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Title: The Golden Calf

Author: M. E. Braddon

Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9052]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 1, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN CALF ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders




                            THE GOLDEN CALF


                               _A Novel_

                            BY M.E. BRADDON


                               AUTHOR OF

                'LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,' 'AURORA FLOYD,'
                    'VIXEN,' 'ISHMAEL,' ETC., ETC.



[Illustration:  "Ida stood with clasped hands, and lips moving dumbly in
prayer."]




CONTENTS

CHAP.

      I. THE ARTICLED PUPIL

     II. 'I AM GOING TO MARRY FOR MONEY'

    III. AT THE KNOLL

     IV. WENDOVER ABBEY

      V. DR. RYLANCE ASSERTS HIMSELF

     VI. A BIRTHDAY FEAST

    VII. IN THE RIVER-MEADOW

   VIII. AT THE LOCK-HOUSE

     IX. A SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT

      X. A BAD PENNY

     XI. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT A DISCOUNT

    XII. THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES

   XIII. KINGTHORPE SOCIETY

    XIV. THE TRUE KNIGHT

     XV. MR. WENDOVER PLANS AN EXCURSION

    XVI. THICKER THAN WATER

   XVII. OUGHT SHE TO STAY?

  XVIII. AFTER A STORM COMES A CALM

    XIX. AFTER A CALM A STORM

     XX. WAS THIS THE MOTIVE?

    XXI. TAKING LIFE QUIETLY

   XXII. LADY PALLISER STUDIES THE UPPER TEN

  XXIII. 'ALL OUR LIFE is MIXED WITH DEATH'

   XXIV. 'FRUITS FAIL AND LOVE DIES AND TIME RANGES'

    XXV. 'MY SEED WAS YOUTH, MY CROP WAS ENDLESS CARE'

   XXVI. 'AND, IF I DIE, NO SOUL WILL PITY ME'

  XXVII. JOHN JARDINE SOLVES THE MYSTERY

 XXVIII. AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOUSE IS HIS CASTLE

   XXIX. 'AS ONE DEAD IN THE BOTTOM OF A TOMB'

    XXX. A FIERY DAWN

   XXXI. 'SOLE PARTNER AND SOLE PART OF ALL THESE JOYS'




THE GOLDEN CALF




CHAPTER I.


THE ARTICLED PUPIL.

'Where is Miss Palliser?' inquired Miss Pew, in that awful voice of hers,
at which the class-room trembled, as at unexpected thunder. A murmur ran
along the desks, from girl to girl, and then some one, near that end of
the long room which was sacred to Miss Pew and her lieutenants, said that
Miss Palliser was not in the class-room.

'I think she is taking her music lesson, ma'am,' faltered the girl who
had ventured diffidently to impart this information to the
schoolmistress.

'Think?' exclaimed Miss Pew, in her stentorian voice. 'How can you think
about an absolute fact? Either she is taking her lesson, or she is not
taking her lesson. There is no room for thought. Let Miss Palliser be
sent for this moment.'

At this command, as at the behest of the Homeric Jove himself, half a
dozen Irises started up to carry the ruler's message; but again Miss
Pew's mighty tones resounded in the echoing class-room.

'I don't want twenty girls to carry one message. Let Miss Rylance go.'

There was a grim smile on the principal's coarsely-featured countenance
as she gave this order. Miss Rylance was not one of the six who had
started up to do the schoolmistress's bidding. She was a young lady who
considered her mission in life anything rather than to carry a message--a
young lady who thought herself quite the most refined and elegant thing
at Mauleverer Manor, and so entirely superior to her surroundings as to
be absolved from the necessity of being obliging. But Miss Pew's voice,
when fortified by anger, was too much even for Miss Rylance's calm sense
of her own merits, and she rose at the lady's bidding, laid down her
ivory penholder on the neatly written exercise, and walked out of the
room quietly, with the slow and stately deportment imparted by a long
course of instruction from Madame Rigolette, the fashionable
dancing-mistress.

'Rylance won't much like being sent on a message,' whispered Miss
Cobb, the Kentish brewer's daughter, to Miss Mullins, the Northampton
carriage-builder's heiress.

'And old Pew delights in taking her down a peg,' said Miss Cobb, who was
short, plump, and ruddy, a picture of rude health and unrefined good
looks--a girl who bore 'beer' written in unmistakable characters across
her forehead, Miss Rylance had observed to her own particular circle. 'I
will say that for the old lady,' added Miss Cobb, 'she never cottons to
stuckupishness.'

Vulgarity of speech is the peculiar delight of a schoolgirl off duty. She
spends so much of her life under the all-pervading eye of authority, she
is so drilled, and lectured, and ruled and regulated, that, when the eye
of authority is off her, she seems naturally to degenerate into licence.
No speech so interwoven with slang as the speech of a schoolgirl--except
that of a schoolboy.

There came a sudden hush upon the class-room after Miss Rylance had
departed on her errand. It was a sultry afternoon in late June, and the
four rows of girls seated at the two long desks in the long bare room,
with its four tall windows facing a hot blue sky, felt almost as
exhausted by the heat as if they had been placed under an air-pump. Miss
Pew had a horror of draughts, so the upper sashes were only lowered a
couple of inches, to let out the used atmosphere. There was no chance of
a gentle west wind blowing in to ruffle the loose hair upon the foreheads
of those weary students.

Thursday afternoons were devoted to the study of German. The sandy-haired
young woman at the end of the room furthest from Miss Pew's throne was
Fräulein Wolf, from Frankfort, and it was Fräulein Wolf's mission to go
on eternally explaining the difficulties of her native language to the
pupils at Mauleverer Manor, and to correct those interesting exercises of
Ollendorff's which ascend from the primitive simplicity of golden
candlesticks and bakers' dogs, to the loftiest themes in romantic
literature.

For five minutes there was no sound save the scratching of pens, and the
placid voice of the Fräulein demonstrating to Miss Mullins that in an
exercise of twenty lines, ten words out of every twenty were wrong, and
then the door was opened suddenly--not at all in the manner so carefully
instilled by the teacher of deportment. It was flung back, rather, as if
with an angry hand, and a young woman, taller than the generality of her
sex, walked quickly up the room to Miss Pew's desk, and stood before that
bar of justice, with head erect, and dark flashing eyes, the incarnation
of defiance.

_'Was für ein Mädchen.'_ muttered the Fräulein, blinking at that distant
figure, with her pale gray-green eyes.

Miss Pew pretended not to see the challenge in the girl's angry eyes. She
turned to her subordinate, Miss Pillby, the useful drudge who did a
little indifferent teaching in English grammar and geography, looked
after the younger girls' wardrobes, and toadied the mistress of the
house.

'Miss Pillby, will you be kind enough to show Ida Palliser the state of
her desk?' asked Miss Pew, with awe-inspiring politeness.

'She needn't do anything of the kind, 'said Ida coolly. 'I know the state
of my desk quite as well as she does. I daresay it's untidy. I haven't
had time to put things straight.'

'Untidy!' exclaimed Miss Pew, in her appalling baritone; 'untidy is not
the word. It's degrading. Miss Pillby, be good enough to call over the
various articles which you have found in Ida Palliser's desk.'

Miss Pillby rose to do her employer's bidding. She was a dull piece of
human machinery to which the idea of resistance to authority was
impossible. There was no dirty work she would not have done meekly,
willingly even, at Miss Pew's bidding. The girls were never tired of
expatiating upon Miss Pillby's meanness; but the lady herself did not
even know that she was mean. She had been born so.

She went to the locker, lifted the wooden lid, and proceeded in a flat,
drawling voice to call over the items which she found in that receptacle.

'A novel, "The Children of the Abbey," without a cover.'

'Ah!' sighed Miss Pew.

'One stocking with a rusty darning-needle sticking in it. Five apples,
two mouldy. A square of hardbake. An old neck-ribbon. An odd cuff. Seven
letters. A knife, with the blade broken. A bundle of pen-and-ink--well, I
suppose they are meant for sketches.'

'Hand them over to me,' commanded Miss Pew.

She had seen some of Ida Palliser's pen-and-ink sketches before
to-day--had seen herself represented in every ridiculous guise and
attitude by that young person's facile pen. Her large cheeks reddened in
anticipation of her pupil's insolence. She took the sheaf of crumpled
paper and thrust it hastily into her pocket.

A ripple of laughter swept over Miss Palliser's resolute face; but she
said not a word.

'Half a New Testament--the margins shamefully scribbled over,' pursued
Miss Pillby, with implacable monotony. 'Three Brazil nuts. A piece of
slate-pencil. The photograph of a little boy--'

'My brother,' cried Ida hastily. 'I hope you are not going to confiscate
that, Miss Pew, as you have confiscated my sketches.'

'It would be no more than you deserve if I were to burn everything in
your locker, Miss Palliser,' said the schoolmistress.

'Burn everything except my brother's portrait. I might never get another.
Papa is so thoughtless. Oh, please, Miss Pillby, give me back the photo.'

'Give her the photograph,' said Miss Pew, who was not all inhuman,
although she kept a school, a hardening process which is supposed to
deaden the instincts of womanhood. 'And now, pray, Miss Palliser, what
excuse have you to offer for your untidiness?'

'None,' said Ida, 'except that I have no time to be tidy. You can't
expect tidiness from a drudge like me.'

And with this cool retort Miss Palliser turned her back upon her mistress
and left the room.

'Did you ever see such cheek?' murmured the irrepressible Miss Cobb to
her neighbour.

'She can afford to be cheeky,' retorted the neighbour. 'She has nothing
to lose. Old Pew couldn't possibly treat her any worse than she does. If
she did, it would be a police case.'

When Ida Palliser was in the little lobby outside the class room, she
took the little boy's photograph from her pocket, and kissed it
passionately. Then she ran upstairs to a small room on the landing, where
there was nothing but emptiness and a worn-out old square piano, and sat
down for her hour's practice. She was always told off to the worst pianos
in the house. She took out a book of five-finger exercises, by a Leipsic
professor, placed it on the desk, and then, just as she was beginning to
play, her whole frame was shaken like a bulrush in a sudden gust of wind;
she let her head fall forward on the desk, and burst into tears, hot,
passionate tears, that came like a flood, in spite of her determination
not to cry.

What was the matter with Ida Palliser? Not much, perhaps. Only poverty,
and poverty's natural corollary, a lack of friends. She was the
handsomest girl in the school, and one of the cleverest--clever in an
exceptional way, which claimed admiration even from the coldest. She
occupied the anomalous position of a pupil teacher, or an articled pupil.
Her father, a military man, living abroad on his half pay, with a young
second wife, and a five-year old son, had paid Miss Pew a lump sum of
fifty pounds, and for those fifty pounds Miss Pew had agreed to maintain
and educate Ida Palliser during the space of three years, to give her the
benefit of instruction from the masters who attended the school, and to
befit her for the brilliant and lucrative career of governess in a
gentleman's family. As a set-off against these advantages, Miss Pew had
full liberty to exact what services she pleased from Miss Palliser,
stopping short, as Miss Green had suggested, of a police case.

Miss Pew had not shown herself narrow in her ideas of the articled
pupil's capacity. It was her theory that no amount of intellectual
labour, including some manual duties in the way of assisting in the
lavatory on tub-nights, washing hair-brushes, and mending clothes, could
be too much for a healthy young woman of nineteen. She always talked of
Ida as a young woman. The other pupils of the same age she called girls;
but of Ida she spoke uncompromisingly as a 'young woman.'

'Oh, how I hate them all!' said Ida, in the midst of her sobs. 'I hate
everybody, myself most of all!'

Then she pulled herself together with an effort, dried her tears
hurriedly, and began her five-finger exercises, _tum, tum, tum,_ with the
little finger, all the other fingers pinned resolutely down upon the
keys.

'I wonder whether, if I had been ugly and stupid, they would have been a
little more merciful to me?' she said to herself.

Miss Palliser's ability had been a disadvantage to her at Mauleverer
Manor. When Miss Pew discovered that the girl had a knack of teaching she
enlarged her sphere of tuition, and from taking the lowest class only, as
former articled pupils had done, Miss Palliser was allowed to preside
over the second and third classes, and thereby saved her employers forty
pounds a year.

To teach two classes, each consisting of from fifteen to twenty girls,
was in itself no trifling labour. But besides this Ida had to give music
lessons to that lowest class which she had ceased to instruct in English
and French, and whose studies were now conducted by Miss Pillby. She had
her own studies, and she was eager to improve herself, for that career of
governess in a gentleman's family was the only future open to her. She
used to read the advertisements in the governess column of the _Times_
supplement, and it comforted her to see that an all-accomplished teacher
demanded from eighty to a hundred a year for her services. A hundred a
year was Ida's idea of illimitable wealth. How much she might do with
such a sum! She could dress herself handsomely, she could save enough
money for a summer holiday in Normandy with her neglectful father and her
weak little vulgar step-mother, and the half-brother, whom she loved
better than anyone else in the world.

The thought of this avenue to fortune gave her fortitude. She braced
herself up, and set herself valourously to unriddle the perplexities of a
nocturne by Chopin.

'After all I have only to work on steadily,' she told herself; 'there
will come an end to my slavery.'

Presently she began to laugh to herself softly:

'I wonder whether old Pew has looked at my caricatures,' she thought,
'and whether she'll treat me any worse on account of them?'

She finished her hour's practice, put her music back into her portfolio,
which lived in an ancient canterbury under the ancient piano, and went to
the room where she slept, in company with seven other spirits, as
mischievous and altogether evilly disposed as her own.

Mauleverer Manor had not been built for a school, or it would hardly have
been called a manor. There were none of those bleak, bare dormitories,
specially planned for the accommodation of thirty sleepers--none of those
barrack-like rooms which strike desolation to the soul. With the
exception of the large classroom which had been added at one end of the
house, the manor was very much as it had been in the days of the
Mauleverers, a race now as extinct as the Dodo. It was a roomy, rambling
old house of the time of the Stuarts, and bore the date of its erection
in many unmistakable peculiarities. There were fine rooms on the ground
floor, with handsome chimney-pieces and oak panelling. There were small
low rooms above, curious old passages, turns and twists, a short flight
of steps here, and another flight there, various levels, irregularities
of all kinds, and, in the opinion of every servant who had ever lived in
the house, an unimpeachable ghost. All Miss Pew's young ladies believed
firmly in that ghost; and there was a legend of a frizzy-haired girl
from Barbados who had seen the ghost, and had incontinently gone out
of one epileptic fit into another, until her father had come in a
fly--presumably from Barbados--and carried her away for ever, epileptic
to the last.

Nobody at present located at Mauleverer Manor remembered that young lady
from Barbados, nor had any of the existing pupils ever seen the ghost.
But the general faith in him was unshaken. He was described as an elderly
man in a snuff-coloured, square-cut coat, knee-breeches, and silk
stockings rolled up over his knees. He was supposed to be one of the
extinct Mauleverers; harmless and even benevolently disposed; given
to plucking flowers in the garden at dusk; and to gliding along
passages, and loitering on the stairs in a somewhat inane manner. The
bolder-spirited among the girls would have given a twelve-month's
pocket money to see him. Miss Pillby declared that the sight of that
snuff-coloured stranger would be her death.

'I've a weak 'art, you know,' said Miss Pillby, who was not mistress
of her aspirates,--she managed them sometimes, but they often evaded
her,--'the doctor said so when I was quite a little thing.'

'Were you ever a little thing, Pillby?' asked Miss Rylance with superb
disdain, the present Pillby being long and gaunt.

And the group of listeners laughed, with that frank laughter of school
girls keenly alive to the ridiculous in other people. There was as much
difference in the standing of the various bedrooms at Mauleverer Manor as
in that of the London squares, but in this case it was the inhabitants
who gave character to the locality. The five-bedded room off the front
landing was occupied by the stiffest and best behaved of the first
division, and might be ranked with Grosvenor Square or Lancaster Gate.
There were rooms on the second floor where girls of the second and third
division herded in inelegant obscurity, the Bloomsbury and Camden Town
of the mansion. On this story, too, slept the rabble of girls under
twelve--creatures utterly despicable in the minds of girls in their
teens, and the rooms they inhabited ranked as low as St. Giles's.

Ida Palliser was fortunate enough to have a bed in the butterfly-room, so
called on account of a gaudy wall paper, whereon Camberwell Beauties
disported themselves among roses and lilies in a strictly conventional
style of art. The butterfly-room was the most fashionable and altogether
popular dormitory at the Manor. It was the May Fair--a district not
without a shade of Bohemianism, a certain fastness of tone. The wildest
girls in the school were to be found in the butterfly-room.

It was a pleasant enough room in itself, even apart from its association
with pleasant people. The bow window looked out upon the garden and
across the garden to the Thames, which at this point took a wide curve
between banks shaded by old pollard willows. The landscape was purely
pastoral. Beyond the level meadows came an undulating line of low hill
and woodland, with here and there a village spire dark against the blue.

Mauleverer Manor lay midway between Hampton and Chertsey, in a land of
meadows and gardens which the speculating builder had not yet invaded.

The butterfly-room was furnished a little better than the common run of
boarding-school bedchambers. Miss Pew had taken a good deal of the
Mauleverer furniture at a valuation when she bought the old house; and
the Mauleverer furniture being of a _rococo_ and exploded style, the
valuation had been ridiculously low. Thus it happened that a big wainscot
wardrobe, with doors substantial enough for a church, projected its
enormous bulk upon one side of the butterfly-room, while a tall narrow
cheval glass stood in front of a window. That cheval was the glory of the
butterfly-room. The girls could see how their skirts hung, and if the
backs of their dresses fitted. On Sunday mornings there used to be an
incursion of outsiders, eager to test the effect of their Sabbath
bonnets, and the sets of their jackets, by the cheval.

And now Ida Palliser came into the butterfly-room, yawning wearily, to
brush herself up a little before tea, knowing that Miss Pew and her
younger sister, Miss Dulcibella--who devoted herself to dress and the
amenities of life generally--would scrutinize her with eyes only too
ready to see anything amiss.

The butterfly-room was not empty. Miss Rylance was plaiting her long
flaxen hair in front of the toilet table, and another girl, a plump
little sixteen-year-old, with nut-brown hair, and a fresh complexion, was
advancing and retiring before the cheval, studying the effect of a
cherry-coloured neck-ribbon with a gray gown.

'Cherry's a lovely colour in the abstract,' said this damsel, 'but it
reminds one too dreadfully of barmaids.'

'Did you ever see a barmaid?' asked Miss Rylance, languidly, slowly
winding the long flaxen plait into a shining knob at the back of her
head, and contemplating her reflection placidly with large calm blue eyes
which saw no fault in the face they belonged to.

With features so correctly modelled, and a complexion so delicately
tinted, Miss Rylance ought to have been lovely. But she had escaped
loveliness by a long way. There was something wanting, and that something
was very big.

'Good gracious, yes; I've seen dozens of barmaids,' answered Bessie
Wendover, with her frank voice. 'Do you suppose I've never been into an
hotel, or even into a tavern? When I go for a long drive with papa he
generally wants brandy and soda, and that's how I get taken into the bar
and introduced to the barmaid.'

'When you say introduced, of course you don't mean it,' said Miss
Rylance, fastening her brooch. 'Calling things by their wrong names is
your idea of wit.'

'I would rather have a mistaken idea of wit than none at all,' retorted
Miss Wendover, and then she pirouetted on the tips of her toes, and
surveyed her image in the glass from head to foot, with an aggravated
air. 'I hope I'm not vulgar-looking, but I'm rather afraid I am,' she
said. 'What's the good of belonging to an old Saxon family if one has a
thick waist and large hands?'

'What's the good of anything at Mauleverer Manor?' asked Ida, coming into
the room, and seating herself on the ground with a dejected air.

Bessie Wendover ran across the room and sat down beside her.

'So you were in for it again this afternoon, you poor dear thing,' she
murmured, in a cooing voice. 'I wish I had been there. It would have been
"Up, guards, and at 'em!" if I had. I'm sure I should have said something
cheeky to old Pew. The idea of overhauling your locker! I should just
like her to see the inside of mine. It would make her blood run cold.'

'Ah!' sighed Ida, 'she can't afford to make an example of you. You mean a
hundred and fifty pounds a year. I am of no more account in her eyes than
an artist's lay figure, which is put away in a dark closet when it isn't
in use. She wanted to give you girls a lesson in tidiness, so she put me
into her pillory. Fortunately I'm used to the pillory.'

'But you are looking white and worried, you dear lovely thing,' exclaimed
Bessie, who was Ida Palliser's bosom friend. 'It's too bad the way they
use you. Have this neck-ribbon,' suddenly untying the bow so carefully
elaborated five minutes ago. 'You must, you shall; I don't want it; I
hate it. Do, dear.'

And for consolation Miss Wendover tied the cherry-coloured ribbon under
her friend's collar, patted Ida's pale cheeks, and kissed and hugged her.

'Be happy, darling, do,' she said, in her loving half-childish way, while
Miss Rylance looked on with ineffable contempt. 'You are so clever and so
beautiful; you were born to be happy.'

'Do you think so, pet?' asked Ida, with cold scorn; 'then I ought to have
been born with a little more money.'

'What does money matter?' cried Bessie.

'Not very much to a girl like you, who has never known the want of it.'

'That's not true, darling. I never go home for the holidays that I don't
hear father grumble about his poverty. The rents are so slow to come in;
the tenants are always wanting drain-pipes and barns and things. Last
Christmas his howls were awful. We are positive paupers. Mother has to
wait ages for a cheque.'

'Ah, my pet, that's a very different kind of poverty from mine. You have
never known what it is to have only three pairs of wearable stockings.'

Bessie looked as if she were going to cry.

'If you were not so disgustingly proud, you horrid thing, you need never
feel the want of stockings,' she said discontentedly.

'If it were not for what you call my disgusting pride, I should
degenerate into that loathsome animal a sponge,' said Ida, rising
suddenly from her dejected attitude, and standing up before her admiring
little friend,

'A daughter of the gods, divinely tall And most divinely fair.'

That fatal dower of beauty had been given to Ida Palliser in fullest
measure. She had the form of a goddess, a head proudly set upon shoulders
that were sloping but not narrow, the walk of a Moorish girl, accustomed
to carrying a water-jug on her head, eyes dark as night, hair of a deep
warm brown rippling naturally across her broad forehead, a complexion
of creamiest white and richest carnation. These were but the sensual
parts of beauty which can be catalogued. But it was in the glorious
light and variety of expression that Ida shone above all compeers. It
was by the intellectual part of her beauty that she commanded the
admiration--enthusiastic in some cases, in others grudging and
unwilling--of her schoolfellows, and reigned by right divine, despite her
shabby gowns and her cheap ready-made boots, the belle of the school.




CHAPTER II.


'I AM GOING TO MARRY FOR MONEY.'

When a schoolgirl of sixteen falls in love with one of her schoolfellows
there are no limits to her devotion. Bessie Wendover's adoration of Miss
Palliser was boundless. Ida's seniority of three years, her beauty, her
talent, placed her, as it were, upon a pinnacle in the eyes of the
younger girl. Her poverty, her inferior position in the school, only made
her more interesting to the warm-hearted Bessie, who passionately
resented any slight offered to her friend. It was in vain that Miss
Rylance took Bessie to task, and demonstrated the absurdity of this
childish fancy for a young person whose future sphere of life must be
necessarily remote from that of a Hampshire squire's daughter. Bessie
despised this worldly wisdom.

'What is the use of attaching yourself to a girl whom you are never
likely to see after you leave school?' argued Miss Rylance.

'I shall see her. I shall ask her home,' said Bessie, sturdily.

'Do you think your people will let you ?'

'Mother will do anything I ask her, and father will do anything mother
asks him. I am going to have Ida home with me all the summer holidays.'

'How do you know that she will come?'

'I shall make her come. It is very nasty of you to insinuate that she
won't.'

'Palliser has a good deal of pride--pride and poverty generally go
together, don't you know. I don't think she'll care about showing herself
at the Grange in her old clothes and her three pairs of stockings, one
on, one off, and one at the laundress's,' said Miss Rylance, winding up
with a viperish little laugh as if she had said something witty.

She had a certain influence with Bessie, whom she had known all her life.
It was she who had inspired Bessie with the desks to come to Mauleverer
Manor, to be finished, after having endured eight years of jog-trot
education from a homely little governess at home--who grounded the boys
in Latin and mathematics before they went to Winchester, and made herself
generally useful. Miss Rylance was the daughter of a fashionable
physician, whose head-quarters were in Cavendish Square, but who spent
his leisure at a something which he called 'a place' at Kingthorpe, a
lovely little village between Winchester and Romsey, where the Wendovers
were indigenous to the soil, whence they seemed to have sprung, like the
armed men in the story; for remotest tradition bore no record of their
having come there from anywhere else, nor was there record of a time when
the land round Kingthorpe belonged to any other family.

Dr. Rylance, whose dainty verandah shaded cottage stood in gardens of
three and a half acres, and who rented a paddock for his cow, was always
lamenting that he could not buy more land.

'The Wendovers have everything,' he said. 'It is impossible for a new man
to establish himself.'

It was to be observed, however, that when land within a reasonable
distance of Kingthorpe came into the market, Dr. Rylance did not put
himself forward as a buyer. His craving for more territory always ended
in words.

Urania Rylance had spent much of her girlhood at Kingthorpe, and had
always been made welcome at The Knoll; but although she saw the Wendovers
established upon their native soil, the rulers of the land, and revered
by all the parish, she had grown up with the firm conviction that Dr.
Rylance, of Cavendish Square, and Dr. Rylance's daughter were altogether
superior to these country bumpkins, with their narrow range of ideas and
their strictly local importance.

The summer days wore on at Mauleverer Manor, not altogether unpleasantly
for the majority of the girls, who contrived to enjoy their lives in
spite of Miss Pew's tyranny, which was considered vile enough to rank
that middle-aged, loud-voiced lady with the Domitians and Attilas of
history. There was a softening influence, happily, in the person of Miss
Dulcibella, who was slim and sentimental, talked about sweetness and
light, loved modern poetry, spent all her available funds upon dress, and
was wonderfully girlish in her tastes and habits at nine-and-thirty years
of age.

It was a splendid summer, a time of roses and sunshine, and the girls
were allowed to carry on their studies in the noble old garden, in the
summer-houses and pleasure domes which the extinct Mauleverers had made
for themselves in their day of power. Grinding at history, grammar, and
geography did not seem so oppressive a burden when it could be done
under the shade of spreading cedars, amid the scent of roses, in an
atmosphere of colour and light. Even Ida's labours seemed a little easier
when she and her pupils sat in a fast-decaying old summer-house in the
rose-garden, with a glimpse of sunlit river flashing athwart the roses.

So the time wore on until the last week in July, and then all the school
was alive with excitement, and every one was looking forward to the great
event of the term, 'breaking up.' 'Old Pew,' had sent out her invitations
for a garden party, an actual garden party--not a mere namby-pamby
entertainment among the girls themselves, in which a liberal supply of
blanc-mange and jam tarts was expected to atone for the absence of the
outside world. Miss Pew had taken it into her head that Mauleverer Manor
ought to be better known, and that a garden party would be a good
advertisement. With this idea, she had ordered a hundred invitation
cards, and had disseminated them among the most eligible of her old
pupils, and the parents and guardians of those damsels now at the Manor.
The good old gardens, where velvet greensward and cedars of Lebanon cost
little labour to maintain in perfect order, were worthy to be exhibited.
The roses, Miss Dulcibella's peculiar care, were, in that lady's opinion,
equal to anything outside Chatsworth or Trentham. A garden party, by all
means, said Miss Dulcibella, and she gave the young ladies to understand
that the whole thing was her doing.

'I waited till Sarah was in a good temper,' she told her satellites, half
a dozen or so of the elder girls who worshipped her, and who, in the
slang phraseology of the school, were known as Miss Dulcie's 'cracks,'
'and then I proposed a garden party. It required a great deal of talking
to bring her even to think about such a thing. You see the expense will
be enormous! Ices, tea and coffee, cakes, sandwiches, claret-cup. Thank
goodness it's too late in the year for people to expect strawberries.
Yes, my dears, you may thank me for your garden party.'

'Dear Miss Dulcibella,' exclaimed one.

'You too delicious darling,' cried another.

'What will you wear?' asked a third, knowing that Miss Dulcie was weak
about dress, and had a morbid craving for originality.

'Well, dears,' began Miss Dulcie, growing radiant at the thrilling
question, 'I have been thinking of making up my art needlework tunic--the
pale green, you know, with garlands of passion flowers, worked in
crewels--over a petticoat of the faintest primrose.'

'That will be quite too lovely,' exclaimed four enthusiasts in a chorus.

'You know how fond I am of those delicate tints in that soft Indian
cashmere, that falls in such artistic folds.'

'Heavenly,' sighed the chorus, and Miss Dulcie went on talking for
half-an-hour by Chertsey clock, in fact till the tea-bell broke up the
little conclave.

What was Ida Palliser going to wear at the garden party? The question was
far more serious for her than for Miss Dulcibella, who had plenty of
money to spend upon her adornment. In Ida the necessity for a new gown
meant difficulty, perhaps mortification.

'Why should I not spend the day in one of the garrets, darning stockings
and packing boxes?' she said bitterly, when a grand discussion about the
garden party was being held in the butterfly-room; 'nobody will want me.
I have no relations coming to admire me.'

'You know you don't mean what you say,' said Miss Rylance. 'You expect to
have half-a-dozen prizes, and to lord it over all of us.'

'I have worked hard enough for the prizes,' answered Ida. 'I don't think
you need grudge me them.'

'I do not,' said Miss Rylance, with languid scorn. 'You know I never go
in for prizes. My father looks upon school as only a preliminary kind of
education. When I am at home with him in the season I shall have lessons
from better masters than any we are favoured with here.'

'What a comfort it is for us to know that!' retorted Ida, her eyes
dancing mischievously.

It was now within a week of the garden party. Miss Pew was grimmer of
aspect and louder of voice than usual, and it was felt that, at the
slightest provocation, she might send forth an edict revoking all her
invitations, and the party might be relegated to the limbo of unrealized
hopes. Never had the conduct of Miss Pew's pupils been so irreproachable,
never had lessons been learned, and exercises prepared, so diligently.

Ida had received a kind little note from Mrs. Wendover, asking her to
spend her summer holidays at Kingthorpe, and at Bessie's earnest desire
had accepted the cordial invitation.

'You don't know what a foolish thing you are doing, Bess,' said Miss
Palliser, when--reluctant to the last--she had written her acceptance,
Bessie looking over her shoulder all the while. 'Foolish for you, foolish
for me. It is a mistake to associate yourself with paupers. You will feel
ashamed of me half-a-dozen times a day at Kingthorpe.'

'No, no, no!' cried the energetic Bessie; 'I shall never feel anything
but pride in you. I shall be proud to show my people what a beautiful,
brilliant, wonderful friend I have chosen for myself.'

'Ardent child!' exclaimed Ida, with a touch of sadness even in her
mockery. 'What a pity you have not a bachelor brother to fall in love
with me!'

'Never mind the brother. I have two bachelor cousins.'

'Of course! The rich Brian, and the poor Brian, whose histories I have
heard almost as often as I heard the story of "Little Red Ridinghood" in
my nursery days. Both good-looking, both clever, both young. One a man of
landed estate. All Kingthorpe parish belongs to him, does it not?'

'All except the little bit that belongs to papa.'

'And Dr. Rylance's garden and paddock; don't forget that.'

'Could I forget the Rylances? Urania says that although her father has no
land at Kingthorpe, he has influence.'

'The other cousin dependent on his talents, and fighting his way at the
Bar. Is not that how the story goes, Bess?'

'Yes, darling. I am afraid poor Brian has hardly begun fighting yet. He
is only eating his terms. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds
rather low.'

'Well, Bess, if I am to marry either of your cousins, it must be the rich
one,' said Ida, decisively.

'Oh, Ida, how can you say so? You can't know which you will like best.'

'My likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it. I am going to marry
for money.'

Miss Rylance had brought her desk to that end of the table where the two
girls were sitting, during the latter part of the conversation. It was
evening, the hour or so of leisure allowed for the preparation of studies
and the writing of home letters. Miss Rylance unlocked her desk, and took
out her paper and pens; but, having got so far as this, she seemed rather
inclined to join in the conversation than to begin her letter.

'Isn't that rather a worldly idea for your time of life?' she asked,
looking at Ida with her usual unfriendly expression.

'No doubt. I should be disgusted if you or Bessie entertained such a
notion. But in me it is only natural. I have drained the cup of poverty
to the dregs. I thirst for the nectar of wealth. I would marry a
soap-boiler, a linseed-crusher, a self-educated navvy who had developed
into a great contractor--any plebian creature, always provided that he
was an honest man.'

'How condescending!' said Miss Rylance. 'I suppose, Bessie, you know that
Miss Pew has especially forbidden us all to indulge in idle talk about
courtship and marriage?'

'Quite so,' said Bessie; 'but as old Pew knows that we are human, I've no
doubt she is quite aware that this is one of her numerous rules which we
diligently set at nought.'

Urania began her letter, but although her pen moved swiftly over her
paper in that elegant Italian hand which was, as it were, a badge of
honour at Mauleverer Manor, her ears were not the less open to the
conversation going on close beside her.

'Marry a soap-boiler, indeed!' exclaimed Bessie, indignantly; 'you ought
to be a duchess!'

'No doubt, dear, if dukes went about the world, like King Cophetua, on
the look out for beggar-maids.'

'I am so happy to think you are coming to Kingthorpe! It is the dearest
old place. We shall be so happy!'

'It will not be your fault if we are not, darling,' said Ida, looking
tenderly at the loving face, uplifted to hers. 'Well, I have written to
my father to ask him for five pounds, and if he sends the five pounds I
will go to Kingthorpe. If not, I must invent an excuse--mumps, or
measles, or something--for staying away. Or I must behave so badly for
the last week of the term that old Pew will revoke her sanction of the
intended visit. I cannot come to Kingthorpe quite out at elbows.'

'You look lovely even in the gown you have on,' said Bessie.

'I don't know anything about my loveliness, but I know that this gown is
absolutely threadbare.'

Bessie, sighed despondently. She knew her friend's resolute temper, and
that any offer of clothes or money from her would be worse than useless.
It would make Ida angry.

'What kind of man is your father, darling?' she asked, thoughtfully.

'Very good-natured.'

'Ah! Then he will send the five pounds.'

'Very weak.'

'Ah! Then he may change his mind about it.'

'Very poor.'

'Then he may not have the money.'

'The lot is in the urn of fate, Bess, We must take our chance. I think,
somehow, that the money will come. I have asked for it urgently, for I do
want to come to Kingthorpe.' Bessie kissed her. 'Yes, dear, I wish with
all my heart to accept your kind mother's invitation; though I know, in
my secret soul, that it is foolishness for me to see the inside of a
happy home, to sit beside a hospitable hearth, when it is my mission in
life to be a dependent in the house of a stranger. If you had half a
dozen small sisters, now, and your people would engage me as a nursery
governess--'

'You a nursery governess!' cried Bessie, 'you who are at the top of every
class, and who do everything better than the masters who teach you?'

'Well, if my perfection prove worth seventy pounds a-year when I go out
into the world, I shall be satisfied,' said Ida.

'What will you buy with your five pounds?' asked Bessie.

'A black cashmere gown, as plain as a nun's, a straw hat, and as many
collars, cuffs, and stockings as I can get for the rest of the money.'

Miss Rylance listened, smiling quietly to herself as she bent over her
desk. To the mind of an only daughter, who had been brought up in a
supremely correct manner, who had had her winter clothes and summer
clothes at exactly the right season, and of the best that money could
buy, there was a piteous depth of poverty and degradation in Ida
Palliser's position. The girl's beauty and talents were as nothing when
weighed against such sordid surroundings.

The prize-day came, a glorious day at the beginning of August, and the
gardens of Mauleverer Manor, the wide reach of blue river, the meadows,
the willows, the distant woods, all looked their loveliest, as if Nature
was playing into the hands of Miss Pew.

'I am sure you girls ought to be very happy to live in such a place!'
said one of the mothers, as she strolled about the velvet lawn with her
daughters, 'instead of being mewed up in a dingy London square.'

'You wouldn't say that if you saw the bread and scrape and the sloppy tea
we have for breakfast,' answered one of the girls,

'It's all very well for you, who see this wretched hole in the sunshine,
and old Pew in her best gown and her company manners. The place is a
whited sepulchre. I should like you to have a glimpse behind the scenes,
ma.'

'Ma' smiled placidly, and turned a deaf ear to these aspersions of the
schoolmistress. Her girls looked well fed and healthy. Bread and scrape
evidently agreed with them much better than that reckless consumption of
butter and marmalade which swelled the housekeeping bills during the
holidays.

It was a great day. Miss Pew the elder was splendid in apple-green moiré
antique; Miss Pew the younger was elegant in pale and flabby raiment of
cashmere and crewel-work. The girls were in that simple white muslin of
the _jeune Meess Anglaise_, to which they were languishing to bid an
eternal adieu. There were a great many pretty girls at Mauleverer Manor,
and on this day, when the white-robed girlish forms were flitting to and
fro upon the green lawns, in the sweet summer air and sunshine, it seemed
as if the old manorial mansion were a bower of beauty. Among the parents
of existing pupils who had accepted the Misses Pew's invitation was Dr.
Rylance, the fashionable physician, whose presence there conferred
distinction upon the school. It was Miss Rylance's last term, and the
doctor wished to assist at those honours which she would doubtless reap
as the reward of meritorious studies. He was not blindly devoted to his
daughter, but he was convinced that, like every thing else belonging to
him, she was of the best quality; and he expected to see her appreciated
by the people who had been privileged to educate her.

The distribution of prizes was the great feature of the day. It was to
take place at four o'clock, in the ball room, a fine old panelled saloon,
in which the only furniture was a pair of grand pianos, somewhat the
worse for wear, a table at the end of the room on which the prizes were
arranged, and benches covered with crimson cloth for the accommodation of
the company.

There was to be a concert before the distribution. Four of the best
pianoforte players in the school were to hammer out an intensely noisy
version of the overture to _Zampa_, arranged for eight hands on two
pianos. The crack singer was to sing 'Una voce,' and Ida Palliser was to
play the 'Moonlight Sonata.'

Dr. Rylance had come early, on purpose to be present at this ceremonial.
He was the most important guest who had yet arrived, and Miss Pew devoted
herself to his entertainment, and went rustling up and down the terrace
in front of the ballroom windows in her armour of apple-green moiré,
listening deferentially to the physician's remarks.

Dr. Rylance was a large fair-complexioned man, who had been handsome in
his youth, and who at seven-and-forty was still remarkably good-looking.
He had fine teeth, good hair, full blue eyes, capable of the hardest,
coldest stare that ever looked out of a human countenance. Mr. Darwin has
told us that the eyes do not smile, that the radiance we fancy we see in
the eye itself is only produced by certain contractions of the muscles
surrounding it. Assuredly there was no smile in the eyes of Dr. Rylance.
His smile, which was bland and frequent, gave only a vague impression of
white teeth and brown whiskers. He had a fine figure, and was proud of
his erect carriage. He dressed carefully and well, and was as particular
as Brummel about his laundress. His manners were considered pleasing by
the people who liked him; while those who disliked him accused him of an
undue estimate of his own merits, and a tendency to depreciate the rest
of humanity. His practice was rather select than extensive, for Dr.
Rylance was a specialist. He had won his reputation as an adviser in
cases of mental disease; and as, happily, mental diseases are less common
than bodily ailments, Dr. Rylance had not the continuous work of a Gull
or a Jenner. His speciality paid him remarkably well. His cases hung long
on hand, and when he had a patient of wealth and standing Dr. Rylance
knew how to keep him. His treatment was soothing and palliative, as
befitted an enlightened age. In an age of scepticism no one could expect
Dr. Rylance to work miraculous cures. It is in no wise to his discredit
to say that he was more successful in sustaining and comforting the
patient's friends than in curing the patient.

This was Laurence Rylance, a man who had begun life in a very humble way,
had raised himself by his own efforts, if not to the top of the medical
tree, certainly to a very comfortable and remunerative perch among its
upper branches; a man thoroughly satisfied with himself and with what
destiny had done for him; a man who, to be a new Caesar, would hardly
have foregone the privilege of being Laurence Rylance.

'My daughter has done well during this last term, I hope, Miss Pew?' he
said, interrogatively, but rather as if the question were needless, as he
walked beside the rustling moiré.

'She has earned my entire approval,' replied Miss Pew, in her oiliest
accents. 'She has application.' Dr. Rylance nodded assentingly. 'She has
a charming deportment. I know of no girl in the school more thoroughly
ladylike. I have never seen her with a collar put on crookedly, or with
rough hair. She is a pattern to many of my girls.'

'That is all gratifying to my pride as a father; but I hope she has made
progress in her studies.'

Miss Pew coughed gently behind a mittened hand.

'She has not made quite so great an advance as I should have wished. She
has talent, no doubt; but it is hardly of a kind that comes into play
among other girls. In after-life, perhaps, there may be development. I am
sorry to say she is not in our roll-call of honour to-day. She has won no
prize.'

'Perhaps she may have hardly thought it worth her while to compete,' said
Dr. Rylance, hurt in his own individual pride by the idea that his
daughter had missed distinction, just as he would have been hurt if
anybody had called one of his pictures a copy, or made light of his blue
china. 'With the Rylances it has always been Caesar or nothing.'

'I regret to say that my three most important prizes have been won by a
young woman whom I cannot esteem,' said Miss Pew, bristling in her
panoply of apple-green, at the thought of Ida Palliser's insolence. 'I
hope I shall ever be just, at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling. I
shall to-day bestow the first prize for modern languages, for music, and
for English history and literature, upon a young person of whose moral
character I have a very low opinion.'

'And pray who is this young lady?' asked Dr. Rylance.

'Miss Palliser, the daughter of a half-pay officer residing in the
neighbourhood of Dieppe--for very good reasons, no doubt.

'Palliser; yes, I have heard my daughter talk of her. An insolent,
ill-bred girl. I have been taught to consider her somewhat a disgrace to
your excellent and well-managed school.'

'Her deportment is certainly deplorable,' admitted Miss Pew; 'but the
girl has remarkable talents.'

More visitors were arriving from this time forward, until everyone was
seated in the ball-room. Miss Pew was engaged in receiving people, and
ushering them to their seats, always assisted by Miss Dulcibella--an
image of limp gracefulness--and the three governesses--all as stiff as
perambulating black-boards. Dr. Rylance strolled by himself for a little
while, sniffed at the great ivory cup of a magnolia, gazed dreamily at
the river--shining yonder across intervening gardens and meadows--and
ultimately found his daughter.

'I am sorry to find you are not to be honoured with a prize, Ranie,' he
said, smiling at her gently.

In no relation of life had he been so nearly perfect as in his conduct as
a father. Were he ever so disappointed in his daughter, he could not
bring himself to be angry with her.

'I have not tried for prizes, papa. Why should I compete with such a girl
as Ida Palliser, who is to get her living as a governess, and who knows
that success at school is a matter of life and death with her?'

'Do you not think it might have been worth your while to work as hard as
Miss Palliser, for the mere honour and glory of being first in your
school?'

'Did you ever work for mere honour and glory, papa?' asked Urania, with
her unpleasant little air of cynicism.

'Well, my love, I confess there has been generally a promise of solid
pudding in the background. Pray, who is this Miss Palliser, whom I hear
of at every turn, and whom nobody seems to like?'

'There you are mistaken, papa. Miss Palliser has her worshippers, though
she is the most disagreeable girl in the school. That silly little Bessie
raves about her, and has actually induced Mrs. Wendover to invite her to
The Knoll!'

'That is a pity, if the girl is ill-bred and unpleasant,' said Dr.
Rylance.

'She's a horror,' exclaimed Urania, vindictively.

Five minutes later Dr. Rylance and his daughter made their entrance into
the ball-room, which was full of people, and whence came the opening
crash of an eight-handed 'Zampa.' Father and daughter went in softly, and
with a hushed air, as if they had been going into church; yet the firing
of a cannon or two more or less would hardly have disturbed the
performers at the two pianos, so tremendous was their own uproar. They
were taking the overture in what they called orchestral time; though it
is doubtful whether even their playing could have kept pace with the
hurrying of excited fiddles in a presto passage, or the roll of the big
drum, simulating distant thunder. Be that as it may, the four performers
were pounding along at a breathless pace; and if their pianissimo
passages failed in delicacy, there was no mistake about their fortissimo.

'What an abominable row!' whispered Dr. Rylance. 'Is this what they call
music?'

Urania smiled, and felt meritorious in that, after being chosen as one of
the four for this very 'Zampa,' she had failed ignominiously as a timist,
and had been compelled to cede her place to another pupil.

'I might have toiled for six weeks at the horrid thing,' she thought,
'and papa would have only called it a row.'

'Zampa' ended amidst polite applause, the delighted parents of the four
players feeling that they had not lived in vain. And now the music
mistress took her place at one of the pianos, the top of the instrument
was lowered, and Miss Fane, a little fair girl with a round face and
frizzy auburn hair, came simpering forward to sing 'Una voce,' in a reedy
soprano, which had been attenuated by half-guinea lessons from an Italian
master, and which frequently threatened a snap.

Happily on this occasion the thin little voice got through its work
without disaster; there was a pervading sense of relief when the crisis
was over, and Miss Fane had simpered her acknowledgments of the applause
which rewarded a severely conscientious performance.

'Any more singing?' inquired Dr. Rylance of his daughter, not with the
air of a man who pants for vocal melody.

'No, the next is the "Moonlight Sonata."'

Dr. Rylance had a dim idea that he had heard of this piece before. He
waited dumbly, admiring the fine old room, with its lofty ceiling, and
florid cornice, and the sunny garden beyond the five tall windows.

Presently Ida Palliser came slowly towards the piano, carrying herself
like an empress. Dr. Rylance could hardly believe the evidence of his
eyes. Was this the girl whose deportment had been called abominable, whom
Urania had denounced as a horror? Was this the articled pupil, the girl
doomed to life-long drudgery as a governess, this superb creature, with
her noble form and noble face, looking grave defiance at the world which
hitherto had not used her too kindly?

She was dressed in black, a sombre figure amidst the white muslins and
rainbow sashes of her comrades. Her cashmere gown was of the simplest
fashion, but it became the tall full figure to admiration. Below her
linen collar she wore a scarlet ribbon, from which hung a silver locket,
the only ornament she possessed. It was Bessie Wendover who had insisted
on the scarlet ribbon, as a relief to that funereal gown.

'I was never so surprised in my life,' whispered Dr. Rylance to his
daughter. 'She is the handsomest girl I ever saw.'

'Yes, she is an acknowledged beauty, said Urania, with a contraction of
her thin lips; 'nobody disputes her good looks. It is a pity her manners
are so abominable.'

'She moves like a lady.'

'She has been thoroughly drilled,' sneered Urania. 'The original savage
in her has been tamed as much as possible.'

'I should like to know more of that girl,' said Dr. Rylance, 'for she
looks as if she has force of character. I'm sorry you and she are not
better friends.'

Ida seated herself at the piano and began to play, without honouring the
assembly with one glance from her dark eyes. She sat looking straight
before her, like one whose thoughts are far away. She played by memory,
and at first her hands faltered a little as they touched the keys, as if
she hardly knew what she was going to play. Then she recollected herself
in a flash, and began the firm, slow, legato movement with the touch of a
master hand, the melody rising and falling in solemn waves of sound, like
the long, slow roll of a calm sea.

The 'Moonlight Sonata' is a composition of some length. Badly, or even
indifferently performed, the 'Moonlight Sonata' is a trial; but no one
grew weary of it to-day, though the strong young hands which gave
emphasis to the profound beauties of that wonderful work were only the
hands of a girl. Those among the listeners who knew least about music,
knew that this was good playing; those who cared not at all for the
playing were pleased to sit and watch the mobile face of the player as
she wove her web of melody, her expression changing with every change in
the music, but unmoved by a thought of the spectators.

Presently, just as the sonata drew to its close, an auburn head was
thrust between Dr. Rylance and his daughter, and a girl's voice
whispered,

'Is she not splendid? Is she not the grandest creature you ever saw?'

The doctor turned and recognized Bessie Wendover.

'She is, Bessie,' he said, shaking hands with her. 'I never was so struck
by anyone in my life.'

Urania grew white with anger. Was it not enough that Ida Palliser should
have outshone her in every accomplishment upon which school-girls pride
themselves? Was it not enough that she should have taken complete
possession of that foolish little Bessie, and thus ingratiated herself
into the Wendover set, and contrived to get invited to Kingthorpe? No.
Here was Urania's own father, her especial property, going over to the
enemy.

'I am glad you admire her so much, papa,' she said, outwardly calm and
sweet, but inwardly consumed with anger; 'for it will be so pleasant for
you to see more of her at Kingthorpe.'

'Yes,' he said heartily, 'I am glad she is coming to Kingthorpe. That was
a good idea of yours, Bessie.'

'Wasn't it? I am so pleased to find you like her. I wish you could get
Ranie to think better of her.'

Now came the distribution of prizes and accessits. Miss Pew took her seat
before the table on which the gaudily-bound books were arranged, and
began to read out the names. It was a hard thing for her to have to award
the three first prizes to a girl she detested; but Miss Pew knew the
little world she ruled well enough to know that palpable injustice would
weaken her rule. Ninety-nine girls who had failed to win the prize would
have resented her favouritism if she had given the reward to a hundredth
girl who had not fairly won it. The eyes of her little world were upon
her, and she was obliged to give the palm to the real victor. So, in her
dull, hard voice, looking straight before her, with cold, unfriendly
eyes, she read out--

'The prize for modern languages has been obtained by Miss Palliser!' and
Ida came slowly up to the table and received a bulky crimson volume,
containing the poetical works of Sir Walter Scott.

'The prize for proficiency in instrumental music is awarded to Miss
Palliser!'

Another bulky volume was handed to Ida. For variety the binding was
green, and the inside of the book was by William Cowper.

'The greatest number of marks for English history and literature nave
been obtained by Miss Palliser.'

Miss Palliser was now the happy possessor of a third volume bound in
blue, containing a selection from the works of Robert Southey.

With not one word of praise nor one smile of approval did Miss Pew
sweeten the gifts which she bestowed upon the articled pupil. She gave
that which justice, or rather policy, compelled her to give. No more.
Kindliness was not in the bond.

Ida came slowly away from the table, laden with her prizes, her head held
high, but not with pride in the trophies she carried. Her keenest feeling
at this moment was a sense of humiliation. The prizes had been given her
as a bone might be flung to a strange dog, by one whose heart held no
love for the canine species. An indignant flush clouded the creamy
whiteness of her forehead, angry tears glittered in her proud eyes. She
made her way to the nearest door, and went away without a word to the
crowd of younger girls, her own pupils, who had crowded round to
congratulate and caress her. She was adored by these small people, and it
was her personal influence as much as her talent which made her so
successful a teacher.

Dr. Rylance followed her to the door with his eyes. He was not capable of
wide sympathies, or of projecting himself into the lives of other people;
but he did sympathize with this girl, so lonely in the splendour of her
beauty, so joyless in her triumph.

'God help her, poor child, in the days to come!' he said to himself.




CHAPTER III.


AT THE KNOLL.

Between Winchester and Romsey there lies a region of gentle hills and
grassy slopes shadowed by fine old yew trees, a land of verdure, lonely
and exceeding fair; and in a hollow of this undulating district nestles
the village of Kingthorpe, with its half-dozen handsome old houses, its
richly cultivated gardens, and quaint old square-towered church. It is a
prosperous, well-to-do little settlement, where squalor and want are
unknown. Its humbler dwellings belong chiefly to the labourers on the
Wendover estate, and those are liberally paid and well cared for. An
agricultural labourer's wages at Kingthorpe might seem infinitely small
to a London mechanic; but when it is taken into account that the tiller
of the fields has a roomy cottage and an acre of garden for sixpence
a-week, his daily dole of milk from the home farm, as much wood as he can
burn, blankets and coals at Christmas, and wine and brandy, soup and
bread from the great house, in all emergencies, he is perhaps not so very
much worse off than his metropolitan brother.

There was an air of comfort and repose at Kingthorpe which made the place
delightful to the eye of a passing wanderer--a spot where one would
gladly have lain down the burden of life and rested for awhile in one of
those white cottages that lay a little way back from the high road,
shadowed by a screen of tall elms. There was a duck-pond in front of a
low red-brick inn which reminded one of Birkett Foster, and made the
central feature of the village; a spot of busy life where all else was
stillness. There were accommodation roads leading off to distant farms,
above which the tree-tops interlaced, and where the hedges were rich
in blackberry and sloe, dog-roses and honeysuckle, and the banks in
spring-time dappled with violet and primrose, purple orchids and wild
crocus, and all the flowers that grow for the delight of village
children.

Ida Palliser sat silent in her corner of the large landau which was
taking Miss Wendover and her schoolfellows from Winchester station to
Kingthorpe. Miss Rylance had accepted a seat in the Wendover landau at
her father's desire; but she would have preferred to have had her own
smart little pony-carriage to meet her at the station. To drive her own
carriage, were it ever so small, was more agreeable to Urania's temper
than to sit behind the over-fed horses from The Knoll, and to be thus, in
some small measure, indebted to Bessie Wendover.

Ida Palliser's presence made the thing still more odious. Bessie was
radiant with delight at taking her friend home with her. She watched
Ida's eyes as they roamed over the landscape. She understood the girl's
silent admiration.

'They are darling old hills, aren't they, dear?' she asked, squeezing
Ida's hand, as the summer shadows and summer lights went dancing over the
sward like living things.

'Yes, dear, they are lovely,' answered Ida, quietly.

She was devouring the beauty of the scene with her eyes. She had seen
nothing like it in her narrow wanderings over the earth--nothing so
simple, so beautiful, and so lonely. She was sorry when they left that
open hill country and came into a more fertile scene, a high road, which
was like an avenue in a gentleman's park, and then the village duck-pond
and red homestead, the old gray church, with its gilded sun-dial, marking
the hour of six, the gardens brimming over with roses, and as full of
sweet odours as those spicy islands which send their perfumed breath to
greet the seaman as he sails to the land of the Sun.

The carriage stopped at the iron gate of an exquisitely kept garden,
surrounding a small Gothic cottage of the fanciful order of
architecture,--a cottage with plate-glass windows, shaded by Spanish
blinds, a glazed verandah sheltering a tesselated walk, sloping banks and
terraces, on a very small scale, stone vases full of flowers, a tiny
fountain sparkling in the afternoon sun.

