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                        The Late Miss Hollingford

                           BY ROSA MULHOLLAND

                             (LADY GILBERT)

Author of "Cynthia's Bonnet Shop" "Giannetta" "Hetty Gray" "Four Little
Mischiefs" &c.

                             _ILLUSTRATED_


BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND DUBLIN




[Illustration: RACHEL RETURNS TO HER MOTHER.]




PREFACE.


"The Late Miss Hollingford" was published a good many years ago in the
pages of _All the Year Round_.

It has never till now been re-published in England, though it has been
translated into French under the title of _Une Idée Fantasque_, and
issued by the Bleriot Library, with a preface by M. Gounod. It has also
appeared in Italian. In the Tauchnitz Collection it is bound in with _No
Thoroughfare_, having been chosen by the late Charles Dickens as a
pendant for his own story in a volume of that series.

Mr. Dickens was so pleased with this tale, and some others by the same
author, then a very young beginner, that he wrote asking her to
contribute a serial story of considerable length to his journal.

"The Late Miss Hollingford" (the title of which was chosen by Mr.
Dickens himself) comes now asking for a favourable reception from the
public, in the name of the great master of English fiction--long passed
away from among us.




CHAPTER I.


A dear old lady tells us this story in the late autumn evenings. Now the
harvest is in, huge haycocks shelter the gable, the honey is strained
and put by in jars, the apples are ripened and stored; the logs begin to
sputter and sing in the big parlour at evening, hot cakes to steam on
the tea-table, and the pleasant lamp-lit hours to spread themselves.
Indoor things begin to have meaning looks of their own, our limbs grow
quiet, and our brains begin to work. The moors beyond the window take
strange expressions in the twilight, and fold mysteries into their
hollows with the shadows of the night. The maids in the kitchen sing
wild ballads to one another round the ingle; and when one of us young
folks threads the rambling passages above to fetch a stray thimble from
one of the lavender-scented bed-rooms, she comes back flying down the
great hollow staircase as if a troop of ghosts were at her heels. It is
the time to enjoy a story, a true story, the story of a real life; and
here it is, as our dear old lady is telling it to us.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I first learned, my children, that I was the ward of my mother's
early friend, Mrs. Hollingford, and was to live under her roof after my
departure from school, I little thought that a place like Hillsbro' Farm
was ever likely to be my home. I was a conceited young person, and fond
of giving myself airs. My father was colonel of his regiment, and I
thought I had a right to look down on Lydia Brown, whose father was in
business, though she wore velvet three inches deep upon her frocks,
while mine had no better trimming than worsted braid. I had spent all my
life at school, from the day when my father and mother kissed me for the
last time in Miss Sweetman's parlour. I remember yet my pretty mother's
pale tearful face as she looked back at me through the carriage window,
and my own paroxysm of despairing tears on the mat when the door was
shut. After that I had a pleasant enough life of it. I was a favourite
at school, having a disposition to make myself and others as happy as I
could. I required a good deal of snubbing, but when properly kept down I
believe I was not a disagreeable girl.

My Indian letters generally contained some bit of news to amuse or
interest my companions, and now and again captain, or ensign somebody,
home upon sick leave, called and presented himself in Miss Sweetman's
parlour, with curious presents for me, my mistresses, or favourite
companions. I remember well the day when Major Guthrie arrived with the
box of stuffed birds. Miss Kitty Sweetman, our youngest and best-loved
mistress, was sent on before me to speak civilly to the gentleman in the
parlour, and announce my coming. Miss Kitty was the drudge of the
school, the sweetest-tempered drudge in the world. She was not so well
informed as her elder sisters, and had to make up in the quantity of her
teaching what it lacked in the quality. She was fagged, and hunted, and
worried from morning till night by all the small girls in the school.
She would have been merry if she had had time, and she was witty
whenever she could get the chance of being anything but a machine; but
she was not always happy, for I slept in her room, and I sometimes heard
her crying in the night. As I remember her first she was young and
pretty, but as time went on she grew a little faded, and a little
harassed-looking; though I still thought her sweet enough for anything.

Well, Miss Kitty went down to the major, and I, following close upon her
heels, heard a little scream as I paused at the parlour door, and there
when I went in was a bronzed-looking gentleman holding Miss Kitty's two
hands in his, and looking in her face. And I could not care about the
birds for thinking of it, and when we went up to bed Miss Kitty told me
that Major Guthrie was an old friend of her family, and that he had said
he would call again. And surely enough he did call again; and then it
happened that the three Miss Sweetmans were invited out to an evening
party--a great event for them. I thought there was something very
particular about it, and so I took care to dress Miss Kitty with my own
hands. She had a plain white dress, and I insisted on lending her my
blue sash and coral necklace; and when she was dressed she put her
finger in her mouth, and asked, between laughing and crying, whether I
could further accommodate her with a coral and bells. She looked as
young as anybody, though she would make fun of herself. And when she
came in that night, and saw my open eyes waiting for her, she sat down
on my bed and began to cry, and told me that Major Guthrie had asked her
to marry him, and she was going to India as his wife. Then I heard the
whole story; how he had loved her dearly long ago; how her friends had
refused him because he was too poor, and she was too young; how after he
had gone off in a passion reverses had come upon them, and she and her
sisters had been obliged to open a school. And so Miss Kitty went out to
India, and the only thing that comforted me for her loss was the fact
that she took with her the embroidered handkerchief for my mother, and
the wrought cigar-case for my father, which it had taken my idleness a
whole year to produce. Ah, me! and my eyes never beheld either of these
three again: friend, father, or mother.

My first recollections of Mrs. Hollingford are associated with
plum-cake, birth-days, and bon-bons. I remember her as an erect,
dignified-looking lady in a long velvet cloak, and with a peculiarly
venerable face, half severe, half benevolent. I used to feel a little
nervous about speaking to her, but I liked to sit at a distance and look
at her. I had a superstition that she was the most powerful universal
agent in existence; that she had only to say, "Let there be plum-cake,"
and immediately it would appear on the table; or, "This little girl
requires a new doll," and at once a waxen cherub would repose in my
arms. The Miss Sweetmans paid her the greatest deference, and the girls
used to peep over the blinds in the school-room at her handsome carriage
and powdered servants. I remember, when a very little girl, presenting
myself before Miss Sweetman one day, and popping up my hand as a sign
that I wanted to ask a question. "What is the reason, Miss Sweetman," I
asked, "that Mrs. Hollingford makes me think of the valiant woman of
whom we were reading in the Bible yesterday?" But Miss Sweetman was
busy, and only puckered up her mouth and ordered me back to my seat.
Mrs. Hollingford used to take me on her knee and tell me of a little
girl of hers who was at school in France, and with whom I was one day to
be acquainted; and a tall lad, who was her son, used to call sometimes
with bouquets for Miss Sweetman or sugar-plums for me; but I was never
in her house, which I believed to be a palace, nor did I ever see Mr.
Hollingford, who was a banker in the city. After my twelfth birthday I
saw them no more. I missed the periodical appearance of the noble
countenance in the parlour. Miss Sweetman, with a very long face, told
me something of the breaking of a bank, ruin, and poverty. I was very
sorry, but I was too young to realise it much; and I went on thinking of
Mrs. Hollingford, in trouble, no doubt, and unfortunately removed from
me, but still going about the world in her long velvet cloak and with
her hands full of plum-cake.

So my youth went on till I was sixteen, pretty well grown for my years,
a little pert, a little proud, a little fond of tinsels and butterflies,
a little too apt to make fun of my neighbours, and to believe that the
sun had got a special commission to shine upon me, but withal
sympathetic and soft-hearted enough when in my right senses, and, as I
said before, not a bad sort of girl when properly kept down by a
judicious system of snubbing. I had already begun to count the months to
the happy time, two years hence, when, my education being finished, I
should at last rejoin my parents in India; and I was fond of describing
all the beautiful things I would send as presents to the friends who had
been kind to me in England. And then one fearful day came the black
letter bearing the terrible news which bowed my head in the dust,
scattered my girlish vanities, and altered my fate for life. Every one
in the house learned the news before me. I saw blank faces all around,
and could only guess the cause, so careful were they to break it to me
gradually. For two dreadful days they kept me on the rack of suspense,
while I did not know whether it was my father or mother who was dead, or
whether both were ill, or only one. But I learned all soon enough. There
had been a fever, and both were dead. I was an orphan, quite alone in
the world.

For three years after this I remained with the Miss Sweetmans, during
which time I had regained much of my old cheerfulness, and also some
degree of my natural pride and impertinence. My father and mother had
been to me a memory and a hope; now they were a memory only. After my
first grief and sense of desolation had passed, I went on with the
routine of my days much as before. I did not miss my father and mother
every hour as though I had lived under their roof and been familiar with
their faces and caresses. But the bright expectation of my youth was
extinguished, and I suffered secretly a great yearning for the love
which I had now no right to claim from anyone. The time was fast
approaching when I must take my school-books down from Miss Sweetmans'
shelves, pack up my trunks, and go forth among strangers. I had some
property, more than enough for my needs, and I was to dwell under the
roof of my guardian, Mrs. Hollingford. In the mean time, I paid several
visits to the home of a wealthy school-fellow, who had entered upon
fashionable life, and who was eager to give me a taste of its delights
before I yielded myself to the fate that was in store for me. I learned
to dress with taste, to wear my hair in the newest style, and to waltz
to perfection. But I could not go on paying visits for ever, and the
time arrived when I found it necessary to turn my back on lively scenes
and prepare for the obscurity of Hillsbro'. This was a remote place in
the north country, from whence were dated all the letters addressed by
Mrs. Hollingford to me since the time when she had become my guardian.

I did not go to Hillsbro' Farm in any unfair state of ignorance as to
the present worldly position of its owners. Grace Tyrrell (my
school-fellow) was careful to let me know the depth of the degradation
to which these friends of an old time had fallen from their once high
estate; also to make me aware of the estimation in which they were held
by the people of her world. The idea of my going to Hillsbro' was
ridiculed till I got angry, but not ashamed.

"Those poor Hollingfords!" said one lady. "I am sure it is very kind of
you, Miss Dacre, to pay them a visit; but _live_ with them, my
dear!--you could not think of identifying yourself with such people. Are
you aware that the father ruined numbers of people, absconded with his
pockets full of money, and never was heard of since?"

"Yes," said I; "but I have nothing to do with Mr. Hollingford. And I
daresay if his wife had taken ill-gotten riches down to Hillsbro' with
her, the police would have followed her before this; for she gives her
address quite openly."

I afterwards heard this lady telling Grace that her friend was a very
pert young woman. I did not mind, for, through fighting Mrs.
Hollingford's battles, I had come to think that I loved her memory; and
I tried to do so for my mother's sake.

"It is not at all necessary to live with a guardian," said Grace. "They
say Mrs. Hollingford makes butter and sells it; and Frederick says the
son is a mere ploughman. He is Mr. Hill's agent; Frederick met him by
chance, quite lately, when he was shooting at Hillsbro'."

"Agent, is he?" said I, mischievously. "Then I should think he must at
least know how to read and write. Come, that is not so bad!"

"You will get the worst of it, Grace," said Frederick Tyrrell, who was
listening. "Lucky fellow, Hollingford, to have such a champion!"

So here I had better explain to you, my dears, that Captain Tyrrell was,
even at this time, what old-fashioned people used to call a great _beau_
of mine; that he was fond of dangling about my skirts and picking up my
fan. Nothing more on this subject is necessary here. If you desire to
know what he is like, I refer you to an old water-colour sketch of a
weak-faced, washed-out-looking young man, with handsome features, and a
high-collared coat, which you will find in an old portfolio upstairs, on
the top shelf of the wardrobe, in the lumber-room. It was done by
Grace's own hand, a portrait of her brother, and presented to me in
those days. It has lain in that portfolio ever since.

Though I fought for the Hollingfords, and would hear no word against
them, I do confess that I suffered much fear as to how I should manage
to accommodate myself to the life which I might find awaiting me at
Hillsbro' Farm. That idea of the butter-making, for instance, suggested
a new train of reflections. The image of Mrs. Hollingford began to
divest itself gradually of the long velvet cloak and majestic mien which
it had always worn in my mind, and I speculated as to whether I might
not be expected to dine in a kitchen with the farm-servants, and to
assist with the milking of the cows. But I contrived to keep my doubts
to myself, and went on packing my trunks with a grudging conviction that
at least I was doing my duty.

And it is here, just when my packing was half done, that the strange,
beautiful face of Rachel Leonard rises up to take its place in my
history. I was introduced to her by chance; I did not know her story,
nor that she had a story, nor yet that she was connected with any people
whose intimate acquaintance I was likely to make in the future.

We met at a small musical party, where we had opportunities for
conversation. She wore a white Indian muslin, with a bunch of scarlet
flowers in the bosom. We were sitting in a softly lighted corner, and
her figure was in relief against a dark curtain. Her face was oval and
olive, with an exquisite mingling of warmth and purity, depth and
delicacy, in its tone. Her dark hair was swept up to the top of her head
in a crown of braids, as it was then worn. Her eyes were dark grey, and
very sweet, with a mysterious shadow of sadness about them when her face
was in repose; yet, when they smiled they shone more than any eyes I
have ever seen.

"Miss Dacre and Miss Leonard, I must make you acquainted," said our
hostess (the meddling lady whom I have already quoted on the subject of
the Hollingford misdemeanours). "You intend passing the winter at
Hillsbro', Miss Leonard."

"Yes," replied Rachel; "I believe we shall be at the hall about
Christmas."

"Ah! and you have never been there before? I can assure you it is the
most dreary place; you will be glad of a young friend in the
neighbourhood. Miss Dacre's whim is one of our amusements at present.
She is going to Hillsbro' to stay with a lady who is the mother of Mr.
Hill's agent."

"Mrs. Cowan?" said Miss Leonard, with a ladylike assumption of interest
in the subject.

"Not at all, my dear; the Cowans were worthy people, but Mr. Hill has
changed his agent. Have you not heard? No, of course. Hollingford is the
name of these people. The father was a banker, the bank smashed, and he
ran away with large sums of money."

I thought--nay, I was quite sure--that Miss Leonard started at the
mention of the word Hollingford; and I also thought that she turned
deathly pale; but she bent over her flowers at the moment, and the light
was very subdued. No one else seemed to notice it, so it is just
possible I may have been mistaken.

"Mr. Hill's new agent is, then, the son of Mr. Hollingford, the banker?"
said Miss Leonard, after a pause. "I did not know that they belonged to
that part of the country."

"Oh! I do not know about that; but the mother and son have taken a farm
there lately, trying to make shift for themselves, poor things! They say
young Hollingford has some Quixotic ideas about paying some of his
father's liabilities; and if he has, I am sure it is very creditable to
him. But I for one am inclined to doubt it. Bad conduct generally runs
in families."

"Madam," said I, with my cheeks getting very hot, "Mrs. Hollingford was
my mother's dear friend."

"Highty tighty, Miss Dacre," said the lady, "we never know how our
friends are going to turn out. I say nothing but what is true. And allow
me to warn you, my dear, that if you will persist in identifying
yourself with such people you must make up your mind to hear them spoken
of as they deserve."

"Madam," said I again, flashes of lightning now dancing before my eyes,
"I am very sorry I ever entered your house; and I shall certainly never
enter it again."

Not waiting for more I made her a curtsy, and walked out of the room. I
found the dressing-room where I had left my cloak, fully determined to
go home at once, if I could only get the carriage. I had to wait some
time, however, and whilst I sat alone the door opened and Rachel Leonard
came hurriedly up to my side.

"I could not go away without bidding you good-night," she said, holding
both my hands in both of hers. "Perhaps we may meet again. God bless
you!"

Her voice was unsteady, her face pale, her eyes wet. A lady came to the
door and said, "Now, Rachel, we are waiting!" She dropped my hand and
was gone.

"Who is she?" I asked of Grace, as soon as we were together, "What
relation is she to the Hills?"

"None whatever," said Grace; "only an adopted daughter. There is some
romantic story about her, I believe. She went to Mrs. Hill as a
companion first. The Hills, who are the most eccentric old couple in the
world, took a violent fancy to her, and adopted her for their own. I
believe she is an orphan of a very good family. They keep up a wonderful
fuss about her; and people say they have made her their heiress."

"I wonder why she looked so strangely at the mention of the
Hollingfords?" I said musingly.

"My dear Margery," said Grace, shaking her head, "I give you up. You are
perfectly insane on the subject of the Hollingfords. What will you
imagine next?"

"I do not think I imagined it," said I. "I am sure that she turned as
white as your cloak."

"Well, well," said Grace, "there may be some deep mystery for all I
know. Miss Leonard may, like yourself, have a taste for agriculture; or
may have known young Mr. Hollingford before he turned ploughman. I
advise you to think about it. You have materials for a pretty romance to
take into exile with you."

And I did think about it long afterwards.




CHAPTER II.


My children, you must remember that I am speaking of an old-fashioned
time, and I travelled down to Hillsbro' by coach. The promenade of a
fashionable watering-place had hitherto been my idea of the country.
Imagine, then, how my hungry eyes devoured the new beauties presented to
them. I had provided myself with a book, and I had hoped to fall asleep
over it, yet here I was with my eyes riveted to a pane of glass, afraid
to wink lest I should miss something. Grace's warning, "You will fret
yourself to death, you will be back before a month," grew faint in my
ears. When night shut out my new world and I fell asleep, I dreamed of
extraordinary phenomena--trees stalking about the plains, fairies
leaping out of the foam of the rivers.

I opened my eyes to a rose-coloured dawn. We had stopped before a little
village inn. A row of pigeons with burnished necks looked down on me
from their perch on the signboard above the door; a half-dressed,
curly-headed child peeped out of a window from under the eaves, and
clapped his hands at the steaming horses: and a young man walked out of
the inn with a whip in his hand, and asked if there might be a lady
inside the coach whose destination was Hillsbro' Farm.

I was soon seated by his side in a gig. By a few careful glances I had
easily assured myself that there was nothing of the ploughman in the
appearance of Mrs. Hollingford's son. You will want to know what I
thought of him that morning, and I will tell you. He seemed to me the
beau ideal of a country gentleman: nothing less than this, and something
more. You have known him, my dears, stooped and white-haired, and have
loved him in his age for the sake of the heart that never grew old. But
on that brilliant autumn morning when he and I first sat side by side,
the same lovable spirit was clothed with the strength and beauty of
mortal youth.

