A COUNTRY-HOUSE  STORY.








A COUNTRY-HOUSE STORY.
BY
HENRY KINGSLEY,
AUTHOR OF "( RAVENSHOE," "THE T HILLYARS AND THE BURTONS," ETO.
B OS T  ON:
TIC KNOR AND FIELDS.
1866.




AUTHOR'S EDITION.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.




To
MY BROTHER GEORGE,
THIS COUNTRY TA LE
MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.








LEIGHTON COURT.
PART I.








PART I.
CHAPTER I.
THE river Wysclith, though one of the shortest in course of the
beautiful rivers of Dartmoor, still claims a high place among them.
None sooner quits the barren granite, and begins to wander seaward through the lower and richer country which lies between
the Moor and the sea. None except Dart sends a larger body
of water to the sea, and none forms a smaller or less dangerous
estuary.
Indeed, its course is so exceedingly short, that the members of
the Wysclith Vale hunt, whose kennels were within a mile of the
sea, were well acquainted, from frequent observation, with the
vast melancholy bog in which it took its rise. More than once,
more than twenty times, within the memory of old Tom Squire,
the lean, little old huntsman, had the fox been run into in the
midst of that great waste of turbary, from whence the infant
stream issues; on ground which no man, leave alone a horse,
dared to face. Laura Seckerton has a clever sketch in her portfolio of the wild, desolate, elevated swamp as it appeared on one
of these occasions; a sweep of yellow grass, interspersed with
ling, and black bog pits; in the centre, far away from human
help, a confused heap of struggling hounds killing their fox;
round the edges, as near as they dared go, red-coated horsemen,
most cleverly grouped in twos and threes; beyond all, a low,
ugly tor of weather-worn granite. Laura Seckerton could paint
as well as she could ride, which is giving her very high praise
indeed.
On a hot summer's day, if you had crossed the watershed from
the northward, from the head-waters of the Ouse, for instance,
and if you found yourself in this desolate, lonely swamp, with no
signs of animal life except the cry of the melancholy peewit, or
the quaint, dull note of the stonechat, you would find it hard to
believe that anything so wild, fierce, and loud as the river Wysclith could be born of such solitary silence. But if you hold on
1.                                A




2                    LEIGHTON COURT.
your way, round the bases of the low granite tors, between the
tumbled rocks and the quaking bog, for four or five miles, you
will begin, afar off, to hear a tinkling of waters, you will meet a
broad amber-colored stream, and find that the many trickling rills
from the great swamp have united, and are quietly preparing
for their journey to the sea; are making for that gap in the granite, below which the land drops away into an unknown depth, and
from which you can see a vista of a gleaming glen miles below, in
which the river, so quiet and so small up here, spouts and raves
and roars like a giant as he is. Right and left, far, far below you,
are crags, tors, castles of granite. Twenty streams from  fifty
glens;from a hundred sunny lonely hills, join our river far below;
until tired of fretting and fuming among the granite crags in the
glen of ten thousand voices, he finds his way out into the champaign country, and you see him wandering on in wide waving
curves towards his estuary. All this you can see even on a
blighty easterly day; with a clear south wind, Laura Seckerton
used to say, that, standing within two miles of the river's source,
you can make out the fisher boats on the sands at its mouth, and
the setting sun blazing on the windows of Leighton Court, which
stands on a knoll of new red sandstone at the head of the tideway.
I cannot say that either there or elsewhere I have ever distinguished drawing-room windows at a distance of eighteen miles as
the crow flies; but I confess to have seen the vast tower and dark
long facade of Berry Morecombe, which lies on the other side of
the river, blocking the westerly sun and casting a long shadow
over the sands towards Leighton Court, when I have stood on a
summer's evening at the tip of the lonely marsh in which the
Wysclith takes his rise, fifteen hundred feet above the sea.
Standing just where he begins to live, and whimper like a newborn babe over his granite rocks.
CHAPTER II.
THERE were only three families in this part of the country:
the Downeses, the Seckertons, and the Poyntzes. We shall meet
them all directly; but it is necessary even here to say that the
Downeses (represented by sir Peckwich Downes) were eminently
respectable and horribly rich. That the Seclkertons (Sir Charles
Seckerton) were eminently respectable, very rich, though not so
rich as the Downeses; but that they had entirely taken the wind




LEIGHTON COURT.                     3
out of'their (Downes's) sails, by Sir Charles marrying Lady
Emily Lee, a sister of the Earl of Southmolton, and by taking
the hounds nearly at the same time. And lastly, coming to the
Poyntzes (represented by Sir Harry Poyntz, younger by a generation than either of the other baronets), we are obliged to say
that the family had grown so utterly disreputable, that a respectable Poyntz was considerably rarer than a white crow. The third
family, these Poyntzes, were what the Americans call "burst up,"
and their seat, Berry Morecombe Castle, was now let on a lease
to Mr. Huxtable, a iManchester cotton-spinner.
Sir William Poyntz, that very disreputable old gentleman, had
been the last master of the hounds, and had handsomely finished
his ruin by taking them. He was a sad old fellow, and kept a
sad establishment there in the castle. The only signs of decency
which the old fellow showed was that he would not allow any of
his sons, legitimate or other, to come near the place. Harry
Poyntz, now the baronet, used to come and stay at Leighton
Court; Robert, the younger, was only dimly remembered by a
few of the older servants as a petulant, wayward, handsome child.
There was a third one yet, whom some remembered, a very beautiful, winning boy; but he had no name, he was not acknowledged.
When Sir Charles Seckerton took the hounds, Mr. Huxtable
took the castle, and very shortly after the wife of the latter died,
leaving him with a little girl, heir to all his wealth. Sir William
Poyntz left Sir Charles Seckerton a legacy also: he left him old
Tom Squire, the huntsman. He was a silent, terrier-faced little
fellow, who seemed to know more than he chose to tell, as indeed
he did. He was a jewel, however; he had hunted that difficult
country for many years, and if you had not taken him with the
hounds, you might as well have left the hounds alone.
A very difficult hunting country. Why, yes. Irish horses
strongly in request, not to mention Irish whips and second horsemen. A stone-wall country in part, and in part intersected by
deep lanes and high hedges. Not a safe or promising country by
any means. Bad accidents were not unknown; one very severe
one had but recently happened, just before my tale begins. The
first whip, a young Irishman, O'Ryan by name, had ridden into
one of those deep red lanes, which intersect the new red sandstone
hereabouts, and had so injured his spine as to be a cripple probably for life. Sir Charles had pensioned him with a pound a
week; and being determined to try an Englishman this time,
wrote to a friend in Leicestershire for a first-rate man, fit to succeed old Tom Squire, the wiry terrier-faced ex-Poyntz retainer
aforesaid, as huntsman, when he should retire to the chimney-corner, and twitter on the legends of the Poyntz family till he twittered no longer.




4                    LEIGHTON COURT.
An answer had come by return of post. There had never
been such a chance as now, wrote Sir George Herage. A young
man, possessed of all the cardinal virtues, with several to spare;
who was the most consummate rider ever seen, could tell the
pedigree of a hound with one moment's glance, of gentle temper
with man, horse, and dog. A young man who had hunted not
only in Leicestershire and Berwickshire, but at Pau; a young
man entirely up to every conceivable sort of country. Such a
young man was To Let. And Sir George Herage's advice was,
" Snap him up on any price; the more especially as he has expressed to me strongly his intense anxiety to improve his already
great experience by hunting in that very county of yours. Indeed, has given me warning the instant he heard of your want."
On further examination of Sir George's letter, it appeared that
this young Crichton, Bayard, Philip Sidney, St. Hubert's price
was extremely moderate, considering his amazing virtues and
talents. His very name, too, sounded well, - Hammersley. Sir
George was also anxious to impress on his friend's mind the fact
that he was no ordinary person. That he was a deuced presentable fellow, and a fellow who would not stand much talking to, but
was perfect at his work. Sir Charles thought himself in luck,
and passed the letter over the breakfast-table to Lady Emily, his
wife, to see what s/he thought of it, -by no means an unimportant matter.
Lady Emily was making a somewhat witchlike mess in a
china basin, the basis of which was chocolate. Sir Charles had
seen her put in sugar, brown bread, baked yam, and cream, and
began to wonder when she would begin to eat it. She delayed
her pleasure, however, and he grew impatient.
"Emily," said Sir Charles at last, " I wish, when you have gone
through your morning ceremonies with your olla-podrida, that
you would look at that letter."
"My love," she said, "I will do so directly."  And she went
on with her preparations quite regardless of the impatient, exasperated way in which Sir Charles tore the " Times" open, pitched
the supplement on the ground, and rattled the other part open.
At last she had done. She read the letter steadily, put it
down again, and gazed into'space.
" Well," said Sir Charles, testily, "-will that man do or no?"
"I do wonder," she said, with her great, cool, high-bred voice.
" Now I really do wonder."
"I wonder at our luck in getting such a man at such a time,"
said Sir Charles.
"I don't mean that," said Lady Emily, " I wonder what on
earth this paragon of a creature has been doing which makes
Sir George Herage so exceeding anxious to foist him off upon




LEIGHTON COURT.                    5
us and get him three hundred miles out of his own way. That is
what I am wondering at.".1
"You look on it in that light, do you, Emily?" said Sir Charles.
"I wonder," said Lady Emily, going on in her own line,
"whether the fellow is good-looking, and has been making love
to one of those red-haired, horse-brealking Herage girls.  That
is' it, depend on it. Not another word, Charles, -here comes
Laura."
"My dear mother, good morning!"
"You think he ought to come, then, Emily? " said Sir Charles.
" You think he will do? "
"My dear Charles! Do! Such a paragon of a creature. The
question is not whether he will do, but what he has been doing. I
have the deepest curiosity to see the man. I suppose he will take
his meals with us; what rooms shall I get ready for him?"
"Then he had better come?"
"It is not in my line at all to say yes or no. If my personal
wishes were consulted, I should say let him come. You seem to
have collected all the available rogues and fools in the south of
Devon about your stable and kennel, and I am getting tired of
them. I want to see a rogue from another country for a change.
Have the man down."
"My dearest Emily, why are you so disagreeable this morning? i'
"I did not mean to be so to you, Charles," said his wife, kissing him as she passed hbim. " Since you have taken me out of
society, I have no one to whet my tongue on but you, you selfish
man. And it is rather cool of Sir George Herage to try and
foist off a man, who evidently has made the country too hot to
hold him, on to us."
"But, Emily dear, I won't have him if you think so."
-l Have him down, Charles, by all means have him down."
And so the paragon Hammersley came. And no one having
said anything against it, it'must be supposed that every one was
perfectly satisfied. But Lady Emily determined to find out the
reason of this wonderful recommendation of Sir George Herage
or perish in the attempt. She neither did the one thing or the
other at first; but she was not easily to bebeaten.
Her sister, Lady Melton, on being appealed to by letter, at
first could find out nothing more about the young man than that
Sir George Herage had picked him up at Pau, where he was
hunting the hounds during the illness of the huntsman, and had
brought him home. That he certainly understood his business
in a masterly way, but was uncivil, loutish, quarrelsome, and rode
very little under twelve stone. Lady Melton added that she had
never seen the young man, that he had never appeared with the
quorn; and that was all she knew about him.




6                   LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER  III.
I HAVE described the lay of the country as you look from the
mountain down to the sea, and will describe for you directly the
appearance of that country, looking up from the tideway towards
the mountain, from the terraces of Leighton Court. But my eye
rests on something in the immediate foreground which arrests it.
I find I cannot describe the dark purple moor, with Wysclith
leaping from rock to rock down its side, without first getting rid
of two figures in the foreground. From the terraces of Leighton
Court, which surround the house east, seaward, and westward,
one looks over the sand-bars of the river, here beginning to spread
into its little estuary, on to the red county, beyond on to the flashing cascades of the river; above all on to the dark, black-blue
moor. But there are two figures in the foreground, which seem
to impersonate the scenery, and being animate, they must be
looked to first.
Lady Emily stands nearest to us. A large, handsome, gypsylooking woman, whose real age was five-and-forty, but whose constant good humor, and the fact of her having had her own way,
both in the county and in her family, for some twenty years,
caused her to look ten years younger. She was a noble, kindly,
nay, jolly-looking woman, so very like the nearer parts of the
landscape; so rich in color, so bold in rounded outlines.
If Lady Emily stood well as a central figure to the blazing
reds and greens of the fertile red sandstone country, her daughter
might well represent to our fancy the dark purple moor whichhung aloft in the distance, furrowed by deep rifts, which in their
darkest depths showed the gleams of the leaping torrent; and yet
which, through ten miles of atmosphere, seemed little more than
a perpendicular plane, without cape or bay, prominence or depth.
She was a little taller than her mother; her face, though like her
mother's, was more refined with the refinement of youth; her
face might get a trifle coarser by age, (who knows?) or might be
swept by storms of passion; but at present she was as placid, as
delicately tinted, as lofty, and apparently a thousand times more
unapproachable,than the mountain on which she gazed.    I
People tell one that at the end of the last century there was a
school or party among people of rank, whose specialite was the
extreme care with which they educated their women, -a party
who hailed Mrs. Hannah More as their leader and example.




LEIGHTON COURT.                     7
Very few of us have so little experience of life as not to have
seen and respected one of the old ladies thus trained, and to reflect, one hopes, on the very great deal we owe to them and to
their influence. None of us, however, have probably had the
luck to see a more perfect specimen of this type of lady than was
the old Countess of Southmolton, the bosom friend of Hannah
More, grandmother of Laura Seckerton, whose gentle influence
was still felt in her daughter's house. She had formed Lady
Emily upon the most perfect model, and Lady Emily had fully
answered her expectations, but, partly from the natural vivacity
of her disposition, and partly from her having married a sporting
baronet, she had become a.trifle corrupted; so that her manners,
beside her more sedate mother, appeared almost brusque and jovial. She, however, had vast reverence for her mother, and for
her mother's system. And so Laura had been brought up, not
so much by her mother as by her grandmother, in the very
straitest mode of Queen Charlottism.
And she had taken to the style of thing kindly enough. As a
child she was too slow and dreamy, too "good," as her grandmother would have said, to make any flat rebellion, and as she
grew up, her grandmother, as having more talent, attracted
her perhaps more than her mother; besides, the style of thing
suited her. She was idle and dreamy, and she liked rules for
life; and such wells of passion as were in her were as yet unruffled by any wind. So it was that her manner was far more staid,
and her habits of thought far narrower than those of her mother.
A grand, imperial, graceful looking girl, with a Greek face,
bearing not much color, and an imperial diadem of dark black
hair, dark as the moor after a thunder-storm; was there a fault
in her face? Only one; the mouth was rather large.
CHAPTER IV.
THESE two figures were so very prominent, as being perhaps
the only two things visible in the landscape I have in my mind's
eye, that I could see nothing, or make you see nothing, till they
were disposed of. W7e will soon have done with the rest of the
landscape, at which the reader will possibly rejoice.
Leighton Court was what is generally called Tudor, of a sort;
stone-built, mullions, and transoms of granite. Length one hundred and five feet, depth fifty-two feet. It was very like Balliol




8                   LEIGHTON COURT.
uncommonly like Oriel, and a perfect replicate of University. It
stood near the extreme end of a promontory of the red country,
some four hundred acres in extent, and say one hundred feet in
extreme- height, densely wooded, down to the very shore which
divided the little estuary of the Wysclith from the larger estuary
of the Avon.
An old Tudor house, say, standing on a promontory of red
rock, feathered with deep green woods, whose base lost itself in
an ocean of wide-spreading sea-sand. As you looked towards the
sea from the hill landward of the house, you saw narrow sandy
Wysclith on your right, broad sandy Avon on your left; the
house deep bosomed in feathering woods, which ran down and
fringed the sands in front, and beyond sands and sands bounded
by the blue channel with toiling ships.
Wysclith, on your right, made but a small estuary, hardly
could carry the tide a mile above the house, for he had to make the
sea between the rib of sandstone on which Leighton Court stood,
and another higher rib, three hundred yards to the westward, on
the summit of which stood the great Norman keep of Morecombe
Castle, which, at the equinoxes, threw its long shadow across the
narrow tideway, and in March and September, at sunset, lay the
shade of its tallest battlements on the smooth shorn turf of Leighton Court pleasance. At those two periods of the year when the
sun was due west, and began to darken towards his setting, the
tower of the keep of Morecombe seemed to hang minatory and
darkly over its more peaceful neighbor, the hall; but at all other
times the castle was a thing of beauty for the inhabitants of the
Court. At morn it rose a column of gray, tinged with faint
orange; at noon, pure pearl gray with purplish shadows; in the
evening, dark leaden color, with the blaze of the sunset behind it,
and its shadow barring the narrow river, and creeping towards
the feet of those who sat on the terrace of the Court.
The river just began to narrow in opposite Leighton Court
and Morecombe Castle, and not a quarter of a mile up, left creeping among sand-bars and took to chafing among vast shingle beds.
There is no town on the river, only the big red village of South
Wyston round a turn in the river. So you looked up a reach in
the river, feathered with wood and ribbed with reddish-purple
rocks, up to the corn-fields, wooded hedgerows, and woodlands of
the red country, and above and beyond at the blue-brown moor,
with young Wysclith raving down in a hundred cascades through
a rift in the granite.




LEIGHTON COURT.                     9
CHAPTER V.
PROFOUND as was Sir Charles's respect for his wife, and his
reverence for his mother-in-law, there was one point in Laura's
education on which, once for all, he had so coolly and calmly opposed them, that they, like sensible women, knew he was in earnest, and gave up the contest there and then.
Laura was to learn to ride; nay, O Shade of Hannah More!
to hunt. He was so very distinct about this, the first point on
which he had ever opposed them, that they-knowing that
although he was so easy-going to them, yet had among men the
character of being a resolute, valiant man-gave way at once,
and did not even openly protest.
Laura was strong and healthy, and got very fond indeed of the
sport. One need hardly say that under Sir Charles's tuition she
turned out a first-rate horsewoman. The country was a difficult,
nay, dangerous country, but then, with its continually recurring
copses, it was a very slow country, by no means a bad country
for a lady who knew every gap, low stile, and gate, for ten miles
round; a better country, for a lady, perhaps, than faster countries
nearer London, certainly easier than Leicestershire.
So she got very fbnd of the sport, and if the pace got too great
for her, there was nothing to prevent her riding home alone.
Mr. Sponge, not to mention Mr. Jorrocks, don't make hunting
tours in the West. There were no strangers for her to meet, except perhaps an officer or so from Plymouth. And very few
officers were at Plymouth many weeks without making her father's acquaintance, so that of real strangers there were none.
She very much enjoyed the times when she got thrown out
among the stone-walls, and had to ride home alone through the
deep lanes, dreaming.
Dreaming!  What could she do but dream?  When she sat
on her horse alone, on the hill which lay half way between the
sea and the moor, she looked round on the widest horizon she
had ever seen.  She had heard of a great world which roared
and whirled beyond that horizon; but she had never seen it, or
seen a glimpse of it, with her own eyes. She heard her grandmother and her mother talking of this world; she had been expressly trained, carefully trained, for moving in this world. She
could have gone, with her training and her nerve, into the best
drawing-room in London, or more, in Paris, and have found her1*




10                  LEIGHTON COURT.
self perfectly at home.  Lady Southmolton confessed that she
was perfectly formed; but meanwhile they could not go to London this year, and then they could n't go next year. Sir Charles
was hard to move, and the hounds had cost a deal of money,- a
great deal too much money, indeed.
So she heard of the world only from without. She heard her
grandmother and her mother talking of the great governors of
the country, and the great givers of parties, which were reported
in the " Times " most familiarly; heard a great Liberal nobleman
talked of as "dear Henry," and came to the conclusion that if
dear Henry had taken her grandmother's advice, things would
not have come to the present dead-lock. She heard these two
women continually living in the past among the great men they
had danced with, growing more familiar in the mention of their
names as time went on, expanding and developing their legends
and recollections about these people, and egging one another on
until a doubtful recollection became an article of faith, and a
third-hand story became a personal experience. She heard all
this, and possibly laughed at it. But she knew well that her
mother had known the War God, and sometimes she thought it
rather tiresome that she could not know him also.
She heard of the world, too, a veriy different world, from the
soldiers and sailors who came over to them from Plymouth. Her
mother startled her one night by telling her, that of all the sailors and soldiers she had ever entertained for the space of twenty
years, Captain Fitzgorman was the only one who had ever thoroughly known the great world. She was startled, for she had set
him down as the dullest and most unmitigated noodle she had
ever had inflicted on her; a man who could talk about lords and
ladies, their marryings and intermarryings, and nothing else.
She had asked her mother not to ask him again.
"' My dear, he knows the world!"
" He knows the peerage," said Laura, peevishly; " and I don't
want to have the peerage talked to me. If I want to know anything out of the peerage, I get it down and refer to it. He seems
to have got it up. I listened to him, and you, and grandma tonight, until I was sick. The whole conversation amounted to a
competitive examination on those sort of people. And while we
are on the subject, allow me to tell you, having listened through
curiosity, that you got considerably the worst of it. That noodle
was better up in that particular kind of talk than the pair of you
put together."
Jovial Lady Emily had to stand on her dignity.
"Because I withdrew myself from the world when I married
your dear father, I cannot see that it is becoming for my daughter to cast in my teeth my forgetfulness of the world."




LEIGHTON COURT.                    11
Though her grammar was involved, as it always was when
she tried to be grand, Laura did not laugh at it. She only said,
good-humoredly, "Well, mother, I may be wrong, but it seems to
me ridiculous for a younger son to talk about nothing but his own
and other people's connections."
She had a sharper arrow in her quiver than that for young
" Fitz"; but who could snarl or say a bitter thing in the presence of her genial mother, who kissed her, called her a radical,
and went to bed?
Laura, you see, did not believe in the grand monde. She
believed that the real great world was the wide world the sailors
and soldiers told her of. West Coast of Africa, India, and all
that sort of thing, which the reader may supplement, out of the
history of these wonderful thirty millions of islanders who have
seized on the strongest and richest parts of the world, according
to his fancy. But this world was as much shut out to her as the
London world, and she was thrown on to her own, a very small
one, more the pity.
The peasantry were all her world. Poor visiting had always
been one of the rules of the family, and Laura took to it not
unkindly. She got to love the people, she understood -their
wants, she excused their faults, and got more deeply, than she
was aware, imbued with their superstitions.
CHAPTER VI.
LORD HATTERLEIGH was a young man of great promise,
aged twenty-two, who wore goloshes, carried a bulgy umbrella,
and took dinner pills.
Generally he took them in the hall, getting a confidential glass
of water from the butler. But if he had been somewhat late, and
had forgot them, he would have no hesitation in taking them
after his soup, or even after his fish, before an admiring dinnertable. Lord Hatterleigh's inside was the most wonderful inside
ever known. It was a complicated and delicate piece of machinery, which required continual oiling. He was exceedingly proud
of it. Two or three doctors had set it right for him, but he
found himself somewhat lost if it was not out of order. A subject of conversation was lost to him. He could talk peerage by
the yard; he could pipe out feeble wishy-washy politics by the
hour; but to the dearest friends of his heart he always led the
conversation to his inside.




12                  LEIGHTON COURT.
It was a great joke in the county for some time, that Lord
Hatterleigh had appointed Sam Bolton his chaplain, because
Bolton had a complication in his liver or somewhere, nearly as
fine as the hitch in Lord Hatterleigh's " ilia." It ~was notorious,
and, what is very different, perfectly true, that he was very fond
of Samuel Bolton, and that they would sit up half the night comparing their symptoms. Sam Bolton was the most intimate
friend he had, and it was as plain as the nose on one's face, that
as soon as the present rector dropped, Lord Hatterleigh would
give him the living of Hatterleigh to keep him near him. Sam
Bolton got engaged on the strength of it. The rector himself, a
lean old gentleman, a bishop's man, who preached in his surplice,
turned to the east at the creed, and in spite of it kept his church
full, recognized him as his successor.
"' When I am gone, my dear Mr. Bolton," he would say, " you
will find that the dilapidation money will hardly make the house
fit for a family man. You are going to marry, and you will
have to build, sir, you will have to build."
The rector "dropped" suddenly, through attending a typhus
case on a fast day without a good dinner and a glass of port, but
Sam Bolton never was Rector of Hatterleigh. Lord Hatterleigh wrote off to Dr. Arnold to send him the best available parson he could lay his hands on. Dr. Arnold did so, and the Rector of Hatterleigh was not Sam Bolton.
Sam Bolton sulked, and at last one evening grew pathetic, nay,
got near to a state of injured indignation.
" I never promised you the living, Bolton," said his Lordship,
nursing his big knee. "1  like you very much, but I don't think
you are fit for it. Besides, your digestion, my dear fellow, your
digestion! "
A high-minded man enough, this Lord Hatterleigh, always
putting before him, according to his light, a lofty ideal, and fighting up to it with the obstinacy of a mule and the cunning of a fox.
The world called him false and untrustworthy, but if you catechised the world, you would find that he had never departed
from his pledged word, and had never disappointed hopes which
he himself had given.
He had tried Rugby, but his health would n't stand it (so said
he and his grandmother). He had gone to a great private
tutor's and had read continuously and diligently, (as for reading
hard it was not in the man,) and in due time had made his appearance in Peckwater. Here he was recognized at once as a young
man of great promise. He could, give him. a bottle of water,
talk you washy politics by the yard, by the hour. But the
union, most patient of assemblees, very soon got impatient of him,
and certain square-headed, bright-eyed young rascals from Bal



LEIGHTON COURT.                    13
liol and University began to make terrible mince-meat of him.
Still he was a young nobleman of promise.              -
Of great promise out of little performance, he was so very
steady and, studious that outsiders put him down for all sorts of
degrees, treble first, said some, for he had sent a gigantic order
to Shrimpton for chemical and geological books, and was evidently
going in to win. But after; dandering about the University for
three years, he got a bad fourth in classics and merely passed in
the other schools. After which, he transferred himself and his
talents to his paternal acres and the House of Lords. On his
own estates he did his duty manfully and well. In the House
of Lords he spoke on the Address and none afterwards.  He
found he was out of his depth, and had the sense to float without trying to swim. Most likely his failure at Oxford had done
him good. There he had been measured with a moiety of the
talent of the country, and had failed. I think that in his way
he understood this.
But with perfect good temper. If he was sly, it was only
through a kind of half-physical, half-nervous cowardice. There
was none of the cat-like bitterness of the real coward about him.
He hated a scene beyond all things, but he would face a scene,
and go through with it to the end if one of his principles was at
stake, and win. Temper! his temper was angelic, so long as he
had not lost his umbrella, mislaid his goloshes, or forgot his
dinner pills; and then his temper only showed itself in a kind of
plaintive peevishness. When any one of these three things happened, Laura could always bring him into good temper again.
The rules of society prevented her talking over his complaints
with him, but she could talk genealogies and marriages with so
many mistakes as to rouse him into animation to set lier right,
and she was fond of the poor creature. She was very tender to
the village idiot, too, and had prevented the boys from bullying
him into madness many times. Lord Hatterleigh had seen her
but from childhood, and Laura had never cared to look for such
finer qualities as there might be in him. They used to call him
Ursa Major.




14                   LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER VII.
THE little affair of Assewal scarcely deserves to be called a
battle, it was merely a prelude; nay, not even that, only a
tuning of fiddles for the " Grand Devil's Opera," which crashed
and roared so late into the next day that the last mutter of it was
heard as the sinking sun flamed upon the Eastern ghaut; and
night and silence, only half broken by the low wails and moans
of the wounded, settled down upon another great field, whose
name henceforth is one of the landmarks of history.
Yet a remarkable thing happened there. The advance guard
of the enemy, as well as one can understand, were in a strongish
position, on the other side of a nullah, and were keeping up an
infernal fire of artillery at a native regiment of ours, which was
only half sheltered by a roll in the ground. It was absolutely
necessary that this regiment should stay in its present position,
for it was the extreme of our left flank in that little affair, and our
general was engaged in turning their left flank, and forcing them
into that disadvantageous position in which they gave us battle
the next day, and got so terribly beaten.
Sir Charles had deputed the work to be done on his right to
three or four men whose names have since been burnt deep into
the memories of their countrymen, and therefore he knew that
the work on the right was being as efficiently done as if he had
been there himself.
It was necessary, however, for the eagle's eye to watch this
left flank, which was our weakest place. And so the eagle was
there with his great hooked beak stretched towards the enemy,
from time to time shaking out his ruffled feathers ready to swoop
and strike.
As he was. The 140th dragoons were behind the tope in
which he stood; and if the Sikh artillery did not soon feel the
pressure which he was putting on their left, it would become
necessary to hurl our cavalry at this artillery and silence it,
with the loss of half of one of our best regiments.
No one could doubt that. The plain -more correctly the
glacis —which lay between the Sikh artillery and the halfconcealed native regiment in the lower ground, was being ripped
and torn and riven by their furious cannonade. Life, even for a
single individual, seemed to be impossible there. What would be
the fate of seven hundred close-packed horsemen, - Thermopyle
or Balaelava 




LEIGHTON COURT.                    15
Some of the shot were reaching the native regiment, and they
were getting fidgety.  If they could be kept there until the
pressure on the enemy's left was felt? If the sacrifice of the
140th could be saved? But a good many shot had come ripping
in on the flank companies, which were exposed on each side of
the roll in the ground, and they were getting unsteady.
" Go and tell him to draw his flank companies behind the
ridge," he said, and turning, found himself face to face with a
cornet of the 140th, a handsome, pensive-looking boy, who, by
some accident, had been sent up to him with a message.
The boy, a scarlet-and-gold thing, all over golden fripperies
and tags and bobtails, topped with a white pith helmet, a very
beautiful and expensive article, (receiving one third the pay of a
Staffordshire iron-puddler,) went jingling down the hill and
passed behind the native regiment, till he came to the colonel.
They saw him deliver his message, and thought he was coming
back again.
So he was, but by a very queer route. He rode past the left
flank of the wavering regiment, and then, mounting the hill,
turned, and came coolly jingling back at a sling trot over that
terrible plain slope, which was being ripped, and torn, and sent
into the air in all directions by the enemy's shot, and on which
human life appeared impossible.  Fountains and showers of
stones and sand were rising and falling all around him as he
rode, but he came coolly clanking on, and while the staff were
expecting to see him cut in two every instant, he managed to
knock his helmet off.
He stopped, dismounted, picked it up, put it on hindside before,
altered it, and prepared to mount. His horse was restive, and he
gave it a good-natured little kick in the ribs, got on again, and
came jangling slowly up to the tope where the eagle was posted.
The eagle never liked that sort of thing. He was very angry; he
shook his feathers and opened on him.
"Are you a Frenchman, sir, that you play these Tomfool's
games under fire? Do you know, sir, that your life is your
country's, sir, and that death is a very solemn thing? Do you
know that if it were not for an extraordinary instance of God's
mercy, you would be lying howling and dying in the grass
yonder? What did you do it for; eh, sir?"
The boy looked at him with his great melancholy eyes, and
said, -
" The 84th seemed getting unsteady, sir, and I thought I would
show them that it was not so bad as it looked."
" Hem! that is another matter. That is a different affair, altogether. You have acted with great valor and discretion; you
have done a noble deed at the right time. Such actions as yours,




16                  LEIGHTON COURT.
sir, elevate the tone of the army, and deserve to live in the
mouths of men forever. What is your name?"
"George Hilton."
"He is Jack's boy," said a general, who stood near.
"Why could n't you have said so before?" snapped out the
eagle.<
"Because I did n't want to spoil the fun of hearing you make a
set complimentary speech to Jack's boy. Fancy such a torrent
of fervid eloquence being poured out on his head. It's as good
as a play."
The great warrior was very much amused, and held out his
hand to the lad.
" You are at your father's tricks, are you, you monkey?  Go
back to your regiment. I shall write to your mother."
And so he did, and kept his eye on the boy. Young George
Hilton soon changed into an infantry regiment, partly because
his mother had lost some money, and partly because his patron
and his father's friend wished it. In time his patron died; but
he fought his way steadily on through the weary nights of -1854,
through the dark and terrible hour of 1855, leaving his mark
on everything he undertook, and getting his name well known,
not only at the Horse Guards, but to the most careless of the
general public. Here we find him -now on the terrace beside
Laura. Colonel Hilton, C. B., V. C., a tall man of remarkable
personal beauty, with a dark-brown beard, and large melancholy
eyes; and with a low-pitched, but singularly distinct voice. A
dangerous man for any girl to listen to, among the lengthening
summer twilight shadows, particularly after having had Lord
Hatterleigh gobbling and spluttering out insane political twaddle the whole evening.
CHAPTER VIII.
" AND how do you like Cain, my love? " said Lady Emily,
sweeping in full dressed into Sir Charles's dressing-room, just
as he was tying his cravat for dinner.
" Cain, my dear?"
" The new young man."
"Why do you call him Cain?"
"Because he must have murdered his brother, or something
as bad, to get such a good recommendation. Don't you see, you
foolish old man, that if what Sir George Herage says about him




LEIGHTON COURT.                    17
is in. any way true, he would sooner have pulled out his few remaining teeth than part with him? I hope we sha'n't have our
throats cut."
"I thought you called yourself a Christian," growled Sir
Charles.
"I was under the same impression myself," laughed Lady
Emily.
"Then why do you go on comparing an innocent young man
to Judas Iscariot?"
" I did not compare him to Judas Iscariot. I compared him
to Cain."
"' If Cain was such a splendid-looking fellow as he is, he was
a remarkable man."
" O, is he so very grand? Does he talk well?"
"He talks very little, and seems a little surly.".
"Can he ride? "
"' Don't ask me. I have nearly broken my neck looking after
him. Absolutely superb!"
"Tell me some more about him."
"What makes you so eager?"
"Never you mind; are his manners good?"
"Yes, I should say so. He is perfectly Tom Squire's master, by the by. The fellow's London assurance has completely
quelled the old man; he takes orders from his subordinate which
he could never take from me."
" Now," said Lady Emily, " comes my turn. Suppose I was to
tell you that I had found out all about him and refused to tell you."
" You know you could n't keep it to yourself. I should hear
all about it if I waited. Better tell it at once."
"I suppose I had. By the by, this young gentleman's name
will be George."
"It is so. How did you guess?"
"My love, I know all about everything.  My sister has found
it all out. You know that Sir William Poyntz had two sons,
Harry and Bob?"
" Of course."
" Did you ever hear of a third, an illegitimate one?"
"I know there was such a son. The old man's favorite.
Well?"
"This is the man."
"No! Is it, really?  That is very strange."
"Sir Harry Poyntz has been in the neighborhood and has
told my sister everything. This George has been a sadly dissipated fellow."
" That is one of Harry's lies.  The fellow's eye is as clear as
mine," intercalated Sir Charles.
B




18                  LEIGHTON COURT.
" Well, that is Sir Harry's account of the matter, - very dissipated. He, it seemed, got hold of Robert Poyntz, now in India,
and led him into all kinds of dissipation. All this brought on a
serious misunderstanding between Sir Harry and his brother,
and led to this George Hammersley being utterly ignored by Sir
Harry, and sent to live on his wits. And that is your Adonis."
" The best thing about our Adonis seems to be his good looks
and good manners, and the fact that Harry Poyntz has taken
awav his character."
" The last item is the most important," said Lady Emily. " I
never knew Harry Poyntz tell the truth yet; did you?"
" Not I. But Poyntz is coming here soon; in six months, I
believe.  He refuses to renew  Huxtable's lease. What will
Adonis do then?"
"That is distinctly his business," said Lady Emily. "We
shall see."
" I wonder why he left Leicestershire, this paragon," said Sir
Charles, just as they got to the drawing-room door.
" He admired, or was admired too much by one of the Herage
girls. Don't say a word about that, it is not fair. Laura will
take uncommon good care that he don't make love to her."
CHAPTER IX.
"AIND who is going to make love to our Laura? " said a little
voice, very like a tiny chime of silver bells, from the other end
of the room as they entered.
There sat, all alone, a little old lady with a white lace cap on
her head, and a white lace shawl over her shoulders. She wore
her own gray hair, and her complexion was nearly as delicate
now as in her youth, but slightly paler, and covered with tiny
wrinkles, only visible when one was quite close to her. A most
wonderfully beautiful old lady (how beautiful old women can
be), with a cheerful, peaceful light in her face, which made one
love her at once: and yet with a look of-complacent, self-possessed, self-conscious goodness, too, which after a time became
provoking, and which tempted outsiders and sinners to contradict her, and to broach heretical opinions for the mere sake of
aggravation.
" And who is going to make love to our Laura? " she repeated.
Lady Emily would have done a great deal sooner than have




LEIGHTON COUR'T.                  19
repeated before her mother the audacious joke she had just made
with her husband. The old lady would have been too painfully
shocked at it; she turned it off by a little fib.
" 0, you can guess whom I mean, mamma. I hate mentioning names."
"Poor Ursa MIajor is terribly smitten, I fancy," said the old
lady, smiling.  "I am fond of Ursa Major.  He comes of a
good stock. All the Hortons are good. He will make the
woman he marries very happy if she will only let him."' "Yes, he is a good match for any woman," said Lady Emily,
seizing her opportunity with admirable quickness, and speaking
in a free, off-hand way, as though it was a mere abstract question. "He has sixty thousand a year. He is very amiable and
talented, and young. That is a great point. He is not beyond
forming, and Laura would form him."
" Laura!" shouted Sir Charles.
"'My love, we are not deaf," said Lady Emily, with lofty
quietness.
These two good ladies never told Sir Charles anything important, they always broke it to him, administered it in gentle
doses, as beef-tea is given to starving persons; sometimes driving him half wild in the process. This seemed a fair occasion,
though an accidental one, of " breaking" to Sir Charles the fact
that Lord Hatterleigh was most undoubtedly smitten with Laura. They were considerably anxious, and had reason to be.
But they did not show it.
" I beg pardon," said Sir Charles, " but you gave me such a
start."
"I merely said," remarked Lady Emily, shutting her eyes,
pulling the string, and letting off the cannon, bang! "that in
case Laura married him, the excellent training she has received
from her grandmother would -"
"Laura marry him, that Guy Fawkes booby!' What monstrous rubbish is this "
"Would polish him, remove any little uncouthness, and so
on," continued Lady Emily, with steady severity.
"She's a clever girl," cried Sir Charles, " but she will never
make him anything but what he is, - an awkward lopsided gaby,
the butt of every club he belongs to.  Besides, the man is not a
marrying man. There is something wrong with him. He keeps
a doctor; and he has not had a proper education; he can't ride
or shoot. He could n't ride about with her. It would never do,
- shall never be. How could you dare to think of such a monstrous arrangement, Emily? But Laura can take care of herself, that is one comfort. There he comes himself, by all that's
awkward."