This was Dr. Rylance's country retreat. It had been a yeoman's cottage,
plain, substantial and homely as the yeoman and his household. The doctor
had added a Gothic front, increased the number of rooms, but not the
general convenience of the dwelling. He had been his own architect, and
the result was a variety of levels and a breakneck arrangement of stairs
at all manner of odd corners, so ingenious in their peril to life and
limb that they might be supposed to have been designed as traps for the
ignorant stranger.

'Don't say good-bye, Ranie,' said Bessie, when Miss Rylance had alighted,
and was making her adieux at the carriage door; 'you'll come over to
dinner, won't you, dear? Your father won't be down till Saturday. You'll
be dreadfully dull at home.'

'Thanks, dear, no; I'd rather spend my first evening at home. I'm never
dull,' answered Urania, with her air of superiority.

'What a queer girl you are!' exclaimed Bessie, frankly. 'I should be
wretched if I found myself alone in a house. Do run over in the evening,
at any rate. We are going to have lots of fun.'

Miss Rylance shuddered. She knew what was meant by lots of fun at The
Knoll; a romping game at croquet, or the newly-established lawn-tennis,
with girls in short petticoats and boys in Eton jackets; a raid upon
the plum-trees on the crumbling red brick walls of the fine old
kitchen-garden; winding up with a boisterous bout at hide-and-seek in the
twilight; and finally a banquet of sandwiches, jam tarts, and syllabub in
the shabby old dining-room.

'I'll come over to see Mrs. Wendover, if I am not too tired,' she said,
with languid politeness, and then she closed the gate, and the carriage
drove on to The Knoll.

Colonel Wendover's house was a substantial dwelling of the Queen Anne
period, built of unmixed red brick, with a fine pediment, a stone shell
over the entrance, four long narrow windows on each side of the tall
door, and nine in each upper story, a house that looked all eyes, and was
a blaze of splendour when the western sun shone upon its many windows.
The house stood on a bit of rising ground at the end of the village, and
dominated all meaner habitations. It was the typical squire's house, and
Colonel Wendover was no bad representative of the typical squire.

A fine old iron gate opened upon a broad gravel drive, which made the
circuit of a well-kept _parterre_, where the flowers grew as they only
grow for those who love them dearly. This gate stood hospitably open at
all times, and many were the vehicles which drove up to the tall door of
The Knoll, and friendly the welcome which greeted all comers.

The door, like the gate, stood open all day long--indeed, open doors
were the rule at Kingthorpe. Ida saw a roomy old hall, paved with black
and white marble, a few family portraits, considerably the worse for
wear, against panelled walls painted white, a concatenation of guns,
fishing-rods, whips, canes, cricket-bats, croquet-mallets, and all things
appertaining to the out-door amusements of a numerous family. A large
tiger skin stretched before the drawing-room door was one memorial of
Colonel Wendover's Indian life; a tiger's skull gleaming on the wall,
between a pair of elephant's ears, was another. One side of the wall was
adorned with a collection of Indian arms, showing all those various
curves with which oriental ingenuity has improved upon the straight
simplicity of the western sword.

It was not a neatly kept hall. There had been no careful study of colour
in the arrangement of things--hats and caps were flung carelessly on the
old oak chairs--there was a licentious mixture of styles in the
furniture--half Old English, half Indian, and all the worse for wear: but
Ida Palliser thought the house had a friendly look, which made it better
than any house she had ever seen before.

Through an open door at the back of the hall she saw a broad gravel walk,
long and straight, leading to a temple or summer-house built of red
brick, like the mansion itself. On each side of the broad walk there was
a strip of grass, just about wide enough for a bowling-green, and on the
grass were orange-trees in big wooden tubs, painted green. Slowly
advancing along the broad walk there came a large lady.

'Is that you mother?' asked Ida.

'No, it's Aunt Betsy. You ought to have known Aunt Betsy at a glance. I'm
sure I've described her often enough. How good of her to be here to
welcome us!' and Bessie flew across the hall and rushed down the broad
walk to greet her aunt.

Ida followed at a more sober pace. Yes, she had heard of Aunt Betsy--a
maiden aunt, who lived in her own house a little way from The Knoll. A
lady who had plenty of money and decidedly masculine tastes, which she
indulged freely; a very lovable person withal, if Bessie might be
believed. Ida wondered if she too would be able to like Aunt Betsy.

Miss Wendover's appearance was not repulsive. She was a woman of heroic
mould, considerably above the average height of womankind, with a large
head nobly set upon large well-shaped shoulders. Bulky Miss Wendover
decidedly was, but she carried her bulkiness well. She still maintained a
waist, firmly braced above her expansive hips. She walked well, and was
more active than many smaller women. Indeed, her life was full of
activity, spent for the most part in the open air, driving, walking,
gardening, looking after her cows and poultry, and visiting the
labouring-classes round Kingthorpe, among whom she was esteemed an
oracle.

Bessie hung herself round her large aunt like ivy on an oak, and the two
thus united came up the broad walk to meet Ida, Bessie chattering all the
way.

'So this is Miss Palliser,' said Aunt Betsy heartily, and in a deep
masculine voice, which accorded well with her large figure. 'I have heard
a great deal about you from this enthusiastic child,--so much that I was
prepared to be disappointed in you. It is the highest compliment I can
pay you to say I am not.'

'Where's mother?' asked Bessie.

'Your father drove her to Romsey to call on the new vicar. There's the
phaeton driving in at the gate.'

It was so. Before Ida had had breathing time to get over the introduction
to Aunt Betsy, she was hurried off to see her host and hostess.

They were very pleasant people, who did not consider themselves called on
to present an icy aspect to a new acquaintance.

The Colonel was the image of his sister, tall and broad of figure, with
an aquiline nose and a commanding eye, thoroughly good-natured withal,
and a man whom everybody loved. Mrs. Wendover was a dumpy little woman,
who had brought dumpiness and a handsome fortune into the family. She had
been very pretty in girlhood, and was pretty still, with a round-faced
innocent prettiness which made her look almost as young as her eldest
daughter. Her husband loved her with a fondly protecting and almost
paternal affection, which was very pleasant to behold; and she held him
in devoted reverence, as the beginning and end of all that was worth
loving and knowing in the Universe. She was not an accomplished woman,
and had made the smallest possible use of those opportunities which
civilization affords to every young lady whose parents have plenty of
money; but she was a lady to the marrow of her bones--benevolent, kindly.
thinking no evil, rejoicing in the truth--an embodiment of domestic love.

Such a host and hostess made Ida feel at home in their house in less than
five minutes. If there had been a shade of coldness in their greeting her
pride would have risen in arms against them, and she would have made
herself eminently disagreeable. But at their hearty welcome she expanded
like a beautiful flower which opens its lovely heart to the sunshine.

'It is so good of you to ask me here,' she said, when Mrs. Wendover had
kissed her, 'knowing so little of me.'

'I know that my daughter loves you,' answered the mother, 'and it is not
in Bessie's nature to love anyone who isn't worthy of love.'

Ida smiled at the mother's simple answer.

'Don't you think that in a heart so full of love some may run over and
get wasted on worthless objects?' she asked.

'That's very true,' cried a boy in an Eton jacket, one of a troop that
had congregated round the Colonel and his wife since their entrance. 'You
know there was that half-bred terrier you doted upon, Bess, though I
showed you that the roof of his mouth was as red as sealing-wax.'

'I hope you are not going to compare me to a half-bred terrier,' said
Ida, laughing.

'If you were a terrier, the roof of your mouth would be as black as my
hat,' said the boy decisively. It was his way of expressing his
conviction that Ida was thoroughbred.

The ice being thus easily broken, Ida found herself received into the
bosom of the family, and at once established as a favourite with all.
There were two boys in Eton jackets, answering to the names of Reginald
and Horatio, but oftener to the friendly abbreviations Reg and Horry.
Both had chubby faces, liberally freckled, warts on their hands, and
rumpled hair; and it was not easy for a new comer to distinguish Horatio
from Reginald, or Reginald from Horatio. There was a girl of fourteen
with flowing hair, who looked very tall because her petticoats were very
short, and who always required some one to hug and hang upon. If she
found herself deprived of human support she lolled against a wall.

This young person at once pounced upon Ida, as a being sent into the
world to sustain her.

'Do you think you shall like me?' she asked, when they had all swarmed up
to the long corridor, out of which numerous bedrooms opened.

'I like you already,' answered Ida.

'Do thoo like pigs?' asked a smaller girl, round and rosy, in a holland
pinafore, putting the question as if it were relevant to her sister's
inquiry.

'I don't quite know,' said Ida doubtfully.

''Cos there are nine black oneths, tho pwutty. Will thoo come and thee
them?'

Ida said she would think about it: and then she received various
pressing invitations to go and see lop-eared rabbits, guinea-pigs, a tame
water-rat in the rushes of the duck-pond, a collection of eggs in the
schoolroom, and the new lawn-tennis ground which father had made in the
paddock.

'Now all you small children run away!' cried Bessie, loftily. 'Ida and I
are going to dress for dinner.'

The crowd dispersed reluctantly, with low mutterings about rabbits, pigs,
and water-rats, like the murmurs of a stage mob; and then Bessie led her
friend into a large sunny room fronting westward, a room with three
windows, cushioned window-seats, two pretty white-curtained beds, and a
good deal of old-fashioned and heterogeneous furniture, half English,
half Indian.

'You said you wouldn't mind sleeping in my room,' said Bessie, as she
showed her friend an exclusive dressing-table, daintily draperied, and
enlivened with blue satin bows, for the refreshment of the visitor's eye.

While the girls were contemplating this work of art the door was suddenly
opened and Blanche's head was thrust in.

'I did the dressing-table, Miss Palliser, every bit, on purpose for you.'

And the door then slammed to, and Bessie rushed across the room and drew
the bolt.

'We shall have them all one after another,' she said.

'Don't shut them out on my account.'

'Oh, but I must. You would have no peace. I can see they are going to be
appallingly fond of you.'

'Let them like me as much as they can. Do you know, Bessie, this is my
first glimpse into the inside of a home!'

'Oh, Ida, dear, but your father,' remonstrated Bessie.

'My father has never been unkind to me, but I have had no home with him.
When my mother brought me home from India--she died very soon after we
got home, you know'--Ida strangled a sob at this point--'I was placed
with strangers, two elderly maiden ladies, who reared me very well, no
doubt, in their stiff business-like way, and who really gave me a very
good education. That went on for nine years,--a long time to spend with
two old maids in a dull little house at Turnham Green,--and then I had a
letter from my father to say he had come home for good. He had sold his
commission and meant to settle down in some quiet spot abroad. His first
duty would be to make arrangements for placing me in a high-class school,
where I could finish my education; and he told me, quite at the end of
his letter, that he had married a very sweet young lady, who was ready to
give me all a mother's affection, and who would be able to receive me in
my holidays, when the expense of the journey to France and back was
manageable.'

'Poor darling!' sighed Bessie. 'Did your heart warm to the sweet young
lady?'

'No, Bess; I'm afraid it must be an unregenerate heart, for I took a
furious dislike to her. Very unjust and unreasonable, wasn't it?
Afterwards, when my father took me over to his cottage, near Dieppe, to
spend my holidays, I found that my stepmother was a kind-hearted, pretty
little thing, whom I might look down upon for her want of education, but
whom I could not dislike. She was very kind to me; and she had a baby
boy. I have told you about him, and how he and I fell in love with each
other at first sight.'

'I am horribly jealous of that baby boy,' protested Bessie. 'How old is
he now?'

'Nearly five. He was two years and a half old when I was at Les
Fontaines, and that was before I went to Mauleverer Manor.'

'And you have been at Mauleverer Manor more than two years without once
going home for the holidays,' said Bessie. 'That seems hard.'

'My dear, poverty is hard. It is all of a piece. It means deprivation,
humiliation, degradation, the severance of friends. My father would have
had me home if he could have afforded it; but he couldn't. He has only
just enough to keep himself and his wife and boy. If you were to see the
little box of a house they inhabit in that tiny French village, you would
wonder that anybody bigger than a pigeon could live in so small a place.
They have a narrow garden, and there is an orchard on the slope of a hill
behind the cottage, and a long white road leading to nowhere in front. It
is all very nice in the summer, when one can live half one's life out of
doors, but I am sure I don't know how they manage to exist through the
winter.'

'Poor things!' sighed Bessie, who had a large stock of compassion always
on hand.

And then she tied a bright ribbon at the back of Ida's collar, by way of
finishing touch to the girl's simple toilet, which had been going on
while they talked, and then, Bessie in white and Ida in black, like
sunlight and shadow, they went downstairs to the drawing-room, where
Colonel Wendover was stretched on his favourite sofa, reading a county
paper. Since his retirement from active service into domestic idleness
the Colonel had required a great deal of rest, and was to be found at all
hours of the day extended at ease on his own particular sofa. During his
intervals of activity he exhibited a large amount of energy. When he was
indoors his stentorian voice penetrated from garret to cellar; when he
was out of doors the same deep-toned thunder could be heard across a
couple of paddocks. He pervaded the gardens and stables, supervised the
home farm, and had a finger in every pie.

Mrs. Wendover was sitting in her own particular arm-chair, close to her
husband's sofa--they were seldom seen far apart--with a large basket of
crewel-work beside her, containing sundry squares of kitchen towelling
and a chaos of many-coloured wools, which never seemed to arrive at any
result.

The impression which Mrs. Wendover's drawing-room conveyed to a stranger
was a general idea of homeliness and comfort. It was not fine, it was not
aesthetic, it was not even elegant. A great bay window opened upon the
garden, a large old-fashioned fireplace, with carved wooden chimney-piece
faced the bay. The floor was polished oak, with only an island of faded
Persian carpet in the centre, and Indian prayer rugs lying about here and
there. There were chairs and tables of richly carved Bombay blackwood,
Japanese cabinets in the recesses beside the fire-place, a five-leaved
Indian screen between the fire-place and the door. There was just enough
Oriental china to give colour to the room, and to relieve by glowing reds
and vivid purples the faded dead-leaf tint of curtains and chair covers.

The gong began to boom as the two girls came into the room, and the rest
of the family dropped in through the open windows at the same moment,
Aunt Betsey bringing up the rear. There was no nursery dinner at The
Knoll. Colonel Wendover allowed his children to dine with him from the
day they were able to manage their knives and forks. Save on state
occasions, the whole brood sat down with their father and mother to the
seven o'clock dinner; as the young sprigs of the House of Orleans used to
sit round good King Louis Philippe in his tranquil retirement at
Claremont. Even the lisping girl who loved pigs had her place at the
board, and knew how to behave herself. There was a subdued struggle for
the seat next Ida, whom the Colonel had placed on his right, but
Reginald, the elder of the Winchester boys, asserted his claim with a
quiet firmness that proved irresistible. Grace was said with solemn
brevity by the Colonel, whose sum total of orthodoxy was comprised in
that brief grace, and in regular attendance at church on Sunday mornings;
and then there came a period of chatter and laughter which might have
been a little distracting to a stranger. Each of the boys and girls had
some wonderful fact, usually about his or her favourite animal, to
communicate to the father. Aunt Betsy broke in with her fine manly voice
at every turn in the conversation. Ripples of laughter made a running
accompaniment to everything. It was a new thing to Ida Palliser to find
herself in the midst of so much happiness.

After dinner they all rushed off to play lawn tennis, carrying Ida along
with them.

'It's a shame,' protested Bessie. 'I know you're tired, darling. Come and
rest in a shady corner of the drawing-room.'

This sounded tempting, but it was not to be.

'No she's not,' asserted Blanche, boldly. 'You're not tired, are you,
Miss Palliser?'

'Not too tired for just one game,' replied Ida. 'But you are never to
call me Miss Palliser.'

'May I really call you Ida? That's too lovely.'

'May we all call you Ida?' asked Horatio. 'Don't begin by making
distinctions. Blanche is no better than the rest of us.'

'Don't be jealous,' said Miss Palliser, laughing. 'I am going to be
everybody's Ida.'

On this she was borne off to the garden as in a whirlwind.

There were some bamboo chairs and sofas on the grass in front of the bay
window, and here the elder members of the family established themselves.

'I like that schoolfellow of Bessie's,' said Aunt Betsy, with her decided
air, whereupon the Colonel and his wife assented, as they always did to
any proposition of Miss Wendover's.

'She is remarkably handsome,' said the Colonel.

'She is good and thorough, and that's of much more consequence,' said his
sister.

'She takes to the children, and that is so truly nice in her' murmured
Mrs. Wendover.




CHAPTER IV.


WENDOVER ABBEY.

The next day was fine. The children had all been praying for fine
weather, that they might entertain Miss Palliser with an exploration of
the surrounding neighbourhood. Loud whoops of triumph and sundry
breakdown dances were heard in the top story soon after five o'clock, for
the juvenile Wendovers were early risers, and when in high spirits made
themselves distinctly audible.

The eight o'clock breakfast in the old painted dining-room--all oak
panelling, but painted stone colour by generations of Goths and
Vandals--was even more animated than the seven o'clock dinner.

Such a breakfast, after the thick bread and butter and thin coffee at
Mauleverer. Relays of hot buttered cakes, and eggs and bacon, fish,
honey, fresh fruit from the garden, a picturesque confusion of form and
colour on the lavishly-furnished table, and youthful appetites ready to
do justice to the good cheer.

'What are you going to do with Miss Palliser?' asked the Colonel. 'Am I
to take her for a drive?'

'No, father, you can't have Miss Palliser to-day. She's going in the
jaunting-car,' said Reginald, talking of the lady as if she were a horse.
'We're going to take her over to the Abbey.'

The Abbey was the ancestral home of the Wendovers, now in possession of
Brian Wendover, only son of the Colonel's eldest brother, and head of the
house.

'Well, don't upset her oftener than you can help,' replied the father. 'I
suppose you don't much mind being spilt off an outside car, Miss
Palliser? I believe young ladies of your age rather relish the
excitement.'

'She needn't be afraid,' said Reginald; 'I am going to drive.'

'Then we are very likely to find ourselves reposing in a ditch before the
day is over,' retorted Bessie. 'I hope you--or the pony--will choose a
dry one.'

'I'll risk it, ditches and all,' said Ida, good-naturedly. 'I am longing
to see the Abbey.'

'The rich Brian's Abbey,' said Bessie, laughing. 'What a pity he is not
at home for you to see him too! Do you think Brian will be back before
Ida's holidays are over, father?'

'I never know what that young man is going to do,' answered the Colonel.
'When last I heard from him he was fishing in Norway. He doesn't care
much about the sport, he tells me; indeed, he was never a very
enthusiastic angler; but he likes the country and the people. He ought to
stay at home, and stand for the county at the next election. A young man
in his position has no business to be idle.'

'Is he clever?' asked Ida.

'Too clever for my money,' answered the Colonel. 'He has too much
book-learning, and too little knowledge of men and things. What is the
good of a man being a fine Greek scholar if he knows nothing about the
land he owns, or the cattle that graze upon it, and has not enough tact
to make himself popular in his own neighbourhood? Brian is a man who
would starve if his bread depended on his own exertions.'

'He's a jolly kind of cousin for a fellow to have,' suggested Horry,
looking up from his eggs and bacon. 'He lets us do what we like at the
Abbey. By the way, Blanche, have you packed the picnic basket?'

'Yes.'

'What have you put in?'

'That's my secret,' answered Blanche. 'Do you think I am going to tell
you what you are to have for lunch? That would spoil all the fun.'

'Blanche isn't half a bad caterer,' said Reg. 'I place myself in her
hands unreservedly; I will only venture to hint that I hope she hasn't
forgotten the chutnee, Tirhoot, and plenty of it. What's the good of
having a father who was shoulder to shoulder with Gough in the Punjab, if
we are to run short of Indian condiments?'

At nine o'clock the young people were all ready to start. The
jaunting-car held five, including the driver; Bessie and her friend were
to occupy one side, Eva, the round child who loved pigs, was to have a
seat, and a place was to be kept for Miss Rylance, who was to be invited
to join the exploration party, much to the disgust of the Winchester
lads, who denounced her as a stuck-up minx, and distinguished her with
various other epithets of an abusive character selected from a vocabulary
known only to Wyckhamists. Blanche and Horatio and a smaller boy, called
Ernest, who was dressed like a gillie, and had all the wildness of a
young Highlander, were to walk, with the occasional charity of a lift.

The jaunting-car was drawn by a large white pony, fat and pampered,
overfed with dainties from the children's tables, and petted and played
with until he had become almost human in his intelligence, and a match
for his youthful masters in cunning and mischief. This impish animal had
been christened Robin Goodfellow, a name that was shortened for
convenience to Robin. Robin's eagerness to depart was now made known to
the family by an incessant rattling of his bit.

Reginald took the reins, and got into his seat with the quiet grandeur of
a celebrity in the four-in-hand club. Ida and Bessie were handed to their
places by Horatio, the chubby Eva scrambled into her seat, with a liberal
display of Oxford blue stocking, under the shortest of striped
petticoats; and off they drove to the cottage, Dr. Rylance's miniature
dwelling, where the plate-glass windows were shining in the morning sun,
and the colours of the flower-beds were almost too bright to be looked
at.

Bessie found Miss Rylance in the dainty little drawing-room, all ebonized
wood and blue china, as neat as an interior by Mieris. The fair Urania
was yawning over a book of travels--trying to improve a mind which was
not naturally fertile--and she was not sorry to be interrupted by an
irruption of noisy Wendovers, even though they left impressions of their
boots on the delicate tones of the carpet, and made havoc of the cretonne
chair-covers.

Miss Rylance had no passion for country life. Fields and trees, hills and
winding streams, even when enlivened by the society of the lower animals,
were not all-sufficient for her happiness. It was all very well for her
father to oscillate between Cavendish Square and Kingthorpe, avoiding the
expense and trouble of autumn touring, and taking his rest and his
pleasure in this rustic retreat. But her summer holidays for the last
three years had been all Kingthorpe, and Miss Rylance detested the
picturesque village, the busy duck-pond, the insignificant hills, which
nobody had ever heard of, and the monotonous sequence of events.

'We are going to the Abbey for a nice long day, taking our dinner with
us, and coming round to Aunt Betsy's to tea on our way home,' said
Bessie, as if she were proposing an entirely novel excursion; 'and we
want you to come with us, Ranie.'

Miss Rylance stifled a yawn. She had been trying to pin her thoughts to a
particular tribe of Abyssinians, who fought all the surrounding tribes,
and always welcomed the confiding stranger with a shower of poisoned
arrows. She did not care for the Wendover children, but they were better
than those wearisome Abyssinians.

'You are very kind, but I know the Abbey so well,' she said, determined
to yield her consent as a favour.

'Never mind that. Ida has never seen it. We are going to show her
everything. We want her to feel one of us.'

'We shall have a jolly lunch,' interjected Blanche. 'There are some lemon
cheesecakes that I made myself yesterday afternoon. Cook was in a good
temper, and let me do it.'

'I hope you washed your hands first,' said Horatio. 'I'd sooner cook had
made the cheesecakes.'

'Of course I washed my hands, you too suggestive pig. But I should-hope
that in a general way my hands are cleaner than cook's. It is only
schoolboys who luxuriate in dirt.'

'You'll come, Ranie?' pleaded Bess.

'If you really wish it.'

'I do, or I shouldn't be here. But I hope you wish it too. You ought to
be longing to get out of doors on such a lovely morning. Houses were
never intended for such weather as this Come and join the birds and
butterflies, and all the happiest things in creation.'

'I must go for my hat and sunshade. I wasn't born full-dressed, like the
birds and butterflies,' replied Urania.

She ran away, leaving Bessie and Ida in the drawing-room. The younger
children having rushed in and left their mark upon the room, had now
rushed out again to the jaunting-car.

'A pretty drawing-room, isn't it?' asked Bess. 'It looks so neat and
fresh and bright after ours.'

'It doesn't look half so much like home,' said Ida.

'Perhaps not. But I believe it is just the exact thing a drawing-room
ought to be in this latter part of the nineteenth century; or, at least,
so Dr. Rylance says. How do you like the blue china? Dr. Rylance is an
amateur of blue china. He will have no other. Dresden and Sevres have no
existence for him. He recognizes nothing beyond his own particular breed
of ginger-jars.'

Miss Rylance came back, dressed as carefully as if she had been going for
a morning lounge in Hyde Park, hat and feather, pongee sunshade,
mousquetaire gloves. The Wendovers all wore their gloves in their
pockets, and cultivated blisters on the palms of their hands, as a mark
of distinction, which implied great feats in rowing, or the pulling in of
desperate horses.

Now they were all mounted on the car, just as the church clock struck
ten. Reginald gave the reins a shake, cracked his whip, and Robin, who
always knew where his young friends wanted to go, twisted the vehicle
sharply round a corner and started at an agreeable canter, expressive of
good spirits.

Robin carried them joltingly along a lovely lane till they came to a
gentle acclivity, by which time, having given vent to his exuberance, the
pony settled down into a crawl. Vainly did Reginald crack his whip--vain
even stinging switches on Robin's fat sides. Out of that crawl nothing
could move him. The sun was gaining power with every moment, and blazing
down upon the occupants of the car; but Robin cared not at all. He was an
animal of tropical origin, and had no apprehension of sunshine; his eyes
were so constructed as to accommodate themselves to a superfluity of
light.

'I think we shall be tolerably well roasted by the time we get to the
Abbey,' said Bessie. 'Don't you think if we were all to get down and push
the back of the car, Robin might go a little faster?'

'He'll go fast enough when he has blown a bit,' said Reg. 'Can't you
admire the landscape?'

'We could, if we were not being baked,' replied Ida.

Miss Rylance sat silent under her pongee umbrella, and wished herself in
Cavendish Square; even though western London were as empty and barren as
the great wilderness.

They were on the ridge of a hill, overlooking undulating pastures and
quiet sheep-walks, fair hills on which the yew-trees cast their dark
shadows, a broad stretch of pastoral country with sunny gleams of water
shining low in the distance.

Suddenly the road dipped, and Robin was going downhill with alarming
speed.

'This means that we shall all be in the ditch presently,' said Bessie.
'Never mind. It's only a dry bed of dock and used-up stinging nettles. We
shan't be much hurt.'

After two or three miraculous escapes they landed at the bottom of the
hill, and Ida beheld the good old gates of Kingthorpe Abbey, low iron
gates that stood open, between tall stone pillars supporting the
sculptured escutcheon of the Wendovers. There was a stone lodge on each
side of the gate, past which the car drove in triumph into an avenue of
ancient yew-trees, low and wide-spreading, with a solemn gloom that would
better have become a churchyard than a gentleman's park.

It was a noble old park, richly timbered with oaks as old as those
immemorial trees that make the glory of Stoneleigh. There was a lake in a
wooded hollow in front of the Abbey, a long low pile of stone, the newest
part of which was as old as the days of the last Tudor. Nor had much
money been spent on the restoration or decorative repair of that fine old
house. It had been kept wind and weather proof. It had been protected
against the injuries of time; and that was all. There it stood, a brave
and solid monument of the remote past, grand in its stern simplicity and
its historic associations.

'Oh, what a dear old house!' cried Ida, clasping her hands, as the car
came out of the yew-tree avenue into the open space in front of the
Abbey; a wide lawn, where four mighty cedars of Lebanon spread their
dense shadows--grave old trees--which were in somewise impostors, as they
looked older than the house, and yet had been saplings in the days of
Queen Anne. 'What a sweet old place!' repeated Ida; 'and how I envy the
rich Brian!'

'Don't you think the rich Brian's wife will be still more enviable
sneered Miss Rylance.

'That depends. She may be a Vere-de-Vereish kind of person, and pine
amongst her halls and towers,' said Ida.

'Not if she had been brought up in poverty. She would revel in the
advantages of her position as Mrs. Wendover of the Abbey,' asserted Miss
Rylance.

'Would she? The Earl of Burleigh's wife had been poor, and yet did not
enjoy being rich and great,' said Bessie. 'It killed her, poor thing. And
yet she had married for love, and had no remorse of conscience to weigh
her down.'

'She was a sensitive little fool,' said Ida; 'I have no patience with
her.'

'Modern young ladies are not easily crushed,' remarked Miss Rylance;
'they make marrying for money a profession.'

'Is that your idea of life?' asked Ida.

'No; but I understand it is yours. I heard you say you meant to marry for
money.'

'Then you must have been listening to a conversation in which you had no
concern,' Ida answered coolly. 'I never said as much to you.'

The three girls, and the chubby Eva, had alighted from the car, which was
being conveyed to the stables at a hand-gallop, and this conversation was
continued on the broad gravel sweep in front of the Abbey. Just as the
discussion was intensifying in unpleasantness, the arrival of the
pedestrians made an agreeable diversion. Blanche and her two brothers had
come by a short cut, across fields and common, had given chase to
butterflies, experimented with tadpoles, and looked for hedge-birds' eggs
in the course of their journey, and were altogether in a state of
dilapidation--perspiration running down their sunburnt faces--their hats
anyhow--their hands embellished with recent scratches--their boots coated
with clay.

'Did ever anyone see such objects?' exclaimed Bessie, who had imbibed
certain conventional ideas of decency at Mauleverer Manor: 'you ought to
be ashamed of yourselves.'

'I daresay we ought, but we aren't,' retorted Horatio. 'I found a tadpole
in an advanced stage of transmutation, Miss Palliser, and it has almost
converted me to Darwinism. Given a single step and you may accept the
whole ladder. If from tadpoles frogs, why not from monkeys man?'

'Go and be a Darwinian, and don't prose,' said Blanche, impatiently. 'We
are going to show Ida the Abbey. How do you like the outside, darling?'
asked the too-affectionate girl, favouring Miss Palliser with the full
weight of her seven stone and three-quarters.

'I adore it. It is like a page out of an old chronicle.'

'Isn't it?' gasped Blanche; 'and you can fancy the fat old monks sitting
on those stone benches, nodding in the sunshine. The house is hardly
altered a bit since it was an actual abbey, except that half a dozen
cells have been knocked into one comfortable bedroom. The long dark
passages are just the same as they were when those sly old monks went
gliding up and down them--such dear old passages, smelling palpably of
ghosts.'

'Mice,' said Horatio.

'No, sir, ghosts. Do you suppose my sense of smell is of such inferior
quality that I can't distinguish a ghost from a mouse?'

'Now, how about luncheon?' demanded Horatio. 'I propose that we all go
and sit under that prime old cedar and discuss the contents of the picnic
basket before we discuss the Abbey.'

'Why, it isn't half-past eleven,' said Bessie.

'Ah,' sighed Blanche, 'I'm afraid it's too early for lunch. We should
have nothing left to look forward to all the rest of the day.'

'There'd be afternoon tea at Aunt Betsy's to build upon, said Horry. 'I
gave her to understand we were to have something good: blue gages from
the south wall, cream to a reckless extent.'

'Strawberry jam and pound-cake,' suggested Eva.

'If you go on like that you'll make me distracted with hunger,' said
Blanche, a young person who at the seaside wanted twopence to buy buns
directly after she had swallowed her dinner.

Bessie and Miss Rylance had been walking up and down the velvet sward
beside the beds of dwarf roses and geraniums, with a ladylike stateliness
which did credit to their training at Mauleverer. Ida was the centre of
the juvenile group.

'Come and see the Abbey,' exclaimed Horry, putting his arm through Miss
Palliser's, 'and at the stroke of one we will sit down to lunch under the
biggest of the cedars--the tree which according to tradition was planted
by John Evelyn himself, when he came on a visit to Sir Tristram
Wendover.'

They all trooped into the Abbey, the hall door standing open, as in a
fairy tale. Bessie and Urania followed at a more sober pace; but Ida had
given herself over to the children, and they did what they liked with
her, Blanche hanging on her bodily all the time.

They were now joined by Reginald, who appeared mysteriously from the back
premises, where he had been seeing Robin eat his corn, having a fixed
idea that it was in the nature of all grooms and stablemen to cheat
horses.

The Abbey was furnished with a sober grandeur, in perfect tone with its
architecture. Everything was solid and ponderous, save here and there,
where in some lady's bower there appeared the spindle-legged tables and
inlaid cabinets of the Chippendale period, which had an air of newness
where all else was so old. The upper rooms were low and somewhat dark,
the heavily mullioned windows being designed to exclude rather than to
admit light. There was much tapestry, subdued in hue, but in good
condition, and as frankly uninteresting in subject as the generality of
old English needlework.

Below, the rooms were large and lofty, rich in carved chimney pieces,
well preserved panelling, and old oak furniture. There were some fine
pictures, from Holbein downwards, and the usual array of family
portraits, which the boys and girls explained and commented upon
copiously.

'There's my favourite ancestor, Sir Tristram,' cried Blanche pointing to
a dark-eyed cavalier, with strongly-marked brow and bronzed visage. 'He
was middle-aged when that picture was painted, but I know he was handsome
in his youth. The face is still in the family.'

'Of course it is,' said Horatio--'on my shoulders.'

'Your shoulders!' ejaculated Blanche, contemptuously. 'As if my Sir
Tristram ever resembled you. He fought in all the great battles, from
Edgehill to Worcester,' continued the girl; 'and he was wounded seven
times; and he was true to his master through every trial; and he had all
the Wendover plate melted down; and he followed Charles the Second into
exile; he mortgaged his estate to raise money for the king; and he
married a very lovely French woman, who introduced turned-up noses into
the family,' concluded Blanche, giving her tip-tilted nose a complacent
toss.

'I thought it was a mercy that we were spared the old housekeeper,' said
Urania, 'but really Blanche is worse.'

'Ida doesn't know all about our family, if you do,' protested Blanche.
'It is all new to her.'

'Yes, dear, it is all new and interesting to me,' said Ida.

'How much more deeply you would have been interested if Mr. Wendover had
been here to expatiate upon his family tree,' said Urania.

'That might have made it still more interesting,' admitted Ida, with a
frankness which took the sting out of Miss Rylance's remark.

The young Wendovers had shown Ida everything. They had opened cabinets,
peered into secret drawers, sniffed at the stale _pot-pourri_ in old
crackle vases; they had dragged their willing victim through all the long
slippery passages, by all the mysterious stairs and by-ways; they had
obliged her to look at the interior of ghostly closets, where the ladies
of old had stored their house linen or hung their mantuas and
farthingales; they had made her look out of numerous windows to admire
the prospect; they had introduced her to the state bedroom in which the
heads of the Wendover race made a point of being born; they made her peep
shuddering into the death-chamber where the family were laid in their
last slumber. The time thus pleasantly occupied slipped away unawares;
and the chapel clock was striking one as they all went trooping down the
broad oak staircase for about the fifteenth time.

A gentleman was entering the hall as they came down. They could only see
the top of his hat.

'It's father,' cried Eva.

'You little idiot; did you ever see my father in a stove-pipe hat on a
week-day?' cried Reg, with infinite scorn.

'Then it's Brian.'

'Brian is in Norway.'

The gentleman looked up and greeted them all with a comprehensive smile.
It was Dr. Rylance.

'So glad I have found you, young people,' he said blandly.

'Papa,' exclaimed Urania, in a tone which did not express unmitigated
pleasure, 'this is a surprise. You told me you would not be down till
late in the evening.'

'Yes, my dear: but the fine morning tempted me. I found my engagements
would stand over till Monday or Tuesday, so I put myself into the eight
o'clock train, and arrived at The Cottage just an hour after you and your
friends had left for your picnic. So I walked over to join you. I hope I
am not in the way.'

'Of course not,' said Bessie. 'I'm afraid you'll find us hardly the kind
of company you are accustomed to; but if you will put up with our
roughness and noise we shall feel honoured.'

'We are going to get lunch ready,' said Blanche. 'You grown-ups will find
us under Evelyn's tree when you're hungry, and you'd better accommodate
yourselves to be hungry soon.'

'Or you may find a dearth of provisions,' interjected Reg. 'I feel in a
demolishing humour.'

The troop rushed off, leaving the three elder girls and Dr. Rylance
standing in the hall, listlessly contemplative of Sir Tristram's dinted
breast-plate, hacked by Roundhead pikes at Marston Moor.




CHAPTER V.


DR. RYLANCE ASSERTS HIMSELF.

The luncheon under Evelyn's tree took a cooler shade from Dr. Rylance's
presence than from the far-reaching branches of the cedar. His politeness
made the whole business different from what it would have been without
him.

Blanche and the boys, accustomed to abandon themselves to frantic
joviality at any outdoor feast of their own contriving, now withdrew into
the background, and established themselves behind the trunk of the tree,
in which retirement they kept up an insane giggling, varied by low and
secret discourse, and from which shelter they issued forth stealthily,
one by one, to pounce with crafty hands upon the provisions. These
unmannerly proceedings were ignored by the elders, but they exercised a
harassing influence upon poor little Eva, who had been told to sit
quietly by Bessie, and who watched her brothers' raids with round-eyed
wonder, and listened with envious ears to that distracting laughter
behind the tree.

'Did you see Horry take quite half the cake, just now?' she whispered to
Bessie, in the midst of a polite conversation about nothing particular.

And anon she murmured in horrified wonder, after a stolen peep behind the
tree,' Reg is taking off Dr. Rylance.'

The grown-up luncheon party was not lively. Tongue and chicken,
pigeon-pie, cheese-cakes, tarts, cake, fruit--all had been neatly spread
upon a tablecloth laid on the soft turf. Nothing had been forgotten.
There were plates and knives and forks enough for everybody--picnicking
being a business thoroughly well understood at The Knoll; but there was a
good deal wanting in the guests.

Ida was thoughtful, Urania obviously sullen, Bessie amiably stupid; but
Dr. Rylance appeared to think that they were all enjoying themselves
intensely.

'Now this is what I call really delightful,' he said, as he poured out
the sparkling Devonshire cider with as stately a turn of his wrist as if
the liquor had been Cliquot or Roederer. 'An open-air luncheon on such a
day as this is positively inspiring, and to a man who has breakfasted at
seven o'clock on a cup of tea and a morsel of dry toast--thanks, yes, I
prefer the wing if no one else, will have it--such an unceremonious meal
is doubly welcome. I'm so glad I found you. Lucky, wasn't it, Ranie?'

He smiled at his daughter, as if deprecating that stolid expression of
hers, which would have been eminently appropriate to the funeral of an
indifferent acquaintance,--a total absence of all feeling, a grave
nullity.

'I don't see anything lucky in so simple a fact,' answered Urania. 'You
were told we had come here, and you came here after us.'

'You might have changed your minds at the last moment and gone somewhere
else. Might you not, now, Miss Palliser?'

'Yes, if we had been very frivolous people; but as to-day's exploration
of the Abbey was planned last night, it would have indicated great
weakness of mind if we had been tempted into any other direction,'
answered Ida, feeling somewhat sorry for Dr. Rylance.

The coldest heart might compassionate a man cursed in such a disagreeable
daughter.

'I am very glad you were not weak-minded, and that I was so fortunate as
to find you,' said the doctor, addressing himself henceforward
exclusively to Ida and her friend.

Bessie took care of his creature-comforts with a matronly hospitality
which sat well upon her. She cut thin slices of tongue, she fished out
savouriest bits of pigeon and egg, when he passed, by a natural
transition, from chicken to pie. She was quite distressed because he did
not care for tarts or cake. But the doctor's appetite, unlike that of the
young people on the other side of the cedar, had its limits. He had
satisfied his hunger long before they had, and was ready to show Miss
Palliser the gardens.

'They are fine old gardens,' he said, approvingly. 'Perhaps their chief
beauty is that they have not a single modern improvement. They are as
old-fashioned as the gardens of Sion Abbey, before the good queen Bess
ousted the nuns to make room for the Percies.'

They all rose and walked slowly away from the cedar, leaving the
fragments of the feast to Blanche and her three brothers. Eva stayed
behind, to make one of that exuberant group, and to see Reg 'take off'
Urania and her father. His mimicry was cordially admired, though it was
not always clear to his audience which was the doctor and which was his
daughter. A stare, a strut, a toss, an affected drawl were the leading
features of each characterization.

'I had no opportunity of congratulating you on your triumphs the other
day, Miss Palliser,' said Dr. Rylance, who had somehow managed that Ida
and he should be side by side, and a little in advance of the other two.
'But, believe me, I most heartily sympathized with you in the delight of
your success.'

'Delight?' echoed Ida. 'Do you think there was any real pleasure for me
in receiving a gift from the hands of Miss Pew, who has done all she
could do to make me feel the disadvantages of my position, from the day I
first entered her house to the day I last left it? The prizes gave me no
pleasure. They have no value in my mind, except as an evidence that I
have made the most of my opportunities at Mauleverer, in spite of my
contempt for my schoolmistress.'

'You dislike her intensely, I see.'

'She has made me dislike her. I never knew unkindness till I knew her. I
never felt the sting of poverty till she made me feel all its sharpness.
I never knew that I was steeped in sinful pride until she humiliated me.'

'Your days of honour and happiness will come, said the doctor, 'days when
you will think no more of Miss Pew than of an insect which once stung
you.'

'Thank you for the comforting forecast,' answered Ida, lightly. 'But it
is easy to prophesy good fortune.'

'Easy, and safe, in such a case as yours. I can sympathize with you
better than you may suppose, Miss Palliser. I have had to fight my
battle. I was not always Dr. Rylance, of Cavendish Square; and I did not
enter a world in which there was a fine estate waiting for me, like the
owner of this place.'

'But you have conquered fortune, and by your own talents,' said Ida.
'That must be a proud thought.'

Dr. Rylance, who was not utterly without knowledge of himself, smiled at
the compliment. He knew it was by tact and address, smooth speech and
clean linen, that he had conquered fortune, rather than by shining
abilities. Yet he valued himself not the less on that account. In his
mind tact ranked higher than genius, since it was his own peculiar gift:
just as blue ginger-jars were better than Sevres, because he, Dr.
Rylance, was a collector of ginger-jars. He approved of himself so
completely that even his littlenesses were great in his own eyes.

'I have worked hard,' he said, complacently, 'and I have been patient.
But now, when my work is done, and my place in the world fixed, I begin
to find life somewhat barren. A man ought to reap some reward--something
fairer and sweeter than pounds, shillings, and pence, for a life of
labour and care.'

'No doubt,' assented Ida, receiving this remark as abstract philosophy,
rather than as having a personal meaning. 'But I think I should consider
pounds, shillings, and pence a very fair reward, if I only had enough of
them.'

'Yes, now, when you are smarting under the insolence of a purse-proud
schoolmistress; but years hence, when you have won independence, you will
feel disappointed if you have won nothing better.'

'What could be better?'

'Sympathetic companionship--a love worthy to influence your life.'

Ida looked up at the doctor with naïve surprise. Good heavens, was this
middle-aged gentleman going to drop into sentiment, as Silas Wegg dropped
into poetry? She glanced back at the other two. Happily they were close
at hand.

'What have you done with the children, Bessie?' asked Ida, as if she were
suddenly distracted with anxiety about their fate.

'Left them to their own devices. I hope they will not quite kill
themselves. We are all to meet in the stable yard at four, so that we may
be with Aunt Betsy at five.'

'Don't you think papa and I had better walk gently home?' suggested
Urania; 'I am sure it would be cruel to inflict such an immense party
upon Miss Wendover.'

'Nonsense,' exclaimed Bessie. 'Why, if all old Pew's school was to march
in upon her, without a moment's notice Aunt Betsy would not be put out of
the way one little bit. If Queen Victoria were to drop in unexpectedly to
luncheon, my aunt would be as cool as one of her own early cucumbers, and
would insist on showing the Queen her stables, and possibly her pigs.'

'How do you know that?' asked Ida.

'Because she never had a visitor yet whom she did not drag into her
stables, from archbishops downwards; and I don't suppose she'd draw the
line at a queen,' answered Bessie, with conviction.

'I am going to drink tea with Miss Wendover, whatever Urania may do,'
said Dr. Rylance, who felt that the time had come when he must assert
himself. 'I am out for a day's pleasure, and I mean to drink the cup to
the dregs.'

Urania looked at her father with absolute consternation. He was
transformed; he had become a new person; he was forgetting himself in a
ridiculous manner; letting down his dignity to an alarming extent. Dr.
Rylance, the fashionable physician, the man whose nice touch adjusted the
nerves of the aristocracy, to disport himself with unkempt, bare-handed
young Wendovers! It was an upheaval of things which struck horror to
Urania's soul. Easy, after beholding such a moral convulsion, to believe
that the Wight had once been part of the mainland; or even that Ireland
had originally been joined to Spain.

They all roamed into the rose-garden, where there were alleys of standard
rose-trees, planted upon grass that was soft and springy under the foot.
They went into the old vineries, where the big bunches of grapes were
purpling in the gentle heat. Dr. Rylance went everywhere, and he
contrived always to be near Ida Palliser.

He did not again lapse into sentiment, and he made himself fairly
agreeable, in his somewhat stilted fashion. Ida accepted his attention
with a charming unconsciousness; but she was perfectly conscious of
Urania's vexation, and that gave a zest to the whole thing.

'Well, Ida, what do you think of Kingthorpe Abbey?' asked Bessie, when
they had seen everything, even to the stoats and weasles, and various
vermin nailed flat against the stable wall, and were waiting for Robin to
be harnessed.

'It is a noble old place. It is simply perfect. I wonder your cousin can
live away from it.'

'Oh, Brian's chief delight is in roaming about the world. The Abbey is
thrown away upon him. He ought to have been an explorer or a missionary.
However, he is expected home in a month, and you will be able to judge
for yourself whether he deserves to be master of this old place. I only
wish it belonged to the other Brian.'

'The other Brian is your favourite.'

'He is ever so much nicer than his cousin--at least, the children and I
like him best. My father swears by the head of the house.'

'I think I would rather accept the Colonel's judgment than yours, Bess,'
said Ida. 'You are so impulsive in your likings.'

'Don't say that I am wanting in judgment,' urged Bessie, coaxingly, 'for
you know how dearly I love you. You will see the two Brians, I hope,
before your holidays are over; and then you can make your own selection.
Brian Walford will be with us for my birthday picnic, I daresay, wherever
he may be now. I believe he is mooning away his time in Herefordshire,
with his mother's people.'

'Is his father dead?'

'Yes, mother and father both, ages ago, in the days when I was a
hard-hearted little wretch, and thought it a treat to go into mourning,
and rather nice to be able to tell everybody, "Uncle Walford's dead. He
had a fit, and he never speaked any more." It was news, you know, and in
a village that goes for something.'

After a lengthy discussion, and some squabbling, it was decided that the
children were to have the benefit of the jaunting-car for the homeward
journey, and that Dr. Rylance and the three young ladies were to walk,
attended by Reginald, who insisted upon attaching himself to their
service, volunteering to show them the very nearest way through a wood,
and across a field, and over a common, and down a lane, which led
straight to the gate of Aunt Betsy's orchard.

Urania wore fashionable boots, and considered walking exercise a
superstition of medical men and old-fashioned people; yet she stoutly
refused a seat in the car.

'No, thanks, Horatio; I know your pony too well. I'd rather trust myself
upon my own feet.'

'There's more danger in your high heels than in my pony, retorted
Horatio. 'I shouldn't wonder if you dropped in for a sprained ankle
before you got home.'

Urania risked the sprained ankle. She began to limp before she had
emerged from the wood. She hobbled painfully along the rugged footpath
between the yellow wheat. She was obliged to sit down and rest upon a
furzy hillock on the common, good-natured Bess keeping her company, while
Ida and Reginald were half a mile ahead with Dr. Rylance. Her delicate
complexion was unbecomingly flushed by the time she and Bessie arrived
wearily at the little gate opening into Miss Wendover's orchard.

There were only some iron hurdles between Aunt Betsy's orchard and the
lawn before Aunt Betsy's drawing-room. The house was characteristic of
the lady. It was a long red-brick cottage, solid, substantial, roomy,
eschewing ornament, but beautified in the eyes of most people by an air
of supreme comfort, cleanliness, and general well-being. In all
Kingthorpe there were no rooms so cool as Aunt Betsy's in summer--none so
warm in winter. The cottage had originally been the homestead of a small
grass-farm, which had been bequeathed to Betsy Wendover by her father,
familiarly known as the Old Squire, the chief landowner in that part of
the country. With this farm of about two hundred and fifty acres of the
most fertile pasture land in Hampshire and an income of seven hundred a
year from consols, Miss Wendover found herself passing rich. She built a
drawing-room with wide windows opening on to the lawn, and a bed-room
with a covered balcony over the drawing-room. These additional rooms made
the homestead all-sufficient for a lady of Aunt Betsy's simple habits.
She was hospitality itself, receiving her friends in a large-hearted,
gentleman-like style, keeping open house for man and beast, proud of her
wine, still prouder of her garden and greenhouses, proudest of her
stables; fond of this life, and of her many comforts, yet without a
particle of selfishness; ready to leave her cosy fireside at a moment's
notice on the bitterest winter night, to go and nurse a sick child, or
comfort a dying woman; religious without ostentation, charitable without
weakness, stern to resent an injury, implacable against an insult.

A refreshing sight, yet not altogether a pleasant one for Miss Rylance,
met the eyes of the two young ladies as they neared the little iron gate
opening from the orchard to the lawn. A couple of tea-tables had been
brought out upon the grass before the drawing-room window. The youngsters
were busily engaged at one table, Blanche pouring out tea, while her
brothers and small sister made havoc with cake and fruit, home-made bread
and butter, and jams of various hues. At the other table, less lavishly
but more elegantly furnished, sat Miss Wendover and Ida Palliser, with
Dr. Rylance comfortably established in a Buckinghamshire wickerwork chair
between them.

'Does not that look a picture of comfort?' exclaimed Bessie.

'My father seems to be making himself very comfortable,' said Urania.

She hobbled across the lawn, and sank exhausted into a low chair, near
her parent.

'My poor child, how dilapidated you look after your walk,' said Dr.
Rylance; 'Miss Palliser and I enjoyed it immensely.'

'I cannot boast of Miss Palliser's robust health,' retorted Urania
contemptuously, as if good health were a sign of vulgarity. 'I had my
neuralgia all last night.'

Whenever the course of events proved objectionable, Miss Rylance took
refuge in a complaint which she called her neuralgia, indicating that it
was a species of disorder peculiar to herself, and of a superior quality
to everybody else's neuralgia.

'You should live in the open air, like my sunburnt young friends yonder,'
said the doctor, with a glance at the table where the young Wendovers
were stuffing themselves; 'I am sure they never complain of neuralgia.'

Urania looked daggers but spoke none.

It was a wearisome afternoon for that injured young lady. Dr. Rylance
dawdled over his tea, handed teacups and bread and butter, was assiduous
with the sugar basin, devoted with the cream jug, talked and laughed with
Miss Palliser, as if they had a world of ideas in common, and made
himself altogether objectionable to his only child.

By-and-by, when there was a general adjournment to the greenhouses and
stables, Urania contrived to slip her arm through her father's.

'I thought I told you that Miss Palliser was my favourite aversion,
papa,' she said, tremulous with angry feeling.

'I have some faint idea that you did express yourself unfavourably about
her,' answered the doctor, with his consulting-room urbanity, 'but I am
at a loss to understand your antipathy. The girl is positively charming,
as frank as the sunshine, and full of brains.'

'I know her. You do not,' said Urania tersely.

'My dear, it is the speciality of men in my profession to make rapid
judgments.'

'Yes, and very often to make them wrong. I was never so much annoyed in
my life. I consider your attention to that girl a deliberate insult to
me; a girl with whom I never could get on--who has said the rudest things
to me.'

'Can I be uncivil to a friend of your friend Bessie?'

'There is a wide distance between being uncivil and being obsequiously,
ridiculously attentive.'

'Urania,' said the doctor in his gravest voice, 'I have allowed you to
have your own way in most things, and I believe your life has been a
pleasant one.'

'Of course, papa. I never said otherwise.'

'Very well, my dear, then you must be good enough to let me take my own
way of making life pleasant to myself, and you must not take upon
yourself to dictate what degree of civility I am to show to Miss
Palliser, or to any other lady.'

Urania held her peace after this. It was the first deliberate snub she
had ever received from her father, and she added it to her lengthy score
against Ida.




CHAPTER VI.


A BIRTHDAY FEAST.

Ida Palliser's holidays were coming to an end, like a tale that is told.
There was only one day more left, but that day was to be especially
glorious; for it was Bessie Wendover's birthday, a day which from time
immemorial--or, at all events, ever since Bessie was ten years old--had
been sacred to certain games or festivities--a modernized worship of the
great god Pan.

Sad was it for Bessie and all the junior Wendovers when the seventh of
September dawned with gray skies, or east winds, rain, or hail. It was
usually a brilliant day. The clerk of the weather appeared favourably
disposed to the warm-hearted Bessie.

On this particular occasion the preparations for the festival were on a
grander scale than usual, in honour of Ida, who was on the eve of
departure. A cruel, cruel car was to carry her off to Winchester at six
o'clock on the morning after the birthday; the railway station was to
swallow her up alive; the train was to rush off with her, like a fiery
dragon carrying off the princess of fairy tale; and the youthful
Wendovers were to be left lamenting.

In six happy weeks their enthusiasm for their young guest had known no
abatement. She had realized their fondest anticipations. She had entered
into their young lives and made herself a part of them. She had given
herself up, heart and soul, to childish things and foolish things, to
please these devoted admirers; and the long summer holiday had been very
sweet to her. The open-air life--the balmy noontides in woods and
meadows, beside wandering trout streams--on the breezy hill-tops--the
afternoon tea-drinking in gardens and orchards--the novels read aloud,
seated in the heart of some fine old tree, with her auditors perched on
the branches round about her, like gigantic birds--the boating excursions
on a river with more weeds than water in it--the jaunts to Winchester,
and dreamy afternoons in the cathedral--all had been delicious. She had
lived in an atmosphere of homely domestic love, among people who valued
her for herself, and did not calculate the cost of her gowns, or despise
her because she had so few. The old church was lovely in her eyes; the
old vicar and his wife had taken a fancy to her. Everything at Kingthorpe
was delightful, except Urania. She certainly was a drawback; but she had
been tolerably civil since the first day at the Abbey.

Ida had spent many an hour at the Abbey since that first inspection. She
knew every room in the house--the sunniest windows--the books in the long
library, with its jutting wings between the windows, and cosy nooks for
study. She knew almost every tree in the park, and the mild faces of the
deer looking gravely reproachful, as if asking what business she had
there. She had lain asleep on the sloping bank above the lake on drowsy
afternoons, tired by wandering far a-field with her young esquires. She
knew the Abbey by heart--better than even Urania knew it; though she had
used that phrase to express utter satiety. Ida Palliser had a deeper love
of natural beauty, a stronger appreciation of all that made the old place
interesting. She had a curious feeling, too, about the absent master of
that grave, gray old house--a fond, romantic dream, which she would not
for the wealth of India have revealed to mortal ear, that in the days to
come Brian's life would be in somewise linked with hers. Perhaps this
foolish thought was engendered of the blankness of her own life, a stage
on which the players had been so few that this figure of an unknown young
man assumed undue proportions.

