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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75173 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SONS OF FIRE
+
+                                A Novel
+
+                       By Mary Elizabeth Braddon
+
+                             THE AUTHOR OF
+
+                   "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"
+                            "ISHMAEL," ETC.
+
+
+                          _IN THREE VOLUMES_
+
+                                VOL. I.
+
+                                LONDON
+                SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.
+                                LIMITED
+                        STATIONERS' HALL COURT
+
+                        [_All rights reserved_]
+
+                                LONDON:
+             PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+                          CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+                 I. A STRIKING LIKENESS
+
+                II. ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE
+
+               III. "A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE"
+
+                IV. "IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON"
+
+                 V. MORE NEW-COMERS
+
+                VI. LIKE THE MOTH TO THE FLAME
+
+               VII. "O THE RARE SPRING-TIME!"
+
+              VIII. NOT YET
+
+                IX. "SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE"
+
+                 X. "OUR DREAMS PURSUE OUR DEAD, AND DO NOT FIND"
+
+                XI. THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE
+
+
+
+
+                             SONS OF FIRE.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                         A STRIKING LIKENESS.
+
+
+The meet was at the Pig and Whistle, at Melbury, nine miles off. Rather
+a near meet--compared with the usual appointments of the South Sarum
+hounds--the ostler remarked, as Allan Carew mounted a hired hunter in
+the yard of the Duke's Head, chief, and indeed only possible inn for a
+gentleman to put up at, in the little village of Matcham, a small but
+prosperous hamlet, lying in a hollow of the hills between Salisbury
+and Andover. He had only arrived on the previous afternoon, and he was
+sallying forth in the crisp March morning, on an unknown horse in an
+unfamiliar country, to hunt with a pack whose master's name he had
+heard for the first time that day.
+
+"Can he jump?" asked Allan, as he scrutinized the lean, upstanding
+bay; not a bad kind of horse by any means, but with that shabby,
+under-groomed and over-worked appearance common to hirelings.
+
+"Can't he, sir? There ain't a better lepper in Wiltshire. And as
+clever as a cat! We had a lady staying here in the winter, Mrs.
+Colonel Parkyn, brought two 'acks of her own, besides the colonel's
+two 'unters, and liked this here horse better than any of 'em. She was
+right down mashed on him, as the young gents say."
+
+"I wonder she didn't buy him," said Allan.
+
+"She couldn't, sir. Money wouldn't buy such a hunter as this off my
+master. He's a fortune to us."
+
+"I hope I may be of Mrs. Parkyn's opinion when I come home," said
+Allan. "Now then, ostler, just tell me which way I am to ride to get to
+the Pig and Whistle by eleven o'clock."
+
+The ostler gave elaborate instructions. A public-house here, an
+accommodation lane there--a common to cross--a copse to skirt--three
+villages--one church--a post-office--and several cross-roads.
+
+"You're safe to fall in with company before you get there," concluded
+the ostler, whisking a bit of straw out of the bay's off hind hoof, and
+eyeing him critically, previous to departure.
+
+"If I don't, I doubt if I ever shall get there," said Allan, as he rode
+out of the yard.
+
+He was a stranger in Matcham, a "foreigner," as the villagers called
+such alien visitors. He had never been in the village before,
+knew nothing of its inhabitants or its surroundings, its customs,
+ways, local prejudices, produce, trade, scandals, hates, loves,
+subserviencies, gods, or devils. And yet henceforward he was to be
+closely allied with Matcham, for a certain bachelor uncle had lately
+died and left him a small estate within a mile of the village--a
+relative with whom Allan Carew had held slightest commune, lunching or
+dining with him perhaps once in a summer, at an old family hotel in
+Albemarle Street, never honoured by so much as a hint at an invitation
+to his rural retreat, and not cherishing any expectation of a legacy,
+much less the bequest of all the gentleman's worldly possessions,
+comprising a snug, well-built house, in pretty and spacious grounds,
+with good and ample stabling, and with farms and homesteads covering
+something like fifteen hundred acres, and producing an income of a
+little over two thousand a year.
+
+It need hardly be stated that Allan Carew was not a poor man when this
+unexpected property fell into his lap.
+
+The children of this world are rarely false to the gospel precept--to
+every one which hath shall be given. Allan's father had changed his
+name, ten years before, from Beresford to Carew, upon his succession
+to a respectable estate in Suffolk, an inheritance from his maternal
+grandfather, old Squire Carew, of Fendyke Hall, Millfield.
+
+Allan, an only son, was not by any means ill provided for when his
+maternal uncle, Admiral the Honourable Allan Darnleigh, took it into
+his head to leave him his Wiltshire property; but this bequest raised
+him at once to independence, and altogether dispensed with any further
+care about that gentleman-like profession, the Bar, which had so far
+repaid Mr. Carew's collegiate studies, labours, outlays, and solicitude
+by fees amounting in all to seven pounds seven shillings, which sum
+represented the gross earnings of three years.
+
+So, riding along the rustic high-road, in the clear morning air, under
+a sapphire sky, just gently flecked with fleecy cloudlets, Allan Carew
+told himself that it was a blessed escape to have done with chambers,
+and reading law, and waiting for briefs; and that it was a good thing
+to be a country gentleman; to have his own house and his own stable;
+not to be obliged to ride another man's horses, even though that other
+man were his very father; not to be told after every stiffish day
+across country that he had done for the grey, or that the chestnut's
+legs had filled as never horse's legs filled before, nor to hear any
+other reproachful utterances of an old and privileged stud-groom, who
+knew the horses he rode were not his own property. Henceforth his
+stable would be his own kingdom, and he would reign there absolute and
+unquestioned. He could choose his own horses, and they should be good
+ones. He naturally shared the common creed of sons, and looked upon
+all animals of his father's buying as "screws" and "duffers." His own
+stables would be something altogether different from the drowsy old
+stables at home, where horses were kept and cherished because they were
+familiar friends, rather than with a view to locomotion. His stud and
+his stable should be as different as if horses and grooms had been bred
+upon another planet.
+
+He loved field-sports. He felt that it was in him to make a model
+squire, albeit two thousand a year was not a large revenue in these
+days of elegant living and Continental holidays, and eclectic tastes.
+He felt that among his numerous nephews, old Admiral Darnleigh had
+made a wise selection in choosing his god-son, Allan Carew, to inherit
+his Wiltshire estate. He meant to be prudent and economical. He had
+spent the previous afternoon in a leisurely inspection of Beechhurst.
+He had gone over house and stables, and had found all things so well
+planned, and in such perfect order, that he was assailed by none of
+those temptations to pull down and to build, to alter and to improve,
+which often inaugurate ruin in the very dawn of possession. He thought
+he might build two or three loose boxes on one side of the spacious
+stable-yard. There were two packs within easy reach of Matcham, to say
+nothing of packs accessible by rail, and he would naturally want more
+hunters than had sufficed for the old sailor, who had jogged out on his
+clever cob two or three times a week, and had gone home early, after
+artful riding and waiting about the lanes, or to leeward of the great
+bare hills, and in snug corners, where a profound knowledge of the
+country enabled him to make sure of the hounds. Allan's hunting-stable
+would be on a very different footing; and although Beechhurst provided
+ample accommodation for a stud of eight, Allan told himself that one of
+his first duties would be to build loose boxes.
+
+"I shall often have to put up a couple of horses for a friend," he
+thought.
+
+The morning was lovely, more like April than March. The bay trotted
+along complacently, neither lazy nor feverishly active, but with an air
+of knowing what he had to do for his day's wage, and meaning honestly
+to do it. Allan was glad that his road took him past Beechhurst.
+Possession had still all the charm of novelty. His heart thrilled with
+pride as he slackened his pace to gaze fondly at the pretty white
+house, low and long, with a verandah running all along the southern
+front, admirably placed upon a gentle elevation, against the swelling
+shoulder of a broad down, facing south-west, and looking over garden
+and shrubbery, and across a stretch of common, that lay between
+Beechhurst and the high-road, and gave a dignified aloofness to the
+situation; seclusion without dulness, a house and grounds remote, but
+not buried or hidden.
+
+"Nothing manorial about it," mused Allan; "but it certainly looks a
+gentleman's place."
+
+He would naturally have preferred something less essentially modern. He
+would have liked Tudor chimneys, panelled walls, and a family ghost.
+He would have liked to know that his race had taken deep root in the
+soil, had been lords of the manor centuries and centuries ago, when
+Wamba was keeping pigs in the woods, and when the jester's bells mixed
+with the merry music of hawk and hound. Admiral Darnleigh, so far as
+Wiltshire was concerned, had been a new man. He had made his money in
+China, speculating in tea-gardens, and other property, while pursuing
+his naval career with considerable distinction. He had retired from
+active service soon after the Chinese war, a C.B. and a rich man, had
+bought Beechhurst a bargain--during a period of depression--and had
+settled down in yonder pretty white house, with a small but admirable
+establishment, each member thereof a pearl of price among servants,
+and had there spent the tranquil even-tide of an honourable and
+consistently selfish life. He had never married. As a single man, he
+had always felt himself rich; as a married man he might often have
+felt himself poor. He had heard Allan at five and twenty declare that
+he had done with the romance of life, and that he, too, meant to be a
+bachelor; and it may be that this boyish assertion, carelessly made
+over a bottle of Lafitte, did in some measure influence the Admiral's
+choice of an heir.
+
+Allan's father and mother were of a more liberal mind.
+
+"You are in a better position than your father was at your age," said
+Lady Emily Carew, on her son's accession to fortune. "I hope you will
+marry well--and soon."
+
+There was no thought of woman's love, or of married bliss, in Allan
+Carew's mind, as he rode through the lanes and over a common, and
+across a broad stretch of open down to the Pig and Whistle. He was
+full, not of his inner self, but of the outer world around and about
+him, pleased with the pleasant country in which his lot was cast,
+wondering what his new neighbours were like, and how they would receive
+him.
+
+"I wonder whether the South Sarum is a hospitable hunt, or whether the
+members are a surly lot, and look upon every stranger as a sponge and
+an interloper," he mused.
+
+He had ridden alone for about half the way, when a man in grey fustian
+and leather gaiters, who looked like a small tenant farmer, trotted
+past him, turned and stared at him with obvious astonishment, touched
+his hat and rode on, after a few words of greeting, which were lost in
+the clatter of hoofs.
+
+He had ridden right so far by the aid of memory; he now followed
+the man in grey, and, taking care to keep this pioneer in view,
+duly arrived at a small rustic inn, standing upon high ground, and
+overlooking an undulating sweep of woodland and common, marsh and
+plain, one of those picturesque oases which diversify the breadth of
+wind-swept downs. The inn was an isolated building, the few labourers'
+cottages within reach being hidden by a turn of the road.
+
+Hounds and hunt-servants were clustered on a level green on the other
+side of the road, but there was no one else upon the ground.
+
+Allan looked at his watch, and found that it was ten minutes to eleven.
+
+The man in grey had dismounted from his serviceable cob, and was
+standing on the greensward, talking to the huntsman. Huntsman and whips
+had taken off their caps to Allan as he rode up, and it seemed to
+him that there was at once more respect and more friendliness in the
+salutation than a stranger usually receives--above all a stranger in
+heather cloth and butcher boots, and not in the orthodox pink and tops.
+The man in grey, and the hunt-servants, were evidently talking of him
+as he sat solitary in front of the inn. Their furtive glances in his
+direction fully indicated that he was the subject of their discourse.
+
+"They take a curious interest in strangers in these parts," thought
+Allan.
+
+Two minutes afterwards, a stout man, with a weather-beaten red face
+showing above a weather-beaten red coat, rode up with two other men.
+Evidently the master and his satellites.
+
+"Hulloa!" cried the jovial man, "what the deuce brings you back so much
+sooner than Mrs. Wornock expected you? She told me there was no chance
+of our seeing you for the next year. When did you arrive? I never heard
+a word about it."
+
+The master's broad doeskin palm was extended to Allan in the most
+cordial way, and the master's broad red face irradiated kindliest
+feelings.
+
+"You are under a misapprehension, sir," said Allan, smiling at the
+frank, friendly face, amused at the eager rapidity of speech which had
+made it impossible for him to interrupt the speaker. "I have never yet
+enjoyed the privilege of a day with the South Sarum, and this is my
+first appearance in your neighbourhood."
+
+"And you ain't Geoffrey Wornock," exclaimed the master, utterly
+discomfited.
+
+"My name is Carew."
+
+"Ah, your voice is different. I should have known you were not Geoff if
+I had heard you speak. And now, of course, when one looks deliberately,
+there is a difference--a difference which would be more marked, I dare
+say, if Wornock were here. Are you a relation of Wornock's?"
+
+"I never heard the name of Wornock in my life until I heard it from
+you."
+
+"Well, I'm--dashed," cried the master, suppressing a stronger word as
+premature so early in the day. "Did you see the likeness, Champion?"
+asked the master, appealing to one of his satellites.
+
+"Of course I did," replied Captain Champion. "I was just as much
+under a delusion as you were--and yet--Mr. Carew's features are not
+the same as Wornock's--and his eyes are a different colour. It's the
+outlook, the expression, the character in the face that is so like our
+friend's--and I think that kind of likeness impresses one more than
+mere form and outline."
+
+"Hang me if I know anything about it, except that I took one man for
+the other," said the master, bluntly. "Well, Mr. Carew, I hope you will
+excuse my blunder, and that we may be able to show you some sport on
+your first day in our country. We'll draw Wellout's Wood, Hamper, and
+if we don't find there we'll go on to Holiday Hill."
+
+Hounds and servants went off merrily across the down, and dipped into
+a winding lane. A good many horsemen had ridden up by this time, with
+half a dozen ladies among them. Some skirmished across the fields,
+others crowded the lane, and in this latter contingent rode the master,
+with his hounds in front of him, and Carew at his side.
+
+"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" he asked; "or did you come by
+rail this morning? A long ride from Matcham Road station, if you did."
+
+"I am staying at the Duke's Head, at Matcham; but I only arrived
+yesterday. I am going to settle in your neighbourhood."
+
+"Indeed! Have you bought a place?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, going to rent one. Wiser, perhaps, till you see how you like this
+part of the country."
+
+"I have had a place left me by my uncle, Admiral Darnleigh."
+
+"What! are you Darnleigh's heir? Yes, by-the-by, I heard that
+Beechhurst was left to a Mr. Carew; but I've a bad memory for names.
+So you have got Beechhurst, have you? I congratulate you. A charming
+place, compact, snug, warm, and in perfect order. Stables a trifle
+small, perhaps, for a hunting man."
+
+"I am going to extend them," said Allan, with suppressed pride.
+
+"Then you are going to do the right thing, sir. The only part in
+which Beechhurst falls short of perfection is in the stables. Capital
+stables, as far as they go, but it isn't far enough for a man who wants
+to hunt five days a week, and accommodate his hunting friends. Besides,
+the owner of Beechhurst ought to be in a position to take the hounds at
+a push."
+
+"I hope it may be long before that push comes," said Allan.
+
+"Ah, you're very kind; but I'm not so young as I was once, nor so rich
+as I was once--and--the Preacher says there's a time for all things. My
+time is very nearly past, and your time is coming, Mr. Carew. When do
+you establish yourself at Beechhurst?"
+
+"I am going back to London to-morrow to settle a few matters, and
+perhaps have a look round at Tattersall's, and I hope to be at
+Beechhurst in less than a fortnight."
+
+"I shall do myself the pleasure of calling upon you. Any wife?"
+
+"I am still in the enviable position my uncle enjoyed till his death."
+
+"A bachelor? Ah! that won't last long. It's all very well for a
+sun-dried old sailor to keep the fair sex at arm's length; but
+_you_ won't be able to do it, Mr. Carew. I give you till our
+next hunt-ball for a free man. You've no notion what complexions our
+Wiltshire women have--Devon can't beat 'em--or what a lot of pretty
+girls there are within a fifteen-mile drive of Matcham."
+
+"I look forward with a thrill of mingled rapture and apprehension to
+your next hunt-ball."
+
+"It'll be here before you know where you are. We have postponed it till
+the first of May. We shall kill our May fox on the thirtieth of April,
+and dance on his grave on the first."
+
+"I shall be there, my lord," said Allan, as Lord Hambury galloped off
+after his huntsman, who had just put the hounds into the covert.
+
+A whimper proclaimed that there was something on foot, five minutes
+afterwards, and the business of the day began--a goodish day, and a
+long one--two foxes run to earth, and one killed in the twilight. It
+was seven o'clock when Allan Carew arrived at the Duke's Head, hungry
+and thirsty, and not a little bored by having been obliged to explain
+to various people that he was no relation to Geoffrey Wornock.
+
+He had been too much bored at this enforced reiteration to make any
+inquiries about this double of his in the course of the day, or during
+the long homeward ride; but when he had taken the edge off his appetite
+in his cosy sitting-room at the Duke's Head, he began to question the
+waiter, as he trifled with the customary hotel tart, a hollow cavern of
+short crust roofing in half a bottle of overgrown gooseberries.
+
+"Do you know Mr. Wornock?"
+
+"Yes, sir; know him uncommonly well. Wonderful likeness between him and
+you, sir; thought you was him till I heard you speak."
+
+"Our voices are different, I am told."
+
+"Yes, sir, there's a difference. It ain't much--but it's just enough to
+make one doubtful like. Your voice, begging your pardon, sir, ain't as
+musical as his. Mr. Wornock's is a voice that would charm a bird off a
+tree, as the saying is. And then, after the first glance, one can see
+it ain't the same face," pursued the waiter, thoughtfully. "You've got
+such a look of him, you see, sir. That's what it is. One don't stop
+to think of the shape of a nose or a chin. It's the look that catches
+the eye. I suppose that's what people means by a speaking countenance,
+sir," added the waiter, garrulous, but not disrespectful.
+
+"Has Mr. Wornock any land in the county?" asked Allan.
+
+"Land, sir? Yes, sir," replied the waiter, with a touch of wonder at
+being asked such a question. "Mr. Wornock is Lord of the Manor of
+Discombe, sir--a very large estate--and a fine old house, added to by
+Mr. Wornock's grandfather. The old part was built in the time of King
+Charles, sir, and the new part is very fine and picturesque--and the
+gardens are celebrated in these parts, sir--quite a show place--but
+Mrs. Wornock never allows it to be shown. She lives very secluded,
+don't give no entertainments herself, nor visit scarce anywheres. They
+do say that she was not right in her mind for some years after Mr.
+Wornock's birth, but that's six and twenty years ago, and there may not
+be any truth in the report. Gongozorla, sir, or cheddar?"
+
+"Neither, thanks. Are the Wornocks an old family?"
+
+"Very old family, sir. Old Saxon name. Came over with Edward the
+Confessor."
+
+"And who was Mrs. Wornock?"
+
+"Ah, there's a little 'itch there, sir. Nobody knows who Mrs. Wornock
+was, or where she came from--and they do say she wasn't county, which
+is a pity, seeing that the Wornocks had always married county prior to
+that marriage," added the waiter, proud of his concluding phrase.
+
+"Mr. Wornock is abroad, I understand. Where?"
+
+"Inja, sir. Cavalry regiment, the Eighteenth South Sarum Lancers."
+
+"Strange for a man owning so fine a property to go into the army."
+
+"Well, sir, don't you see, the life at the Manor must have been a
+very dull one for a young gentleman. No entertainments. No staying
+company. Mrs. Wornock, she don't care for nothink but music--and,
+after all, sir, music ain't everythink to a young man. He 'unted, and
+he 'unted, and he 'unted, from the time he 'ad legs to cross a pony.
+Wherever there was 'ounds to be follered, he follered 'em. But hunting
+ain't everythink in life, and it don't last long," added the waiter,
+philosophically.
+
+"Mrs. Wornock, as dowager, should have withdrawn to her Dower-house,
+and left the young man free to be as jovial as he liked at the Manor."
+
+"Ah, that may come to pass when he marries, sir, but not before.
+Mr. Wornock is a devoted son. He'd be the last to turn his mother
+out-of-doors. And he's almost as keen on music as his mother, I've
+heard say; plays the fiddle just like a professional--and the organ."
+
+"Well," sighed Carew, having heard all he wanted to hear, "I bear no
+grudge against Mr. Geoffrey Wornock because he happens to resemble me;
+but I wish with all my heart that he could have made it convenient to
+live in any other neighbourhood than that in which my lot is cast. That
+will do, waiter; I don't want any more wine. You may clear the table,
+and bring me some tea at nine o'clock."
+
+The waiter cleared the table, in a leisurely way, made up the fire,
+also in a leisurely way, and contrived to spend a quarter of an
+hour upon work that might have been done in five minutes; but Allan
+questioned him no further. He flung himself back in an easy-chair,
+rested his slippered feet upon the fender, and meditated with closed
+eyes.
+
+Yes, it was a bore, a decided bore, to have a double in the
+neighbourhood. A double richer, more important, and altogether better
+placed than himself; a double in a Lancer regiment--there is at once
+chic and attractiveness in a cavalry soldier--a double who owned just
+the fine old manorial estate, and fine old manorial mansion which he,
+Allan, would have liked to possess.
+
+Beechhurst might be a snug little property; the house might be
+perfection, as Lord Hambury had averred; but when a house of that
+calibre is said to be perfect, the adjective rarely means anything more
+than a good kitchen, and a convenient butler's pantry, roomy cellars,
+and a well-planned staircase; whereas, to praise a fine old manor house
+implies that it contains a panelled hall, and a spacious ballroom, a
+library with a groined roof, and a music gallery in the dining-room.
+After hearing of Wornock's old house, Allan felt that Beechhurst was
+distinctly middle-class, and that his sailor uncle must have been
+a poor creature to have found pride and pleasure in such a cockney
+paradise.
+
+He jumped up out of his easy-chair, shook himself, and laughed aloud at
+his own pettiness.
+
+"What an envious brute I am!" he said to himself. "I dare say, when
+Wornock comes home, I shall find him a decent fellow, and we shall get
+to be good friends. If we do, I'll tell him how I was gnawed with envy
+of his better fortune before ever I saw his face."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+                         ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE.
+
+
+Allan Carew spent the best part of the following day at Beechhurst,
+better pleased with his inheritance than he would confess even to
+himself. The Admiral's Chinese experiences had not been without
+tangible result. The hall was decorated with curios whose value
+their present possessor could only guess, and if the greater part
+of the house was prim and commonplace, there was one room which
+was both handsome and original--this was the smoking-room and
+library, a spacious apartment which the Admiral had added to the
+original structure, and which was built on the model of a Mandarin's
+reception-room. Yes, on the whole, Allan was inclined to think his lot
+had fallen on a pleasant heritage. He went up to town in good spirits;
+spent ten days in looking at hunting studs at Tattersall's, and made
+his modest selection with care and prudence, content to start his
+stable with four good hunters, a dog-cart horse, a pony to fetch and
+carry, two grooms and a stable-help.
+
+The all-important business of the stable concluded, he went back to
+Suffolk to spend Easter in the bosom of his family, and to tell his
+father what he had done. There was perfect harmony of feeling, and
+frankest confidence between father and son, and the son's regard
+for the father was all the stronger because, under that quiet and
+somewhat languid bearing of the Squire of Fendyke, Allan suspected
+hidden depths. Of the history of his father's youth, or the history
+of his father's heart, the son knew nothing; yet, fondly as he loved
+his mother, the excellent and popular Lady Emily, he had a shrewd
+suspicion that she was not the kind of woman to have won his father's
+heart in the days when love means romance rather than reason. That
+she possessed her husband's warm affection now, he, the son, was
+fully assured; but he was equally assured that the alliance had been
+passionless, a union of two honourable minds, rather than of two loving
+hearts.
+
+There was that in his father's manner of life which to Allan's mind
+told of a youth overshadowed by some unhappy experience; and a word
+dropped now and then, in the father's talk of his son's prospects and
+hopes, a hint, a sigh, had suggested an unfortunate love-affair.
+
+His mother was more communicative, and had told her son frankly that
+she was not his father's first love.
+
+"You remember your grandmother, Allan?" she said.
+
+Yes, Allan remembered her distinctly--an elderly woman dressed in some
+rich silken fabric, always black, with a silver chatelaine at her side,
+on which there hung a curious old enamelled watch that he loved to look
+at. A tall slender figure, a thin aquiline countenance, with silvery
+hair arrayed in feathery curls under a honiton cap. She had been always
+kind to him; but no kindness could dispel the awe which she inspired.
+
+"I used to dream of her," he said. "Had she a frightening voice, do you
+think? She was mixed up in most of my childish nightmares."
+
+"Poor Allan!" laughed his mother. "She was an excellent woman, but
+she loved to command; and one can't command affection, not even the
+affection of a child. It was she who made your father marry me.
+He liked me, and I liked him, and we had been playfellows; but we
+should never have thought of marrying if your grandmother had not,
+in a manner, insisted upon it. She told George that I was deeply in
+love with him; and she told me that George was devoted to me; and so
+we could not help ourselves. And, after all," she went on, with a
+comfortable sigh, "it has answered very well. I don't think we could
+possibly be fonder of our home, or of each other, than we are. And
+your father has his books, and his shooting and fishing, and I have my
+farm and my schools--and," with a sudden gush of tenderness, "we both
+have you. You ought to be fond of us, Allan. You are the link that
+makes us one in heart and mind."
+
+Allan was fond of them. Both parents had been undeviating in their
+indulgence, and he had given them love without stint. But it may be
+that he loved the somewhat silent and reserved father with a profounder
+affection than he gave to the open-hearted and loquacious mother.
+That vague consciousness of a secret in his father's life, of sorrows
+unforgotten, but never told, had evoked the son's warmest sympathy. All
+that Allan had ever felt of sentiment or romantic feeling hitherto, he
+had felt for his father. It is not to be supposed that he had reached
+five and twenty without some commerce with Cupid, but his loves had
+been only passing fancies, sunbeams glancing on the surface of life's
+current, not those deep forces which change the course of the river.
+
+The characters of father and mother were distinctly marked in their
+acceptance of Allan's good fortune. Lady Emily saw only the sunny
+side of the inheritance. She was delighted that her son should have
+ample means and perfect independence in the morning of life. She was
+full of matrimonial schemes on his behalf. Decidedly he ought to
+marry, well and quickly. An only son, with an estate in possession,
+and another--his patrimonial estate--in prospective. It was his duty
+to found a family. She marshalled all the young women she knew in a
+mental review. There must be good family--a pure race, untarnished by
+the taint of commerce, unshadowed by hushed-up disgrace--divorces,
+bankruptcies, turf scandals. There should be money, because even the
+two estates would not make Allan a rich man, as the world reckons
+wealth nowadays; but they would give him a respectable platform from
+which to demand the hand of an heiress. He could woo the wealthiest
+without fear of being considered a fortune-hunter.
+
+"It is sad to think you will like your own place better than this,"
+said Lady Emily in her cheerfullest voice, "and that we shall hardly
+see you except at Christmas and Easter; but it is so nice to know that
+you are in a position to marry as early as you like without being under
+any obligation to your father; for, indeed, dear, what with his library
+and my farm, there would have been very little margin for a proper
+establishment for you."
+
+"My dearest mother, why harp upon matrimony? I have made up my mind to
+follow my uncle's excellent example."
+
+"My poor brother!" sighed Lady Emily. "He was in love with the belle
+of the season--a foolish pink and white thing, with one long curl
+streaming over her left shoulder, and a frock that you would laugh at,
+if you could see her to-day. Of course Allan's chances were hopeless--a
+younger son, with a commander's pay, eked out by a pittance from his
+father. She used to ride in the Row with a plume in her hat--half a
+Spanish fowl--quite the right thing, I assure you, at that time.
+Your uncle was twelve years older than I, you know, Allan; and I was
+still in short petticoats when he went off to China broken-hearted.
+Of course she wouldn't have him, though she said he was the best
+waltzer in London. Her people wouldn't let her look at him even, from a
+matrimonial point of view."
+
+Allan went to church with his mother on Easter morning--attended two
+services in the fine old church, which seemed much too grand and too
+big for the tiny town--her loving heart swelling with pride at having
+such an admirable son. Her friends had always been fond of him; but now
+it seemed to her there was a touch of deference in their kindness. They
+had liked him as _her_ son, and the inheritor of Fendyke Hall; but
+perhaps they liked him even a little better now that he was his own
+master, a man of independent means.
+
+He accompanied Lady Emily in her weekly visit to the schools; he
+assisted in dealing out Easter gifts to the school-children, and
+distributed half a dozen pounds of the very strongest obtainable
+tobacco among his male acquaintance in the village of Fendyke--a
+village consisting of a rectory, three picturesque farmhouses, a still
+more picturesque water-mill and miller's house, a roomy old barn-like
+inn, said to have once given shelter to good Queen Bess, and a good
+many decent cottages grouped in threes and fours along the broad, level
+road, or scattered in side lanes.
+
+The morning of Easter Monday was given to an inspection of Lady
+Emily's white farm--that farm which, next to her son, was the greatest
+pride and delight of her innocent and strictly rural life. Here,
+all buildings and all creatures were of an almost dazzling purity.
+White horses at the plough, a white fox-terrier running beside it,
+white birds in the poultry-yard, white cows in the meadow--cows from
+Lord Cawdor's old white Pembroke breed, cows from Blickling Park and
+Woodbastwick--white cottages for bailiff and farm-labourers, white
+palings, white pigs, and white donkeys, a white peacock sunning
+himself on the top of the clipped yew-hedge in the bailiff's garden,
+white tulips, white hyacinths in the flower-beds. To procure all this
+whiteness had cost trouble and money; but there are few home-farms
+which give as much delight to their possessors as this white farm gave
+to Lady Emily Carew. She had as much pride in its perfection as the
+connoisseur who collects only Wedgwood, or only Florentine Majolica,
+has in his collection. It is not so much the actual value of the thing
+as the fact that the thing is unique, and has cost the possessor years
+of patience and labour. Lady Emily would take a long journey to look at
+a white cow, or to secure the whitest thing in Brahmas or Cochin Chinas.
+
+It was a harmless, simple, womanly hobby, and although Lady Emily's
+farm was a somewhat costly toy, it served to give her status in the
+neighbourhood, and it provided labour for a good many people, who
+were well housed and well looked after, and whose children astonished
+the school-inspectors by the thoroughness of their education. No
+incompetent master or mistress could have held on in the schools where
+Lady Emily was a power. She cultivated a friendly familiarity with the
+man and woman who taught her cottage children; she asked them to quiet,
+confidential luncheons three or four times in a quarter; she sounded
+their opinions, plucked out the heart of their mystery, lent them
+books, stuffed them with her own ideas, and, in a manner, made them her
+mouthpiece. Intensely conservative as to her opinions and prejudices,
+and with an absolute loathing for all radical and revolutionary
+principles; she was yet, by the beneficence of her nature, more liberal
+than many a professing demagogue, and would fain have admitted all
+her fellow-creatures to an equal share in the good things of this
+life. Her warm heart was full of compassion for the hard lives she saw
+around her--hard even where the condition of the agricultural labourer
+was at its best--and it was her delight to introduce into these hard
+lives occasional glimpses of a happier world--a world of pleasure
+and gaiety, laughter and frolic. Lady Emily's Christmas and Whitsun
+balls for the villagers and servants; Lady Emily's May-day feast for
+the children; Lady Emily's midsummer picnic and harvest-home; and Lady
+Emily's fairy fir-tree, which reached to the ceiling of the boy's
+schoolroom, every branch laden with benefits--these were events which
+broke the slow monotony of each laborious year, joys to dream of and
+to remember in many a dull week of toil. Second only to these festive
+gatherings in helpfulness were Lady Emily's coal and blanket society,
+savings bank, and mothers' meeting--the last a friendly, familiar
+gathering held in a spacious old building which had been a brewery in
+the days when every country gentleman's household brewed its own beer.
+Once a week, through the winter season, Lady Emily sat in the old
+brewery, with a circle of cottagers' wives sewing industriously, while
+she talked and read to them. Tea and bread-and-butter, a roaring wood
+fire, and a bright lamp, were the only material comforts provided; but
+these and Lady Emily's friendly welcome and pleasant talk, with the
+short story chosen out of a magazine, and the familiar chapter of the
+New Testament, read far better than vicar or curate read it in church,
+sufficed to make the mothers' meeting a cheerful break in the cottage
+matron's busy week. She went back to her homely hearth cheered and
+encouraged. Lady Emily had told her the latest news of the great busy
+world outside Fendyke, had given her a recipe for a new savoury pie of
+ox-cheek and twopenny rice, or a new way of making barley broth; or
+had given her a "cutting" for her tiny flower-garden, or had cut out
+her new Gari_bawl_di. Lady Emily had been to her as a friend and
+counsellor.
+
+The village remembered with a shudder that long dreary winter when
+the great house was empty, while Mr. Carew and his wife were in
+Egypt--ordered there by the doctors, after a serious illness of the
+squire's.
+
+Much had been done for the sick and the poor even in that desolate
+winter, for the housekeeper had been given a free hand; but no
+one could replace Lady Emily, and the gaiety of Fendyke had been
+extinguished.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                      "A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE."
+
+
+The hunting was nearly over by the time Allan Carew had established
+himself at Beechhurst and completed his stud. The selection of half a
+dozen hunters had given him an excuse for running up to London once or
+twice a week; and he had revelled in the convenience of express trains
+between Salisbury and Waterloo as compared with the slow and scanty
+train service between Fendyke and Cambridge, which made a journey from
+his native village a trial of youthful patience.
+
+London was full of pleasant people at this after-Easter season, so
+Allan took his time at Tattersall's, saw his friends, dined them, or
+dined with them, at those clubs which young men most affect, went to
+his favourite theatres, rode in the Park, and saw a race or two at
+Sandown, all in the process of buying his horses; but at last the stud
+was complete, and his stud-groom, a man he had brought from Suffolk,
+the man who taught him to ride, had shaken a wise head, and told his
+young master to stop buying.
+
+"You've got just as many as you can use, Mr. Allan," he said, "and if
+you buy another one, it 'ud mean another b'y, and we shall have b'ys
+enough for me to keep in order as it is."
+
+So Allan held his hand. "And now I am a country gentleman," he said,
+"and I must go and live on my acres."
+
+Everybody in the neighbourhood wanted to know him. He was under none
+of the disadvantages of the new man about whom people have to ask
+each other, "Who is he?" He came to Matcham with the best possible
+credentials. His father was a man of old family, against whose name no
+evil thing had ever been written. His mother was an earl's daughter;
+and the estate which was his had been left him by a man whose memory
+was respected in the neighbourhood--a man of easy temper and open hand,
+a kind master, and a staunch friend.
+
+Allan found his hall-table covered with cards when he returned from his
+London holiday, and he was occupied for the next fortnight in returning
+the calls that had been made for the most part in his absence. To a
+shy young man this business of returning calls in an unknown land
+would have been terrible--invading unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and
+seeing strange faces, wondering which of two matrons was his hostess
+and which the friend or sister-in-law--an ordeal as awful as any
+mediæval torture; but Allan was not shy, and he accepted the situation
+with a winning ease which pleased everybody. When he blundered--and
+his blunders were rare--he laughed at his mistake, and turned it
+into a jest that served to help him through the first five minutes
+of small-talk. He had a quick eye, and in a room full of people saw
+at a glance the welcoming smile and extended hand which marked his
+hostess. "Quite an acquisition to the neighbourhood," said everybody;
+and the mothers of marriageable daughters were as eager to improve the
+acquaintance as Jane Austen's inimitable Mrs. Bennett was to cultivate
+the irreproachable Bingley.
+
+In the course of that round of visits Allan contrived to find out a
+good deal about the neighbourhood which was henceforward to be his home.
+
+He discovered that it was, above all, a hunting neighbourhood; but that
+it was also a shooting neighbourhood; and that there was bad blood
+between the men who wanted to preserve pheasants and the men who wanted
+to hunt foxes. From the point of view of the rights of property, the
+shooters would appear to be in their right, since they only wanted to
+feed and foster birds on their own land; while the hunting-man--were
+he but the season-ticket-holding solicitor from Bloomsbury--wanted to
+hunt his fox over land which belonged to another man, and to spoil that
+other man's costly sport in the pursuit of a pleasure which cost him,
+the season-ticket holder, at most a stingy subscription to the hunt he
+affected. But, on the other hand, hunting is a strictly national sport,
+and shooting is a selfish, hole-and-corner kind of pleasure; so the
+hunting men claimed immemorial rights and privileges as against the
+owners of woods and copses, and the hatchers of pheasants.
+
+Allan found another and more universal sport also in the ascendant at
+Matcham. The neighbourhood had taken lately to golf, and that game
+had found favour with old and young of both sexes. Everybody could
+not hunt, but everybody could play golf, or fancy that he or she was
+playing golf, or, at least, look on from a respectful distance while
+golf was being played. The golf-links on Matcham Common had therefore
+become the most popular institution in the neighbourhood, and the
+scarlet coat of the golfer was oftener seen than the fox-hunter in
+pink, and people came from afar to see the young ladies of Matcham
+contest for the bangles and photograph-frames which the golf club
+offered as the reward of the strong arm and the accurate eye.
+
+Allan, who could turn his hand to most things in the way of physical
+exercise, was able to hold his own with the members of the golf club,
+and speedily became a familiar figure on the links. Here, as elsewhere,
+he met people who told him he was like Geoffrey Wornock, and who
+praised Wornock's skill at golf just as other people had praised his
+riding or his shooting.
+
+"He seems to be something of a Crichton, this Wornock of yours," Allan
+said sometimes, with a suspicion of annoyance.
+
+He was sick of being told of his likeness to this man whom he had never
+seen--weary of hearing the likeness discussed in his presence; weary of
+being told that the resemblance was in expression rather than in actual
+feature; that there was an indefinable something in his face which
+recalled Wornock in an absolutely startling manner; while the details
+of that face taken separately were in many respects unlike Wornock's
+face.
+
+"Yet it is more than what is generally called a family likeness,"
+said Mrs. Mornington of the Grove, a personage in the neighbourhood,
+and the cleverest woman among Allan's new acquaintances. "It is the
+individuality, the life and movement of the face, that are the same.
+The likeness is a likeness of light and shade rather than of line and
+colour."
+
+There was a curious feeling in Allan's mind by the time this kind of
+thing had been said to him in different forms of speech by nearly
+everybody he knew in Matcham--a feeling which was partly irritation,
+partly interest in the man whose outward likeness to himself might be
+allied with some identity of mind and inclinations.
+
+"I wonder whether I shall like him very much, or hate him very much,"
+he said to Mrs. Mornington. "I feel sure I must do one or the other."
+
+"You are sure to like him. He is not the kind of man for anybody
+to hate," answered the lady quickly; and then, growing suddenly
+thoughtful, she added, "You may find a something wanting in his
+character, perhaps; but you cannot dislike him. He is thoroughly
+likeable."
+
+"What is the something wanting which you have found?"
+
+"I did not say I had found----"
+
+"Oh, but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak
+spot if you had not found it yourself!"
+
+"You are as searching as a cross-examining counsel," said Mrs.
+Mornington, laughing at him. "Well, I will be perfectly frank with
+you. To my mind, Geoffrey's character suffers from the fault which
+doctors--speaking of a patient's physical condition--call want of tone.
+There is a want of mental tone in Geoffrey. I have known him from a
+boy. I like him; I admire his talents. He and my sons were at Eton
+together. I have seen more of him perhaps than any one else in this
+neighbourhood. I like him--I am sorry for him."
+
+"Why sorry? Has he not all the good things of this world?"
+
+"Not all. He lost his father before he was five years old; and his
+mother is, I fear, a poor creature."
+
+"Eccentric, I understand."
+
+"Lamentably so--a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose
+society would do her good, and who opens her door to any spirit-rapping
+charlatan whose tricks become public talk. Poor thing! One ought not to
+be angry with her, but it is provoking to see such a place as Discombe
+in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position
+to which she has been elevated."
+
+"Who _was_ Mrs. Wornock before she became Mrs. Wornock? I have
+heard hints----"
+
+"Yes, and you are never likely to hear more than hints," retorted
+Mrs. Mornington, impatiently. "Nobody in this neighbourhood knows
+who Mrs. Wornock was. No creature of her kith or kin has ever been
+seen at Discombe. I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her
+antecedents than you or I. Old Squire Wornock left Discombe about
+seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring
+in Bohemia--a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of. He was past
+sixty when he set out on that journey, a confirmed bachelor. One would
+as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife,
+but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance, he
+returned with a pretty-looking delicate young creature he had married
+in Germany--at Dresden, I believe--and who looked much more like dying
+within the next five years than he did."
+
+"Did he introduce her to his neighbours? Was she well received?"
+
+"Oh, she was received well enough. Mr. Wornock was not the kind of man
+to marry a disreputable person. People took her on trust. She seemed
+painfully shy, and her only merit in society was that she sang very
+prettily. Everybody called upon her, but she did not respond warmly
+to our advances; and about six months after her marriage there were
+rumours of an alarming kind about her health--her mental health. Our
+own good little doctor, dear old Mr. Podmore, who had attended three
+generations of Wornocks, shook his head when he was questioned about
+her. 'Was it serious?' people asked--for I suppose you know that in
+a neighbourhood as rustic as ours, if the doctor's carriage is seen
+at a particular house very often, people _will_ ask questions
+of that doctor. Yes, it was very serious. We never got beyond that.
+Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient, fondly as he loves a gossip.
+By-and-by we heard that Mr. Wornock had taken his young wife off to
+Switzerland. He who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil
+was off again to the Continent, and Discombe was shut up once more. I'm
+afraid we all hated Mrs. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like ours, one
+detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life. Dinners
+and hunting-breakfasts at Discombe were an element in our daily lives,
+and we resented their cessation. When I say we, I mean, of course, our
+men-folk."
+
+"Were your men-folk long deprived of Mr. Wornock's hospitalities?"
+
+"For ever," answered Mrs. Mornington, solemnly. "The Wornocks had only
+been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and
+heir, born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter. A nice place for the
+future owner of Discombe to be born in--Grindelwald--at the sign of
+the Bear! We were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing. This
+comes of an old man marrying a nobody, we said. Well, Mr. Carew, it was
+ages before we saw anything more of the Wornocks. Geoffrey must have
+been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to
+the house in which he ought to have been born--a poor little fragile
+Frenchified object, hanging on to a French _bonne_, and speaking
+nothing but French. Not one sentence of his native tongue did the
+little wretch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us!"
+
+Allan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mornington's indignant recital of this
+ancient history. Her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she
+were describing the events of yesterday.
+
+"Was he a nice child?" he asked, when they had both had their laugh.
+
+"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He
+was very active and intelligent--hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He
+frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close
+friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking
+an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of
+the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have
+let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible,
+matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the
+clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down
+to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing--what
+can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as
+those?--a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar
+to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses?
+I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of
+her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon
+her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in
+my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing
+to go. What can one do with such a woman?"
+
+"Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?"
+
+"Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression
+of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above
+the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told
+that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and
+appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both
+organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have
+not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth."
+
+"She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction.
+
+"She is interesting--only she won't let one be interested in her."
+
+"Can one get a look at her? Does she go to Matcham Church?"
+
+"Never. That is another of her eccentricities. She either goes to
+that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the
+fields--Filbury parish church--nearly six miles from Discombe, or she
+drives thirteen miles to Salisbury Cathedral. I believe she sometimes
+plays the organ at Filbury. That organ was her gift, by the way. They
+had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discombe."
+
+"I shall go to Filbury Church next Sunday," said Allan.
+
+"Shall you? I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time. This
+interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint,
+remember. She must be five and forty years of age. Not even Cleopatra
+would have been interesting at forty-five."
+
+"I am under no hallucination as to the lady's age. I want to see
+the mother of Geoffrey Wornock. It is Geoffrey Wornock in whom I am
+interested."
+
+"Egotistical person! Only because Geoffrey is like you."
+
+"Is there any man living who would not be interested in his double?"
+
+"Ah, but he is not your double! The village mind is given to
+exaggeration. He has not your firm chin, nor your thoughtful brow. His
+face is a reminiscence of yours. It is weaker in every characteristic,
+in every line. You are the substance, he the reflection."
+
+"Now, you are laughing at my egotism, and developing my vanity."
+
+"No, believe me, no!" protested Mrs. Mornington, gaily. "I see you both
+with all your defects and qualities. You have the stronger character,
+but you have not Geoffrey's fascinating personality. His very faults
+are attractive. He is by no means effeminate; yet there is a something
+womanish in his nature which makes women fond of him. He has inherited
+his mother's sensitive, dreamy temperament. I feel sure he would see
+a ghost if there were one in his neighbourhood. The ghost would go to
+him instinctively, as dogs go unbidden to certain people--sometimes
+to people who don't care about them; while the genuine dog-lover
+may be doing his best to attract bow-wow's attention, and failing
+ignominiously."
+
+"Every word you say increases my interest in Mr. Wornock. In a
+neighbourhood like this, where everybody is sensible and commonplace
+and conventional, excepting always your brilliant self"--Mrs.
+Mornington nodded, and put her feet on the fender--"it is so delightful
+to meet some one who does not move just on the common lines, and is not
+worked by the common machinery."
+
+"You will find nothing common about Geoffrey," said the lady. "I have
+known him since he was a little white boy in a black velvet suit, and
+he was just as enigmatical to me the day he left for Bombay as he was
+on his seventh birthday. I know that he has winning manners, and that I
+am very fond of him; and that is all I know about him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan drove to Filbury on the following Sunday, and was in his place
+in the little old parish church ten minutes before the service began.
+The high oak pews were not favourable to his getting a good view of the
+congregation, since, when seated, the top of his head was only on a
+level with the top of his pew; but by leaving the door of the pew ajar
+he contrived to see Mrs. Wornock as she went up the narrow aisle--nave
+there was none, the pews forming a solid square in the centre of the
+church. Yes, he was assured that slim, graceful figure in a plain
+grey cashmere gown and grey straw bonnet must be Mrs. Wornock and no
+other. Indeed, the inference was easily arrived at, for the rest of
+the congregation belonged obviously to the small tenant-farmer and
+agricultural-labourer class--the women-folk homely and ruddy-cheeked,
+the men ponderous, and ill at ease in their Sunday clothes.
+
+The lady in the grey gown made her way quietly to a pew that occupied
+the angle of the church nearest the pulpit and reading-desk--the old
+three-decker arrangement, for clerk, parson, and preacher. Mr. Wornock
+was patron of the living of Filbury and Discombe, and this large,
+square pew had belonged to the Wornocks ever since the rebuilding of
+the church in Charles the Second's reign, a year or two after the
+manor-house was built, when the estate, which had hitherto been an
+outlying possession of the Wornocks, became their place of residence,
+and most important property.
+
+Allan could see only the lady's profile from his place in the body
+of the church--a delicate profile, worn as if with long years of
+thoughtfulness; a sweet, sad face that had lost all freshness of
+colouring, but had gained the spiritual beauty which grows in thought
+and solitude, where there are no vulgar cares to harass and vex the
+mind. A pensive peacefulness was the chief characteristic of the face,
+Allan thought, when the lady turned towards the organ during the _Te
+Deum_, listening to the village voices, which sang truer than
+village voices generally do.
+
+Allan submitted to the slow torture of a very long sermon about
+nothing particular, on a text in Nehemiah, which suggested not the
+faintest bearing on the Christian life--a sermon preached by an elderly
+gentleman in a black silk gown, whose eloquence would have been more
+impressive had his false teeth been a better fit. After the sermon
+there was a hymn, and the old-fashioned plate was carried round by
+a blacksmith, whom Allan recognized as a man who had fastened his
+hunter's shoe one day at a forge on the outskirts of Filbury, in the
+midst of a run; and then the little congregation quietly dispersed,
+after an exchange of friendly greetings between the church door and the
+lych-gate.
+
+Allan's gig was waiting for him near the gate, and a victoria, on
+which he recognized the Wornock crest--a dolphin crowned--stood in the
+shade of a row of limes, which marked the boundary of the Vicarage
+garden. Allan waited a little, expecting to see Mrs. Wornock come out;
+and then, as she did not appear, he re-entered the churchyard, and
+strayed among moss-mantled tomb-stones, reading the village names, the
+village histories of birth and death, musing, as he read, upon the long
+eventless years which make the sum of rustic lives.
+
+The blue pure sky, the perfume of a bean-field in flower, the hawthorns
+in undulating masses of snowy blossom, and here and there, in the
+angles of the meadows, the heaped-up gold of furze-bushes that were
+more bloom than bush--all these made life to-day a sensuous delight
+which exacted no questionings of the intellect, suggested no doubt as
+to the bliss of living. If it were always thus--a crust of bread and
+cheese under such a sky, a bed in the hollow of yonder bank between
+bean-field and clover, would suffice for a man's content, Allan
+thought, as he stood on a knoll in God's acre, and looked down upon
+the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and hollow with gentle
+undulations between Filbury and Discombe.
+
+What had become of Mrs. Wornock? He had made the circuit of the
+burial-ground, pausing often to read an epitaph, but never relaxing
+his watchfulness of the carriage yonder, waiting under the limes. The
+carriage was there still, and there was no sign of Mrs. Wornock. Was
+there a celebration? No; he had seen all the congregation leave the
+church, except the mistress of that curtained pew in the corner near
+the pulpit.
+
+Presently the broad strong chords of a prelude were poured out upon the
+still air--a prelude by Sebastian Bach, masterful, imposing, followed
+by a fugue, whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by
+the player. Standing in the sunshine listening to that music, Allan
+remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him. The player was Mrs.
+Wornock. He had seen the professional organist and schoolmaster leave
+the church with his flock of village boys. Mrs. Wornock had lingered
+after the service to gratify herself with the music she loved. He
+sauntered and loitered near the open window, listening to the music
+for nearly an hour. Then the organ sounds melted away in one last long
+rallentando, and presently he heard the heavy old key turn in the
+heavy old lock, and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the
+lych-gate, followed by a clumsy boy, who looked like a smaller edition
+of the blacksmith. Allan stood within a few yards of the pathway to
+see her go by, hoping to be himself unobserved, screened by the angle
+of an old monument, where rust had eaten away the railing, and moss
+and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epitaph, while the dense
+growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn. Here, in the shadow of
+ostentation's unenduring monument, he waited for that slender and still
+youthful form to pass.
+
+In figure the widow of twenty years looked a girl, and the face which
+turned quickly towards Allan, her keen ear having caught the rustle
+of the long grass under his tread, had the delicacy of outline and
+transparency of youth. The cheek had lost its girlish roundness, and
+the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow.
+Involuntarily Allan recalled a familiar line--
+
+    "Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."
+
+That expression of tranquil thoughtfulness changed in an instant as
+she looked at him; changed to astonishment, interrogation, which
+gradually softened to a grave curiosity, an anxious scrutiny. Then, as
+if becoming suddenly aware of her breach of good manners, the heavy
+eyelids sank, a faint blush coloured the thin cheeks, and she hurried
+onward to the gate where her carriage had drawn up in readiness for her.
+
+Her footman, in a sober brown livery, was holding the gate open for
+her. Her horses were shaking their bridles. She stepped lightly into
+the victoria, nodded an adieu to the schoolboy who had blown the organ
+bellows, and vanished into the leafy distance of the lane.
+
+"So that is my double's mother. An interesting face, a graceful figure,
+and a lady to the tips of her fingers. Whether she is county, or not
+county, Geoffrey Wornock has no cause to be ashamed of his mother.
+Nothing would induce me to think ill of that woman."
+
+He brooded on that startled expression which had flashed across Mrs.
+Wornock's face as she looked at him. Clearly she, too, had seen the
+likeness which he bore to her son.
+
+"I wonder whether it pains her to be reminded of him when he is so far
+away," speculated Allan, "or whether she feels kindly towards me for
+the sake of that absent son?"
+
+This question of his was answered three days later by the lady's own
+hand. Among the letters on Allan's breakfast-table on Wednesday morning
+there was one in a strange penmanship, which took his breath away, for
+on the envelope, in bold brown letters, appeared the address, Discombe
+Manor.
+
+He thrust all his other letters aside--those uninteresting letters
+which besiege the man who is supposed to have money to spend, from
+tradesmen who want to work for him, charities who want to do good for
+him, stock-jobbers who want to speculate for him--the whole race of
+spiders that harassed the well-feathered fly. He tore open the letter
+from Discombe Manor, and his eye ran eagerly over the following lines:--
+
+    "DEAR SIR,
+
+    "People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened
+    by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call
+    upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we
+    should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can,
+    if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your
+    acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home
+    on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I
+    dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will
+    hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me
+    of my nearest and dearest.
+
+    "I am generally at home in the afternoon.
+
+                                                     "Very truly yours,
+                                                          "E. WORNOCK."
+
+"E. Wornock!" he repeated, studying the signature. "Why no
+Christian name? And what is the name which that initial represents?
+Eliza, perhaps--and she sinks it, thinking it common and
+housemaidish--forgetting how Ben Jonson, by that housemaidish name,
+does designate the most glorious of queens. Possibly Ellen--a
+milk-and-waterish name, with less of dignity than Eliza; or Emily, my
+mother's name--graceful but colourless. I have never thought it good
+enough for so fine a character as my mother. She should have been
+Katherine or Margaret, Gertrude or Barbara, names that have a fulness
+of sound which implies fulness of meaning. I will call at Discombe
+Manor this afternoon. Delay would be churlish--and I want to see what
+Geoffrey Wornock's home is like."
+
+The afternoon was warm and sunny, and Allan made a leisurely circuit of
+the chase and park of Discombe on his way to Mrs. Wornock's house.
+
+The beauty of the Manor consisted as much in the perfection of detail
+as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park.
+The mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly
+picturesque. It was a sober red brick house, with a high, tiled
+roof, and level rows of windows--those of the upper story were the
+original lattices of 1664, the date of the house; but on the lower
+floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows,
+of a uniform unpicturesque flatness, opening on a broad gravel walk,
+beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a
+moat, for Mrs. Wornock's house was one of those moated manor-houses
+of which there are so few left in the south of England. The gardens
+surrounding that grave-looking Carolian house had attained the ideal
+of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden-lovers, the
+ideal of old-fashioned beauty, be it understood; the beauty of clipped
+hedges and sunk lawns, walls of ilex and of yew, solemn avenues of
+obelisk-shaped conifers, labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of
+roses, tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, broad borders of old-fashioned
+perennials, clumps and masses of vivid colour, placed with art that
+seemed accidental wherever vivid colour was wanted to relieve the
+verdant monotony.
+
+If the gardens were perfect, the house, farm, and cottages were even
+more attractive in their arcadian grace, the grace of a day that is
+dead. Quaint roofs and massive chimney-stacks, lattices, porches,
+sun-dials, gardens brimming over with flowers, trim pathways, shining
+panes, everywhere a spotless cleanliness, a wealth of foliage, an
+air of prosperous fatness, bee-hives, poultry, cattle, all the signs
+and tokens of dependents for whom much is done, and whose dwellings
+flourish at somebody else's expense.
+
+Allan noted the cottages which bore the Wornock "W" above the date of
+the building--he noted them, but lost count of their number--keepers'
+lodges in the woodland which skirted the park--gardeners' or
+dairy-men's cottages at every park gate; farmhouse and bailiff's house;
+cottages for coachmen and helpers. At every available angle where
+gable, roof, and quaint old chimney-stack could make a picturesque
+feature in the landscape, a cottage had been placed, and the number of
+these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more
+obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage, a thing
+that is talked about but not seen. Discombe Chase, the Discombe lodges,
+and the village and school-houses of Discombe were obvious facts which
+impressed the stranger.
+
+That sweetly pensive face of Mrs. Wornock's had slain the viper envy
+in Allan's breast. When first he rode through those woods and over
+those undulating pastures and by those gables embowered in roses and
+wisteria, or starred with the pale blue clematis, he had felt a certain
+sour discontent with his own good fortune, about which people, from
+his mother down to the acquaintance of yesterday, prattled and prosed
+so officiously. He was sick of hearing himself called a lucky fellow.
+Luck, forsooth! what was his luck compared with Geoffrey Wornock's?
+That a bachelor uncle of his, having scraped together a modest little
+fortune, and not being able to carry it with him to the nether-world,
+should have passed it on to him, Allan, was not such a strange event as
+to warrant the running commentary of congratulation that had assailed
+his ear ever since he came to Matcham. No one congratulated Geoffrey
+Wornock. Nobody talked of _his_ good luck. He had been born in
+the purple, and people spoke of him as of one having a divine right
+to the best things that this earth can give--to a Carolian mansion,
+and chase and park, and wide-spreading farms. There seemed to Allan
+Carew's self-consciousness an implied disparagement of himself in
+the tone which Matcham people took about Geoffrey Wornock. They in a
+manner congratulated him on his likeness to the Lord of Discombe Manor,
+and insinuated that he ought to be proud of himself because of this
+resemblance to the local magnate.
+
+To-day, however, Allan forgot all those infinitesimal vexations which
+in the beginning of his residence at Matcham had made the name of
+Wornock odious to him. His thoughts were full of that pale sad face,
+the wasted cheeks, the heavy eyelids, the somewhat sickly transparency
+of complexion, the large violet eyes, which lit up the whole face as
+with a light that is not of this world. It was the most spiritual
+countenance he had ever seen--the first face which had ever suggested
+to him the epithet ethereal.
+
+He remembered what society had told him about Mrs. Wornock; her
+encouragement of spirit-rapping people and thought-reading people,
+and every phase of modern super-naturalism; her passion for music--a
+passion so absorbing as almost to pass the border-line of sanity;
+at least in the opinion of the commonplace sane. He wondered no
+longer that such a woman had held herself aloof from the hunting, and
+shooting, and dinner-giving, and tea-drinking population scattered
+within a radius of eight or ten miles of Discombe; the people with
+whom, had she lived the conventional life of the conventional rural
+lady, she should have been on intimate terms. She was among them, but
+not of them, Allan told himself.
+
+"Surely I am not in love with a woman old enough to be my mother!" he
+thought, between jest and earnest, as he drove up to the house. "I have
+not thought so persistently of any woman since I was sick for love of
+the dean's pretty daughter, fairest and last of my calf-loves."