20                  LEIGHTON COURT.
Somebody was heard lumbering down stairs and objurgating
somebody else, in a voice compounded of a gobble and a growl.
Some one slipped down the last two stairs. That it was the
owner of the gorilla voice was evident from that voice exclaiming aloud, " Bless my soul, I have broke my back."
" Sweet youth," said Sir Charles, "I hope he won't cry."
Before Lord Hatterleigh'had finished a plaintive wrangle
with his valet, as to whether his slipping down stairs was his
own or the valet's' fault, two other people entered the drawingroom together, — Laura and Colonel Hilton; a most splendid
pair of people indeed; they had evidently been saying something kindly wicked about Lord Hatterleigh's accident, and
were both smiling. He was slightly behind her, and being the
tallest was bending towards her, she, saying the last word of
their little joke, was turning her beautiful head back to him, and
showing the soft curves of her splendid throat, as though Millais
were lying in wait for her. They were a wonderfully beautiful
pair of people, and the three folks in the drawing-room were
obliged to confess it.
Said Lady Southmolton to herself: "That would do, perhaps,
under other circumstances. But he has n't got any fortune, and
she don't care for him, and never will. He flatters her too grossly and too openly, and she hates being flattered; with all his personal beauty and his gallantry, she despises him. I could tell
him how to win that girl, but I won't. He has neither birth nor
money.  That young man don't understand women of her
stamp; very few soldiers do."
Said Lady Emily: "I wish that could come about;; he is
so handsome and so good. But it can't. He has got no money,
and what I can't understand is, that she don't like him. I wish
he had Hatterleigh's money, and that she would fall in love with
him." Two things which happened to be impossible.
Said Sir Charles: " Sometimes I wish the hounds were at
the devil. If it was not for them I should be beforehand with
the world, instead of getting behindhand year after year. I
wish this fellow had Hatterleigh's m6ney. But he has n't. She
is evidently in love with this fellow." (Was she, Sir Charles?
The mother and grandmother did not think so, and ladies are
generally considered judges of that sort of thing.)  "I suppose
it will end in her marrying that booby; the women seem set
on it."
That was the way with Sir Charles and with a great many
others; a furious. rebellion against the women, and then a dull,
sulky acquiescence. Stronger men than Sir Charles have been
fairly beaten by female persistency.  He gave up the battle,
however, the moment he saw that the enemy were going to show




LEIGHTON COURT.                   21
fight. He hated the very sound of Lord Hatterleigh's volce.
He had thought, half an hour ago, that the sacrifice of such a
being as Laura to such a booby as Lord Hatterleigh was a
monstrous thing; but —but Lord Hatterleigh was rich; and
if Laura, noble, honest Laura, could say she loved him, what
had he to say. It would be a great match, and so on, only there
lurked in his heart a strong half-formed desire, that Laura would
box his Lordship's ears, the first moment he ventured to speak
to her.
" Aha, my young lady," he said to himself, " I have no doubt
you would give the hair off your head to have him talk to you
in the tone he does to Laura. But you run after him too openly, my poor MIaria."
This remark arose from the entrance of the Huxtables, father
and daughter. Mr. Huxtable was a fine-looking North-countryman, and his daughter Maria a very fine specimen of a Lancashire lass, by no means unlike Laura, but coarser. Sir Charles,
who was standing close to her, had noticed the shade of vexation
which passed over her handsome face, when she saw Colonel
Hilton bending over Laura, and made the above remark,
which he supplemented by another.
" What fools soldiers are! There is Hilton dangling about
after Laura, who don't care for him, and sixty thousand pounds
ready to drop into his mouth."
The great mighty master of Tomfoolery, Levassor, blundering on to the stage with his breeches up to his ears, just as
Rachel had drooped into one of her sublimest attitudes, could
hardly have been a greater foil to her than was Lord Hatterleigh to Colonel Hilton; yet Laura left the Colonel directly,
and going to the other began kindly to laugh at him about his
tumbling down stairs.
He was extremely flattered and pleased by her kindness, and
held himself as gallantly as he could. He had made his valet
take particular pains with his toilette, but as the valet had said
to himself, it was n't the fault of the clothes, but of the man inside them. He remained silent, only smiling radiantly until it
became time to take Lady Emily in to dinner.
He sat next Laura, but his silence continued until he had finished his soup and his fish. He did nothing but smile. He had
invented something pretty in the retirement of his chamber
which he was to say to Laura, but he had forgotten it, and his
soul was consumed in spasmodic efforts to remember it. Laura
saw this to her intense amusement. At the end of the fish she
thought he had got it, for he brightened up and gave a sigh of
relief. She was wrong, he had only abandoned the effort. He
slopped out a glass of' water, looked sweetly at her, and said, -




22                   LEIGHTON COURT.
"I take it that the great duration of the Liverpool ministry
arose mainly from the absence of anything like decision or force
of character in the chief. The whole, too, was a mere coalition
as profligate as that between Fox and North. The very possibility of a coalition argues an entire absence of principle in the
coalescing parties, and of policy in the coalition itself."
CHAPTER X.
HUNTING was nearly the only irregular pursuit which Laura
had, the only one the duration of which could not be calculated.
With this single exception her life was as perfectly methodical
as her grandmother's.  The system  on which she had been
brought up consisted mainly of perfect regularity of time and
uniformity of thought. This hunting was an eccentric, incalculable comet in the regular planetary system of her mother. It
was the only exception; the rest of her life was perfectly regular, nearly as regular as a religious sister's.
A morning walk from six to seven. Religious reading in her
own room till half past; breakfast at nine. Poor people from
ten to twelve. Solid reading (but very few novels admitted into
the house) till one. Lunch. Drive out with grandma in the
afternoon. Dinner at seven. Prayers and bed at half past ten.
So much for a non-hunting day. One of the days after her
grandmother's own heart. Idleness, said her grandma, was the
source of all temptation; days spent like this could lead to no
temptation (except that of suicide, perhaps?), and therefore
would help to preserve from sin. But a hunting day was a very
different sort of thing. What must the poor old lady have
suffered on one of them, with her well-regulated mind lacerated at
every point! She had learnt to suffer and smile in far more terrible affairs than this.
- On those happy hunting days all the old rules were broken
through. Waking from some happy dream to the consciousness
of an existence still happier, Laura would find herself in her riding habit, hat in hand, in the dim gray morning, passing through
the great hall to the breakfast-room to meet her father. And O,
what divine feasts were those tete- -tete breakfasts with him, and
him alone, before the roaring logs. All her nature seemed
changed on these occasions. She felt as some old knight must
have felt, when, after being mewed up in his castle for a weary




LEIGHTON COURT.                    23
week, he found himself on the road. She had a day of adventure,
of unknown adventure, before her. On other days she was
watching the clock to see when it was time to leave off working
and begin reading. On these there was no rule, no law. Liberty, - wild, mad liberty!
Then came the ride with her father in the cold, wild morning,
up one of the more secluded lowland valleys, through ever-rising
lanes, which grew more steep until the cottages grew scarcer,
and the hedges less cared for, until there were no lanes and no
hedges, but tracks among scattered oak and holly, and the trickling trout-stream in the bottom gleaming among his alders. And
at last, after the stream had divided into three or four little channels, came opener country, and rising above the highest combe,
the gentle roll called Whinny Hill, a hundred acres of gorse, now
made brilliant by the redcoats which awaited their arrival. Then
the summit with a hundred pleasant greetings, the moor in the
distance, dark purple wreathed with silver mist.
And the coming home at night, draggled and happily tired,
and, last of all, the sweet, confused dreams of all the day's wild
adventures. What though to-morrow should be a day of dull
routine, - there were other hunting days to come!
So she had two lives, as it would seem, - the one of respectable,
not unpleasant routine, the other of glorious abandon. "In case
of overwhelming trouble," she often asked herself, "to which of
these lives should I fly for comfort, for consolation?" Surely
a nature so noble as hers was capable of fighting sorrow with the
weapons of quiet, order, and industry, with which her grandmother had so perfectly armed her, and of winning a glorious
peace, such as her grandmother had won? So she said to
herself, until she looked in the glass, and then she found it difficult to believe. Could that imperial diadem of hair ever come to
be smoothed down under a white-laced cap? Could those steadyset, hawk-like eyes ever get into them the tender hare-like look of
Lady Southmolton; and, more than all, could that somewhat
large stern mouth ever learn to set itself into the peaceful, eternal
smile which sat like some gleam of heaven on the beautiful old
woman's lips?  Mrs. Hannah More was a wise woman, but
Laura used to doubt her power of having done that, even were
she alive. "They will never make a saint of me," she used to
say to herself. " I'11 be a good. woman, but I shall never be a
saint. Papa has spoilt me. If anything does happen, I will stay
by him. He and his ways suit me, best, I fear. I shall always
have my horse, and be able to ride myself tired among these
long-drawn valleys. I wish I was better, but he has spoilt me! "




24                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XI.
LAURA had a great curiosity to see that personage who was
called by her grandmother " the new young man." She had been
detained at home by some accident on the day of his first appearance. Her father, however, had so consistently bored every one to
death that evening by his account of the run, which would have
filled three columns of "Bell," and by the manifold excellences
of his new St. Hubert, that Laura remembered that old Mrs.
Squire, the huntsman's aged mother, had not been so well. for
two or three days, and that she was very much to blame for not
having been to see her; and moreover, by the by, that there was a
new litter of puppies at the kennels, and she might as well step on
from old Mrs. Squire's and see them. It pleased her father that
she should sympathize with his favorite pursuits.  Since the
expedition of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, there
never was a more innocent, more necessary expedition, than this
of Laura that winter morning. It was plainly her duty. Of
course, if the New Young Man happened to be at the kennels,
she would be rewarded by seeing that remarkable character.
That he could n't, by the wildest possibility, be anywhere else at
that time of day never struck her - of course!
Still the Hannah-More half of her was in the ascendant to-day.
It was a non-hunting day. She felt a craving to bolster herself
up with formulas and precedents, after the manner of that
school. Old Elspie, her Scotch nurse, was a great crony of Mrs.
Squire, both being advanced Calvinists. Laura would just step
up and ask her what she thought of M31rs. Squire's state, and if it
was not necessary for her to go, why of course she would stay at
home. She was going to do one of the most simple, natural
things possible, to gratify her curiosity by looking at a new
servant.  And yet - she would be glad of a false excuse for
doing so; she would have been almost disappointed if Mrs.
Squire had been better.
She went up stairs into a room whose long-mullioned window
looked upon the distant moor; and there she found an old and,
physically speaking, very ugly old Scotchwoman, with a long
hooked nose, and gleaming gray eyes. This old woman was
dressed for walking, with an awful fantastic bonnet, and a
crutched stick like Mother Bunch's. Her father's joke struck her
forcibly, — Elspie did look very like a witch indeed!




LEIGHTON COURT.                   25
" Elspie, dear," she said, " have you heard how Mrs. Squire
is?"
"She is just deeing," was the answer, "and I'm awa to see
her. There'll be manifestations when she is caught up, I'm
thinking. Last night, while I sat with her, there came a sough
of wind round the house, which would have swelled into music, if
that ill-faured auld witch, Mother Carden, hadna been there.
I ken of her tickling a paddock wi twa barley straes, held crosswise, to change the wind. She should be burnt in bear strae
herself, the witch!  To depart from  the gude honest auld
practice of knouting aught thrums of hempen cord, with
saxteen knots apiece, and calling twal times on,- guide us
where's my sneeshin, - which mony a time I've done myself,
Gude forgie me, with the best success."
Laura laughed loudly, kissed the old woman, and said she
would go with her.
They walked slowly together through the shadows of the park,
which comprised all the promontory between the narrow estuary
of the Wysclith on the left, and the broad, dangerous sands of
the Avon on the right. Betwixt the tree-stems on either side
they could see gleams of yellow sand and sea-green water.
Where the trees broke, Poyntz Castle loomed up grandly on the
other side of the river close at hand. There was no regular
avenue, but beyond the trees which bordered the carriage-way
the Moor, the mother of waters, was visible, and seemed to gladden old Elspie's Highland eyes.
She tattled on incessantly. It was a beautiful country, she
said, to the blinded eyes of those who had never seen solitary
Rannoch and lonely, majestic Schehallion.  God had left the
people here to wax fat until they kicked, in proof of which' he
sent no snow; and twaddling on uncontradicted with her argument, no whiskey, and deil a screed of the pipes from ae year's
end to the ither. The trout were but poor things, and the blessed
salmon themselves were naething to the Scottish salmon, though,
with her wonderful honesty, she confessed that she had never seen
but one at Rannoch in her life. The Gospel in all its purity was
preached here, she allowed, but in holes and corners; and then
she gave Laura a piece of her mind about the High Church rector, and about what would happen to her (Laura) for the prominent part she was taking in the Christmas decorations of the
church. But Laura only half heard her, for she was away on
horseback over a particular line of country, over which she had
always hoped the fox would go, but over which he never did.
Then Elspie went on to say that the people here were sunk in
the grossest superstition; after which she rambled on into describing a never-failing spell of her own for doing something or an2




26                   LEIGHTON COURT.
other. " And then ye pit the thimmle half-way betwixt the twa
bannocks, and ye turn to the four airts, and ye say four times
to ilka airt, —' Hech, sirs, see to yon hoodie, she's waur I'm
thinking.'"
The last sentence was not Elspie's incantation, - it was only a
natural exclamation. If she had said, C" your twa dizzen hoodies,"
it would have been equally correct. They had arrived at Mrs.
Squire's cottage, the last house in the village, close to the tideway, and there were Royston crows enough about in every
direction.
They went in, but there was no one on the ground-floor. A
man's voice was audible up stairs, apparently talking to the sick
woman. Elspie immediately prepared for going up stairs in extreme wrath. The voice, as far as they could hear it, was the
voice of Mr. Parsons, the Tractarian rector. In Elspie's eyes,
the sin of a Romanizing Episcopalian like the Rector, daring to
trouble the death-bed of an elected Calvinist with his miserable
soulless formalisms, was a sin too horrible to be tolerated for a
moment. She charged the stairs, and Laura shoved her up right
willingly, knowing that her Highland respect for rank would prevent her insulting a guest of her father's house in his daughter's
presence.
They came silently into the room of death, for it was so. She
saw at once that it was not the Rector who was bending over the
dying woman, but a stranger. She heard him say, "Mother, your
assurance of salvation is so great, that if I were a duke I would
change with you. Think of your future, and think of the hell
which is before me. Do you think I would not change with
you?"
That was all they heard, for the next instant the stranger
turned and saw them. Before he had time to do so, Laura's
heart was melted with pity towards him; and when he did so,
she looked on the most magnificent young man she had ever seen
in her life.
There was more mischief done in the next five minutes than
was thoroughly undone in the next five years. It was very
wrong, and Mrs. Hannah More would have been very angry;
but it will happen, you. know, and it does. Poor Laura tried
hard to undo that five minutes' work, but she never entirely did,
circumstances were so fearfully against her.
A wonderfully splendid young fellow, very young, so young as
to be beardless, yet well-grown and graceful. In her memory he
lived as a perfectly beautiful young man, with large, steadfast
eyes, and a look of deep sorrow in them and the whole of his
face, which had not yet developed into despair.
As Elspie moved towards the bed, he rose and came towards




LEIGHTON COURT.                    27
them. He was singularly well-dressed, and looked the gentleman
he was every inch of him; there was no man in that part of the
country who could compare with him. Hilton was grand enough
in his way, but he wanted the keen vitality which dwelt in every
look, every action of this one. Laura had never seen any one
like him at all. She was very plainly dressed, as she generally
was when about home. They could scarcely help speaking to
one another. They both felt they were in the presence of death,
and thought but little of forms or introductions. Each was only
conscious that the other was wondrously attractive, and they
talked like two children. He began,1" Death in such a form as he takes here loses all his terrors.
The most selfish sybarite would hold out his white hands and
take him to his bosom, if he came in this form."
The young lady was the very last young lady in England to
yield to any one in a conversation of this kind. She loved it with
her whole soul. She plunged into it at once, looking frankly
into the stranger's eyes,
"The death is beautiful. Yes! of course it is. But it is
merely the corollary of the life. How could it be anything but
beautiful, after such a life: brutal ingratitude met with patient
love and forgiveness, - grinding poverty endured with saintlike
patience, — a charity which hoped all things and believed all
things, - helpful diligence towards those in affliction, and genial
sympathy for those in prosperity? Of course her death is beautiful."
"So you think that the death will be peaceful according as the
life has been good?"
" Of course I do."
"Do you believe in the converse of your proposition?  Do
you believe that no man, after a life of misused opportunities,
of anger, of frivolity which he despised, of aimless idleness which
he loathed, would not take death in his arms as his dearest friend,
just as this old woman is doing?"
"No, I do not.  Death to him would be the executioner with
the mask and axe, not the angel with the crown of glory."
"That is not a very comfortable creed for those who seek
death as a rest from misfortune and life-long trouble, which
troubles evermore, and will not cease troubling."
" No, it is not," replied Laura.  " I did not mean it to be. If
I ever met any one who was so supremely and sentimentally silly
as to say in earnest what you have been advancing as a speculation, I should have much more to say on the subject."
For she suddenly had to fall back on Mrs. Hannah SMore and
the strait-laced regularities, double-quick; for this tall youth
was dropping these sentimental platitudes out of his handsome
mouth in such a careless, graceful, melodious manner, that she
began to find that she must either get angry or cry.




28                   LEIGHTON COURT.
They passed out of the house together, and parted with a bow.
Laura was so trained to habit that she seldom departed from a
plan she had laid down. She went on towards the kennels, more
because she had started with that intention, than because she
cared to see much of the puppies. Her deeply-hidden design of
seeing the New Young  Ian was no more; she had forgotten all
about him.
The old huntsman, a little, weasened, lean old man, about sixty,
son of the woman who was dying, - a man with a keen gray eye,
which, though half hidden under his eyebrows, was always on
yours, received her. They were on the flags together in amicable
dispute about some one of the young hounds, which had been
brought out for inspection, when the stranger whom she had only
just left, and of whom she had not yet ceased thinking, came up
and said to the huntsman,
"I'11 go across to Clercombe then, and fetch that puppy home.
I shall take Xicotencatl, or he'11 be too fresh for you to-morrow.
Mind you look at that dog's foot again; do not forget it. And so
he went.
Laura had voice to ask Squire who that might be.
"The new gentleman, Miss," said the voice, which came from
under the keen, gray old eye.
"Do you mean the new whip?" she asked, in blank astonishment.
"I calls him the new master, Miss.  I give way to him at
once, and so he's took to ordering Sir Charles about now, and he
seems to like it."
"You seem  to like it too," said Laura; "you take it very
easily?"
" If gentlemen takes the place of whips, such as I must obey
their orders," said Squire. " You were n't out a Tuesday, Miss?"
" You know I was not."
"Did Sir Charles mention to you, or to her ladyship, the
fact that he would n't ride in a frock? "
"No. You mean the new whip, I suppose?"
"The new Dook I mean, of course, come out in a swallowtailed pink like a gentleman. I point it out to him very gentle.' I'm not going to ride in a frock,' he snaps.'The master himself does,' I urged.'The Devil he does!' says he;'then I
suppose I must. But I am not going to wear that beastly thing
the tailor sent home for me. I will have one built at Plymouth.
Is thereda decent tailor there?' And so he picks his horse and
goes over. And he has been snapping my nose off because the
tailor has not sent his coat in, and he is going to ride in his
swallow-tail to-morrow, and says he will apologize to Sir Charles
if he thinks about it."




LEIGHTON COURT.                    29
" Are all the Leicestershire men such dandies? " said Laura.
"It's to be hoped not, Miss," said old Squire, looking keenly at
her with his gray old eye. "Fox-hunting would be expensive if
they were."
"Does he understand his business?"
"Not he. But he thinks he do, which is much; and he is a
capital hand at giving orders, which is more. And he is cool."
"Cool over his fences, you mean?" said Laura.
"Cool with the field Imean," said Squire.  " A  Tuesday he
rode The Elk, and he went over a big thing in front of your
father, and waits for him. And Sir Charles comes up and he
funks it, for it were a awful big thing, for fegs it were! And
Mr. Hammersley goes round and opens the gate for him; and I
hearn him say,'We shouldn't have funked that ten years ago,
Sir Charles, - hey?' And your father says,' That is a regular
Leicestershire trick, to ride a man's best horse, that could carry
his ten pounds extra, and then chaff him for not taking his
fences.' But he laughed again, and he said,'No, Sir Charles, it
won't do. It's the ten years, not the ten pounds. Old Time has
handicapped us all.' And when we checked the first time, he
offered his cigar-case to Tom Downes, who asked to be introduced,
and looked mad when he found out who he was. That is what
I call coolness. But he always were the best of the lot, say what
you will."
"' Best of what lot?" asked Laura.
" Of the Leicestershire lot, Miss," replied the old fellow,
quickly. "They are a troublesome lot for the most part, Miss,
as you will find when you get to know the world as well as I do.
Too gentlemanly, for instance. But this young man, he is what
I call a model."
" Are they all gentlemen?" asked Laura.
" Not all on'em, Miss. This young man is perhaps rather
exasperating gentlemanlike. But they all have the same ways,
in some degree."
Laura went home again: knowing in the inmost recesses of
her soul, in her consciousness, that something had happened to
her, which the intelligent and the emotional part of her equally
refused.to recognize,- a something, which those two thirds of
her soul, which lay nearest to the surface, absolutely refused to
name. Her intelligence would not, as yet, tell herself, nor would
her emotions, as yet, allow her to tell anybody else, that she had
fallen in love with this young gentleman.  If her intelligence
had told this fact to herself, or if her emotions had got so far out
of the guidance of Hannah-Moreism as to allow her to tell it to
any one else, she would have been covered with shame and indignation. But she knew it perfectly well; and was most heartily




30                   LEIGHTON COURT.
frightened, as was the German student, when he left his monster
in his room, and feared to come back there for fear of meeting
it in all its monstrous horror. There are three ways of knowing
things; she had only got to the first as yet. Familiar intercourse was to give her the second, grief the third.
lMeanwhile that most unaccountable old trot, Mother Nature,
had been casting her kevels, and had arranged that these two
young people should fall in love with one another. What that
means exactly we none of us know.  But it happened here
most unmistakably.
CHAPTER XII.
LAURA passed the rest of that day in the most praiseworthy
activity.  Her poor people done, she armed herself with a Biographical Dictionary, and settled steadily down to Froude's first
volume, which had just arrived, to work at it till lunch-time.
What had passed that morning she chose to ignore utterly to herself. She once went so far as to make the admission, "I was
very nearly being silly this morning.  I was not at all myself. It was that poor woman's approaching death upset me."
Nothing more than this. She determined on an expansive course
of study of the Tudor times, got out a new manuscript book,
in the which to take notes, determined to be utterly sceptical
about Mr. Froude's conclusions, and diligently to spy out every
deficiency. She got her pens, ink, MS. book and blotting-paper
all ready, settled herself at the writing-table with the volume before her, and then sat down and began thinking about the incomprehensible impudence of this wonderful Hammersley, until she
found it would n't do, and went to work in serious, sober earnest.
Her diligence met with its reward; for after reading steadily till
lunch-time, practising until the carriage came round, making herself agreeable to Lord Hatterleigh and her grandmother during
their drive, and writing letters for her father till the dressing-bell
rang, she found that the little something which had existed in the
morning had ceased to exist, and that she was in a mood of lofty
scorn with herself, for having in the deepest, dimmest, sevenfold
depths of her soul allowed that anything of that kind had for an
instant existed.
A mood of lofty self-scorn is seen probably to better advantage
on the stage than in the drawing-room. The drawing-room, I
take it, is, to use our modern elegant language, a sphere devoted




LEIGHTON COURT.                    31
to the gentler and more elegant emotions. The proper place for
tantrums is the library, or, if you have such an apartment, the
ancestral hall, with the portraits of your forefathers scowling
gloomily down on the petty passions of their ephemeral and degenerate successors. Laura had no business to bring her scorn
into the drawing-room and frighten her grandmother, not to mention astonishing (no, he could n't be astonished, he never got so
high as that), surprising Lord Hatterleigh to that extent that
he feared there was an insufficient quantity of pepsine in his
dinner-pills.
"What have you done to-day, Miss Seckerton?" he asked
her, leaning back with his legs stretched out and folded before
him.
"; Being foolish all the morning, and trying to persuade myself
that I had been nothing of the kind all the afternoon," replied
Laura.  "Do you ever do that?"' What! make a fool of myself?"
"No; of course you do that: we all do. I mean, do you
ever try to persuade yourself that you have n't? "
This being considerable nonsense sounded obscure and difficult, and Lord Hatterleigh brought his mind to bear upon it.
He refolded his legs slowly, putting the one lately underneath
uppermost, folded his hands on the pit of. his stomach, and said,
to begin, —
" Say that again, will you, Miss Seckerton?"
"It was hardly worth saying the first time," she answered; " I
certainly can't say it twice over."
This was very disconcerting, and he sat perfectly silent for a
time, and then made another attempt to talk. But she would
not talk to him to-day.  She was not in the humor to tolerate
his weary platitudes, and she let him see it. She was unkind to
him for the first time in her life. She disturbed him so much by
her brusquerie and petulance that he felt it necessary to go for a
jog-trot ride on one of his three hobby-horses to forget it. The
medical horse was unavailable in the present company; he had
been riding his political horse all day, to Sir Charles's intense
exasperation. So he mounted the genealogical palfrey, and went
out for a ride with old Lady Southmolton.  He put her gently
in her saddle when he gave her his arm in to dinner, and with
the exception of a blundering gallop on his political cob, when
the men were left over their wine, rambled with her through
green lanes of pedigrees until bedtime; and even over his wineand-water at eleven, after she had gone to bed, seemed strongly
inclined to penetrate as far as her venerated bedroom, and correct her for some blunder which he averred she had made, were
it only through the keyhole.




32                   LEIGHTON COURT.
" Who was that, Lady Mary Saunders, we saw to-day? " he
began, as he was taking her in: " the little yellow woman with
the wig, at the red-brick house with the beehives on the lawn, -
a very well-bred woman indeed, husband a Tory?"
" She was a Spettigue."
"Which Spettigues, the Cromer or the Scilly Spettigues?"
"Neither. She belongs to the half-way house; she is the third
daughter of Lord Mapledurham."
" O, a Spettigoo" (so he pronounced it). "They have dropped
the e, my dear Lady Southmolton, in the present generation.
Was n't there something about one of her brothers? I seem to
fancy that there was."
"Nothing very much; Charles lives away from his wife."
"Aha! " said Lord Hatterleigh, "and how was that?"
"I hardly know. There were two sides to the story.  She
has got her party and he has got his. Some say that he treated
her very badly, and some say she gave him good cause. Sir
Harry Poyntz was furious at having his name mixed up in it."
" O, he was in it, was he?"
"He says he was not."
" All the more -   Do you know Sir Harry Poyntz, my dear
Lady Southmolton?"
"I have known him and his from a boy."
"What do you think of him?"
"I try to think the best of him."
"I should not like to have his character," said Lord Hatterleigh. " They say he is profligate beyond precedent, false beyond
contempt, and avaricious beyond - beyond thingamy i "
" It is i'ather hard to accuse him of avarice, I think," said the
kind old lady. " He has succeeded in clearing the estate which
was dipped so shamefully by his father."
"No, really; I thought it would have taken years more to db it."
"So did every one else. But see, he has done it. He has refused to renew Mr. Huxtable's lease of the Castle, and is to. be
our next-door neighbor after the end of this year."
"Then will people call on him?"
" I should suppose, of course, they will," said Lady Southmolton. "He has done nothing which would give them any excuse
for such an extreme measure as not doing so."
"Why, no. But I could like a man more, far more, who had
made one grand fiasco. For instance, Colonel Ikey has made
a mess of it, - an awful mess, —and he don't show. But I tell
you honestly, I would sooner be Ikey behind his cloud than I
would keep my name on my club-books with Sir Harry Poyntz's
reputation.  He will never step over the line; but, if he ever
did, no man would be found to say,' Poor Harry Poyntz!'




LEIGHTON COURT.                   33
"I want to make the best of him," said Lady Southmolton.
" You always want to make the best of everybody; you Hortons always do, you know. You can't help it; goodness is in
your blood; you have given yourselves to peacemaking for these
two centuries.  But all the HIortons since the Conquest won't
whitewash this fellow.  He is too utterly ill-conditioned. He
has a brother, has he not?"
"Yes; just gone to India."
"By the same mother?"
"0, yes. Robert Poyntz; I remember him as a pretty, bright
boy, - a very nice boy."
"There is another brother, I heard of the other day only, -
a Falconbridge, - a splendid fellow by all descriptions; have
you ever heard of him?"
"I have heard of such a person, but I never, never heard of
his splendor. I have always understood him to be a sad mauvais
siget. A very disreputable person, is he not? "
"No. I have heard no harm of him worse than that he was
riding steeple-chases, or acting as huntsman or something in Leicestershire, last year. He seemed to be a somewhat remarkable
fellow, —a youth who seemed to play Count Saxe to old Sir
George Poyntz's August der Starke. What do you know about
Robert Poyntz, the brother?"
" I am afraid but very little good," said Lady Southmolton.
"I fear he is' very dissipated. Why?"
" Because he will soon be in possession. Sir Harry Poyntz is
a doomed man; he has ruined his constitution by profligacy, and
has had one or more attacks of angina pectoris. You will have
this Robert Poyntz at the Castle in a couple of years, mark my
words!"
So Lord Hatterleigh and Lady Southmolton. Let us see
what they were talking about *at the other end of the table.
Laura was sitting next to Lord Hatterleigh; but he did not
speak to her, for she had frightened him. He calmed himself by
talking to that well-conducted old Lady Southmolton. As I said
before, he did not feel equal to Laura for the rest of the evening.
She was very much pleased at not having to amuse him, and
most willingly left him to talk with her grandmother. But we
shall have to follow the conversation at what may properly be
called the noisy end of the table, as distinguished from the quiet
end, where Lord Hatterleigh mumbled and spluttered as above
to Lady Southmolton. Lady Emily tried; not to yawn, and Sir
Peckwich Dow-nes, who, from his figure, seemed to have three
stomachs, ruminated over his dinner, listening to Lord Hatterleigh, and confined his observations to saying, in a deep voice,
" Sherry!" whenever the butler offered him champagne, or any
2*                               c




34                  LEIGHTON COURT.
frivolous drinks of that kind. We will take up the conversation
at the noisy end.
TEE VICAR. "I deny your position, Colonel H-ilton. The
great Bithynian Council was merely assembled for the purpose
of condemning Arianism. That was its specialite. I deny that
I am bound by it further than that. As regards sumptuary laws
for the priesthood, it did absolutely nothing. It left them to be
developed by the Western Church- "
COLONEL HILTON. "The Papists."
THE VIcAR.  "The Western Church, sir.  Thus our chasuble is developed from the blanket of the shepherd of the Campagna, our dalmatic from -"
SIR GEORGE.   " But where are you to stop in your development?  We fox-hunters, about the middle of the last century,
developed our vestments into breeches and top-boots, and there
we have stuck for a hundred years. But lately a number of
young fellows have shown signs of moving forward again, and
have appeared in gray cords and butchers' boots. One of your
boys, Huxtable, rode last week in knickerbockers, and went
very well forward indeed. I was very much offended; I could
not bear the sight of it. But if you allow that Pu-, I mean
that Church vestments, were developed out of something which
went before, I cannot see at what point you are to stop that development, any more than I can stop breeches and top-boots from
developing into knickerbockers and gaiters."
THE VICAR. "The development should stop, sir, the instant that the original idea of the vestment is lost."
LAURA. "I agree with the Vicar.  Let us use these Church
vestments as long as any idea worth preserving is preserved by
them. I believe in symbols. If you are to wear anything at
all, let it mean something. A gown and surplice mean nothing
at all. Now, Mr. Spurgeon, when he goes into the pulpit with a
blue necktie and a white hat, does mean something, - a something I don't like; but, at all events, he means something, however offensive it may be to me."
COLONEL HILTON. " I am converted. Miss Seckerton has
put it so well. I see that we must either have Bryan King, with
his albs and his dalmatiques, or we must have Spurgeon, with
his white bowler hat and blue tie."
LAURA. "You are very easily converted, Colonel Hilton."
COLONEL HILTON. " Very easily indeed - by you."
LAURA. " Thank you.  That means that you are never in
earnest about anything."
COLONEL HILTON (in his softest voice).  "Only very much
in earnest about one thing."
LAURA (looking at him with strong disfavor). "And what
may that be, for instance?"




LEIGHTON COURT.                   385
The Colonel, reduced to silence for a moment, and feeling that
he had somehow done just what he did not want to do, said,
" Is it really true, Mr. Huxtable, that we are to lose you, and that
Sir Harry Poyntz is coming to the Castle?"
Mr. Huxtable, a jolly Yorkshire giant, said: "Indeed it is.
lie will neither sell nor give me another lease. And I have
offered him a fancy price, too. It is a sad pity for the Conservative interest. If I had lived in that dear, inconvenient old Castle
a few years more, I should have turned a Tory. Lord bless
you! No one could stand the atmosphere of the dear old place.
Lock John Bright up a year or two in a Norman keep, with a
deer-park, and you would find him walking arm in arm with
)israeli into the Carlton.
THE VICAR. "The atmosphere of-"
MR. HUXTABLE.  "That is just what I mean.  As the
atmosphere of IMagdalen turned you Tractarian, so the atmosphere of the dear old place would turn rne Tory. I shall go back
to Bradford, build a red-brick house, and go in for a six-pound
suffrage to begin with, - only begin with, understand. And I
shall also turn dissenter.  Ha! ha!
THE VICAR. " My good sir --
IMR. HUXTABLE. "I know all about that, Vicar. It's all a
matter of atmosphere, you know. Hey?  e E'avror o-royaxov -
hey?  But seriously, it does make a man talk radically and
wildly, to find himself turned out of such glorious quarters as
these to make room for a profligate usurer."
THE VICAR.  " I can quite conceive it. I wish to heaven
that Sir Harry would sell to you. Since you have been here
you have done nothing but good. You have strengthened my
hands at every point, although you have often disagreed with
me. And now you are to make room for a profligate atheistic
usurer."
SIR CHARLES. "My dear Vicar!"
The Vicar onlv looked at Sir Charles, and Sir Charles held
his tongue and carved the venison.
COLONEL HILTON. "I am afraid that Mr. Huxtable has been
pauperizing the laborers hereabouts with his liberality. They
have got to depend on him as a deus ex Mtchinad. Nothing can
be more demoralizing than that. You are a capital political economist, Miss Seckerton, you will agree with me."
LAURA.  "I don't see how  Ir. Huxtable, with all his ingenuity, can have succeeded in pauperizing men with eleven shillings
a week, three to five children, two shillings a week off for rent, a
pound a year to the doctor, which brings them down to little over
eight shillings, out of which they have to find boots, clothes,
and firing."




36                   LEIGHTON COURT.
COLONEL HILTON (somewhat nettled at having put his foot in
it again). "It's a case of supply and demand, I suppose."
LAURA.  "So I suppose.  It is a positive fact that the
agricultural population could not get on at all without artificial
assistance from the gentry; and I suppose we don't help them
from Christian good-will, but only to prevent the ricks from
catching fire. Is that what you mean?"
Laura was behaving very badly. Her father was pained and
astonished. What she said might be true, but she had no business
to speak in that way. What right had she to talk about rickburning? No lady ever did.
Kind Mr. Huxtable saw all this, and came to the rescue with
the best intentions, - with one of those intentions with which a
silly, lying old proverb says that " hell is paved."  He made, on
the whole, a rather worse mess of it; but his meaning was good,
and by no means the sort of thing with which to pave hell. He
tried to " change the conversation," a thing I have never yet
seen done with the slightest success. If the conversation gets
awkward, diligently try to lead it into a new channel, but don't
change it, and leave the whole of the company in a nervous, disconcerted frame of mind, each wondering whether or not he or
she has said the Dreadful Thing which made such a terrible
remedy necessary.
"That is a splendid young fellow,- that new whip of yours,
- Sir Charles, if I may take the liberty of calling him so."
Sir Charles agreed that he was.
"Thrown away here, though," continued Huxtable. " Goes
too straight for this country; won't learn to potter. He will go
at something half a size too big for him some day, and come to
grief. I saw him go at some terrible things the day before yesterday."
"I wonder if I could enlist him," said Colonel Hilton. "He
would make a capital dragoon."
".He is a cut above that sort of thing, I fancy," said Laura,
who seemed determined to behave worse as the evening got
later.
Colonel Hilton was getting angry with her. She had given
him the dor two or three times without the slightest offence on
his part, and he was not going to stand it.
"Do you think, then, that a whip to hounds holds a higher
position than that of the light cavalry who were at Balaclava? "
" I say nothing about them," said Laura. " But you must acknowledge, as a general rule, that the army is recruited from the
lowest class in the community, and that you never get a man to
enlist if he can do anything else with himself."
"That is hardly to the point. I deny it; but that has nothing




LEIGHTON COURT.                     37
to do with the argument. What I asked was, Do not you think that
the position of a trooper, who may have the Victoria Cross, which
I wear myself, pinned on to his coat by the most august person in
the world, is superior to a menial servant, dressed in a private
livery, who feeds the hounds, and drowns the blind puppies? "
" It depends very much on the way you take it," said Laura,
who had nothing whatever to say, and so said that.
"I don't think it does," said Colonel Hilton.  "To bring the
matter to practice. I sit at mess with a man whose father,
till last year, was working as a journeyman blacksmith on Finsbury Pavement. He was sergeant-major in the 14th Hussars,
and got his commission for service: and as it is best for a man
who rises from the ranks to change his regiment, he came to us.
We received him  with open arms. That man is a trusted
companion of mine, one of the best officers I have. I can make
a friend of that man, but I don't think I could stand a menial
servant, - a mere minister to luxury, a kennel boy. If there are
to be any rules about that sort of thing, I am right. If not, I am
wrong."
These sentiments were far too near the creed of most present
to be contradicted. A short silence ensued, which was more
flattering than applause, during which Laura was thinking.
"So you have got a temper, and won't always stand contradiction, eh, Colonel Hilton?  Well, I like you the better for it."
It was broken by Sir Peckwich Downes from the end of the table, who, as he had finished his venison, and had as much sherry
as he wanted, got tired of thinking what a queer lop-sided young
gaby, Lord Hatterleigh was, and felt conversational.  He put a
knife up his sleeve, and said, -
"This winter venison of yours is too fat. Winter venison
always is. But it is not bad-flavored. Give me the old rule: a
buck a week till September; neck o' Tuesday week, haunch
o' Thursday week. There is the same difference between a
Paris chicken and a nice young spring Dorking, in my estimation.* Your fawn, again, is new-fashioned and hasty."
Sir Charles thought that the conversation was changed, and
that there were better times before him. He tried to catch
Sir Peckwich's eye, and bring him into the talk. But his eye
had a long way to travel, and before it got to Sir Peckwich,
it was arrested by a stony stare from the Vicar.
"I suppose," said the Vicar to the unhappy baronet, in a
severe clerical voice, "that when Sir Harry Poyntz comes to
the Castle, you will find it necessary to dismiss your new master
of the buckhounds."
* The worthy baronet is possibly obscure to some of our readers, but in these
days we cannot edit him.




38                   LEIGHTON COURT.
That finished him. When the ladies were gone, he sat down
over his wine, saying to himself, -
"Confound these moles of parsons!  How  the deuse did
he find that out?  And how, in the name of all confusion, did he
know that I knew it?"
But he was not to be beat by fifty vicars, when he was in
an obstinate mood. In spite of the Vicar's deprecation, he
insisted on seeing him through the darkest part of the park,
and as he left him said, —
"What did you mean, Vicar, by saying that I must discharge
my man when Sir Harry Poyntz came?"
"You know as well as I do," said the Vicar.
"Do you think," asked Sir Charles, " that Harry Poyntz
knows the relation in which this young man stands to him?"
" As well as you or I do," said the Vicar.  " Henry is, as you
know, my relation. I got the living from his father, and am
in constant communication with himself. He knows who this
young man is as well as I do."
I am afraid it won't do to keep him  here, then," said Sir
Charles.
" It won't do for one instant," said the Vicar. " It is not to be
thought of for a moment."
" I suppose not," said Sir Charles, stroking his chin. "Well,
I am very sorry, for he is a charming gentleman, and I should
have liked such a son."
" You have n't seen much of him yet, have you? " said the
Vicar.
"Why no," said Sir Charles.
"Ahb" said the Vicar, "so I thought."
"Is he a very bad fellow, then?" asked Sir Charles.
"There is a natural depravity in our human nature," began
the Vicar, very slowly.
" I did n't mean that sort of thing," replied Sir Charles, quickly.
"I know you did n't," said the Vicar, looking steadily at him.
"I know what you mean, and I answer that the human heart
is naturally depraved. You are depraved, you know. As for
me, I am a most graceless sinner."
" Well, well!" said Sir Charles, impatiently. "Is this young
gentleman so extra depraved that I must send him about his
business? "
"You want an excuse," said the Vicar.
"I don't want any excuse," said Sir Charles. "Is he any
worse than you or I, then?"
"Not much, but it won't do to have him here after Harry,
Poyntz comes."
"Does he know who he is?"




LEIGHTON COURT.                   39
" Perfectly."'" Does he know that you know who he is?"
"Not in the least," said the Vicar. " Pack him off about his
business. Do you know the dew is very heavy?  Good night."
CHAPTER XIII.
IT is one thing to go to bed with your brain active from conversation and company, brimful of to-morrow's plans; and quite
another to find, after you are in bed, that this tiresome brain
of yours will go on grinding, utterly refusing to stop, like Mrs.
Crowe's mechanical church-organ, and declines to sink into sleep;
nay, sooner than do that, will go on playing foolish old psalmtunes against your pillow, until you don't know whether the
weary measure comes from your head or from the pillow.
Under these circumstances, as hour after hour of the weary night
goes on, the plans of the morning become hateful; every past sin,
every past omission, every future contingency of evil becomes
prominent and immediate. Life seems a weary mistake, and that
darkest midnight thought of all, that death must and will come
sooner or later, is apt to sit and brood upon your pillow.
Laura did not feel all this. It was to come to her. But she
had what her mother or her grandmother would have called " a
wretched night."  There was a little dumb, dull imp abroad this
night, which was not to be named, whose existence was not to
be allowed under penalties too horrible for contemplation, -a
fiend unnamed, unrecognized, yet horribly real. For as she lay
awake, with all the phantasmagoria of an excited brain passing
before her so distinctly that some of the most vivid images were
actually reflected on her retina, this little imp contrived at every
opportunity, at every pause in the procession of incongruous images, to hold up the face of one man before her, and grin from
behind it, - the face of the man whom she wished she had never
seen, whom she hated, and wished dead.
Why should she hate him and wish him dead?  Because she
knew she was going to fall in love with him, and did not yet
actually realize that she had. And she had teased Colonel Hilton until, quite unconsciously on his part and on hers, he had
given her three or four deep stabs in the heart. He had spoken
so dreadfully of this man.
At last these brain phantasmagoria grew so exceeding incongruous that she began to hope she was asleep, but only found




40                   LEIGHTON COURT.
that she was not by watching the dull silvered light of the moon
upon her window-blinds. At last it camne like a dim gray cloud.
The last feeling of outward sensation was a happy weariness
upon her eyelids, which drooped and drooped till they opened no
more. Then the images were as incongruous as ever, but their
incongruity was no longer felt. She had passed into the land
where incongruity becomes logical, nay, commonplace.  There
was the form of a beautiful woman lying in a bed, with no outward signs of vitality except a gentle heaving at the breast; buat
where that woman was for the next two hours I don't know, and
none of the authors I have consulted seem able to tell me.
-" Easier to prove the existence of spirit than to prove the existence of matter? "  I should rather think it was!
The appearance of a very commonplace maid, very sleepy,
and in reality very cross, although making a praiseworthy effort
to look good-humored, with a candle and a jug of warm water
at seven o'clock on a cold November morning, acts as a foil for
this sort of thing. I deny the charge of bathos, or of an ad
cacptandum contrast. If life had not perpetually these commonplace turns, we should wander sentimentally through this life
with Shelley, Byron, and Heine, behowing the state of a world
which we have never raised a finger to mend. Thank Heaven!
we have got out of that sort of thing now. From the " Saturday Review" down to the "'Tiser," every man has got his
shoulder honestly to the wheel. Where they are going to shove
us to is a question which has all the pleasures of profound uncertainty.
If' ever there was a young lady in an unsentimental - not to
say cross - frame of mind, it was Laura on that November
morning. If ever there was a young lady who wondered why
on earth that idiot of a girl could n't have had the tact to oversleep herself, or to say that she (Laura) was ill, it was Laura.
If ever there was a young lady who thought that fox-hunting
could only yield to the national game of cricket, as a gigantic
and intolerable humbug, it was Laura.
It was only duty, or the habit of duty, which made her get up
at all. Her father would miss her,
"And still her sire the wine would chide,
If it was not filled by Rosabel."
It is a good thing to get up early of a morning for the sake
of other folks. The kindest and least cynical of men said that
getting up early made you conceited all the morning, and sleepy
all the afternoon; but that is scarcely fair.  She found her reward quickly. The dark, nonsensical waking dreams of the
night were gone, and her temper had come back. While her
maid was doing her hair, she was so far herself as to ask,
"What sort of morning is it, Eliza? "




LEIGHTON COURT.                   41
"A bittiful scenting morning, Miss. You've only got to put
your nose out of doors to see it," said Susan, who was the huntsman's daughter. " They meets to Winkworthy, don't'em, Miss? "
" Yes; and I suppose we shall go straight for the moors and
get home about midnight. I don't feel up to a long run. I wish
we met nearer home."
Her father was helping himself to tongue at the sideboard
when she got into the breakfast-room. " My darling," he said,
"I don't'want to startle you, but I forgot to speak to you
last night. I want you to ride' The Elk' to-day. Are you
afraid? "
"Not I," laughed Laura; " but why? Has he ever carried a
lady?"
" He has carried a lady. Colonel Seymour warranted him to
do so, and Hammersley has been riding him with a cloth, and
pronounced him perfect. The reason I want you to ride him is
that, as Hammersley pointed out, Witchcraft is not up to your
weight in those heavy upland clays. I think he is right."
"That settles the matter," said Laura.  "If our new lord and
master has issued his orders that I am to ride' The Elk,' I submit, of course.  Have you made any arrangements for getting
me on to the top of him?"
"Yes," said Sir Charles; " Lord Hatterleigh is going to
hoist you on from the top of a pair of steps."
"And if I get thrown? "
"If you get thrown, you must drive him against an eightfoot stone wall, and get up on to him from that in the best way
you can.9"
And so they laughed away over their breakfast, and were
happy, and Laura's long night was as though it had never been.
This horse, "The Elk," was a character in his way, and in
consequence of what happened afterwards, is still remembered
well in the family. His height was eighteen hands and a trifle,
his color very light chestnut, his temper that of a Palmerston;
not a very handsome horse, — no concentration of vast speed,
beauty, and mad vitality, like "Lord Cliefden"; a horse with
the forehand of "Fisherman," with Barclay and Perkins's
quarters, and the gaskins of " Umpire"; a great deal more
like William Pocock than like Robert Coombes,- a great deal
more like Thomas King than Thomas Sayers; a vast sweettempered horse, whose speed and staying qualities were like the
military excellence of the British and American armies, requiring time to show them, but when once shown, amazing; an
elephantine, clumsy, Teutonic sort of beast, with his shoulders
sloped back to his girth, and his ribs back to his flank; nothing
Norman about him at all, except a beautiful, thin arched neck,