Then, again, the fact that she could hear very little about Mr. Wendover
from his cousins, stimulated her curiosity about him, and intensified her
interest in him. Brian's merits were a subject which the Wendover
children always shirked, or passed over so lightly that Ida was no wiser
for her questioning; and maidenly reserve forbade her too eager inquiry.

About Brian Walford, the son of Parson Wendover, youngest of the three
brothers, for seven years vicar of a parish near Hereford, and for the
last twelve years at rest in the village churchyard, the young Wendovers
had plenty to say. He was good-looking, they assured Ida. She would
inevitably fall in love with him when they met. He was the cleverest
young man in England, and was certain to finish his career as Lord
Chancellor, despite the humility of his present stage of being.

'He has no fortune, I suppose?' hazarded Ida, in a conversation with
Horatio.

She did not ask the question from any interest in the subject. Brian
Walford was a being whose image never presented itself to her mind. She
only made the remark for the sake of saying something.

'Not a denarius,' said Horry, who liked occasionally to be classical.
'But what of that? If I were as clever as Brian I shouldn't mind how poor
I was. With his talents he is sure to get to the top of the tree.'

'What can he do?' asked Ida.

'Ride a bicycle better than any man I know.'

'What else?'

'Sing a first-rate comic song.'

'What else?'

'Get longer breaks at billiards than any fellow I ever played with.'

'What else?'

'Pick the winner out of a score of race-horses in the preliminary
canter.'

'Those are great gifts, I have no doubt,' said Ida. 'But do eminent
lawyers, in a general way, win their advancement by riding bicycles and
singing comic songs?'

'Don't sneer, Ida. When a fellow is clever in one thing he is clever in
other things. Genius is many-sided, universal. Carlyle says as much. If
Napoleon Bonaparte had not been a great general, he would have been a
great writer like Voltaire--or a great lawyer like Thurlow.'

From this time forward Ida had an image of Brian Walford in her mind. It
was the picture of a vapid youth, fair-haired, with thin moustache
elaborately trained, and thinner whiskers--a fribble that gave half its
little mind to its collar, and the other half to its boots. Such images
are photographed in a flash of lightning on the sensitive brain of youth,
and are naturally more often false guesses than true ones.

There was delightful riot in the house of the Wendovers on the night
before the picnic. The Colonel had developed a cold and cough within the
last week, so he and his wife had jogged off to Bournemouth, in the
T-cart, with one portmanteau and one servant, leaving Bessie mistress of
all things. It was a grief to Mrs. Wendover to be separated from home and
children at any time, and she was especially regretful at being absent on
her eldest daughter's birthday; but the Colonel was paramount. If his
cough could be cured by sea air, to the sea he must go, with his faithful
wife in attendance upon him.

'Don't let the children turn the house quite out of windows, darling,'
said Mrs. Wendover, at the moment of parting.

'No, mother dear, we are all going to be goodness itself.'

'I know, dears, you always are. And I hope you will all enjoy
yourselves.'

'We're sure to do that, mother,' answered Reginald, with a cheerfulness
that seemed almost heartless.

The departing parent would not have liked them to be unhappy, but a few
natural tears would have been a pleasing tribute. Not a tear was shed.
Even the little Eva skipped joyously on the doorstep as the phaeton drove
away. The idea of the picnic was all-absorbing.

The Colonel and his wife were to spend a week, at Bournemouth. Ida would
see them no more this year.

'You must come again next summer, Mrs. Wendover said heartily, as she
kissed her daughter's friend.

'Of course she must,' cried Horry. 'She is coming every summer. She is
one of the institutions of Kingthorpe. I only wonder how we ever managed
to get on so long without her.'

All that evening was devoted to the packing of hampers, and to general
skirmishing. The picnic was to be held on the highest hill-top between
Kingthorpe and Winchester, one of those little Lebanons, fair and green,
on which the yew-trees flourished like the cedars of the East, but with a
sturdy British air that was all their own.

The birthday dawned with the soft pearly gray and tender opal tints which
presage a fair noontide. Before six o'clock the children had all besieged
Bessie's door, with noisy tappings and louder congratulations. At seven,
they were all seated at breakfast, the table strewn with birthday gifts,
mostly of that useless and semi-idiotic character peculiar to such
tributes-ormolu inkstands, holding a thimbleful of ink--penholders
warranted to break before they have been used three times--purses with
impossible snaps--photograph frames and pomatum-pots.

Bessie pretended to be enraptured with everything. The purse Horry gave
her was 'too lovely.' Reginald's penholder was the very thing she had
been wanting for an age. Dear little Eva's pomatum-pot was perfection.
The point-lace handkerchief Ida had worked in secret was exquisite.
Blanche's crochet slippers were so lovely that their not being big enough
was hardly a fault. They were much too pretty to be worn. Urania
contributed a more costly gift, in the shape of a perfume cabinet, all
cut-glass, walnut-wood, and ormolu.

'Urania's presents are always meant to crush one,' said Blanche
disrespectfully; 'they are like the shields and bracelets those rude
soldiers flung at poor Tarpeia.'

Urania was to be one of the picnic party. She was to be the only stranger
present. There had been a disappointment about the two cousins. Neither
Brian had accepted the annual summons. One was supposed to be still in
Norway, the other had neglected to answer the letter which had been sent
more than a week ago to his address in Herefordshire.

'I'm afraid you'll find it dreadfully like our every-day picnics,' Bessie
said to Ida, as they were starting.

'I shall be satisfied if it be half as pleasant.'

'Ah, it would have been nice enough if the two Brians had been with us.
Brian Walford is so amusing.'

'He would have sung comic songs, I suppose?' said Ida rather
contemptuously.

'Oh, no; you must not suppose that he is always singing comic songs. He
is one of those versatile people who can do anything.'

'I don't want to be rude about your own flesh and blood Bess, but in a
general way I detest versatile people,' said Ida.

'What a queer girl you are, Ida! I'm afraid you have taken a dislike to
Brian Walford,' complained Bessie.

'No,' said Ida, deep in thought,--the two girls were standing at the
hall-door, waiting for the carriage,--'it is not that.'

'You like the idea of the other Brian better?'

Ida's wild-rose bloom deepened to a rich carnation.

'Oh, Ida,' cried Bessie; 'do you remember what you said about marrying
for money?'

'It was a revolting sentiment; but it was wrung from me by the infinite
vexations of poverty.'

'Wouldn't it be too lovely if Brian the Great were to fall in love with
you, and ask you to be mistress of that dear old Abbey which you admire
so much?

'Don't be ecstatic, Bessie. I shall never be the mistress of the Abbey. I
was not born under a propitious star. There must have been a very ugly
concatenation of planets ruling the heavens at the hour of my birth. You
see, Brian the Great does not even put himself in the way of falling
captive to my charms.'

This was said half in sport, half in bitterness; indeed, there was a
bitter flavour in much of Ida Palliser's mirth. She was thinking of the
stories she had read in which a woman had but to be young and lovely, and
all creation bowed down to her. Yet her beauty had been for the most part
a cause of vexation, and had made people hate her. She had been
infinitely happy during the last six weeks; but embodied hatred had been
close at hand in the presence of Miss Rylance; and if anyone had fallen
in love with her during that time, it was the wrong person.

The young ladies were to go in the landau, leaving the exclusive
enjoyment of Robin's variable humours to Horatio and the juveniles. There
was a general idea that Robin, in conjunction with a hilly country, might
be sooner or later fatal to the young Wendovers; but they went on driving
him, nevertheless, as everybody knew that if he did ultimately prove
disastrous to them it would be with the best intentions and without loss
of temper.

Bessie and Ida took their seats in the roomy carriage, Reginald mounted
to the perch beside the coachman, and they drove triumphantly through the
village to the gate of Dr. Rylance's cottage, where Urania stood waiting
for them.

'I hope we haven't kept you long?' said Bessie.

'Not more than a quarter of an hour,' answered Urania, meekly; 'but that
seems rather long in a broiling sun. You always have such insufferably
hot weather on your birthdays, Bessie.'

'It will be cool enough on the hills by-and-by,' said Bess,
apologetically.

'I daresay there will be a cold wind,' returned Urania, who wore an
unmistakable air of discontent. 'There generally is on these unnatural
September days.'

'One would think you bore a grudge against the month of September because
I was born in it,' retorted Bessie. And then, remembering her
obligations, she hastened to add, 'How can I thank you sufficiently for
that exquisite scent-case? It is far too lovely.'

'I am very glad you like it. One hardly knows what to choose.'

Miss Rylance had taken her seat in the landau by this time, and they were
bowling along the smooth high road at that gentle jog-trot pace affected
by a country gentleman's coachman.

The day was heavenly; the wind due south; a day on which life--mere
sensual existence--is a delight. The landscape still wore its richest
summer beauty--not a leaf had fallen. They were going upward, to the
hilly region between Kingthorpe and Winchester, to a spot where there was
a table-shaped edifice of stones, supposed to be of Druidic origin.

The young Wendovers were profoundly indifferent to the Druids, and to
that hypothetical race who lived ages before the Druids, and have broken
out all over the earth in stony excrescences, as yet vaguely classified.
That three-legged granite table, whose origin was lost in the remoteness
of past time, seemed to the young Wendovers a thing that had been created
expressly for their amusement, to be climbed upon or crawled under as the
fancy moved them. It was a capital rallying-point for a picnic or a gipsy
tea-drinking.

'We are to have no grown-ups to-day,' said Reginald, looking down from
his place beside the coachman. 'The pater and mater are away, and Aunt
Betsy has a headache; so we can have things all our own way.'

'You are mistaken, Reginald,' said Urania; 'my father is going to join us
by-and-by. I hope he won't be considered an interloper. I told him that
it was to be a young party, and that I was sure he would be in the way;
but he wouldn't take my advice. He is going to ride over in the broiling
sun. Very foolish, I think.'

'I thought Dr. Rylance was in London?'

'He was till last night. He came down on purpose to be at your picnic.'

'I am sure I feel honoured,' said Bessie.

'Do you? I don't think _you_ are the attraction,' answered Urania, with a
cantankerous glance at Miss Palliser.

Ida's dark eyes were looking far away across the hills. It seemed as if
she neither heard Miss Rylance's speech nor saw the sneer which
emphasized it.

Dr. Rylance's substantial hunter came plodding over the turfy ridge
behind them five minutes afterwards, and presently he was riding at a
measured trot beside the carriage door, congratulating Bessie on the
beauty of the day, and saying civil things to every one.

'I could not resist the temptation to give myself a day's idleness in the
Hampshire air,' he said.

Reginald felt an utterably savage. What a trouble-feast the man was. They
would have to adapt the proceedings of the day to his middle-aged good
manners. There could be no wild revelry, no freedom. Dr. Rylance was an
embodiment of propriety.

Half-an-hour after dinner they were all scattered upon the hills.

Reginald, who cherished a secret passion for Ida, which was considerably
in advance of his years, and who had calculated upon being her guide,
philosopher, and friend all through the day, found himself ousted by the
West End physician, who took complete possession of Miss Palliser, under
the pretence of explaining the history--altogether speculative--of the
spot. He discoursed eloquently about the Druids, expatiated upon the City
of Winchester, dozing in the sunshine yonder, among its fat water
meadows. He talked of the Saxons and the Normans, of William of Wykeham,
and his successors, until poor Ida felt sick and faint from very
weariness. It was all very delightful talk, no doubt--the polished
utterance of a man who read his _Saturday Review_ and _Athenaeum_
diligently, saw an occasional number of _Fors Clavigera_, and even
skimmed the more aesthetic papers in the _Architect_; but to Ida this
expression of modern culture was all weariness. She would rather have
been racing those wild young Wendovers down the slippery hill-side, on
which they were perilling their necks; she would rather have been lying
beside the lake in Kingthorpe Park, reading her well-thumbed Tennyson, or
her shabby little Keats.

Her thoughts had wandered ever so far away when she was called back to
the work-a-day world by finding that Dr. Rylance's conversation had
suddenly slipped from archaeology into a more personal tone.

'Are you really going away to-morrow?' he asked.

'Yes,' answered Ida, sadly, looking at one of the last of the
butterflies, whose brief summertide of existence was wearing to its
close, like her own.

'You are going back to Mauleverer Manor?'

'Yes. I have another half-year of bondage, I am going back to drudgery
and self-contempt, to be brow-beaten by Miss Pew, and looked down upon by
most of her pupils. The girls in my own class are very fond of me, but
I'm afraid their fondness is half pity. The grown-up girls with happy
homes and rich fathers despise me. I hardly wonder at it. Genteel poverty
certainly is contemptible. There is nothing debasing in a smock-frock or
a fustian jacket. The labourers I see about Kingthorpe have a glorious
air of independence, and I daresay are as proud, in their way, as if they
were dukes. But shabby finery--genteel gowns worn threadbare: there is a
deep degradation in those.'

'Not for you,' answered Dr. Rylance, earnestly, with an admiring look in
his blue-gray eyes. They were somewhat handsome eyes when they did not
put on their cruel expression. 'Not for you. Nothing could degrade,
nothing could exalt you. You are superior to the accident of your
surroundings.'

'It's very kind of you to say that; but it's a fallacy, all the same,'
said Ida. 'Do you think Napoleon at St. Helena, squabbling with Sir
Hudson Lowe, is as dignified a figure as Napoleon at the Tuileries, in
the zenith of his power? But I ought not to be grumbling at fate. I have
been happy for six sunshiny weeks. If I were to live to be a century old,
I could never forget how good people at Kingthorpe have been to me. I
will go back to my old slavery, and live upon the memory of that
happiness.'

'Why should you go back to slavery?' asked Dr. Rylance, taking her hand
in his and holding it with so strong a grasp that she could hardly have
withdrawn it without violence. 'There is a home at Kingthorpe ready to
receive you. If you have been happy there in the last few weeks, why not
try if you can be happy there always? There is a house in Cavendish
Square whose master would be proud to make you its mistress. Ida, we have
seen very little of each other, and I may be precipitate in hazarding
this offer; but I am as fond of you as if I had known you half a
lifetime, and I believe that I could make your life happy.'

Ida Palliser's heart thrilled with a chill sense of horror and aversion.
She had talked recklessly enough of her willingness to marry for money,
and, lo! here was a prosperous man laying two handsomely furnished houses
at her feet--a man of gentlemanlike bearing, good-looking, well-informed,
well-spoken, with no signs of age in his well-preserved face and figure;
a man whom any woman, friendless, portionless, a mere waif upon earth's
surface, at the mercy of all the winds that blow, ought proudly and
gladly to accept for her husband.

No, too bold had been her challenge to fate. She had said that she would
marry any honest man who would lift her out of the quagmire of poverty:
but she was not prepared to accept Dr. Rylance's offer, generous as it
sounded. She would rather go back to the old treadmill, and her old
fights with Miss Pew, than reign supreme over the dainty cottage at
Kingthorpe and the house in Cavendish Square. Her time had not come.

Dr. Rylance had not risen to eloquence in making his offer; and Ida's
reply was in plainest words.

'I am very sorry,' she faltered. 'I feel that it is very good of you to
make such a proposal; but I cannot accept it.'

'There is some one else,' said the doctor. 'Your heart is given away
already.'

'No,' she answered sadly; 'my heart is like an empty sepulchre.'

'Then why should I not hope to win you? I have been hasty, no doubt: but
I want if possible to prevent your return to that odious school. If you
would but make me happy by saying yes, you could stay with your kind
friends at The Knoll till the day that makes you mistress of my house. We
might be married in time to spend November in Italy. It is the nicest
month for Rome. You have never seen Italy, perhaps?'

'No. I have seen very little that is worth seeing.'

'Ida, why will you not say yes? Do you doubt that I should try my
uttermost to make you happy?'

'No,' she answered gravely, but I doubt my own capacity for that kind of
happiness.'

Dr. Rylance was deeply wounded. He had been petted and admired by women
during the ten years of his widowhood, favoured and a favourite
everywhere. He had made up his mind deliberately to marry this penniless
girl. Looked at from a worldling's point of view, it would seem, at the
first glance, an utterly disadvantageous alliance: but Dr. Rylance had an
eye that could sweep over horizons other than are revealed to the average
gaze, and he told himself that so lovely a woman as Ida Palliser must
inevitably become the fashion in that particular society which Dr.
Rylance most affected: and a wife famed for her beauty and elegance
Would assuredly be of more advantage to a fashionable physician than a
common-place wife with a fortune. Dr. Rylance liked money; but he liked
it only for what it could buy. He had no sons, and he was much too fond
of himself to lead laborious days in order to leave a large fortune to
his daughter. He had bought a lease of his London house, which would last
his time; he had bought the freehold of the Kingthorpe cottage; and he
was living up to his income. When he died there would be two houses of
furniture, plate, pictures, horses and carriages, and the Kingthorpe
cottage, to be realized for Urania. He estimated these roughly as worth
between six and seven thousand pounds, and he considered seven thousand
pounds an ample fortune for his only daughter. Urania was in happy
ignorance of the modesty of his views. She imagined herself an heiress on
a much larger scale.

To offer himself to a penniless girl of whose belongings he knew
absolutely nothing, and to be peremptorily refused! Dr. Rylance could
hardly believe such a thing possible. The girl must be trifling with him,
playing her fish, with the fixed intention of landing him presently. It
was in the nature of girls to do that kind of thing. 'Why do you reject
me?' he asked seriously 'is it because I am old enough to be your
father?'

'No, I would marry a man old enough to be my grandfather if I loved him,'
answered Ida, with cruel candour.

'And I am to understand that your refusal is irrevocable? he urged.

'Quite irrevocable. But I hope you believe that I am grateful for the
honour you have done me.'

'That is the correct thing to say upon such occasions, answered Dr.
Rylance, coldly; 'I wonder the sentence is not written in your copy
books, among those moral aphorisms which are of so little use in after
life.'

'The phrase may seem conventional, but in my case it means much more than
usual,' said Ida; 'a girl who has neither money nor friends has good
reason to be grateful when a gentleman asks her to be his wife.'

'I wish I could be grateful for your gratitude,' said Dr. Rylance, 'but I
can't. I want your love, and nothing else. Is it on Urania's account that
you reject me?' he urged. 'If you think that she would be a hindrance to
your happiness, pray dismiss the thought. If she did not accommodate
herself pleasantly to my choice her life would have to be spent apart
from us. I would brook no rebellion.'

The cruel look had come into Dr. Rylance's eyes. He was desperately
angry. He was surprised, humiliated, indignant. Never had the possibility
of rejection occurred to him. It had been for him to decide whether he
would or would not take this girl for his wife; and after due
consideration of her merits and all surrounding circumstances, he had
decided that he would take her.

'Is my daughter the stumbling-block?' he urged.

'No,' she answered, 'there is no stumbling-block. I would marry you
to-morrow, if I felt that I could love you as a wife ought to love her
husband. I said once--only a little while ago--that I would marry for
money. I find that I am not so base as I thought myself.'

'Perhaps the temptation is not large enough,' said Dr. Rylance. 'If I had
been Brian Wendover, and the owner of Kingthorpe Abbey, you would hardly
have rejected me so lightly.'

Ida crimsoned to the roots of her hair. The shaft went home. It was as if
Dr. Rylance had been inside her mind and knew all the foolish day-dreams
she had dreamed in the idle summer afternoons, under the spreading cedar
branches, or beside the lake in the Abbey grounds. Before she had time to
express her resentment a cluster of young Wendovers came sweeping down
the greensward at her side, and in the next minute Blanche was hanging
upon her bodily, like a lusty parasite strangling a slim young tree.

'Darling,' cried Blanche gaspingly, 'such news. Brian has come--cousin
Brian--after all, though he thought he couldn't. But he made a great
effort, and he has come all the way as fast as he could tear to be here
on Bessie's birthday. Isn't it too jolly?'

'All the way from Norway?' asked Ida.

'Yes,' said Urania, who had been carried down the hill with the torrent
of Wendovers, 'all the way from Norway. Isn't it nice of him?'

Blanche's frank face was brimming over with smiles. The boys were all
laughing. How happy Brian's coming had made them!

Ida looked at them wonderingly.

'How pleased you all seem!' she said. 'I did not know you were so fond of
your cousin. I thought it was the other you liked.'

'Oh, we like them both,' said Blanche, 'and it is so nice of Brian to
come on purpose for Bessie's birthday. Do come and see him. He is on the
top of the hill talking to Bess; and the kettle boils, and we are just
going to have tea. We are all starving.'

'After such a dinner!' exclaimed Ida.

'Such a dinner, indeed!--two or three legs of fowls and a plate or so of
pie!' ejaculated Reginald, contemptuously. 'I began to be hungry a
quarter of an hour afterwards. Come and see Brian.'

Ida looked round her wonderingly, feeling as if she was in a dream.

Dr. Rylance had disappeared. Urania was smiling at her sweetly, more
sweetly than it was her wont to smile at Ida Palliser.

'One would think she knew that I had refused her father,' mused Ida.

They all climbed the hill, the children talking perpetually, Ida
unusually silent. The smoke of a gipsy fire was going up from a hollow
near the Druid altar, and two figures were standing beside the altar;
one, a young man, with his arm resting on the granite slab, and his head
bent as he talked, with seeming earnestness, to Bessie Wendover. He
turned as the crowd approached, and Bessie introduced him to Miss
Palliser. 'My cousin Brian--my dearest friend Ida,' she said.

'She is desperately fond of the Abbey,' said Blanche; 'so I hope she will
like you. "Love me, love my dog," says the proverb, so I suppose one
might say, "Love my house, love me."'

Ida stood silent amidst her loquacious friends, looking at the stranger
with a touch of wonder. No, this was not the image which she had pictured
to herself. Mr. Wendover was very good-looking--interesting even; he had
the kind of face which women call nice--a pale complexion, dreamy gray
eyes, thin lips, a well-shaped nose, a fairly intellectual forehead. But
the Brian of her fancies was a man of firmer mould, larger features, a
more resolute air, an eye with more fire, a brow marked by stronger
lines. For some unknown reason she had fancied the master of the Abbey
like that Sir Tristram Wendover who had been so loyal a subject and so
brave a soldier, and before whose portrait she had so often lingered in
dreamy contemplation.

'And you have really come all the way from Norway to be at Bessie's
picnic?' she faltered at last, feeling that she was expected to say
something.

'I would have come a longer distance for the sake of such a pleasant
meeting,' he answered, smiling at her.

'Bessie,' cried Blanche, who had been grovelling on her knees before the
gipsy fire, 'the kettle will go off the boil if you don't make tea
instantly. If it were not your birthday I should make it myself.'

'You may,' said Bessie, 'although it is my birthday.'

She had walked a little way apart with Urania, and they two were talking
somewhat earnestly.

'Those girls seem to be plotting something,' said Reginald; 'a charade
for to-night, perhaps. It's sure to be stupid if Urania's in it.'

'You mean that it will be too clever,' said Horatio.

'Yes, that kind of cleverness which is the essence of stupidity.'

While Bessie and Miss Rylance conversed apart, and all the younger
Wendovers devoted their energies to the preparation of a tremendous meal,
Ida and Brian Wendover stood face to face upon the breezy hill-top, the
girl sorely embarrassed, the young man gazing at her as if he had never
seen anything so lovely in his life.

'I have heard so much about you from Bessie,' he said after a silence
which seemed long to both. 'Her letters for the last twelve months have
been a perpetual paean--like one of the Homeric hymns, with you for the
heroine. I had quite a dread of meeting you, feeling that, after having
my expectations strung up to such a pitch, I must be disappointed.
Nothing human could justify Bessie's enthusiasm.'

'Please don't talk about it. Bessie's one weak point is her affection for
me. I am very grateful. I love her dearly, but she does her best to make
me ridiculous.'

'I am beginning to think Bessie a very sensible girl,' said Brian,
longing to say much more, so deeply was he impressed by this goddess in a
holland gown, with glorious eyes shining upon him under the shadow of a
coarse straw hat.

'Have you come back to Hampshire for good?' asked Ida, as they strolled
towards Bessie and Urania.

'For good! No, I never stay long.'

'What a pity that lovely old Abbey should be deserted!'

'Yes, it is rather a shame, is it not? But then no one could expect a
young man to live there except in the hunting season--or for the sake of
the shooting.'

'Could anyone ever grow tired of such a place?' asked Ida.

She was wondering at the young man's indifferent air, as if that solemn
abbey, those romantic gardens, were of no account to him. She supposed
that this was in the nature of things. A man born lord of such an elysium
would set little value upon his paradise. Was it not Eve's weariness of
Eden which inclined her ear to the serpent?

And now the banquet was spread upon the short smooth turf, and everybody
was ordered to sit down. They made a merry circle, with the tea-kettle in
the centre, piles of cake, and bread and butter, and jam-pots surrounding
it. Blanche and Horatio were the chief officiators, and were tremendously
busy ministering to the wants of others, while they satisfied their own
hunger and thirst hurriedly between whiles. The damsel sat on the grass
with a big crockery teapot in her lap, while her brother watched and
managed the kettle, and ran to and fro with cups and saucers. Bessie, as
the guest of honour, was commanded to sit still and look on.

'Dreadfully babyish, isn't it?' said Urania, smiling with her superior
air at Brian, who had helped himself to a crust of home-made bread, and a
liberal supply of gooseberry jam.

'Uncommonly jolly,' he answered gaily. 'I confess to a weakness for bread
and jam. I wish people always gave it at afternoon teas.'

'Has it not a slight flavour of the nursery?'

'Of course it has. But a nursery picnic is ever so much better than a
swell garden-party, and bread and jam is a great deal more wholesome than
salmon-mayonaise and Strasbourg pie. You may despise me as much as you
like, Miss Rylance. I came here determined to enjoy myself.'

'That is the right spirit for a picnic,' said Ida, 'People with grand
ideas are not wanted.'

'And I suppose in the evening you will join in the dumb charades, and
play hide-and-seek in the garden, all among spiders and cockchafers.'

'I will do anything I am told to do,' answered Brian, cheerily. 'But I
think the season of the cockchafer is over.'

'What has become of Dr. Rylance?' asked Bessie, looking about her as if
she had only that moment missed him.

'I think he went back to the farm for his horse,' said Urania. 'I suppose
he found our juvenile sports rather depressing.'

'Well, he paid us a compliment in coming at all,' answered Bessie, 'so we
must forgive him for getting tired of us.'

The drive home was very merry, albeit Bessie and her friend were to part
next morning--Ida to go back to slavery. They were both young enough to
be able to enjoy the present hour, even on the edge of darkness.

Bessie clasped her friend's hand as they sat side by side in the landau.

'You must come to us at Christmas,' she whispered: 'I shall ask mother to
invite you.'

Brian was full of talk and gaiety as they drove home through the dusk. He
was very different from that ideal Brian of Ida's girlish fancy--the
Brian who embodied all her favourite attributes, and had all the finest
qualities of the hero of romance. But he was an agreeable, well-bred
young man, bringing with him that knowledge of life and the active world
which made his talk seem new and enlightening after the strictly local
and domestic intellects of the good people with whom she had been living.

With the family at The Knoll conversation had been bounded by Winchester
on one side, and Romsey on the other. There was an agreeable freshness in
the society of a young man who could talk of all that was newest in
European art and literature, and who knew how the world was being
governed.

But this fund of information was hinted at rather than expressed.
To-night Mr. Wendover seemed most inclined to mere nonsense talk--the
lively nothings that please children. Of himself and his Norwegian
adventures he said hardly anything.

'I suppose when a man has travelled so much he gets to look upon strange
countries as a matter of course,' speculated Ida. 'If I had just come
from Norway, I should talk of nothing else.'

The dumb-charades and hide-and-seek were played, but only by the lower
orders, as Bessie called her younger brothers and sisters.

Ida strolled in the moonlit garden with Mr. Wendover, Bessie Urania, and
Mr. Ratcliffe, a very juvenile curate, who was Bessie's admirer and
slave. Urania had no particular admirer She felt that every one at
Kingthorpe must needs behold her with mute worship; but there was no one
so audacious as to give expression to the feeling; no one of sufficient
importance to be favoured with her smiles. She looked forward to her
first season in London next year, and then she would be called upon to
make her selection.

'She is worldly to the tips of her fingers,' said Ida, as she and Bessie
talked apart from the others for a few minutes: 'I wonder she does not
try to captivate your cousin.'

'What--Brian? Oh, he is not at all in her line. He would not suit her a
bit.'

'But don't you think it would suit her to be mistress of the Abbey?'

Bessie gave a little start, as if the idea were new.

'I don't think she has ever thought of him in that light,' she said.

'Don't you? If she hasn't she is not the girl I think her.'

'Oh, I know she is very worldly; but I don't think she's so bad as that.'

'Not so bad as to be capable of marrying for money--no, I suppose not,'
said Ida, thoughtfully.

'I'm sure you would not, darling, said Bessie. 'You talked about it once,
when you were feeling bitter; but I know that in your heart of hearts you
never meant it. You are much too high-minded.'

'I am not a bit high-minded. All my high-mindedness, if I ever had any,
has been squeezed out of me by poverty. My only idea is to escape from
subjection and humiliation--a degrading bondage to vulgar-minded people.'

'But would the escape be worth having at the cost of your own
degradation?' urged Bessie, who felt particularly heroic this evening,
exalted by the moonlight, the loveliness of the garden, the thought of
parting with her dearest friend. 'Marry for love, dearest. Sacrifice
everything in this world rather than be false to yourself.'

'You dear little enthusiast, I may never be asked to make any such
sacrifice. I have not much chance of suitors at Mauleverer, as you
know--and as for falling in love--'

'Oh, you never know when the fatal moment may come. How do you like
Brian?'

'He is very gentlemanlike; he seems very well informed.'

'He is immensely clever,' answered Bessie, almost offended at this
languid praise; 'he is a man who might succeed in any line he chose for
himself. Do you think him handsome?'

'He is certainly nice looking.'

'How cool you are! I had set my heart upon your liking him.'

'What could come of my liking?' asked Ida with a touch of bitterness. 'Is
there a portionless girl in all England who would not like the master of
Wendover Abbey?'

'But for his own sake,' urged Bessie, with a vexed air; 'surely he is
worthy of being liked for his own sake, without a thought of the Abbey.'

'I cannot dissociate him from that lovely old house and gardens. Indeed,
to my mind he rather belongs to the Abbey than the Abbey belongs to him.
You see I knew the Abbey first.'

Here they were interrupted by Brian and Urania, and presently Ida found
herself walking in the moonlight in a broad avenue of standard roses, at
the end of the garden, with Mr. Wendover by her side, and the voices of
the other three sounding ever so far away. On the other side of a low
quickset hedge stretched a wide expanse of level meadow land, while in
the farther distance rose the Wiltshire hills, and nearer the heathy
highlands of the New Forest. The lamp-lit windows of Miss Wendover's
cottage glimmered a little way off, across gardens and meadows.

'And so you are really going to leave us to-morrow morning?' said Brian,
regretfully.

'By the eight o'clock train from Winchester. To-morrow evening I shall be
sitting on a form in a big bare class-room, listening to the babble of a
lot of girls pretending to learn their lessons.'

'Are you fond of teaching?'

'Just imagine to yourself the one occupation which is most odious to you,
and then you may know how fond I am of teaching; and of school-girls; and
of school-life altogether.'

'It is very hard that you should have to pursue such an uncongenial
career.'

'It seems so to me; but, perhaps, that is my selfishness. I suppose half
the people in this world have to live by work they hate.'

'Allowing for the number of people to whom all kind of work is hateful, I
dare say you are right. But I think, in a general way, congenial work
means successful work. No man hates the profession that brings him fame
and money; but the doctor without patients, the briefless barrister, can
hardly love law or medicine.'

He beguiled Ida into talking of her own life, with all its bitterness.
There was something in his voice and manner which tempted her to confide
in him. He seemed thoroughly sympathetic.

'I keep forgetting what strangers we are,' she said, apologizing for her
unreserve.

'We are not strangers. I have heard of you from Bessie so much that I
seem to have known you for years. I hope you will never think of me as a
stranger.'

'I don't think I ever can, after this conversation. I am afraid you will
think me horribly egotistical.'

She had been talking of her father and stepmother, the little brother she
loved so fondly, dwelling with delight upon his perfections.

'I think you all that is good and noble. How I wish this were not your
last evening at the Knoll!'

'Do you think I do not wish it? Hark, there's Bessie calling us.'

They went back to the house, and to the drawing-room, which wore quite a
festive appearance, in honour of Bessie's birthday; ever so many extra
candles dotted about, and a table laid with fruit and sandwiches, cake
and claret-cup, the children evidently considering a superfluity of meals
indispensable to a happy birthday. Blanche and her juniors were sitting
about the room, in the last stage of exhaustion after hide-and-seek.

'This has been a capital birthday,' said Horatio, wiping the perspiration
from his brow, and then filling for himself a bumper of claret-cup; 'and
now we are going to dance. Blanche, give us the Faust Waltz, and go on
playing till we tell you to leave off.'

Blanche, considerably blown, and with her hair like a mop, sat down and
began to touch the piano with resolute fingers and forcible rhythm. ONE,
two, three, ONE, two, three. The boys pushed the furniture into the
corners. Brian offered himself to Ida; Bessie insisted upon surrendering
the curate to Urania, and took one of her brothers for a partner; and the
three couples went gliding round the pretty old room, the cool night
breezes blowing in upon them from wide-open windows.

They danced and played, and sang and talked, till midnight chimed from
the old eight-day clock in the hall,--a sound which struck almost as much
consternation to Bessie's soul as if she had been Cinderella at the royal
ball.

'TWELVE O'CLOCK! and the little ones all up!' she exclaimed, looking
round the circle of towzled heads with remorseful eyes. 'What would
mother say? And she told me she relied on my discretion! Go to bed, every
one of you, this instant!'

'Oh, come, now,' remonstrated Blanche, 'there's no use in hustling us off
like that, after letting us sit up hours after our proper time. I'm going
to have another sandwich; and there's not a bit of good in leaving all
those raspberry tarts. The servants won't thank us. _They_ have as many
jam tarts as they like.'

'You greedy little wretches; you have been doing nothing but eat all
day,' said Ida. 'When I am back at Mauleverer I shall remember you only
as machines for the consumption of pudding and jam. Obey your grown-up
sister, and go to bed directly.'

'Grown up, indeed! How long has she been grown up, I should like to
know!' exclaimed Blanche vindictively. 'She's only an inch and a quarter
taller than me, and she's a mere dumpling compared with Horry.'

The lower orders were got rid of somehow--driven to their quarters, as it
were, at the point of the bayonet; and then the grown-ups bade each other
good-night; the curate escorting Miss Rylance to her home, and Brian
going up to the top floor to a bachelor's room.

'Who is going to drive Miss Palliser to the station?' he asked, as they
stood, candlestick in hand, at the foot of the stairs.

'I am, of course,' answered Reginald. 'Robin will spin us over the hills
in no time. I've ordered the car for seven sharp.'

There was very little sleep for either Bessie or her guest that night.
Both girls were excited by memories of the day that was past, and by
thoughts of the day that was coming. Ida was brooding a little upon her
disappointment in Brian Wendover. He had very pleasant manners, he seemed
soft-hearted and sympathetic, he was very good-looking--but he was not
the Brian of her dreams. That ideal personage had never existed outside
her imagination. It was a shock to her girlish fancy. There was a sense
of loss in her mind.

'I must be very silly,' she told herself, 'to make a fancy picture of a
person, and to be vexed with him because he does not resemble my
portrait.'

She was disappointed, and yet she was interested in this new
acquaintance. He was the first really interesting young man she had ever
met, and he was evidently interested in her. And then she pictured him at
the Abbey, in the splendid solitude of those fine old rooms, leading the
calm, studious life which Bessie had talked of--an altogether enviable
life, Ida thought.

Mr. Wendover was in the dining-room at half-past six when the two girls
went down to breakfast. All the others came trooping down a few minutes
afterwards, Reginald got up to the last degree of four-in-handishness
which the resources of his wardrobe allowed, and with a flower in his
buttonhole. There was a loud cry for eggs and bacon, kippered herrings,
marmalade, Yorkshire cakes; but neither Ida nor Bessie could eat.

'Do have a good breakfast,' pleaded Blanche affectionately; 'you will be
having bread and scrape to-morrow. We have got a nice hamper for you,
with a cake and a lot of jam puffs and things; but those will only last a
short time.'

'You dear child, I wouldn't mind the bread and scrape, if there were only
a little love to flavour it,' answered Ida softly.

The jaunting-car came to the door as the clock struck seven. Ida's
luggage was securely bestowed, then, after a perfect convulsion of
kissing, she was banded to her place, Reginald jumped into his seat and
took the reins, and Brian seated himself beside Ida.

'You are not going with them?' exclaimed Bessie.

'Yes I am, to see that Miss Palliser is not spilt on the hills.'

'What rot!' cried Reginald. 'I should be rather sorry for myself if I
were not able to manage Robin.'

'This is a new development in you, who are generally the laziest of
living creatures,' said Bessie to Brian, and before he could reply, Robin
was bounding cheerily through the village, making very little account of
the jaunting-car and its occupants. Urania was at her garden gate, fresh
and elegant-looking in pale blue cambric. She smiled at Ida, and waved
her a most gracious farewell.

'I don't think I ever saw Miss Rylance look so amiable,' said Ida. 'She
does not often favour me with her smiles.'

'Are you enemies?' asked Brian.

'Not open foes; we have always maintained an armed neutrality. I don't
like her, and she doesn't like me, and we both know it. But perhaps I
ought not to be so candid. She may be a favourite of yours.'

'She might be, but she is not. She is very elegant, very
lady-like--according to her own lights--very viperish.'

It was a lovely drive in the crisp clear air, across the breezy hills.
Ida could not help enjoying the freshness of morning, the beauty of
earth, albeit she was going from comfort to discomfort, from love to cold
indifference or open enmity.

'How I delight in this landscape!' she exclaimed. 'Is it not ever so much
better than Norway?' appealing to Brian.

'It is a milder, smaller kind of beauty,' he answered. 'Would you not
like to see Norway?'

'I would like to see all that is lovely on earth; yet I think I could be
content to spend, a life-time here. This must seem strange to you, who
grow weary of that beautiful Abbey.'

'It is not of his house, but of himself, that a man grows weary,'
answered Brian.

Robin was in a vivacious humour, and rattled the car across the hills at
a good pace. They had a quarter of an hour to wait at the busy little
station. Brian and Ida walked up and down the platform talking, while
Reginald looked after the pony and the luggage. They found so much to say
to each other, that the train seemed to come too soon.

They bade each other good-bye with a tender look on Brian's part, a blush
on Ida's. Reginald had to push his cousin away from the carriage window,
in order to get a word with the departing guest.

'We shall all miss you awfully,' he said; 'but mind, you must come back
at Christmas.'

'I shall be only too glad, if Mrs. Wendover will have me. Good-bye.'

The train moved slowly forward, and she was gone.

'Isn't she a stunner?' asked Reginald of his cousin, as they stood on the
platform looking at each other blankly.

'She is the handsomest girl I ever saw, and out and away the nicest,'
answered Brian.




CHAPTER VII.


IN THE RIVER-MEADOW.

The old hackneyed round of daily life at Mauleverer Manor seemed just a
little worse to Ida Palliser after that happy break of six weeks' pure
and perfect enjoyment. Miss Pew was no less exacting than of old. Miss
Pillby, for whose orphaned and friendless existence there had been no
such thing as a holiday, and who had spent the vacation at Mauleverer
diligently employed in mending the house-linen, resented Ida's visit to
The Knoll as if it were a personal injury, and vented her envy in sneers
and innuendoes of the coarsest character.

'If _I_ were to spoon upon one of the rich pupils, I dare say I could get
invited out for the holidays,' she said, _apropos_ to nothing particular;
'but I am thankful to say I am above such meanness.'

'I never laid myself under an obligation I didn't feel myself able to
return,' said Miss Motley, the English governess, who had spent her
holidays amidst the rank and fashion of Margate. 'When I go to the
sea-side with my sister and her family, I pay my own expenses, and I feel
I've a right to be made comfortable.'

Miss Pillby, who had flattered and toadied every well-to-do pupil, and
laboured desperately to wind herself into the affections of Bessie
Wendover, that warm-hearted young person seeming particularly accessible
to flattery, felt herself absolutely injured by the kindness that had
been lavished upon Ida. She drank in with greedy ears Miss Palliser's
description of The Knoll and its occupants--the picnics, carpet-dances,
afternoon teas; and the thought that all these enjoyments and
festivities, the good things to eat and drink, the pleasant society,
ought to have been hers instead of Ida's, was wormwood.

'When I think of my kindness to Bessie Wendover,' she said to Miss
Motley, in the confidence of that one quiet hour which belonged to the
mistresses after the pupils' curfew-bell had rung youth and hope and
gaiety into retirement, 'when I think of the mustard poultices I have put
upon her chest, and the bronchial troches I have given her when she had
the slightest touch of cold or cough, I am positively appalled at the
ingratitude of the human race.'

'I don't think she likes bronchial troches,' said Miss Motley, a very
matter-of-fact young person who saved money, wore thick boots, and was
never unprovided with an umbrella: 'I have seen her throw them away
directly after you gave them to her.'

'She ought to have liked them,' exclaimed Miss Pillby, sternly. 'They are
very expensive.'

'No doubt she appreciated your kindness,' said Miss Motley, absently,
being just then absorbed in an abstruse calculation as to how many yards
of merino would be required for her winter gown.

'No, she did not,' said Miss Pillby. 'If she had been grateful she would
have invited me to her home. I should not have gone, but the act would
have given me a higher idea of her character.'

'Well, she is gone, and we needn't trouble ourselves any more about her,'
retorted Miss Motley, who hated to be plagued about abstract questions,
being a young woman of an essentially concrete nature, born to consume
and digest three meals a day, and having no views that go beyond that
function.

Miss Pillby sighed at finding herself in communion with so coarse a
nature.

'I don't easily get over a blow of that sort,' she said; 'I am too
tender-hearted.'

'So you are,' acquiesced Miss Motley. 'It doesn't pay in a big
boarding-school, however it may answer in private families.'

Ida, having lost her chief friend and companion, Bessie Wendover, found
life at Mauleverer Manor passing lonely. She even missed the excitement
of her little skirmishes, her passages-at-arms, with Urania Rylance, in
which she had generally got the best of the argument. There had been life
and emotion in these touch-and-go speeches, covert sneers, quick retorts,
innuendoes met and flung back in the very face of the sneerer. Now there
was nothing but dull, dead monotony. Many of the old pupils had departed,
and many new pupils had come, daughters of well-to-do parents,
prosperous, well-dressed, talking largely of the gaieties enjoyed by
their elder sisters, of the wonderful things done by their brothers at
Oxford or Cambridge, and of the grand things which were to happen two or
three year hence, when they themselves should be 'out.' Ida took no
interest in their prattle. It was so apt to sting her with the reminder
of her own poverty, the life of drudgery and dependence that was to be
her portion till the end of her days. She did not, in the Mauleverer
phraseology, 'take to' the new girls. She left them to be courted by Miss
Pillby, and petted by Miss Dulcibella. She felt as lonely as one who has
outlived her generation.

Happily the younger girls in the class which she taught were fond of her,
and when she wanted company she let these juveniles cluster round her in
her garden rambles; but in a general way she preferred loneliness, and to
work at the cracked old piano in the room where she slept. Beethoven and
Chopin, Mozart and Mendelssohn were companions of whom she never grew
weary.

So the slow days wore on till nearly the end of the month, and on one
cool, misty, afternoon, when the river flowed sluggishly under a dull
grey sky she walked alone along that allotted extent of the river-side
path which the mistresses and pupil-teachers were allowed to promenade
without _surveillance_. This river walk skirted a meadow which was in
Miss Pew's occupation, and ranked as a part of the Mauleverer grounds,
although it was divided by the high road from the garden proper.

A green paling, and a little green gate, always padlocked, secured this
meadow from intrusion on the road-side, but it was open to the river. To
be entrusted with the key of this pastoral retreat was a privilege only
accorded to governesses and pupil-teachers.

It was supposed by Miss Pew that no young person in her employment would
be capable of walking quite alone, where it was within the range of
possibility that her solitude might be intruded upon by an unknown member
of the opposite sex. She trusted, as she said afterwards, in the refined
feeling of any person brought into association with her, and, until
rudely awakened by facts, she never would have stooped from the lofty
pinnacle of her own purity to suspect the evil consequences which arose
from the liberty too generously accorded to her dependents.

Ida detested Miss Pillby and despised Miss Motley; and the greatest
relief she knew to the dismal monotony of her days was a lonely walk by
the river, with a shabby Wordsworth or a battered little volume of
Shelley's minor poems for her companions. She possessed so few books that
it was only natural for her to read those she had until love ripened with
familiarity.

On this autumnal afternoon she walked with slow steps, while the river
went murmuring by, and now and then a boat drifted lazily down the
stream. The boating season was over for the most part--the season of
picnics and beanfeasts, and Cockney holiday-making, and noisy revelry,
smart young women, young men in white flannels, with bare arms and
sunburnt noses. It was the dull blank time when everybody who could
afford to wander far from this suburban paradise, was away upon his and
her travels. Only parsons, doctors, schoolmistresses, and poverty stayed
at home. Yet now and then a youth in boating costume glided by, his
shoulders bending slowly to the lazy dip of his oars, his keel now and
then making a rushing sound among long trailing weeds.

Such a youth presently came creeping along the bank, almost at Ida's
feet, but passed her unseen. Her heavy lids were drooping, her eyes
intent upon the familiar page. The young man looked up at her with keen
gray eyes, recognised her, and pushed his boat in among the rushes by the
bank, moored it to a pollard willow, and with light footstep leaped on
shore.

He landed a few yards in the rear of Ida's slowly moving figure, followed
softly, came close behind her, and read aloud across her shoulder:

'There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this garden; a ruling grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.'

Ida looked round, first indignant, then laughing.

'How you startled me!' she exclaimed; 'I thought you were some horrid,
impertinent stranger; and yet the voice had a familiar sound. How are
they all at The Knoll? It is nearly a fortnight since Bessie wrote to me.
If she only knew how I hunger for her letters.'

'Very sweet of you,' answered Mr. Wendover, holding the girl's hand with
a lingering pressure, releasing it reluctantly when her rising colour
told him it would be insolent to keep it longer.

How those large dark eyes beamed with pleasure at seeing him! Was it for
his own sake, or for love of her friends at Kingthorpe? The smile was
perhaps too frank to be flattering.

'Very sweet of you to care so much for Bessie's girlish epistles,' he
said lazily; 'they are full of affection, but the style of composition
always recalls our dear Mrs. Nickleby. "Aunt Betsy was asking after you
the other day: and that reminds me that the last litter of black
Hampshires was sixteen--the largest number father ever remembers having.
The vicar and his wife are coming to dinner on Tuesday, and do tell me if
this new picture that everybody is talking about is really better than
the Derby Day," and that sort of thing. Not a very consecutive style,
don't you know.'

'Every word is interesting to me,' said Ida, with a look that told him
she was not one of those young ladies who enjoy a little good-natured
ridicule of their nearest and dearest. 'Is it long since you left
Kingthorpe?'

'Not four-and-twenty hours. I promised Bessie that my very first
occupation on coming to London should be to make my way down here to see
you, in order that I may tell her faithfully and truly whether you are
well and happy. She has a lurking conviction that you are unable to live
without her, that you will incontinently go into a galloping consumption,
and keep the fact concealed from all your friends until they receive a
telegram summoning them to your death-bed. I know that is the picture
Bessie's sentimental fancies have depicted.'

'I did not think Bessie was so morbid,' said Ida, laughing. 'No, I am not
one of those whom the gods love. I am made of very tough material, or I
should hardly have lived till now. I see before me a perspective of
lonely, loveless old age--finishing in a governess' almshouse. I hope
there are almshouses for governesses.

'Nobody will pity your loneliness or lovelessness,' retorted Brian,' for
they will both be your own fault.'

She blushed, looking dreamily across the dark-gray river to the level
shores beyond--the low meadows--gentle hills in the back-ground--the
wooded slopes of Weybridge and Chertsey. If this speaker, whose voice
dropped to so tender a tone, had been like the Brian of her
imaginings--if he had looked at her with the dark eyes of Sir Tristram's
picture, how differently his speech would have affected her! As it was,
she listened with airy indifference, only blushing girlishly at his
compliment, and wondering a little if he really admired her--he the
owner of that glorious old Abbey--the wealthy head of the house of
Wendover--the golden fish for whom so many pretty fishers must have
angled in days gone by.

'Did you stay at The Knoll all the time,' she inquired, her thoughts
having flown back to Kingthorpe; 'or at the Abbey?'

'At The Knoll. It is ever so much livelier, and my cousins like to have
me with them.'

'Naturally. But I wonder you did not prefer living in that lovely old
house of yours. To occupy it must seem like living in the Middle Ages.'

'Uncommonly. One is twelve miles from a station, and four from
post-office, butcher, and baker. Very like the Middle Ages. There is no
gas even in the offices, and there are as many rats behind the wainscot
as there were Israelites in Egypt. All the rooms are draughty and some
are damp. No servant who has not been born and bred on the estate will
stay more than six months. There is a deficient water supply in dry
summers, and there are three distinct ghosts all the year round.
Extremely like the Middle Ages.'

'I would not mind ghosts, rats, anything, if it were my house' exclaimed
Ida, enthusiastically. 'The house is a poem.'

'Perhaps; but it is not a house; in the modern sense of the word, that is
to say, which implies comfort and convenience.'

Ida sighed, deeply disgusted at this want of appreciation of the romantic
spot where she had dreamed away more than one happy summer noontide,
while the Wendover children played hide-and-seek in the overgrown old
shrubberies.

No doubt life was always thus. The people to whom blind fortune gave such
blessings were unable to appreciate them, and only the hungry outsiders
could imagine the delight of possession.

'Are you living in London now?' she asked, as Mr. Wendover lingered at
her side, and seemed to expect the conversation to be continued
indefinitely.

His boat was safe enough, moving gently up and down among the rushes,
with the gentle flow of the tide. Ida looked at it longingly, thinking
how sweet it would be to step into it and let it carry her--any whither,
so long as it was away from Mauleverer Manor.

'Yes, I am in London for the present.'

'But not for long, I suppose.'

'I hardly know. I have no plans. I won't say with Romeo that I am
fortune's fool--but I am fortune's shuttlecock; and I suppose that means
pretty much the same.'

'It was very kind of you to come to see me,' said Ida.

'Kind to myself, for in coming I indulged the dearest wish of my soul,'
said the young man, looking at her with eyes whose meaning even her
inexperience could not misread.

'Please don't pay me compliments,' she said, hastily, 'or I shall feel
very sorry you came. And now I must hurry back to the house--the tea-bell
will ring in a few minutes. Please tell Bessie I am very well, and only
longing for one of her dear letters. Good-bye.'

She made him a little curtsey, and would have gone without shaking hands,
but he caught her hand and detained her in spite of herself.

'Don't be angry,' he pleaded; 'don't look at me with such cold, proud
eyes. Is it an offence to admire, to love you too quickly? If it is, I
have sinned deeply, and am past hope of pardon. Must one serve an
apprenticeship to mere formal acquaintance first, then rise step by step
to privileged friendship, before one dares to utter the sweet word love?
Remember, at least, that I am your dearest friend's first cousin, and
ought not to appear to you as a stranger.'

'I can remember nothing when you talk so wildly,' said Ida, crimson to
the roots of her hair. Never before had a young lover talked to her of
love. 'Pray let me go. Miss Pew will be angry if I am not at tea.'

'To think that such a creature as you should be under the control of any
such harpy,' exclaimed Brian. 'Well, if I must go, at least tell me I am
forgiven, and that I may exist upon the hope of seeing you again. I
suppose if I were to come to the hall-door, and send in my card, I should
not be allowed to see you?'

'Certainly not. Not if you were my own cousin instead of Bessie's.
Good-bye.'

'Then I shall happen to be going by in my boat every afternoon for the
next month or so. There is a dear good soul at the lock who lets
lodgings. I shall take up my abode there.'

'Please never land on this pathway again,' said Ida earnestly 'Miss Pew
would be horribly angry if she heard I had spoken to you. And now I must
go.'

She withdrew her hand from his grasp, and ran off across the meadow,
light-footed as Atalanta. Her heart was beating wildly, beating
furiously, when she flew up to her room to take off her hat and jacket
and smooth her disordered hair. Never before had any man, except
middle-aged Dr. Rylance, talked to her of love: and that this man of all
others, this man, sole master of the old mansion she so intensely
admired, her friend's kinsman, owner of a good old Saxon name; this man,
who could lift her in a moment from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to
place and station; that this man should look at her with admiring eyes,
and breathe impassioned words into her ear, was enough to set her heart
beating tumultuously, to bring hot blushes to her cheeks. It was too wild
a dream.

True, that for the man himself, considered apart from his belongings, his
name and race, she cared not at all. But just now, in this tumult of
excited feeling, she was disposed to confuse the man with his
surroundings--to think of him, not as that young man with gray eyes and
thin lips, who had walked with her at The Knoll, who had stood beside her
just now by the river, but as the living embodiment of fortune, pride,
delight.

Perhaps the vision really dominant in her mind was the thought of
Herself as mistress of the Abbey, herself as living for ever among the
people she loved, amidst those breezy Hampshire hills, in the odour of
pine-woods--rich, important, honoured, and beloved, doing good to all who
came within the limit of her life. Yes, that was a glorious vision, and
its reflected light shone upon Brian Wendover, and in somewise glorified
him.

She went down to tea with such a triumphant light in her eyes that the
smaller pupils who sat at her end of the table, so as to be under her
_surveillance_ during the meal, exclaimed at her beauty.

'What a colour you've got, Miss Palliser!' said Lucy Dobbs, 'and how your
eyes sparkle! You look as if you'd just had a hamper.'

'I'm not quite so greedy as you, Lucy,' retorted Ida; 'I don't think a
hamper would make my eyes sparkle, even if there were anybody to send me
one.'

'But there is somebody to send you one,' argued Lucy, with her mouth full
of bread and butter; 'your father isn't dead?'

'No.'

'Then he might send you a hamper.'