The vivid life of the country was sweet to me that early morning. Carts
of hay lumbered past us, almost crushing us into the hedges as they
swept along heavily, leaving a trail of fragrance in the air. Red and
brown leaves lay thick on the ground, making beautiful the undulations
of the roads. Mists of dew hung among the purple folds of the hills, and
the sun dashed the woods and streams with kindling gold. By and by the
whole country side was laughing in the full face of the day.

Hillsbro' Farmhouse was, and is, a low long dwelling built of dark
bricks, and standing among orchards and meadows, green pasture lands and
running streams. Its ivied chimneys had for background the sombre lines
of a swelling moor, belted by a wood of pines which skirted the hollow
wherein the earth nourished the fatness and sweetness of the thrifty
farm acres. Along the edge of the moor the road ran that led to
Hillsbro' Hall, and a short cut through the wood brought one down upon a
back entrance to the squire's own grounds.

The dear old farm! Roses were blowing in that morning at the open sashes
of the big, heavy, roughly hung windows. Two young girls, who were
afterwards dear to me as fibres of my heart, lingered beside the open
door; stately handsome Jane, with her solemn observant black eyes and
trim dark dress, and frolicsome Mopsie, with her laughing face, and her
hat tied down, gipsy fashion, with a red ribbon. They lingered to see
me, to take their share in giving me a welcome, and then set out on
their long walk, discussing me by the way. They told me of it
afterwards. Jane said I was only fit for a glass case, and Mopsie
declared I alighted from the old gig as if I had a mind to dance. They
were awed by the high heels on my boots, the feather in my hat, and the
quilted satin of my pelisse. They wondered I could deign to speak
anything but French, and concluded I did so only out of compliment to
their homeliness.

And I, meanwhile, decked in all the fanciful elegancies of a London
toilette, sat down to breakfast in the long parlour at Hillsbro' Farm,
with something in my heart that would not let me eat though I was
hungry, and something in my eyes that would not let me see very well,
though the sun came rich and yellow through each of the wide windows,
forming one broad golden path down the middle of the room. I saw but
dimly the dark brown walls and ceiling, the stiff-backed chairs with
their worn covers, the jar full of late roses that stood in either
window, the heap of trailing ivy that overran the huge grate. It was
Mrs. Hollingford's face that did it as she sat, kind, careful,
hospitable, pressing on me sweet home-made cakes, fresh butter, fragrant
tea, delicious cream, and delicate pink eggs. Ah me! it was her face
that did it. There was my great lady, my beneficent friend, my valiant
woman. Her eyes were somewhat sunken, the fire of their energy a trifle
slackened, her brow a little seamed; the strain of fortitude had drawn a
tight cord about her mouth. Whence, then, that new touching beauty that
made one see the stamp of heaven's nobility shining on her face? Had I
quite forgotten her, or was she indeed something new? It was as if grief
had chiselled her features afresh out of the superfluous roundings of
prosperity, wasted them into perfect sweetness, hacked them into purer
refinement. She wore a strait black gown of the coarsest material, only
the fair folds of muslin about her throat giving daintiness to her
attire. Her son breakfasted with us, and I fancied he often looked at me
curiously as if to say, "What concern can she have with us? why did she
come? how long will she remain?" I had talked to him without
embarrassment as we drove along, but now I could hardly speak. Never had
I felt so shy in any company as I did in the presence of my mother's
friend.

After breakfast she led me to my room, bright and airy, but scantily
furnished. It had a window looking out on an orchard threaded by long
alleys, over which hung a glowing roof of fruit-laden branches. And here
I unpacked my trunks and stowed away my elegant dresses in a huge
painted wardrobe smelling of apples. I laid aside with a kind of shame
all the little ornaments I was accustomed to wear, and dressed myself in
the plainest gown I possessed. Descending the quaint old staircase
again, I found Mrs. Hollingford walking up and down the hall waiting
patiently for my appearance.

"What a great woman you have grown, my love!" she said, drawing my hand
within her arm, and leading me through the open hall door. "But you have
still your mother's fair hair and sunny eyes. Will you walk with me for
an hour? I have much to say to you, and the sooner it is said the
better."

Then she told me the story of her life, and misfortunes, sternly,
sweetly, with strange humility and fortitude. I knew much of it before,
but she would tell it all.

"And now, my love," she said, "you know us as we are. Your mother, when
she made me your guardian, did not foresee the changes that were to take
place. You have other friends who are willing to give you a home. You
have come here of your own will. When you wish to leave us we shall not
wonder."

I threw my arms round her neck and told her I would not leave her.
Never, since Miss Kitty Sweetman went to India, had my heart gone forth
so completely to anyone.

She bade me not be too hasty. "You will find our life so different from
anything you have ever known," she said. "We all fear it for you. We are
so busy here. We have always a purpose before our eyes to make us work."

"Then I shall work too," I said. "I will not be the only drone in such a
thrifty hive."

She smiled at this, and shook her head. But I immediately began to cast
about for the means by which I might find it possible to keep my word.




CHAPTER III.


I soon learned to love the farm. I began to know the meaning of the word
"home." The beauty and lovableness of some persons and places takes you
by surprise; with others they steal upon you by degrees; but there was
that about Hillsbro' Farm which I loved much at once and more
afterwards. Looking at it in the most commonplace way, it had all the
peace and plenty of an English farmhouse, while for eyes that sought
more they would find enough that was picturesque in the orchard's ruddy
thickets, where the sun struck fire on frosty mornings; in the wide
pasture lands sloping to the sedgy river, where the cows cooled their
feet on sultry evenings. You know as well as I the curious bowery garden
beyond the lower window of the parlour, stocked with riches and sweets
of all kinds, rows of bee-hives standing in the sun, roses and
raspberries growing side by side. The breaths of thyme and balm,
lavender and myrtle, were always in that parlour. You know the
sheep-fold and the paddock, the old tree over the west gable where the
owl made his nest--the owl that used to come and sit on our school-room
windowsill and hoot at night. You know, the sun-dial where the screaming
peacock used to perch and spread his tail; the dove-cote, where the
silver-necks and fan-tails used to coo and ruffle their feathers. You
know, too, all the quaint plannings and accidents of the old house; how
the fiery creeper ran riot through the ivy on the dark walls, dangling
its burning wreaths over the windows; how the hall door lay open all day
with the dogs sleeping on the broad door-step. Also, within, that there
were long dark passages, rooms with low ceilings; a step up here, and a
step down there; fireplaces twisted into odd corners, narrow pointed
windows, and wide latticed ones. You know all the household recesses,
the dairies and pantries and store-rooms; but you cannot know how Mrs.
Hollingford toiled amongst them, filling them with her industry one day
that they might be emptied the next; hardening her delicate hands with
labour to the end that justice might be done, that some who had lost
might gain, that a portion of her husband's heavy debts might be paid,
and a portion of the curse of the impoverished lifted from his guilty
shoulders.

No luxury was ever permitted in that household. Old gowns were worn and
mended till they could be worn and mended no longer. The girls were of
an age to go abroad to school, but they must be contented with such
education as they could pick up at home, so long as one poor creature
suffered straits through their father's fault. The only indulgence
allowed was almsgiving. Mopsie might divide her dinner with a hungry
child, or Jane bestow her new petticoat on an aged woman; but they must,
in consequence, deny themselves and suffer inconvenience till such time
as it came to be again their turn to have their absolute wants relieved.

I did, indeed, feel like a drone in a hive when, on leaving my room in
the mornings, I met Mrs. Hollingford coming from her work in the dairy,
John Hollingford arriving from his early visit to a distant part of the
farm, Jane from her sewing closet where she made and mended the linen of
the household, and Mopsie from the kitchen with a piled dish of
breakfast-cakes, showing what her morning task had been. I could not eat
for envy. Why could I not be of use to somebody? I gave Mopsie some gay
ribbons, which were returned to me by her mother. Nothing might she wear
but her plain black frock and white frill. I gave Jane a book of poems
with woodcuts, and that was accepted with rapture. This encouraged me. I
picked up two little children on the road, and to one I gave a bright
silk girdle for a skipping-rope, and to the other a doll dressed from
the materials of a fine gauze hat, which I picked to pieces for the
purpose. I was not going to be a peony flaunting among thrifty modest
vetches. At first I was sorry for the destruction of my pretty things,
but soon I grew to admire the demureness of my gray gown and little
black apron. I learned to make pies and cakes, to sweep a room and set
it to rights, to wash and get up linen and laces, to churn, to make
butter. But as many hands were engaged in these matters, I was often
thrown out of employment. I made music for my friends in the evenings,
and, as they liked it, this was something; but it was not enough. A new
spirit had entered into me. I felt my old self lost in the admiration
which I had conceived for the new friends who had accepted me amongst
them.

By and by I found out a little niche of usefulness for myself. Jane and
Mopsie attended the village school. One day I went to the town to buy
some trifle and call for the girls. It was past the hour for breaking
up, and I found Mopsie romping with some rude-looking girls on the
green, while Jane, detained for some fault, sat alone in the
school-room, perched on a bench, her arms folded and her eyes gloomily
fixed on the wall. When I entered she blushed crimson. She was a proud
girl, and I knew she was hurt at my seeing her disgrace. I coaxed her to
speak out her trouble.

"I could teach the whole school," she said, fiercely--"master, mistress,
and all--and yet I am kept sitting over a, b, c, like a baby. I get so
sick of it that sometimes I answer wrong by way of novelty. Then I have
to hold out my hand for the rod. To-day I drew Portia and Shylock on my
slate, and forgot to finish my sum; therefore I am disgraced!"

I seized the happy moment and offered myself to the girls as a
governess. Mopsie stopped on the road and hugged me in delight. Jane
squeezed my hand and was silent during the rest of the walk, except when
she said,

"Mother will never consent. I am too proud, and she wants me to be
humbled. She thinks it is good for me to go to the village school."

That night, however, I laid my plan before Mrs. Hollingford, and, after
some trouble, I attained my point.

We chose for our school-room an unoccupied chamber at the end of a long
passage upstairs. It was furnished with a deal table and chairs, and a
small square of green carpet laid upon the sanded floor. It had three
latticed windows looking westward, and one of those odd grates I have
mentioned, large enough to cook a dinner. We kept it filled with logs,
and in the evenings, after we had drawn the curtains in the parlour, set
the tea-table, and made Mrs. Hollingford comfortable on the sofa for an
hour's rest, we three retreated to our school-room for a chat in the
firelight. Here John joined us when he happened to come home early, and
many a happy hour we passed, four of us sitting round the blazing logs,
talking and roasting apples. We told stories, tales of the outer world,
and legends of the country around us. We described places and people we
had seen, and our fancies about others we had not seen. John, who had
travelled, was the most frequent speaker; and as I was a wonder of
experience to his sisters, just so was he a wonder to me. We laughed,
cried, or listened in breathless silence, all as he willed, while the
purple and yellow lingered in the sky behind the lattice, and the
moaning of the wind through the forlorn fields, the hissing of the
roasting apples, and the crackling of the burning wood, kept up an
accompaniment to his voice.

There were other evenings, too, when John was late, and Mopsie, having
grown tired of serious talk, tripped off to hear the lasses singing Bold
Robin Hood in the kitchen. Then Jane used to open her heart to me, and
talk about the troubles of the family. Her heart was stern and bitter
against her father. Well had she said she was proud; well had her mother
wished to humble her, if that could be done. She had, I believe, a great
intellect, and she had much personal beauty of a grand character. I do
not think she thought much about the latter, but she felt her mental
powers. She knew she was fitted to move in a high sphere, and chafed
against her fate; still more against the fate of her brother.

I can see her now, on her low seat before the fire, her hands clasping
one knee, her dark head thrown back, and her eyes fixed on the dancing
shadows above the chimney.

"To think of John settling down as a farmer!" she said; "John, who for
cleverness might be prime minister. And there is no hope of his getting
away from it; none whatever."

I could not but agree to this, though the thought occurred to me that
the farm might not be so pleasant a home if John had to go away and be
prime minister. All I could say I said to combat her rebellious
despondency as to her own future.

"If you knew the emptiness and foolishness of the gay world," I said in
a sage manner, "you would be thankful for our quiet life at Hillsbro'."

"It is not the gay world I think of," she said. "It is the world of
thought, of genius."

"Well, Jane," said I, cheerfully, "you may pierce your way to that yet."

"No!" she said. "If I had a clean name I would try to do it. As it is, I
will not hold up my head only to be pointed at. But I will not spend my
life at Hillsbro', moping. I will go away and work, teach, or write, if
I can."

I saw her eyes beginning to flash, and I did not like these fierce moods
for Jane. I was turning over a book at the time, and, to divert her
attention, I read aloud the name written on the title-page.

"Mary Hollingford," I said. "Was not she your elder sister?"

Jane started. "Yes," she said. "Who mentioned her to you?"

"Your mother," I said, "used to tell me of her little Mary, who was at
school in France. I cannot recollect who told me of her death. Do you
remember her?"

"Oh yes," said Jane, "perfectly. We did not lose her till after--my
father went away."

"I suppose she took the trouble to heart," I said, reflectively; and
then was sorry I had said it. But Jane answered,

"Yes," readily; then dropped her face between her hands, and remained
plunged in one of her motionless fits of abstraction for half an hour.

I never alluded to this subject again to Jane, but one evening when
Mopsie and I were alone together, the child spoke of it herself.

"Margery," she said, "you are holding me now just as sister Mary used to
hold me with both her arms round my waist, when I was a tiny little
thing, and she used to play with me in our nursery in London."

"You remember her, then?" I said.

"Yes," said Mopsie. "I remember her like a dream. She used to come home
for the holidays, and a handsome French lady with her, who used to throw
up her hands if we had not ribbons in our sleeves and smart rosettes on
our shoes. I remember sister Mary in a pretty white frock trimmed with
lace, and her hair curled down to her waist. I used to think her like
one of the angels. But we never speak of her now, nor of papa, because
it pains mother and John. I used to speak of her to Jane sometimes in
the night, just to ask her did she think sister Mary was thinking of us
in heaven; but Jane used to get into such dreadful fits of crying that I
grew afraid. I wish some one would talk of her. I think it is cruel of
us all to forget her because she is dead."

And tears stood in Mopsie's blue eyes. But the next half hour she was
singing like a skylark over some household task.




CHAPTER IV.


The winter deepened. Christmas was drawing near, and workmen were busy
setting the old Hall to rights for the reception of Mr. Hill and his
family. John had been requested to oversee the arrangements, for the
place had been unoccupied for years, and there were many alterations to
be made, and much new furnishing to be done. The housekeeper, who had
quietly dozed away half her life in two rooms in a corner of the house,
now bestirred herself joyfully to open shutters, kindle fires, see to
the sweeping and scrubbing, keep her eye upon painters and charwomen,
and make ready store of pickles and preserves for the adornment of her
pantry shelves.

This good woman was an old acquaintance of our two girls, their long
walks often leading them across the moor, and through the grounds to the
Hall. Mrs. Beatty, from her lonely window, had always espied their
approach, and many a winter day had she fed them with sweets by her
fireside, while she dried their wet wrappings, and told them stories of
the pictures in the dining-room. Later, they had discovered the library,
a sunny room at the south side of the house, stored with an excellent
collection of books, and had gone there to read when it pleased them. I,
in my capacity of governess, encouraged them in this habit, and at least
once a week we had a "reading day," as we called it. Mrs. Beatty knew
our day, and had coffee and a blazing fire awaiting us. And here we had
delicious times of study, with our books in our laps, perched on the
steps of the little ladder, or buried deep in the recesses of the deep
leathern chairs.

Now, however, the luxury of our quiet days was interfered with. Workmen
hammered about our ears, and an impertinent odour of paint annoyed us.
We turned our reading days into days of general inspection, and amused
ourselves with watching how the dingy corners threw off their cobwebs
one after another, and came forth into the light with clean and
brilliant faces. It was pleasant to know that I was useful to John in
those days, for his mother did not interfere in this affair, and he
needed a woman's taste to help him. It was I who selected the colours
for Mrs. Hill's drawing-room carpet, I who chose the silk hangings for
Miss Leonard's boudoir, I who rearranged in the cabinets the curiosities
about which no one but a stray mouse or two had been curious for many
years. I knew well that I did nothing but what any other person could
do, yet it pleased me to see how John overrated my services. It
delighted me to hear him praise to his mother my "exquisite taste and
skill;" but it pained me to see her anxious look from him to me. I knew
she feared that he was getting to love me well; sometimes with a mixture
of fear and joy I thought it myself. I guessed that his mother would
rather keep her son by her side unwed--perhaps that he could not afford
to marry. I often longed to slip my hand in hers, and say, "Be not
afraid, I am true;" but I could only look straight in her eyes and be
silent. And this thought, perhaps because I might not speak it out and
have done with it, remained with me, and preyed upon my mind. About this
time I began to lie awake at nights, planning how I might show Mrs.
Hollingford that I had no wish to thrust myself between her and her son.

And so it came that there arose a strangeness between John and me. I did
not wish it to be so, but it happened naturally as a consequence of all
my thinking and planning. It grew up in the midst of our pleasant work
at the Hall, and it was burthensome, for it took the joyous adornment
off everything, made handsome things ugly, and comfortable things
dreary. It made the snowy landscape lonely, and the red sun angry. It
made me cold and disobliging, the girls dull, and John proud and
reserved. Jane spoke of it to me; she said:

"What is the matter between you and John? You used to be such good
friends. Now you hurry down-stairs in the evenings, though you know he
likes our chat round the school-room fire. And when we go to the Hall
you start early for the purpose of walking home without him."

"Don't be foolish, Jane," I said; "John and I are just as good friends
as ever. But you must not suppose he always cares for our women's
chatter. We must give him a little rest sometimes."

Jane was silenced, but not satisfied. She thought I was beginning to
look down on her brother. The proud, loving heart would not brook this,
and she, too, estranged herself from me. The girl was very dear to me,
and it was a trial.

Thus a division grew up amongst us. It was in the bright frosty days
before Christmas, when the fields and dales were wrapped in snow, when
the logs burned merrily, and the crickets sang, when fairyland was
painted on every window-pane, when our superintendence at the Hall was
over, when all things there had been placed in readiness, even to the
lighting of the fires in the bed-chambers. We had left Mrs. Beatty in
possession of her domain, and in daily expectation of an announcement of
the intended arrival of her master and mistress. Things were in this way
when one day a carriage dashed up to our farmhouse door, and out stepped
Grace Tyrrell and her brother Frederick.