42                   LEIGHTON COURT.
and a little nervous head, out of which, however, gleamed a
large, speculative, kindly, and most thoroughly Teutonic eye.
Sir Charles refused five hundred guineas for him. His early
history is extremely obscure, merely, I think, legendary. If he
was ever in the service of Messrs. Chaplin and Horne, how
did he get to Dublin? —though it is equally certain that he
was never bred, and most certainly never broken, in Ireland.
Even his temper would never have stood an Irish breaking.
After what I have said, it will be evident that " The Elk's"
pedigree was still more obscure than "The Elk's " education.
He first made his appearance in civilized society at Plymouth.
Hiaskerton, of Bear Down, who stood six feet two in his stockings, and weighed nineteen stone, married a Scotch lady, who was
six feet in her stockings, and weighed, say, twelve. They had
a big baby, height and weight unknown, purchased a six-foot
groom out of a dragoon regiment, a pair of eighteen-hand horses,
of which " The Elk" was one, and had the biggest phaeton
built that old Long Acre had ever turned out; and with this
elephantine equipage used to charge up and down the roads in
the neighborhood of Plymouth, to the terror of -the peaceable
inhabitants.
"Talk to me about the decadence of Englishmen!" said
Sir Peckwich Downes to Lady Southmolton, on one occasion.
"Why, if Haskerton, with those horses, that wife, that phaeton,
that groom, and that baby, were to charge full-speed against the
whole French army, they would fly like sheep! "
Lady Southmolton was obliged to allow that such a thing
was very probable. She herself was possessed of the hereditary
courage of an Englishwoman; yet whenever she, in her ponycarriage, met this terrific engine of war, guided by Haskerton
of Bear Down, in a narrow lane, she always (to use yachting
slang) put her helm down, took a strong pull on the starboard
rein, got into the ditch, and remained there, bowing like a Limoges china figure, until the terrible Squire, baby and all, had
raged on past her like a cyclone.
Sir Charles had looked " The Elk " over; had offered Haskerton another horse of the same size, and ten pounds. Haskerton
did n't see his way to the ten pounds, - rather thought the ten
pounds should go the other way; thought Sir. Charles wrong
about the horse; but still Sir Charles said he was never wrong
about a horse, and so the horse was sent home.
And now Laura found herself mounted on his vast carcass,
declaring she should roll off, and making the dull misty morning
beautiful with her ringing laughter.
It was a very dull morning, with a slow-sucking wind from
the southward. There was no fog on the lower country, but




LEIGHTON COURT.                    43
after they had risen about 100 feet the trees began to drop,
and they were enveloped in the mist. Sometimes it would
lift and brighten, and rise to higher elevations as the day went
on; but it was a dull, melancholy day to all non-foxhunting
mortals, but a bright one enough to Laura and her father.
They had one another; all the world was behind them, and a
day's sweet enjoyment before.
As they shogged on comfortably together, they came round the
turn of a lane, and lo! a gleam of white and a forest of waving
tails; in another moment the hounds had seen their master, had
rushed forward to meet him, and were crowding joyously around.
A pleasant sight always, as I remember it, was the meeting of
hounds and master in the fresh morning.
The approach to Winkworthy was through ground which was
not yet reclaimed from its original state, although rich and cultivable; heavy yellow clay, with forest of oak and holly; and
passing along through the dim aisles of it, they came at last
on the breezy hill of Winkworthy, and a few faithful ones who
faced the dark morning and the distant meet.
Sir Charles was the tallest man there; his very lean, spare
figure and his broad shoulders looked very well on horseback,
not to mention his leg, which he and others thought to be the
finest leg in Devonshire, and which was certainly as well dressed
a leg as any in that county or any other; - altogether a most
gallant-looking gentleman, as straight as a dart.
Dickson, the attorney from Totridge, who had ridden up and
looked keenly at him, was speaking to him when the hounds
were put in; but Laura called him away, and they took their
places, with three or four other hard-goers, at the upper corner
of the little patch of gorse. The rest of the field were not in
order, -were talking, smoking, and so on; but our friends knew
what they were about. The hounds were no sooner in than
they were out again on the other side, with a long-legged mountain fox before them, and going fifteen miles an hour straight for
the moor.
As soon as Laura got used to the elephantine stride of "The
Elk," she found that she was away from the others, with only
her father and the huntsman alongside of her, and Hammersley,
who had kept out of her sight till now, sailing gallantly on in
firont, showing them the way. He could ride, there was no doubt
of that; and a man master of his horse, going hard, is one of
the most beautiful sights in the world. Hammersley knew that
as well as you or I.
Laura went storming along, enjoying herself thoroughly.
They were rapidly approaching the moor, when, after leaping
some not very difficult timber, she missed her father. He had




44                   LEIGHTON COURT.
come to grief, and was chasing his horse into a corner of the
stone wall, so there was nothing much the matter with him.
An'd Laura went on, the more particularly as it was doubtful
whether she could have pulled Elk with any great success. She
had just begun to realize that she was away alone with Hammersley, when they were up and out on the moor, and into a
dense mist; and he had drawn back and was riding nearer to
her, as was absolutely necessary.
How far they went she did not know then. The ground was
tolerably smooth, — heather with very little rock, — and they
went fast, just keeping sight of the hounds. They were going
along a ridge, for Laura saw, first on one side and then on the
other, a precipitous slope below her, with hanging cliffs festooned
by the mist, - saw and did not like it.
At last, suddenly, Hammersley held up his hand and shouted
to her to stop. She pulled up in time, but he, watching her, was
too late. They had come suddenly on a loose broken slope of
weather-worn granite boulders among the heather, and he had
ridden on to it before he could pull up. There was a fierce
struggling clatter for half a minute, and then horse and man
came crashing down together am'ong the cruel, pitiless rocks.
He was thrown clear of his'horse, and fell partly behind a
small rock, so that she could only see his leg. At first the knee
was raised, but after a moment it fell over on its side and remained still. She began to get frightened. " Are you hurt?"
she cried out; but there was no answer, he lay quite still.
Around in the mist she could only hear the faint cry of the running hounds getting fainter each moment, and the trickling of
some hidden runnel beneath the stones hard by. She cried for
help, - there was but little chance of that.  Her voice only
echoed among the rocks for an instant, - after that silence again,
and she began to feel that she was alone with Death.!
Dead or alive, she must go to him; the higher law told her
that. She had never seen death yet, but she must look on him
for the first time, now, here, in the darkened face of that man, —
of that man of all others! She slipped from her horse, and
scrambled towards him.
Was this death, this loose attitude of all the limbs, this quiet
resting of the cheek upon the arm? If so it was hardly terrible,
nay, somewhat beautiful! But it was not death; for the head
shifted, the soul came back, and a sharp cry told that pain had
returned with consciousness.
Laura's face flushed up with sheer, honest joy. She would
have felt the same glad bound at her heart, had he who was lying before her been the merest old lazar which lay by the roadside. Our hatred of death is so ingrained into, our nature, as the




LEIGHTON COURT.                    45
greatest and most terrible of evils, that we rejoice beyond measure when his threatened darkness passes away from the most
worthless face, and leaves the light of life flickering there again,
however foul and worthless that light may be. Poor Laura did
not know as yet how precious this life was to get to her! It
was only in the reaction of her terror that she rejoiced now,
and went innocently to his assistance. She was strong, and she
raised him into an easier position. She was knowing, to a certain extent, in the way of nursing, and she unloosed his neck.
She was curious, and she wondered what was this thick gold
chain about his neck, and whether it was his sweetheart's portrait which hung so heavy from it down on his breast; and she
was an artist, and she saw that he was very, very handsome.
She raised her voice once more, and cried " Help I " three times,
and the circumambient mist and the rocky hollows around reechoed " Help!"  Poor child, she wanted it as much as he did;
God help her!
It was not long before " The Elk," who had been elephantinely grazing, raised his head and whinnied. He had heard, quicker than could she, swift horses' feet brushing through the heather.
When she caught the sound she cried, " Pull up, we have had an
accident. Father! is that you?"  She heard the approaching
horse pass into a walk, and then out of the mist came, not her
father, but Tom Squire the old huntsman.
He saw what had happened directly.  He jumped from his
horse and came towards them, with his little bright terrier eyes
sparkling from one to the other. "Is he dead? " he said first,
and then he took off his cap.  "Go and get it full of water,
Miss. Your father is close behind.  Quick! "
She went, and as she came back she heard her father pricking
on towards them, and called on him to draw rein. What did she
see? The old huntsman bending down over the hurt man, moving his hair from his eyes, and using such endearments towards
him as a father uses towards a favorite son; and the wounded
man smiling back into his face with a patronizing, kindly confidence, which puzzled her exceedingly.
Her father came up, and they took stock of the disaster. The
man was only stunned, and his collar-bone put out, and lie could
ride home with assistance.  Colonel Hilton and Sir Charles's
second horseman came next. Colonel Hilton cleverly tied him
up in pocket-handkerchiefs, and he was sent home on the second
horse with the little groom. Others came up then, and it was
determined to hunt the hounds, who must be a few miles off by
this time, and make a day of it.
So they did. A glorious day they had! Laura rejected
with scorn the idea of going home, was hoisted on " The Elk"




46                   LEIGHTON COURT.
by Colonel Hilton, and went on. But all that concerns us in that
day is this.
Sir Charles and the huntsman rode first, Laura and the
Colonel behind. The Colonel was in one of his complimentary
humors again, for his theory was that, although women kicked
against that sort of thing, they must like it, and that it told
in the long run.  So he and Laura (who never could bear him
when he did not contradict her) had (if you will let me say so)
fallen together by the ears - I mean quarrelled - to that extent
that Laura, after a biting sarcasm, not handed down to us in the
family archives, and therefore suppliable by the reader's imagination, had, with her riding-whip, banged and thwacked'"The
Elk" into a canter, and pushed on to join her father and the
huntsman, leaving Colonel Hilton to fall back on the society of
a talkative horse-doctor, with a grievance against Lieutenant
James.
As she came up she heard her father and the huntsman talking
together.
"Then you knew him-land liked him in his youth?"
"Yes, Sir Charles. The best of the bunch, Sir, - the best of
the bunch!"
" He has not been treated fairly, say what you will," replied
Sir Charles. " Is there no hope for mercy for him? "
"There is no mercy there, Sir Charles," said the little old
man, looking up at him. "Let those who have to ask mercy
remember that."
Her father, she saw, turned sharply on the old man as he
said this, but he turned away again, and rode on as stiff and
as grand as ever.
"His is a sad story," she heard him say.
" A very, very sad story, Sir! - sadder than you dream of,"
said the huntsman. And when she came up to them they began
talking of where the hounds might be.




LEIGHTON COURT.                    47
CHAPTERI' XIV.
THE only woman of her own age whom Laura called friend
was Maria Huxtable, the tenant of the Castle's daughter; a
tall, beautiful, though somewhat loud, daughter of Lancashire;
as handsome in person as Laura, as like her as she could
manage to be in manners, by unassisted, unguided imitation,
and a still more successful replicat of Laura in her dress,
in which particular a reproduction of ideas is more mechanical,
and therefore more easy. The only particular difference between them seemed at first sight to be, that Laura had that
trained, far-gazing look of eye, the "not speak till you're
spoken to" look, which is mainly got by education from a
woman of the world, or by unconscious imitation of such;
and MarIia Huxtable had not. Laura seldom looked at you,
except so far as was necessary to fix your image on her
retina for the purpose of recognition, until you spoke to her;
then she could look straight enough at you.  Maria Huxtable used actually to lorgner you, and, what is more, every
one else, to that excruciating degree that you were forced
to speak to her. At a lawn-party there would be half a dozen
young country gentlemen round Maria Huxtable, leaning on
their mallets, and neglecting their game, only on account of
those eyes; while Laura, in solitary, imperial state, would be
standing alone, waiting until it should please them to go on.
Noticeable to Maria the good-natured was this: that the moment a field-officer, or naval man of any mark, or dandy lawyer
on circuit, or any man who, as those benighted savages down
there would say, had "been in London," appeared, they made
up to Laura immediately, and got amazingly intimate with her.
On the other hand, Maria was very much amused by noticing
that six young Oxford Christchurch men, down in these parts on
a reading-party, used at these croquet rabbles to sneak past Laura with all the grace and self-possession which young Englishmen usually display on similar occasions. The two were tenderly devoted to one another, and their affection was of the most
ostentatious kind, far surpassing any demonstrations ever made
towards such unimportant people as lovers.  Previous to any
temporary separation they used to spend every precious hour
with one another; during it they corresponded constantly, and
were frantically, feverishly eager to rejoin one another at the first
possible moment.  Now a permanent separation was coming on,
they spent most of their time together.




48                   LEIGHTON COURT.
"I will come across to the Castle to-morrow, dearest Maria,"
said Laura one evening. "I will come in the morning; the tide
will be low at ten, and James can push me across in the dingy."
"My sweetest Laura," said Maria, "I shall be out all day."
"And where are you going then?" asked Laura, surprised at
this sudden announcement.
"I do not know. I am at papa's orders for the day; that is
all."
So it was arranged that Laura should stay at home on that
day, but the fates ordained otherwise. The next morning a box
arrived from London, containing a beautiful parting present for
dear Maria. How nice it would be to go and put it on her table
in her absence, or take the chance of catching her! She delayed till evening in the hope that Maria would come home, and
then she went.
She called one of the gardeners, who followed her down over
the sands, and put her across the little channel of the river
which was left at low tide. Climbing a steep path, partly cut
into steps, up the low red cliff, she soon came to the platform
above and stood before the Castle, in the Castle grounds, with the
great keep hanging dark aloft.
She paused for an instant to look back across the river at the
Court embosomed in trees, standing on its promontory among the
yellow sea-sands, and to think how many happy hours she had
spent with Maria under the shadow of this keep where she stood,
all of which had come to an end forever! The Castle would
be closed to her when Sir Harry Poyntz came.
She let herself in by a postern, and passing through many
long, dark, pleasant rooms, and meeting no one, began to climb
the stairs towards the second story of the keep, where Maria
had romantically made her bower; her hand was on the doorhandle, when she started and drew back, for she heard Hammersley's voice on the other side of the door.
There was no doubt of it; in another moment his question,
put in an easy tone, to Mr. Huxtable apparently, was answered
by that gentleman's voice.
She determined to satisfy her curiosity at once without further
listening, and went in. The room took up the whole of that
floor of the keep, and was furnished with only four narrow windows, calculated to avoid archery more than to give light, - one
on each side. She saw the old prospects through each of them,
partly with her outward eye, and partly in her memory, at one
glance round. On the north the purple moor; on the south the
gray sea getting grayer, as night settled down; to the east the
Court, on its terraces, and the wide sand all around, with the tide
crawling up; and to the west the sunset, which threw the shad



LEIGHTON COURT.                    49
ow of this keep towards'her home. And now between her and
the sunset was another shadow, - the shadow of a man who sat in
the window, talking to Huxtable, - of a man she had never seen,
and yet who had been speaking with Hammersley's voice.
Mr. Huxtable hurriedly said, " O, here is Maria!  Come in,
my love; I will be back directly," and hurried past her without
recognition or explanation.  Laura saw that he.had mistaken
her for Maria, and was determined to satisfy her curiosity by a
view. of this man with the other man's voice. She therefore sat
down in the half-darkness, and allowed good Mr. Huxtable to go
blundering down the stone stairs in error.
The reader knows more than poor Laura did, and therefore
can guess who this man was, left with her here in semi-darkness,
and why his voice was so like Hammersley's. Laura was in
deep curiosity. There was no mistake about the similarity of the
voice, however; for when he spoke to her, she could hardly help
starting, and stared keenly into the dusk to see what he was like,
without success. He leaned against the western window, and
entered into conversation with her.
" Much obliged to you, Miss Huxtable, for letting me come in
here. I had an object. I never pay compliments, or I should
say that I was sorry I was going to turn you out of this room,
whereas I am glad."
Laura's voice was a wonderfully well-trained one. She was
more careful than usual with it as she replied out of the
gloom, -
"I am  not Miss Huxtable; I am  only Miss Huxtable's
friend."
"Has Miss Huxtable made friends with a lady, then?  On
what false pretences? My ear never deceives me, though my
eyes are bad. I beg your pardon for my mistake."
Laura was somewhat indignant for her friend, and thought
the compliment coarse, or would have thought so but for her
education. But she knew in a moment, from the way in which
he spoke, that she was speaking to what her mother and grandmother had taught her to call a gentleman. And she spoke accordingly, " refusing," as Colonel Hilton might have said, the
subject of Laura Seckerton, and coming into- action with her
other wing somewhat spitefully, fancying somehow that this man
was some led captain of Sir Harry Poyntz, instead of being the
man himself, as of course it was. I have shown you how naughty she could be; on this occasion she was rather naughtier than
usual.
"The Huxtables are by far the nicest people about here.
The whole county will miss them.  It will be a sad change
from them to Sir Harry Poyntz!"
3                                D




50                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"What has he been doing, then? " said the man in the dark.
"Getting his estate right," replied Laura; " more's the pity;
a dreadful crime in these parts, where no one wants him. From
all accounts it will be an evil day for the poor when these good
Huxtables go, and we have an exchange."
"A very bad exchange, you think?"
"A very bad one indeed, I fear."
"Then you have heard no good of Sir Harry?"
" No good whatever."
" Much harm?"
"0  dear no, not the least. Have you ever seen the view out
of these windows before? "
1" Yes, I know it well," said the man in the dark. "If I were
Sir Harry Poyntz, I would take this room as my own. H le was
born in this room, you know. And I would sit here every day,
summer and winter, and I would look north, south,' east, and
west, and I would say,'Before I die, every acre, from  the
moor to the sea, from the promontory westward'to the sands
eastward, shall be mine.' I would sit in this old robber-tower,
and say to myself;'You are the first of your name for a thousand years who has been forced to lend your castle for a pittance to a Manchester radical, a man who would destroy your
order.  Make war against his order in return. They have
fought for their trade. Buy until there is no room  in the
land, until the middle class hereabouts are your creatures.
The little freeholders are dropping like rotten pears under
free-trade. Pick them up and make yourself a peer.' "
Laura was amused and interested by this singular confidence
from the unknown. She went about with him at once.
" Cursed be they that add house to house, and field to field!
you know," she said.
" O, I would risk the curse, if I could get the land; and so
would you, and so would any of us. Let's have none of that
now, come! "
"Perhaps you are right," she said; "but it would be an awkward thing for some of us - for us in particular - if Sir Harry Poyntz were wicked enough to do such a thing."
" Sir Harry Poyntz is wicked enough to do anything," he replied. "I am Sir Harry Poyntz, and so I ought to know."
"0," said Laura to herself, "have I made your ears tingle for you, my gentleman?" and began trying to remember
what she had said. Sir Harry thought he had "shut her up,"
but he had done nothing of the kind. She was only longing to
look on what should be, by all accounts, the wickedest, meanest, most worthless face that ever troubled this unhappy earth.
She sat in the dark, trying to picture it to herself, - trying to




LEIGHTON COURT.                   51
anticipate the reality, with the same feeling which makes men
madly bet - not from avarice, but as a proof of sagacity - on
some sporting even-t which will be decided in the next three
minutes. She could see that he was tall, and she pictured him
satanic: a dark, melancholic man, with sloping eyebrows, wicked
little eyes, and an upward curl at the corner of his mouth; the
man she knew so well by Cruikshank's art; the swaggering,
fiendish cavalier who has come home from the Spanish main,
and who is no less than the fiend himself; a man with a wicked leer for a woman, and a twopenny-halfpenny, who-are-you,
Haymarket scowl for a man. As she looked at him in the darkness, this fanciful image grew on her imagination till it was nearly reflected on her retina.
Huxtable, coming in with a candle, upset all her fine theories.
She saw, instead of her corsair, a bland, fat, flabby, lymphatic
man, with a flat pale blue eye, with less depth in it than a
wafer; who was too fat for his apparent age; a man who
had apparently, by some mistake in Nature's cookery, been
boiled instead of roasted; a man who would not even grill
well, but would remain mere flabby meat, with a coating of
brown. He was so utterly unlike what she had thought, that'she forgot Hannah More and all that sort of thing, and burst
out laughing. But the nasty, shallow, light-blue, dangerous eye
was steadily on hers, with a look of power, too; and she stopped laughing.
I think, if the reader will allow me,'that I will leave to her or
his imagination, to conceive good Huxtable's fuss when he came
back with the candle, and found that he had left, not Maria, but
Laura alone with Sir Harry Poyntz; and his explanations, and
the grand kootooing and bowing and scraping, the utter ignoring
of all passages of arms in the dark, which went on after Laura
and Sir Harry were introduced to one another, may be also
omitted with advantage, in order to get on to what is more
interesting.




52                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XV.
BELOW Laura was pounced upon by Maria, who to her surprise, late as it was, with a rising tide, insisted on coming home
with her. There was not the slightest possible danger in crossing the Wysclith at any time of night, so Laura let her come.
Laura called her a traitor and a story-teller for saying she was
out when she was not, for the sake of preventing a meeting between her and Sir Harry Poyntz.  Maria said she had only
done exactly what her father had told her, and had fully believed that, she should be out; that Sir Harry Poyntz had come
one single day on business, and did not wish to be recognized.
But when they were alone on the Court side of the river,
Maria changed the conversation, and became very serious.
"Laura, I want to ask a question, and I am frightened."
" What are you afraid of? "
" Your answer. What do you think of Sir Harry Poyntz?"
"Think of him?  What I always have ever since I played
with him as a child. And now I have seen him again, I must
say that his face does not belie his character, but is the most
false, mean, and cruel one I ever saw! "
IMaria gave a little cry, and laid her hand on Laura's mouth.
" O Laura, Laura! No, no! For my sake, no!"
"What have you to do with the man? Why should, I not say
what I please about him?"
"Because I- am going to marry him, I believe.  0, do have
mercy on me, and make the best of him."
"Marry him! Where have you seen him?"
"In the North, many times."
"Do you love him?"
" Yes - yes, of course! It's a family arrangement, and he
has been shamefully ill-used and misrepresented, and -"
" He has been nothing of the kind, Maria. You know you are
ashamed of what you are doing, or you would have told me of
it before. Sir Harry Poyntz is a thoroughly worthless person.
Men wonder how it is that his name is'kept on the books of his
clubs, - a man whom my father would never allow to darken his
doors for one instant. You don't love him and you know you
don't. You have withheld your confidence from me in this manner, not in the most friendly way, and therefore I cannot tell at
all what is urging you on to this most miserable folly. If it is




LEIGHTON COURT.                   53
that-you think it a fine thing to be Lady Poyntz, and live at the
Castle, I can assure you that you had ten thousand times better
be plain Mrs. Hilton. And you could be Mrs. Hilton to-morrow; I know that as well as ally one. I have taught him to
hate me like poison. He. don't suit me, and I have let him see
it most unmistakably. But Harry Poyntz, - good heavens! "
The shoe pinched a little tight here, it seemed. Laura soon
found what she had done with that tongue of hers. Poor Maria
turned upon her immediately. That one name had roused her
to anger; she turned on Laura, and Laura soon found, for the
first time, too, that Maria had naturally every whit as much determination and strength as she had herself, and that at a battleroyal she was her superior, using weapons which Laura had been
taught to believe unchivalrous and unladylike.
At this point Maria Huxtable lost her temper.
" Better be Mrs. Hilton! " she said, furiously. "I have no
doubt you think that I had better take up with him, and marry
the man you encouraged, until you determined to sell yourself to
a titled booby. Laura, you have behaved yourself more wickedly than I thought it possible. I loved that man, and if you had
not come between us I know he would have loved me. Loved
me! You hear what I say, and see if you can sleep after it.
I love him now; and I am going to marry Sir Harry Poyntz,
who is all that you say and perhaps more. What fiend made
you mention him by name, and drive me mad! I could have
gone on smiling, and lying, and pretending I did n't hate you if
you had not brought his name up. Nay, I did n't know I hated
you before. You must make me know it, forsooth. You have
stood between that man and me, and now, when Lord Hatterleigh comes forward, you coolly recommend the man to my attention, when it is too late forever! Laura, you have made an
enemy of me, and you will live to wish you were dead before
you had done so."
All this was so horribly, ridiculously untrue, that if poor Laura
had kept her temper she might have cleared the cobwebs from
the poor girl's eyes, and saved infinite woe. She was angry herself, however; and one angry woman going about with another
is as vinegar poured upon nitre. She lost her temper now: she
turned on the poor girl and said,"What you have been saying about me is so very impertinent,
and so ridiculously false, that I shall not condescend to any explanation whatever. You have often taken my advice; this is
the last time I shall ever offer it, and it is this, -- that you cross
the river, go to your bedroom, and pray to God to forgive you
your wickedness."  And since tall talk inexorably leads to taller,
and since if you begin talking big you will say a deal more




~64                  LEIGHTON COURT.
than you mean, she continued: " I have done with you. You told
me a lie to-day in saying that you were out. I thought till. now
it was the first; now I see it is the last of many, - the very last.
Go back across the river to your fate. You have made your bed,
and must lie on it.  Your servant is waiting for you at the
steps."
And so they parted. Laura was only in time to dress for dinner, and very soon sailed into the drawing-room, looking very
beautiful, only a little tired, as her mother and grandmother,
two of the wise women of Gotham, could not help remarking.
Lord Hatterleigh was there, got up carefully with a twiceround white tie, looking as if he was at the meeting of a Young
Men's Christian Association, and was only waiting for the chairman's summons to rise and make the speech of the evening. He
looked at her in what he considered an amatory sort of way, and
tumbled over a footstool, and kicked her father, before he bowed
himself stern-foremost into Lady Emily's stand of camellias.
There was also Colonel Hilton, who was dressed like a boxkeeper, and might have passed for one, - only that his clothes
were so perfectly cut, his beard (the Duke of Cambridge not
having published his order) was so very long, and his Victoria
Cross was peeping out on the left side of his whiskers. There
was Papa, tall, gray, elegant - in blue and brass buttons; there
was Mamma, stout and respectable, yet with twopennyworth of
espi)glerie to carry it off; there was Grandma, with her waxen
complexion, and her lace cap, looking as if she was sitting there
until the angels Respectability and Routine came and carried her
to heaven, to join Hannah More; and here, in the midst of them,
stood Laura herself, with a secret gnawing at her heart, which
to her was guilty and dreadful. She loved the gallant young
Hammersley, and she knew it. Though she said to herself loudly that it was a monstrous falsehood, yet she knew it to be true.
Lord Hatterleigh twaddled on about the Whigs, that incomprehensible and undefinable body, who form the staple of all
political talk and speculation. Her father dextrously helped the
turbot, and turned his graceful high-bred head and face towards
the Vicar, now and then making a little mild fun with him about
the rest of his dinner, - this being a Friday, and the Vicar being
a ferocious high-churchman. That preux chevalier, Colonel Hilton, flirted solemnly and gracefully with Constance Downes. Sir
Peckwich Downes beamed over his white waistcoat at his fish.
Mamma and Grandma chirruped and cackled away as usual.
Richardson the butler, master of the feast, administered stimulants according to his will and pleasure, getting vexed with Sir
Peckwich's perpetual growl of "Sherry 1" as showing want of
confidence. There were their own three footmen in crimson




LEIGHTON COURT.                   55
plush, and Sir Peckwich's man in orange plush. Was there
ever a more respectable gathering?
Poor Laura was excited and upset this evening. It came into her head:" "What if she should rise up and tell them all
the truth, that she was —?"  She could n't say it, not to herself; she could not articulate it even to her second consciousness,
though she knew it was there, fatally sure enough, in her third
and innermost soul. Suppose she was to get up and say, " Ladies and gentlemen, I am in love with -—.  That way lies
madness."  What would Lord Hatterleigh do?- -The Fox-andNorth coalition was nothing to this, Would her father rise and
curse her?  Would Colonel Hilton's look of distrust develop
into a look of contempt, and how? The footmen would " tehee,"
to borrow an expression from Mr. Carlyle. As for her mother
and grandma, she knew what they would do, - order her to her
room.  What Sir Peckwich Downres would do she could n't
think: whether he would have a fit, or order his carriage, or
lose his temper, or get tipsy, she could not settle. But she
found herself smiling over that little speculation, and was surprised to find that her smile swelled into a laugh, so loud that
every one asked her what the joke might be, but she would not
tell them.
So they sat over their meat and drink, as though there were
no tragedy in the world, and never had been: as if, because you
buried an ugly thing and did n't talk about it, that there were to
be no more ugly things forever: as if the butler's cousin had not
been hung for sheep-stealing; as if one of the footmen's sisters
had not thrown her baby down a well; as if Sir Peckwich's
brother had not fled to happier and more easy-going climes; as
if the golden lock of hair which Colonel Hilton wore round his
neck were not his sister's, red with the blood of the Khyber
Pass! And quite right, too.
"' And what had she done? " she asked herself in scorn. "The
man was a gentleman; there was no one in the room who could
compare with him, except Hilton. What had made him commit
this fatal folly, put on this degrading masquerade? And yet if
he had not, she could never have seen him."  She rebelled
against the notion that her love for him was disgraceful one
moment, and then the next she denied that it existed; but she
sat silent and let them tattle on.




56                  LEIGHT ON COURT.
CHAPTER XVI.
PooR Maria Huxtable! Prowling among the desolate and
empty flower-beds, lurking behind the shrubs, she got glimpses
of the party through the half-drawn blinds. The man she loved
was there, gay and cheerful, little dreaming who was watching
him; and the woman who could have saved her, had she been
more patient, was beside him, laughing and talking loudly and
almost boisterously. "Laura has a bad heart," thought Maria;
" can she laugh so soon after my story?" - Alas, yes! she has
her own story, too, Maria.- "And yet I loved that woman
once."  And so she delayed there in the growing darkness, tormenting her poor heart by looking- into the house she never
would enter again as a friend, and watching eagerly the man she
loved so dearly, to think of whom was a crime. At last she turned
to go towards her home and her fate.  The servant who had
rowed them over was asleep in the boat before she came back;
behind her as she crossed, the wood and the low, long facade of
the Court were bathed in the dim, dull light of a young moon;
but before, the cruel keep of her future home rose black and ominous, with the blurred crescent behind its topmost battlement,
and the wooded cliff so dark that you could scarcely tell when
the boat touched the shore.
Dinner would not be till half past eight. There was time before her yet, precious time! Before she went to bed that night
her fate would be sealed. She knew that if she said yes, she
could never unsay it; she felt terribly sure of that. All that
Laura had said of Sir Harry was true; yet wealth and title were
great things. The wish not to leave her dear old home, where
her sunny life had been passed, and anger against Laura and
pique against Colonel Hilton were terrible assistants, and there
was none by to help her. The hour of grace went by; and as
she swept into the drawing-room, covered with jewels and lace,
her father saw that she was dressed for attraction, and that the
deed was done.
It was done indeed. These three were alone in the house, and
when Sir Hariy and Mr. Huxtable rose from their wine, the host
gave Sir Harry ten minutes' law. At the end of that time, coming into the drawing-room, he found Maria sitting,calmly on one
side of the fire, while Sir Harry warmed his knees, and examined his face in the pier-glass. As Huxtable entered he
turned, -




LEIGHTON COURT.                    67
"I have been asking Maria not to leave the Castle with you,
but to remain as its mistress. She has said' yes.' She has had
the matter put before her in the most favorable manner by you,
and has, I doubt not, heard every word that those two cackling
old idiots Lady Emily Seckerton and Lady Southmolton, not to
mention Miss Laura, have had to say against me. She has had
the good sense to say'yes.'"
Dare a man's eye follow the unhappy girl to her room that
night, - dare a man's hand, and no light one, write what she felt
and what she said.! Not mine. But she knew full well what
she had done; and there was no shadow of turning with her.
CHAPTER XVII.
MARIA departed next day to visit an aunt; and Sir Harry
Poyntz, keeping in strict seclusion, stayed over another day to
see after some business.
Immediately after lunch that next day, Mr. Huxtable got into
his phaeton and drove round, announcing his daughter's engagement to the master of the Castle.
He drove all the short afternoon, from  one country-house
to another, generally finding some members of the family at
home at each house. As he drove he looked more aged, and
more worn as he left each neighbor's. These old-fashioned
country-folks none of them concealed their opinion about the
matter. From  house to house up the left bank of the Wysclith, they (some member of each family at all events) let him
know  their opinion of the business unmistakably.  Generally the announcement, was received with astonished silence;
but some few spoke. Among the latter was.Sir Peckwich
Downes, who spoke to the purpose: —
"I am very sorry to lose sight of my dear little sweetheart
Maria; but you see of course, Huxtable, that it is impossible
for me to know anything of her husband, or to exchange any
more courtesy with him beyond a bow when we meet on the
bench."
H'  e has been wild," said poor Huxtable.' I never heard of that," said Sir Peckwich. "I was wild.
I may have fought one Simon Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind
Gray's Inn. My eldest son was very unsteady before he married, - so unsteady, that I used to go away from home when
_\




f58                  LEIGHTON COURT.
he proposed a visit, and left him to the care of his mother and
sisters. They brought him right, and he is as good a son as
ever stepped since he married. But this - this' man.'"
"He may reform, too," said Huxtable.
"Huxtable! how can you look me in the face and talk like
that?  Who in the name of confusion has induced you to consent to this shameful arrangement?   I can only tell you one
thing: if this affair comes off, which I can hardly believe possible, I must take the same measure with you as I did with my
son,- be out whenever you call."
There was nothing more to be said. They neither spoke
again. The next house was the Vicarage, — the next person
the Vicar.
It happened to be the vigil of St. Thomas of Moorstanton
(a saint whom the Vicar had evolved, it was said, out of his own
internal consciousness originally, but whom the Vicar had " developed,"' in spite of three or four sarcastic letters from the
Bishop of Exeter), whose body had been brought and buried
here at Wysclith, in spite of the strenuous opposition of five hundred thousand ass panier loads of small devils. So the Vicar had
got out the school-children, and was doing a wonderful service over the grave of the saint in whom no one ever believed
but himself, in the churchyard.  Consequently poor Huxtable
was received by the Vicaress, a childless and submissive lady of
fifty, who wore scarlet gloves, in deference to her husband's
orders.
Huxtable had been so very much bullied to-day that he was
very humble here. Even to this woman, the fool of the neighborhood, - who had brought the Vicar money, and who never
had a say in her own house, - who followed blindly all her husband's vagaries, while the sounder heads of his party cried out
against him for ruining their cause with his folly: even before this
woman (the " Umbrella," as Laura had christened her) he was
humble to-day. He broke the news to her apologetically; and
as he did so, she by degrees took off her scarlet gloves.
"And now, my dear madam," he said, " what is your opinion?"
"My opinion," said the " Umbrella," "most decidedly is that
you have n't got the feelings of a man about you. If' that dear
girl's blessed mother had been alive, you never would have had
the impudence to propose such a thing."
If one of his own Leicester lambs had, after this, run at
him barking, and bitten him in the calf of his leg, he could
not have been surprised. If a mere umbrella of a woman
like this gave him such a reception, what could be expected
of her husband, coming fresh, in a state of supramaidane




LEIGHITON COURT.                  59
pietism, in a green chasuble, from  the tomb of a saint?
Huxtable fled without confronting the Vicar; and as he took
the reins, and set the horses' heads towards the Court, said
aloud,
"Let us have it over at once; let us get through with it."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the groom beside him.
" Let us have a finish and end of it; I'11 stand no more of
this after to-day."
The young groom's conscience was troubled somehow, for he
said, --
" It was all along of the Court servants, sir. And we was in
afore twelve after all."
Huxtable laughed, but his laugh did him  no good.  He
felt like a beaten dog in this matter.  Every one had turned
against him, and why? If this Sir Harry Poyntz was outside the pale of all society, why had no one ever told him
of it?  Most certainly no one ever had.  His fourteen years'
lease of the Castle was nearly up, and he had, during that time,
heard nothing more against Sir Harry Poyntz than he had heard
against the eldest young Downes, or against half a dozen others;
and yet, now it came to the pinch, the county, which had submitted to his coming back there, who had talked of the Poyntz
as of themselves, burst out on him in furious rage, at the first
mention of his marrying an honest man's daughter! Are class
prejudices so strong that they would keep a secret like this from
him? And now he had to face the Court, Lady Southmolton
and Lady Emily, who gave laws hereabouts, and announce it to
them. But he would go through with it. He was an honest
Manchester man, and would know the truth. He would not
have half-statements from Lady Southmolton.
" I shall get the truth there," he said to himself, with'that noble instinct which makes honesty recognize honest folks. And
so he would have- butAs he came thundering along in his mail-phaeton through the
park, he turned round the corner of a plantation, and caught
sight of a group before him.
Laura was riding side by side with a very gallant-looking
young fellow in a black coat, but otherwise dressed as a foxhunter, who was leading a horse; and they were almost alone,
talking together in an animated manner. A hundred yards
ahead- rode Sir Charles on " The Elk," looking every inch the
perfect gentleman and gallant horseman that he was. His long
but perfectly-shaped and beautifully-clothed legs seemed made
to clip that vast mass of horseflesh, and his upright not too broad
back moved gracefully, under the perfectly cut red coat, with
every movement of the horse. A gallant gentleman, yet his




60                  LEIGHTON COURT.
close-cropped gray head was rather bent down to-day, and he
seemed tired with his hunting.
As the phaeton bore down on them, the talkers parted and rode
aside on to the turf. He saw both their faces; Laura's was animated and interested. He looked at the dandy in the black
coat, and to his unutterable amazement beheld Hanrnersley, and
he was laughing.  He was very much astonished; but Laura
was, in her high-and-mighty way, very familiar with servants
and dogs, he thought: still this was going rather far.
"Does this young man hunt in black? " he asked his groom.
"Yes, sir. He says every one wears pink now. He would
not hunt in a frock at first, and now he has given up red altogether."
"Does Sir Charles allow these airs?"
"Allow, sir I He orders Sir Charles about everywhere, and
he only laughs."
But it soon went out of his head; for Sir Charles stopped and
waited for him, and trotted along with him gayly when he came
up, telling him of the run, some part of which, as a matter of
course, was one of the finest things ever seen. When they got
to the front-door, and had dismounted, Sir Charles said, of
course, "Come in, my dear Huxtable."
Huxtable said, " No, come into the pleasance with me "; and
Sir Charles went, seeing that Huxtable had something to say;
and they walked up and down along the terrace, not six hundred
yards from the great keep across the river.  It never occurred
to either of them  that Sir Harry Poyntz was watching them
through a field-glass, but he was.
" Seckerton, our intercourse has been a very.pleasant one for
twenty years."
Sir Charles's hand was on his shoulder in a moment; he needed to say nothing.
" I fear your hand will be moved directly, Seckerton; I fear
this will be our last interview. I have got it over with Sir
Peckwich Downes, and have gone out of his house without
waiting to be ordered out. I have-given my consent to Maria's
marriage with Sir Harry Poyntz! "
Sir Charles's hand was withdrawn indeed; he put both his
hands suddenly to his head,'and cried out, "0 good heavens! "
"It is quite true," said Huxtable, delighting in his own torture
in a strange kind of way, " and the match is principally of my
seeking.  He is desperately in love with her -sixty thousand
pounds; and I have put before her forcibly, as a man of the
world, and a prudent and affectionate father, the rank, prestige,
and title which she will gain by such a match. I have done
everything to forward it in every way. I have got my will, and




LEIGHTON COURT.                   61
I wish we were both dead, dead, dead, lying quietly asleep beside her mother in the cemetery at Manchester."
"It would be much better," said Sir Charles, quietly. And
Huxtable, turning, saw that he was scared and shocked.  He
grew frightened himself now, and waited for Sir Charles to go
on.
"This has come on me rather suddenly. Are you aware of
the character Sir Harry bears in the county?"
" Something between Judas Iscariot and Beelzebub,*apparently," said Huxtable;, "though no one has had the friendliness to
give me any details until it is too late."
"It is not too late now, is it?  Surely not; your daughter
would listen to you?"
" Not now. I know Maria better than you. And there is
something the matter about some one else; and there's a good
deal of spite in the business, that is the truth. And it is too late;
Maria won't go back now."
"But he, my dear sir,- he?"
" He give up sixty thousand pounds!" laughed Huxtable;
"he'd sooner prosecute her for breach! "
" But remove the sixty thousand; cut her off with a penny;
disin-" and there he stopped like a bullet on the target.
Huxtable began slowly: " There seems to be something that
no one dares tell me.  And I'd sooner do that than -    What
is it? Is it friendly or manly in you, Sir Charles, to keep me
in the dark on such a subject? Come!"
Sir Charles remained as dumb as a stone for a minute; his
thin, brown, handsome face seemed pinched up, as though with a
spasm. At last he said,'
"I am taken by surprise. Will you go away now, and come
to me again to-morrow morning? And will you be assured of
one thing: that I believe that you have acted in the dark about
this matter, and that nothing shall ever alter the relations between us?  Stick by me, Huxtable, and I will stick by you
through everything."




62                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THAT night, after dinner, Sir Charles, with his wife, and mother, and Laura, were together in the drawing-room.  Sir Charles,
standing with his back to the fire, and looking steadily over the
tops of the women's heads at a Raeburn of himself sitting on his
mother's shoulder, told them about Maria Huxtable's engagement.
Laura was not surprised, of course; Lady Emily bouncedyes, indeed, bounced - off her chair in an acute attack of virtuous indignation; while Lady Southmolton only took off her spectacles, laid down her work, and began rubbing her two waxen,
withered old hands one over the other.
What Lady Emily said was much the same as what every one
else had said, and so the reader may guess at it. Sir Charles
had expected her outbreak, but was more anxious to hear what
her mother would say. It was some time before he heard it, for
his wife took a long time running down. When she had subsided
into a state of occasional indignant interjections, her mother-inlaw began, in a style which gave Sir Charles great surprise.
That she always made the best of things with the most wonderful tact, and with an amount of Christian charity he had never
seen elsewhere, he was perfectly aware; but he was not prepared
for the way in which the old lady, in her optimism, supplied him
with the very arguments he was dying to find for himself.
"Maria might have married any one," she said; " and I think
myself, not that it is any business of ours in any way whatever,
that she is throwing herself away. Still we must remember that
Harry Poyntz has been much steadier lately, - nay, seems to be
growing into a model young man altogether. He had a bad start
in life. His morals were corrupted by the example of his father,
and his estate dipped, I thought beyond all hope, by his father's
and latterly by his brother's extravagance. He has brought the
estate right, or nearly so, and is going to put it right entirely by
a most prudent match with a most estimable girl. I have every
wish for their happiness. And I should say — you know how
used I am to giving advice, my dears, and you must forgive me
- that our duty is not to stand in the way, by any means whatever, of the repentance and the reception into a higher atmosphere of a misguided and unfortunate young man, who seems to
be trying to retrieve himself, financially and morally."