+
+He was not wholly in jest, for during the last three days the lady's
+image had haunted him with an insistency that bordered on "possession."
+It was as if those dark grey eyes had cast a spell upon him, and as
+if he must needs wait until the enchantress who held him in her mystic
+bands should unweave her mystery and set his thoughts at liberty.
+
+The hall door stood open to the summer air and the afternoon sun. A
+large black poodle, with an air of ineffable wisdom, was stretched near
+the threshold; a liver-and-white St. Bernard sunned his hairy bulk upon
+the grass in front of the steps; and on the broad terrace to the right
+of the house a peacock spread the rainbow splendour of his tail, and
+strutted in stately slowness towards the sun.
+
+"House and garden belong to fairyland," thought Allan. "The enchantress
+has but to wave her wand and fix the picture for a century. We may
+have extended the limit of human life a hundred years hence, and
+Mrs. Wornock's age may count as girlhood, when some gay young prince
+of fifty-five shall ride through the tangled woodland to awaken the
+sleeper. Who can tell? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we
+may be.'"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+                    "IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON."
+
+
+The hall door stood wide open to the sunlight, sufficiently guarded by
+that splendid brute, the St. Bernard.
+
+A middle-aged footman in the sober Wornock livery came at the sound of
+the bell, the St. Bernard watching the visitor with grave but friendly
+eyes, and evidently perfectly aware of his respectability.
+
+Mrs. Wornock was at home. A slow and solemn butler now appeared upon
+the scene, and led the way to a corridor which opened out of the hall;
+and at the end of this corridor, like Vandyke's famous portrait of
+Charles the First at Warwick Castle, the full-length portrait of a
+young man in a hunting-coat looked Allan Carew in the face.
+
+In spite of all he had been told about his likeness to the owner of
+Discombe, the sight of that frank young face looking at him under the
+bright white light fairly startled him. For the moment it seemed to him
+as if he had seen his own reflection in a cheval-glass; but as he drew
+nearer the canvas the likeness lessened, the difference in the features
+came out, and he saw that the resemblance was less a likeness than a
+reminiscence. Distance was needed to make the illusion, and he could
+understand now why his new friends of the hunting-field should have
+taken him for Wornock on that first morning when he rode up to them as
+a stranger.
+
+The portrait was by Millais, painted with as much _brio_ and
+vigour as the better-known picture of the young Marchioness of Huntley.
+Mr. Wornock was standing in an old stone doorway, leaning in an easy
+attitude against the deep arch of the door, hunting-crop, cigar-case,
+and hat on a table in the background, standing where he had stood on
+many a winter morning, waiting for his horse.
+
+There was a skylight over this end of the corridor, and the portrait of
+the master of the house shone out brilliantly under the clear top-light.
+
+The butler stopped within a few paces of the portrait, opened a low,
+old-fashioned door, and ushered Mr. Carew into a spacious room, at
+the further end of which a lady was sitting by an open window, beyond
+which he saw the long vista of an Italian garden, a cypress avenue,
+where statues were gleaming here and there in the sunshine. There was
+a grand piano on one side of the room, an organ on the other; books
+filled every recess. This spacious apartment was evidently music-room
+and library rather than drawing-room, and here, amidst books and music,
+lived the lonely lady of the house.
+
+She came to meet him with a friendly smile as he advanced into the
+room, holding out her hand.
+
+"It was very good of you to come so soon," she said, in her low,
+musical voice. "I wanted so much to see you--to know you. Yes, you are
+very like him. One of those accidental likenesses which are so common,
+and yet seem so strange. My husband had a friend who was murdered
+because he was like Sir Robert Peel; but my son is not a public man,
+and he has no enemies. You will run no risks on account of your
+likeness to him.
+
+"I am grateful to the likeness which has given me the honour of knowing
+Mrs. Wornock," said Allan, taking the seat to which she motioned him,
+as she resumed her low chair by the window.
+
+"Indeed, you have no reason. I am a very stupid person. I go nowhere, I
+see very few people; and the people I do see are people whom you would
+think unworthy of your interest."
+
+"Not if you are interested in them. They cannot be unworthy."
+
+"Oh, I am easily interested! I like strange people. I like to believe
+strange things. Your friend, Mrs. Mornington, will tell you that I am a
+foolish person."
+
+"You have seen Mrs. Mornington lately?" questioned Allan.
+
+"Yes; she was here yesterday afternoon. She is always bright and
+amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She is
+always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her
+society. She talked of you, but I did not tell her I wanted to make
+your acquaintance. She would have offered to make a luncheon-party for
+me to meet you--or something dreadful of that kind."
+
+"You have a great dislike to society, Mrs. Wornock?" he asked, keenly
+interested.
+
+Her manner was so fresh and simple, almost childlike in its confiding
+candour, and her appearance was no less interesting than her manner.
+It is the fashion of our day for women of five and forty to look
+young, even to girlishness; but most women of five and forty are
+considerably indebted to modern art for that advantage. Here there was
+no art. The pale, clear fairness of the complexion owed nothing to the
+perfumer's palette. No _poudre des fées_ blanched the delicate
+brow; no _rose d'amour_ flushed the cheek; no _eau de Medée_
+brightened the large violet eyes. The lines which thought and sorrow
+had drawn upon the fair brow were undisguised, and in the soft, pale
+gold of the hair there were threads of silver. The youthfulness of the
+face was in its colouring and expression--the complexion so delicately
+fair, the countenance so trustful and pleading. It was the countenance
+of a woman to whom the conventionalities and jargon of modern life were
+unknown.
+
+"You saw my son's portrait in the corridor?" said Mrs. Wornock.
+
+"Yes. It struck my untutored eye as a very fine picture--almost as
+powerful as the Gladstone and the Salisbury, which I remember in the
+Millais collection at the Grosvenor."
+
+"But as for the likeness to yourself, now--did that strike you as
+forcibly as it has struck other people?"
+
+"I confess that as I stood in the hall I was inclined to exclaim, 'That
+is I or my brother!' But as I came nearer the picture I saw there was
+considerable diversity. To begin with, your son is much handsomer than
+I."
+
+"The drawing of his features may be more correct, but you are quite
+handsome enough," she answered, with her pretty friendly air, as if she
+had been his aunt. "And your face is more strongly marked than his,
+just as your voice is stronger," she added, with a sigh.
+
+"Your son is not an invalid, I hope?"
+
+"An invalid! No. But he is not very strong. He could not play football.
+He hated even cricket. He is passionately fond of horses, and an ardent
+sportsman; but he can be sadly idle. He likes to lie about in the
+sunshine, reading or dreaming. I fear he is a dreamer, like his mother."
+
+"He is not like you, in person."
+
+"No."
+
+"He is like his father, no doubt."
+
+"You will see his father's picture, and you can judge for yourself.
+Well, we are to be friends, are we not, Mr. Carew? And you will come
+to see me sometimes; and if you ever have any little troubles which can
+be lightened by a woman's sympathy, you will come and confide them to
+me, I hope."
+
+"It will be very sweet to be allowed to confide in so kind a friend,"
+said Allan.
+
+"My son will be home for his long leave before the end of the year, and
+I want you to make him your friend. He is very amiable," again with a
+suppressed sigh. "Come, now it is your turn to tell me something about
+yourself. This room tells you all there is to be told about me."
+
+"It tells me you are very fond of music."
+
+"I live for it. Music has been my companion and consoler all my life."
+
+"And I hope you will let me hear you play again some day."
+
+"Again? Ah, I forgot! You were in the churchyard last Sunday while I
+was playing. Did you listen?"
+
+"As long as you played. I was under the open window most of the time."
+
+"You are fond of organ music?"
+
+"As fond as an ignorant man may be. I know nothing of the subtleties of
+music. I have never been educated up to Wagner or Dvorak. I love the
+familiar voices--Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Gounod, Auber even, and I
+adore our English master of melody, Sullivan. Does that shock you?"
+
+"Not at all. I will play his cantata for you some day. If you have
+nothing better to do with your time this afternoon, I should like to
+show you my garden."
+
+"I shall be enchanted. I am enchanted already with that long straight
+walk, those walls of cypress and yew, that peacock sunning his emerald
+and sapphire plumage by the dial. In such a garden did Beatrice hide
+when Hero and her ladies talked of Benedick's passion; in such a garden
+did Jessica and Lorenzo loiter under the moonlight."
+
+"I see you love your Shakespeare."
+
+"As interpreted by Irving and Ellen Terry. The Lyceum was the school in
+which I learnt to love the bard. An Eton examination in Richard the
+Second only prejudiced me against him."
+
+"Mr. Wornock was a great Shakespearian."
+
+They were in the garden by this time--sauntering with slow footsteps
+along the level stretch of turf on one side of the broad gravel walk.
+At the end of the cypress avenue there was a semicircular recess, shut
+in by a raised bank, and a wall of clipped yew, in which, at regular
+intervals, there were statues in dark green niches.
+
+"Mr. Wornock brought the statues from Rome when he was a young man.
+The gardens were laid out by his grandfather nearly a century ago,"
+explained Mrs. Wornock.
+
+Allan noticed that she spoke of her husband generally as "Mr. Wornock."
+
+"That amphitheatre reminds me a little of the Boboli gardens," said
+Allan; "but there is a peacefulness about this solitude which no public
+garden can have."
+
+Three peacocks were trailing their plumage on the long lawns between
+the house and the amphitheatre, and one less gorgeous but more
+ethereal, a bird of dazzling whiteness, was perched, with outspread
+tail, on an angle of the cypress wall.
+
+The lady and her companion strolled to the end of the lawn, and crossed
+the amphitheatre to a stone temple, open on the side fronting the
+south-western sun, and spacious enough to accommodate a dozen people.
+
+"If you had a garden-play, how delightfully this temple would serve for
+a central point in your stage," said Allan, admiringly.
+
+"People have asked me to lend them the gardens for a play--'Twelfth
+Night,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing;' but I have always said no. I
+should hate to see a crowd in this dear old garden."
+
+"Yet there are people who would think such a place as this created on
+purpose for garden-parties, and who would desire nothing better than a
+crowd of smart people."
+
+Mrs. Wornock shuddered at the mention of smart people.
+
+"A party of that kind would be misery for me," she said. "And now
+tell me about yourself, and your relations. Mrs. Mornington told me
+that your father and mother are both living, and that you inherited
+Beechhurst from your uncle. I remember seeing Admiral Darnleigh years
+and years ago, when everything at Discombe and at Matcham was new to
+me. It must be sad for your mother to lose you from her own home."
+
+"My mother is not given to sadness," Allan answered, smiling. "She is
+the best and kindest of mothers, and I know she loves me as dearly as
+any son need desire; but she is quite resigned to my having my own home
+and my own interests. She would argue, perhaps, that were I to marry I
+must have a house of my own, and that my establishment at Beechhurst is
+only a little premature."
+
+"You are very much attached to your mother?"
+
+"Very much--and to my father."
+
+"Your tone as you say those words tell me that your father is the
+dearer of the two."
+
+"You have a quick ear for shades of meaning, Mrs. Wornock."
+
+"Pray do not think me impertinent. I am not questioning you out of
+idle curiosity. If we are to be friends in the future, I must know and
+understand something of your life and your mind. But perhaps I bore
+you--perhaps you think me both eccentric and impertinent."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I am deeply touched that you should offer to be
+my friend. Be assured I have no reserve, and am willing--possibly too
+willing--to talk of myself and my own people. I have no dark corners
+in my life. My history is all open country--an uninteresting landscape
+enough. But there is no difficult going--there are no bogs or risky
+bits over which the inquiring spirit need skim lightly. Your ear did
+not deceive you, just now. Fondly as I love my mother, I will freely
+confess that the bond that draws me to my father is the stronger
+bond. In the parrot jargon of the day, his is the more interesting
+'personality.' He is a man of powerful intellect, whose mind has
+done nothing for the good of the world--who will die unhonoured and
+unremembered except by his familiar friends. There is one question I
+have asked myself about him ever since I was old enough to think--a
+question which I first asked myself when I began to read classics
+with him in my school vacations, and which I had not finished asking
+myself when his untiring help had enabled me to take a first-class in
+the Honour School. To me it has always been a mystery that a man of
+wide attainments and financial independence should have been utterly
+destitute of ambition. My father was a young man when he married; he is
+still in the prime of life; and for six and twenty years he has been
+content to vegetate in Suffolk, and has regarded his annual visit to
+London as more of an affliction than a relief. It is as if the hands
+of life's clock had stopped in the golden noon of youth. I have told
+myself again and again that my father's life must have been shadowed
+by some great sorrow before his marriage, young as he was when he
+married."
+
+Mrs. Wornock listened intently, her head slightly bent, her clasped
+hands resting on her knee, her sensitive lips slightly parted.
+
+"You say that your father married young," she said, after a brief
+silence, in which she seemed to be thinking over his words. "What do
+you call young in such a case?"
+
+"My father was not three and twenty when he married--two years younger
+than I am at this present hour--and yet the idea of matrimony has
+never shaped itself in my mind. But you must not infer from anything
+I have said that my father's has been an unhappy marriage. On the
+contrary, he is devoted to my mother, and she to him. I cannot imagine
+a better assorted couple. Each supplies the qualities wanting in the
+other. She is all movement, impulse, and spontaneousness. He is calm
+and meditative, with depths of thought and feeling which no one has
+sounded. They are perfectly happy as husband and wife. But there is
+a shade of melancholy that steals over my father in quiet, unoccupied
+hours, which indicates a sorrow or a disappointment in the past. I have
+taken it to mean an unhappy love-affair. I may be utterly wrong, and
+the shadow may be cast by a disappointed ambition. It is not unlikely
+that a man of powerful intellect and lymphatic temperament should feel
+that he had wasted opportunities, and failed in life. It is quite easy
+to imagine ambition without the energy to achieve."
+
+She made no comment upon this, but Allan could see in her eager
+countenance that she was intensely interested.
+
+"Is your mother beautiful?" she asked timidly.
+
+It seemed a foolish and futile question; and it jarred upon that
+serious thought of his parents which had been inspired by her previous
+questioning. But, after all, it was a natural question for a woman to
+ask, and he smiled as he answered--
+
+"No, my mother is not beautiful. I am not guilty of treason as a son
+if I confess that she is plain, since she herself would be the first
+to take offence at any sophistication of the truth. She has never
+set up for being other than she is. She has a fine countenance and
+a fine figure, straight as a dart, with a waist which a girl might
+acknowledge without a blush. She dresses with admirable taste, and
+always looks well, after her own fashion, exclusive of beautiful
+features or brilliant colouring. She is what women call stylish, and
+men distinguished. I am as proud as I am fond of her."
+
+"Will she come to see you in your new home?"
+
+"Most assuredly my mother will pay me a visit before the summer is
+over, and I shall be charmed to bring you and her together."
+
+"And your father? Will not he come?"
+
+"I don't know. He is very difficult to move. He is like the lichen
+on the old stone walls at home. He takes no particular interest in
+chairs and tables; he would care not a fig for my new surroundings.
+Besides, he saw Beechhurst years ago, when the Admiral was building and
+improving. He has no curiosity to bring him here; and as for his son,
+he knows he has only to want me for me to be at his side."
+
+After this there came a silence. Certainly Mrs. Wornock was not gifted
+as a conversationalist. She sat looking straight before her at the long
+perspective of lawn and cypress, broad gravel walk, and narrow grass
+plots, all verging to a point at which the old house rose square and
+grey, crowned with cupola and bell. The peacocks strutted slowly along
+the narrow lawn. The waters of a fountain flashed in the warm sunlight.
+It was a garden that recalled Tivoli, or that old grave garden of the
+Vatican, with its long level walks and prim flower-beds, in which
+the Holy Father takes his restricted airing. In the Vatican pleasure
+grounds there are peacocks and clipped hedges, and smooth greensward,
+and formal cypress avenues, and quaint arbours; but the hum of Rome,
+the echoes of the Papal Barrack, the rush of the Tiber are near; and
+not even in that antique garden can there be this summer silence,
+profound as in the enchanted isle where it seemeth always afternoon.
+
+"Tell me more about yourself, your childhood, your youth," Mrs. Wornock
+asked suddenly, with an air of agitated impatience which took Allan by
+surprise.
+
+Mrs. Mornington had prepared him for a certain eccentricity in the
+lonely lady of Discombe; but the strangeness of her manner was even
+more than he had expected.
+
+"There is very little to tell about my own life," he said. "I have
+lived at home for the most part, except when I was at Eton and
+Cambridge. My father helped me in all my studies. I never had any other
+tutor except at the University. My home life was of the quietest.
+Fendyke is twenty miles from Cambridge, but it seems at the end of the
+world. The single line of rail that leads to it comes to a full stop.
+The terminus stands in the midst of a Dutch landscape--level fields
+divided by shallow dykes, a river so straight that it might as well
+be a canal, water-mills, pollarded willows, broad clean roads, and
+fine old Norman churches large enough for a city, no Sunday trains,
+and not many on lawful days. A neat little town, with decent shops,
+and comfortable inns, and a market which only awakens from a Pompeian
+slumber for an hour or two on Fridays. A land of rest and plenty,
+picturesque cottages and trim cottage gardens, an air of prosperity
+which I believe is real. So much for our town and surroundings. For the
+family mansion picture to yourself a long low house, built partly of
+brick and partly of wood, with chimney-stacks that contain brick enough
+for the building of respectable houses, and which have defied the gales
+sweeping down from the Ural mountains--there is nothing, mark you,
+between Fendyke and the Urals--ever since Queen Elizabeth was young
+enough to pace a pavan."
+
+"You must be fond of an old house like that."
+
+"Yes, I am very fond of Fendyke. I even love the surrounding country,
+though I can but wish Nature had not ironed the landscape with her
+mammoth iron. She might have left us a few creases, a wrinkled meadow
+here and there."
+
+"I have heard that people born in Norfolk and Suffolk have an innate
+antipathy to hills."
+
+"That may be. Indeed, I have noticed in the East Anglians a kind of
+stubborn pride in the flatness of their soil. But I have not that
+perverted pride in ugliness, since I was not born in Suffolk."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"No. My father lived in Sussex--at Hayward's Heath--at the time of his
+marriage, and for half a dozen years after my birth. Fendyke came to
+him from his maternal grandfather, who left the estate to his daughter
+and heiress, and to her son after her, who was to assume the name and
+arms of Carew when he succeeded to the property. My father's name was
+Beresford."
+
+There was no reply--no further questioning on Mrs. Wornock's part--and
+for some minutes Allan abandoned himself to the dreamy silence of the
+scene, content to watch the peacocks on the lawn, and to listen to the
+splash of the fountains.
+
+Then suddenly the silence surprised him, and he turned to look at
+his companion. Her head had fallen back against the wall of the
+summer-house, her eyes were closed, and her face was white as death.
+She was in a dead faint; and they were at least a quarter of a mile
+from the house.
+
+The situation was awkward for Allan, though there was nothing in so
+simple a matter as a fainting-fit to surprise him. He knew that there
+are women who faint at the smallest provocation, in a crowded room, in
+the sunshine, at church, anywhere. Here the sunshine was perhaps to
+blame; that delicious pure sunlight in which he had been basking.
+
+He gave a long Australian cooe, long enough and loud enough to have
+brought help in the wilderness, and assuredly calculated to attract
+some gardener at work within call. Then he bethought himself of the
+fountain, and ran to get some water in his hat.
+
+At the first dash of water, Mrs. Wornock opened her eyes, with a little
+sobbing sigh, and looked at him as if wondering who and what he was.
+
+"I knew he would have answered my prayer," she murmured brokenly,
+"spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost."
+
+It seemed a worse kind of faint than Allan had supposed, for now her
+mind was wandering.
+
+"I fear the sun was too warm for you," he said, standing before her
+in painful embarrassment, half expecting some indication of absolute
+lunacy.
+
+"Yes, yes, it was the sun," she answered nervously. "The glare is so
+strong this afternoon; and this summer-house is shadeless. I must go
+back to the house. It was very foolish of me to faint. I am so sorry. I
+hope you won't consider me a very silly person."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I have never heard that a fainting-fit on a warm
+summer afternoon is a sign of silliness."
+
+"No, it is a thing one cannot help, can one? But it must have been so
+unpleasant for you. Ah, here is one of the gardeners," as a man came
+hurrying towards her, with a scared countenance. "There is nothing the
+matter, Henry. I am quite well now, Mr. Carew, and I can walk back to
+the house. And so your father's original name was Beresford. Does he
+call himself Beresford-Carew?"
+
+"Yes, in all important documents; but he is a man too careless of forms
+to trouble himself much about the first name; and it has fallen into
+disuse for the most part, Carew being the name of honour in our county.
+He is known at Fendyke and in the neighbourhood simply as Squire Carew.
+I sign myself Beresford-Carew sometimes, when I want to distinguish
+myself from the numerous clan of Carews in Devonshire and elsewhere.
+Will you take my arm to go back to the house?"
+
+"Yes"--timidly and faintly--"I shall be very glad of your support."
+
+She put her hand through his arm, and walked slowly and silently by his
+side. Returning consciousness had brought back very little colour to
+her face. It had still an almost unearthly pallor. She walked the whole
+distance without uttering a word. A faint sigh fluttered her lips two
+or three times during that slow promenade, and on her drooping lashes
+Allan saw the glitter of a tear. For some reason or other she was
+deeply moved; or it might be that her fainting-fits always took this
+emotional form. He saw her safely seated on her own sofa, with footman
+and maid in attendance upon her, before he took a brief adieu.
+
+"You'll come and see me again, I hope," she said, with a faint smile,
+as she gave him her hand at parting.
+
+"I shall be most happy," he murmured, doubtful within himself whether
+he would ever hazard a repetition of this agitating finale to an
+afternoon call.
+
+To be interrogated about himself and his surroundings, with an eager
+curiosity which was certainly startling, and then to find himself
+_tête-à-tête_ with an unconscious fellow-creature was an ordeal
+that few young men would care to repeat.
+
+When he described his visit next day to Mrs. Mornington, she only
+shrugged her shoulders and said decisively, "Hysteria! Too much money,
+too much leisure, and no respectable connections. If there is one woman
+I pity more than another that woman is Mrs. Wornock."
+
+"If ever I call on her again it must be with you or with my mother,"
+said Allan. "I won't face her alone."
+
+Although he came to this decision about the lady, he found himself not
+the less disposed to dwell upon her image during the days and weeks
+that followed his afternoon at Discombe; and more than once he asked
+himself whether there might not be some more cogent reason for her
+fainting-fit than the sun's warmth or the sun's glare--whether that
+deep interest which she had evinced in all he could tell her of home
+and parents might not be founded on something more serious than an idle
+woman's idle curiosity.
+
+Could it be that he had lighted upon some trace of that mystery in his
+father's past life--that mystery which, without tangible evidence, he
+had always imagined as the key-note to his father's character in later
+years? She had fainted immediately upon his telling her his father's
+former name. Was that a mere coincidence of time, or was the name the
+cause of the fainting-fit?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady Emily arrived on a visit to her son while he was pondering
+this unanswerable question about Mrs. Wornock, and he caught at the
+opportunity. He hardly allowed his mother time to inspect his house and
+gardens, and the small farm which supplied his larder, and to give her
+opinion upon the furnishing of the rooms and the arrangement of the
+flower-beds and lawns, before he suggested taking her to call upon his
+neighbour at Discombe.
+
+"But why, Allan? why should I call upon this Mrs. Wornock, when I am a
+stranger in the land?" argued his mother. "If there is any question of
+calling, it is Mrs. Wornock who must call upon me."
+
+"Ah, but this lady is an exception to all rules, mother. She calls upon
+hardly anybody, and she has begged me to go and see her, and I feel a
+kind of hesitation in going alone--a second time."
+
+He stopped in sudden embarrassment. He did not wish to tell his mother
+about the fainting-fit, though he had described the thing freely to
+Mrs. Mornington. He had thought more seriously of the circumstance
+since that conversation, and he was inclined to attach more importance
+to it now than at that time.
+
+"I think you would be interested in Mrs. Wornock, mother," he urged,
+after a pause, during which Lady Emily had been pacing the room from
+window to wall with the idea of suggesting a bay to be thrown out
+where there was now only a flat French casement.
+
+"Allan, you alarm me. I think you must be in love with this eccentric
+widow. You told me she was very rich, didn't you? It might not be a bad
+match for you."
+
+"Perhaps not, if Mrs. Wornock had any penchant for me; and if I wanted
+a wife old enough to be my mother. Do you know that the lady has a son
+as old as I am?"
+
+He reddened at the thought of that son, whose likeness to Beresford
+Carew was startling enough to surprise Lady Emily, and might possibly
+occasion unpleasant suspicions. And yet accidental likenesses are so
+common in this world that it would be weak to be scared by such a
+resemblance.
+
+Would he be wise in taking his mother to Discombe? Perhaps not. He had
+made up his mind to take her there, wisely or foolishly. He wanted to
+bring her plain common sense to bear upon Mrs. Wornock's fantastic
+temperament.
+
+"My mother is the shrewdest woman I know," he told himself. "She will
+read Mrs. Wornock's character much better than I can."
+
+Lady Emily was the soul of good nature, and was particularly free from
+the trammels of conventionality; so, when she found her son had the
+matter at heart, she waived all question of the caller and the called
+upon, and allowed Allan to drive her to Discombe on the afternoon after
+her arrival at Beechhurst; and the drive and the approach to the Manor
+were very agreeable to her.
+
+"You are really prettier hereabouts than we are in Suffolk," she said
+condescendingly; "but you have not our wide expanse of field and
+meadow, our open horizon. Those high downs have a cramping effect on
+your landscape--they narrow your outlook, and shut you in too much.
+Your sunsets must be very poor, in a broken-up country like this."
+
+The weather was more sultry than on Allan's previous visit. Summer had
+ripened, the roses were in bloom, and the last purple petal had fallen
+in the rhododendron jungle through which they drove to the Manor House.
+
+Mrs. Wornock was at home. Vain for the footman to deny it, even had he
+been so minded, for the deep-toned music of the organ was pealing along
+the corridor. The chords which begin Beethoven's Funeral March for the
+Burial of a Hero crashed out, solemnly and slowly, as Lady Emily and
+her son approached the music-room; and when, at the opening of the
+door, the player stopped suddenly, the silence was more startling than
+the music had been.
+
+Startling, too, to see the fragile form of the player, and the
+semi-transparent hands which had produced that volume of sound.
+
+"I had no idea you were so fine a musician, Mrs. Wornock," Lady Emily
+said graciously, after the introduction had been got over, the lady of
+Discombe standing before her timidly in the broad sunlight from the
+open window, so fragile, so youthful-looking, so unlike the mistress
+of a great house, and the chief personage in a rustic parish. "My son
+was eloquent in your praise, but he forgot to tell me of your musical
+talent."
+
+"I don't think I have much talent," answered Mrs. Wornock,
+hesitatingly. "I am very fond of music--that is all."
+
+"There is a great deal in that ALL. I wish my love of music--and Allan
+knows I prefer a good concert to any other form of entertainment--would
+enable me to play as you do, for then I could take the place of the
+stupidest organist in England at our parish church."
+
+Lady Emily was making conversation, seeing that Mrs. Wornock's lips
+were mute and dry, as if she were absolutely speechless from fright.
+A most extraordinary woman, thought Lady Emily, shy to a degree that
+bordered on lunacy.
+
+The talk had all to be done by Allan and his mother, since Mrs.
+Wornock's share in it was hardly more than monosyllabic. She assented
+to everything they said--she contradicted herself over and over again
+about the weather, and about the distinguishing features of the
+surrounding country. She agreed with Lady Emily that the hills spoiled
+the landscape; she assented to Allan's protestation that the hills
+were the chief charm of the neighbourhood. She rang for tea, and when
+the servants had brought tables and tray and tea-kettle, she sat as in
+a dream for ever so long before she became conscious that the things
+were there, and that she had a duty to perform. Then she filled the
+cups with tremulous hands, and allowed Allan to help her through the
+simplest details.
+
+Her obvious distress strengthened Allan's suspicions. There must be
+some mystery behind all this embarrassment. Mrs. Wornock could hardly
+behave in this way to every stranger who called upon her. Of all women
+living no one was less calculated to inspire awe than Lady Emily Carew.
+Good humour was writ large upon her open countenance. The milk of human
+kindness gave softness to her speech. She was full of consideration for
+others.
+
+Distracted by the music of the organ, Lady Emily had not even glanced
+at the Millais portrait which faced her as she walked along the
+corridor. It was, therefore, with unmixed astonishment that she
+observed a photograph on an easel conspicuous on a distant table--a
+photograph which she took to be the likeness of her son.
+
+"I see you have given Mrs. Wornock your photo, Allan," she said. "That
+is more than you have done for me since you were at the University."
+
+"Go and look at the photo, mother, and you will see I have not been so
+wanting in filial duty."
+
+Lady Emily rose and went over to the table in the furthermost window.
+
+"No, I see it is another face; but there is a wonderful look of you.
+Pray who is this nice-looking young man, Mrs. Wornock? I may call him
+nice-looking with a good grace, since he is not my son. His features
+are more refined than Allan's. The modelling of the face is more
+delicate."
+
+"That is my son's portrait," answered Mrs. Wornock, "and it is thought
+a good likeness. He is like Mr. Carew, is he not? Almost startlingly
+like; but the resemblance is less striking in the picture than in the
+living face. It is in expression that the two faces are alike."
+
+"I begin to understand why you are interested in my son," said Lady
+Emily, smiling down at the face on the easel. "The two young men might
+be brothers. Pray how old is this young gentleman?"
+
+"He will be six and twenty in August."
+
+"And Allan was twenty-five last March. And is Mr. Wornock an only son,
+like my Allan?"
+
+"Yes. I have only him. When he is away, I am quite alone--except for my
+organ and piano. I try sometimes to think they are both alive."
+
+"What a pity you have no daughter! A place like this looks as if it
+wanted a daughter. But you and I are in the same desolate condition.
+Allan is all I have--and my white farm."
+
+"Mother, why not my white farm and Allan?" said her son laughingly. "If
+you knew more of my mother, Mrs. Wornock, if you knew her in Suffolk,
+you would be very likely to think the farm first and not second in her
+dear love. Perhaps you, too, are interested in farming."
+
+Mrs. Wornock smiled a gentle negative, and gave a glance at the triple
+keyboard yonder, which was eloquent of meaning. A glance which seemed
+to ask, "Who could waste time upon cowhouse and poultry-yard when all
+the master-spirits of harmony are offering their mysteries to the
+faithful student?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, mother, how do you like the mistress of Discombe?" asked Allan,
+as they drove homeward.
+
+"She is very refined--rather graceful--dreadfully shy," answered his
+mother, musingly; "and I hope you won't be angry with me, Allan, if I
+add that she seems to me half an idiot."
+
+"You saw her to-day at a disadvantage," said Allan, and then lapsed
+into meditative silence.
+
+Had he not also seen this strange woman at a disadvantage when she
+fainted at the mention of his father's name--the name his father
+had borne in youth, not the name by which he was known now? Her
+fainting-fit might have had no significance in his eyes if it had not
+followed upon her eager questioning about his father. And whatever
+suspicions had been excited by that first visit were intensified by
+Mrs. Wornock's manner in the presence of Lady Emily. Such obvious
+embarrassment--a shyness so much more marked than that with which she
+had received him on his first visit--could hardly exist without a
+deeper cause than solitary habits or nervous temperament.
+
+The likeness between Geoffrey Wornock and himself might have meant no
+more than the likeness between Mr. Drummond and Sir Robert Peel; but
+that likeness, taken in conjunction with Mrs. Wornock's extraordinary
+interest in his father, and most noticeable embarrassment in receiving
+his mother, might mean a great deal--might mean, indeed, that the cloud
+upon his father's life was the shadow of a lifelong remorse, the dark
+memory of sin and sorrow. It might be that within the years preceding
+his marriage George Beresford had been involved in a guilty intrigue
+with Mr. Wornock's young wife.
+
+To believe this was to think very badly of this gentle creature, who
+used the advantages of wealth and position with such modest restraint,
+whose only delight in life was in one of the most exalted of life's
+pleasures. To believe this was to think Mrs. Wornock a false and
+ungrateful wife to a generous husband; and it was to believe George
+Beresford a vulgar seducer.
+
+If there is one fallacy to which the non-legal mind is more prone
+than another it is its belief in its power to estimate the value of
+circumstantial evidence. Allan Carew tried his father and Mrs. Wornock
+by the evidence of circumstances, and he found them guilty.
+
+"My mother shall never cross that woman's threshold again!" he decided,
+angry with himself for having taken Lady Emily to Discombe.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                           MORE NEW-COMERS.
+
+
+Allan recalled the story which Mrs. Mornington had told him of
+Mr. Wornock's marriage, and the mysterious birth of his son and
+heir--mysterious in that it was a strange thing for an English
+gentleman with a fine estate to carry off his wife to a foreign country
+before the birth of her first child, and to remain an exile from home
+and property until his son was three years old. Mystery of some kind--a
+secret sorrow or a secret shame--must have been at the root of conduct
+so unusual; and might not that secret include the story of the young
+wife's sin?
+
+Allan Carew had heard of husbands so beneficent as to forgive that sin
+which to the mind of the average man lies beyond reach of pardon;
+husbands who have taken back runaway wives, and set the fallen idol
+once again in the temple of home-life; husbands who, knowing themselves
+old, ugly, and unlovable, have palliated and pardoned the passionate
+impulses of undisciplined girlhood, the sin in which there has been
+more of romantic folly than of profligate inclination; husbands who
+have asked themselves whether _they_ were not the darker sinners
+in having possessed themselves of creatures so lovely and so frail, so
+unadapted for a passionless, workaday union with grey hairs and old
+age. It might be, Allan thought, that Mr. Wornock was one of these,
+and that he had conveyed his young wife away from the scene of her sin
+and the influence of her betrayer, and had hidden her shame and his
+dishonour in that quiet valley among the snow-peaks and the glaciers.
+But if Mrs. Wornock had so sinned in the early days of her married life
+there must be people at Matcham who would remember the lover's presence
+at Discombe, even although his real character had been undiscovered by
+the searching eyes of village censors.
+
+Lady Emily went back to her husband and her farm after a week at
+Beechhurst--a pleasant and busy week, in which the mother's experience
+and good sense had been brought to bear upon all the details of the
+son's household and domestic possessions--plate and linen, glass and
+china, books and ornaments.
+
+"If it were not for your smoking-room, or drawing-room, or whatever you
+may be pleased to call it, your house would be obviously Philistine,"
+said Lady Emily; "but that is a really fine room, and there are some
+pretty things in it."
+
+"Some pretty things? Yes, there are a few," answered Allan, laughing
+at her tone of patronage. "I was offered five hundred pounds for that
+piece of tapestry which hangs in front of the conservatory doors by
+a man who thinks himself a judge of such things. The room is full of
+treasures from the Summer Palace."
+
+"My brother must have looted in a most audacious manner!"
+
+"No, he bought the things afterwards--mostly from the French sailors,
+who were licensed to steal or destroy. I believe the bronzes, and
+porcelain, and ivories, and embroideries that the admiral bought for
+a few hundreds are worth as many thousands. But there they are, and I
+must be very hard up before I disturb them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan called upon Mrs. Mornington the day after his mother's departure,
+and was lucky enough to find that lady at home and alone.
+
+She was sitting in her verandah, sewing, with a large basket of plain
+work on the ground beside her, and her scissors and other implements on
+a wicker-table in front of her. She had a trellis covered with climbing
+roses for a background, and a sunny lawn, a sunk fence, and a paddock
+dotted with Jersey cows for her outlook.
+
+"I'm at work for the Guild," she said, apologetically, after shaking
+hands with Allan, and she went on herring-boning a flannel waistcoat;
+a waistcoat of that stout flannel which is supposed to have a kind of
+affinity with the skin of the agricultural labourer, although it can be
+worn comfortably by no other class.
+
+Allan knew nothing about the Guild, but was accustomed to see Mrs.
+Mornington's superfluous energy expending itself in some kind of
+needlework. He seated himself in the comfortable armchair to which she
+invited him, and prepared himself for a long talk.
+
+Of course he could not begin at once upon the subject of Mrs. Wornock.
+That would have to be introduced casually. He talked about his mother,
+and her regret at not having been able to stay till the following week,
+when Mrs. Mornington was to give a small dance, to which Lady Emily and
+her son had been invited.
+
+"She can't be as sorry as I am, or she'd have managed to stay," replied
+Mrs. Mornington, in her blunt style.
+
+"She has my father to think of. She is never long away from him."
+
+"Why don't he come too?"
+
+"I hope to get him for a week or so before the summer is over. He
+promises to come and look at my surroundings; but he is very much of a
+recluse. He lives in his library."
+
+"I dare say he will contrive to come when Philip and I are away on our
+August holiday. We always take a month on the Continent just to keep
+us in touch with the outside world, and to remind us that the earth
+doesn't end on the other side of Salisbury. Do you know why I am giving
+this dance?"
+
+"I am sure it is from a conscientious motive--to pay your debts. I find
+that most ladies' hospitalities are founded upon a system of exchange
+and barter, 'cutlet for cutlet,' as Lady Londonderry called it."
+
+"It is very rude of you to say that--as if women had no real
+hospitality! No, Mr. Carew, I owe no one anything in the dancing line;
+and I am not making one evening party pay for a whole year's dinners.
+I have known that done, I assure you. No, I am turning my house out
+of windows, and making poor Phil utterly miserable, for the sake of a
+certain young half-French niece of mine, who is coming to live in this
+neighbourhood with my brother Bob, her thoroughly English father."
+
+"You mean General Vincent? Some one told me that he was related to you."
+
+"Related? I should think he was related to me! He used to pull my
+hair--we wore long plaits in those days, don't you know--with a
+ferocity only possible in an elder brother. Poor dear old Bob! I am
+monstrously pleased at the idea of having him near me in our old
+age. He has been tossed and beaten about the world for the last
+thirty years, at home and abroad, and now he is to enjoy enforced
+leisure, and the noble income which our country bestows upon a retired
+lieutenant-general. He has a little money of his own, fortunately, and
+a little more from his wife; so he will be able to live comfortably at
+Marsh House--in a very quiet, unpretentious way, _bien entendu_."
+
+"He is a widower, I conclude?"
+
+"Yes; his pretty French wife died fifteen years ago. He met her in
+Canada, but she was a Parisian _pur sang_, and of a very good
+family. She had gone to Montreal with her mother, to visit some
+relations--uncle, cousin, or what-not. It was a very happy marriage,
+and Suzette is a very charming girl. She is a Papist"--with a faint
+sigh--"which, of course, is a pity. But even in spite of that, she is a
+very sweet girl."
+
+"Worthy that you should turn your house out of window in order to
+introduce her to the neighbourhood in the pleasantest possible manner,"
+said Allan. "My greenhouse is only a bachelor's idea of glass, but any
+flowers there shall be sent to add to your decorations--at least, if
+you don't despise such poor aid."
+
+"How truly nice of you! Every flower will be useful. I want to make the
+rooms pretty, since nothing can make them spacious. Ah, if I had only
+the Manor House now--those noble rooms of which Mrs. Wornock makes so
+little use!"
+
+Allan seized his opportunity.
+
+"Mrs. Wornock is the most singular woman I ever met!" he exclaimed
+quickly, lest Mrs. Mornington should diverge to another subject. "I
+took my mother to call upon her----"
+
+"Had she called upon Lady Emily?" asked Mrs. Mornington, surprised.
+
+"No. It was altogether out of order, my mother told me; but I rather
+insisted upon her going to Discombe. I wanted her to see Mrs. Wornock;
+and I must say that lady's manner was calculated to excite wonder
+rather than admiration. I never saw a woman of mature years receive
+a visitor so awkwardly. Her shyness would have been remarkable in a
+bread-and-butter miss just escaped from the schoolroom."
+
+"That is so like Mrs. Wornock. The ways of society are a foreign
+language to her. Had you taken her a German organist with long hair,
+or a spiritualist, or an esoteric Buddhist, she would have received him
+with open arms--she would have been _simpatica_ to the highest
+degree, and would have impressed him with the idea of a sensitive
+nature and a temperament akin to genius, while I dare say Lady Emily
+thought her a fool."
+
+"She certainly did not give the lady credit for superior intelligence."
+
+"Of course not. She has not even average intelligence in the affairs
+of social life. She has lived all these years at Discombe--she
+might be in touch with some of the best people in the county--and
+she has learnt nothing, except to play the organ. I believe she has
+toiled unremittingly at _that_," concluded Mrs. Mornington,
+contemptuously.
+
+"I have half forgotten what you told me about her in the first
+instance. I think you spoke of a mystery in her early life."
+
+"The only mystery was that old Wornock should have married her, and
+that he should have told us nothing about her belongings. Had she been
+a lady, we must have heard something about her people in the last five
+and twenty years; and yet there is a refinement about her which makes
+me think she could not have sprung from the gutter."
+
+"The gutter! No, indeed! She has an air of exceptional refinement.
+I should take her to be the offspring of an effete race--a
+crystallization. In her early married life, when she and Mr. Wornock
+were living together at Discombe, she had friends, I presume. They must
+have had visitors occasionally--a house-party?"
+
+"Not they. You must remember that it was not more than six months after
+Mr. Wornock brought his young wife home when he took her away again----"
+
+"But in the interim," interrupted Allan, eagerly, "they must have had
+visitors in the house! He would be proud to exhibit his pretty young
+wife. There must have been men-friends of his coming and going during
+that time."
+
+"I think not. He was a dry chip; and I don't think he had made many
+friends in the forty years he had reigned at Discombe. I never heard
+of any one staying in the house, either at that time or previously.
+He was hospitable in a casual way to the neighbourhood while he was
+a bachelor--gave a hunt breakfast every winter, and a good many
+dinners--but he was not a man to make friends. He was an ardent
+politician and an ardent Radical, and would have quarrelled with any
+one who wasn't of his way of thinking."
+
+A blank here. No hint of a too-frequent visitor, of one figure standing
+out against the quiet background of home-life, of one person whose
+coming and going had been marked enough to attract attention.
+
+Allan breathed more freely. It was no prurient curiosity which had led
+him to pry into the secrets of the past. He wanted to know the truth;
+yet it would have been agony to him to discover anything that would
+lessen his reverent admiration for his father, or his belief in his
+father's honour and high principle. Sitting idle in the sunshine beside
+Mrs. Mornington, he tried to think that there might be nothing more
+than eccentricity in Mrs. Wornock's conduct, no indication of a dark
+secret in her fainting-fit, or in her embarrassed manner during his
+mother's visit.
+
+Mrs. Mornington went back to the subject of her dance--her niece, her
+brother, his income, his establishment, and the how much or how little
+he could afford to spend. She lamented the dearth of dancing men.
+
+"Both my boys are away," she said, "Luke with his regiment in Burmah,
+Fred in London. _He_ might run down for the evening if he liked;
+but you know what young men are. Well, perhaps you are more civilized
+than Frederick. He pretends to hate dancing-parties; yet, when we spent
+a winter at Cannes, he was at a ball nearly every night. He despises my
+poor little dance."
+
+"I am sure your little dance will be delightful."
+
+"I hope it will not be dull. I am straining every nerve to make it a
+success. I shall have the house full of nice young people, and I shall
+have decent music. Only four men, but they will be very good men, and
+four will make quite enough noise in my poor little rooms."
+
+Mrs. Mornington's "poor little rooms" included a drawing-room thirty
+feet long, opening into a spacious conservatory. There was a wide bay
+at the end of the room which would accommodate the grand piano and
+the four musicians. Allan had to make a tour of inspection with the
+mistress of the house before he left, and to express his approval of
+her arrangements.
+
+"There will be a comfortable old-fashioned sit-down supper," she said
+finally. "I have asked a good many middle-aged people, and there will
+be nothing for _them_ to do but eat."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+                      LIKE THE MOTH TO THE FLAME.
+
+
+A small dance in a bright airy country house on a balmy summer evening
+is about as pleasant a form of entertainment as can be offered to the
+youthful mind not satiated by metropolitan entertainments, by balls
+in Park Lane, where the flowers alone cost the price of an elderly
+spinster's annuity, Bachelors' balls, and Guards' balls, American balls
+in Carlton Gardens, patrician balls in grand old London houses, built
+in the days when rank was as much apart from the herd and the newly
+rich as royalty; when rank and royalty moved hand-in-hand on a plateau
+of privilege and splendour as high above the commonality as Madrid is
+above the sea.
+
+Matcham, which gave itself the airs common to all village communities,
+pretended to make very light of Mrs. Mornington's dance; a summer
+dance, when everybody worth meeting was, or ought to be, in London.
+Happily for Mrs. Mornington, the inhabitants of Matcham were a
+stay-at-home race--who had neither money nor enterprise for much
+gadding. To go to Swanage or Budleigh Salterton for a month or so while
+the leaves were falling was the boldest flight that Matcham people
+cared about.
+
+There was always so much to do at home--golf, tennis, shooting,
+hunting, falconry, fishing for the enthusiasts of rod and line, and
+one's garden and stable all the year round, needing the eye of master
+and mistress. Except for the absence of the great shipbuilder's family,
+at Hillerby Height, three miles on the other side of Salisbury, the
+circle of Matcham society was complete, and the answers to Mrs.
+Mornington's cards were all acceptances.
+
+Allan went cheerfully enough to the party, but he did not go very
+early, and he had something of the feeling which most young men
+entertain, or affect, about dances, the feeling that he was sacrificing
+himself at the shrine of friendship. He danced well, and he did not
+dislike dancing--liked it, indeed, when blest with a good partner; but
+it is not often that a young man can escape the chances of partners
+that are not altogether good, and Allan felt very doubtful as to the
+dancing capacities of Matcham. Those healthy, out-of-door young women,
+who went to about half a dozen dances in a year, would hardly waltz
+well enough to make waltzing anything but toil and weariness.
+
+He approached the Grove in that state of placid indifference with
+which a man generally goes to meet his destiny. He looks back in the
+after-time, and remembers that equable frame of mind, hoping nothing,
+expecting nothing, content with his lot in life, and in no wise eager
+to question or forestall fate--
+
+    "Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi,
+    Finem di dederint."
+
+The Grove was a long, low stuccoed house, built at the beginning of
+the century, a house spread over a considerable extent of ground.
+To-night--with lights and flowers, and all the doors and windows
+open to the summer gloom, and lace draperies where doors had been,
+and white-gowned girls moving to and fro, and the sound of a Strauss
+waltz mixing with the voices of the idlers sitting in the hall--Mrs.
+Mornington's house was as pretty as a fairy palace, and as much unlike
+itself in its workaday guise.
+
+Mrs. Mornington, in black lace and diamonds, with a black ostrich fan,
+loomed with commanding bulk on the threshold of the dancing-room. She
+wanted no steward, no master of the ceremonies to help her. Alone she
+did it! Mr. Mornington walked about and pretended to be useful; but it
+was Mrs. Mornington who did everything. She received the guests, she
+introduced the few strange young men to the many local young ladies. As
+for the local young men, whom she had seen grow up from sailor suits
+and mud-pies to pink coats which marked them members of the South Sarum
+Hunt, her dominion over these was absolute. She drove them about with
+threatening movements of her large black fan. She would not allow them
+rest or respite, would not let them hang together in corners to discuss
+the hunters they were summering, or the hunters they were thinking of
+buying, or the probable changes in the management of the kennels, or
+any other subject dear to the minds of rustic youth.
+
+"You have come here to dance, Billy Walcott, and not to talk of those
+wretched old screws of yours," said Mrs. Mornington. "You can have
+that all out in the saddle-room to-morrow when you are smoking with
+your grooms. Let me look at your programme, Sidney. Not half full, I
+declare. Now go over to Miss Rycroft this instant, and engage her for
+the next waltz."
+
+"Come now, Mrs. Mornington, that's rather too rough on me. A man mayn't
+marry his grandmother; and surely there's some kind of law to forbid
+his dancing with a woman who looks like his great-aunt."
+
+"Sidney, love, to oblige me. The dear old thing has gone to the expense
+of a new frock----"
+
+"She might have bought a little more stuff while she was about it,"
+murmured the youth.
+
+"On purpose for my dance, and _somebody_ must give her a waltz.
+Come, boys, who shall it be?"
+
+"Let's go into the garden and toss up," said Sidney Heathfield; but
+the other youths protested that they were engaged for every dance, and
+Sidney, who had come late, and whose programme was only half full, had
+to submit.
+
+"I'll do it, Mrs. Mornington," he said, with serio-comic resignation,
+"on condition you get me a dance with Miss Vincent afterwards."
+
+"If I do, she will have to cheat somebody else. Her programme was
+full a quarter of an hour after she came into the room. My niece is a
+success."
+
+Young Heathfield made his way to a distant bench, where an elderly
+young lady of expansive figure, set off by a pink-gauze frock, had been
+sitting for an hour and a half, smiling blandly upon her friends and
+acquaintance, with a growing sense of despair.
+
+What had come over the young men of the present generation, when good
+dancers were allowed to sit partnerless and forlorn? It all came of the
+absence of men of standing and mature age at evening parties. Sensible
+men were so disgusted by the slang and boldness of chits just escaped
+from the schoolroom that they held themselves aloof, and ball-rooms
+were given over to boys and girls, and to romping galops and kitchen
+lancers.
+
+Here was one sensible boy at least, thought poor Miss Rycroft, as
+Sidney Heathfield, tall, slim, studiously correct, stood looking
+solemnly down upon her, asking for the next waltz. Little did Miss
+Rycroft dream of the pressure which had been put upon the youth by
+yonder matron, whose voice was now heard loud and lively on the other
+side of the lace curtains.
+
+Mrs. Mornington was talking to Allan.
+
+"How horribly late you are, Mr. Carew. You don't deserve to find one
+nice girl disengaged."
+
+"Even if I don't, I know one nice woman with whom I would as soon sit
+and talk common sense as dance with the prettiest girl in Matcham."
+
+"If you mean me," said Mrs. Mornington, "there will be no commonsense
+talk for you and me to-night. I have all these young men to keep in
+order. Now, Billy," suddenly attacking Mr. Walcott, who was talking
+mysteriously to a bosom friend about some one or something that was
+seven off, with capped hocks, but a splendid lepper, "Billy, haven't I
+told you that you were here to dance, not to talk stables? There's Miss
+Forlander, the girl from Torquay, who plays golf so well, sitting like
+a statue next Mrs. Paddington Brown."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Mornington," groaned the youth, as he strolled off, "what a
+life you lead us! I hope you don't call this hospitality."
+
+"Am I not at least to be introduced to Miss Vincent, the heroine of the
+evening?" asked Allan.
+
+"The heroine of the evening is behaving very badly," said Mrs.
+Mornington. "I don't think I'll ever give a summer dance again. I wish
+it had rained cats and dogs. Look at the dancing-room, half empty.
+Those young people are all meandering about the garden, picking my
+finest roses, I dare say, just to tear them to pieces in the game of
+'he loves me, loves me not.'"
+
+"What better use could be made of a garden and roses? As long as you
+have only the true lovers, and no Mephistopheles or Martha, your garden
+is another Eden. But I must insist upon being introduced to Miss
+Vincent before the evening is over."
+
+"I will do my best," said Mrs. Mornington, and then in a lower voice
+she told him that she had ordered her niece to keep a late number open
+for his name. "She is a very nice girl, and I think you are a nice
+young man, and I should like you to know each other," concluded the
+lady with her bluff straightforwardness.
+
+Mr. Mornington and an elderly stranger, with iron-grey hair and
+iron-grey moustache, came across the hall at this moment.
+
+"Ah, here is my brother!" cried Mrs. Mornington. "Robert, I want
+to introduce Mr. Carew to you. He is a new neighbour, but a great
+favourite of mine."
+
+Allan stopped in the hall for about a quarter of an hour talking to
+General Vincent and Mr. Mornington, and then he, too, was called to
+order by his hostess, and was marched into the dancing-room to be
+introduced to a Dresden-china young lady, pink and white and blue-eyed,
+like Saxony porcelain, who had been brought by somebody, and who was a
+stranger in the land.
+
+He waltzed with this young creature, who was pretty and daintily
+dressed, and who asked him various questions about Salisbury Cathedral
+and Stonehenge, evidently with the idea that she was adapting her
+conversation to the locality. When the dance was over, she refused
+his offer of an ice, and suggested a turn in the garden; so Allan
+found himself among the meanderers under the moonlit sky; but there
+was no plucking of roses or murmuring of "Loves me not, loves me,
+loves me not," no thought of Gretchen's impassioned love-dream as the
+Dresden-china young lady and he promenaded solemnly up and down the
+broad gravel terrace in front of the open windows, still conversing
+sagely about Salisbury Cathedral and the decoration of the Chapter
+House.
+
+While parading slowly up and down, Allan found his attention wandering
+every now and then from the young lady at his side to another young
+lady who passed and repassed with an elderly cavalier. A tall, slim
+young lady, with black hair and eyes, a pale brunette complexion, and
+an elegant simplicity of dress and _chevelure_ which Allan at
+once recognized as Parisian. No English girl, he thought, ever had
+that air of being more plainly dressed than other girls, and yet more
+distinguished and fashionable. He had seen no frock like this girl's
+frock, but he felt assured that she was dressed in that Parisian
+fashion which is said to antedate London fashion by a twelvemonth.
+
+She was in white from head to foot, and her gown was made of some
+dead-white fabric which combined the solidity of satin with the soft
+suppleness of gauze. The bodice was rather short-waisted, and the young
+lady wore a broad satin belt clasped with a diamond buckle, which
+flashed with many coloured gleams in the moonlight, as she passed
+to and fro; and whereas most young women at that time displayed a
+prodigious length of arm broken only by a narrow shoulder-strap, this
+young lady wore large puffed sleeves which recalled the portraits of
+Sir Thomas Lawrence. The large puffed sleeves became common enough a
+year later, but they were unknown in Wiltshire when Mrs. Mornington
+gave her dance. The damsel's silky black hair was coiled with artistic
+simplicity at the back of the prettily shaped head, while a cloud of
+little careless curls clustered above the broad, intelligent forehead.
+
+She was talking gaily with her companion, Colonel Fordingbridge, a
+retired engineer, settled for some fifteen years in the outskirts of
+Matcham, and an intimate friend of Mr. Mornington's. He was telling
+her about the neighbourhood, holding it up to contempt and ridicule
+in a good-natured way which implied that, after all, it was the best
+neighbourhood in the world.
+
+"It suits an old fellow like me," Allan heard him say; "plenty of sport
+of a mildish order. Huntin', fishin', shootin', hawkin', and golf."
+
+"Hawking!" cried the young lady. "Do you really mean that? I thought
+there were no more hawks left in the world. Why, it sounds like the
+Middle Ages."
+
+"Yes, and I'm afraid you'll say it looks like the Middle Ages when you
+see a flight on the hills near Matcham. The members of the Falconry
+Club in this neighbourhood are not all boys."
+
+"But the hawks!" exclaimed she. "Where--where can one see them?"
+
+"Have you really hawks?" inquired Allan's young lady, who had exhausted
+the Chapter House, and who caught eagerly at another local subject.
+"How utterly delightful! Do you go out with them very often?"
+
+"I blush to admit that I have not even seen them, though I know there
+are such birds kept in the neighbourhood. I have even been invited
+to become a member of the society, and am seriously thinking about
+offering myself for election."
+
+Seriously thinking since two minutes ago, be it understood, for until
+he caught that speech from the unknown young lady he had hardly given
+falconry a thought.
+
+She and her companion had disappeared when he and his porcelain lady
+turned at the end of the terrace.
+
+"Do you know that girl who was talking about the hawks?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I have been introduced to her. She is the girl of the house."
+
+"I am afraid you are missing a dance," said Allan, with grave concern.
+"We had better go in, had we not?"
+
+"Yes, I fear I am behaving badly to somebody; but it is so much nicer
+here than in those hot rooms."
+
+"Infinitely preferable; but one has a duty to one's neighbour."
+
+They met a youth in quest of the porcelain girl.
+
+"Oh, Miss Mercer, how could you desert me so long? Our waltz is half
+over!"
+
+Allan breathed more freely, having handed over Miss Mercer. He made
+his way quickly to the hall where Mrs. Mornington was still on
+guard, receiving the latest comers, sending the first batch into the
+supper-room, and dictating to everybody.
+
+"I shall not leave your elbow till you have introduced me to Miss
+Vincent," he said, planting himself near his hostess.
+
+"If you don't take care, you will have to give me some supper," replied
+she, "I am beginning to feel sinking. And I think it would be a good
+plan for me to sup early in order to see that things are as they should
+be."
+
+Allan's heart also began to sink. He knew what it meant to take a
+matron in to supper; the leisurely discussion of salmon and cutlets,
+the half-bottle of champagne, the gossip, lasting half an hour at the
+least. And while he was ministering to Mrs. Mornington what chance
+would he have of becoming acquainted with Mrs. Mornington's niece?
+
+"I should be proud to be so honoured; but think how many persons of
+greater age and dignity you will offend. Colonel Fordingbridge, for
+instance, such an old friend."
+
+"Colonel Fordingbridge has just gone in with my niece."
+
+"Oh, in that case, let me have the honour," exclaimed Allan eagerly,
+almost dragging Mrs. Mornington towards the supper-room. "I should not
+like to have offended dear old Fordingbridge."
+
+"We may get seats at their table, perhaps. I told Suzette to go to one
+of the cosy little tables at the end of the room."
+
+Suzette! what a coquettish, enchanting name! He pushed past the long
+table where two rows of people were talking, laughing, gobbling, as
+if they never dined and had hardly tasted food for a week. He pushed
+on to the end of the room where, on each side of the fireplace, now a
+mass of golden lilies and palms, Mrs. Mornington had found space for a
+small round table--a table which just held four people snugly, if not
+commodiously.
+
+One of these tables had been made to accommodate six; the other had
+just been left by the first batch of supper-eaters. Miss Vincent and
+Colonel Fordingbridge were standing near while a servant re-arranged
+the table.