'He might, if he lived within easy reach of Mauleverer Manor,' replied
Ida; 'but as he lives in France--'

'He could send a post-office order to a confectioner in London, and the
confectioner would send you a big box of cakes, and marmalade, and jam,
and mixed biscuits, and preserved ginger,' said Lucy, her cheeks glowing
with the rapture of her theme. 'That is what my mamma and papa did, when
they were in Switzerland, on my birthday. I never had such a hamper as
that one. I was ill for a week afterwards.'

'And I suppose you were very glad your mother and father were away,' said
Ida, while the other children laughed in chorus.

'It was a splendid hamper,' said Lucy, stolidly. 'I shall never forget
it. So you see your father might send you a hamper,' she went on, for the
sake of argument, 'though he is in France.'

'Certainly,' said Ida, 'if I were not too old to care about cakes and
jam.'

'_We_ are not too old,' persisted Lucy; 'you might share them among us.'

Ida's heart had not stilled its stormy vehemence yet. She talked likely
to her young companions, and tried to eat a little bread and butter, but
that insipid fare almost choked her. Her mind was overcharged with
thought and wonder.

Could he have meant all or half he said just now?--this young man with
the delicate features, pale complexion, and thin lips. He had seemed
intensely earnest. Those gray eyes of his, somewhat too pale of hue for
absolutely beauty, had glowed with a fire which even Ida's inexperience
recognised as something above and beyond common feeling. His hand had
trembled as it clasped hers. Could there be such a thing as love at first
sight? and was she destined to be the object of that romantic passion?
She had read of the triumphs of beauty, and she knew that she was
handsome. She had been told the fact in too many ways--by praise
sometimes, but much more often by envy--to remain unconscious of her
charms. She was scornful of her beauty, inclined to undervalue the gift
as compared with the blessings of other girls--a prosperous home, the
world's respect, the means to gratify the natural yearnings of youth--but
she knew that she was beautiful. And now it seemed to her all at once
that beauty was a much more valuable gift than she had supposed
hitherto--indeed, a kind of talisman or Aladdin's lamp, which could win
for her all she wanted in this world--Wendover Abbey and the position of
a country squire's wife. It was not a dazzling or giddy height to which
to aspire; but to Ida just now it seemed the topmost pinnacle of social
success.

'Oh, what a wretch I am!' she said to herself presently; 'what a
despicable, mercenary creature! I don't care a straw for this man; and
yet I am already thinking of myself as his wife.'

And then, remembering how she had once openly declared her intention of
marrying for money, she shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.

'Ought I to hesitate when the chance comes to me?' she thought. 'I always
meant to marry for money, if ever such wonderful fortune as a rich
husband fell in my way.'

And yet she had refused Dr. Rylance's offer, without a moment's
hesitation. Was it really as he had said, in the bitterness of his wrath,
because the offer was not good enough, the temptation not large enough?
No, she told herself, she had rejected the smug physician, with his West
End mansion and dainty Hampshire villa, his courtly manners, his perfect
dress, because the man himself was obnoxious to her. Now, she did not
dislike Brian Wendover--indeed, she was rather inclined to like him. She
was only just a little disappointed that he was not the ideal Brian of
her dreams. The dark-browed cavalier, with grave forehead and eagle eyes.
She had a vague recollection of having once heard Blanche say that her
cousin Brian of the Abbey was like Sir Tristram's portrait; but this must
have been a misapprehension upon her part, since no two faces could have
differed more than the pale delicate-featured countenance of the living
man and the dark rugged face in the picture.

She quieted the trouble of her thoughts as well as she could before tea
was over and the evening task of preparation,--the gulfs and straits, the
predicates and noun sentences, rule of three, common denominators, and
all the dry-as-dust machinery was set in motion again.

Helping her pupils through their difficulties, battling with their
stupidities, employed her too closely for any day-dreams of her own. But
when prayers had been read, and the school had dispersed, and the
butterfly-room was hushed into the silence of midnight, Ida Palliser lay
broad awake, wondering at what Fate was doing for her.

'To think that perhaps I am going to be rich after all--honoured, looked
up to, able to help those I love,' she thought, thrilling at the
splendour of her visions.

Ah! if this thing were verily to come to pass, how kind, how good she
would be to others! She would have them all at the Abbey,--the shabby old
half-pay father, shabby no longer in those glorious days; the vulgar
little stepmother, improved into elegance; the five-year old brother,
that loveliest and dearest of created beings. How lovely to see him
rioting in the luxuriance of those dear old gardens, rolling on that
velvet sward, racing his favourite dogs round and round the grand old
cedars! What a pony he should ride! His daily raiment should be Genoa
velvet and old point lace. He should be the admiration and delight of
half the county. And Bessie--how kind she could be to Bessie, repaying
in some small measure that which never could be fully repaid--the
kindness shown by the prosperous girl to the poor dependent. And above
all,--vision sweeter even than the thought of doing good,--how she would
trample on Urania Rylance--how the serpentine coils of that damsel's
malice and pride could be trodden under foot! Not a ball, not a dinner,
not a garden-party given at the Abbey that would not be a thorn in
Urania's side, a nail in Urania's coffin.

So ran her fancies--in a very fever--all through the troubled night; but
when the first streak of the autumn dawn glimmered coldly in the east,
dismal presage of the discordant dressing-bell, then she turned upon her
pillow with a weary sigh, and muttered to herself:--

'After all I daresay Mr. Wendover is only fooling me. Perhaps it is his
habit to make love to every decent-looking girl he meets.'

The next day Ida walked on the same riverside path, but this time
not alone. Her natural modesty shrank from the possibility of a second
_tête-à-tête_ with her admirer, and she stooped from her solitary state
to ask Fräulein Wolf to accompany her in her afternoon walk.

Fräulein was delighted, honoured even, by the request. She was a
wishy-washy person, sentimental, vapourish, altogether feeble, and she
intensely admired Ida Palliser's vigorous young beauty.

The day was bright and sunny, the air deliciously mild, the river simply
divine. The two young women paced the path slowly, talking of German
poetry. The Fräulein knew her Schiller by heart, having expounded him
daily for the last four years, and she fondly believed that after
Shakespeare Schiller was the greatest poet who had ever trodden this
globe.

'And if God had spared him for twenty more years, who knows if he would
not have been greater than Shakespeare? inquired the Fräulein, blandly.

She talked of Schiller's idea of friendship, as represented by the
Marquis of Posa.

'Ah,' sighed Ida, 'I doubt if there is any such friendship as that out of
a book.'

'I could be like the marquis,' said the Fräulein, smiling tenderly.' Oh,
Ida, you don't know what I would do for anyone I loved--for a dear and
valued friend, like you for instance, if you would only let me love you;
but you have always held me at arm's length.'

'I did not mean to do so,' answered Ida, frankly; 'but perhaps I am not
particularly warm-hearted. It is not in my nature to have many friends. I
was very fond of Bessie Wendover, but then she is such a dear clinging
thing, like a chubby child that puts its fat arms round your neck--an
irresistible creature. She made me love her in spite of myself.'

'Why cannot I make you love me?' asked the fair Gertrude, with a
languishing look.

Ida could have alleged several reasons, but they would have been
unflattering, so she only said feebly,--

'Oh, I really like you very much, and I enjoy talking about German
literature with you. Tell me more about Schiller--you know his poetry so
well--and Jean Paul. I never can quite understand the German idolatry of
him. He is too much in the clouds for me.'

'Too philosophic, you mean,' said Fräulein. 'I love philosophy.'

'"Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, it helps not, it avails not,"'
said a manly voice from the river close by, and Brian Wendover shot his
boat in against the bank and leapt up from among the rushes like a
river-god.

Miss Palliser blushed crimson, but it hardly needed her blushes to
convince Fräulein Wolf that this young stranger was a lover. Her
sentimental soul thrilled at the idea of having plunged into the very
midst of an intrigue.

Ida's heart throbbed heavily, not so much with emotion at beholding her
admirer as at the recollection of her visions last night. She tried to
look calm and indifferent.

'How do you do?' she said, shaking hands with him. 'Mr. Wendover--Miss
Wolf, our German mistress.'

The Fräulein blushed, sniggered, and curtseyed.

'This gentleman is Bessie Wendover's first cousin, Fräulein,' said Ida,
with an explanatory air. 'He was staying at The Knoll during the last
part of my visit.'

'Yes, and you saw much of each other, and you became heart-friends,'
gushed Miss Wolf, beaming benevolently at Brian with her pale green orbs.

Brian answered in very fair German, sinking his voice a little so as only
to be heard by the Fräulein, who was in raptures with this young
stranger. So good-looking, so elegant, and speaking Hanoverian German. He
told her that he had seen only too little of Ida at The Knoll, but enough
to know that she was his 'Schicksal'; and then he took the Fräulein's
hand and pressed it gently.

'I know you are our friend,' he said.

'Bis den Tod,' gasped Gertrude.

After this no one felt any more restraint. The Fräulein dropped into her
place of confidante as easily as possible.

'What brings you here again this afternoon, Mr. Wendover?' asked Ida,
trying to sustain the idea of being unconcerned in the matter.

'My load-star; the same that drew me here yesterday, and will draw me
here to-morrow.'

'You had better not come here any more; you have no idea what a terrible
person Miss Pew is. These river-side fields are her own particular
property. Didn't you see the board, "Trespassers will be prosecuted"?'

'Let her prosecute. If her wrath were deadly, I would risk it You know
what Borneo says--

"Wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,
I would adventure for such merchandize"

And shall I be afraid of Miss Pew, when the path to my paradise lies so
near?'

'Please don't talk such nonsense,' pleaded Ida; 'Fräulein will think you
a very absurd person.'

But Miss Wolf protested that she would think nothing of the sort.
Sentiment of that kind was her idea of common sense.

'I am established at Penton Hook,' said Brian. 'I live on the water, and
my only thought in life is to be near you. I shall know every stump of
willow--every bulrush before I am a month older.'

'But surely you are not going to stay at Penton Hook for a month!'
exclaimed Ida, 'buried alive in that little lock-house?'

'I shall have my daily resurrection when I see you.'

'But you cannot imagine that I shall walk upon this path every afternoon,
in order that you may land and talk nonsense?' protested Ida.

'I only imagine that this path is your daily walk, and that you would not
be so heartless as to change your habits in order to deprive me of the
sunshine of your presence,' replied Brian, gazing at her tenderly, as if
Miss Wolf counted for nothing, and they two were standing alone among the
reeds and willows.

'You will simply make this walk impossible for me. It is quite out of the
question that I should come here again so long as you are likely to be
lying in wait for me. Is it not so, Fräulein? You know Miss Pew's way of
thinking, and how she would regard such conduct.'

Fräulein shook her head dolefully, and admitted that in Miss Pew's
social code such a derogation from maiden dignity would be, in a manner,
death--an offence beyond all hope of pardon.

'Hang Miss Pew!' exclaimed Brian. 'If Miss Pew were Minerva, with all the
weight and influence of her father, the Thunderer, to back her up, I
would defy her. Confess now, dear Fräulein--liebste Fräulein'--how tender
his accents sounded in German!--'_you_ do not think it wrong for me to
see the lady of my love for a few all-too-happy moments once a day?'

The Fräulein declared that it was the most natural thing in the world for
them thus to meet, and that she for her part would be enchanted to play
propriety, and to be her dearest Ida's companion on all such occasions,
nor would thumbscrew or rack extort from her the secret of their loves.

'Nonsense!' exclaimed Ida, 'in future I shall always walk in the kitchen
garden; the walls are ten feet high, and unless you had a horse that
could fly, like Perseus, you would never be able to get at me.'

'I will get a flying horse,' answered Brian. 'Don't defy me. Remember
there are things that have been heard of before now in love-stories,
called ladders.'

After this their conversation became as light and airy as that dandelion
seed which every breath of summer blows across the land. They were all
three young, happy in health and hope despite of fortune. Ida began to
think that Brian Wendover, if in nowise resembling her ideal, was a very
agreeable young man. He was full of life and spirits; he spoke German
admirably. He had the Fräulein's idolized Schiller on the tip of his
tongue. He quoted Heine's tenderest love songs. Altogether his society
was much more intellectual and more agreeable than any to be had at
Mauleverer Manor. Miss Wolf parted from him reluctantly, and thought that
Ida was unreasonably urgent when she insisted on leaving him at the end
of half an hour's dawdling walk up and down the river path.

'Ach, how he is handsome! how he is clever! What for a man!' exclaimed
Miss Wolf, as they went back to the Manor grounds, across the dusty
high-road, the mere passage over which had a faint flavour of excitement,
as a momentary escape into the outside world. 'How proud you must be of
his devotion to you!'

'Indeed I am not,' answered Ida, frankly. 'I only wonder at it. We have
seen so little of each other; we have known each other so short a time.'

'I don't think time counts for lovers,' argued the romantic Gertrude.
'One sees a face which is one's fate, and only wonders how one can have
lived until that moment, since life must have been so empty without
_him_.'

'Have you done that sort of thing often?' asked Ida, with rather a
cynical air. 'You talk as if it were a common experience of yours.'

Fräulein Wolf blushed and simpered.

'There was one,' she murmured, 'when I was very young. He was to me as a
bright particular star. His father kept a shop, but, oh, his soul would
have harmonized with the loftiest rank in the land. He was in the
Landwehr. If you had seen him in his uniform--ach, Himmel! He went away
to the Franco-Prussian war. I wept for him; I thought of him as Leonora
of her Wilhelm. He came back. Ach!'

'Was he a ghost? Did he carry you off to the churchyard?'

'Neither to churchyard nor church,' sighed Gertrude. 'He was false! He
married his father's cook--a fat, rosy-cheeked Swabian. All that was
delicate and refined in his nature, every poetical yearning of his soul,
had been trampled out of him in that hellish war!'

'I dare say he was hungry after a prolonged existence upon wurst,' said
Ida, 'and that instinct drew him to the cook-maid.'

After this there came many afternoons on which the Fräulein and Ida
walked in the meadow path by the river, and walk there when they would,
the light wherry always came glancing along the tide, and shot in among
the reeds, and Miss Palliser's faithful swain was in attendance upon her.
On doubtful afternoons, when Ida was inclined to stay indoors, the
sentimental Fräulein was always at her side to urge her to take the
accustomed walk. Not only was Mr. Wendover's society agreeable to her
poetic soul, but he occasionally brought some tender offering in the
shape of hothouse grapes or Jersey pears, which were still more welcome
to the fair German.

The governesses, Miss Motley, Miss Pillby, and Mademoiselle were always
on duty on fine afternoons, in attendance upon the pupils' regulation
walks--long dusty perambulations of dull high roads; and thus it happened
that Ida and the Fräulein had the meadow path to themselves.

Nothing occurred during the space of a fortnight to disturb their sense
of security. The river-side seemed a kind of Paradise, without the
possibility of a serpent. Ida's lover had not yet made her any
categorical and formal offer of marriage. Indeed, he had never been one
minute alone with her since their first meeting; but he talked as if it
was a settled thing that they two were to be man and wife in the days to
come. He did not speak as if their marriage were an event in the near
future; and at this Ida wondered a little, seeing that the owner of
Wendover Abbey could have no need to wait for a wife--to consider ways
and means--and to be prudently patient, as struggling professional youth
must be. This was curious; for that he loved her passionately there could
be little doubt. Every look, every tone told her as much a hundred times
in an hour. Nor did she make any protest when he spoke of her as one
pledged to him, though no formal covenant had been entered upon. She
allowed him to talk as he pleased about their future; and her only wonder
was, that in all his conversation he spoke so little of the house in
which he was born, and indeed of his belongings generally.

Once she expatiated to Fräulein Wolf in Brian's presence upon the
picturesque beauties of the Abbey.

'It is the dearest, noblest old house you can conceive,' she said; 'and
the old, old gardens and park are something too lovely: but I believe Mr.
Wendover does not care a straw about the place.'

'You know what comes of familiarity,' answered Brian, carelessly. 'I have
seen too much of the Abbey to be moved to rapture by its Gothic charms
every time I see it after the agony of separation.'

'But you would like to live there?'

'I would infinitely prefer living anywhere else. The place is too remote
from civilization. A spot one might enjoy, perhaps, on the downhill side
of sixty; but in youth or active middle age every sensible man should
shun seclusion. A man has to fight against an inherent tendency to lapse
into a vegetable.'

'Fox did not become a vegetable,' said Ida; 'yet how he adored St. Ann's
Hill!'

'Fox was a hard drinker and a fast liver,' answered Brian.

'If he had not let the clock run down now and then, the works would have
worn out sooner than they did.'

'But do you never feel the need of rest?' asked Ida.

Brian stifled a yawn.

'No; I'm afraid I have never worked hard enough for that. The need will
come, perhaps, later--when the work comes.'

On more than one occasion when Ida talked of the Abbey, Mr. Wendover
replied in the same tone. It was evident that he was indifferent to the
family seat, or that he even disliked it. He had no pride in surroundings
which might have inspired another man.

'One would think you had been frightened by the family ghost,' Ida said
laughingly, 'you so studiously avoid talking about the Abbey.'

'I have not been frightened by the ghost--I am too modern to believe in
ghosts.'

'Oh, but it is modern to believe in everything
impossible--spirit-rapping, thought-reading.'

'Perhaps; but I am not of that temper.' And then, with a graver look than
Ida had ever seen in his face, he said, 'You are full of enthusiasm about
that old place among the hills, Ida. I hope you do not care more for the
Abbey than for me.'

She crimsoned and looked down. The question touched her weakness too
nearly.

'Oh, no,' she faltered; 'what are cedars and limestone as compared with
humanity?'

'And if I were without the Abbey--if the Abbey and I were nothing to each
other--should I be nobody in your sight?'

'It is difficult to dissociate a man from his surroundings,' she
answered; 'but I suppose you would be just the same person?'

'I hope so,' said Brian. '"The rank is but the guinea stamp, the man's a
man for a' that." But the guinea stamp is an uncommonly good thing in its
way, I admit.'

These afternoon promenades between four and five o'clock, while the rest
of the school was out walking, had been going on for a fortnight, and no
harm to Ida had come of her indiscretion. Perhaps she hardly considered
how wrong a thing she was doing in violating Miss Pew's confidence by
conduct so entirely averse from Miss Pew's ideas of good behaviour. The
confidence had been so grudgingly given, Miss Pew had been so
systematically unkind, that the girl may be forgiven for detesting her,
nay, even for glorying in the notion of acting in a manner which would
shock all Miss Pew's dearest prejudices. Her meeting with her lover could
scarcely be called clandestine, for she took very little pains to conceal
the fact. If the affair had gone on secretly for so long, it was because
of no artifice on her part.

But that any act of any member of the Mauleverer household could remain
long unknown was almost an impossibility. If there had been but one pair
of eyes in the establishment, and those the eyes of Miss Pillby, the
thing would have been discovered; for those pale unlovely orbs were as
the eyes of Argus himself in their manifold power to spy out the
proceedings of other people--more especially of any person whom their
owner disliked.

Now Miss Pillby had never loved Ida Palliser, objecting to her on broad
grounds as a person whose beauty and talents were an indirect injury to
mediocre people. Since Ida's visit to The Knoll her angry feeling had
intensified with every mention of the pleasures and comforts of that
abode. Miss Pillby, who never opened a book for her own pleasure, who
cared nothing for music, and whose highest notion of art was all
blacklead pencil and bread-crumbs, had plenty of vacant space in her
mind for other people's business. She was a sharp observer of the
fiddle-faddle of daily life; she had a keen scent for evil motives
underlying simple actions. Thus when she perceived the intimacy which had
newly arisen between the Fräulein and Miss Palliser, she told herself
that there must be some occult reason for the fact. Why did those two
always walk together? What hidden charm had they discovered in the
river-meadow?

For this question, looked at from Miss Pillby's point of view, there
could be only one answer. The attraction was masculine. One or other of
the damsels must have an admirer whom she contrived to see somehow, or to
correspond with somehow, during her meadow walk. That the thing had gone
so far as it really had gone, that any young lady at Mauleverer could
dare to walk and talk with an unlicensed man in the broad light of day,
was more than Miss Pillby's imagination could conceive. But she
speculated upon some transient glimpse of a man on the opposite bank, or
in the middle distance of the river--a handkerchief waved, a signal
given, perhaps a love-letter hidden in a hollow bree. This was about the
culminating point to which any intrigue at Mauleverer had ever reached
hitherto. Beyond this Miss Pillby's fancy ventured not.

It was on the second Sunday in October, when the Mauleverer pupils were
beginning to look forward, almost hopefully, to the Christmas vacation,
that a flood of light streamed suddenly upon Miss Pillby's troubled mind.
The revelation happened in this wise. Evening service at a smart little
newly-built church, where the function was Anglican to the verge of
Ritualism, was a privilege reserved for the elder and more favoured of
the Mauleverer flock. All the girls liked this evening service at St.
Dunstan's. It had a flavour of dissipation. The lamps, the music, the
gaily decorated altar, the Saint's-day banners and processional hymn,
were faintly suggestive of the opera. The change from the darkness of the
country road to the glow and glitter of the tabernacle was thrilling.
Evening service at St. Dunstan's was the most exciting event of the week.
There was a curate who intoned exquisitely, with that melodious snuffle
so dear to modern congregations, and whose voice had a dying fall when he
gave out a hymn which almost moved girl-worshippers to tears. He was
thought to be in a consumption--had a little dry hacking cough, actually
caused by relaxed tonsils, but painfully recalling her of the camelias.
The Mauleverer girls called him interesting, and hoped that he would
never marry, but live and die like St. Francis de Sales. On this
particular Sunday, Miss Pew--vulgarly Old Pew--happened to be unusually
amiable. That morning's post had brought her the promise of three new
pupils, daughters of a mighty sheep farmer lately returned from
Australia, and supposed to be a millionaire. He was a widower, and wanted
motherly care for his orphans. They were to be clothed as well as fed at
Mauleverer; they were to have all those tender cares and indulgences
which a loving mother could give them. This kind of transaction was
eminently profitable to the Miss Pews. Maternal care meant a tremendous
list of extra charges--treats, medical attendance, little comforts of all
kinds, from old port to lamb's-wool sleeping-socks. Orphans of this kind
were the pigeons whose tender breasts furnished the down with which that
experienced crow, Miss Pew, feathered her nest. She had read the
Australian's letter over three times before evening service, and she was
inclined to think kindly of the human race; so when Miss Palliser asked
if she too--she, the Pariah, might go to St. Dunstan's--she, whose
general duty of a Sunday evening was to hear the little ones their
catechism, or keep them quiet by reading aloud to them 'Pilgrim's
Progress' or 'Agathos,' perhaps--Miss Pew said, loftily, 'I do not see
any objection.'

There was no kindness, no indulgence in her tone, but she said she saw no
objection, and Ida flew off to put on her bonnet,--that poor little black
lace bonnet with yellow rosebuds which had done duty for so many
services.

It was a relief to get a way from school, and its dull monotony, even for
a couple of hours; and then there was the music. Ida loved music too
passionately to be indifferent to the harmony of village voices,
carefully trained to sing her favourite hymns to the sound of a small but
excellent organ.

The little church was somewhat poorly attended on this fine autumn
evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the
river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan
and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which
tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather
than to worship in the warm little temple.

The Mauleverer girls made a solid block of humanity on one side of the
nave, but on the other side the congregation was scattered thinly in the
open oaken seats.

Miss Pillby, perusing those figures within her view, as she stood in the
back row of the school seats, perceived a stranger--a stranger of elegant
and pleasing appearance, who was evidently casting stolen glances at the
lambs of the Mauleverer fold. Nor was Miss Pillby's keen eye slow to
discover for which lamb those ardent looks were intended. The object of
the stranger's admiration was evidently Ida Palliser.

'I thought as much,' mused Miss Pillby, as she listened, or seemed to
listen, to the trials and triumphs of the children of Israel, chanted by
fresh young voices with a decidedly rural twang; 'this explains
everything.'

When they left the church, Miss Pillby was perfectly aware of the
stranger following the Mauleverer flock, evidently in the hope of getting
speech with Miss Palliser. He hung on the pathway near them, he shot
ahead of them, and then turned and strolled slowly back. All in vain. Ida
was too closely hemmed in and guarded for him to get speech of her; and
the maiden procession passed on without any violation of the proprieties.

'Did you see that underbred young man following us as we came home?'
asked Miss Pillby, with a disgusted air, as she shared an invigorating
repast of bread and butter and toast and water with the pupils who had
been to church. 'Some London shopman, no doubt, by his bad manners.' She
stole a look at Ida, who flushed ever so slightly at hearing Brian
Wendover thus maligned.

Fräulein Wolf slept in the room occupied by Miss Pillby and Miss
Motley--three narrow iron bedsteads in a particularly inconvenient room,
always devoted to governesses, and supposed to be a temple of learning.

While Miss Motley was saying her prayers, Miss Pillby wriggled up to the
Fräulein, who was calmly brushing her flaxen tresses, and whispered
impetuously, 'I have seen him! I know all about it!'

'Ach, Himmel,' cried the Fräulein. 'Thou wouldst not betray?'

'Not for the world.'

'Is he not handsome, godlike?' demanded the Fräulein, still in German.

'Yes, he is very nice-looking. Don't tell Palliser that I know anything
about him. She mightn't like it.'

The Fräulein shook her head, and put her finger to her lips, just as Miss
Motley rose from her knees, remarking that it was impossible for anybody
to pray in a proper business-like manner with such whispering and
chattering going on.

Next day Miss Pillby contrived to get a walk in the garden before the
early dinner. Here among the asparagus beds she had a brief conversation
with a small boy employed in the kitchen-garden, a youth whose mother
washed for the school, and had frequent encounters with Miss Pillby, that
lady having charge of the linen, and being, in the laundress's eye, a
power in the establishment. Miss Pillby had furthermore been what she
called 'kind' to the laundress's hope. She had insisted upon his learning
his catechism, and attending church twice every Sunday, and she had
knitted him a comforter, the material being that harsh and scrubby
worsted which makes the word comforter a sound of derision.

Strong in the sense of these favours, Miss Pillby put it upon the boy as
a duty which he owed to her and to society to watch Ida Palliser's
proceedings in the river-meadow. She also promised him sixpence if he
found out anything bad.

The influence of the Church Catechism, learned by rote, parrot fashion,
had not awakened in the laundress's boy any keen sense of honour. He had
a dim feeling that it was a shabby service which he was called upon to
perform; but then of course Miss Pillby, who taught the young ladies, and
who was no doubt a wise and discreet personage, knew best; and a possible
sixpence was a great temptation.

'Them rushes and weeds down by the bank wants cutting. Gar'ner told me
about it last week,' said the astute youth. 'I'll do 'em this very
afternoon.'

'Do, Sam. Be there between four and five. Keep out of sight as much as
you can, but be well within hearing. I want you to tell me all that goes
on.'

'And when shall I see you agen, miss?'

'Let me see. That's rather difficult. I'm afraid it can't be managed till
to-morrow. You are in the house at six every morning to clean the boots?'

'Yes, miss.'

'Then I'll come down to the boot-room at half-past six to-morrow morning
and hear what you've got to tell me.'

'Lor, miss, it's such a mucky place--all among the coal-cellars.'

'I don't mind,' said Miss Pillby; which was quite true. There was no
amount of muckiness Miss Pillby would not have endured in order to injure
a person she disliked.

'I have never shrunk from my duty, however painful it might be, Sam!' she
said, and left the youth impressed by the idea of her virtues.

In the duskiness of the October dawn Miss Pillby stole stealthily down by
back stairs and obscure passages to the boot-room, where she found Sam
hard at work with brushes and blacking, by the light of a tallow candle,
in an atmosphere flavoured with coals.

'Well, Sam?' asked the vestal, eagerly.

'Well, miss, I seed 'em and I heerd 'em,' answered the boy; 'such goin's
on. Orful?'

'What kind of thing, Sam?'

'Love-makin,' miss; keepin' company. The young ladies hadn't been there
five minutes when a boat dashes up to the bank, and a young gent jumps
ashore. My, how he went on! I was down among the rushes, right under his
feet, as you may say, most of the time, and I heerd him beautiful. How he
did talk; like a poetry book!'

'Did he kiss her?'

'Yes, miss, just one as they parted company. She was very stand-offish
with him, but he catched hold of her just as she was wishing of him
good-bye. He gave her a squeedge like, and took her unawares. It was only
one kiss, yer know, miss, but he made it last as long as he could. The
foreigner looked the other way.'

'Shameful creatures, both of them!' exclaimed Miss Pillby. 'There's your
sixpence, Sam, and don't say a word to anybody about what you've seen,
till I tell you. I may want you to repeat it all to Miss Pew. If I do,
I'll give you another sixpence.'

'Lawks, miss, that would be cheap at a shilling,' said the boy. 'It would
freeze my blood to have to stand up to talk before Miss Pew.'

'Nonsense, Sam, you will be only telling the truth, and there can be
nothing to frighten you. However, I dare say she will be satisfied with
my statement. She won't want confirmation from you.'

'Confirmation from me,' muttered Sam, as Miss Pillby left his den. 'No, I
should think not. Why, that's what the bishops do. Fancy old Pew being
confirmed too--old Pew in a white frock and a veil. That is a good'un,'
and Sam exploded over his blacking-brush at the preposterous idea.

It was Miss Pew's habit to take a cup of tea and a square of buttered
toast every morning at seven, before she left her pillow; in order to
fortify herself for the effort of getting up and dressing, so as to be in
her place, at the head of the chief table in the school dining-room, when
eight o'clock struck. Had Miss Pew consulted her own inclination she
would have reposed until a much later hour; but the maintenance of
discipline compelled that she should be the head and front of all
virtuous movements at Mauleverer Manor. How could she inveigh with due
force against the sin of sloth if she were herself a slug-a-bed?
Therefore did Miss Pew vanquish the weakness of the flesh, and rise at a
quarter past seven, summer and winter. But this struggle between duty and
inclination made the lady's temper somewhat critical in the morning
hours.

Now it was the custom for one of the mistresses to carry Miss Pew's
tea-tray, and to attend at her bedside while she sipped her bohea and
munched her toast. It was a delicate attention, a recognition of her
dignity, which Miss Pew liked. It was the _lever du roi_ upon a small
scale. And this afforded an opportunity for the mistress on duty to
inform her principal of any small fact in connection with the school or
household which it was well for Miss Pew to know. Not for worlds would
Sarah Pew have encouraged a spy, according to her own view of her own
character; but she liked people with keen eyes, who could tell her
everything that was going on under her roof.

'Good morning, Pillby,' said Miss Pew, sitting up against a massive
background of pillows, like a female Jove upon a bank of clouds, an awful
figure in frilled white raiment, with an eye able to command, but hardly
to flatter; 'what kind of a day in it?'

'Dull and heavy,' answered Miss Pillby; 'I shouldn't wonder if there was
a thunderstorm.'

'Don't talk nonsense, child; it's too late in the year for thunder. We
shall have the equinoctial gales soon, I dare say.'

'No doubt,' replied Miss Pillby, who had heard about the equinox and its
carryings on all her life without having arrived at any clear idea of its
nature and properties. 'We shall have it very equinoctial before the end
of the month, I've no doubt.'

'Well, is there anything going on? Any of the girls bilious? One of my
black draughts wanted anywhere?'

Miss Pew was not highly intellectual, but she was a great hand at
finance, household economies, and domestic medicine. She compounded most
of the doses taken at Mauleverer with her own fair hands, and her black
draughts were a feature in the school. The pupils never forgot them.
However faint became the memory of youthful joys in after years, the
flavour of Miss Pew's jalap and senna was never obliterated.

'No; there's nobody ill this morning,' answered Miss Pillby, with a faint
groan.

'Ah, you may well sigh,' retorted her principal; 'the way those girls ate
veal and ham yesterday was enough to have turned the school into a
hospital--and with raspberry jam tart after, too.'

Veal with ham was the Sunday dinner at Mauleverer, a banquet upon which
Miss Pew prided herself, as an instance of luxurious living rarely to be
met with in boarding-schools. If the girls were ill after it, that was
their look out.

'There's something wrong, I can see by your face, said Miss Pew, after
she had sipped half her tea and enjoyed the whole of her toast; 'is it
the servants or the pupils?'

Strange to say, Miss Pew did not look grateful to the bearer of evil
tidings. This was one of her idiosyncrasies. She insisted upon being kept
informed of all that went wrong in her establishment, but she was apt to
be out of temper with the informant.

'Neither,' answered Miss Pillby, with an awful shake of her sandy locks;
'I don't believe there is a servant in this house who would so far forget
herself. And as to the pupils--'

'We know what they are,' snapped Miss Pew; 'I never heard of anything bad
enough to be beyond their reach. Who is it?'

'Your clever pupil teacher, Ida Palliser.'

'Ah,' grunted Miss Pew, setting down her cup; 'I can believe anything of
her. That girl was born to be troublesome. What has she done now?'

Miss Pillby related the circumstances of Miss Palliser's crime setting
forth her own cleverness in the course of her narrative--how her
misgivings had been excited by the unwonted familiarity between Ida and
the Fräulein--a young person always open to suspicion as a stranger in
the land--how her fears had been confirmed by the conduct of an unknown
man in the church; and how, urged by her keen sense of duty, she had
employed Mrs. Jones's boy to watch the delinquents.

'I'll make an example of her,' said Miss Pew, flinging back the
bed-clothes with a tragic air as she rose from her couch. 'That will do,
Pillby. I want no further details. I'll wring the rest out of that
bold-faced minx in the face of all the school. You can go.'

And without any word of praise or thanks from her principal, Miss Pillby
retired: yet she knew in her heart that for this piece of ill news Miss
Pew was not ungrateful.

Never had Sarah Pew looked more awful than she appeared that morning at
the breakfast table, clad in sombre robes of olive green merino, and a
cap bristling with olive-green berries and brambly twigs--a cap which to
the more advanced of the pupils suggested the head-gear of Medusa.

Miss Dulcibella, gentle, limp, sea-greeny, looked at her stronger-minded
sister, and was so disturbed by the gloom upon that imperial brow as to
be unable to eat her customary rasher. Not a word did Miss Pew speak to
sister or mistresses during that brief but awful meal; but when the delft
breakfast cups were empty, and the stacks of thick bread and butter had
diminished to nothingness, and the girls were about to rise and disperse
for their morning studies, Miss Pew's voice arose suddenly amidst them
like the sound of thunder.

'Keep your seats, if you please, young ladies. I am about to make an
example; and I hope what I have to say and do may be for the general
good. Miss Palliser, stand up.'

Ida rose in her place, at that end of the table where she was supposed to
exercise a corrective influence upon the younger pupils. She stood up
where all the rest were seated, a tall and perfect figure, a beautiful
statuesque head, supported by a neck like a marble column. She stood up
among all those other girls the handsomest of them all, pale, with
flashing eyes, feeling very sure that she was going to be ill-treated.

'Pray, Miss Palliser, who is the person whom it is your daily habit to
meet and converse with in my grounds? Who is the man who has dared to
trespass on my meadow at your invitation?'

'Not at my invitation,' answered Ida, as calm as marble 'The gentleman
came of his own accord. His name is Brian Wendover, and he and I are
engaged to be married.'

Miss Pew laughed a loud ironical laugh, a laugh which froze the blood of
all the seventeen-year-old pupils who were not without fear or reproach
upon the subject of clandestine glances, little notes, or girlish
carryings-on in the flirtation line.

'Engaged?' she exclaimed, in her stentorian voice, 'That is really too
good a joke. Engaged? Pray, which Mr. Brian Wendover is it?

'Mr. Wendover of the Abbey.'

'Mr. Wendover of the Abbey, the head of the Wendover family?' cried Miss
Pew. 'And you would wish us to believe that Mr. Wendover, of Wendover
Abbey--a gentleman with an estate worth something like seven thousand
a year, young ladies--has engaged himself to the youngest of my
pupil-teachers, whose acquaintance he has cultivated while trespassing on
my meadow? Miss Palliser, when a gentleman of Mr. Wendover's means and
social status wishes to marry a young person in your position--a
concatenation which occurs very rarely in the history of the human
race--he comes to the hall door. Mr. Wendover no more means to marry you
than he means to marry the moon. His views are of quite a different kind,
and you know it.'

Ida cast a withering look at her tyrant, and moved quickly from her
place.

'You are a wretch to say such a thing to me,' she cried passionately; 'I
will not stay another hour under your roof to be so insulted.'

'No, you will not stay under my roof, Miss Palliser,' retorted Miss Pew.
'My mind was made up more than an hour ago on that point. You will not be
allowed to stay in this house one minute longer than is needed for the
packing up of your clothes, and that, I take it,' added the
schoolmistress, with an insolent laugh, 'will not be a lengthy operation.
You are expelled, Miss Palliser--expelled from this establishment for
grossly improper conduct; and I am only sorry for your poor father's sake
that you will have to begin your career as a governess with disgrace
attached to your name.'

'There is no disgrace, except in your own foul mind,' said Ida. 'I can
imagine that as nobody ever admired you or made love to you when you
were young, you may have mistaken ideas as to the nature of lovers and
love-making'--despite the universal awe, this provoked a faint,
irrepressible titter--'but it is hard that you should revenge your
ignorance upon me. Mr. Wendover has never said a word to me which a
gentleman should not say. Fräulein Wolf, who has heard his every word,
knows that this is true.'

'Fräulein will leave this house to-morrow, if she is not careful,' said
Miss Pew, who had, however, no intention of parting with so useful and
cheap a teacher.

She could afford to revenge herself upon Ida, whose period of tutelage
was nearly over.

'Fräulein knows that Mr. Wendover speaks of our future as the future of
man and wife.'

'Ja wohl,' murmured the Fräulein, 'that is true; ganz und gan.'

'I will not hear another word!' cried Miss Pew, swelling with rage, while
every thorn and berry on her autumnal cap quivered. 'Ungrateful, impudent
young woman! Leave my house instantly. I will not have these innocent
girls perverted by your vile example. In speech and in conduct you are
alike detestable.'

'Good-bye, girls,' cried Ida, lightly: 'you all know how much harm my
speech and my example have done you. Good-bye, Fräulein; don't you be
afraid of dismissal,--you are too well worth your salt.'

Polly Cobb, the brewer's daughter, sat near the door by which Ida had to
make her exit. She was quite the richest, and perhaps the best-natured
girl in the school. She caught hold of Ida's gown and thrust a little
Russia-leather purse into her hand, with a tender squeeze.

'Take it, dear,' she whispered; 'I don't want it, I can get plenty more.
Yes, yes, you must; you shall. I'll make a row, and get myself into
disgrace, if you refuse. You can't go to France without money.'

'God bless you, dear. I'll send it you back,' answered Ida.

'Don't; I shall hate you if you do.'

'Is that young woman gone?' demanded Miss Pew's awful voice.

'Going, going, gone!' cried Miss Cobb, forgetting herself in her
excitement, as the door closed behind Ida.

'Who was that?' roared Miss Pew.

Half a dozen informants pronounced Miss Cobb's name.

Now Miss Cobb's people were wealthy, and Miss Cobb had younger sisters,
all coming on under a homely governess to that critical stage in which
they would require the polishing processes of Mauleverer Manor: so Sarah
Pew bridled her wrath, and said quietly--

'Kindly reserve your jocosity for a more appropriate season, Miss Cobb.
Young ladies, you may proceed with your matutinal duties.'




CHAPTER VIII.


AT THE LOCK-HOUSE.

Miss Pew had argued rightly that the process of packing would not be a
long one with Ida Palliser. The girl had come to Mauleverer with the
smallest number of garments compatible with decency; and her stock had
been but tardily and scantily replenished during her residence in that
manorial abode. It was to her credit that she had contrived still to be
clean, still to be neat, under such adverse conditions; it was Nature's
royal gift that she had looked grandly beautiful in the shabbiest gowns
and mantles ever seen at Mauleverer.

She huddled her poor possessions into her solitary trunk--a battered hair
trunk which had done duty ever since she came as a child from India. She
put a few necessaries into a convenient morocco bag, which the girls in
her class had clubbed their pocket-money to present to her on her last
birthday; and then she washed the traces of angry tears from her face,
put on her hat and jacket, and went downstairs, carrying her bag and
umbrella.

One of the housemaids met her in the hall, a buxom, good-natured country
girl.

'Is it true that you are going to leave us, miss?' she asked.

'What! you all know it already?' exclaimed Ida.

'Everybody is talking about it, miss. The young ladies are all on your
side; but they dare not speak up before Miss Pew.'

'I suppose not. Yes, it is quite true; I am expelled, Eliza; sent out
into the world without a character, because I allowed Mr. Wendover to
walk and talk with the Fräulein and me for half an hour or so in the
river-meadow! Mr. Wendover, my best, my only friend's first cousin.
Rather hard, isn't it?'

Hard? it's shameful,' cried the girl. 'I should like to see old Pew
turning me off for keeping company with my young man. But she daren't do
it. Good servants are hard to get nowadays; or any servants, indeed, for
the paltry wages she gives.'

'And governesses are a drug in the market,' said Ida, bitterly.
'Good-bye, Eliza.'

'Where are you going, miss? Home?'

'Yes; I suppose so.'

The reckless tone, the careless words alarmed the good-hearted housemaid.

'Oh, miss, pray go home, straight home--wherever your home is. You are
too handsome to be going about alone among strangers. It's a wicked
world, miss--wickeder than you know of, perhaps. Have you got money
enough to get you home comfortable?'

'I'll see,' answered Ida, taking out Miss Cobb's fat little purse and
looking into it.

There were two sovereigns and a good deal of silver--a tremendous fortune
for a schoolgirl; but then it was said that Cobb Brothers coined money by
the useful art of brewing.

'Yes; I have plenty of money for my journey,' said Ida.

'Are you certain sure, now, miss?' pleaded the housemaid; 'for if you
ain't, I've got a pound laid by in my drawer ready to put in the Post
Office Savings Bank, and you're as welcome to it as flowers in May, if
you'll take it off me.'

'God bless you, Eliza. If I were in any want of money, I'd gladly borrow
your sovereign; but Miss Cobb has lent me more than I want. Good-bye.'

Ida held out her hand, which the housemaid, after wiping her own paw upon
her apron, clasped affectionately.

'God bless you, Miss Palliser,' she said fervently; 'I shall miss the
sight of your handsome face when I waits at table.'

A minute more and Ida stood in the broad carriage sweep, with her back to
the stately old mansion which had sheltered her so long, and in which,
despite her dependency and her poverty, she had known some light-hearted
hours. Now, where was she to go? and what was she to do with her life?
She stood with the autumn wind blowing about her--the fallen chestnut
leaves drifting to her feet--pondering that question.

Was she or was she not Brian Wendover's affianced wife? How far was she
to trust in him, to lean upon him, in this crucial hour of her life?
There had been so much playfulness in their love-making, his tone had
been for the most part so light and sportive, that now, when she stood,
as it were, face to face with destiny, she hardly knew how to think of
him, whether as a rock that she might lean upon, or as a reed that would
give way at her touch. Rock or reed, womanly instinct told her that it
was not to this fervent admirer she must apply for aid or counsel yet
awhile. Her duty was to go home at once--to get across the Channel, if
possible, as quickly as Miss Pew's letter to her father.

Intent on doing this, she walked along the dusty high road by the river,
in the direction of the railway station. This station was more than two
miles distant, a long, straight walk by the river, and then a mile or so
across fields and by narrow lanes to an arid spot, where some newly-built
houses were arising round a hopeless-looking little loop-line station in
a desert of agricultural land.

She had walked about three-quarters of a mile, when she heard the rapid
dip of oars, as if in pursuit of her, and a familiar voice calling to
her.

It was Brian, who almost lived in his boat, and who had caught sight of
her in the distance, and followed at racing speed.

'What are you doing?' he asked, coming up close to the bank, and standing
up in his boat. 'Where are you going at such a pace? I don't think I ever
saw a woman walk so fast.'

'Was I walking fast?' she asked, unconscious of the impetus which
excitement had given to her movements.

She knew in her heart of hearts that she did not love him--that love--the
passion which she had read of in prose and poetry was still a stranger to
her soul: but just at this Moment, galled and stung by Miss Pew's
unkindness, heart-sick at her own absolute desolation, the sound of his
voice was sweet in her ears, the look of the tall slim figure, the
friendly face turned towards her, was pleasant to her eyes. No, he was
not a reed, he was a rock. She felt protected and comforted by his
presence.

'Were you walking fast! Galloping like a three-year-old--_quoe velut
latis equa trima campis_,' quoted Brian. 'Are you running away from
Mauleverer Manor?'

'I am going away,' she answered calmly. 'I have been expelled.'

'Ex--what?' roared Brian.

'I have been expelled--sent away at a minute's notice--for the
impropriety of my conduct in allowing you to talk to me in the
river-meadow.'

Brian had been fastening his boat to a pollard willow as he talked. He
leapt on to the bank, and came close to Ida's side.

'My darling, my dearest love, what a burning shame! What a villainous old
hag that Pew woman must be! Bessie told me she was a Tartar, but this
beats everything. Expelled! Your conduct impeached because you let me
talk to you--I, Bessie's cousin, a man who at the worst has some claim to
be considered a gentleman, while you have the highest claim to be
considered a lady. It is beyond all measure infamous.'

'It was rather hard, was it not?' said Ida quietly.

'Abominable, insufferable! I--well. I'll call upon the lady this
afternoon, and make her acquainted with my sentiments upon the subject.
The wicked old harridan.'

'Please don't,' urged Ida, smiling at his wrath; 'it doesn't give me any
consolation to hear you call her horrid names.'

'Did you tell her that I had asked you to be my wife?'

'I said something to that effect--in self-defence--not from any wish to
commit you: and she told me that a man in your position, who intended to
marry a girl in my position, would act in a very different manner from
the way in which you have acted.'

'Did she? She is a wise judge of human nature--and of a lover's nature,
above all. Well, Ida, dearest, we have only one course open to us, and
that is to give her the lie at once--by our conduct. Deeds, not words,
shall be our argument. You do care for me--just a little--don't you, pet?
just well enough to marry me? All the rest will come after?'

'Whom else have I to care for?' faltered Ida, with downcast eyes and
passionately throbbing heart. 'Who else has ever cared for me?'

'I am answered. So long as I am the only one I will confide all the rest
to Fate. We will be married to-morrow.'

'To-morrow! No, no, no.'

'Yes, yes, yes. What is there to hinder our immediate marriage? And what
can be such a crushing answer to that old Jezebel! We will be married at
the little church where I saw you last Sunday night, looking like St.
Cecilia when you joined in the Psalms. We have been both living in the
same parish for the last fortnight. I will run up to Doctors' Commons
this afternoon, bring back the licence, interview the parson, and have
everything arranged for our being married at ten o'clock to-morrow
morning.'

'No, no, not for the world.'

For some time the girl was firm in her refusal of such a hasty union. She
would not marry her lover except in the face of the world, with the full
consent of his friends and her own. Her duty was to go by the first train
and boat that would convey her to Dieppe, and to place herself in her
father's care.

'Do you think your father would object to our marriage?' asked Brian.

'No, I am sure he would not object,' she answered, smiling within herself
at the question.

As if Captain Palliser, living upon his half-pay, and the occasional
benefactions of a rich kinsman, could by any possibility object to a
match that would make his daughter mistress of Wendover Abbey!

'Then why delay our marriage, in order to formally obtain a consent which
you are sure of beforehand! As for my friends, Bessie's people are the
nearest and dearest, and you know what their feelings are on your
behalf.'

'Bessie likes me as her friend. I don't know how she might like me as her
cousin's wife,' said Ida.

'Then I will settle your doubts by telling you a little secret. Bessie
sent me here to try and win you for my wife. It was her desire as well as
mine.'

More arguments followed, and against the lover's ardent pleading there
was only a vague idea of duty in the girl's mind, somewhat weakened by an
instinctive notion that her father would think her an arrant fool for
delaying so grand a triumph as her marriage with a man of fortune and
position. Had he not often spoken to her wistfully of her beauty, and the
dim hope that her handsome face might some day win her a rich husband?

'It's a poor chance at the best,' he told her. 'The days of the Miss
Gunnings have gone by. The world has grown commercial. Nowadays money
marries money.'

And this chance, which her father had speculated upon despondently as a
remote contingency, was now at her feet. Was she to spurn it, and then go
back to the shabby little villa near Dieppe, and expect to be praised for
her filial duty?

While she wavered, Brian urged every argument which a lover could bring
to aid his suit. To-morrow they might be married, and in the meanwhile
Ida could be safely and comfortably housed with the good woman at the
lock-house. Brian would give up his lodgings to her, and would stay at
the hotel at Chertsey. Ida listened, and hesitated: before her lay the
dry, dusty road, the solitary journey by land and sea, the doubtful
welcome at home. And here by her side stood the wealthy lover, the very
embodiment of protecting power--is not every girl's first lover in her
eyes as Olympian Jove?--eager to take upon himself the burden of her
life, to make her footsteps easy.

'Step into the boat, dearest,' he said; 'I know your heart has decided
for me. You are not afraid to trust me, Ida?'

'Afraid? no,' she answered, frankly, looking at him with heavenly
confidence in her large dark eyes; 'I am only afraid of doing wrong.'

'You can do no wrong with me by your side, your husband to-morrow,
responsible for all the rest of your existence.'

'True, after to-morrow I shall be accountable to no one but you,' she
said, thoughtfully. 'How strange it seems!'

'At the worst, I hope you will find me better than old Pew,' answered
Brian, lightly.

'You are too good--too generous,' she said; 'but I am afraid you are
acting too much from impulse. Have you considered what you are going to
do? have you thought what it is to marry a penniless girl, who can give
you none of the things which the world cares for in exchange for your
devotion?'

'I have thought what it is to marry the woman I fondly love, the
loveliest girl these eyes ever looked upon. Step into my boat, Ida; I
must row you up to the lock, and then start for London by the first train
I can catch. I don't know how early the licence-shop closes.'

She obeyed him, and sank into a seat in the stern of the cockle-shell
craft, exhausted, mentally and physically, by the agitation of the last
two hours, She felt an unspeakable relief in sitting quietly in the boat,
the water rippling gently past, like a lullaby, the rushes and willows
waving in the mild western breeze. Henceforth she had little to do in
life but to be cared for and cherished by an all-powerful lord and
master. Wealth to her mind meant power; and this devoted lover was rich.
Fate had been infinitely kind to her.

It was a lovely October morning, warm and bright as August. The river
banks still seemed to wear their summer green, the blue bright water
reflected the cloudless blue above. The bells were ringing for a
saint's-day service as Brian's boat shot past the water-side village,
with its old square-towered church. All the world had a happy look, as if
it smiled at Ida and her choice.

They moved with an easy motion past the pastoral banks, here and there a
villa garden, here and there a rustic inn, and so beneath Chertsey's
wooded heights to the level fields beyond, and to a spot where the Thames
and the Abbey River made a loop round a verdant little marshy island; and
here was the silvery weir, brawling noisily in its ceaseless fall, and
the lockhouse, where Mr. Wendover had lodgings.

The proprietress of that neat abode had just been letting a boat through
the lock, and stood leaning lazily against the woodwork, tasting the
morning air. She was a comfortable, well-to-do person, who rented a
paddock or two by the towing-path, and owned cows. Her little garden was
gay with late geraniums and many-coloured asters.

'Mrs. Topman, I have brought you a young lady to take care of for the
next twenty-four hours,' said Brian, coolly, as he handed Ida out of the
boat. 'Miss Palliser and I are going to be married to-morrow morning;
and, as her friends all live abroad, I want you to take care of her, in a
nice, motherly way, till she and I are one. You can give her my rooms,
and I can put up at the inn.'

Mrs. Topman curtseyed, and gazed admiringly at Ida.

'I shall be proud to wait upon such a sweet young lady,' she said. 'But
isn't it rather sudden? You told me there was a young lady in the case,
but I never knowed you was going to be married off-hand like this.'

'I never knew it myself till an hour ago, Mrs. Topman, answered Brian,
gaily. 'I knew that I was to be one of the happiest of men some day; but
I did not know bliss was so near me. And now I am off to catch the next
train from Chertsey. Be sure you give Miss Palliser some breakfast; I
don't think she has had a very comfortable one.'

He dashed into the cottage, and came out again five minutes afterwards,
having changed his boating clothes for a costume more appropriate to the
streets of London. He clasped Ida's hand, murmured a loving good-bye, and
then ran with light footsteps along the towing-path, while Ida stood
leaning against the lock door looking dreamily down at the water.

How light-hearted he was! and how easily he took life! This marriage,
which was to her an awful thing, signifying fate and the unknown future,
seemed to him as a mere whim of the hour, a caprice, a fancy. And yet
there could be no doubt of his affection for her. Even if his nature was
somewhat shallow, as she feared it must be, he was at least capable of a
warm and generous attachment. To her in her poverty and her disgrace he
had proved himself nobly loyal.

'I ought to be very grateful to him,' she said to herself; and then in
her schoolgirl phrase she added, 'and he is very nice.'

Mrs. Topman was in the house, tidying and smartening that rustic
sitting-room, which had not been kept too neatly during Mr. Wendover's
occupation. Presently came the clinking of cups and saucers, and anon
Mrs. Topman appeared on the doorstep, and announced that breakfast was
ready.

What a luxurious breakfast it seemed to the schoolgirl after a month of
the Mauleverer bread and scrape! Frizzled bacon, new laid eggs, cream,
marmalade, and a dainty little cottage loaf, all served with exquisite
cleanliness. Ida was too highly strung to do justice to the excellent
fare, but she enjoyed a cup of strong tea, and ate one of the eggs, to
oblige Mrs. Topman, who waited upon her assiduously, palpably panting
with friendly curiosity.

'Do take off your hat, miss,' she urged; 'you must be very tired after
your journey--a long journey, I daresay. Perhaps you would like me to
send a boy with a barrow for your luggage directly after breakfast. I
suppose your trunks are at the station?'

'No; Mr. Wendover will arrange about my trunk by-and-by,' faltered Ida;
and then looking down at her well-worn gray cashmere gown, she thought
that it was hardly a costume in which to be married. Yet how was she to
get her box from Mauleverer Manor without provoking dangerous inquiries?
And even if she had the box its contents would hardly solve the question
of a wedding gown. Her one white gown would be too cold for the season;
her best gown was black. Would Brian feel very much ashamed of her, she
wondered, if she must needs be married in that shabby gray cashmere?

And then it occurred to her that possibly Brian, while procuring the
licence, might have a happy thought about a wedding gown, and buy her one
ready made at a London draper's. He, to whom money was no object, could
so easily get an appropriate costume. It would be only for him to go into
a shop and say, 'I want a neat, pretty travelling dress for a tall, slim
young lady,' and the thing would be packed in a box and put into his cab
in a trice. Everything in life is made so easy for people with ample
means.