LEIGHTON COURT.                    63
They heard a measured beat of oars, coming across the river
towards the Court.
Lady Emily, as she heard her mother's infallible saint-like
voice putting the case in this form, grew awe-struck, and began to
get thoroughly ashamed of her late outbreak. Sir Charles was
very uneasy, but allowed that the old lady had put it marvellously well. But Laura — the gentle, highly-trained, perfectlyformed, submissive Laura — rose suddenly up in fiat, furious
rebellion, and frightened them all three (though they were too
cunning to show it) out of their wits.
" I say," she burst out, " that it is a wicked and shameful business from beginning to end, and I'11 stop it! Grandma, how can
you use your tact to find excuses?  No, ma, Is am not in the
school-room! Father, you seem tame and acquiescent over the
matter; am I to distrust you? But if we talk about it any more
we shall quarrel, for the first time in our lives; and I can only
say one thing, that it can't be and sha'n't be, and that I'11 stop
it! Colonel Hilton's little finger is worth Sir Harry's whole
body, and I will put things right, and put a stop to it."
If she had been an older campaigner, after having charged the
enemy, she would have held the ground won, and waited for her
supports, which were close at hand, for her mother was rallying
and forming fast. Instead of this she committed the error of retiring, being contented with the astonishment inflicted, leaving
the enemy only temporarily paralyzed, - in other words, flounced
out of the room, and gave them time to re-form.
Not in the most dignified fashion, though, for she came full-tilt
against a footman, unobserved by the whole party, who was holding the door open; and having nearly knocked him down, found
herself immediately after cast against a fierce and severe-looking
gentleman, in evening dress, with two oirders on his coat; who
on seeing her bowed a great deal too low, leered a great deal too
much, backed against a table like dear Lord Hatterleigh himself,
and in dashing to hold the next door open for her, trod on her
gown, and tore it out of the gathers. She gave him that particular woman's bow which means " There is some one in the neighborhood somewhere,",and wrathfully disappeared.
Before the capsized footman was discovered by the three left
behind, Lady Southmolton had looked across her son-in-law to
her daughter, and said, quietly,
" This is your fox-hunting; this is your galloping about alone
at all hours." The grievance was ten years old, and had not
been turned up before. The retort was not the less precious to
the old lady for that.
"Captain Southcot, sir, wishes to speak to you in the anteroom'00




64                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"And who on earth is Captain Southcot? And what on earth
prevents Captain Southcot from coming at a decent hour in the
day?" snapped out poor irritated Sir Charles in a loud voice,
and at the same moment caught sight of that gentleman standing
within ten feet of him, and recognized him, - one of the very
men in this world he was least anxious to offend. He was very
much taken aback, but perfectly up to the emergency. He burst
out into a laugh, and advanced towards Captain Southcot with
his hand extended, repeating, -
"And who on earth is Captain Southcot? And why the deuse
has he dared to come into the neighborhood without knocking his
father's old friend up before this?"
Poor Sir Charles! Baden would be better than this sort of
thing, - to be driven to lying for the first time in a life, and old
age fast creeping on. He felt this, - it came on him like a shock;
he tried to sustain the effort, but it was too much for him; he
began to get forgetful, and talk nonsense.
With the greatest empressement he had Captain Southcot in,
and introduced him. The two ladies saw in one moment that he
was what our late lamented friend Major Pendennis would have
called a " tiger."  He was a man with a complexion, a nose, and
a moustache which did n't cover his teeth. He had eyes, too,
somewhere, arguing by analogy, or he could n't have got there
without a dog or a boy; but if any one had told you so, you would
almost have felt inclined to deny it. His face was too small and
too short, and his hair was parted in the middle, - the sort of
man one has a morbid desire to contradict flatly, if not to go
further.
"Your father was an old friend of mine at school," said Sir
Charles, " and I remember your mother, Lady Joanna Southcot,
well."
"Lady Mary Southcot," said the Captain, grinning.
"Lady Mary, of course;- what am I thinking of? Poor dear
Joanna Southcot! I ought to remember her, too, well enough;
she was your aunt."
Lady Emily rapped the table two or three times, and said impatiently, "My dear Charles, you are wool-gathering! "
Conversation is generally hopeless, when three people are
wondering what on earth the fourth one has come for; but it
was more hopeless still after Sir Charles's dreadful blunder. It
had not become quite monosyllabic, when Lady Southmolton came
to their assistance by making preparations for bed, by moving
from the chair she occupied all day to the bed she occupied all
night,- a transition which had something of solemnity in it to
these good devoted people; for she was so feeble now, that none
of them knew but that the next morning the chair might be
empty.




LEIGHTON COURT.                  65
As soon as her work was put in the bag, and her little books
of devotion which lay around her all day were gathered up, and
she had gone away on her daughter's arm, Sir Charles shut the
door behind them, and turning round on Captain Southcot, said
quietly, -
" Now, sir?"
He looked so big, so grand, and so melancholy, as he looked
down on the miserable little ape before him, that that gentleman
was abashed, and only handed him a note. For the fulfilment of
the rest of his commission, to report how Sir Charles looked on
reading it, he had recourse to his imagination, and lied horribly,
but so clumsily that he got himself sworn at.
Sir Charles read the note carefully, folded it up again, put it
in his waistcoat-pocket, and began staring at Captain Southcot
with his great hazel eyes, which looked awfully prominent under
his gray eyebrows.  After an interval, longer than was quite
polite, he said, —
"Do you know the contents of this letter?"
"Yes."
"And now won't you take something before you go?"
"Nothing at all, thank you."
"Quite sure?"
" Quite sure."
" Will nothing tempt you," said Sir Charles, ringing the bell;
" sherry and seltzer, brandy and soda-water, noyeau and lemonade? "' Nothing, thank you," said Captain Southcot, who did n't like
the look of the old gentleman, and was bowing himself out.
"There is no answer to the letter, then?"
"None whatever. You may tell your master not to send you
here again if you like. But are you quite sure you won't take
anything? It is to be had in one moment: gingerbeer and bitters, brimstone and treacle, - anything! They are going to supper in the servants' hall; won't you join them? Good night.
Don't let me catch you here again."




66                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XIX.
Poor Sir Charles was in very sad trouble indeed,- in a fearful dilemma; but he would not face it out, and took the consequences. It becomes necessary to see what these troubles arose
from, and how they had accumulated.
About the best way for a gentleman of easy disposition with
four thousand a year to ruin himself, is for him to take the
hounds and keep open house. If these two things will not do it,
let him farm five or six hundred acres of his own land; if that
does not finish him, he must have the most astonishing good fortune. Now Sir Charles had done all these three things, and his
fortune had been bad.
When Sir George Downes died, and his son, the present baronet, declined to keep the hounds on, Sir Charles " nobly came
forward," as the county paper had it, and offered to take them if
the county would give him a thousand a year. An enthusiastic
meeting of the hunt and the farmers was called, who voted that
sum by acclamation, and, what is more, paid it —for the first
year; after that the subscriptions had got rapidly less and less,
so that, for the last ten years, Sir Charles had had little to depend on beyond the regularly-paid fifty guineas of Sir Peckwich
Downes, and his own pocket.
He had everything perfectly though not extravagantly done;
and he found that the hounds cost him just about ~2,000 a year.
Devonshire is a cheap county, and Lady Emily was a most
thrifty and excellent manager, so she managed to keep house
with ~4,000 a year, whereas Lady Downes could not do nearly
as much for five; put another thousand on for sundries, and you
will get a very pretty yearly deficit, which had been going on for
twelve years. But this was not the worst. Sir Charles could
calculate all this; but he never knew, never could dare to think,
even to this day, what he lost upon the-home-farm. I have
known ~30,000 lost on 1,200 acres, and the muddle in that case
was certainly not worse than in that of the home-farm at Leighton Court. He may have lost anything.  Meanwhile he had
not been over-anxious, for the whole of the Shropshire property
came to him at the death of Miss Seckerton of Brignal, who,
however, was only six-and-forty.
Of course his estate was deeply mortgaged, but no one knew of
it, and many would not have believed it. Sir Charles had such




LEIGHTOXN COURT.                   67
a character in the neighborhood for foresight and prudence, that
he was resorted to for advice by all his neighbors, on subjects varying from the choosing of a gun to the marrying o.f a daughter;
and, indeed, he deserved this confidence, for a clearer head for
other folks' business never was on human shoulders. It would
have been an inexpressibly sad thing for Sir Charles to have
confessed himself a poor and unthrifty man before these simple
people; but a greater evil than that had threatened him for this
year past, and had made him wish sometimes that he could say,
once for all, "Neighbors, I have been deceiving you all; I am
but the most foolish and the poorest among you. I only ask to
die with your faces around me." He thought that he would retrench and get his estate right before the Shropshire money fell
in, but he began to think so when it was too late!
His man of business had come to him one day, and informed
him that he had discovered that every mortgage on the estate
was in the hands of Sir Harry Poyntz. When Sir Charles,
aghast, asked how he had discovered it, he replied that that was
the strangest part of the business; that Sir Harry Poyntz, whom
he had never spoken to, had stopped him in the street and informed him of the fact in a very few words, had then laughed
and ridden off.
From that day Sir Charles's head had begun to bow. Nearly
a year passed, and Sir Harry Poyntz made no sign. The latter had improved his acquaintance with his tenant Mr. Huxtable and his charming daughter in the North, and had clinched
that matter by coming down to the Castle and proposing to
Maria. Until the day after that, no communication had passed
between him and Sir Charles. But he had watched Huxtable
and him through a glass, and had noticed the attitude of disgust
and horror with which Sir Charles received the intelligence, and
he saw that he must act.
That evening he sent across his toady, henchman, or what you
call that sort of man, a particularly worthless young fellow, with
the note of which we have seen the arrival and reception.
There was no actual threat in it. He merely pointed out Sir
Charles's great influence over Huxtable, and that if it was used
to prevent his marriage with Maria, he (Sir Harry) would miss
sixty thousand pounds, for which he should indemnify himself (so
he said) if his own father stood in the way.
That was all, and enough, too, for poor Sir Charles! Forced
as it were to lie,- he who had always been so acutely proud of
his honor and straightforwardness, to be driven to this!
Laura, coming in late into his dressing-room, found him with
his head buried in his hands, and the letter lying before him.
She came in softly. She was accustomed to coming in softly on




68                  LEIGHTON COURT.
these occasions, and to passing a few golden happy minutes in
loving talk with the man she loved best in all the world. There
was once perfect confidence between those two; their hearts had
been so drawn, as it were, to one another, that their friendship
had become greater than that between two men who had tried
and who trusted one another, - greater than the mere instinctive
love of father and daughter.
But all this was past. One thing Sir Charles had unhappily
concealed from his daughter, - his difficulties. One thing Laura.
would fain have concealed even from herself, but could not.
Something had disturbed their confidence, and each thought they
were the guilty one.
As she came behind him to-night, she saw the letter lying
open before him, and, before she knew what she was doing, she
had read, " Yours very truly, Harry Poyntz." The look of wonder was still on her face when he turned, and saw that she had
read it. He angrily crumpled it up in his hand and turned
towards her.;" Laura," he said, coldly, "I see by your eyes that you have
read the signature of this letter."
"Accidentally."
"Of course I mean accidentally, my love! Laura, when you
left the room this evening you said that you could and would put
a stop to the match between him (touching the letter) and poor
Maria."
"I did, and I will."
"Now, my child, I charge you, on your duty, to remain absolutely neutral in the matter."
"0 father, - father!"
" Absolutely neutral! It is not your business to interfere in
any way. Older and wiser heads than yours are at work upon it."' You surely are not going to let it take place?"
"You talk like a perfect child. In the first place, I have not
decided what course to pursue; and in the second, what right
have I to dictate to Huxtable who his daughter may or may not
marry? I meanwhile insist that the influence of this family shall
be used' through me, and through me only."
Poor Laura saw that her father was sold to the enemy, but
would not acknowledge it to himself. She was too sick at heart
to say anything more. For the first time he had spoken harshly
to her. She would wait for better times; she turned away and
left him.
When Mr. IHuxtable called at eleven o'clock the next day, he
was shown into the breakfast room, where he found only Sir
Charles and Lady Southmolton, who had evidently waited there




LEIGHTON COURT.                   69
for him, before taking up her usual seat by the little drawingroom fire. Sir Charles merely gave him "good morning": he
left Lady Southmolton to speak.
She soon began. "We heard a piece of news last night,"
she said, " and it is my turn to congratulate you on it. The more
I have thought of this match between your daughter and Sir
Harry Poyntz, the better I think of it. It is an eminently good
match; he has family, a large and increasing fortune, youth and
health. He is not worthy of her, - no man is, you say, - but
she would wait a long time before she did better. Sir Harry
might marry nearly any one he chose in London. It is a good
match."
And so she honestly believed. She had been so very much
used to see very happy marriages made on mere worldly grounds,
that she had got to regard the thing rather as a matter of course.
She would not have thought that she was doing her duty had she
stood between Maria and such a match, - so she spoke as above.
Her word was law to Mr. HIuxtable, and the thing was done:
Sir Charles sitting by silent, and trying to believe that what his
mother-in-law said was true, but not in the least degree succeeding.
CHAPTER XX.
THIs year, on Christmas Eve, the gout, which had for some
years been twitching at the long fingers and tugging at the small,
well-formed feet of long Jim Pollifex of Fernworthy, flew to his
stomach in a kind of pet, killed him, and went off to seek another
victim.
"He was a great loss to the county," said the bucolic interest;
" a great loss to county society," said every one who had ever
been in it; " a great loss to the bucolic interest," said both Tory
and Whig. The Whigs determined on a fight for that division
of the county, and spent ~155 10s. 9d. on a patriotic address, setting forth the claims of Colonel Hilton.
Pollifex had been a somewhat remarkable man, — a longer,
leaner, shrewder, wittier edition of his younger brother and heir
Abiram, the great Australian statesman. He made his last joke
to the doctor when he was told things were getting serious, and
nominated Sir Peckwich Downes as his successor. The Liberals
withdrew the instant his name appeared in print, and their
~155 10s. 9d. worth of stationery was pelted with mud by children scarce out of arms. The Tories had played too big a card




70                   LEIGHTON COURT.
for them. Sir Peckwich Downes had done so much work for the
Tories in Parliament before, — was so very big, so very good, so
very rich, so perfectly convinced of the infallibility of his opinions, - such a model landlord, such a model husband, such a capital horseman, such a thoroughly kind-hearted gentleman, that the
Liberals felt they could not play even such a card as Colonel
Hilton, V. C., C. B., against him. They retired, and called Sir
Peckwich Downes an ass, in which they were mistaken. There
was no opposition.
So the Downeses went off to London early in February, and
Lady Downes gave herself such airs before she went, that our people were not very sorry when she was gone. She knew - every
one knew -that Sir Peckwich's peerage was certain, should the
Tories come into power, as they were sure to do with this reaction going on; and she took to patronizing Lady Southmolton,
until that old lady furbished up her old arms, and did a little mild
fighting. However, she was gone, and Hoxworthy was empty,
and the servants gave a ball in the gallery.
It turned out also that the Liberal agent had been a little too
quick in using Colonel Hilton's name. With a laudable effort to
be first in the field, he had started that gentleman without any
attempt at consultation with him or others.  That gentleman, his
enemies said, as soon as ever he saw that his chance was hopeless, resented the liberty which had been taken with his name,
by writing a letter to the county paper, indignantly denying
any complicity in the matter, and showing that he had, contemporaneously with the Liberal manifesto, accepted an official mission to Chalons.
It was perfectly true. He had been appointed by the Horse
Guards to go and look at the great French camp, and he went
away and out of the way. " What he ever came in the way
for," said Lady Southmolton, "is a question which, with our limited knowledge of the ways of Providence, it will be impossible
for us to solve on this side of the grave"; in saying which Lady
Southmolton spoke too fast.
Lord Hatterleigh, with his hat -on the very back of his head,
- with his respirator, umbrella, and goloshes, keeping both. windows up all the way, - had likewise departed for London, to attend to his Parliamentary duties. Maria Huxtable had gone the
day after her quarrel with Laura, and had never come back.
She and her father were in London, where they were joined,
very soon after the beginning of the season, by Sir Harry Poyntz
and innumerable north-country friends, while preparations for the
wedding were going on most briskly. No one, in short, was left
in the neighborhood but our people and the Vicar, who, after a
long wrangle with a dissenting granite-splitter on the moor, had




LEIGHTON COURT.                    71
wrought himself into a Torquemada vein and excommunicated
him.
All else was very still and peaceful; and as the spring went
on day after day, even the Vicar and the stone-splitter ceased to
wrangle, and were out trout-fishing together before April was
over. Nature felt spring in every vein. Even on the solitary
mountain-top of Fern Tor quaint little plants came forth and
sunned themselves; the great bog got himself a fringe of gold,
and in the deep granite glen of the " hundred voices," down
which Wysclith hurried night and day, his roar was dulled and
softened by the overarching bowers -of greenery.
But down in the slate and red-sandstone country spring showed
brightest. There the greens were more vivid, the shadows deeper, the water in the streams clear as crystal, untinged by peat;
The beautiful, half-cultivated valleys, which stretched in all directions, deeply wooded, had each one a sleepy brook which murmured on from shallow to pool, crowned with new yellow shoots
of king-fern and lady-fern, hazel and alder. Bright and rare
butterflies and insects shot to and fro across the surface of the
water, and trout, hardly less gaudy than the butterflies, poised
themselves below in the crystal, above the pale-blue gravel. It
was a beautiful season, a foolish, romantic season; everywhere,
too, was the jubilant, flute-voice blackbird, filling the air with song.
As for Lady Emily and her mother, they had nothing whatever to trouble them, and were happy enough; but to Laura and
her father, with their two wearing secrets, it was a season of rest
which they were glad of. They both pursued the same plan, the
foolish old plan we have all pursued in turn: making believe because our trouble does not make itself heard, that it is getting distant, while we know well all the time that it is creeping steadily
nearer. They both succeeded pretty well, and were gay enough,
riding together along the sands, or up aloft on the moor; but
their old confidence in one another was gone, and they knew it.
Neither of them chose to know the exact day of Maria's marriage. No one ever talked of it except Lady Southmolton, who
did so occasionally on principle, to show that a thing to which she
had given her approval was of necessity a perfectly eligible subject of conversation: however, she did not know the day,, and no
one else cared to inquire. Sir Charles had heard so little about
it that he began to hope it was all over and done. One day
Laura followed him into his justice-room or study after breakfast, and said, —
"I have heard from  Constance Downes, father.  She has
been to the Queen's ball."
" Oho, indeed i" said Sir Charles. "And is there any other
news from the gay folks, eh?"




72                   LEIGHTON COURT.
" Not much," said Laura, looking out of window.  "Lady
Poyntz and her husband are at Ems."
"Hem! " said Sir Charles. " And when,-when did the-? "
"Wedding take place?  Last week."
"There was no bell-ringing; why were the bells not rung?"
"The Vicar found the young men in the belfry getting ready,
and he turned them all out, locked it up, and took the keys away.
He said that if one of them liked to be locked in by himself he
might toll, but that there should be no chiming."
"The man is mad!"
" Quite mad!"
So it was all over. "And a good job, too," said (not thought)
Sir Charles to himself. "They'll be able to pay their way,
which is a great thing in these times. She has n't done badly."
Alas! Alexander in debt and Alexander out of debt talk very
differently.
At the end of July all the old set were back again, with the addition of the Poyntz, who came back last of all. But before that,
a great deal that was very mischievous and sad had occurred, as
we must show you. "It is very hard for idle hands to keep out
of mischief," says old Watts.  Certainly Miss Laura, that opinionated and self-sufficient young lady, was exceedingly idle this
spring; all the more solid of her new books from Exeter lay unread on the table; while she, as Edie Ochiltrie would say, went
" daundering " by burnsides with "Maude" and " Aurora Leigh."
Idle she was, certainly, and contrived to get into a labyrinth of
mischief such as is inconceivable by folks who try to fight against
circumstances in any way, and do not altogether give up and believe that " the nice " is coexistent, conterminous, and scientifically identical with " the common-sensible."
CHAPTER XXI.
LAURA had better, for some reasons, have been in pension in
a third-class boarding-house at Boulogne, than have stayed
"daundering " there in Devonshire that spring. Her father and
she had lost confidence in one another. There was just one little matter - the Hammersley matter, to wit - which prevented
her telling all things to the Vicar as heretofore: a mere twopenny-halfpenny little business, but one which she was afraid to
tell him, and which, after all, was no earthly business of his.




LEIGHTON COURT.                   73
Her mother was - her mother - a perfectly commonplace woman; and as for her grandmother, good as she was, and sensible
according to her lights, Laura had seen her little store of experience exhibited so often, that she, had she lived among betting
people, might have kept herself in gloves, by betting on what her.
grandmother would say on any given subject. The only woman
who seemed to have any originality in her whatever was old
Elspie, her nurse, the most romantic and superstitious old trot
in the three kingdoms.. And I must, sooner or later, come en visage with my reader
about another matter. Let us get it over, and let the reader
make the worst of it, or the best of it as he chooses. Laura was
thinking a great deal too much about this Hammersley, - this
incomprehensible young preux chevalier, — a great deal too
much.
It is hard to blame her much. Of course she was very indiscreet in ever thinking of him for a moment, but her father was
more indiscreet still; knowing what he knew about the man's
quasi-position, he should not have allowed her so much intercourse with this splendid Falconbridge. But debt and anxiety
had clouded his mind; and, moreover, this young fellow was getting very dear to him. He had wished for a son, but had never
had one. His daughter was not to him what she had been, and
in this young man the old gentleman seemed to see the son of his
imagination. Hammersley's continual affectionate attention to
him was very pleasant;- there was such grace about the young
fellow, that even when Hammersley bullied him and ordered him
about, he, on the whole, liked it, and did not rebel. It was so
well and so kindly done, so well and so gently, that Sir Clharles,
who thought he had but few years' happiness before him, delighted in this young man's presence; and, forgetting the unhappy
circumstances of his birth, treated him as an equal, contrasting
him favorably with his half-brother, "Harry the Wicked," with
his sallow, ruthless face, and his cold blue eye; and Robert (now
in India), whom he remembered a fierce, savage, but beautiful
boy, - a boy more disagreeable for the contrast of his wondrous
beauty and his uncontrollable temper.' I- am in the hands of
Harry Poyntz," he used to think; " and if Harry dies before my
ruin, I am in the hands of that young fiend Robert. I wish this
fellow were other than he is. I could plead to him."
Not one word of what was passing did Laura's mother or
grandmother know.  They had not given Hammersley two
thoughts since he had first come; and even if they had done so,
the possibility of Laura's being indiscreet enough to interchange
words with him never entered into their heads. But they noticed that Laura was always with her father now; that she had
4




74                   LEIGHTON COURT.
given up,all her old orderly habits, and came and went like a
wild sea-bird on the shore. All this gave her mother great
uneasiness.
"I have lost all power over her. I dare not say anything to
her. I wonder if she means to have Hatterleigh. This don't
look much like it."
" My dear," said the elder lady, " in my opinion she has made
up her mind to have him, and is enjoying her freedom before going
into harness. That is it, depend upon it. There is not a more
sensible girl in England; she is far too wise to refuse such an
establishment as Grimwood."
Lady Emily could only hope so. She knew Laura a great
deal better than her mother. Many a furious outburst of childish
temper had been concealed from the old lady, and remained a
secret between mother and daughter. Laura could be headstrong
when she chose, and she chose now.
Meanwhile she looked on herself as a model of discretion, and
indeed never, first or last, did she take any step unworthy of a
lady. She kept Hammersley carefully at bay, and very rarely
spoke to him; on one or two occasions she had so far forgotten
who he was as to enter into conversation with him, as when
Huxtable overtook them in the park; at these times she found
him to be, just what he looked, one of the most charming fellows
she had ever met. Of course she saw he was a gentleman. She.
would have given a great deal to know his history, but her father
and mother kept that (at least all they knew of it) to themselves.
Her father, during these months, was as restless and as reticent as herself. The passion, almost the pursuit of his life had
been horse-riding. Save that he had done his duty as landlord
and magistrate, he had done nothing else. Now, with a prospect
of Baden or Wiesbaden before him, - now that he saw that it
only rested with an utter scoundrel to ruin him, and to make
him walk afoot till he was too old to ride, - he took to his horses
and his dogs more diligently than ever; his grooms and his dogfeeders acquired new importance in his eyes. Th.e poor gentleman saw that his power over them was ephemeral, - that the
time would soon come whlen they would call him master no
longer. He had always been a kind and indulgent master, -
now he grew kinder and more indulgent than ever. Anxiety
acts on some souls like that. Poor Sir Charles knew that his
reign was coming to an end, and wished that his subjects should
have none but kindly recollections of the banished prince. Laura had got hold of a foolish negro song, " So Early in the Morning!" a very pretty little song too," Master's dead and gone to rest,
Of all the masters he was best."




LEIGHTON COURT.                    75
She sang it once, but he asked her not to sing it again. He gave
every reason but the right one; it was silly, -the lilt was a
mere vulgar jingle, and so on. Poor fellow! the truth was that
the silly pretty song touched him too nearly.
Ah! poor fellow; if he would only have told the truth to
Laura i He could not tell it to his wife or Lady Southmolton,
- he dared not! They, had they taken any pains to calculate
matters, might have found it out for themselves; but no. Sometimes he asked himself, now and afterwards, did they ever guess
or care to guess the truth?   They certainly never gave any
sign. The household, so utterly bankrupt, was kept up in the
same respectable manner: prayers at nine, - lunch at two; service in the hall on wet Sunday mornings, - sermon every Sunday evening, wet or dry, in the dining-room at nine; the whole
dead-and-alive old routine kept up as though there was no merciless creditor, as though ruin were not knocking at the door. It
would have been better if he had told Laura first than last.
But he could not. The dark, nameless secret in Laura's heart
showed itself in her eyes, and Sir Charles saw that there was a
cloud between them. He knew he had sinned, and sinned deeply, in the matter of Maria Huxtable; and he thought that the indecision in Laura's eye, the unwillingness with which she met his
look, arose from contempt, - that she could not forgive him about
that matter. He knew that he was guilty, but he never dreamt
that she could have anything to conceal too. He was so unused
to having anything to conceal, that now, when he had erred, and
found himself, through circumstances, left without a friend, he
got cowardly and reckless.
But though Sir Charles had no more confidence with his
daughter, still he had her. Though his position was a fiction,
an air-raised castle which might tumble down any moment, still
he liad Laura. She was his daughter, the beauty of Devon, the
best horsewoman and the best-trained lady in the county. And
she loved him still, in spite of this cloud between them. It would
all vanish soon, into thin air; and after that the dreary hot white
streets of Baden. Meanwhile he had his daughter, his dogs, his
grooms, and his horses, and no one knew anything; he need not
yet walk afoot and see other folks on horseback.
He never was out of the saddle now. He would ride as long
as he could. As for Laura, she would ride you from cock-crow
to curfew, and she rode with him, loving him as he loved her,
while neither dared say the few words which would have restored
confidence. In either case it would have been too terrible.
So these two reprobates went about on horseback, - away
before prayers, home too late for dinner, - committing every sin
of omission conceivable. The Vicar came down on Laura for




76                   LEIGHTON COURT.
missing church on Easter Eve, pathetically noticed her entire
neglect of the Easter decorations, and plaintively rebuked her
for her backslidings. Laura gave a little laugh, which puzzled
the Vicar, and promised amendment. After he was gone she
laughed again, louder. How quaint his language seemed to her!
His rebuke, earnest though it was, seemed taken out of some
book; not a word in it seemed wrong. Yet all that had had a
meaning for her three months ago. How far off seemed Christmas, - how long she had lived since then! Was the rapt worshipper of Christmas the same being as the wild, gypsy-like Laura
of Easter?  She laughed again; there was nothing irreverent or
mocking in her laugh; it was merely a laugh of wonder, such as
a savage gives when he sees a new toy.
But her riding-habit was on, and her father was waiting for
her in the stable-yard.
CHAPTER XXII.
So Laura- still laughing, still vaguely puzzled about the
change in herself, still vaguely wondering where it would lead
- went into the stable-yard with the skirts of her habit gathered
in her hand. Her father had mounted "The Elk," and was at
the farther end of the yard. Hammersley was leaning against
his leg, and talking to him, with the bridle of the horse he was
evidently going to ride, over his arm. Laura looked, and saw
that the horse he had appropriated was the very horse she had
ordered for herself. The grooms, meanwhile, were bringing out
for her another horse, a horse she did not like particularly.  She
rebelled.
"I ordered Avoca," she said. "I shall not go out to-day, on
this horse."
One of the grooms said that " Mr. -Iammersley had countermanded the order, and had said that Miss was to ride the
chestnut."
And at the same moment Hammersley said to her father, "I
want to ride that horse to-day. His mouth has been pulled about
sadly lately; I want to ride him myself."
This was going too far.  Sir Charles was very angry. He
said, in Hammersley's hearing alone, —
"You are taking liberties. I will allow no liberties. Do you
think, because - because — that I will allow you to speak in




LEIGHTON COURT.                    77
that way? I know the secret of your birth, Hammersley, and I
have treated you as if you were the first-born. But I will not
stand this."
" I am a fool," said Hammersley; and he went quietly forward,
and told the grooms to change the saddles, without looking at
Laura. They obeyed him in a moment; they knew who was
practically master.  When the arrangement was accomplished
he went back to Sir Charles, without once offering to put Laura
on her horse. One of the grooms did that.
Sir Charles and he had time for a minute's private conversation, away from the others. Sir Charles was still angry, but his
anger was passing away. He said to Hammersley: " You forced
me to speak to you. And there is another thing I wished to say.
From your manner, you seem to assert an equality with us, which,
under the circumstances, your are scarcely warranted in assuming. Do you know anything which others do not? Is there any
chance of your assuming the place in the world to which you are
fitted? If so, I will serve you with purse and with influence to
the utmost of my power."
Hammersley pressed his hand. " Let it be as it is for the
present."  They had time to say no more.
To-day Sir Charles and his daughter were bent on an aimless
expedition to the wildest and farthest of their farms, on the very
moor itself, - Fernworthy: a solitary stone house, in the centre
of about eighty acres of poor, arable land, reclaimed from the
moor, lying at the edge of the great Wysclith bog, at the sources
of the river, in the heart of the mountains. There were some
puppies at walk there, and he made believe he wanted to see
them, so as to get a day's riding with his daughter. By a similar kind of self-deception, he persuaded himself that his new
favorite, Hammersley, had better come too and see them. The
pad-groom was ordered back, and Hammersley followed.
So they rode away from the sound of the sea, through the deep
red lanes, through the rich, overarching boscage of the first band
of country; and then through a long-drawn valley of yellow clay,
through which the blue slate peeped here and there, among
world-old oaks, thickly clustered, underlaid with holly, - the
home of the woodcock. Then, facing on to the culminating
height of the slate hills, they rode across the desolate scratchand-scramble-farmed, infanticide-producing twenty-acre freehold,
ten-bushel country, which lies between the thirty-bushel civilization of the red lands, and the vast barbarous granite desert beyond; lastly they came to the country of heather and bleating
peewits,- to the hot silence of the moor; Wysclith, five hundred feet below them, hungrily gnawing at the ribs of the earth
to win his passage to the sea.




78                   LEIGHTON COURT.
But as they rose to this height, great clouds - which unpoetical folks call " cabbage-headed," but which more sentimental folks
call either " blue piled. thunder-loft," or else "Alp-formed cirrocumuli "- kept rising also from the southeast, and now hovered
so closely overhead that Sir Charles remarked, as if there were
the least necessity for doing so, that they were going to have a
thunder-storm.
Wysclith only makes one great bound or waterfall in his passage from the hills to the sea, and that is in his very youth, shortly after he leaves the bog, and before he gets into that great gray
glen, - the " glen of the hundred voices," as we have called it, -
which stills his roaring by degrees till he comes into the softer
strata below. The ford across to Fernworthy crosses the infant
stream about one hundred yards above the waterfall; and as they
splashed through it, they saw the little trout scouring away in all
directions over the yellow gravel, and heard the first thundercrash over Fern Tor.
There is no need to describe Fernworthy, because we shall not
want it again. Yet we will give three lines to a genuine moorfarm. A low gray stone house, with a wall enclosing what our
Scotch brothers call " policies " (and why?); low granite hills,
breaking sometimes into low weathered tors, blocking the horizon; a dozen ill-grown fir-trees, dogs which bark all day, and, for
want of anything to do, hunt the cats (with a distinct understanding, however, on the part of the cats). Besides this, muck, mess,
mad mismanagement, cider and brandy, immorality and ignorance: you must go to the backwoods to match some moor-farms.
The farmer, a vast, untidy, good-humored, slab-sided giant, held
the gate open for them.  "You'm just in time, Sir Charles," he
said. " Listen to mun; and how she stinketh! mussy."
The "she " referred to the air, which certainly deserved to be
so spoken of, for a sulphureous, electrical smell penetrated their
nostrils most disagreeably. Hammersley took their horses to the
stables, and he had hardly come into the kitchen when the rain
began to roar upon the roof, and the first red blink of lightning
was visible in the room.
It was a very fearful storm, such as the livers in the lowlands
seldom remembered, but which were frequent enough, said the
farmer, among the hills. Laura sat beside her father in the middle of the room, away from the chimney; and though she to a
certain extent disliked the glare of the lightning, which was almost perpetual, she could not help looking at the window; for
Hammersley stood there, looking coolly out into the livid blaze
perfectlyi unconcerned. At each variety in the lightning his face
assumed a different color, - now green, now purple, now flushed
with red; and as she watched, she began to fancy that his face




LEIGHTON COURT.                    79
was changing rapidly from one fierce passion to another with a
grotesque diablerie exceedingly terrifying. At last, during a flash
of lightning more white, brighter, and more prolonged than the
rest, which was accompanied by three or four sharp snaps, and
then a roar which shook the house, she saw his face take the
color and the rigidity of death.
Her nerve gave way, and she screamed out, " 0, he's killed!"
and sprang towards him. She had seized his arm before she was
aware of it i and he turned very coolly towards her, saying, in
his usual voice, looking very steadily at her, -
"It was the effect of the lightning on my face, I dare say,
Miss. I will come away from the window."
Laura felt a trifle silly at the exhibition of a self-possession
greater than her own, and began wondering whether or no she
had n't made a fool of herself. She thought more of this question on finding that her father had suddenly tuned his fiddle up
a full octave higher, and had become afflicted with a somewhat
offensively polite silence. Laura was terribly frightened.
If her father's eyes had been for one moment opened, they
were very soon shut again. I believe that in the terror of what
happened instantly after, he forgot the little circumstance altogether, or, if not, that it dwindled into insignificance. The storm
was soon over, and they rode away.
The ford before mentioned, where they had seen the trout
scudding over the yellow quartz gravel, was now a whirling, porter-colored torrent of uncertain depth. Sir Charles pulled up at
it. When they passed before they could hear the noise of the
waters in the glen below; now every sound, even that of the
thunder, which was still growling in the northeast, was swallowed
up in the roar of the waterfall, which was a bare hundred yards
to the right; he'could see the water shelve away smooth and
glassy and disappear, while from the chasm the spray rose and
floated among the rocks, telling of the hell of waters bc'ow.
This was all uncommonly pretty.  He had an eye for scenery,
and admired it, but as a master of hounds he was obliged to call
it a very ugly thing. He wondered aloud how deep it was.
"I'11 see, sir," said Hammersley, and went clattering and
splashing into it then and there. His big Irish horse went at it
in true Irish fashion. It looked dangerous, and there was a
chance of being killed, and so -"at it you go"; and he got
through. It was n't half so bad as it looked. The water had
barely reached to his feet, - they were only splashed. Sir
Charles and Laura instantly followed, " The Elk" striding
through it like an elephant, and Laura's smaller horse seeming
to make as little of it as the elephantine Elk himself.
The Australians are probably the most reckless riders. in the




80                   LEIGHTON COURT.
world, and the younger of them think nothing so fine as swimming a flooded river. But you find that the older they get the
less they like it. After they have had a horse " capsize " under
them a few times they get rid of their superfluous vitality by
dangerous forms of steeple-chasing, and "funk" the water.
Vho can tell at what particular moment what we call an
" accident" begins?  Something suddenly happens, and while
people are wondering what is the matter, limbs are broken and
lives lost. The train begins to jump, and you have not time to
look up from your "Saturday Review" before you find yourself
amidst a ruin of wood and iron, with a lady screaming herself to
death before you, and the last piece of fun in the small-print
article in full possession of your brain. You watch a dipping
sail in the Solent, and think it is dipping too deep; and before
you can realize that anything has happened, the boatmen bring
you ashore a trembling idiot who, an hour ago, was a gallant
young man, and tell you that he was to have been married to the
young lady who was just drowned, and that he held her up until
his, arm gave way, and he was obliged to let her go. This is too
terribly true!
Sir Charles saw Laura go safely on before him till she was
almost at the other side, when her horse seemed to stumble and
feel the pressure of the current; for he rolled on his side, and
threw Laura beneath him. When he saw the horse's near hoofs
rising to the surface, and Laura's arms only appearing above the
water, and her little white gloves clutching about at anything and
everything, then he realized the fact that there was an accident
and a terrible one; and tried to spur "The Elk" towards her,
and towards the destruction which awaited them both in the
seething cataract below.
But the good horse only floundered through the ford, and,
getting on land, burst into one of his pachydermatous gallops; by
the time Sir Charles, half mad with terror, had turned him and
had got back to the bank, he only saw this -
Laura's horse landing himself about ten yards above the waterfall; Hammersley's horse grazing, and Hammersley himself
in the water, with his feet still off the ground holding on to an
oak-root, with his arm around Laura's waist. Their faces were
close together, and they were within five seconds of death, and
he was encouraging her to hold on. She held on. Sir Charles
shouted wildly to them: to her to save herself for his sake, - to
Hammersley to save her, giving wild promises, which were
luckily wasted, as they neither of them heard him. Before he
had time to think of what he had said, they got their feet upon a
shelf of granite, and came on land safe.
Laura was dripping from head to foot; she was trembling too,




LEIGHTON COURT.                    81
but she was also in " a mood," as her father saw in a moment.
He who had watched her so long and so well saw that she was
agitated by something more than sheer physical fright at her
terrible danger. He saw that she was in a mood, and guessed the
cause, sagacious creature!
"Lsaura, dear, you can't blame me. How could I guess that
your horse would have stumbled? I tried to ride down and help
you, but this old brute of a horse would n't turn."
6 "I don't blame you at all, father; I have no one but myself
to blame. Bring me my horse, if you please, as quick as you
can. Father, I am frightened; take me home to my mother."
Hammersley had caught her horse and brought it up, holding
the reins of his own horse by his arm, and standing by her horse's
head; he spoke first, -
"Would you be kind enough to put Miss Seckerton on her
horse, sir? I have frightened her a little pulling her out of the
water."
Sir Charles did so, appreciating the high-bred instinct of the
young man. The moment they were all mounted, the young
gentleman, looking as sulky as a thunder-storm, said, -
" I think I had better ride home, sir, and tell them that Miss
Seckerton is wet and frightened." And without any more words
away he went, as if he was a gentleman, without waiting for
leave.
"Laura, dear," said Sir Charles, who had got very much afraid
of her since the cessation of their confidence, " let us go to the
Downes; you are wet through, and the housekeeper will rig you
out in Constance's things in a quarter of an hour."
" I asked you to take me to my mother, father!"
" But your chest, dear? "
" Take me to my mother; I want to go to my mother  "
4*                                F




82                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XXIII.
BUT now came a crisis in matters which led to' strange results.
Poor Laura will remember the 17th of June as long as she lives;
and there are more still who will remember the next day quite
as well.
What encouragement poor Hammersley had ever received,
which induced him to commit the most fatal act of folly he did,
we shall never know. From  Laura certainly none; she had
scarcely thanked him for saving her life. For the present we
must suppose that Sir Charles had so far spoilt him, as to make
him so utterly forget his position, and what was due to Laura, as
to speak to her in the way he did.
It was very late in the June evening, and the few workmen
who had been employed in doing a few stingy repairs in preparation for Sir Harry and Lady Poyntz were gone, and the Castle
grounds were left in seclusion. Laura went over to walk there.
We know now that Hammersley had watched her and crossed
by the bridge higher up, for another watched and followed him,
impelled by an overwhelming curiosity.
He met her in a dark walk, and, going to her, spoke to her
more familiarly than he had ever done before. He did not go
far, - she did not give him time. She stopped him the very
instant he had gone far enough to make it necessary, but did not
let him go a step too far. She had not been well-formed for
nothing; no one could do it better than she.
She was very quiet indeed with him. She first pointed out
the extreme act of folly of which he had been guilty, and then
dwelt on the extreme degradation and aimlessness of his present
way of life.
" If you are what you seem," she said " (I mean, a gentleman),
throw off this miserable disguise and way of life, and do something worthy of yourself, — something which will make your
fellow-men respect you. Take tho advice of one who wishes you
sincerely well, and go from here at once. Now go; and, believe
me, I shall be always glad to hear of your welfare.  Good by i "
He went quickly, without a word. When she turned round to
see if he was gone she was alone in the gathering gloom, and
saw him no more.
" Could her grandmother have been more discreet?" was the
first thing she asked herself. The answer her conscience gave




LEIGHTON COURT.                   83
her was,," Certainly not!"  The very echoes of the summer's
evening seemed to tell of " Coelebs in Search of a Wife " and
other high-toned books of that kind. She recalled every word
she had said. It was in her grandmother's best style, - nothing
could be more eminently satisfactory. And then she began to cry.
As soon as she had moved away to a safe distance, no other
person than old Tom Squire crept cautiously out, and looked after
her round the corner. He was very nearly caught, for Laura
turned and looked back suddenly; and he saw that she was
crying bitterly.
"What! looking back to see if he'd come again, eh?" the
old fellow chuckled. "There'd be a fine to-do if the lad had
brains to follow you now, -my young lady. Well, if gentlefolks
don't know their own minds, it's no business of mine; but he
shall know of this, though he breaks my head for watching!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
THOSE dreadfully inexorable people the chemists insist that
there is just as much oxygen in the atmosphere on one day as
there is on another, but it is very hard to believe. They make
up their account with ozone, which is a very nasty thing. It is
hard that one may not believe, in this age of toleration, that
there is not more oxygen in the air on a brilliant, crystalline
morning, than on a dim, Wild, murky autumn evening. However,
they are right, one supposes, and air cannot be oxygenated like
water; otherwise the atmosphere round Leighton Court must
have been represented by a fresh formula, on the morning after
Laura's adventure in the Castle shrubbery.
There was something in the air that morning, however, ozone
or barometric pressure or something else, which got into the lungs
of Sir Charles Seckerton, as he lay in bed, with his window open
as usual, and made him get up and shave at seven, and moreover
caused him to ring up Lady Emily's maid, and send her to
Laura's room to challenge her to a gallop on the sands before
breakfast.
The lady's-maid - a most superior woman, who "messed"
alone with old Elspie the nurse, since a great quarrel in the
housekeeper's room, which has nothing to do with this story -
answered the bell with wonderful alacrity, and before Sir Charles
had time to deliver his message, delivered her own: to wit, that




84                  LEIGHTON COURT.
the huntsman and the stud-groom had been waiting in the servant's-hall for him since six, and that she believed there had been
an accident.
"An accident  To whom?"
One of the grooms, or helpers, or some one of the stable people was drowned, she believed, - young Hammersley, she thought.
She belonged to the female side of the house, and shared in the
opposition to horse-riding in any form, which was their creed,
and which had led to the secession of her and Elspie from the
housekeeper's and steward's room.
" Go and fetch them up instantly," said Sir Charles.'And
don't wake Miss Seckerton on any account whatever."
On ordinary occasions Madam would have as soon had her
dinner in the servants' hall as show up any of the "' stable-people." This time, however, she made no further objection than
gathering her petticoats round her and sniffing; she wanted to
hear the news.
" Good heavens! what has happened, Dickson?" said Sir
Charles to the stud-groom, who stood forwardest.
"Mr. Squire will explain, Sir Charles," he said; "I am only
here to make my story good about the horse."
Sir Charles glanced impatiently at the terrier-faced little
huntsman, and said, " Go on."
He still kept in the back, with his gray eyes fixed keenly on
Sir Charles. He began at once, -
"Last night I went to bed at ten o'clock. I had been in bed
about ten minutes, when he came in in a hurry."
"He! Who? Hammersley?"
The old man nodded. Sir Charles looked for a moment from
him to Dickson, and then back again, as though he would ask,
" Does he know anything?"  And Squire shook his head " No,"
and went on,"He came straight to my room with a light, and said at once,'Get up. I must go far and fast to-night. I want "The Elk,"
and I want you to get him for me, for,' he said,' that infernal
cross-grained old pig Dickson,' meaning him, you know, (pointing
at him with his hat,)' would never let me have the horse at this
time of night.' I immediately did as he required."
"And I, Sir Charles," said Dickson, pompously, "following
the routine of the establishment, complied with Mr. Squire's astounding request, and sent out the horse."
"You did perfectly right, my good Dickson.  You may go
now."
Dickson the astonished retired, and the old man resumed, -
" He got on'The Elk.' I asked no questions, I durnst. He
is a Poyntz, you know, or as good as one I should say, and he




LEIGHTON COURT.                   85
was in one of his moods; but knowing Sir Harry was nearly due
home, I thought it was a case of good by. I waited to hear him
say it, but he did not till the very last; and then he said,'I'm
off. I can't stand this. Good by! You shall hear of the horse.'
And I said nothing. Then he said,'Good by, and God bless
you! Come here.' And I came to him, and he bent down and
kissed my forehead."
A pause. Sir Charles turned away, and went on with his
dressing. The old terrier took up his story as soon as he found
his voice; not a moment before,
"He turned to the left out of the Bell Yard, and broke into a
gallop. Then I saw that he was going to try the sands that
night, and I cried out, like a man in the falling sickness,' The
tide's making! the tide's making!' Perhaps he did not hear,
at all events he did not heed. I ran, but what was the good of
that? I heard him only a few minutes, but I ran on, guessing
which way he had gone; and all I could find of him was the way
that the deer still stood gazing as he had startled them. I heard
him open the gate, and rattle down the lane; and when I got to
the cliff above the Avon Sands, I saw that he was lost. He was
three hundred yards out on them going like mad, and the breakers were not a quarter of a mile to his right, growling up fast
before a strongish south wind. That's the last I saw of him,
and the last any man ever will."
" Good God!" said Sir Charles; "you don't actually mean to
say that Mr. Poyntz is drowned? I would n't have had this happen for a thousand pounds. He was worth the two other brothers put together. What makes you think he is drowned?"
" What makes you think he is drowned, Sir Charles?  You
have me there. I am afraid there is no'hope at all."
" But hang it, man, it can't be true; it is too horrible! An
author would n't dare to put such a horrid thing in a novel, except Scott, of course, who has some devilish horrid things in his
novels. Such things don't happen in real life. I won't believe
it. Pish!  I don't choose to believe it.  I don't want to be
shocked just now; we were going on so nicely, as if we were n't
all walking blindfold among venetian-glass; and now this comes.
Poyntz was no fool; he would have turned from the tide and
headed landward. That horse would beat any tide that ever
flowed. You are talking folly!"
" He is drowned and dead. You say he was no fool. He was
a madman last night; and I know they as drove him so. He
got on the Musselbank and was surrounded. Why do you talk
nonsense, Sir Charles, about his heading up the bay?  Don't
you know he is dead? Ride his darndest, and suppose the sands
were sound, where could he possibly make in time?"