Jane shrank into a corner when I asked her to accompany me down-stairs,
murmuring something I would not hear about my "fine friends." But Mopsie
smoothed her curly locks, put on her best apron, and slipped her hand in
mine as I went down to the parlour.

Grace was impatiently tripping about the room, making faces at the bare
walls and laughing at the old-fashioned furniture. She was clothed in
velvet and fur with feathers nodding from her hat. She put her hands on
my shoulders and eyed me all over critically.

"Pray, little Quakeress," said she, "can you tell me what has become of
my friend Margery?"

"Yes," said I laughing, "I actually happen to have her about me. What do
you want with her?"

"Only to ask her what sin she has committed that she shuts herself up
from the world, starves herself to skin and bone, and dresses herself in
sackcloth?" she replied, touching my dress, and trying its texture
between her finger and thumb.

"We do not starve her," put in Mopsie stoutly.

"And who are you, little miss?" said Grace, using a gold-rimmed
eye-glass, which nearly annihilated poor Mopsie.

"No matter," said the little one, scarlet and trembling. "We are all
Margery's friends, and we love her dearly."

Grace laughed at the child's ardour, as if it were something very funny
and original; but Mopsie, never flinching, held my hand all the time.

"And what about the ploughman, dear?" Grace went on; "would it be
possible to get a sight of him? Yes, do go" (to Mopsie), "like a useful
little girl, and see about getting us some lunch. We are staying in this
country at present, Margery, and when we return to London we intend to
take you with us."

Mopsie's eyes dilated dangerously, but she retreated to the door at a
whisper from me.

"Frederick," said Grace, "come and help me to persuade Margery;" and
Mopsie vanished.

I said something about Frederick Tyrrell before, but I can hardly
describe how excessively slim, and elegant, and effeminate he looked to
me that day in particular. His dress and his manners amused me very
much. While staying with the Tyrrells one of my chief occupations had
been making fun of this young man, a fact of which I believe he was
blissfully unconscious. Perhaps experience had made him incredulous as
to the indifference any young lady might feel to his special favour; or
it might have been conceit; I will not pretend to decide which. But when
he drew near me, murmuring (shall I say lisping?), "Oh, do come; pray,
take pity on us--we have missed you so dreadfully," I am sure he thought
he did enough to make any reasonable young woman desire to leave
Hillsbro' on the instant.

But I did not want to leave Hillsbro', I felt a pang of keen pain at the
very suggestion; yet at the same moment an idea came into my mind that
it might be a good thing that I should leave it for a time. I hesitated,
asked Grace when she intended returning to London, and, while we were
parleying about the matter, Mopsie returned. During the remainder of the
visit the little girl listened earnestly to everything we said on the
subject, and when I parted from my friends at the gate, leaving it
undecided whether I should go with them to London or not, Mopsie burst
into tears and clung to my neck.

"Do not go with them," she said; "they cannot love you as we do."

"Mopsie, my pet," I said, "don't be a little goose. Neither do I love
them as I love you. If I go away for a time I will be sure to come
back."

Mopsie whispered her fears to Jane, and all that evening Jane kept aloof
from me. My head ached with trying to think of what I ought to do, and I
sat alone by the school-room hearth in the firelight considering my
difficulties, fighting against my wishes, and endeavouring in vain to
convince myself that I had no wishes at all. Mopsie came in and lay down
at my feet, with her face rolled up in my gown; and so busy was I that I
did not know she was crying. John came in and found her out. He took her
on his knee and stroked her as if she had been a kitten. Mopsie would
not be comforted. I felt guilty and said nothing. John looked from her
to me, wondering. At last Mopsie's news came out.

"Margery's grand London friends have been here, and they want to take
her away."

"What grand London friends?" asked John, looking at me, but talking to
her.

"Oh, Mr. and Miss Tyrrell, a pretty lady with long feathers and
ringlets, and flounces on her dress, and a handsome gentleman who said
they had missed Margery dreadfully. And Margery is thinking of going
back to them."

John suddenly stopped stroking her, and sat quite still. I felt him
looking at me earnestly, and at last I had to look up, which I did
smiling, and saying, "I did not know Mopsie cared so much about me."

Then John kissed the little girl, and said, "Go down-stairs to Jane,
dear. I have something particular to say to Margery."

I was completely taken by surprise. He closed the door upon Mopsie, and
came back and reseated himself at the fire. He sat on one side of the
fireplace, and I at the other, and the flames danced between us. He
shaded his face with his hand, and looked across at me; and I watched
intently a great tree falling in the depths of a burning forest among
the embers.

"Is this true, Margery," said John, "that you are going to leave us, and
return to London?"

"I am thinking of it," I said pleasantly.

"I thought--I had hoped you were happy with us," he said.

"Yes," I said, "I have been very happy, but I think I want a little
change."

How my heart ached with the effort of uttering that untruth! I knew that
I wanted no change.

"I do not wonder at it," he said after a pause. "We have made a slave of
you. You are tired of it, and you are going away."

He said this bitterly and sorrowfully, shading his eyes still more with
his hand.

"No, no," I said, "you must not say that. I never was so happy in my
life as I have been here."

I spoke more eagerly than I meant to do, and my voice broke a little in
spite of me. John left his seat and bent down beside me, so that he
could see my face, which could not escape him.

"Margery," said he, "I have seen that you have made yourself happy, and
I have been sometimes wild enough to hope that you would be content to
spend your life amongst us. When you came first I feared to love you too
well, but your sweet face and your sweet ways have been too much for me.
It may be ungenerous in me to speak, seeing that I only have to offer
you a true love, truer maybe than you will meet with in the gay world, a
tarnished name, and a very humble home. I have debts to pay, and a soil
to wash off my name; but still, Margery, will you be my wife? With your
love nothing will be dark or difficult to me."

It was very hard. My heart was brimming over with a joyous reply to this
appeal; but Mrs. Hollingford's uneasy face was vividly before my eyes
all the time, and I could only say distressedly, "It cannot be, John. It
cannot, cannot be."

"Why?" he asked, almost sternly, and he rose up and stood above me.
"Tell me that you cannot love me--tell me you would rather save yourself
for more honour, more prosperity, and I will never trouble you again.
Were I differently circumstanced I might plead, but I could not live to
see you discontented, ashamed. Why can it not be, Margery?"

I clasped my hands in my lap, and tried to speak firmly. "For a reason
that I cannot give to you, John. Let us be good friends."

"Friends!" he echoed bitterly. "Well! I was wrong to think of my own
happiness before your worldly advantage. Good-bye, Margery. I am going
to London in the morning. Perhaps you may be gone before I come back."

And with this he abruptly walked out of the room. But afterwards I sat
there an hour, wondering if what had passed so quickly were true, and I
had really refused to be John Hollingford's wife.

After tea he left us early, saying he must start for Hillsbro' at four
in the morning. Mopsie fell asleep, and Jane absorbed herself in her
books. Mrs. Hollingford and I held some embroidery in our hands, but my
fingers trembled so that the stitches went all wrong. Now and again,
glancing up, I encountered long troubled looks from Mrs. Hollingford.
She had seen that something was amiss between me and John, and I guessed
that her mind was at work with fears. I could not bear it; I thought it
was not fair after what I had done. For the first and last time I felt
angry and impatient with the dear old lady. Would she herself, in her
own young days, have sacrificed as much? Jane shut up her books at last,
and carried Mopsie off with her to bed, and Mrs. Hollingford and I were
left sitting facing one another.

"Mrs. Hollingford," I said, dropping my work with almost a sob, "don't
look at me like that. I cannot bear it, and I do not deserve it."

What made me say it I cannot think. The moment before I spoke I had no
intention of speaking. Mrs. Hollingford dropped her work in dismay.

"My love," she said, "what do you mean? I do not understand. What do my
looks say that you cannot bear?"

"Oh, Mrs. Hollingford," I said, covering my burning cheeks with my
hands, "you must know what I mean. You look at me, and look at me, and I
see what is in your mind. How can I help it?"

"My dear," said she, "is it anything about John?"

"Yes," said I desperately, "it is about John. You think I want to take
him from you, and I do not, and I never will, and I have told him so. I
am going away to London with my friends the Tyrrells, and I will never
trouble you any more."

I was rather blind by this time, and I was not sure of what part of the
room I was in; but Mrs. Hollingford had come to my side, and she put her
arms round about me and fondled my head on her breast.

"My dear," she said, "and is this the secret that has made the trouble
between us? I never thought that you wanted to take him from me; on the
contrary, I feared that you might be too young to understand his worth.
I dreaded sorrow and suffering for my son, nothing else."

My face was hidden in her motherly embrace. I could not speak for some
moments, and I thought my heart had stopped beating. At last I
whispered:

"Oh, Mrs. Hollingford, I have made a great mistake. Can it be that you
really--"

"Will have you for a daughter?" she asked, smiling. "Gladly, thankfully,
my darling, if it be for your happiness. But you must not decide
hastily; there are great disadvantages which you must consider, and I,
as your guardian and friend, must point them out to you. I must forget
my son's interests in the faithful discharge of my trust. John has a
cloud upon his name."

"Don't, don't!" I said, "if he had a hundred clouds upon his name it
would be all the same to me."

"Then you love him well?" she said tenderly, sighing and smiling at the
same time.

"I think I do," I said; "but that is only a misfortune, for you know I
have refused him."

"Well," she said cheerfully, "perhaps it is for the best. You must go to
London with your friends, and test your feeling by absence and the
society of others. If you remain unattracted by those who are better
placed in the world, I think John will try again, in spite of his pride.
I know I should in his place," she said, lifting up my disturbed face,
and looking in it with a half quizzical fondness.

I answered by throwing my arms round her neck in a long tearful embrace,
and after that we sat long by the fireside talking the matter over. The
consequence was, oddly enough, that I went upstairs to bed feeling so
extremely sober that, before I laid my head upon my pillow, I had begun
to doubt whether I cared for John Hollingford at all. It was not that I
shrank from what his mother had called the "sacrifices" I should make in
becoming his wife. I never even thought of them. I had found too much
happiness at Hillsbro' Farm to be able to realise their existence. But I
had a superstition that I ought to feel very joyfully excited about all
I had learned that evening; first, that John really loved me, and,
secondly, that his mother was ready to take me to her heart. Yet I only
felt sobered to the last degree, and exceedingly afraid of seeing John
again. I heard him driving away from the door before daybreak, and I
found myself hoping that he might not come back for a week.

The next day I was in the same mood. I felt so grave and quiet that I
made up my mind I could not have that wonderful love for John which I
believed to be the duty of a wife. I thought I had better write to
Grace, and arrange about going with her to London. Then I grew miserable
at the thought of leaving the farm, and wished I had never seen it. For
three days I tormented myself thus, and then there came a shock which
brought me cruelly to my senses.

On the fourth day after John had left us, I was walking up and down the
frosty avenue just as the evening was coming on. The sun was setting
redly behind the brown wood, and blushing over the whitened fields and
hedgerows. A man came up the avenue and pulled off his hat as he
approached me. I recognised in him an Irish labourer whom I had seen
working in the gardens at the Hall.

"Beg pardon, miss!" said he, "but be you Miss Margery Dacre?"

"Yes, Pat," said I. "This is a fine evening, is it not? What do you want
with me?"

"Oh then, a fine evenin' it is; glory be to God!" said Pat; "but all the
same, Mrs. Beatty is mortial anxious for you to step over to the Hall
the soonest minute ye can, as she has somethin' very sarious to say to
ye."

"Step over to the Hall?" I exclaimed. "Do you know what o'clock it is,
Pat?"

"Oh yis, miss!" said Pat; "it's three o'clock, an' the sun low, but
niver fear; I'll walk behind ye ivery step o' the way, an' if as much as
a hare winks at ye, he'll rue the day. Mrs. Beatty would ha' come over
here to spake to ye, only for fear o' hersel' at the farm," said Pat,
jerking his thumb in the direction of the house. "God keep sorrow from
her door; but I'm feared there's throuble in the wind!"

I did not quite understand whether the threatened trouble was for Mrs.
Beatty or Mrs. Hollingford. I guessed the latter, and thought
immediately of the absent husband and father. I felt that I could not do
better than obey the summons. Pat promised to wait for me at the gate,
and I hastened into the house to prepare for my journey.

"I am going for a walk, Jane," I said, looking in at the school-room
door. "Don't be surprised if I am not in before dark."

"But, Margery!" I heard her beginning, and did not wait to hear any
more.

How I racked my brains during that walk to try and guess the cause of my
sudden summons. The only thing I could think of was that Mr. Hollingford
was in prison. I never fancied anything approaching to the truth.

Mrs. Beatty was anxiously watching at the door for my arrival. She had
tea waiting for me, and began pulling off my bonnet and boots at her
fireside. But her hands were shaking, and her eyes red and watering.

"Never mind me, Mrs. Beatty," I said, imploringly; "tell me what is the
matter."

"Take a sup of tea first, my dear young lady," said she; "ill news is
heard soon enough."

"I won't taste it," I said, pushing it away. "Tell me this instant!" I
said, as a dim fear of the truth came across my brain.

"Well, my dear," she said, beginning to cry outright, "you see there has
been a terrible smash of the coach from London. The horses fell crossing
a bridge, and the coach was overturned into the river; and they do say
everybody was killed or drowned. And poor young Mr. Hollingford was in
the coach; and, oh! that I should have to say it, he's met a cruel
death. I sent for you, dear young lady, that you might break the news
gently to his mother; for there's not a soul in the country side dare
carry the story to her door, and they'll maybe be bringing home the
bodies."

"Stop!" said I. "Mrs. Beatty--are you sure--"

And the next thing I knew was a sensation of coldness and wetness upon
my face, and a smell of vinegar and wine, and a sound of murmuring and
crying.

[Illustration: MARGERY HEARS OF THE ACCIDENT.]

"Dear heart, dear heart! to think of her taking on so!" I heard the good
woman saying, and I crept to my feet, and began tying on my bonnet in
spite of her entreaties that I would lie still.

"No, no, I must get home!" I said, shuddering. "Some one else will come
and tell her, and it will kill her. Let me go at once! Let me go!"

At the door in the frosty dusk Pat was waiting with a horse and gig.

"I was thinkin' ye'd be a bit staggered by the news, miss," he said,
"an' I put the mare to this ould shandheradan. It's not very fit for a
lady, bad manners to it! but it'll be betther nor the slippery roads
undher yer feet."

I do not know how the drive passed. I remember saying once to Pat,

"Are they quite, quite sure that Mr. Hollingford was--was--"

"No indeed, miss," was the answer, "sorra sure at all. They do say he
was in the coach, but no wan seen him dead, as far as I can hear tell."

I made the man set me down at the farm gate, and walked up the avenue
just as the early moonlight was beginning to light up the frosty world.
As I came near the door, I fancied I heard crying and wailing; but it
was only Mopsie singing in the hall. Behind the parlour window I saw
Jane stepping about briskly in the firelight, arranging the table for
tea. All was quiet and peaceful as when I had left the place two hours
before.




CHAPTER V.


The children followed me to my room, wondering where I could have been
so late. I said I was tired, and begged them to leave me alone. Then I
locked my door, and a solitary hour of anguish passed. The fever of
uncertainty would not let me weep; I suffered without much sign, but in
such a degree as I had never dreamed of before.

There was something horrible that I had to realise and could not. John
hurt and dying away from his home, without one by to comfort him,
without his mother's blessing, without a whisper to tell him that I had
loved him and would mourn for him all my life! John vanished from the
earth--lost to us for ever! The sickly moonlight fell about me with a
ghastly peace, and the horror of death froze my heart.

Tea-hour arrived, and the girls knocked at the door. Mrs. Hollingford
came to me, questioning me anxiously, and pressing my burning temples
between her cool palms; and there I lay under her hands, crushed with my
cruel secret. I could not tell it. Not that night. When the worst must
be known it would be my place to help them all in their agony; and was I
fit for such a task now? Besides, there was still a hope, and I clung to
it with wild energy.

They left me for the night, thinking I slept, but when the clock struck
five I wrapped myself in a cloak, and went out and down the avenue. I
was half afraid of the ghostly trees, so black against the snow, but I
was more in terror of the melancholy corners of my own room, the
solitary light, the dreary ashes in the grate. I walked as far as the
gate, and even ventured out on the road, hoping to see some wayfarer
coming past who might be able to tell me something of the accident. I
tried to consider how far it might be to the nearest wayside cottage,
where I might possibly learn some news that might break the awful
suspense. But my head was confused, and I suppose I did not calculate
the distance rightly, for after I had walked a mile I could see no
dwelling. The morning was breaking now, and the world looked pallid and
dreary. Suddenly my strength failed, I felt faint and dizzy, and sat
down upon a heap of stones, drawing my cloak over my face. My thoughts
became broken and confused, and my senses numb, I remained, lost in a
sort of stupid dream of trouble, I do not know how long, when the touch
of a hand on my shoulder made me start, and a voice said, "What is the
matter with you, my poor woman?"

It was a man's voice--a familiar voice; my children, it was the voice of
John Hollingford. With a cry I flung back the cloak from my face.
"John!--John!" I cried, and grasped him by both hands. There he stood
unhurt. I burst into a fit of weeping, though not a tear had I shed all
the while I had pictured him lying dead or dying. "I thought I never
should have seen your face again except in the coffin!"

I sobbed in my joy, hardly knowing what I said.

"Margery!" he said. "Is this all for me?"

"I cannot help it," I said. "I ought, but I cannot. No one knows but me.
I heard it last night--"

"You are killing yourself sitting here in the cold," said John. "You are
nearly frozen to death." He wrapped my cloak round me, and drew my arm
through his.

"Who told you of the accident?" he said.

"Mrs. Beatty."

"She might have kept her own counsel till to-day. Several poor fellows
have been killed, but many escaped, like myself, unhurt. And so you kept
it from my mother, and you grieved for me. Margery, may I ask again that
question I asked you the night before I went away? If it pains you, say
nothing."

"You may ask it."

"And what will you answer?"

"Anything you like."

"And you do not want to go to London?"

"Not unless you turn me out of doors."

"My darling!" he said. And so we became engaged there upon the snow.