+
+"That's lucky," said Mrs. Mornington. "Suzette, I want to introduce my
+friend Mr. Carew to you--Mr. Carew--Miss Vincent. And after supper he
+can take you to your father, whom I haven't seen for the last hour."
+
+"I am afraid he has gone home," replied the young lady, after
+smilingly accepting the introduction. "I heard him ask Mrs.
+Fordingbridge to take care of me if he should feel tired and be obliged
+to go home. He can't bear being up late at night."
+
+"No wonder, when he is out and about at daybreak!"
+
+"The mornings are so nice," said Suzette.
+
+"Yes, for people like you, who can do without sleep; people who have
+quicksilver in their veins."
+
+"One learns to be fond of the early morning in India," explained
+Suzette.
+
+"Because every other part of the day is intolerable," said Colonel
+Fordingbridge.
+
+They were seated by this time, and Mrs. Mornington was sipping her
+first glass of champagne with an air of supreme content, while Allan
+helped her to lobster mayonnaise. Suzette was on his other side; and
+even while ministering to the elder lady his looks and his thoughts
+were on the younger.
+
+How pretty she was, and how interesting. It seemed to him that he had
+never cared for English beauty; the commonplace pinkness and whiteness,
+chubby cheeks, blunt noses, cherry lips. Those delicate features,
+that pale dark skin, those brilliant dark eyes and small white teeth
+flashing upon him now and then as she smiled, with the most bewitching
+mouth--a mouth that could express volumes in a smile, or by a pouting
+movement of the flexible lips.
+
+Allan and she were good friends in about five minutes. He was
+questioning and she answering. Surely, surely she did not like India as
+well as England--a life of exile--a life under torrid skies? Surely,
+surely, yes. There were a hundred things that she loved in India; those
+three years of her life in the North-West Provinces had been years in
+fairyland.
+
+"It must have been because you were worshipped," he said. "You lived
+upon adulation. I'm afraid when a young lady is happy in India, it
+means that she is not altogether innocent of vanity."
+
+"It is very unkind of you to say that. How sorry you must feel when I
+tell you that the happiest half-year I spent in India was when father
+was road-making, and the only other officer in camp was a fat, married
+major--an immense major, as big as this table."
+
+"And you were happy! How?"
+
+"In all manner of ways; riding, rambling, botanizing, sketching, and
+looking after father."
+
+"My niece is a Miss Crichton. She has all the accomplishments," said
+Mrs. Mornington.
+
+"Oh, aunt! that is a dreadful character to give me. It means that I do
+nothing well!"
+
+Allan had asked her for a dance, and there had been an examination of
+her programme, which showed only one blank.
+
+"Auntie told me to keep that waltz," she said. "I don't know why."
+
+"I do. It was kept for me. I am the favoured one."
+
+"But why?" she asked naïvely. "Why you more than any one else?"
+
+"Who can say? Will you call me vain if I tell you that I think I am a
+favourite with your aunt?"
+
+She looked at him laughingly, with a glance that asked a question.
+
+"You don't see any reason why I should be preferred," said Allan,
+interpreting her look; "but remember there never is any reason for such
+preferences. Clever women are full of prejudices."
+
+He could imagine a reason which he would not have had Suzette suspect
+for worlds. Perhaps among the available young men in Mrs. Mornington's
+circle he was the best placed, with an ample income in the present, and
+an estate that must be his in the future, the best placed of all except
+the young master of Discombe Manor; and the Lord of Discombe was away,
+while he, Allan, was on the spot.
+
+The thought of Geoffrey Wornock suggested a question. They had left the
+little table to Mrs. Mornington and Colonel Fordingbridge, who were
+able to take care of each other. Allan and Miss Vincent were going to
+the dancing-room, not by the nearest way, but through a French window
+into the garden.
+
+"Shall we take a little turn before we go back to the house?"
+
+"I should like it of all things."
+
+"And you are not afraid of catching cold?"
+
+"On such a night as this? Why, in the hills I lived out-of-doors!"
+
+"You have been at Matcham before, I suppose!"
+
+"Yes, father and I stayed here with auntie once upon a time."
+
+"Long ago?"
+
+"Ages ago, when I wore short petticoats and wasn't allowed late dinner."
+
+"Heartless tyranny!"
+
+"Wasn't it? I didn't know what to do with myself in the long summer
+evenings. I used to roam about this garden till I was tired, and then
+I would go and look in at the dining-room window where they were all
+sitting at dessert, and auntie would wave me away, 'Go and play,
+child.' Play, indeed! Even the gardeners had gone home, and the dogs
+were shut up for the night. I was actually glad when it was nine
+o'clock and bedtime."
+
+"Poor victim of middle-aged egotism."
+
+"Dear auntie! She is so good! But people don't understand children.
+They forget what their own feelings were when they were little."
+
+"Alas, yes! A child is as great a mystery to me to-day as if I had been
+born at one and twenty. I can't even understand or interest myself in
+a lad of fifteen. He seems such an incongruous, unnecessary creature,
+stupid, lumbering, in everybody's way. I can't realize the fact that he
+will ever get any better. He is there, complete in himself, a being of
+a race apart. I should feel insulted if any one were to tell me I had
+ever been like him."
+
+"How true that is!" assented Suzette, gaily. "I have felt just the same
+about girls. I only began to wear my hair in a knot three years ago,
+and yet there seems hardly one point of union between me and a girl
+with her hair down her back. I have got beyond her, as somebody says.
+How sad that one should always be getting beyond things! Father detests
+India--talks only of the climate--while to me it was all enchantment.
+Perhaps if I were to go back to the East, a few years hence, I should
+hate it."
+
+"Very likely. Going back is always a mistake."
+
+There was nothing exalted or out of the common in their talk, but at
+least there was sympathy in it all, and they were telling each other
+their thoughts as freely as if they had been friends of long years. It
+was very different from being obliged to talk of Salisbury Cathedral,
+and theorize on the history of Stonehenge. And then there was the
+glamour of the garden and the moonlight; the mysterious light and shade
+of shrubbery walks; the blackness of the cedars that spread a deeper
+dark across the lawn. Mrs. Mornington had taken care to choose a night
+when the midsummer moon should be at the full, and she had abstained
+from cockneyfying the garden with artificial light, from those fairy
+lamps or Chinese lanterns which are well enough within the narrow
+limits of a suburban garden, but which could only vulgarize grounds
+that had something of forestial beauty.
+
+"I am glad you are almost a stranger to Matcham, Miss Vincent," said
+Allan, after the first brief pause in their talk.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it is such a pleasure to meet some one who does not know
+Geoffrey Wornock."
+
+"And pray who is Geoffrey Wornock?"
+
+"Ah, how delightful, how refreshing it is to hear that question! Miss
+Vincent, I am your devoted friend from this moment. Your friend, did I
+say? I am your slave--command my allegiance in everything."
+
+"Please be tranquil. What does it all mean?"
+
+"Oh, forgive me! Know then that hitherto everybody I have met in this
+place has greeted me by an expression of surprise at my resemblance
+to one Geoffrey Wornock--happily now absent with his regiment in the
+East. Nobody has taken any interest in me except on the score of
+this likeness to the absent Wornock. My face has been criticized, my
+features descanted upon one by one in my hearing. I have been informed
+that it is in this or that feature, in this or that expression, the
+likeness consists, while I naturally don't care twopence about the
+likeness, or about Wornock. And to meet some one who doesn't know
+my double, who will accept me for what I am individually!--oh, Miss
+Vincent, we ought to be friends. Say that we may be friends."
+
+"Please don't rush on in such a headlong fashion. You talk like the
+girls at the convent, who wanted me to swear eternal friendship in the
+first half-hour; and perhaps turned out to be very disagreeable girls
+when one came to know them."
+
+"I hope I shall not turn out disagreeable."
+
+"I did not mean to be rude; but friendship is a serious thing. At
+present I have no friend except father, and two girls with whom I have
+kept up a correspondence since I left the Sacré Cœur. One lives at
+Bournemouth and the other in Paris, so our friendship is dependent on
+the post. I think we ought to go back to the dancing-room now. I have
+to report myself to Mrs. Fordingbridge, and not to keep her later than
+she may wish to stay."
+
+Allan felt that he had been talking like a fool; that he had presumed
+on the young lady's unconventional manner. She had talked to him
+brightly and unrestrainedly; and he had been pushing and impertinent.
+The moonlight, the garden, the pleasure of talking to a bright
+vivacious girl had made him forget the respect due to the acquaintance
+of an hour.
+
+He was silent on the way back to the ballroom, silent and abashed; but
+five minutes afterwards he was waltzing with Suzette, who was assuredly
+the best waltzer of all that evening's partners, and he felt that he
+was treading on air.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                       "O THE RARE SPRING-TIME!"
+
+
+Allan called at the Grove two days after the dance--called at the
+friendly hour when there was a certainty of afternoon tea, if Mrs.
+Mornington were at home; and when he thought it likely that Miss
+Vincent would be with her aunt.
+
+"She will almost live at the Grove," he thought, as he walked towards
+that comfortable mansion, which was nearly a mile from Beechhurst.
+"Marsh House is so near. There is a path across the meadows by which
+she can walk in dry weather. A girl living alone with her father will
+naturally turn to her aunt for companionship, will take counsel with
+her upon all household affairs, and will run in and out every day."
+
+It was a disappointment, after having made up his mind in this way, to
+see no sign of Suzette's presence in the drawing-room at the Grove.
+Mrs. Mornington was sitting in the verandah with her inevitable
+work-basket, just as he had found her a fortnight before, when her
+brother's advent at Marsh House and the dance at the Grove were still
+in the future.
+
+She received him with her accustomed cordiality, but she did not ask
+him what he thought of her niece, though he was dying to be questioned.
+An unwonted shyness prevented his beginning the subject. He sat meekly
+sustaining a conversation about the parish, the wrongs and rights of
+the last clerical squabble, till his patience could hold out no longer.
+
+"I hope General Vincent likes Matcham," he said at last, not daring to
+touch nearer to the subject which absorbed his thoughts.
+
+"Oh yes, _he_ likes the place well enough. He has lived his life,
+and can amuse himself with his poultry-yard, and will potter about
+with the hounds now and then when the cub-hunting begins. But I don't
+know how it will suit _her_."
+
+"You think Miss Vincent would prefer a livelier place?"
+
+"Of course she would prefer it. The question is, will she put up with
+this? She has never lived in an English village, though she has lived
+in out-of-the-way places in India; but, then, that was camp life,
+adventure, the sort of thing a girl likes. Her father idolizes her,
+and has taken her about everywhere with him since she left the Sacré
+Cœur at fourteen years of age. She has lived at Plymouth, at York, at
+Lucknow. She has had enough adulation to turn a wiser head than hers."
+
+"And yet--so far as a man may venture to judge within the compass of
+an hour--I don't think her head has been turned," said Allan, growing
+bolder.
+
+"That's as may be. She has a clever little way of seeming wiser
+than she is. The nuns gave her that wise air, I think. They have
+a wonderfully refining effect upon their pupils. Do you think her
+good-looking?"
+
+"Good-looking is an odious epithet to apply to such a girl. She is
+exquisitely pretty."
+
+"I'm glad you admire her. Yes, it is a dainty kind of prettiness, ain't
+it? Exquisite is far too strong a word; but I think she is a little
+superior to the common run of English girls."
+
+"I hope she may be able to endure Matcham. After all, the country round
+is tolerably interesting."
+
+"Oh, I believe she will put up with it for her father's sake, if he is
+happy here. Only no doubt she will miss the adulation."
+
+"She must not be allowed to miss it. All the young men in the
+neighbourhood will be her worshippers."
+
+Mrs. Mornington shrugged her shoulders, pursed up her lips, and made a
+long slashing cut in a breadth of substantial calico.
+
+"The young men of the neighbourhood will hardly fill the gap," she
+said. "Yourself excepted, there is not an idea among them--that is
+to say, not an idea unconnected with sport. If a girl doesn't care
+to talk about hunting, shooting, or golf, there is no such thing as
+conversation for her in Matcham."
+
+Before Allan could reply, the drawing-room door was thrown open, and
+Mrs. Mornington rose to receive a visitor. Her seat in the verandah
+commanded the drawing-room as well as the garden, and she was always on
+the alert for arrivals. Allan rose as quickly, expecting to see Miss
+Vincent.
+
+"Mrs. Wornock," announced the butler, with a grand air, perfectly
+cognizant of the lady's social importance.
+
+To Allan the appearance of the lady of Discombe was as startling as if
+she had lived at the other end of England. And yet Mrs. Mornington had
+told him that she and Mrs. Wornock exchanged three or four visits in
+the course of the year.
+
+Mrs. Mornington greeted her guest with cordiality, and the two women
+came out to the verandah together. They offered a striking contrast,
+and, as types of the sex, were at the opposite poles of woman. One was
+of the world, worldly, large, strongly built, loud-voiced, resolute,
+commanding, a woman whose surplus power was accentuated by the petty
+sphere in which she lived; the other was slender and youthful in
+figure, with a marked fragility of frame, pale, ethereal, and with a
+girlish shyness of manner, not wanting in mental power, perhaps, but
+likely to be thought inferior, from the lack of self-possession and
+self-esteem. All the social advantages which surrounded Mrs. Wornock of
+Discombe had been insufficient to give her the self-confidence which
+is commonly superabundant in the humblest matron who has passed her
+thirtieth birthday.
+
+She gave a little start of surprise at finding Allan in the verandah,
+but the smile with which she offered him her hand was one of pleasure.
+She took the seat which Mrs. Mornington offered her--the most
+comfortable chair in the verandah--and then began to apologize for
+having taken it.
+
+"I'm afraid this is your chair----"
+
+"No, no, no. Sit where you are, for goodness' sake!" cried Mrs.
+Mornington. "I never indulge myself with an easy-chair till my day's
+work is done. We are going to have our tea out here." The servants
+were bringing table and tray as she talked. "I'm very glad you came
+to see me this afternoon, for I dare say my niece will be running in
+presently--my brother Robert's daughter--and I want you to call upon
+her. I told you all about her the other day when I was at the Manor."
+
+"Would she like me to call, do you think? Of course I will call, if you
+wish it; but I hardly think she will care."
+
+"I know that she will care," replied Mrs. Mornington, busy at the
+tea-table. "She is not a great performer, but she is almost as
+enthusiastic about music as you are. She is a Roman, and those old
+Masses of which you are so fond mean more to her than they do to most
+of us."
+
+Allan's spirits had risen with the expectation of Miss Vincent's
+appearance. He had been right in his conclusions, after all.
+
+He resumed his seat, which was near enough to Mrs. Wornock's chair for
+confidential talk.
+
+"You have quite deserted me, Mr. Carew," she said, with gentle
+reproachfulness. "I thought you would have been to see me before now."
+
+"I did not want to seem intrusive."
+
+"You could not seem or be intrusive. You are so much more to me than
+a common friend. You remind me of the past--of my son. You would be
+almost as another son to me if you would let me think of you like that.
+If----"
+
+She spoke quickly, almost passionately, and her low voice had a thrill
+of feeling in it which touched him deeply. What a strange impulsive
+creature this woman was, in spite of the timidity and reserve that
+had kept her aloof from that rural society over which she might have
+reigned as a queen.
+
+Before Allan could reply to Mrs. Wornock's unfinished speech, there
+came a welcome diversion in the shape of a large black poodle,
+which rushed vehemently across the lawn, stood on end beside Mrs.
+Mornington's gown for a moment or two, sniffed the tea-table, wheeled
+round, and rushed off again in a diagonal line towards the point whence
+he had come.
+
+This sudden black appearance was followed by an appearance in lavender
+cambric, and the tall, slim form of a very elegant young woman, whose
+simple attire, as at the ball, bore the true Parisian stamp, that
+indescribable air of unlikeness to British dress, which is rather a
+negative than a positive quality.
+
+The brilliant dark eyes flashed a smile upon Allan, as the young lady
+allowed him to take her hand _à l'Anglaise_, after she had spoken
+to her aunt and been introduced to Mrs. Wornock.
+
+"Your poodle is a little too bad, Suzie. He nearly knocked me and the
+tea-table clean over."
+
+"That is one of the aunt's innocent exaggerations," said Suzette,
+laughing. "If you know her as well as I do, Mrs. Wornock, you must
+know that she always talks in a large way. Poor Caro. He is only a
+puppy; and I think, for a puppy, his manners are perfect."
+
+Caro was crouching at her feet, breathing hard, for the space of half
+a minute as she spoke, and then he rushed off again, circling the lawn
+three or four times, with spasmodic halts by his mistress, or by the
+tea-table.
+
+"He is rather a ridiculous dog at present," apologized Suzette, fondly
+watching these manœuvres; "but he is going to be very clever. He has
+begun to die for his queen, and he will do wonderful things when he
+is older. I have been warned not to teach him too much while he is a
+puppy, for fear of addling his brain."
+
+"I don't believe he has any brain to be addled, or at least he must
+have addled it for himself with that absurd rushing about," said Mrs.
+Mornington, dealing out the tea-cups, which Allan meekly handed to the
+two ladies.
+
+He had been to so many afternoon tea-parties of late that he felt as if
+handing cups and saucers and cream and sugar were a kind of speciality
+with him. In Suffolk he had never troubled about these things. His time
+had been taken up with shooting or fishing. He had allowed all social
+amenities to be performed by his mother, unaided by him. At Matcham
+he had become a new being, a person to be called upon and to return
+calls, with all the punctiliousness of a popular curate. He wondered at
+himself as he accomplished these novel duties.
+
+Mrs. Wornock began to talk to Suzette, constrainedly at first, but the
+girl's frank vivacity soon put her at her ease, and then Allan joined
+in the conversation, and in a few minutes they were all three on the
+friendliest terms, although the elder lady gradually dropped out of
+the conversation, save for a word or two now and then when addressed
+by the other two. She seemed content to sit by and listen while those
+two talked, as much interested in them as they were interested in
+each other. She was quick to perceive Allan's subjugation, quick to
+understand that he was surrendering himself without a struggle to the
+fascination of a girl who was not quite as other girls, who had nothing
+hackneyed or conventional in person or manner.
+
+After tea, they all went round the lawn, headed by Mrs. Mornington, to
+look at her roses and carnations, flowers which were her peculiar pride
+and care.
+
+"If I had such a garden as yours--a day-dream in gardens--I don't
+suppose I should take any trouble about a few beds of dwarf-roses and
+picotees," she said to Mrs. Wornock; "but these flower-beds are all I
+have to console me for the Philistinism of my surroundings."
+
+"Oh, but you have a really fine shrubbery," urged Allan, remembering
+that promenade of the other night among the lights and shadows, and
+the perfume of dewy conifers. "That belt of deodara and arbutus and
+rhododendrons, and this fine expanse of level lawn ought to satisfy any
+lady's ambition."
+
+"No doubt. This garden of mine always reminds me of the Church
+catechism. It suggests that state of life to which it has pleased
+God to call me--an eminently respectable, upper middle-class garden,
+fifty years old at most; while the grounds at Discombe carry one back
+three centuries, and one expects to meet fine gentlemen in ruffs and
+doublets, with roses on their shoes, and talking like that book whose
+name I forget, or abusing the new and detestable custom of smoking
+tobacco. You will be in love with Mrs. Wornock's garden, Suzette, and
+will give up all idea of improving the Marsh House flower-beds."
+
+"No, I shan't give up, however much I may admire," protested Suzette,
+sturdily. "If I had only a cottage garden, I would toil early and late
+to make it beautiful."
+
+"There is plenty of room at Marsh House," said Mrs. Wornock, "and the
+garden is capable of improvement. When will you bring Miss Vincent to
+see me and my peacocks, Mrs. Mornington? Pray let it be soon. Your
+niece and I have at least one taste in common, and I think we ought
+to be good friends. Will you come to luncheon to-morrow, you and Miss
+Vincent, and you, Mr. Carew, if you are all disengaged?"
+
+"For my part, I would throw over any engagement that was capable of
+being evaded," said Mrs. Mornington, cheerily. And then in an undertone
+to Allan, she added, "It will be a new sensation to eat a meal at the
+Manor. This burst of hospitality is almost a miracle."
+
+Allan accepted the invitation unhesitatingly, and began to think Mrs.
+Wornock the most delightful of women, and to be angry with himself for
+ever having suspected evil in her past history. Whatever was strange in
+her conduct in relation to himself and to his father must be accounted
+for in some way that would be consonant with guilelessness and goodness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That luncheon at Discombe Manor was the beginning of a new phase
+in Allan Carew's existence. All things must begin some day; and
+love--serious and earnest love--is one of the things which have
+their beginning, and whose beginning is sweeter than all the other
+first-fruits of life. It is not to be supposed that Allan was
+altogether a stranger to tender emotions, that he had come to five and
+twenty years of age without ever having fancied himself in love. He
+had had his boyish loves, and they had ended in disappointment. The
+blighting wind of satiety had swept across his budding loves before
+they had time to flower. All those youthful goddesses of his had shown
+him too soon and too plainly that there was very little of Olympian
+grandeur about them. As an only son with good prospects, he had been
+rudely awakened to the cruel truth that the average young lady has a
+sharp eye to the main chance, and that he, Allan Carew, was measured
+by his expectations rather than by his merits. Very early in his youth
+he made up his mind that he would never let his heart go out to any
+woman who contemplated marriage from a business standpoint; and he
+had been keenly on the watch for the canker of worldliness among
+the flowers. Unluckily for his chances of matrimony, the prettiest
+girls he had met hitherto had been the most worldly; trained perhaps
+to worldliness on account of their marketable qualities. Much as he
+admired high-mindedness in woman, he was not high-minded enough to seek
+out virtue under an unattractive exterior; so he had almost made up his
+mind to follow his uncle's example, and go through life a bachelor.
+
+As a bachelor he might count himself rich, and for a bachelor
+Beechhurst was an admirable dwelling-place. The house had been built
+for a bachelor. The rooms were spacious but few. Twice as many
+bedrooms, best and secondary, would be required for a family man.
+Thinking vaguely of the possibility of marriage, Allan had shuddered
+as he thought of an architect exploring that delightful upper floor,
+measuring walls, and tapping partitions, and discussing the best point
+at which to throw out a nursery wing, and where to add three or four
+servants' bedrooms.
+
+And behold now this prudent, far-seeing young man, whose philosophy
+hitherto had been the philosophy of pure selfishness, was allowing
+himself to fall in love with a young lady who, for all he could tell,
+might be just as mercenary and worldly-minded as the girls he had met
+in Suffolk shooting-parties or in London ball-rooms. He had no reason
+to suppose her any better than they. Her father was a man of moderate
+means, and according to all the rules of modern life, it would be her
+duty to make a good marriage. He remembered how Mrs. Mornington had
+ordered her niece to save a dance for him, and he might conclude from
+that and other small facts that the aunt would favour him as a suitor
+for the niece. Yet the idea of worldly-mindedness never entered his
+thoughts in relation to Suzette. He abandoned himself to the charm
+of her delightful individuality without the faintest apprehension of
+future disillusion. He thought, indeed, but little of the future.
+The joys of the present were all-sufficing. To talk with her in
+unrestrained frivolity, glancing from theme to theme, but always with a
+grain of sentiment or philosophy in their talk; to walk beside her in
+those stately alleys at Discombe, or to linger in the marble temple;
+to follow the peacocks along the grass walks; to look for the nests
+of the thrushes and blackbirds in the thick walls of laurel; to plan
+garden-plays--Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream--in that grassy
+amphitheatre, which reminded Allan of the Boboli Gardens--these things
+made a happiness that filled mind and heart to the exclusion of all
+thought of the future.
+
+"I can understand the lilies better now than when I was first told to
+consider them," said Allan one day, as he stood with Suzette beside a
+great bed of lilium auratum.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Because I am as happy as they are, and take no more heed of the future
+than they do. I feel as they feel when they sway in the summer wind and
+bask in the summer sun, fed with the dews of night, having all things
+that are good for flowers, satisfied and happy."
+
+"You are as foolish as I am. I can't help fancying sometimes that
+flowers are alive and can feel the sun and the glory of the blue sky.
+To be always looking up at the sky, dumb, lifeless, not knowing! One
+would hardly care for flowers if one could realize that they have
+neither sense nor feeling. Yet I suppose one does realize that cruel
+fact sometimes. I know when I have been looking at the roses, and
+delighting in their beauty, Caro meets me as I go back to the house,
+and as he leaps and frisks about me, the difference between him and the
+flowers strikes me very keenly. They so beautiful and so far off, he so
+near and dear--the precious living thing!"
+
+"Ah, that is the crown of things, Miss Vincent--life! Dead loveliness
+is nothing in comparison!"
+
+"No," said Suzette. "And what a blessing that life is beautiful in
+itself. One can love ugly people; one may adore an ugly dog; but who
+ever cared for an ugly chair, or could become attached to an ugly
+house?"
+
+"Not knowingly; but I have known people fondly attached to the
+most hideously furnished rooms. And oh, how humiliating it is for
+middle-aged people like my mother to be obliged to admit that the
+things we think hideous were accounted beautiful when they were young!"
+
+This easy, trivial talk was the growth of more than one luncheon, and
+a good many tea-drinkings, in the music-room or in the gardens of
+Discombe. Mrs. Wornock had opened her heart and her house to Suzette as
+she had never before done to any young lady in the neighbourhood, and
+Suzette warmly reciprocated the kindness of the recluse. She ran in at
+the Manor House almost as unceremoniously as she ran in at the Grove.
+It was understood by the servants that their mistress was always at
+home to Miss Vincent. And as Allan had previously been made free of the
+Manor House, it was only natural that he and Suzette should meet very
+often under Mrs. Wornock's mild chaperonage.
+
+Mrs. Mornington knew of these meetings, and, indeed, often dropped in
+while the young people were there, coming to take Suzette home in her
+pony-carriage, or to walk with her through the lanes. She showed no
+sign of disapproval; yet, as a woman of the world, it may have occurred
+to her that, since Mrs. Wornock was so fond of Suzette, it might be
+wise for Suzette to refrain from attaching herself to Allan Carew,
+while a superior _parti_ remained in the background in the person
+of Mrs. Wornock's only son.
+
+Happily for Allan, Mrs. Mornington, although essentially mundane, was
+not a schemer. She had made up her mind that Allan was a good deal
+better than the average young man, and that Beechhurst was quite good
+enough for her niece, whose present means and expectations were of a
+very modest order. There had been no mock humility in Mrs. Mornington's
+statement of facts when she told Allan that her brother's income, from
+all sources, was just big enough to enable him to live respectably at
+Marsh House.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The foliage was beginning to show gleams of gold and red amidst the
+sombre green of late summer; the hounds were beginning to meet at seven
+o'clock in the crisper, clearer mornings of September; and Allan Carew
+was beginning to feel himself the bond-slave of a young lady about
+whose sentiments towards himself he was still entirely in the dark.
+
+Did she care for him much, a little, not at all? Allan Carew was
+continually asking himself those questions, and there was no oracle to
+answer him; no oracle even in his inner consciousness, which told him
+nothing of Suzette's feelings. He knew that he loved her; but he could
+recall no word or look of hers which could assure him that she returned
+his love. It was certain that she liked him, and that his society was
+pleasant to her.
+
+They had an infinite series of ideas in common--they thought alike upon
+most subjects; and she seemed no more to weary of his society than
+he of hers--yet there were times when he thought he might have been
+nearer winning her love had she liked him less. Her friendship seemed
+too frank ever to ripen into love. He would have liked to see her start
+and blush at his coming. She did neither; but received him with her
+airiest grace, and had always her laughter ready for his poor jokes,
+her intellect on the alert for his serious speech about books or men.
+She was the most delightful companion he had ever known; but a sister
+could not have been more at her ease with him.
+
+"I sometimes think you take me for one of your old convent friends," he
+said one day, when she had prattled to him of her housekeeping and her
+garden as they walked up and down the long grass alley, while the music
+of the organ came to them, now loud with the lessening distance, now
+sinking slowly to silence as they walked further from the house.
+
+"Oh no; I should never take you for any one so patrician and
+distinguished as Laure de Beauvais, or Athenaïs de Laroche," she
+answered laughingly, "I should never dare to talk to them about eggs
+and butter, the obstinacy of a cook at twenty-five pounds a year, the
+ignorance of a gardener who is little better than a day labourer. But
+perhaps I am wrong to talk to you of these everyday cares. I will try
+to talk as I would to Athenaïs. I will dispute the merit of Lamartine's
+Elegy on Byron as compared with Hugo's Ode to the King of Rome. I was
+for Hugo; Athenaïs for Lamartine. We used to have terrible battles. And
+now Athenaïs is married to a financier, and has a palace in the Parc
+Monceau, and gives balls to all Paris; and I am living with father in a
+shabby old house with three maids and a man-of-all-work."
+
+"Talk to me as you like," he said; "talk to me as your serf, your
+slave."
+
+And then, without a moment's pause in which to arrange his thoughts,
+surprised into a revelation which he had intended indefinitely to
+defer, he told her that he was in very truth her slave, and that he
+must be the most miserable of men if this avowal of his love touched
+no answering chord in her heart.
+
+She who was habitually so gay grew suddenly grave almost to sadness,
+and looked at him with an expression which was half-frightened,
+half-reproachful.
+
+"Oh, why do you talk like this?" she cried. "We have been such
+friends--so happy."
+
+"Shall we be less friendly or less happy when we are lovers?"
+
+That word "when" touched her keen sense of the ridiculous.
+
+"When we are lovers!" she echoed, smiling at him. "You take everything
+for granted."
+
+"I have no alternative between confidence and despair."
+
+"Really, really, now? Am I really necessary to your happiness?"
+
+"You are my happiness. I come here, or I go to the Grove, and find you,
+and I am happy. When I go away, I leave happiness behind me, except
+the reflected light of memory; except the dreams in which your image
+floats about me, in which I hear your voice, the sweet voice that is
+kinder in my dreams than it ever is in my waking hours."
+
+"Surely I am never unkind."
+
+"No; but in my dreams you are more than kind--you are my own and my
+love. You are what I hope you will be soon, Suzette--soon! Life's
+morning is so short. Let us spend it together."
+
+They were in the temple at the end of the cypress walk, and in that
+semi-sacred solitude his arm had stolen round her waist, his lips were
+seeking hers, gently, yet with a force which it needed all her strength
+to oppose.
+
+"No; no; you must not. I can promise nothing yet. I have had no time to
+think."
+
+"No time! Oh, Suzette, you must have known for the last six weeks that
+I adore you."
+
+"I am not vain enough to imagine myself adored. I think I knew that you
+liked me--almost from the first----"
+
+"Liked and admired you from the very first," interrupted Allan.
+
+"My aunt said things--hinted and laughed, and was altogether absurd;
+but one's kinsfolk are so vain."
+
+"Yes, when they have a goddess born among them."
+
+"Oh, please don't be too ridiculous. You know that I like you; but, as
+for loving, I must have a long, long time to think about _that_."
+
+"You shall think as long as you like; so long as you do not withdraw
+your friendship. I cannot live without you."
+
+"Why should I cease to be your friend? Only promise that you will never
+again talk, or behave, as foolishly as you have done this afternoon."
+
+"I promise, solemnly promise; until you give me leave to be foolish,"
+he added, with a touch of tenderness.
+
+He felt that he had been precipitate; that he might, by this temerity,
+have brought upon himself banishment from the Eden in which he was
+so happy. He had been over bold in thinking that the time which had
+sufficed for the growth of passionate love on his part was enough to
+make this charming girl as fond of him as he was of her. He was ashamed
+of his presumption. The degrees of their merit were so different; she a
+being whom to know was to love; he a very commonplace young man.
+
+Suzette was quite as easy in her manner with him after that little
+outbreak as she had been before. He had promised not to renew the
+attack, and in her simple truthfulness she believed all promises sacred
+between well-bred people.
+
+Mrs. Mornington dropped in at teatime, ready to drive her niece home.
+It was a common thing now for Suzette to spend the whole day at
+Discombe, playing classical duets with Mrs. Wornock, or sitting quietly
+by her side reading or musing while she played the organ. The girl's
+religious feeling gave significance to that noble music of the old
+German and Italian masses which to other hearers were only music. The
+acquaintance between the elder woman and the younger had ripened by
+this time into a friendship which was not without affection.
+
+"Mrs. Wornock is my second aunt, and Discombe is my second home," said
+Suzette, explaining the frequency of her visits.
+
+"And the Grove, does not that count as home?" asked Mrs. Mornington,
+with an offended air.
+
+"It is so much my home that I don't count it at all. It is more like
+home than Marsh House, both for father and for me."
+
+Later, when the pony-carriage was taking aunt and niece along the road
+to Matcham, Suzette said suddenly, after a silence--
+
+"Auntie, would it be a shock to your nerves if I were to tell you
+something that happened to-day."
+
+"My nerves are very strong, Suzie. What kind of thing was it? and did
+it concern Mr. Carew _par exemple_?"
+
+"How clever you are at guessing! Yes, it was Mr. Carew. He proposed to
+me."
+
+"And of course you accepted him."
+
+"Of course! Oh, auntie! what do you think I am made of? I have only
+known him about two months."
+
+"What of that? If you had been brought up in the French fashion--and a
+very sensible fashion it is, to my thinking--you would have only seen
+him two or three times before you marched up to the altar with him.
+Surely you did not reject him?"
+
+"I may not have said positively no; but I told him that it was much
+too soon--that I could not possibly love him after such a short
+acquaintance, and that, if we were to go on being friends, he must
+never speak of such a thing again."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"I think the word was never--or, at any rate, for a long, long time.
+And he promised."
+
+"He will keep his promise, no doubt. Well, Suzette, all I can say is
+that you must be very difficult to please. I don't believe there is
+another girl in Matcham who would have refused Allan Carew."
+
+"What, are all the young ladies in Matcham so much alike that the same
+young man would suit them all? Have they no individuality?"
+
+"They have individuality enough to know a good young man, with an
+excellent position in life, when they see one. I believe your father
+will be as disappointed as I am."
+
+"Disappointed? Because I am not in a hurry to leave him. I don't know
+my father, if he is capable of such unkindness."
+
+"Suzette, that little mind of yours is full to the brim of high-flown
+notions," retorted her aunt, impatiently.
+
+"Dear auntie, surely you are not angry?"
+
+"Yes, Suzie, I am angry, because I have a very high opinion of Allan
+Carew. I consider him a pearl among young men."
+
+"Really, aunt! And if he were a poor curate, or a barrister
+without--what do you call them--briefs? Yes, briefs! Would he be a
+pearl then?"
+
+"He would be just as good a young man, but not a husband for you.
+Don't expect romantic ideas from me, Suzette. If I ever was romantic,
+it was so many years ago that I have quite forgotten the sensation."
+
+"And you cannot conjure back your youth in order to understand me,"
+said her niece, musingly. "You are not like Mrs. Wornock, whose mind
+seems always dwelling upon the past."
+
+"Has she talked to you of her youth?" Mrs. Mornington asked quickly.
+
+"Not directly; but she has talked vaguely sometimes of feelings
+long dead and gone--of the dead whom she loved--her father whom she
+lost when she was seventeen, and whose spirit--as she thinks--holds
+communion with her in her solitary daydreams at the organ. He was a
+musician, like herself, passionately fond of music."
+
+"I hope you will not take up any of Mrs. Wornock's fads."
+
+"Not unless you call music a fad."
+
+"No, no, music is well enough, and I like you to practise and improve
+your playing. But I hope you will never allow yourself to believe in
+poor Mrs. Wornock's nonsense about spirit-rapping, and communion with
+the dead. You must see that the poor woman is _toquée_."
+
+"I see that she is dreamy; and I am not carried away by her dreams.
+I think her the most interesting woman I ever met. Don't be jealous,
+auntie darling, I should never be as fond of her as I am of you."
+
+"I hope not!"
+
+"Only I can't help being interested in her. She is _simpatica_."
+
+"'Simpatica!' I hate the word. I never heard any one talked of as
+simpatica who hadn't a bee in her bonnet. I really don't know if your
+father ought to allow you to be so much at the Manor."
+
+"I am going to take him to see Mrs. Wornock to-morrow afternoon. I know
+he will be in love with her."
+
+"It would be a very good thing if he were to marry her, and make a
+sensible woman of her."
+
+"Mrs. Wornock with a second husband! The idea is hateful. She would
+cease to interest me, if she were so commonplace as to marry. I prefer
+her infinitely with what you call her fads."
+
+"'Crabbed age and youth cannot live together,'" said Mrs. Mornington,
+quoting one of the few poets with whom she had any acquaintance.
+"You and I would never think alike, I suppose, young woman. And so
+you refused Mr. Carew, and told him never to talk to you of love or
+wedlock, and you refused Beechhurst, yonder," pointing with her whip
+across the heath to where the white walls of Allan Carew's house smiled
+in the afternoon sunlight. "I know what your uncle Mornington will say
+when I tell him what a little fool you have been."
+
+"Auntie, why is it you want me to marry, Mr. Carew?" Suzette asked
+pleadingly. "Is it because he is rich? Is it for the sake of
+Beechhurst?"
+
+"No, Miss Minx, it is because I believe him to be a good young man--a
+gentleman--and as true as steel."
+
+Suzette gave a little sigh, and for a minute or so was dumb.
+
+"Do you know why I have always been glad that my father is an
+Englishman?" she asked presently.
+
+"Why, because he is an Englishman, I suppose. I should think any girl
+would be English if she could."
+
+"No, auntie, I am not so proud of my father's country as all that. I
+have been glad of my English father because I knew that English girls
+are allowed to make their own choice in marriage."
+
+"And a very pretty use you are going to make of your privileges,
+refusing the best young man in the neighbourhood. If you were my
+daughter, I should be half inclined to send for one of those whipping
+ladies we read about, and have you brought to your senses that way."
+
+"No, you wouldn't, auntie. You wouldn't be unkind to daughter or to
+niece."
+
+"Well, you have your father to account to. What will he say, I wonder?"
+
+"Only that his Suzie is to do just as she likes. Do you know that I
+refused a subaltern up at the Hills, a young man with an enormous
+fortune whom ever so many girls were trying to catch--girls and widows
+too--he might have had a large choice."
+
+"And what did my brother say to that?"
+
+"He only laughed, and told me that I knew my own value."
+
+Mrs. Mornington was thoughtful for the rest of the way. Perhaps, after
+all, it was a good thing for a girl to be difficult to please. A
+girl as bright and as pretty as Suzette could afford to give herself
+airs. Allan would be sure to propose to her again; and then there was
+Geoffrey Wornock, who was expected home before Christmas. Who could
+tell if Geoffrey might not be as deeply smitten with this charming
+hybrid as Allan? and Discombe was to Beechhurst as sunlight unto
+moonlight, in extensiveness and value.
+
+"And yet I would rather she should marry Carew," mused Mrs. Mornington.
+"I should be afraid of young Wornock."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                               NOT YET.
+
+
+Allan was dashed by Suzette's refusal to accept him on any other
+footing than that of friendship, and he was angry with himself for
+having spoken too soon. The only comfort left him was her willingness
+to consider him still her friend; but this was cold comfort, and in
+some wise more disheartening than if she had been more angry. Yet in
+his musings he could but think that she liked him better than a mere
+average acquaintance; while now and then there stole across his mind
+the flattering hope that she liked him better than she herself knew. He
+recalled all those happy hours they had spent together, with only Mrs.
+Wornock to make a third, Mrs. Wornock who so often crept away to her
+beloved organ and left them free to loiter in the gardens, or to sit
+in one of the deeply recessed windows, talking in whispers, while the
+music filled the room, or to stray far off in the stately pleasaunce,
+where their light laughter could not disturb the player.
+
+They had talked together often enough and long enough to have explored
+each other's minds and imaginations, and they had found that about all
+great things they thought alike; while their differences of opinion
+about the trifles of life gave them subjects for mirthful argument,
+occasions for disagreeing only to end in agreement.
+
+Suzette complained that Allan's university training made all argument
+unfair. How could she--an illogical, prejudiced woman, maintain her
+ground against a master of dialectics?
+
+In all their companionship he could remember no moments of ennui, no
+indication upon the young lady's part that she could have been happier
+elsewhere than in his company. This was at least encouraging. The dual
+solitude seemed to have been as pleasant to her as it was to him. She
+had confided in him in the frankest fashion. She had told him story
+after story of her convent life; of her friends and chosen companions.
+She had talked to him as a girl might talk to a cousin whom she liked
+and trusted; and how often does such liking ripen into love; an
+attachment truer and more lasting than that hot-headed love at first
+sight, born of the pleasure of the eye, and taking shallowest root in
+the mind. Allan's musings ended in a determination to cultivate the
+friendship which had not been withheld from him, and to trust to time
+for the growth of love.
+
+He was anxious to see Suzette as soon as possible after that premature
+avowal which had stirred the calm current of their companionship,
+lest she should have time to ponder upon his conduct, and to feel
+embarrassed at their next meeting. She had told him that she was going
+to the golf-links before breakfast on the following morning; so at
+eight o'clock Allan made his appearance on the long stretch of rather
+rough common-land which bordered the Salisbury road half a mile from
+Beechhurst, and which was distinguished from other waste places by the
+little red flags of the golf club.
+
+She was there, as fresh as the morning, in her blue-serge frock and
+sailor hat, attended by a small boy, and with the vicar's youngest
+daughter for her companion.
+
+She blushed as they shook hands--blushed, and then distinctly laughed;
+and the laugh, frank as it sounded, was the laugh of a triumphant
+coquette, for she was thinking of her aunt's indignation yesterday
+afternoon, and thinking how little it mattered her refusing a man who
+was so absolutely her slave. Propose to her again, forsooth? Why, of
+course he would propose to her again, and again, and again, as that
+foolish young subaltern had done at Simla. Were all men as foolish,
+Suzette wondered; and had all young women as much liberty of choice?
+
+She glanced involuntarily at the Vicar's youngest daughter, regarded by
+her family as the flower of the flock, but of a very humble degree in
+the floral world. A fresh-coloured, pudding-faced girl, with small eyes
+and a pug nose, but with a tall, well-developed figure of the order
+that is usually described as "fine."
+
+The golf went on in a desultory way, Allan strolling after the
+players, and venturing a remark now and then, as suggested by a single
+summer's experience at St. Andrews. When the two girls had been
+round the course, and it was time to hasten home to their respective
+breakfast-tables, he accompanied them on their way, and after having
+left Miss Bessie Edgefield at the Vicarage gate he had Suzette all
+to himself for something under a quarter of a mile. They met Mrs.
+Mornington a little way from Marsh House, sallying out for her morning
+conference with butcher and fishmonger, the business of providing Mr.
+Mornington's dinner being too important to be left to the hazards
+of cook and shopkeeper. It was necessary that Mrs. Mornington's own
+infallible eye should survey saddle or sirloin, and measure the
+thickness of turbot or sole.
+
+She greeted the two young people with jovial heartiness, and rejoiced
+beyond measure at seeing them together. After all, perhaps Suzette had
+done well in refusing the first offer. The poor young man was evidently
+her slave.
+
+"Or if Geoffrey should fall desperately in love with her," mused Mrs.
+Mornington, on her way to the village street, not quite heroic enough
+to put the owner of Discombe Manor altogether out of her calculations;
+"but, no, I shouldn't care about that. It would be too risky."
+
+That which Mrs. Mornington would not care about was the mental tendency
+that Geoffrey might inherit from his mother, whom the strong-minded,
+clear-headed lady regarded as a visionary, if not a harmless lunatic.
+No! Geoffrey was clever, interesting, fascinating even; but he was
+not to be compared with Allan, whose calm common sense had won Mrs.
+Mornington's warmest liking.
+
+After that morning on the links, and the friendly homeward walk, Allan
+felt more hopeful about Suzette; but he was not the less bent upon
+bringing to bear every influence which might help him to win her for
+his own, before any other suitor should come forward to dispute the
+prize with him. Happily for him, there were few eligible young men in
+the neighbourhood, and those few thought more of horses and guns than
+of girlhood and beauty.
+
+Lady Emily had promised her son a visit in the autumn. Allan hoped
+that his father would accompany her. He wanted to bring Suzette into
+the narrow circle of his home life, to bring her nearer to himself by
+her liking for his mother and father. With this intent he urged on the
+promised visit, delighted at the thought that his mother's presence
+would enable him to receive Suzette as a guest in the house where he
+hoped she would some day be mistress.
+
+He wrote to his father, reminding him of his assurance that he would
+not always remain a stranger to his son's home, and this letter of
+his, which dwelt earnestly upon certain unexplained reasons why he was
+especially anxious for his father's early presence at Beechhurst, was
+not without effect. The recluse consented to leave his library, which
+perhaps was no greater sacrifice on his part than Lady Emily made in
+leaving her farm. Indeed, one of the inducements which Allan held out
+to his mother was the promise of a pair of white peacocks from Mrs.
+Wornock, finer and whiter than the birds at Fendyke.
+
+Mr. Carew professed himself pleased with his son's surroundings.
+
+"Your house is like the good man who bequeathed it to you," he said,
+after his tour of inspection; "essentially comfortable, solid, and
+commonplace. The admiral had a grand solidity of character; but even
+your mother will not deny that he was commonplace."
+
+Lady Emily nodded a cheery assent. She always agreed with her husband
+on all points that did not touch the white farm. There her opinions
+were paramount; and she would not have submitted to dictation in so
+much as the ears of a rabbit.
+
+"I could hardly forgive my brother for buying such a house if he
+hadn't-----"
+
+"Left it to your son," interrupted her husband.
+
+"No, George, that is not what I was going to say. I could not forgive
+his Philistine taste if he had not brought home all those delicious
+things from China, and built the Mandarin's room. That is the redeeming
+feature which makes the house worth having."
+
+"Every one admits that it is a fine room," said Allan. "There is no
+such room in the neighbourhood, except at Discombe."
+
+"Your father must see Discombe, Allan. We must introduce him to Mrs.
+Wornock."
+
+"I think not, mother. He would be insufferably bored by a woman who
+believes in spirit-rapping, sees visions, and plays the organ for hours
+at a stretch."
+
+His father looked at him intently.
+
+"Who is this person?" he asked quickly.
+
+"A rich widow, whose son is lord of the manor of Discombe, one of the
+most important places between here and Salisbury."
+
+"And she believes in spiritualism. Curious in a lady living in the
+country. I thought that kind of thing had died out with Home, and the
+famous article in the _Cornhill Magazine_."
+
+"We have had later prophets. Eglinton, for instance, with his
+materializations and his slate-writing. I don't think the
+spiritualistic idea is dead yet, in spite of the ridicule which the
+outside herd has cast upon it."
+
+"I hope the widow lady is not beguiling you into sharing her delusions,
+Allan."
+
+The son had seen a look in the father's face which spoke to him
+as plainly as any spoken words. That look had told him that his
+description of Mrs. Wornock conjured up some thrilling image in his
+father's mind. He saw that startled wondering look come and go, slowly
+fading out of the pensive face, as the mind dismissed the thought which
+Allan's words had awakened. Surely it was not a guilty look which
+had troubled his father's mild countenance--rather a look of awakened
+interest, of eager questioning.
+
+"I should hate to see Allan taking up any nonsense of that kind," said
+Lady Emily, with her practical air; "but really, if this Mrs. Wornock
+were not twenty years older than he, I should suspect him of being in
+love with her. She is a pretty, delicate-looking woman, with a shy,
+girlish manner, and looks ridiculously young to be the mother of a
+grown-up son."
+
+"Oh, she has a grown-up son, has she?" asked Mr. Carew. "She belongs to
+this part of the country, I suppose, and is a woman of good family?"
+
+He looked at his son; but, for some reason of his own, Allan parried
+the question.
+
+"I know hardly anything about her, except that she is a very fine
+musician, and that she has been particularly kind to me," he said.
+
+"There, George," cried Lady Emily. "Didn't I tell you so? The foolish
+boy is half in love with her!"
+
+"You will not say that after to-morrow, mother."
+
+"Shall I not? But why?"
+
+"You will lose all interest in to-morrow, if I tell you. Go on
+wondering, mother dear, till to-morrow, and to-morrow I will tell you
+a secret; but, remember, it is not to be talked about to any one in
+Matcham."
+
+"Should I talk of a secret, Allan?"
+
+"I don't know. I have an idea that secrets are the staple of tea-table
+talk in a village."
+
+"Poor village! for how much it has to bear the blame; and yet people
+are worse gossips in Mayfair and Belgravia."
+
+"Only because they have more to talk about."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Allan had arranged a luncheon-party for the following day. His courage
+had failed at the idea of a dinner: the lengthy ceremonial, the fear of
+failure if he demanded too much of his cook, the long blank space after
+dinner, with its possibility of ennui. Luncheon was a friendlier meal,
+and would less heavily tax the resources of a bachelor's establishment;
+and then there was the chance of being able to wander about the garden
+with Suzette in the afternoon, the hope of keeping her and her father
+till teatime, when the other people had gone home; though people do not
+disperse so speedily after a country luncheon as in town, and it might
+be that everybody would stop to tea. No matter, if he could steal away
+with Suzette to look at the single dahlias, in the west garden, fenced
+off from the lawn by a high laurel hedge, leaving Lady Emily and Mrs.
+Mornington to entertain his guests.
+
+He had asked Mr. and Mrs. Mornington, General Vincent and his
+daughter, Mr. Edgefield, the Vicar, and his daughter Bessie (Suzette's
+antagonist at golf), Mr. and Mrs. Roebuck, a youngish couple, who
+prided themselves on being essentially of the great world, towny,
+cosmopolitan, anything but rustic, and who insisted on talking
+exclusively of London and the Riviera to people who rarely left their
+native gardens and paddocks. Mr. Roebuck had been officiously civil to
+Allan, and he had felt constrained to invite him. The invitation was on
+Mrs. Mornington's principle of payment for value received.
+
+Allan had invited Mrs. Wornock; he had even pressed her to be of the
+party, but she had refused.
+
+"I don't care for society," she said. "I am out of my element among
+smart people."
+
+"There will be very little smartness--only the Roebucks, and one may
+say of them as Beatrice said of Benedick, 'It is a wonder _they_
+will still be talking, for nobody minds _them_.' Seriously now,
+Mrs. Wornock, I should like you to meet my father."
+
+"You are very kind, but you must excuse me. Don't think me rude or
+ungrateful."
+
+"Ungrateful! Why, it is I who ask a favour."
+
+"But I am grateful for your kindness in wishing to have me at your
+house. I will go there some day with Suzette, when you are quite
+alone, and you shall show me the Mandarin-room."
+
+"That is too good of you. Mind, I shall exact the performance of that
+promise. You are very fond of Suzette, I think, Mrs. Wornock?"
+
+"Yes, I am very fond of her. She is the only girl with whom I have ever
+felt in sympathy; just as you are the only young man, except my son,
+for whom I have ever cared."
+
+"You link us together in your thoughts."
+
+"I do, Allan," she answered gravely, "and I hoped to see you linked
+by-and-by in a lifelong union."
+
+"That is my own fondest hope," he said. "How did you discover my
+secret?"
+
+"Your secret! My dear Allan, I have known that you were in love with
+Suzette almost from the first time I saw you together--yes, even that
+afternoon at the Grove."
+
+"You were very sympathetic, very quick to read my thoughts. I own that
+I admired her immensely even at that early stage of our acquaintance."
+
+"And admiration soon grew into love. It has been such happiness for me
+to watch the growth of that love--to see you two young creatures so
+trustful and so happy together, walking about that old garden yonder,
+which has seen so little of youth or of happiness. I felt almost as
+a mother might have felt watching the happiness of her son. Indeed,
+Allan, you have become to me almost as a second son."
+
+"And you are becoming to me almost as a second mother," he said,
+bending down to kiss the slim white hand which lay languidly upon her
+open book.
+
+Never till to-day had she called him Allan, never before had she spoken
+to him so freely of her regard for him.
+
+"Allan," she repeated softly. "You don't mind my calling you by your
+Christian name?"
+
+"Mind! I am flattered that you should so honour me."
+
+"Allan," she repeated again, musingly, "why were you not called George,
+after your father?"
+
+"Because Allan is an old family name on my mother's side of the house.
+Her father and grandfather and elder brother were Allans."
+
+He left her almost immediately, taking leave of her briefly, with a
+sudden revulsion of feeling. That question of hers, and the mention of
+his father's name, chilled and angered him, in the very moment when his
+heart had been moved by her sympathy and affection.
+
+There was something in the familiar mention of his father's name that
+re-awakened those suspicions which he had never altogether banished
+from his mind. It was perhaps on this account that he had spoken
+slightingly of Mrs. Wornock when Lady Emily suggested that he should
+make her known to his father. That question about the name had seemed
+to him a fresh link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.
+
+Suzette and her father were the first arrivals at Allan's
+luncheon-party. The General was a martinet in the matter of
+punctuality; and having taken what he called his _chota haz'ri_
+at half-past six that morning, was by no means inclined to feel
+indulgently disposed towards dilatory arrivals, who should keep him
+waiting for his tiffin; nor could he be made to understand that a
+quarter to two always meant two o'clock. The Morningtons appeared at
+five minutes before two, the Vicar and his daughter as the clock struck
+the hour; and then there followed a quarter of an hour of obvious
+waiting, during which Allan showed Suzette the Chinese enamels and
+ivories, and the arsenal of deadly swords and daggers displayed against
+the wall of the Mandarin-room, while the Morningtons were discussing
+with Lady Emily and her husband the merits of Wiltshire as compared
+with Suffolk.
+
+This delay, at which General Vincent was righteously angry, was
+occasioned by the Roebucks, who sauntered in with a leisurely air at
+a quarter-past two; the wife on the best possible terms with herself
+and her new tailor gown; the husband puffed up at having read his
+_Times_ before any one else, and loquacious upon the merits of
+the "crushing reply" made last night by Lord Hatfield at Windermere to
+"the abominable farrago of lies" in Mr. Henry Wilkes' oration the night
+before last at Kendal.
+
+"I dare say it was a very good speech," said the General, grimly; "but
+you might have kept it for after luncheon. It would have been less
+injured by waiting than Mr. Carew's joint; if he's going to give us
+one."
+
+"Are we late?" exclaimed Mrs. Roebuck, who had endured a quarter of an
+hour's agony in front of her cheval glass before the new tailor bodice
+could be made to "come to." "Are we really late? How very naughty of
+us! Please, please don't be angry, good people. We beg everybody's
+pardon," clasping two tightly gloved hands with a prettily beseeching
+gesture.
+
+"Don't mention it," said the General. "We all like waiting; but if
+Carew has got a mug cook, I wouldn't give much for the state of her
+temper at this moment."
+
+"We'll send a pretty message to the cook after luncheon, if she has
+been clever enough not to spoil her dishes."
+
+The ladies--Lady Emily and Mrs. Mornington descanting on gardens
+and glass all the way--went in a bevy to the dining-room, the men
+following, Mr. Roebuck still quoting Lord Hatfield, and the way in
+which he had demolished the Radical orator.
+
+"The worst of it is he don't make 'em laugh," said Mr. Mornington.
+"Nobody can make 'em laugh as Wilkes does. Town or country, hodge or
+mechanic, he knows the length of their foot to a fraction, and knows
+what will hit them and what will tickle them."
+
+The cook was sufficiently "mug" to have been equal to the difficulties
+of twenty minutes' delay, and the luncheon was admirable--not too many
+courses, nor too many dishes, but everything perfect after its kind.
+Nor was the joint--that item dear to elderly gentlemen--forgotten,
+for after a first course of fish and a second of curry and _crême de
+volaille_, there appeared a saddle of Wiltshire mutton, to which the
+elderly gentlemen did ample justice, while the ladies, who had lunched
+upon the more sophisticated dishes, supplied the greater part of the
+conversation.
+
+"My father will quote your cook for the next six months," said Suzette,
+by whose side Allan had contrived to place himself during the casual
+dropping into seats at the large round table, "for yours is the only
+house where he has seen Bombay ducks served with the curry."
+
+"Did you not tell me once that your father has a weakness for those
+absurd little fish?"
+
+"Did I really? Was I capable of talking such absolute twaddle?"
+
+"It was not twaddle. It was very serious. It was on a day when I found
+you looking worried and absent, unable to appreciate either Mrs.
+Wornock's music or my conversation; and, on being closely questioned,
+you confessed that the canker at your heart was dinner. The General
+had been dissatisfied; the cook was stupid. You had done your
+uttermost. You had devoted hours to the reading of cookery-books, which
+seemed all of them hopelessly alike. You had studied all his fancies.
+You had given him Bombay ducks with his curry----"
+
+"Did I say all that? How silly of me. And how ridiculous of you to
+remember."
+
+"Memory is not a paid servant, but a most capricious Ariel. One cannot
+say to one's self, I will remember this or that. My memory is as
+fugitive as most people's; but there is one thing for which it can be
+relied on. I remember everything about you--all you say to me, all you
+do--even to the gowns you wear."
+
+Suzette laughed a little and blushed a little; but did not look
+offended.
+
+"You had about five minutes' talk with my mother before I took you to
+see the enamels. How do you like her?"
+
+"Immensely! Lady Emily is charming. She was telling me about her white
+farm."
+
+"It would have been odd if you had escaped hearing of that, even in the
+first five minutes."
+
+"I was deeply interested. Lady Emily has promised me some white
+bramahs. I am going to start a white poultry-yard. I cannot aspire
+higher than poultry; but I am determined that every bird shall be
+white."
+
+"Pretty foolishness! And so you like my mother?"
+
+"Very, very much. She is one of those people with whom one feels at
+one's ease from the first moment. She looks as if she could not say or
+even think anything unkind."
+
+"I don't believe she could do either. And yet she is
+human--feminine-human--and can enjoy an interesting scandal--local,
+if possible. She enjoys it passively. She does nothing to swell the
+snowball, and will hardly help to roll it along. She remains perfectly
+passive, and never goes further than to say that she is shocked and
+disappointed. And yet I believe she enjoys it."
+
+"It is only the excitement that one enjoys. We had scandals even
+in the convent--girls who behaved badly, dishonourably, about their
+studies; cheating in order to get a better chance of a prize. I'm
+afraid we were all too deeply interested in the crime and the
+punishment. It was something to think about and talk about when life
+was particularly monotonous."