86                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"Barcombe."
"I was in a boat as soon as there was water to carry one, and
I have been all along the other shore, to Barcombe and to Seamouth, higher up, but they've heard naught of him. When the
sea gives up her dead, Sir Charles, you will meet the best of all
the Poyntzes, not before. Oh, my noble boy, -oh, my noble,
noble lad! "
Poor Sir Charles! He tried to fight against the probability
of its being true, but facts were too strong for him. He had got
very fond of this unhappy young man, and had more than a
dozen times thought how well he would have liked such a son.
Since he had known that his own ruin was only a matter of time,
he had relieved the ghastly, sleepless watches of the night by
picturing in the dark, when he was afraid to turn and toss for
fear of arousing and making anxious the innocent, unconscious
wife at his side, what sort of a graceful home he could make
himself at Wiesbaden or Paris; and this young Hammersley,
Poyntz, or what you choose to call him, had always made part
of the home-group. And now he was dead, and in this dreadful
manner!
Although he felt certain that it was true, yet he refused to
believe it. For twenty-four hours he was able to say to neighbors that he did not believe it; that the young man had gone off
with the horse, and all that sort of thing; but on the next
morning there was no doubt about the fate of Poyntz-Hammersley, the nameless man, and they searched no more.
Riding under the red cliffs, Sir Charles and old Squire came
upon a little cove or bay of golden sand, which ran up among
sea-weed grown rocks; and here, with his head resting on a
pillow of purple sea-tang, they found "The Elk" drowned and
dead.
It was as well. The cruel quicksands had done their work
thoroughly. The carcass of a drowned horse may pose itself
artistically, and look grand and noble for a little while, but
nothing can make the loose wet lips of a drowned man look
otherwise than horrible. The mermaidens had kept their ghastly
toy to themselves; or, to put it otherwise, the horse had had
strength to struggle from the shifting quicksand, while the weaker
man had been sucked down and buried forever.




LEIGHTON COURT.                    87
CHAPTER XXV.
THE wild July weather set in for a few days now. Nature
generally gives us a reminder, just about the middle of summer,
that there is something to think of in this English climate besides
deep, green forest boskage, and calm, cloudless summer days.
Generally about this time she comes tearing back in her strength,
to toss the boughs wildly to and fro, to flood the streams and beat
down the ripening corn, and to say plainly, "You English, you
nation of pirates, you and I are always at war! I am not beaten,
but will beat you yet. Here are some wrecks for you; I will
come again at the equinox, and fight with you all through your
long, dreary winter." And then up goes the drum and cone from
Peterhead to Penzance, and the telegraph clicks out from one
end of Britain to another, "Here she comes; look out!" And
those of the small fry who abide her coming are hurled on
lee-shores, or tossed, terrified and storm-beaten, into holes and
corners to hide themselves; while the larger ships and steamers
toil grandly on, defiant.
Laura was looking from her window, and watched the dark
weather booming and rushing from the southwest across the
sands. The evening was darkening so much, and night was so
near, that the few toiling ships passing up and down the Channel
were getting too dim to distinguish through the haze.
The news of the accident had found its way early that morning
from the servants' hall to the steward's room, and from thence
upwards into that sacred eyrie, which those two eagles of respectability - Elspie the Scottish nurse, and Lady Emily's maid -
had got built for themselves alone above the base scolding of the
shorter-winged birds below, and where they sat all day with their
long beaks together over the table, turning over the bones of
dead scandals and scenting new ones. A little wide-eyed dove
of a stillroom maid got bold enough, under the general excitement, to fly into their Golgotha, and tell them the news without
having heard their bell; after which she wisely fluttered out
again.
As soon as she wos gone, old Elspie rose up and said to the
Englishwoman, "I'11 just gang up at once, and break it to her
myself."'I think you are wise, my dear soul, " said Mistress Bridget.
"Break it to her gently, my dear soul. That it should come to




88                   LEIGHTON COURT.
this! Break it to her gently. How very, very dreadful! But it
is all for the best. Be gentle with it, my dear soul, whatever you
do. Poor young man! But I did n't see my way out of the mess
till this happened. We have a deal to be thankful for in this,
Mistress Campbell. Mercies are showered down on us every
day. Break it to her gently, my dear soul; but I fear she will
break her heart over it, any how."
Elspie, as the saying goes, looked her through and through.
Mistress Bridget had before made some feeble skirmishing
attempts on Elspie of this kind, — attempts to make Elspie
acknowledge that there was some kind of mild flirtation between
Poyntz-Haminersley and Laura, and Elspie had always stopped
her advance with a dead-wall of Scoth caution. Her own darling
Laura should never be talked about, by that woman at any rate!
She considered Mistress Bridget's last speech as a treacherous
attack on her works at a moment of sentimental confidence, and
she was very angry.
"Ye'11 no sell stinking herrings in Kirkealdy, woman," she
said. " And why should Miss Laura break her heart because one
of her father's retainers is drowned in the sand, if ye please?"
Mistress Bridget " caved in."  It was very horrible, - such a
fine young man! -- and so on; she had not meant anything.
"Ye'd better not mean anything, woman," replied Elspie,
leaving the room, " because I ain't just in the temper to stand it."
So she, who knew how matters stood as well as you or I, went
up stairs and broke it to Laura in the fashion which her keen
intellect told her was the best.
Laura was in her combing-jacket, combing her hair, when she
came in. She stood at the door, and knocked her stick on
the floor.
"A bonnie morn, lassie!"
"A beautiful morning, nurse."
"Ye ken young Hammersley, yer father's favorite man?"
"Very well."
"He's drowned, drowned, drowned; buried sax feet in the
wicked, treacherous sand, and his ain mither will never wail over
his bonnie corpse! Sirs, he was a bonnie lad! I've a tear or twa
left for him in my dry eye yet. The horse fought out of the
quicksand and got drowned fairly, - they found him just now in
the cove below the Castle cliff, - but your bonnie Hammersley is
deid, smoored in the sand, half-way between this and Barcombe!"
And so she shut the door on Laura, and went down stairs to see
if Mistress Bridget was inclined for a fight, which she felt would
do her good, saying as she went," There, she has got it a'! Poor dear, poor darling, she loved
him; and he was a bonny boy, a bonny boy, worth sax hundred




LEIGHTON COURT.                   89
of your fushionless, doited potato-bogle Hatterleighs! She shall
stay alone to-day. I'll tell that roundabout whiskey-barrel
woman Lady Emily and that feckless auld dolly Lady Southmolton that she is ill. They lang nebbit hawk-eyed women are
best left alone in their grief. I mind me of a red-haired seceder
lass taking the jocktaleg to her ain mither, but that's no exactly
to the purpose. Laura is too lang in the neb, and too keen in
the eye, to be meddled with this day."
" But," groaned out the old woman, " the Papister! If that
man get hold of her, now in her trouble, she'11 be a Papist in
three months; and she'11 fly to him now, and he'11 pass her on
to the abomination, the villain, before I am dead. I shall have to
see it. I'11 go in and see if Mistress Bridget will have a turn
of words with me, and help me to put poor Laura out of my
mind.  They lang nebbit women, —it's either Calvinism or
Romanism with them. They must have it hot either way."
Poor Laura had been devising fifty plans to avoid seeing
Hammersley again, supposing he had not done as she had asked
him, and gone. One plan was to ask to go to her aunt's in
London; another to fall ill, and get taken to Bournemouth;
another to tell her father just enough to make him send Hammersley away. But now her difficulty had been solved in this
horrible way. She spent all the day by herself in a state of
stupefied terror, sending excuses down stairs to say that she was
shocked by the accident, and that it had made her ill. All day
she stayed in her room, looking over the desolate sands until day
began to decline. She felt alternately terror at his death, and
terror at what she had escaped; tenderness, too, tried to make
itself heard, but she resolutely beat it. "Not to-day, at all
events, - not to-day," she said, resolutely.
As the day went on a resolution grew into a settled purpose,
and at evening she rose to put it into practice. In her terror and
her grief she fled back to those old rules of life in which she had
been brought up. She would appeal to them for protection
against herself; they had seemed to do much for her grandmothers
- let her see what they would do for her, now they were wanted.
She dressed herself very carefully, and went down to dinner.
As she shut the door of her room, she said, — " There! the discipline is begun; the last six months are shut in that room
forever!"
When she got down' Lady Southmolton and her mother were
laughing together, but they left off as she came in.
"My dearest girl," said the older lady, "you have had a sad
shock!"
"Why, yes, - rather," said Laura, in her dryest, hardest voice;
"it actually made me ill for a little, Elspie announced it so sud



90                  LEIGHTON COURT
denly. It seemed to me so particularly horrible, that a fellow-.creature was struggling fdr life within sight of our windows,
while we were comfortably laughing and joking. At what time
was he drowned?"
"At about a quarter to eleven."
"Singular! There was a light in my room just at the time,
probably the only one on that side of the house. That must
have been the last object his eyes rested on before he sank. Of
course it is not so shocking in this case, as it was only a servant,
but it is very sad! "
This I give as an instance of the mental torture she began to
inflict on herself. Not an idle hour in the day was allowed now.
The next day she walked up to the Vicar in the morning, confessed to him, and received absolution. He imposed a few
penances upon her, which seemed to make her much happier,
but they were very light ones indeed; for the Vicar was not only
glad to have her back, having missed her sadly, but he thought,
on the whole, that she had behaved uncommonly well. The
principal thing he insisted on was, that there should be no more
fox-hunting; all the mischief had come from that, and there should
be an end to it.
And Sir Charles put up a tablet on the church-wall to poor
Poyntz-Hammersley, and " The Elk " sleeps beneath the immemorial elms in the corner of the Park.
END OF PART L.




LEIGHTON COURT.
PART II.








PART II.
CHAPTER XXVI.
BY the end of July, before the cub-hunting began, all the
neighbors came cackling back again, with new ideas, new dresses, new people to talk about, new combinations to discuss; and
poured into the Court first of all, as being the most popular house
thereabouts, to give the folks there - Laura especially - the
results of their experience: as if there had been no change
down here, —as if there had not something happened here which
made their mere cacklings ridiculously unimportant, - as if she
had not lived a life longer than any of theirs since they had
gone ambling away into the world!
There was a dinner-party, with some of the first arrivals, on
a Friday, —a haunch-day, as Sir Peckwich Downes called it.
Laura appeared in gray silk, with no ornament but a crucifix;
and, as it was a fast-day, mortified the flesh by taking nothing for
dinner but turbot and lobster-sauce, oyster-patties, some omelette,
a little cream, and some peaches and grapes. Her conversation,
also, was purely theological. In short, with the highest and
noblest intentions, she was overdoing the thing altogether; and
when it was over, and Laura had gone up stairs, her father
followed her into her room, and said, -
" My sweetest Laura, I am not going to argue, to dictate, to
command, or even to advise. I merely want to put this before
you. Does not your admirable good sense point out to you that
your suddenly changed dress and manner are calculated to make
people talk?"
" Dear me, father, - let them talk i"
"After what has happened?" said Sir Charles, and thought
wistfully.
" It shall be as you wish," said Laura. "I quite see what you
mean, dear; and don't be impatient.  The old confidence will
come back in happier times. There - go!"
" It will come back in ruin and disaster," thought Sir Charles.




94                  LEIGHTON COURT.
But his heart was lighter. "It will come back, at all events,"
said he.
After this, Laura never made any public - not to say offensive - renegation of the vanities of this world, but let her own
common-sense have full play. She was thoroughly in earnest
though, and worked away like a cart-horse at her good resolutions. I suppose most of us have done what she was doing at one
period of our lives, and have found, or have thought we found,
peace in factitious activity about small things; and have ended
by finding out that, like opium or brandy, the remedy destroys
itself, and that " peace of mind " is not the greatest object in this
world. But with this we have little to do; we must attend to
more trivial matters. We have more to do with the succession
of arrivals, which came on the Court people like a deluge of cold
water; and had the effect, among others, of making Sir Charles
quite forget that he was a bankrupt.
Constance Downes was about the very first of the arrivals.
She was a fine, roundabout, bounceable, two-to-a-pew young lady
before she went; but now she had sewed pillows to all her armholes, and was two breadths more round the skirt than she had
ever been before. She embraced Laura, and, as she said, brought
the news herself. She was engaged: to Count Ozoni Galvani,
an Italian nobleman, it appeared; who, if his brother, the Duke
of Pozzo di Argento, a most dissipated and unhealthy man, died,
would become golden pump himself; but who at all events, even
if that miserable little creature married, would have his mother's
money. She was Miss Butts, it appeared, the banker's daughter,
at Whitby. Laura congratulated her, but wondered how it was
that Constance, with her beauty and her fifteen thousand pounds,
had not picked up something better: moreover, wondered how
much Constance Downes's dress had cost; and whether "his
mother's money" would stand such a tug-of-war as a dozen of
such dresses a year: got entirely worldly, in fact, as she confessed to the Vicar next day, who was very impatient with her,
though from a cause quite different to what she supposed.
With Constance, of course, came Sir Peckwich and Lady
Downes, vastly deteriorated in everything which made them
worthy, by their visit to London. They had both developed, or,
more properly speaking, thought they had developed. Sir Peckwich, from an honest county baronet, had developed into a twopenny-halfpenny politician, and, what is worse, in a story about
mere social relations, an absolute bore. Lady Downes, an honest,
roundabout, country-squire's wife, was now by way of being a fine
lady, with about the same capabilities for being one, or of understanding what one is, as a donkey has of winning the Derby. A
fine lady is a very rare and peculiar article, like certain wines.
Any wine-merchant can charge you for them, but it takes three




LEIGHTON COURT.                   95
generations, three bottlings off, and a voyage to India say, to
supply the article. What it is worth when you get it is another
matter. But your real fine lady is a thing of time and tradition;
you can't, to take the very lowest qualification of all, get at that
unutterably graceful impudence in one generation. Mere Becky
Sharp genius won't do it; it wants tradition. The art is, they
say, rapidly becoming extinct in England; but there are a few
fine ladies left still. We have lost utterly the art of designing
decent buildings and statues, and of making bells; but those who
ought to know tell one, we have a few fine ladies left, though
none coming in. One would say that fine ladies would, in the
coming bouleversement, be found last in Prussia.  Bismarck,
though of the other sex, is, as far as we have been taught to understand the fine lady, the finest instance of the fine lady to be
found out of England.
It is humiliating to confess that poor dear Lady Downes tried
to be the fine lady before Lady Southmolton: but she did. She
sat, and fall-lalled, and patronized, and talked about the Court,
and cross-examined Lady Southmolton on the peerage, and on
people. And Lady Southmolton sat and looked at her.
Colonel Hilton appeared next. He had been to Chalons, but
not, as was proposed to him, to America. He looked handsomer
than ever. He had found so much to do at Chlions, in studying
the new military movements, that he had got another man sent
to America. It had been very pleasant there and at Paris. The
Poyntz people, Sir Harry and his bride, had been there. "At
Chalons or at Paris? "-"At both." "How was Lady Poyntz?"
-" Lady Poyntz was quite well," he believed.
Next the Poyntzes themselves came. Every one at one time
had declared they would not call on them, but now, somehow,
everybody did. Lady Southmolton went with singular promptitude, in the most public manner; thundering through Winkworthy ostentatiously, in the family Ark. It is supposed that
Sir P. Downes would have refused to call, but his women-folks
were too many for him. It was understood that Sir Harry would
keep up the house much as the Huxtables had done, and Constance had a hundred pounds' worth of finery which she must
wear out before the fashions changed; and she, as bully of the
establishment, had no idea of having a house closed to her down
here, where there were so few. So they went, and everybody
went. And Sir Harry received them with the most high-headed
nonchalance, and showed them all, as plainly as possible, that he
did not care whether they came or stayed away.
So the land became peopled again; and before they had well
heard and communicated all the news, Laura, one afternoon coming out of her room, heard Lord Hatterleigh cackling and
screeching in the hall




96                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XXVII.
ABOUT a fortnight after their arrival at the Castle, Lady
Poyntz was sitting at breakfast, in her own old room in the keep,
the quaint four-windowed room in which Laura once met Sir
Harry Poyntz.
Poor woman! She had got back to the dear old Castle as its
mistress,- she had got title and position, such as it was; but she
had made a sad blunder, and she had found it out three days
after she had married.
Sir Harry puzzled and shocked her. He was unutterably
false, but he was never in the very least ashamed of it; and as
for physical cowardice, he boasted of it. With all this he had
shown hitherto such a perfectly equable temper, and such an unmovable persistency in gaining his end, that, on the two or three
occasions in which their wills had crossed already, she had yielded, although a person of considerable strength of character.
Once she had made him a scene, but it was no use: the more she
stormed the more he laughed, in such an exasperating way that
he left her pale with rage. She vowed to herself that he should
never see her tears again.
Still it was his interest to treat her well, for only half her
money was in his power, and he did so whenever she did not
come between him and his object: when that was the case, his
gigantic selfishness would have made him use cruelty towards
her, had it been necessary.
"Lady Poyntz, I wish you would tell your women to get
the blue room ready for to-morrow," he said on this particular
morning.
"Certainly, dear: who is coming?"
"Captain Wheaton."
"Sir Harry Poyntz," she said, indignantly, "you promised
that you would not let that man enter the house!"
" I did not promise."
"You did, and, what is more, you know you did."
" Well, that was before we were married, when I was n't sure
of you."
" Or my money?"
"Or your money: exactly, and I can't keep my promise now,
— lovers' oaths, you know. I must have the fellow. He is an
awful blackguard, but he is necessary to me. I will keep him in




LEIGHTON COURT.                   97
order for you. He is afraid of me, - physically afraid I mean,
- as great a hound as that."
Lady Poyntz remained silent, consideringhow she should act,
and, while doing so, fixed her fine dark eye steadily on her husband's. What a curious, shallow, cold, dangerous eye it was,
the lightest blue she had ever seen, with a kind of moonlight
gleam about it! She would have died sooner than have turned
her own eye away, and yet she would have been glad to do so.
She made as though she were brushing flies away from her
forehead, and at last said, —
"Well, I have made up my mind; I suppose he will come."
"Most assuredly!"
"Then I shall not speak to him, and not allow him in the
drawing-room. I must sit at dinner with him, I suppose?"
"Well, I think so. I am glad you are not going to speak to
him; it will teach him his place. So that is settled; I thank
you very much."
" Harry," said Lady Poyntz, "do you ever hear from your
brother in India?"
"My brother in India is an extravagant and dissipated rascal,"
said Sir Harry; "I wish he was at Jericho! He has been costing me more money."
" Is there any chance of his coming home soon? " she asked.
"I should like to catch him at it," said Sir Harry. "O, I
should so very much like to catch him at it!"
Maria had asked him this in good-natured curiosity, to see
how he was disposed towards his brother, and to try and find out
something of his character. She had been set on to this by her
old friend, Sir Charles Seckerton. It was an important question
to him, for he knew the state of Sir Harry Poyntz's health. She
left the result here, as being somewhat unsatisfactory. There
was another matter on which she wished to satisfy herself, and
thought it a good opportunity. She, as nonchalantly as she could,
said, -
"What a sad accident the Seckertons have had with their new
huntsman! "
The light-blue eyes were on her in a moment. She thought
that the fowl sat, and she stalked on.
He said, "Yes, I heard of it."
"Did you know anything of the young man?"
"I suppose you do, from your manner, my pretty fencer. I
guess that you know that he was our illegitimate brother. Is not
that true?"
Maria laughed. "You are very cunning," she said; but the
blue eye was on her, still inquiringly.
"Who told you?" he asked.
5




98                   LEIGHTON COURT.
"Lady Emily Seckerton," she said. "What sort of man was
he?  Were you fond of him?"
" Very much so. I liked him better than any other human
being, - except you, you know, of course."
" You seem to have taken his loss pretty easily; I did not
notice that you were much affected."
"I wished to spare your feelings; I was unwilling to disturb
the happiness of your honeymoon by any exhibition of grief.
Besides, it is one of the traits of my character that I never do
show my grief. The remarkable fortitude I showed at the death
of my father drew tears from the nurse. She was drunk, and
wanted to kiss me; but I am sure she was in earnest."
"I suppose you could show equal fortitude at my death?"
said Maria.
"rThat would depend entirely on what you did with the thirty
thousand pounds which is settled on yourself. If you left it back
to me, as Christianity dictates, I should spend five-and-twenty
pounds on a cheap tombstone for you, tear my hair, and take to
drink. If you let it go back to your family, I should show my
fortitude by looking out for another woman with money, as soon
as - nay, long before - it was decent."
" Harry! Harry!" said Maria, reproachfully, "are you ever
in earnest?"
"Sometimes on money matters, -  on sentimental business,
never. So drop it. Now, have you satisfied your curiosity
about Poyntz-Hammersley?"
" I have satisfied my own. Now to raise yours. Do you like
Laura Seckerton?"
" I love her! She is a paragon of a woman, - so beautiful, so
discreet, so careful not to wound with her tongue.  0, I love
her!"
" Shall I tell you something about her, - your paragon?"
" Do; you will never bore me as long as you speak of her."
"' Why, then, I will tell you," said the unhappy woman. " She
fell in love with Poyntz-Hammersley; she made every kind of
advance to him, which he, for decency's sake, reciprocated. When
he was drowned, she took to her long-forgotten devotions, and
went into mourning, until her father and mother forced her, with
threats, to behave more reasonably. All this time she believed
him to be a common groom from the stable-yard. I know that
she knows no more of him,- no, nor does any one else, except
her mother and her father. And this is your Laura: it is the
scandal of the place."
Sir Harry drew his chair up against hers, and said, " Say that
again."
"6 Why.,)




LEIGHTON COURT.                   99
"Because it is delicious; because it does me good; because it
makes me love you. Wheaton shall dine in the housekeeper's
room, in the still-room, in the coal-hole, before he insults my
peerless wife by his presence! Say it again."
She told the story over, with additions.
"That is very good," he said; " you love her, don't you?"
"I hate her! " said Maria, but said no more.
"And I," said Sir Harry Poyntz, grasping his wife's arm, -
"I hate her with a hatred which your spasmodic female nature
has no power of understanding, leave alone of feeling! She hates
me, and she nearly turned you against me (and your sixty thousand pounds, you know; let us have no sentimentality). She
has used language about me here, there, and everywhere which a
dog would n't forgive, - and a dog will forgive, from his heart
of hearts, far more than any Christian. I hate her! I can ruin
her father any hour after six months; but the pleasure of ruining
her will be greater than taking possession of the Court. How
are matters going on with Lord Hatterleigh?"
Maria roused herself, and said: "' I expect the engagement to
be announced every day. The booby is always there. How
long he will take about proposing Providence only knows.
When, where, and how he will do it I dare not think, but do it
he will: and she will have him, and stop slander."
" Look here," said Sir Harry, with his wife's wrist still in his
hand. " You have said you hated her, and I must do you the
credit to say that you never lie, if that be any credit. We must
let this engagement go on until it is talked of all over the
county,.- until it is in the'Morning Post'; and then we must
revive this scandal, get it broken off, and drag her down in the
dust. Tell me, woman (for I am blind about such things), is
Hatterleigh, as they say in their cant, man enough to pitch her
overboard for this?"
"He is one of the first men who would do so. But I am not
prepared -"
"Then I will prepare you. It was well done in her to trifle
and play with our dear friend, Colonel Hilton, and then throw
him over for a roughrider! "
Maria could not help catching her arm away. "Have I married the Fiend?" she thought, and Sir Harry Poyntz laughed
and left the room.
This interview had opened both their eyes a little. Maria
saw, by this last unutterably wicked speech of his, that her husband knew that she had been in love with Colonel Hilton, and
that he had tried to see whether that was the case still. He,
from the snatching-away of her arm when Hilton and Laura's
names were mentioned together, had seen that it was. Alas! he




100                 LEIGHTON COURT.
was right. Poor Lady Poyntz had tried to get over it; but the
first few days with Sir Harry had opened her eyes, and Chalons
and Paris had done the rest. She found herself tied to a hopeless, shameless liar and coward; while that glorious melancholyeyed hero Hilton had, now that Laura's baleful dark eyes were
out of the way, fallen in love with her. It was all Laura's fault;
she would have won him in time if it had not been for Laura.
So, when her husband had asked her, she had said, " I hate her! "
But had that very unaccountable scoundrel, Sir Harry Poyntz,
known anything about the better class of women, which he did
not, he would have observed that* Maria's "I hate her!" was
said in a snappish tone, which, with a very little extra passion,
would have gone over the hysterical border, and come to be, " I
love her." The fact was that there was nothing more than temper,
and a very little matter of that, between her and Laura just now.
Lady Poyntz had thought a good deal since she had flown out at
Laura on the subject of Colonel Hilton just before she was
married: had reflected what a high-minded, noble friend Laura
had been to her; how the real fact was that Laura had never
encouraged Colonel Hilton, whereas Colonel Hilton had undoubtedly made, in his cool, procrastinating, dandy-soldier way, a
considerable deal of love -to Laura; and that Laura had only
told her the truth about her husband, after all. But still she had
a little devil of jealousy and evil temper at work in her heart, -
a little devil who was sometimes almost powerless, but who got
very active and powerful whenever her husband had the management of him.
Sir Harry had just been showing off the paces of that little
fiend, and he was full rampant. But even now, in the hour of
that fiend's power, poor Lady Poyntz knew in her own mind
that she could never bring herself to join her husband in his
scheme for ruining Laura. She felt pleasure in the indulgence
of her ill-temper towards her, but only in imagination: she knew
she would never reduce it to practice, although she went to bed
indulging in the anticipation of doing so.




LEIGHTON COURT.                  101
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PooR Laura, terrified, had retired into her shell, and was by
no means the genial, outspoken woman of old times. Besides,
Maria Poyntz had given the first offence, and should therefore
make the first advance, which Maria, after the extremely precise
not to say demure manner in which Laura had received her, felt
very little inclined to do.
" She might surely come and see me," sulked Lady Poyntz.
"I have not committed any crime."  But assuredly she did not;
and as sulks grow by indulgence, the chances of a reconciliation
seemed to get more hopeless as time went on.
Laura's mother and grandmother were astonished to find all
their old influence over her completely restored. They were
such very wise women that they never mentioned this astonishment even to one another.  They perfectly understood one
another, and agreed without speech that the reins now recovered
must not be drawn too tight, and moreover, must be loosened on
the first symptom of restiveness. They need not have been
uneasy; they might have driven her hard enough now. Part of
her scheme was the giving-up of her own will, and the more they
had asked from her the more she would have yielded. One
difficulty she had,- a comical, foolish little difficulty enough, but
one which gave her a deal of trouble; she was determined to
yield to the Vicar's wish about fox-hunting, and she dreaded
telling her father of this resolution. Moreover, she was afraid
of giving rise to remarks. Something occurred, however, before
cub-hunting began, which made this matter easy for her.
We were great admirers of the late Admiral Fitzroy, and at
one time thought Mr. Burder a most shocking man for doubting
his entire infallibility.  Certainly, some of the Admiral's hits
about the weather were nearly miraculous; but it was a low class
of cunning. It was done mechanically, and he was always telling us how he did it, -a great mistake in a thaumaturgist. It
was almost a low class of cunning compared with the foresight
which even an ordinary woman will exhibit, not even empirically, but intuitively, about the social weather. Compared to
such a woman as Laura, the late Admiral was quite behindhand,
and would have confessed it in a moment.
There was bidden a great picnic party to the place which we,
with our fine imagination, have hitherto called " the glen of the
hundred voices," but which is marked on the Ordnance Map as




102                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"Crab's Gut." - They were all to start from the Court at twelve;
and when Laura had finished her breakfast, and found herself
alone in the room with her grandmother and her mother, she saw
that there was something in the wind, - that they were going to
say something important to her. She could n't tell you exactly,
like Admiral Fitzroy, the process by which she arrived at her
conclusion, but the conclusion was no less certain. They were,
especially the elder, both well-trained women; and Laura knew
that they would take, with their wonderful tact, a long time in
telling her. She knew perfectly well what they were going to
say, had her answer ready, and wished it done. Nevertheless,
she was a ritualist: forms must be gone through. They did not
ask her to stay in the room. She looked at them and saved them
the trouble, stayed without being asked; looking at them both
steadily.
Lady Southmolton, looking out of window: "What a glorious
day for it! I wish I was going. I wonder if I dared trundle
round in my pony-carriage and see you all. I am afraid not."
"You must not think of such a thing, mother," said Lady
Emily; " it would be too much for you."  She had by this time
come round to Laura, and was stroking her hair.
" That'11 do, mamma," said Laura to herself. She said aloud,
" I don't think you had better, grandma. It's a long way and
the roads are rough. No, I would n't."
" How  are you going, dear?" asked* Lady  Southmolton,
sweetly, as her mother kissed her back-hair, in irrepressible
admiration.
"With peas in my shoes. It is Friday, you know," said
Laura; and didn't say anything more, which was worse still.
It was abominable- and undutiful of her, in the highest degree, to
pull out (if one may be allowed a simile, taken from  Lady
Southmolton's constant occupation) her grandmother's knitting
like this! However, the old lady gathered up as many stitches as
she could, and clicked away again. Lady Emily, getting frightened, and being (as was always the case when she was wanted)
utterly useless, continued to stroke Laura's hair, till Laura very
nearly went to the extreme length of asking her to leave off.
Lady Southmolton got up a ghost of a giggle, and said something about their dear Laura's spirits, which, seeing that dear
Laura was sitting before her, looking very stern, and getting
paler each moment, seemed to be somewhat misplaced. She was
a brave old lady, however, and went on with her business, as per
arrangement with Lady Emily, —plans rather traversed by
Laura's vulgar answer about the peas in her shoes.
" Colonel Hilton is coming with his phaeton, my love; he
would be delighted to drive you." This had been part of the




LEIGHTON COURT.                  103
leading-up business, but went amiss: it came in the wrong place
and did n't fit.
Said Laura: i" If he don't drive Maria Poyntz he may drive
any one else. But he sha'n't drive me. And if he drives her, I
shall not go. Neither would you, m6ther, would you?" facing
round on her mother at the same time.
Lady Emily kissed her daughter, and most loyally answered,
6 No, I would not"; after which she gave the whole business up
to Lady Southmolton, and confined herself to kissing Laura at
all the important pauses.
" Now go on, grandma," said Laura.
In spites of this traversing of plans by a slightly contemptuous
Laura, the old lady nailed the last rags of the original programme
to the mast, and fought for them to the end. She had been going
to do the thing in the proper way, as that sort of thing was always
done. The responsibility of any deviation from the programme
should fall on Laura's shoulders. She solemnly played her
next card, Just as if Laura hadn't just trumped one of the
same suit.
" Lord Hatterleigh," she said, in as offhand a manner as she
could manage, — which was very badly, for Laura had been
" odd " with her, and she hated " oddness," and was nearly eighty,
- " Lord Hatterleigh has borrowed your mother's pony-carriage,
and will be delighted to drive you. Will you go with him?"
"Yes."
This was worse than before, - enough to make Mrs. Hannah
More rise from her grave. Here was a young woman with opinions of her own, with some shadowing-forth of a character. That
transcendently perfect and angelical muff and ass, Coelebs, would
never have got on with Laura: a young person who exasperated
her own grandmother with such answers as that about the peas,
or, failing that, monosyllables like this last " yes," and drove her
to make her grand speech before she had half got through the
hour's fencing and "beating about the bush" laid down in the
programme. It was intolerable! Lady Southmolton came to the
"toast of the evening" at once, -
" My love, all that I have previously said, and which you have
somewhat impatiently heard, was intended to prepare your mind
for this great fact: Lord Hatterleigh has been to see your
mother! "
Why does one feel inclined to laugh at a funeral? Laura felt
so much inclined to laugh at her grandmother's bathos, that she
gave herself great credit for keeping her countenance. Yet she
knew - who better? - that it meant a life-important decision.
She was all alone, poor girl! Her heart was with Poyntz-Hammersley, who was drowned in the quicksands: that we know




104                 LEIGHTON COURT.
well. Her father and she were estranged. It was not a matter
for the Vicar's ear, for it was not all her own matter, - one half
was Lord Hatterleigh's. She had, she thought, nearly done a
great wrong to her family, and would atone for it at all risks.
No: she had no soul to whom to go for advice and assistance;
for she had travelled out of the grooves of her mother and grandmother's ways of life and thought, and could not return to them
again, try she never so hard. And, above all, she really was fond
of that Guy Fawkes Lord Hatterleigh; she knew his worth, and
so she said,"Well? "
"Well, dear, we were going to say that in all human probability he will speak to you this morning; and that if you could
give us the very slightest hint as to what answer you would give
him, you would remove a great load from our minds."
"I will give him any answer you please; I will say exactly
what you like. What do you wish me to say?"
Lady Emily kissed her and wept; Lady Southmolton went on.
She would not influence her for one moment, she said; but then
went on to point out to her the innumerable advantages of such a
match, if Laura could only bring her mind to it, and so on.
" I gather from all this," said Laura, " that I am to say' yes.'
Well, then,'yes' it shall be. Now I think I will go and get
ready. Here are the carriages coming round."
Lord Hatterleigh had come over to breakfast that morning,
but had spoken word to no one, save salutations, - except to
Granby Dixon, M. P., the man who knows everybody, and turns
up everywhere. Lord Hatterleigh had eagerly seized on Granby
Dixon the moment he came into the house, had sat next him at
breakfast, and talked to him incessantly and pertinaciously about
the Limited Liability Bill. And that kind and worthy little soul,
under the impression that he was doing a good-natured action by
undertaking Lord Hatterleigh, had led him on. Not that he
wanted much leading, however, for he was evidently determined
to stick to the Member for Brentford like a leech; and after
breakfast took him out into the garden, and stumbled up and
down beside him, offering'a strange contrast to his dapper companion. All this was somewhat irritating to Lady Emily, who
knew what was coming; but her wrath rose to a towering pitch
when she heard Lord Hatterleigh say to Granby Dixon, just
before they started, -
"Come with me, Granby, and we will have it out in the
carriage."
"This is too bad! " she said to herself. "H Iis own arrangement,
too! However, he shall not play with me like this."
She saw that Granby Dixon had gone up stairs to put on his




LEIGHTON COURT.                   105
boots, and that Lord Hatterleigh was in the- porch. She stood
by the stairs. Granby's dandy little boots were soon heard tripping down the stairs; him she seized, and eagerly said, -
" Mr. Dixon, my dear friend, don't go with Lord Hatterleigh:
Laura is to go. I have known you so many years, I know I may
trust you."
~ He grew grave. " It is easily managed, my dear Lady Emily;
where is Miss Seckerton?"
" In the library. Thank you very much!"
Granby Dixon went after her with his brightest smile and his
lightest trip, and found her sitting alone in the library, readydressed.
" Lord Hatterleigh is waiting for you, Miss Seckerton," he said
cheerily; and she rose at once without a word, and took his arm.
She was rather pale, and he felt her arm tremble just once, but
she was perfectly self-possessed when they got among the other
people; and Granby chattered away merrily, and continued to
do so until he had packed her into the pony-carriage beside Lord
Hatterleigh, who had got in and was sitting on the left side, waiting for Granby himself, - having made the last feebly desperate
effort to gain a little more time.
Granby saw them drive off, and found his warm little heart
nearer to his eyes than he liked. He chattered and made himself agreeable all day to every one, but at night he said to himself
when he was alone in his bedroom, " God help that poor girl!
God Almighty help her! O, it is monstrous, - monstrous!"
Meanwhile Lord Hatterleigh had said to Laura: "Will you
drive, Miss Seckerton, as you are on the right side? " And Laura said " Yes," and away went the pony (an exmoor, - that is
to say, havingj a considerable share of Barb blood, and standing
fourteen hands) like a steam-engine. They were out of the park
and through Winkworthy before either of them seemed to find
time for speaking; but when the pony slackened up the first hill,
Lord Hatterleigh laughed, not with his ordinary idiotic cackle,
by any means, but pleasantly enough, and said," I am glad you drove. I am such an outrageous muff that I
can't even drive a pony. This pony would have found me out
before this, and run up a tree, or done something or another."
"You should practise," said Laura.
" No good,- no good! I have practised shooting, but I shoot
so badly that my own brother swears at me. I was sent into the
world with two left sides; I am an ambisinister.  I can't even
catch trout, - at least, I only catch junior and inexperienced'
trout, and I fall into the water in doing: that. Now, who is to
answer for this state of things? What is the good of my having fifty
thousand a year if I have two left legst and another man's arms? X
5*




106                 LEIGHTON COURT.
Laura suggested that he might do a great deal with his money.
She mentioned hospitals, industrial exhibitions for the workingclasses; but found herself dwelling on flower-shows, being in a
foolish frame of mind, and naturally harping on the most foolish
idea. She forced home the necessity of these flower-shows upon
him with considerable volubility; but finding herself somewhat
entangled in proving the moral effects of china-asters, she saw
that she was talking unutterable nonsense to gain time, and
wisely held her tongue until it was all over.
"Well, I do go in for that sort of thing, Laura," he said.
"God knows I do heartily whatever my hand finds to do, but I
am what they call a muff; and if you married me, you would
make me little else. The time is gone by, - nay, the time never
existed. But, Laura, I am neither coward nor liar, as you will
find if you say'yes' to the question I am going to ask you.
Can you marry me? There is no hurry for your answer. I
urge nothing in my own favor, you observe. Give me an
answer before we reach the end of the next mile, and that shall
be final."
Laura could not help turning and looking at him. She had
her answer ready, and was determined to deliver it face to face,
with her eyes on his. So she turned; and she saw him as she
had never seen him before, and knew him for the first time. Now
that he was sitting in perfect repose, h-ow that his fantastic
manner was out of the play, - she saw what a noble creature he
was. She was clever enough to know that his brain was not
first-class,- that his family was getting worn out; but she had
sense enough to see that his face, now that it was at rest, was a
very noble one, and to feel that the calm patience with which
he waited for her answer showed that he had a gentleman's soul
in spite of his fantastic habits. I suppose it was her woman's
instinct which told her that he was in love with her; but
woman's instinct is a thing which I don't understand, nor you,
and least of all the women themselves.
He soon felt that she was looking at him. He turned on her
kindly and, to say the truth, grandly, and said,
"Well, is the answer ready so soon?"
Laura said: " The answer has been ready since this morning.
My mother prepared me for all this.'The answer is,'Yes.'
If you had asked me at breakfast-time this morning, the answer
would have been a complimentary'yes'; now it is a very decided'yes,' indeed."
" Then you think you can get to love me?"
" Not better than I do af present! I always loved you, Lord
Hatterleigh, and I love you better than ever now. I think you
are a noble person; but you do not do yourself justice. Let me




LEIGHTON COURT.                   107
give you our first confidence. This morning I was ready to
submit, - now I am ready to acquiesce. I think —"
Ah! that one glance at the wild tide-beaten sands, far below
their feet, which showed her that she was speaking falsely, though
she meant so earnestly and so honestly every word she said!
Step out, old pony, and carry us deep into the green woodlands
beside the rushing river; and leave the sands far behind, with
the dead man buried in them. The dead man's memory walks
there like a ghost, and will walk forever: but like other ghosts,
if not seen, will be forgotten and discredited. On into the
woodlands then!
They all met in the glen, at a place where the trees were so
high, large, and dense, that you could only see the overhanging
cliffs here and there among the topmost boughs. The river,
tired of streaming from crag to crag of granite, slept in a deep
black pool, over whose surface the foam-flakes slowly travelled
in gentle curves. There was silence close at hand all around;
but, farther off, the ceaseless rush of water came softly and
pleasantly to the ear. About the edge of the water were broad
shelves of granite, mostly carpeted with moss; while on the
edge which ran farthest into the pool, there stood a great Loganstone, which seemed as if a child's hand might topple it into the
river. The summer sun streamed through a deep boskage of
king-fern and hazel. It was a perfect place for a picnic i
Laura and Lord Hatterleigh noticed to one another, as soon as
they looked round, that the central figure in the landscape was a
very singular one. Sir Harry Poyntz happened to be standing
apart from every one, on the edge of the water, looking about him.
Hle had dressed himself, as he usually did, very oddly, and looked
utterly unlike any one else. With the exception of the blazing
breloques on his waistcoat, and the rings on his fingers, everything about him was brilliantly black and white, - white trousers,
waistcoat, and hat, but a black-velvet coat, and lacquered shoes,
all in a state of catlike cleanliness and neatness.
"Look how that fellow's clothes are cut," said Lord Hatterleigh. " They won't make such clothes for me; and it's no use
my going to his tailor. Look at him, Laura! Do you see that
he is blowing his nose, and that he has a tinted handkerchief and
primrose-colored gloves, which have the effect of making his
waxen complexion look healthy? Did you ever see such a
clever fellow?"
Laura had no time to laugh, as she felt very much inclined to
do, for Sir Harry Poyntz came towards the pair; and with a
smile on his face, but none in the cold shallow blue eye, asked
Laura, to her great surprise, if she had seen Colonel Hilton?
" He is not coming; indeed, he was not asked, I believe," said




108.                LEIGHTON COURT.
Laura, with- the most perfect coolness, - a coolness which had the
effect of irritating her mother extremely. She wanted to get some
hint of the result of the drive in the pony-carriage: " Had that
booby spoken?"  Laura gave no sign.
"Oh i bother it all," said Sir Harry; "is n't he coming? Then
I shall have to take care of my own wife; this is too bad!"
"I can take care of myself, Harry, I dare say," said Lady
Poyntz, bridling.
"Can you? " said he. " From watching you and him together,
I should have thought that you could scarcely have cut up your
own dinner without him! "
"What a reckless lunatic'that man is, George, to speak so to
that poor woman!" said Laura, aside, to Lord Hatterleigh.
It was the first time she had ever called him by his Christian
name; he turned and looked at her gratefully; and Laura was
astonished, he really looked very handsome. Could this be the
booby of this morning?
"Where will this end?" he said to Laura. "What can the
man be doing it for?  To gird at her in society before they have
been six weeks married!  I can't endure that fellow, Laura. I
know nothing of him, except this, that I hate him  "
" You should not hate anybody, George."
"Very like, - very like!  But I hate that man, however.
Are you fond of cats?"
" For the sake of argument, no. But why?"
"'Because that man is a cat. Look at him; look at his
stealthy grace,- look at his perfect cleanliness and neatness, and
look at his hopeless, unutterable selfishness. I'll go up, and
make him purr for you directly.  Did you ever see anything
more wonderfully bizarre and attractive than the fellow's dress?
If he chose to be decently civil to his wife, that sentimental whiskerando Hilton would have no chance with him. Hiltons are as
common as blackberries; any one could manage him, — there
would be no credit to her in dragging him at her chariot-wheels.
But there is only one Harry Poyntz. If he would only allow
her, before society, the reputation of having mastered such a notoriously dangerous tiger as he is, she would be proud of him and
would get to love him. But he won't; it is not his game; I can't
understand his game the least in the world. I suspect there is a
good deal of caprice and whim about the man. Those effeminate men acquire feminine vices, I expect: childish love of power, causeless ill-temper, and cap-"
Laura looked at him with the corners of her mouth drawn
down demurely, and they both burst out laughing.
Sir Harry and Lady Poyntz were having a few words meanwhile. 