How wonderful the sun rose that morning. How I walked home through
Paradise, forgetting that there was such a thing as suffering in the
world. How the girls hugged me when they knew all. How Mrs. Hollingford
smiled upon us. And how sweet the honey and rice-cakes tasted at
breakfast. It was arranged that, all things considered, we had better
not be married for a year.

I remember our gathering round the fire that evening, the curtains
unclosed, the mild moonshine behind the window, the room half black
shade and half red light, the dear faces beaming round. That evening I
wrote my letter to Grace Tyrrell to say that I should not go to London.
That evening, also, there came a letter from Mr. Hill to John, saying
that he hoped to arrive at the Hall on the morrow or next day. At tea we
talked about Rachel Leonard. Thinking of her, the scene at the party
came vividly back--the occasion on which I had defended Mr. Hollingford
so hotly; and also my conversation with Grace Tyrrell on the subject in
the carriage coming home. After musing a little while, I said:

"John, are you quite sure that you never met Miss Leonard when you were
abroad?"

"Quite," said John, looking at me curiously. "Why do you ask me that
question so often, Margery?"

"Have I asked it often?" I said, "I don't remember; but I fancied from
her manner that she knew something about you."

"It is not likely," said John, "for I know nothing about her." And so
this matter dropped.




CHAPTER VI.


John made me promise to go out to meet him next morning on his return
from his early walk across the farm. I remember so well how gladly I
sprang from my bed that morning, how tedious my dressing seemed, and yet
how I lingered over it at the last, anxious to make myself more pleasing
in the eyes which I knew would be watching for me from the hill. I
remember how, in the tenderness of my joy, I opened my sash to feed the
robins, and how gay and fair the world looked in its robe of white. I
remember how I ran after a little beggar boy to give him sixpence, and
how afterwards I went along the path through the fields singing aloud
for mere happiness. And yet a little cloud had already risen out of the
glories of the shining East, and was spreading and moving towards me.

John and I walked home together, side by side, and we talked the
happiest talk that ever was written or spoken. The world was all radiant
over our heads and under our feet, and we could not see even the shadow
of the cloud that was coming, fast as the wheels that were rolling
towards us from the distance.

"Look, Margery!" said John, "do you see a carriage on the road?"

I shaded my eyes with my hand, and I saw the carriage.

"I daresay it is the Hills'," I said, and then we walked on through the
white fields and between the bare hedges till we came out upon the road
which leads away across the moor between Hillsbro' Farm and Hillsbro'
Hall. There is a spot on this road which you know well, where the ground
sinks into a hollow, and then rises in a steep abrupt hill, on the top
of which any object suddenly appearing stands out in sharp relief
against the sky, in the eyes of the traveller below. We reached the foot
of this hill, John and I; we began to ascend; I raised my eyes, and saw
a figure appear on the brink of the hill, a woman's figure with
draperies fluttering a little as the petticoats of the market women
flutter when they tramp the road to Hillsbro'. I raised my eyes again,
and came face to face with Rachel Leonard.

She was walking quickly, pressing forward, wrapped in a fur mantle, with
a Shetland snood drawn round her face. I remember the momentary
expression of that face before it changed at sight of us; the delicate
brows knitted as if in pain or anxiety; the wide dark eyes intent upon
the scenes opening before them; the scarlet lips parted in fatigue; the
glow of exercise wandering over the cheeks.

She did not see us at first; the sun was in her eyes; but I spoke her
name aloud, and held out my hand. She started violently, and all the
colour flew out of her cheeks. She took my hand, and held it
mechanically, but her eyes were fixed on John. I looked at him in
amazement, seeking for some explanation of the strange long look in her
eyes, and the trembling of her white lips, only to see both repeated in
his face, which had been ruddy and smiling the minute before. They stood
gazing in one another's eyes as if both were magnetised, without either
advancing a hand or attempting a word. An indescribable chill crept over
my heart as I looked at them, and I drew my hand from John's arm, and
turned impatiently away.

He did not seem conscious of the action, but it roused Rachel. She
smiled, and extending her hand, said, with quivering lips, which she
made vain efforts to compose:

"Mr. Hollingford, do you not remember me? My name is Rachel Leonard."

John's gaze had never left her face, and he could not but note the
imploring look that came into her eyes as she said these words.

"Yes," he answered, and his voice shook, though his face kept a fixed,
stern gravity. "Yes, surely I remember you--Miss Leonard."

At this the sound of wheels was heard coming up the hill, and with a
sudden effort Rachel changed her manner.

"Here is the carriage," she said. "I hope, Mr. Hollingford, you will not
greet Mr. and Mrs. Hill with that panic-stricken look. You are a great
favourite with them, and they will be glad to see you. Pray do not look
so shocked. They will think you have seen a ghost."

"Would to God I had--rather than have seen you," he murmured to himself,
and I heard him.

The carriage drew up beside us, and Mr. Hill jumped out. He was an
odd-looking man, with a bald, benevolent forehead, a pair of honest
brown eyes, which glared about with a sort of fierce good-humour, white
hair, and white thick-set whiskers. Mrs. Hill sat within the carriage, a
mild-looking fat little lady, with rosy cheeks and a piping voice,
holding hugged in her arms something which looked like a bundle of
fleecy wool, but which I afterwards knew to be a favourite dog.

"Eh, Hollingford, my lad, I am glad to see you. How are you? and your
good mother?" said the old gentleman, grasping John's hand, and glaring
kindly in his face.

"Well, Mr. Hill; well, thank you," answered John, but he kept his stern,
absent demeanour, as if he could not, or would not, shake off the spell
that had come over him, which made him look like a cold, unfaithful,
unlifelike copy of himself.

The sharp trebles of the ladies' voices rang about my ears, but it was
only by an effort that I could take in the meaning of what they said, so
observant was I of John's severe glance which followed every movement of
Rachel, as she stood chatting to me with a merriment which I could not
but think was nervous and assumed.

Mr. Hill was rallying John upon his gravity, kindly and delicately, even
in the midst of the natural noisy bluster of his manner. And somehow I
divined readily, even out of the distraction of wonder that had come
upon me, that the fine old gentleman, remembering certain thorns in
John's way, was touched at seeing him proud and reserved in the presence
of his natural equals, who had not sunk in the world's favour, and who
had got no stain upon their name.

"Will you come and dine with us this evening at seven?" said Mr. Hill.
"You and I must have much to talk about. I have been too long absent
from this place, but even already I see new things around which delight
me. I shall be blind and helpless here till you open my eyes and set me
on my feet."

I noticed, or I fancied I noticed, that Rachel faltered on the words she
was speaking at this moment, and that she held her breath to hear John's
reply to the invitation.

"I will go with pleasure, sir," said John.

"And Miss Dacre?" piped Mrs. Hill. "Will she not also come and dine with
us?"

"I fear we should be bad company to-night," put in Rachel quickly. "We
shall be so tired; it would be a poor compliment to ask her to come and
look at us nodding in our chairs. Say to-morrow, instead. Margery Dacre,
will you come and spend a long day with us to-morrow?"

But Margery Dacre had at that moment no wish to spend such a day. I
said, "No, thank you, Miss Leonard; I shall be otherwise engaged both
to-day and to-morrow." And then, feeling that I had spoken very coldly,
and seeing that she looked troubled, I added, forcing a smile, "The
winter will be long enough for our civilities."

"But not for our friendship, I trust," she replied quickly, seizing my
hands, while her face cleared, and sincerity seemed to beam out of it,
like the sun out of a May sky. I felt her fascination; but it sickened
me somehow, and I dropped her hands, and thought of saying good-morning
to the group, and returning to the farm alone, so that John might not
feel himself hindered from going to breakfast as well as to dine with
these new old friends of his who were so eager for his company. But
before I had time to act upon the thought Mr. Hill handed Rachel into
the carriage, followed her himself, and the carriage rolled away. John
and I were left standing there together; I stupid, like one awakened
from a dream, staring at the wheel-marks on the snow and at other signs
which these people, in passing, had left behind them.

I turned and walked on silently towards the farm, and John walked beside
me. A weight of doubt and wonder pressed on my heart like a load of ice.
Why had John wanted to conceal from me his acquaintance with Rachel
Leonard? Why had they both been so strangely moved at meeting? I longed
to ask a question; but I could not find my voice. I longed for John to
speak, and tell me something--anything at all that he liked; and were it
the strangest puzzle that ever failed to be unriddled, I swore to my own
heart that I would believe him.

"Margery," said John, speaking as if in answer to my thought--and he
came nearer to me, for we had walked a little apart, and drew my hand
through his arm, and looked down in my face--"Margery," he said, "look
me straight in the eyes," and I looked, and saw them full of grievous
trouble.

"You are blaming me in your heart," he said, "and saying to yourself
that I have deceived you. Will you trust me that I did not mean to do
so? I have got a cruel shock, dearest, and I beg of you to be kind and
forbearing with me. I owe you an explanation, and I will give it the
earliest moment I can. I cannot till I see further. In the meantime, I
swear to you that there is nothing in this that should shake your faith
in me. Do you trust me, Margery?"

"I would trust you against the whole world, John!" I cried, in a sudden
remorse for having ever doubted him. And, smiling and happy, I walked by
the side of his horse that evening down the avenue, and kissed my hand
to him over the gate as he rode away to dine at the Hall.

"Do not say anything to my mother about my knowing Miss Leonard," he
said, the last thing at parting; and I nodded and said, No, not unless
he bade me; and I tried not to wonder, and went back to the house
satisfied. And I was very merry all the evening; but at night, in my
bed, I listened for his return. An evil spirit reminded me of Rachel's
face when John said "I will go," and her quickness in arranging that I
should not accompany him. I said, "Margery, I am ashamed of you;
curiosity and jealousy are hateful; have nothing to do with them." And I
turned on my pillow and prayed for John; and then I heard him coming
into the house. So utterly still was everything by reason of the snow,
that I heard his every movement. Even after he had closed his door, I
thought I heard him walking about his room. And the wonder leaped up in
me again--why was he troubled? why could he not rest? I got up, and laid
my heart and ear against his door in a passion of dismay and sympathy.
Up and down, up and down; no thought of sleep after his fatigue. Oh,
what was this that had come between us? I went back to my bed and wept.

That was the first beginning of the trouble about Rachel Leonard. From
that day a shadow hung upon John. He went often to the Hall, for Mr.
Hill fastened upon him, and delighted in him, and would not live without
him. But the more he went to the Hall, the more the trouble grew upon
him; and I could not but date its beginning from the arrival of Rachel
Leonard, seeing that, before he met her that morning upon the road, he
had seemed as radiantly happy as it is possible for any man to be. And
the more the trouble grew upon him, the more reserved he became on the
subject of the people at the Hall. His mother began to guess that he
must be annoyed with business, and the girls to fancy that he and I had
quarrelled. And I silently let them think that it was so, the better to
keep his secret.

My own heart was aching, but I would not speak. I had promised not to
doubt him, and I feared lest he should think, even by my face or manner,
that I was weak enough to break my word.




CHAPTER VII.


Several weeks passed before I saw anything more of Rachel Leonard than
my passing glimpse of her in the snow at sunrise. Mrs. Hollingford, who
never had been in any but the poorest houses on the estate, walked over
with me, at Mrs. Hill's request, to pay a morning visit at the Hall. On
that occasion no Miss Leonard was to be seen. She must have gone out
walking--so said the maid who went to seek her in her room; and we came
back to the farm without having seen her. Then arrived Mrs. Hill to
return the visit, but no Miss Leonard accompanied her. Rachel was
confined to bed with a cold. The girls, who had hoped for a sight of
her, were disappointed.

And so the days went on, till it happened that I went to stay at the
Hall. I had received two or three invitations, and had always found an
excuse to stay away. At last it seemed ungracious to stay away any
longer, and I went.

How the house was changed since the quiet time of our "reading days,"
when the solitary wreath of smoke went up from Mrs. Beatty's chimney,
and the echo of one's step on the stone stair rang round the gallery
above! Now the hall, that had used to look so wide and chilly with its
grim ornaments of busts of authors, was decorated with flowers from the
hothouse, and cheered by a blazing fire. A soft murmur of prosperity was
heard throughout the house, as if Luxury were gliding about in her
velvet slippers, giving orders in her modulated voice, and breathing her
perfumed breath into all the corners. The presence of life had wrought
upon the handsome sticks and stones that furnished the rooms, and
transformed them into household gods. Firelight twinkled in all the
chambers, bringing out the lustre of coloured glass and costly hangings
into the sallow daylight of the winter noon. I do not know how it was
that on the day of my arrival at the Hall I made my appearance at an
earlier hour than they expected me. I learned afterwards, by chance,
that they had not looked for me till the dinner hour, whilst I
understood that it was desired of me to present myself early in the day,
so that Rachel and I might have some quiet hours during which to renew
our acquaintance before we should be called upon to mix among the
company now staying at the Hall. Good Mrs. Hill was one of those people
whose manner would make you believe that if you deny them the thing they
desire at your hands, you will undoubtedly destroy their peace, but who
will probably have forgotten their request and its motive whilst you are
yet pondering it, and forcing your own will that it may be complied
with. The mistake about the hour of my arrival was one of those pieces
of confusion which seem too trifling ever to be worth clearing up. But
it was a mistake which caused me months of unutterable misery.

The idea of the visit had always been distasteful to me; but, having
made up my mind to go, I thought it was better to be amiable for John's
sake. About mid-day I said good-bye to the three who were already my
mother and sisters, and set out to walk across the moor to the Hall.
John was to dine with the Hills that day, so I knew I should see him in
the evening. My baggage had been sent on before me early in the morning.
It seemed very absurd to feel so sorry at leaving home to stay at a fine
house, where the hours were to be filled with feasting and merry-making.
In earlier days it would have been otherwise. But the farm, with its
busy inmates, its old-fashioned nooks and corners, its homely sights and
sounds, had grown strangely sufficient for the desires of my life.

I arrived at the Hall, gaining the grounds by a descent from the hill at
their back, and coming, so, round by the gardens to the house. Mrs. Hill
was driving with some of her guests. Mr. Hill was out walking with some
of his guests. A maid would go and seek for Miss Leonard, and in the
meantime I was conducted to my room.

Such a room as it was. I smiled at myself for thinking it so grand, for
I had certainly slept in as fine a chamber before. But of late I had
forgotten how long is wealth's list of necessities, and had learned to
live without a velvet couch at the fireside of my sleeping apartment,
branches of wax-candles on the mantel, and long mirrors on every side to
make me feel as if half a dozen impertinent young women were for ever
prying into, and making a mockery of, my movements. I had lately been
accustomed to hear the heels of my shoes go clinking over the well-waxed
boards of my simple room, and to look out at the woods and fields
through a narrow framework of white dimity. Here were voluptuous
curtains and carpets that forbade sound, and denied the daylight. The
farm was my beau-ideal of a home; therefore my room at the farm was my
beau-ideal of a room; therefore all this comfort was oppressive and
ridiculous.

Miss Leonard did not come to seek me. Perhaps she was out. I guessed
there was a mistake, and made myself content. I declined the services of
a maid, unpacked my trunk, and laid out my dinner dress upon the bed.
After this I knew not what to do, and sat down to rest. I looked at the
swelling couch over whose cushions the firelight wavered drowsily. "We
are not likely to have velvet couches at the farm," I thought, "and it
is better to despise such foolish luxuries." So I drew out a
stiff-backed chair, and sat down to muse before the fire.

I soon got tired of this, for I could not think without conjuring up my
familiar wonders and forebodings, and these must be kept in the
background in order that I might conduct myself properly in this house.
I opened my door and looked around me. I knew the place well, but I did
not care to be seen roaming about before I had received a welcome from
my host or hostess. Weariness enabled me to overcome this difficulty,
and I presently found myself in the gallery where the pictures hung and
the curiosities were displayed in their cabinets; where chairs were
placed for people to sit upon, and screens erected to keep away the
draughts; and where the light from the dome in the roof fell mellowly
over the knight made of armour, who stood quite at the end of the
gallery, near a narrow staircase which led down to the back premises of
the house. This knight was an old friend. Mopsie had been very fond of a
nook formed by the angle of the wall at his back, and in the days of our
"readings" had dragged a deep-seated arm-chair from a near room, and
arranged a tall light screen behind his shoulders, forming a tiny
triangular chamber. When I came upon this retreat now I took possession
of it, for it was a pleasant place to sit in. The massive helmet of the
knight on his pedestal soared above the top of the screen, and stood out
in bold relief against the soft brilliance of the painted dome. I seated
myself in Mopsie's chair, and drew a little book from my pocket. In this
little book John had copied out for me some sweet quaint rhymes which
were favourites of his and mine, and because I had thought the writing
and the writer could never be glorified enough, I had wrought round the
margin of the pages a border of fanciful arabesque, which I had filled
in with colours and gold.

I turned over the pages absently. By and by I heard footsteps coming
down the gallery, and voices drawing near me. I hoped that, whoever the
people were, they might pass on without perceiving me. I did not like
the idea of strangers peeping in behind the screen and wondering who I
could be. But the people came nearer, still conversing in low earnest
tones, the sound of which made me start and wonder. They came up to the
screen, which was just at the end of the gallery, and stopped there as
people will pause at the extremity of a walk before they turn to retrace
their steps. And it seemed as if my heart paused with them, for the
speakers were Rachel Leonard and John Hollingford, and this was the
conversation I heard:

"I think you are very unkind, John," said Rachel; and she spoke
sullenly, and as if she had been crying. "I only ask you not to hurry
me, to give me time, and you complain as if I had refused altogether."

"I do not understand why you should want time," replied John; "if what
you have told me is true, if what you have promised is in good faith, I
do not see why you should delay making everything known."

"Nor do I see why you should wish for haste," said Rachel. "The
announcement will be painful enough when it must be made. Have you ever
thought of what Margery will say?"

"Margery! God bless her!" said John earnestly, "Sweet, unselfish soul!
It will be a shock, but she will get over it. While this is going on,
her eyes are a continual reproach to me. The position is intolerable. If
you will not speak soon I must break my promise to you, and enlighten
her."

"No, no, no!" said Rachel passionately. "She suspects nothing, and let
her rest awhile. She will not take it so quietly as you think. Every one
will cry out at me, and I know that I deserve it. Pity me, John"--here
her voice broke down--"but, for God's sake, leave me to myself for a
time."