+
+Lady Emily was watching them from the other side of the table, and
+lending rather an indifferent ear to Mr. Roebuck's account of Homburg
+and the people he and his wife had met there. They had only just
+returned from that exhilarating scene. He could talk of nothing but
+H.R.H.'s condescension; the dear duchess; Lady this, Lord the other;
+and the prodigious demand there had been for himself and his wife in
+the very smartest society.
+
+"Four picnics a day are hardly conducive to the cure of suppressed
+gout," said Mr. Roebuck; "and there were ever so many days when we
+had to cut ourselves up into little bits--lunching with one party,
+taking coffee with another, driving home with somebody else, going to
+tea-fights all over the place. Dinner engagements I positively set my
+face against. Mimosa and I were there for rest and recuperation after
+the season--positively washed out, both of us. You have no idea what a
+rag my wife looked when we took our seats in the club train."
+
+Happily for Lady Emily, who had been suffering this kind of thing for
+half an hour, the coffee had gone round, and at her first imploring
+glance Mrs. Mornington rose and the ladies left the dining-room. Yet
+even this relief was but temporary; for Mrs. Roebuck appropriated Lady
+Emily in the garden, and entertained her with her own view of Homburg,
+which was smarter, inasmuch as it was more exclusive than Mr. Roebuck's.
+
+"A horrid place," said the lady. "One meets all one's London friends
+mixed up with a herd of foreign royalties whom one is expected to
+cultivate. I used to send Richard to all the gaieties, while I stopped
+at home and let my maid-companion read to me. We shall go to Marienbad
+next August. If one could be at Homburg without people knowing one was
+there, the place might be tolerable."
+
+"I have been told the scenery is very fine," hazarded Lady Emily.
+
+"Oh, the scenery is well enough; but one knows it, and one has seen
+so much finer things in that way. When one has been across the
+Cordilleras, it is absurd to be asked to worship some poor little hills
+in Germany."
+
+"I have seldom been out of Suffolk, except to visit some of my people
+in Scotland. Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis are quite big enough for me."
+
+"Oh, the Scotch hills are dear things, with quite a character of their
+own; and a Scotch deer forest is the finest thing of its kind all over
+the world. The duke's is sixty thousand acres--and Dick and I always
+enjoy ourselves at Ultimathule Castle--but after being lost in a
+snowstorm in the Cordilleras----"
+
+Lady Emily stifled a despairing yawn. Not a word had she been able to
+say about her Woodbastwick cows, which she was inwardly comparing
+with Allan's black muzzled Jerseys, grazing on the other side of the
+sunk fence. Heartfelt was her gratitude to Mrs. Mornington when that
+lady suddenly wheeled round from a confidential talk with the Vicar
+and interrupted Mrs. Roebuck's journey across the Cordilleras by an
+inquiry about the Suffolk branches of the Guild for supplying warm and
+comfortable raiment to the deserving poor.
+
+"I hope you have a branch in your neighbourhood," she said.
+
+"Yes, indeed we have. I am a slave to the Guild all the winter. One
+can't make flannel petticoats and things in summer, you know."
+
+"_I_ can," retorted Mrs. Mornington, decisively.
+
+"What, on a broiling day in August! when the very sight of flannel puts
+one in a fever?"
+
+"I am not so impressionable. The things are wanted in October, and July
+and August are quite late enough for getting them ready."
+
+"I subscribe to these institutions," Mrs. Roebuck remarked languidly.
+"I never work for them. Life isn't long enough."
+
+"Then you never have the right kind of feeling about your poorer
+fellow-creatures," said Mrs. Mornington. "It is the doing something for
+them, using one's own hand and eye and thought for the poor toiling
+creatures, sacrificing some little leisure and some little fad to
+making them more comfortable--it is that kind of thing which brings the
+idea of that harder world home to one."
+
+"Ah, how nice it is of you dear ladies to sacrifice yourselves like
+that; but you couldn't do it after a June and July in London. If you
+had seen what a poor creature I looked when we took our seats in the
+club train for Homburg----"
+
+Mrs. Mornington tucked her arm under Lady Emily's and walked her away.
+
+"I want you to tell me all about your farm," she said. And then, in
+a rather loud aside, "I can't stand that woman, and I wish your son
+hadn't been so conscientious in asking her."
+
+While emptiness and ennui prevailed on the terrace in front of the
+Mandarin-room, there were a pair of wanderers in the shrubbery, whose
+talk was unleavened by worldliness or pretence of any kind. Allan had
+stolen away from the smokers in the dining-room, and was escorting
+Suzette and her friend Bessie Edgefield round his modest domain--the
+shrubberies, the paddocks nearest the house, which had been planted and
+educated into a kind of park; the greenhouse and hothouse, which were
+just capacious enough to supply plenty of flowers for drawing-room and
+dinner-table, but not to grow grapes or peaches. Everything was on a
+modest, unassuming scale. Allan felt that after the mansion and gardens
+at Discombe, his house suggested the abode of a retired shopkeeper. A
+successful hosier or bootmaker might create for himself such a home.
+Wholesale trade, soap, or lucifer matches, or cocoa would require
+something far more splendid.
+
+Modest as the place was, the two girls admired, or seemed to admire,
+all its details--the conifers of thirty years' growth, the smiling
+meadows, the fawn-coloured cows. A sunny September afternoon showed
+those fertile pastures and trim gardens at their best. Allan felt
+exquisitely happy walking about those smooth lawns and gravel paths
+with the girl he loved. At every word of approval he fancied she was
+praising the place in which she would be content to live. After that
+avowal of his the other day, it seemed to him that her kindness meant
+much more than it had meant before she knew her power. She could not
+be so cruel as to mock him with the promise of her smiles, her sweet
+words, her undisguised pleasure in his company. Yes, he was perfectly
+happy. He thought of her refusal the other day as only the prelude to
+her acceptance. She had not said "No;" she had only said "Not yet."
+
+Bessie Edgefield was one of those sweetly constituted girls whom Nature
+has especially created to be a third party in a love affair; never to
+play the heroine in white satin, but always the confidante in white
+muslin. She walked beside her friend, placid, silent, save for an
+occasional monosyllable, and was of no more account than Suzette's
+shadow.
+
+"The Roebucks are taking leave," exclaimed Suzette, looking across the
+lawn to the groups on the terrace. "Mr. Carew, I'm afraid you are a
+sadly inattentive host."
+
+"Have I neglected you, Miss Vincent?"
+
+"You have neglected Mrs. Roebuck, which is much worse. She will be
+talking of your want of _savoir vivre_ all over Matcham."
+
+"Let her talk. She has been boring my mother with a cruelty worthy of
+Torquemada. She forgets that torture was illegal in England even in
+Bacon's time. See, they are all going away; but you and the General and
+Miss Edgefield must stay to tea, even if the Vicar is too busy to stop."
+
+The Vicar had quietly vanished, to resume the round of parish duties,
+quite content to leave his Bessie in comfortable quarters. The Roebucks
+were going, and the Morningtons were following their example; but
+General Vincent had no objection to stop to tea if his daughter and
+Miss Edgefield desired him to do so.
+
+He was smoking a cheroot, comfortably seated in a sheltered part of
+the terrace--a corner facing south, screened from east and north by an
+angle of the house, where the Mandarin-room projected from the main
+building--and he was absorbed in a discussion of Indian legendary lore
+with Mr. Carew, who owned to some knowledge of sanscrit, and had made
+Eastern fable and legend an especial study.
+
+Suzette and her father stayed till nearly seven o'clock, when Allan
+insisted on walking home with them, having suddenly discovered that he
+had had no walking that day. He had been cub-hunting from seven in the
+morning till nine; but he declared himself in need of walking exercise.
+Lady Emily went with them to the gate, and parted with Suzette as with
+a favourite of long standing. Allan was enraptured to see his mother's
+friendliness with the girl he loved; and it was all he could do to
+restrain his feelings during the walk to Marsh House.
+
+Perhaps it was only that gay temper of hers, that readiness to laugh
+at him and at all things in creation, which held him at a distance.
+He had made up his mind that she was to be his--that if she were to
+refuse him twenty times in twenty capricious moods of her light and
+airy temperament, there was somewhere in her nature a vein of serious
+feeling, and by that he would win her and hold her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You like Miss Vincent, mother?" he asked that evening, when he was
+sitting with his father and mother in the Mandarin-room after dinner.
+
+The evening was warm to sultriness, and there were several casements
+open in the long window which filled one end of the room; a window with
+richly carved sashes and panels of cedar and lattice-work alternating
+with the glass. There was another window in the western wall, less
+elaborate--a door-window--which formed the usual exit to the garden.
+This was closed, but not curtained.
+
+The room was lighted only with shaded lamps, which lighted the tables
+and the spaces round them, but left the corners in shadow.
+
+Lady Emily was sitting at one of the tables, her fingers occupied with
+a large piece of work, which she carried about with her wherever she
+went, and which, to the eye of the uninitiated, never appeared to make
+any progress towards completion. It was destined eventually to cover
+the grand piano at Fendyke, and it was to be something very rare and
+precious in the way of embroidery; the basis a collection of Breton
+shawl-pattern handkerchiefs, overlaid by Lady Emily with embroidery in
+many-coloured silks and Japanese gold thread. This piece of work was
+a devouring monster in the matter of silk, and Lady Emily was always
+telling her friends the number of skeins which were required for its
+maintenance, and the cost of the gold thread which made so faint an
+effect in the Oriental labyrinth of palms and sprigs and arabesques
+and medallions.
+
+"I'm afraid I shall never live to finish it," Lady Emily would conclude
+with a sigh, throwing herself back in her chair after an hour's
+steadfast labour, her eyes fixed in a kind of ecstasy upon the little
+corner of palm which she had encrusted with satin stitch and gold; "but
+if I _do_, I really think it will repay me for all my trouble."
+
+To-night her mind was divided between her embroidery and her son, who
+sat on a three-cornered chair beside her, meekly threading her needles
+while he tried to get her to talk about Suzette.
+
+His father was seated almost out of earshot, at a table near the open
+window, reading the _Nineteenth Century_ by the light of a lamp
+which shone full upon his lowered eyelids, and on the thoughtful brow
+and sensitive mouth, as he sat in a reposeful attitude in the low, deep
+chair.
+
+"Do I like Miss Vincent?" repeated Lady Emily, when she had turned a
+critical corner in the leafy edging of a scroll. "I wonder how often
+you will make me tell you that I think her a very--no, Allan, the
+light peacock, please--not that dark shade--very sweet girl--bright,
+unaffected----"
+
+"And exquisitely lovely," interjected her son, as he handed her the
+needleful of silk.
+
+"Ah, there you exaggerate awfully. She is certainly a pretty girl;
+but her nose is--well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there
+is a fault somewhere in the nose, and her mouth might be smaller;
+but, on the other hand, she has fine eyes. Her manners are really
+charming--that pretty little Parisian air which is so fascinating in a
+high-bred Parisian. But, oh, Allan! can you really mean to marry her?"
+
+"I really mean to try my hardest to achieve that happiness, and I
+shall think myself the luckiest man in Wiltshire, or in England, or in
+Europe, if I succeed."
+
+"But, Allan, have you reflected seriously? She tells me that she is a
+Roman Catholic."
+
+"If she were a Fire-worshipper, I would run the risk of failure in
+converting her to Christianity. If she were a Buddhist, I should be
+inclined to embrace the faith of Gautama; but since she is only a
+conformer to a more ancient form of religion of which you and I are
+followers, I don't see why her creed should be a stumbling-block to my
+bliss."
+
+Lady Emily shook her head sagely, and breathed a profound sigh.
+
+"Differences of religion are so apt to make unhappiness in married
+life."
+
+"I am not religious enough to distress myself because my wife believes
+in some things that are incredible to me. We shall both follow the same
+Master, both hope for reunion in the same heaven."
+
+"Allan, _she_ believes in Purgatory. Think how inconsistent your
+ideas of the future must be."
+
+Allan did not pursue the argument. He was smiling to himself at the
+easy way in which he had been talking of his wife--their future,
+their very hopes of heaven--making so sure that she was to be his.
+He looked at his father, sitting alone with them, but not of them,
+and thought of his father's married life as he had seen it ever since
+he was old enough to observe or understand the life around him; so
+peaceful, so in all things what married life should be; and yet over
+all there had been that faint shadow of melancholy which the son had
+felt from his earliest years, that absence of the warmth and the
+romance of a marriage where love is the bond of union. Here, Allan told
+himself, the bond had been friendly regard, convenience, the world's
+approval, family interests, and lastly the child as connecting link
+and meeting-place of hopes and fears. Love had been missing from the
+life of yonder pale student, musing over half a dozen pages of modern
+metaphysics.
+
+Allan rose and moved slowly towards that tranquil figure, and feeling
+the night air blowing cold as he approached that end of the room, he
+asked his father if he would like the windows shut?
+
+"No, thank you, Allan, not on my account," Mr. Carew answered, without
+looking up from his book.
+
+Had he looked up, he would have seen Allan standing between the
+lamplight and the window like a man transfixed.
+
+A pale wan face had that moment vanished in the outward darkness; a
+face which a moment before had been looking in at one of the open
+lattices, a face which Allan had recognized at the first glance.
+
+He went to the glass door, opened it quietly, and went out to the
+terrace, so quickly and so silently that his disappearance attracted no
+attention from father or mother, one absorbed in his book, the other
+bending over her work.
+
+The face was the face of Mrs. Wornock; and Mrs. Wornock must be
+somewhere between the terrace and the gates. There was no moon, but
+the night was clear, and the sky was full of stars. Allan went swiftly
+round the angle of the house to the terrace outside the large window;
+but the figure that he had seen from within was no longer stationed
+outside the window. The terrace was empty. He went round to the front
+of the house, whence the carriage drive wound with a gentle curve to
+the gates, between shrubberies of laurel and arbutus, cypress and
+deodara.
+
+Yes, the figure he had expected to see vanished round the curve of the
+drive as he drew near the porch, a slender figure in dark raiment,
+with something white about the head and shoulders. He ran along the
+drive, and reached the gate just in time to see Mrs. Wornock's brougham
+standing in the road, at a distance of about fifty yards, and to see
+Mrs. Wornock open the door and step in. Another moment--affording him
+no time for pursuit, had he even wished to pursue her--and the carriage
+drove away.
+
+Allan had no doubt as to the motive of this conduct. She had come by
+stealth to look upon the face of the man whom she had refused to meet
+in the beaten way of friendship.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+                 "SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE."
+
+
+After the incident of that September night, there was no longer the
+shadow of doubt in Allan's mind as to the relations between his father
+and the lady at Discombe Manor. That they had known each other and
+loved each other in their youth he was now fully convinced. This last
+strange act of Mrs. Wornock's was to his mind the strongest link in
+the chain of evidence. Whatever the relations between them had been,
+guilty or innocent--and fondly as he loved his father, he feared there
+had been guilt in that association--it was his duty to prevent any
+meeting between them, lest the mere sight of that pale, spiritual face
+with its singular youthfulness of aspect, should re-awaken in his
+father's breast some faint ghost of the passion that had lived and died
+a quarter of a century ago. Nor did his respect for his honest-minded,
+trustful-hearted mother permit him to tolerate the idea of friendly
+intercourse between her and this mysterious rival from the shadowland
+of vanished years. He took care, therefore, to discourage any idea of
+visiting the Manor; and he carefully avoided any further talk of Mrs.
+Wornock, lest his father's closer questioning should bring about the
+disclosure of her identity. His father's manner, when the lady was
+first discussed, had shown him very clearly that the description of her
+gifts and fancies coincided with the memory of some one known in the
+past; but it had been also clear that neither the name of Wornock, nor
+the lady's position at Discombe, had any association for Mr. Carew.
+If he had known and loved her in the past, he had known and loved her
+before she married old Geoffrey Wornock.
+
+His anxiety upon his father's account was speedily set at rest, for
+Mr. Carew--after exploring his son's small and strictly popular
+library, where among rows of handsomely bound standard works, there
+were practically no books which appealed to the scholar's taste--soon
+wearied of unstudious ease, and announced a stern necessity for going
+to London, where a certain defunct Hebrew scholar's library, lay and
+ecclesiastical, was to be sold at Hodgson's. He would put up for a
+few days at the old-fashioned hotel which he had used since he was
+an undergraduate, potter about among the book-shops, look up some
+references he wanted in the Museum Reading-room, and meet his wife at
+Liverpool Street on her way home.
+
+Lady Emily, absorbed in her son and her son's love affair, agreed most
+amiably to this arrangement.
+
+"Telegraph your day and hour for returning, when you have bought all
+the books you want," she said. "I'm afraid you spend more money on
+those dreadful old books, which nobody in Suffolk cares a straw about,
+than I do on my farm, which people come to see from far and wide."
+
+"And a great nuisance your admirers are, Emily. I am very glad the
+Suffolk people are no book-lovers; and I hope you will never hint to
+anybody that my books are worth seeing."
+
+"I could not say anything so untrue. Your shelves are full of horrors.
+Now Allan's library here is really delightful--_Blackwood's
+Magazine_, from the beginning, _Macaulay_, _Scott_,
+_Dickens_, _Thackeray_, _Bulwer_, _Lever_,
+_Marryat_--and all of them so handsomely bound! I think my brother
+showed excellent taste in literature, though I doubt if he ever read
+much. But as you seem happier in your library than anywhere else, I
+suppose one must forgive you for spending a fortune on books that don't
+interest anybody else. And one can't help being a little bit proud of
+your scholarship."
+
+And so they kissed and parted, with the unimpassioned kiss of marriage
+which has never meant more than affectionate friendship. Lady Emily
+stood at the hall door while her husband drove off to the station, and
+then turned gaily to her son, and said--
+
+"Now, Allan, I am yours to command. Let me see as much as possible of
+that sweet young thing you are in love with. Shall we go and call on
+her this afternoon? She has a white cat which may some day provide her
+with kittens to distribute among her friends, and, if so, I am to have
+one to bring up by hand as I did Snowdrop. You remember Snowdrop?"
+
+Allan kissed his mother before he answered, but not for Snowdrop's sake.
+
+"I have a vague recollection of something white and fluffy hanging to
+the skirt of your gown, that I used to tread upon."
+
+"Yes, you were horrid. You very nearly killed him. Shall we go?"
+
+"Please, please, please, mother dearest. I am ready this instant. Three
+o'clock. We shall get there at half-past, and if we loiter looking at
+white kittens, or the mother of potential kittens, till half-past four,
+she will give us tea, and we can make an afternoon of it."
+
+"Hadn't I better put on a bonnet, Allan?"
+
+"No, no. You will go in your hat, just as you are. You will treat her
+without the slightest ceremony--treat her as your daughter. Do you
+know, mother, I am uncommonly glad you never honoured me with a sister."
+
+"Why, Allan?"
+
+"Because, if I marry Suzette, she will be your only daughter. There
+will be no one to be jealous of her, in Suffolk or here."
+
+"What a foolish fancy! Well, give me a daughter as soon as you like. I
+am getting old, Allan, and your father's secluded habits leave me very
+often alone. His books are more his companions than I am----"
+
+"Ah, but you know how he loves you, mother," interrupted Allan.
+
+They were on their way to the gate by this time, Lady Emily in her
+travelling-hat and loose tan gloves, just as she had been going about
+the gardens and meadows in the morning, Allan twirling his stick in
+very gladness of heart.
+
+They were going to her. If she were out, they would go and find her;
+at her aunt's, at the Vicarage, on the links yonder; anywhere but at
+Discombe. He hoped she had not gone to Discombe.
+
+"Yes, he is fond of me, I believe, in his own way. There never was a
+better husband," Lady Emily answered thoughtfully. "But I know, Allan!
+I know!"
+
+"What, mother?"
+
+"I know that I was not his first love--that I was only a _pis
+aller_--that there is something wanting in his life, and always must
+be till the end. I should brood over it all, perhaps, Allan, and end by
+making myself unhappy, if it were not for my farm; but all those living
+creatures occupy my mind. One living fox-terrier is worth a whole
+picture-gallery."
+
+Suzette was at home. The after-math had been cut in the meadow in front
+of Marsh House, a somewhat swampy piece of ground at some seasons,
+but tolerably dry just now, after a hot summer. Suzette and Bessie
+Edgefield were tossing the scented grass in the afternoon sunshine,
+and fancying themselves useful haymakers. They threw down their
+hay-forks at the approach of visitors, and there was no more work
+done that day, though Allan offered to take a fork. They all sat in
+the garden talking, or wandered about among the flowers in a casual
+way, and while Bessie and Lady Emily were looking at the contents of
+the only greenhouse, Allan found himself alone with Suzette in a long
+gravel walk on the other side of the lawn-like meadow, along all the
+length of which there was a broad border filled with old-fashioned
+perennials that had been growing and spreading and multiplying
+themselves for half a century. A row of old medlar and hazel trees
+sheltered this border from the north wind, and hid the boundary fence.
+
+"Dear old garden!" cried Allan. "How much nicer an old garden is than a
+new one!"
+
+"I hope you don't mean to disparage your garden at Beechhurst. Our
+gardener is always complaining of the old age of all things here.
+Everything is worn out. The trees, the shrubs, the frames, the
+greenhouse. One ought to begin again from the very beginning, he says.
+He would be charmed with Beechhurst, where all things are so neat and
+trim."
+
+"Cockney trimness, I'm afraid; but if you are satisfied with it, if you
+think it not altogether a bad garden----"
+
+"I think it a delightful garden," said Suzette, blushing at that word
+"satisfied," which implied so much.
+
+"I am glad of that," said Allan, with a deep sigh of content, as if
+some solemn question had been settled. "And you like my mother?"
+
+"Very much indeed. But how you skip from the garden to Lady Emily!"
+
+"And you approve of the Mandarin-room?"
+
+"It is one of the handsomest rooms I ever saw, except in an Indian
+palace."
+
+"Then take them, Suzette," he cried eagerly, with his arm round her
+waist, drawing the slim figure to his breast, holding and dominating
+her by force of will and strength of arm, smiling down at her with
+adoring eyes. "Have them, dearest! Mother, garden, room--they are all
+your own; for they belong to your very slave. They are at your feet, as
+I am."
+
+"Do you call this being at my feet?" she asked, setting herself
+suddenly free, with a joyous laugh. "You have a very impertinent way of
+offering your gifts."
+
+"Not impertinent--only desperate. I remembered my repulse of the other
+day, and I swore to myself that I would hold you in my arms--once, at
+least, if only once, even if you were to banish me into outer darkness
+the next moment--and I have done it, and I am glad! But you won't
+banish me, will you, Suzette? You must needs know how I love you--how
+long and patiently I have loved you----"
+
+"Long! patiently! Why, we only met at Midsummer."
+
+"Ah, consider the age that every day on which I did not see you has
+seemed to me, and the time would hardly come within your powers of
+computation. Suzette, be merciful! say you love me, were it ever so
+little. Were it only a love like a grain of mustard-seed, I know it
+would grow into a wide and spreading tree by-and-by, and all the days
+of my life would be happy under its shelter."
+
+"You would think me curiously inconsistent if I owned to loving you
+after what I said the other day," faltered Suzette, looking down at the
+flowers.
+
+"I should think you adorable."
+
+She was only serious for a moment, and then her natural gaiety
+prevailed.
+
+"Do you know that my aunt lectured me severely when I confessed to
+having refused your flattering offer?"
+
+"Did she really? How sweet of her! After that, you cannot refuse me
+again. Your aunt would shut you up and feed you upon bread and water,
+as fathers and mothers used to do with rebellious daughters in the
+eighteenth century."
+
+"I hardly think she would treat me quite so ferociously for saying
+'No;' but I think she would be pleased if I were to say 'Yes.'"
+
+"And that means yes, my love, my own!" he cried, in a rapture so swift
+and sudden that he had clasped her to his breast and snatched the kiss
+of betrothal before she could check his impulsiveness. "You are my
+very own," he said, "and I am the happiest man in England. Yes, the
+happiest----Did I say in England? What a contemptible notion! I cannot
+conceive the idea that anywhere upon this earth there beats a human
+heart so full of gladness as mine. Suzette, Suzette, Suzette!" he
+repeated tenderly, with a kiss for each comma.
+
+"What a whirlwind you are!" she remonstrated. "And what a rag you are
+making of my frock! Oh, Allan, how you have hurried me into this! And
+even now I am not quite sure----"
+
+"You are sure that I adore you! What more need my wife be sure of? Oh,
+my darling, I have seen wedlock where no love is--only affection and
+trustfulness and kindly feeling--all the domestic virtues with love
+left out! Dearest, such a union is like a picture to the colour-blind,
+like music to the stone-deaf, like a landscape without sunlight. There
+is nothing in this world like love, and nothing can make up for love
+when love is wanting."
+
+"And nothing can make up for love when love is wanting," repeated
+Suzette, suddenly serious. "Oh, Allan! what if I am not sure?--if I
+doubt my own feelings?"
+
+"But you can't doubt. My dearest, I am reading the signs and tokens of
+love in those eloquent eyes, in those sensitive lips, while you are
+talking of doubt. There is no one else, is there, Suzette?" he asked,
+with quick earnestness. "No one in the past whose image comes between
+you and me?"
+
+"No one, no one."
+
+"In all your Indian experiences?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"Then I am more than satisfied. And now let us go and tell my mother.
+She has been waiting for a daughter ever since I was born; and, behold,
+at last I am giving her one, the sweetest her heart could desire."
+
+Suzette submitted, and walked by his side in silence while he went in
+search of Lady Emily, whom he finally discovered in the poultry-yard
+with Bessie Edgefield. Allan's elated air and Suzette's blushes were a
+sufficient indication of what had happened; and when mother and son had
+clasped hands and looked at each other there was no need of words. Lady
+Emily took the girl to her heart and kissed her.
+
+"I hope your father will be pleased, Suzette."
+
+"I don't think he will be sorry."
+
+"And I know Mrs. Mornington will be glad. Allan has her consent in
+advance."
+
+"Auntie is a very silly woman," said Suzette, laughingly. And then she
+had to endure Bessie Edgefield's congratulations, which were of the
+boisterous kind.
+
+"Of course you will let me be bridesmaid," she said, with that vulgar,
+practical view of things which wounds the sensitiveness of the newly
+betrothed almost as much as an estimate from a furniture dealer, or a
+prospectus from an insurance office.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+            "OUR DREAMS PURSUE OUR DEAD, AND DO NOT FIND."
+
+
+Miss Vincent's engagement met with everybody's approval, with the one
+exception of the marriageable young ladies of the neighbourhood, who
+thought that Allan Carew had made a foolish choice, and might certainly
+have done better for himself. What good could come of marrying a girl
+who was neither English nor French; who had been educated in a Parisian
+convent, and who drove to Salisbury every Sunday morning to hear mass?
+
+"What uncomfortable Sundays they will have!" one of these young ladies
+remarked to Bessie Edgefield; "and then how horrid for him to have a
+wife of a different creed! They are sure to quarrel about religion.
+Isn't the Vicar dreadfully shocked?"
+
+"My father is rather sorry that Mr. Carew should marry a Roman
+Catholic. There is always the fear that he might go over to Rome----"
+
+"Of course. He is sure to do that. It will be the only way to stop the
+quarrelling. She will make him a pervert."
+
+Mrs. Mornington, on the other hand, flattered herself that, by her
+marriage with a member of the English Church, her niece would be
+brought to see the errors of Rome, and would very soon make her
+appearance in the family pew beside her husband.
+
+Lady Emily cherished the same hope, since, although a less ardent
+Churchwoman than Mrs. Mornington, she believed in Anglicanism as the
+surest road to salvation, and she dwelt also upon the difficulties that
+might arise by-and-by about the poor dear children, talking of those
+potential beings as if they were already on the scene.
+
+The Roman Church was severe upon that question, and it would perhaps
+be impossible for Suzette to be married in her own church unless her
+husband would promise that their children should be baptized and
+educated in the true faith.
+
+While other people were thinking about these things for him, Allan had
+no room for thought of any kind, unless a lover's meditation upon the
+image of the girl he loved could be dignified by the name of thought.
+For Allan, life was a perpetual ecstasy. To be with Suzette in her own
+home, at the Grove, on the links, anywhere--to be with her was all
+he needed for bliss. For his sake, his mother had prolonged her stay
+at Beechhurst, in order that the two young people might be together
+in the house where they were to live as man and wife. It was Allan's
+delight to make Suzette familiar with her future home. He wanted her
+to feel that this was the house in which she was to live; that under
+her father's roof she was no longer at home; that her books, her
+bric-à-brac, the multifarious accumulations of a happy girlhood,
+might as well be transferred at once to the sunny, bow-windowed
+upstair room which was to be her den. It was now a plainly furnished,
+matter-of-fact morning room, a room in which the Admiral had kept his
+boots, cigar-boxes, and business documents, and transacted the fussy
+futilities of his unoccupied life. The mantelpiece, which had been
+built up with shelves and artful cupboards for the accommodation of
+the Admiral's cigars, would serve excellently to set off Suzette's
+zoological china; her Dresden pugs, and rats, and lobsters, and
+pigs, and rabbits, her morsels of silver, and scraps of wrought
+copper would adorn the shelves; and all her little odds and ends and
+never-to-be-finished bits of fancy-work could be neatly stowed away in
+the cupboards.
+
+"But won't you want those dear little cubby-houses for your own
+cigars?" asked Suzette. "It seems too cruel to rob you of your uncle's
+snuggery. I've no doubt you smoke just as much as the Admiral."
+
+"Not cigars. My humble pipe and pouch can stow themselves away
+anywhere. I only smoke cigars out hunting, and I keep a box or two in
+the saddle-room for handiness. No, this is to be your room, Suzette. I
+have imagined you in it until it seems so to belong to you that I feel
+I am taking a liberty in writing a letter here. When are you going to
+bring the Dresden bow-wows, and the elephants, and mice, and lobsters,
+and donkeys?--all about of a size, by the way."
+
+"Oh, I could not possibly spare them," Suzette answered quickly, making
+for the door.
+
+They had come in to look at the room, and for Suzette to give her
+opinion as to the colour and style of the new papering. It was to be a
+Morris paper, although that would entail new carpet and curtains, and a
+complete revolution as to colouring.
+
+"Spare them!" echoed Allan, detaining her. "Who wants you to spare
+them? When will you bring them with you? When are you coming to take
+possession of the house which is no home for me until you are mistress
+of it?"
+
+This was by no means the first time the question had been asked.
+Again and again had Allan pleaded that his marriage might be soon.
+There was no reason why he should wait for his wife. His position
+was established, his house was ready; a house as well found as that
+flagship had been on whose quarter-deck the Admiral had moved as a
+king. Why should he wait? He could never love his future wife more
+dearly than he loved her now. All the framework of his life would be
+out of gear till he had brought her home to the house which seemed
+joyless and empty for want of her.
+
+"When is it to be, Suzette? When am I to be completely happy?"
+
+"What, are you not happy, _par exemple_? You talked about
+overwhelming happiness when I said 'Yes.'"
+
+"That was the promise of happiness. It lifted me to the skies; but it
+was only the promise. I am pining for the realization. I want you all
+to myself--to have and to hold for ever and ever; beside my hearth;
+interwoven with my life; mine always and always; no longer a bright,
+capricious spirit, glancing about me like a gleam of sunshine, and
+vanishing like the sunbeam; but a woman--my very own--of one mind and
+of one heart with me. Suzette, if you love me, you will not spin out
+the time of dreams; you will give yourself to me really and for ever."
+
+There was an earnestness in his tone that scared her. The blushes faded
+from her cheeks, and she looked at him, pale and startled, and sudden
+tears rushed to her eyes.
+
+"You said you would give me time," she faltered; "time to know
+you better--to be certain." And then recovering her gaiety in an
+instant--"Now, Allan, it is too bad of you. Did I not tell you that I
+would not be married till my one-and-twentieth birthday? Why do you
+tease me to alter the date? Surely you don't want to marry an infant."
+
+"And your birthday will be on the twenty-third of June," said Allan,
+rather sullenly. "Nearly a year from now."
+
+"Nearly a year from October to June! What odd ideas you have about
+arithmetic! And now I must run and find Lady Emily. We are going to
+drive to Morton Towers together."
+
+Allan made way for her to pass, and followed her downstairs, vexed and
+disheartened. His mother was to leave him next day; and then there
+would be one house the less in which he and Suzette could meet--the
+house which was to be their home.
+
+He had not visited Mrs. Wornock since her nocturnal perambulation, and
+he had prevented his mother paying her a second visit, albeit the hope
+of a white peacock and a certain interest in the widow's personality
+had made Lady Emily anxious to call at the Manor. Allan had found
+reasons for putting off any such call, without saying one disparaging
+word about the lady. He had heard of Mrs. Wornock from Suzette, who
+reproached him for going no more to Discombe.
+
+"I did not know you were so fickle," she said. "I really think you have
+behaved abominably to poor Mrs. Wornock. She is always asking me why
+you don't go to see her; and I am tired of inventing excuses."
+
+Suzette was at the Manor every other day. Mrs. Wornock was teaching her
+to play the organ.
+
+"Is it not sweet of her?" she asked Allan. "And though I don't suppose
+she ever gave any one a lesson in her life till she began to teach me,
+she has the teaching gift in a marked degree. I love to learn of her.
+I can play some simple things of Haydn's not altogether badly. Perhaps
+you will do me the honour to come and hear me some day, when I have got
+a little further."
+
+"I will go to hear you to-morrow, if I may."
+
+"What! Then you have no objection to Discombe in the abstract, though
+you have cut poor Mrs. Wornock for the last six weeks?"
+
+"I was so much occupied with my mother."
+
+"And your mother wanted badly to call upon Mrs. Wornock, and you
+always put a stumbling-block in her way. But I am happy to say Lady
+Emily is to have the white peacock all the same. She is to have a pair
+of birds. I have taken care of that."
+
+"Like a good and thoughtful daughter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Allan came back from the station, after seeing his mother safely
+seated in the London train, he found a letter from Mrs. Wornock on the
+hall table--a hand-delivered letter which had just arrived. It was
+brief and to the point.
+
+    "Why have you deserted me, Allan? Have I unconsciously offended
+    you, or is there no room in your heart for friendship as well as
+    love? I hear of your happiness from Suzette; but I want to see
+    you and your sweetheart roaming about the gardens here as in the
+    old days, before you were engaged lovers. Now that Lady Emily is
+    leaving Beechhurst, you will have time to spare for me."
+
+The letter seemed a reproach, and he felt that he deserved to be
+reproached by her. How kind she had been, how sympathetic, how
+interested in his love-story; and what an ingrate he must appear in her
+eyes!
+
+He did not wait for the following morning and the music-lesson, lest
+Mrs. Wornock should think he went to Discombe only on Suzette's
+account. He set out immediately after reading that reproachful little
+letter, and walked through the lanes and copses to the Manor House.
+
+It was four o'clock when he arrived, and Mrs. Wornock was at home and
+alone. The swelling tones of that wonderful organ answered his question
+on the threshold. No beginner could play with that broad, strong
+touch, which gave grandeur to the simple phrases of an "Agnus Dei" by
+Palestrina.
+
+She started up as Allan was announced, and went quickly to meet him,
+giving him both her hands.
+
+"This is so good of you," she exclaimed.
+
+"Then you are not offended, and you have forgiven me?"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Wornock, why should I be offended? I have received
+nothing but kindness from you."
+
+"I thought you might be angry with me for refusing the invitation to
+your luncheon-party."
+
+"It would have been very impertinent of me to be angry, when I know
+what a recluse you are."
+
+"It is a month since you were here--a whole calendar month. Why didn't
+you bring Lady Emily to see me? But perhaps she did not wish to come.
+Was that so?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Wornock," he answered coldly. "My mother wished to call upon
+you."
+
+"And you prevented her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you do that?"
+
+"Dare I be frank with you?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes! You cannot be too frank. I love you, Allan. Always
+remember that. You are to me as a second son."
+
+Her warmth startled and scared him. His face flushed hotly, and he
+stood before her in mute embarrassment. If the secret of the past
+was indeed the guilty secret which he had suspected, there was utter
+shamelessness in this speech of hers.
+
+"Allan, why are you silent?"
+
+"Because there are some things that can hardly be said; least of all by
+a man of my age to a woman of yours."
+
+"There is nothing that you can say to me, Allan, about myself or my
+regard for you, that can bring a blush to my face or to yours. There is
+nothing in my life of which I need be ashamed in your sight or in the
+sight of my son."
+
+"Forgive me, forgive me, if my secret thoughts have sometimes wronged
+you. There has been so much to surprise and mystify me. Your agitation
+on hearing my father's name; your painful embarrassment when I brought
+my mother here; and last, and most of all, your secret visit to
+Beechhurst when my father was there."
+
+"What! you know of that?"
+
+"Yes; I saw your face at the open window, looking in at him."
+
+She clasped her hands, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Yes," she faltered, after a silence of some moments, "I was looking
+at the face I had not seen for nearly thirty years--the face that
+looked at me like a ghost from the past, and had no knowledge of me,
+no care for me. I knew--I have known in all these years that George
+Beresford was to be looked for among the living. I have sought for
+him in the spirit-world, again and again and again, in long days and
+nights of waiting, in my dreams, in long, far-reaching thoughts that
+have carried my soul away from this dull earth; but there was no
+answer--not a thought, not a breath out of that unseen world where my
+spirit would have touched his had he died while he was young, and while
+he still loved me. But he lived, and grew old like me, and found a new
+love, and so we are as wide apart as if we had never met. I stood in
+the darkness outside your window for nearly an hour, looking at him,
+listening to his voice when he spoke--the dear, kind voice! _That_
+was not changed."
+
+"It is true, then? You knew and loved my father years ago?"
+
+"Yes, knew him and loved him, and would have been his wife if it had
+been for his happiness to marry me. Think of that, Allan! I was to have
+been his wife, and I gave him up for his own sake."
+
+"Why did you do that? Why should you not have married him?"
+
+"Because I was only a poor girl, and he was a gentleman--the only son
+of a rich widow, and his mother would never have forgiven him for such
+a marriage. I knew nothing of that when he asked me to be his wife. I
+only knew that we loved each other truly and dearly. But just before
+the day that was to have been our wedding-day his mother came to me,
+and told me that if I persisted in marrying him I should be the bane of
+his life. It would be social extinction for him to marry me. Social
+extinction! I remember those words, though I hardly knew then what they
+meant. I was not eighteen, Allan, and I knew less of the world than
+many children of eight. But I did not give up my happiness without a
+struggle. There was strong persuasion brought to bear upon me; and at
+last I yielded--for his sake."
+
+"And blighted his life!" exclaimed Allan. "My mother is the best of
+women, and the best and kindest of wives; but I have always known
+that my father's marriage was a loveless marriage. Well," he went on,
+recovering himself quickly, apprehensive lest he should lower his
+mother's dignity by revealing too much, "you acted generously, and no
+doubt for the best, in making that sacrifice, and all has worked round
+well. You married a good man, and secured a position of more importance
+than my father's smaller means could have given you."
+
+"Position! means!" she repeated, in bitterest scorn. "Oh, Allan, don't
+think so poorly of me as to suppose that it was Mr. Wornock's wealth
+which attracted me. I married him because he was kind and sympathetic
+and good to me in my loneliness--a pupil at a German conservatoire,
+living with stony-hearted people, who only cared for me to the extent
+of the money that was paid for my board and lodging, and who were
+always saying hard things to me because they had agreed to take me so
+cheaply--too cheaply, they said. I used to feel as if I were cheating
+them when I sat at their wretched meals, and I was thankful that I had
+a wretched appetite."
+
+"You were cruelly used, dear Mrs. Wornock. I can just remember my
+grandmother, and I know she was a hard woman. She had no right to
+interfere with her son's disposal of his life."
+
+"No, she had no right. If I had known even as much of the world as I
+know now, when Miss Marjorum--Mrs. Beresford's messenger--came to me,
+I would have acted differently. I know now that a gentleman need not
+be ashamed of marrying a penniless girl if there is nothing against
+her but her poverty; but then I believed what Miss Marjorum told
+me--believed that I should blight the life of the man who loved me with
+such generous self-sacrificing love. Why should he alone be generous,
+and I selfish and indifferent to his welfare?"
+
+"But how did he suffer you to sacrifice yourself at his mother's
+bidding?"
+
+"He had no power to stop me. It was all settled without his knowledge.
+I hope he was not very sorry--dear, dear George!--so generous, so true,
+so noble. Oh, how I loved him--how I have loved him--all my life,
+all my life! My husband knew that I had no heart to give him--that I
+could be his obedient wife--but that I could never love him as I had
+loved----"
+
+Again her sobs choked her speech. She threw herself into a chair and
+abandoned herself to that passionate grief.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Wornock, forgive me for having revived these sorrowful
+memories. I was wrong--I ought not to have spoken----"
+
+"No, no, there is nothing to forgive. It does me good to talk of the
+past--with you, Allan, with you, not with any one else. And now you
+know why my heart went out to you from the first. Why you are to me
+almost as a son--almost as dear as my own son--and your future wife
+as my daughter. It does me good to talk to you of that time--so long
+and long ago. It does me good to talk of my dead self. I have never
+forgotten. The past has always been dearer to me than anything in this
+life that came afterwards."
+
+"I do not think my father has forgotten that past, any more than you
+have, Mrs. Wornock. I know that there has always been a cloud over his
+life--the shadow of one sad memory. I have felt and understood this,
+without knowing whence the shadow came."
+
+"He was too true-hearted to forget easily," Mrs. Wornock said, gently,
+"and we were both so young. I was his first love, as he was mine. And
+when a first love is pure and strong as ours was, it must be first and
+last, must it not, Allan?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, half doubtfully, remembering certain sketchy loves
+of his own, and hoping that they could hardly be ranked as love, so
+that he might believe that his passion for Suzette was essentially the
+first; essentially, if not actually.
+
+"No, I have never forgotten," Mrs. Wornock repeated musingly, seating
+herself at the piano, and softly touching the notes now and then,
+playing a few bars of pensive melody sotto voce as she talked--now a
+phrase from an Adagio of Beethoven's, now a resolution from a prelude
+by Bach, dropping gravely down into the bass with softly repetitive
+phrases, from piano to pianissimo, melting into silence like a sigh.
+"No, I have never forgotten--and I have suffered from the pains as well
+as the pleasures of memory. Before my son was born, and after, there
+was a long interval of darkness when I lived only in the past, when the
+shadows of the past were more real to me than the living things of the
+present, when my husband's face was dim and distant, and that dear face
+from the past was always near me, with the kind smile that comforted
+me in my desolate youth. Yes, I loved him, Allan, loved him, and gave
+him up for his own sake. And now you tell me my sacrifice was useless;
+that, even with the wife his mother chose for him, the good amiable
+wife, he has not been altogether happy."
+
+"His life has been placid, studious, kindly, and useful. It may be that
+he was best fitted for that calm, secluded life--it may be that if you
+had taken the more natural and the more selfish course--and in so doing
+parted him for ever from his mother, who was a proud woman, capable of
+lifelong resentment--it may be that remorse might have blighted his
+life, and that even your love would not have consoled him under the
+conviction that he had broken his mother's heart. I know that, after
+her strong-minded masterful fashion, she adored him. He was all she
+had in this world to love or care for; and it is quite possible that
+a lasting quarrel with him might have killed her. Dear Mrs. Wornock,
+pray do not think that your sacrifice was altogether in vain. No such
+self-surrender as that can be without some good fruit. I do not pretend
+to be a holy person, but I do believe in the power of goodness. And,
+consider, dear friend, your life has not been all unhappy. You had a
+kind and good husband."
+
+"Good! He was more than good, and for over a year of our married life
+I was a burden to him. He was an exile from the home he loved, for my
+sake--for me, who ought to have brightened his home for him."
+
+"But that was only a dark interval," said Allan, remembering what Mrs.
+Mornington had told him, of the long residence at Grindelwald, and
+the birth of the heir in that remote spot. "There were happier days
+afterwards."
+
+"Yes, we had a few peaceful years here, before death took him from me,
+and while our boy was growing in strength and beauty."
+
+"And in these long years of widowhood music has been your comforter. In
+your devotion to art you have lived the higher life."
+
+"Yes," she answered, with an inspired look, striking a triumphant
+chord, "music has been my comforter--music has conjured back my dead
+father, my lost lover. Music has been my life and my hope."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE.
+
+
+Mrs. Wornock's frank revelation of her girlish love and self-sacrifice
+lifted a burden from Allan's heart and mind. He had been interested in
+her, and attracted towards her from that first summer noontide when
+he studied her thoughtful face in the village church, and when he
+lingered among the villagers' graves to hear her play. His sympathy had
+grown with every hour he spent in her society, and he had been deeply
+grateful for the friendship which had so cordially included him and the
+girl he loved. It had been very painful to him to believe that this
+sweet-mannered woman belonged to the fallen ones of the earth, that her
+graces were the graces of a Magdalen, most painful to think that she
+was no fitting companion for the girl who had so readily responded to
+her friendly advances.
+
+The cloud was lifted now, and he felt ashamed of all his past doubts
+and suspicions. He respected Mrs. Wornock for her refusal to meet his
+father in the beaten way of friendship. He was touched by the devotion
+which had brought her creeping to his windows under the cover of night
+to look upon the face of her beloved. He resolved that he would do
+all that in him lay to atone for the wrong his thoughts had done her,
+that he would be to her, indeed, as a second son, and that he would
+cultivate her son's friendship in a brotherly spirit.
+
+He stopped in the corridor on the morning after that interview to
+study the portrait of the young man whose likeness to himself had now
+resolved itself into a psychological mystery, and he could but see that
+it was a likeness of the mind rather than of the flesh, a resemblance
+in character and expression far more than in actual lineaments.
+
+"He is vastly my superior in looks," thought Allan, as he studied
+the lines of that boldly painted face. "He has his mother's finely
+chiselled features, his mother's delicate colouring. There is a shade
+of effeminacy, otherwise the face would be almost faultless. And to
+mistake this face for that! Absurd!" muttered Allan, catching the
+reflection of his sunburnt forehead, and strongly marked nose and chin,
+in the Venetian glass that hung at right angles with the picture.
+
+He heard the organ while the butler paused with his hand on the door,
+waiting to announce the visitor. The simpler music, the weaker touch,
+told him that the pupil was playing.
+
+"Please don't stop," he cried, as he went in; "I want to hear if the
+pupil is worthy of her mistress."
+
+Mrs. Wornock came to meet him, and Suzette went on playing, with only a
+smile and a nod to her sweetheart.
+
+"She is getting on capitally. She has a real delight in music,"
+announced Mrs. Wornock.
+
+"How happy you are looking this morning!"
+
+"I have had good news. My son is on his way home."
+
+"I congratulate you."
+
+"He is coming home for his long leave. I shall have him for nearly a
+year."
+
+"How happy you will be! I have just been studying his portrait."
+
+"You are so like him."
+
+"Oh, only a rough copy--a charcoal sketch on coarse paper,--nothing to
+boast of," said Allan, with a curious laugh.
+
+He was watching Suzette, to see if she were interested in the expected
+arrival. She played on, her eyes intent alternately upon the page of
+music in front of her, and upon the stops which she was learning to
+use. There was no stumbling in the notes, or halting in the time. She
+played the simple legato passages smoothly and carefully, and seemed to
+pay no heed to their talk.
+
+Allan would have been less than human, perhaps, if his first thought on
+hearing of Geoffrey's return had not been of the influence he might
+exercise upon Suzette--whether in him she would recognize the superior
+and more attractive personality.
+
+"No," he thought, ashamed of that jealous fear which was so quick to
+foresee a rival, "Suzette has given me her heart, and it must be my
+own fault if I can't keep it. Women are our superiors, at least in
+this, that they are not so easily caught by the modelling of a face,
+or the rich tones of a complexion. And shall I think so meanly of my
+sweet Suzette as to suppose that my happiness is in danger because some
+one more attractive than myself appears upon the scene? When we spend
+our first season in London as man and wife, she will have to run the
+gauntlet of all the agreeable men in town, soldiers and sailors, actors
+and painters, ingenuous young adorers and hoary-headed flatterers. The
+whole army of Satan that maketh war upon innocence and beauty. No, I am
+not afraid. She has a fine brain and a noble heart. She is not the kind
+of woman to jilt a lover or betray a husband. I am safe in loving her."
+
+He had need to comfort himself, for the hour of trial was nearer than
+he thought.
+
+He went to Discombe before luncheon on the morning after he had heard
+of Geoffrey's return. He went expecting to find Suzette at the organ,
+and to hear the latter part of the lesson. He was not a connoisseur,
+but he loved music well enough to love to hear his sweetheart play, and
+to be able to distinguish every stage of progress in her performance.
+To-day, however, the organ was silent; the youth who blew the bellows
+was chasing a wasp in the corridor, and the room into which Allan was
+ushered was empty.
+
+"The ladies are in the garden, sir," said the butler. "Shall I tell my
+mistress that you are here?"
+
+"No, thanks, I'll go and look for the ladies."
+
+The autumn morning was bright and mild, and one of the French windows
+was open.
+
+Allan hurried out to the garden, and looked down the cypress avenue.
+The long perspective of smooth-shaven lawn was empty. There was no one
+loitering by the fountain. They were in the summer-house--the classic
+temple where Mrs. Wornock had sunk into unconsciousness at the sound
+of his father's name, where he had lived through the most embarrassing
+experience of his life.
+
+He could distinguish Mrs. Wornock's black gown, and Suzette's
+terra-cotta frock, a cloth frock from a Salisbury tailor, which he had
+greatly admired. But there was another figure that puzzled him--an
+unfamiliar figure in grey--a man's figure.
+
+Never had the grass walk seemed so long, or the temple so remote.
+Yes, that third figure was decidedly masculine. There was no optical
+delusion as to the sex of the stranger--no petticoat hidden behind the
+marble table. As he drew nearer he saw that the intruder was a young
+man, sitting in a lounging attitude with his arms resting on the table,
+and his shoulders leaning forward to bring him nearer to the two
+ladies seated opposite.
+
+He felt that it would be undignified to run, but he walked so fast in
+his eagerness to discover the identity of the interloper that he was in
+an undignified perspiration when he arrived.
+
+"Allan, poor Allan, how you have been running!" exclaimed Suzette.
+
+"I was vexed with myself for losing the whole of your organ lesson,"
+said Allan, shaking hands with Mrs. Wornock, and gazing at the stranger
+as at a ghost.
+
+Yes, it was Geoffrey Wornock. Even his hurried reflections during
+that hurried walk had told Allan that it must be he, and none other.
+No one else would be admitted to the familiarity of the garden and
+summer-house. Mrs. Wornock had no casual visitors, no intimate friends,
+except Suzette and himself.
+
+"There has been no organ lesson this morning, Allan," Mrs. Wornock
+told him, her face radiant with happiness. "Suzette and I have been
+surprised out of all sober occupations and ideas. This son of mine took
+it into his head to come home nearly a fortnight before I expected him.
+He arrived as suddenly as if he had dropped from the skies. He did not
+even telegraph to be met at the station."
+
+"A telegram would have taken the bloom off the surprise, mother," said
+the man in grey, standing up tall and straight, but slenderly built.
+
+Allan felt himself a coarse gladiatorial sort of person beside
+this elegant and refined-looking young man. Nor was there anything
+effeminate about that graceful figure to which an envious critic could
+take exception. Soldiering had given that air of manliness which can
+co-exist with slenderness and grace.
+
+"Geoffrey, this is Allan, of whom you know so much."
+
+"They tell me that you and I are very much alike, Mr. Carew," said
+Geoffrey, with a pleasant laugh, "and my mother tells me that you and
+I are to take kindly to each other, and in fact she expects to see
+us by way of being adopted brothers. I don't quite know what that
+means--whether we are to ride each other's horses, and make free with
+each other's guns, or go halves in a yacht or a racehorse?"
+
+"I want you to like each other--to be real friends," said Mrs. Wornock,
+earnestly.
+
+"Then don't say another word about it, mother. Friendship under that
+kind of protecting influence rarely comes to any good; but I am quite
+prepared to like Mr. Carew on his own account, and I hope he may be
+able to like me on the same poor grounds."
+
+He had an airy way of dismissing the subject which set them all
+at their ease, and steered them away from the rocks and shoals of
+sentiment. Mrs. Wornock, who had been on the verge of weeping, smiled
+again, and led Geoffrey off to look at the gardens, and all the
+improvements which had been effected during his three years' absence,
+leaving the lovers to follow or not as they pleased.
+
+The lovers stayed in the summer-house, feeling that mother and son
+would like to be alone; and mother and son strolled on side by side,
+looking like brother and sister.
+
+"My dearest," said Mrs. Wornock, tenderly, slipping her arm through
+her son's directly they were really alone, and out of sight, in an
+old flower-garden walled round by dense hedges of clipped ilex, a
+garden laid out in a geometrical pattern, and with narrow gravel paths
+intersecting the flower-beds. The glory of all gardens was over. There
+were only a few lingering dahlias, and prim asters lifting up their
+gaudy discs to the sun, and beds of marigolds of different shades, from
+palest yellow to deepest orange.
+
+"My dearest, how glad I am to have you! I begin to live again now you
+have come home."
+
+"And I am very glad to be at home, mother," answered her son, smiling
+down upon her, fondly, protectingly, but with that light tone which
+marked all he said. "But it seems to me you have been very much alive
+while I have been away, with this young man of yours who is almost an
+adopted son."
+
+"My heart went out to him, Geoffrey, because of his likeness to you."
+
+"A dangerous precedent. You might meet half a dozen such likenesses in
+a London season. It would hardly do for your heart to go out to them
+all. You would be coming home with a large family--by adoption."
+
+"There is no fear of that. I don't go into society, and I don't think,
+if I did, I should meet any one like Allan Carew."
+
+Geoffrey could but note the tenderness in her tone as she spoke Allan's
+name.
+
+"And who is this double of mine, mother; and what is he, and how does
+he come to be engaged to that dainty, dark-eyed girl?"
+
+"You like Suzette?"
+
+"Yes, I like her--she is a nice, winning thing--not startlingly pretty;
+but altogether nice. I like the way that dark silky hair of hers breaks
+up into tiny curls about her forehead--and she has fine eyes----"
+
+"India has made you critical, Geoffrey."
+
+"Not India, but a native disposition, mother dearest. In India we
+have often to put up with second best in the way of beauty, faded
+carnations, tired eyes, hollow cheeks; but the young women have
+generally plenty to say for themselves. They can talk, and they can
+dance. They are educated for the marriage market before they are sent
+out."
+
+His mother laughed, and hung on to his arm admiringly. In her opinion,
+whatever he said was either wise or witty. All his impertinences were
+graceful. His ignorance was better than other people's knowledge.
+
+"You have not neglected your violin, I hope, Geoffrey?"
+
+"No, mother. My good little Strad has been my friend and comrade in
+many a quiet hour while the other fellows were at cards, or telling
+stale stories. I shall be very glad to play the old de Beriot duets
+again. Your fingers have not lost their cunning, I know."
+
+"I have played a great deal while you were away. I have had nothing
+else to think about."
+
+"Except Allan Carew."
+
+"He has not made much difference. He comes and goes as he
+likes--especially when Suzette is here. I sit at my organ or piano and
+let them wander about and amuse themselves."
+
+"What an indulgent chaperon!"
+
+"I knew what the end must be, Geoffrey. I knew from the first that they
+were in love with each other. At least I knew from the very first that
+he was in love with her."
+
+"You were not so sure about the lady?"
+
+"A girl is too shy to let her feelings be read easily; but I could see
+she liked his society. They used to roam about the garden together like
+children. They were too happy not to be in love."
+
+"Does being in love mean happiness, mother? Don't you think there is a
+middle state between indifference and passion--a cordial, comfortable,
+sympathetic friendship which is far happier than love? It has no
+cold fits of doubt, no hot fits of jealousy. From your account of
+these young people, I question if they were ever really in love. Your
+Carew looks essentially commonplace. I don't give him credit for much
+imagination."
+
+"You will understand him better by-and-by, dearest."
+
+The mother was looking up at the newly regained son, admiring him, and
+beginning to fancy that she had done him an injustice in thinking that
+Allan resembled him. He was much handsomer than Allan, and there was
+something picturesque and romantic in his countenance and bearing which
+appealed to a woman's fancy; a look as of the Lovelaces and Dorsets of
+old, the courtiers and soldiers who could write a love-song on the eve
+of a bloody battle, or dance a minuet at midnight, and fight a duel at
+dawn. His manner to his mother was playful and protecting. He had not
+the air of thinking her the wisest of women, but no one could doubt
+that he loved her.
+
+The summer-house was empty when they went back to it, and there was a
+pencilled note on the marble table addressed to Mrs. Wornock.
+
+    "Allan is going to see me home in time to give father his tiffin,
+    and I think you and Mr. Wornock will like to have the day to
+    yourselves. I shall come for my organ lesson to-morrow at eleven,
+    unless you tell me to stop away--
+
+                                     "Ever, dear Mrs. Wornock, your own
+                                                             "SUZETTE."
+
+"Pretty tactful soul! Of course we want to be alone," said Geoffrey,
+reading the note over his mother's shoulder. "First you shall give me
+the best lunch that Discombe can provide; and then we will drive round
+and look at everything. And we will devote the evening to de Beriot. I
+must go up to town by an early train to-morrow."
+
+"Running away from me so soon, Geoffrey?"
+
+"Now, mother, it's base ingratitude to say that. I've hardly given
+myself breathing time since I landed at Brindisi, because I wanted
+to push home to you, first of the very first. I shall only be in
+London a day or two. I want to see what kind of horses are being sold
+at Tattersall's, and I may run down to look at the Belhus hunters.
+Remember I haven't a horse to ride."
+
+"There are your old hunters, Geoffrey?"
+
+"Three dear old crocks. Admirable as pensioners, not to carry eleven
+stone to hounds. No, mother, I'm afraid there's nothing in your stables
+that will be good for more than a cover-hack."