It was some time before Mrs. Topman would consent to leave her new
lodger. She was so anxious to be of use to the sweet young lady, and
threw out as many feelers as an octopus in the way of artfully-devised
conjectures and suppositions calculated to extract information. But Miss
Palliser was not communicative.

'You _must_ be tired after your journey. Those railways are so hot and so
dusty,' said Mrs. Topman, with a despairing effort to discover whence her
unexpected guest had come that morning.

'I am rather tired,' admitted Ida; 'I think, if you don't mind, I'll take
a book and lie down on that comfortable sofa for an hour or two.'

'Do miss. You'll find some books of Mr. Wendover's on the cheffonier. But
perhaps you'll be glad to take a little nap. Shall I draw down the blind
and darken the room for you?'

'No, thanks; I like the sunshine.'

Mrs. Topman unwillingly withdrew, and Ida was alone in the sitting-room
which her lover had occupied for the last fortnight.

Much individuality can hardly be expected in a temporary lodging--a mere
caravansary in life's journey; and yet, even in the brief space of a
fortnight, a room takes some colour from the habits and ideas of the
being who has lived in it.

Ida looked round curiously, wondering whether she would discover any
indications of her lover's character in Mrs. Topman's parlour. The room,
despite its open casements, smelt strongly of tobacco. That was a small
thing, for Ida knew that her lover smoked. She had seen him several times
throw away the end of his cigar as he sprang from his boat by the river
meadow. But that array of various pipes and cigar-holders--that cedar
cigar box--that brass tobacco jar on the mantelpiece, hinted at an ardent
devotion to the nymph Nicotina such as is rarely pleasing to woman.

'I am sorry he is so wedded to his pipes,' thought Ida with a faint sigh.

And then she turned to the cheffonier to inspect her lover's stock of
literature.

A man who loves his books never travels without a few old
favourites--Horace or Montaigne, Elia, an odd volume of De Quincey, a
battered Don Juan, a worn-out Faust, a shabby Shelley, or a ponderous
Burton in his threadbare cloth raiment.

But there was not one such book among Mr. Wendover's possessions. His
supply of mental food consisted of a half a dozen shilling magazines, the
two last numbers of _Punch_, and three or four sporting papers. Ida
turned from them with bitter disappointment. She seemed to take the
measure of Brian Wendover's mind in that frivolous collection, and she
was deeply pained at the idea of his shallowness.

'What has he done with himself in the long evenings?' she asked herself.
'Has he done nothing but smoke and read those magazines?'

She took up the _Cornhill_, and found its graver essays uncut. It was the
same with the other magazines. Only the most frivolous articles had been
looked at. Mr. Wendover was evidently anything but a reading man.

'No wonder he does not like the Abbey,' she thought. 'The country must
always seem dull to a man who does not care for books.'

And then she reminded herself remorsefully of his generous affection, his
single-minded devotion to her, and how much gratitude she owed him.

She read all that was worth reading in the magazines, she laughed at all
that was laughable in _Punch,_ and the long, slow day wore on somehow.
Mrs. Topman brought her lunch, and consulted her about dinner.

'You will not dine until Mr. Wendover comes back, I suppose, miss? You
and he can have a nice little dinner together at seven.'

Ida blushed at the mere notion of hobnobbing alone with a gentleman in
that water-side lodging.

'No thanks; this will be my dinner,' she answered quietly. 'Please don't
get anything more for me. No doubt Mr. Wendover will dine at the hotel,
if he has not dined in London. I shall want nothing more except a cup of
tea.'

After luncheon Ida went out and strolled by the river, that river of
which no one ever seems to grow weary. She wandered about the level
meadows, where the last of the wild-flowers were blooming, or she sat on
the bank, watching the ripple of the water, the slow smooth passage of
pleasure-boat or barge, and the day was long but not dreary. It was so
new to her to be idle, to be able to fold her hands and watch the stream,
and not to fear reproof because she had ceased from toil. At Mauleverer,
at this tranquil afternoon hour, while those rooks were sailing so calmly
high above her head--yonder belated butterfly fluttering so happily over
the feathery grasses--all nature so full of rest--they were grinding away
in the hot schoolroom, grinding at the weekly geography lesson, addling
their brains with feeble efforts to repeat by rote dry-as-dust
explanations about the equator and the torrid zone, latitude, longitude,
winds and tides, the height of mountains, the population of towns,
manufactures, creeds; not trying in the least to understand, or caring to
remember; only intent on getting over to-day's trouble and preparing in
some wise to meet the debts of to-morrow.

'Oh, thank God, to have got away from that treadmill,' said Ida, looking
up at the bright blue sky;' can I ever be sufficiently grateful to
Providence, and to the man whose love has rescued me?'

Her deliverer came strolling across the fields in quest of her presently,
tired and dusty, but delighted to be with her again. He sat down by her
side, and put his arm round her waist for the first time in his life.

'Don't,' he said, as she instinctively recoiled from him; 'you are almost
my own now. I have got the licence, I have seen the parson, and he is
quite charmed at the idea of marrying us to-morrow morning. He had heard
of your little escapade, it seems, and he thinks we are doing quite the
wisest thing possible.'

'He had heard--already!' exclaimed Ida, deeply mortified. 'Has Miss Pew
been calling out my delinquencies from the house-top? Oh, no,--I
understand. Tuesday is Mr. Daly's afternoon for Bible class, and he has
been at the school.'

'Exactly; and Miss Pew unburdened her mind to him.'

'Did he think me a dreadful creature?'

'He thinks you charming, but that I ought to have gone to the hall-door
when I courted you; as I should have done, dearest, only I wanted to be
sure of you first. He was all kindness, and will marry us quietly at nine
o'clock to-morrow, just after Matins, when there will be nobody about to
stare at us; and he has promised to say nothing about our marriage until
we give him leave to make the fact public.'

'I am glad of that,' said Ida, looking at her shabby gown. 'Do you think
it will matter much--will you be very much ashamed of me, if I am married
in this threadbare old cashmere?'

She had a faint hope that he would exclaim, 'My love, I have brought you
a wedding dress from Regent Street; come and see it.' But he only smiled
at her tenderly, and said--

'The gown does not matter a jot; you are lovelier in your shabby frock
than any other bride in satin and pearls. And some of these days you
shall have smart frocks.'

He said it hopefully, but as if it were a remote contingency.

He spoke very much as her impecunious father might have spoken. He, the
master of Wendover Abbey, to whom the possession of things that money
could buy must needs be a dead certainty. But it was evidently a part of
his character to make light of his wealth; assuredly a pleasant
idiosyncrasy.

They dawdled about on the bank for half an hour or so, talking somewhat
listlessly, for Ida was depressed and frightened by the idea of that
fateful event, giving a new colour to all her life to come, which was so
soon to happen. Brian was very kind, very good to her; she wished with
all her heart that she had loved him better; yet it seemed to her that
she did love him--a little. Surely this feeling was love, this keen sense
of obligation, this warm admiration for his generous and loyal conduct.
Yes, this must be love. And why, loving him, should she feel this
profound melancholy at the idea of a marriage which satisfied her
loftiest ambition?

Perhaps the cause of her depression lay in the strangeness of this sudden
union, its semi-clandestine character, her loneliness at a crisis in life
when most girls are surrounded by friends. Often in her reckless talk
with Bessie Wendover she had imagined her marriage. She would marry for
money. Yes, the soap-boiler, the candlestick maker--anybody. It should be
a splendid wedding--a dozen of the prettiest girls at Mauleverer for her
bridesmaids, bells ringing, flowers strewn upon her pathway, carriage and
four, postilions in blue jackets and white favours, all the world and his
wife looking on and wondering at her high fortune. This is how fancy
had painted the picture when Ida discoursed of her future in the
butterfly-room at Mauleverer; Miss Rylance listening and making sarcastic
comments; Bessie in fits of smothered laughter at all the comic touches
in the description; for did not true-hearted Bessie know that the thing
was a joke, and that her noble Ida would never so degrade herself as to
marry for money? And now Ida was going to do this thing, scarcely knowing
why she did it, not at all secure in her own mind of future happiness;
not with unalloyed pride in her conquest, but yielding to her lover
because he was the first who had ever asked her; because he was warm and
true when all else in life seemed cold and false; and because the
alternative--return to the poor home--was so dreary.

The conversation flagged as the lovers walked in the twilight. The sun
was sinking behind the low hedge of yonder level meadow. Far away in
mountainous regions the same orb was setting in rocky amphitheatres,
distant, unapproachable. Here in this level land he seemed to be going
down into a grave behind that furthest hedge.

It was a lovely evening--orange and rosy lights reflected on the glassy
river, willows stirred with a murmurous movement by faintest zephyrs--a
wind no louder than a sigh. Brian proposed that they should go on the
river; his boat was there ready, it was only to step into the light
skiff, and drift lazily with the stream.

They got into the Abbey river, among water-lilies whose flowers had all
died long ago, face downwards. The season of golden flowers, buttercup,
marsh-mallow, was over. The fields were grayish-green, with ruddy tinges
here and there. The year was fading.

Ida sat in dead silence watching the declining light, one listless hand
dipping in the river.

Brian was thoughtful, more thoughtful than she had known him in any
period of their acquaintance.

'Where shall we go for our honeymoon? he asked abruptly, jingling some
loose coins in his pocket.

'Oh, that is for you to decide. I--I know what I should like best,'
faltered Ida.

'What is that?'

'I should like you to take me to Dieppe, where we could see my father,
and explain everything to him.'

'Did you write to him to-day?'

'No; I thought I would tell him nothing till after our marriage. You
might change your mind at the last.'

'Cautious young party,' said Brian, laughing. 'There is no fear of that.
I am too far gone in love for that. For good or ill I am your faithful
slave. Yes, we will go to Dieppe if you like. It is late in the year for
a place of that kind; but what do we care for seasons? Do you think your
father and I will be able to get on?'

'My father is the soul of good nature. He would get on with anyone who
is a gentleman, and I am sure he will like you very much. My stepmother
is--well, she is rather vulgar. But I hope you won't mind that. She is
very warm-hearted.'

'Vulgarians generally are, I believe,' answered Brian lightly. 'At least,
one is always told as much. It is hard that the educated classes should
monopolize all the cold hearts. Vulgar but warm-hearted--misplaces her
aspirates--but affectionate! That is the kind of thing one is told when
Achilles marries a housemaid. Never mind, Ida, dearest, I feel sure I
shall like your father; and for his sake I will try to make myself
agreeable to his wife. And your little brother is perfection. I have
heard enough about him from those dear lips of yours.'

'He is a darling little fellow, and I long to see him again. How I wish
they could all be with me to-morrow!'

'It would make our wedding more domestic, but don't you think it would
vulgarize it a little?' said Brian. 'There is something so sweet to me in
the idea of you and me alone in that little church, with no witnesses but
the clerk and the pew-opener.'

'And God!' said Ida, looking upward.

'Did you ever read the discourses of Colonel Bob Ingersoll?' asked Brian,
smiling at her.

'No; what has that to do with it?'

'He has curious ideas of omnipotence; and I fancy he would say that the
Infinite Being who made every shining star is hardly likely to be on the
look-out for our wedding.'

'He cares for the lilies and the sparrows.'

'That's a gospel notion. Colonel Bob is not exactly a gospel teacher,'

'Then don't you learn of him, Brian,' said Ida, earnestly.




CHAPTER IX.


A SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.

The sun shone upon Ida's wedding morn. She was dressed and down before
seven--her shabby cashmere gown carefully brushed, her splendid hair
neatly arranged, her linen collar and cuffs spotlessly clean. This was
all she could do in the way of costume in honour of this solemn day. She
had not even a new pair of gloves. Mrs. Topman, who was to go to church
with her in a fly from Chertsey, was gorgeous in purple silk and a summer
bonnet--a grand institution, worn only on Sundays. Breakfast was ready in
the neat little parlour, but Ida would only take a cup of tea. She
wandered out to the river-side, and looked at the weir and the little
green island round which the shining blue water twined itself like a
caress. All things looked lovely in the pure freshness of morning.

'What a sweet spot it is!' said Ida to Mrs. Topman, who stood at her
gate, watching for the fly, which was not due for half an hour; 'I should
almost like to spend my life here.'

'Almost, but not quite,' answered the matron. 'Young folks like you wants
change. But I hope you and Mr. Wendover will come here sometimes in the
boating season, in memory of old times.'

'We'll come often,' said Ida; 'I hope I shall always remember how kind
you have been to me.'

A distant church clock struck the half hour.

'Only half-past seven,' exclaimed Mrs. Topman, 'and Simmons's fly is not
to be here till eight. Well, we _are_ early.'

Ida strolled a little way along the bank, glad to be alone. It was an
awful business, this marriage, when she came to the very threshold of
Hymen's temple. Yesterday it had seemed to her that she and Brian
Wendover were familiar friends; to-day she thought of him almost as a
stranger.

'How little we know of each other, and yet we are going to take the most
solemn vow that ever was vowed,' she thought, as she read the marriage
service in a Prayer-book which Mrs. Topman had lent her for that purpose.

'It's as well to read it over and understand what you're going to bind
yourself to,' said the matron; 'I did before I married Topman. It made me
feel more comfortable in my mind to know what I was doing. But I must say
it's high time there was a change made in the service. It never can have
been intended by Providence for all the obedience to be on the wife's
side, or God Almighty wouldn't have made husbands such fools. If Topman
hadn't obeyed me he'd have died in a workhouse; and if I'd obeyed his I
shouldn't have a stick of furniture belonging to me.'

Ida was not deeply interested in the late Mr. Topman's idiosyncrasies,
but she was interested in the marriage bond, which seemed to her a very
solemn league and covenant, as she read the service beside the quietly
flowing river.

'For better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish, till death us do part.'

Yes, those were awful words--words to be pronounced by her presently,
binding her for the rest of her life. She who was marrying a rich man for
the sake of his wealth was to swear to be true to him in poverty. She who
was marrying youth and good spirits was to swear to be true to sickness
and feeble age. A terrible covenant! And of this man for whom she was to
undertake so much she knew so little.

The fly drove along the towing-path, and drew up in front of Mrs.
Topman's garden gate as the Chertsey clocks struck the hour, and Mrs.
Topman and her charge took their places in that vehicle, and were jolted
off at a jog-trot pace towards the town, and then on by a dusty high road
towards that new church in the fields at which the Mauleverer girls
deemed it such a privilege to worship.

It was about forty minutes' drive from the lock to the church, and Matins
were only just over when the fly drew up at the Gothic door.

The incumbent was hovering near in his surplice, and the pew-opener was
all in a fluster at the idea of a runaway marriage. Brian came out of the
dusky background--the daylight being tempered by small painted windows in
heavy stone mullions--as Ida entered the church. Everything was ready.
Before she knew how it came to pass, she was standing before the altar,
and the fatal words were being spoken.

'Brian Walford, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?'

'Brian Walford!' she heard the words as in a dream. Surely Walford was
the second name of Bessie's other cousin, the poor cousin! Ida had heard
Bessie so distinguish him from the master of the Abbey. But no doubt
Walford was some old family name borne by both cousins.

Brian Walford! She had not much time to think about this, when the same
solemn question was asked of her.

And then in a low and quiet voice the priest read the rest of the
time-hallowed ceremonial, and Brian and Ida, glorified by a broad ray of
morning sunshine streaming through an open window, stood up side by side
man and wife.

Then came the signing of the register in the snug little vestry, Mrs.
Topman figuring largely as witness.

'I did not know your name was Walford,' said Ida, looking over her
husband's shoulder as he wrote.

'Didn't you? Second names are of so little use to a man, unless he has
the misfortune to be Smith or Jones, and wants to borrow dignity from a
prefix. Wendover is good enough for me.'

The young couple bade Mrs. Topman good-bye at the churchdoor. The fly was
to take them straight to the station, on the first stage of their
honeymoon trip.

'You know where to send my luggage,' Brian said to his landlady at
parting.

'Yes, sir, I've got the address all right;' and the fly drove along
another dusty high road, still within sight of the river, till it turned
at right angles into a bye road leading to the station.

At that uncongenial place they had to wait a quarter of an hour, walking
up and down the windy platform, where the porter abandoned himself to the
contemplation of occasional rooks, and was sometimes surprised by the
arrival of a train for which he had waited so long as to have become
sceptical as to the existence of such things as trains in the scheme of
the universe. The station was a terminus, and the line was a loop, for
which very few people appeared to have any necessity.

'Would you mind telling me where we are going, Brian?' Ida asked her
husband presently, when they had discussed the characteristics of the
station, and Brian had been mildly facetious about the porter.

She had grown curiously shy since the ceremonial. Her lover seemed to her
transformed into another person by those fateful words. He was now the
custodian of her life, the master of her destiny.

'Would I mind telling you, my dearest? What a question! You proposed
Dieppe for our honeymoon, and we are going to Dieppe.'

'Does this train go to Newhaven?'

'Not exactly. Nothing in this life is so convenient as that. This train
will deposit us at Waterloo Station. The train for Newhaven leaves London
Bridge at seven, in time for the midnight boat. We will go to my chambers
and have some lunch.'

'Chambers!' exclaimed Ida, wonderingly. 'Have you really chambers in
London?'

'Yes.'

'What a strange man you are!'

'That hardly indicates strangeness. But here at last is our train.'

A train had come slowly in and deposited its handful of passengers about
ten minutes ago, and the same train was now ready to start in the
opposite direction.

Ida and her husband got into an empty first-class compartment and the
train moved slowly off. And now that they were alone, as it were within
four walls, she summoned up courage to say something that had been on her
mind for the last quarter of an hour--a very hard thing for a bride of an
hour old to say, yet which must be said somehow.

'Would you mind giving me a little money, while we are in London, to buy
some clothes?' she began hesitatingly. 'It is a dreadful thing to have to
ask you, when, if I were not like the beggar girl in the ballad, I should
have a trousseau. But I don't know when I may get my box from Mauleverer,
and when I do most of the things in it are too shabby for your wife; and
in the meantime I have nothing, and I should not like to disgrace you, to
make you feel ashamed of me while we are on our honeymoon tour.'

She sat with downcast eyes and flaming cheeks, deeply humiliated by her
position, hating her poverty more than she had ever hated it in her life
before. She felt that this rich husband of hers had not been altogether
kind to her--that he might by a little forethought have spared her this
shame. He must have known that she had neither clothes nor money. He who
had such large means had done nothing to sweeten her poverty. On this her
wedding morning he had brought her no gift save the ring which the law
prescribed. He had not brought her so much as a flower by way of
greeting; yet she knew by the gossip of her schoolfellows that it was the
custom for a lover to ratify his engagement by some splendid ring, which
was ever afterwards his betrothed's choicest jewel. The girls had talked
of their elder sisters' engagement-rings: how one had diamonds, another
rubies, another catseyes, more distinguished and artistic than either.

And now she sat with drooping eyelids, expecting her lover-husband to
break into an outburst of self-reproach, then pour a shower of gold into
her lap. But he did neither. He rattled some loose coins in his pocket,
just as he had done yesterday when he talked of the honeymoon; and he
answered hesitatingly, with evident embarrassment.

'Yes, you'll want some new clothes, I daresay. All girls do when they
marry, don't they? It's a kind of unwritten law--new husband, new gowns.
But I'm sure you can't look better than you do in that gray gown, and
it looks to me just the right thing for travelling. And for any other
little things you may want for the moment, if a couple of sovereigns will
do'--producing those coins--'you can get anything you like as we drive to
my chambers. We could stop at a draper's on our way.'

Ida was stricken dumb by this reply. Her cheeks changed from crimson to
pale. Her wealthy husband--the man whose fortune was to give her all
those good things she had ever pictured to herself in the airy visions of
a splendid future--offered her, with a half-reluctant air, as if offering
his life's blood, two sovereigns with which to purchase a travelling
outfit. What could she buy for two sovereigns? Not all the economy of her
girlhood could screw half the things she wanted out of that pitiful sum.

She thought of all those descriptions of weddings which were so eagerly
devoured at Mauleverer, whenever a fashionable newspaper fell in the way
of those eager neophytes. She recalled the wonderful gifts which the
bridegroom and the bridegroom's friends showered on the bride--the
glorious gown and bonnet in which the bride departed on her honeymoon
journey. And she was offered two sovereigns, wherewith to supply herself
with all things needful for comfort and respectability.

Pride gave her strength to refuse the sordid boon. She had the contents
of her small travelling bag, and she was going to her father's house,
where her step-mother would, perhaps, contrive to provide what was
absolutely necessary. Anything was better than to be under an obligation
to this rich husband who so little understood her needs.

Could she have married that most detestable of all monsters, a miser? No,
she could hardly believe that. It was not in a Wendover to be mean. And
all that she had observed hitherto of Brian's way of acting and thinking
rather indicated a recklessness about money than an undue care of pounds,
shillings, and pence.

'If you don't object to this gown and hat, I can manage very well till we
get to my father's house,' she said quietly.

'I adore you in that hat and gown,' replied Brian, eagerly, dropping the
sovereigns back into his pocket; and so the question was settled.

An elderly lady came into the carriage at the next station, and there was
no renewal of confidences between bride and bridegroom till they came to
Waterloo, nor even then, for there is not much opportunity for
confidential utterances in a hansom, and it was that convenient vehicle
which carried Brian and his bride to the Temple.

They alighted at a gate on the Embankment, and made their way by a garden
to a row of grave old houses, with a fine view of the river. Brian led
his wife into one of these houses and up the uncarpeted stair to the
third floor, where he ushered her into a room with two old-fashioned
windows looking out upon grass, and trees, and old-fashioned buildings,
all grave and gray, and having an air of sober peacefulness, as of a
collegiate or monastic seclusion, while beyond the broad green lawn shone
the broad blue river.

'What a nice old place!' said Ida, looking down at the garden. 'How
quiet, how grave, how learned-looking! I don't wonder you like this
_pied-à-terre_ in London, as a change from your grand old Abbey.'

Brian gave a little nervous cough, as if something were choking him. He
came to the window, and put his arm round his wife's waist.

'Ida,' he began, somewhat huskily, 'I am going to tell you a secret.'

'What is that?' she asked, turning and looking at him.

'The Abbey does not belong to me!'

'What?' she cried, with wide-open eyes.

'You have been rather fond of talking about the Abbey; but I hope your
heart is not too much set upon it. You told me the other day, you know,
that you did not value me upon account of the Abbey or my position as its
owner. I hope that was the truth, Ida; for Wendover Abbey belongs to my
cousin. You have married the poor Brian and not the rich one!'

'What?' she cried. 'You have lied to me all this time--you have fooled
and deluded me!'

She turned and faced him with eyes that flamed indignant fire, lips that
quivered with unrestrained passion.

'It was not my doing,' he faltered, shrinking before her like the veriest
craven; 'it was the girls--Urania and Bessie--who started the notion as a
practical joke, just to see what you would think of me, believing me to
be my cousin. And when you seemed to like me--a little--Bessie, who is
fond of me and who adores you, urged me to follow up my advantage.'

'But not to cheat me into a marriage. No; it is not in Bessie to suggest
such falsehood.'

'She hardly contemplated an immediate marriage. I was to win your heart,
and when I was sure of that--'

'You were to tell me the truth,' said Ida, looking him straight in the
eyes.

His head drooped upon his breast.

'And you did not tell me. You knew that I saw in you Brian Wendover, the
head of the family, the owner of a great estate; that I was proud of
being loved and sought by a man who stooped from such a high position to
love me, who renounced the chance of a brilliant marriage to marry me, a
penniless body! You knew that it was in that character I admired you
and respected you, and was grateful to you! Not as the briefless
barrister--the man without means or position!'

'You harped a good deal upon the Abbey. But I had some right to suppose
you liked me for my own sake, and that you would forgive me for a
stratagem which was prompted by my love for you. How could I know that
you looked upon marriage as a matter of exchange and barter?'

'No,' said Ida, bitterly. 'You are right. You could not know how mean I
am. I did not know it myself till now. And now,' she pursued, with
flashing eyes, with a look in her splendid face that seemed to blight and
wither him, with all her beauty, all her womanhood, up in arms against
him, 'and now to punish you for having kept the truth from me, I will
tell _you_ the truth--plainly. I have never cared one straw for you. I
thought I did while I still believed you Brian Wendover of the Abbey. I
was dazzled by your position; I was grateful in advance for all the good
things that your wealth was to bring me. I tried to delude myself into
the belief that I really loved you; but the voice of my conscience told
me that it was not so, that I was, in sober truth, the basest of
creatures--a woman who marries for money. And now, standing here before
you, I know what a wretch I seem--what a wretch I am.'

'You are my wife,' said Brian, trying to take her hand; 'and we must both
make the best of a bad bargain.'

'Your wife?' she echoed, in a mocking voice.

'Yes, my very wife, Ida. The knot that was tied to-day can only be
loosened by death--or dishonour.'

'You have married me under a false name.'

'No, I have not. You married Brian Walford Wendover. There is no other
man of that name.'

'You have cheated me into a miserable marriage. I will never forgive that
cheat. I will never acknowledge you as my husband. I will never bear your
name, or be anything to you but a stranger, except that I shall hate you
all the days of my life. That will be the only bond between us,' she
added, with a bitter laugh.

'Come, Ida,' said Brian, soothingly, feeling himself quite able to face
the situation now the first shock was over, 'I was prepared for you to be
disappointed--to be angry, even; but you are carrying matters a little
too far. Even your natural disappointment can hardly excuse such language
as this. I am the same man I was yesterday morning when I asked you to
marry me.'

'No, you are not. I saw you in a false light--glorified by attributes
that never belonged to you.'

'In plain words, you thought me the owner of a big house and a fine
income. I am neither; but I am the same Brian Wendover, for all that--a
briefless barrister, but with some talent; not without friends; and with
as fair a chance of success as most young men of my rank.'

'You are an idler--I have heard that from your uncle--self-indulgent,
fond of trivial pleasures. Such men never succeed in life. But if you
were certain to be Lord Chancellor--if you could this moment prove
yourself possessed of a splendid fortune--my feelings would be unchanged.
You have lied to me as no gentleman would have lied. I will own no
husband who is not a gentleman.'

'You carry things with a high hand,' said Brian, with sullen wrath; and
then love prevailed over anger, and he flung himself on his knees at her
feet, clasping her reluctant hands, urging every impassioned argument
which young lips could frame; but to all such prayers she was marble.
'You are my wife,' he pleaded; 'you are my snared bird; your wings are
netted, darling. Do you think I will let you go? Yes, I was false, but it
was love made me deceive you. I loved you so well that I dared not risk
losing you.'

'You have lost me for ever,' she cried, breaking from him and moving
towards the door; 'perhaps, had you been loyal and true, you might have
taught me to love you for your own sake. Women are easier won by truth
than falsehood.'

'It seems to me they are easier won by houses and lands,' answered Brian,
with a sneer.

And then he followed her to the door, caught her in his arms, and held
her against his passionately beating heart, covering her angry face with
kisses.

'Let me go!' she cried, tearing herself from his arms, with a shriek of
horror; 'your kisses are poison to me. I hate you--I hate you!'

He recoiled a few paces, and stood looking at her with a countenance in
which the passionate love of a moment ago gave place to gloomy anger.

'So be it,' he said; 'if we cannot be friends we must be enemies. You
reveal your character with an admirable candour. You did not mind
marrying a man who was absolutely repulsive to you--whose kisses are
poison--so long as you thought he was rich. But directly you are told he
is poor you inform him of your real sentiments with a delightful
frankness. Suppose this confession of mine were a hoax, and that I really
were the wealthy Brian after all--playing off a practical joke to test
your feelings--what a sorry figure you would cut!'

'Despicable,' said Ida, with her hand on the handle of the door. 'Yes, I
know that. I despise and loathe myself as much as I despise and loathe
you. I have drained the cup of poverty to the dregs, and I languished for
the elixir of wealth. When you asked me to marry you, I thought Fate had
thrown prosperity in my way--that it would be to lose the golden chance
of a lifetime if I refused you.'

'Not much gold about it,' said Brian, lightly.

He had one of those shallow natures to which the tragedy of life is
impossible. He was disappointed--angry at the turn which affairs had
taken; but he was not reduced to despair. To take things easily had been
his complete code of morals and philosophy from earliest boyhood. He was
not going to break his heart for any woman, were she the loveliest, the
cleverest, the noblest that ever the gods endowed with their choicest
gifts. She might be ever so fair, but if she were not fair for him she
was, in a manner, non-existent. Life, in his philosophy, was too short to
be wasted in following phantoms.

'You must have thought me a mean cad this morning, when I offered you a
couple of sovereigns,' he said; 'yet they constituted a third of my
worldly possessions, and I was sorely puzzled how we were to get to
Dieppe on less than four pounds. I have been living from hand to mouth
ever since I left the university, picking up a few pounds now and then by
literature, writing criticisms for a theatrical journal, and so on--by no
means a brilliant living. Perhaps, after all, it is as well you take
things so severely,' he added, with a sneer. 'If we had been well
disposed towards each other, we must have starved.'

'I could have lived upon a crust with a husband whom I loved and
respected; but not with a man who could act a lie, as you did,' said Ida.

She took her bag from the chair where Brian had thrown it as they entered
the room, and went out on the landing.

'Good-bye, Mrs. Wendover,' he called after her; 'let me know if I can
ever be of any use to you.'

She was going downstairs by this time, and he was looking down at her
across the heavy old banister rail.

'I suppose you are going straight to your father's?'

'Yes.'

'Hadn't you better stop and have some lunch? The train doesn't go for
hours.'

'No, thanks.'

The gray gown fluttered against the sombre brown panelling as his
wife turned the corner of the lower landing and disappeared from his
view--perhaps for ever.

Brian went back to his room, and stood in the middle of it, looking
round him with a contemplative air. It was a pleasant room, arranged
with rather a dandified air--pipes, walking-sticks, old engravings,
_bric-à-brac_--the relics of his college life.

'Well, if she had been more agreeable, I should have had to get new
rooms, and that would have been a bore,' he said to himself; and then he
sank into a chair, gave a laugh that was half a sob, and wiped a mist of
tears from his eyes.

'What fools we have both been!' he muttered to himself, 'I knew she was
in love with the Abbey; but I don't believe a word she says about hating
me!'

And yet--and yet--she had seemed very much in earnest when she tore
herself from his arms with that agonized shriek.




CHAPTER X.


A BAD PENNY.

Ida made her way back to the Embankment somehow, hardly knowing where she
was going or what she was going to do. The airy castle which she had
built for herself had fallen about her ears, and she was left standing
amidst the ruins. Wendover Abbey, wealth, position, independence, the
world's respect, were all as far from her as they had been a month ago.
Her sense of disappointment was keen, but not so keen as the sense of her
self-abasement. Her own character stood revealed, to herself in all its
meanness--its sordid longing for worldly wealth--its willingness to
stoop to falsehood in the pursuit of a woman's lowest aim, a good
establishment. Seen in the light of abject failure, the scheme of her
life seemed utterly detestable. Success would have gilded everything. As
the wife of the rich Brian she would have done her duty in all wifely
meekness and obedience, and would have gone down to the grave under
the comforting delusion that she had in no wise forfeited honour or
self-respect. Cheated, duped, degraded, she now felt all the infamy
implied in her willingness to marry a man for whom she cared not a straw.

'Oh, it was cruel, iniquitous,' she said to herself, as she hurried along
the dusty pavement, impelled by agitated thoughts, 'to trade upon my
weakness--my misery--to see me steeped to the lips in odious poverty,
and to tempt me with the glitter of wealth. I never pretended to love
him--never--thank God for that! I let him tell me that he loved me, and I
consented to be his wife; but I pretended no love on my side. Thank God
for that! He cannot say that I lied to him.'

She hurried along, citywards, following the stream of people, and found
herself presently in broad, busy Queen Victoria Street, with all the
traffic hastening by her, staring helplessly at the cabs, and omnibuses,
waggons, carriages streaming east and west under the murky London sky,
vaguely wondering what she was to do next.

He--her husband--had asked her if she were going back to her father, and
she had said 'Yes.' Indeed it was the only course open to her. She must
go home and face the situation, and accept any paternal reproof that
might be offered her. She had lost a day. No doubt Miss Pew's indictment
would have arrived before her; and she would have to explain her conduct
to father and step-mother. But the little white-walled house near Dieppe
was the only shelter the universe held for her, and she must go there.

'Wendover Abbey!' she repeated to herself. I the mistress of Wendover
Abbey! That was too good a joke, 'Why did I not see the folly of such a
dream? But it was just like other dreams. When one dreams one is a queen,
or that one can fly, there is no consciousness of the absurdity of the
thing.'

She stood staring at the omnibuses till the conductor of one that was
nearly empty murmured invitingly in her ear, 'London Bridge?'

It was the place to which she wanted to go. She nodded to the man, who
opened his door and let her in.

She was at the station at a quarter to four, and the train for Newhaven
did not leave till seven--a long dismal stretch of empty time to be lived
through. But she could not improve her situation by going anywhere else.
The station, with its dingy waiting-rooms and garish refreshment-room,
was as good an hotel for her as any other. She was faint for want of
food, having taken nothing since her apology for breakfast at seven
o'clock.

'Can one get a cup of tea here?' she asked of the dry-as-dust matron in
charge of the waiting-room; whereupon the matron good-naturedly offered
to fetch her some tea.

'If you would be so kind,' she faltered, too exhausted to speak above a
whisper; 'I don't like going into that crowded refreshment-room.'

'No, to be sure--not much used to travelling alone, I daresay. You will
be better when you've had a cup of tea.'

The tea, with a roll and butter, revived exhausted nature. Ida paid for
this temperate refreshment, went to the booking-office, made some
inquiries about her ticket, and bought herself a book at the stall,
wherewith to beguile the time and to distract her mind from brooding on
its own miseries.

She felt it was a frightful extravagance as she paid away two of Miss
Cobb's shillings for Bulwer's 'Caxtons;' but she felt also that to live
through those three tedious hours without such aid would be a step on the
road to a lunatic asylum.

Armed with her book, she went back to the waiting-room, settled herself
in a corner of the sofa, and remained there absorbed, immovable; while
travellers came and went, all alike fussy, flurried, and full of their
own concerns--not one of them stopping to notice the pale, tired-looking
girl reading in the remotest corner of the spacious room.

A somewhat stormy passage brought the boat which carried Ida and her
fortunes to straggling, stony, smelly Dieppe, now abandoned to its native
population, and deprived of that flavour of fashion which pervades its
beach in the brighter months of August and September. The town looked
gray, cold, and forbidding in the bleak October morning, when Ida found
herself alone amidst its stoniness, the native population only just
beginning to bestir itself in the street above the quay, and making
believe, by an inordinate splashing and a frantic vehemence in the use of
birch-brooms, to be the cleanest population under the sun; an assertion
of superiority somewhat belied by an all-pervading odour of decomposed
vegetable matter, a small heap of which refuse, including egg-shells and
fishy offal--which the town in the matutinal cleansing process offered up
to the sun-god as incense upon an altar--lay before every door, to be
collected by the local scavenger at his leisure, or to be blown about and
disseminated by the winds of heaven.

Alone upon the stony quay, in the freshness and chilliness of early
morning, Ida took temporary refuge in the humblest _café_ she could find,
where a feeble old woman was feebly brooming the floor, and where there
was no appearance of any masculine element. Here she expended another of
Miss Cobb's shillings upon a cup of coffee and a roll. She had spent five
and twenty shillings for her second-class ticket. The debt to Miss Cobb
now amounted to a sovereign and a half; and Ida Palliser thought of it
with an aching sense of her own helplessness to refund so large a sum.
Yesterday morning, believing herself about to become the wife of a rich
man, she had thought what fun it would be to send 'Cobby' a five-pound
note in the prettiest of ivory purses from one of those shops in the
street yonder.

She drank her coffee slowly, not anxious to hasten the hour of a
home-coming which could not be altogether pleasant. She was as fond of
her father as adverse circumstances had allowed her to be; she adored her
half-brother, and was not unkindly disposed towards her step-mother. But
to go back to them penniless, threadbare, disgraced--go back to be a
burden upon their genteel poverty. That was bitter.

She had made up her mind to walk to Les Fontaines rather than make any
further inroad upon Miss Cobb's purse for coach-hire. What was she that
she should be idle or luxurious, or spare the labour of her young limbs?
She went along the narrow stony street where the shops were only now
being opened, past the wide market where the women were setting out their
stalls in front of the fine old church, and where Duguesclin, heroic and
gigantic, defied the stormy winds that had ruffled his sculptured hair.

Two years and a half ago it had been a treat to her to walk in that
market-place, hanging on her father's arm, to stand in the sombre
stillness of that solemn cathedral, while the organ rolled its
magnificent music along the dusky aisles. They two had chaffered for
fruit at those stalls, laughing gaily with the good-tempered
countrywomen. They had strolled on the beach and amused themselves
economically, from the outside, with the diversions of the
_établissement_. An afternoon in Dieppe had meant fun and holiday-making.
Now she looked at the town with weary eyes, and thought how dull and
shabby it had grown.

The walk to Les Fontaines, along a white dusty road, seemed interminable.
If she had not been told again and again that it was only four miles from
the town to the village, she would have taken the distance for eight--so
long, so weary, seemed the way. There were hills in the background, hills
right and left of her, orchards, glimpses of woodland--here and there a
peep of sea--pretty enough road to be whirled along in a comfortable
carriage with a fast horse, but passing flat, stale, and unprofitable to
the heavy-hearted pedestrian.

At last the little straggling village, the half-dozen new houses--square
white boxes, which seemed to have been dropped accidentally in square
enclosures of ragged garden--white-walled penitentiaries on a small
scale, deriving an air of forced liveliness from emerald-green shutters,
here a tree, and there a patch of rough grass, but never a flower--for
the scarlet geraniums in the plaster vases on the wall of the grandest of
the mansions had done blooming, and beyond scarlet geraniums on the wall
the horticultural taste of Les Fontaines had never risen. The old
cottages, with heavy thatched roofs and curious attic windows, with fruit
trees sprawling over the walls, and orchards in the rear, were better
than the new villas; but even these lacked the neatness and picturesque
beauty of an English cottage in a pastoral landscape. There was a shabby
dustiness, a barren, comfortless look about everything; and the height of
ugliness was attained in the new church, a plastered barn, with a gaudily
painted figure of our Blessed Lady in a niche above the door, all red and
blue and gold, against the white-washed wall.

Ida thought of Kingthorpe,--the rustic inn with its queer old gables,
shining lattices, quaint dovecots, the green, the pond, with its willowy
island, the lovely old Gothic church--solid, and grave, and gray--calm
amidst the shade of immemorial yews. The country about Les Fontaines was
almost as pretty as that hilly region between Winchester and Romsey; but
the English village was like a gem set in the English landscape, while
the French village was a wart on the face of a smiling land.

'Why call it Les Fontaines?' Ida wondered, in her parched and dusty
weariness. 'It is the dryest village I ever saw; and I don't believe
there is anything like a fountain within a mile.'

Her father's house was one of the white boxes with green shutters. It
enjoyed a dignified seclusion behind a plaster wall, which looked as if
anyone might knock it down in very wantonness. The baby-boy had varied
the monotony of his solitary sports by picking little bits out of it.
There was a green door opening into this walled forecourt or garden,
but the door was not fastened, so Ida pushed it open and went in. The
baby-boy, now a sturdy vagabond of five years old, was digging an empty
flower-bed. He caught sight of his sister, and galloped off into the
house before she could take him in her arms, shouting, 'Maman, une
dame--une dame! lady, lady, lady!' exercising his lungs upon both those
languages which were familiar to his dawning intelligence.

His mother came out at his summons, a pretty, blue-eyed woman with an
untidy gown and towzley hair, aged and faded a little since Ida had seen
her.

'Oh, Ida,' she said, kissing her step-daughter heartily enough, despite
her reproachful tone, 'how could you go on so! We have had such a letter
from Miss Pew. Your father is awfully cut up. And we were expecting you
all yesterday. He went to Dieppe to meet the afternoon boat. Where have
you been since Tuesday?'

'I slept at the lock-house with a nice civil woman, who gave me a night's
lodging,' said Ida, somewhat embarrassed by this question.

'But why not have come home at once, dear?' asked the step-mother mildly.
She always felt herself a poor creature before her Juno-like daughter.

'I was flurried and worried--hardly knew what I was doing for the first
few hours after I left Mauleverer; and I let the time slip by till it was
too late to think of travelling yesterday,' answered Ida. 'Old Pew is a
demon.'

'She seems to be a nasty, unkind old thing,' said Mrs. Palliser; 'for,
after all, the worst she can bring against you is flirting with your
friend's cousin. I hope you are engaged to him, dear; for that will
silence everybody.'

'No, I am not engaged to him--he is nothing to me,' answered Ida,
crimsoning; 'I never saw him, except in Fräulein's company. Neither you
nor my father would like me to marry a man without sixpence.'

'But in Miss Pew's letter she said you declared you were engaged to Mr.
Wendover of the Abbey, a gentleman of wealth and position. She was wicked
enough to say she did not believe a word you said; but still, Ida, I do
hope you were not telling falsehoods.'

'I hardly knew what I said,' replied Ida, feeling the difficulties of her
position rising up on every side and hemming her in. She had never
contemplated this kind of thing when she repudiated her marriage and
turned her face homewards. 'She maddened me by her shameful attack,
talking to me as if I were dirt, degrading me before the whole school. If
you had been treated as I was you would have been beside yourself.'

'I might have gone into hysterics,' said Mrs. Palliser, 'but I don't
think I should have told deliberate falsehoods: and to say that you were
engaged to a rich man when you were not engaged, and the man hasn't a
sixpence, was going a little too far. But don't fret, dear,' added the
step-mother, soothingly, as the tears of shame and anger--anger against
fate, life, all things--welled into Ida's lovely eyes. 'Never mind. We'll
say no more about it. Come upstairs to your own room--it's Vernie's
day-nursery now, but you won't mind that, I know--and take off your hat.
Poor thing, how tired and ill you look!'

'I feel as if I was going to be ill and die, and I hope I am,' said Ida,
petulantly.

'Don't, dear; it's wicked to say such a thing as that. You needn't be
afraid of your poor pa; he takes everything easily.'

'Yes, he is always good. Where is he?'

'Not up yet. He comes down in time for his little _déjeûner à la
fourchette_. Poor fellow, he had to get up so early in India.'

Captain Palliser had for the last seven years been trying to recover
those arrears of sleep incurred during his Eastern career. He had been
active enough under a tropical sky, when his mind was kept alive by a
modicum of hard work and a very wide margin of sport--pig-sticking,
peacock-shooting, paper-chases, all the delights of an Indian life. But
now, vegetating on a slender pittance in the semi-slumberous idleness of
Les Fontaines, he had nothing to do and nothing to think about; and he
was glad to shorten his days by dozing away the fresher hours of the
morning, while his wife toiled at the preparation of that elaborate meal
which he loved to talk about as tiffin.

Poor little Mrs. Palliser made strenuous efforts to keep the sparsely
furnished dusty house as clean and trim as it could be kept; but her life
was a perpetual conflict with other people's untidiness.

The house was let furnished, and everything was in the third-rate French
style--inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little
rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers,
chairs cushioned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham
tortoiseshell clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece,
alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing
home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the
rooms, which seemed mere cells to Ida after the spaciousness of
Mauleverer Manor and The Knoll. She wondered how her father and mother
could breathe in such rooms.

That bed-chamber to which Mrs. Palliser introduced her step-daughter was
even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot
here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden
horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence
everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking
chair, a battered old table, a heap of old illustrated newspapers, and
torn toy-books.

'You won't mind Vernon's using the room in the day, dear, will you?' said
Mrs. Palliser, apologetically. 'It shall be tidied for you at night.'

This meant that in the daytime Ida would have no place for retreat, no
nook or corner of the house which she might call her own. She submitted
meekly even to this deprivation, feeling that she was an intruder who had
no right to be there.

'I should like to see my father soon,' she said, with a trembling lip,
stooping down to caress Vernon, who had followed them upstairs.

He was a lovely, fair-haired boy, with big candid blue eyes, a lovable,
confiding child, full of life and spirits and friendly feeling towards
all mankind and the whole animal creation, down to its very lowest forms.

'You shall have your breakfast with him,' said Mrs. Palliser, feeling
that she was conferring a great favour, for the Captain's breakfast was a
meal apart. 'I don't say but what he'll be a little cross to you at
first; but you must put up with that. He'll come round afterwards.'

'He has not seen me for two years and a half,' said Ida, thinking that
fatherly affection ought to count for something under such circumstances.

'Yes, it's only two years and a half,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, 'and you
were to have stayed at Mauleverer Manor three years. Miss Pew is a wicked
old woman to cheat your father out of six months' board and tuition. He
paid her fifty pounds in one lump when he articled you--fifty pounds--a
heap of money for people in our position; and here you are, come back to
us like a bad penny.'

'I am very sorry,' faltered Ida, reddening at that unflattering
comparison. 'But I worked very hard at Mauleverer, and am tolerably
experienced in tuition. I must try to get a governess's situation
directly, and then I shall be paid a salary, and shall be able to give
you back the fifty pounds by degrees.'

'Ah, that's the dreadful part of it all,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, who was
very seldom in the open air, and had that despondent view of life common
to people who live within four narrow walls. 'Goodness knows how you are
ever to get a situation without references. Miss Pew says you are not to
refer to her; and who else is there who knows anything of you or your
capacity?'

'Yes, there is some one else. Bessie Wendover and her family.'

'The people you went to visit in Hampshire. Ah! there went another five
pounds in a lump. You have been a heavy expense to us, Ida. I don't know
whether anyone wanting to employ you as a governess would take such a
reference as that. People are so particular. But we must hope for the
best, and in the meantime you can make yourself useful at home in taking
care of Vernon and teaching him his letters. He is dreadfully backward.'

'He is an angel,' said Ida, lifting the cherub in her arms, and letting
the fair, curly head nestle upon her shoulder. 'I will wait upon him like
a slave. You do love me, don't you, pet?'

'Ess, I love 'oo, but I don't know who 'oo is. _Connais pas_,' said
Vernon, shaking his head vehemently.

'I am your sister, darling, your only sister.'

'My half-sister,' said Vernon. 'Maman said I had a half-sister, and she
was naughty. _Dites donc_, would a whole sister be twice as big as you?'

Thus in his baby language, which may be easier imagined than described,
gravely questioned the boy.

'I am your sister, dearest, heart and soul. There is no such thing as
half-love or half-sisterhood between us. You should not have talked to
him like that, mother,' said Ida, turning her reproachful gaze upon her
step-mother, who was melted to tears.

'Your father was so upset by Miss Pew's letter,' she murmured
apologetically. 'To pay fifty pounds for you, and for it to end in such
humiliation as that. You must own that it was hard for us.'

'It was harder for me,' said Ida; 'I had to stand up and face that wicked
woman, who knew that I had done no wrong, and who wreaked her malignity
upon me because I am cleverer and better-looking than ever she was in her
life.'

'I must go and make your father's omelette,' said the stepmother, 'while
you tidy yourself for breakfast. I think there's some water on the
washstand, and Vernon shall bring you a clean towel.'

The little fellow trotted out after his mother, and trotted back
presently with the towel--one towel, which was about in proportion to the
water-jug and basin. Ida shuddered, remembering the plentitude of water
and towels at The Knoll. She made her toilet as well as she could, with
the scantiest materials, as she might have done on board ship; shook and
brushed the shabby gray cashmere--her wedding gown, she thought, with a
bitter smile--before she put it on again, and then went down the bare
narrow deal staircase, superb in all the freshness of her youth and
beauty, which neither care nor poverty could spoil.

Captain Palliser was pacing up and down his little dining parlour,
looking flurried and anxious. He turned suddenly as Ida entered, and
stood staring at her.

'By Jove, how handsome you have grown!' he said, and then he look her in
his arms and kissed her. 'But you know, my dear, this is really too bad,'
he went on in a fretful tone,' to come back upon us like a bad penny.'

'That is what my step-mother said just now.'

'My dear, how can one help saying it, when it's the truth? After my
paying fifty pounds, don't you know, and thinking that you were
comfortably disposed of for the next three years, and that at the expiry
of the term Miss Pew would place you in a gentleman's family, where you
would receive from sixty to a hundred per annum, according to your
acquirements--those were her very words--to have you sent back to us like
this, in disgrace, and to be told that you had been carrying on in an
absurd way with a young man on the bank of a river. It is most
humiliating. And now my wife tells me the young man has not a sixpence
which makes the whole thing so very culpable.'

'Please let me tell you the extent of my iniquity, father, and then you
can judge what right Miss Pew had to expel me.'

Whereupon Ida quietly described her afternoon promenades upon the
river-path, with the Fräulein always in her company, and how her friend's
cousin had been permitted to walk up and down with them.

'Nobody supposes there was any actual harm,' replied Captain Palliser,
'but you must have been perfectly aware that you were acting
foolishly--that this kind of thing was a violation of the school
etiquette. Come, now, you knew Miss Pew would disapprove of such goings
on, did you not?'

'Well, yes, no doubt I knew old Pew would be horrified. Perhaps it was
the idea of that which gave a zest to the thing.'

'Precisely! and you never thought of my fifty pounds, and you ran this
risk for the sake of a young man without a penny, who never could be your
husband.'

Ida grew scarlet and then deadly pale.

'There, don't look so distressed, child. I must try to forget my fifty
pounds, and to think of your future career. It is a deuced awkward
business--here come the omelette and the coffee--an escapade of this kind
is always cropping up against a girl in after life--sit down and make
yourself comfortable--capital dish of kidneys--the world is so small; and
of course every pupil at Mauleverer Manor will gabble about this
business. No mushrooms!--what is the little woman thinking about?'

Captain Palliser seated himself, and arranged his napkin under his chin,
French fashion. His features were of that aquiline type which seems to
have been invented on purpose for army men. His eyes were light blue,
like his boy's--Ida's dark eyes were a maternal inheritance--his hair was
auburn, sprinkled with gray, his moustache straw-colour and with a
carefully trained cavalry droop. His clothes and boots were perfect of
their kind, albeit they had seen good wear. He had been heard to declare
that he had rather wear feathers and war-paint, like a red Indian, than a
coat made by a third-rate tailor. He was tall and inclining to stoutness,
broad-shouldered, and with an easy carriage and a nonchalant air, which
were not without their charm. He had what most people called a patrician
look--that is to say the air of never having done anything useful in the
whole course of his existence--not such a patrician as a Palmerston, a
Russell, a Derby, or a Salisbury, but the ideal lotus-eating aristocrat,
who dresses, drives, and dines and gossips through a languid existence.

The Captain's career in the East had not been particularly brilliant. His
lines had not lain in great battles or stirring campaigns. Except during
the awful episode of the Mutiny, when he was still a young man, he had
seen little active service. His life, since his return from India, had
been a blank.

His mind, never vigorous, had rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his
days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life's river
as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events
of his life--if it was well with these it was well with him.

There was a rustic tavern where in summer a good many people came to
dine, either in the house or the garden, and in a room adjoining the
kitchen there was a small French billiard-table with very big balls. Here
the Captain played of an evening with the _habitués_ of the place, and
was much looked up to for his superior skill. An occasional drive into
Dieppe on the _banquette_ of the diligence, and a saunter by the sea, was
his only other amusement.

His daughter poured out his coffee, and ministered to his various wants
as he breakfasted, eating with but little appetite herself, albeit the
fare was excellent.

Captain Palliser talked in a desultory way as he ate, not often looking
up from his plate, but meandering on. Happily for Ida, who had been
reduced to the lowest stage of self-abasement by her welcome, he said no
more about Miss Pew or his daughter's gloomy prospects. It was not
without a considerable mental effort that he was able to bring his
thoughts to bear upon other people's business. He had strained his mind a
good deal during the last twenty-four hours, and he was very glad to
relax the tension of the bow.

'Rather a dull kind of life for a man who has been used to society--eh,
Ida?' he murmured, as he ate his omelette; 'but we contrive to rub on
somehow. Your step-mother likes it, and the boy likes it--wonderful
healthy air, don't you know--no smoke--no fogs--only three miles from the
sea, as the crow flies. It suits them, and it's cheap--a paramount
consideration with a poor devil on half-pay; and in the season there are
some of the best people in Europe to be seen at the _établissement_.'

'I suppose you go to Dieppe often in the season, father?' said Ida,
pleased to find he had dropped Miss Pew and the governess question.

'Well, yes; I wander in almost every fine day.'

'You don't walk?' exclaimed Ida, surprised at such activity in a man of
his languid temper.

'Oh, no; I never walk. I just wander in--on the diligence-or in, a return
fly. I wander in and look about me a little, and perhaps take a cup of
coffee with a friend at the Hôtel des Bains. There is generally some one
I know at the Bains or the Royal. Ah, by-the-bye whom, do you think I saw
there a fortnight ago?'

'I haven't the least idea,' answered Ida; 'I know so few of your
friends.'

'No, of course not. You never saw Sir Vernon Palliser, but you've heard
me talk about him.'

'Your rich brother, the wicked old baronet in Sussex, who never did you a
kindness in his life?'

'My dear, old Sir Vernon has been dead two years.'

'I never heard of his death.'

'No, by-the-bye. It wasn't worth while worrying you about it, especially
as we could not afford to go into mourning. Your step-mother fretted
about that dreadfully, poor little woman; as if it could matter to her,
when she had never seen the man in her life. She said if one had a
baronet in one's family one ought to go into mourning for him. I can't
understand the passion some women have for mourning. They are eager to
smother themselves in crape at the slightest provocation, and for a mean
old beggar like Vernon, who never gave me a sixpence. But as I was
saying, these two young fellows turned up the other day in front of the
Hôtel des Bains.'

'Which two young fellows, my dear father? I haven't the faintest idea of
whom you are talking,' protested Ida, who found her father's conversation
very difficult to follow.

'Why, Sir Vernon, of course--the present Sir Vernon and his brother
Peter: ugly name, isn't it, Ida? but there has always been a Peter in the
family; and as a rule,' added Captain Palliser, growing slower and
dreamier of speech as he fell into reminiscences of the past--'as a
rule the Peter Pallisers have gone to the dogs. There was Major
Palliser--fought in the Peninsula--knew George the Fourth--married a very
pretty woman and beat her--died in the Bench.'

'Tell me about the present Sir Vernon,' asked Ida, more interested in the
moving, breathing life of to-day than in memories of the unknown dead.
'Is he nice?'

'He is a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow--seven or eight and twenty.
No, not handsome--my brother Vernon was never distinguished for beauty,
though he had all the markings of race. There is nothing like race, Ida;
you see it in a man's walk; you hear it in every tone of a man's voice.'