"Let it be a short time, then," said John, sadly. "I must say I am
grieved to see that this is such a hard trial to you. After all that has
been, all you have told me, I did not expect to find you so weak and
selfish."

"I am weak and I am selfish," sobbed Rachel; "do not expect to find me
anything else. I am struggling to be something better; but whatever I
am, John, be sure that I love you, and have loved you all these years.
Leave me a little time, and I will do everything you wish."

"Let it be so, then," said John--"a short time, remember. My poor, dear
girl! My lost darling, so unexpectedly found."

And they walked away together down the gallery talking till their voices
and their steps died away. The thick yellow daylight was almost extinct
in the gallery by this time, and it was nearly dark behind the screen.
It was night at four o'clock in those days, and it was not till the
dressing-bell for dinner rang at near seven that I went, feeling my way
along the gallery, back to my own chamber. I do not know what I had been
doing in the meantime. A chorus of soft voices warbled in conversation
on the stairs as a band of graceful ladies tripped up to their several
apartments. Miss Leonard came to me in my rich, hot, heavy room and
helped me to dress. I told her I had come too soon, and had been
rambling about. I believe that was what I said. She fastened my sash,
and even tied my sandals, for my fingers were shaking. She bent over my
feet with her glorious face and her firm white hands. I think she had a
black velvet frock and a diamond waist buckle; but I am not sure. The
charm of her beauty overshone these things. As she busied herself among
my hooks and eyes, I saw our two reflections, in a glass--she who had
loved John for years, and I who had only known him for a few short
months.

As I went down the stairs with Rachel, I told myself it was true what
John said, that I should get over it. The drawing-room was full of gay
people, and my first thought was, looking round it, that there was no
man there equal to John--no woman there equal to Rachel. Why had I
thrust myself between them?

When John took my hand with just his old loving pressure, the first wave
of despair broke over me. "Get over it?" I asked myself; but that was
all. I believed that John was sitting by Rachel, but I did not see the
dinner-table, nor the people sitting at it. They thought I was shy or
proud, and did not trouble me with conversation. A sound was in my ears,
which I thought was like the rushing of a storm in an Indian forest. All
my life lay before me like a blot of ink on a bright page. Why must I
give trouble, and carry a sore heart? Why was I left behind to come to
Hillsbro'? Why did not my father and mother take me with them that I
might have died of their fever and been buried in their Indian grave?
But how Rachel laughed. All the evening she was the most brilliant,
beautiful, witty creature that ever enlivened a company.




CHAPTER VIII.


My children, when I sat that night over the embers of my dying fire in
my chamber at Hillsbro' Hall, whilst every one else was asleep, there
has never been a more desolate creature in the world than I felt myself
to be. I had behaved all the evening very meekly and quietly, keeping
out of John's way, accepting Rachel's attentions, watching and admiring
her with a dull kind of fascination. I remember observing absently, in a
mirror at the other end of the room, the white pensive face of a young
girl sitting very still in a corner, rapt in thought or pain. I wondered
whether she was sick or in trouble; but afterwards I found by accident
that I had been speculating about myself. A little chill smile came to
my lips at this discovery; but I felt hardly any surprise at seeing
myself thus so different from what I had ever been before. The world had
changed, and I with it, since the fall of twilight in the gallery.

Rachel sang and the room applauded; people danced and Rachel amongst
them; young gentlemen were introduced to me, and I told them "I don't
dance" with my cold lips. There was an agonising pressure on my senses,
of sound, light, perfume. I thought it was these things that gave the
pain, while from my heart, which seemed perfectly still, came forth at
intervals the repetition "I will get over it, I will get over it." John
found me out, and said, quite startled, "What is the matter with you,
Margery?" I complained of "my head," and drew back within the shelter of
a curtain. "Margery, my dearest, you are ill," he said, and then the
flood-gates of bitterness opened in my heart. How long was he going to
act a cruel lie to me? I said, "I am ill; I must go to bed." He followed
me out of the room, questioned me anxiously, wrapped me in a shawl,
stood at the foot of the stairs watching till I passed out of sight; all
as if he had still loved me.

When I reached my room I blew out my candles, and the fireplace was the
only spot of light in the large shadowy room. I walked up and down in
the dark, thinking about it all. I could imagine how Rachel and John had
met whilst I was still in Miss Sweetman's school-room. There had been a
quarrel, and then had come John's misfortunes, and they had never met
again till that morning in the sunrise on the snow. I knew the story as
perfectly as if the firelight were printing it all over the walls for me
to read. And then I had risen up between them, and here I stood between
them now, when all their mistakes had been cleared up, and all their old
feelings revived. Well, I would not be in their way. I would go away
from Hillsboro'.

I crept over to the fire, drew the embers together, and watched them
waning and dying in the grate. I no longer told myself that I should get
over it. I knew that I should not die, or go mad, nor do anything that
people could talk about; but deep in my heart I knew that here was a
sorrow that would go with me to my grave. I felt that I was not a girl
to put my foot on the memory of it, and go out into the world again to
be wooed and won afresh. I knew that the spring of my days were going to
end in winter. Then I thought of how I had turned my back upon the whole
world, all the world that I knew, to follow my mother's friends to
Hillsbro'; how I had loved them, how I had given my whole heart and
faith to John; how trusting, how satisfied, how happy I had been. At
last my heart swelled up in softer grief, and I wept with my face buried
in my arms where I lay upon the hearth-rug. And so after long grieving I
sobbed myself to sleep, and wakened in the dark, towards morning,
shuddering with cold in my thin dress.

The next day I was ill with a feverish cold, and Rachel tended me. Never
was there a nurse more tender, more patient, more attentive. I was not
at all so ill as to require constant watching, but she hovered about my
bed, applying remedies, tempting me with dainties, changing my pillows,
shifting the blinds so as to keep the room cheerful, yet save my burning
eyes from the light. She would not be coaxed away from me even for an
hour. Mrs. Hill, though kind and sympathetic herself, in a different
way, was dissatisfied, I think. There were other guests, and she was a
lady who took the duties of hospitality seriously to heart. But Rachel,
charming, even when provoking, knew how to manage her adopted mother.
There were whispered discussions between them, of which I, lying with
closed eyes, was supposed to know nothing, and then Rachel would steal
her graceful arm round Mrs. Hill's portly waist, and kiss her, and put
her out of the room. Mrs. Hill was very good to me, and scrupulously
left her poodle dog on the mat outside the door when she came to visit
me; but her vocation was not for waiting in sick-rooms.

Rachel, soft-voiced, light-footed as a sister of mercy, moved about in
her pale gray woollen gown, with a few snowdrops in her breast, her face
more thoughtful and sad, yet sweeter than I had ever seen it. She had a
work-basket beside her, and a book, while she sat by the head of my bed,
but I saw that she occupied herself only with her thoughts, sitting with
her hands laced loosely together in her lap, gazing across the room
through a distant window at the ragged scratchy outlines of the bare
brown wood that hid the chimneys of the farm from the view of the
inmates of the Hall.

It needed no witchcraft to divine her thoughts. She was thinking of John
at the farm, and possibly of all that had passed there between him and
me. It saddened her, but I thought she must be very secure in her faith,
for there was no angry disturbance in her anxious eyes, no bitterness of
jealousy about her soft sweet lips. I read her behaviour all through
like a printed legend; her faithful kindness, her tender care, her
thoughtful regret. She was feeling in her woman's heart the inevitable
wrong she was about to do me, measuring my love by the strength and
endurance of her own, and pitying me with a pity which was great in
proportion to the happiness which was to be her own lot for life.

Everywhere she moved I followed her with John's eyes, it seemed, seeing
new beauties in her, feeling how he must love her. In my weak desolation
I wished to die, that I might slip quietly out of the hold of my kind
enemy, leaving vacant for her the place from which she was going to
thrust me with her strong gentle hands. But under her care I recovered
quickly.

Never had there been such a nurse, such a petting, fondling, bewitching
guardian of an ill-humoured, nervous, thankless patient. How lovingly
she tucked me up on the couch by the fireside; how unweariedly she
sought to amuse me with her sprightly wit; how nimbly her feet went and
came; how deftly and readily her hands ministered; I could never tell
you half of it, my dears! If her face fell into anxious lines while my
eyes were closed, no sooner did I seem to wake to consciousness again
than the sunshine and the archness beamed out. Once or twice it smote me
that she wondered at my petulance and gloom--wondered, not knowing that
my time had already come, that the burden of the sorrow she had brought
me was already upon my shoulders. "Are you in pain, dear?" she would
ask, perplexed. "I am afraid you are worse than we think;" and I would
answer coldly, "Thank you; I suffer a little, but it will pass away. It
is only weakness. Pray, do not trouble yourself so much about me."

My only excuse was that my heart was breaking; but this I could not
explain. And still she was faithful and winning, would not take offence,
and would not be repelled. It was hard work trying to hate her, and I
gave it up at last. One time when her hand hovered by me I caught it
going past, kissed it, and burst into tears. "Forgive me," I said; "you
are an angel, and I--" I felt that I had been something very evil in the
past few days. "My poor little nervous darling!" she said, down on her
knees, with her arms about me, "what shall we do to make you strong?"
"Little" she called me, though I was as tall as she. I acknowledged her
superior greatness for compelling love, and letting the bitterness roll
out of my heart for the time, like a huge load, I laid my head upon her
shoulder for a long miserable cry. Desperately I invented excuses for my
tears, but I shed them, and they did me good. After that I no longer
struggled against the spell of her attraction. I loved her even out of
the depths of the misery she had caused.

She saw that I was growing to love her, and she was glad, and I winced
at her delight. She was thinking that by and by, when I should have "got
over it," she and I would be friends. I smarted silently, and smiled. I
would not be a weeping, deserted damsel. I would try to be strong and
generous, and keep my sorrow to myself.

During this illness of mine, which lasted about a week, John came often
to the Hall to inquire for me. Good little Mrs. Hill would come into the
room smiling, and say, "Rachel, you must go down to Mr. Hollingford. He
wants to hear from your own lips about your patient." And she would sit
with me, talking about her dogs and the county families, till Rachel's
return, who always brought me kind messages, and seemed anxious to
deliver them faithfully. I thought she always came back with signs of
disturbance in her face, either very pale, or with a heightened colour.
Once I thought she looked as if she had been crying; she pulled down the
blinds immediately on entering the room, and sat with her back to the
light.

"Margery," said she by and by, "Mrs. Hollingford is coming to see you
to-morrow."

"Is she?" said I, with a great pang at my heart.

I could not say "I am glad," for the dear old lady's true face rose up
before me, a treasure I had lost, and I lay back among my cushions, and
thought it would be well if I could die.

The next morning Rachel was restless and absent. Early in the day she
left me suddenly, and came back dressed in her riding-habit.

"I am going for a ride, dear," she said hurriedly. "I am not very well;
I need fresh air. You can do without me for a few hours, I daresay."

Something in her manner made me wonder. I heard the mustering of horses
on the gravel, and dragged myself to the window to see if John
Hollingford were of the party. But he was not there. Lying on my sofa
afterwards I remembered Mrs. Hollingford's expected visit, and felt sure
that Rachel had gone away to avoid her. I remembered that they had never
yet met, and I easily saw a reason for Rachel's fearing her eyes at
present. In the midst of these reflections came my dear second mother.

Mrs. Hill brought her to me. The contrast between the two was striking.
Mrs. Hill was short, fat, and plain, and had narrowly escaped from
nature's hands without the stamp of a vulgar little woman. Mrs.
Hollingford was tall and slender, with a worn noble face, and, in spite
of all circumstances, looked the ideal of an ancient "high-born ladye."

When I looked at her, I felt that it would be impossible for me to go
back to the farm. I thought that when we found ourselves alone I would
tell her what I had learned, and beg of her to permit me to go straight
from the Hall to London, whence I could write a letter of release to
John. But Mrs. Hill stayed with us some time, and in the meantime my
courage oozed away. When I found myself face to face with her, and no
one else there, I could not say a word of my confession. I realised what
would be her dismay, her indignation, and worst of all, I feared her
incredulity. She would assuredly speak to John when she went home, and
all my pride revolted at the thought. So I let the opportunity go by.

I told her of Miss Leonard's kindness. She had been a little hurt, I
think, at the young lady's absence, but she was never used to look for
slights, and my testimony cleared away all shadow of offence. Afterwards
I found that the girls at home were indignant at Miss Leonard's hauteur.
They had expected something different. She had disappointed them. Mrs.
Hill was courteous, Mr. Hill was kind, but Miss Leonard ignored the dear
old mother altogether.

"'Tis always the way with upstarts," said Jane; and the foolish little
hearts were up in arms.

"Tell me, my darling," said Mrs. Hollingford, with her arm round my
neck, "is there anything amiss between you and John?"

"What could there be amiss?" I said, kissing her hand, and avoiding her
eyes. "I have not seen him since the day I came here. He has called to
inquire for me constantly."

"I thought of it before you left us," she said sadly, "and I fear it
more every day. He is--you are both strangely altered. Margery, don't
jilt my son. He is not as fine a gentleman as others you may see, but
you will never meet his like."

I turned my head away, and said nothing. What was there that I could
say? My heart was big with much that I could not tell, and I was silent.
And so the occasion passed away. Mrs. Hollingford went home with a
bitter doubt in her heart; and the doubt was all of me.

After she had gone, Mrs. Hill came and sat with me, and tried to amuse
me. She was a good little woman, but her gossip was tiresome, and her
anecdotes worldly. I was glad when her duty to her other guests carried
her away. You will find it hard, my dears, to understand from my account
of this time that I was staying at a pleasant country-house full of
merry-making people. But the people were only shadows to me, and the
time a puzzle. What was not real to me then, I cannot make real to you
now.

The afternoon was wet and windy, and the riding-party returned early,
all but Rachel and another lady and gentleman. These came home later. I
was sitting in my room, in the firelight, alone, when Rachel came to me,
laughing, in her wet riding-habit, saying she had had enough of the
weather.

I said, "Yes, it is a pity you went."

"No, not a pity," she said. Then, "Has not Mrs. Hollingford been here?"

"Yes," I said.

"Here, in this room, with you?"

"There, in that chair, by your side."

She turned and looked at the chair with a strange look, which was
wonderful to see, but quite indescribable. She drew it to the hearth,
and sat down in it, throwing back her wet skirts and leaning towards the
fire. Then I saw that she looked pale and worn, as if her riding had not
done her much good.

"Do you not love her, this Mrs. Hollingford?" she said, presently.

"Dearly," I said.

"Will you describe her to me?" said Rachel.

"She is tall and handsome," I began.

"Yes," put in Rachel, "I have heard so."

"There is something grand about her, though she dresses as gravely and
poorly as a nun. Her face is sweet and sad, and can be stern. Her hair
is silver gray--"

"No," said Rachel hurriedly, "brown. I heard that it was a beautiful
chestnut-brown."

"It is nearly white now," said I.

Rachel did not speak again for some minutes. Looking at her presently, I
was surprised to see her face quivering, and great shining tears
following one another swiftly and silently into her lap.

"Do not mind me," she said. "I went to see a poor girl on the estate,
who is dying. Her mother was sitting at the head of her bed. She told me
the girl had never vexed her in her life."

"And has that made you sad?" asked I, thinking the girl was to be
envied.

"Very sad," said Rachel; "sadder than I could tell."

We were silent awhile, and then said Rachel:

"It must have made her grow old before her time, that trouble."

"Do you mean Mrs. Hollingford?" said I.

"Yes," said Rachel. "The grief, and the shame, and the blight."

"There should be no shame, no blight for the innocent," I said.

"The world does not think so," said Rachel, with a stern cloud on her
face.

"The world!" I said contemptuously.

She lifted her eyes from the fire to my face. "Yes, I know you are a
brave independent little soul," she said. "Will you answer me one thing
truly? Did you not feel even a shadow of shrinking or regret when you
promised to marry John Hollingford?"

"Not a shadow," I said bitterly. "I accepted him for what I believed him
to be, not for what the world might think of him."

"I wish God had made me like you," she said solemnly; and then got up,
with a wild sad look in her face, and left me without another word,
forgetting to lift up her wet trailing habit, which she dragged along
the ground as she went.

After she had gone I sat there, angry, amazed, and sick at heart. I
thought she had well said to John, "I am weak and selfish." I had never
told her of my engagement, and she had talked to me of it unblushingly.
Thinking of her own sacrifice, she had forgotten my wrong and pain. I
had seen into the working of her thoughts. She could love John and
injure me, but she could not be content without the approval of the
world. The young farmer was worthy of love, but he was not rich enough,
nor grand enough, nor was his soiled name fitted for the spoilt child of
wealth. She could steal away my treasure without enriching
herself--could destroy the peace of two minds, without creating any
contentment for herself out of the wreck. "Poor John!" I thought, "your
chances of happiness are no better than my own, even though you have
paid a dishonourable price for them." And I hated her after that.




CHAPTER IX.


The winter was passing away at this time, and spring days were beginning
to shine. I walked out of my bed-room into the bright March world and
saw the primroses laughing in the hollows. I thought my heart broke
outright when I heard the first lark begin to sing. After that things
went still further wrong. John came to take me out for a drive one day,
and I would not go. And the Tyrrells were staying at the Hall.

Whether it was that Rachel shunned me of her own wish, or because she
saw that I had learned to despise her, I do not know; but we kept apart.
My poor soul was quite adrift. Anguish for the past, disgust at the
present, terror of the future, all weighed on it. If I had known of any
convent of saintly nuns, such as I had read of in poems and legends, who
took the weary in at their door and healed the sick, who would have
preached to me, prayed with me, let me sit at their feet and weep at
their knees till I had struggled through this dark phase of my life, I
would have got up and fled to them in the night, and left no trace
behind me.

I hated to stay at the Hall, and yet I stayed. Mr. Hill--kind
heart!--said he would bar the gates, and set on the dogs if I attempted
to move. He and his wife both fancied at this time to make a pet of me.
I had been ill in their house, and I must get well in their house. They
would warrant to make the time pleasant. So the Tyrrells were bidden to
come and stay a month. Grace Tyrrell arrived with her high spirits, her
frivolity, her odour of the world, took me in her hands, and placed
herself at once between me and Rachel. She found me weak, irritable,
wobegone. She questioned, petted, coaxed. Partly through curiosity, and
partly through good-nature, she tried to win my confidence, and in an
evil hour I told her all my trouble. I listened to her censure, scoffs,
counsels, and my heart turned to steel against John.