+
+Mrs. Wornock sighed faintly in the midst of her bliss. She had a
+womanly horror of hunting and all its perils, and in her heart of
+hearts was always on the side of the fox; but she knew that without
+hunting and shooting Discombe Manor would very soon pall upon
+her son, dilettante and Jack-of-all-trades though he was. Music
+alone--passionately as he loved it--would not keep him contented.
+
+Allan and Suzette strolled home under the bright blue sky. These
+late days in October were the Indian summer of the year, a season in
+which it was a joy to live, especially in a land where the smoke from
+domestic hearths curling upward here and there in silvery wreaths from
+wood fires, only suggested homeliness and warmth, not filth and fog.
+They sauntered slowly homeward through the rustic lanes, and their talk
+was naturally of the new arrival.
+
+"Is he the kind of young man you expected him to be?" asked Suzette.
+
+There was no occasion to be more specific in one's mention of
+_him_. There could but be one young man in their thoughts to-day.
+
+"I don't know that I had formed any expectations about him."
+
+"Oh, Allan, that can't be true! You must have thought about him, after
+everybody telling you of the likeness. Remember what you told me in our
+very first dance--how dreadfully bored you had been about him, and how
+glad you were that I didn't know him."
+
+"My being bored--and I was horribly--was no reason why my imagination
+should dwell upon him. If I thought of him at all, I thought of him
+just as he is--the image of his portrait by Millais--and a very
+good-looking and well set-up young man--so much better looking than my
+humble self, that I wonder at any one's seeing a likeness between the
+two faces."
+
+"Is he better looking, Allan? I know I like your face best."
+
+"I'm glad of that, since you will have to put up with my face for a
+lifelong companion."
+
+"Allan, how grumpily you said that."
+
+"Did I, Suzie? I'm afraid I'm a brute. I am beginning to find out
+disagreeable depths in my character."
+
+She looked at him with a puzzled air--so sweetly innocent, so free from
+any backward-reaching thought--that made him happy again. He took up
+the little hand hanging loose at her side and kissed it.
+
+"Let us drop in upon Aunt Mornington, and ask her for lunch," he said
+as they came within sight of the Grove. "I don't feel like parting with
+you just yet, Suzie."
+
+"Quite impossible. I must be at home for father's tiffin."
+
+"I forgot that sacred institution. Well, Suzie, do you think it's
+possible the General might ask me to share that important meal if he
+saw me hanging about? We could go to the links afterwards, so that you
+might have the pleasure of seeing how wildly I can beat the air?"
+
+Suzie laughed her assent to this proposition, and General Vincent,
+overtaking them five minutes afterwards on his useful hack, sustained
+an Anglo-Indian's reputation for hospitality by immediately inviting
+Allan to luncheon.
+
+
+                            END OF VOL. I.
+
+         LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+                  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+      [Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75173 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75173 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>SONS OF FIRE</h1>
+
+<p>A Novel</p>
+
+<p class="ph1">By Mary Elizabeth Braddon</p>
+
+<p>THE AUTHOR OF</p>
+
+<p>"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"<br>
+"ISHMAEL," ETC.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>IN THREE VOLUMES</i></p>
+
+<p>VOL. I.</p>
+
+<p>LONDON<br>
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO. LIMITED<br>
+STATIONERS' HALL COURT</p>
+
+<p>[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p>
+
+<p>LONDON:<br>
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+<table>
+<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">A STRIKING LIKENESS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">"A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">"IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">MORE NEW-COMERS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">LIKE THE MOTH TO THE FLAME</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">"O THE RARE SPRING-TIME!"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">NOT YET</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">"SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">"OUR DREAMS PURSUE OUR DEAD, AND DO NOT FIND"</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td> <td class="tdl"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+
+<h2>SONS OF FIRE.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">A STRIKING LIKENESS.</p>
+
+
+<p>The meet was at the Pig and Whistle, at Melbury, nine miles off. Rather
+a near meet—compared with the usual appointments of the South Sarum
+hounds—the ostler remarked, as Allan Carew mounted a hired hunter in
+the yard of the Duke's Head, chief, and indeed only possible inn for a
+gentleman to put up at, in the little village of Matcham, a small but
+prosperous hamlet, lying in a hollow of the hills between Salisbury
+and Andover. He had only arrived on the previous afternoon, and he was
+sallying forth in the crisp March morning, on an unknown horse in an
+unfamiliar country, to hunt with a pack whose master's name he had
+heard for the first time that day.</p>
+
+<p>"Can he jump?" asked Allan, as he scrutinized the lean, upstanding
+bay; not a bad kind of horse by any means, but with that shabby,
+under-groomed and over-worked appearance common to hirelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't he, sir? There ain't a better lepper in Wiltshire. And as
+clever as a cat! We had a lady staying here in the winter, Mrs.
+Colonel Parkyn, brought two 'acks of her own, besides the colonel's
+two 'unters, and liked this here horse better than any of 'em. She was
+right down mashed on him, as the young gents say."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder she didn't buy him," said Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"She couldn't, sir. Money wouldn't buy such a hunter as this off my
+master. He's a fortune to us."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I may be of Mrs. Parkyn's opinion when I come home," said
+Allan. "Now then, ostler, just tell me which way I am to ride to get to
+the Pig and Whistle by eleven o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>The ostler gave elaborate instructions. A public-house here, an
+accommodation lane there—a common to cross—a copse to skirt—three
+villages—one church—a post-office—and several cross-roads.</p>
+
+<p>"You're safe to fall in with company before you get there," concluded
+the ostler, whisking a bit of straw out of the bay's off hind hoof, and
+eyeing him critically, previous to departure.</p>
+
+<p>"If I don't, I doubt if I ever shall get there," said Allan, as he rode
+out of the yard.</p>
+
+<p>He was a stranger in Matcham, a "foreigner," as the villagers called
+such alien visitors. He had never been in the village before,
+knew nothing of its inhabitants or its surroundings, its customs,
+ways, local prejudices, produce, trade, scandals, hates, loves,
+subserviencies, gods, or devils. And yet henceforward he was to be
+closely allied with Matcham, for a certain bachelor uncle had lately
+died and left him a small estate within a mile of the village—a
+relative with whom Allan Carew had held slightest commune, lunching or
+dining with him perhaps once in a summer, at an old family hotel in
+Albemarle Street, never honoured by so much as a hint at an invitation
+to his rural retreat, and not cherishing any expectation of a legacy,
+much less the bequest of all the gentleman's worldly possessions,
+comprising a snug, well-built house, in pretty and spacious grounds,
+with good and ample stabling, and with farms and homesteads covering
+something like fifteen hundred acres, and producing an income of a
+little over two thousand a year.</p>
+
+<p>It need hardly be stated that Allan Carew was not a poor man when this
+unexpected property fell into his lap.</p>
+
+<p>The children of this world are rarely false to the gospel precept—to
+every one which hath shall be given. Allan's father had changed his
+name, ten years before, from Beresford to Carew, upon his succession
+to a respectable estate in Suffolk, an inheritance from his maternal
+grandfather, old Squire Carew, of Fendyke Hall, Millfield.</p>
+
+<p>Allan, an only son, was not by any means ill provided for when his
+maternal uncle, Admiral the Honourable Allan Darnleigh, took it into
+his head to leave him his Wiltshire property; but this bequest raised
+him at once to independence, and altogether dispensed with any further
+care about that gentleman-like profession, the Bar, which had so far
+repaid Mr. Carew's collegiate studies, labours, outlays, and solicitude
+by fees amounting in all to seven pounds seven shillings, which sum
+represented the gross earnings of three years.</p>
+
+<p>So, riding along the rustic high-road, in the clear morning air, under
+a sapphire sky, just gently flecked with fleecy cloudlets, Allan Carew
+told himself that it was a blessed escape to have done with chambers,
+and reading law, and waiting for briefs; and that it was a good thing
+to be a country gentleman; to have his own house and his own stable;
+not to be obliged to ride another man's horses, even though that other
+man were his very father; not to be told after every stiffish day
+across country that he had done for the grey, or that the chestnut's
+legs had filled as never horse's legs filled before, nor to hear any
+other reproachful utterances of an old and privileged stud-groom, who
+knew the horses he rode were not his own property. Henceforth his
+stable would be his own kingdom, and he would reign there absolute and
+unquestioned. He could choose his own horses, and they should be good
+ones. He naturally shared the common creed of sons, and looked upon
+all animals of his father's buying as "screws" and "duffers." His own
+stables would be something altogether different from the drowsy old
+stables at home, where horses were kept and cherished because they were
+familiar friends, rather than with a view to locomotion. His stud and
+his stable should be as different as if horses and grooms had been bred
+upon another planet.</p>
+
+<p>He loved field-sports. He felt that it was in him to make a model
+squire, albeit two thousand a year was not a large revenue in these
+days of elegant living and Continental holidays, and eclectic tastes.
+He felt that among his numerous nephews, old Admiral Darnleigh had
+made a wise selection in choosing his god-son, Allan Carew, to inherit
+his Wiltshire estate. He meant to be prudent and economical. He had
+spent the previous afternoon in a leisurely inspection of Beechhurst.
+He had gone over house and stables, and had found all things so well
+planned, and in such perfect order, that he was assailed by none of
+those temptations to pull down and to build, to alter and to improve,
+which often inaugurate ruin in the very dawn of possession. He thought
+he might build two or three loose boxes on one side of the spacious
+stable-yard. There were two packs within easy reach of Matcham, to say
+nothing of packs accessible by rail, and he would naturally want more
+hunters than had sufficed for the old sailor, who had jogged out on his
+clever cob two or three times a week, and had gone home early, after
+artful riding and waiting about the lanes, or to leeward of the great
+bare hills, and in snug corners, where a profound knowledge of the
+country enabled him to make sure of the hounds. Allan's hunting-stable
+would be on a very different footing; and although Beechhurst provided
+ample accommodation for a stud of eight, Allan told himself that one of
+his first duties would be to build loose boxes.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall often have to put up a couple of horses for a friend," he
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was lovely, more like April than March. The bay trotted
+along complacently, neither lazy nor feverishly active, but with an air
+of knowing what he had to do for his day's wage, and meaning honestly
+to do it. Allan was glad that his road took him past Beechhurst.
+Possession had still all the charm of novelty. His heart thrilled with
+pride as he slackened his pace to gaze fondly at the pretty white
+house, low and long, with a verandah running all along the southern
+front, admirably placed upon a gentle elevation, against the swelling
+shoulder of a broad down, facing south-west, and looking over garden
+and shrubbery, and across a stretch of common, that lay between
+Beechhurst and the high-road, and gave a dignified aloofness to the
+situation; seclusion without dulness, a house and grounds remote, but
+not buried or hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing manorial about it," mused Allan; "but it certainly looks a
+gentleman's place."</p>
+
+<p>He would naturally have preferred something less essentially modern. He
+would have liked Tudor chimneys, panelled walls, and a family ghost.
+He would have liked to know that his race had taken deep root in the
+soil, had been lords of the manor centuries and centuries ago, when
+Wamba was keeping pigs in the woods, and when the jester's bells mixed
+with the merry music of hawk and hound. Admiral Darnleigh, so far as
+Wiltshire was concerned, had been a new man. He had made his money in
+China, speculating in tea-gardens, and other property, while pursuing
+his naval career with considerable distinction. He had retired from
+active service soon after the Chinese war, a C.B. and a rich man, had
+bought Beechhurst a bargain—during a period of depression—and had
+settled down in yonder pretty white house, with a small but admirable
+establishment, each member thereof a pearl of price among servants,
+and had there spent the tranquil even-tide of an honourable and
+consistently selfish life. He had never married. As a single man, he
+had always felt himself rich; as a married man he might often have
+felt himself poor. He had heard Allan at five and twenty declare that
+he had done with the romance of life, and that he, too, meant to be a
+bachelor; and it may be that this boyish assertion, carelessly made
+over a bottle of Lafitte, did in some measure influence the Admiral's
+choice of an heir.</p>
+
+<p>Allan's father and mother were of a more liberal mind.</p>
+
+<p>"You are in a better position than your father was at your age," said
+Lady Emily Carew, on her son's accession to fortune. "I hope you will
+marry well—and soon."</p>
+
+<p>There was no thought of woman's love, or of married bliss, in Allan
+Carew's mind, as he rode through the lanes and over a common, and
+across a broad stretch of open down to the Pig and Whistle. He was
+full, not of his inner self, but of the outer world around and about
+him, pleased with the pleasant country in which his lot was cast,
+wondering what his new neighbours were like, and how they would receive
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether the South Sarum is a hospitable hunt, or whether the
+members are a surly lot, and look upon every stranger as a sponge and
+an interloper," he mused.</p>
+
+<p>He had ridden alone for about half the way, when a man in grey fustian
+and leather gaiters, who looked like a small tenant farmer, trotted
+past him, turned and stared at him with obvious astonishment, touched
+his hat and rode on, after a few words of greeting, which were lost in
+the clatter of hoofs.</p>
+
+<p>He had ridden right so far by the aid of memory; he now followed
+the man in grey, and, taking care to keep this pioneer in view,
+duly arrived at a small rustic inn, standing upon high ground, and
+overlooking an undulating sweep of woodland and common, marsh and
+plain, one of those picturesque oases which diversify the breadth of
+wind-swept downs. The inn was an isolated building, the few labourers'
+cottages within reach being hidden by a turn of the road.</p>
+
+<p>Hounds and hunt-servants were clustered on a level green on the other
+side of the road, but there was no one else upon the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Allan looked at his watch, and found that it was ten minutes to eleven.</p>
+
+<p>The man in grey had dismounted from his serviceable cob, and was
+standing on the greensward, talking to the huntsman. Huntsman and whips
+had taken off their caps to Allan as he rode up, and it seemed to
+him that there was at once more respect and more friendliness in the
+salutation than a stranger usually receives—above all a stranger in
+heather cloth and butcher boots, and not in the orthodox pink and tops.
+The man in grey, and the hunt-servants, were evidently talking of him
+as he sat solitary in front of the inn. Their furtive glances in his
+direction fully indicated that he was the subject of their discourse.</p>
+
+<p>"They take a curious interest in strangers in these parts," thought
+Allan.</p>
+
+<p>Two minutes afterwards, a stout man, with a weather-beaten red face
+showing above a weather-beaten red coat, rode up with two other men.
+Evidently the master and his satellites.</p>
+
+<p>"Hulloa!" cried the jovial man, "what the deuce brings you back so much
+sooner than Mrs. Wornock expected you? She told me there was no chance
+of our seeing you for the next year. When did you arrive? I never heard
+a word about it."</p>
+
+<p>The master's broad doeskin palm was extended to Allan in the most
+cordial way, and the master's broad red face irradiated kindliest
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"You are under a misapprehension, sir," said Allan, smiling at the
+frank, friendly face, amused at the eager rapidity of speech which had
+made it impossible for him to interrupt the speaker. "I have never yet
+enjoyed the privilege of a day with the South Sarum, and this is my
+first appearance in your neighbourhood."</p>
+
+<p>"And you ain't Geoffrey Wornock," exclaimed the master, utterly
+discomfited.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Carew."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, your voice is different. I should have known you were not Geoff if
+I had heard you speak. And now, of course, when one looks deliberately,
+there is a difference—a difference which would be more marked, I dare
+say, if Wornock were here. Are you a relation of Wornock's?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard the name of Wornock in my life until I heard it from
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm—dashed," cried the master, suppressing a stronger word as
+premature so early in the day. "Did you see the likeness, Champion?"
+asked the master, appealing to one of his satellites.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I did," replied Captain Champion. "I was just as much
+under a delusion as you were—and yet—Mr. Carew's features are not
+the same as Wornock's—and his eyes are a different colour. It's the
+outlook, the expression, the character in the face that is so like our
+friend's—and I think that kind of likeness impresses one more than
+mere form and outline."</p>
+
+<p>"Hang me if I know anything about it, except that I took one man for
+the other," said the master, bluntly. "Well, Mr. Carew, I hope you will
+excuse my blunder, and that we may be able to show you some sport on
+your first day in our country. We'll draw Wellout's Wood, Hamper, and
+if we don't find there we'll go on to Holiday Hill."</p>
+
+<p>Hounds and servants went off merrily across the down, and dipped into
+a winding lane. A good many horsemen had ridden up by this time, with
+half a dozen ladies among them. Some skirmished across the fields,
+others crowded the lane, and in this latter contingent rode the master,
+with his hounds in front of him, and Carew at his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" he asked; "or did you come by
+rail this morning? A long ride from Matcham Road station, if you did."</p>
+
+<p>"I am staying at the Duke's Head, at Matcham; but I only arrived
+yesterday. I am going to settle in your neighbourhood."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! Have you bought a place?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, going to rent one. Wiser, perhaps, till you see how you like this
+part of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had a place left me by my uncle, Admiral Darnleigh."</p>
+
+<p>"What! are you Darnleigh's heir? Yes, by-the-by, I heard that
+Beechhurst was left to a Mr. Carew; but I've a bad memory for names.
+So you have got Beechhurst, have you? I congratulate you. A charming
+place, compact, snug, warm, and in perfect order. Stables a trifle
+small, perhaps, for a hunting man."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to extend them," said Allan, with suppressed pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are going to do the right thing, sir. The only part in
+which Beechhurst falls short of perfection is in the stables. Capital
+stables, as far as they go, but it isn't far enough for a man who wants
+to hunt five days a week, and accommodate his hunting friends. Besides,
+the owner of Beechhurst ought to be in a position to take the hounds at
+a push."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it may be long before that push comes," said Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you're very kind; but I'm not so young as I was once, nor so rich
+as I was once—and—the Preacher says there's a time for all things. My
+time is very nearly past, and your time is coming, Mr. Carew. When do
+you establish yourself at Beechhurst?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going back to London to-morrow to settle a few matters, and
+perhaps have a look round at Tattersall's, and I hope to be at
+Beechhurst in less than a fortnight."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do myself the pleasure of calling upon you. Any wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am still in the enviable position my uncle enjoyed till his death."</p>
+
+<p>"A bachelor? Ah! that won't last long. It's all very well for a
+sun-dried old sailor to keep the fair sex at arm's length; but
+<i>you</i> won't be able to do it, Mr. Carew. I give you till our
+next hunt-ball for a free man. You've no notion what complexions our
+Wiltshire women have—Devon can't beat 'em—or what a lot of pretty
+girls there are within a fifteen-mile drive of Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>"I look forward with a thrill of mingled rapture and apprehension to
+your next hunt-ball."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be here before you know where you are. We have postponed it till
+the first of May. We shall kill our May fox on the thirtieth of April,
+and dance on his grave on the first."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be there, my lord," said Allan, as Lord Hambury galloped off
+after his huntsman, who had just put the hounds into the covert.</p>
+
+<p>A whimper proclaimed that there was something on foot, five minutes
+afterwards, and the business of the day began—a goodish day, and a
+long one—two foxes run to earth, and one killed in the twilight. It
+was seven o'clock when Allan Carew arrived at the Duke's Head, hungry
+and thirsty, and not a little bored by having been obliged to explain
+to various people that he was no relation to Geoffrey Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>He had been too much bored at this enforced reiteration to make any
+inquiries about this double of his in the course of the day, or during
+the long homeward ride; but when he had taken the edge off his appetite
+in his cosy sitting-room at the Duke's Head, he began to question the
+waiter, as he trifled with the customary hotel tart, a hollow cavern of
+short crust roofing in half a bottle of overgrown gooseberries.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know Mr. Wornock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; know him uncommonly well. Wonderful likeness between him and
+you, sir; thought you was him till I heard you speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Our voices are different, I am told."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, there's a difference. It ain't much—but it's just enough to
+make one doubtful like. Your voice, begging your pardon, sir, ain't as
+musical as his. Mr. Wornock's is a voice that would charm a bird off a
+tree, as the saying is. And then, after the first glance, one can see
+it ain't the same face," pursued the waiter, thoughtfully. "You've got
+such a look of him, you see, sir. That's what it is. One don't stop
+to think of the shape of a nose or a chin. It's the look that catches
+the eye. I suppose that's what people means by a speaking countenance,
+sir," added the waiter, garrulous, but not disrespectful.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Mr. Wornock any land in the county?" asked Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Land, sir? Yes, sir," replied the waiter, with a touch of wonder at
+being asked such a question. "Mr. Wornock is Lord of the Manor of
+Discombe, sir—a very large estate—and a fine old house, added to by
+Mr. Wornock's grandfather. The old part was built in the time of King
+Charles, sir, and the new part is very fine and picturesque—and the
+gardens are celebrated in these parts, sir—quite a show place—but
+Mrs. Wornock never allows it to be shown. She lives very secluded,
+don't give no entertainments herself, nor visit scarce anywheres. They
+do say that she was not right in her mind for some years after Mr.
+Wornock's birth, but that's six and twenty years ago, and there may not
+be any truth in the report. Gongozorla, sir, or cheddar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither, thanks. Are the Wornocks an old family?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very old family, sir. Old Saxon name. Came over with Edward the
+Confessor."</p>
+
+<p>"And who was Mrs. Wornock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there's a little 'itch there, sir. Nobody knows who Mrs. Wornock
+was, or where she came from—and they do say she wasn't county, which
+is a pity, seeing that the Wornocks had always married county prior to
+that marriage," added the waiter, proud of his concluding phrase.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock is abroad, I understand. Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Inja, sir. Cavalry regiment, the Eighteenth South Sarum Lancers."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange for a man owning so fine a property to go into the army."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, don't you see, the life at the Manor must have been a
+very dull one for a young gentleman. No entertainments. No staying
+company. Mrs. Wornock, she don't care for nothink but music—and,
+after all, sir, music ain't everythink to a young man. He 'unted, and
+he 'unted, and he 'unted, from the time he 'ad legs to cross a pony.
+Wherever there was 'ounds to be follered, he follered 'em. But hunting
+ain't everythink in life, and it don't last long," added the waiter,
+philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Wornock, as dowager, should have withdrawn to her Dower-house,
+and left the young man free to be as jovial as he liked at the Manor."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that may come to pass when he marries, sir, but not before.
+Mr. Wornock is a devoted son. He'd be the last to turn his mother
+out-of-doors. And he's almost as keen on music as his mother, I've
+heard say; plays the fiddle just like a professional—and the organ."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," sighed Carew, having heard all he wanted to hear, "I bear no
+grudge against Mr. Geoffrey Wornock because he happens to resemble me;
+but I wish with all my heart that he could have made it convenient to
+live in any other neighbourhood than that in which my lot is cast. That
+will do, waiter; I don't want any more wine. You may clear the table,
+and bring me some tea at nine o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>The waiter cleared the table, in a leisurely way, made up the fire,
+also in a leisurely way, and contrived to spend a quarter of an
+hour upon work that might have been done in five minutes; but Allan
+questioned him no further. He flung himself back in an easy-chair,
+rested his slippered feet upon the fender, and meditated with closed
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was a bore, a decided bore, to have a double in the
+neighbourhood. A double richer, more important, and altogether better
+placed than himself; a double in a Lancer regiment—there is at once
+chic and attractiveness in a cavalry soldier—a double who owned just
+the fine old manorial estate, and fine old manorial mansion which he,
+Allan, would have liked to possess.</p>
+
+<p>Beechhurst might be a snug little property; the house might be
+perfection, as Lord Hambury had averred; but when a house of that
+calibre is said to be perfect, the adjective rarely means anything more
+than a good kitchen, and a convenient butler's pantry, roomy cellars,
+and a well-planned staircase; whereas, to praise a fine old manor house
+implies that it contains a panelled hall, and a spacious ballroom, a
+library with a groined roof, and a music gallery in the dining-room.
+After hearing of Wornock's old house, Allan felt that Beechhurst was
+distinctly middle-class, and that his sailor uncle must have been
+a poor creature to have found pride and pleasure in such a cockney
+paradise.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up out of his easy-chair, shook himself, and laughed aloud at
+his own pettiness.</p>
+
+<p>"What an envious brute I am!" he said to himself. "I dare say, when
+Wornock comes home, I shall find him a decent fellow, and we shall get
+to be good friends. If we do, I'll tell him how I was gnawed with envy
+of his better fortune before ever I saw his face."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan Carew spent the best part of the following day at Beechhurst,
+better pleased with his inheritance than he would confess even to
+himself. The Admiral's Chinese experiences had not been without
+tangible result. The hall was decorated with curios whose value
+their present possessor could only guess, and if the greater part
+of the house was prim and commonplace, there was one room which
+was both handsome and original—this was the smoking-room and
+library, a spacious apartment which the Admiral had added to the
+original structure, and which was built on the model of a Mandarin's
+reception-room. Yes, on the whole, Allan was inclined to think his lot
+had fallen on a pleasant heritage. He went up to town in good spirits;
+spent ten days in looking at hunting studs at Tattersall's, and made
+his modest selection with care and prudence, content to start his
+stable with four good hunters, a dog-cart horse, a pony to fetch and
+carry, two grooms and a stable-help.</p>
+
+<p>The all-important business of the stable concluded, he went back to
+Suffolk to spend Easter in the bosom of his family, and to tell his
+father what he had done. There was perfect harmony of feeling, and
+frankest confidence between father and son, and the son's regard
+for the father was all the stronger because, under that quiet and
+somewhat languid bearing of the Squire of Fendyke, Allan suspected
+hidden depths. Of the history of his father's youth, or the history
+of his father's heart, the son knew nothing; yet, fondly as he loved
+his mother, the excellent and popular Lady Emily, he had a shrewd
+suspicion that she was not the kind of woman to have won his father's
+heart in the days when love means romance rather than reason. That
+she possessed her husband's warm affection now, he, the son, was
+fully assured; but he was equally assured that the alliance had been
+passionless, a union of two honourable minds, rather than of two loving
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>There was that in his father's manner of life which to Allan's mind
+told of a youth overshadowed by some unhappy experience; and a word
+dropped now and then, in the father's talk of his son's prospects and
+hopes, a hint, a sigh, had suggested an unfortunate love-affair.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was more communicative, and had told her son frankly that
+she was not his father's first love.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember your grandmother, Allan?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Allan remembered her distinctly—an elderly woman dressed in some
+rich silken fabric, always black, with a silver chatelaine at her side,
+on which there hung a curious old enamelled watch that he loved to look
+at. A tall slender figure, a thin aquiline countenance, with silvery
+hair arrayed in feathery curls under a honiton cap. She had been always
+kind to him; but no kindness could dispel the awe which she inspired.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to dream of her," he said. "Had she a frightening voice, do you
+think? She was mixed up in most of my childish nightmares."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Allan!" laughed his mother. "She was an excellent woman, but
+she loved to command; and one can't command affection, not even the
+affection of a child. It was she who made your father marry me.
+He liked me, and I liked him, and we had been playfellows; but we
+should never have thought of marrying if your grandmother had not,
+in a manner, insisted upon it. She told George that I was deeply in
+love with him; and she told me that George was devoted to me; and so
+we could not help ourselves. And, after all," she went on, with a
+comfortable sigh, "it has answered very well. I don't think we could
+possibly be fonder of our home, or of each other, than we are. And
+your father has his books, and his shooting and fishing, and I have my
+farm and my schools—and," with a sudden gush of tenderness, "we both
+have you. You ought to be fond of us, Allan. You are the link that
+makes us one in heart and mind."</p>
+
+<p>Allan was fond of them. Both parents had been undeviating in their
+indulgence, and he had given them love without stint. But it may be
+that he loved the somewhat silent and reserved father with a profounder
+affection than he gave to the open-hearted and loquacious mother.
+That vague consciousness of a secret in his father's life, of sorrows
+unforgotten, but never told, had evoked the son's warmest sympathy. All
+that Allan had ever felt of sentiment or romantic feeling hitherto, he
+had felt for his father. It is not to be supposed that he had reached
+five and twenty without some commerce with Cupid, but his loves had
+been only passing fancies, sunbeams glancing on the surface of life's
+current, not those deep forces which change the course of the river.</p>
+
+<p>The characters of father and mother were distinctly marked in their
+acceptance of Allan's good fortune. Lady Emily saw only the sunny
+side of the inheritance. She was delighted that her son should have
+ample means and perfect independence in the morning of life. She was
+full of matrimonial schemes on his behalf. Decidedly he ought to
+marry, well and quickly. An only son, with an estate in possession,
+and another—his patrimonial estate—in prospective. It was his duty
+to found a family. She marshalled all the young women she knew in a
+mental review. There must be good family—a pure race, untarnished by
+the taint of commerce, unshadowed by hushed-up disgrace—divorces,
+bankruptcies, turf scandals. There should be money, because even the
+two estates would not make Allan a rich man, as the world reckons
+wealth nowadays; but they would give him a respectable platform from
+which to demand the hand of an heiress. He could woo the wealthiest
+without fear of being considered a fortune-hunter.</p>
+
+<p>"It is sad to think you will like your own place better than this,"
+said Lady Emily in her cheerfullest voice, "and that we shall hardly
+see you except at Christmas and Easter; but it is so nice to know that
+you are in a position to marry as early as you like without being under
+any obligation to your father; for, indeed, dear, what with his library
+and my farm, there would have been very little margin for a proper
+establishment for you."</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest mother, why harp upon matrimony? I have made up my mind to
+follow my uncle's excellent example."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor brother!" sighed Lady Emily. "He was in love with the belle
+of the season—a foolish pink and white thing, with one long curl
+streaming over her left shoulder, and a frock that you would laugh at,
+if you could see her to-day. Of course Allan's chances were hopeless—a
+younger son, with a commander's pay, eked out by a pittance from his
+father. She used to ride in the Row with a plume in her hat—half a
+Spanish fowl—quite the right thing, I assure you, at that time.
+Your uncle was twelve years older than I, you know, Allan; and I was
+still in short petticoats when he went off to China broken-hearted.
+Of course she wouldn't have him, though she said he was the best
+waltzer in London. Her people wouldn't let her look at him even, from a
+matrimonial point of view."</p>
+
+<p>Allan went to church with his mother on Easter morning—attended two
+services in the fine old church, which seemed much too grand and too
+big for the tiny town—her loving heart swelling with pride at having
+such an admirable son. Her friends had always been fond of him; but now
+it seemed to her there was a touch of deference in their kindness. They
+had liked him as <i>her</i> son, and the inheritor of Fendyke Hall; but
+perhaps they liked him even a little better now that he was his own
+master, a man of independent means.</p>
+
+<p>He accompanied Lady Emily in her weekly visit to the schools; he
+assisted in dealing out Easter gifts to the school-children, and
+distributed half a dozen pounds of the very strongest obtainable
+tobacco among his male acquaintance in the village of Fendyke—a
+village consisting of a rectory, three picturesque farmhouses, a still
+more picturesque water-mill and miller's house, a roomy old barn-like
+inn, said to have once given shelter to good Queen Bess, and a good
+many decent cottages grouped in threes and fours along the broad, level
+road, or scattered in side lanes.</p>
+
+<p>The morning of Easter Monday was given to an inspection of Lady
+Emily's white farm—that farm which, next to her son, was the greatest
+pride and delight of her innocent and strictly rural life. Here,
+all buildings and all creatures were of an almost dazzling purity.
+White horses at the plough, a white fox-terrier running beside it,
+white birds in the poultry-yard, white cows in the meadow—cows from
+Lord Cawdor's old white Pembroke breed, cows from Blickling Park and
+Woodbastwick—white cottages for bailiff and farm-labourers, white
+palings, white pigs, and white donkeys, a white peacock sunning
+himself on the top of the clipped yew-hedge in the bailiff's garden,
+white tulips, white hyacinths in the flower-beds. To procure all this
+whiteness had cost trouble and money; but there are few home-farms
+which give as much delight to their possessors as this white farm gave
+to Lady Emily Carew. She had as much pride in its perfection as the
+connoisseur who collects only Wedgwood, or only Florentine Majolica,
+has in his collection. It is not so much the actual value of the thing
+as the fact that the thing is unique, and has cost the possessor years
+of patience and labour. Lady Emily would take a long journey to look at
+a white cow, or to secure the whitest thing in Brahmas or Cochin Chinas.</p>
+
+<p>It was a harmless, simple, womanly hobby, and although Lady Emily's
+farm was a somewhat costly toy, it served to give her status in the
+neighbourhood, and it provided labour for a good many people, who
+were well housed and well looked after, and whose children astonished
+the school-inspectors by the thoroughness of their education. No
+incompetent master or mistress could have held on in the schools where
+Lady Emily was a power. She cultivated a friendly familiarity with the
+man and woman who taught her cottage children; she asked them to quiet,
+confidential luncheons three or four times in a quarter; she sounded
+their opinions, plucked out the heart of their mystery, lent them
+books, stuffed them with her own ideas, and, in a manner, made them her
+mouthpiece. Intensely conservative as to her opinions and prejudices,
+and with an absolute loathing for all radical and revolutionary
+principles; she was yet, by the beneficence of her nature, more liberal
+than many a professing demagogue, and would fain have admitted all
+her fellow-creatures to an equal share in the good things of this
+life. Her warm heart was full of compassion for the hard lives she saw
+around her—hard even where the condition of the agricultural labourer
+was at its best—and it was her delight to introduce into these hard
+lives occasional glimpses of a happier world—a world of pleasure
+and gaiety, laughter and frolic. Lady Emily's Christmas and Whitsun
+balls for the villagers and servants; Lady Emily's May-day feast for
+the children; Lady Emily's midsummer picnic and harvest-home; and Lady
+Emily's fairy fir-tree, which reached to the ceiling of the boy's
+schoolroom, every branch laden with benefits—these were events which
+broke the slow monotony of each laborious year, joys to dream of and
+to remember in many a dull week of toil. Second only to these festive
+gatherings in helpfulness were Lady Emily's coal and blanket society,
+savings bank, and mothers' meeting—the last a friendly, familiar
+gathering held in a spacious old building which had been a brewery in
+the days when every country gentleman's household brewed its own beer.
+Once a week, through the winter season, Lady Emily sat in the old
+brewery, with a circle of cottagers' wives sewing industriously, while
+she talked and read to them. Tea and bread-and-butter, a roaring wood
+fire, and a bright lamp, were the only material comforts provided; but
+these and Lady Emily's friendly welcome and pleasant talk, with the
+short story chosen out of a magazine, and the familiar chapter of the
+New Testament, read far better than vicar or curate read it in church,
+sufficed to make the mothers' meeting a cheerful break in the cottage
+matron's busy week. She went back to her homely hearth cheered and
+encouraged. Lady Emily had told her the latest news of the great busy
+world outside Fendyke, had given her a recipe for a new savoury pie of
+ox-cheek and twopenny rice, or a new way of making barley broth; or
+had given her a "cutting" for her tiny flower-garden, or had cut out
+her new Gari<i>bawl</i>di. Lady Emily had been to her as a friend and
+counsellor.</p>
+
+<p>The village remembered with a shudder that long dreary winter when
+the great house was empty, while Mr. Carew and his wife were in
+Egypt—ordered there by the doctors, after a serious illness of the
+squire's.</p>
+
+<p>Much had been done for the sick and the poor even in that desolate
+winter, for the housekeeper had been given a free hand; but no
+one could replace Lady Emily, and the gaiety of Fendyke had been
+extinguished.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE."</p>
+
+
+<p>The hunting was nearly over by the time Allan Carew had established
+himself at Beechhurst and completed his stud. The selection of half a
+dozen hunters had given him an excuse for running up to London once or
+twice a week; and he had revelled in the convenience of express trains
+between Salisbury and Waterloo as compared with the slow and scanty
+train service between Fendyke and Cambridge, which made a journey from
+his native village a trial of youthful patience.</p>
+
+<p>London was full of pleasant people at this after-Easter season, so
+Allan took his time at Tattersall's, saw his friends, dined them, or
+dined with them, at those clubs which young men most affect, went to
+his favourite theatres, rode in the Park, and saw a race or two at
+Sandown, all in the process of buying his horses; but at last the stud
+was complete, and his stud-groom, a man he had brought from Suffolk,
+the man who taught him to ride, had shaken a wise head, and told his
+young master to stop buying.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got just as many as you can use, Mr. Allan," he said, "and if
+you buy another one, it 'ud mean another b'y, and we shall have b'ys
+enough for me to keep in order as it is."</p>
+
+<p>So Allan held his hand. "And now I am a country gentleman," he said,
+"and I must go and live on my acres."</p>
+
+<p>Everybody in the neighbourhood wanted to know him. He was under none
+of the disadvantages of the new man about whom people have to ask
+each other, "Who is he?" He came to Matcham with the best possible
+credentials. His father was a man of old family, against whose name no
+evil thing had ever been written. His mother was an earl's daughter;
+and the estate which was his had been left him by a man whose memory
+was respected in the neighbourhood—a man of easy temper and open hand,
+a kind master, and a staunch friend.</p>
+
+<p>Allan found his hall-table covered with cards when he returned from his
+London holiday, and he was occupied for the next fortnight in returning
+the calls that had been made for the most part in his absence. To a
+shy young man this business of returning calls in an unknown land
+would have been terrible—invading unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and
+seeing strange faces, wondering which of two matrons was his hostess
+and which the friend or sister-in-law—an ordeal as awful as any
+mediæval torture; but Allan was not shy, and he accepted the situation
+with a winning ease which pleased everybody. When he blundered—and
+his blunders were rare—he laughed at his mistake, and turned it
+into a jest that served to help him through the first five minutes
+of small-talk. He had a quick eye, and in a room full of people saw
+at a glance the welcoming smile and extended hand which marked his
+hostess. "Quite an acquisition to the neighbourhood," said everybody;
+and the mothers of marriageable daughters were as eager to improve the
+acquaintance as Jane Austen's inimitable Mrs. Bennett was to cultivate
+the irreproachable Bingley.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of that round of visits Allan contrived to find out a
+good deal about the neighbourhood which was henceforward to be his home.</p>
+
+<p>He discovered that it was, above all, a hunting neighbourhood; but that
+it was also a shooting neighbourhood; and that there was bad blood
+between the men who wanted to preserve pheasants and the men who wanted
+to hunt foxes. From the point of view of the rights of property, the
+shooters would appear to be in their right, since they only wanted to
+feed and foster birds on their own land; while the hunting-man—were
+he but the season-ticket-holding solicitor from Bloomsbury—wanted to
+hunt his fox over land which belonged to another man, and to spoil that
+other man's costly sport in the pursuit of a pleasure which cost him,
+the season-ticket holder, at most a stingy subscription to the hunt he
+affected. But, on the other hand, hunting is a strictly national sport,
+and shooting is a selfish, hole-and-corner kind of pleasure; so the
+hunting men claimed immemorial rights and privileges as against the
+owners of woods and copses, and the hatchers of pheasants.</p>
+
+<p>Allan found another and more universal sport also in the ascendant at
+Matcham. The neighbourhood had taken lately to golf, and that game
+had found favour with old and young of both sexes. Everybody could
+not hunt, but everybody could play golf, or fancy that he or she was
+playing golf, or, at least, look on from a respectful distance while
+golf was being played. The golf-links on Matcham Common had therefore
+become the most popular institution in the neighbourhood, and the
+scarlet coat of the golfer was oftener seen than the fox-hunter in
+pink, and people came from afar to see the young ladies of Matcham
+contest for the bangles and photograph-frames which the golf club
+offered as the reward of the strong arm and the accurate eye.</p>
+
+<p>Allan, who could turn his hand to most things in the way of physical
+exercise, was able to hold his own with the members of the golf club,
+and speedily became a familiar figure on the links. Here, as elsewhere,
+he met people who told him he was like Geoffrey Wornock, and who
+praised Wornock's skill at golf just as other people had praised his
+riding or his shooting.</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to be something of a Crichton, this Wornock of yours," Allan
+said sometimes, with a suspicion of annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>He was sick of being told of his likeness to this man whom he had never
+seen—weary of hearing the likeness discussed in his presence; weary of
+being told that the resemblance was in expression rather than in actual
+feature; that there was an indefinable something in his face which
+recalled Wornock in an absolutely startling manner; while the details
+of that face taken separately were in many respects unlike Wornock's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet it is more than what is generally called a family likeness,"
+said Mrs. Mornington of the Grove, a personage in the neighbourhood,
+and the cleverest woman among Allan's new acquaintances. "It is the
+individuality, the life and movement of the face, that are the same.
+The likeness is a likeness of light and shade rather than of line and
+colour."</p>
+
+<p>There was a curious feeling in Allan's mind by the time this kind of
+thing had been said to him in different forms of speech by nearly
+everybody he knew in Matcham—a feeling which was partly irritation,
+partly interest in the man whose outward likeness to himself might be
+allied with some identity of mind and inclinations.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether I shall like him very much, or hate him very much,"
+he said to Mrs. Mornington. "I feel sure I must do one or the other."</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure to like him. He is not the kind of man for anybody
+to hate," answered the lady quickly; and then, growing suddenly
+thoughtful, she added, "You may find a something wanting in his
+character, perhaps; but you cannot dislike him. He is thoroughly
+likeable."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the something wanting which you have found?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say I had found——"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak
+spot if you had not found it yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are as searching as a cross-examining counsel," said Mrs.
+Mornington, laughing at him. "Well, I will be perfectly frank with
+you. To my mind, Geoffrey's character suffers from the fault which
+doctors—speaking of a patient's physical condition—call want of tone.
+There is a want of mental tone in Geoffrey. I have known him from a
+boy. I like him; I admire his talents. He and my sons were at Eton
+together. I have seen more of him perhaps than any one else in this
+neighbourhood. I like him—I am sorry for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why sorry? Has he not all the good things of this world?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not all. He lost his father before he was five years old; and his
+mother is, I fear, a poor creature."</p>
+
+<p>"Eccentric, I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Lamentably so—a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose
+society would do her good, and who opens her door to any spirit-rapping
+charlatan whose tricks become public talk. Poor thing! One ought not to
+be angry with her, but it is provoking to see such a place as Discombe
+in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position
+to which she has been elevated."</p>
+
+<p>"Who <i>was</i> Mrs. Wornock before she became Mrs. Wornock? I have
+heard hints——"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and you are never likely to hear more than hints," retorted
+Mrs. Mornington, impatiently. "Nobody in this neighbourhood knows
+who Mrs. Wornock was. No creature of her kith or kin has ever been
+seen at Discombe. I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her
+antecedents than you or I. Old Squire Wornock left Discombe about
+seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring
+in Bohemia—a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of. He was past
+sixty when he set out on that journey, a confirmed bachelor. One would
+as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife,
+but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance, he
+returned with a pretty-looking delicate young creature he had married
+in Germany—at Dresden, I believe—and who looked much more like dying
+within the next five years than he did."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he introduce her to his neighbours? Was she well received?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she was received well enough. Mr. Wornock was not the kind of man
+to marry a disreputable person. People took her on trust. She seemed
+painfully shy, and her only merit in society was that she sang very
+prettily. Everybody called upon her, but she did not respond warmly
+to our advances; and about six months after her marriage there were
+rumours of an alarming kind about her health—her mental health. Our
+own good little doctor, dear old Mr. Podmore, who had attended three
+generations of Wornocks, shook his head when he was questioned about
+her. 'Was it serious?' people asked—for I suppose you know that in
+a neighbourhood as rustic as ours, if the doctor's carriage is seen
+at a particular house very often, people <i>will</i> ask questions
+of that doctor. Yes, it was very serious. We never got beyond that.
+Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient, fondly as he loves a gossip.
+By-and-by we heard that Mr. Wornock had taken his young wife off to
+Switzerland. He who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil
+was off again to the Continent, and Discombe was shut up once more. I'm
+afraid we all hated Mrs. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like ours, one
+detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life. Dinners
+and hunting-breakfasts at Discombe were an element in our daily lives,
+and we resented their cessation. When I say we, I mean, of course, our
+men-folk."</p>
+
+<p>"Were your men-folk long deprived of Mr. Wornock's hospitalities?"</p>
+
+<p>"For ever," answered Mrs. Mornington, solemnly. "The Wornocks had only
+been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and
+heir, born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter. A nice place for the
+future owner of Discombe to be born in—Grindelwald—at the sign of
+the Bear! We were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing. This
+comes of an old man marrying a nobody, we said. Well, Mr. Carew, it was
+ages before we saw anything more of the Wornocks. Geoffrey must have
+been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to
+the house in which he ought to have been born—a poor little fragile
+Frenchified object, hanging on to a French <i>bonne</i>, and speaking
+nothing but French. Not one sentence of his native tongue did the
+little wretch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mornington's indignant recital of this
+ancient history. Her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she
+were describing the events of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he a nice child?" he asked, when they had both had their laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He
+was very active and intelligent—hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He
+frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close
+friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking
+an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of
+the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have
+let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible,
+matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the
+clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down
+to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing—what
+can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as
+those?—a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar
+to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses?
+I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of
+her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon
+her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in
+my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing
+to go. What can one do with such a woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression
+of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above
+the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told
+that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and
+appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both
+organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have
+not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth."</p>
+
+<p>"She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"She is interesting—only she won't let one be interested in her."</p>
+
+<p>"Can one get a look at her? Does she go to Matcham Church?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never. That is another of her eccentricities. She either goes to
+that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the
+fields—Filbury parish church—nearly six miles from Discombe, or she
+drives thirteen miles to Salisbury Cathedral. I believe she sometimes
+plays the organ at Filbury. That organ was her gift, by the way. They
+had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discombe."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go to Filbury Church next Sunday," said Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you? I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time. This
+interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint,
+remember. She must be five and forty years of age. Not even Cleopatra
+would have been interesting at forty-five."</p>
+
+<p>"I am under no hallucination as to the lady's age. I want to see
+the mother of Geoffrey Wornock. It is Geoffrey Wornock in whom I am
+interested."</p>
+
+<p>"Egotistical person! Only because Geoffrey is like you."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any man living who would not be interested in his double?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but he is not your double! The village mind is given to
+exaggeration. He has not your firm chin, nor your thoughtful brow. His
+face is a reminiscence of yours. It is weaker in every characteristic,
+in every line. You are the substance, he the reflection."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you are laughing at my egotism, and developing my vanity."</p>
+
+<p>"No, believe me, no!" protested Mrs. Mornington, gaily. "I see you both
+with all your defects and qualities. You have the stronger character,
+but you have not Geoffrey's fascinating personality. His very faults
+are attractive. He is by no means effeminate; yet there is a something
+womanish in his nature which makes women fond of him. He has inherited
+his mother's sensitive, dreamy temperament. I feel sure he would see
+a ghost if there were one in his neighbourhood. The ghost would go to
+him instinctively, as dogs go unbidden to certain people—sometimes
+to people who don't care about them; while the genuine dog-lover
+may be doing his best to attract bow-wow's attention, and failing
+ignominiously."</p>
+
+<p>"Every word you say increases my interest in Mr. Wornock. In a
+neighbourhood like this, where everybody is sensible and commonplace
+and conventional, excepting always your brilliant self"—Mrs.
+Mornington nodded, and put her feet on the fender—"it is so delightful
+to meet some one who does not move just on the common lines, and is not
+worked by the common machinery."</p>
+
+<p>"You will find nothing common about Geoffrey," said the lady. "I have
+known him since he was a little white boy in a black velvet suit, and
+he was just as enigmatical to me the day he left for Bombay as he was
+on his seventh birthday. I know that he has winning manners, and that I
+am very fond of him; and that is all I know about him."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Allan drove to Filbury on the following Sunday, and was in his place
+in the little old parish church ten minutes before the service began.
+The high oak pews were not favourable to his getting a good view of the
+congregation, since, when seated, the top of his head was only on a
+level with the top of his pew; but by leaving the door of the pew ajar
+he contrived to see Mrs. Wornock as she went up the narrow aisle—nave
+there was none, the pews forming a solid square in the centre of the
+church. Yes, he was assured that slim, graceful figure in a plain
+grey cashmere gown and grey straw bonnet must be Mrs. Wornock and no
+other. Indeed, the inference was easily arrived at, for the rest of
+the congregation belonged obviously to the small tenant-farmer and
+agricultural-labourer class—the women-folk homely and ruddy-cheeked,
+the men ponderous, and ill at ease in their Sunday clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The lady in the grey gown made her way quietly to a pew that occupied
+the angle of the church nearest the pulpit and reading-desk—the old
+three-decker arrangement, for clerk, parson, and preacher. Mr. Wornock
+was patron of the living of Filbury and Discombe, and this large,
+square pew had belonged to the Wornocks ever since the rebuilding of
+the church in Charles the Second's reign, a year or two after the
+manor-house was built, when the estate, which had hitherto been an
+outlying possession of the Wornocks, became their place of residence,
+and most important property.</p>
+
+<p>Allan could see only the lady's profile from his place in the body
+of the church—a delicate profile, worn as if with long years of
+thoughtfulness; a sweet, sad face that had lost all freshness of
+colouring, but had gained the spiritual beauty which grows in thought
+and solitude, where there are no vulgar cares to harass and vex the
+mind. A pensive peacefulness was the chief characteristic of the face,
+Allan thought, when the lady turned towards the organ during the <i>Te
+Deum</i>, listening to the village voices, which sang truer than
+village voices generally do.</p>
+
+<p>Allan submitted to the slow torture of a very long sermon about
+nothing particular, on a text in Nehemiah, which suggested not the
+faintest bearing on the Christian life—a sermon preached by an elderly
+gentleman in a black silk gown, whose eloquence would have been more
+impressive had his false teeth been a better fit. After the sermon
+there was a hymn, and the old-fashioned plate was carried round by
+a blacksmith, whom Allan recognized as a man who had fastened his
+hunter's shoe one day at a forge on the outskirts of Filbury, in the
+midst of a run; and then the little congregation quietly dispersed,
+after an exchange of friendly greetings between the church door and the
+lych-gate.</p>
+
+<p>Allan's gig was waiting for him near the gate, and a victoria, on
+which he recognized the Wornock crest—a dolphin crowned—stood in the
+shade of a row of limes, which marked the boundary of the Vicarage
+garden. Allan waited a little, expecting to see Mrs. Wornock come out;
+and then, as she did not appear, he re-entered the churchyard, and
+strayed among moss-mantled tomb-stones, reading the village names, the
+village histories of birth and death, musing, as he read, upon the long
+eventless years which make the sum of rustic lives.</p>
+
+<p>The blue pure sky, the perfume of a bean-field in flower, the hawthorns
+in undulating masses of snowy blossom, and here and there, in the
+angles of the meadows, the heaped-up gold of furze-bushes that were
+more bloom than bush—all these made life to-day a sensuous delight
+which exacted no questionings of the intellect, suggested no doubt as
+to the bliss of living. If it were always thus—a crust of bread and
+cheese under such a sky, a bed in the hollow of yonder bank between
+bean-field and clover, would suffice for a man's content, Allan
+thought, as he stood on a knoll in God's acre, and looked down upon
+the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and hollow with gentle
+undulations between Filbury and Discombe.</p>
+
+<p>What had become of Mrs. Wornock? He had made the circuit of the
+burial-ground, pausing often to read an epitaph, but never relaxing
+his watchfulness of the carriage yonder, waiting under the limes. The
+carriage was there still, and there was no sign of Mrs. Wornock. Was
+there a celebration? No; he had seen all the congregation leave the
+church, except the mistress of that curtained pew in the corner near
+the pulpit.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the broad strong chords of a prelude were poured out upon the
+still air—a prelude by Sebastian Bach, masterful, imposing, followed
+by a fugue, whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by
+the player. Standing in the sunshine listening to that music, Allan
+remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him. The player was Mrs.
+Wornock. He had seen the professional organist and schoolmaster leave
+the church with his flock of village boys. Mrs. Wornock had lingered
+after the service to gratify herself with the music she loved. He
+sauntered and loitered near the open window, listening to the music
+for nearly an hour. Then the organ sounds melted away in one last long
+rallentando, and presently he heard the heavy old key turn in the
+heavy old lock, and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the
+lych-gate, followed by a clumsy boy, who looked like a smaller edition
+of the blacksmith. Allan stood within a few yards of the pathway to
+see her go by, hoping to be himself unobserved, screened by the angle
+of an old monument, where rust had eaten away the railing, and moss
+and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epitaph, while the dense
+growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn. Here, in the shadow of
+ostentation's unenduring monument, he waited for that slender and still
+youthful form to pass.</p>
+
+<p>In figure the widow of twenty years looked a girl, and the face which
+turned quickly towards Allan, her keen ear having caught the rustle
+of the long grass under his tread, had the delicacy of outline and
+transparency of youth. The cheek had lost its girlish roundness, and
+the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow.
+Involuntarily Allan recalled a familiar line—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>That expression of tranquil thoughtfulness changed in an instant as
+she looked at him; changed to astonishment, interrogation, which
+gradually softened to a grave curiosity, an anxious scrutiny. Then, as
+if becoming suddenly aware of her breach of good manners, the heavy
+eyelids sank, a faint blush coloured the thin cheeks, and she hurried
+onward to the gate where her carriage had drawn up in readiness for her.</p>
+
+<p>Her footman, in a sober brown livery, was holding the gate open for
+her. Her horses were shaking their bridles. She stepped lightly into
+the victoria, nodded an adieu to the schoolboy who had blown the organ
+bellows, and vanished into the leafy distance of the lane.</p>
+
+<p>"So that is my double's mother. An interesting face, a graceful figure,
+and a lady to the tips of her fingers. Whether she is county, or not
+county, Geoffrey Wornock has no cause to be ashamed of his mother.
+Nothing would induce me to think ill of that woman."</p>
+
+<p>He brooded on that startled expression which had flashed across Mrs.
+Wornock's face as she looked at him. Clearly she, too, had seen the
+likeness which he bore to her son.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether it pains her to be reminded of him when he is so far
+away," speculated Allan, "or whether she feels kindly towards me for
+the sake of that absent son?"</p>
+
+<p>This question of his was answered three days later by the lady's own
+hand. Among the letters on Allan's breakfast-table on Wednesday morning
+there was one in a strange penmanship, which took his breath away, for
+on the envelope, in bold brown letters, appeared the address, Discombe
+Manor.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust all his other letters aside—those uninteresting letters
+which besiege the man who is supposed to have money to spend, from
+tradesmen who want to work for him, charities who want to do good for
+him, stock-jobbers who want to speculate for him—the whole race of
+spiders that harassed the well-feathered fly. He tore open the letter
+from Discombe Manor, and his eye ran eagerly over the following lines:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"DEAR SIR,</p>
+
+<p>"People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened
+by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call
+upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we
+should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can,
+if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your
+acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home
+on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I
+dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will
+hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me
+of my nearest and dearest.</p>
+
+<p>"I am generally at home in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">"Very truly yours,<br>
+
+"E. WORNOCK."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"E. Wornock!" he repeated, studying the signature. "Why no
+Christian name? And what is the name which that initial represents?
+Eliza, perhaps—and she sinks it, thinking it common and
+housemaidish—forgetting how Ben Jonson, by that housemaidish name,
+does designate the most glorious of queens. Possibly Ellen—a
+milk-and-waterish name, with less of dignity than Eliza; or Emily, my
+mother's name—graceful but colourless. I have never thought it good
+enough for so fine a character as my mother. She should have been
+Katherine or Margaret, Gertrude or Barbara, names that have a fulness
+of sound which implies fulness of meaning. I will call at Discombe
+Manor this afternoon. Delay would be churlish—and I want to see what
+Geoffrey Wornock's home is like."</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was warm and sunny, and Allan made a leisurely circuit of
+the chase and park of Discombe on his way to Mrs. Wornock's house.</p>
+
+<p>The beauty of the Manor consisted as much in the perfection of detail
+as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park.
+The mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly
+picturesque. It was a sober red brick house, with a high, tiled
+roof, and level rows of windows—those of the upper story were the
+original lattices of 1664, the date of the house; but on the lower
+floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows,
+of a uniform unpicturesque flatness, opening on a broad gravel walk,
+beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a
+moat, for Mrs. Wornock's house was one of those moated manor-houses
+of which there are so few left in the south of England. The gardens
+surrounding that grave-looking Carolian house had attained the ideal
+of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden-lovers, the
+ideal of old-fashioned beauty, be it understood; the beauty of clipped
+hedges and sunk lawns, walls of ilex and of yew, solemn avenues of
+obelisk-shaped conifers, labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of
+roses, tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, broad borders of old-fashioned
+perennials, clumps and masses of vivid colour, placed with art that
+seemed accidental wherever vivid colour was wanted to relieve the
+verdant monotony.</p>
+
+<p>If the gardens were perfect, the house, farm, and cottages were even
+more attractive in their arcadian grace, the grace of a day that is
+dead. Quaint roofs and massive chimney-stacks, lattices, porches,
+sun-dials, gardens brimming over with flowers, trim pathways, shining
+panes, everywhere a spotless cleanliness, a wealth of foliage, an
+air of prosperous fatness, bee-hives, poultry, cattle, all the signs
+and tokens of dependents for whom much is done, and whose dwellings
+flourish at somebody else's expense.</p>
+
+<p>Allan noted the cottages which bore the Wornock "W" above the date of
+the building—he noted them, but lost count of their number—keepers'
+lodges in the woodland which skirted the park—gardeners' or
+dairy-men's cottages at every park gate; farmhouse and bailiff's house;
+cottages for coachmen and helpers. At every available angle where
+gable, roof, and quaint old chimney-stack could make a picturesque
+feature in the landscape, a cottage had been placed, and the number of
+these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more
+obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage, a thing
+that is talked about but not seen. Discombe Chase, the Discombe lodges,
+and the village and school-houses of Discombe were obvious facts which
+impressed the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>That sweetly pensive face of Mrs. Wornock's had slain the viper envy
+in Allan's breast. When first he rode through those woods and over
+those undulating pastures and by those gables embowered in roses and
+wisteria, or starred with the pale blue clematis, he had felt a certain
+sour discontent with his own good fortune, about which people, from
+his mother down to the acquaintance of yesterday, prattled and prosed
+so officiously. He was sick of hearing himself called a lucky fellow.
+Luck, forsooth! what was his luck compared with Geoffrey Wornock's?