'Dear father, I was asking about this particular Sir Vernon,' urged Ida,
with a touch of impatience, unaccustomed to this slow meandering talk.

'And I was telling you about him,' answered the Captain, slightly
offended. His little low-born wife never hurried and hustled his thoughts
in this way. She was content to sit at his feet, and let him meander on
for hours. True that she did not often listen, but she was always
respectful. 'I was remarking that Sir Vernon is a fine young fellow, and
likely to live to see himself a great-grandfather. His brother, too, is
nearly as big and healthy--healthy to a degree. The breakfast I saw those
two young men devour at the hotel would have made your hair stand on end.
But, thank heaven, I have never been the kind of man to wait for dead
men's shoes.'

'I see,' said Ida. 'If these boys had been sickly and had died young, you
would have succeeded to the baronetcy.'

'To the baronetcy and to the estate in Sussex, which is a very fine
estate, worth eight thousand a year.'

'Then, of course, they are strong, and likely to live to the age of
Methuselah!' exclaimed Ida, with a laugh of passing bitterness. 'Who ever
heard of luck coming our way? It is not in our race to be fortunate.'

The shame and agony of her own failure to win fortune were still strong
upon her.

'Who knows what might happen?' said the Captain, with amiable
listlessness. 'I have never allowed my thoughts to dwell upon the
possibilities of the future; yet it is a fact that, so long as those
young men remain unmarried, there are only two lives between me and
wealth. They feel the position themselves; for when Sir Vernon came over
here to lunch, he patted my boy on the head and said, in his joking way,
"If Peter and I had fallen down a crevasse the other day in the Oberland,
this little chap would have been heir to Wimperfield."'

'No doubt Sir Vernon and his brother will marry and set up nurseries of
their own within the next two or three years,' said Ida, carelessly.
Eager as she had been to be rich during those two and a half bitter years
in which she had so keenly felt the sting of poverty, she was not capable
of seeing her way to fortune through the dark gate of death.

'Yes, I daresay they will both marry,' replied Captain Palliser, gravely,
folding his napkin and whisking an accidental crumb off his waistcoat.
'Young men always get drifted into matrimony. If they are rich all the
women are after them, If they are poor--well, there is generally some
woman weak enough to prefer dual starvation to bread and cheese and
solitude. Vernon told me he had no idea of marriage. He and his brother
are both rovers--fond of mountain-climbing, yachting, every open-air
amusement.'

'Did you see much of them while they were at Dieppe ?'

'They only stayed three days. They walked over here to lunch, put the
poor little woman in a fluster--although they were very pleasant and easy
about everything--invited me to dinner, tipped the boy munificently, and
went off by the night-boat, bound straight for Wimperfield and the
partridges. Very fine partridge shooting at Wimperfield! Vernon asked me
to go across with him and stay at the old place for a week or two; but my
sporting days are over. I can't get up early; and I can't walk in
shooting-boots. Besides, the little woman would have fretted if I had
left her alone so long.'

'But the change would have done you good, father.'

'No, my dear; any change of habits would worry me. I have dropped into my
groove and I must stay in it. What a pity you were not here when your
cousins called! Who knows what might have happened? Vernon might have
fallen over head and ears in love with you.'

'Don't, father!' cried Ida, with absolute pain in her voice. 'Don't talk
about marrying for money. There is nothing in life so revolting, so
degrading. Be sure, it is a sin which always brings its own punishment.'

'My dear,' said the Captain, gravely, 'there are so many love-matches
which bring their own punishment, that I am inclined to believe that
marrying for money is a virtue which ought to ensure its own reward. You
may depend, if we could get statistics upon the subject, one would find
that after ten years' marriage the couples who were drawn together by
prudential motives are just as fond of each other as those more romantic
pairs who wedded for love. A decade of matrimony rounds a good many sharp
angles, and dispels a good many illusions.'




CHAPTER XI.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT A DISCOUNT.

Now began for Ida a life of supreme dullness--an empty, almost hopeless,
life, waiting upon fortune. Her father was kind to her in his easy-going,
lymphatic way, liking well enough to have her about him, pleased with her
affection for his boy, proud of her beauty and her talents, but with no
earnest care for her welfare in the present or the future. What was to
become of wife, son and daughter when he was dead and gone, was a
question which Captain Palliser dared not ask himself. For the widow
there would be a pittance, for son and daughter nothing. It was therefore
vital that Ida should either marry well or become a money-earning
personage. Of marriage at Les Fontaines there seemed not the faintest
probability, since the experiences of the past afford so few instances of
wandering swains caught and won by a face at a window, or the casual
appearance of a beautiful girl on a country road.

Of friends or acquaintance, in his present abode, Captain Palliser had
none. The only people he had ever cared for were the men and women he had
known in India; and he had lost sight of those since his marriage. They
were scattered; and he was too proud to expose his fallen fortunes to
those who had known him in his happier days, those days when the careless
expenditure of his modest capital had given him a false air of easy
circumstances.

His life at Les Fontaines suited him well enough, individually. It was a
kind of hibernation. He slept a good deal, and ate a good deal, and
smoked incessantly, and took very little exercise. For all that is best
and noblest in life, Captain Palliser might just as well have been dead.
He had outlived hope and ambition, thought, invention. He exercised no
influence upon the lives of others, except upon the little homely wife,
who was a slave to him. He was no possible good in the world. Yet his
daughter was fond of him, and pleased to bear him company when he would
have her; and under her influence his sluggish intellect brightened a
little.

For the first few weeks of her residence at Les Fontaines, Ida was
tortured by a continually recurring fear of Brian Wendover's pursuit. He
had let her go coolly enough; but what if he were to change his mind and
follow and claim her? She belonged to him. She was his goods, his
chattels--to have and to hold till death did them part. Her life was no
longer her own to dispose of as she pleased. Would he let her alone?--he
who had held her in his arms with passionate force, who had entreated her
to stay with him, and had surrendered her reluctantly in sullen anger.

What if anger, which had been stronger with him than love at that last
moment, should urge him to denounce her--to tell the world how base a
thing she was--a woman who had been eager to marry a rich man and had
been trapped by a pauper! She glanced with a sickening dread at every
letter which her father received, lest it should be from Brian, telling
her shameful story. She counted the days as they went by, saying to
herself, 'A fortnight since we were married; surely if he had meant to
claim me he would have come before now.' 'Three weeks! now I must be
safe!' And then came the dull November morning which completed the
calendar month since her wedding-day, and her husband had made no sign.
She began to feel easier, to believe that he repented his marriage as
deeply as she did, and that he was very glad to be free from its bondage.

And now she was able to think more seriously of her future. She had
answered a great many advertisements in the _Times_, wherein paragons
were demanded for the tuition of youth or the companionship of age; but
as she saw the papers only on the day after their publication, other
paragons, on the spot, were beforehand with her. She did not receive a
single answer to those carefully written letters, setting forth her
qualifications and her willingness to work hard.

'I shall waste a small fortune in postage-stamps, father,' she said at
last, 'and shall be no nearer the mark. My only chance is to advertise.
Will you give me the money for an advertisement? I am sorry to ask you,
but--'

'My dear, you are always asking me for money,' replied Captain Palliser,
peevishly; which was hardly fair, as she had asked him nothing since
her return, except the sum of thirty shillings, being the exact amount
of which she stood indebted to kind-hearted Miss Cobb. 'However, I
suppose you must have it.' He produced a half sovereign from his
meagrely-furnished purse. 'It is only right you should do something;
indeed, anything is better than wasting your life in such a hole as this.
But what if you do get any answers to your advertisement? Who is to give
you a character, since that old witch at Mauleverer Manor has chosen to
put up her back against you?'

'That must be managed somehow,' answered Ida, moodily. 'Will it not be
enough for the people to know who you are, and that I have never been in
a situation before? Why should they apply to the schoolmistress who
finished my education?'

'People are so suspicious,' said the Captain, 'and the handsomer a girl
is the more questions they ask. They seem to think she has no right to be
so handsome. However you must risk it'

Ida wrote her advertisement, an unvarnished statement of her
qualifications as a teacher, and of her willingness to be useful; not a
word about references. The advertisement appeared a few days later, and
the little family at Les Fontaines anxiously awaited the result, even
little Vernon eagerly expressing himself on the subject, his youthful
ears being open to every topic discussed in his presence, and his
youthful mind quick to form opinions.

'You shan't go away!' he exclaimed. 'Ma, she shan't go, shall she? lady
shan't have her; I want her always; you mustn't go, sissie,' all in baby
language, with a curious perversion of consonants. He had climbed on her
knee, and had his arms round her neck--energetic young arms which almost
throttled her. She had been his chief companion and playfellow for the
last five weeks, had read him all his favourite fairy-tales over and over
again, had sat with him of an evening till he fell asleep, an invincible
defence against bogies and vague fears of darkness. She had taken him for
long rural rambles, over breezy downs towards the sea, had dug and delved
with him on the lonely beach below the great white lighthouse, warmly
coated and shawled, and working hard in the November wind; and now, just
when he had grown fonder of her than anyone else in the world, she was
going to leave him. He lifted up his head and howled, and refused all
comfort from mother or father. Ida cried with him. 'My pet, I can't bear
to leave you, but I must; my darling, I shall come back,' she protested,
clasping him to her breast, kissing his fair tearful face, soft round
cheeks, lovely blue eyes swimming in tears.

'To-morrow?' inquired Vernon, with a strangled sob.

'No, darling, not to-morrow; there would be no use in my going just for
one day; but I am not going yet--I don't know when I am going--Vernon
must not cry. See how unhappy he is making poor mamma.'

Mrs. Palliser put her hands before her face, and made a bohooing noise to
keep up the illusion; whereupon the affectionate little fellow slipped
off his sister's knee, and ran to his mother to administer comfort.

'I am not going away yet, Vernon; indeed, I hardly know whether I am ever
going at all. I have come back like a bad penny, and I seem likely to be
as difficult to get rid of as other bad pennies,' said Ida, despondingly,
for three posts had gone by since the insertion of her advertisement, and
had brought her nothing. The market was evidently overstocked with young
ladies knowing French and German, able to play and sing, and willing to
be useful.

After this Vernon would hardly let his sister out of his sight. He had a
suspicion that she would leave him unawares--slip out of the door some
day, and be gone without a moment's warning. That is how joy flees.

'My pet, be reasonable,' said Ida; 'I can't go away without my trunk.'

This comforted him a little, and he made a point of sitting upon one of
Ida's trunks, when they two were alone in that barely furnished chamber
which served for her bed-room and his day-nursery.

She contrived to tell him fairy-tales, and to keep him amused; albeit she
was now busy at carefully overhauling, patching, and repairing her scanty
wardrobe--trying to make neat mending do duty for new clothes, and
getting ready against any sudden summons. She could not bring herself to
ask her father for money, sadly as she wanted new garments. He had given
her five pounds in August, and two sovereigns since her return, and the
way he had doled out those sums indicated the low state of his funds. No,
the gown that had been new at The Knoll must still be her best gown. Last
winter's jacket, albeit threadbare in places, must do duty for this
winter. Before the next summer she might be in the receipt of a salary
and able to clothe herself decently, and to send presents to this beloved
boy, who was not much better clad than herself.

But the days wore on, and brought no answer to her advertisement.

'I shouldn't wonder if it were the foreign address,' said Captain
Palliser, when they were all speculating upon the cause of this dismal
silence. 'People are suspicious of anyone living abroad. If you had been
able to advertise from a rectory in Lincolnshire, or even an obscure
street at the west end of London, they'd have thought better of you. But
Boulogne, Calais, Dieppe, they all hint at impecuniosity and enforced
exile. It's very unlucky.'

The postman stopped at the little green gate next morning, and Ida flew
to receive his packet. It was a letter for her--a bulky letter--in a hand
she knew well, and her heart seemed to stop beating as she looked at the
address.

The hand was Bessie Wendover's. Who could tell what new trouble the
letter might announce? Brian might have told his family the whole history
of his marriage and her unworthy conduct. Oh, what shame, what agony, if
this were so! And how was she to face her father when he asked her the
contents of the letter? She ran out into the garden--the little bare,
joyless garden--to read her letter alone, and to gain time.

This is how the dreaded epistle ran:--

'My dear darling, ill-used, cruel thing,--

'However could you treat me so badly? What is friendship worth, if you
set no higher value upon it than this? I don't believe you know what
friendship means, or you never could act so. How miserable you have made
me! how wretched you must have been yourself! you proud, noble-minded
darling--under the sting of such vile treatment.

'I wrote to you three times last month, and could not imagine why my
letters were unanswered. Brian had told me that you were perfectly well,
and looking splendid when he saw you in October, so I did not think it
could be illness that kept you silent; and at last I began to feel angry,
and to fancy you had forgotten me, and were ungrateful. No, I don't mean
that, dearest. What reason had you for gratitude? The obligation was all
on my side.

'Towards the end of October I wrote to Brian, telling him of your
silence, and asking if he could find out if you were well. He answered
with one of his short, unsatisfactory scrawls that he had reason to know
you were quite well. After this I felt _really_ offended; for I thought
you must have deceived me all along, and that you had never cared a straw
about me; so I coiled myself up in my dignity, and, although I felt very
unhappy, I resolved never to write you another line till you wrote to me.
I was very miserable, but still I felt that I owed a duty to my own
self-respect, don't you know; and just at thistimall went to Bournemouth,
where we were very gay. Father and mother knew no end of people there,
and I began to feel what it really is to be out, which no girl ever could
at Kingthorpe, where there are about three parties in a twelvemonth.

'Well, darling, so I went on leading a frivolous life among people I did
not care twopence for, and hardening my heart against my dearest friend,
when, on the day we came home, I happened to take up the _Times_ in the
railway carriage. I hate newspapers in a common way, but one reads such
things when one is travelling, and out of mere idleness I amused myself
skimming the advertisements, which I found ever so much more interesting
than the leading articles. What should my eye light upon but an
advertisement from a young lady wanting to go out as a governess--address
I.P., Le Rosier, Les Fontaines, near Dieppe--and the whole murder was
out. You must have left old Pew's and be living with your father. I was
horribly indignant with you--as, indeed, I am still--for not having
told me anything about it; but directly I got home I telegraphed to
Polly Cobb, as the best-natured girl I knew at Mauleverer, asking where
you were, and why you had left. I had such a letter from her next
day--spelling bad, but full of kind feeling--giving me a full account of
the row, and old Pew's detestable conduct. She told me that Fräulein
vouched for your having behaved with the most perfect propriety, and
never having seen Brian out of her presence; but Brian's meanness in not
having told me about the trouble he had brought upon you is more than I
can understand.

'Well, darling, I went off to Aunt Betsy, who is always my _confidante_
in all delicate matters, because she's ever so much cleverer than dear
warm-hearted mother, who never could keep a secret in her life, sweet
soul, and is no better than a speaking-tube for conveying information to
the Colonel. I told Aunt Betsy everything--how it was all Brian's fault,
and how I adore you, and how miserable I felt about you, and how you were
trying to get a situation as governess, in spite of that malignant old
Pew--she must be a lineal descendant of the wicked fairy--having said she
would give you no certificate of character or ability.

'Now, what do you think that sweetest and best of aunties said? "Let her
come to me," she said; "I am getting old and dull, and I want something
bright and clever about me, to cheer me and rouse me when I feel
depressed. Let her come to me as a companion and amanuensis, help me to
look after my cottagers, who are getting too much for me, and play to me
of an evening. I like that girl, and I should like to have her in my
house."

'I was enchanted at the thought of your being always near us, and I
fancied you wouldn't altogether dislike it; although Kingthorpe certainly
is the dullest, sleepiest old hole in the universe. So I begged Aunt
Betsy to write to you _instanter_; said I knew you would be charmed to
accept such a situation, and that she would secure a treasure; and, in
all probability, you'll have a letter from her to-morrow.

'And now, dear, I must repeat that you have treated me shamefully. Why
did you not write to me directly you left Mauleverer? Could you think
that I could believe you had really done wrong--that I could possibly be
influenced by the judgment of that old monster, Pew? If you could think
so, you are not worthy to be loved as I love you. However, come to us,
sweetest, directly you get auntie's letter, and all shall be forgiven and
forgotten, as the advertisements say.'

Ida kissed the loving letter. So far, therefore, Brian had not betrayed
her; and, having kept her secret so long, it might be supposed he would
keep it for all time.

Poor little warm-hearted Bessie! Was not she by her foolish
falsification--a piece of mild jocosity, no doubt--the prime author of
all the evil that had followed? And yet Ida could not feel angry with
her, any more than she could have been angry with Vernon for some piece
of sportive mischief.

'Thank God, he has kept our wretched secret,' she thought, as she folded
Bessie's long letter, and went back to the house. 'I am grateful to him
for that.'

She went in radiant, gladdened at the thought of being able to relieve
her father and step-mother of the burden of her maintenance; for the fact
that she was a burden had not been hidden from her. They had been kind;
they had given her to eat and to drink of their best, and had admired her
talents and accomplishments; but they had let her know at the same time
that she was a failure, and that her future was a dark problem still far
from solution--a problem which troubled them in the silent watches of the
night. Nor did they forget to remind her from time to time that by her
imprudence--pardonable although that imprudence might be--she had
forfeited six months' board and lodging, together with those educational
advantages the Captain's fifty pounds had been intended to purchase for
her. These facts had been reiterated, not altogether unkindly, but in a
manner that made life intolerable; and she felt that were she to continue
at Les Fontaines for the natural term of her existence, the same theme
would still furnish the subject for parental harpings.

'Father,' she said, going behind Captain Palliser's chair, as he smoked
his after-breakfast cigar, and read yesterday's _Times_, 'I want you to
read this letter. It is a foolish schoolgirl letter, perhaps; but it will
show you that my friends are not going to discard me on account of Miss
Pew.'

The Captain laid down his paper, and slowly made his way through Bessie's
lengthy epistle, which, although prettily written, with a good deal of
grace in the slopes and curves of the penmanship, gave him considerable
trouble to decipher. It was only when he had discovered that all the B's
looked like H's, and that all the G's were K's, and all the L's S's, and
had, as it were, made a system for himself, that he was able to get on
comfortably.

'Bless my soul,' he murmured, 'why cannot girls write legibly?'

'It is the real Mauleverer hand, papa, and is generally thought very
pretty,' said Ida.

'Pretty, yes; you might have a zigzag pattern over the paper that would
be just as pretty. One wants to be able to read a letter. This is almost
as bad as Arabic. However, the girl seems a good, warm-hearted creature,
and very fond of you; and I should think you could not do better than
accept her aunt's offer. It will be a beginning.'

'It is Hobson's choice, papa; but I am sure I shall be happy with Miss
Wendover,' said Ida; and then she gave a faint sigh, and her heart
sank at the thought of that Damoclesian sword always hanging over her
head--the possibility of her husband claiming her.

Mrs. Palliser was much more rapturous when she heard the contents of
the letter--much more interested in all details about Ida's future home.
She wanted to know what Miss Wendover was like--how many servants she
kept--whether carriage or no carriage--what kind of a house she lived in,
and how it was furnished.

'You will be quite a grand lady,' she said, with a touch of envy, when
Ida had described the cosy red-brick cottage, the verandahed drawing-room
and conservatory added by Miss Wendover, the pair of cobs which that lady
drove, the large well-kept gardens; 'you will look down upon us with our
poor ways, and this house, in which all the rooms smell of whitewash.'

'No, indeed, mamma, I shall always think of you with affection; for you
have been very kind to me, although I know I have been a burden.'

'Everything is a burden when one is poor,' sighed her stepmother; 'even
one extra in the washing-bills makes a difference; and we shall feel it
awfully when Vernon grows up. Boys are so extravagant; and one cannot
talk to them as one can to girls.'

'But I hope you will be better off then, mamma.'

'My dear, you might as well hope we should be dukes and duchesses. What
chance is there of any improvement? Your poor papa has no idea of earning
money. I'm sure I have said to him, often and often, "Reginald, do
_something_. Write for the magazines! Surely you can do _that_? Other men
in your position do it." "Yes," he growled, "and that's why the magazines
are so stupid." No, Ida, your father's circumstances will never improve;
and when the time comes for giving Vernon a proper education we shall be
paupers.'

'Poor papa!' sighed Ida; 'I am afraid he is not strong enough to make any
great effort.'

'He has given way, my dear; that is the root of it all. We shall never be
better off, unless those two healthy, broad-shouldered young men were to
go and get themselves swallowed up by an earthquake; and that is rather
too much for anyone to expect.'

'What young men?' asked Ida, absently.

'Your two cousins.'

'Oh, Sir Vernon and his brother. No, I don't suppose they will die to
oblige us poor creatures.'

'They went up the what's-its-name Horn, in Switzerland,' said Mrs.
Palliser, plaintively. 'It made my blood run cold to hear them talk about
it. "By Jove, Peter, I thought it was all over with you," said Sir
Vernon, when he told us how foolhardy his brother had been. But you see
they got to the bottom all safe and sound, though ever so many people
have been killed on that very mountain.'

'I'm glad they did, mamma. We may want their money very badly, but we are
not murderers, even in thought.'

'God forbid!' sighed the little woman. 'They are fine-grown, gentlemanly
young men, too. Sir Vernon gave my Vernie a sovereign, and promised him a
pony next year; but, good gracious! how could we afford to keep a pony,
even if we had a stable? "You had better make it the other kind of pony,"
says your father, and then they all burst out laughing.'

'So little makes a man laugh!' said Ida, somewhat contemptuously. That
picture of her father making sport of his poverty irritated her. 'Well,
dear mamma,' she said presently, moved by one of those generous impulses
which were a part of her frank, unwise nature, 'if ever I can earn a
hundred a year-and there are many governesses who get as much--you shall
have fifty to help pay Vernon's schooling.'

'You are a dear generous 'arted girl,' exclaimed the stepmother, and the
two women kissed again with tears, an operation which they usually
performed in the hour of domestic trouble.

Miss Wendover's letter came next day, a hearty, frank, affectionate
letter, offering a home that was really meant to be like home, and a
salary of forty pounds a year, 'just to buy your gowns,' Miss Wendover
said. 'I know it is not sufficient remuneration for such accomplishments
as yours, but I want _you_ rather than your accomplishments and I am not
rich enough to give as much as you are worth. But you will, at least,
stave off the drudgery of a governess's life till you are older, and
better able to cope with domineering mothers and insolent pupils.'

Such a salary was a long way off that hundred per annum which Ida had set
before her eyes as the golden goal to be gained by laborious pianoforte
athletics and patient struggles with the profundities of German grammar;
but, as Captain Palliser paid, it was a beginning; and Ida was very glad
so to begin. She wrote to Miss Wendover gratefully accepting her offer,
and in a very humble spirit.

'I fear it is pity that prompts your kind offer,' she wrote, 'and that
you take me because you know I left Mauleverer Manor in disgrace, and
that nobody else would have me. I am a bad penny. That is what my father
called me when I came home to him. And now I am to go back to Kingthorpe
as a bad penny. But, please God, I will try to prove to you that I am not
altogether worthless; and, whatever may happen, I shall love you and be
grateful to you till the end of my life.

'As you are so kind as to say I may come as soon as I like, I shall be
with you on the day after you receive this letter.'

Ida's preparations for departure were not elaborate. Her scanty wardrobe
had been put in the neatest possible order. A few hours sufficed for
packing trunk and bonnet-box. On the last afternoon Mrs. Palliser came to
her highly elated, and proposed a walk to Dieppe, and a drive home in the
diligence which left the Market Place at five o'clock.

'I am going to give you a new hat,' she said, triumphantly. 'You must
have a new hat.'

'But, dear mamma, I know you can't afford it.'

'I _will_ afford it, Ida. You will have to go to church at
Kingthorpe'--Mrs. Palliser regarded church-going as an oppressive
condition of prosperous respectability. One of the few privileges of
being hard up and quite out of society was that one need not go to
church--'and I should like you to appear like a lady. You owe it to your
pa and I. A hat you must 'ave. I can pay for it out of the housekeeping
money, and your pa will never know the difference.'

'No, mamma, but you and Vernon will have to pinch for it,' said Ida,
knowing that there was positively no margin to that household's narrow
means of existence.

'A little pinching won't hurt us. Vernie is as bilious as he can be; he
eats too many compots and little fours. I shall keep him to plain bread
and butter for a bit, and it will do him a world of good. There's no use
talking, Ida, I mean you to 'ave a 'at; and if you won't come and choose
it I must choose it myself,' concluded the little woman, dropping more
aspirates as she grew more excited.

So mother and daughter walked to Dieppe in the dull November afternoon,
Vernon trudging sturdily by his sister's side. They bought the hat, a
gray felt with partridge plumage, which became Ida's rich dark bloom to
perfection; and then they went to the Cathedral, and knelt in the dusky
aisle, and heard the solemn melody of the organ, and the subdued voices
of the choir, in the plaintive music of Vesper Psalms, monotonous
somewhat, but with a sweet soothing influence, music that inspired gentle
thoughts.

Then they went back to the Market-Place, and were in time to get good
places on the _banquette_ of the diligence, before the big white Norman
horses trotted and ambled noisily along the stony street.

Ida left Dieppe late on the following evening, by the same steamer that
had brought her from Newhaven. The British stewardess recognised her.

'Why, you was only across the other day, miss!' she said; 'what a
gad-about you must be!'

She arrived in London by ten o'clock next morning, and left Waterloo at a
quarter-past eleven, reaching Winchester early in the day. How different
were her feelings this time, as the train wound slowly over those chalky
hills! how full of care was her soul! And yet she was no longer a visitor
going among strangers--this time she went to an assured home, she was to
be received among friends. But the knowledge that her liberty was
forfeited for ever, that she was a free-agent only on sufferance, made
her grave and depressed. Never again could she feel as glad and frank a
creature as she had been in the golden prime of the summer that was gone,
when she and Bessie and Urania Rylance came by this same railway, over
those green English hill-sides, to the city that was once the chief seat
of England's power and splendour.

A young man in a plain gray livery and irreproachable top-boots stood
contemplatively regarding the train as it came into the station. He
touched his hat at sight of Miss Palliser, and she remembered him as Miss
Wendover's groom.

'Any luggage, ma'am?' he asked, as she alighted; as if it were as likely
as not that she had come without any.

'There is one box, Needham. That is all besides these things.'

Her bonnet-box--frail ark of woman's pride--was in the carriage, with a
wrap and an umbrella, and her dressing bag.

'All right, ma'am. If you'll show me which it is I'll tell the porter to
bring it. I've got the cobs outside.'

'Oh, I am so sorry,--how good of Miss Wendover!'

'They wanted exercise, 'um. They was a bit above themselves, and the
drive has done 'em good.'

Miss Wendover's cherished brown cobs, animals which in the eyes of
Kingthorpe were almost as sacred as that Egyptian beast whose profane
slaughter was more deeply felt than the nation's ruin--to think that
these exalted brutes should have been sent to fetch that debased
creature, a salaried companion. But then Aunt Betsy was never like anyone
else.

Needham took the cobs across the hills at a pace which he would have
highly disapproved in any other driver. Had Miss Wendover so driven them,
he would have declared she was running them off their legs. But in his
own hands, Brimstone and Treacle--so called to mark their difference of
disposition--could come to no harm. 'They wanted it,' he told Miss
Palliser, when she remarked upon their magnificent pace, 'they never got
half work enough.'

The hills looked lovely, even in this wintry season--yew trees and grass
gave no token of November's gloom. The sky was bright and blue, a faint
mist hung like a veil over the city in the valley, the low Norman tower
of the cathedral, the winding river, and flat fertile meadows--a vision
very soon left far in the rear of Brimstone and Treacle.

'How handsome they look!' said Ida, admiring their strong, bold crests,
like war-horses in a Ninevite picture, their shining black-brown coats.
'Is Brimstone such a very vicious horse?'

'Vicious, mum? no, not a bit of vice about him,' answered Needham
promptly, 'but he's a rare difficult horse to groom. There ain't none but
me as dares touch him. I let the boy try it once, and I found the poor
lad half an hour afterwards standing in the middle of the big loose box
like a statter, while Brimstone raced round him as hard as he could go,
just like one of them circus horses. The boy dursn't stir. If he'd moved
a limb, Brimstone 'ud have 'molished him.'

'What an awful horse! But isn't that viciousness?'

'Lor', no mum. That ain't vice,' answered the groom smiling amusedly at
the lady's ignorance. Vice is crib-biting, or jibbing, or boring or
summat o' that kind. Brimstone is a game hoss, and he's got a bit of a
temper, but he ain't got no vice.'

Here was Kingthorpe, looking almost as pretty as it had looked when she
gazed upon it with tearful eyes in her sad farewell at the close of
summer. The big forest trees were bare, but there were flowers in all the
cottage gardens, even late lingering roses on southern walls, and the
clipped yew-tree abominations--dumb-waiters, peacocks, and other
monstrosities--were in their pride of winter beauty. The ducks were
swimming gaily in the village pond, and the village inn was still
glorious with red geraniums, in redder pots. The Knoll stood out grandly
above all other dwellings--the beds full of chrysanthemums, and a bank of
big scarlet geraniums on each side of the hall door.

It seemed strange to be driven swiftly past the familiar carriage-drive,
and round into the lane leading to Miss Wendover's cottage. It was only
an accommodation lane--or a back-out lane, as the boys called it, since
no two carriages could pass each other in that narrow channel--and in bad
weather the approach to the Homestead was far from agreeable. A carriage
and horses had been known to stick there, with wheels hopelessly embedded
in the clay, while Miss Wendover's guests picked their footsteps through
the mud.

But the Homestead, when attained, was such a delightful house that one
forgot all impediments in the way thither. The red brick front--old red
brick, be it noted, which has a brightness and purity of colour never
retained for above a twelvemonth by the red brick of to-day--glowing,
athwart its surrounding greenery, like the warm welcome of a friend; the
exquisite neatness of the garden, where every flower that could be coaxed
into growing in the open air bloomed in perfection; the spick-and-span
brightness of the windows; the elegant order that prevailed within, from
cellar to garret; the old, carefully-chosen furniture, which had for the
most part been collected from other old-world homesteads; the artistic
colouring of draperies and carpets--all combined to make Miss Wendover's
house delightful.

'My house had need be orderly,' she said, when her friends waxed
rapturous; 'I have so little else to think about.'

Yet the sick and poor, within a radius of ten miles, might have testified
that Miss Wendover had thought and care for all who needed them, and that
she devoted the larger half of her life to other people's interests.

It was a clear, balmy day, one of those lovely autumn days which hang
upon the edge of winter, and Miss Wendover was pacing her garden walks
bare-headed, armed with gardening scissors and formidable brown leather
gauntlets, nipping a leaf here, or a withered rosebud there, with eyes
whose eagle glance not so much as an aphis could escape. From the slope
of her lawn Aunt Betsy saw the cobs turn into the lane, and she was
standing at the gate to welcome the traveller when the carriage drew up.

There was no carriage-drive on this side of the house, only a lawn with a
world of flower-beds. Those visitors who wanted to enter in a ceremonious
manner had to drive round by shrubbery and orchard to the back, where
there were an old oak door and an entrance-hall. On this garden front
there were only glass doors and long French windows, verandahs, and sunny
parlours, opening one out of another.

'How do you do, my dear?' said the spinster heartily, as Ida alighted; 'I
am very glad to see you. Why, how bright and blooming you look--not a bit
like a sea-sick traveller.'

'Dear Miss Wendover, I ought to look bright when I am so glad to come to
you; and, as to the other thing, I am never sea-sick.'

'What a splendid girl! That unhappy little Bessie can't cross to the
Wight without being a martyr. But, Ida, I am not going to be called Miss
Wendover. Only bishops and county magnates, and people of that kind, call
me by that name. To you I am to be Aunt Betsy, as I am to the children at
The Knoll.'

'Is not that putting me too much on a level--'

'With my own flesh and blood? Nonsense! I mean you to be as my own flesh
and blood. I could not bear to have anyone about me who was not.'

'You are too good,' faltered Ida. 'How can I ever repay you?'

'You have only to be happy. It is your nature to be frank and truthful,
so I will say nothing about that.'

Ida blushed deepest scarlet. Frank and truthful--she--whose very name was
a lie! And yet there could be no wrong done to Miss Wendover, she told
herself, by her suppression of the truth. It was a suppression that
concerned only Brian Walford and herself. No one else could have any
interest in the matter.

Betsy Wendover herself led the way to the bed-chamber that had been
prepared for the new inmate. It was a dear old room, not spacious, but
provided with two most capacious closets, in each of which a small gang
of burglars could have hidden--dear old closets, with odd little corner
cupboards inside them, and a most elaborate system of shelves. One closet
had a little swing window at the top for ventilation, and this, Miss
Wendover told Ida, was generally taken for a haunted corner, as the
ventilating window gave utterance to unearthly noises in the dead watches
of the night, and sometimes gave entrance to a stray cat from adjacent
tiles. A cat less agile than the rest of his species had been known to
entangle himself in the little swing window, and to hang there all the
night, sending forth unearthly caterwaulings, to the unspeakable terror
of Miss Wendover's guest, unfamiliar with the mechanism of the room, and
wondering what breed of Hampshire demon or afrit was thus making night
hideous.

There was a painted wooden dado halfway up the wall, and a florid rose
and butterfly paper above it. There was a neat little brass bedstead
on one side of the room, a tall Chippendale chest of drawers, with
writing-table and pigeon-holes on the other side; the dearest, oldest
dressing-table and shield-shaped glass in front of the broad latticed
window; while in another window there was a cushioned seat, such as
Mariana of the Moated Grange sat upon when she looked across the fens and
bewailed her dead-and-gone joys. There were old cups and saucers on the
high, narrow chimney-piece, below which a cosy fire burned in a little
old basket grate. Altogether the room was the picture of homely comfort.

'Oh, what a lovely room!' cried Ida, inwardly contrasting this cheery
chamber with that white-washed den at Lea Fontaines, with its tawdry
mahogany and brass fittings, its florid six feet of carpet on a deal
floor stained brown, its alabaster clock and tin candelabra--a cheap
caricature of Parisian elegance.

'I'm glad you like it, my dear, 'answered Miss Wendover. 'Bessie said it
would suit you; and all I ask you is to keep it tidy. I hope I am not a
tyrant; but I am an old maid. Of course, I shall never pry into your
room; but I warn you that I have an eye which takes in everything at a
flash; and if I happen to go past when your door is open, and see a
bonnet and shawl on your bed, or a gown sprawling on your sofa, my teeth
will be set on edge for the next half-hour.'

'Dear Miss Wen--, dear Aunt Betsy,' said Ida, corrected by a frown, 'I
hope you will come into my room every day, and give me a good scolding if
it is not exactly as you like. Everything in this house looks lovely. I
want to learn your nice neat ways.'

'Well, my love, you might learn something worse,' replied Miss Wendover,
with innocent pride. 'And now come down to luncheon; I kept it back on
purpose for you, and I am sure you must be starving.'

The luncheon was excellent, served with a tranquil perfection only to be
attained by careful training; and yet Miss Wendover's youthful butler
three years ago had been a bird boy; while her rosy-cheeked parlour-maid
was only eighteen, and had escaped but two years from the primitive
habits of cottage life. Aunt Betsy had a genius for training young
servants.

'You had better unpack your boxes directly after luncheon, said Miss
Wendover, when Ida had eaten with very good appetite, 'and arrange your
things in your drawers. That will take you an hour or so, I suppose--say
till five o'clock, when Bessie is coming over to afternoon tea.'

'Oh, I am so glad! I am longing to see Bessie. Is she as lovable and
pretty as ever?'

'Well, yes,' replied Aunt Betsy, with a critical air; 'I think she has
rather improved. She is plump enough still, in all conscience, but not
quite so stumpy as she was last summer. Her figure is a little less like
a barrel.'

'I hope she was very much admired at Bournemouth.'

'Yes, strange to say, she had a good many admirers,' answered Miss
Wendover coolly. 'She made a point of never being enthusiastic about her
relations. She had always partners at the dances, I am told, even when
there was a paucity of dancing men; and she was considered rather
remarkable at lawn tennis. No doubt she will tell you all about it this
afternoon. I have some work to do in the village, and I shall leave you
two girls together.'

This was a delicacy which touched Ida. She was very anxious to see
Bessie, and to talk to her as they could only talk when they were alone.
She wanted to know her faithful friend's motive for that cruel deception
about Brian Walford. That the frank, tender-hearted Bessie could have so
deceived her from any unworthy motive was impossible.

Five o'clock struck, and Ida was sitting alone in the drawing-room,
waiting to receive her friend, just as if she were the daughter of the
house, instead of a salaried dependent. The pretty carved Indian
tea-table--a gem in Bombay blackwood--was wheeled in front of the
fire-place, which was old, as regarded the high wooden mantel-piece and
capacious breadth of the hearth, but essentially new in its glittering
tiles and dainty brass fire-irons.

The clock had hardly finished striking when Bessie bounced into the room,
rosy and smiling, in sealskin jacket and toque.

'Oh, you darling! isn't this lovely?' she exclaimed, hugging Ida. 'You
are to live here for ever and ever, and never, never, never to leave us
again, and never to marry, unless you marry one of the Brians. Don't
shudder like that, pet, they are both nice! And I'm sure you like Brian
Walford, though, perhaps, not quite so much as he liked you. You do like
him now, don't you, darling?' urged Bess.

Ida had withdrawn from her embrace, and was seated before the low Bombay
table, occupied with the tea pot. There was no light but the fire and one
shaded lamp on a distant table. The curtains were not yet drawn, and
white mists were rising in the garden outside, like a sea.

'Bessie,' Ida began, gravely, as her old schoolfellow sat on a low stool
in front of the fire, 'how could you deceive me like that? What could put
such a thing in your head--_you_, so frank, so open?'

'I am sure I hardly know,' answered Bess, innocently. 'It was my
birthday, don't you know, and we were all wild. Perhaps the champagne had
something to do with it, though I didn't take any. But that sort of
excitement communicates itself; and running up and down hill gets into
one's head. We all thought it would be such fun to pass off penniless B.
W. for his wealthy cousin--and just to see how you liked him, with that
extra advantage. But there was no harm in it, was there, dear? Of course,
he told you afterwards, when you saw him at Mauleverer?

'Yes, he told me--afterwards.'

'Naturally; and having begun to like him as the rich Brian, you didn't
leave off liking him because of his poverty--did you, darling? The man
himself was the same.'

Ida was silent, remembering how, with the revelation of the fraud that
had been practised upon her, the very man himself had seemed to undergo a
transformation--as if a disguise, altering his every characteristic, had
been suddenly flung aside.

She did not answer Bessie's question, but, looking down at her with
grave, searching eyes, she said,--'Dear Bessie, it was a very foolish
jest. I know it is not in your nature to mean unkindly to anyone, least
of all to me, to whom you have been an angel of light; but all practical
jokes of that kind are liable to inflict pain and humiliation upon the
victim--however innocently meant. Whose idea was it, Bess? Not yours, I
think?'

'No; it was Urania who proposed it. She said it would be such fun.'

'Miss Rylance is not usually so--funny.'

'No; but she was particularly jolly that day, don't you remember? in
positively boisterous spirits--for her.'

'And the outcome of her amiability was this suggestion?'

'Yes, darling. She had noticed that you had a kind of romantic fancy
about Brian of the Abbey--that you had idealised his image, as it
were--and set him up as a kind of demi-god. Not because of his wealth,
darling--don't suppose that we supposed that--but on account of that dear
old Abbey and its romantic associations, which gave a charm to the owner.
And so she said what fun it would be to pass off Brian Walford as his
cousin, and see if you fell in love with him. 'I know she is ready to lay
her heart at the feet of the owner of the Abbey,' Urania said; and I
thought it would be too delicious if you were to fall in love with Brian
Walford, who could not help falling in love with you, for of course it
would end in your marrying him, and his getting on splendidly at the Bar;
for, with his talents, he must do well. He only wants a motive for
industry. And then you would be our very own cousin! I hope it wasn't a
very wicked idea, Ida, and that you will find it in your heart to forgive
me,' pleaded Bess, kneeling by her friend's chair, with clasped bands
upon Ida's knees, and sweet, half-tearful face looking up, 'My darling, I
have never been angry with you,' answered Ida, clasping the girl to her
heart, with a stifled sob. 'But I don't think Miss Rylance meant so
kindly. Her idea sprang from a malevolent heart. She wanted to humiliate
me--to drag my most sordid characteristics into the light of day--to make
me more abject than poverty had made me already. That was the motive of
her joke.'

'Never mind her motive, dear. All I am interested in is your opinion of
Brian. I hope he behaved nicely at Mauleverer.'

'Very nicely.'

'Cobb says that Fräulein positively raves about him--declares he is quite
the most gentlemanly young man she ever saw--a godly young man she called
him, in her funny English. And, she says, that he was madly in love with
you. Of course he made you an offer?'

'How could he do that when I was always with the Fräulein?'

'Oh, nonsense. Brian is not the kind of young man to be kept at bay by a
mild nonentity like the Fräulein. He told me before he left that he was
desperately in love with you, and that he meant to win you for his wife.
I asked him how he intended to keep a wife, and he said he should write
for the magazines, and do theatrical criticisms for the newspapers, till
briefs began to drop in. He was determined to win you if you were to be
won. So I feel sure that he made you an offer, unless, indeed, that
horrid old Pew spoiled all by her venomous conduct.'

'That is it, dear. Miss Pew brought matters to an abrupt close.'

'And you are not engaged to Brian?' said Bess, dolefully.

'No.'

'And he didn't follow you to Dieppe?'

'No.'

'Then he is not half so fine a fellow as I thought him.'

'Suppose, Bessie, that after a little mild flirtation, with Fräulein Wolf
for an audience, we both discovered that our liking for each other was of
the very coolest order, and that it was wiser to let the acquaintance
end?'

'You might feel that; but I would never believe it of Brian. Why, he
raved about you; he was passionately in love. He told me there was no
sacrifice he would not make to call you his wife.'

'He had so much to sacrifice,' said Ida, with a cynical air.

'Don't be unkind, Ida. Of course I know that he has his fortune to make;
but he is so thoroughly nice--so full of fun.'

'Did you ever know him do anything good or great, anything worth being
remembered--anything that proved the depth and nobility of his nature?'
asked Ida, earnestly.

'Good gracious! no, not that I can remember. He is always nice, and
amusing. He doesn't like carrying a basket, or skates, and things; but of
course, where there are younger boys one couldn't expect him to do that;
and he hates plain girls and old women; but I suppose that is natural,
for even father does it, in his secret soul, though he is always so
utterly sweet to the poor things. But I am sure Brian Walford has a
tender heart, because he is so fond of kittens.'

'I didn't mean to insinuate that he was a modern Domitian,' answered Ida,
smiling at Bessie's childish earnestness. 'What I mean is that there is
no depth in his nature, no nobility in his character. He is shallow, and,
I fear, selfish. But, Bessie, my pet, I am going to ask you a favour.'

'Ask away,' cried Bessie, cheerfully; 'I can't give you the moon, but
anything which I really do possess is yours this instant.'

'Don't let us ever talk of Brian Walford. I can never get over the
feeling of humiliation which Miss Rylance's practical joke caused me; and
my only chance of forgetting it is to forget your cousin's existence.'

'Oh, but he will come to The Knoll, I hope, at Christmas, and then you
will think better of him.'

'If he should come I--I hope I shall not see him.'

'Has he offended you so deeply?'

'Don't let us talk about him, Bess. Tell me all about your Bournemouth
triumphs. I hear you were the belle of the place.'

'Then you have heard a most egregious fib. There were dozens of girls
with nineteen-inch waists, before whom I felt myself a monster of
dumpiness. But I got on pretty well. I don't pretend to be a good dancer,
but I can generally adapt myself to the badness of other people's steps,
and that goes for something.'

And now having got away from all painful subjects, Bessie rattled on at a
tremendous pace, describing girls and gowns, and partners, and tennis
tournaments, and yachting excursions, all in a breath, as she sat in
front of the fire sipping her tea, and devouring a particular kind of
buttered bun for which Miss Wendover's cook was famous.

'Aunt Betsy's tea is always nicer than any one else's; and so are her
buns and her butter; in fact everything in this house is nicer than it is
anywhere else,' said Bessie, pausing in her reminiscences. 'You are in
clover here, Ida.'

'Thanks to your goodness, Bess.'

'To mine? But I have positively nothing to do with it.'

'Yes, you have. It is from the wish to please her warm-hearted little
niece that Miss Wendover has been so good to me.'

'But if you had been plain or stupid she would have only been kind to you
at a distance. Aunt Betsy has her idiosyncrasies, and one of them is a
liking for beauty in individuals, as well as in chairs and tables and
cups and saucers. You will see that all her servants are pretty. She
picks them for their good looks, I believe, and trains them afterwards.
She would not have so much as a bad-looking stable boy.'

'Hard upon ugliness to be shut out of this paradise,' said Ida.

'Oh, but she finds places for the ugly boys and girls, with people whose
teeth are not so easily set on edge, she says herself. And now I must
be off, to change my frock for dinner. You know the back way to The
Knoll--across the fields to the little door in the kitchen-garden. You
will always come that way, of course. When are you coming to see us?
To-morrow?'

'You forget that my time is not my own. I will come whenever Miss
Wendover can best spare me.'

'Oh, you will have plenty of spare time, I am sure.'

'I hope not too much, or I shall be too sharply reminded that Miss
Wendover has taken me out of charity.'

'Charity fiddlestick! A prize-winner like you! And now good-bye, pet, or
I shall be late for dinner, which offends the Colonel beyond measure.'

Bessie scampered off, Ida following her to the glass door, only in time
to see her running across the lawn as fast as her feet could carry her.
It was characteristic of Bessie to cut everything very fine in the way of
time.




CHAPTER XII.


THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.

And now began for Ida a life of exceeding peacefulness, comfort,
happiness even; for how could a girl fail to be happy among people who
were so friendly and kind, who so thoroughly respected her, and so warmly
admired her for gifts altogether independent of fortune--who never, by
word or look, reminded her that she was in anywise of less importance
than themselves?

Nor had the girl any cause to fear that she was a useless member of Miss
Wendover's household. That lady found plenty of occupation for her young
companion--varied and pleasant duties, which made the days seem too
short, and the leisure of the long winter evenings an agreeable relief
from the busy hours of daylight.

That exquisite neatness which gave such a charm to Wendover's house was
not attained without labour. The polished surface of the old Chippendale
bureaus, the inlaid Sheraton chairs and tables, could only be maintained
by daily care. A housemaid's perfunctory dusting was not sufficient here;
and Miss Wendover, gloved and aproned, and armed with leathers and
brushes, gave at least half an hour every morning to the care of her old
furniture. Another half hour was devoted to china; and the floral
arrangements indoors, even in this wintry season, occupied half an hour
more. This was all active work, about which Aunt Betsy and Ida went
merrily, talking tremendously as they polished and dusted, and upon all
possible subjects, for Miss Wendover's lonely evenings had enabled her to
read almost as much as Southey, and she delighted in telling Ida the
curious out-of-the-way facts that were stored up in her memory.

Sometimes there was an hour or so given to culinary matters--new dishes,
new kickshaws, _hors d'oeuvres,_ savouries--to be taught the young,
teachable cook-maid; for whenever Miss Wendover went to a great dinner,
her eagle eye was on the alert to discover some modern improvement in the
dishes or the table arrangements.

Then there was gardening, which absorbed a good deal of time in fine
weather; for Aunt Betsy held that no gardener, however honestly inclined,
would long feel interested in a garden to which its owner was
indifferent. Miss Wendover knew every flower that grew--could bud, and
graft, and pot, and prune, and do everything that her youthful gardeners
could do, beside being ever so much more learned in the science of
gardening.

Then there were inspections of piggery and poultry-yard, medicines and
particular foods to be prepared for the poultry, hospitals to be
established and looked after in odd corners of the orchard, and the
propagation of species to be carried on by mechanical contrivances.

On wet days there was art needlework, for which Miss Wendover had what
artists would call a great deal of feeling, without being very skilful as
an executant. Under her direction, Ida began a mauresque border for a
tawny plush curtain which was to be a triumph of art when completed, and
which was full of interest in progress. She worked at this of an evening,
while Miss Wendover, who had a fine full voice, and a perfect
enunciation, read aloud to her. Then, when Miss Wendover was tired, Ida
went to the piano and played for an hour or so, while the elder lady gave
herself up to rare idleness and dreamy thought.

These were home duties only. The two ladies had occupations abroad of a
more exacting nature. Miss Wendover until now had given two botany
lessons, and one physical science lesson, every week in the village
school. The botany lessons she now handed over to Ida, whom she coached
for that purpose. Summer or winter these lessons were always given out of
doors, in the course of an hour's ramble in field, lane, or wood. Then
Miss Wendover had a weekly class for domestic economy, a class attended
by all the most promising girls, from thirteen years old upwards, within
five miles. This class was held in the kitchen or housekeeper's room at
the Homestead; and many were the savoury messes of broth or soup, cheap
stews and meat puddings, and the jellies and custards compounded at these
lessons, to be fleut off next day to the sick poor upon Miss Wendover's
list.

Then there was house to house visiting all over the widely-scattered
parish, much talk with gaffers and goodies, in all of which Ida assisted.
She would have hated the work had Miss Wendover been a person of the
Pardiggle stamp; but as love was the governing principle of all Aunt
Betsy's work, her presence was welcome as sunshine or balmy air; so
welcome that her sharpest lectures (and she could lecture when there was
need) were received with meekness and even gratitude. In these visits Ida
learned to know a great deal about the ways and manners of the
agricultural poor, all the weakness and all the nobility of the rural
nature.

Every Saturday or half-holiday at the village school--blessed respite
which gave the hard-worked mistress time to mend her clothes, and make
herself bright and trim for Sunday, and opened for the master brilliant
possibilities in the way of a jaunt to Bomsey or Winchester--Miss
Wendover gave a dinner to all the school children under twelve. She had
taken up Victor Hugo's theory that a substantial meat dinner, even on one
day out of seven, will do much to build up the youthful constitution and
to prevent scrofulous diseases. Moved by these considerations, she had
fitted up a disused barn as a rustic dining-hall, the walls plastered and
whitewashed, or buff-washed, the massive cross timbers painted a dark
red, a long deal table and a few forms the only furniture. Here every
Saturday, at half-past one o'clock, she provided a savoury meat dinner;
and very strong must be that temptation or that necessity which would
induce Aunt Betsy to abandon her duties as hostess at this weekly feast.
It was she who said grace before and after meat--save when some suckling
parson was admitted to the meal; it was she who surveyed and improved the
manners of her guests by sarcastic hints or friendly admonitions; and it
was she who furnished intellectual entertainment in the shape of
anecdote, historical story, or excruciating conundrum.

Ida was allowed to assist at these banquets, and there was nothing in her
new life which she enjoyed more than the sight of all those glad young
faces round the board, or the sound of that frank, rustic laughter. Some
there were naturally of a bovine dullness, in whom even Miss Wendover
could not awaken a ray of intelligence; but these were few. The
generality of the children were far above the average rustic in
brightness of intellect, and this superiority might fairly be ascribed to
Aunt Betsy's influence.

A fortnight before Christmas, by which time Ida had been at the Homestead
more than a month, Miss Wendover suggested a drive to Winchester, and
before starting she handed Ida a ten-pound note. 'You may want some
additional finery for Christmas,' she said kindly. 'Girls generally do.
So you may as well buy it to-day.'

'But, dear Aunt Betsy, I have only been with you a month.'

'Never mind that, my dear. We will not be particular as to quarter-days.
When I think you want money I shall give it to you, and we can make up
our accounts at the end of the year.'

'You are ever so much too good to me,' said Ida, with a loving look that
said a good deal more than words.

There was a light frost that whitened the hills, and the keen freshness
of the air stimulated Brimstone to conduct of a somewhat riotous
character, but Miss Wendover's firm hand held his spirits in check.
Treacle was a sagacious beast, who never did more work than he was
absolutely obliged to do, and who allowed Brimstone to drag the phaeton
while he trotted complacently on the other side of the pole. But Miss
Wendover would stand no nonsense, even from the amiable Treacle. She sent
the pair across the hills at a splendid pace, and drove them under the
old archway and down the stony street with a style which won the
admiration of every experienced eye.

They drew up at the chief draper's of the town; and here Miss Wendover
retired to hold a solemn conference with the head milliner, a judicious
and accomplished person who made Aunt Betsy's gowns and bonnets--all of a
solid and substantial architecture, as if modelled on the adjacent
cathedral. Ida, left alone amidst all the fascinations of the chief shop
in a smart county town, and feeling herself a Croesus, had much need of
fortitude and coolness of temper. Happily she remembered what a little
way that five-pound note had gone in preparing her for her summer visit
to The Knoll, and this brought wisdom. Before spending sixpence upon
herself she bought a gown--an olive merino gown, and velvet to trim it
withal--for her stepmother.

'I don't think she gets a new gown much oftener than I do,' she thought;
'and even if this costs four or five shillings for carriage it will be
worth the money, as a Christmas surprise.'

The gown left only trifling change out of two sovereigns, so that by the
time Ida had bought herself a dark brown cloth jacket and a brown
cashmere gown there were only four sovereigns left out of the ten. She
spent one of these upon some pale pink cashmere for an evening dress, and
half a sovereign on gloves, as she knew Miss Wendover liked to see people
neatly gloved. Ten shillings more were spent upon calico, and another
sovereign went by-and-by at the bootmaker's, leaving the damsel with
just twenty shillings out of her quarter's wage; but as the need of
pocket-money at Kingthorpe, except for the Sunday offertory, was nil, she
felt herself passing rich in the possession of that last remaining
sovereign. She would have liked to spend it all upon Christmas gifts for
her young friends at The Knoll; but this fond wish she relinquished with
a sigh. Paupers could not be givers of gifts. Whatever she gave must be
the fruit of her own labour--some delicate piece of handiwork made out of
cheap materials.

'They are all too good to think meanly of me because I can only show my
gratitude in words,' she told herself.

As Christmas drew near Ida listened anxiously for any allusion to Brian
Walford as a probable visitor; and to her infinite relief, just three
days before the festival, she heard that he was not coming. He had been
invited, and he had left his young cousins in suspense as to his
intentions till the last moment, and then had written to say that he had
accepted an invitation to Norfolk, where there would be shooting, and a
probability of a stag-hunt on foot.

'Which I call horridly mean of him,' protested Horatio, who had come
across the fields expressly to announce this fact to Ida. 'Why can't he
come and shoot here? I don't mean to say that there is anything
particular to shoot, but he and I could go out together and try our luck.
Our hills are splendid for hares.'

'Do you mean that there are plenty of hares?' inquired Ida.