LEIGHTON COURT.                   109
"I cannot conceive, Harry," she said, "what you propose to
yourself in treating me like this in public. If you could help it,
I shall be glad; if you can't, I shall retaliate. I could be very
disagreeable, mind!"
"0 no, you could n't, my love; you could n't say anything
which these dear friends of ours have not said a hundred times
over. Bless the dear little fool, you have n't heard half the lies
about me yet! But there is no cause for anger in this case; I
only chaffed you about Hilton because I saw it annoyed Laura
Seckerton."
"I wish you would not sharpen your wits on your wife. Why
don't you bring Captain Wheaton, and make him your foil? "
"The people won't have my helot; my helot gets drunk and
becomes offensive, and what is amusing to me is disgusting to
them. Take care where you are standing, you will catch fire.
By Jove, you are on fire; take care! "
It was true. The grooms had made a fire on the rock, as being a necessary part of any picnic; and Lady Poyntz, in drawing herself up tragically before her husband, had backed against
it, and her flowered muslin dress was sending up half a dozen
tiny wreaths of white smoke, just preparing to burst into a blaze.
Laura and Lord Hatterleigh were watching the pair, and saw
the accident. Laura gave a wild scream, and Lord fiatterleigh a
roar. He rose up, tore off his coat, and, as he hurled his ungainly length towards them, was heard by the terrified spectators to
cry out, —
1" Throw her down, Poyntz; throw her down into the wet moss.
The fool, why does he stand staring there! Are you fit for nothing in heaven or earth?  Throw her down."
By the time he had relieved his feelings so far, he had got
hold of her and fairly tumbled her down, trying with his coat to
smother the fire. Fortunately for her, they fell together among
deep wet moss at the edge of the water, with the fire underneath.
But the fire was strong; and Laura, standing horror-struck, saw
his long, lean, delicate white hand in the midst of it four or five
times as he tried to smother it with his coat, before his own groom,
the first man who recovered his senses, put it out by baling water
on it from his hat.
Then Lord Hatterleigh got up, and Lady Poyntz was helped
up; and there was a general shrieking and gabbling, in the midst
of which Laura came up to Lord Hatterleigh's side, and found
him thanking his groom.
"I am personally obliged to you, Sanders. Your family has
served our house for many years now, and has always been distinguished, with one solitary exception " (brother of this Sanders,
say-the Archives, who got himself bored to the borders of Bed



110                  LEIGH1TON COURT.
lam, and enlisted in the 16th Light Dragoons, - a rebellious Sanders) " for their dexterity and devotion. - This shall not be forgotten."
The present Sanders merely touched his hat in acknowledgment, and pointed out to Laura, as being a thing which decidedly
concerned her more than any one else, that his Lordship's left
hand was terribly burnt; after which he went for old Doctor
Buscombe, who happened luckily to be of the party, and who
was wandering in the wood with Lady Emily, gathering bilberries, and hearing all about Lady Southmolton's symptoms.
Laura took Lord Hatterleigh's arm, and led him away. When
she dared to look at his left hand she nearly cried out. It was
all burnt up into great bladders, - but no more of that. He tried
to laugh, but it ended in a feeble cackle.
"Lucky it was n't the right one, — eh, Laura? Should n't have
been able to write. I should have been obliged to dictate my
Limited Liability pamphlet to you: and you're so stupid, you
know; you'd have made a hundred blunders, would n't you,
now?"
" I should, indeed. Sit down here, and let me tie my handkerchief over your hand. I don't like this."
"Don't like what?"
"This, all of this. It is all getting so tragical, and so terrible. 0 George! George! do, whatever happens, stay by me,
and see me through it.  Do let me believe that there is one
other human soul in whom I can trust. Be friendly to me,
George; I have no friend left but you. I always loved you,
George, — I always trusted you. Be a friend to me, George,
for I am all alone, George, - all alone, all alone!"
This from his imperial bride, whom he thought so hard to
win! It set-him thinking. He could think rapidly, and generally to the purpose; besides, to use a term, which I cannot replace by a better term, "his heart was in the right place." His
answer was soon ready, rough as it was,"Laura, if the Old Gentleman himself comes between you
and me, let him take care. I am a peer of England, with fifty
thousand a year; that still counts for something, even in these
latter days. What is the social status or income of the gentleman just alluded to, I don't know; but let him take care, — a
British peer is still a very terrible person! Make me your husband as soon as you can, and we will face it out together. Pitch
me overboard to-morrow, and we will face it out just the same."
Their tete-&-tete was ended. The Doctor was seen approach-'
ing rapidly with Sir Harry Poyntz, who was trying to look as
if' he had been to fetch him. While the Doctor was untying
Laura's pocket-handkerchief from the burnt hand, Sir Harry




LEIGHTON COURT.                  111
spoke to Lord Hatterleigh in a gentle, quiet voice, without one
touch of scorn, and apparently without the slightest arriere pensee,- with the strange recklessness of a man who has, offended
the world past forgiveness, and has become utterly contemptuous
of it, —
"I have to thank you for saving my wife's life. That is, I
believe, supposed to be a great' obligation, although it has cost
me thirty thousand pounds. I am very much obliged to you,
and all that sort of thing. I was utterly taken aback when the
accident happened, and she would have been burnt to death before I should have realized it, and then I shouldn't have known
what to do. You have shown an extraordinary amount of courage and sagacity, - you must see that yourself. I have entirely
changed my opinion of you. I always thought you a half-witted
booby; and so did you, you know, Miss Seckerton?"
It was horribly, viciously true, - it was as wicked a thing as
ever was said; but Lord Hatterleigh's quiet, beautiful good-humor took the sting out of it in a moment, and made it perfectly
innocuous, -
" I don't know whether she thought so; I can only answer for her
having diligently told me so for the last ten years. Eh, Laura?"
"/1My lord," said the Doctor, "we must get home and have
this dressed."
"But I don't want to go home."
"You must."
"Pish, Doctor! I am determined to stay out and.enjoy myself."
"Enjoy yourself! You know you are in terrible torture?"
"By no means; I am enjoying myself thoroughly. Take Sanders home, and bring your bandages, your cotton-wool, your fiddle-faddles back. You needn't be gone half an hour. Home,"
quoth he, -" not if I know it!"
" Hah! " said the Doctor to Laura, " the symptoms are worse
than I thought. Fever is setting in; he is getting tete montee. -
My dear lord, I am astonished that one who has always taken
such care of his most valuable health should trifle with a serious
accident of this kind." And here they all three burst out laughing.
" Don't let him chaff me, Laura. -But, seriously, is there any
danger in my staying out?"
"No danger," said the Doctor; " only, if you persist in staying
out, I shall think that Sir Harry Poyntz's former estimate of
your character was - was - well, I won't say what."
"And Miss Seckerton's too, remember. A half-witted booby,
eh?  Well, I'11 submit; I must act up to my new character. I
suppose you could n't quit this festive scene, Laura, and drive me
home? By the by, Doctor, I ought to tell you I am engaged to
3Miss Seckerton."




112                 LEIGHTON COURT.
" A bad thing for me," said the Doctor.
"Very bad. If you are the man I take you for, you will go
and get the pony-carriage for us. I'd do the same for you."
"We shall see," said the Doctor to himself, as chorus, going
on his errand, " what stuff there is in this good-humored gaby.
There may be something. He comes of a good stock, and has
shown pluck and resource to-day: but I fear he has thought
about himself and his inside too long, and that this is only a
grand show-off. Noblesse oblige, but noblesse and dinner-pills, -
bah! I can't believe in it yet. He has got that peerless girl to
consent to marry him, and he is bent on showing that he is not
the miserable effeminate ass which the world has written him
down. When the necessity for showing-off before her is gone,
he will sink back into his old valetudinarian selfishness again.
A man don't study himself for fourteen years, to the exclusion
of all other matters, and then turn out a hero at the end. She,
pretty story-teller, has been telling him that she loves him, -O
woman! woman! woman! — and he has believed her. When
he finds out how she has lied, the last state of that man will be
worse than the first!"
But when the Vicar heard of it, he said:'I always thought
well of that young man from a boy. His mother nearly spoilt
him, but he will do now. He only wanted arousing."
CHAPTER XXIX.
AND so Laura was enabled to say, without exciting any surprise, on the day before the cub-hunting began, -
"I shall not hunt this year, my dear father. George has
pressed me very eagerly to do so, but I don't think it would be
fair on him. He can't hunt himself."
There was, undeniably, good sense in this. Sir Charles
sighed and gave up the question, seeing that he should have to
hunt his short remaining time by himself. But he found her
waiting for him at his early breakfast. She made him his tea as
of old, paid the little attentions to his necktie, and made him as
smart and as spruce as possible; and she sent him off with a kiss,
and stood laughing at the door in the early autumn morning, as
the tall, spare, gentlemanly figure rode down the avenue alone.
She noticed how bent he was getting, and said with a sigh, -
"Well, and so there's an end of all that!  I shall wonder




LEIGHTON COURT.                  113
at nothing now. I knew a young lady once, called Laura Seckerton, and a jolly young lady she was; but I don't know what
has become of her. There is the church-bell! "
The Vicar had been profoundly astonished at this engagement
with Lord Hatterleigh. If he was in any way offended with
Laura for not having asked his advice, he was too sensible, with
all his fantastic ritualisms, to show it. He knew that if Laura
had ever had. the slightest idea of following his advice, she would
certainly have asked it. Therefore, when she told him of it, he
only gave her his affectionate blessing; and as soon as he could
get rid of her, went and told his wife, saying to her what we
have mentioned above as a per contra to the Doctor's opinion.
The "Umbrella" was rather more savage about this engagement than she was about Maria Huxtable's. Her life is only
noticeable for these few outbreaks, as the history of a volcano is
only the history of its eruptions. On this occasion she made an
A. D. 63 business of it. After twenty years' quiescence she rose
upon her husband, and overwhelmed him; he being as unsuspecting of such a thing being possible, as ever were the inhabitants of Pompeii, when they saw something like a fir-tree
fifteen thousand feet high. Yes, she turned on him for the first
and last time. Their servant (probably an idle and untrustworthy minx, given to leasing) put it about afterwards, that she
actually shook her scarlet-gloved fist in his reverend face; it is
pretty certain, seeing that he told the whole business to his most
excellent gossip Sir Charles Seckerton, that she "went in on
him " very much in this style: —
" This is a most villanous business! Those exasperating old
trots, Lady Southmolton and Lady Emily, are allowing the girl
to sell herself. Do they know that she was in love with PoyntzHammersley?"
"With whom? I did n't catch the name."
"Yes, you did. With Poyntz-Hammersley, the man who was
down here in disguise. Do they know that,- that they are
allowing the poor girl to sell herself, for bare respectability's
sake, to this tomfool? I dare say they do. You do!"
" How do you know that?"
"I know it now, at all events, because you don't dare to deny
it. And knowing it, why did n't you prevent her making this
engagement?"
"What power had I?"
"None, I hope; for I should be sorry to think that, if you
had any, you would have been such a coward as not to exert it.
Why can't you confess at once that you had no power, after all
your boasting?"
" My power is limited at a certain point."
H




114                 LEIGHTON COURT.
"So it seems; stops short of the useful point, - very short."
"Georgina, you are losing your temper- "
"I am not!"
"But I could easily forgive you if you were. I don't like it,
but will you be good enough to tell me what I could have
done?"
Only indignant twitching of the red gloves. The Vicar had
administered a puzzler; and he, seeing'his opportunity, dexterously and at once soared up into a vast moral height and regarded the red gloves, as though through the wrong end of a
telescope, in infinite perspective: —
"Your instincts, like those of most women, are good; your
capacity of judgment and your knowledge of logic are, as in the
case of all women, contemptible. I would have prevented this
if I could, but I could not. No one knows better than yourself
that the wholesome power of the priest is, for the present, circumscribed in a shameful manner."
" You might have done something. You might have gone to
dinner there Friday week - fast-day - what is a fast-day to
Laura's happiness?  Besides, there were filleted soles and
crimped skate - Mrs. Border showed me her bill of fare - and
you might have spoken your mind. You might have pointed
out quietly to Lord Hatterleigh, that he was notoriously the
greatest gaby and goose in the Three Kingdoms, and that he
never could be happy with Laura; or you might have wrapped
the whole thing up in an allegory."
" As how?"
"That's entirely your business. You are clever enough at
allegories, when you choose. I never know when you are speaking in allegories, or speaking the truth. I thought it was all true
about Saint Bristow, till you told me it was an allegory, and the
school-children believe it as much as the Babes in the Wood to
this day. If you had gone to dinner on Friday week, and
wrapped it up in an allegory, the thing would have been stopped.
As it is, Laura Seckerton is, entirely owing to you, going to
marry Guy Fawkes!"




LEIGHTON COURT.                  11 5
CHAPTER XXX.
GuY FAWKES, however, as the Vicar's wife called him, made
a most attentive lover: he used to ride or drive over from Grimwood every day, and spend many hours with Laura, interfering
sadly with the regularity of her life, and her methodical arrangements; and of course she submitted uncomplainingly.
Nay, more. These interruptions of Lord Hatterleigh were far
from unpleasant. Those good folks who said to one another,
"-How can that noble girl endure that booby for ten minutes?"
knew very little either of Laura or of Lord Hatterleigh. In the
first place, all her hundred-and-one rules and regulations, though
bravely persisted in, were, so far from being any relief, becoming
intolerably irksome. They had always been tiresome to her in
the old times; but she had grown into the creed that the only
difference between an Englishwoman and a foreign woman, the
only difference between an immaculate saint and an ordinary
sinner, consisted in the adherence to these aforesaid rules. That
the immaculate saints, when they did fall, made a far worse mess
of it than the ordinary sinners, who had not pitched their pipes
too high, she had long suspected; but she had been brought up
to consider that the only life possible for a decent woman wasthat of the well-regulated'British female of the superior classes,
and on to this belief she had engrafted the Tractarianism she had
learned from the Vicar. Whether the creed she had knocked up,
between Hannah-More regularities and ultra-high-church regularities would not hold together, or whether her mind had all along
been too extremely ill-regulated for either, is a question we must
leave to abler hands to decide. We have only to do with results; and the results were, first and last, unsatisfactory.
Last, more particularly: when she had that terrible fright
about Poyntz-Hammersley, she began to believe her grandmother once more, and fled back to her old formulas. She
found them deader than ever, —so very dead, that when she
recognized that the submitting to Lord IHatterleigh's attentions
was part of her duty, she found at the same time that his babble
was the only thing in life that she cared for. When he was absent she went on with her other duties, -her regular reading, her
poor, her schools, or what-not. But as day after day went on she
began to look more eagerly for his coming, and, to his great delight, to chide him for being late. She had always liked the man,




116                 LEIGHTON COURT.
and she liked him better day by day. Though he atfirst gobbled
like a turkey-cock, and blundered about like a hobbled donkey,
yet what he said was fhr better worth hearing than anything else
she heard; and as for clumsiness, he improved rapidly.
"I wish," he said once, "that I could put you on your horse."
"Why?" she asked.
" Because then we could ride together; and it seems so shameful to me that you should have given up your riding on my account."
" Would you like to ride with me, then?"
"I would give anything to do so; but I should pitch you over.
And I can't ride."
"You ride well enough, and the stud-groom can put me on.
Do you desire that I should ride with you?"
He laughed, and so did she. "I make a formal request that
you ride with me."
"I obey, of course," she said. "Will you ride with me tomorrow?"
"Shall we go with your father to the meet?" he said, eagerly.
"I know you would like it."
"What can we want at the meet, my dear George? Every
man can't ride to hounds, and you can't. I don't love you or
respect you one whit the less for it, but I don't want youi to be
sneered at by all the horse-breakers and horse-dealers on that
account. Come with me over the sands."
So they went, - farther and farther each day; poor and
schools being more and more neglected for a week. At the
end of that time Laura made. her appearance one night in her
father's dressing-room, as of old, and, putting her arm around his
neck, said, -
" George and I have got such a quarrel with you, you wicked
and unfeeling old man!"
"My darling, why?"
"You never come. and ride with us; you treat us like the
dust under your feet. If you want us ever to speak to you
again, you will come and ride with us to-morrow."
He could only kiss her and cry. Poor old gentleman.! with
all the ruin hanging over their heads, and be afraid to realize it
to himself, still more afraid to tell Lord Hatterleigh the truth.
But he came with them day after day, and, for the first time for
so many years, was sorry when a hunting-day came, and they were
separated. He forgot that he was ruined during these rides;- he
only remembered it in the dark watches of the night, while the
unconscious Lady Emily murdered sleep by his side. They rode
everywhere these three, Sir Charles pioneering, -by the river,
through the woodlands, up the glen, on the mountain ridge,




LEIGHTON COURT.                  117
along the sands. They talked of everything, - of hounds, politics,
other folks' housekeeping, Constance Downes's match, bullocks,
ploughs, cottages and their improvement, horses, and servants.
But there was one horse they never spoke of, — "The Elk";
there was one servant they never mentioned, - Poyntz-Hammersley; and there was one ride they never rode, - the bay under
Leighton Castle, where "The Elk" lay dead on the morning
after the dark night in which Poyntz-Hammersley had been lost
in the quicksands.
CHAPTER XXXI.
"IT is all getting so terrible and so tragical," said Laura once
before. So it was, though she knew nothing of her father's impending ruin. She could see that her mother and her grandmother knew nothing, or would know nothing, of the great
tragedy which was being played around them: of her state of
mind, for instance, with regard to Poyntz-Hammersley and Lord
Hatterleigh; or, again, of the relations between Sir Harry
Poyntz, his wife, and Colonel Hilton: which last were getting
horridly confused in Laura's mind. Whatever happened, she
was sure that they would have a respectability handy, and would
get over it:" My dear, he was a handsome fellow, and Laura
behaved with great discretion, -far better than poor dear Lady
Becky"; or, " My dear, he used her shamefully, and she went
off with Colonel Hilton. She must never be mentioned again."
Laura was right. If they had known of Sir Charles's difficulties,
they would only have said, " Poor dear Charles has been living
too fast!"  That would have been- their formula for ruin; and
they would have gone to Baden with the utmost complacency,
and without any loss of dignity. The thing had happened before
to dozens of people in their rank of life, and with their way of
living; therefore, there was nothing shocking about it, - nothing
particular to grieve about. Laura knew this, and knew that it
would be a more shocking thing, in her grandmother's eyes, if Sir
Charles had sold his grapes or his game, than if he had lived beyond his income in doing usual extravagances, and had landed
them all au premier at Brussels.
She had done with these two ladies, and she felt less inclined
to renew her confidence with them every day; for she had found
a friend, - Lord Hatterleigh. Every day she felt more respect




118                 LEIGHTON COURT.
for him, and every day she felt more and more that with that
noble, high-minded, highly-educated oddity at her side, she could
face the world in arms. There was not perfect confidence between
them, and that made her at times uneasy. Much as she loved him,
he was no lover of hers. One night while Sir Harry Poyntz was
walking up and down his room, and thinking when he should
begin to poison Lord Hatterleigh's mind against her, she was
tossing on her bed, brimful of the resolution of breaking off her
engagement with Lord Hatterleigh and taking him for her friend.
She never did so. She let things drive; she did not move in the
matter any more than did Sir Harry Poyntz. They both bided
their time.
But the pleasure she felt in the confidence and conversation
of this man was very great; she revelled in it. She told him
everything (save that one, and got to forget that, and to act
about it as she did when it first happened, — to shove it back
into her deepest consciousness, with such success that she thought
it was going to stay there).  She told him of her systematic
bringing-up, and her early rebellions - and he laughed; of her
religionism —and he spoke gravely and well, praising her and
blaming her confidentially and sensibly; showing her the absurdity of running into these extremes, and, in the end, persuading
her to return in a moderate manner to her old routine; and, as
part of it, took going to church on saints' days with her himself.
Her grandmother could not have been more discreet than this
youth; sometimes, however, she was forced to laugh when he got
too priggish. There was perfect equality between them; it was
all give-and-take. He was a strong anti-Tractarian,- would have
been, if he could, leader of the Oxford Liberals; and they had
many a fine fight over that matter. She, on the other hand, was
merciless about untidiness, and bullied him systematically about
his personal appearance, until he got to put on his clothes in a
decent manner, and to come into the room without falling into
the fireplace. In short, they did one another a great deal of good,
- as any two honest people may, if they will only speak the
truth to one another. She by degrees laughed him out of his
sententious Daniel-come-to-judgment way of talking; and he,
though sometimes in a fantastical way, put more good sense and
knowledge of the way in which the world wags into her head
than ever had been there before.
In the full luxury of the new-found confidence between them,
the following dialogue took place one day when they were riding
together.
"George," she said, "there is something very near my heart,
and you must share it."
He said - &c., &c., &c., — just what you or I would say.




LEIGHTON COURT.                  119
"Don't cackle; and you should n't giggle after such a speech
as that; and you have got your feet too fafr in your stirrups, and
are turning your toes out. Men who don't hunt should n't ride
like grooms. Keep your toes in as if you were in the Row."
"Is that what was so near your heart?"
"Now, pray, don't be funny; remember the bull in the chinashop."
" I will, - and turn my toes in too. There! Now then, Laura; if you are going to be serious, be so."
"I am not at all sure that you are in a fit state of mind to
be consulted with; you are a trifle rebellious, and I have a good
mind —  But, George dear, let us be in earnest; I want to
speak to you about Maria Poyntz."
Lord Hatterleigh looked over his shoulder to the groom, and
said,," Go home to the Court, and borrow me a clean pockethandkerchief from Sir Charles's valet."  And he went.
"What about her?"
"Is there nothing to be done? Is there no way to warn
them, - to warn her? "
"Do you wish to try?"
" I only want your sanction."
"Then you have it. God speed you I"
CHAPTER XXXII.
"Is Captain Wheaton come in?" said Sir Harry Poyntz to
his valet one day, about half an hour before dinner.
"He has been in some time, Sir Harry; he is smoking in the
library."
"He has no business to smoke there, unless I am present.
Did you tell him that he was to come to me the moment he
came in?"
"I did, Sir Harry."
"Then why the devil did n't he come? Lawrence, that man
is getting too much of a gentleman for us; he must have a
lesson."
"The best lesson you could give him, Sir Harry, would be to
pack him about his business."
" But who is to do the dirty work, - the spying, informing,
mischief-making, gaining information, and so on?  You won't.
I have asked you more than once, and you flatly refused. Who
is to do it?"




120                 LEIGHTON COURT.
"Nobody, Sir Harry; leave it undone."
"Ah! but you're a fool, you know. There is not a man or
woman within ten miles who is not a rogue, - except you, you
know, of course, and my Lady Poyntz, - of course I except my
Lady Poyntz, -and roguery must be met by finesse. Send
him up."
He soon came, whistling: an evil-looking creature, with his
eyes too near, too deeply set, and too shifty, and a nasty grin on
the mouth of him, which fortunately could cnly be guessed at,
not seen, under his beard.
"I'll tell you what, Wheaton," said Sir Harry; "I'll give
you five pounds if you'11 shave."
", What for?"
"I love my money better than anything in this world, - except, of course, virtue, and my Lady Poyntz; but I would give
five pounds to see your villanous face without all that hair on it:
only as a matter of curiosity I would. I hate this beard-andmoustache movement. One used to be able to tell a rascal by
his mouth: now one has to look at his eyes. However, it don't
much matter in your case; in more difficult ones it might be
different."
"Have you called me up here to insult me?" said Captain
Wheaton.
"Yes: partly that, and partly to hear your report of your
rascally eaves-dropping expedition."
"The devil is on you strong to-night; Lawrence had better
sit up with you again. Bedlam  ain't such a nice place as
Poyntz Castle."
" Bedlam, you fool! In the first place, I am not in the least
degree mad; and in the second place, I have had another attack
of angina pectoris this morning, so you'll soon be in Newgate.
You won' t be out of jail six weeks after my death, and I can't
last many months. Now then, report progress, and let us have
no more nonsense."
"I went," said Captain Wheaton, "at your desire, into the
pleasance, and watched Miss Seckerton and Lady Poyntz, and I
was lucky enough to hear some of their conversation."
" Sagacious touter! And neither of them horsewhipped you,
as the boy Custance did at Newmarket? And how did the fillies
gallop?"
Wheaton never looked at him, but went on: "I heard their
conversation. Miss Seckerton was telling her what a fool she
had been to pitch Colonel Hilton overboard, loving him as she
did, in a fit of ill-temper, for such a worthless, effeminate, shallow
knave as you. "
Such a silly lie! But he, who disbelieved every other word




LEIGHTON COURT.                 121
the man said, believed this. He had exasperated himself against
Laura: this man Wheaton had helped in it to his utmost, hating
her with his deepest hatred for the utter scorn which always
shone on him out of her eyes; and Sir Harry Poyntz believed
him.
"I really must play the deuse with this young lady, — I really
must. I am very sorry, for I rather like her when she is wicked.
Go on."
" And then I came round the corner on them."
"What an infernal hang-dog scoundrel you must have looked!
What did they say?"
"Do you want me to drive a knife in you, you brute!" cried
Wheaton, rising in a catlike rage. "I'11 do it some day if you go
on torturing me and insulting me like this. Do you think I can't
feel?"' If I thought you could n't feel, I should n't do it."
"'You make my work too hard for me. I did n't mean to lose
my temper. You are ungenerous, — you are ungentlemanly to
use me so. And it is such bosh! You can be kind enough at
times. Why do you madden me against you like this?  You
know you ain't half such a devil as you want to make out."
"Silence! You interrupt my line of thought. Well, I won't
do it any more; if you were n't such a hound I should n't do it at
all. About this young lady: I'd let her be Lady Hatterleigh,
and madden her life away when she found out the truth, only I
should n't be alive and should n't see it. Besides, she's a shrew,
and I hate her; but she is too good for that. I think I shall
merely administer a severe castigation, which I shall have the
pleasure of seeing, and teach her to keep her tongue between her
teeth. I shall not give you any money to-day; I will not be
threatened with knives."
" That's it! Devil's pay! You never gave me anything for
making the huntsman drunk, and getting him to tell me that he
saw them kissing one another in the garden; and now you are
going to ruin her on my information."
"There is scarcely a word of truth in what you say. In the
first place, it was n't in the garden, - it was in the shrubbery; in
the second, they did n't kiss one another, but fell together by the
ears, and blew one another up consumedly; and in the third
place, I am not going to ruin her at all, but only to give her
a lesson about the management of her tongue. Saving her.from Lord Hatterleigh cannot be ruining her. She can marry
Bob; he would take her with any reputation for the sake of the
estate. Lastly, if either you or the huntsman say one word-you
know what I mean - I will pitch you overboard (and you know
what that means); and I will ruin his master, and take uncom6




122                 LEIGHTON COURT.
mon good care that that rascal Robert shall turn him off the
estate."
"About Lady Poyntz and Colonel Hilton?"
"Silence, sir. Mly domestic affairs are none of your business."
"Are you going to sell up Sir Charles Seckerton?"
"That is a matter of detail. Go and ask Lawrence for my
check-book."  (He brought it.)  "You don't deserve anything
- you and your knives. How much do you want?  Want,
I say; what matter is it how much water one pours into a
sieve? "
Wheaton mentioned five-and-twenty pounds.
"Then you will want the dogeart to drive to Exeter, and I
charge you five pounds for that; that makes twenty. A man
of any gumption would bring back a couple of hundred. But
you can' t play billiards, and you never will. Why do you go
on trying? None of you cat-faced men ever can play. I would.
give you points, and have all this money back to-night, if you
dared to play me. Here's fifty pounds for you; in the name of
decency take a fortnight in losing it; I don't want you before
that."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
"You have got your hat on the back of your head again,
George," said Laura, one afternoon. "I wish you would n't; I
am always telling you of it."
"' Why should n't I? It's very nice."
"If looking like a lunatic is nice, that's nice. No one does it
out of Bedlam; it makes you look as mad as a hatter."
"- does it."  He mentioned a statesman, at the sound of
whose name the earth quakes to its centre.
"Then he's mad," said Laura, " and ought to be locked up."
"You can think better when your hat's like that," said Lord
Hatterleigh, "and I was thinking."
"What about?"
"I was thinking when we ought to be married."
"That's my business. I have thought about that and come tc
a decision. My decision is next year."
" I will see if I can make you alter it."
"There is not the least use. George, I want time. George,
I must and will have time. Do you, accept my decision? "




LEIGHTON COURT.                  123
"I suppose I must."
"So I suppose. Now go and dress for dinner."
"It is very early."
"Use the interval in abstraction from worldly affairs and contemplation. No great work of art is accomplished without that.
Put the whole force of your intellect into the subject for the
next half-hour, and then, when your valet comes to you, you
will have grasped the subject yourself, and will.not be dependent
on a mere expert. Get to feel yourself safe without your expert.
Why, if anything was to happen to him, you would n't be able to
dress yourself, and would have to put the thing in commission.
Look at the Admiralty, will you?"
And with these whirling words she left him, and went in, but
not to dress just yet. She went up stairs past her own room,
higher yet, to the room which old Elspie inhabited with Lady
Emily's maid, and she found her alone.
"Elspie, dear, how are you?"
"I'm braw, my bonny bird. And I'm as strong as maist of
these southern lasses yet, praise be to God! And how is my
lord?"
" He is very well, — and he is very kind and very good, Elspie,
which is better still."
"Bless him! A noble heart! I wish I had had the nursing
of him. Your feckless queans of southern nurses, - see what
they've done with him! His heid gangs ane gate, and his legs
the ither."' He is mending, Elspie; he is mending."
" I'd mend him! Why does his lordship keep the Tullibardie Moor, that his brother Lord Charles should kill the grouse,
and send them south to him? Why does he no go north, and
brush the bare lean legs of him through the heather?  When
he came south again he'd be for kicking your Colonel Hilton
down stairs. Laura dear?"
"Well?"
"When you are married, take his lordship to Scotland; and
0, my darling, take me with you. It's a bonnie country, this
England, and I love it; but let me see Scotland again before I
die. I am an auld fule, and I'11 confess that Fern Tor is grander
than Schehallion, and that Wysclith is bonnier than Tummle;
but take me back to Rannoch, darling, once more, before I die.
I'm a hale old woman, I'11 no dee on the road. If I dee there,
— I will dee there, Laura, and lie with him on Tummle side,
with the roar of the Waxing Burn in my ear, until the dawn
which knows no night begins to wax in the Cairn of Schehallion -"
" That's all about long ago, and about long to come," said




124                 LEIGHTON COURT.
Laura, looking out of the window across the sands. "Elspie,
tell me this; how long does it take to live down love?"
The old woman had risen, and had been getting a little excited,
as the images of the crystal mountain, the long-drawn lake, the
snarling river, the whirling snow-drift, the crashing thunder-storm,
- all the wild incidents of that wondrous fairy-land, Perthshire,
came flashing on her aged brain. But she sat down now suddenly, and watched the back of Laura's head with her keen gray eye.
"How long does it take to live down love?" she repeated,
slowly. "Weel, that juist depends on the person ye speir of.
There was Luckie Macdonald of Dall; Sandy Macpherson of
Aberfeldy died in the snaedrift aboon Rosemount, coming over
to see her, and she married Rab Grant, one of Lord Breadalbane's keepers, before her second sacrament. (The deil mend
the pair of'em!) Then there's my ain case, again. I have been
forty years forgetting him, and have not done it yet; but then I
have no tried, ye ken. Of whom were ye speiring?"
"Of no one in particular; of such a person as myself, say."
"0, yersell. 0, forty-five hundred and saxty-seven years;
and ye'll no do it at that, lassie.  Gang down and dress for dinner. Mistress Bridget will be here the now for her tea. I'm
loath that she should hear you talking your nonsense.  Gang
down, - gang down to my lord."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
TIME went on, until the months had nearly made up another
year; but nothing happened of any sort worth relating, and only
two things progressed which are worth mentioning by us.
One thing which progressed was Sir Charles Seckerton's ruin.
There was no doubt now that he was in the hands of Sir Harry
Poyntz, for the interest on the mortgages was openly paid to his
man of business; yet neither man took any step. Sir Charles
lived on the same as ever, and Sir Harry Poyntz never made
the slightest allusion to his affairs. That some contraction in the
household expenses must be made, and that the hounds must go,
was pointed out continually by Sir Charles's man of business, but
entirely without effect.
"I am cheating no one; they will all be paid with interest. I
want to keep my daughter and my hounds one year more; when
she goes they may go. Laissez-aller. I have lived with all these




LEIGHTON COURT.                   125
faces round me, and I don't want to see the old style changed,
and the old circle broken up. Either in my time, or soon after
it, the Yorkshire money will set everything straight."
" Not at this rate, Sir Charles."
"Pish, man! Lord Hatterleigh is a model young man, who
knows every sixpence he spends. He will put the whole matter
right, after my death."
"The smash may come any day, Sir Charles."
"Well, I shall not make the smash myself; I am not going to
take to shambling about the pump-rooms at Aix-la-Chapelle till
I am forced."
No sense could be got into his head. The old prestige had
become too dear to him. A grand handsome crash would have
pleased him better than saving himself by any retrenchment.
He even stopped the ordinary cut of timber that year, to the
actual detriment of his woods. And it seems curious enough
that he confessed afterwards, to a certain acquaintance of mine
and of the reader's, that the man towards whom he had the
greatest jealousy, -the man from whom he most jealously and
proudly concealed his difficulties, was his old tried friend Sir
Peckwich Downes, - a man who would have lent him a hundred
thousand pounds on moderate interest, and put him square.
His man of business, in despair, made a schedule of his liabilities, and tried to get him to look at it, but he refused pointblank.
"I know in a general way that the estate will pull through,
if we get time. I'11 make the change when Laura is married.
There \vill be an excuse then. I shall miss my daughter, and
so on. At all events, I will go on for another season; and there
are fifty contingencies in my favor, -Lord Hatterleigh,- the
Yorkshire property,- I know not what. Let be."
" But if Sir Harry Poyntz comes down?"
"Let him. Let me hear no more about it; only keep the
whole thing quiet."
That was all his distracted man of business could get out of
him. In some unlucky moment that most innocent attorney had
bought and hung up in his parlor Hogarth's print, in "Marriage
a la Mode," of the morning after the rout, in which the old steward
is going out of the room with only one bill on the file, and all
the rest in his hand. It became so offensive to him now that he
had it removed. He could do nothing more, except wonder at
the extraordinary reticence of Sir Harry Poyntz, and the equally
extraordinary insolence of Sir Charles Seckerton towards Sir
Harry, the man who could ruin him at any moment.
For Sir Charles was riding the high-horse with his neighbor
of the Castle. The relations between Lady Poyntz and Colonel




126                 LEIGHTON COURT.
Hilton were not pleasing to Sir Charles Seckerton. They were
going about too much together; Colonel Hilton had got his leave
of absence unreasonably prolonged. The whole state of affairs
between those two was of a sort which had never been tolerated
in this extremely moral county of Devon: and Sir Charles found
it incumbent on him to put on fawn-colored pantaloons, a buff
waistcoat, a blue coat and brass buttons; and mounting his most
solemn cob, - the property of a late Bishop, picked up for a song
(sixty guineas) at that prelate's death,-and followed by the
most solemn and handsomest of all his enormous choice of grooms,
mounted on a vast hack (another bargain), he rode round to the
Castle to give Sir Harry a piece of his mind.
The solver of difficulties says, in his reckless way, that both
this horse and this groom went into the undertaking trade, - the
one as a hearse-horse, and the other as a mute. He talks too fast
sometimes; but there is no doubt that Sir Charles on the Bishop's cob, followed by the hearse-horse and mute, looked most
awfully and severely respectable, and would have frightened- any
one except that strange, fantastically incomprehensible creature
Sir Harry Poyntz, who, as he viewed the enemy's approach
from the window, broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter
which he was unable to stop.
"You're going to catch it," he said to his wife. " I would n't
be in your shoes for a hundred pounds. Just look at the solemn
pomposity of the old fool, will you, Maria? What have you been
up to, eh?  Hallo, it's me he wants! I hope I shall keep my
countenance."
After a solemn shake of the hands, Sir Charles went gravely
into his business, more in sorrow than in anger. Sir Harry listened patiently, and made reply, -
"I assure you I think you labor under a great mistake. I
cannot say how much I think you are mistaken. I have honestly
the fullest confidence in Maria, - dear me, the utmost confidence,
not only in her, but still more in Hilton."
" Well, I have done my duty. I have known you from a boy,
and have taken the liberty of telling you what the county said."
" The county are a parcel of cackling idiots, - all except, you
know, — in short, with the exceptions which common* politeness
requires.  If they knew anything about present society, they
would know that every woman of any pretensions to fashion has
a follower.
"It is a shameless custom!"
"I don't see it. You at all events should not complain of it
in this case. You knew all about me from a boy, and it was
you who sold the girl to me, and it is you who are spending the
money now."