+That a bachelor uncle of his, having scraped together a modest little
+fortune, and not being able to carry it with him to the nether-world,
+should have passed it on to him, Allan, was not such a strange event as
+to warrant the running commentary of congratulation that had assailed
+his ear ever since he came to Matcham. No one congratulated Geoffrey
+Wornock. Nobody talked of <i>his</i> good luck. He had been born in
+the purple, and people spoke of him as of one having a divine right
+to the best things that this earth can give—to a Carolian mansion,
+and chase and park, and wide-spreading farms. There seemed to Allan
+Carew's self-consciousness an implied disparagement of himself in
+the tone which Matcham people took about Geoffrey Wornock. They in a
+manner congratulated him on his likeness to the Lord of Discombe Manor,
+and insinuated that he ought to be proud of himself because of this
+resemblance to the local magnate.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, however, Allan forgot all those infinitesimal vexations which
+in the beginning of his residence at Matcham had made the name of
+Wornock odious to him. His thoughts were full of that pale sad face,
+the wasted cheeks, the heavy eyelids, the somewhat sickly transparency
+of complexion, the large violet eyes, which lit up the whole face as
+with a light that is not of this world. It was the most spiritual
+countenance he had ever seen—the first face which had ever suggested
+to him the epithet ethereal.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered what society had told him about Mrs. Wornock; her
+encouragement of spirit-rapping people and thought-reading people,
+and every phase of modern super-naturalism; her passion for music—a
+passion so absorbing as almost to pass the border-line of sanity;
+at least in the opinion of the commonplace sane. He wondered no
+longer that such a woman had held herself aloof from the hunting, and
+shooting, and dinner-giving, and tea-drinking population scattered
+within a radius of eight or ten miles of Discombe; the people with
+whom, had she lived the conventional life of the conventional rural
+lady, she should have been on intimate terms. She was among them, but
+not of them, Allan told himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely I am not in love with a woman old enough to be my mother!" he
+thought, between jest and earnest, as he drove up to the house. "I have
+not thought so persistently of any woman since I was sick for love of
+the dean's pretty daughter, fairest and last of my calf-loves."</p>
+
+<p>He was not wholly in jest, for during the last three days the lady's
+image had haunted him with an insistency that bordered on "possession."
+It was as if those dark grey eyes had cast a spell upon him, and as
+if he must needs wait until the enchantress who held him in her mystic
+bands should unweave her mystery and set his thoughts at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>The hall door stood open to the summer air and the afternoon sun. A
+large black poodle, with an air of ineffable wisdom, was stretched near
+the threshold; a liver-and-white St. Bernard sunned his hairy bulk upon
+the grass in front of the steps; and on the broad terrace to the right
+of the house a peacock spread the rainbow splendour of his tail, and
+strutted in stately slowness towards the sun.</p>
+
+<p>"House and garden belong to fairyland," thought Allan. "The enchantress
+has but to wave her wand and fix the picture for a century. We may
+have extended the limit of human life a hundred years hence, and
+Mrs. Wornock's age may count as girlhood, when some gay young prince
+of fifty-five shall ride through the tangled woodland to awaken the
+sleeper. Who can tell? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we
+may be.'"</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON."</p>
+
+
+<p>The hall door stood wide open to the sunlight, sufficiently guarded by
+that splendid brute, the St. Bernard.</p>
+
+<p>A middle-aged footman in the sober Wornock livery came at the sound of
+the bell, the St. Bernard watching the visitor with grave but friendly
+eyes, and evidently perfectly aware of his respectability.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock was at home. A slow and solemn butler now appeared upon
+the scene, and led the way to a corridor which opened out of the hall;
+and at the end of this corridor, like Vandyke's famous portrait of
+Charles the First at Warwick Castle, the full-length portrait of a
+young man in a hunting-coat looked Allan Carew in the face.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all he had been told about his likeness to the owner of
+Discombe, the sight of that frank young face looking at him under the
+bright white light fairly startled him. For the moment it seemed to him
+as if he had seen his own reflection in a cheval-glass; but as he drew
+nearer the canvas the likeness lessened, the difference in the features
+came out, and he saw that the resemblance was less a likeness than a
+reminiscence. Distance was needed to make the illusion, and he could
+understand now why his new friends of the hunting-field should have
+taken him for Wornock on that first morning when he rode up to them as
+a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>The portrait was by Millais, painted with as much <i>brio</i> and
+vigour as the better-known picture of the young Marchioness of Huntley.
+Mr. Wornock was standing in an old stone doorway, leaning in an easy
+attitude against the deep arch of the door, hunting-crop, cigar-case,
+and hat on a table in the background, standing where he had stood on
+many a winter morning, waiting for his horse.</p>
+
+<p>There was a skylight over this end of the corridor, and the portrait of
+the master of the house shone out brilliantly under the clear top-light.</p>
+
+<p>The butler stopped within a few paces of the portrait, opened a low,
+old-fashioned door, and ushered Mr. Carew into a spacious room, at
+the further end of which a lady was sitting by an open window, beyond
+which he saw the long vista of an Italian garden, a cypress avenue,
+where statues were gleaming here and there in the sunshine. There was
+a grand piano on one side of the room, an organ on the other; books
+filled every recess. This spacious apartment was evidently music-room
+and library rather than drawing-room, and here, amidst books and music,
+lived the lonely lady of the house.</p>
+
+<p>She came to meet him with a friendly smile as he advanced into the
+room, holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It was very good of you to come so soon," she said, in her low,
+musical voice. "I wanted so much to see you—to know you. Yes, you are
+very like him. One of those accidental likenesses which are so common,
+and yet seem so strange. My husband had a friend who was murdered
+because he was like Sir Robert Peel; but my son is not a public man,
+and he has no enemies. You will run no risks on account of your
+likeness to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am grateful to the likeness which has given me the honour of knowing
+Mrs. Wornock," said Allan, taking the seat to which she motioned him,
+as she resumed her low chair by the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, you have no reason. I am a very stupid person. I go nowhere, I
+see very few people; and the people I do see are people whom you would
+think unworthy of your interest."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you are interested in them. They cannot be unworthy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am easily interested! I like strange people. I like to believe
+strange things. Your friend, Mrs. Mornington, will tell you that I am a
+foolish person."</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen Mrs. Mornington lately?" questioned Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she was here yesterday afternoon. She is always bright and
+amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She is
+always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her
+society. She talked of you, but I did not tell her I wanted to make
+your acquaintance. She would have offered to make a luncheon-party for
+me to meet you—or something dreadful of that kind."</p>
+
+<p>"You have a great dislike to society, Mrs. Wornock?" he asked, keenly
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>Her manner was so fresh and simple, almost childlike in its confiding
+candour, and her appearance was no less interesting than her manner.
+It is the fashion of our day for women of five and forty to look
+young, even to girlishness; but most women of five and forty are
+considerably indebted to modern art for that advantage. Here there was
+no art. The pale, clear fairness of the complexion owed nothing to the
+perfumer's palette. No <i>poudre des fées</i> blanched the delicate
+brow; no <i>rose d'amour</i> flushed the cheek; no <i>eau de Medée</i>
+brightened the large violet eyes. The lines which thought and sorrow
+had drawn upon the fair brow were undisguised, and in the soft, pale
+gold of the hair there were threads of silver. The youthfulness of the
+face was in its colouring and expression—the complexion so delicately
+fair, the countenance so trustful and pleading. It was the countenance
+of a woman to whom the conventionalities and jargon of modern life were
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw my son's portrait in the corridor?" said Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It struck my untutored eye as a very fine picture—almost as
+powerful as the Gladstone and the Salisbury, which I remember in the
+Millais collection at the Grosvenor."</p>
+
+<p>"But as for the likeness to yourself, now—did that strike you as
+forcibly as it has struck other people?"</p>
+
+<p>"I confess that as I stood in the hall I was inclined to exclaim, 'That
+is I or my brother!' But as I came nearer the picture I saw there was
+considerable diversity. To begin with, your son is much handsomer than
+I."</p>
+
+<p>"The drawing of his features may be more correct, but you are quite
+handsome enough," she answered, with her pretty friendly air, as if she
+had been his aunt. "And your face is more strongly marked than his,
+just as your voice is stronger," she added, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Your son is not an invalid, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"An invalid! No. But he is not very strong. He could not play football.
+He hated even cricket. He is passionately fond of horses, and an ardent
+sportsman; but he can be sadly idle. He likes to lie about in the
+sunshine, reading or dreaming. I fear he is a dreamer, like his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not like you, in person."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"He is like his father, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"You will see his father's picture, and you can judge for yourself.
+Well, we are to be friends, are we not, Mr. Carew? And you will come
+to see me sometimes; and if you ever have any little troubles which can
+be lightened by a woman's sympathy, you will come and confide them to
+me, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be very sweet to be allowed to confide in so kind a friend,"
+said Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"My son will be home for his long leave before the end of the year, and
+I want you to make him your friend. He is very amiable," again with a
+suppressed sigh. "Come, now it is your turn to tell me something about
+yourself. This room tells you all there is to be told about me."</p>
+
+<p>"It tells me you are very fond of music."</p>
+
+<p>"I live for it. Music has been my companion and consoler all my life."</p>
+
+<p>"And I hope you will let me hear you play again some day."</p>
+
+<p>"Again? Ah, I forgot! You were in the churchyard last Sunday while I
+was playing. Did you listen?"</p>
+
+<p>"As long as you played. I was under the open window most of the time."</p>
+
+<p>"You are fond of organ music?"</p>
+
+<p>"As fond as an ignorant man may be. I know nothing of the subtleties of
+music. I have never been educated up to Wagner or Dvorak. I love the
+familiar voices—Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Gounod, Auber even, and I
+adore our English master of melody, Sullivan. Does that shock you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I will play his cantata for you some day. If you have
+nothing better to do with your time this afternoon, I should like to
+show you my garden."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be enchanted. I am enchanted already with that long straight
+walk, those walls of cypress and yew, that peacock sunning his emerald
+and sapphire plumage by the dial. In such a garden did Beatrice hide
+when Hero and her ladies talked of Benedick's passion; in such a garden
+did Jessica and Lorenzo loiter under the moonlight."</p>
+
+<p>"I see you love your Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>"As interpreted by Irving and Ellen Terry. The Lyceum was the school in
+which I learnt to love the bard. An Eton examination in Richard the
+Second only prejudiced me against him."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock was a great Shakespearian."</p>
+
+<p>They were in the garden by this time—sauntering with slow footsteps
+along the level stretch of turf on one side of the broad gravel walk.
+At the end of the cypress avenue there was a semicircular recess, shut
+in by a raised bank, and a wall of clipped yew, in which, at regular
+intervals, there were statues in dark green niches.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wornock brought the statues from Rome when he was a young man.
+The gardens were laid out by his grandfather nearly a century ago,"
+explained Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>Allan noticed that she spoke of her husband generally as "Mr. Wornock."</p>
+
+<p>"That amphitheatre reminds me a little of the Boboli gardens," said
+Allan; "but there is a peacefulness about this solitude which no public
+garden can have."</p>
+
+<p>Three peacocks were trailing their plumage on the long lawns between
+the house and the amphitheatre, and one less gorgeous but more
+ethereal, a bird of dazzling whiteness, was perched, with outspread
+tail, on an angle of the cypress wall.</p>
+
+<p>The lady and her companion strolled to the end of the lawn, and crossed
+the amphitheatre to a stone temple, open on the side fronting the
+south-western sun, and spacious enough to accommodate a dozen people.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had a garden-play, how delightfully this temple would serve for
+a central point in your stage," said Allan, admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"People have asked me to lend them the gardens for a play—'Twelfth
+Night,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing;' but I have always said no. I
+should hate to see a crowd in this dear old garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet there are people who would think such a place as this created on
+purpose for garden-parties, and who would desire nothing better than a
+crowd of smart people."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock shuddered at the mention of smart people.</p>
+
+<p>"A party of that kind would be misery for me," she said. "And now
+tell me about yourself, and your relations. Mrs. Mornington told me
+that your father and mother are both living, and that you inherited
+Beechhurst from your uncle. I remember seeing Admiral Darnleigh years
+and years ago, when everything at Discombe and at Matcham was new to
+me. It must be sad for your mother to lose you from her own home."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother is not given to sadness," Allan answered, smiling. "She is
+the best and kindest of mothers, and I know she loves me as dearly as
+any son need desire; but she is quite resigned to my having my own home
+and my own interests. She would argue, perhaps, that were I to marry I
+must have a house of my own, and that my establishment at Beechhurst is
+only a little premature."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very much attached to your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much—and to my father."</p>
+
+<p>"Your tone as you say those words tell me that your father is the
+dearer of the two."</p>
+
+<p>"You have a quick ear for shades of meaning, Mrs. Wornock."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray do not think me impertinent. I am not questioning you out of
+idle curiosity. If we are to be friends in the future, I must know and
+understand something of your life and your mind. But perhaps I bore
+you—perhaps you think me both eccentric and impertinent."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I am deeply touched that you should offer to be
+my friend. Be assured I have no reserve, and am willing—possibly too
+willing—to talk of myself and my own people. I have no dark corners
+in my life. My history is all open country—an uninteresting landscape
+enough. But there is no difficult going—there are no bogs or risky
+bits over which the inquiring spirit need skim lightly. Your ear did
+not deceive you, just now. Fondly as I love my mother, I will freely
+confess that the bond that draws me to my father is the stronger
+bond. In the parrot jargon of the day, his is the more interesting
+'personality.' He is a man of powerful intellect, whose mind has
+done nothing for the good of the world—who will die unhonoured and
+unremembered except by his familiar friends. There is one question I
+have asked myself about him ever since I was old enough to think—a
+question which I first asked myself when I began to read classics
+with him in my school vacations, and which I had not finished asking
+myself when his untiring help had enabled me to take a first-class in
+the Honour School. To me it has always been a mystery that a man of
+wide attainments and financial independence should have been utterly
+destitute of ambition. My father was a young man when he married; he is
+still in the prime of life; and for six and twenty years he has been
+content to vegetate in Suffolk, and has regarded his annual visit to
+London as more of an affliction than a relief. It is as if the hands
+of life's clock had stopped in the golden noon of youth. I have told
+myself again and again that my father's life must have been shadowed
+by some great sorrow before his marriage, young as he was when he
+married."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock listened intently, her head slightly bent, her clasped
+hands resting on her knee, her sensitive lips slightly parted.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that your father married young," she said, after a brief
+silence, in which she seemed to be thinking over his words. "What do
+you call young in such a case?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father was not three and twenty when he married—two years younger
+than I am at this present hour—and yet the idea of matrimony has
+never shaped itself in my mind. But you must not infer from anything
+I have said that my father's has been an unhappy marriage. On the
+contrary, he is devoted to my mother, and she to him. I cannot imagine
+a better assorted couple. Each supplies the qualities wanting in the
+other. She is all movement, impulse, and spontaneousness. He is calm
+and meditative, with depths of thought and feeling which no one has
+sounded. They are perfectly happy as husband and wife. But there is
+a shade of melancholy that steals over my father in quiet, unoccupied
+hours, which indicates a sorrow or a disappointment in the past. I have
+taken it to mean an unhappy love-affair. I may be utterly wrong, and
+the shadow may be cast by a disappointed ambition. It is not unlikely
+that a man of powerful intellect and lymphatic temperament should feel
+that he had wasted opportunities, and failed in life. It is quite easy
+to imagine ambition without the energy to achieve."</p>
+
+<p>She made no comment upon this, but Allan could see in her eager
+countenance that she was intensely interested.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your mother beautiful?" she asked timidly.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a foolish and futile question; and it jarred upon that
+serious thought of his parents which had been inspired by her previous
+questioning. But, after all, it was a natural question for a woman to
+ask, and he smiled as he answered—</p>
+
+<p>"No, my mother is not beautiful. I am not guilty of treason as a son
+if I confess that she is plain, since she herself would be the first
+to take offence at any sophistication of the truth. She has never
+set up for being other than she is. She has a fine countenance and
+a fine figure, straight as a dart, with a waist which a girl might
+acknowledge without a blush. She dresses with admirable taste, and
+always looks well, after her own fashion, exclusive of beautiful
+features or brilliant colouring. She is what women call stylish, and
+men distinguished. I am as proud as I am fond of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Will she come to see you in your new home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most assuredly my mother will pay me a visit before the summer is
+over, and I shall be charmed to bring you and her together."</p>
+
+<p>"And your father? Will not he come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. He is very difficult to move. He is like the lichen
+on the old stone walls at home. He takes no particular interest in
+chairs and tables; he would care not a fig for my new surroundings.
+Besides, he saw Beechhurst years ago, when the Admiral was building and
+improving. He has no curiosity to bring him here; and as for his son,
+he knows he has only to want me for me to be at his side."</p>
+
+<p>After this there came a silence. Certainly Mrs. Wornock was not gifted
+as a conversationalist. She sat looking straight before her at the long
+perspective of lawn and cypress, broad gravel walk, and narrow grass
+plots, all verging to a point at which the old house rose square and
+grey, crowned with cupola and bell. The peacocks strutted slowly along
+the narrow lawn. The waters of a fountain flashed in the warm sunlight.
+It was a garden that recalled Tivoli, or that old grave garden of the
+Vatican, with its long level walks and prim flower-beds, in which
+the Holy Father takes his restricted airing. In the Vatican pleasure
+grounds there are peacocks and clipped hedges, and smooth greensward,
+and formal cypress avenues, and quaint arbours; but the hum of Rome,
+the echoes of the Papal Barrack, the rush of the Tiber are near; and
+not even in that antique garden can there be this summer silence,
+profound as in the enchanted isle where it seemeth always afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me more about yourself, your childhood, your youth," Mrs. Wornock
+asked suddenly, with an air of agitated impatience which took Allan by
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington had prepared him for a certain eccentricity in the
+lonely lady of Discombe; but the strangeness of her manner was even
+more than he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>"There is very little to tell about my own life," he said. "I have
+lived at home for the most part, except when I was at Eton and
+Cambridge. My father helped me in all my studies. I never had any other
+tutor except at the University. My home life was of the quietest.
+Fendyke is twenty miles from Cambridge, but it seems at the end of the
+world. The single line of rail that leads to it comes to a full stop.
+The terminus stands in the midst of a Dutch landscape—level fields
+divided by shallow dykes, a river so straight that it might as well
+be a canal, water-mills, pollarded willows, broad clean roads, and
+fine old Norman churches large enough for a city, no Sunday trains,
+and not many on lawful days. A neat little town, with decent shops,
+and comfortable inns, and a market which only awakens from a Pompeian
+slumber for an hour or two on Fridays. A land of rest and plenty,
+picturesque cottages and trim cottage gardens, an air of prosperity
+which I believe is real. So much for our town and surroundings. For the
+family mansion picture to yourself a long low house, built partly of
+brick and partly of wood, with chimney-stacks that contain brick enough
+for the building of respectable houses, and which have defied the gales
+sweeping down from the Ural mountains—there is nothing, mark you,
+between Fendyke and the Urals—ever since Queen Elizabeth was young
+enough to pace a pavan."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be fond of an old house like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am very fond of Fendyke. I even love the surrounding country,
+though I can but wish Nature had not ironed the landscape with her
+mammoth iron. She might have left us a few creases, a wrinkled meadow
+here and there."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard that people born in Norfolk and Suffolk have an innate
+antipathy to hills."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be. Indeed, I have noticed in the East Anglians a kind of
+stubborn pride in the flatness of their soil. But I have not that
+perverted pride in ugliness, since I was not born in Suffolk."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"No. My father lived in Sussex—at Hayward's Heath—at the time of his
+marriage, and for half a dozen years after my birth. Fendyke came to
+him from his maternal grandfather, who left the estate to his daughter
+and heiress, and to her son after her, who was to assume the name and
+arms of Carew when he succeeded to the property. My father's name was
+Beresford."</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply—no further questioning on Mrs. Wornock's part—and
+for some minutes Allan abandoned himself to the dreamy silence of the
+scene, content to watch the peacocks on the lawn, and to listen to the
+splash of the fountains.</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly the silence surprised him, and he turned to look at
+his companion. Her head had fallen back against the wall of the
+summer-house, her eyes were closed, and her face was white as death.
+She was in a dead faint; and they were at least a quarter of a mile
+from the house.</p>
+
+<p>The situation was awkward for Allan, though there was nothing in so
+simple a matter as a fainting-fit to surprise him. He knew that there
+are women who faint at the smallest provocation, in a crowded room, in
+the sunshine, at church, anywhere. Here the sunshine was perhaps to
+blame; that delicious pure sunlight in which he had been basking.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a long Australian cooe, long enough and loud enough to have
+brought help in the wilderness, and assuredly calculated to attract
+some gardener at work within call. Then he bethought himself of the
+fountain, and ran to get some water in his hat.</p>
+
+<p>At the first dash of water, Mrs. Wornock opened her eyes, with a little
+sobbing sigh, and looked at him as if wondering who and what he was.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew he would have answered my prayer," she murmured brokenly,
+"spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a worse kind of faint than Allan had supposed, for now her
+mind was wandering.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear the sun was too warm for you," he said, standing before her
+in painful embarrassment, half expecting some indication of absolute
+lunacy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, it was the sun," she answered nervously. "The glare is so
+strong this afternoon; and this summer-house is shadeless. I must go
+back to the house. It was very foolish of me to faint. I am so sorry. I
+hope you won't consider me a very silly person."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I have never heard that a fainting-fit on a warm
+summer afternoon is a sign of silliness."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it is a thing one cannot help, can one? But it must have been so
+unpleasant for you. Ah, here is one of the gardeners," as a man came
+hurrying towards her, with a scared countenance. "There is nothing the
+matter, Henry. I am quite well now, Mr. Carew, and I can walk back to
+the house. And so your father's original name was Beresford. Does he
+call himself Beresford-Carew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in all important documents; but he is a man too careless of forms
+to trouble himself much about the first name; and it has fallen into
+disuse for the most part, Carew being the name of honour in our county.
+He is known at Fendyke and in the neighbourhood simply as Squire Carew.
+I sign myself Beresford-Carew sometimes, when I want to distinguish
+myself from the numerous clan of Carews in Devonshire and elsewhere.
+Will you take my arm to go back to the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes"—timidly and faintly—"I shall be very glad of your support."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand through his arm, and walked slowly and silently by his
+side. Returning consciousness had brought back very little colour to
+her face. It had still an almost unearthly pallor. She walked the whole
+distance without uttering a word. A faint sigh fluttered her lips two
+or three times during that slow promenade, and on her drooping lashes
+Allan saw the glitter of a tear. For some reason or other she was
+deeply moved; or it might be that her fainting-fits always took this
+emotional form. He saw her safely seated on her own sofa, with footman
+and maid in attendance upon her, before he took a brief adieu.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come and see me again, I hope," she said, with a faint smile,
+as she gave him her hand at parting.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be most happy," he murmured, doubtful within himself whether
+he would ever hazard a repetition of this agitating finale to an
+afternoon call.</p>
+
+<p>To be interrogated about himself and his surroundings, with an eager
+curiosity which was certainly startling, and then to find himself
+<i>tête-à-tête</i> with an unconscious fellow-creature was an ordeal
+that few young men would care to repeat.</p>
+
+<p>When he described his visit next day to Mrs. Mornington, she only
+shrugged her shoulders and said decisively, "Hysteria! Too much money,
+too much leisure, and no respectable connections. If there is one woman
+I pity more than another that woman is Mrs. Wornock."</p>
+
+<p>"If ever I call on her again it must be with you or with my mother,"
+said Allan. "I won't face her alone."</p>
+
+<p>Although he came to this decision about the lady, he found himself not
+the less disposed to dwell upon her image during the days and weeks
+that followed his afternoon at Discombe; and more than once he asked
+himself whether there might not be some more cogent reason for her
+fainting-fit than the sun's warmth or the sun's glare—whether that
+deep interest which she had evinced in all he could tell her of home
+and parents might not be founded on something more serious than an idle
+woman's idle curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be that he had lighted upon some trace of that mystery in his
+father's past life—that mystery which, without tangible evidence, he
+had always imagined as the key-note to his father's character in later
+years? She had fainted immediately upon his telling her his father's
+former name. Was that a mere coincidence of time, or was the name the
+cause of the fainting-fit?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Lady Emily arrived on a visit to her son while he was pondering
+this unanswerable question about Mrs. Wornock, and he caught at the
+opportunity. He hardly allowed his mother time to inspect his house and
+gardens, and the small farm which supplied his larder, and to give her
+opinion upon the furnishing of the rooms and the arrangement of the
+flower-beds and lawns, before he suggested taking her to call upon his
+neighbour at Discombe.</p>
+
+<p>"But why, Allan? why should I call upon this Mrs. Wornock, when I am a
+stranger in the land?" argued his mother. "If there is any question of
+calling, it is Mrs. Wornock who must call upon me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but this lady is an exception to all rules, mother. She calls upon
+hardly anybody, and she has begged me to go and see her, and I feel a
+kind of hesitation in going alone—a second time."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped in sudden embarrassment. He did not wish to tell his mother
+about the fainting-fit, though he had described the thing freely to
+Mrs. Mornington. He had thought more seriously of the circumstance
+since that conversation, and he was inclined to attach more importance
+to it now than at that time.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you would be interested in Mrs. Wornock, mother," he urged,
+after a pause, during which Lady Emily had been pacing the room from
+window to wall with the idea of suggesting a bay to be thrown out
+where there was now only a flat French casement.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, you alarm me. I think you must be in love with this eccentric
+widow. You told me she was very rich, didn't you? It might not be a bad
+match for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not, if Mrs. Wornock had any penchant for me; and if I wanted
+a wife old enough to be my mother. Do you know that the lady has a son
+as old as I am?"</p>
+
+<p>He reddened at the thought of that son, whose likeness to Beresford
+Carew was startling enough to surprise Lady Emily, and might possibly
+occasion unpleasant suspicions. And yet accidental likenesses are so
+common in this world that it would be weak to be scared by such a
+resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>Would he be wise in taking his mother to Discombe? Perhaps not. He had
+made up his mind to take her there, wisely or foolishly. He wanted to
+bring her plain common sense to bear upon Mrs. Wornock's fantastic
+temperament.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother is the shrewdest woman I know," he told himself. "She will
+read Mrs. Wornock's character much better than I can."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was the soul of good nature, and was particularly free from
+the trammels of conventionality; so, when she found her son had the
+matter at heart, she waived all question of the caller and the called
+upon, and allowed Allan to drive her to Discombe on the afternoon after
+her arrival at Beechhurst; and the drive and the approach to the Manor
+were very agreeable to her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are really prettier hereabouts than we are in Suffolk," she said
+condescendingly; "but you have not our wide expanse of field and
+meadow, our open horizon. Those high downs have a cramping effect on
+your landscape—they narrow your outlook, and shut you in too much.
+Your sunsets must be very poor, in a broken-up country like this."</p>
+
+<p>The weather was more sultry than on Allan's previous visit. Summer had
+ripened, the roses were in bloom, and the last purple petal had fallen
+in the rhododendron jungle through which they drove to the Manor House.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock was at home. Vain for the footman to deny it, even had he
+been so minded, for the deep-toned music of the organ was pealing along
+the corridor. The chords which begin Beethoven's Funeral March for the
+Burial of a Hero crashed out, solemnly and slowly, as Lady Emily and
+her son approached the music-room; and when, at the opening of the
+door, the player stopped suddenly, the silence was more startling than
+the music had been.</p>
+
+<p>Startling, too, to see the fragile form of the player, and the
+semi-transparent hands which had produced that volume of sound.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea you were so fine a musician, Mrs. Wornock," Lady Emily
+said graciously, after the introduction had been got over, the lady of
+Discombe standing before her timidly in the broad sunlight from the
+open window, so fragile, so youthful-looking, so unlike the mistress
+of a great house, and the chief personage in a rustic parish. "My son
+was eloquent in your praise, but he forgot to tell me of your musical
+talent."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I have much talent," answered Mrs. Wornock,
+hesitatingly. "I am very fond of music—that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a great deal in that ALL. I wish my love of music—and Allan
+knows I prefer a good concert to any other form of entertainment—would
+enable me to play as you do, for then I could take the place of the
+stupidest organist in England at our parish church."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was making conversation, seeing that Mrs. Wornock's lips
+were mute and dry, as if she were absolutely speechless from fright.
+A most extraordinary woman, thought Lady Emily, shy to a degree that
+bordered on lunacy.</p>
+
+<p>The talk had all to be done by Allan and his mother, since Mrs.
+Wornock's share in it was hardly more than monosyllabic. She assented
+to everything they said—she contradicted herself over and over again
+about the weather, and about the distinguishing features of the
+surrounding country. She agreed with Lady Emily that the hills spoiled
+the landscape; she assented to Allan's protestation that the hills
+were the chief charm of the neighbourhood. She rang for tea, and when
+the servants had brought tables and tray and tea-kettle, she sat as in
+a dream for ever so long before she became conscious that the things
+were there, and that she had a duty to perform. Then she filled the
+cups with tremulous hands, and allowed Allan to help her through the
+simplest details.</p>
+
+<p>Her obvious distress strengthened Allan's suspicions. There must be
+some mystery behind all this embarrassment. Mrs. Wornock could hardly
+behave in this way to every stranger who called upon her. Of all women
+living no one was less calculated to inspire awe than Lady Emily Carew.
+Good humour was writ large upon her open countenance. The milk of human
+kindness gave softness to her speech. She was full of consideration for
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Distracted by the music of the organ, Lady Emily had not even glanced
+at the Millais portrait which faced her as she walked along the
+corridor. It was, therefore, with unmixed astonishment that she
+observed a photograph on an easel conspicuous on a distant table—a
+photograph which she took to be the likeness of her son.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you have given Mrs. Wornock your photo, Allan," she said. "That
+is more than you have done for me since you were at the University."</p>
+
+<p>"Go and look at the photo, mother, and you will see I have not been so
+wanting in filial duty."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily rose and went over to the table in the furthermost window.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I see it is another face; but there is a wonderful look of you.
+Pray who is this nice-looking young man, Mrs. Wornock? I may call him
+nice-looking with a good grace, since he is not my son. His features
+are more refined than Allan's. The modelling of the face is more
+delicate."</p>
+
+<p>"That is my son's portrait," answered Mrs. Wornock, "and it is thought
+a good likeness. He is like Mr. Carew, is he not? Almost startlingly
+like; but the resemblance is less striking in the picture than in the
+living face. It is in expression that the two faces are alike."</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to understand why you are interested in my son," said Lady
+Emily, smiling down at the face on the easel. "The two young men might
+be brothers. Pray how old is this young gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will be six and twenty in August."</p>
+
+<p>"And Allan was twenty-five last March. And is Mr. Wornock an only son,
+like my Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have only him. When he is away, I am quite alone—except for my
+organ and piano. I try sometimes to think they are both alive."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity you have no daughter! A place like this looks as if it
+wanted a daughter. But you and I are in the same desolate condition.
+Allan is all I have—and my white farm."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, why not my white farm and Allan?" said her son laughingly. "If
+you knew more of my mother, Mrs. Wornock, if you knew her in Suffolk,
+you would be very likely to think the farm first and not second in her
+dear love. Perhaps you, too, are interested in farming."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock smiled a gentle negative, and gave a glance at the triple
+keyboard yonder, which was eloquent of meaning. A glance which seemed
+to ask, "Who could waste time upon cowhouse and poultry-yard when all
+the master-spirits of harmony are offering their mysteries to the
+faithful student?"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"Well, mother, how do you like the mistress of Discombe?" asked Allan,
+as they drove homeward.</p>
+
+<p>"She is very refined—rather graceful—dreadfully shy," answered his
+mother, musingly; "and I hope you won't be angry with me, Allan, if I
+add that she seems to me half an idiot."</p>
+
+<p>"You saw her to-day at a disadvantage," said Allan, and then lapsed
+into meditative silence.</p>
+
+<p>Had he not also seen this strange woman at a disadvantage when she
+fainted at the mention of his father's name—the name his father
+had borne in youth, not the name by which he was known now? Her
+fainting-fit might have had no significance in his eyes if it had not
+followed upon her eager questioning about his father. And whatever
+suspicions had been excited by that first visit were intensified by
+Mrs. Wornock's manner in the presence of Lady Emily. Such obvious
+embarrassment—a shyness so much more marked than that with which she
+had received him on his first visit—could hardly exist without a
+deeper cause than solitary habits or nervous temperament.</p>
+
+<p>The likeness between Geoffrey Wornock and himself might have meant no
+more than the likeness between Mr. Drummond and Sir Robert Peel; but
+that likeness, taken in conjunction with Mrs. Wornock's extraordinary
+interest in his father, and most noticeable embarrassment in receiving
+his mother, might mean a great deal—might mean, indeed, that the cloud
+upon his father's life was the shadow of a lifelong remorse, the dark
+memory of sin and sorrow. It might be that within the years preceding
+his marriage George Beresford had been involved in a guilty intrigue
+with Mr. Wornock's young wife.</p>
+
+<p>To believe this was to think very badly of this gentle creature, who
+used the advantages of wealth and position with such modest restraint,
+whose only delight in life was in one of the most exalted of life's
+pleasures. To believe this was to think Mrs. Wornock a false and
+ungrateful wife to a generous husband; and it was to believe George
+Beresford a vulgar seducer.</p>
+
+<p>If there is one fallacy to which the non-legal mind is more prone
+than another it is its belief in its power to estimate the value of
+circumstantial evidence. Allan Carew tried his father and Mrs. Wornock
+by the evidence of circumstances, and he found them guilty.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother shall never cross that woman's threshold again!" he decided,
+angry with himself for having taken Lady Emily to Discombe.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">MORE NEW-COMERS.</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan recalled the story which Mrs. Mornington had told him of
+Mr. Wornock's marriage, and the mysterious birth of his son and
+heir—mysterious in that it was a strange thing for an English
+gentleman with a fine estate to carry off his wife to a foreign country
+before the birth of her first child, and to remain an exile from home
+and property until his son was three years old. Mystery of some kind—a
+secret sorrow or a secret shame—must have been at the root of conduct
+so unusual; and might not that secret include the story of the young
+wife's sin?</p>
+
+<p>Allan Carew had heard of husbands so beneficent as to forgive that sin
+which to the mind of the average man lies beyond reach of pardon;
+husbands who have taken back runaway wives, and set the fallen idol
+once again in the temple of home-life; husbands who, knowing themselves
+old, ugly, and unlovable, have palliated and pardoned the passionate
+impulses of undisciplined girlhood, the sin in which there has been
+more of romantic folly than of profligate inclination; husbands who
+have asked themselves whether <i>they</i> were not the darker sinners
+in having possessed themselves of creatures so lovely and so frail, so
+unadapted for a passionless, workaday union with grey hairs and old
+age. It might be, Allan thought, that Mr. Wornock was one of these,
+and that he had conveyed his young wife away from the scene of her sin
+and the influence of her betrayer, and had hidden her shame and his
+dishonour in that quiet valley among the snow-peaks and the glaciers.
+But if Mrs. Wornock had so sinned in the early days of her married life
+there must be people at Matcham who would remember the lover's presence
+at Discombe, even although his real character had been undiscovered by
+the searching eyes of village censors.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily went back to her husband and her farm after a week at
+Beechhurst—a pleasant and busy week, in which the mother's experience
+and good sense had been brought to bear upon all the details of the
+son's household and domestic possessions—plate and linen, glass and
+china, books and ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>"If it were not for your smoking-room, or drawing-room, or whatever you
+may be pleased to call it, your house would be obviously Philistine,"
+said Lady Emily; "but that is a really fine room, and there are some
+pretty things in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Some pretty things? Yes, there are a few," answered Allan, laughing
+at her tone of patronage. "I was offered five hundred pounds for that
+piece of tapestry which hangs in front of the conservatory doors by
+a man who thinks himself a judge of such things. The room is full of
+treasures from the Summer Palace."</p>
+
+<p>"My brother must have looted in a most audacious manner!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he bought the things afterwards—mostly from the French sailors,
+who were licensed to steal or destroy. I believe the bronzes, and
+porcelain, and ivories, and embroideries that the admiral bought for
+a few hundreds are worth as many thousands. But there they are, and I
+must be very hard up before I disturb them."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Allan called upon Mrs. Mornington the day after his mother's departure,
+and was lucky enough to find that lady at home and alone.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting in her verandah, sewing, with a large basket of plain
+work on the ground beside her, and her scissors and other implements on
+a wicker-table in front of her. She had a trellis covered with climbing
+roses for a background, and a sunny lawn, a sunk fence, and a paddock
+dotted with Jersey cows for her outlook.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm at work for the Guild," she said, apologetically, after shaking
+hands with Allan, and she went on herring-boning a flannel waistcoat;
+a waistcoat of that stout flannel which is supposed to have a kind of
+affinity with the skin of the agricultural labourer, although it can be
+worn comfortably by no other class.</p>
+
+<p>Allan knew nothing about the Guild, but was accustomed to see Mrs.
+Mornington's superfluous energy expending itself in some kind of
+needlework. He seated himself in the comfortable armchair to which she
+invited him, and prepared himself for a long talk.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he could not begin at once upon the subject of Mrs. Wornock.
+That would have to be introduced casually. He talked about his mother,
+and her regret at not having been able to stay till the following week,
+when Mrs. Mornington was to give a small dance, to which Lady Emily and
+her son had been invited.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't be as sorry as I am, or she'd have managed to stay," replied
+Mrs. Mornington, in her blunt style.</p>
+
+<p>"She has my father to think of. She is never long away from him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't he come too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope to get him for a week or so before the summer is over. He
+promises to come and look at my surroundings; but he is very much of a
+recluse. He lives in his library."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say he will contrive to come when Philip and I are away on our
+August holiday. We always take a month on the Continent just to keep
+us in touch with the outside world, and to remind us that the earth
+doesn't end on the other side of Salisbury. Do you know why I am giving
+this dance?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure it is from a conscientious motive—to pay your debts. I find
+that most ladies' hospitalities are founded upon a system of exchange
+and barter, 'cutlet for cutlet,' as Lady Londonderry called it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very rude of you to say that—as if women had no real
+hospitality! No, Mr. Carew, I owe no one anything in the dancing line;
+and I am not making one evening party pay for a whole year's dinners.
+I have known that done, I assure you. No, I am turning my house out
+of windows, and making poor Phil utterly miserable, for the sake of a
+certain young half-French niece of mine, who is coming to live in this
+neighbourhood with my brother Bob, her thoroughly English father."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean General Vincent? Some one told me that he was related to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Related? I should think he was related to me! He used to pull my
+hair—we wore long plaits in those days, don't you know—with a
+ferocity only possible in an elder brother. Poor dear old Bob! I am
+monstrously pleased at the idea of having him near me in our old
+age. He has been tossed and beaten about the world for the last
+thirty years, at home and abroad, and now he is to enjoy enforced
+leisure, and the noble income which our country bestows upon a retired
+lieutenant-general. He has a little money of his own, fortunately, and
+a little more from his wife; so he will be able to live comfortably at
+Marsh House—in a very quiet, unpretentious way, <i>bien entendu</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"He is a widower, I conclude?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; his pretty French wife died fifteen years ago. He met her in
+Canada, but she was a Parisian <i>pur sang</i>, and of a very good
+family. She had gone to Montreal with her mother, to visit some
+relations—uncle, cousin, or what-not. It was a very happy marriage,
+and Suzette is a very charming girl. She is a Papist"—with a faint
+sigh—"which, of course, is a pity. But even in spite of that, she is a
+very sweet girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Worthy that you should turn your house out of window in order to
+introduce her to the neighbourhood in the pleasantest possible manner,"
+said Allan. "My greenhouse is only a bachelor's idea of glass, but any
+flowers there shall be sent to add to your decorations—at least, if
+you don't despise such poor aid."</p>
+
+<p>"How truly nice of you! Every flower will be useful. I want to make the
+rooms pretty, since nothing can make them spacious. Ah, if I had only
+the Manor House now—those noble rooms of which Mrs. Wornock makes so
+little use!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan seized his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Wornock is the most singular woman I ever met!" he exclaimed
+quickly, lest Mrs. Mornington should diverge to another subject. "I
+took my mother to call upon her——"</p>
+
+<p>"Had she called upon Lady Emily?" asked Mrs. Mornington, surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"No. It was altogether out of order, my mother told me; but I rather
+insisted upon her going to Discombe. I wanted her to see Mrs. Wornock;
+and I must say that lady's manner was calculated to excite wonder
+rather than admiration. I never saw a woman of mature years receive
+a visitor so awkwardly. Her shyness would have been remarkable in a
+bread-and-butter miss just escaped from the schoolroom."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so like Mrs. Wornock. The ways of society are a foreign
+language to her. Had you taken her a German organist with long hair,
+or a spiritualist, or an esoteric Buddhist, she would have received him
+with open arms—she would have been <i>simpatica</i> to the highest
+degree, and would have impressed him with the idea of a sensitive
+nature and a temperament akin to genius, while I dare say Lady Emily
+thought her a fool."</p>
+
+<p>"She certainly did not give the lady credit for superior intelligence."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. She has not even average intelligence in the affairs
+of social life. She has lived all these years at Discombe—she
+might be in touch with some of the best people in the county—and
+she has learnt nothing, except to play the organ. I believe she has
+toiled unremittingly at <i>that</i>," concluded Mrs. Mornington,
+contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"I have half forgotten what you told me about her in the first
+instance. I think you spoke of a mystery in her early life."</p>
+
+<p>"The only mystery was that old Wornock should have married her, and
+that he should have told us nothing about her belongings. Had she been
+a lady, we must have heard something about her people in the last five
+and twenty years; and yet there is a refinement about her which makes
+me think she could not have sprung from the gutter."</p>
+
+<p>"The gutter! No, indeed! She has an air of exceptional refinement.
+I should take her to be the offspring of an effete race—a
+crystallization. In her early married life, when she and Mr. Wornock
+were living together at Discombe, she had friends, I presume. They must
+have had visitors occasionally—a house-party?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not they. You must remember that it was not more than six months after
+Mr. Wornock brought his young wife home when he took her away again——"</p>
+
+<p>"But in the interim," interrupted Allan, eagerly, "they must have had
+visitors in the house! He would be proud to exhibit his pretty young
+wife. There must have been men-friends of his coming and going during
+that time."</p>
+
+<p>"I think not. He was a dry chip; and I don't think he had made many
+friends in the forty years he had reigned at Discombe. I never heard
+of any one staying in the house, either at that time or previously.
+He was hospitable in a casual way to the neighbourhood while he was
+a bachelor—gave a hunt breakfast every winter, and a good many
+dinners—but he was not a man to make friends. He was an ardent
+politician and an ardent Radical, and would have quarrelled with any
+one who wasn't of his way of thinking."</p>
+
+<p>A blank here. No hint of a too-frequent visitor, of one figure standing
+out against the quiet background of home-life, of one person whose
+coming and going had been marked enough to attract attention.</p>
+
+<p>Allan breathed more freely. It was no prurient curiosity which had led
+him to pry into the secrets of the past. He wanted to know the truth;
+yet it would have been agony to him to discover anything that would
+lessen his reverent admiration for his father, or his belief in his
+father's honour and high principle. Sitting idle in the sunshine beside
+Mrs. Mornington, he tried to think that there might be nothing more
+than eccentricity in Mrs. Wornock's conduct, no indication of a dark
+secret in her fainting-fit, or in her embarrassed manner during his
+mother's visit.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington went back to the subject of her dance—her niece, her
+brother, his income, his establishment, and the how much or how little
+he could afford to spend. She lamented the dearth of dancing men.</p>
+
+<p>"Both my boys are away," she said, "Luke with his regiment in Burmah,
+Fred in London. <i>He</i> might run down for the evening if he liked;
+but you know what young men are. Well, perhaps you are more civilized
+than Frederick. He pretends to hate dancing-parties; yet, when we spent
+a winter at Cannes, he was at a ball nearly every night. He despises my
+poor little dance."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure your little dance will be delightful."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it will not be dull. I am straining every nerve to make it a
+success. I shall have the house full of nice young people, and I shall
+have decent music. Only four men, but they will be very good men, and
+four will make quite enough noise in my poor little rooms."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington's "poor little rooms" included a drawing-room thirty
+feet long, opening into a spacious conservatory. There was a wide bay
+at the end of the room which would accommodate the grand piano and
+the four musicians. Allan had to make a tour of inspection with the
+mistress of the house before he left, and to express his approval of
+her arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be a comfortable old-fashioned sit-down supper," she said
+finally. "I have asked a good many middle-aged people, and there will
+be nothing for <i>them</i> to do but eat."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">LIKE THE MOTH TO THE FLAME.</p>
+
+
+<p>A small dance in a bright airy country house on a balmy summer evening
+is about as pleasant a form of entertainment as can be offered to the
+youthful mind not satiated by metropolitan entertainments, by balls
+in Park Lane, where the flowers alone cost the price of an elderly
+spinster's annuity, Bachelors' balls, and Guards' balls, American balls
+in Carlton Gardens, patrician balls in grand old London houses, built
+in the days when rank was as much apart from the herd and the newly
+rich as royalty; when rank and royalty moved hand-in-hand on a plateau
+of privilege and splendour as high above the commonality as Madrid is
+above the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Matcham, which gave itself the airs common to all village communities,
+pretended to make very light of Mrs. Mornington's dance; a summer
+dance, when everybody worth meeting was, or ought to be, in London.
+Happily for Mrs. Mornington, the inhabitants of Matcham were a
+stay-at-home race—who had neither money nor enterprise for much
+gadding. To go to Swanage or Budleigh Salterton for a month or so while
+the leaves were falling was the boldest flight that Matcham people
+cared about.</p>
+
+<p>There was always so much to do at home—golf, tennis, shooting,
+hunting, falconry, fishing for the enthusiasts of rod and line, and
+one's garden and stable all the year round, needing the eye of master
+and mistress. Except for the absence of the great shipbuilder's family,
+at Hillerby Height, three miles on the other side of Salisbury, the
+circle of Matcham society was complete, and the answers to Mrs.
+Mornington's cards were all acceptances.</p>
+
+<p>Allan went cheerfully enough to the party, but he did not go very
+early, and he had something of the feeling which most young men
+entertain, or affect, about dances, the feeling that he was sacrificing
+himself at the shrine of friendship. He danced well, and he did not
+dislike dancing—liked it, indeed, when blest with a good partner; but
+it is not often that a young man can escape the chances of partners
+that are not altogether good, and Allan felt very doubtful as to the
+dancing capacities of Matcham. Those healthy, out-of-door young women,
+who went to about half a dozen dances in a year, would hardly waltz
+well enough to make waltzing anything but toil and weariness.</p>
+
+<p>He approached the Grove in that state of placid indifference with
+which a man generally goes to meet his destiny. He looks back in the
+after-time, and remembers that equable frame of mind, hoping nothing,
+expecting nothing, content with his lot in life, and in no wise eager
+to question or forestall fate—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">"Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Finem di dederint."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Grove was a long, low stuccoed house, built at the beginning of
+the century, a house spread over a considerable extent of ground.
+To-night—with lights and flowers, and all the doors and windows
+open to the summer gloom, and lace draperies where doors had been,
+and white-gowned girls moving to and fro, and the sound of a Strauss
+waltz mixing with the voices of the idlers sitting in the hall—Mrs.
+Mornington's house was as pretty as a fairy palace, and as much unlike
+itself in its workaday guise.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington, in black lace and diamonds, with a black ostrich fan,
+loomed with commanding bulk on the threshold of the dancing-room. She
+wanted no steward, no master of the ceremonies to help her. Alone she
+did it! Mr. Mornington walked about and pretended to be useful; but it
+was Mrs. Mornington who did everything. She received the guests, she
+introduced the few strange young men to the many local young ladies. As
+for the local young men, whom she had seen grow up from sailor suits
+and mud-pies to pink coats which marked them members of the South Sarum
+Hunt, her dominion over these was absolute. She drove them about with
+threatening movements of her large black fan. She would not allow them
+rest or respite, would not let them hang together in corners to discuss
+the hunters they were summering, or the hunters they were thinking of
+buying, or the probable changes in the management of the kennels, or
+any other subject dear to the minds of rustic youth.</p>
+
+<p>"You have come here to dance, Billy Walcott, and not to talk of those
+wretched old screws of yours," said Mrs. Mornington. "You can have
+that all out in the saddle-room to-morrow when you are smoking with
+your grooms. Let me look at your programme, Sidney. Not half full, I
+declare. Now go over to Miss Rycroft this instant, and engage her for
+the next waltz."</p>
+
+<p>"Come now, Mrs. Mornington, that's rather too rough on me. A man mayn't
+marry his grandmother; and surely there's some kind of law to forbid
+his dancing with a woman who looks like his great-aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Sidney, love, to oblige me. The dear old thing has gone to the expense
+of a new frock——"</p>
+
+<p>"She might have bought a little more stuff while she was about it,"
+murmured the youth.</p>
+
+<p>"On purpose for my dance, and <i>somebody</i> must give her a waltz.
+Come, boys, who shall it be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go into the garden and toss up," said Sidney Heathfield; but
+the other youths protested that they were engaged for every dance, and
+Sidney, who had come late, and whose programme was only half full, had
+to submit.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do it, Mrs. Mornington," he said, with serio-comic resignation,
+"on condition you get me a dance with Miss Vincent afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"If I do, she will have to cheat somebody else. Her programme was
+full a quarter of an hour after she came into the room. My niece is a
+success."</p>
+
+<p>Young Heathfield made his way to a distant bench, where an elderly
+young lady of expansive figure, set off by a pink-gauze frock, had been
+sitting for an hour and a half, smiling blandly upon her friends and
+acquaintance, with a growing sense of despair.</p>
+
+<p>What had come over the young men of the present generation, when good
+dancers were allowed to sit partnerless and forlorn? It all came of the
+absence of men of standing and mature age at evening parties. Sensible
+men were so disgusted by the slang and boldness of chits just escaped
+from the schoolroom that they held themselves aloof, and ball-rooms
+were given over to boys and girls, and to romping galops and kitchen
+lancers.</p>
+
+<p>Here was one sensible boy at least, thought poor Miss Rycroft, as
+Sidney Heathfield, tall, slim, studiously correct, stood looking
+solemnly down upon her, asking for the next waltz. Little did Miss
+Rycroft dream of the pressure which had been put upon the youth by
+yonder matron, whose voice was now heard loud and lively on the other
+side of the lace curtains.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington was talking to Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"How horribly late you are, Mr. Carew. You don't deserve to find one
+nice girl disengaged."</p>
+
+<p>"Even if I don't, I know one nice woman with whom I would as soon sit
+and talk common sense as dance with the prettiest girl in Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean me," said Mrs. Mornington, "there will be no commonsense
+talk for you and me to-night. I have all these young men to keep in
+order. Now, Billy," suddenly attacking Mr. Walcott, who was talking
+mysteriously to a bosom friend about some one or something that was
+seven off, with capped hocks, but a splendid lepper, "Billy, haven't I
+told you that you were here to dance, not to talk stables? There's Miss
+Forlander, the girl from Torquay, who plays golf so well, sitting like
+a statue next Mrs. Paddington Brown."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Mornington," groaned the youth, as he strolled off, "what a
+life you lead us! I hope you don't call this hospitality."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I not at least to be introduced to Miss Vincent, the heroine of the
+evening?" asked Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"The heroine of the evening is behaving very badly," said Mrs.
+Mornington. "I don't think I'll ever give a summer dance again. I wish
+it had rained cats and dogs. Look at the dancing-room, half empty.
+Those young people are all meandering about the garden, picking my
+finest roses, I dare say, just to tear them to pieces in the game of
+'he loves me, loves me not.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What better use could be made of a garden and roses? As long as you
+have only the true lovers, and no Mephistopheles or Martha, your garden
+is another Eden. But I must insist upon being introduced to Miss
+Vincent before the evening is over."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do my best," said Mrs. Mornington, and then in a lower voice
+she told him that she had ordered her niece to keep a late number open
+for his name. "She is a very nice girl, and I think you are a nice
+young man, and I should like you to know each other," concluded the
+lady with her bluff straightforwardness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mornington and an elderly stranger, with iron-grey hair and
+iron-grey moustache, came across the hall at this moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, here is my brother!" cried Mrs. Mornington. "Robert, I want
+to introduce Mr. Carew to you. He is a new neighbour, but a great
+favourite of mine."</p>
+
+<p>Allan stopped in the hall for about a quarter of an hour talking to
+General Vincent and Mr. Mornington, and then he, too, was called to
+order by his hostess, and was marched into the dancing-room to be
+introduced to a Dresden-china young lady, pink and white and blue-eyed,
+like Saxony porcelain, who had been brought by somebody, and who was a
+stranger in the land.</p>
+
+<p>He waltzed with this young creature, who was pretty and daintily
+dressed, and who asked him various questions about Salisbury Cathedral
+and Stonehenge, evidently with the idea that she was adapting her
+conversation to the locality. When the dance was over, she refused
+his offer of an ice, and suggested a turn in the garden; so Allan
+found himself among the meanderers under the moonlit sky; but there
+was no plucking of roses or murmuring of "Loves me not, loves me,
+loves me not," no thought of Gretchen's impassioned love-dream as the
+Dresden-china young lady and he promenaded solemnly up and down the
+broad gravel terrace in front of the open windows, still conversing
+sagely about Salisbury Cathedral and the decoration of the Chapter
+House.</p>
+
+<p>While parading slowly up and down, Allan found his attention wandering
+every now and then from the young lady at his side to another young
+lady who passed and repassed with an elderly cavalier. A tall, slim
+young lady, with black hair and eyes, a pale brunette complexion, and
+an elegant simplicity of dress and <i>chevelure</i> which Allan at
+once recognized as Parisian. No English girl, he thought, ever had
+that air of being more plainly dressed than other girls, and yet more
+distinguished and fashionable. He had seen no frock like this girl's
+frock, but he felt assured that she was dressed in that Parisian
+fashion which is said to antedate London fashion by a twelvemonth.</p>
+
+<p>She was in white from head to foot, and her gown was made of some
+dead-white fabric which combined the solidity of satin with the soft
+suppleness of gauze. The bodice was rather short-waisted, and the young
+lady wore a broad satin belt clasped with a diamond buckle, which
+flashed with many coloured gleams in the moonlight, as she passed
+to and fro; and whereas most young women at that time displayed a
+prodigious length of arm broken only by a narrow shoulder-strap, this
+young lady wore large puffed sleeves which recalled the portraits of
+Sir Thomas Lawrence. The large puffed sleeves became common enough a
+year later, but they were unknown in Wiltshire when Mrs. Mornington
+gave her dance. The damsel's silky black hair was coiled with artistic
+simplicity at the back of the prettily shaped head, while a cloud of
+little careless curls clustered above the broad, intelligent forehead.</p>
+
+<p>She was talking gaily with her companion, Colonel Fordingbridge, a
+retired engineer, settled for some fifteen years in the outskirts of
+Matcham, and an intimate friend of Mr. Mornington's. He was telling
+her about the neighbourhood, holding it up to contempt and ridicule
+in a good-natured way which implied that, after all, it was the best
+neighbourhood in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"It suits an old fellow like me," Allan heard him say; "plenty of sport
+of a mildish order. Huntin', fishin', shootin', hawkin', and golf."</p>
+
+<p>"Hawking!" cried the young lady. "Do you really mean that? I thought
+there were no more hawks left in the world. Why, it sounds like the
+Middle Ages."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I'm afraid you'll say it looks like the Middle Ages when you
+see a flight on the hills near Matcham. The members of the Falconry
+Club in this neighbourhood are not all boys."</p>
+
+<p>"But the hawks!" exclaimed she. "Where—where can one see them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you really hawks?" inquired Allan's young lady, who had exhausted
+the Chapter House, and who caught eagerly at another local subject.
+"How utterly delightful! Do you go out with them very often?"</p>
+
+<p>"I blush to admit that I have not even seen them, though I know there
+are such birds kept in the neighbourhood. I have even been invited
+to become a member of the society, and am seriously thinking about
+offering myself for election."</p>
+
+<p>Seriously thinking since two minutes ago, be it understood, for until
+he caught that speech from the unknown young lady he had hardly given
+falconry a thought.</p>
+
+<p>She and her companion had disappeared when he and his porcelain lady
+turned at the end of the terrace.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that girl who was talking about the hawks?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have been introduced to her. She is the girl of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you are missing a dance," said Allan, with grave concern.
+"We had better go in, had we not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I fear I am behaving badly to somebody; but it is so much nicer
+here than in those hot rooms."</p>
+
+<p>"Infinitely preferable; but one has a duty to one's neighbour."</p>
+
+<p>They met a youth in quest of the porcelain girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Mercer, how could you desert me so long? Our waltz is half
+over!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan breathed more freely, having handed over Miss Mercer. He made
+his way quickly to the hall where Mrs. Mornington was still on
+guard, receiving the latest comers, sending the first batch into the
+supper-room, and dictating to everybody.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not leave your elbow till you have introduced me to Miss
+Vincent," he said, planting himself near his hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't take care, you will have to give me some supper," replied
+she, "I am beginning to feel sinking. And I think it would be a good
+plan for me to sup early in order to see that things are as they should
+be."</p>
+
+<p>Allan's heart also began to sink. He knew what it meant to take a
+matron in to supper; the leisurely discussion of salmon and cutlets,
+the half-bottle of champagne, the gossip, lasting half an hour at the
+least. And while he was ministering to Mrs. Mornington what chance
+would he have of becoming acquainted with Mrs. Mornington's niece?</p>
+
+<p>"I should be proud to be so honoured; but think how many persons of
+greater age and dignity you will offend. Colonel Fordingbridge, for
+instance, such an old friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Fordingbridge has just gone in with my niece."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in that case, let me have the honour," exclaimed Allan eagerly,
+almost dragging Mrs. Mornington towards the supper-room. "I should not
+like to have offended dear old Fordingbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"We may get seats at their table, perhaps. I told Suzette to go to one
+of the cosy little tables at the end of the room."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette! what a coquettish, enchanting name! He pushed past the long
+table where two rows of people were talking, laughing, gobbling, as
+if they never dined and had hardly tasted food for a week. He pushed
+on to the end of the room where, on each side of the fireplace, now a
+mass of golden lilies and palms, Mrs. Mornington had found space for a
+small round table—a table which just held four people snugly, if not
+commodiously.</p>
+
+<p>One of these tables had been made to accommodate six; the other had
+just been left by the first batch of supper-eaters. Miss Vincent and
+Colonel Fordingbridge were standing near while a servant re-arranged
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>"That's lucky," said Mrs. Mornington. "Suzette, I want to introduce my
+friend Mr. Carew to you—Mr. Carew—Miss Vincent. And after supper he
+can take you to your father, whom I haven't seen for the last hour."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid he has gone home," replied the young lady, after
+smilingly accepting the introduction. "I heard him ask Mrs.