She was older than me by five or six years. I was a good little simple
babe, she said, but she, she knew the world. It was only in story books,
or by younglings like me that lovers were expected to be true. Miss
Leonard was an "old flame," and, if all that was said might be true,
would be heiress of Hillsbro'. Yes, yes, she knew; I need not blaze out.
I had made myself a hero, as simple hearts do, but my idol was clay all
the same. Wealth and power would do for John Hollingford what his
father's misconduct had undone. It was utter silliness my abasing
myself, saying that Rachel Leonard was more lovable than I. Her rich
expectations were her superior charm. Oh me! how people will talk, just
to be thought knowing, just to be thought wise, just to dazzle, and to
create an excitement for the hour.

I do think that Grace Tyrrell loved me after her own fashion, and that
she thought I had been hardly used; but the sympathy she gave me was a
weak sympathy, that loved to spend itself in words, that was curious to
sift out the matter of my grief, that laid little wiles to prove the
judgment she had given me true. She had watched them (Rachel and John),
she said, and John's manner was not the manner of a lover, though he
affected it as much as he could. He was trying to bind her with
promises, but she would not be bound. Yes, she, Grace, had watched them,
and would watch them. Every night she brought me into her room, and
detailed her observations of the day, and pitied and petted and caressed
her poor darling. I was weak in health, and unutterably lonely and sad,
and I clung to her protection and kindness. But instinctively I
distrusted her judgment. I disliked her coarse views of things, and
followed her counsels doubtingly.

I have not described her to you yet, my children. Imagine, then, a
showy, frivolous-looking, blonde young woman, fond of pretty feathers,
and flowers, and gay colours; pretty enough in her way, good-humoured
and talkative.

I thought, then, that I had every reason to be grateful to her, and I
blamed myself for not loving her spontaneously, as I had loved, as I
still fought against loving Rachel. I think now that I had no reason to
be grateful to her. If she had not been always by my side, so faithful,
so watchful, so never-failing with her worldly lesson, I think I should
have found a way out of the darkness of my trouble. I think I should
have softened a little when Rachel met me in the gallery, twined her
soft arm round my neck, and asked me why we two should be so estranged.
I think I should have wept when John took my hand between his two and
asked me, in God's name, to tell him why I had grown so altered. But I
was blind, deaf, and dumb to their advances. Their reproaches were
meaningless, their caresses treacherous, and I would have none of them.
I would stand where they themselves had placed me, but I would draw no
nearer to set their consciences at rest. And then there was Captain
Tyrrell at the Hall.

Why did Grace Tyrrell want me to marry her brother? I do not know;
unless because she liked me, for she was fond of him; unless because my
substantial dowry would be of use to the needy man of fashion. I had
heard before that he had made two unsuccessful attempts to marry an
heiress. I was not an heiress, but the hand that I should give to a
husband would be pretty well filled. At all events he was ever by my
side, and Grace (I am now sure) helped him to contrive that it should be
so. I did not like him, I never had liked him. Before I had come to
Hillsbro' he had wearied me with compliments and attentions. When he had
visited me at the farm, elegant as he was, I had contrasted him
unfavourably with the absent "ploughman," wondering that language had
only provided one word, "man," by which to designate two creatures so
different. He was the same now that he had been then; but I, who had
soared to things higher, had fallen. Anyone was useful to talk to, to
walk with, to drive with, so that time might pass; any noise, any
bustle, that would keep me from thinking, was grateful. So I tolerated
the attention of Captain Tyrrell, and he and Grace hemmed me in between
them. Rachel looked on in silence, sometimes with contempt, sometimes
with wondering pity. John kept further and further aloof, and his face
got darker, and sadder, and sterner to me. And this it was that
bewildered and chafed me more than anything I had suffered yet. Why,
since he had turned his back upon me, would he keep constantly looking
over his shoulder? And, oh me! how Grace did whisper; and how her
whispers fired me with pride, while the confidence I had foolishly given
her daily wore away my womanly self-respect.

My children, you will wonder why I did not behave heroically under this
trial. You despise a heroine who is subject to the most common faults
and failings. The old woman now can look back and mark out a better
course of conduct for the girl. But the girl is gone--the past is past,
the life is lived. I was full of the humours and delusions of nineteen
years, and I saw the glory and delight of my youth wrecked. Existence
was merely inextricable confusion in the dark. I never dreamt of a path
appearing, of a return of sunshine, of a story like this to be
afterwards told.

Rachel's conduct was variable and strange to me at this time. She kept
aloof from me, as I have told you, looking on at my poor little frantic
efforts to be careless with a grand contempt. She watched me as closely
as Grace watched her; but one day, I know not how it happened, some word
of jealous misery escaped me, and Rachel grew very white and silent, and
there was a long pause of days before either of us addressed the other
again; but Rachel's look and manner was altered to me from that moment.
A long, tender, wistful gaze followed me about. She did not venture to
dispute Grace Tyrrell's possession of me, but it made her uneasy. She
was observant and sad, patient and kind, while my manner to her was
often irritable and repellent. One night she stole into my room when I
was sinking to sleep, and bent over me in my bed. "My darling, my
sister!" she said, "let me kiss you, let me put my arms round you. Oh!
why will you always turn away from me?"

I did not answer, except by moving my face shudderingly aside.

"Margery," she whispered again, "tell me why you have turned against me
and John Hollingford."

"You and John!" said I, opening my eyes and looking at her. "Yes, that
is it. You and John. Dear me; am I not grateful to you both? How odd!"

"Margery, shall I swear that you have no reason to be jealous of me?"

"Oh, no, Rachel," I said; "don't swear. Go away and be happy, as I am,
and sleep soundly."

She moved away a step or two, but came back hesitatingly.

"Margery," said she, "I want to tell you--if you will listen to me--I
have a great trouble."

"Have you?" said I. "To think of anyone having a trouble in this world!
I can't believe it."

"But, Margery," she said, putting her hands on my shoulders, and looking
down at me, "I have a secret, and I came here to tell it to you, and you
must listen, for it concerns you."

"Does it?" said I; "then you had better not trust me with your secret,
Rachel. I think I have a wild creature chained up in me somewhere, and
it might do you harm. I advise you not to have anything to do with me.
Good-night."

"Ah!" said she bitterly, turning away, "was ever anyone so changed in so
short a time. This is Miss Tyrrell's doing. She is a spy upon me, and
yet I defy her to know anything about me. She has filled you with her
own cruel prejudice."

"Do not say anything against the Tyrrells in my hearing," I said. "They
are the dearest friends I have."

"If that be true," answered Rachel thoughtfully, "I have nothing more to
say. The thing that I was going to tell you does not concern you, and I
have been spared a humiliation for the present. When you know all, you
can cry out against me with the rest. Remember," she added distinctly
with proud bitterness, "I give you full permission."

She turned away and moved across the room; she stopped before the dying
fire, standing above it, and looking down into it. I saw her dark figure
between me and the fading glare, her head lowered on her breast, her
arms hanging dejectedly by her side. She mused there a few minutes, and
then went noiselessly out of the room.




CHAPTER X.


Early summer was already upon the land, flowers were blooming, and the
reign of sunshine had begun. The cuckoo haunted the Hall gardens,
rabbits basked in the glades, and the woods were alive with singing
birds.

A little thing happened which surprised me. A troop of us were riding
one day along the moor, and by the outskirts of the road, I, being
foremost, espied two figures at a distance among the trees, and
recognizing the girls from the farm, I pressed on and came on them
unawares, where they were down on their knees, gathering mosses out of
the grass. Mopsie was on my neck in a moment, but Jane was a little shy.
I had to coax her to be frank.

She thought I must be changed, she said, I stayed away so long. If I
cared for them any more, I would have come to see them. Mother was not
very well, and John, when at home, was dull. He fretted about something.
Did I not know what it was about?

"Whether I come or stay, you must believe in me, Jane," said I; "I am
not one of those that change. I will go back with you now and see your
mother. Here are the rest of our party coming; we will meet them and
tell them what I am going to do."

"That is Miss Leonard," I added, seeing Rachel riding foremost. "Are you
not curious to see her?" Jane said "Yes," and walked on beside me,
holding my whip.

The sun was in Rachel's face till she passed into the shade right before
us. She raised her eyes then and looked at us, started violently, gave
her reins a sudden wild pluck; the horse reared, plunged, and flung her.
I screamed and sprang to the ground, but Jane stood immovable, looking
at Rachel where she lay, staring at her with a face which had changed
from glowing red to white. I pushed her aside to reach Rachel. She
turned quickly round, and, without a word, began walking rapidly towards
home. She passed out of sight without once looking back. It all occurred
in a minute.

The other riders came up; Rachel was not injured, only a little bruised
and faint. She was too nervous to remount. Our party rode home, and I
sat with Rachel on the grass, till a servant came with a pony carriage.
The man took our horses, and I drove Rachel home. She cried hysterically
all the time whilst we waited in the wood. I did not see any more of
Jane, and, of course, I did not pay my proposed visit to her mother.
Rachel did not attempt to explain the cause of her accident, and I did
not ask her anything about it. I remembered Jane's face, and I puzzled
over her strange conduct in silence. It was impossible not to think that
she had beheld in Rachel some one whom she had not expected, and was not
well pleased to see. Yet this young girl had been a child when she had
come to Hillsbro', and she had not known Rachel by name. My head ached
distressfully over the puzzle, but I could make nothing of it. Jane was
an odd girl; she had conceived a prejudice against Miss Leonard, and had
taken a whimsically rude way of showing it. This was all the conclusion
I could come to on the subject.

One evening we had a dinner party, and a good many young people being
present, we danced a little. I danced more gaily than the rest, for my
heart was unusually sore. Grace Tyrrell had told me that day that she
purposed leaving the Hall next week, and had pressed me to go with her
to London. I thought I had better go, yet I had refused her. I knew I
must leave Hillsbro', yet I shrank from the great effort of tearing
myself away. Here I had been loved and happy; the trees and the moors
knew it; even the strange faces of the country people passing on the
roads had seemed to be in my secret, and had played their simple part in
my dream. I felt that, once gone, I could never return, and I must first
have an explanation with John, and put an end to our engagement. Yet how
to seek him for such a purpose? I had kept at so great a distance from
him lately that it seemed impossible. I felt that he would be relieved
by my absence, and glad of his release, but my own woe pressed upon me.
I feared to make a fool of myself, if he was kind as of old when we said
good-bye.

So I was dancing with the rest, and Captain Tyrrell was my partner. We
were very merry. Grace was playing for us, and looked approvingly over
her shoulders. John had been with us at dinner, but I had lost sight of
him, and as I did not see Rachel either, my fancy saw them walking in
the moonlight without. For it was a warm evening, the windows were open,
the stars bright, and people went in and out at their pleasure. The
flowers smelt sweetly in the dew, and the nightingales were singing.
There was a game of hide-and-seek on the lawn, and when the shrieks and
laughter were subsiding, some one began to sing within. Rachel was
entertaining the old ladies and gentlemen, and the rovers flocked round
the windows to listen. I had sauntered with Captain Tyrrell into a grove
to hear a nightingale, and I was weary to death of his company. He was
trying to make me promise to go to London. "Oh, let it rest," I said,
"we will talk about it to-morrow. Let us be merry to-night. We will play
hide-and-seek again!" and I darted suddenly among the trees, and lay
close behind a great oak. My squire lost me; I heard him go past
plunging through the underwood, and swearing a little. I lay still till
he had given up the search and gone towards the house, and then, like
the silly lamb in the spelling-book story, I came forth in the
moonlight, and if I did not skip and frisk about with delight, I at
least enjoyed myself after the only dismal fashion I could command.
Captain Tyrrell was to me, in these days, a veritable old man of the
sea, I could not get rid of him, and sometimes I thought in my most
despairing moods that it was going to be my lot to carry him on my
shoulders for the remainder of my life.

I was walking slowly, musing ruefully, when I saw a figure advancing to
meet me on the path. I saw at a glance that it was John Hollingford. The
time had been when I would have flown gladly to meet him, linked my arm
in his, and seized the opportunity for one of our old talks about
pleasant fancies. But this was not the friend I had known, nor was I any
longer the simple girl who could open her heart to trust, and delight in
shining dreams. The pleasant fancies had been proved cheats, the stars
had fallen. I no longer looked up at the sky, but down to the ground.
For a moment I shrank back, and would have hidden, but then I thought
bitterly, what did it matter? Unpleasant words must be said between us,
sooner or later. A very few would suffice. Better they were said at
once.

"Margery," said John, "people are looking for you, and talking about
you. I have come to fetch you to the house. To tell the truth I am glad
of the opportunity of saying something which has been long upon my mind.
Will you bear with me a few minutes?"

"Yes," I said, "certainly. As long as you please," and I tossed little
pieces of twig over my shoulder, and prepared myself to listen. Oh, my
dears, how defiant women will be, just for the fear of being pitied.

"You must know very well," he continued, "what I am going to say. I have
a right to ask you for an explanation of your conduct for the past few
weeks. People are coupling your name with that of Captain Tyrrell, and
with good reason. You are so changed that I scarcely see a trace of the
Margery I once knew. Child! if you repent of the promise you have given
me, tell me now and I will set you free. I remember the circumstances
under which that promise was given. You, perhaps, exaggerated your own
feelings; you have since renewed your acquaintance with people and ways
of life that suit you best. I will try not to blame you. Speak out at
once, and do not think of me."

The truthful ring of feeling and reproach in his voice startled my ears,
and set my heart struggling for liberty to give an honest response to
this appeal. A few simple words would have been enough, but the
recollection of all that I knew came back too quickly. The conviction of
his insincerity and injustice suddenly bewildered me with anger, keen in
proportion to the desolation I had suffered.

"Sir," said I (we said "sir" for politeness in those days, my dear),
loftily, coldly, and in utter despair, "I will take you at your word.
Let the promise between us be broken from this moment!"

He heaved a great sigh, of relief, I thought, and being near the house
we parted with much politeness. Thus we put an end to our engagement.
Holy and indestructible I had believed it to be; but then I was an
ignorant little fool. People shake hands and say good-bye every day, and
never dream of being so mad as to spoil to-morrow with tears. As for me
I did not wait for to-morrow. That night was piteous with the rain of my
grief. But Grace was at hand to comfort, to counsel, to instruct, which
she did with her own peculiar figures of speech.

"You are a brave little thing!" she said. "I am glad you had spirit to
act on the first notice to quit. It would have been so much more
humiliating to have waited for a forcible ejectment."

And I promised to accompany her to London.




CHAPTER XI.


Mrs. Hill had a pretty little bedizened boudoir, blue silk hangings
elegantly festooned with bird cages; couches and divans for its
mistress's dogs and cats; with a spare seat for a friend who might
venture in at any time for a dish of private chit-chat with the lady of
the Hall. Into this apartment I was confidentially drawn by Mrs. Hill on
the morning after my moonlight conversation with John, as with heavy
eyes and hectic cheeks, but with a saucy tongue in reserve, specially
sharpened, and a chin held at the extreme angle of self-complacency and
no toleration of interference from others, I was sailing majestically
down-stairs to put my melancholy finger as usual into the pie of the
pleasures and pastimes of the day.

"Come in, my dear," she said mysteriously, with her finger to her lip,
nodding her little fat face good-humouredly at me, and making all her
little curls shake. "I think you are a very safe person, my love, and,
besides, so fond of Rachel. I would not trouble you with my news, only
that it is a secret, and a secret is a thing that I never could endure
for any length of time without bringing on hysterics. You are not fond
of my darlings, I know. There, we will send away the noisiest."

And Mrs. Hill hereupon tumbled some half-dozen fluffy bodies out of the
window on to the verandah below, and stood for the next few moments
wagging her head and coquetting down at the ill-tempered little brutes,
who whined and scowled their resentment of the disrespectful treatment
they had received.

"Ho, my beauties! run, skip, jump!" cried the lady, throwing up her
little fat arms. And the dogs, rolling their bodies away into the sun at
last, her attention returned to me.

"I must first tell you, my love," said she, drawing a letter from her
pocket, and smoothing it open on her knee, "I must first confide to you
in strict secresy that our dear Rachel is engaged to be married."

Here the ecstatic fury of the singing-birds reached such a deafening
climax that their mistress was obliged to pause in her communication,
and to go round the room dropping extinguishers of silk and muslin over
the cages. "When the pie was opened the birds began to sing," thought I,
the pie being Mrs. Hill's budget, and I had also time to consider that
John must have sat up very late last night, or risen very early this
morning, to have matters already so very happily matured. "I wonder if
Grace would mind travelling a day sooner than she named," was the third
thought that went whizzing through my head before Mrs. Hill could
proceed any further with the news that she had in store for me.

"Yes," said Mrs. Hill, "it is true that we are destined to lose her, and
it is very kind and sympathising of you, my dear, to look so miserable.
You can readily imagine how I shall suffer--I, who have loved that girl
far more than if I had been ten times over her mother." And the little
lady wiped her eyes. "I told you, my dear, that the matter is a secret.
Old Sir Arthur wants his son to marry another lady, and Arthur Noble
cannot marry without his father's consent. But, in the meantime, the
children are engaged, hoping for better days. And now there is a letter
from the dear fellow saying he will be here this evening. Only I am not
to tell Rachel, as he wants to surprise her. You will keep my counsel,
Miss Dacre?"

I murmured, "Oh, certainly;" but the things in the room were swimming
about strangely, and my wits were astray.

"And do you know, my dear (I feel I can trust you thoroughly), do you
know I am exceedingly glad of this for many reasons. I have noticed poor
young Hollingford! Rachel is an attractive creature, and I fear a little
inconsiderate. But the queen of beauty must be excused, my dear, and she
is a queen, our Rachel. We cannot help the moths getting round the
candle, can we?"

After this I curtsied, and made my escape as quickly as possible. "Poor
young Hollingford! Oh, John, John! why have you brought yourself so low
as this?" I cried across the wood to the farm chimneys.

My children, there is a rambling old garden at the back of the hall, a
spot which the sun never leaves. Wild tangles of shadow fall now as then
on the paths, from the gnarled branches of moss-eaten apple-trees. In
the season of fruit, blushing peaches and plums, yellow and transparent
as honey, hung from its ancient lichen-covered walls. Raspberry
brambles, borne out of their ranks by the weight of their crimson
berries, strayed across the path. There were bee-hives ranged against
the fiery creeper on the far-end wall, and the booming of the bees made
a drowsy atmosphere in the place. This, together with the odour of
stocks and wallflowers, was deliciously perceived as soon as your hand
lifted the latch of the little green door, and regretfully missed when
you closed it behind you.