LEIGHTON COURT.                  127
The poor old gentleman rose up deadly white, and laying his
hands to his heart, gave a pitiable groan. Such a bitter, bitter
stab! — so reckless, so needless, so horribly cruel, and yet so
bitterly true!  He turned towards the window, and leant his
head on his arm.
Sir Harry Poyntz rose at the same time. He cursed himself
and his own tongue with a refined sort of blasphemy which none
of us need guess at. He cried out to Sir Charles to witness that
he was a fool, a lunatic, who did n't know what he was saying;
and, lastly, besought his pardon on his knees.
Sir Charles turned on him at last and said: " Leave me alone
a few minutes, and I am at your orders. Let the pain of the
wound go off a little before you give me another."
And Sir Harry went back to his chair, and took up a book
of pictures,- no other a book than our "Tom and Jerry"; and
when Sir Charles turned on him after a considerable interval, he
was to all appearance deeply engrossed in it.
He knew that Sir Charles had turned towards him, and instantly began the conversation, -
"The cleverest thing in this most marvellous book is the figure of the beggar scratching himself. Now, did your Hogarth
beat this man?"
"' I want you to be serious, Harry."
" I'1 be perfectly serious, my dear Sir Charles: I have much
more to be serious about than you have."
"How can that be?"                           -
"I have been to London to the doctors, —real doctors, none
of your tin-pot, twopenny-halfpenny, second-hand leech apothecaries, but Savile Row, you know. And they say I am dying; I
have angina pectoris. I could have told them that. But it appears that my brain has been softening for years, and that if the
one thing don't carry me off I shall die a drivelling idiot. It appears that I can seldom have been sane since I was sixteen, and
that my lucid intervals will get rarer. Do you forgive those
wicked words I said to you just now? "
"Most heartily, Harry; but I can never forget them, -they
were so terribly true!"
" Fiddle-de-dee! - you'll forget them fast enough. I'll send
you out of this room six inches higher than you were when you
came into it. Sit down."
Sir Charles did so, wondering what was to come next.
"You feel humiliated. Of course you do. So you ought, if
you have any of the feelings of a gentleman left. You see I can
be keen enough in my lucid intervals. You thought, forsooth,
that you were going to incur pecuniary liabilities, and then march
out of the whole business at twelve-and-sixpence in the pound,




128                 LEIGHTON COURT.
with your nose in the air. Now, no man with the feelings of a
gentleman ever did that yet, and you have the feelings of a gentleman. I am sorry I spoke so cruelly to you just now, because
I love you very much; but it is an uncommonly good lesson for
you. You lay it to heart, and don't get yourself up in the heavyfather style again, and come here to lecture me."
" I take my rebuke, Harry. But be merciful; I am an old man.
You shall have your bond to-morrow: I will announce my ruin
to-morrow morning. But don't say any more cruel things."
"Announce your ruin! For God's sake, Sir Charles, don't
be a lunatic! I have got this pain in my chest coming on again,
and I cannot talk much more; this attack may kill me. Listen
to what I say, and go home and think about it, without any further discussion. Your daughter Laura irritated me, in one way
and another, beyond what my temper could bear. I had a plan
for ruining you and disgracing her. But I have given it up. I
am a bad fellow and a great rascal, as you, who have known me
from a boy, well know. But I am ridiculously superstitious, and
I want to die without leaving any one anything to forgive. Come,
there is nothing foolish in that. I could ruin you to-morrow, but
I won't. While I live you are safe. (Why you don't retrench
I don't know, - that is your business.) But during my lifetime
you will have mercy, afterwards none. What do you know of
my brother Robert? Come, speak out."
" I have heard that he was very dissipated and wild, but that
we attributed to -"
"To false reports spread by me?  Come, speak out, man; you
don't know how much depends on it. Is it not so?"
"Yes."
"Ask any one who knows him - but you don't know any one,
though - if I am not right, half spendthrift, half miser. Even I
had to send him off. You will get no mercy from him; you'll
be sold up, body and bones, as soon as I am dead."
"You are not dead yet, Harry."
"Ah! but I may die to-night. Have you not brains to see
your only course?"
"I can't say I do."
"Break off this match with Lord Hatterleigh," said Sir Harry,
looking very keenly at Sir Charles. "I was going to do it once
from far other motives, but will do it still if you hesitate. Break
off this match, and marry her to my brother. He will come home
from India in a most marriageable frame of mind. Those two
queer rumpty-tumpty old trots of yours, Lady Southmolton and
Lady Emily, would have him to book in a week."
Sir Charles passed over this disrespectful mention of his womankind, but rose in wrath on the other side of the question,




LEIGHTON COURT.                   129
"Sell my daughter, sir? Never!"
"Hang it, old fellow! You know," said Sir Harry, nursing
his knee, "you sold Maria to me, as you have confessed. And
you have sold your own daughter to a Guy Fawkes who wears
his boots -hind-side before. Surely you can do it again? But
whether or no, you think of it, and bring your mind to it. It
seems shocking now; but it is wonderful what you can bring
your mind to if you only put yourself en visaye with it soon
enough. Now go home, and don't say a word to me, or I shall
die before it will be convenient to you. Only remember this:
break off this unnatural match between your daughter and Lord
Hatterleigh, or else I shall have to do it myself."
Sir Charles rode back again. The groom and the horse which
followed him were as portentously solemn as ever; but Sir Charles
sat huddled together in an undignified manner, and rode badly.
And the cob stumbled once or twice,- a thing we must attribute
to the uncertain hand of poor Sir Charles; for when ridden by
his late master, the Bishop, that cob had never been known to
stumble. Biut, then, his lordship was a man so certain of his
conclusions, that his certainty communicated itself to his horse;
whereas poor Sir Charles was in a perfect sea of bewilderment.
No wonder the pony stumbled!
CHAPTER XXXV.
THIs last conversation must have taken place nearly a year
after the eventful midsummer on which we have had to dwell so
long, -not long before the time when fresh and startling changes
took place; which changes conclude that period in the lives of
our friends which seemed to me worth speaking of, and which
also bring my story to an end. It is now my duty to speak somewhat at large of Colonel Hilton.
"What business he had here at all," said Lady Emily one
day, " was a thing which no one could find out."  But, whether
he had any business here or no, - here he was; and we must
decidedly agree with the county that he had much better have
been anywhere else.
He had returned invalided from the Crimea, but had soon got
well; and had found himself in the course of duty at Plymouth,
doing some work or another, nothing very much the matter with
6*                                I




130                  LEIGHTON COURT.
him. He was in a deservedly high position, and was able to take
things very comfortably. He was asked, of course, to Leighton
Court; and at once it occurred to him that it would be a very
nice thing to fall in love with Laura, which he immediately did
— in a sort of way. What was unfortunate was, that Laura did
not fall in love with him: and, what was worse still, Maria Huxtable did, and, not being so well-formed a young lady as our poor
Laura, let him see it. Of course he was flattered and pleased
by this; though to himself he said that it was a most unfortunate and unhappy business, that a very beautiful girl with
sixty thousand pounds should have shown herself ready to be
asked by him, as it was impossible that he could return her affection, and all that sort of thing. He pitied the poor girl extremely,
and was very kind to her indeed.
Fall in love with her he could not. She was vulgar beside
Laura, he said; and she had a dog-like way of following him
about and persecuting him, which exasperated him to the pitch
of madness. If the poor silly girl had only waited for him to
make love to her, instead of making play at him, she might have
been Mrs. Hilton. But she would n't.  She had no mother,
and had had no training. She thought, in her simplicity, that
her little artifices to get near him, to touch him, to get him to
speak kindly to her, were utterly unsuspected; while Hilton was
driving back in his dogcart to Plymouth, and saying," Hang it
all, that girl is worse than any girl who ever made a dead set at
a man in India! It is perfectly sickening. The women in
England are losing all sense of modesty. But I like her better
than the other one, after all."
For his imperial majesty, after having bound himself to Laura's chariot-wheels for a few weeks, and having received nothing
but impertinence from that young lady, had begun to dislike her
amazingly, and to show it. He had got a certain sort of contempt for her. She sets up for strength of character, but she
lets herself be led by the nose by a priest. She is positive,
and will never confess herself wrong; but she is as often wrong
as right; and she has such a deuse of a tongue! Colonel Hilton,
after all his knockings about, did not feel at all inclined to "hang
up his hat," as the soldiers say, with Laura. Besides, he did not
want. to marry at all, if it came to that.
A few weeks made a great change in his sentiments about
marriage. Hitherto he had been getting all the kicks and none
of the halfpence of this world. And now just when he could
look about him, he neither felt inclined to tie himself for life to
such a very positive and contradicting person as Laura, or to a
jealous spaniel of a woman like Maria. He went back to his
work, leaving Maria, who had created a fiction that Laura had




LEIGHTON COURT.                  131
stood between him and her, in a state of jealousy and anger
against Laura.
It gave him a pang, however, when he heard that Maria was
married to Sir Harry Poyntz. Every one knew  everything
about Sir Harry Poyntz except those most concerned. Hilton,
who knew that she was in love with him, was shocked and distressed at such a shameful sacrifice; and while at Chalons, hearing that the Poyntzes were at Paris, left his duty to see, —
what?  Who can say?  Let us put it thus, - to see how they
were getting on together.
Sir Harry had received him with a most cordial welcome.
He found in him a most agreeable companion, not only for himself, but for Lady Poyntz. He could not, would not, pay much
attention to her, - Hilton was able and apparently willing to
do so. He knew she had been fond of him, but with that strange,
unreasoning recklessness which was part of his disease, he, merely because he took a great liking to the man, pressed his friendship on him, and as a matter of course thrust his society on his
wife.
The mischief must have begun very soon, probably in the rush
and roar and glitter of Chalons, for he got off going to America
on the score of his health; and those who knew and loved him
best were grieved to see the Hero of Assewal obviously malingering, and getting himself talked of with another man's wife.
The county, as we know, strongly rebelled, but no one dared
to speak. Some said that Sir Harry connived at it, - others
said he was a besotted idiot. The last opinion was more nearly
true than the former. Sir Harry's head was going. He began
to find that he had not brain to execute the schemes which his
cunning had originated. He had early confided what was the
matter to Hilton, and Hilton had often acted for him. But something happened once which gave him firmer confidence in Hilton,
and which gave Colonel Hilton supreme power over Sir Harry.
Poor Sir Harry began to get into a new phase of his disease.
His fits of irritability became more acute, and began to develop
into violence. His wife one night irritated him extremely; she
had no tact whatever, and he threw something at her. The
ridiculous part of the matter was that it was only an antimacassar; but the pathetic part of it was that the poor fellow had cunning enough to see that he had by that act overstepped a certain
boundary, and that he could never step back again. He was on
his knees before her directly, and she, not having wit to see,
laughed at the whole matter, and threatened to box his ears.
He said nothing more to her; but he rode over to Plymouth,
and told the whole business to Colonel Hilton.
"If it had been the poker, you know, Hilton, it would have




132                 LEIGHTON COURT.
been just the same. And it would be in the highest degree ungentlemanly if I laid my hand on that woman.  She hasn't
behaved badly, and she brought me, first and last, sixty thousand
pounds. It's an awful nuisance, isn't it?"
"Why did you marry, Poyntz? "
"Heaven only knows! Why the deuse did they let me? If
they had all done their duty they could have stopped it. My
character was bad enough to have justified the county in burning
down the Castle."
"Poyntz, I can't make head or tail of you; you are the most
confusing fellow I ever met."
"I know I am a disturbing cause among you sane people.
You generalize from an accumulation of facts which you consider as sufficient, and then I come cranking in, and send your
calculations to the four winds of heaven, - make you all in your
bewilderment a hundred times madder than myself. For instance, you are all mops and brooms now. You don't know what
to do, —I do. I want watching, and some one ought to watch
me; some one I respect and like ought to have his eye on me
If it was only once a week it would be something."
" Go home and fight against it, man; you have plenty of resolution and plenty of brains, though they are most decidedly addled, God help you! I never saw anything like you in all my
born days," cried the Colonel, in a bewilderment which would
have been comical under any other circumstances. " Go home and
keep your temper, man."
" But will you speak to Maria, and persuade her not to exasperate me to the pitch of murder? "
"Well - Yes, I will. What did she do to you?"
-" She kept on agreeing to every word I said. I tried to make
her contradict me for an hour and a half, but she would n't. She
sat there smiling, and agreeing with every word I said till I
thirsted for her blood, and hurled the antimacassar at her. I
talked of everything in heaven or earth. I turned high-churchman and low-churchman, Whig, Tory, doctrinaire Radical, pothouse Radical, -pitched into Popery, pitched into Whalley; but
there she sat and smiled, and agreed to every word I said, till at
last I did what can never be undone, - I used violence towards
her."
"You have n't hurt her much, have you?" said Hilton, laughing.
" Don't be a fool! If you can't see the importance of what I
have told you, leave us alone! "
So Colonel Hilton thought it his duty to see more of that
establishment, as being the only person who had any power over
Sir Harry. He made very light of this antimacassar business;




LEIGHTON COURT.                  133
Sir Harry was so fantastic about it. A circumstance which happened a few days afterwards showed him that the poor fellow (we
may call him so now) was right, and that a strong head was needed: in that house.
Sir Harry Poyntz had lately drunk nothing but water; he
was a very abstemious man. Therefore one evening, when Colonel Hilton was over at the Castle, he felt no anxiety when he
left Captain Wheaton and Sir Harry alone over the wine (Captain Wheaton drinking like a fish, and Sir Harry eating grapes.
like a famished hound) and went up to the drawing-room to
Lady Poyntz.
He had hardly been there ten minutes, when Wheaton came
in, as pale as a ghost, and called on Colonel Hilton to defend
him.
Hilton thought he was drunk. "I thought I had, - that you
were forbidden this room, sir?"
"For God's sake come and help us! Sir Harry is going to
murder me; he has gone for his revolver!"
Hilton went at once; from a noise he heard he directed his
feet towards Sir Harry's bedroom. There he found three or four
servants round the door, begging Sir Harry to be calm; he, in a
furious rage, had just finished loading his revolver.
" Now, clear out of the way; I'll shoot the first man who
stands between that dog and me! "
All got out of the way except a young footman, who cleverly
kept his eye on the pistol, intending to run in on his master. He
was just going to make a dart, when he was thrust gently on one
side; and Colonel Hilton, walking calmly in, took the pistol away
from Sir Harry as if he was a child.
" You can all go. Thomas, you have behaved uncommonly
well; Sir Harry will reward you. Now, Poyntz, how did this
come about? "
"He was drunk, and he amused himself by irritating and insulting me the moment you were gone."
"Did n't you begin nagging at him? "
"Nothing of the kind, I assure you."
" Well, we must take care it don't happen again. You have
pretty well frightened him this time."
" He would do it again when he was drunk; we had better
kick him out."
" I think that ought to have been done a long while ago; but
— I beg your pardon, Poyntz - are you quite sure you mean
what you say?"
"Quite sure? Yes."
"You are quite sure the fellow don't know too much, - is not
dangerous?"




134                 LEIGHTON COURT.
"O0 dear no; he knows nothing more than you do. I certainly did keep him on, partly because I did not want it known
that I was odd in my head; but the main reason was that I liked
to tease and insult him, and see how much the dog would stand.
As far as I am concerned, kick him out to-night! You are not
afraid yourself, are you? " said Sir Harry.
"What should Ibe afraid of?  What is the dog to me?"
" He will blacken your character, and, I fear, Maria's too. But
anything is better than murder!"
" I will give the rascal a hint of my vengeance if he dares.
I will go now and send him off."
And so Captain Wheaton got what he elegantly called his
"walking ticket," and disappeared. Instantly on his disappearance, rumor got tenfold more busy with Lady Poyntz's name,
with Hilton's name, and with Sir Harry's name. Lady Poyntz
was an abandoned woman, and gambled; Hilton was lost to all
honor, and drank; Sir Harry was abandoned, gambled, drank,
and was a dangerous lunatic all at the same time. Of course
these reports were set about by our friend Wheaton, but most
people believed them; and not long after Wheaton's departure,
Sir Charles Seckerton had the interview we know of with Sir
Harry Poyntz, and came home with his feathers ruffled.
Meanwhile Sir Harry clung more and more closely to Hilton,
as the only man in this world whom he could trust. And Hilton
hung on about the house, and saw more and more of Maria, till
now he and Lady Poyntz were standing on the very verge of ruin
unutterable.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"DID you see Lady Poyntz this morning, Laura?" asked
Lord Hatterleigh, as he and Laura met on the stairs, going down
to dinner, and dawdled together for a chat.
"' Yes; I saw her and walked with her, but there was no result. She held me completely at bay, and talked and rattled on
just as she has done since I went back to her to try to gain her
confidence. She is perfectly friendly, but will talk nothing but
commonplace. I must give the business up, George."
"Don't do that; persevere, my love. Think for a moment
what is involved in giving her up."
" You are right. I will persevere on the mere chance of some




LEIGHTON COURT.                  135
accident giving me my old hold on her. George, there was a time
when that woman hung on every word I said, - when I could
have made her jump off the keep or turn Roman Catholic."
" How did you lose it?"
" You are rather provoking; but I will stick to our bargain,
and tell the truth. Through my own conceit and folly, not to
mention my tongue; I bullied her too much."
"And she thought you stood between her and Colonel Hilton
at the time you encouraged him to pay you so much attention?"
"If snapping his nose off every time he opened his mouth
meant encouragement, you are quite right."
" I know," said Lord Hatterleigh, giving one of his own "Alcedo gigantea " guffaws. "I used to watch you. What on earth
made you hate the man so?"
" The same thing which makes me dislike you so much,- he is
a gaby!"
" I don't think he is a gaby at all, - at all events, not such a
gaby as I was."
" I never examined into the degrees of gabyism."
"Bless thy sweet tongue, Kate! And you wonder you lost
your power over Maria Poyntz?"
" Bless thy sweet temper, George! - Did any one ever make
you cross? I have tried hard enough."
"No, I never was cross. MIy mother remarks it in public
often,- a great deal too often. She damages my reputation, and
makes people take liberties with me, by always representing me
a lamb. It would do me infinite good in the world if people
could be got to believe that I was a terrible tiger at bottom;
but they won't. By the by, do you remember that you told me
once that the reason you hated Colonel Hilton was that he agreed
with every word you said? Now that is singular, is n't it? "
" Come to your dinner, will you, and don't stay exasperating
me on the stairs. The cases are utterly different. You contradict me, and argue with me in perfect good-humor; he flattered
one until he made one contradict him, and only opposed one when
he was thoroughly angry. Now that is quite enough to carry you
on for the rest of the evening; I cannot be always flattering
you."
"Very well; I can take care of myself."
"They are coming to-night," said Laura.
"Who?'
"The Poyntzes and Colonel Hilton. That is the last civil
thing I shall say to-night. As an illustration, you knew who I
meant well enough, only for the chance of another spar you pretended you did n't."
They both burst out laughing. There was something very




136                  LEIGHTON COURT.
pretty in the friendship between these two. They sparred at
times, but Laura always lost. She sometimes lost her temper,
for instance, which that sweet-natured gorilla of a nobleman
never did. They did one another a deal of good. She civilized
him to an extent which his own mother had never conceived
possible; and he, by his persistent good-humor, broke her of her
petulance, and cured her of her unfortunate habit of speaking her
mind. When on this occasion they had both done laughing, she
answered him," The Poyntzes and the other gaby - you know whom I mean
by the first one- are coming. Now."
"Pax, be serious! I am in earnest, Laura. I want to speak
to you; I want to consult you. There, now let us be wise."
They were at once as wise as Solomon.
"I wish he was gone from here," said Lord Hatterleigh.
"We all wish that."
"If he has a spark of honor or manliness left in him - and
the man is a noble soldier, Laura -he will go after hearing today's news."
"What news?"
"News!" cried Lord Hatterleigh, and looking sternly at her.
":Heavens! have you heard nothing? - that India is lost; that
the Sepoys have risen, and are driving the British before them
like sheep; that the European men and women are being shot
down like dogs, and treated worse; that the whole remnant of
British rule in India consists in a few hopeless garrisons, shut in,
with their women and children, in the principal towns, holding
out, through thirst and hunger, lest a fate worse than death befall
them? India is lost - gone - hopelessly gone!"
"That is very dreadful, Hatterleigh'! Are we really to lose
India? But we shall get on pretty well without it, sha'n't we?"
"Heaven help her!' said Lord Hatterleigh, addressing a
case full of stuffed birds, which stood in the hall close before him.
"' My mother was right; I can't lose my temper. Laura dear,
you can understand this. We have suffered a fearful disaster
in India,- more fearful, more terrible than you can understand!
I will teach you to understand it, dear, and you shall be as angry
and as fierce as I am. But this terrible disaster strikes home
here in two ways."
"As how? I cannot understand."
"Colonel Hilton's brother is there in the thick of it.  Surely
the danger of his only brother, his favorite, will be sufficient to
arouse him from this unmanly sloth? Surely he will exchange
into some regiment ordered for service, and quit this place forever?;"
"It would be an excellent solution; let us hope so."




LEIGHTON COURT.                  137
"Then there is Poyntz's brother Robert. He is in the thick
of it too. Now would be the time for some one to say a kind
word for him to his brother, and to reconcile them."
"Is their quarrel very bitter?"
"Very so. He was very wild. There, your mother has rung
for dinner; we shall catch it."
" Not we," said Laura, laughing; "my mother never scolds you."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
DURING dinner, and after dinner, they talked of only one thing,
- the Indian Mutiny; and more particularly that part of it which
was illustrated by a wonderful letter just received by Sir Peckwich Downes from his son George, who was in the heart of the
whole matter.
The party was complete, with the exception of Colonel Hilton,
who could not come. Sir Peckwich looked seven sizes larger than
usual, and tried to be as pompous as ever, but failed. A radiant
genial smile overspread his features continually; and more than
once, like our dear Sir Hugh, he manifested a mighty disposition
to cry. All the best part of the man (and he was a noble man
enough) was coming out of him as he talked of his son's heroism,
and his son's friend's heroism. And Lord Hatterleigh and Laura
noticed, as a curious thing, that he addressed himself almost
entirely to Sir Harry Poyntz, to whom he had hardly deigned to
speak before. He appealed to him, and he flattered him: when
he told the most exciting part of the noble story, as he did by
request half a dozen times over, he addressed himself almost
entirely to Sir Harry Poyntz. Once, when his utterance was
stopped, and his great chest began heaving, he sat calmly looking
at Sir Harry, until he had succeeded in smothering the sobs which
were trying to rise. And Sir Harry, with his shallow pale-blue
eye, sat watching and listening to him with his head on one side,
like a parrot. No one but Hilton could have read that intense
look: it meant, "My brain is getting dull; but I think I know
what you are after, old gentleman! " Lord Hatterleigh could n't
make it out at all.
The gist of the story was this. The garrison of Gorumpore,
reduced to about sixty European soldiers, one hundred Sikhs, and
the civilian volunteers, had, finding their position untenable, made
a glorious retreat, with the women and children, back in safety




138                   LEIGHTON COURT.
to a nucleus of the army, which was now sufficiently large to
retreat the next day into communication with the base of operations at Calcutta, - and this through masses of swarming Sepoys.
You can read a hundred such stories. Their rear had been sorely
pressed by rebel cavalry. The handful of mounted Europeans
and Sikhs had charged back, against overwhelmingly superior
numbers, time after time through the burning day. At last, at
evening, when the main body were just getting into safety, within
hearing of British bugles, George Downes, in command of the
party, had ordered one last charge. But the rebels, getting more
reckless as they saw their prey escaping, were too strong for
them, - the British got the worst of it. Several of the Sikhs
went to Paradise with closed teeth, laying about them like glorious fellows as they are; but the rest cut their way through the
rebels, and, led by a certain Cornet, were in a fair way to get
home; when this Cornet, now their leader, looking round, missed
Downes, and, crying out to the rest of his handful of Sikhs and
Europeans, turned bridle and rode back again as hard as he
could go.
The main body of the rebels had found themselves too near
the British bugles, and had retreated. But in the centre of the
plain there were left somewhere near fifty of them, riding round
and round one another in a circle, —the inner ones of them
cutting and slashing at something with their sabres. The Cornet, sailing straight away into this embroglio, never looking as to
who were following, and making himself felt right and left, discovered that the something they were cutting at was George
Downes, standing, dismounted, over the body of a wounded British trooper, fighting the whole fifty of them single-handed.*
The Cornet dashed at the whole of them alone; and whether
it was that he laid about him so stoutly, or whether the mere appearance of " an angry sahib" - which, as Mr. Trevelyan tells
us, is sufficient to produce any amount of panic among Indians -
caused it, we cannot say; at all events there was a general
"skedaddle," which is one fact; and another is, that we agree
with Mr. Trevelyan that an angry Englishman is a very terrible
business indeed.
However, the Cornet and the Cornet's tail got Captain Downes
out of his terrible situation in triumph, and that was the story.
"And what I say is," thundered Sir Peckwich Downes, "that
* I have not drawn on my imagination here. I met a quiet man at a country dinner-party, not many years ago, on whose dress-coat I detected the Victoria Cross. In the half-hour before dinner I got introduced to him for the
purpose of having a look at his shabby bit of gun-metal, a decoration which I
had never seen closely before. A few years afterwards I saw his sword-arm,
and then I began to understand what war meant. He had eight-and-twenty
sabre cuts in various parts of his body.




LEIGHTON COURT.                   139
nobly as that most noble boy of mine has behaved, the Cornet
has behaved more nobly still. Just think of it, by Jove  - coming back after poor George, - all alone, single-handed, by Jove!
And you talk to me of your ancient Romans," he continued,
turning with sudden asperity on Sir Charles, as if that innocent
and perfectly silent gentleman had just finished a string of highly
offensive classical allusions, -" your Quintus Curtius, your Leonidas, your rubbish! What were they to this glorious self-devoted Cornet, — eh, sir? Go along with you, sir; don't talk
that nonsense to me!"
" A glorious fellow truly," said Sir Charles; "a noble fellow,
a hero among heroes!"
"We have not had his name yet," said Laura.  " Let us have
this noble man's name."
"Ask Sir Harry Poyntz," said Sir Peckwich, with a toss of
the head and a puff.
Laura did so, with her eyes flashing, and her whole face animated by the glorious story. Sir Harry looked at her steadily,
and thought, "I shall have to play the mischief with you tomorrow, my dear young lady, -I shall indeed"; and then said
slowly, aloud, —" I do not know his name. I know nothing
of the story but what I have heard here. But I begin to make
a guess, from Sir Peckwich Downes's exceedingly personal gaze,
that this hero is no other than that lunatic young rascal, my
brother Bob; it's exactly like a piece of his tomfoolery."
"Right, by Jingo!" said Sir Peckwich, bringing his fist on
the table with a crash: a piece of vulgarity which, coupled with
the lowness of the remark which accompanied it would at an
ordinary time have raised extreme anger in the aristocratic soul
of Lady Downes: but she now only sat, flushed and proud, looking so really noble that Laura remarked it, and pointed it out to
Lord Hatterleigh.
"Wonderful! " he whispered; "and such a very commonplace
looking person on ordinary occasions!"
" We have all got a little extra fire in our eyes to-night,- not
one of us but looks nobler," said Laura; "but the proud mother
beats us all. I wonder whether that strange creature Sir Harry
will notice his brother now: he is going to speak."
"It was not a difficult guess of mine, Sir Peckwich. I know
now that he must have charged into that Clanjam fry because
your son was there. They were boy-lovers at Eton, you remember."
"I congratulate myself on the result," said Sir Peckwich.
"I say," said Sir Harry, with some show of interest, " what
does one do in these cases?"
"What do you mean? " said Sir Peckwich, puzzled.




140                 LEIGHTON COURT.
"In these cases, when a man's brother or son distinguishes
himself like this: do you send them a present, or merely write
them a complimentary letter?  What are you going to do in
George's case, for instance?"
" I shall write to him, sir, a letter he'11 remember to the day
of his death. And I shall pay a thousand pounds into Cox and
Greenwood's, for him to spenrd in the way he likes best. That
is what I am going to do, sir."
" 0, indeed i You are going to do that. Should you say that
in my case half would be enough?"
" Give me your hand, Poyntz," said Sir Peckwich; and the
other did so, laughing.
"Much obliged to you for giving me a precedent. Bob has
never done so in his own person. He has never behaved in any
way approaching to common decency till now. Here's my difficulty about the letter: all the letters I have ever written to him
have been of a violently exasperating and abusive nature, and now
to begin gushing —  However, it must be done."
By and by a servant came in and announced "Sir Harry
Poyntz's boat."
"It is very early," said he.
"I think you are wanted at home, Sir Harry: something about
Colonel Hilton."
"Is anything the matter with him?"
"Is he dead?" said Lady Poyntz, in a voice which made them
all start.
" No, my lady, I believe not, - nothing at all the matter with
him.1"
But she passed out, very pale; and Laura went with her to
wrap her up, for the night was chill. Her husband stayed behind, and paused while wishing Lord Hatterleigh good night.
He was a little more fantastic than usual.
" Good night! I hope you will sleep well to-night."
" Thank you, - I generally do, Poyntz, - thank you," said
Lord Hatterleigh.
" And I hope you will sleep well to-morrow night also. Inside
all right now?"
"Quite right, thank you," said the other, laughing.
" Hah! don't let it go wrong again, if anything happens to you.
Put a bold face on it, you know. Good night! "
"Put a bold face on what?" asked Lord Hatterleigh.
"On anything that may happen," said Sir Harry. "Don't
think so much of your inside. Bless you, there is no greater
mistake in life than beginning to study your inside! If I had
done so I should have been in Bedlam ten years ago. Short of
turning Papist, I know of no superstition so mischievous as that




LEIGHTON COURT.                   141
of believing one's inside to be in an exceptional and abnormal
state. That is the great temptation of your life; don't you yield
to it after you get my letter to-morrow."
At the door Sir Harry came across his wife, Laura, and Sir
Charles Seckerton. He bid Laura "good night," and paused with
her as he had with Lord Hatterleigh.
"That was a fine story about George Downes," he said.
"A noble story! And your brother too! "
"And my brother Bob, eh? A fine fellow, - a fine fellow! I
will send him five hundred pounds, and I'11 bet another hundred
khat he makes that five hundred go further than scatter-brained
George Downes does his thousand. A fine fellow Bob, after all,
Sir Charles; only one fault, he is such a miserly screw!"')
" I can hardly believe that about such a hero," said Laura.
"You'll have to believe it, Miss Seckerton. And now, as we
shall never meet again in this world, let me say good by once
more. Reserve your judgment of me; all I ask of you is to reserve your judgment of me."
And before puzzled Laura had replied, he was down the pleasance-walk after his wife; and soon they heard the throb of the
rowlocks, as the boat carried them across the tideway towards the
dark Castle which threatened in the westward before the sinking
moon. " Seen him for the last time! Reserve her judgment on
him! The man was mad!"
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
IT was a cold night, and a cold and wailing wind came down the
river from the moor; but it was hardly cold enough to account
for Lady Poyntz trembling and shivering as she did.
"How you shake, old woman! " said Sir Harry; "you have
caught a cold. Take my coat."
"I am warm enough, Harry; at least I shall get warm walking up to the Castle. I hate dining at the Court!  I shall
catch my death crossing this river some night. However, here
we are."
She sprang on shore; and the moment they were alone together, she said," Hilton has got some ill news, or he is going to India. Go
and speak to him."
"India! for God's sake don't let him go away from me! I




142                  LEIGHTON COURT.
shall be ruined. I can't do without him now. I tell you fairly,
I have no one who will act for me but him."
" Go to him, Harry; see if anything is wrong."'I wish you would go," said Sir Harry. "I hate a scene.
Besides, you have ten times the influence with him that I have.
-Do go, to oblige me."
"Let it be so then," she said, with a sigh.
"' Thank you! I will go to my room."
Colonel Hilton, the servant said, was in the library. She
passed quickly to the door, and paused when she had her hand
on the handle.
She felt sick and faint; she was terrified beyond measure.
The poor woman knew that, although as yet innocent, she was
on the edge of a precipice, and that any movement might be her
ruin. What was Hilton doing; why had he sent for them home?
She knew, poor creature, that she was in his power; that he had
got perfect control over her; and that if he was scoundrel
enough to say the word this night she would follow him to the
ends of the earth! She wished she was dead; she wished that
she had never been born. At last she said to herself, " Oh, if
he will only have mercy!"
She let the handle go. A thought came into her head so
maddening, so terrifying, that she nearly screamed aloud. Her
father! For one moment in the darkness she saw the dear old
face, as it would be when he got the news; incredulity, horror,
and a wild grief which was beyond Wailing, were torturing each
sacred line. The ghastly vision was gone again in an instant;
and she stood gasping for breath before the door, knowing that
she must enter to her fate.
She was terrified suddenly by a sound in the room, at the door
of which she stood trembling; a word, —a word in Hilton's
voice, - a loud, furious, terrible oath! She went in now, and
as she looked at him, she thought her doom was sealed.
He was perfectly white, and his hair was disordered, and hung
over his forehead.  On his face there was a scowl so fearful, so
utterly unlike anything she had seen there before, that her terror was almost lost in amazement. He was standing with his
back to the fire and his face towards her as she came in, and so
she took it all in at a glance.
"Is that you, Lady Poyntz? " he croaked out.
"Yes, it is I; you sent for us."
"To hear the news, the gallant news, my Lady Poyntz
Have you heard the news of my brother Jack, of my bonny little
Jack, the lad I swore to protect, to my mother on her death-bed?
Only he and I left in the world together!"
"Has anything happened to him?"




LEIGHTON COURT.                  143
"Murdered!" he shouted, in a voice which rang through the
silent house and startled the distant servants.  " Murdered,
foully and cruelly, by his own men, while I, like a thrice-cursed
fool, was mincing here! That is brave news for you, my Lady
Poyntz  "
She could only weep, - she had nothing to say.
"But, Maria, I will have vengeance for this, — sweet, noble
vengeance! I am off to-night; I only stayed to say good by,
and before you see me again, I shall have waded knee-deep in
blood. Our fellows are at the glorious work now, and I am away
to join them. And now good by once more, Maria; say good
by to your husband for me. I have been here too long already."
And so, without another word, he was gone.
A sad frame of mind for such a genial, noble creature to find
himself in. It is easy enough to be philosophical over this state
of feeling, and to be shocked at it at this distance of time. We,
however, have nothing to do either with excusing it or condemning it; all we need say about it is, that it existed to an immense
extent, and that its existence in the breast of Colonel Hilton probably saved him and Lady Poyntz from hopeless ruin.
She was saved, and she knew it. Half an hour after Hilton
was gone, her husband, prowling round the house with cat-like
tread, came to the library door and looked in. Lady Poyntz was
kneeling at the table, with the light in her face, and her hands
held before her as though she prayed; while her lips, though moving rapidly, did not disturb the beautiful smile which was settled
on her mouth. She had not been weeping, for her magnificent,
lustrous eyes were as clear and more brilliant than ever; but
what was more noticeable than anything, was a look of unutterable joy which overspread her face, and had its origin in too many
infinitely intricate sources for it to be possible to analyze it, or to
say it was expressed so, or so. There was something so solemnly
beautiful about her, that Sir Harry drew back, and looked on
puzzled.
"How wonderfully beautiful she looks! Why is she glad Hilton is gone? I hope I have not been too careless. She is looking like her dead mother now. I never saw her mother, but I
know she is. Well, it is no good trying to get her to help me
in this business while she is in this saint-like frame of mind;
I might as well ask that Madonna there. I see I must do it all
myself."
And so with cat-like stealth he crept away through the silent
house, and left her kneeling with her hands before her, indulging
the long-lost but new-found luxury of prayer.




144                 LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
LORD HATTERLEIGH came over earlier than usual the next
morning. Laura heard his horse come to the hall door, and heard
him come rattling along to the door of the breakfast-room, where
she sat alone. She thought he was in a great hurry, but until he
had shut the door behind him took very little notice. When he
had done so she looked up, and was filled with astonishment and
fear.
Poor gentleman, he was a sad spectacle! He looked pale and
wild, and, what was more extraordinary, all the latent " Guy "
element in the man had come out stronger than ever, as the Doctor said it would on the first strain of circumstances. He had got
his hat on the back of his head, his necktie was on one side; and
one of his shoe-strings was untied. Laura saw that something
had happened, but she preserved her equanimity, for she had
really no anticipation of anything overwhelming.  She spoke
first.
" What is the matter, George? "
O0 Laura! Laura! I have got such a dreadful letter."
" Is that any reason why you should keep your hat on, not to
say wear it on the back of your head, like a lunatic? Sit down,
and tell me all about it."
"I hardly know where to begin," said poor Lord Hatterleigh,
sitting down.
"' Begin anywhere; and as for leaving off, leave off as soon as
I order you."
It was the last piece of her kindly shrewishness which she
ever gave to him or any one else. Lord Hatterleigh saw the old
effort to be smart and epigrammatical, and saw the failure also.
She was frightened. He paused before he went on, and there
was a dead silence. She woujd not speak, and he was forced to
begin. He sat, and looked steadily and kindly at her, and began speaking. She thought he had never looked so manly, so
noble, or so good as he looked now, when every words he spoke
was like a dull blow on her heart, which by God's mercy deadened its sensation, and prevented her going mad.
" Laura," he said, " do you remember once that you turned to
me suddenly, when I, to tell the truth, was not prepared for your
doing so; when I, in fact, was only hoping that you could get to
love me after getting used to my uncouthness, and finding out by




LEIGHTON COURT.                   1 45
degrees my better qualities; you remember that at such a time
once you turned to me spontaneously, and told me that you had
always liked me and trusted me?"
1" I went further than that. I said I had always loved you;
and so I always did, and so I always shall in a sort of way. I
always laughed at you, and, unless my heart is broken and the
wells of laughter get dry, I always shall whenever you are ridiculous. I would laugh at you now, if you were not so serious.
Go on."
"Do you remember that you said to me on that occasion,
that you had no one left whom you could trust to but me; and,
moreover, that I gave you my knightly word of honor, as a Peer
of Great Britain, that whatever happened would make no difference to me, — that I would stand by your side and see you
through it?"
"I remember all that.  Go on."
"Now I wish, before you see this letter, to renew that vow,
and to tell you that this letter makes no difference to me; that I
swear by my title, by my position, by my fifty-thousand a-year,
that no cloud shall come between me and you. Will you read
it?"
"I had better. I would have made you a shrewish joke about
the absurdity of your swearing Jy your income, but I fear I shall
make few more jokes in this world.  Give it to me; and give
me one kiss, George, before I read it."
He tried to kneel to her, but she would not have it. "We
must be very cool over this matter," she said. "If we were only
Jemmy and Jessamy it would be different. You are Lord Hatterleigh, and I am Laura Seclkerton.  Now for the letter; I suppose the signature is Harry Poyntz."
Lord Hatterleigh gave it to her without a word. It was infinitely worse than she had anticipated; there was ruin in the
first two lines of it. She had often laughed to herself at the idea
of her, with her secret, being received into the bosom of a family
so rampantly offensively particular as that of the Hatterleighs,
and she had lately determined that it would not do. She knew
that she loved the dead Poyntz-Hammersley still: and her plan
had been to keep Lord Hatterleigh dangling after her, nominally
engaged to her; to form him as well as she was able, to cure
him of his Guy Fawkes habits, and so by degrees show him that
their engagement was only a thing of words; to quietly dismiss
him as soon as an eligible young lady appeared in the field, and
to keep up a platonic friendship with him for the rest of her life,
while she herself went into the high-church nursing-sisterhood
business. That was her programme, - not a bad one, if that unaccountable bedlamite Sir Harry Poyntz had not drawn a wet
7                                 J




146                  LEIGHTON COURT.
sponge through the whole matter. As she read his letter to
Lord Hatterleigh, she saw that her engagement to him must
come to an end at once; and, what was more, that there was left,
over and above, a frightful personal scandal against herself.  She
had not read three sentences of it before she looked up at Lord
Hatterleigh, and said," I wonder why he did this. I cannot conceive what his motive can be. But a lunatic has no motives. Perhaps it is better
that he has done it." And then she went on, finished it, folded it
up, and gave it back to Lord Hatterleigh, with a sigh, saying:
" Vell, that's all over! "
The letter was as follows: —
"M'Y DEAR HATTERLEIGH, — I have been waiting for some
one else to perform this exceedingly unpleasant task, but as no
one seems inclined to do it, I must open your eyes myself.
"Miss Seckerton's close intimacy with young Hammersley -a
noble young fellow, certainly, but only huntsman, or something of
that kind, to her father — renders it impossible and ridiculous for
her to become your Countess.
"One particular and private meeting which took place in my
shrubberies was witnessed. The indiscretion in this particular
instance will, I suppose, accomplish my object.
"Yours very sincerely,
" HARRY POYNTZ."
" And what do you think of that for a false villain?" said Lord
Hatterleigh. " You must commission me to go to him and give
him the lie to his face! "
" I can't do that; it is all true enough," she said, wearily.
"All true enough!" he cried, aghast.
"All true enough to ruin me, I mean," she said; "though of
course, my lord," she added, suddenly and fiercely, "you understand that I acted with the most perfect discretion throughout the
business."
" Of course you did. Did you dream that I distrusted you?"
Lord Hatterleigh answered, proudly. " I only ask you to explain
so far as to enable me to go and tell that villain he lies in his
throat, -- not a word more than that! "
She liked him better now- she had lost him than she had ever
liked him before. She had intended to break off her engagement;
Sir Harry Poyntz had done it for her, and ruined her besides.
The world seemed all such a ghastly, weary waste! Only one
hand seemed held out to her, and she was going to cast that hand
away.
"I can give you no explanations. As he has put the matter
it is utterly false; but I am wearied of the subject, and it is hateful to me. Our engagement is at an end! "




LEIGHTON COURT.                  147
"It is nothing of the kind; I will not have it so for an instant."
"Do not you see that it is wholly impossible for you to continue it if I refuse you those explanations? And I do refuse them.
Here is your ring."
"Laura, one moment before it is too late- "
"Not another word until you have taken your ring."
He was forced to take it, and said, " What have I left to live
for now?"
"Much," she answered. "Now we can talk as friends. You
have me to live for; I am in want of a friend."
The poor gentleman did not accept his position at all kindly,
but sat ruefully silent.
I" I can speak no more on this subject this morning," she said;' I am ill. Go away now. What can I have done to make Sir
Harry Poyntz use me so cruelly?"
She said this as she passed out, and said it in such a pitiable
tone, that it went to Lord Hatterleigh's heart. He thought a few
minutes, and then hurled himself down the stairs out of the room,
across the hall, and out of the house. " Send my horse and groom
after me," was all he said to the wondering butler, and strode away
gesticulating across the park.
CHAPTER XL.
LADY EMILY and her mother sat alone in the library, no more
suspecting that there was anything wrong in their domestic affairs,
than believing that the granite tors of the moor were breaking
from their bases, and coming crashing about their heads. They
had never had a hint of Sir Charles's difficulties; and he used to
see them day after day utterly unconscious, cheerful, and peaceful, in a circle of circumstances, which to them appeared a wellkept English gentleman's establishment, but which to him seemed
only a ghastly heap of fraudulent bankruptcy and ruin.
They were talking, as they always were now, of Laura's approaching marriage, and were indeed getting busy about it. It
was very charming to Lady Emily to have the management of
such a great affair, and not less pleasant for her mother to be
consulted (as she was a hundred times a day) on every detail,
and not only consulted, but implicitly followed. The presents
were dropping in. The Downeses only the day before had sent
in a magnificently ostentatious offering from Howell- and James,




148                 LEIGHTON COURT.
and there it stood; even Lady Downes and Constance Downes's
comparatively humble contributions towering above all the others
on the table, while Sir Peckwich himself was represented by an
almost offensively beautiful centre-piece for flowers, which, like
Sir Peckwich himself, was head and shoulders higher than the
other two.
"I hear Laura's footstep: she is coming to look at the Downes'
presents."
If she was she had made strange preparations for doing so. It
would seem much more likely that she had been getting herself
ready to act the part of" Medea." She was deadly, ghastly pale,
and somehow —perhaps by some frenzied motion of her body,
perhaps by the mere clasping of her hands to her heated head -
one large band of her hair had come down and hung across her
face. She was very calm, and her mouth was set firmly; but
the instant the two ladies looked at her, they saw plainly enough
that she would never be Countess of Hatterleigh.
" I am come to tell you both that I have broken off my engagement with Lord Hatterleigh, in a manner which renders all reconsideration impossible. Will you tell people about it for me,
and all that sort of thing? I am very tired, and am unable to
speak any more on the subject."
"If Lord Hatterleigh has dared-" began Lady Emily.
"Lord Hatterleigh has not dared anything, my dearest mother! The whole thing is of my doing, - my fault from beginning
to end. Lord Hatterleigh has behaved like a very noble and
true-hearted gentleman, and has left me very unwillingly."
Lady Emily immediately went down on her knees. "Laura,"
she said, " let your own mother on her bended knees implore you
to say the one word to that unhappy young man, which will bring
him back to your side, and save us from the intolerable ridicule
which always attaches to the breaking off a match when it has
gone as far as this one has!"
"3Mother, get up."
"I know this is your doing. I know that Hatterleigh was too
infatuated, - loved you too dearly. Oh, say the word, - oh, say
the word, and save us!"
" Mother, I think I can bear what I have to bear. You may
make it harder for me by these scenes, but I will try. I wish
you to understand, once for all, that it is all over between us, and
that no power on earth can ever make me alter my decision."
She left the room; and Lady Emily, getting up from her
knees, -by no means so easy a process as going down on them,
- turned to her mother, and said, " Here is a pretty business!"
s" I never thought it would do," said Lady Southmolton.
" I am aware of that, my dear mother; I have heard that be



LEIGHTON COURT.                  149
fore," replied Lady Emily, with perfect truth, but with more tart-.
ness than was necessary. "The question is, what is to be
done?"
"Nothing, that I am aware of, except writing to Jane Clark."
"Jane Clark is dead," said Lady Emily, still snappishly. " Do
you mean to advise me to sit down under this? "
-" Whether I advise you to do so or not, my dear Emily, you
will have to do so. You had better stop any further expense."
"The milliner will put it all about London."
"Not she: a hundred others will have done it for her," said
Lady Southmolton, who had never been spoken to sharply by
her daughter before, and had no idea of standing it.
" It is so sudden," said Lady Emily: "and we have had it
talked about so much. It was in the' Post.'"
4"It is the most sudden and scandalous business I have ever
had to do with," replied her mother. "I thought I could have
crept to my grave without being mixed up in a business of this
kind. But I will not complain; I will bear my cross, Emily."
"You seem bent on driving me out of my mind, mother. Will
you tell me what to do?"
" With the greatest pleasure. Was her veil ordered?"
"You know it was."
"Then you must compromise. The milliner is a most excellent woman, and will let you off your bargain far cheaper than
Madam Muntalini would; but I should tell her all the circumstances of the case, out of mere courtesy. Then you must write
to Gunter and tell him all about it; say you don't want the cake.
Then you will have to tell Harry Emmanuel about it, and so
on."
" Mother! mother! why are you so cruel?"
"Because I am angry with you, Emily! " said the little old
lady, stamping her foot upon the floor. " Would you have dared
to rebel against me in this manner?  Why don't you do your
duty as a mother, and send for Lord Hatterleigh yourself? Why
do you allow Laura to dictate to you in this shameful way?
Order Laura to her room, and sit down and write to Lord Hatterleigh yourself." (The little old lady had shaken and wagged
her head, and stamped her foot so much by now, that she might
almost have frightened a rabbit.)  " Do you think that at Laura's age I should have so far forgotten every moral and religious
duty as to allow you for one instant to behave as Laura is
behaving now?  Never!"
"I know you would not, mother. But I am afraid of Laura:
I dare not speak to her 1 "
Old Lady Southmolton was so filled with unutterable contempt by this expression of weakness, that she had nothing to
say. She looked up to heaven as though praying for patience.