+Fordingbridge to take care of me if he should feel tired and be obliged
+to go home. He can't bear being up late at night."</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder, when he is out and about at daybreak!"</p>
+
+<p>"The mornings are so nice," said Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for people like you, who can do without sleep; people who have
+quicksilver in their veins."</p>
+
+<p>"One learns to be fond of the early morning in India," explained
+Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"Because every other part of the day is intolerable," said Colonel
+Fordingbridge.</p>
+
+<p>They were seated by this time, and Mrs. Mornington was sipping her
+first glass of champagne with an air of supreme content, while Allan
+helped her to lobster mayonnaise. Suzette was on his other side; and
+even while ministering to the elder lady his looks and his thoughts
+were on the younger.</p>
+
+<p>How pretty she was, and how interesting. It seemed to him that he had
+never cared for English beauty; the commonplace pinkness and whiteness,
+chubby cheeks, blunt noses, cherry lips. Those delicate features,
+that pale dark skin, those brilliant dark eyes and small white teeth
+flashing upon him now and then as she smiled, with the most bewitching
+mouth—a mouth that could express volumes in a smile, or by a pouting
+movement of the flexible lips.</p>
+
+<p>Allan and she were good friends in about five minutes. He was
+questioning and she answering. Surely, surely she did not like India as
+well as England—a life of exile—a life under torrid skies? Surely,
+surely, yes. There were a hundred things that she loved in India; those
+three years of her life in the North-West Provinces had been years in
+fairyland.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been because you were worshipped," he said. "You lived
+upon adulation. I'm afraid when a young lady is happy in India, it
+means that she is not altogether innocent of vanity."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very unkind of you to say that. How sorry you must feel when I
+tell you that the happiest half-year I spent in India was when father
+was road-making, and the only other officer in camp was a fat, married
+major—an immense major, as big as this table."</p>
+
+<p>"And you were happy! How?"</p>
+
+<p>"In all manner of ways; riding, rambling, botanizing, sketching, and
+looking after father."</p>
+
+<p>"My niece is a Miss Crichton. She has all the accomplishments," said
+Mrs. Mornington.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, aunt! that is a dreadful character to give me. It means that I do
+nothing well!"</p>
+
+<p>Allan had asked her for a dance, and there had been an examination of
+her programme, which showed only one blank.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie told me to keep that waltz," she said. "I don't know why."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. It was kept for me. I am the favoured one."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" she asked naïvely. "Why you more than any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can say? Will you call me vain if I tell you that I think I am a
+favourite with your aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him laughingly, with a glance that asked a question.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't see any reason why I should be preferred," said Allan,
+interpreting her look; "but remember there never is any reason for such
+preferences. Clever women are full of prejudices."</p>
+
+<p>He could imagine a reason which he would not have had Suzette suspect
+for worlds. Perhaps among the available young men in Mrs. Mornington's
+circle he was the best placed, with an ample income in the present, and
+an estate that must be his in the future, the best placed of all except
+the young master of Discombe Manor; and the Lord of Discombe was away,
+while he, Allan, was on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Geoffrey Wornock suggested a question. They had left the
+little table to Mrs. Mornington and Colonel Fordingbridge, who were
+able to take care of each other. Allan and Miss Vincent were going to
+the dancing-room, not by the nearest way, but through a French window
+into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we take a little turn before we go back to the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like it of all things."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are not afraid of catching cold?"</p>
+
+<p>"On such a night as this? Why, in the hills I lived out-of-doors!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have been at Matcham before, I suppose!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father and I stayed here with auntie once upon a time."</p>
+
+<p>"Long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ages ago, when I wore short petticoats and wasn't allowed late dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Heartless tyranny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't it? I didn't know what to do with myself in the long summer
+evenings. I used to roam about this garden till I was tired, and then
+I would go and look in at the dining-room window where they were all
+sitting at dessert, and auntie would wave me away, 'Go and play,
+child.' Play, indeed! Even the gardeners had gone home, and the dogs
+were shut up for the night. I was actually glad when it was nine
+o'clock and bedtime."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor victim of middle-aged egotism."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear auntie! She is so good! But people don't understand children.
+They forget what their own feelings were when they were little."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas, yes! A child is as great a mystery to me to-day as if I had been
+born at one and twenty. I can't even understand or interest myself in
+a lad of fifteen. He seems such an incongruous, unnecessary creature,
+stupid, lumbering, in everybody's way. I can't realize the fact that he
+will ever get any better. He is there, complete in himself, a being of
+a race apart. I should feel insulted if any one were to tell me I had
+ever been like him."</p>
+
+<p>"How true that is!" assented Suzette, gaily. "I have felt just the same
+about girls. I only began to wear my hair in a knot three years ago,
+and yet there seems hardly one point of union between me and a girl
+with her hair down her back. I have got beyond her, as somebody says.
+How sad that one should always be getting beyond things! Father detests
+India—talks only of the climate—while to me it was all enchantment.
+Perhaps if I were to go back to the East, a few years hence, I should
+hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely. Going back is always a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing exalted or out of the common in their talk, but at
+least there was sympathy in it all, and they were telling each other
+their thoughts as freely as if they had been friends of long years. It
+was very different from being obliged to talk of Salisbury Cathedral,
+and theorize on the history of Stonehenge. And then there was the
+glamour of the garden and the moonlight; the mysterious light and shade
+of shrubbery walks; the blackness of the cedars that spread a deeper
+dark across the lawn. Mrs. Mornington had taken care to choose a night
+when the midsummer moon should be at the full, and she had abstained
+from cockneyfying the garden with artificial light, from those fairy
+lamps or Chinese lanterns which are well enough within the narrow
+limits of a suburban garden, but which could only vulgarize grounds
+that had something of forestial beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you are almost a stranger to Matcham, Miss Vincent," said
+Allan, after the first brief pause in their talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is such a pleasure to meet some one who does not know
+Geoffrey Wornock."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray who is Geoffrey Wornock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, how delightful, how refreshing it is to hear that question! Miss
+Vincent, I am your devoted friend from this moment. Your friend, did I
+say? I am your slave—command my allegiance in everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Please be tranquil. What does it all mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, forgive me! Know then that hitherto everybody I have met in this
+place has greeted me by an expression of surprise at my resemblance
+to one Geoffrey Wornock—happily now absent with his regiment in the
+East. Nobody has taken any interest in me except on the score of
+this likeness to the absent Wornock. My face has been criticized, my
+features descanted upon one by one in my hearing. I have been informed
+that it is in this or that feature, in this or that expression, the
+likeness consists, while I naturally don't care twopence about the
+likeness, or about Wornock. And to meet some one who doesn't know
+my double, who will accept me for what I am individually!—oh, Miss
+Vincent, we ought to be friends. Say that we may be friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't rush on in such a headlong fashion. You talk like the
+girls at the convent, who wanted me to swear eternal friendship in the
+first half-hour; and perhaps turned out to be very disagreeable girls
+when one came to know them."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I shall not turn out disagreeable."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not mean to be rude; but friendship is a serious thing. At
+present I have no friend except father, and two girls with whom I have
+kept up a correspondence since I left the Sacré Cœur. One lives at
+Bournemouth and the other in Paris, so our friendship is dependent on
+the post. I think we ought to go back to the dancing-room now. I have
+to report myself to Mrs. Fordingbridge, and not to keep her later than
+she may wish to stay."</p>
+
+<p>Allan felt that he had been talking like a fool; that he had presumed
+on the young lady's unconventional manner. She had talked to him
+brightly and unrestrainedly; and he had been pushing and impertinent.
+The moonlight, the garden, the pleasure of talking to a bright
+vivacious girl had made him forget the respect due to the acquaintance
+of an hour.</p>
+
+<p>He was silent on the way back to the ballroom, silent and abashed; but
+five minutes afterwards he was waltzing with Suzette, who was assuredly
+the best waltzer of all that evening's partners, and he felt that he
+was treading on air.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"O THE RARE SPRING-TIME!"</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan called at the Grove two days after the dance—called at the
+friendly hour when there was a certainty of afternoon tea, if Mrs.
+Mornington were at home; and when he thought it likely that Miss
+Vincent would be with her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"She will almost live at the Grove," he thought, as he walked towards
+that comfortable mansion, which was nearly a mile from Beechhurst.
+"Marsh House is so near. There is a path across the meadows by which
+she can walk in dry weather. A girl living alone with her father will
+naturally turn to her aunt for companionship, will take counsel with
+her upon all household affairs, and will run in and out every day."</p>
+
+<p>It was a disappointment, after having made up his mind in this way, to
+see no sign of Suzette's presence in the drawing-room at the Grove.
+Mrs. Mornington was sitting in the verandah with her inevitable
+work-basket, just as he had found her a fortnight before, when her
+brother's advent at Marsh House and the dance at the Grove were still
+in the future.</p>
+
+<p>She received him with her accustomed cordiality, but she did not ask
+him what he thought of her niece, though he was dying to be questioned.
+An unwonted shyness prevented his beginning the subject. He sat meekly
+sustaining a conversation about the parish, the wrongs and rights of
+the last clerical squabble, till his patience could hold out no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope General Vincent likes Matcham," he said at last, not daring to
+touch nearer to the subject which absorbed his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, <i>he</i> likes the place well enough. He has lived his life,
+and can amuse himself with his poultry-yard, and will potter about
+with the hounds now and then when the cub-hunting begins. But I don't
+know how it will suit <i>her</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You think Miss Vincent would prefer a livelier place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she would prefer it. The question is, will she put up with
+this? She has never lived in an English village, though she has lived
+in out-of-the-way places in India; but, then, that was camp life,
+adventure, the sort of thing a girl likes. Her father idolizes her,
+and has taken her about everywhere with him since she left the Sacré
+Cœur at fourteen years of age. She has lived at Plymouth, at York, at
+Lucknow. She has had enough adulation to turn a wiser head than hers."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet—so far as a man may venture to judge within the compass of
+an hour—I don't think her head has been turned," said Allan, growing
+bolder.</p>
+
+<p>"That's as may be. She has a clever little way of seeming wiser
+than she is. The nuns gave her that wise air, I think. They have
+a wonderfully refining effect upon their pupils. Do you think her
+good-looking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-looking is an odious epithet to apply to such a girl. She is
+exquisitely pretty."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you admire her. Yes, it is a dainty kind of prettiness, ain't
+it? Exquisite is far too strong a word; but I think she is a little
+superior to the common run of English girls."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope she may be able to endure Matcham. After all, the country round
+is tolerably interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I believe she will put up with it for her father's sake, if he is
+happy here. Only no doubt she will miss the adulation."</p>
+
+<p>"She must not be allowed to miss it. All the young men in the
+neighbourhood will be her worshippers."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington shrugged her shoulders, pursed up her lips, and made a
+long slashing cut in a breadth of substantial calico.</p>
+
+<p>"The young men of the neighbourhood will hardly fill the gap," she
+said. "Yourself excepted, there is not an idea among them—that is
+to say, not an idea unconnected with sport. If a girl doesn't care
+to talk about hunting, shooting, or golf, there is no such thing as
+conversation for her in Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>Before Allan could reply, the drawing-room door was thrown open, and
+Mrs. Mornington rose to receive a visitor. Her seat in the verandah
+commanded the drawing-room as well as the garden, and she was always on
+the alert for arrivals. Allan rose as quickly, expecting to see Miss
+Vincent.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Wornock," announced the butler, with a grand air, perfectly
+cognizant of the lady's social importance.</p>
+
+<p>To Allan the appearance of the lady of Discombe was as startling as if
+she had lived at the other end of England. And yet Mrs. Mornington had
+told him that she and Mrs. Wornock exchanged three or four visits in
+the course of the year.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington greeted her guest with cordiality, and the two women
+came out to the verandah together. They offered a striking contrast,
+and, as types of the sex, were at the opposite poles of woman. One was
+of the world, worldly, large, strongly built, loud-voiced, resolute,
+commanding, a woman whose surplus power was accentuated by the petty
+sphere in which she lived; the other was slender and youthful in
+figure, with a marked fragility of frame, pale, ethereal, and with a
+girlish shyness of manner, not wanting in mental power, perhaps, but
+likely to be thought inferior, from the lack of self-possession and
+self-esteem. All the social advantages which surrounded Mrs. Wornock of
+Discombe had been insufficient to give her the self-confidence which
+is commonly superabundant in the humblest matron who has passed her
+thirtieth birthday.</p>
+
+<p>She gave a little start of surprise at finding Allan in the verandah,
+but the smile with which she offered him her hand was one of pleasure.
+She took the seat which Mrs. Mornington offered her—the most
+comfortable chair in the verandah—and then began to apologize for
+having taken it.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid this is your chair——"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no. Sit where you are, for goodness' sake!" cried Mrs.
+Mornington. "I never indulge myself with an easy-chair till my day's
+work is done. We are going to have our tea out here." The servants
+were bringing table and tray as she talked. "I'm very glad you came
+to see me this afternoon, for I dare say my niece will be running in
+presently—my brother Robert's daughter—and I want you to call upon
+her. I told you all about her the other day when I was at the Manor."</p>
+
+<p>"Would she like me to call, do you think? Of course I will call, if you
+wish it; but I hardly think she will care."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that she will care," replied Mrs. Mornington, busy at the
+tea-table. "She is not a great performer, but she is almost as
+enthusiastic about music as you are. She is a Roman, and those old
+Masses of which you are so fond mean more to her than they do to most
+of us."</p>
+
+<p>Allan's spirits had risen with the expectation of Miss Vincent's
+appearance. He had been right in his conclusions, after all.</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his seat, which was near enough to Mrs. Wornock's chair for
+confidential talk.</p>
+
+<p>"You have quite deserted me, Mr. Carew," she said, with gentle
+reproachfulness. "I thought you would have been to see me before now."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not want to seem intrusive."</p>
+
+<p>"You could not seem or be intrusive. You are so much more to me than
+a common friend. You remind me of the past—of my son. You would be
+almost as another son to me if you would let me think of you like that.
+If——"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke quickly, almost passionately, and her low voice had a thrill
+of feeling in it which touched him deeply. What a strange impulsive
+creature this woman was, in spite of the timidity and reserve that
+had kept her aloof from that rural society over which she might have
+reigned as a queen.</p>
+
+<p>Before Allan could reply to Mrs. Wornock's unfinished speech, there
+came a welcome diversion in the shape of a large black poodle,
+which rushed vehemently across the lawn, stood on end beside Mrs.
+Mornington's gown for a moment or two, sniffed the tea-table, wheeled
+round, and rushed off again in a diagonal line towards the point whence
+he had come.</p>
+
+<p>This sudden black appearance was followed by an appearance in lavender
+cambric, and the tall, slim form of a very elegant young woman, whose
+simple attire, as at the ball, bore the true Parisian stamp, that
+indescribable air of unlikeness to British dress, which is rather a
+negative than a positive quality.</p>
+
+<p>The brilliant dark eyes flashed a smile upon Allan, as the young lady
+allowed him to take her hand <i>à l'Anglaise</i>, after she had spoken
+to her aunt and been introduced to Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>"Your poodle is a little too bad, Suzie. He nearly knocked me and the
+tea-table clean over."</p>
+
+<p>"That is one of the aunt's innocent exaggerations," said Suzette,
+laughing. "If you know her as well as I do, Mrs. Wornock, you must
+know that she always talks in a large way. Poor Caro. He is only a
+puppy; and I think, for a puppy, his manners are perfect."</p>
+
+<p>Caro was crouching at her feet, breathing hard, for the space of half
+a minute as she spoke, and then he rushed off again, circling the lawn
+three or four times, with spasmodic halts by his mistress, or by the
+tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>"He is rather a ridiculous dog at present," apologized Suzette, fondly
+watching these manœuvres; "but he is going to be very clever. He has
+begun to die for his queen, and he will do wonderful things when he
+is older. I have been warned not to teach him too much while he is a
+puppy, for fear of addling his brain."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe he has any brain to be addled, or at least he must
+have addled it for himself with that absurd rushing about," said Mrs.
+Mornington, dealing out the tea-cups, which Allan meekly handed to the
+two ladies.</p>
+
+<p>He had been to so many afternoon tea-parties of late that he felt as if
+handing cups and saucers and cream and sugar were a kind of speciality
+with him. In Suffolk he had never troubled about these things. His time
+had been taken up with shooting or fishing. He had allowed all social
+amenities to be performed by his mother, unaided by him. At Matcham
+he had become a new being, a person to be called upon and to return
+calls, with all the punctiliousness of a popular curate. He wondered at
+himself as he accomplished these novel duties.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock began to talk to Suzette, constrainedly at first, but the
+girl's frank vivacity soon put her at her ease, and then Allan joined
+in the conversation, and in a few minutes they were all three on the
+friendliest terms, although the elder lady gradually dropped out of
+the conversation, save for a word or two now and then when addressed
+by the other two. She seemed content to sit by and listen while those
+two talked, as much interested in them as they were interested in
+each other. She was quick to perceive Allan's subjugation, quick to
+understand that he was surrendering himself without a struggle to the
+fascination of a girl who was not quite as other girls, who had nothing
+hackneyed or conventional in person or manner.</p>
+
+<p>After tea, they all went round the lawn, headed by Mrs. Mornington, to
+look at her roses and carnations, flowers which were her peculiar pride
+and care.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had such a garden as yours—a day-dream in gardens—I don't
+suppose I should take any trouble about a few beds of dwarf-roses and
+picotees," she said to Mrs. Wornock; "but these flower-beds are all I
+have to console me for the Philistinism of my surroundings."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you have a really fine shrubbery," urged Allan, remembering
+that promenade of the other night among the lights and shadows, and
+the perfume of dewy conifers. "That belt of deodara and arbutus and
+rhododendrons, and this fine expanse of level lawn ought to satisfy any
+lady's ambition."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt. This garden of mine always reminds me of the Church
+catechism. It suggests that state of life to which it has pleased
+God to call me—an eminently respectable, upper middle-class garden,
+fifty years old at most; while the grounds at Discombe carry one back
+three centuries, and one expects to meet fine gentlemen in ruffs and
+doublets, with roses on their shoes, and talking like that book whose
+name I forget, or abusing the new and detestable custom of smoking
+tobacco. You will be in love with Mrs. Wornock's garden, Suzette, and
+will give up all idea of improving the Marsh House flower-beds."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shan't give up, however much I may admire," protested Suzette,
+sturdily. "If I had only a cottage garden, I would toil early and late
+to make it beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"There is plenty of room at Marsh House," said Mrs. Wornock, "and the
+garden is capable of improvement. When will you bring Miss Vincent to
+see me and my peacocks, Mrs. Mornington? Pray let it be soon. Your
+niece and I have at least one taste in common, and I think we ought
+to be good friends. Will you come to luncheon to-morrow, you and Miss
+Vincent, and you, Mr. Carew, if you are all disengaged?"</p>
+
+<p>"For my part, I would throw over any engagement that was capable of
+being evaded," said Mrs. Mornington, cheerily. And then in an undertone
+to Allan, she added, "It will be a new sensation to eat a meal at the
+Manor. This burst of hospitality is almost a miracle."</p>
+
+<p>Allan accepted the invitation unhesitatingly, and began to think Mrs.
+Wornock the most delightful of women, and to be angry with himself for
+ever having suspected evil in her past history. Whatever was strange in
+her conduct in relation to himself and to his father must be accounted
+for in some way that would be consonant with guilelessness and goodness.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That luncheon at Discombe Manor was the beginning of a new phase
+in Allan Carew's existence. All things must begin some day; and
+love—serious and earnest love—is one of the things which have
+their beginning, and whose beginning is sweeter than all the other
+first-fruits of life. It is not to be supposed that Allan was
+altogether a stranger to tender emotions, that he had come to five and
+twenty years of age without ever having fancied himself in love. He
+had had his boyish loves, and they had ended in disappointment. The
+blighting wind of satiety had swept across his budding loves before
+they had time to flower. All those youthful goddesses of his had shown
+him too soon and too plainly that there was very little of Olympian
+grandeur about them. As an only son with good prospects, he had been
+rudely awakened to the cruel truth that the average young lady has a
+sharp eye to the main chance, and that he, Allan Carew, was measured
+by his expectations rather than by his merits. Very early in his youth
+he made up his mind that he would never let his heart go out to any
+woman who contemplated marriage from a business standpoint; and he
+had been keenly on the watch for the canker of worldliness among
+the flowers. Unluckily for his chances of matrimony, the prettiest
+girls he had met hitherto had been the most worldly; trained perhaps
+to worldliness on account of their marketable qualities. Much as he
+admired high-mindedness in woman, he was not high-minded enough to seek
+out virtue under an unattractive exterior; so he had almost made up his
+mind to follow his uncle's example, and go through life a bachelor.</p>
+
+<p>As a bachelor he might count himself rich, and for a bachelor
+Beechhurst was an admirable dwelling-place. The house had been built
+for a bachelor. The rooms were spacious but few. Twice as many
+bedrooms, best and secondary, would be required for a family man.
+Thinking vaguely of the possibility of marriage, Allan had shuddered
+as he thought of an architect exploring that delightful upper floor,
+measuring walls, and tapping partitions, and discussing the best point
+at which to throw out a nursery wing, and where to add three or four
+servants' bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>And behold now this prudent, far-seeing young man, whose philosophy
+hitherto had been the philosophy of pure selfishness, was allowing
+himself to fall in love with a young lady who, for all he could tell,
+might be just as mercenary and worldly-minded as the girls he had met
+in Suffolk shooting-parties or in London ball-rooms. He had no reason
+to suppose her any better than they. Her father was a man of moderate
+means, and according to all the rules of modern life, it would be her
+duty to make a good marriage. He remembered how Mrs. Mornington had
+ordered her niece to save a dance for him, and he might conclude from
+that and other small facts that the aunt would favour him as a suitor
+for the niece. Yet the idea of worldly-mindedness never entered his
+thoughts in relation to Suzette. He abandoned himself to the charm
+of her delightful individuality without the faintest apprehension of
+future disillusion. He thought, indeed, but little of the future.
+The joys of the present were all-sufficing. To talk with her in
+unrestrained frivolity, glancing from theme to theme, but always with a
+grain of sentiment or philosophy in their talk; to walk beside her in
+those stately alleys at Discombe, or to linger in the marble temple;
+to follow the peacocks along the grass walks; to look for the nests
+of the thrushes and blackbirds in the thick walls of laurel; to plan
+garden-plays—Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream—in that grassy
+amphitheatre, which reminded Allan of the Boboli Gardens—these things
+made a happiness that filled mind and heart to the exclusion of all
+thought of the future.</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand the lilies better now than when I was first told to
+consider them," said Allan one day, as he stood with Suzette beside a
+great bed of lilium auratum.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I am as happy as they are, and take no more heed of the future
+than they do. I feel as they feel when they sway in the summer wind and
+bask in the summer sun, fed with the dews of night, having all things
+that are good for flowers, satisfied and happy."</p>
+
+<p>"You are as foolish as I am. I can't help fancying sometimes that
+flowers are alive and can feel the sun and the glory of the blue sky.
+To be always looking up at the sky, dumb, lifeless, not knowing! One
+would hardly care for flowers if one could realize that they have
+neither sense nor feeling. Yet I suppose one does realize that cruel
+fact sometimes. I know when I have been looking at the roses, and
+delighting in their beauty, Caro meets me as I go back to the house,
+and as he leaps and frisks about me, the difference between him and the
+flowers strikes me very keenly. They so beautiful and so far off, he so
+near and dear—the precious living thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that is the crown of things, Miss Vincent—life! Dead loveliness
+is nothing in comparison!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Suzette. "And what a blessing that life is beautiful in
+itself. One can love ugly people; one may adore an ugly dog; but who
+ever cared for an ugly chair, or could become attached to an ugly
+house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not knowingly; but I have known people fondly attached to the
+most hideously furnished rooms. And oh, how humiliating it is for
+middle-aged people like my mother to be obliged to admit that the
+things we think hideous were accounted beautiful when they were young!"</p>
+
+<p>This easy, trivial talk was the growth of more than one luncheon, and
+a good many tea-drinkings, in the music-room or in the gardens of
+Discombe. Mrs. Wornock had opened her heart and her house to Suzette as
+she had never before done to any young lady in the neighbourhood, and
+Suzette warmly reciprocated the kindness of the recluse. She ran in at
+the Manor House almost as unceremoniously as she ran in at the Grove.
+It was understood by the servants that their mistress was always at
+home to Miss Vincent. And as Allan had previously been made free of the
+Manor House, it was only natural that he and Suzette should meet very
+often under Mrs. Wornock's mild chaperonage.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington knew of these meetings, and, indeed, often dropped in
+while the young people were there, coming to take Suzette home in her
+pony-carriage, or to walk with her through the lanes. She showed no
+sign of disapproval; yet, as a woman of the world, it may have occurred
+to her that, since Mrs. Wornock was so fond of Suzette, it might be
+wise for Suzette to refrain from attaching herself to Allan Carew,
+while a superior <i>parti</i> remained in the background in the person
+of Mrs. Wornock's only son.</p>
+
+<p>Happily for Allan, Mrs. Mornington, although essentially mundane, was
+not a schemer. She had made up her mind that Allan was a good deal
+better than the average young man, and that Beechhurst was quite good
+enough for her niece, whose present means and expectations were of a
+very modest order. There had been no mock humility in Mrs. Mornington's
+statement of facts when she told Allan that her brother's income, from
+all sources, was just big enough to enable him to live respectably at
+Marsh House.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The foliage was beginning to show gleams of gold and red amidst the
+sombre green of late summer; the hounds were beginning to meet at seven
+o'clock in the crisper, clearer mornings of September; and Allan Carew
+was beginning to feel himself the bond-slave of a young lady about
+whose sentiments towards himself he was still entirely in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>Did she care for him much, a little, not at all? Allan Carew was
+continually asking himself those questions, and there was no oracle to
+answer him; no oracle even in his inner consciousness, which told him
+nothing of Suzette's feelings. He knew that he loved her; but he could
+recall no word or look of hers which could assure him that she returned
+his love. It was certain that she liked him, and that his society was
+pleasant to her.</p>
+
+<p>They had an infinite series of ideas in common—they thought alike upon
+most subjects; and she seemed no more to weary of his society than
+he of hers—yet there were times when he thought he might have been
+nearer winning her love had she liked him less. Her friendship seemed
+too frank ever to ripen into love. He would have liked to see her start
+and blush at his coming. She did neither; but received him with her
+airiest grace, and had always her laughter ready for his poor jokes,
+her intellect on the alert for his serious speech about books or men.
+She was the most delightful companion he had ever known; but a sister
+could not have been more at her ease with him.</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes think you take me for one of your old convent friends," he
+said one day, when she had prattled to him of her housekeeping and her
+garden as they walked up and down the long grass alley, while the music
+of the organ came to them, now loud with the lessening distance, now
+sinking slowly to silence as they walked further from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no; I should never take you for any one so patrician and
+distinguished as Laure de Beauvais, or Athenaïs de Laroche," she
+answered laughingly, "I should never dare to talk to them about eggs
+and butter, the obstinacy of a cook at twenty-five pounds a year, the
+ignorance of a gardener who is little better than a day labourer. But
+perhaps I am wrong to talk to you of these everyday cares. I will try
+to talk as I would to Athenaïs. I will dispute the merit of Lamartine's
+Elegy on Byron as compared with Hugo's Ode to the King of Rome. I was
+for Hugo; Athenaïs for Lamartine. We used to have terrible battles. And
+now Athenaïs is married to a financier, and has a palace in the Parc
+Monceau, and gives balls to all Paris; and I am living with father in a
+shabby old house with three maids and a man-of-all-work."</p>
+
+<p>"Talk to me as you like," he said; "talk to me as your serf, your
+slave."</p>
+
+<p>And then, without a moment's pause in which to arrange his thoughts,
+surprised into a revelation which he had intended indefinitely to
+defer, he told her that he was in very truth her slave, and that he
+must be the most miserable of men if this avowal of his love touched
+no answering chord in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>She who was habitually so gay grew suddenly grave almost to sadness,
+and looked at him with an expression which was half-frightened,
+half-reproachful.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why do you talk like this?" she cried. "We have been such
+friends—so happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we be less friendly or less happy when we are lovers?"</p>
+
+<p>That word "when" touched her keen sense of the ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>"When we are lovers!" she echoed, smiling at him. "You take everything
+for granted."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no alternative between confidence and despair."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, really, now? Am I really necessary to your happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are my happiness. I come here, or I go to the Grove, and find you,
+and I am happy. When I go away, I leave happiness behind me, except
+the reflected light of memory; except the dreams in which your image
+floats about me, in which I hear your voice, the sweet voice that is
+kinder in my dreams than it ever is in my waking hours."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely I am never unkind."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but in my dreams you are more than kind—you are my own and my
+love. You are what I hope you will be soon, Suzette—soon! Life's
+morning is so short. Let us spend it together."</p>
+
+<p>They were in the temple at the end of the cypress walk, and in that
+semi-sacred solitude his arm had stolen round her waist, his lips were
+seeking hers, gently, yet with a force which it needed all her strength
+to oppose.</p>
+
+<p>"No; no; you must not. I can promise nothing yet. I have had no time to
+think."</p>
+
+<p>"No time! Oh, Suzette, you must have known for the last six weeks that
+I adore you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not vain enough to imagine myself adored. I think I knew that you
+liked me—almost from the first——"</p>
+
+<p>"Liked and admired you from the very first," interrupted Allan.</p>
+
+<p>"My aunt said things—hinted and laughed, and was altogether absurd;
+but one's kinsfolk are so vain."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, when they have a goddess born among them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please don't be too ridiculous. You know that I like you; but, as
+for loving, I must have a long, long time to think about <i>that</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall think as long as you like; so long as you do not withdraw
+your friendship. I cannot live without you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I cease to be your friend? Only promise that you will never
+again talk, or behave, as foolishly as you have done this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"I promise, solemnly promise; until you give me leave to be foolish,"
+he added, with a touch of tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that he had been precipitate; that he might, by this temerity,
+have brought upon himself banishment from the Eden in which he was
+so happy. He had been over bold in thinking that the time which had
+sufficed for the growth of passionate love on his part was enough to
+make this charming girl as fond of him as he was of her. He was ashamed
+of his presumption. The degrees of their merit were so different; she a
+being whom to know was to love; he a very commonplace young man.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was quite as easy in her manner with him after that little
+outbreak as she had been before. He had promised not to renew the
+attack, and in her simple truthfulness she believed all promises sacred
+between well-bred people.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington dropped in at teatime, ready to drive her niece home.
+It was a common thing now for Suzette to spend the whole day at
+Discombe, playing classical duets with Mrs. Wornock, or sitting quietly
+by her side reading or musing while she played the organ. The girl's
+religious feeling gave significance to that noble music of the old
+German and Italian masses which to other hearers were only music. The
+acquaintance between the elder woman and the younger had ripened by
+this time into a friendship which was not without affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Wornock is my second aunt, and Discombe is my second home," said
+Suzette, explaining the frequency of her visits.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Grove, does not that count as home?" asked Mrs. Mornington,
+with an offended air.</p>
+
+<p>"It is so much my home that I don't count it at all. It is more like
+home than Marsh House, both for father and for me."</p>
+
+<p>Later, when the pony-carriage was taking aunt and niece along the road
+to Matcham, Suzette said suddenly, after a silence—</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie, would it be a shock to your nerves if I were to tell you
+something that happened to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"My nerves are very strong, Suzie. What kind of thing was it? and did
+it concern Mr. Carew <i>par exemple</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"How clever you are at guessing! Yes, it was Mr. Carew. He proposed to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"And of course you accepted him."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Oh, auntie! what do you think I am made of? I have only
+known him about two months."</p>
+
+<p>"What of that? If you had been brought up in the French fashion—and a
+very sensible fashion it is, to my thinking—you would have only seen
+him two or three times before you marched up to the altar with him.
+Surely you did not reject him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I may not have said positively no; but I told him that it was much
+too soon—that I could not possibly love him after such a short
+acquaintance, and that, if we were to go on being friends, he must
+never speak of such a thing again."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think the word was never—or, at any rate, for a long, long time.
+And he promised."</p>
+
+<p>"He will keep his promise, no doubt. Well, Suzette, all I can say is
+that you must be very difficult to please. I don't believe there is
+another girl in Matcham who would have refused Allan Carew."</p>
+
+<p>"What, are all the young ladies in Matcham so much alike that the same
+young man would suit them all? Have they no individuality?"</p>
+
+<p>"They have individuality enough to know a good young man, with an
+excellent position in life, when they see one. I believe your father
+will be as disappointed as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Disappointed? Because I am not in a hurry to leave him. I don't know
+my father, if he is capable of such unkindness."</p>
+
+<p>"Suzette, that little mind of yours is full to the brim of high-flown
+notions," retorted her aunt, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear auntie, surely you are not angry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Suzie, I am angry, because I have a very high opinion of Allan
+Carew. I consider him a pearl among young men."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, aunt! And if he were a poor curate, or a barrister
+without—what do you call them—briefs? Yes, briefs! Would he be a
+pearl then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He would be just as good a young man, but not a husband for you.
+Don't expect romantic ideas from me, Suzette. If I ever was romantic,
+it was so many years ago that I have quite forgotten the sensation."</p>
+
+<p>"And you cannot conjure back your youth in order to understand me,"
+said her niece, musingly. "You are not like Mrs. Wornock, whose mind
+seems always dwelling upon the past."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she talked to you of her youth?" Mrs. Mornington asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not directly; but she has talked vaguely sometimes of feelings
+long dead and gone—of the dead whom she loved—her father whom she
+lost when she was seventeen, and whose spirit—as she thinks—holds
+communion with her in her solitary daydreams at the organ. He was a
+musician, like herself, passionately fond of music."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will not take up any of Mrs. Wornock's fads."</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless you call music a fad."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, music is well enough, and I like you to practise and improve
+your playing. But I hope you will never allow yourself to believe in
+poor Mrs. Wornock's nonsense about spirit-rapping, and communion with
+the dead. You must see that the poor woman is <i>toquée</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I see that she is dreamy; and I am not carried away by her dreams.
+I think her the most interesting woman I ever met. Don't be jealous,
+auntie darling, I should never be as fond of her as I am of you."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only I can't help being interested in her. She is <i>simpatica</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"'Simpatica!' I hate the word. I never heard any one talked of as
+simpatica who hadn't a bee in her bonnet. I really don't know if your
+father ought to allow you to be so much at the Manor."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to take him to see Mrs. Wornock to-morrow afternoon. I know
+he will be in love with her."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a very good thing if he were to marry her, and make a
+sensible woman of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Wornock with a second husband! The idea is hateful. She would
+cease to interest me, if she were so commonplace as to marry. I prefer
+her infinitely with what you call her fads."</p>
+
+<p>"'Crabbed age and youth cannot live together,'" said Mrs. Mornington,
+quoting one of the few poets with whom she had any acquaintance.
+"You and I would never think alike, I suppose, young woman. And so
+you refused Mr. Carew, and told him never to talk to you of love or
+wedlock, and you refused Beechhurst, yonder," pointing with her whip
+across the heath to where the white walls of Allan Carew's house smiled
+in the afternoon sunlight. "I know what your uncle Mornington will say
+when I tell him what a little fool you have been."</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie, why is it you want me to marry, Mr. Carew?" Suzette asked
+pleadingly. "Is it because he is rich? Is it for the sake of
+Beechhurst?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss Minx, it is because I believe him to be a good young man—a
+gentleman—and as true as steel."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette gave a little sigh, and for a minute or so was dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know why I have always been glad that my father is an
+Englishman?" she asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, because he is an Englishman, I suppose. I should think any girl
+would be English if she could."</p>
+
+<p>"No, auntie, I am not so proud of my father's country as all that. I
+have been glad of my English father because I knew that English girls
+are allowed to make their own choice in marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"And a very pretty use you are going to make of your privileges,
+refusing the best young man in the neighbourhood. If you were my
+daughter, I should be half inclined to send for one of those whipping
+ladies we read about, and have you brought to your senses that way."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you wouldn't, auntie. You wouldn't be unkind to daughter or to
+niece."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you have your father to account to. What will he say, I wonder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that his Suzie is to do just as she likes. Do you know that I
+refused a subaltern up at the Hills, a young man with an enormous
+fortune whom ever so many girls were trying to catch—girls and widows
+too—he might have had a large choice."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did my brother say to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He only laughed, and told me that I knew my own value."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington was thoughtful for the rest of the way. Perhaps, after
+all, it was a good thing for a girl to be difficult to please. A
+girl as bright and as pretty as Suzette could afford to give herself
+airs. Allan would be sure to propose to her again; and then there was
+Geoffrey Wornock, who was expected home before Christmas. Who could
+tell if Geoffrey might not be as deeply smitten with this charming
+hybrid as Allan? and Discombe was to Beechhurst as sunlight unto
+moonlight, in extensiveness and value.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet I would rather she should marry Carew," mused Mrs. Mornington.
+"I should be afraid of young Wornock."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">NOT YET.</p>
+
+
+<p>Allan was dashed by Suzette's refusal to accept him on any other
+footing than that of friendship, and he was angry with himself for
+having spoken too soon. The only comfort left him was her willingness
+to consider him still her friend; but this was cold comfort, and in
+some wise more disheartening than if she had been more angry. Yet in
+his musings he could but think that she liked him better than a mere
+average acquaintance; while now and then there stole across his mind
+the flattering hope that she liked him better than she herself knew. He
+recalled all those happy hours they had spent together, with only Mrs.
+Wornock to make a third, Mrs. Wornock who so often crept away to her
+beloved organ and left them free to loiter in the gardens, or to sit
+in one of the deeply recessed windows, talking in whispers, while the
+music filled the room, or to stray far off in the stately pleasaunce,
+where their light laughter could not disturb the player.</p>
+
+<p>They had talked together often enough and long enough to have explored
+each other's minds and imaginations, and they had found that about all
+great things they thought alike; while their differences of opinion
+about the trifles of life gave them subjects for mirthful argument,
+occasions for disagreeing only to end in agreement.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette complained that Allan's university training made all argument
+unfair. How could she—an illogical, prejudiced woman, maintain her
+ground against a master of dialectics?</p>
+
+<p>In all their companionship he could remember no moments of ennui, no
+indication upon the young lady's part that she could have been happier
+elsewhere than in his company. This was at least encouraging. The dual
+solitude seemed to have been as pleasant to her as it was to him. She
+had confided in him in the frankest fashion. She had told him story
+after story of her convent life; of her friends and chosen companions.
+She had talked to him as a girl might talk to a cousin whom she liked
+and trusted; and how often does such liking ripen into love; an
+attachment truer and more lasting than that hot-headed love at first
+sight, born of the pleasure of the eye, and taking shallowest root in
+the mind. Allan's musings ended in a determination to cultivate the
+friendship which had not been withheld from him, and to trust to time
+for the growth of love.</p>
+
+<p>He was anxious to see Suzette as soon as possible after that premature
+avowal which had stirred the calm current of their companionship,
+lest she should have time to ponder upon his conduct, and to feel
+embarrassed at their next meeting. She had told him that she was going
+to the golf-links before breakfast on the following morning; so at
+eight o'clock Allan made his appearance on the long stretch of rather
+rough common-land which bordered the Salisbury road half a mile from
+Beechhurst, and which was distinguished from other waste places by the
+little red flags of the golf club.</p>
+
+<p>She was there, as fresh as the morning, in her blue-serge frock and
+sailor hat, attended by a small boy, and with the vicar's youngest
+daughter for her companion.</p>
+
+<p>She blushed as they shook hands—blushed, and then distinctly laughed;
+and the laugh, frank as it sounded, was the laugh of a triumphant
+coquette, for she was thinking of her aunt's indignation yesterday
+afternoon, and thinking how little it mattered her refusing a man who
+was so absolutely her slave. Propose to her again, forsooth? Why, of
+course he would propose to her again, and again, and again, as that
+foolish young subaltern had done at Simla. Were all men as foolish,
+Suzette wondered; and had all young women as much liberty of choice?</p>
+
+<p>She glanced involuntarily at the Vicar's youngest daughter, regarded by
+her family as the flower of the flock, but of a very humble degree in
+the floral world. A fresh-coloured, pudding-faced girl, with small eyes
+and a pug nose, but with a tall, well-developed figure of the order
+that is usually described as "fine."</p>
+
+<p>The golf went on in a desultory way, Allan strolling after the
+players, and venturing a remark now and then, as suggested by a single
+summer's experience at St. Andrews. When the two girls had been
+round the course, and it was time to hasten home to their respective
+breakfast-tables, he accompanied them on their way, and after having
+left Miss Bessie Edgefield at the Vicarage gate he had Suzette all
+to himself for something under a quarter of a mile. They met Mrs.
+Mornington a little way from Marsh House, sallying out for her morning
+conference with butcher and fishmonger, the business of providing Mr.
+Mornington's dinner being too important to be left to the hazards
+of cook and shopkeeper. It was necessary that Mrs. Mornington's own
+infallible eye should survey saddle or sirloin, and measure the
+thickness of turbot or sole.</p>
+
+<p>She greeted the two young people with jovial heartiness, and rejoiced
+beyond measure at seeing them together. After all, perhaps Suzette had
+done well in refusing the first offer. The poor young man was evidently
+her slave.</p>
+
+<p>"Or if Geoffrey should fall desperately in love with her," mused Mrs.
+Mornington, on her way to the village street, not quite heroic enough
+to put the owner of Discombe Manor altogether out of her calculations;
+"but, no, I shouldn't care about that. It would be too risky."</p>
+
+<p>That which Mrs. Mornington would not care about was the mental tendency
+that Geoffrey might inherit from his mother, whom the strong-minded,
+clear-headed lady regarded as a visionary, if not a harmless lunatic.
+No! Geoffrey was clever, interesting, fascinating even; but he was
+not to be compared with Allan, whose calm common sense had won Mrs.
+Mornington's warmest liking.</p>
+
+<p>After that morning on the links, and the friendly homeward walk, Allan
+felt more hopeful about Suzette; but he was not the less bent upon
+bringing to bear every influence which might help him to win her for
+his own, before any other suitor should come forward to dispute the
+prize with him. Happily for him, there were few eligible young men in
+the neighbourhood, and those few thought more of horses and guns than
+of girlhood and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily had promised her son a visit in the autumn. Allan hoped
+that his father would accompany her. He wanted to bring Suzette into
+the narrow circle of his home life, to bring her nearer to himself by
+her liking for his mother and father. With this intent he urged on the
+promised visit, delighted at the thought that his mother's presence
+would enable him to receive Suzette as a guest in the house where he
+hoped she would some day be mistress.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote to his father, reminding him of his assurance that he would
+not always remain a stranger to his son's home, and this letter of
+his, which dwelt earnestly upon certain unexplained reasons why he was
+especially anxious for his father's early presence at Beechhurst, was
+not without effect. The recluse consented to leave his library, which
+perhaps was no greater sacrifice on his part than Lady Emily made in
+leaving her farm. Indeed, one of the inducements which Allan held out
+to his mother was the promise of a pair of white peacocks from Mrs.
+Wornock, finer and whiter than the birds at Fendyke.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Carew professed himself pleased with his son's surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"Your house is like the good man who bequeathed it to you," he said,
+after his tour of inspection; "essentially comfortable, solid, and
+commonplace. The admiral had a grand solidity of character; but even
+your mother will not deny that he was commonplace."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily nodded a cheery assent. She always agreed with her husband
+on all points that did not touch the white farm. There her opinions
+were paramount; and she would not have submitted to dictation in so
+much as the ears of a rabbit.</p>
+
+<p>"I could hardly forgive my brother for buying such a house if he
+hadn't——-"</p>
+
+<p>"Left it to your son," interrupted her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"No, George, that is not what I was going to say. I could not forgive
+his Philistine taste if he had not brought home all those delicious
+things from China, and built the Mandarin's room. That is the redeeming
+feature which makes the house worth having."</p>
+
+<p>"Every one admits that it is a fine room," said Allan. "There is no
+such room in the neighbourhood, except at Discombe."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father must see Discombe, Allan. We must introduce him to Mrs.
+Wornock."</p>
+
+<p>"I think not, mother. He would be insufferably bored by a woman who
+believes in spirit-rapping, sees visions, and plays the organ for hours
+at a stretch."</p>
+
+<p>His father looked at him intently.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this person?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"A rich widow, whose son is lord of the manor of Discombe, one of the
+most important places between here and Salisbury."</p>
+
+<p>"And she believes in spiritualism. Curious in a lady living in the
+country. I thought that kind of thing had died out with Home, and the
+famous article in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"We have had later prophets. Eglinton, for instance, with his
+materializations and his slate-writing. I don't think the
+spiritualistic idea is dead yet, in spite of the ridicule which the
+outside herd has cast upon it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the widow lady is not beguiling you into sharing her delusions,
+Allan."</p>
+
+<p>The son had seen a look in the father's face which spoke to him
+as plainly as any spoken words. That look had told him that his
+description of Mrs. Wornock conjured up some thrilling image in his
+father's mind. He saw that startled wondering look come and go, slowly
+fading out of the pensive face, as the mind dismissed the thought which
+Allan's words had awakened. Surely it was not a guilty look which
+had troubled his father's mild countenance—rather a look of awakened
+interest, of eager questioning.</p>
+
+<p>"I should hate to see Allan taking up any nonsense of that kind," said
+Lady Emily, with her practical air; "but really, if this Mrs. Wornock
+were not twenty years older than he, I should suspect him of being in
+love with her. She is a pretty, delicate-looking woman, with a shy,
+girlish manner, and looks ridiculously young to be the mother of a
+grown-up son."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she has a grown-up son, has she?" asked Mr. Carew. "She belongs to
+this part of the country, I suppose, and is a woman of good family?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his son; but, for some reason of his own, Allan parried
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I know hardly anything about her, except that she is a very fine
+musician, and that she has been particularly kind to me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"There, George," cried Lady Emily. "Didn't I tell you so? The foolish
+boy is half in love with her!"</p>
+
+<p>"You will not say that after to-morrow, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I not? But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will lose all interest in to-morrow, if I tell you. Go on
+wondering, mother dear, till to-morrow, and to-morrow I will tell you
+a secret; but, remember, it is not to be talked about to any one in
+Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>"Should I talk of a secret, Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I have an idea that secrets are the staple of tea-table
+talk in a village."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor village! for how much it has to bear the blame; and yet people
+are worse gossips in Mayfair and Belgravia."</p>
+
+<p>"Only because they have more to talk about."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Allan had arranged a luncheon-party for the following day. His courage
+had failed at the idea of a dinner: the lengthy ceremonial, the fear of
+failure if he demanded too much of his cook, the long blank space after
+dinner, with its possibility of ennui. Luncheon was a friendlier meal,
+and would less heavily tax the resources of a bachelor's establishment;
+and then there was the chance of being able to wander about the garden
+with Suzette in the afternoon, the hope of keeping her and her father
+till teatime, when the other people had gone home; though people do not
+disperse so speedily after a country luncheon as in town, and it might
+be that everybody would stop to tea. No matter, if he could steal away
+with Suzette to look at the single dahlias, in the west garden, fenced
+off from the lawn by a high laurel hedge, leaving Lady Emily and Mrs.
+Mornington to entertain his guests.</p>
+
+<p>He had asked Mr. and Mrs. Mornington, General Vincent and his
+daughter, Mr. Edgefield, the Vicar, and his daughter Bessie (Suzette's
+antagonist at golf), Mr. and Mrs. Roebuck, a youngish couple, who
+prided themselves on being essentially of the great world, towny,
+cosmopolitan, anything but rustic, and who insisted on talking
+exclusively of London and the Riviera to people who rarely left their
+native gardens and paddocks. Mr. Roebuck had been officiously civil to
+Allan, and he had felt constrained to invite him. The invitation was on
+Mrs. Mornington's principle of payment for value received.</p>
+
+<p>Allan had invited Mrs. Wornock; he had even pressed her to be of the
+party, but she had refused.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care for society," she said. "I am out of my element among
+smart people."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be very little smartness—only the Roebucks, and one may
+say of them as Beatrice said of Benedick, 'It is a wonder <i>they</i>
+will still be talking, for nobody minds <i>them</i>.' Seriously now,
+Mrs. Wornock, I should like you to meet my father."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very kind, but you must excuse me. Don't think me rude or
+ungrateful."</p>
+
+<p>"Ungrateful! Why, it is I who ask a favour."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am grateful for your kindness in wishing to have me at your
+house. I will go there some day with Suzette, when you are quite
+alone, and you shall show me the Mandarin-room."</p>
+
+<p>"That is too good of you. Mind, I shall exact the performance of that
+promise. You are very fond of Suzette, I think, Mrs. Wornock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am very fond of her. She is the only girl with whom I have ever
+felt in sympathy; just as you are the only young man, except my son,
+for whom I have ever cared."</p>
+
+<p>"You link us together in your thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, Allan," she answered gravely, "and I hoped to see you linked
+by-and-by in a lifelong union."</p>
+
+<p>"That is my own fondest hope," he said. "How did you discover my
+secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your secret! My dear Allan, I have known that you were in love with
+Suzette almost from the first time I saw you together—yes, even that
+afternoon at the Grove."</p>
+
+<p>"You were very sympathetic, very quick to read my thoughts. I own that
+I admired her immensely even at that early stage of our acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>"And admiration soon grew into love. It has been such happiness for me
+to watch the growth of that love—to see you two young creatures so
+trustful and so happy together, walking about that old garden yonder,
+which has seen so little of youth or of happiness. I felt almost as
+a mother might have felt watching the happiness of her son. Indeed,
+Allan, you have become to me almost as a second son."</p>
+
+<p>"And you are becoming to me almost as a second mother," he said,
+bending down to kiss the slim white hand which lay languidly upon her
+open book.</p>
+
+<p>Never till to-day had she called him Allan, never before had she spoken
+to him so freely of her regard for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan," she repeated softly. "You don't mind my calling you by your
+Christian name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mind! I am flattered that you should so honour me."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan," she repeated again, musingly, "why were you not called George,
+after your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because Allan is an old family name on my mother's side of the house.
+Her father and grandfather and elder brother were Allans."</p>
+
+<p>He left her almost immediately, taking leave of her briefly, with a
+sudden revulsion of feeling. That question of hers, and the mention of
+his father's name, chilled and angered him, in the very moment when his
+heart had been moved by her sympathy and affection.</p>
+
+<p>There was something in the familiar mention of his father's name that
+re-awakened those suspicions which he had never altogether banished
+from his mind. It was perhaps on this account that he had spoken
+slightingly of Mrs. Wornock when Lady Emily suggested that he should
+make her known to his father. That question about the name had seemed
+to him a fresh link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette and her father were the first arrivals at Allan's
+luncheon-party. The General was a martinet in the matter of
+punctuality; and having taken what he called his <i>chota haz'ri</i>
+at half-past six that morning, was by no means inclined to feel
+indulgently disposed towards dilatory arrivals, who should keep him
+waiting for his tiffin; nor could he be made to understand that a
+quarter to two always meant two o'clock. The Morningtons appeared at
+five minutes before two, the Vicar and his daughter as the clock struck
+the hour; and then there followed a quarter of an hour of obvious
+waiting, during which Allan showed Suzette the Chinese enamels and
+ivories, and the arsenal of deadly swords and daggers displayed against
+the wall of the Mandarin-room, while the Morningtons were discussing
+with Lady Emily and her husband the merits of Wiltshire as compared
+with Suffolk.</p>
+
+<p>This delay, at which General Vincent was righteously angry, was
+occasioned by the Roebucks, who sauntered in with a leisurely air at
+a quarter-past two; the wife on the best possible terms with herself
+and her new tailor gown; the husband puffed up at having read his
+<i>Times</i> before any one else, and loquacious upon the merits of
+the "crushing reply" made last night by Lord Hatfield at Windermere to
+"the abominable farrago of lies" in Mr. Henry Wilkes' oration the night
+before last at Kendal.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say it was a very good speech," said the General, grimly; "but
+you might have kept it for after luncheon. It would have been less
+injured by waiting than Mr. Carew's joint; if he's going to give us
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"Are we late?" exclaimed Mrs. Roebuck, who had endured a quarter of an
+hour's agony in front of her cheval glass before the new tailor bodice
+could be made to "come to." "Are we really late? How very naughty of
+us! Please, please don't be angry, good people. We beg everybody's
+pardon," clasping two tightly gloved hands with a prettily beseeching
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mention it," said the General. "We all like waiting; but if
+Carew has got a mug cook, I wouldn't give much for the state of her
+temper at this moment."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll send a pretty message to the cook after luncheon, if she has
+been clever enough not to spoil her dishes."</p>
+
+<p>The ladies—Lady Emily and Mrs. Mornington descanting on gardens
+and glass all the way—went in a bevy to the dining-room, the men
+following, Mr. Roebuck still quoting Lord Hatfield, and the way in
+which he had demolished the Radical orator.</p>
+
+<p>"The worst of it is he don't make 'em laugh," said Mr. Mornington.
+"Nobody can make 'em laugh as Wilkes does. Town or country, hodge or
+mechanic, he knows the length of their foot to a fraction, and knows
+what will hit them and what will tickle them."</p>
+
+<p>The cook was sufficiently "mug" to have been equal to the difficulties
+of twenty minutes' delay, and the luncheon was admirable—not too many
+courses, nor too many dishes, but everything perfect after its kind.
+Nor was the joint—that item dear to elderly gentlemen—forgotten,
+for after a first course of fish and a second of curry and <i>crême de
+volaille</i>, there appeared a saddle of Wiltshire mutton, to which the
+elderly gentlemen did ample justice, while the ladies, who had lunched
+upon the more sophisticated dishes, supplied the greater part of the
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"My father will quote your cook for the next six months," said Suzette,
+by whose side Allan had contrived to place himself during the casual
+dropping into seats at the large round table, "for yours is the only
+house where he has seen Bombay ducks served with the curry."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you not tell me once that your father has a weakness for those
+absurd little fish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I really? Was I capable of talking such absolute twaddle?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was not twaddle. It was very serious. It was on a day when I found
+you looking worried and absent, unable to appreciate either Mrs.
+Wornock's music or my conversation; and, on being closely questioned,
+you confessed that the canker at your heart was dinner. The General
+had been dissatisfied; the cook was stupid. You had done your
+uttermost. You had devoted hours to the reading of cookery-books, which
+seemed all of them hopelessly alike. You had studied all his fancies.
+You had given him Bombay ducks with his curry——"</p>
+
+<p>"Did I say all that? How silly of me. And how ridiculous of you to
+remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Memory is not a paid servant, but a most capricious Ariel. One cannot
+say to one's self, I will remember this or that. My memory is as
+fugitive as most people's; but there is one thing for which it can be
+relied on. I remember everything about you—all you say to me, all you
+do—even to the gowns you wear."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette laughed a little and blushed a little; but did not look
+offended.</p>
+
+<p>"You had about five minutes' talk with my mother before I took you to
+see the enamels. How do you like her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Immensely! Lady Emily is charming. She was telling me about her white
+farm."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been odd if you had escaped hearing of that, even in the
+first five minutes."</p>
+
+<p>"I was deeply interested. Lady Emily has promised me some white
+bramahs. I am going to start a white poultry-yard. I cannot aspire
+higher than poultry; but I am determined that every bird shall be
+white."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty foolishness! And so you like my mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very, very much. She is one of those people with whom one feels at
+one's ease from the first moment. She looks as if she could not say or
+even think anything unkind."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe she could do either. And yet she is
+human—feminine-human—and can enjoy an interesting scandal—local,
+if possible. She enjoys it passively. She does nothing to swell the
+snowball, and will hardly help to roll it along. She remains perfectly
+passive, and never goes further than to say that she is shocked and
+disappointed. And yet I believe she enjoys it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is only the excitement that one enjoys. We had scandals even
+in the convent—girls who behaved badly, dishonourably, about their
+studies; cheating in order to get a better chance of a prize. I'm
+afraid we were all too deeply interested in the crime and the
+punishment. It was something to think about and talk about when life
+was particularly monotonous."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was watching them from the other side of the table, and
+lending rather an indifferent ear to Mr. Roebuck's account of Homburg
+and the people he and his wife had met there. They had only just
+returned from that exhilarating scene. He could talk of nothing but
+H.R.H.'s condescension; the dear duchess; Lady this, Lord the other;
+and the prodigious demand there had been for himself and his wife in
+the very smartest society.</p>
+
+<p>"Four picnics a day are hardly conducive to the cure of suppressed
+gout," said Mr. Roebuck; "and there were ever so many days when we
+had to cut ourselves up into little bits—lunching with one party,
+taking coffee with another, driving home with somebody else, going to
+tea-fights all over the place. Dinner engagements I positively set my
+face against. Mimosa and I were there for rest and recuperation after
+the season—positively washed out, both of us. You have no idea what a
+rag my wife looked when we took our seats in the club train."</p>
+
+<p>Happily for Lady Emily, who had been suffering this kind of thing for
+half an hour, the coffee had gone round, and at her first imploring
+glance Mrs. Mornington rose and the ladies left the dining-room. Yet
+even this relief was but temporary; for Mrs. Roebuck appropriated Lady
+Emily in the garden, and entertained her with her own view of Homburg,
+which was smarter, inasmuch as it was more exclusive than Mr. Roebuck's.</p>
+
+<p>"A horrid place," said the lady. "One meets all one's London friends
+mixed up with a herd of foreign royalties whom one is expected to
+cultivate. I used to send Richard to all the gaieties, while I stopped
+at home and let my maid-companion read to me. We shall go to Marienbad
+next August. If one could be at Homburg without people knowing one was
+there, the place might be tolerable."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been told the scenery is very fine," hazarded Lady Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the scenery is well enough; but one knows it, and one has seen
+so much finer things in that way. When one has been across the
+Cordilleras, it is absurd to be asked to worship some poor little hills
+in Germany."</p>
+
+<p>"I have seldom been out of Suffolk, except to visit some of my people
+in Scotland. Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis are quite big enough for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the Scotch hills are dear things, with quite a character of their
+own; and a Scotch deer forest is the finest thing of its kind all over
+the world. The duke's is sixty thousand acres—and Dick and I always
+enjoy ourselves at Ultimathule Castle—but after being lost in a
+snowstorm in the Cordilleras——"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily stifled a despairing yawn. Not a word had she been able to
+say about her Woodbastwick cows, which she was inwardly comparing
+with Allan's black muzzled Jerseys, grazing on the other side of the
+sunk fence. Heartfelt was her gratitude to Mrs. Mornington when that
+lady suddenly wheeled round from a confidential talk with the Vicar
+and interrupted Mrs. Roebuck's journey across the Cordilleras by an
+inquiry about the Suffolk branches of the Guild for supplying warm and
+comfortable raiment to the deserving poor.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have a branch in your neighbourhood," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed we have. I am a slave to the Guild all the winter. One
+can't make flannel petticoats and things in summer, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> can," retorted Mrs. Mornington, decisively.</p>
+
+<p>"What, on a broiling day in August! when the very sight of flannel puts
+one in a fever?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so impressionable. The things are wanted in October, and July
+and August are quite late enough for getting them ready."</p>
+
+<p>"I subscribe to these institutions," Mrs. Roebuck remarked languidly.