You know it, my children. I need not tell you that it is a homely
retreat compared with the other gardens near, costly, curious, and prim,
where the beds are like enormous bouquets dropped on the grass, and the
complexion of every flower is suited with that of its neighbour. But
this old garden was always a favourite, for its unfailing sunshine, its
murmurous repose, and the refreshing fragrance of its old-fashioned
odours.

Well, my dears, all day long I stayed in my room, fighting a battle of
sorrow and passion, and when evening came I stood at the window and saw
the sun go down behind the trees of the old garden. I bethought me of
its soothing sights and sounds, and fled away to it, as to a sanctuary.
There is an arbour under the wall, in the midst of a bed of lilies. I
hid myself there, and looked out on the lily-cups brimming with sunset
light, on the diving up and down of the birds, on the little golden
clouds transfixed in the glory of the heavens. Not a soul breathed
within the four high walls but myself, till the latch of the little
green door clicked, and who should come hieing along the path but
Rachel, her white evening dress tucked to one side, and a watering-pot
in her hand. She had a favourite corner in this garden, which it was her
pleasure to tend with her own hands. The sun was down, and the plants
were thirsting. Rachel was kind to all: kind to the daisies and me, kind
to John, kind to her betrothed, Arthur Noble (I had not failed to pick
up the name), who was coming this evening to surprise her. When and in
what corner would the kindness end and cruelty begin? Watching through a
rent screen of tangled flowers, the fair shapely figure flitting and
swaying in the after glory of the sunset, I wondered about it all. How
would she act when her other lover arrived? Would she turn her face, in
which lived such pathetic truth, first on one, and then on the other?
Would she for a time give a hand in the dark to each, lacking courage to
fling love for ever over her shoulder, and declare at once for the
world? Would she honestly dismiss John, confessing that she had chosen
her path? or would she bravely destroy that which was unholy, and give
her hand to him before the world? Contemplating this possibility, I felt
my heart swell with something that was not selfishness; and I built a
palace in the air for John.

Having done so, I heard the garden door click again, and starting,
looked, expecting to see John coming in to take possession of his palace
on the instant. A man came in, but he was a stranger. He took first one
path, and then another, and glanced about him with eyes unused to the
place. Here, then, was Arthur Noble, arrived. He passed along the path
below the lily-bed, and I saw him well. He was a fine-looking fellow,
sunburnt, like one who had seen foreign service, and handsome:
physically handsomer than John, I could see, with more of the dash of
gallantry and air of the grand gentleman, but with less of that
something I have hinted at before, soul, spirituality--what shall I call
it, my dears, to escape being smiled at? You have known John
Hollingford, and you will recognise the charm that I mean, something
that--sick, or afflicted, or disfigured, or aged--must always make him
lovable, and attract the pure of heart to his side.

Well, Arthur Noble was of a different stamp. How he would have looked
out of the sunshine of prosperity, I do not know; but he seemed made to
be gilt by it from head to foot. He had a pleasant face, sunny and
frank, a high-bred, masterful air, and an amiable courtly manner.
Physically he had all the fine points of a Saxon hero, fair hair, blue
eyes, powerful frame. Yet, gay, and debonnair, and happy as he looked, I
pitied him a little, going past to find Rachel. A little, not a great
deal, for I judged him (wrongly, as it afterwards proved) to be one who
would love lightly, and be easily consoled by a world whose darling he
must be.

I saw their meeting, and John's aërial palace crumbled away into dust.
There was no mistaking Rachel's face, the glow that transfigured it when
she turned by chance and saw the figure advancing towards her. She
sprang to meet him with hands extended, gown tucked aside as it was, and
visibly flying feet; and he, striding on, opened his arms to receive
her, and folded them reverently about her, like a true knight embracing
his bride.

"And what about John?" I said angrily, as I watched the two walking up
and down between the roses, talking as eagerly and joyously as if they
had just received a charter for perpetual happiness.

That was a dull evening for some of us at the Hall. Rachel and her
betrothed sat apart and talked. Grace played chess with Mr. Hill, and,
to escape from Captain Tyrrell, I kept close to Mrs. Hill.

"I am quite in a dilemma, my dear," she whispered to me. "There is young
Hollingford, who has been coming about the Hall so much, and will be
coming about; and then here is Arthur Noble; and you know, my dear, or
perhaps you do not know that there has been a deadly feud between their
fathers. They were once friends; but poor Mr. Hollingford--you know all
about him, and Sir Arthur Noble was a heavy loser. Sir Arthur is very
vindictive, I must say. I do not think his son is of the same temper,
but it might be unpleasant, their meeting. Mr. Hill, who is quite
bewitched about young Hollingford, will say, 'Pooh pooh! let the lads
meet and be friends;' but I am not at all so sure that there will not be
an awkwardness. I declare I am quite at my wits' end."

I professed myself unable to give advice on this subject; and, indeed, I
felt that I ought now to regard myself as a dying person, who has no
further concern with the interests and people around me. I saw a reason
why John Hollingford and Mr. Noble were not likely to be friends, even
if their fathers had been brothers. And the little lady's petty
grievance worried me. And all things troubled me, for in three days I
was to leave Hillsbro' for London with the Tyrrells.




CHAPTER XII.


The next morning I set off for a solitary walk to the farm. I was going
to ask of Mrs. Hollingford formal permission for my visit to London, and
to say good-bye to her and the girls. I cried sadly to myself walking
over the happy moor and through the wood. I felt unutterably lonely and
wobegone. I was going to part from my only friends, and the separation
was at hand. I knew that Mrs. Hollingford would blame me, and I felt it
hardly worth my while to defend myself. I had quarrelled with John, and
broken our engagement. I was going to London with gayer friends.
Everything was against me; all the wrong seemed mine. I knew that the
dear old lady would say little, only look sad and disappointed, thinking
in her heart that things were turning out as she had prophesied; would
give me full permission to go where I pleased, and do what I pleased;
would kiss and bless me; and then I should have the wide world before
me.

It was a radiant May day. A saint has said that "peace is the
tranquillity of order;" and such a peace brooded over the happy farm as
I crossed its sunny meadows, heard the bleating of its lambs, the lowing
of its kine, met its labourers coming and going. An idler was piping
somewhere in the fields, the rooks were cawing, the leaves on the boughs
just winked in the breeze, the Hall door lay open as usual. I did not
see a soul about, and I walked in without summoning anyone. I opened the
parlour door; the place smelt of May and myrtle, and there were fresh
roses in the jars, but there was no one there. No one in the kitchen,
dairy, still-room; the maids were abroad this glorious noon. I went
upstairs, looking for a face in vain till I came to our school-room.
There was Jane alone, sitting at the table over some books, her head
between her hands, her hair thrust back from her face, looking older and
paler and thinner since I had seen her; a stern, sad-looking young
student, with her back to the sun that burned upon the lattice.

Her face turned scarlet when she saw me, and then became paler than
before. She gave me her hand coldly, as if she would rather have held it
by her side. Her mother was out, she said; had gone to visit at a poor
house where there was death and trouble, and would not be home till
evening. Mopsie had taken the dogs for a ramble. Then we both sat down
and were silent, and Jane's eyes wandered over everything in the room,
but would not meet mine.

"I am going to London, Jane," I said, "and I came to bid you good-bye."

"I know," she said. "John told me." And she blushed again fiercely. "I
am very glad. I have thought for a long time that London was the place
that would suit you best. I knew you would soon tire of the farm."

"I have not tired of the farm," I said, "but the farm has tired of me."

She glanced up amazed, then smiled bitterly, and turned aside her head
without speaking, as if such utter nonsense could not be thought worthy
of an answer.

"However," I added, "I did not come here to talk about that--"

"No," she interrupted hastily, "it is not worth your while to make any
pretence to us. We do not expect to have friends; we never thought of it
till you came. In time we shall get used to the curse our father left
upon us."

"Jane, Jane," I said angrily, "how can you be so wicked?"

"How can I help being wicked?" she asked. "I heard that it was
prophesied of us that we should all turn out badly, because ill conduct
runs in the blood."

"You do not deserve to have such a mother," I said.

"Oh! my mother!" she said in an altered tone. "But she has given all her
sweetness to Mopsie, and--to John," she added, with an effort, a tear
starting in her eye. "But I am my father's daughter. She would cure me
too, if she knew of my badness; but she is a saint, and thinks no evil.
I work hard at my books, and she calls me a good industrious girl. I
will never pour out my bitterness on her. But if my father were here I
would let him know what he has done."

The hopeless hardness of her young voice smote me with pain, but I could
think of nothing to say to her. I felt that she thought I had been false
to John, and that her sympathy for him had stirred all the latent
bitterness of her nature.

"And how is the young lady at the Hall?" she asked suddenly.

"Do you mean Miss Leonard?" I said.

"Oh, yes--Miss Leonard," said Jane, dropping her eyes on the floor with
a strange look.

"Very well," I answered, thinking of the jubilee that was going on at
the Hall.

"There is more wickedness in the world than mine," said Jane still
frowning at the carpet. "She is false, and you are false--every one is
false. I only know of two grand souls in the world--my mother and John.
But the wicked ones will prosper, see if they don't--those who are gay
and charming, at least. Bad ones like me go down like a stone, and lie
at the bottom."

At this moment an eager treble voice was heard on the stairs, and the
next Mopsie and I were crying, with our heads together, on the lobby.

"Oh, Margery, Margery!" sobbed the little one--"dear, darling, _sweet_
Margery! why are you going away? You promised you would always stay. Oh,
oh, Margery!"

An hour passed before I could tear myself away from the child. Jane
prepared luncheon, which was not eaten; but she did not attempt to share
in our sorrow and caresses. When I turned from the door Mopsie was
prostrate, weeping on the mat; and Jane was standing upright in the
doorway, straight, stern, and pale. So I went sorrowing back to the
Hall. And I had not seen Mrs. Hollingford.

Had I seen her that day, had her errand of mercy not taken her away from
her home and kept her away while I stayed, the whole current of my life
and of the lives of others might have been changed. She would then have
had no reason to come and visit me the next morning at the Hall, as she
did.

I was busy packing in my own room, enlivening my work by humming gay
airs, just to make-believe to myself that I was very merry at the
prospect of my visit to London. The door opened quickly, and Rachel came
in, walking on tiptoe, with her hand to her lips in trepidation. Her
face was as pale as snow, and large tears stood in her eyes.

"My mother, my mother!" she said like one talking in her sleep. "I have
seen my mother."

"What do you mean, Rachel?" I cried quite panic-stricken; for I thought
that her mother was dead, and she must have seen a ghost.

"My mother--Mrs. Hollingford; you know her; you are her true daughter; I
am nobody--a liar, an outcast. Oh, Margery! she did not know me. Am I
changed? I was a child then. And she!--how sunken her eyes are, and
dim!--she did not know me. 'And this is Miss Leonard!' she said; and I
hung my false face, and curtsied from the distance, and ran away. Oh, my
mother! Margery, Margery!"

The strange confused words passed like light into my brain. First the
room grew dark, and then so bewilderingly bright, that I could see
nothing. But presently Rachel's white face, with its piteous look came
glimmering towards me. I stretched out both my hands to her, but she
melted from my touch; what colour of life remained in her face faded
away from it, and she fell in a swoon at my feet.




CHAPTER XIII.


A messenger came to my door to tell me that Mrs. Hollingford was waiting
to see me. Rachel, restored to her senses, was lying upon my bed with
her face hidden on my hands.

"Rachel," I said, "I must go to her; but before I go tell me, assure me,
that what you have said is true, that you are truly the daughter of Mrs.
Hollingford."

"I am truly her daughter, Mary Hollingford," said Rachel (for I cannot
but still call her Rachel); "I am John's sister. That is the secret I
wanted to tell you one night, when you were jealous. But you would not
listen. I have more, much more, to tell you; but go now. One thing I beg
you to promise me--that you will tell her you have changed your mind
about going to London. Let the Tyrrells go, and stay you with me--oh,
stay with me! I want you so badly; and, now that I have once spoken, I
will trust you with everything--all my wickedness and weakness, all my
troubles and difficulties."

She spoke entreatingly, and her tears fell over my hands as she kissed
them.

"I will stay," I said; and the sun began to dance on the walls, it
seemed. "I will help you all I can; and, oh, how glad I shall be to let
the Tyrrells go without me!"

And then I went down-stairs.

I found my dear old lady looking very sad and worn and anxious. I threw
myself into her arms and sobbed on her neck.

"What is this, my love?" she said. "Is it a mistake, after all? And
whose is the fault? Is it yours, or is it John's?"

"Mine--mine," I cried. "And I am not going to London. But you must not
tell John this, because he might think--"

"Think what?" she said smiling.

"Oh, I don't know; but you must only tell him that I have deferred my
visit because Miss Leonard," I choked a little over the word, "has
pressed me to remain here longer."

She went away smiling and satisfied, and I went wondering back to my
room to hear Rachel's story.

I found her standing, as pale as a ghost, at my window, which commanded
a view of the approach to the house. Looking over her shoulder, I saw
Mrs. Hollingford's black robe disappearing among the trees.

"Now, Rachel," I said--"now for your story. I have done what you bid me.
I am going to stay with you. Trust me with everything, I am full of
anxiety and wonder."

But at that moment a messenger came to the door seeking Miss Leonard.
Mr. Noble was waiting for her to walk with him.

Rachel flushed at the summons.

"Do not go; send him word that you are engaged--what can it matter?" I
said eagerly.

"No, no," said Rachel confusedly. "You must excuse me now, Margery. I
must go. Have patience with me, dear," she added wistfully. "I will come
to your room to-night."

And she went away sadly.

She came to me that night surely. She asked me to put out the lights,
and crouching on a low seat by the fire, she told me her story.

"Do not ask me to look in your face till I have done," she said, "but
let me hold your hand, and whenever you are too much disgusted and
sickened with me to hear me any longer draw away your hand, that I may
know."

Poor Rachel! that was what she said in beginning. I will tell you her
history as nearly as possible in the way that she related it, but I
cannot now recollect, and it were useless to repeat one half the bitter
words of self-condemnation which she used.

       *       *       *       *       *

When quite a little girl (she said) I was sent to a school in Paris. Oh,
why did my mother send me so early from her side? It was a worldly
school--worldly to the last degree. I learned chiefly to think that in
proportion as my father was honoured and wealthy, my friends gay and
extravagant, just so were my chances of happiness in life. I had
handsome clothes and rich presents, and I was a great favourite.

There was a lady, a friend of my father's, who lived in Paris, and who
had liberty to take me for holidays to her house as often as she
pleased. She made a pet of me, and I spent at least half my time in her
carriage or her salon. She had charming toilettes prepared for me, which
I was enchanted to wear. Thus I was early introduced to the gay world of
Paris, and learned its lessons of folly and vanity by heart. I can
remember myself dressed like a fantastic doll, flitting from one room to
another, listening to the conversation of the ladies and admiring their
costumes. Every summer I came home for a time, but I found home dull
after Paris, and I was rather in awe of my mother's grave face and quiet
ways. She always parted with me against her will--I knew that--but it
was my father's wish that I should have a Parisian education.

I was just seventeen, on the point of leaving school, bewitched by
vanity and arrogance and the delights of the world, when the dreadful
news came--you know--about my father, his ruin and disgrace. The effect
on me was like nothing you could enter into or conceive. I think it
deprived me even of reason, such reason as I had. I had nothing in
me--nothing had ever been put in me--to enable me to endure such a
horrible reverse.

My mother had written to that friend, the lady I have mentioned, begging
her to break the news to me. She, however, was on the point of leaving
Paris for her country château, and simply wrote to madame, the mistress
of my school, transferring the unpleasant task to her. She sent her love
to me, and assured me she was very sorry, _desolée_, that she could not
delay, to pay me a visit. I have never seen her since.

And so the whole school knew of my fall and disgrace as soon as I
learned it myself. The first thing I did when I understood the full
extent of my humiliation was to seize my hat and cloak, and rush out of
the house with the intention of never coming back, never being seen
again by anyone who had known me. But after walking Paris for several
hours, and getting two or three rough frights through being alone and
unprotected, I was overcome with fear and fatigue, and was obliged to
return by evening, hungry, weary, and sullen, to the school.

I took it for granted that all the world would now be my enemy, and,
determined not to wait to be shuffled off by my friends, I assumed at
once an air of hauteur and defiance which estranged me from every one.
My mother, my poor mother, wrote to me, begging me to be patient until
she should find it convenient to bring me home. Patient! Oh dear, I did
not know the meaning of the word! No, I would not go home; I would
change my name and never willingly see again the face of one who knew
me.

Every day I searched the papers, and soon saw an advertisement which I
thought might suit me. An English lady in Paris required an English
companion, "young, cheerful, and well-educated." Without losing a moment
I went straight to the hotel where the lady lived, saw her, pleased her;
she was good, kind Mrs. Hill.

I gave her an assumed name, the first that entered my head, and referred
her to madame, at my pension. When I returned home I said:

"Madame, I have two hundred francs here in my desk; they shall be yours
if you will not undeceive a lady who is coming here to assure herself
that I am respectable and well-educated, and that I am Miss Leonard, an
orphan, and of an honourable family."

Madame coloured and hesitated; she was surprised at my audacity; but I
knew that she had bills coming due just then, and that she was
extravagant. We, her pupils, had talked over these things. She
hesitated, but in the end agreed to oblige her dear child, who had been
to her so good and so profitable a pupil. Perhaps she thought I acted
with the consent of my mother, that it was not her affair, and that
Providence had sent her my little offering to help her to pay her just
debts.

Mrs. Hill came the next day; a word satisfied her, and she only stayed
about three minutes. She was preparing to leave Paris for Rome, and had
many affairs to attend to in the meantime. She urged me to come to her
without delay, and in a few hours I was established under her roof.

I was then quite unaware that I had omitted to mention Mrs. Hill's name
or address to madame, and that madame had forgotten, or had not been
sufficiently interested in the matter to ask it. As I said before, I
think it is likely that madame believed I acted with the consent of my
friends, and that she had no further concern in the matter. Indeed,
indeed, I had then no idea of deserting my mother altogether. I was
hurried along by impulse, and I intended, when the hurry of action
should be over, to write and tell her of all I had done. I little
thought that when I quitted my school that day, without leaving behind
me the name and address of my new protector, I cut away the only clue by
which it might be possible my mother should find me in the future. I did
not know that I should afterwards deliberately turn my back upon her,
and hide myself from her.