'No, not exactly that. But it would be capital ground for them, don't you
know, if there were any.'

'And where is your other cousin Brian?' asked Ida, merely for the sake of
conversation.

All interest, all idle dreaming about the unknown Brian was over with her
since the fatal mistake which had marred her life. She could not conceive
that anything save evil could ever arise to her henceforward out of that
hated name.

'Oh, he is in Sweden, or Turkey, or Russia, or somewhere,' replied
Horatio, with a disgusted air; 'always on the move, instead of keeping up
the Abbey in proper style, and cultivating his cousins. A man with such
an income is bound in duty to his fellow-creatures to keep a pack of
foxhounds. What else was he sent into the world for, I should like to
know?'

'Perhaps to cultivate the knowledge of his fellow-creatures in distant
countries, and to improve his mind.'

'Rot!' exclaimed Horatio, who was not choice in his language. 'What does
he want with mind? or to make a walking Murray or Baedeker of himself?
Society requires him to lay out his money to the local advantage. Here we
are, with no foxhounds nearer than the New Forest, when we ought to have
a pack at our door!'

Ida could not enter into the keen sense of deprivation caused by a dearth
of foxhounds, so she went on quietly with her work, shading the wing of
the inevitable swallow flitting across the inevitable bulrushes which
formed the design for a piano back.

Presently Bessie came bouncing in, her sealskin flung on anyhow, and the
most disreputable thing in hats perched sideways on her bright brown
curls.

'Mother is going to let us have a dance,' she burst forth breathlessly,
'on Twelfth Night! Won't that be too jolly? A regular party, don't you
know, with a crumb-cloth, and a pianiste from Winchester, and perhaps a
cornet. It's only another guinea, and if father's in a good temper he's
sure to say yes. You must come over to The Knoll every evening to
practise your waltzing. We shall have nothing but round dances in the
programme. I'll take care of that!'

'But if there are any matrons who like to have a romp in the Lancers or
the Caledonians, ain't it rather a shame to leave them out in the cold?'
suggested Horatio. 'You're so blessed selfish, Bess.'

'We are not going to have any matrons. Mother will matronize the whole
party. We are going to have the De Travers, and the Pococks, and the
Ducies, and the Bullinghams over from Bournemouth.'

'And where the deuce are you going to put 'em?'

'Oh, we can put up at least twenty--on spare mattresses, don't you know,
in the old nursery, and in the dressing-rooms and bath-room; and as for
us, why, of course, _we_ can sleep anywhere.'

'Thank you,' replied Horatio; 'I hope you don't suppose I am going to
turn out of my den, or to allow a pack of girls to ransack my drawers and
smoke my favourite pipe.'

'I don't suppose any decent-minded girl would consent to sleep in such a
loathsome hole,' retorted Bessie. 'She would prefer a pillow and a rug on
the landing.'

'My den is quite as tidy as that barrack of yours,' said the Wykhamiste,
'though I haven't yet risen to disfiguring my walls with kitchen plates
and fourpenny fans. The cheap aesthetic is not my line.

'Don't pretend to be cantankerous, Horatio,' said Ida, looking at him
with the loveliest eyes, twinkling a little at his expense; 'we all know
that you are brimming over with good-humour.

Perhaps Aunt Betsy will take in some of your visitors, Bess. I am sure
they shall be welcome to my room, if I have to sleep in the poultry
yard.'

'Happy thought,' cried Bessie; 'I'll sound the dear creature as to her
views on the subject this very day.'

Aunt Betsy was all goodness, and offered to accommodate half a dozen
young ladies of neat and cleanly habits. She protested that she would
have no candle-grease droppers or door-mat despisers in her house.

'The Homestead is the only toy I have,' she said,' and I won't have it
ill-used.'

So six irreproachable young women, the pride of careful mothers, were
billeted on Miss Wendover, while the more Bohemian damsels were to revel
in the improvised accommodation of The Knoll.

That particular Christmas-tide at Kingthorpe was a time of innocent mirth
and youthful happiness which might have banished black care, for the
nonce, from the oldest, weariest breast. For Ida, still young and fresh,
loving and lovable, the contagion of that youthful mirth was
irresistible.

She forgot by how fine a hair hung the sword that dangled over her guilty
head--or began to think that the hair was tough enough to hold good for
ever. And what mattered the existence of the sword provided it was never
to fall? Sometimes it seemed to her in the pure and perfect happiness of
this calm rural home, this useful, innocent life, as if that ill-advised
act of hers had never been acted--as if that autumn morning, that one
half-hour in the modern Gothic church, still smelling of mortar and
pitch-pine, set in flat fields, from which October mists were rising
ghostlike, was no more than a troubled dream--a dream that she had
dreamed and done with for ever. Could it be that such an hour--so dim, so
shadowy to look back upon from the substantial footing of her present
existence--was to give colour to all the rest of her life? No, it was the
dark dream of a troubled past, and she had nothing to do but to forget it
as soon as possible.

Forgetfulness--or at least a temporary kind of forgetfulness--was
tolerably easy while Brian Walford was civil enough to stay away from
Kingthorpe; but the problem of life would be difficult were he to appear
in the midst of that cordial circle--difficult to impossibility.

'It is evident that he doesn't mean to come while I am here,' she told
herself, 'and that at least is kind. But in that case I must not stay
here too long. It is not fair that I should shut him out of his uncle's
house. It is I who am the interloper.'

She thought with bitterest grief of any change from this peaceful life
among friends who loved her, to service in the house of a stranger; but
her conscience recognised the necessity for such a change.

She had no right to squat upon the family of the man she had married--to
exclude him from his rightful heritage, she who refused to acknowledge
his right as her husband. He had done her a deep wrong; he had deceived
her cruelly; and she deemed that she had a right to repudiate a bond
tainted by fraud; but she knew that she had no right to banish him from
his family circle--to dwell, under false pretences, by the hearth of his
kindred.

'I did wrong in coming here,' she thought; 'it was a mean thing to do.
Yet how could I resist the temptation, when no other place offered, and
when I knew I was such a burden at home?'

In the very midst of her happiness, therefore, there was always this
corroding care, this remorseful sense of wrong-doing. This present life
of hers was all blissful, but it was bliss which could not, which must
not, last. Yet what fortitude would be needed ere she could break this
flowery bondage, loosen these dear fetters which love had laid upon her!

Once, during that jovial Christmas season, she hinted at a possible
change in the future.

'What a happy day this has been!' she said as she walked across the
wintry fields with Miss Wendover on the verge of midnight, after a
Christmas dinner and a long evening of Christmas games at The Knoll,
Needham marching in front of them with an unnecessary lantern, and all
the stars of heaven shining in blue frosty brilliance above their heads,
'and what a happy home! I feel it is a privilege to have seen so much of
it; and by-and-by, when I am among strangers--'

'What do you mean?' exclaimed Aunt Betsy, sharply; 'there is to be no
such by-and-by; or, if there ever be such a time, it will be your making,
not mine. You suit me capitally, and I mean to keep you as long as ever I
can, without absolute selfishness. If an eligible husband should want to
carry you off, I must let you go; but I will part with you to no one less
than a husband--unless, indeed,' and here Betsy Wendover's voice took a
colder and graver tone, 'unless you should want to better yourself, as
the servants say, and get more money than I can afford to give you. I
know your accomplishments are worth much more; but it is not everybody to
whom you would be as their own flesh and blood.'

'Oh, Aunt Betsy, can you think that I should ever set money in the scale
against your kindness--your infinite goodness to me?'

'When you talk of a change by-and-by, you set me thinking. Perhaps you
are already beginning to tire of this rustic dullness.'

'No, no, no; I never was so happy in my life--never since I was a child
playing about on board the ship that brought my mother and me to England.
Everybody were kind to me, and made much of me. My mother and I adored
each other; and I did not know that she was dying. Soon after we landed
she grew dangerously ill, and lay for weeks in a darkened room, which I
was not allowed to enter. It was a dreary, miserable time; a lonely,
friendless child pining in a furnished lodging, with no one but a servant
and a sick-nurse to speak to; and then, one dark November morning, the
black hearse and coaches came to the door, and I stood peeping behind a
corner of the parlour blind, and saw my mother's coffin carried out of
the house. No; from the time we left the ship till I came to The Knoll I
had never known what perfect happiness meant.'

'Surely you must have had some happy days with your father?' said Aunt
Betsy.

'Very few. There was always a cloud. Papa is not the kind of man who can
be cheerful under difficulties. Besides, I have seen so little of him,
poor dear. He did not come home from India till I was thirteen, and then
he fell in love with my stepmother, and married her, and took her to
France, where he fancies it is cheaper to live than in England. Yet I
cannot help thinking there are corners of dear old England where he might
find a prettier home and live quite as cheaply.'

'Of course, if he were a sensible man; but I gather from all you have
told me that there is a gentlemanlike helplessness about him--as of a
person who ought to have inherited a handsome income, and is out of his
element as a struggler.'

'That is quite true,' answered Ida; 'my father was not born to wrestle
with Fate.'

They were at the glass door which opened into the morning-room by this
time. The room was steeped in rosy light--such a pretty room, with chintz
curtains and chintz-covered easy-chairs, low, luxurious, inviting; the
only ponderous piece of furniture an old Japanese cabinet, rich in gold
work upon black lacquer. On the dainty little octagon table there was a
large shallow brown glass vase full of Christmas roses; and there was an
odour of violets from the celadon china jars on the chimney-piece. Aunt
Betsy's favourite Persian cat, a marvel of fluffy whiteness, rose from
the hearth to welcome them. It was a delightful picture of home life.

Miss Wendover seemed in no hurry to go to bed. She seated herself in the
low arm-chair by the fire, and allowed the Persian to rub its white head
and arch its back against her dark brocade skirt. No one within twenty
miles of Winchester wore such brocades or such velvets as Miss
Wendover's. They were supposed to be woven on purpose for her. Her gowns
were gowns of the old school, and lasted for years, smelling of the
sandal or camphor wood chests in which they reposed for months at a
stretch, yet, by virtue of some wonderful tact in the wearer, never
looked dowdy or out of date.

'Now,' said Miss Wendover, with a resolute air, 'let us understand each
other, my dear Ida. I don't quite like what you said just now; and I want
to hear for certain that you are satisfied with your life here.'

'I am utterly happy here, dear Aunt Betsy. Is that a sufficient answer?
Only, when I came here, I felt that it was charity--an impulse of
kindness for a friendless girl--that prompted you to offer me a home;
that, in accepting your kindness, I had no right to become an
encumbrance; that, having enjoyed your genial hospitality for a space, I
ought to move on upon my journey, to go where I could be of more use.'

'You too ridiculous girl, can you suppose that you are not useful to me?'
exclaimed Aunt Betsy, impatiently. 'Is there a single hour of your day
unoccupied? Granted that my original motive was a desire to give a
comfortable home to a dear girl who seemed in need of new surroundings,
but that idea would hardly have occurred to me unless I had begun to feel
the want of some energetic helpmate to lighten the load of my daily
duties. The experiment has answered admirably, so far as I am concerned.
But it is just possible you feel otherwise. You may think that you could
make better use of your powers--earn double my poor salary, win
distinction by your fine playing, dress better, see more of the world. I
daresay to a girl of your age Kingthorpe seems a kind of living death.'

'So far from that, I love Kingthorpe with all my heart, so much that I
almost hate myself for not having been born here, for not being able to
say these are my native fields, I was cradled among these hills.'

'So be it. If you love Kingthorpe and love me, you have nothing to do but
to stay here till the hero of your life-story comes to carry you off.'

'There will be no such hero.'

'Oh, yes, there will! Every story, however humble, has its hero; but
yours is going to be a very magnificent personage, I hope.'

The little clock on the chimney-piece chimed the half-hour after
midnight, whereupon Aunt Betsy started up and called for her candle. She
and Ida kissed as they wished each other good night on the threshold of
the elder lady's room.

After this conversation, how could Ida ever again broach the subject of
departure? and yet she felt that sooner or later she must depart. Honour,
conscience, womanly feeling, forbade that she should remain at the cost
of Brian Walford's banishment.




CHAPTER XIII.


KINGTHORPE SOCIETY.

On New Year's Eve Miss Wendover gave one of her famous dinner-parties;
famous because it was always said that her dinners were, on their scale,
better than anybody else's--yea, even that Dr. Rylance's, although that
gentleman spared no expense, and had been known to induce the French cook
from the Dolphin at Southampton to come over and prepare the feast for
him.

Miss Wendover's dinner was an excuse for the bringing forth of rich
stores of old china, old glass, and older silver--the accumulations of
aunts and uncles for past generations, and in some part of the lady
herself, who had the true spirit of a collector, that special gift which
the French connoisseur calls _le flair_. Ida and the lady of the house
worked diligently all the morning in papering and polishing these
treasures; and the dinner table, with its antique silver, Derby china,
heavy diamond-cut glass, and white and scarlet exotics, was a picture to
gladden the eyes of Aunt Betsy's guests.

The party consisted of Colonel and Mrs. Wendover, with their daughter
Bessie, admitted to this sacred function for the first time in her young
life, and duly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion; the Vicar
and his wife; the new curate, an Oxford M.A., and a sprig of a good old
family tree, altogether something very superior in the way of curates;
Mr. and Mrs. Hildrop Havenant, the great people of a neighbouring
settlement, with their eldest son, also an Oxonion; and Dr. and Miss
Rylance.

'Be sure you two girls look your best to-night,' said Miss Wendover, as
she sat before the fire with Bessie and Ida, enjoying the free and easy
luxury of a substantial afternoon tea, which would enable them all to be
gracefully indifferent to the more solid features of dinner, and duly on
the alert, to make conversation. 'We shall have three eligible men.'

'How do you make three, Aunt Betsy?' inquired her niece. 'Of course we
all know that young Hildrop Havenant is heir to nearly all the land
between Havenant and Romsey; but he is such a mass of affectation that I
can't imagine anybody wanting to marry him. And as for Mr. Jardine--'

'Is he a mass of affectation, too, Bess?' inquired Aunt Betsy with
intention, for Mr. Jardine, the curate, was supposed to have impressed
the damsel's fancy more deeply than she would care to own. 'He is an
Oxford man.'

'There is Oxford and Oxford,' said Bess. 'If all the Oxford men were like
young Havenant, the only course open to the rest of the world would be to
burn Oxford, just as Oxford burned the martyrs.'

'Well, we may count Mr. Jardine as an eligible, I suppose?'

'But that only makes two. Who is your third?' asked Bessie.

'Dr. Rylance.'

'Dr. Rylance an eligible?' cried Bessie, with girlhood's frank laughter
at the absurd idea of middle age coming into the market to bid for youth.
'Why, auntie, the man must be fifty.'

'Five-and-forty at most, and very young-looking for his age; very
polished, very well off. There are many girls who would be proud to win
such a husband,' said Miss Wendover, glancing at Ida in the firelight.

She wanted to test the girl's temper--to find out, were it possible,
whether this girl, whom she so inclined to love, tried in the fierce
furnace of poverty, had acquired mercenary instincts. She had heard from
Urania of that reckless speech about marrying for money, and she wanted
to know how much or how little that speech had implied.

Ida was silent. She had never told anyone of Dr. Rylance's offer. She
would have deemed it dishonourable to let anyone into the secret of his
humiliation--to let his little world know that he, so superior a person,
could offer himself and be rejected.

'What do you think now, Bess,' pursued Miss Wendover; 'would it not be
rather a nice thing if Dr. Rylance were to marry Ida? We all know how
much he admires her.'

'It would be a very horrid thing!' cried the impetuous Bess. 'I would
ever so much rather Ida married poor Brian, although they had to pig in
furnished lodgings for the first ten years of their life. Crabbed age and
youth cannot dwell together.'

'But Dr. Rylance is not crabbed, and he is not old.'

'Let him marry a lady of the same doubtful age, which seems old to me,
but young to you, and then no one will find fault with him,' said Bess,
savagely. 'I feel an inward and spiritual conviction that Ida is doomed
to marry Brian Walford. The poor fellow was so hopelessly in love with
her when he left this place, that, if she had not a stone inside her
instead of a heart, she would have accepted him; but _magno est amor et
praevalebit!_' concluded Bess, with a mighty effort; 'I'm sure I hope
that's right.'

'I think it must be time for you to go home and dress, if you really wish
to look nice to-night,' said Ida, severely. 'You know you generally find
yourself without frilling, or something wrong, at the last moment.'

'Heavens!' exclaimed Bessie, starting up and upsetting the petted
Persian, which had been reposing in her lap, and which now skulked off
resentfully, with a swollen tail, to hide its indignation under a chair,
'you are as bad as an oracle. I have yards and yards of frilling to sew
on before I dress--my sleeves--my neck--my sweeper.'

'Shall I run over and sew the frills on for you?' asked Ida.

'You! when you are going to wear that lovely pink gown. You will want
hours to dress. No: Blanche must make herself useful for once in her
ridiculous life. _Au revoir_, auntie darling. Go, lovely rose'--to
Ida--'and make yourself still lovelier in order to captivate Dr.
Rylance.'

The dinner was over. It had passed without a hitch, and the gentlemen
were now enjoying their claret and conversation in a comfortable
semicircle in front of Miss Wendover's roomy hearth.

The conversation was for the most part strictly local, Colonel Wendover
and Mr. Hildrop Havenant leading, and the Vicar a good second; but now
and then there was a brief diversion from the parish to European
politics, when Dr. Rylance--who secretly abhorred parochial talk--dashed
to the fore and talked with an authority which it was hard for the others
to keep under. He spoke of the impending declaration of war--there is
generally some such thing--as if he had been at the War Office that
morning in confidential converse with the chief officials; but this was
more than Squire Havenant could endure, and he flatly contradicted the
physician on the strength of his morning's correspondence. Mr. Havenant
always talked of his letters as if they contained all the law and the
prophets. His correspondents were high in office, unimpeachable
authorities, men who had the ear of the House, or who pulled the strings
of the Government.

'I am told on the best authority that there will be no war,' he said,
swelling, or seeming to swell, as he spoke.

He was a large man, with a florid complexion and gray mutton-chop
whiskers.

Dr. Rylance shrugged his shoulders and smiled blandly. It was the calm,
incredulous smile with which he encountered any rival medico who was bold
enough to question his treatment.

'That is not the opinion of the War Office,' he said quietly.

'But it is the opinion of men who dictate to the War Office,' replied Mr.
Havenant.

'We couldn't have a better place for the working men's club than old
Parker's cottage,' said the Vicar, addressing himself to Colonel
Wendover.

'If Russia advances a foot farther, there must be war in Beloochistan,'
said Dr. Rylance; 'and if England is blind to the exigencies of the
situation, I should like to know how you are going to get your troops
through the Bolan Pass.'

'A single line to Romsey would send up the value of land fifty per cent,'
said the Colonel, who cared much more about Hampshire than Hindostan,
although the best years of his life had been spent under Indian skies.

Hildrop Havenant pricked up his ears, and forgot all about the War
Office.

'If the railway company had the pluck they ought to get that Bill through
next Session,' he said, meaning a Bill for a loop between Winchester and
Romsey.

While the elder gentlemen prosed over their wine the two younger men had
found their way, first to the garden, for a cigar under the frosty moon,
then back to Miss Wendover's pretty drawing room, where Ida was playing
Schumann's 'Träumerei' at one end of the room with Bessie for her only
audience, while Miss By lance, Miss Wendover, and the three matrons made
a stately group around and about the fire-place.

Urania was providing the greater part of the conversation. She had spent
a delightful fortnight in Cavendish Square at the end of November, and
had been everywhere and seen everything--winter exhibitions--new plays.

'I had no idea there could be so many nice people in town out of the
season,' she said with a grand air. 'But then my father knows all the
nicest people; he cultivates no Philistines.'

The Vicar's wife required to have this last remark explained to her. She
only knew the Philistines of Scripture, an unfortunate people who seem
always to have been in the wrong.

'And you saw some good pictures?' inquired Aunt Betsy.

'A few good ones and acres of daubs,' replied Urania. 'Why will so many
people paint? There are pictures which are an affliction to the eye--an
outrage upon common sense. Instead of a huge gallery lined from floor to
ceiling with commonplace, why cannot we have a Temple with a single
Watts, or Burne Jones, or Dante Bossetti, which one could go in and
worship quietly in a subdued light?'

'That is a horridly expensive way of seeing pictures,' said the Vicar's
wife; 'I hate paying a shilling for seeing a single picture. If it is
ever so good one feels one has had so little for one's money. Now at the
Academy there are always at least fifty pictures which delight me.'

'You must be very easy to please,' said Urania.

'I am,' replied the Vicar's wife, curtly, 'and that is one of the
blessings for which I am thankful to God. I hate your _nil admiraris_,'
added the lady, as if it were the name of a species.

After this Urania became suddenly interested in Schumann, and glided
across the room to see what the music meant.

'That is very sweet,' she murmured, sinking into a seat by Bessie;
'classical, of course?'

'Schumann,' answered Ida, briefly.

'I thought so. It has that delicious vagueness one only finds in German
music--a half-developed meaning--leaving wide horizons of melodious
uncertainty.'

This was a conversational style which Miss Rylance had cultivated since
her entrance into the small world of Kingthorpe, and the larger world of
Cavendish Square, as a grown-up young woman. She had seen a good deal of
a semi-artistic, quasi-literary circle, in which her father was the
medical oracle, attending actresses and singers without any more
substantial guerdon than free admittance to the best theatres on the best
nights; prescribing for newspaper-men and literary lions, who sang his
praises wherever they went.

Urania had fallen at once into all the tricks and manners of the new
school. She had taken to short waists and broad sashes, and a style of
drapery which accentuated the elegant slimness of her figure. She
affected out-of-the-way colours, and quaint combinations--pale pinks and
olive greens, tawny yellow and faded russet--and bought her gowns at a
Japanese warehouse, where limp lengths of flimsy cashmere were mixed in
artistic confusion with sixpenny teapots and paper umbrellas. In a word,
Miss Rylance had become a disciple of the peacock-feather school of art,
and affected to despise every other development of intellect, or beauty.

This was the first time that she and Ida had met since the latter's
return to Kingthorpe, except indeed for briefest greetings in the
churchyard after morning service. Ida had not yet upbraided her for the
trick of which she was the author and originator, but Urania was in no
wise grateful for this forbearance. She had acted with deliberate
maliciousness; and she wanted to know that her malice had given pain. The
whole thing was a failure if it had not hurt the girl who had been
audacious enough to outshine Miss Rylance, and to fascinate Miss
Rylance's father. Urania had no idea that the physician had offered
himself and his two houses to Ida Palliser, nay, had even pledged himself
to sacrifice his daughter at the shrine of his new love. She knew that he
admired Miss Palliser more than he had ever admired anyone else within
her knowledge, and this was more than enough to make Ida hateful.

Ida was particularly obnoxious this evening, in that pale pink cashmere
gown, with a falling collar of fine old Brussels point, a Christmas gift
from Mrs. Wendover. The gown might not be the highest development of the
Grosvenor Gallery school, but it was at once picturesque and becoming,
and Ida was looking her loveliest.

'Why have you never come to see me since your return?' inquired Urania,
with languid graciousness.

'I did not think you wanted me,' Ida answered, coolly.

'I am always glad to see my friends. I stop at home on Thursday
afternoons on purpose; but perhaps you have not quite forgiven Bess and
me for that little bit of fun we indulged in last September,' said
Urania.

'I have quite forgiven Bess her share of the joke,' answered Ida,
scanning Miss Rylance's smiling countenance with dark, scornful eyes,
'because I know she had no idea of giving me pain.'

'But won't you forgive me too? Are you going to leave me out in the
cold?'

'I don't think you care a straw whether I forgive or do not forgive you.
You wanted to wound me--to humiliate me--and you succeeded--to a certain
degree. But you see I have survived the humiliation. You did not hurt me
quite so much as you intended, perhaps.'

'What a too absurd view to take of the thing!' cried Urania, with an
injured air. 'An innocent practical joke, not involving harm of any kind;
a little girlish prank played on the spur of the moment. I thought you
were more sensible than to be offended--much less seriously angry--at any
such nonsense.'

Ida contemplated her enemy silently for a few moments, as her hands
wandered softly through one of those Kinder-scenen which she knew by
heart.

'If I am mistaken in your motives it is I who have to apologize,' she
said, quietly. 'Perhaps I am inclined to make too much of what is really
nothing. But I detest all practical jokes, and I should have thought you
were the very last person to indulge in one, Miss Rylance. Sportiveness
is hardly in your line.'

'Nobody is always wise,' murmured Urania, with her disagreeable simper.

'Not even Miss Rylance?' questioned Ida, without looking up from the
keys.

'Please don't quarrel,' pleaded Bessie, piteously; 'such a bad use for
the last night of the year. It was more my fault than anyone else's,
though the suggestion did certainly come from Urania--but no harm has
come of it--nor good either, I am sorry to say--and I have repented
in sackcloth and ashes. Why should the dismal failure be raked up
to-night?'

'I should not have spoken of it if Miss Rylance had been silent,' said
Ida; and here, happily, the two young men came in, and made at once for
the group of girls by the piano, whereupon Urania had an opportunity of
parading her newest ideas, all second, third, or even fourth-hand, before
the young Oxonians. One young Oxonian was chillingly indifferent to the
later developments of modern thought, and had eyes for no one but Bessie,
whose childish face beamed with smiles as he talked to her, although his
homely theme was old Sam Jones's rheumatics, and the Providence which had
preserved Martha Morris's boy from instant death when he tumbled into the
fire. It was only parish talk, but Bessie felt as happy as if one of the
saints of old had condescended to converse with her--proud and pleased,
too, when Mr. Jardine told her how grateful old Jones was for her
occasional visits, and how her goodness to Mrs. Morris had made a deep
impression upon that personage, commonly reported to have 'a temper' and
to be altogether a difficult subject.

The conversation drifted not unnaturally from parochial to more personal
topics, and Mr. Jardine showed himself interested in Bessie's pursuits,
studies, and amusements.

'I hear so much of you from those two brothers of yours,' said the
Curate--'fine, frank fellows. They often join me in my walks.'

'I'm sure it is very good of you to have anything to say to them,'
replied Bessie, feeling, like other girls of eighteen, that there could
hardly be anything more despicable--from a Society point of view--than
her two brothers.' They are laboriously idle all through the holidays.'

'Well, I daresay they might work a little more, with ultimate advantage,'
said Mr. Jardine, smiling; 'but it is pleasant to see boys enjoy life so
thoroughly. They are fond of all open air amusements, and they are keen
observers, and I find that they think a good deal, which is a stage
towards work.'

'They are not utterly idiotic,' sighed Bessie; 'but they never read, and
they break things in a dreadful way. The legs of our chairs snap under
those two boys as if old oak were touchwood; and Blanche and Eva, who
ought to know better, devote all their energies to imitating them.'

The other gentlemen had come in by this time, and Dr. Rylance came
gliding across the room with his gentlemanly but somewhat catlike tread,
and planted himself behind Ida, bending down to question her about her
music, and letting her see that he admired her as much as ever, and had
even forgiven her for refusing him. But she rose as soon as she decently
could, and left the piano.

'Miss Rylance will sing, I hope,' she said, politely. Miss Wendover came
over to make the same request, and Urania sane the last fashionable
ballad, 'Blind Man's Holiday,' in a hard chilly voice which was as
unpleasant as a voice well could be without being actually out of tune.

After this Bessie sang 'Darby and Joan,' in a sweet contralto, but with a
doleful slowness which hung heavily upon the spirits of the company, and
a duly dismal effect having been produced, the young ladies were
cordially thanked for--leaving off.

A pair of whist-tables were now started for the elders, while the three
girls and the two Oxonians still clustered round the piano, and seemed to
find plenty to talk about till sweetly and suddenly upon the still night
air came the silver tones of the church bells.

Miss Wendover started up from the card-table with a solemn look, as the
curate opened a window and let in a flood of sound. A silent hush fell
upon everyone.

'The New Year is born,' said Aunt Betsy; 'may it spare us those we love,
and end as peacefully for us as the year that is just dead.'

And then they all shook hands with each other and parted.

The dance at The Knoll was a success, and Ida danced with the best men in
the room, and was as much courted and admired as if she had been the
greatest heiress in that part of Hampshire. Urania Rylance went simpering
about the room telling everybody, in the kindest way, who Miss Palliser
was, and how she had been an ill-used drudge at a suburban finishing
school, before that dear good Miss Wendover took her as a useful
companion; but even that crushing phrase, 'useful companion,' did not
degrade Ida in the eyes of her admirers.

'Palliser's a good name,' said one youth. 'There's a Sir Vernon
Palliser--knew him and his brother at Cambridge--members of the Alpine
Club--great athletes. Any relation?'

'Very distant, I should think, from what I know of Miss Palliser's
circumstances;' answered Miss Rylance, with an incredulous sneer.

But Urania failed in making youth and beauty contemptible, and was fain
to admit to herself that Ida Palliser was the belle of the room. Dr.
Rylance, who had not been invited, but who looked so well and so young
that no one could be angry with him for coming, hung upon Miss Palliser's
steps, and tortured her with his politeness.

For Ida the festivity was not all happiness. She would have been
happier at the Homestead, sitting by the fire reading aloud to Miss
Wendover--happier almost anywhere--for she had not only to endure a kind
of gentlemanly persecution from Dr. Rylance, but she was tormented by an
ever-present dread of Brian Walford's appearance. Bessie had sent him a
telegram only that morning, imploring him, as a personal favour, to be
present at her ball, vowing that she would be deeply offended with him if
he did not come; and more than once in the course of the evening Bessie
had told Ida that there was still time, there was a train now just due at
Winchester, and that might have brought him. Ida breathed more freely
after midnight, when it was obviously too late for any one else to
arrive.

'It is your fault,' said Bessie, pettishly. 'If you had not treated him
very unkindly at Mauleverer he would be here to-night. He never failed me
before.'

Ida reddened, and then grew very pale.

'I see,' she said, 'you think I deprive you of your cousin's society. I
will ask Miss Wendover to let me go back to France.'

'No, no, no, you inhuman creature! how can you talk like that? You know
that I love you ever so much better than Brian, though he is my own kith
and kin. I would not lose you for worlds. I don't care a straw about his
coming, for my own sake. Only I should so like you to marry him, and be
one of us. Oh, here's that odious Dr. Rylance stealing after you. Aunt
Betsy is quite right--the man would like to marry you--but you won't
accept him, will you, darling?--not even to have your own house in
Cavendish Square, a victoria and brougham, and all those blessings we
hear so much about from Urania. Remember, you would have her for a
stepdaughter into the bargain.'

'Be assured, dear Bess, I shall never be Urania's stepmother. And now,
darling, put all thoughts of matrimony out of your head; for me, at
least.'

That brief flash of Christmas and New Year's gaiety was soon over. The
Knoll resumed its wonted domestic calm. Dr. Rylance went back to
Cavendish Square, and only emerged occasionally from the London vortex to
spend a peaceful day or two at Kingthorpe. His daughter was not installed
as mistress of his town house, as she had fondly hoped would be the case.
She was permitted to spend an occasional week, sometimes stretched to ten
days or a fortnight, in Cavendish Square; but the cook-housekeeper and
the clever German servant, half valet half butler, still reigned supreme
in that well-ordered establishment; and Urania felt that she had no more
authority than a visitor. She dared not find fault with servants who
had lived ten years in her father's service, and who suited him
perfectly--even had there been any legitimate reason for fault-finding,
which there was not.

Dr. Rylance having got on so comfortably during the last twelve years of
his life without a mistress for his town house, was disinclined to
surrender his freedom to a daughter who had more than once ventured to
question his actions, to hint that he was not all-wise. He considered it
a duty to introduce his daughter into the pleasant circles where he was
petted and made much of; and he fondly hoped she would speedily find a
husband sufficiently eligible to be allowed the privilege of taking her
off her father's hands. But in the meanwhile, Urania in London was
somewhat of a bore; and Dr. Rylance was never more cheerful than when
driving her to Waterloo Station.

Miss Rylance's life, therefore, during this period alternated between
rural seclusion and London gaiety. She came back to the pastoral phase of
her existence with the feelings and demeanour of a martyr; and her only
consolation was found in those calm airs of superiority which seemed
justified by her intimate acquaintance with society, and her free use of
a kind of jargon which she called modern thought.

'How you can manage to exist here all the year round without going out of
your mind is more than I can understand,' she told Bessie.

'Well, I know Kingthorpe is dull,' replied Bess, meekly, 'but it's a dear
old hole, and I never find the days too long, especially when those
odious boys are at home.'

'But really now, Bessie, don't you think it is time you should leave off
playing with boys, and begin wearing gloves?' sneered Urania.

'I did wear gloves at Bournemouth, religiously--mousquetaires, up to my
elbows; never went out without them. No, Ranie, I am never dull at old
Kingthorpe; and then there is always a hope of Bournemouth.'

'Bournemouth is worse than this!' exclaimed Urania. 'There is nothing so
laboriously dismal as a semi-fashionable watering-place.'

Talk as she might, Miss Rylance could not sour Bessie's happy disposition
with the vinegar of discontent. Hers was a sweet, joyous soul; and just
now, had she dared to speak the truth, she would have said that this
pastoral village of Kingthorpe, this cluster of fine old houses and
comfortable cottages, grouped around an ancient parish church, was to her
the central point of the universe, to leave which would be as Eve's
banishment from Eden. The pure and tender heart had found its shrine, and
laid down its offering of reverent devotion. Mr. Jardine had said nothing
as yet, but he had sedulously cultivated Bessie Wendover's society, and
had made himself eminently agreeable to her parents, who could find no
fault with a man who was at once a scholar and a gentleman, and who had
an income which made him comfortably independent of immediate preferment.

He was enthusiastic, and he could afford to give his enthusiasm full
scope. Kingthorpe suited him admirably. It was a parish rich in sweet
associations. The present Vicar was a good, easy-going man, a High
Churchman of the old school rather than the new, yet able to sympathize
with men of more advanced opinions and fiercer energies.

Thus it was that while Miss Rylance found her bower at Kingthorpe a place
of dullness and discontent, Bessie rose every morning to a new day of joy
and gladness, which began, oh! so sweetly, in the early morning service,
in which John Jardine's deep musical voice gave new force and meaning to
the daily lessons, new melody to the Psalms. Ida was always present at
this morning service, and the two girls used to walk home together
through the dewy fields, sometimes one, sometimes the other going out of
her way to accompany her friend. Bessie poured all her innocent secrets
into Ida's ear, expatiating with sweet girlish folly upon every look and
tone of Mr. Jardine's, asking Ida again and again if she thought that he
cared, ever so little, for her.

'You never tell me any of your secrets, Ida,' she said, reproachfully,
after one of these lengthy discussions. 'I am always prosing about my
affairs, until I must seem a lump of egotism. Why don't you make me
listen sometimes? I should be deeply interested in any dream of yours, if
it were ever so wild.'

'My darling, I have no dreams, wild or tame,' said Ida. She could not say
that she had no secret, having that one dreadful secret hanging over her
and overshadowing her life.

'And have you never been in love?'

'Never. I once thought--almost thought--that I was in love. It was like
drifting away in a frail, dancing little boat over an unknown sea--all
very well while the sun shone and the boat went gaily--suddenly the boat
fell to pieces, and I found myself in the cold, cruel water.'

'Horrid!' cried Bess, with a shudder. 'That could not have been real
love.'

'No, dear, it was a will-o'-the-wisp, not the true light.'

'And you have got over it?'

'Quite. I am perfectly happy in the life I lead now.'

This was the truth. There are these calm pauses in most lives--blessed
intervals of bliss without passion--a period in which heart and mind are
both at rest, and yet growing and becoming nobler and purer in the time
of repose, just as the body grows during sleep.

And thus Ida's life, full and useful, glided on, and the days went by
only too swiftly; for it was never out of her mind that these days of
tranquil happiness were numbered, that she was bound in honour to leave
Kingthorpe before Brian Walford could feel the oppression of banishment
from his kindred. At present Brian Walford was living in Paris, with an
old college friend, both these youths being supposed to be studying the
French language and literature, with a view to making themselves more
valuable at the English bar. He had given up his chambers in the Temple,
as too expensive for a man living from hand to mouth. He was understood
to be contributing to the English magazines, and to be getting his living
decently, which was better than languishing under the cognizance of the
Lamb and Flag, with no immediate prospect of briefs.




CHAPTER XIV.


THE TRUE KNIGHT.

Kingthorpe, beautiful even in the winter, with its noble panorama of
hills and woods, was now looking its loveliest in the leafy month of
June. Ida had been living with Miss Wendover nearly eight months, and had
become to her as a daughter, waiting upon her with faithful and loving
service, always a bright and cheerful companion, joining with heart and
hand in all good works. Her active life, her freedom from daily cares,
had brightened her proud young beauty. She was lovelier than she had ever
been as the belle of Mauleverer Manor, for that defiant look which had
been the outcome of oppression had now given place to softness and
smiles. The light of happiness beamed in her dark eyes. Between December
and June this tranquil existence had scarcely been rippled by anything
that could be called an event, save the one grand event of Bessie
Wendover's life--her engagement to John Jardine, who had proposed quite
unexpectedly, as Bessie declared, one evening in May, when the two had
gone into a certain copse at the back of The Knoll gardens, famous as the
immemorial resort of nightingales. Here, instead of listening to the
nightingales, or silently awaiting a gush of melody from those pensive
birds, Mr. Jardine had poured out his own melodious strain, which took
the form of an ardent declaration. Bessie, who had been doing 'he loves
me, loves me not,' with every flower in the garden--forgetting that from
a botanical point of view the result was considerably influenced by the
nature of the flower--pretended to be intensely surprised; made believe
there was nothing further from her thoughts; and then, when her
emboldened lover folded her to his breast, owned shyly, and with tears,
that she had loved him desperately ever since Christmas, and that she
would have been heartbroken had he married anyone else.

Colonel and Mrs. Wendover received the Curate's declaration with the
coolness which is so aggravating in parents, who would hardly be elated
if the sons of God came down once more to propose for the daughters of
men.

They both considered that Bessie was ridiculously young--much too young
to receive an offer of marriage. They consented, ultimately, to an
engagement; but Bessie was not to be married till after her twenty-first
birthday. This meant two years from next September, and Mr. Jardine
pleaded hard for a milder sentence. Surely one year would be long enough
to wait, when Bessie and he were so sure of their own minds.

'Bessie is too young to be sure of anything,' said the Colonel; 'and two
years will only give you time to find a living and a nice cosy vicarage,
or rectory, as the case way be.'

Mr. Jardine did not venture to remind Colonel Wendover that for him the
cosiness of vicarage or rectory was a mere detail as compared with a
worthy field for his labours. He meant to spend his life where it would
be of most use to his fellow-creatures; even although the call of duty
should come to him from the smokiest of manufacturing towns, or in the
flat, dull fields of Lincolnshire, among pitmen and stockingers. He was
not the kind of man to consider the snug rectory houses or fat glebes,
but rather the kind of man to take upon himself some long-neglected
parish, and ruin himself in building church and schools.

Fortunately for Bessie's hopes, however, Colonel Wendover did not know
this.

The Curate complained to Aunt Betsy of her brother's hardness.

'Why cannot we be married at the end of this year?' he said. 'We have
pledged ourselves to spend our lives together. Why should we not begin
that bright new life--bright and new, at least to me--in a few months?
That would be ample time for the Colonel and Mrs. Wendover to get
accustomed to the idea of Bessie's marriage.'

'But a few months will not make her old enough or wise enough for a
clergyman's wife,' said Miss Wendover.

'She has plenty of wisdom--the wisdom of a generous and tender heart--the
best kind of wisdom. All her instincts, all her impulses, are pure, and
true, and noble. What can age give her better than that? Girl, as she is,
my parish will be the better for her sweet influence. She will be the
sunshine of my people's life as well as of mine. How will she grow wiser
by living two years longer, and reading novels, and dancing at
Bournemouth? I don't want her to be worldly-wise; and the better kind of
wisdom comes from above. She will learn that in the quiet of her married
home.'

'I see,' said Miss Wendover, smiling at him; 'you don't quite like the
afternoon dances and tennis parties at Bournemouth.'

'Pray don't suppose I am jealous,' said the Curate. 'My trust in my
darling's goodness and purity is the strongest part of my love. But I
don't want to see the best years of her youth, her freshness, her girlish
energy and enthusiasm, frittered away upon dances, and tennis, and dress,
which has lately been elevated into an art. I want her help, I want her
sympathy, I want her for my own--the better part of myself--going hand in
hand with me in all my hopes and acts.'

'Two years sounds a long time,' said Miss Wendover, musingly, 'and I
suppose, at your age and Bessie's, it is a long time; though at mine the
years flow onward with such a gliding motion that it is only one's
looking-glass, and the quarterly accounts, that tell one time is moving.
However, I have seen a good many of these two-year engagements--'

'Yes.'

'And I have seldom seen one of them last a twelvemonth.'

'They have ended unhappily?'

'Quite the contrary. They have ended in a premature wedding. The
young people have put their heads together, and have talked over the
flinty-hearted parents; and some bright morning, when the father and
mother have been in a good temper, the order for the trousseau has been
given, the bridesmaids have received notice, and in six weeks the whole
business was over, And the old people rather glad to have got rid of a
love-sick damsel and her attendant swain. There is no greater nuisance in
a house than engaged sweethearts. Who knows whether you and Bessie may
not be equally fortunate?'

'I hope we may be so,' said the Curate; 'but I don't think we shall make
ourselves obnoxious.'

'Oh, of course you think not. Every man believes himself superior to
every form of silliness, but I never saw a lover yet who did not lapse
sooner or later into mild idiocy.'

_'Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.'_

'Of course. Indeed, with the gods of Olympus it was quite the other way.
Nothing could be more absurd than their goings on.'

Ida was delighted at her friend's happiness, and was never tired of
hearing about Mr. Jardine's virtues. Love had already begun to exercise a
sobering influence upon Bessie. She no longer romped with the boys, and
she wore gloves. She had become very studious of her appearance, but all
those little coquettish arts of the toilet which she had learned last
autumn at Bournemouth, the cluster of flowers pinned on her shoulder, the
laces and frivolities, were eschewed; lest Mr. Jardine should be reminded
of the wanton-eyed daughters of Zion, with their tinkling ornaments, and
chains, and bracelets, and mufflers, and rings, and nose-jewels. She
began to read with a view to improving her mind, and plodded laboriously
through certain books of the advanced Anglican school which her lover had
told her were good. But she learnt a great deal more from Mr. Jardine's
oral instructions than from any books, and when the Winchester boys came
home for an occasional Sunday they found her brimful of ecclesiastical
knowledge, and at once nicknamed her the Perambulating Rubric, or by the
name of any feminine saint which their limited learning suggested.
Fortunately for Bessie, however, their jests were not unkindly meant, and
they liked Mr. Jardine, whose knowledge of natural history, the ways and
manners of every creature that flew, or walked, or crawled, or swam in
that region of hill and valley, made him respectable in their eyes.

'He's not half a bad fellow--for a parson,' said Horatio,
condescendingly.

'And wouldn't he make a jolly schoolmaster?' exclaimed Reginald. 'Boys
would get on capitally with Jardine. They'd never try to bosh _him_.'

'Schoolmaster, indeed?' echoed Bessie, with an offended air.

'I suppose you think it wouldn't be good enough for him? You expect him
to be made an archbishop off-hand, without being educated up to his work
by the rising generation. No doubt you forget that there have been such
men as Arnold, and Temple, and Moberly. Pray what higher office can a man
hold in this world than to form the minds of the rising generation?'

'I wish your master would form your manners,' said Bessie, 'for they are
simply detestable.'

It was nearly the end of June, and the song of the nightingales was
growing rarer in the twilight woods.

Ida started early one heavenly midsummer morning, with her book and her
luncheon in a little basket, to see the old lodge-keeper at Wendover
Abbey, who had nursed the elder Wendovers when they were babies in the
nurseries at the Abbey, and who had lived in a Gothic cottage at the
gate--built on purpose for her by the last squire--ever since her
retirement from active service. This walk to the Abbey was one of Ida's
favourite rambles, and on this June morning the common, the wood, the
corn-fields, and distant hills were glorious with that fleeting beauty of
summer which gives a glamour to the most commonplace scenery.

She had a long idle morning before her, a thing which happened rarely.
Miss Wendover had driven to Romsey with the Colonel and his wife, to
lunch with some old friends in the neighbourhood of that quiet town, and
was not likely to be home till afternoon tea. Bessie was left in charge
of the younger members of the household, and was further deeply engaged
in an elaborate piece of ecclesiastical embroidery, all crimson and gold,
and peacock floss, which she hoped to finish before All Saints' Day.

Old Mrs. Rowse, the gatekeeper, was delighted to see Miss Palliser. The
young lady was a frequent visitor, for the old woman was entitled to
particular attention as a sufferer from chronic rheumatism, unable to
do more than just crawl into her little patch of garden, or to the
grass-plat before her door on a sunny afternoon. Her days were spent, for
the most part, in an arm-chair in front of the neat little grate, where a
handful of fire burnt, winter and summer, diffusing a turfy odour.

Ida liked to hear the old woman talk of the past. She had been a bright
young girl, under-nurse when the old squire was born; and now the squire
had been lying at rest in the family vault for nigh upon fifteen years,
and here she was still, without kith or kin, or a friend in the world
except the Wendovers.

She liked to hold forth upon the remarkable events of her life--from her
birth in a labourer's cottage, about half a mile from the Abbey, to the
last time she had been able to walk as far as the parish church, now five
years ago. She was cheerful, yet made the most of her afflictions, and
seemed to think that chronic rheumatism of her particular type was a
social distinction. She was also proud of her advanced age, and had hopes
of living into the nineties, and having her death recorded in the county
papers.

That romantic feeling about the Abbey, which had taken possession of
Ida's mind on her first visit, had hardly been lessened by familiarity
with the place, or even by those painful associations which made the spot
fatal to her. The time-old deserted mansion was still to her fancy a poem
in stone; and although she could not think about its unknown master
without a shudder, recalling her miserable delusion, she could not banish
his image from her thoughts, when she roamed about the park, or explored
the house, where the few old servants had grown fond of her and suffered
her to wander at will.

When she had spent an hour with Mrs. Rowse, she walked on to the Abbey,
and seated herself to eat her sandwiches and read her beloved Shelley
under the cedar beneath which she and the Wendover party had picnicked so
gaily on the day of her first visit. Shelley harmonized with her
thoughtful moods, for with most of his longer poems there is interwoven
that sense of wrong and sorrow, that idea of a life spoiled and blighted
by the oppression of stern social laws, which could but remind Ida of her
own entanglement. She had bound herself by a chain that could never be
broken, and here she read of how all noblest and grandest impulses are
above the law, and refuse to be so bound; and how, in such cases, it is
noble to defy and trample upon the law. A kind of heroic lawlessness,
spiritualized and diffused in a cloud of exquisite poetry, was what she
found in her Shelley; and it comforted her to know that before her time
there had been lofty souls caught in the web of their own folly.

When she was tired of reading she went into the Abbey. The great hall
door stood open to admit the summer air and sunshine. Ida wandered from
one room to another as freely as if she had been in her own house,
knowing that any servant she met would be pleased to see her there. The
old housekeeper was a devoted admirer of Miss Palliser; the two young
housemaids were her pupils in a class which met every Sunday afternoon
for study of the Scriptures. She had no fear of being considered an
intruder. Many of the casements stood open, and there was the scent of
flowers in the silent old rooms, where all was neat and prim, albeit a
little faded and gray.

Ida loved to explore the library, where the books were for the most part
quaint and old, original editions of seventeenth and eighteenth century
books, in sober, substantial bindings. It was pleasant to take out a
volume of one of the old poets, or the eighteenth century essayists, and
to read a few stanzas, or a paper of Addison's or Steele's, standing by
the open window in the air and sunlight.

The rooms in which she roamed at will were the public apartments of the
Abbey, and, although beautiful in her eyes, they had the stiffness and
solemnity of rooms which are not for the common uses of daily life.

But on one occasion Mrs. Mawley, the housekeeper, in a particularly
communicative mood, showed her the suite of rooms in which Mr. Wendover
lived when he was alone; and here, in the study where he read, and wrote,
and smoked, and brooded in the long quiet days, she saw those personal
belongings which gave at least some clue to the character of the man.
Here, on shelves which lined the room from floor to ceiling, she saw the
books which Brian Wendover had collected for his own especial pleasure,
and the neatness of their arrangement and classification told her that
the master of Wendover Abbey was a man of calm temper and orderly habits.

'You'll never see a book out of place when he leaves the room,' said Mrs.
Mawley. 'I've seen him take down fifty volumes of a morning, when he's at
his studies. I've seen the table covered with books, and books piled up
on the carpet at each side of his chair, but they'd all be back on their
shelves, as neat as a new pin, when I went to tidy up the room after him.
I never allow no butter-fingered girls in this room, except to sweep or
scrub, under my own eye. There's not many ornaments, but what there is is
precious, and the apple of master's eye.'

It was a lovely room, with a panelled oak ceiling, and a fine old oak
mantel-piece, on which were three or four pieces of Oriental crackle. The
large oak writing-table was neatly arranged with crimson leather
blotting-book, despatch-box, old silver inkstand, and a pair of exquisite
bronze statuettes of Apollo and Mercury, which seemed the presiding
geniuses of the place.

'I don't believe Mr. Wendover could get on with his studies if those two
figures weren't there,' said Mrs. Mawley.

The rooms were kept always aired and ready--no one knew at what hour the
master might return. He was a good master, honoured and beloved by the
old servants, who had known him from his infancy; and his lightest whim
was respected. The fact that he should have given the best part of his
life since he left Oxford to roving about foreign countries was lamented;
but this roving temper was regarded as only an eccentric manner of sowing
those wild oats which youth must in some wise scatter; and it was hoped
that with ripening years he would settle down and spend his days in the
home of his ancestors. He might come home at any time, he had informed
Mrs. Mawley in his last letter, received six weeks ago.

That glimpse of the room in which he lived gave Ida a vivid idea of the
man--the calm, orderly student who had won high honours at the
University, and was never happier than when absorbed in books that took
him back to the past--to that very past which was presided over by the
two pagan gods on the writing-table. She noted that the wide block of
books nearest Mr. Wendover's chair were all Greek and Latin; and straying
round the room she found Homers and Horaces, Greek playwrights and
historians, repeating themselves many times, in various quaint costly
editions. A scholar evidently--perhaps pragmatical and priggish. Bessie's
coolness about her cousin implied that he was not altogether agreeable.

'Perhaps I should have liked him no better than the false Brian,' she
said to herself to-day, as she stood musing before the old brown books in
the library, thinking of that more individual collection which she had
been allowed to inspect on her last visit.

She shuddered at the image of that other Brian, remembering but too
vividly how she had last seen him, kneeling to her, claiming her as his
own. God! could he so claim her? Was she verily his, to summon at his
will?--his by the law of heaven and earth, and only enjoying her liberty
by his sufferance?

The thought was horrible. She snatched a book from the shelf--anything to
distract her mind. Happily, the book was Shakespeare, and she was soon
lost in Lear's woes, wilder, deeper than any sorrow she had ever tasted.

She read for an hour, the soft air fanning her, the sun shining upon her,
the scent of roses and lilies breathing gently round her as she sat in
the deep oak window-seat. Then the clock struck three, and it was time to
think of leaving this enchanted castle, where no prince or princess of
fairy tale ever came.

There was no need for haste. She might depart at her leisure, and dawdle
as much as she pleased on her homeward way. All she wanted was to be
seated neat and trim in a carefully arranged room, ready to pour out Aunt
Betsy's afternoon tea, when the cobs returned from Romsey. She put Lear
back in his place, and strolled slowly through the rooms, opening one
into another, to the hall, where she stopped idly to look at her
favourite picture, that portrait of Sir Tristram Wendover which was
attributed to Vandyke--a noble portrait, and with much of Vandyke's
manner, whoever the painter. It occupied the place of honour in a
richly-carved panel above the wide chimney-piece, a trophy of arms
arranged on each side.

Ida stood gazing dreamily at that picture--the dark, earnest eyes, under
strongly marked brows, the commanding features, somewhat ruggedly
modelled, but fine in their general effect--a Rembrandt face--every line
telling; a face in which manhood and intellect predominated over physical
beauty; and yet to Ida's fancy the face was the finest she had ever seen.
It was her ideal of the knightly countenance, the face of the man who has
won many a hard fight over all comers, and has beaten that last and worst
enemy, his own lower nature, leaving the lofty soul paramount over the
world, the flesh, and the devil. So must Lancelot have looked, Ida
thought, towards the close of life, when conscience had conquered
passion. It was a face that showed the traces of sorrows lived down and
temptations overcome--a face which must have been a living reproof to the
butterfly sybarites of Charles the Second's Court. Ida knew no more of
Sir Tristram's history than that he had been a brave soldier and a
faithful servant of the Stuarts in evil and good fortune; that he had
married somewhat late in life, to become the father of an only son, from
whom the present race of Wendovers were descended. Ida had tried in vain
to discover any resemblance to this pictured face in the Colonel or his
sister; but it was only to be supposed that the characteristics of the
loyal knight had dwindled and vanished from the Wendover countenance with
the passage of two centuries.

'No, there is not one of them has that noble look,' murmured Ida,
thinking aloud, as she turned to leave the hall.

She found herself face to face with a man, who stood looking at her with
friendly eyes, which in their earnest expression and grave dark brows
curiously resembled the eyes of the picture. Her heart gave one leap, and
then seemed to stand still. There could be only one man in the world with
such a face as that, and in that house. Yes, it was a modified copy of
the portrait--younger, the features less rugged, the skin paler and less
tawny, the expression less intense. Yet even here, despite the friendly
smile, there was a gravity, a look of determination which verged upon
severity.

This time she was not deceived. This was that very Brian Wendover whom
she had thought of in her foolish day-dreams, the first romantic fancy of
her girlhood, last year; and now, in the flush and glory of summer, he
stood before her, smiling at her with eyes which seemed to invite her
friendship.

'I am glad you like my ancestor's portrait,' he said. 'I could not resist
watching you for the last five minutes, as you stood in rapt
contemplation of the hero of our race; so unlike the manner of most
visitors to the Abbey, who give Sir Tristram a casual glance, and go on
to the next feature in the housekeeper's catalogue.'

She stood with burning cheeks, looking downward, like a guilty thing, and
for a moment or two could hardly speak. Then she said, faltering--

'It is a very interesting portrait,' after which brilliant remark she
stood looking helplessly towards the open door, which she could not reach
without passing the stranger.