+"I never work for them. Life isn't long enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you never have the right kind of feeling about your poorer
+fellow-creatures," said Mrs. Mornington. "It is the doing something for
+them, using one's own hand and eye and thought for the poor toiling
+creatures, sacrificing some little leisure and some little fad to
+making them more comfortable—it is that kind of thing which brings the
+idea of that harder world home to one."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, how nice it is of you dear ladies to sacrifice yourselves like
+that; but you couldn't do it after a June and July in London. If you
+had seen what a poor creature I looked when we took our seats in the
+club train for Homburg——"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington tucked her arm under Lady Emily's and walked her away.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to tell me all about your farm," she said. And then, in
+a rather loud aside, "I can't stand that woman, and I wish your son
+hadn't been so conscientious in asking her."</p>
+
+<p>While emptiness and ennui prevailed on the terrace in front of the
+Mandarin-room, there were a pair of wanderers in the shrubbery, whose
+talk was unleavened by worldliness or pretence of any kind. Allan had
+stolen away from the smokers in the dining-room, and was escorting
+Suzette and her friend Bessie Edgefield round his modest domain—the
+shrubberies, the paddocks nearest the house, which had been planted and
+educated into a kind of park; the greenhouse and hothouse, which were
+just capacious enough to supply plenty of flowers for drawing-room and
+dinner-table, but not to grow grapes or peaches. Everything was on a
+modest, unassuming scale. Allan felt that after the mansion and gardens
+at Discombe, his house suggested the abode of a retired shopkeeper. A
+successful hosier or bootmaker might create for himself such a home.
+Wholesale trade, soap, or lucifer matches, or cocoa would require
+something far more splendid.</p>
+
+<p>Modest as the place was, the two girls admired, or seemed to admire,
+all its details—the conifers of thirty years' growth, the smiling
+meadows, the fawn-coloured cows. A sunny September afternoon showed
+those fertile pastures and trim gardens at their best. Allan felt
+exquisitely happy walking about those smooth lawns and gravel paths
+with the girl he loved. At every word of approval he fancied she was
+praising the place in which she would be content to live. After that
+avowal of his the other day, it seemed to him that her kindness meant
+much more than it had meant before she knew her power. She could not
+be so cruel as to mock him with the promise of her smiles, her sweet
+words, her undisguised pleasure in his company. Yes, he was perfectly
+happy. He thought of her refusal the other day as only the prelude to
+her acceptance. She had not said "No;" she had only said "Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>Bessie Edgefield was one of those sweetly constituted girls whom Nature
+has especially created to be a third party in a love affair; never to
+play the heroine in white satin, but always the confidante in white
+muslin. She walked beside her friend, placid, silent, save for an
+occasional monosyllable, and was of no more account than Suzette's
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"The Roebucks are taking leave," exclaimed Suzette, looking across the
+lawn to the groups on the terrace. "Mr. Carew, I'm afraid you are a
+sadly inattentive host."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I neglected you, Miss Vincent?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have neglected Mrs. Roebuck, which is much worse. She will be
+talking of your want of <i>savoir vivre</i> all over Matcham."</p>
+
+<p>"Let her talk. She has been boring my mother with a cruelty worthy of
+Torquemada. She forgets that torture was illegal in England even in
+Bacon's time. See, they are all going away; but you and the General and
+Miss Edgefield must stay to tea, even if the Vicar is too busy to stop."</p>
+
+<p>The Vicar had quietly vanished, to resume the round of parish duties,
+quite content to leave his Bessie in comfortable quarters. The Roebucks
+were going, and the Morningtons were following their example; but
+General Vincent had no objection to stop to tea if his daughter and
+Miss Edgefield desired him to do so.</p>
+
+<p>He was smoking a cheroot, comfortably seated in a sheltered part of
+the terrace—a corner facing south, screened from east and north by an
+angle of the house, where the Mandarin-room projected from the main
+building—and he was absorbed in a discussion of Indian legendary lore
+with Mr. Carew, who owned to some knowledge of sanscrit, and had made
+Eastern fable and legend an especial study.</p>
+
+<p>Suzette and her father stayed till nearly seven o'clock, when Allan
+insisted on walking home with them, having suddenly discovered that he
+had had no walking that day. He had been cub-hunting from seven in the
+morning till nine; but he declared himself in need of walking exercise.
+Lady Emily went with them to the gate, and parted with Suzette as with
+a favourite of long standing. Allan was enraptured to see his mother's
+friendliness with the girl he loved; and it was all he could do to
+restrain his feelings during the walk to Marsh House.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was only that gay temper of hers, that readiness to laugh
+at him and at all things in creation, which held him at a distance.
+He had made up his mind that she was to be his—that if she were to
+refuse him twenty times in twenty capricious moods of her light and
+airy temperament, there was somewhere in her nature a vein of serious
+feeling, and by that he would win her and hold her.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>"You like Miss Vincent, mother?" he asked that evening, when he was
+sitting with his father and mother in the Mandarin-room after dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The evening was warm to sultriness, and there were several casements
+open in the long window which filled one end of the room; a window with
+richly carved sashes and panels of cedar and lattice-work alternating
+with the glass. There was another window in the western wall, less
+elaborate—a door-window—which formed the usual exit to the garden.
+This was closed, but not curtained.</p>
+
+<p>The room was lighted only with shaded lamps, which lighted the tables
+and the spaces round them, but left the corners in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily was sitting at one of the tables, her fingers occupied with
+a large piece of work, which she carried about with her wherever she
+went, and which, to the eye of the uninitiated, never appeared to make
+any progress towards completion. It was destined eventually to cover
+the grand piano at Fendyke, and it was to be something very rare and
+precious in the way of embroidery; the basis a collection of Breton
+shawl-pattern handkerchiefs, overlaid by Lady Emily with embroidery in
+many-coloured silks and Japanese gold thread. This piece of work was
+a devouring monster in the matter of silk, and Lady Emily was always
+telling her friends the number of skeins which were required for its
+maintenance, and the cost of the gold thread which made so faint an
+effect in the Oriental labyrinth of palms and sprigs and arabesques
+and medallions.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I shall never live to finish it," Lady Emily would conclude
+with a sigh, throwing herself back in her chair after an hour's
+steadfast labour, her eyes fixed in a kind of ecstasy upon the little
+corner of palm which she had encrusted with satin stitch and gold; "but
+if I <i>do</i>, I really think it will repay me for all my trouble."</p>
+
+<p>To-night her mind was divided between her embroidery and her son, who
+sat on a three-cornered chair beside her, meekly threading her needles
+while he tried to get her to talk about Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>His father was seated almost out of earshot, at a table near the open
+window, reading the <i>Nineteenth Century</i> by the light of a lamp
+which shone full upon his lowered eyelids, and on the thoughtful brow
+and sensitive mouth, as he sat in a reposeful attitude in the low, deep
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I like Miss Vincent?" repeated Lady Emily, when she had turned a
+critical corner in the leafy edging of a scroll. "I wonder how often
+you will make me tell you that I think her a very—no, Allan, the
+light peacock, please—not that dark shade—very sweet girl—bright,
+unaffected——"</p>
+
+<p>"And exquisitely lovely," interjected her son, as he handed her the
+needleful of silk.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there you exaggerate awfully. She is certainly a pretty girl;
+but her nose is—well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there
+is a fault somewhere in the nose, and her mouth might be smaller;
+but, on the other hand, she has fine eyes. Her manners are really
+charming—that pretty little Parisian air which is so fascinating in a
+high-bred Parisian. But, oh, Allan! can you really mean to marry her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I really mean to try my hardest to achieve that happiness, and I
+shall think myself the luckiest man in Wiltshire, or in England, or in
+Europe, if I succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Allan, have you reflected seriously? She tells me that she is a
+Roman Catholic."</p>
+
+<p>"If she were a Fire-worshipper, I would run the risk of failure in
+converting her to Christianity. If she were a Buddhist, I should be
+inclined to embrace the faith of Gautama; but since she is only a
+conformer to a more ancient form of religion of which you and I are
+followers, I don't see why her creed should be a stumbling-block to my
+bliss."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily shook her head sagely, and breathed a profound sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Differences of religion are so apt to make unhappiness in married
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not religious enough to distress myself because my wife believes
+in some things that are incredible to me. We shall both follow the same
+Master, both hope for reunion in the same heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, <i>she</i> believes in Purgatory. Think how inconsistent your
+ideas of the future must be."</p>
+
+<p>Allan did not pursue the argument. He was smiling to himself at the
+easy way in which he had been talking of his wife—their future,
+their very hopes of heaven—making so sure that she was to be his.
+He looked at his father, sitting alone with them, but not of them,
+and thought of his father's married life as he had seen it ever since
+he was old enough to observe or understand the life around him; so
+peaceful, so in all things what married life should be; and yet over
+all there had been that faint shadow of melancholy which the son had
+felt from his earliest years, that absence of the warmth and the
+romance of a marriage where love is the bond of union. Here, Allan told
+himself, the bond had been friendly regard, convenience, the world's
+approval, family interests, and lastly the child as connecting link
+and meeting-place of hopes and fears. Love had been missing from the
+life of yonder pale student, musing over half a dozen pages of modern
+metaphysics.</p>
+
+<p>Allan rose and moved slowly towards that tranquil figure, and feeling
+the night air blowing cold as he approached that end of the room, he
+asked his father if he would like the windows shut?</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you, Allan, not on my account," Mr. Carew answered, without
+looking up from his book.</p>
+
+<p>Had he looked up, he would have seen Allan standing between the
+lamplight and the window like a man transfixed.</p>
+
+<p>A pale wan face had that moment vanished in the outward darkness; a
+face which a moment before had been looking in at one of the open
+lattices, a face which Allan had recognized at the first glance.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the glass door, opened it quietly, and went out to the
+terrace, so quickly and so silently that his disappearance attracted no
+attention from father or mother, one absorbed in his book, the other
+bending over her work.</p>
+
+<p>The face was the face of Mrs. Wornock; and Mrs. Wornock must be
+somewhere between the terrace and the gates. There was no moon, but
+the night was clear, and the sky was full of stars. Allan went swiftly
+round the angle of the house to the terrace outside the large window;
+but the figure that he had seen from within was no longer stationed
+outside the window. The terrace was empty. He went round to the front
+of the house, whence the carriage drive wound with a gentle curve to
+the gates, between shrubberies of laurel and arbutus, cypress and
+deodara.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the figure he had expected to see vanished round the curve of the
+drive as he drew near the porch, a slender figure in dark raiment,
+with something white about the head and shoulders. He ran along the
+drive, and reached the gate just in time to see Mrs. Wornock's brougham
+standing in the road, at a distance of about fifty yards, and to see
+Mrs. Wornock open the door and step in. Another moment—affording him
+no time for pursuit, had he even wished to pursue her—and the carriage
+drove away.</p>
+
+<p>Allan had no doubt as to the motive of this conduct. She had come by
+stealth to look upon the face of the man whom she had refused to meet
+in the beaten way of friendship.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE."</p>
+
+
+<p>After the incident of that September night, there was no longer the
+shadow of doubt in Allan's mind as to the relations between his father
+and the lady at Discombe Manor. That they had known each other and
+loved each other in their youth he was now fully convinced. This last
+strange act of Mrs. Wornock's was to his mind the strongest link in
+the chain of evidence. Whatever the relations between them had been,
+guilty or innocent—and fondly as he loved his father, he feared there
+had been guilt in that association—it was his duty to prevent any
+meeting between them, lest the mere sight of that pale, spiritual face
+with its singular youthfulness of aspect, should re-awaken in his
+father's breast some faint ghost of the passion that had lived and died
+a quarter of a century ago. Nor did his respect for his honest-minded,
+trustful-hearted mother permit him to tolerate the idea of friendly
+intercourse between her and this mysterious rival from the shadowland
+of vanished years. He took care, therefore, to discourage any idea of
+visiting the Manor; and he carefully avoided any further talk of Mrs.
+Wornock, lest his father's closer questioning should bring about the
+disclosure of her identity. His father's manner, when the lady was
+first discussed, had shown him very clearly that the description of her
+gifts and fancies coincided with the memory of some one known in the
+past; but it had been also clear that neither the name of Wornock, nor
+the lady's position at Discombe, had any association for Mr. Carew.
+If he had known and loved her in the past, he had known and loved her
+before she married old Geoffrey Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>His anxiety upon his father's account was speedily set at rest, for
+Mr. Carew—after exploring his son's small and strictly popular
+library, where among rows of handsomely bound standard works, there
+were practically no books which appealed to the scholar's taste—soon
+wearied of unstudious ease, and announced a stern necessity for going
+to London, where a certain defunct Hebrew scholar's library, lay and
+ecclesiastical, was to be sold at Hodgson's. He would put up for a
+few days at the old-fashioned hotel which he had used since he was
+an undergraduate, potter about among the book-shops, look up some
+references he wanted in the Museum Reading-room, and meet his wife at
+Liverpool Street on her way home.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily, absorbed in her son and her son's love affair, agreed most
+amiably to this arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>"Telegraph your day and hour for returning, when you have bought all
+the books you want," she said. "I'm afraid you spend more money on
+those dreadful old books, which nobody in Suffolk cares a straw about,
+than I do on my farm, which people come to see from far and wide."</p>
+
+<p>"And a great nuisance your admirers are, Emily. I am very glad the
+Suffolk people are no book-lovers; and I hope you will never hint to
+anybody that my books are worth seeing."</p>
+
+<p>"I could not say anything so untrue. Your shelves are full of horrors.
+Now Allan's library here is really delightful—<i>Blackwood's
+Magazine</i>, from the beginning, <i>Macaulay</i>, <i>Scott</i>,
+<i>Dickens</i>, <i>Thackeray</i>, <i>Bulwer</i>, <i>Lever</i>,
+<i>Marryat</i>—and all of them so handsomely bound! I think my brother
+showed excellent taste in literature, though I doubt if he ever read
+much. But as you seem happier in your library than anywhere else, I
+suppose one must forgive you for spending a fortune on books that don't
+interest anybody else. And one can't help being a little bit proud of
+your scholarship."</p>
+
+<p>And so they kissed and parted, with the unimpassioned kiss of marriage
+which has never meant more than affectionate friendship. Lady Emily
+stood at the hall door while her husband drove off to the station, and
+then turned gaily to her son, and said—</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Allan, I am yours to command. Let me see as much as possible of
+that sweet young thing you are in love with. Shall we go and call on
+her this afternoon? She has a white cat which may some day provide her
+with kittens to distribute among her friends, and, if so, I am to have
+one to bring up by hand as I did Snowdrop. You remember Snowdrop?"</p>
+
+<p>Allan kissed his mother before he answered, but not for Snowdrop's sake.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a vague recollection of something white and fluffy hanging to
+the skirt of your gown, that I used to tread upon."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you were horrid. You very nearly killed him. Shall we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, please, please, mother dearest. I am ready this instant. Three
+o'clock. We shall get there at half-past, and if we loiter looking at
+white kittens, or the mother of potential kittens, till half-past four,
+she will give us tea, and we can make an afternoon of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't I better put on a bonnet, Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. You will go in your hat, just as you are. You will treat her
+without the slightest ceremony—treat her as your daughter. Do you
+know, mother, I am uncommonly glad you never honoured me with a sister."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because, if I marry Suzette, she will be your only daughter. There
+will be no one to be jealous of her, in Suffolk or here."</p>
+
+<p>"What a foolish fancy! Well, give me a daughter as soon as you like. I
+am getting old, Allan, and your father's secluded habits leave me very
+often alone. His books are more his companions than I am——"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but you know how he loves you, mother," interrupted Allan.</p>
+
+<p>They were on their way to the gate by this time, Lady Emily in her
+travelling-hat and loose tan gloves, just as she had been going about
+the gardens and meadows in the morning, Allan twirling his stick in
+very gladness of heart.</p>
+
+<p>They were going to her. If she were out, they would go and find her;
+at her aunt's, at the Vicarage, on the links yonder; anywhere but at
+Discombe. He hoped she had not gone to Discombe.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is fond of me, I believe, in his own way. There never was a
+better husband," Lady Emily answered thoughtfully. "But I know, Allan!
+I know!"</p>
+
+<p>"What, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that I was not his first love—that I was only a <i>pis
+aller</i>—that there is something wanting in his life, and always must
+be till the end. I should brood over it all, perhaps, Allan, and end by
+making myself unhappy, if it were not for my farm; but all those living
+creatures occupy my mind. One living fox-terrier is worth a whole
+picture-gallery."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was at home. The after-math had been cut in the meadow in front
+of Marsh House, a somewhat swampy piece of ground at some seasons,
+but tolerably dry just now, after a hot summer. Suzette and Bessie
+Edgefield were tossing the scented grass in the afternoon sunshine,
+and fancying themselves useful haymakers. They threw down their
+hay-forks at the approach of visitors, and there was no more work
+done that day, though Allan offered to take a fork. They all sat in
+the garden talking, or wandered about among the flowers in a casual
+way, and while Bessie and Lady Emily were looking at the contents of
+the only greenhouse, Allan found himself alone with Suzette in a long
+gravel walk on the other side of the lawn-like meadow, along all the
+length of which there was a broad border filled with old-fashioned
+perennials that had been growing and spreading and multiplying
+themselves for half a century. A row of old medlar and hazel trees
+sheltered this border from the north wind, and hid the boundary fence.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old garden!" cried Allan. "How much nicer an old garden is than a
+new one!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't mean to disparage your garden at Beechhurst. Our
+gardener is always complaining of the old age of all things here.
+Everything is worn out. The trees, the shrubs, the frames, the
+greenhouse. One ought to begin again from the very beginning, he says.
+He would be charmed with Beechhurst, where all things are so neat and
+trim."</p>
+
+<p>"Cockney trimness, I'm afraid; but if you are satisfied with it, if you
+think it not altogether a bad garden——"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it a delightful garden," said Suzette, blushing at that word
+"satisfied," which implied so much.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of that," said Allan, with a deep sigh of content, as if
+some solemn question had been settled. "And you like my mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much indeed. But how you skip from the garden to Lady Emily!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you approve of the Mandarin-room?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is one of the handsomest rooms I ever saw, except in an Indian
+palace."</p>
+
+<p>"Then take them, Suzette," he cried eagerly, with his arm round her
+waist, drawing the slim figure to his breast, holding and dominating
+her by force of will and strength of arm, smiling down at her with
+adoring eyes. "Have them, dearest! Mother, garden, room—they are all
+your own; for they belong to your very slave. They are at your feet, as
+I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call this being at my feet?" she asked, setting herself
+suddenly free, with a joyous laugh. "You have a very impertinent way of
+offering your gifts."</p>
+
+<p>"Not impertinent—only desperate. I remembered my repulse of the other
+day, and I swore to myself that I would hold you in my arms—once, at
+least, if only once, even if you were to banish me into outer darkness
+the next moment—and I have done it, and I am glad! But you won't
+banish me, will you, Suzette? You must needs know how I love you—how
+long and patiently I have loved you——"</p>
+
+<p>"Long! patiently! Why, we only met at Midsummer."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, consider the age that every day on which I did not see you has
+seemed to me, and the time would hardly come within your powers of
+computation. Suzette, be merciful! say you love me, were it ever so
+little. Were it only a love like a grain of mustard-seed, I know it
+would grow into a wide and spreading tree by-and-by, and all the days
+of my life would be happy under its shelter."</p>
+
+<p>"You would think me curiously inconsistent if I owned to loving you
+after what I said the other day," faltered Suzette, looking down at the
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you adorable."</p>
+
+<p>She was only serious for a moment, and then her natural gaiety
+prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know that my aunt lectured me severely when I confessed to
+having refused your flattering offer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did she really? How sweet of her! After that, you cannot refuse me
+again. Your aunt would shut you up and feed you upon bread and water,
+as fathers and mothers used to do with rebellious daughters in the
+eighteenth century."</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly think she would treat me quite so ferociously for saying
+'No;' but I think she would be pleased if I were to say 'Yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And that means yes, my love, my own!" he cried, in a rapture so swift
+and sudden that he had clasped her to his breast and snatched the kiss
+of betrothal before she could check his impulsiveness. "You are my
+very own," he said, "and I am the happiest man in England. Yes, the
+happiest——Did I say in England? What a contemptible notion! I cannot
+conceive the idea that anywhere upon this earth there beats a human
+heart so full of gladness as mine. Suzette, Suzette, Suzette!" he
+repeated tenderly, with a kiss for each comma.</p>
+
+<p>"What a whirlwind you are!" she remonstrated. "And what a rag you are
+making of my frock! Oh, Allan, how you have hurried me into this! And
+even now I am not quite sure——"</p>
+
+<p>"You are sure that I adore you! What more need my wife be sure of? Oh,
+my darling, I have seen wedlock where no love is—only affection and
+trustfulness and kindly feeling—all the domestic virtues with love
+left out! Dearest, such a union is like a picture to the colour-blind,
+like music to the stone-deaf, like a landscape without sunlight. There
+is nothing in this world like love, and nothing can make up for love
+when love is wanting."</p>
+
+<p>"And nothing can make up for love when love is wanting," repeated
+Suzette, suddenly serious. "Oh, Allan! what if I am not sure?—if I
+doubt my own feelings?"</p>
+
+<p>"But you can't doubt. My dearest, I am reading the signs and tokens of
+love in those eloquent eyes, in those sensitive lips, while you are
+talking of doubt. There is no one else, is there, Suzette?" he asked,
+with quick earnestness. "No one in the past whose image comes between
+you and me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one, no one."</p>
+
+<p>"In all your Indian experiences?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am more than satisfied. And now let us go and tell my mother.
+She has been waiting for a daughter ever since I was born; and, behold,
+at last I am giving her one, the sweetest her heart could desire."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette submitted, and walked by his side in silence while he went in
+search of Lady Emily, whom he finally discovered in the poultry-yard
+with Bessie Edgefield. Allan's elated air and Suzette's blushes were a
+sufficient indication of what had happened; and when mother and son had
+clasped hands and looked at each other there was no need of words. Lady
+Emily took the girl to her heart and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope your father will be pleased, Suzette."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he will be sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"And I know Mrs. Mornington will be glad. Allan has her consent in
+advance."</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie is a very silly woman," said Suzette, laughingly. And then she
+had to endure Bessie Edgefield's congratulations, which were of the
+boisterous kind.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you will let me be bridesmaid," she said, with that vulgar,
+practical view of things which wounds the sensitiveness of the newly
+betrothed almost as much as an estimate from a furniture dealer, or a
+prospectus from an insurance office.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">"OUR DREAMS PURSUE OUR DEAD, AND DO NOT FIND."</p>
+
+
+<p>Miss Vincent's engagement met with everybody's approval, with the one
+exception of the marriageable young ladies of the neighbourhood, who
+thought that Allan Carew had made a foolish choice, and might certainly
+have done better for himself. What good could come of marrying a girl
+who was neither English nor French; who had been educated in a Parisian
+convent, and who drove to Salisbury every Sunday morning to hear mass?</p>
+
+<p>"What uncomfortable Sundays they will have!" one of these young ladies
+remarked to Bessie Edgefield; "and then how horrid for him to have a
+wife of a different creed! They are sure to quarrel about religion.
+Isn't the Vicar dreadfully shocked?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father is rather sorry that Mr. Carew should marry a Roman
+Catholic. There is always the fear that he might go over to Rome——"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. He is sure to do that. It will be the only way to stop the
+quarrelling. She will make him a pervert."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mornington, on the other hand, flattered herself that, by her
+marriage with a member of the English Church, her niece would be
+brought to see the errors of Rome, and would very soon make her
+appearance in the family pew beside her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Emily cherished the same hope, since, although a less ardent
+Churchwoman than Mrs. Mornington, she believed in Anglicanism as the
+surest road to salvation, and she dwelt also upon the difficulties that
+might arise by-and-by about the poor dear children, talking of those
+potential beings as if they were already on the scene.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman Church was severe upon that question, and it would perhaps
+be impossible for Suzette to be married in her own church unless her
+husband would promise that their children should be baptized and
+educated in the true faith.</p>
+
+<p>While other people were thinking about these things for him, Allan had
+no room for thought of any kind, unless a lover's meditation upon the
+image of the girl he loved could be dignified by the name of thought.
+For Allan, life was a perpetual ecstasy. To be with Suzette in her own
+home, at the Grove, on the links, anywhere—to be with her was all
+he needed for bliss. For his sake, his mother had prolonged her stay
+at Beechhurst, in order that the two young people might be together
+in the house where they were to live as man and wife. It was Allan's
+delight to make Suzette familiar with her future home. He wanted her
+to feel that this was the house in which she was to live; that under
+her father's roof she was no longer at home; that her books, her
+bric-à-brac, the multifarious accumulations of a happy girlhood,
+might as well be transferred at once to the sunny, bow-windowed
+upstair room which was to be her den. It was now a plainly furnished,
+matter-of-fact morning room, a room in which the Admiral had kept his
+boots, cigar-boxes, and business documents, and transacted the fussy
+futilities of his unoccupied life. The mantelpiece, which had been
+built up with shelves and artful cupboards for the accommodation of
+the Admiral's cigars, would serve excellently to set off Suzette's
+zoological china; her Dresden pugs, and rats, and lobsters, and
+pigs, and rabbits, her morsels of silver, and scraps of wrought
+copper would adorn the shelves; and all her little odds and ends and
+never-to-be-finished bits of fancy-work could be neatly stowed away in
+the cupboards.</p>
+
+<p>"But won't you want those dear little cubby-houses for your own
+cigars?" asked Suzette. "It seems too cruel to rob you of your uncle's
+snuggery. I've no doubt you smoke just as much as the Admiral."</p>
+
+<p>"Not cigars. My humble pipe and pouch can stow themselves away
+anywhere. I only smoke cigars out hunting, and I keep a box or two in
+the saddle-room for handiness. No, this is to be your room, Suzette. I
+have imagined you in it until it seems so to belong to you that I feel
+I am taking a liberty in writing a letter here. When are you going to
+bring the Dresden bow-wows, and the elephants, and mice, and lobsters,
+and donkeys?—all about of a size, by the way."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I could not possibly spare them," Suzette answered quickly, making
+for the door.</p>
+
+<p>They had come in to look at the room, and for Suzette to give her
+opinion as to the colour and style of the new papering. It was to be a
+Morris paper, although that would entail new carpet and curtains, and a
+complete revolution as to colouring.</p>
+
+<p>"Spare them!" echoed Allan, detaining her. "Who wants you to spare
+them? When will you bring them with you? When are you coming to take
+possession of the house which is no home for me until you are mistress
+of it?"</p>
+
+<p>This was by no means the first time the question had been asked.
+Again and again had Allan pleaded that his marriage might be soon.
+There was no reason why he should wait for his wife. His position
+was established, his house was ready; a house as well found as that
+flagship had been on whose quarter-deck the Admiral had moved as a
+king. Why should he wait? He could never love his future wife more
+dearly than he loved her now. All the framework of his life would be
+out of gear till he had brought her home to the house which seemed
+joyless and empty for want of her.</p>
+
+<p>"When is it to be, Suzette? When am I to be completely happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, are you not happy, <i>par exemple</i>? You talked about
+overwhelming happiness when I said 'Yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That was the promise of happiness. It lifted me to the skies; but it
+was only the promise. I am pining for the realization. I want you all
+to myself—to have and to hold for ever and ever; beside my hearth;
+interwoven with my life; mine always and always; no longer a bright,
+capricious spirit, glancing about me like a gleam of sunshine, and
+vanishing like the sunbeam; but a woman—my very own—of one mind and
+of one heart with me. Suzette, if you love me, you will not spin out
+the time of dreams; you will give yourself to me really and for ever."</p>
+
+<p>There was an earnestness in his tone that scared her. The blushes faded
+from her cheeks, and she looked at him, pale and startled, and sudden
+tears rushed to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You said you would give me time," she faltered; "time to know
+you better—to be certain." And then recovering her gaiety in an
+instant—"Now, Allan, it is too bad of you. Did I not tell you that I
+would not be married till my one-and-twentieth birthday? Why do you
+tease me to alter the date? Surely you don't want to marry an infant."</p>
+
+<p>"And your birthday will be on the twenty-third of June," said Allan,
+rather sullenly. "Nearly a year from now."</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly a year from October to June! What odd ideas you have about
+arithmetic! And now I must run and find Lady Emily. We are going to
+drive to Morton Towers together."</p>
+
+<p>Allan made way for her to pass, and followed her downstairs, vexed and
+disheartened. His mother was to leave him next day; and then there
+would be one house the less in which he and Suzette could meet—the
+house which was to be their home.</p>
+
+<p>He had not visited Mrs. Wornock since her nocturnal perambulation, and
+he had prevented his mother paying her a second visit, albeit the hope
+of a white peacock and a certain interest in the widow's personality
+had made Lady Emily anxious to call at the Manor. Allan had found
+reasons for putting off any such call, without saying one disparaging
+word about the lady. He had heard of Mrs. Wornock from Suzette, who
+reproached him for going no more to Discombe.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know you were so fickle," she said. "I really think you have
+behaved abominably to poor Mrs. Wornock. She is always asking me why
+you don't go to see her; and I am tired of inventing excuses."</p>
+
+<p>Suzette was at the Manor every other day. Mrs. Wornock was teaching her
+to play the organ.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not sweet of her?" she asked Allan. "And though I don't suppose
+she ever gave any one a lesson in her life till she began to teach me,
+she has the teaching gift in a marked degree. I love to learn of her.
+I can play some simple things of Haydn's not altogether badly. Perhaps
+you will do me the honour to come and hear me some day, when I have got
+a little further."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to hear you to-morrow, if I may."</p>
+
+<p>"What! Then you have no objection to Discombe in the abstract, though
+you have cut poor Mrs. Wornock for the last six weeks?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was so much occupied with my mother."</p>
+
+<p>"And your mother wanted badly to call upon Mrs. Wornock, and you
+always put a stumbling-block in her way. But I am happy to say Lady
+Emily is to have the white peacock all the same. She is to have a pair
+of birds. I have taken care of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a good and thoughtful daughter."</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>When Allan came back from the station, after seeing his mother safely
+seated in the London train, he found a letter from Mrs. Wornock on the
+hall table—a hand-delivered letter which had just arrived. It was
+brief and to the point.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"Why have you deserted me, Allan? Have I unconsciously offended
+you, or is there no room in your heart for friendship as well as
+love? I hear of your happiness from Suzette; but I want to see
+you and your sweetheart roaming about the gardens here as in the
+old days, before you were engaged lovers. Now that Lady Emily is
+leaving Beechhurst, you will have time to spare for me."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The letter seemed a reproach, and he felt that he deserved to be
+reproached by her. How kind she had been, how sympathetic, how
+interested in his love-story; and what an ingrate he must appear in her
+eyes!</p>
+
+<p>He did not wait for the following morning and the music-lesson, lest
+Mrs. Wornock should think he went to Discombe only on Suzette's
+account. He set out immediately after reading that reproachful little
+letter, and walked through the lanes and copses to the Manor House.</p>
+
+<p>It was four o'clock when he arrived, and Mrs. Wornock was at home and
+alone. The swelling tones of that wonderful organ answered his question
+on the threshold. No beginner could play with that broad, strong
+touch, which gave grandeur to the simple phrases of an "Agnus Dei" by
+Palestrina.</p>
+
+<p>She started up as Allan was announced, and went quickly to meet him,
+giving him both her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"This is so good of you," she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are not offended, and you have forgiven me?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Mrs. Wornock, why should I be offended? I have received
+nothing but kindness from you."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might be angry with me for refusing the invitation to
+your luncheon-party."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been very impertinent of me to be angry, when I know
+what a recluse you are."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a month since you were here—a whole calendar month. Why didn't
+you bring Lady Emily to see me? But perhaps she did not wish to come.
+Was that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mrs. Wornock," he answered coldly. "My mother wished to call upon
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"And you prevented her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dare I be frank with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes! You cannot be too frank. I love you, Allan. Always
+remember that. You are to me as a second son."</p>
+
+<p>Her warmth startled and scared him. His face flushed hotly, and he
+stood before her in mute embarrassment. If the secret of the past
+was indeed the guilty secret which he had suspected, there was utter
+shamelessness in this speech of hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, why are you silent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because there are some things that can hardly be said; least of all by
+a man of my age to a woman of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing that you can say to me, Allan, about myself or my
+regard for you, that can bring a blush to my face or to yours. There is
+nothing in my life of which I need be ashamed in your sight or in the
+sight of my son."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, forgive me, if my secret thoughts have sometimes wronged
+you. There has been so much to surprise and mystify me. Your agitation
+on hearing my father's name; your painful embarrassment when I brought
+my mother here; and last, and most of all, your secret visit to
+Beechhurst when my father was there."</p>
+
+<p>"What! you know of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I saw your face at the open window, looking in at him."</p>
+
+<p>She clasped her hands, and there were tears in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she faltered, after a silence of some moments, "I was looking
+at the face I had not seen for nearly thirty years—the face that
+looked at me like a ghost from the past, and had no knowledge of me,
+no care for me. I knew—I have known in all these years that George
+Beresford was to be looked for among the living. I have sought for
+him in the spirit-world, again and again and again, in long days and
+nights of waiting, in my dreams, in long, far-reaching thoughts that
+have carried my soul away from this dull earth; but there was no
+answer—not a thought, not a breath out of that unseen world where my
+spirit would have touched his had he died while he was young, and while
+he still loved me. But he lived, and grew old like me, and found a new
+love, and so we are as wide apart as if we had never met. I stood in
+the darkness outside your window for nearly an hour, looking at him,
+listening to his voice when he spoke—the dear, kind voice! <i>That</i>
+was not changed."</p>
+
+<p>"It is true, then? You knew and loved my father years ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, knew him and loved him, and would have been his wife if it had
+been for his happiness to marry me. Think of that, Allan! I was to have
+been his wife, and I gave him up for his own sake."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you do that? Why should you not have married him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I was only a poor girl, and he was a gentleman—the only son
+of a rich widow, and his mother would never have forgiven him for such
+a marriage. I knew nothing of that when he asked me to be his wife. I
+only knew that we loved each other truly and dearly. But just before
+the day that was to have been our wedding-day his mother came to me,
+and told me that if I persisted in marrying him I should be the bane of
+his life. It would be social extinction for him to marry me. Social
+extinction! I remember those words, though I hardly knew then what they
+meant. I was not eighteen, Allan, and I knew less of the world than
+many children of eight. But I did not give up my happiness without a
+struggle. There was strong persuasion brought to bear upon me; and at
+last I yielded—for his sake."</p>
+
+<p>"And blighted his life!" exclaimed Allan. "My mother is the best of
+women, and the best and kindest of wives; but I have always known
+that my father's marriage was a loveless marriage. Well," he went on,
+recovering himself quickly, apprehensive lest he should lower his
+mother's dignity by revealing too much, "you acted generously, and no
+doubt for the best, in making that sacrifice, and all has worked round
+well. You married a good man, and secured a position of more importance
+than my father's smaller means could have given you."</p>
+
+<p>"Position! means!" she repeated, in bitterest scorn. "Oh, Allan, don't
+think so poorly of me as to suppose that it was Mr. Wornock's wealth
+which attracted me. I married him because he was kind and sympathetic
+and good to me in my loneliness—a pupil at a German conservatoire,
+living with stony-hearted people, who only cared for me to the extent
+of the money that was paid for my board and lodging, and who were
+always saying hard things to me because they had agreed to take me so
+cheaply—too cheaply, they said. I used to feel as if I were cheating
+them when I sat at their wretched meals, and I was thankful that I had
+a wretched appetite."</p>
+
+<p>"You were cruelly used, dear Mrs. Wornock. I can just remember my
+grandmother, and I know she was a hard woman. She had no right to
+interfere with her son's disposal of his life."</p>
+
+<p>"No, she had no right. If I had known even as much of the world as I
+know now, when Miss Marjorum—Mrs. Beresford's messenger—came to me,
+I would have acted differently. I know now that a gentleman need not
+be ashamed of marrying a penniless girl if there is nothing against
+her but her poverty; but then I believed what Miss Marjorum told
+me—believed that I should blight the life of the man who loved me with
+such generous self-sacrificing love. Why should he alone be generous,
+and I selfish and indifferent to his welfare?"</p>
+
+<p>"But how did he suffer you to sacrifice yourself at his mother's
+bidding?"</p>
+
+<p>"He had no power to stop me. It was all settled without his knowledge.
+I hope he was not very sorry—dear, dear George!—so generous, so true,
+so noble. Oh, how I loved him—how I have loved him—all my life,
+all my life! My husband knew that I had no heart to give him—that I
+could be his obedient wife—but that I could never love him as I had
+loved——"</p>
+
+<p>Again her sobs choked her speech. She threw herself into a chair and
+abandoned herself to that passionate grief.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Mrs. Wornock, forgive me for having revived these sorrowful
+memories. I was wrong—I ought not to have spoken——"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, there is nothing to forgive. It does me good to talk of the
+past—with you, Allan, with you, not with any one else. And now you
+know why my heart went out to you from the first. Why you are to me
+almost as a son—almost as dear as my own son—and your future wife
+as my daughter. It does me good to talk to you of that time—so long
+and long ago. It does me good to talk of my dead self. I have never
+forgotten. The past has always been dearer to me than anything in this
+life that came afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think my father has forgotten that past, any more than you
+have, Mrs. Wornock. I know that there has always been a cloud over his
+life—the shadow of one sad memory. I have felt and understood this,
+without knowing whence the shadow came."</p>
+
+<p>"He was too true-hearted to forget easily," Mrs. Wornock said, gently,
+"and we were both so young. I was his first love, as he was mine. And
+when a first love is pure and strong as ours was, it must be first and
+last, must it not, Allan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered, half doubtfully, remembering certain sketchy loves
+of his own, and hoping that they could hardly be ranked as love, so
+that he might believe that his passion for Suzette was essentially the
+first; essentially, if not actually.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have never forgotten," Mrs. Wornock repeated musingly, seating
+herself at the piano, and softly touching the notes now and then,
+playing a few bars of pensive melody sotto voce as she talked—now a
+phrase from an Adagio of Beethoven's, now a resolution from a prelude
+by Bach, dropping gravely down into the bass with softly repetitive
+phrases, from piano to pianissimo, melting into silence like a sigh.
+"No, I have never forgotten—and I have suffered from the pains as well
+as the pleasures of memory. Before my son was born, and after, there
+was a long interval of darkness when I lived only in the past, when the
+shadows of the past were more real to me than the living things of the
+present, when my husband's face was dim and distant, and that dear face
+from the past was always near me, with the kind smile that comforted
+me in my desolate youth. Yes, I loved him, Allan, loved him, and gave
+him up for his own sake. And now you tell me my sacrifice was useless;
+that, even with the wife his mother chose for him, the good amiable
+wife, he has not been altogether happy."</p>
+
+<p>"His life has been placid, studious, kindly, and useful. It may be that
+he was best fitted for that calm, secluded life—it may be that if you
+had taken the more natural and the more selfish course—and in so doing
+parted him for ever from his mother, who was a proud woman, capable of
+lifelong resentment—it may be that remorse might have blighted his
+life, and that even your love would not have consoled him under the
+conviction that he had broken his mother's heart. I know that, after
+her strong-minded masterful fashion, she adored him. He was all she
+had in this world to love or care for; and it is quite possible that
+a lasting quarrel with him might have killed her. Dear Mrs. Wornock,
+pray do not think that your sacrifice was altogether in vain. No such
+self-surrender as that can be without some good fruit. I do not pretend
+to be a holy person, but I do believe in the power of goodness. And,
+consider, dear friend, your life has not been all unhappy. You had a
+kind and good husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! He was more than good, and for over a year of our married life
+I was a burden to him. He was an exile from the home he loved, for my
+sake—for me, who ought to have brightened his home for him."</p>
+
+<p>"But that was only a dark interval," said Allan, remembering what Mrs.
+Mornington had told him, of the long residence at Grindelwald, and
+the birth of the heir in that remote spot. "There were happier days
+afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we had a few peaceful years here, before death took him from me,
+and while our boy was growing in strength and beauty."</p>
+
+<p>"And in these long years of widowhood music has been your comforter. In
+your devotion to art you have lived the higher life."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered, with an inspired look, striking a triumphant
+chord, "music has been my comforter—music has conjured back my dead
+father, my lost lover. Music has been my life and my hope."</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="ph2">THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE.</p>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock's frank revelation of her girlish love and self-sacrifice
+lifted a burden from Allan's heart and mind. He had been interested in
+her, and attracted towards her from that first summer noontide when
+he studied her thoughtful face in the village church, and when he
+lingered among the villagers' graves to hear her play. His sympathy had
+grown with every hour he spent in her society, and he had been deeply
+grateful for the friendship which had so cordially included him and the
+girl he loved. It had been very painful to him to believe that this
+sweet-mannered woman belonged to the fallen ones of the earth, that her
+graces were the graces of a Magdalen, most painful to think that she
+was no fitting companion for the girl who had so readily responded to
+her friendly advances.</p>
+
+<p>The cloud was lifted now, and he felt ashamed of all his past doubts
+and suspicions. He respected Mrs. Wornock for her refusal to meet his
+father in the beaten way of friendship. He was touched by the devotion
+which had brought her creeping to his windows under the cover of night
+to look upon the face of her beloved. He resolved that he would do
+all that in him lay to atone for the wrong his thoughts had done her,
+that he would be to her, indeed, as a second son, and that he would
+cultivate her son's friendship in a brotherly spirit.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped in the corridor on the morning after that interview to
+study the portrait of the young man whose likeness to himself had now
+resolved itself into a psychological mystery, and he could but see that
+it was a likeness of the mind rather than of the flesh, a resemblance
+in character and expression far more than in actual lineaments.</p>
+
+<p>"He is vastly my superior in looks," thought Allan, as he studied
+the lines of that boldly painted face. "He has his mother's finely
+chiselled features, his mother's delicate colouring. There is a shade
+of effeminacy, otherwise the face would be almost faultless. And to
+mistake this face for that! Absurd!" muttered Allan, catching the
+reflection of his sunburnt forehead, and strongly marked nose and chin,
+in the Venetian glass that hung at right angles with the picture.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the organ while the butler paused with his hand on the door,
+waiting to announce the visitor. The simpler music, the weaker touch,
+told him that the pupil was playing.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't stop," he cried, as he went in; "I want to hear if the
+pupil is worthy of her mistress."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock came to meet him, and Suzette went on playing, with only a
+smile and a nod to her sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>"She is getting on capitally. She has a real delight in music,"
+announced Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<p>"How happy you are looking this morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have had good news. My son is on his way home."</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you."</p>
+
+<p>"He is coming home for his long leave. I shall have him for nearly a
+year."</p>
+
+<p>"How happy you will be! I have just been studying his portrait."</p>
+
+<p>"You are so like him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, only a rough copy—a charcoal sketch on coarse paper,—nothing to
+boast of," said Allan, with a curious laugh.</p>
+
+<p>He was watching Suzette, to see if she were interested in the expected
+arrival. She played on, her eyes intent alternately upon the page of
+music in front of her, and upon the stops which she was learning to
+use. There was no stumbling in the notes, or halting in the time. She
+played the simple legato passages smoothly and carefully, and seemed to
+pay no heed to their talk.</p>
+
+<p>Allan would have been less than human, perhaps, if his first thought on
+hearing of Geoffrey's return had not been of the influence he might
+exercise upon Suzette—whether in him she would recognize the superior
+and more attractive personality.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he thought, ashamed of that jealous fear which was so quick to
+foresee a rival, "Suzette has given me her heart, and it must be my
+own fault if I can't keep it. Women are our superiors, at least in
+this, that they are not so easily caught by the modelling of a face,
+or the rich tones of a complexion. And shall I think so meanly of my
+sweet Suzette as to suppose that my happiness is in danger because some
+one more attractive than myself appears upon the scene? When we spend
+our first season in London as man and wife, she will have to run the
+gauntlet of all the agreeable men in town, soldiers and sailors, actors
+and painters, ingenuous young adorers and hoary-headed flatterers. The
+whole army of Satan that maketh war upon innocence and beauty. No, I am
+not afraid. She has a fine brain and a noble heart. She is not the kind
+of woman to jilt a lover or betray a husband. I am safe in loving her."</p>
+
+<p>He had need to comfort himself, for the hour of trial was nearer than
+he thought.</p>
+
+<p>He went to Discombe before luncheon on the morning after he had heard
+of Geoffrey's return. He went expecting to find Suzette at the organ,
+and to hear the latter part of the lesson. He was not a connoisseur,
+but he loved music well enough to love to hear his sweetheart play, and
+to be able to distinguish every stage of progress in her performance.
+To-day, however, the organ was silent; the youth who blew the bellows
+was chasing a wasp in the corridor, and the room into which Allan was
+ushered was empty.</p>
+
+<p>"The ladies are in the garden, sir," said the butler. "Shall I tell my
+mistress that you are here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks, I'll go and look for the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>The autumn morning was bright and mild, and one of the French windows
+was open.</p>
+
+<p>Allan hurried out to the garden, and looked down the cypress avenue.
+The long perspective of smooth-shaven lawn was empty. There was no one
+loitering by the fountain. They were in the summer-house—the classic
+temple where Mrs. Wornock had sunk into unconsciousness at the sound
+of his father's name, where he had lived through the most embarrassing
+experience of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He could distinguish Mrs. Wornock's black gown, and Suzette's
+terra-cotta frock, a cloth frock from a Salisbury tailor, which he had
+greatly admired. But there was another figure that puzzled him—an
+unfamiliar figure in grey—a man's figure.</p>
+
+<p>Never had the grass walk seemed so long, or the temple so remote.
+Yes, that third figure was decidedly masculine. There was no optical
+delusion as to the sex of the stranger—no petticoat hidden behind the
+marble table. As he drew nearer he saw that the intruder was a young
+man, sitting in a lounging attitude with his arms resting on the table,
+and his shoulders leaning forward to bring him nearer to the two
+ladies seated opposite.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that it would be undignified to run, but he walked so fast in
+his eagerness to discover the identity of the interloper that he was in
+an undignified perspiration when he arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, poor Allan, how you have been running!" exclaimed Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>"I was vexed with myself for losing the whole of your organ lesson,"
+said Allan, shaking hands with Mrs. Wornock, and gazing at the stranger
+as at a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was Geoffrey Wornock. Even his hurried reflections during
+that hurried walk had told Allan that it must be he, and none other.
+No one else would be admitted to the familiarity of the garden and
+summer-house. Mrs. Wornock had no casual visitors, no intimate friends,
+except Suzette and himself.</p>
+
+<p>"There has been no organ lesson this morning, Allan," Mrs. Wornock
+told him, her face radiant with happiness. "Suzette and I have been
+surprised out of all sober occupations and ideas. This son of mine took
+it into his head to come home nearly a fortnight before I expected him.
+He arrived as suddenly as if he had dropped from the skies. He did not
+even telegraph to be met at the station."</p>
+
+<p>"A telegram would have taken the bloom off the surprise, mother," said
+the man in grey, standing up tall and straight, but slenderly built.</p>
+
+<p>Allan felt himself a coarse gladiatorial sort of person beside
+this elegant and refined-looking young man. Nor was there anything
+effeminate about that graceful figure to which an envious critic could
+take exception. Soldiering had given that air of manliness which can
+co-exist with slenderness and grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Geoffrey, this is Allan, of whom you know so much."</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me that you and I are very much alike, Mr. Carew," said
+Geoffrey, with a pleasant laugh, "and my mother tells me that you and
+I are to take kindly to each other, and in fact she expects to see
+us by way of being adopted brothers. I don't quite know what that
+means—whether we are to ride each other's horses, and make free with
+each other's guns, or go halves in a yacht or a racehorse?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to like each other—to be real friends," said Mrs. Wornock,
+earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't say another word about it, mother. Friendship under that
+kind of protecting influence rarely comes to any good; but I am quite
+prepared to like Mr. Carew on his own account, and I hope he may be
+able to like me on the same poor grounds."</p>
+
+<p>He had an airy way of dismissing the subject which set them all
+at their ease, and steered them away from the rocks and shoals of
+sentiment. Mrs. Wornock, who had been on the verge of weeping, smiled
+again, and led Geoffrey off to look at the gardens, and all the
+improvements which had been effected during his three years' absence,
+leaving the lovers to follow or not as they pleased.</p>
+
+<p>The lovers stayed in the summer-house, feeling that mother and son
+would like to be alone; and mother and son strolled on side by side,
+looking like brother and sister.</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest," said Mrs. Wornock, tenderly, slipping her arm through
+her son's directly they were really alone, and out of sight, in an
+old flower-garden walled round by dense hedges of clipped ilex, a
+garden laid out in a geometrical pattern, and with narrow gravel paths
+intersecting the flower-beds. The glory of all gardens was over. There
+were only a few lingering dahlias, and prim asters lifting up their
+gaudy discs to the sun, and beds of marigolds of different shades, from
+palest yellow to deepest orange.</p>
+
+<p>"My dearest, how glad I am to have you! I begin to live again now you
+have come home."</p>
+
+<p>"And I am very glad to be at home, mother," answered her son, smiling
+down upon her, fondly, protectingly, but with that light tone which
+marked all he said. "But it seems to me you have been very much alive
+while I have been away, with this young man of yours who is almost an
+adopted son."</p>
+
+<p>"My heart went out to him, Geoffrey, because of his likeness to you."</p>
+
+<p>"A dangerous precedent. You might meet half a dozen such likenesses in
+a London season. It would hardly do for your heart to go out to them
+all. You would be coming home with a large family—by adoption."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no fear of that. I don't go into society, and I don't think,
+if I did, I should meet any one like Allan Carew."</p>
+
+<p>Geoffrey could but note the tenderness in her tone as she spoke Allan's
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"And who is this double of mine, mother; and what is he, and how does
+he come to be engaged to that dainty, dark-eyed girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"You like Suzette?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I like her—she is a nice, winning thing—not startlingly pretty;
+but altogether nice. I like the way that dark silky hair of hers breaks
+up into tiny curls about her forehead—and she has fine eyes——"</p>
+
+<p>"India has made you critical, Geoffrey."</p>
+
+<p>"Not India, but a native disposition, mother dearest. In India we
+have often to put up with second best in the way of beauty, faded
+carnations, tired eyes, hollow cheeks; but the young women have
+generally plenty to say for themselves. They can talk, and they can
+dance. They are educated for the marriage market before they are sent
+out."</p>
+
+<p>His mother laughed, and hung on to his arm admiringly. In her opinion,
+whatever he said was either wise or witty. All his impertinences were
+graceful. His ignorance was better than other people's knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not neglected your violin, I hope, Geoffrey?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, mother. My good little Strad has been my friend and comrade in
+many a quiet hour while the other fellows were at cards, or telling
+stale stories. I shall be very glad to play the old de Beriot duets
+again. Your fingers have not lost their cunning, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"I have played a great deal while you were away. I have had nothing
+else to think about."</p>
+
+<p>"Except Allan Carew."</p>
+
+<p>"He has not made much difference. He comes and goes as he
+likes—especially when Suzette is here. I sit at my organ or piano and
+let them wander about and amuse themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"What an indulgent chaperon!"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew what the end must be, Geoffrey. I knew from the first that they
+were in love with each other. At least I knew from the very first that
+he was in love with her."</p>
+
+<p>"You were not so sure about the lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"A girl is too shy to let her feelings be read easily; but I could see
+she liked his society. They used to roam about the garden together like
+children. They were too happy not to be in love."</p>
+
+<p>"Does being in love mean happiness, mother? Don't you think there is a
+middle state between indifference and passion—a cordial, comfortable,
+sympathetic friendship which is far happier than love? It has no
+cold fits of doubt, no hot fits of jealousy. From your account of
+these young people, I question if they were ever really in love. Your
+Carew looks essentially commonplace. I don't give him credit for much
+imagination."</p>
+
+<p>"You will understand him better by-and-by, dearest."</p>
+
+<p>The mother was looking up at the newly regained son, admiring him, and
+beginning to fancy that she had done him an injustice in thinking that
+Allan resembled him. He was much handsomer than Allan, and there was
+something picturesque and romantic in his countenance and bearing which
+appealed to a woman's fancy; a look as of the Lovelaces and Dorsets of
+old, the courtiers and soldiers who could write a love-song on the eve
+of a bloody battle, or dance a minuet at midnight, and fight a duel at
+dawn. His manner to his mother was playful and protecting. He had not
+the air of thinking her the wisest of women, but no one could doubt
+that he loved her.</p>
+
+<p>The summer-house was empty when they went back to it, and there was a
+pencilled note on the marble table addressed to Mrs. Wornock.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>"Allan is going to see me home in time to give father his tiffin,
+and I think you and Mr. Wornock will like to have the day to
+yourselves. I shall come for my organ lesson to-morrow at eleven,
+unless you tell me to stop away—</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">"Ever, dear Mrs. Wornock, your own<br>
+"SUZETTE."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Pretty tactful soul! Of course we want to be alone," said Geoffrey,
+reading the note over his mother's shoulder. "First you shall give me
+the best lunch that Discombe can provide; and then we will drive round
+and look at everything. And we will devote the evening to de Beriot. I
+must go up to town by an early train to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Running away from me so soon, Geoffrey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, mother, it's base ingratitude to say that. I've hardly given
+myself breathing time since I landed at Brindisi, because I wanted
+to push home to you, first of the very first. I shall only be in
+London a day or two. I want to see what kind of horses are being sold
+at Tattersall's, and I may run down to look at the Belhus hunters.
+Remember I haven't a horse to ride."</p>
+
+<p>"There are your old hunters, Geoffrey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three dear old crocks. Admirable as pensioners, not to carry eleven
+stone to hounds. No, mother, I'm afraid there's nothing in your stables
+that will be good for more than a cover-hack."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wornock sighed faintly in the midst of her bliss. She had a
+womanly horror of hunting and all its perils, and in her heart of
+hearts was always on the side of the fox; but she knew that without
+hunting and shooting Discombe Manor would very soon pall upon
+her son, dilettante and Jack-of-all-trades though he was. Music
+alone—passionately as he loved it—would not keep him contented.</p>
+
+<p>Allan and Suzette strolled home under the bright blue sky. These
+late days in October were the Indian summer of the year, a season in
+which it was a joy to live, especially in a land where the smoke from
+domestic hearths curling upward here and there in silvery wreaths from
+wood fires, only suggested homeliness and warmth, not filth and fog.
+They sauntered slowly homeward through the rustic lanes, and their talk
+was naturally of the new arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he the kind of young man you expected him to be?" asked Suzette.</p>
+
+<p>There was no occasion to be more specific in one's mention of
+<i>him</i>. There could but be one young man in their thoughts to-day.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I had formed any expectations about him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Allan, that can't be true! You must have thought about him, after
+everybody telling you of the likeness. Remember what you told me in our
+very first dance—how dreadfully bored you had been about him, and how
+glad you were that I didn't know him."</p>
+
+<p>"My being bored—and I was horribly—was no reason why my imagination
+should dwell upon him. If I thought of him at all, I thought of him
+just as he is—the image of his portrait by Millais—and a very
+good-looking and well set-up young man—so much better looking than my
+humble self, that I wonder at any one's seeing a likeness between the
+two faces."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he better looking, Allan? I know I like your face best."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of that, since you will have to put up with my face for a
+lifelong companion."</p>
+
+<p>"Allan, how grumpily you said that."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I, Suzie? I'm afraid I'm a brute. I am beginning to find out
+disagreeable depths in my character."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with a puzzled air—so sweetly innocent, so free from
+any backward-reaching thought—that made him happy again. He took up
+the little hand hanging loose at her side and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us drop in upon Aunt Mornington, and ask her for lunch," he said
+as they came within sight of the Grove. "I don't feel like parting with
+you just yet, Suzie."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite impossible. I must be at home for father's tiffin."</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot that sacred institution. Well, Suzie, do you think it's
+possible the General might ask me to share that important meal if he
+saw me hanging about? We could go to the links afterwards, so that you
+might have the pleasure of seeing how wildly I can beat the air?"</p>
+
+<p>Suzie laughed her assent to this proposition, and General Vincent,
+overtaking them five minutes afterwards on his useful hack, sustained
+an Anglo-Indian's reputation for hospitality by immediately inviting
+Allan to luncheon.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">END OF VOL. I.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75173 ***</div>
+</body>
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