Arthur Noble dined with us on that very first evening of my acquaintance
with the Hills. You know that I have been long engaged to Arthur, and I
will speak to you freely about him. He has often told me since that he
liked me from the first moment he saw me. I felt it even that evening;
though I could not believe in it. But the possibility of it dazzled and
bewildered me, so powerful was the fascination he possessed for me.

When I went to bed that night I felt my heart strangely softened and
opened. I thought a great deal about my mother and my home, of which I
knew so little, and for the first time feared that I had done very
wrong, and resolved to write to my mother surely on the morrow. I felt
myself to be an impostor and a liar, and I trembled, thinking of her
just anger at my falsehood and cowardice. I felt that when writing to
her I must make up my mind to confess to Mrs. Hill that I had deceived
her respecting my name and condition, and bribed my schoolmistress to
deceive her also. I knew that my mother would not tolerate the deceit;
but the thought of the confession was insufferable to me.

The next day, while we sat together, Mrs. Hill talked to me about Arthur
Noble. He was a great pet of hers, and at present she was particularly
interested in his circumstances. He had a cousin in England who was a
great heiress, and whom his father wanted him to marry. Arthur disliked
the idea extremely; and as the lady was supposed to be very well
inclined towards him, he was anxious to avoid danger by prolonging his
tour abroad. He had arranged to go on to Rome with them, the Hills; but
only yesterday, his father, Sir Arthur Noble, had met him in Paris,
urging him to give up the project, and return at once to England. He,
Sir Arthur, had lost heavily by the failure and bad conduct of a London
banker--a gentleman who had been his personal friend. My heart beat
thickly as I heard her say this; but I did not dare to ask the name of
that banker. In the midst of my dismay, Arthur Noble came in to assure
Mrs. Hill that he still intended to be of the party to Rome. His
father's ill-humour would subside by and by. He was only a little upset
by the shocking conduct of his friend Mr. Hollingford. Then Mrs. Hill
asked questions on the subject, and I sat by stitching at my embroidery
while Arthur described my father's disgrace.

My letter to my mother was not written that day. In the afternoon we
went out, and in the excitement of shopping I tried to forget
everything--who I was, what I was, what I had done, and what I ought to
do. In the evening Arthur Noble appeared again, and with him came his
father. Sir Arthur and Mr. Hill conversed apart, but I could hear the
fiery old baronet giving vent to his anger against my father. Arthur
devoted himself to Mrs. Hill and me. I was bewildered and distracted at
the position in which my rash conduct had placed me, and I was very
silent. Arthur exerted himself to amuse me, and under the spell of his
attractions my remorse was smothered.

I have not spoken to you yet of the wonderful affection which Mrs. Hill
lavished on me. You have seen it lately, but it was the same from the
first. She made me her daughter at once, as far as her conduct to me
could do so, though I had been some months her companion before she
declared her intention of formally adopting me.

Day followed day, and Arthur was always by my side. A new feverish dream
of happiness encompassed me, and it was only in the quiet of wakeful
nights that I thought of my mother and sisters and brother, and longed
to hear some news of my sorrowful home. Every night my wrestlings with
my selfish nature grew weaker and weaker. I could not risk exposure and
banishment from Arthur's presence. I left Paris for Rome without writing
to my mother.

You will hate me, Margery. I hate myself. I gave myself up to the
delight of the hour, and in selfish happiness drowned the reproaches of
my conscience, till I told myself at last that it was too late to undo
what I had done. Time flew, and I became engaged to Arthur, secretly at
first, for he dreaded his father's displeasure. We went from place to
place, staying a few months here and a few months there. We spent a year
at Rome, and Arthur was with us nearly all the time. When we had been
some time engaged, Arthur confided in his father, and asked his consent
to our marriage. Sir Arthur was hopelessly enraged at the idea, and, as
we could not marry without his consent, we have been obliged to be
patient ever since. Arthur has always kept telling me that he knew his
father would relent in time. And he was right. The time has come. Sir
Arthur has at last reluctantly withdrawn his opposition, and we may be
married on any day in the future which I may choose to name.

Stay, stay! do not ask me any questions, or I shall not be able to go
on. Let me tell you everything before I stop. I used to dream that when
I was married to Arthur, when no power on earth could separate us, I
would confess who I was, seek out my mother, and ask her forgiveness.
Remorse never left me, and I had bitterness in the midst of my
happiness. Arthur suspected that I had trouble which I would not share
with him, yet I could not bring myself to confess, so great was my fear
of being parted from him.

Some time before that evening when I first met you in London, I went to
see some friends of Arthur's. During that time, for several months, I
had not seen Mr. or Mrs. Hill; but in the meanwhile Mrs. Hill had
written to me of their intention of coming here to Hillsbro', saying
that Mr. Hill's new agent had written such cheerful accounts of the
estate, that he felt a longing to be on the spot, giving encouragement
to the improvements which were going forward. She did not mention the
name of the new agent, and it was only on that evening when I first met
you, when with shame and bitter self-reproach I heard you defend my poor
mother so valiantly, it was only then I knew that the agent was my
brother, and that I was actually coming to live within a few miles of my
deserted home.

My first thought was that now, indeed, the time for making all the
crooked things straight had come; but, oh Margery, you cannot imagine,
one like you never could imagine anything so wickedly weak as I am. The
old bugbear of our family disgrace, the old terror of Arthur's throwing
me off in disgust, rose up again with all their former strength, and I
came here torn by conflicting feelings. You saw my meeting with John.
The next day, when he came here to dine, I found an opportunity of
telling him my story. He was very severe with me at first, though not so
much so as I deserved; but he forgave me at last, on condition that I
would make up my mind to be honest with every one, let the consequences
be what they might. I promised this; but again and again my courage has
failed. He has been so good, so kind, so patient with me. He told me of
my mother, of the children, of you, and, oh, how he chafed at the
thought of what you would feel about the affair. Every time we met he
reproached me with my cowardice and delay, and I made fresh promises;
but Arthur's letters invariably broke down my courage and destroyed my
resolutions. Again and again John has asked me to allow him to tell you
who I was, but I would not suffer it. I could see no reason for humbling
myself sooner to you than to anyone else, until one day it flashed on me
that you were jealous of me. Then, after a hard struggle, I came to you
to tell my story. You repulsed me, you even assured me that the Tyrrells
were your best friends. I was glad of the excuse to spare myself and my
secret. And so it has gone on. Latterly John has scarcely spoken to,
hardly looked at me. I think he has given me up. I know not what he
means to do, but I think he means to let me have my own way. I think I
should have been silent to the last, but that I saw my mother to-day. I
saw her! I saw her!

       *       *       *       *       *

"And now you will tell her all--everything," I said, squeezing her
hands, while the tears were raining down my face.

"Margery, Margery!" cried Rachel, "how can I give up Arthur? Here he has
come to me after these years of waiting, and presses me to name a day
for our marriage, and I am to meet him with a story like this! He would
despise me."

"I think," said I, "that if he be a generous man he will forgive you.
After loving you so long, he will not give you up so easily. And your
mother," I added. "Think of all she has suffered. Is she worth no
sacrifice?"

"She never knew me," said Rachel gloomily, "and she will be happier
never to know me. She could not have smiled as she did to-day if she had
not forgotten that I ever existed."

"That is a selfish delusion," I said. "If your mother never knew you, it
is plain, at least, that you have never known her. Such a woman could
not forget her child. You cannot think that she has not sought for you,
and mourned for you, all these years?"

"Oh no," said Rachel, with another burst of sorrow, "John has told me.
They searched, they advertised, they suffered agony, and feared every
terrible thing, till at last they were obliged to soothe one another by
trying to think me, by speaking of me as, dead. Little Mopsie thinks I
am dead. So it has been, and so it must be."

"So it must not be," I persisted, and I fought with her all night. The
dawn was in the room before she got up to leave me, pale, and worn, and
weary, but promising that she would make yet one more great struggle
with herself to break the chain of deceit with which one rash falsehood
had so strongly bound her.




CHAPTER XIV.


I had the happiness of seeing my friends the Tyrrells depart for London
without me. I think they were both, brother and sister, somewhat tired
of my inconsistencies and vagaries, and I daresay they felt as little
sorrow at parting as I did.

The long hot days of summer followed one another in a slow wandering
fashion. No news reached us from the farm. I had vaguely hoped that John
would come and speak to me again; but we neither saw him nor heard from
him. Mr. Hill was from home during these days, and there was no
necessity for John to present himself amongst us, though there might
have been many an opportunity if he had cared to seek one. All the light
short nights I lay awake, wondering what was going to become of my life.

And Rachel? Was she mindful of the promise she had given me on that
night? Alas! no, my dears. She was absorbed in her Arthur. They went
here and there together; they were ever side by side, dreaming away the
time; seeming lost to every one else in their happiness. I should have
thought that Rachel had forgotten all her confession to me, all that had
passed between us on the subject, but for a piteous look which she gave
me now and again when no one was by.

At last an early day was fixed for the marriage, and a wonderful
trousseau came down from London for Rachel. The pretty things were
hardly looked at by her, and packed away out of sight. Then I saw that
two warring spirits were striving within Rachel. The colour left her
face, she grew thin, she started and trembled at a sudden word or noise.
Sometimes in the middle of the summer nights, just as the earliest birds
were beginning to stir, she would come into my room and throw herself
weeping across my bed. But I dared not speak to her then. She would not
tolerate a word. And so she took her way.

One morning Arthur went off to explore some place alone--a most unusual
event. I was in my own room when Rachel came in to me, suddenly and
quickly, and very pale.

"Come," she said, "come now, I have got courage to go this moment, but I
must not delay. Come, come!"

"Where are you going," I asked.

"You know well," she said impatiently; "to my mother. See, I am taking
nothing valuable with me."

She had on a calico morning dress, and plain straw hat. She had taken
the ear-rings out of her ears, the rings off her fingers.

I was ready in an instant, and we went off through the wood together. I
did not attempt to ask her what she meant to do; she was not in a mood
for answering questions. She took my hand as we walked, and held it
tightly, and we went along as children do when they are going through
the green wood in quest of May flowers, only our steps were more
fearful, and our faces paler than children's are wont to be. We went on
very silently and bravely, till we were about half-way, deep in the
wood, when a cheerful shout came across our ears, and there was a
swaying and crackling of bushes; and Arthur Noble's handsome genial face
and stalwart figure confronted us on the path.

"Maids a-Maying!" he said. "A pretty picture, on my word. Whither be you
bound, fair ladies, and will you accept the services of a true
knight-errant?"

Rachel's hand had turned cold in mine. "We are going to the farm to
visit Mrs. Hollingford," I said stoutly, "and as you are not acquainted
with the lady you had better go home alone, and amuse Mrs. Hill till we
come back."

"Ah! but I do not like that arrangement at all," said Arthur. "Why
should the lady at the farm not receive me? Has anyone been giving me a
bad character? Speak, Rachel, may I not go with you?"

"I cannot go any further," said Rachel; "I am not well." And indeed she
looked ill.

"Rest a little," I said pitilessly, "and by and by you will be able to
go on."

But Arthur, all alarmed, looked at me with surprise and reproach, drew
Rachel's hand within his own, and began walking slowly towards the Hall.
I followed, with no company but my reflections, which were odd enough;
and so ended this adventure.

And now what I think the most startling occurrence of my story has got
to be related, and, when it is told, all will be pretty nearly finished.

It was arranged that the wedding should be very private. Sir Arthur,
although he had reluctantly withdrawn his opposition, had refused to be
present at the marriage, therefore, no other guests were invited. The
eve of the day arrived, and I had spent the forenoon in decorating the
little church with white flowers. Early in the morning Rachel and
Arthur, with Mr. and Mrs. Hill and myself, were to proceed thither, and
an hour later the husband and wife were to depart on their life's
adventure together.

I remember the kind of evening it was. There was a great flush in the
sky, and a great glow on the earth, that made the garden paths hot to
the tread, and crisped up the leaves of the full-blown roses. There was
a rare blending of heaven and earth in lovely alluring distances, and a
luscious odour of sweet ripe things athirst for rain. The drawing-room
windows were thrown up as high as they would go, and it was cooler
within than without. Upstairs the bride's trunks were packed, and the
white robe was spread out in state, waiting its moment. We were all in
the drawing-room, Mr. and Mrs. Hill variously unoccupied, Rachel and
Arthur sitting together before a window. In another window I was down on
my knees leaning my elbows on the open sash, and gazing out on the
idealised world of the hour in a kind of restful reverie, which held the
fears and pains and unsatisfied hopes of my heart in a sweet thrall,
even as the deep-coloured glory that was abroad fused into common beauty
all the rough seams and barren places of the unequal land. Suddenly out
of the drowsy luxury of stillness there came a quick crushing sound,
flying feet on the gravel, and a dark slim figure dashed through the
light. Whose was the figure? I could not be sure till I sprang with a
shock to my feet, and went to the window where Rachel and Arthur were
sitting. Then there was no mistake about it. Here was Jane Hollingford,
suddenly arrived.

She stood strangely at the window, with one foot on the low sash, so
that she could look searchingly into the room. She had on no bonnet or
hat, and the dust of the road was in her hair; it was also white, up to
the knees, on her black dress. She was quite breathless, and looked sick
and faint with over-running. But there was Jane's wild spirit shining as
strong as ever out of her black eyes. She drew breath a moment and
looked eagerly into the room with a half-blinded searching look out of
the dazzling light into the shade. Then her eyes fell on Rachel, and she
spoke, and said a few words which electrified us all.

"Mary Hollingford," she said; "come home. Your father is dying, and he
wants to see you."

Mr. and Mrs. Hill came to the window to see what it was. We were all
silent from surprise for about a minute. Then Rachel rose trembling.

"Sit still, my love," said Arthur; "it is only a mad gipsy girl." And
Jane was not unlike a gipsy.

"Come, come!" cried Jane, stamping her foot with impatience, not
vouchsafing even a look at Arthur. "Come, or you will be too late; there
is not a moment to lose."

I think Mrs. Hill's voice piped shrill exclamations at my ear, but I
remember nothing that she said. Mr. Hill, who knew Jane by appearance,
was speechless. Arthur had risen, and stood by Rachel, looking amazedly
from her to Jane, and from Jane to her. Rachel turned on him a grievous
look which I have never forgotten, and pushed him from her with both her
hands back into the room. Then she glanced at me with a mute entreaty,
and I stepped with her out of the window, and we went across the lawn
and through the trees, and away along all the old tracks to the farm,
following Jane, who, knowing we were behind her, flew like the wind,
without once looking back. We soon lost her, for we often paused to pant
and lean against one another for a moment's respite in this strange
memorable race. We did not speak, but I looked at Rachel, and she was
like a poor lily soiled and crushed by the storm, with her white dress
trailing through the dust, and her satin shoes torn on her feet. But
that was nothing. We reached the farmhouse. There was some one moving to
meet white dishevelled, quivering Rachel. There was a cry, smothered at
once in the awful hush of the place, and Rachel fell, clasping her
mother's knees. I left them alone. What sobbings and whisperings, what
confession and forgiveness followed, God and his angels heard.

I went blindly into the hall, knowing nothing of what I did. I met John
coming to me. I had no words. I stretched out my hands to him. He took
them, took me in his arms, and that was our reconciliation.

That night we were all present at a death-bed. It was only bit by bit
that I learned the story of how the dying man came to be there. The poor
erring father, reduced to want, and smitten by disease, had crept back
in the disguise of a beggar to ask the charity of his deserted wife and
children, and to breathe his last sigh among loving forgiving hearts. It
was Jane, stern Jane, who had denounced him so cruelly, cherished such
bitter resentment against him; it was Jane, who had happened, of a
summer evening in her mother's absence, to open the door to his knock,
had taken him into her arms and into her heart, had nursed him, caressed
him, watched and prayed with him. So that was the end of poor Jane's
hardness of heart. It was all washed away in tears at her father's
death-bed. The last trace of it vanished at sight of Rachel's remorse.

My dear Mrs. Hollingford, my sweet old mother! These two shocks well
nigh caused her death; but when she had nobly weathered the storm she
found a daughter whom she had mourned as lost, living and breathing and
loving in her arms, and her brave heart accepted much comfort.

And what about those three kind souls whom we left in such sudden
consternation by the open window in the drawing-room at the Hall? Why,
of course, they came to inquire into the mystery. I was the one who had
to tell them Rachel's story, as kindly and delicately as I might. You
will be glad, my children, to know that they made very little of their
darling's fault. Mr. Hill was somewhat grave over the matter, but Mrs.
Hill would not allow a word of blame to be uttered against her pet. She
urged, she invented a hundred excuses; good, kind soul. As for Arthur
Noble, he readily discerned love for himself as the cause of her
unwilling desertion of others. His nature was large enough to appreciate
the worth of my John and his mother. As he had been willing, he said, to
wed Rachel friendless, so was he now more willing to wed Rachel with
friends whom he could love. So the beloved culprit was tried and
acquitted, and after many days had passed, and the poor father had been
laid in the earth, a chastened Rachel was coaxed back to her lover's
side, and, I have no doubt, told him her own story in her own way.

But old Mr. Hill was, to my mind, the most sensible of them all, who
said to his wife: "They may say what they please, sweetheart, but, to my
thinking, the lad, John, is by far the flower of the Hollingford flock!"
And the fine old gentleman proved his good-will after years had passed
that were then to come. When called upon to follow his wife, who died
before him, he bequeathed the Hillsbro' estate to my husband.

Rachel (he always called her Rachel) and Arthur went to live in Paris.
Jane married a great doctor of learning, and found her home in London;
and Mopsie made a sweet little wife for a country squire, and stayed
among the roses and milk-pans.

For John and me, our home was the farm, till fortune promoted us to the
Hall. Thither the dear mother accompanied us, and there she died in my
arms. There, also, at last, my husband. And now, my darlings, your
father, my son, is the owner of Hillsbro' and the Hall is your own happy
home.

And the old woman has returned to the farm.



THE END.






End of Project Gutenberg's The Late Miss Hollingford, by Rosa Mulholland