'I think I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Palliser,' he said. 'Old
Mrs. Rowse told me you were here. I am Brian Wendover.'

Ida made him a little curtsey, so fluttering, so uncertain, as to have
elicited the most severe reproof from Madame Rigolette could she have
seen her pupil at this moment.

'I hope you do not mind,' she said, hesitatingly. 'Bessie and I have
roamed about the Abbey often, while you were away, and to-day I came
alone, and have been reading in the library for an hour or so.'

'I am delighted that the old house should not be quite abandoned.'

How different his tone in speaking of the Abbey from the false Brian's!
There was tenderness and pride of race in every word.

'And I hope that my return will not scare either you or Bessie away; that
you will come here as often as you feel inclined. I am something of a
recluse when I am at home.'

'You are very kind,' said Ida, moving a little way towards the door.
'Have you been to The Knoll yet?'

'I have only just come from Winchester. I landed at Hull yesterday
afternoon, and I have been travelling ever since. But I am very anxious
to see my aunts and cousins, especially Aunt Betsy. If you will allow me,
I will walk back to Kingthorpe with you.'

Ida looked miserable at the suggestion.

'I--I--don't think Miss Wendover will be at home just yet,' she said.
'She has gone to The Grange, near Romsey, you know, to luncheon.'

'But a luncheon doesn't last for ever. What time do you expect her back?'

'Not till five, at the earliest.'

'And it is nearly half-past three. If you'll allow me to come with you I
can lounge in that dear old orchard till Aunt Betty comes home to give me
some tea.'

What could Ida say to this very simple proposition? To object would have
been prudish in the last degree. Brian Wendover could not know what
manifold and guilty reasons she had for shrinking from any association
with him. He could not know that for her there was something akin to
terror in his name, that a sense of shame mingled with her every thought
of him. For him she must needs be as other women, and it was her business
to make him believe that he was to her as other men.

'I shall be very happy,' she said, and then, with a final effort, she
added, 'but are you not tired after your journey? Would it not be wiser
to rest, and go to the Homestead a little later, at half-past seven, when
you are sure of finding Miss Wendover at home?'

'I had rather risk it, and go now, I am only tired of railway travelling,
smoke and sulphur, dust and heat. A quiet walk across the common and
through the wood will be absolute refreshment and repose.'

After this there was nothing to be said, and they went out into the
carriage-way in front of the Abbey, side by side, and across the broad
expanse of turf, on which the cedars flung their wide stretching shadows,
and so by the Park to the corn-fields, where the corn waved green and
tall, and to the open common, above which the skylarks were soaring and
singing as if the whole world were wild with joy.

They had not much to talk about, being such utter strangers to each
other, and Brian Wendover naturally reserved and inclined to silence; but
the little he did say was made agreeable by a voice of singular richness
and melody--just such a voice as that deep and thrilling organ which
Canon Mozley has described in the famous Provost of Oriel, and which was
a marked characteristic of at least one of Bishop Coplestone's nephews--a
voice which gives weight and significance to mere commonplace.

Ida, not prone to shyness, was to-day as one stricken dumb. She could
not think of this man walking by her side, so unconscious of evil,
without unutterable humiliation. If he had been an altogether commonplace
man--pompous, underbred, ridiculous in any way--the situation would have
been a shade less tragic. But he came too near her ideal. This was the
kind of man she had dreamed of, and she had accepted in his stead the
first frivolous, foppish youth whom chance had presented to her, under a
borrowed name. Her own instinct, her own imagination, had told her the
kind of man Brian of the Abbey must needs be, and, in her sordid craving
for wealth and social status, she had allowed herself to be fobbed off
with so poor a counterfeit. And now her very ideal--the dark-browed
knight, with quiet dignity of manner, and that deep, earnest voice--had
come upon the scene; and she thought of her folly with a keener shame
than had touched her yet.

Brian walked at her side, saying very little, but not unobservant. He
knew a good deal about this Miss Palliser from Bessie's letters, which
had given him a detailed account of her chosen friend. He knew that the
damsel had carried on a clandestine flirtation with his cousin, and had
been expelled from Mauleverer Manor in consequence; and these facts,
albeit Bessie had pictured her friend as the innocent victim of tyranny
and wrong, had not given him a favourable opinion of his cousin's chosen
companion. A girl who would meet a lover on the sly, a girl who was
ignominiously ejected from a boarding-school, although clever and useful
there, could not be a proper person for his cousin to know. He was sorry
that Aunt Betsy's good nature had been stronger than her judgment, and
that she had brought such a girl to Kingthorpe as a permanent resident.
He had imagined her a flashy damsel, underbred, with a vulgar style of
beauty, a superficial cleverness, and all those baser arts by which the
needy sometimes ingratiate themselves into the favour of the rich.
Nothing could be more different from his fancy picture than the girl by
whose side he was walking, under that cloudless sky, where the larks were
singing high up in the blue.

What did he see, as he gravely contemplated the lady by his side? A
perfect profile, in which refinement was as distinctly marked as beauty
of line. Darkly fringed lids drooping over lovely eyes, which looked at
him shyly, shrinkingly, with unaffected modesty, when compelled to look.
A tall and beautifully modelled figure, set off by a simple white gown;
glorious dark hair, crowned with the plainest of straw hats. There was
nothing flashy or vulgar here, no trace of bad breeding in tone or
manner. Was this a girl to carry on illicit flirtations, to be mean
or underhand, to do anything meriting expulsion from a genteel
boarding-school? A thousand times no! He began to think that Bessie was
right, that Aunt Betsy's judgment, face to face with the actual facts,
had been wiser than his own view of the case at a distance. And then,
suddenly remembering upon what grounds he was arriving at this more
liberal view, he began to feel scornful of himself, after the manner of
your thinking man, given to metaphysics.

'Heaven help me! I am as weak as the rest of my sex,' he said to himself.
'Because she is lovely I am ready to think she is good--ready to fall
into the old, old trap which has snapped its wicked jaws upon so many
victims. However, be she what she may, at the worst she is not vulgar. I
am glad of that, for Bessie's sake.'

He tried to make a little conversation during the rest of the way, asking
about different members of the Wendover family, and telling Ida some
stray facts about his late wanderings. But she did not encourage him to
talk. Her answers were faltering, her manner absent-minded. He began to
think her stupid; and yet he had been told that she was a wonder of
cleverness.

'I daresay her talent all lies in her fingers' ends,' he thought. 'She
plays Beethoven and works in crewels. That is a girl's idea of feminine
genius. Perhaps she makes her own gowns, which is a higher flight, since
it involves usefulness.'

It was only four o'clock when they went in at the little orchard gate,
and Miss Wendover could hardly be expected for an hour. What was Ida to
do with her guest, unless he kept his word and stayed in the orchard?

'Shall I send you out the newspapers, or any refreshment?' she asked.

There were rustic tables and chairs, a huge Japanese umbrella, every
accommodation for lounging, in that prettiest bit of the spacious old
orchard which adjoined the garden, and here Ida made this polite offer of
refreshment for mind or body.

'No, thank you; I'll stay here and smoke a cigarette. I can get on very
well without newspapers, having lived so long beyond easy reach of them.'

She left him, but glancing back at the garden gate she saw him take a
book from his pocket and settle himself in one of the basket chairs, with
a luxurious air, like a man perfectly content. This was a kind of thing
quite new to her in her experience of the Wendovers, who were not a
bookish race.

She went into the house, and made all her little preparations for
afternoon tea, filling the vases with freshly-cut flowers, drawing up
blinds, arranging book-tables, work-baskets, curtains--all the details of
the prettiest drawing-room in Kingthorpe, but walking to and fro all the
while like a creature in a dream. She had not half recovered from her
surprise, her painful wonder at Brian Wendover's appearance, at his
strange likeness to her ideal knight--strange to her, but not miraculous,
since such hereditary faces are to be found after the lapse of centuries.

When all her small duties had been performed she went up to her room,
bathed her face and brushed her hair, and put on a fresher gown, and then
sat down to read, trying to lose herself in the thoughts of another mind,
trying to forget this embarrassment, this sense of humiliation, which had
come upon her. She sat thus for half an hour or so, reading 'The
Caxtons,' one of her favourite novels, and felt a little more composed
and philosophical, when the rythmical beat of Brimstone and Treacle's
eight iron shoes told her that Miss Wendover had returned.

She ran to the gate to welcome that kind friend, looking so fresh and
bright in her clean white gown that Aunt Betsy saw no sign of the past
struggle.

'Mr. Wendover is here,' she said, shyly, when Aunt Betsy had kissed her
and given her some brief account of the day's adventures. The rest of the
party had been deposited at The Knoll.

'Whom do you mean by Mr. Wendover, child?'

'Mr. Wendover of the Abbey. He is reading in the orchard.'

'Of course, I never saw him without a book in his hand. So he has
come back at last. I am very glad. He is a good fellow, a little too
reserved and self-contained, too fond of brooding over some beautiful
truism of Plato's when he ought to be thinking of deep drainage and a new
school-house; but a good fellow for all that, and always ready with his
cheque-book. Let us go and look for him.'

'You will find him in the orchard,' said Ida. 'I will go and hurry on the
tea. You must want some tea after your dusty drive.'

'Dusty!' exclaimed Miss Wendover; 'we are positively smothered. Yes. I am
dying for my tea; but I must see this nephew of mine first.'

Ida went back to the drawing-room, where everything was perfectly ready,
as she knew very well beforehand; but she shrank with a sickly dread from
any further acquaintance with the master of Wendover Abbey. She hoped
that he and his aunt might say all they had to say to each other in the
orchard, and that he would go on to The Knoll to pay his respects to the
rest of his relations.

In this she was disappointed. Scarcely had she seated herself before the
tea-table when Aunt Betsy and her nephew entered through the open window.

'You two young people have contrived to get acquainted without my aid,'
said Miss Wendover, cheerily, 'so there's no necessity for any
introduction. Now, Brian, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Give
him some tea, Ida. I believe he is just civilized enough to like tea, in
spite of his wanderings.'

'On account of them you might as well say, Aunt Betsy. I drank nothing
but tea in Scandinavia. It was the easiest thing to get.'

Ida's occupation at the table gave her an excuse for silence. She had
only to attend to her cups and saucers, and to listen to Miss Wendover
and her nephew, who had plenty to talk about. To hear that deep full
voice, with its perfect intonation, was in itself a pleasure--pleasant,
also, to discover that Brian Wendover, albeit a famous Balliol man and a
Greek scholar after the Porsonian ideal, could still be warmly interested
in simple things and lowly folk. She began to feel at ease in his
presence; she began to perceive that here was a thoroughly noble nature,
a mind so lofty and liberal that even had the man known her pitiful
sordid story he would have been more inclined to compassionate than to
condemn.

Having recovered her favourite nephew, after so long a severance, Aunt
Betsy was in no wise disposed to let him go. She insisted upon his
staying to dinner; and before the evening was over Ida found herself
quite at home with the dreaded master of the Abbey. At Miss Wendover's
request she played for nearly an hour, and Brian listened with evident
appreciation, sitting at his ease just outside the open window, among the
roses and lilies of June, under a moonlit sky. It was a calm, peaceful,
rational kind of evening, and Ida's mind was tranquillized by the time it
was over; and when she went to her room, after a friendly parting with
Miss Wendover's nephew, she told herself that she was not likely to be
often troubled with his society. He was too much a lover of learned
solitude to be likely to be interested in the small amusements and
occupations of the family at The Knoll--too much in the clouds to concern
himself with Aunt Betsy's various endeavours to improve her poorer
neighbours in themselves and their surroundings.

She did not long remain under this delusion. She was busy in the garden,
with basket and scissors, trimming away fading roses and cankered buds
from the luxuriance of bush and standard, arch and trellis, at eleven
o'clock next morning, when she heard the garden gate open, and beheld Mr.
Wendover, Bessie, and Urania coming across the lawn.

'We are going for a botanical prowl in the woods,' said Bessie, 'and we
want you to come with us. You are always anxious to improve your mind,
and here is a grand opportunity for you. Brian is a tremendous botanist,
and Mr. Jardine is not an ignoramus in that line.'

'Oh, then Mr. Jardine is going to prowl too?' said Ida, smiling at her.

'Yes, he is going to give himself a holiday, for once in a way. Blanche
is packing a basket. She and Eva are to have the car, but the rest of us
are going to walk. Come along, Ida, just as you are. We are going to
grovel and grub after club-mosses and toad-stools. Your oldest gown is
too good.'

'Please wear a white gown, as you did yesterday,' said Brian. 'White has
such a lovely effect amidst the lights and shadows of a wood.'

'Isn't it rather too violent a contrast?' argued Urania. 'A faint
sage-green, or a pale gray--or even that too lovely terra-cotta red--'

'Flower-pot colour!' screamed Bessie. 'Horrid!'

'I should like to go,' faltered Ida, 'but I have so much to do--an
afternoon class--no, it is quite impossible. Thank you very much for
thinking of me, all the same.

'You utterly disagreeable thing!' exclaimed Bessie; and at this moment
Miss Wendover came upon the scene, from an adjacent green-house, where
she had been working diligently with sponge and watering-pot. She heard
the rights and wrongs of the case, and insisted that Ida should go.

'Never mind the afternoon class--I'll take that. You work hard enough,
child; you must have a holiday sometimes.'

'I had a holiday yesterday, Aunt Betsy; and really I had rather not go.
The day is so very warm, and I have a slight headache already.'

'Go and lose it in the wood, where Rosalind lost her heart-ache. Nothing
like a long ramble when one is a little out of sorts. Go and get rid of
your basket, and get your sunshade. Where are you going for your
botanising?'

'All over the world,' said Bessie; 'just as fancy leads us. If you will
promise to meet us anywhere, we'll be there.'

'So be it,' replied Aunt Betsy. 'Suppose we arrange a tea-meeting. I will
be ready for you by the Queen Beech, in Framleigh Wood, as the clock
strikes five, and we will all come home together. And now run away,
before the day gets old. Glad to see you unbending for once in a way,
Urania.'

Miss Rylance had been curiously willing to unbend this morning, when
Bessie ran in and surprised her at her morning practice with the
wonderful tidings of Brian's return. She appeared delighted at the idea
of a botanising expedition, though she cared as little for botany as she
did for Hebrew. But when a young lady of large aspirations is compelled
to vegetate in a village--even after her presentation at court and
introduction into society--she is naturally avid for the society of the
one eligible man in the parish.

'Mr. Jardine is coming with us,' Bessie told her, as a further
temptation.

Urania gave her hand a little squeeze, and murmured, 'Yes, darling, I'll
come: Mr. Jardine is so nice. Will my frock do?'

The frock was of the pre-Raffaelite or Bedford-Parkian order,
short-waisted, flowing, and flabby, colour the foliage of a lavender
bush, relieved by a broad brick-dust sash. An amber necklace, a large
limp Leghorn hat with a sunflower in it, and a pair of long yellow
gloves, completed Urania's costume.

'Your frock will be spoilt in the woods,' said Bessie; but Urania did not
mean to do much botanical work, and was not afraid of spoiling her frock.

They found Mr. Jardine waiting for them at the churchyard gate, and to
him Bessie presented her cousin, somewhat reversing the ceremonial order
of things, since Brian Wendover was the patron of the living, and could
have made John Jardine vicar on the arising of a vacancy.

Brian and the Curate walked on ahead with Miss Rylance, who seemed bent
upon keeping them both in conversation, and Bessie fell back a little way
with Ida.

'You dearest darling,' she exclaimed, squeezing her arm rapturously.

'What has happened, Bess? Why such unusual radiance?'

'Do you suppose I am not glad of Brian's return?'

'I thought you liked the other one best?'

'Well, yes; one is more at home with him, don't you see. This one was a
double-first--got the Ireland Scholarship. Why Ireland, when it was at
Oxford he got it? He is awfully learned; knows Greek plays by heart, just
as that sweet Mr. Brandram who came last winter to read for the new
school-house knows Shakespeare. But I am very fond of him, all the same;
and oh, Ida, what a too heavenly thing it would be if he were to fall in
love with you!'

'Bessie!' exclaimed Ida, with an indignant frown.

'Don't look so angry. You should have heard how he spoke of you
this morning at breakfast; such praise! Approbation from Sir Hubert
What's-his-name is praise indeed, don't you know. There's Shakespeare for
you!' added Bessie, whose knowledge of polite literature had its limits.

'Bessie, you contrived once--meaning no harm, of course--to give me great
pain, to humiliate me to the very dust,' said Ida, seriously. 'Let us
have no more such fooling. Your cousin is--your cousin--quite out of my
sphere. However civil he may be to me, however kindly he may speak of me,
he can never be any more to me than he is at this moment.'

'Very well,' said Bess, meekly, 'I will be as silent as the grave. I
don't think I said anything very offensive, but--I apologize. Do you
think you would very much mind kissing me, just as if nothing had
happened?'

Ida clasped the lovable damsel in her arms and kissed her warmly. And now
Mr. Jardine turned back and joined them at the entrance to a wood
supposed to be particularly rich in mosses, flowers, and fungi. Urania
still absorbed the attention of Mr. Wendover, who strolled by her side
and listened somewhat languidly to her disquisitions upon various phases
of modern thought.

'What a beautiful girl Bessie has discovered for her bosom friend,' he
said, presently.

'Miss Palliser: yes, she is quite too lovely, is she not?' said Urania,
with that air of heartiness which every well-trained young woman assumes
when she discusses a rival beauty; 'but she has not the purity of the
early Italian manner. It is a Carlo-Dolci face--the beauty of the
Florentine decadence. I was at school with her.'

'So I understood. Were you great friends?'

'No,' replied Miss Rylance, decisively; 'if we had been at school for as
many years as it took to evolve man from the lowest of the vertebrata we
should not have been friends.'

'I understand. The thousandth part of an inch, unbridged, is as
metaphysically impassable as the gulf which divides us from the farthest
nebula. In your case there was no conveying medium, no sympathy to draw
you together,' said Brian, answering the young lady in her own coin.

She glanced at him doubtfully, rather inclined to think he was laughing
at her, if any one could laugh at Miss Rylance.

'She was frankly detestable,' said Urania. 'I endure her here for
Bessie's sake; just as I would endure the ungraceful curves of a
Dachshund if Bess took it into her head to make a pet of one; but at
school I could keep her at a distance.'

'What has she done to offend you?'

'Done? nothing. She exists, that is quite enough. Her whole nature--her
moral being--is antagonistic to mine. What is your opinion of a young
woman who declares in cold blood that she means to marry for money?'

'Not a pleasant avowal from such lips, certainly,' said Brian. 'She may
have been only joking.'

'After events showed that she was in earnest.'

'How so? Has she married for money? I thought she was still Miss
Palliser?'

'She is; but that is not her fault. She tried her hardest to secure a
husband whom she supposed to be rich.'

And then Miss Rylance told how in frolic mood his penniless cousin had
been palmed upon Miss Palliser as the owner of the Abbey; how she had
fallen readily into the trap, and had carried on a clandestine
acquaintance which had resulted in her expulsion from the school where
she had filled the subordinate position of pupil-teacher.

'I have heard most of this before, from Bessie, but not the full
particulars of the practical joke which put Brian Walford in my shoes,'
said Mr. Wendover.

He felt more shocked, more wounded than there was need for him to feel,
perhaps; but the girl's beauty had charmed him, and he was prepared to
think her a goddess.

'How do you know that Miss Palliser did not like my cousin for his own
sake?' he speculated presently. 'Brian Walford is a very nice fellow.'

'She did not like him well enough to marry him when she knew the truth,'
replied Urania. 'I believe the poor fellow was passionately in love with
her. She encouraged him, fooled him to the top of his bent, and then
flung him over directly she found he was not the rich Mr. Wendover. He
has never been to Kingthorpe since. That would show how deeply he was
wounded.'

'The fooling was not all on her side,' said Mr. Wendover. 'She had a
right to resent the trick that had been played upon her. I am surprised
that Bessie could lend herself to such a mean attempt to put her friend
at a disadvantage.'

'Oh, I am sure Bessie meant only the most innocent fun; her tremendous
animal spirits carry her away sometimes, don't you know. And then, again,
she thinks her chosen friend perfection. She could not understand that
Miss Palliser could really marry a man for the sake of his houses and
lands. _I_ knew her better.'

'And it was you who hatched the plot, I think,' said Brian.

Miss Rylance had not been prepared to admit as much. She intended Bessie
to bear whatever blame there might be attached to the escapade in Mr.
Wendover's mind; but it seemed from this remark of his that Bessie had
betrayed her.

'I may have thrown out the idea when your cousin suddenly appeared upon
the scene. We were all in wild spirits that day. And really Miss Palliser
had made herself very absurd by her romantic admiration of the Abbey.'

'Well, I hope this young lady-like conspiracy did no harm,' said Brian;
'but I have a hearty abhorrence of all practical jokes.'

They were in a deep, rutty lane by this time, a lane with banks rich in
ferns and floral growth, and here came Blanche and Eva and the youngest
boy, released from Latin grammar and Greek delectus at an earlier hour
than usual. The car was sent on to the wood, and Bessie and her two
sisters produced their fern trowels, and began digging and delving for
rare specimens--real or imaginary--assisted by Mr. Jardine, who had more
knowledge but less enthusiasm than the girls.

'I can't think what you can want with more ferns,' said Urania,
disdainfully; 'every corner at The Knoll has its fernery.'

'Oh, but one can't have too much of a good thing; and then there is the
pleasure of looking for them. Aren't you going to hunt for anything?'

'Thanks, no. It is a day for basking rather than work. Shall we go to the
end of the lane--there is a lovely view from there--and sit and bask?'

'With all my heart,' replied Mr. Wendover. 'Come, Miss Palliser, of
course you'll join the basking detachment.'

Urania would have liked to leave Ida out of the business, but she smiled
sweetly at Mr. Wendover's speech, and they all three strolled to the end
of the lane, which ascended all the way, till they found themselves upon
a fine upland, with a lovely view of woodland and valley stretching away
towards Alresford. Here in the warm June sunshine they seated themselves
on a ferny bank to wait for the diggers and delvers below. It was verily
weather in which to bask was quite the most rapturous employment. The
orchestral harmonies of summer insects made a low drowsy music around
them. There was just enough air to faintly stir the petals of the
dog-roses without blowing them from their frail stems. The dazzling light
above, the cool verdure around, made a delicious contrast. Ida looked
dreamily across the bold grassy downs, with here and there a patch of
white, which shone like a jewel in the sun. It was very pleasant to sit
here--very pleasant to listen to Brian Wendover's description of Norway
and the Norwegians. A book of travels might have been ever so much
better, perhaps; but there was a charm in these vivid pictures of recent
experiences which no printed page could have conveyed. And then the talk
was delightfully desultory, now touching upon literature, now upon art,
now even descending to family reminiscences, stories of the time when
Brian had been a Winchester boy, as his cousins were now, and his happy
hunting grounds had been among these hills.

Ida talked very little. She was disposed to be silent; but had it been
otherwise she would have found slight opportunity for conversation. Miss
Rylance, educated up to the standard of good professional society, was
ready to give her opinions upon anything between heaven and earth, from
the spectrum analysis of the sun's rays to the latest discovery in the
habits of ants. She did not mean Ida to shine, and she so usurped the
conversation that Miss Palliser's opinions and ideas remained a blank to
Mr. Wendover.

Yet a glance at Ida's face now and then told him that she was not
unintelligent, and by the time that summer day was over, and they all sat
round the gipsy tea-kettle in the wood, with Aunt Betsy presiding over
the feast, Mr. Wendover felt as if he knew a good deal about Miss
Palliser. They had talked, and walked, and botanized together in the
wood, in spite of Miss Rylance; and Urania felt somehow that the day had
been a failure. She had made up her mind long ago that Mr. Wendover of
the Abbey was just the one person in Hampshire whom she could allow
herself to marry. Anyone else in that locality was impossible.

Under these circumstances it was trying to behold Mr. Wendover laying
himself, as it were, at the feet of a poor dependent and hanger-on of his
family, merely because that young person happened to be handsome. He
could have no ulterior views; he was only revealing that innate
shallowness and frivolity of the masculine mind which allows even the
wisest man to be caught by a pair of fine eyes, a Grecian nose, and a
brilliant complexion. Mr. Wendover was no doubt a great deal too wise to
have any serious ideas about such a person as Ida Palliser; but he liked
to talk to her, he liked to watch the sensitive colour come and go upon
the perfect oval of her cheek, while the dark eye brightened or clouded
with every change of feeling; and while he was yielding to these vulgar
distractions there was no chance of his falling in love with Urania
Rylance.

It was a crushing blow to Miss Rylance when a little conversation at
tea-time showed that Mr. Wendover was not disposed to think Miss Palliser
altogether a nobody, and that a young woman who earned a salary as a
useful companion might belong to a better family than Miss Rylance could
boast.

'I have heard your name before to-day, Miss Palliser,' said Brian. 'Is
your father any relation to Sir Vernon Palliser?'

'Sir Vernon is my father's nephew.'

'Indeed! Then your father is the Captain Palliser of whom I've heard
Vernon and Peter Palliser talk sometimes. Your cousins are members of the
Alpine Club, and of the Travellers', and we have often met. Capital
fellows, both of them.'

'I have never seen them,' said Ida, 'so much of my life has been spent at
school. Sir Vernon and his brother went to see my father and step-mother
last October, and made a very good impression. But that is all I know of
them.'

A baronet for a first cousin! and she had never mentioned the fact at
Mauleverer, where it would have scored high. What an unaccountable kind
of girl, and quite wanting in human feeling, thought Urania, listening
intently, though pretending to be interested in a vehement discussion
between Blanche and Bessie as to whether a certain puffy excrescence was
or was not a beef-steak fungus, and should or should not be cooked for
dinner.

'Do you know your cousin's Sussex property? Have you ever been at
Wimperfield?' inquired Brian.

'Never. I have heard my father say it is a lovely place, a little way
beyond Petersfield.'

'Yes, I know every inch of the country round. It is charming.'

'It cannot be prettier than this,' said Ida, with conviction.

'I hardly agree with you there. It is a wilder and more varied landscape.
Hampshire has nothing so picturesque on this side of the New Forest. If
Sir Veron and his brother are at Wimperfield this summer, we might make
up a party and drive over to see the place. I know he would give us a
hearty welcome.'

Ida was silent, but Aunt Betsy and her niece declared that it was a
splendid idea of Brian's, and must certainly be carried out.

'Fancy Brian introducing Ida to her cousin!' exclaimed Bessie. 'Would it
not be quite too deliciously absurd? "Sir Vernon Palliser, permit me to
introduce you to your first cousin!"

And then Bessie, who was an incorrigible matchmaker where Ida was
concerned, began to think what a happy thing it would be if Sir Vernon
Palliser were to fall in love with his cousin, and incontinently propose
to make her mistress of this delightful place near Petersfield.

They all walked back to Kingthorpe together, and parted at the Homestead
gate.

Miss Rylance, who hated woods, wild-flowers, ferns and toadstools, and
all the accompaniments of rustic life, went back to her aesthetic
drawing-room in a savage humour, albeit that fine training which comes of
advanced civilization enabled her to part from her friends with endearing
smiles.

She expected her father that evening, and she was looking forward to the
refreshment of hearing of that metropolis which suited her so much better
than Hampshire hills and woods; nay, there was even the possibility that
he might bring someone down with him, as it was his custom to do now and
then. But instead of Dr. Rylance she found an orange-coloured envelope
upon the hall table containing an apologetic message.

'Sorry to disappoint you. Have been persuaded to go to first
representation of new play at Lyceum with Lady Jinks and the Titmarshes.
All London will be there.'

'And I am buried alive in this loathsome hole, where nobody cares a straw
about me,' cried Urania, banging her bedroom door, and flinging herself
upon her luxurious sofa in as despairing an attitude as if it had been
the straw pallet of a condemned cell.

From the very beginning of things she had hated Ida Palliser with the
jealous hatred of conscious inferiority. She who had made up her mind
to go through life as a superior being, to be always on the top rung
of the social ladder, found herself easily distanced by the penniless
pupil-teacher. This had been bitter to bear even at Mauleverer, where
that snobbish feeling which prevails among schoolgirls had allowed the
fashionable physician's daughter a certain superiority over the penniless
beauty. But here at Kingthorpe, where rustic ignorance was ready to
worship beauty and talent for their own sakes, it was still harder for
Urania to assert her superiority; while in the depths of her inner
consciousness lurked the uncomfortable conviction that she was in many
ways inferior to her rival. And now that she discovered Ida Palliser's
near relationship to a baronet of old family, owner of a fine property
within thirty miles of Kingthorpe, Urania began to feel that she must
needs be distanced in the race. She might have held her own against the
shabby half-pay captain's daughter, but Sir Vernon Palliser's first
cousin was quite a different person. If Brian Wendover admired Ida, her
lack of fortune was hardly likely to influence him, seeing that in family
she was his equal. Such a man might have shrunk from allying himself with
a woman of obscure parentage and vulgar associations; but to a man of
Brian Wendover's liberal mind and ample fortune, Ida Palliser would no
doubt seem as suitable a match as a daughter of a duke.

Miss Rylance had grown worldly-wise since her introduction to London
society, that particular and agreeable section of upper-middle class life
which prides itself upon cleverness rather than wealth, and which spices
its conversation with a good deal of smart personality. She had formed a
more correct estimate of life in general, and her father's position in
particular, and had acquired a keener sense of proportion than she had
learnt at Mauleverer Manor. She had learnt that Dr. Rylance, of Cavendish
Square, was not quite such a great man as she had supposed in the
ignorant faith of her girlhood. She had discovered that his greatness was
at best a kind of lap-dog or tame cat distinction; that he was better
known as the caressed and petted adviser of patrician dowagers and
effeminate old gentlemen, of fashionable beauties and hysterical matrons,
than as one of the lights of his profession. He was a clever specialist,
who had made his fortune by half-a-dozen prescriptions as harmless as
Morrison's pills, and who owed more to the grace of his manner and the
excellence of his laundress and his tailor, than to his original
discoveries in the grandest science of the age. Other people made
discoveries, and Dr. Rylance talked about them; and he was so quick in
his absorption of every new idea, so glib in his exposition of every new
theory, that his patients swore by him as a man in the front rank of
modern thought and scientific development. He was a clever man, and he
had a large belief in the great healer Nature, so he rarely did much
harm; while his careful consideration of every word his patients said to
him, his earnest countenance and thoughtful brow, taken in conjunction
with his immaculate shirt-front and shapely white hand, rarely failed to
make a favourable impression.

He was a comfortable physician, lenient in the article of diet, exacting
only moderate sacrifices from the high liver. His Hygeia was not a severe
goddess--rather a friendly matron of the monthly-nurse type, who adapted
herself to circumstances.

'We have been taking a pint of Cliquot every day at luncheon, and we
don't feel that we could eat any luncheon without it.'

Well, well, suppose we try about half the quantity, very dry, and make an
effort to eat a cutlet or a little bit of plain roast mutton, Dr. Rylance
would murmur tenderly to a stout middle-aged lady who had confessed that
her appetite was inferior to her powers of absorption. Men who were
drinking themselves to death in a gentlemanly manner always went to Dr.
Rylance. He did not make their lives a burden to them by an impossible
regimen: he kept them alive as long as he could, and made departure as
gradual and as easy as possible; but his was no kill-or-cure system; he
was not a man for heroic remedies. And now Urania had found that her
father was not a great man--that he was praised and petted, and had made
his nest in the purple and velvet of this world, but that he was not
looked up to or pointed at as one of the beacon-lights on the coast-line
of the age--and that he being so small a Somebody, she his daughter was
very little more than Nobody. Knowing this, she had made up her mind that
whenever Brian Wendover of the Abbey should appear upon the scene, she
would do her uttermost to make him her captive.




CHAPTER XV.


MR. WENDOVER PLANS AN EXCURSION.

The happy summer glided by--the season of roses and butterflies,
strawberries and cream, haymaking, lawn tennis, picnics, gipsy teas--an
idle, joyous life under blue skies. The Knoll family gave themselves up
heart and soul to summer pleasures--simple joys which were at once
innocent and inexpensive--and Ida Palliser found herself a sharer in all
these holiday rambles. Conscience told her that she had no right to be
there, that she was an impostor sailing under false colours. Conscience,
speaking more loudly, told her that she had no right to accept Brian
Wendover's quiet homage, no right to be so happy in his company day after
day; for there were few of their summer joys in which he was not among
them. Bessie was warm in her praises of him, full of wonder at his having
developed into such a companionable being.

'Norway has done him good,' she said. 'He used to be such a reserved
creature, dawdling away day after day in his library, poring over Greek
and Latin, and now he is almost as companionable as Brian Walford.'

'He'll have to live a good many years before he's up to B. W.,' said
Horace, who had walked across the hills for an afternoon at home and the
chance of a tip, 'B. W. knows every music-hall in London, and can sing a
topical song as well as men who get their sixty pounds a week.'

'I wish you wouldn't put on that knowing air. What do you know of men who
get sixty pounds a week?' exclaimed Bessie, contemptuously.

'As much as you do, anyhow,' answered her brother.

Ida made many faint efforts to keep aloof from the summer revelries, but
Miss Wendover insisted upon her enjoying herself with the others. She had
been such a conscientious and devoted coadjutor in all Aunt Betsy's good
works, she had been so thoroughly energetic and industrious, never
relaxing her efforts or growing weary of labour, that it seemed only
right and fair that she should enjoy the summer holiday-time, the blessed
season when every day was full of temptations.

'Enjoy yourself to your heart's content, my dear,' said Aunt Betsy. 'Our
English summers are so short that if we do not make the most of the
bright warm days while they are with us, we have to endure all the pangs
of remorse through a rainy autumn and a cold winter.'

Not only did Miss Wendover give this generous advice, but she herself
joined in many of their expeditions, and her presence was always a source
of pleasure. She was so genial, so hearty, so thoroughly well-informed,
and yet so modest in the use of her knowledge, that the young people
loved to have her with them. Her enjoyment of the free, roving life was
almost as keen as theirs, while her capacity for planning an agreeable
day, and her foresight in the commissariat department, far exceeded that
of youth. And so, and so, June and July drifted by, and it was the
beginning of August, and Ida felt as if she had known Mr. Wendover of the
Abbey all her life.

What did she know of him after two months of almost daily association?
She knew that no unworthy thought ever found utterance upon his lips;
that no vulgar instinct ever showed itself in his conduct; that he was
essentially to the very core of his heart a gentleman; that without any
high-flown affectation of chivalry he was as chivalrous as Bayard; that
without any languid airs and graces of the modern aesthetic school he was
a man of the highest and broadest culture; and that--oh, _rara avis_
among modern scholars and young laymen--he was honestly and unaffectedly
religious, a staunch Anglican of the school of Pusey, and not ashamed to
confess his faith at all times and seasons. In this day, when the
majority of young men affect to regard the services of their church as an
intolerable bore, only endured as a concession to the weaklings of the
inferior sex, it was pleasant to see the master of the Abbey a regular
attendant at his parish church, an earnest and frequent worshipper at the
altar at which his parents and progenitors had knelt before him.

This much and a great deal more had Ida Palliser discovered of the man
whom nearly a year ago her fancy had exalted into an ideal character. It
was strange to find her most romantic visions realised; strange, but a
strangeness not without pain. He was full of kindness and friendliness
for her whenever they met; but she told herself that his manner to her
involved no more than kindly feeling and friendliness. To imagine
anything beyond this was foolhardiness and vanity. And yet there were
times when she felt she had no right to be in his society--that every day
she spent at Kingthorpe was an offence against honour and right feeling.

One August afternoon Ida had, for once in a way, succeeded in making her
domestic occupations an excuse for absenting herself from what Bessie
called a 'barrow-hunt' on the downs. Brian Wendover being a great
authority upon this ancient form of sepulture, and discoursing eloquently
on those widely different races whose funeral chambers are hidden under
the long and the round barrow.

The day, closely as Ida had been occupied, had seemed just a little
dreary, certainly much duller than such days had been wont to seem
before Brian's return to the Abbey: yet she was glad to be alone; it
was a relief even to be a trifle melancholy, rather than to enjoy that
happiness which was always blended with a faint consciousness of
wrong-doing. And now the slow day was nearly over: she had worked at the
village girls'-school in the morning; she had lectured upon domestic
economy to a class of incipient house-maids and scullery maids after
luncheon; and now at five o'clock she was sitting in a basket chair in
the rose-wreathed verandah working at the swallows and bulrushes upon
that elaborate design which she had begun before Christmas for the
adornment of Miss Wendover's piano.

It was a deliciously drowsy afternoon, but Ida's active brain was not
prone to slumber. She sat working diligently and thinking deeply, when a
shadow came between her and the sunshine and on looking up she saw Mr.
Wendover standing before her.

'How do you do? Have they all come home?' she asked, laying aside her
work on the convenient basket table and preparing to welcome Aunt Betsy.

'I have not been with them--at least not since the morning, answered
Brian. 'I left Bessie to hunt out her own barrows; she is so lazy-minded
that as long as I do all the pointing she will never know the true barrow
from the natural lumpiness of the soil. Besides, she has Aunt Betsy, a
tower of strength in all things.'

'And Miss Rylance, I suppose?'

'No, Miss Rylance thought there would be too much walking for her or for
Pinet. I have been at the Abbey all day, getting up my arrears of
correspondence. This fine weather has made me incorrigibly idle. After I
had written about a score of letters I thought myself entitled to a
little rest and refreshment, so I strolled over here to tell you some
news and to ask you for a cup of tea.'

'You shall have some tea directly,' said Ida, going indoors to ring the
bell, an act in which she was naturally anticipated by her guest. 'What
news can you possibly have that concerns me?' she asked, when they had
come back to the verandah. 'I know by your face that it is not bad news.'

'God forbid I should ever have to tell you that. I think it would hurt me
more than you,' said Brian, with an earnestness which brought the crimson
glow into Ida's cheeks, and made her bend a little lower over the
swallows in her crewel-work. 'No, this is pleasant news I hope. I wrote
to Vernon Palliser more than a month ago to propose that I should drive
you and a lot of people over to luncheon. He was in Switzerland, as
usual, and I had no answer to my letter till the second post to-day, when
I received a most hearty invitation to bring my party immediately. But
you shall hear your cousin's own words.'

Mr. Wendover produced the letter and read as follows:--

'I shall be delighted to make my cousin's acquaintance. She was in
England when I last saw her father at his retreat near Dieppe. Bring her
as soon as you can, and with as large a party as you like--the larger the
better, and the sooner the better--as Peter and I will most likely be on
the wing again for Scotland soon after the twelfth. We shall come back
for the partridges, which I hear are abundant. The road is rather
intricate, so you had better bring your ordnance map, but pretty fair in
dry weather like this; and you'll come through some lovely scenery.
Telegraph your time, and Peter and I will be in the way to welcome you!'

'What do you say to our going to-morrow? I waited to know what you would
like before I telegraphed.'

'You are very good: but there are others to be consulted,' replied Ida,
with her head still bent over her work.

Good manners demanded that she should look at him, but at this particular
moment she felt it quite impossible to be mannerly. He had said nothing
of a thrilling nature, yet his whole tone and expression, his air of
deferential regard, stirred a new feeling in her mind--the conviction
that he cared for her more than it was well for either of them that he
should care.

'You are the first person to be consulted,' he said; 'would you like to
go to-morrow?'

'I will go whenever the others like,' answered Ida, still intent upon the
shading of her swallow's wing; 'but I really think you had better leave
me out of your party--I have wasted so much time roaming about--and there
are so many things I want to finish before the summer is over.'

'That elaborate arrangement in swallows and rushes, for instance,' said
Brian, laughingly: 'you are working at it as if for a wager. Perhaps it
is a wager--so many stitches in so many consecutive days--is that it? No,
Miss Palliser, your swallows must wait. The party has been planned on
your account, and to leave you at home would be like leaving Hamlet out
of the play. Besides, I thought you would like to see your cousins and
your ancestral halls.'

'I shall be very glad to see my cousins, for my father likes them very
much; but I do not feel any thrilling interest in the ancestral halls.'

'And yet your father was born there.'

'Yes, that is a reason for being interested in Wimperfield. But my father
has so seldom talked about his birthplace. He speaks a great deal more of
India. That life in a strange far-away land seems to have blotted out the
memory of his childhood. He talks of Addiscomb sometimes but hardly ever
of Wimperfield.'

She laid aside her work as the youthful butler brought out the tea-table.
It was no new thing for her to pour out Mr. Wendover's tea, since it was
his custom to drop in at his aunt's very often at this hour, when the day
had not been given up to excursionising; but it was new for her to be
alone with him at this social meal, and she found herself longing
ardently for Aunt Betsy's return.

She who could have found so much to talk about had her mind been at ease,
was curiously silent as she handed Mr. Wendover his tea, and offered the
cake and fruit, which always accompanied the meal at the Homestead. Her
heart was beating much faster than it should have done, and she was
considering whether it was worth while to place herself in the way of
feeling the pain, the hidden shame, the sense of falsehood which
oppressed her at this moment; whether it would not be better to run any
risk, even the hazard of offending Betsy Wendover, the kindest friend she
had in the world, rather than remain in her present position.

One thing she could have done which would have given her immediate
extrication, and that which seemed the most natural thing to do. She
could have told the truth--told Betsy Wendover all about her unlucky
marriage. But she would rather have killed herself than do this one
righteous thing; for she thought that if her marriage were once known to
Brian's relations she would be compelled to assume her natural position
as his wife. So long as the marriage remained a secret to all the world
except those two whom it most concerned they were free to ignore the tie.
They could live their lives apart; and to the end of time it might be as
if such a marriage had never been. Her husband being consentient to this
life-long separation, her lot might be fairly happy. She had never tried
to penetrate the future. Perhaps to-day for the first time there had
flashed into her mind the thought of what a bright and glorious future
might have been hers had she not so forfeited her freedom.

Voices, at least half a dozen, all talking at once, told her that the
barrow-hunt was winding homewards; gleams of colour athwart the hedges
told her that the hunters were in the lane; and in a minute or two Miss
Wendover and her young kins-folk appeared, all more or less sunburnt and
towzled by their tramp across the downs.

'Found a splendid long barrow,' said Bessie, 'on a lovely point, one of
the finest views in the county. What clever corpses they must have been
to pick such glorious spots! Long barrow, long-headed race,
dolichocephalic skulls, men of the stone age, eh?' she said, looking at
Brian. 'You see I know my lesson; but it was very mean of you not to come
with us, all the same.'

'I wanted you to exercise your own acumen, to cultivate the antiquarian
_flair_. Besides, I had a heap of letters to write.'

'You only found that out after we had started. You never have letters to
write when Ida is with us,' said Bessie; a remark which made two people
blush. 'To think that I had known that spot all my life and never
suspected a barrow,' she continued. 'I thought it was only a convenient
bank which Providence had thrown up ready for picnics.'

Ida had enough to do now in providing for the wants of half a dozen
hungry people. Blanche of the short petticoats was at an age when girls
are ogres, distinguished for nothing but the rapidity of their digestion
and the length of their legs. There was a demand for jam, and the
unsophisticated half-gallon loaf instead of the conventional thin bread
and butter.

'Eat as much as you like, dears,' said Aunt Betsy, 'but remember that
your father will expect you to have some appetite at seven.'

'We won't disappoint him,' said Bessie; 'seven is an hour and half from
now. Blanche can do wonders in an hour and a half.'

Blanche's appetite was one of the stock family jokes, like Urania's tight
boots; so there was a laugh, and the others went on eating.

Brian Wendover told them about to-morrow's excursion. 'I shall put four
horses into the wagonette,' he said. 'I almost wish I had a drag to do
honour to the occasion; but we must resign ourselves to a wagonette. You
will go, of course, Aunt Betsy? and Bessie must come; and I suppose we
ought to invite Miss Rylance. She has joined in most of our excursions,
and it would be invidious to leave her out of this. And I dare-say Bessie
would think the whole thing flat without Mr. Jardine?'

'It's very kind of you to think of him; but I don't believe he'll be able
to spare the day,' said Bessie.

'We'll ask him, at any rate, and then you can't say we've used you badly.
That makes a party of six. I'll go and telegraph to Sir Vernon.'

'Will there be lawn-tennis after lunch?' asked Blanche, with a very long
face.

'I shouldn't wonder if there were,' answered Brian: 'does that mean that
you want to go?'

'I shall not have a creature to speak to at home, and I never go
anywhere,' said Blanche, despairingly.

Both statements were obvious untruths, but no doubt the damsel herself
believed them.

'Have you a gown that covers your knees?' asked Aunt Betsy, severely.

'My new frock is awfully long. It only came from the dress-maker's last
week.'

'Then you have hardly had time to grow out of it,' said Brian.

'Suppose we strain a point, Aunt Betsy, and take her. It will enable us
to say, "we are seven."'

'We shall be a tremendous party,' said Miss Wendover. 'I hope Sir Vernon
is a hospitable, easy-going man, and that your intimacy with him warrants
such an intrusion.'

'I am taking him a cousin,' answered Brian, stealing an admiring glance
at Ida; 'surely that ought to secure our welcome.'

'I hope his housekeeper has large ideas about luncheon,' said Bessie, 'or
Blanche's appetite will throw her out in her calculations. If she is the
sort of person who thinks a pair of ducklings and a dish of rissoles
substantial fare for a large party, I pity her.'

'You're vastly witty,' said Blanche, preparing her final slice of bread
and jam; 'one would think you lived upon roses and lilies, like the
ascetics.'

'The poor child means aesthetes,' explained Bessie.

'Bother the pronunciation! But if people had seen you eating rabbit-pie
on the barrow--why a wolf wouldn't have been in it,' concluded Blanche,
who acquired her flowers of speech from the Wintonians.

'I'll go and despatch my telegram,' said Brian, taking up his hat.




CHAPTER XVI.


THICKER THAN WATER.

The weather was altogether favourable for the thirty-mile drive. The
wagonette with its scratch team and a couple of smart grooms, was at the
Homestead gate at ten o'clock, and after picking up Miss Wendover and her
companion, went on to The Knoll for Bessie and Blanche, and then to Dr.
Rylance's for Urania, who had accepted the invitation most graciously.
Kingthorpe was unwontedly excited by this gorgeous apparition, and the
inhabitants remained at garden gates and cottage doors while so much as a
horse's tail was visible. Everybody was pleased to see the young squire
driving four-in-hand. It had been supposed that as a bookish young man,
given over to Greek and Latin, he must needs be a poor hand with horses.
But this morning's exhibition gave rise to more hopeful views.

'We shall see the squire setting up his coach, and settling down at the
Abbey,' said one.

'Ay, when he gets married,' said another; 'that's what'll settle he. I
believes as him is sweet on that young 'ooman at the Homestead. Her be a
clipper, her be.'

Over the hills and far away went the scratch team--a little fresh, but
behaving beautifully. Aunt Betsy sat beside her nephew, and watched his
coachmanship with a jealous eye, conscious that she could have kept the
team better in hand herself, but still with moderate approval. The girls
and the grooms were in the back of the vehicle--Bessie, Blanche, and Ida
full of talk and merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day's entertainment
was too much in Ida's honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she
could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted
to see what happened--how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot
of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer,
when he turned to talk to the girls behind him--now to point out some
feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with
looks that lingered upon one face, and that face was Ida Palliser's.

It was a long cross country drive, by rustic lanes and dubious roads, but
Mr. Wendover took things easily. He had sent forward a second scratch
team over night to a village half way, and here they changed horses,
while he and his party spent half an hour pleasantly enough exploring an
old gray church and humble graveyard, where the tombstones all bore
record of unrenowned lives that had slowly rusted away in a pastoral
solitude, Blanche, whose schoolroom appetite was wont to damp its keen
edge upon bread and butter at this hour, felt it rather a hard thing that
no one proposed a light refection at the lowly inn; but she bore her
inward gnawings in silence, conscious of the dignity of a frock which
almost reached her ankles, and desirous to prove that she was worthy to
be the associate of grown-up.

Half way between this village inn and Wimperfield they met a couple of
horsemen. These were no other than Sir Vernon and his brother Peter, who
had come to meet their guests, and show them the nearest way, which from
this point became especially intricate.

Brian walked his team gently up a gentle hill, while Sir Vernon and his
brother walked their horses beside him, and during this ascent all
necessary introductions were duly made, everybody being properly
presented except Blanche, who felt that she was being treated with
contumely.

'I am very glad to see you at last, cousin Ida,' said Sir Vernon,
pleasantly. 'I have been hearing of you all my life, but we seemed fated
not to meet.'

He was a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a frank,
fresh-coloured countenance, auburn whiskers, and curly brown hair. His
brother was after the same pattern, hair a little lighter, no whiskers,
eyes rather a brighter blue. They were as much alike as brothers can be
without being mistaken for each other. There was nothing romantic looking
about either of them, Bessie thought, regretfully. She would have liked
Sir Vernon to have resembled her favourite hero in fiction (the man she
always put in confession books), and to have fallen desperately in love
with Ida at first sight. And here he was, a most matter-of-fact looking
young man, riding behind the wagonette in a provokingly matter-of-fact
way.

Yet perhaps there was a providence in this; for if Brian of the Abbey
were in love with Ida, as Bessie shrewdly suspected, it would have been a
terrible thing for him to have found a rival in a titled cousin. If Ida
were ambitious, the title might have turned the scale.

'And I have so set my heart upon having her for my cousin, thought
Bessie. 'The other Brian was a failure, but this Brian may win the
prize.'

Mr. Jardine had not been able to leave his parish for a long day; so
Bessie had plenty of leisure to speculate upon the possible loves of
other people, instead of enjoying the blissfulness of her own love
affair.

Wimperfield was a mansion built in the Italian manner which prevailed
about a century ago, a style about as uninteresting as any order of
domestic architecture, but which makes a house a good feature in a fine
landscape. The Corinthian façade of Wimperfield stood boldly out against
the verdant slope of a hill, backed and sheltered on either side by
woods. Behind that classic portico there was the usual prim range of
windows, and there were the usual barrack-like rooms. The furniture was
of the same heavy and substantial character, rich dark rosewood, amber
satin hangings faded by a quarter of a century; Spanish mahogany in
dining-rooms and bedrooms; Gillow's fine workmanship everywhere, but the
style dating back to the very infancy of that ancient house.

The large, finely-lighted hall, which looked like the vestibule of some
learned institute, was adorned with four Carrara marble statues, placid
gods and goddesses smirking at vacancy, on pedestals of verde antico. The
only pictures in the reception-rooms were family portraits, and a few of
those large Dutch landscapes, battle scenes, sea-pieces and fruit-pieces,
which cry aloud that they are furniture pictures, and have been bought to
fit the panelling of the rooms.

But for its noble situation this temple of English domestic life would
have been utterly without charm; but the situation was superb, the
gardens were in beautiful order, and the stables, as Aunt Betsy declared
after personal inspection, were perfect.

Sir Vernon did the honours of his house in a frank, friendly manner.
He took his guests round the gardens and stables, showed Ida the old
nursery in which his father and her father had spent their infancy; the
gun-room in which their first guns were carefully preserved; the very
rocking-horse on which they had ridden, and which now occupied a recess
in an obscure lobby opening into the garden.

'Peter and I didn't care to ride him,' said Sir Vernon. 'We had Shelties
when we were three-year-olds; but I know when I began Virgil I used to
think the wooden horse that got into Troy was an exaggerated copy of this
one.

He showed his cousin the room in which her grandfather and grandmother
died--an immense apartment, wherein stood, grim and tall, a gigantic
mahogany four-poster, draped with dark green velvet.

'I can't fancy anybody doing anything else in such a room,' said Ida, to
whom the spacious chamber looked as gloomy as a charnel-house. 'I beg
your pardon. I hope you don't sleep here.'

'No, my diggings are at the other end of the house, looking into the
stable-yard. I like to be able to put my head out of window and order my
horse--saves time and trouble. We keep the rooms at this end for
visitors.'

The gong boomed loud and long, much to the relief of poor Blanche, whose
spirits had been slowly sinking, in unison with her inward cravings, and
who had begun to think that the promised luncheon was a delusion and a
snare, which would end in the fashionable frivolity of afternoon tea.

Sir Vernon offered his arm to Miss Wendover, and asked Brian to take Miss
Palliser, while Peter was told off to Miss Rylance, leaving Bessie and
the clinging Blanche like twin cherries on one stem. It was curious for
Ida to find herself seated presently beside the wealthy cousin of whom
she had heard as a far-off and almost mythical personage, of very little
account in her life; since it was so improbable that any of his wealth
would ever come her way.

The luncheon was of the old-fashioned and ponderous order, excellent of
its kind: the orchard-houses had given up their finest peaches and
nectarines and their earliest grapes to do honour to the occasion. Miss
Rylance contemplated the table decorations with mute scorn, which she
hardly cared to disguise. No Venetian wine-flasks, no languorous lilies
swooning in Salviati goblets, no pottery of the new green and yellow
school, but massive silver, and heavy diamond-cut glass--gaudy
Staffordshire china of 'too utterly quite' the worst period of art.
Everything essentially Philistine.

Sir Vernon had placed his cousin on his left hand, and he talked to her a
good deal during luncheon--asking questions as to her past life, which
she answered with perfect candour. It was only when he spoke of her
future that the fair brow clouded, and the cheeks reddened with a painful
glow.

'I hope, now that the ice has been broken, that we are not going to be
strangers any more,' said Vernon, pleasantly. 'To think that you should
be such a near neighbour of mine, and that I should know nothing about
it! You have been at Kingthorpe since last November, you say? How long
are you going to stay there?'

'For a good many Novembers, I hope,' said Aunt Betsy, 'unless she gets
tired of rural solitude, or unless a husband steals her away from me.'

'Ah, that is what all young ladies anticipate. They never are but always
to be blest,' replied Vernon, laughing. He was one of those open-hearted
souls who always appreciate their own mild jokelets.

Brian, who saw Ida's pained expression, made haste to change the
conversation, by an inquiry about Sir Vernon's plans for the autumn,
which set that gentleman on a sporting tack, and spared Miss Palliser all
further trouble.

After luncheon they went to look at the hot-houses, and dawdled away the
time very agreeably until afternoon tea, Miss Rylance doing her best to
improve the occasion with Peter, who was not educated up to the standard
of metropolitan or South Kensingtonian young ladyhood, and who came out
very badly under the process of development; for when talked to about
Ruskin he was at first altogether vacuoous, but, on being pushed har
believed there was a biggish swell of some such name among the Oxford
dons, about whom he could not fairly be expected to know anything, as he
and his brother were Cantabs: while on being languidly asked his opinion
of Swinburne's last tragedy, he grew cheerful,