150                 LEIGHTON COURT.
"Do speak to her yourself, mother, and make her obey you,"
said poor Lady Emily.
At this very alarming proposition, Lady Southmolton came
back to earth again with the most startling rapidity; she actually
tumbled down, headlong. Her first act on arriving on this earth,
after a serene contemplation of the deterioration of the human
species since the days of Hannah More, - after falling suddenly,
from a height of moral speculation, down on to the floor of extremely disagreeable personal practice, - was, so to speak, to sit
up and look round her, to see if her daughter was in earnest, or
was daring to make game of her. Poor Lady Emily was perfectly in earnest, - there was no doubt in that. Lady Southmolton said, quietly scornful, -." She is not my daughter; she is yours. I am not her mother, any more, than my sainted Southmolton was her father. I
wash my hands of her! Do not drive me to say that I wash
my hands of you, - of my own daughter! "
The idea of Lady Southmolton washing her hands of her was
so dreadful to Lady Emily, that she went through the action of
washing her own, and moaned and wailed herself into silence, as
ladies do in such cases. When everything had been quite quiet
for a quarter of an hour, from Lady Emily's last sob, Lady
Southmolton, solemnly, but, on the whole, in a conciliatory manner, said,"Emily!"
Lady Emily threw herself on her mother's bosom, and went
through the sobbing business again, - but three octaves lower,
and many minutes shorter; after which they talked together in a
reasonable manner. But all that they arrived at was, that girls
were not as they used to be, and that dear Laura was very
strange; that, on the whole, they — they - were both horribly
afraid of her, could not in the least degree calculate what she
would do next, and so had better leave her to herself; which
they did.




LEIGHTON COURT.                   151.
CHAPTER X L I.
SIR HARRY POYNTZ was sitting at his library-table turning
over his papers. This became, day after day, a more difficult and
tiresome business for him. He knew that his brain was softening,
and he had submitted to his fate in that matter with that quaint
godless fatalism which possibly was part of his disease. He had
told Hilton that the only thing which annoyed him was, that
those fits of irritability were beyond his control. He said, in his
queer way, that it was so unutterably exasperating to find that
he couldn't keep his temper. But these fits had grown milder
as the disease went on, and had altogether ceased; but as they
ceased a new cause or irritation seemed arising. He had always
been the most methodical as well as the most cat-like cleanly of
men, and now he began to find that his papers got wrong, and
that he was getting untidy in his dress. This vexed him considerably.
He was in a mess with his papers this morning. He had
found himself getting angry, and, being fearful of one of his old
fits of fury coming on, had dismissed the steward with a sweet
smile, on pretence of a headache. He had made an effort to
bring his mind to a focus, and to get his papers in order; but he
found that the effort was beyond him, - and there was no one
to help him.
"The game is very nearly up," he thought; "I wish Bob was
here."
Suddenly there came, as there will in such cases, a sudden
activity of brain, a more rapid passage of blood, or if not that
something else. IIe suddenly saw, in one instant, that he was
all alone, without a single friend in this world, and utterly without hope or-belief in the next. The first effect of this flash of
intelligence was infinitely mournful,- the second most ghastly
and most horrible. There came on him, for one moment, that
sense of illimitable distance from others, which no man can feel
for many seconds and keep his reason. The nightmare passed
away, and left him sitting there, careless, stupid, and desperate.
When the brain quickened again, he began thinking about his
brother Robert, and wishing that he would come back, and that
he might hear that Robert had forgiven him from his own lips.
He did not acknowledge to himself that he had been to blame in
their life-long quarrel; he only wished that Robert would tell




152                 LEIGHTON COURT.
him they were -good friends. "I wish we could start afresh.
How was I to know that Bob was a hero? I suppose," went on
the poor fellow, "that I must be wrong. Every one loved him,
and every one hated me. Why did he always hate and despise...
me so? Why did he irritate me, and make me hate him! Well,
Master Bob, I have brains enough to be even with you yet!"
Some one laid a light hand on his shoulder. He said, " Bob,
I'll be even with you. You'll be devilish sorry for me when I
am gone." And then he looked up and found his wife standing
over him.
"Maria, I am glad to see you; I have had the nightmare.
Do you wish me dead?"
"Harry! Harry! give up talking so wildly."
"I am not talking wildly at all. Maria, do you think, for the
short time we have left to live together, that you could be friends
with me? It is so horrible to die without one single friend! "
"I will be a faithful and good wife to you, Harry. We have
both made a mistake. You have so often, and, let me say, so
coarsely put that before me, times innumerable, that I have no
delicacy in speaking about it. I have been saved from unutterable woe by God's providence, and my heart is tender towards
you, my poor Harry, -very tender 1 Why are you so hopelessly wicked as to make it impossible for me to love you? "
"What have I been doing so unutterably wicked lately?"
"Harry, why have you ruined Laura Seckerton? Why did
you write that horrible letter?  I have just been with her; she
seems the same to the world, but you have driven her half-mad.
We have come together again after all our misunderstandings,
and I tell you, Harry, that she is broken-hearted."
"Serve her right! " said Sir Harry Poyntz, laughing; " she
wanted a lesson. Let her keep her tongue between her teeth
another time."
Maria was so exasperated by this brutality that she rose up,
and paced up and down the room in furious heat, denouncing
him. There was nothing she did not say of him. When she
had somewhat cooled, she, in a very imperial manner, without in
the least degree thinking what she was about, declared she would
live with him no longer and formally demanded a separation.
Meanwhile Sir Harry laughed louder and louder as she went on,
which, however she might conceal it, drove her nearly wild.
" Separation " he said at last, amidst his laughter. "Why,
Sir Charles Seckerton came over here once to represent to me
your goings-on with Hilton. I knew and trusted you, Maria, and
I sent him back shorn. Come, Maria, be sensible; come and
hear all about it. Let us have no nonsense."
Poor Lady Poyntz had nothing more to say. She was obliged




LEIGHTON COURT.                  153
to listen, however indignantly: innocent as she was, she was
obliged to be calm. She came and sat down beside him.
"Maria," he said, " I did write that letter."
"No one doubts it; you signed your name to it. I came in
here to-night in a softened mood, to behave as a wife to you; and
you, by your hopeless wickedness, have exasperated me to that
extent that I have utterly lost my temper with you. Why have
you ruined Laura?"
"You mean, why have I broken off her engagement to that
Guy Fawkes booby, Hatterleigh?"
"You may put it as you will. Why have you involved her
name with Hammersley, sir?"
" Because," said Sir Harry, calmly, " I want her to marry my
brother Bob. I have bought up every mortgage on that estate,
and I could sell Sir Charles up to-morrow. By my arrangements,
Laura, with her damaged reputation -"
"Her damaged reputation, sir!" blazed out Lady Poyntz.
"How dare you, sir?"
"I am aware of her perfect discretion, but I was not speaking
of that; I was speaking of her reputation. With her reputation
she will be glad to marry Bob, and the two estates will be joined,
you see; and her father's creditor will be his own son-in-law,
and they will all live happy for the rest of their lives."
"It is a cunning scheme," she said, " and I so far like your
part in it as to see that you mean well by your brother. But
you little kno~w Laura; she would sooner be burnt alive than
marry a man under such circumstances."
"But I have put her reputation at zero; I have told others
about it. I tell you she will be glad to marry any one."
"I have no patience with you! You have ruined her for
nothing. All she will do will be to go into a convent."
"I thought she was a sound church woman."
" A desperate woman soon gets over a few little difficulties of
creed. Besides, another thing will show you the absolute folly
of your plan. Your brother Robert- he - this heroic man,
with all the pride and bloom of his heroism fresh upon him, is to
marry this woman whose reputation you have so carefully undermined. You have gone muddling and scheming on, until you
have done irreparable mischief, and ruined a noble woman."
She turned and left him in indignation, and looked back after
she passed the door. Sir Harry was looking at her with a halfsilly, half-sly expression, and was laughing at her. There was
more about him than she-could understand. She was sorry to
have lost her temper with him, and she went back and kissed
him. After that she passed out, and left him sitting in his chair.
7*




I0l 4               LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE next morning Laura had risen early, had taken her sketchbook, put some food in her hunting canteen, and walked away
alone through the park to the Vicarage.
The Vicar was away that morning, -she knew that well
enough; but she only wanted the Vicar's wife, whom she found
alone.
" I only want the key of the church."
-Mrs. Vicar hardly spoke, but seemed to think the mor'e. She
had actually given the key to Laura, and Laura was turning
away, when the two scarlet gloves were whipped suddenly round
her neck; and she found herself violently kissed, and the next
instant " The Umbrella" was standing before her, flourishing a
scarlet fist within an inch of her nose.
"O, if I only had the trouncing of some of them! O, if I
could get Tom Downes to play Benedict to a certain gentleman's
Claudio!"
"Hush! hush! " said Laura; " there is no one to blame. Just
think of what you are saying; how very dreadful!"
"I am not an image," said the Vicar's wife. "I am not a stone
gargoyle, to have a mouth and never speak. I am furious, I tell
you.""' Quiet, - quiet, old friend," said Laura; " you should help me
to be quiet, and not make me angry."
" I should, but I can't," said she of the red gloves. "0 Laura,
if I only had Lord Hatterleigh here!"
" What would you do with him? "
" I would give him such a piece of my mind. 0 Laura, they
have used you so shamefully!"
" Indeed, my dear, I cannot see that at all. In the first place,
Lord Hatterleigh: Do you know that I might be Lady Hatterleigh now, in spite of all that has passed, and rule him with a rod
of iron? Do you know that Lord Hatterleigh is the most perfect
gentleman and the most high-minded man I have ever met? lfMy
dear soul, I have committed an indiscretion, and am suffering for
it, - that is all! "
"There is a villain somewhere, Laura."
" I don't see why Sir Harry Poyntz should have been so cruel.
But it is all for the best. Now, give me the key."
"Why are you going into the church?"




LEIGHTON COURT.                   155
"To practise the organ. All my old habits are cut away. I
will not ride again. I cannot look at the poor people; they will
sympathize with me, and I cannot cure them of it; and I won't
be: sympathized with. They have no manners, those poor folks.
And the regulation of hours of business won't do now. Your husband and my grandmother would recommend it, I know, but it
won't do; I have got the'snatches' on me too strong for that.
And I have tried to paint, but — but what is the use of losing
your temper over a thing of that kind? — and so it is all gone but
my most wickedly neglected music, and I am going to try that;
therefore give me the key, and I will call at the school for a boy
to blow, and I will see what that will do."
And so she went; and she of the red gloves said to herself,
" They have played old gooseberry with a very fine girl among
them. Why," she said indignantly to the ambient air, as if the
very winds of heaven were to blame, " there was n't a finer girl
than that in the Three Kingdoms! What have you been doing
with her, you two old trots " (which was personal), " and you extravagant old zany in topboots?" (which was more personal
still). " I wish I had the trouncing of you! Got nothing left
but the organ, and can't play that! If I was her I'd go to Rome,
out of sheer spite; that would be the way to exasperate them."
If the Vicar could only have heard her! But he was away at
Exeter at the Visitation. They called her, in joke, " The Umbrella," partly from her figure, and partly from her inanimate submission to her husband. She let him do as he would with her;
the red gloves were a case in point. But sometimes, to every
one's astonishment and confusion, "The Umbrella," so to speak,
put herself up, and refused to be got through narrow high-church
passages and doorways after her husband, or to be put down again,
- a most obstinate old umbrella with a very rusty spring.
Laura, laughing to herself, went into the church; and soon
afterwards the boy came, and she began playing. The church
was very dear to her, and she wished to get back once more into
the old church routine. Nothing had ever satisfied her so well
as that, after all. As for communicating, - as for returning to
the old pretty woman's ministrations (in the way of ornament,
and so on, about the altar), that was impossible to her. There
was a vindictive chord in her heart, which was vibrated twenty
times a day; and at every vibration she said, "0, if I had a
brother!"  The old church peace was not attainable, now that
she had fully put before herself her utter exasperation against
Sir Harry Poyntz.  He came to church, and she could not kneel
and pray with him. She hated him, and she did not in the least
conceal it from herself. He had gratuitously ruined her, and she
hated him!




156                 LEIGHTON COURT.
She had tried all her old round of duties and pleasures, and they
were all dead and dull. She had a fancy to shut herself up in
the old church and play the organ, —to take once again to her
long-neglected music. The poor girl was hunted and ill-used,
and she had nothing else to look to. " I will practise, and then
I can play on Sundays, and so have some part in the worship;
and I can sit here behind the curtain, and see them communicating. It is better than nothing."
So she in her Galilee. She was not very clever, or very devout, or very sentimental; but she was very truthful, very brave,
and surely as hard beset as a woman need be. The chords all
went wrong:)her hands had got strong enough with her riding
to grip any keys ever made, but she had lost the fingering of'the
keys, and the trick of the stops, and what not; and she could get
no harmony out of the old instrument, which she had heard
sounding so sweetly under other hands. Her foolish fancy of
speaking her sorrows by the organ to those of the congregation
who still dared approach the altar was gone; even this quaint
fancy, her last hope, was unattainable. There was no resource
left. She sent away the boy who blew the bellows, and began
to cry. It is hard to laugh at an utterly lone woman crying
over the keys of an organ. I cannot, and I am quite sure that
you cannot either.
To find her father beside her was no surprise. She only said,
in a low, indignant, almost objurgative tone, "I have forgotten
my music, now I wanted to play for them in church. But I can't
play, I have lost everything. I have behaved so well, too.
What have I done that I should be treated so? I have told
HIatterleigh everything, and he would have me now if I had not
been so honest as to refuse him. What have I done to Harry
Poyntz that he should ruin my character?"
"Laura," said her father, " Harry Poyntz is dead!"
"What! " she cried, starting up and looking at him. "Come
out of this place; let me hear no more here. Come into the
churchyard, —no, not in the churchyard, out on to the millgreen. Dead is he?  Who has killed him?  0 father! father!
there has been nothing between him and Hatterleigh?"
Her father looked surprised, but went on, -
"He was found dead. Lady Poyntz had left him sitting in
his chair, and soon after the servant brought him a letter which a
man on horseback had brought over from Plymouth. Harry
went and lay on the sofa to read it, and very soon after the man
heard him laughing uproariously. He laughed so loud and so
long that the servant feared he would hurt himself. At last he
was silent, and silent so long that the servant went back-"
"Well? " said Laura.




LEIGHTON COURT.                   157
"He was quite dead, my love. He had gone off with a spasm
of the heart, perhaps brought on by his laughter, - a strange end
to a strange life!"
" Oh, may God have mercy on him! " said Laura. "O Harry! Harry! I forgive you so heartily."
"They sent for me early this morning, and among other things
showed me the letter which had caused the poor fellow such
amusement. It was from  Hatterleigh. He called Harry liar
and coward, and informed him that he waited for him at Dessin's,
at Calais, with a friend."   -
"And he only laughed at it! You see that he died in charity
with him, at all events. Poor fellow, what could I have done to
make him use me so?"
"Laura," answered her father, " it is time you knew the reasons for his line of action. He had set his heart on your marriage with his brother Robert, and the union of the two estates."
" How did he dare-! I forgot. But he must have been mad,
for I never saw the man, and the man never saw me."
"I am aware of that; but Harry has broached the idea to him,
and he has taken most kindly to it. In fact, there is nothing
whatever to prevent you becoming Lady Poyntz, if you feel any
inclination for such an honor."
"'O father! father! how utterly you would despise me if I
did so!"
"I really cannot see why," he angrily broke out; "I really,
God grant me patience, can — not. It is high time you were
settled in life,- you must be aware of it. We have none of us
said a word to you about your behavior to Hatterleigh.  You
might have had him and his fifty thousand a year back by saying
one word, and you would n't say it. I don't believe you would
say it to save your old father from ruin. Now I tell you once
for all, that if Sir Robert makes you the subject of this magnificent offer, and you refuse him on sentimental grounds, it will
materially alter the relations between yourself and the rest of
your family."
Laura had become very pale, but her heart was going fast and
furious.
"1 ow look here," she said, turning to her father and forcing
him to look at her; " you talk about altered relations. They are
altered,- they have long been altered. And as for this Sir
Robert Poyntz, I would not marry a royal person on such terms.
Who is he that he DARE make me a part of one of his schemes
for increasing his estate, the least important element in which
seems to be considered my consent to marry him? It is monstrous, - the whole of it, - monstrous!"
Poor Sir Charles was now driven to despair, and spoke as a




158                 LEIGHTON COURT.
desperate man, lost to sense of shame, but with a dim hope of his
object beyond a sea of degradation, and determined to plunge in
and wade through. As he went on, Laura was shocked and
frightened to see how his nature had given way under the wear
and tear of concealed difficulties, and that the best half of it
seemed to have disappeared. She remembered a noble, grand,
upright gentleman, - the worthy magistrate, the generous patron,
the courteous host, the wise friend,- whom she had loved and
called "Father "; she saw before her a miserable, bent, selfish
old man, unable to look his daughter in the face, who went
through his wretched part with the air and the whine of a begging-letter writer.
" Laura, I must tell you at once that, if we cannot make this
arrangement with him, your poor unhappy old father is ruined! "
"Ruined! "
"Ruined utterly! Our existence in this place has been a
fiction for a year or two past. Sir Harry Poyntz spared me in
hopes of executing his darling scheme. If we disappoint this
man, there is no hope whatever!"
"Let me sit down," she said, "I cannot stand any longer";
and she sat down on the root of a tree, and heard him go on.
" He is my only creditor; the arrangement would be actually
perfect in every way. I would give up the hounds, if he insisted
on it. Nothing stands in the way but yourself. And what is
all that your poor father asks of you? To' make one of the
finest matches in England, and save a father from ruin! "
" Cannot we do anything? Is there no hope elsewhere?"
"BNone!"
"Has grandma no money she can lend you?"
" She has twenty thousand pounds, and I want eighty thousand," said Sir Charles, curtly.
"But other people get ruined. I should not mind it except
for you. And I would take such care of you, and work for
you-   Believe me, father, we might be quite as happy without
all these miserable superfluities! Dear father, do think —"
"You speak like a child, my poor Laura! There is one other
point which you force me to mention, though I would rather have
avoided it. With this ruin will come disgrace!"
"Disgrace! what disgrace?" asked Laura.
"You may spare your father, Laura. It is hard to have to
make the confession, —spare me the details. It should be
enough for you to know that it is disgrace so deep that none of
our name could survive it. Now you know all! "
She sat perfectly silent for a long while; he could not tell
whether she had yielded or not. When she spoke at last her
voice was changed, and she spoke in a hard, resolute tone. She
rose, too, without any help, and seemed perfectly firml, -




LEIGHTON COURT.                  159
"We will talk no more of this; the subject is distasteful. I
suppose Sir Robert Poyntz will have the tact and propriety to
behave as if he knew nothing about these arrangements; and I
hope that a proper time will be allowed to elapse. Now I will
go and look at the church. I think I should prefer to walk home
alone, please."
So she went back towards the church; and, when she came
to the gate, turned and saw him walking away, with bowed
head, under the shadow of the elms.
"I must save him," she said to herself; "and, what is more, I
must not think, or I shall go mad. I only want a little more
hardening, and it will come easy enough. I must be as Maria
was when she married poor Harry,- if I can. She might help
me, but she is so strangely changed and softened - I must go
through it by myself. I must become desperate, lest my father's
blood should lie at my door."
She was alone, desperate and forlorn; the dead, so much happier than she, lay all around her, and she envied them. She sat
on one of the green mounds, and thought of her position.
"' I would have been so good if Hammersley had never come"
(for she was getting desperate, taking leave of her better self forever, and concealed nothing), "but he came and spoilt it all, and
ruined everything. And I know now that I love him still as
well as ever, and should have done poor Lord Hatterleigh a
wrong. I saw that after I broke with him. And I put all
thoughts of him aside so loyally while I was engaged to George,
and only thought of him again when I was free; I thought they
might have left me alone, and not driven me to this pass. I
am sure I don't want to accuse anybody; but why has my
father gone on with this selfish ostentation until he is obliged to
sacrifice the creature he loves best in the world, - to put on his
own dear daughter's face a brazen, defiant look, which she must
wear till her death? And my mother and my grandmother, how
much do they know of this horrible business of my father's ruin?
They will stroke my hair and praise me for being dutiful, while
I am getting hardened and desperate. I shall have to dress and
to flaunt it out. I can stare down Constance Downes, but I can
never face Maria Poyntz in her new mood. I shall die if that
woman turns her great eyes on me. She has been through it all,
and has come out again with a face like a saint; and I, who was
so bitter and harsh with her, must go through it all, with those
eyes of hers eating into my soul. I wish I was dead, - I do
wish I was dead!"
She rose up and went into the church, and looked round.
Their seat (Sir Charles was lay impropriator) was in the chancel; but she would not enter what was to her, in her belief, the




160                 LEIGHTON COURT.
more sacred part of the church, - she thought herself unworthy.
She went round the building, and wished the dear old place good
by. She had always loved the church from childhood, as a sol/emn peaceful place, which seemed to hold the very presence of
God. She had sat there year after year, under long, weary services and dull, weary sermons, with the sunlight sloping on the
tombs, and glimpses of the wild moor - the fairyland of her
childhood- seen through the windows; building fancies about
the dead Poyntzes, Seckertons, and Downeses, whose effigies
crowded the chancel; and since the Vicar had come, she had got
to love it better still. In spite of all his fantastic ritualisms, the
man knew what a church was originally designed to mean, and
had taught it to her. Then she had taken a new delight in it, -
had decorated it with a wilderness of glowing flowers at Easter,
and carefully-woven patterns of box and holly at Christmas,
believing that she was doing good service the while. Now the
hard world had come crashing in, and had thrown down her dear
loved images. All that was past and gone, and could never come
back again; but the remembrance of those times was most melancholy and most pleasant. She took one last farewell of the old
place, put on her new look as well as she could, locked the door,
and passed out of the porch:
To meet the Vicar leaning against a gravestone: who said,
looking keenly at her,"You are at your old pious duties, I see?"
To whom Laura, t6ying to look hardened and worldly, answered, "Not at all; I was taking my farewell of the church.
I thought you were away."
" So I was, but I am at home now. My wife told me you
were here. Have you been saying farewell to the church? Are
you not coming to church any more, then?"
" I suppose I may," said Laura.
"You suppose you may?" said the Vicar. "To-morrow is the
Feast of St. Ebba of Moorwinstow. Are you coming to-morrow?"
"No, I am not," said Laura.
"Are you coming to confession this week, - eh?"
"Certainly not."'Then are you coming to church on Sunday?" asked the
Vicar. " I would if I was you: every one does."
"I may or I may not, - I am not well, - most probably not."
"I think I shall see you at church on Sunday," said the Vicar.
"I say, Laura, don't be down-hearted over this business."
"What business?"
"This business; you know what I mean."
He looked so good, and so kind, and so little pretre, that she




LEIGHTON COURT.                  161
felt very much inclined to melt, and tell him everything. But it
would never do to begin like that. She put on the new and
hitherto unsuccessful hard look again, and said," I cannot be expected to understand you, Vicar."
He laughed, - a right jolly laugh too, - and said,"Have you heard the news?"
"What news can matter to me?" 
"None, of course; but I will tell it. Sir Robert Poyntz has
arrived at the Castle."
She saw he knew all.. In trying to tell him how cruel she
thought him, - in trying to tell him that it was mean in him to
laugh at her, she broke down, and bursting into tears left him
standing where he was.
" Poor child," he said, as he looked after her, "she has been
hardly tried! But it will do her good, - and God has been very
merciful to her. Many a woman has had her heart broken
for less before now. Well, let her go; I really can't pity her so
very much."
The Vicar took a turn round the churchyard, and stopped
against Hammersley's tablet, and said, "Hum-' ha!"  Going
closer to it he noticed that some one had chipped off a little angle
of the stone. " Now I would bet a hundred pounds that she did
that," he said.  "And what the curious part of it is, it has n't
been done a week. I wonder if she did do it! Well, we shall
see. It is all in God's hands now. Heaven help us fairly
through it  "
CHAPTER XLIII.
LAURA soon wiped her tears. All the world was banded
together against her, but not one of them should see that she
had been crying. She had to make her face hard; she had to
be cool and defiant towards the world in future. Maria Poyntz
had done it, and she, who had six times her brains, could surely
do it also!
Why, no, - at least not without practice, for the tears which
had been dried began to flow again. Lady Poyntz, with less
heart and fewer brains, could manage the matter better than
Laura. Powder as she would, her eyes were red at lunch; but
she was singularly cool and self-possessed, though her mother
and her grandmother nearly drove her out of her mind.
K




162                  LEIGHTON COURT.
They were wonderfully high-bred women. Tact with them
had become almost a science. They had no written rules of tact,
but they had so many unwritten laws of that great science that
it was almost reduced to exactitude. They, especially the elder,
could pronounce in an instant whether a person had tact or had
not; the consequence was that they had no tact at all. They had
infinite finesse doubtless, all according to rule. It is humiliating
enough to hear a costermonger telling his wife what he thinks of
her in the vernacular, but it is still more humiliating to a quickwitted person to watch a woman, who has forgotten her art, trying her miserable little ruses upon him. Laura was such a
quick-witted person, and saw in two minutes what these two
good ladies knew, and what they did not know. Her feelings
towards them, as in some other cases, were,% —first curiosity,
then contempt, and then indignation.
Their buoyant and pious gayety in the first instance, though
not overdone (they knew better than that), was perfectly obvious.
There was no reason for this exhibition of Christian cheerfulness.
Poor Harry Poyntz had died dreadfully the night before; and
on any other similar occasion her grandmother would have kept
her room except for meals, and would have improved the occasion as soon as her soup and glass of sherry had put life enough
in her to talk. Therefore, why did she twitter like an old dickybird the moment Laura appeared? Moreover her mother, the
inferior actor of the two, was arch. Now, if there was one thing
Laura hated more than another, it was archness.  She saw in
the first three. minutes that they knew all about Sir Robert
Poyntz's intentions, and were, as far as that went, in her father's
confidence.
That they knew nothing of the impending cloud of ruin hanging
over their heads, she saw well enough also. " Poor father!" she
thought, " he has behaved badly enough, but he has confided in
me, and I will serve him.  They would merely sell me to the
highest bidder to-morrow." She saw, moreover, that they were
both afraid of her, and she behaved, in manner only, with a
cool recklessness which they must perfectly have understood.
One wonders if they had sense to see her own terror, -a terror
which grew on her as minutes went on: the terror of first seeing
this bete noire, - this detestable Sir Robert Poyntz, to whom she
was sold like a sheep, to save her father from ruin. I doubt if
they had; Laura's honest, cool recklessness puzzled them, I
fancy. But the terror was there. At one time she hated him;
at another time she made wild schemes of throwing herself on his
generosity, — appealing to his manhood to - she knew not what.
She saw her own folly, while she nursed the hope of its success.
She was like a hare in a snare, -deliverance would only come
with death.




LEIGHTON COURT.                  163
And this man was within three hundred yards of her. She had
once coolly asked where her father was, and they had told her
that he was over at the Castle with Sir Robert. Would her
father bring him home to dinner? she asked herself. Of course
he would; she would see her fate at seven o'clock.
The man had acted heroically in India. Yes; but there were
heroes and heroes, as she knew well. One man, whose glorious
deed of arms in the Crimea had sent her wild with enthusiasm,
had been quartered at Plymouth. Her father had asked him
over. She had dressed herself with extra care to meet him, and
had conned a pretty speech for him. She found her hero - a
scowling, ill-tempered, vulgar fool, with no visible quality save
ferocity.
So as the afternoon went on, and time got shorter, she found
herself.hating and dreading this man beyond conception. She discussed with herself whether she could best face it out by coming
down to dinner first or last. Last she thought, on the whole; and
so she let the second gong sound, and after five minutes' law came
sailing resolutely into the room, " all eyes, mouth, and black velvet," as the Vicar - who was there - described her to his wife.
Sir Robert was not there. She chafed at this new prolongation
of her misery, but she was calm, cool, and polite. There was
another fifteen hours of anxiety before her. The Vicar, who
knew everything, says that she behaved with the courage of a
lion. Her father hardly spoke to her, and the weary evening
wore through, the Vicar staying long and late, doing his duty
like a man.
The next morning she knew her fate. She slept long and
heavily, as the men who are to be hung at eight generally sleep,
— a forgetful, dreamless, Sancho-Panza sleep. At ten o'clock
she was in the breakfast-room alone, trying to read "Adam
Bede," when she heard the hall-door opened, and the footsteps of
two people crossing the flags straight towards the room where
she sat.
The butler threw open the door and said, " Sir Robert Poyntz,
Miss," —and then shut it again, which was the best thing he
could do; and although he had been bribed for doing so very
heavily, he did it well. She was alone in the room with him.
She ought to have risen to receive him, but the thing was sudden; and she felt faint and ill, as women do sometimes. She
half turned her head towards him, bowed, and said, " My father
is in the library."
"- I did not come to see your father," he said; "I came to see
you. I have bribed all your father's servants to watch you, that
I might catch you alone; and I have succeeded."
It was partly the sound of the voice, and partly an indefinite




164                 LEIGHTON COURT.
feeling of anger, that made her rise and look at him. She saw
before her the most magnificent man she had ever seen,- a man
of extraordinary beauty, with a high, square resolute forehead,a man so young that the golden beard which was beginning to
mantle his cheeks and his chin had no shadows in it as yet; you
could still see beneath the golden haze that his beautiful mouth
was parted in eagerness, curiosity, and admiration.
Why did she put her hands before her eyes to shut out the
sight of him? Why did that quaint little sound - half-moan,
half-cry —rise from her overloaded heart? And why did her
lips begin to murmur a prayer of thanksgiving? Questions
easily answered. This detestable Sir Robert Poyntz, - this inexorable creditor, - the man who held them all in the hollow of
his hand, and who stood before her in all the promise of a noble
manhood, - this man was the only man she had ever loved, and
for whose love she had suffered so much. It was Hammersley
himself, risen from the dead, with the wild lurid light of his Indian glory still blazing in his eyes.
CHAPTER XLIV.
Hi spoke first. "I have done as you bid me," he said; "and
I have come back to ask you if I have done it amiss."
She had no answer ready. The poor girl was so utterly undone by her last day's misery, and so deeply happy and thankful
at the discovery that the terrible Sir Robert was no worse a
person than the one she loved best in the world, that she had no
answer for him, and could make no fight. She was, or ought to
have been, very angry; she had a hundred things to say to him.
But she was taken by surprise, - was like one awakening from
a horrible dream, to find himself in the world once more; and
she had nothing at all ready. She should have made her fight
at once, no doubt, but for these reasons she could not. It simplified matters immensely.
It gave him hope. He saw that his wild dream was like to
come true, — nay, would certainly come true if he could only
help speaking too fast (which he could not: a man just come out
of such a wild, dark hurly-burly as the Indian Mutiny could not
be expected to be so very cool). From the moment he saw her
sit silent, after her recognition of him, he began to be certain of




LEIGHTON COURT.                  165
her. He knew she loved him once, but he did not know what
had happened since. He would have been less eager, — would
have let matters take their course for a much longer time,- if it
had not been for Laura's emotion at seeing him again. That
made him push on fiercely, and forget all his worldly-wise resolutions. He saw that affairs were as he left them; but he was
far too wise to claim any acknowledgment of love from her. He
did not know all. He little thought for whom she was prepared, and for what she was prepared.
"I have come back again, Miss Seckerton, to know whether I
have done enough to gain your respect." Some sudden impulse
or instinct showed him that he must change his tone before her
tears were dried, and he knelt at her feet and said, "Laura!
Laura! you loved me once; do you love me still?"
She found her voice: "Yes! yes!  But why have you all
used me so cruelly?"
When they had done being sentimental —  which was very
soon, seeing that a great deal of sentiment had been knocked out
of both of them in a somewhat rough school - they returned to
common sense, of which both had a considerable stock. He
began by asking her what she meant by her having been used
cruelly.
" Never mind that now," she said. "Once and for all, tell me
how all this has happened? You have surprised me into an
admission by the suddenness of your appearance; it is only due
to me to explain your incomprehensible conduct. Let what I
have undergone through that conduct pass for a time; I only
ask you to explain."
He did so, of course, —partly in narrative, and partly by
question and answer. I must be allowed to shape his story for
him, only giving Laura's remarks when they are at all illustrative.
" You have heard of my father, and I wish to say little about
him. He has, I fear, not left a good na'me in this part of the
world."
" We need not begin so early," said Laura; "I have heard a
great deal about your father."
"You must not believe all you have heard. He had very
good qualities; I cannot bear to hear my father ill spoken of.
There were many worse men than my father. In time I will
make you know my father as' he really was; you have only
heard~the worst side of him yet. He was a very clever man,
and very pious latterly. As for his riding, - I think There
would be only one opinion about that."
Laura loved him the better for his silly breakdown in trying




166                 LEIGHTON COURT.
to whitewash the memory of that most miserable old sinner his
father, but she would not help him out. She had admitted more
than she meant to already; she sat silent.
" But that is beside the mark, possibly," said Sir Robert.
"Friends of the family, whose judgment I would be the last to
impugn, but whose advice was certainly never asked, were of
opinion that his establishment was not, on the whole, calculated to
raise the moral tone of such an exceedingly ill-conditioned and
turbulent boy as myself. Now, I look on this as being an exceedingly fine point in my father's character; and I am sure you
will agree with me about this. Although my father had never
asked these people's advice, yet he yielded to it. Their advice
was forced on him in the most offensive way. Tom Squire (you
know him) was in the room when it was forced on him, in the
most eminently offensive way, by Sir Peckwich Downes and
some one else, - never mind who. They said,' You are a most
disreputable and wicked old man; and you are lost to all sense
of decency if you bring those boys here.' That.'s what they said
to him; and see how nobly my father behaved! He took their
advice, at least as far as concerned myself. He used to have
poor Harry down, as you know yourself, having met him here."
" Never mind your father," she said.
"' But I do mind my father. My father is an ill-understood
man. What are the accusations against him? That he used to
drink, and have in the servants to drink with him. And Harry,
poor fellow, used to deny it in the strongest terms. No servant
ever sat down before my father except old Tom Squire, whose
mother was our nurse. Who is your Downes, that he is to dictate to a man in his own house?"
Laura did n't know.
"He had Harry down. Who is your Downes, that he is to
part a father from his eldest son? Me he never had down. One
of the best points in my father's character, one that showed his
knowledge of human nature best, was that he could n't bear the
sight of me."
Laura burst out laughing, but she had to stop it again, lest she
should get hysterical; recent events had been too much for her.
"I mean what I say," continued he. "I was one of the most
turbulent, ill-conditioned young rascals that ever lived. The
whole aim and object of my life, till six months ago, seems to me
to have been quarrelling with my own brother. Laura, I never
hated him; but his better and higher and gentler nature irritated
me."
Iaura gave a start. Had she given her heart to an absolute
fool?
"I never saw this," he continued, without having noticed her




LEIGHTON COURT.                  167
start, " until six months ago. I did something in India, no matter what; they have given me the Victoria Cross for it, so it
counts for something; and that dear fellow who lies dead across
the river wrote me the kindest and tenderest letter that ever one
brother received from another, - a letter written to me, who had
never done anything but vilify and backbite him! "
"About this letter?" said Laura. "Attend please. Did he
never vilify and backbite you?"
" Harry had an infirmity," said Sir Robert. "From childhood
Harry was very acute about money matters, but I never held
Harry accountable. He had an infirmity, —his brain softened,
you know, - he used to forget what he said last. It might happen to you or I to-morrow, you know."
"About this letter once more," said Laura; "did he say anything about me in it?"
"Not a word."
"Did he ever mention me to you in any of his letters?"
"Never! I never had but one. He never said one word to
me about you. Now I will go on with my story.
"My father, you must know, for some reason of his own, - I
think because he never liked me,-left me entirely dependent on
Harry, who I always thought liked me still less than my father
did. Now, the most unfortunate thing was that Harry and I
never got on together. My excuse for this is that Harry would
be master, and I would never submit.. I was sent to Efon to be
out of his way, and kept from home. As we grew up we got on
worse and worse, and at eighteen I found myself left in the world,
-free certainly, but entirely dependent on Harry.
"cMy father left me no guardians; I was entirely in Harry's
hands. And now I must allude to another infirmity of the poor
fellow's, -   must, in justification: he had such a terrible tongue!"
"Ah! well I know it," said Laura.
"He used to say such horrible things, and then laugh at them,
that he drove you almost mad. I have heard him use his tongue
so to that poor creature Wheaton, - who, by the by, must be provided for,  that I wonder he never murdered him. He soon
gave up this habit to me, at all events, as a general rule. But it
would come back to him; he could n't help it. When we were
boys I used to thrash him for it. But when we got too old for
that, his fear of me left him, and he was pretty near as bad as
ever. After our father's death he told me, with a stinging insult,
that he would allow me three hundred a year, - that I might go
anywhere, and do anything. I thought this a somewhat grand
revenue, and went to London an independent gentleman.
" What did I do there? - Why, I went there with three hundred a year, and spent nine hundred. How did I spend it? - In




168                 LEIGHTON COURT.
muddle. You know how our family vacillated between extravagance and stinginess, often in the same individual. Well, I was
in the economical mood when I went to London, and I apportioned out my income carefully, -so much for my rooms and
living, so much for my horse and groom, and so on; and I left a
margin of ~ 50 a year for contingencies. At the end of the year
I was six hundred pounds in debt. I struggled and floundered on
until I made it up to a clear thousand, and then I wrote and told
my brother. He was furious: he paid it, but stopped my allowance, formally renounced me, and left me to shift for myself with
a hundred pounds.
"I had been living a very pleasant life in London. Many of
my Eton friends had not gone to the University, -more than one
of them was in the Guards.  Their families received me very
kindly, — most of them from mere good will, but some because
they foresaw what has actually happened, - that Harry would
die without a family and that I should be rich. So, boy as I was,
I was not merely had out for my dancing, which is admirable,
but as a lad whom it was worth while to have one's eye on. I
have been very civilly bespoke, do you know, by very great people indeed, - political people, I mean. Harry seemed to me always to be a known man, I cannot tell why or how; it is a puzzle
to me. Whether it was his tongue, which he could use in one
case like a delicate poniard, and in another (when among his dependents and relatives) a brutal cudgel; whether it was his credit
as a pushing, unscrupulous man, who must rise in spite of a reputation even then damaged; or what it was, I cannot tell. There
was something odd about Harry which made him a well-known
man. I have, in the corners of drawing rooms, and on staircases, among the men, heard him called every name under the
sun. What puzzled me was that he should be so known, so
talked about, and-what seemed to me stranger still —so feared."
"Did you never speak up for your brother? " asked Laura.
" No; it was impossible. Harry had earned his reputation,
and he had it. I have not learned to lie yet."
" This fits well with your extravagant praise of him ten minutes ago. I thought that he was the saint then, and you the
sinner."
Sir Robert laughed aloud, and did not stop quickly; and as
poor Laura found that she could laugh now without crying, she
joined in. They should not have laughed, you think, so soon
after poor Sir Harry was dead. Well, they did; most of us
have laughed between a death and a funeral.
Sir Robert went on: "I never made him out a saint, save-by
contrasting him with my own wicked self. "
"You are coming to your confessions, then. Pray, did you
ever meet poor Harry in society? "




LEIGHTON COURT.                  169
"Never but once. I was only in society part of one season,
and all that time he was getting the family affairs together.
Near the end of my only season I was at a ball at Tulligoram
House, and was attending to poor old Mrs. Smallwood. I had
got her an ice, and was talking to her. The crowd was very
close, and I noticed that she was back to back, at very close
quarters, with Gordon Dunbar, a six-foot guardsman. His back
was towards hers, and he pushed her so close to me that she had
to eat her ice under my nose; for the Righter of all Wrongs and
the Poet of the Domestic Affections were backing me up from
the other side. All would have gone well had not the big guardsman who was backing up Mrs. Smallwood been introduced to
some one. He made such a low bow, that he shot Mrs. Smallwood on to me headforemost, and me on to the Righter of
Wrongs, who from his physical and moral elevation apologized.
When I had finished blushing, and had got her right, I looked
Gordon-Dunbar way again. It was my brother he had been introduced to: and my brother was standing in the centre of a circle looking at Gordon Dunbar: perfectly dressed, perfectly at
ease, looking at the -guardsman, with an expression on his pale
puffed face, and his shallow blue eye, which said plainly,'Now
what is your metier? How much are you worth?'"
" Did they speak to him?"
" 0 yes, they spoke to him; but they seemed to look on him
as some dreadful curiosity. Do you know, he did look very curious. His dress, to begin with: it was only black and white, of
course. I can dress myself as well as any man alive; but he
could beat me. I dealt with the same tailor (who, by the by,
must be paid), but I never could wear my clothes as he did.
You know the story about' Good heavens, sir, walking trousers!
Why, you have been sitting down in them.' It illustrates what I
mean, -Harry wore his clothes marvellously well. And add to
this, he had a calm look with him, not a stare, which did wonders.
When any one spoke, he, by some twist in his neck, some turn
in his eye, gave all present the idea that this fellow might be
worthl listening to or might not, and then, with a quiet but very
slight turn up of the chin, decided in the negative. I tell you,
Laura, solemnly, that no angel in heaven has the temper which
would have borne with him. The unutterable exasperation which
he was capable of —"
"Hush! hush! " said Laura, "we must forget that. Did he
speak this time you met him?"
"Yes, - to Gordon Dunbar, in his usual style. I never would
have dared to say what he said:'You have made a great mess
of it in the Crimea. You have let the French beat us at all
points. We seem to have as much pluck as they, but we want
8




170                 LEIGHTON COURT.
the brains, - at least, I mean our army seems to want brains.
Our system is wrong altogether. No man enters the army,
either as officer or private, who has the chance of a career elsewhere."'
"Did he dare say that?"
"He dare say anything."
"Did Gordon Dunbar strike him down?"
" No; he is a gentleman. And he carried in his own person
such a refutation of Harry's nonsense, that every one laughed.
Dunbar only bowed, and withdrew from the discussion."
" Did poor Harry say anything to you?"
"To me? No. But he behaved so queerly. He looked me
perfectly straight in the face, and then began talking to Mrs.
Smallwood, with his face almost touching mine, about me. He
gave her my character, speaking of me as'my brother here,'
but not addressing himself personally to me, or even after the
first look glancing my way. He told her (this was to my face,
mind!) that I was idle, extravagant, and, he feared, deceitful;
but that I was generous and brave, and that (so he said, - don't
laugh) my extraordinary personal beauty would make me friends
everywhere, and that he hoped those friends would not -find
themselves deceived. And then he walked on."
"Poor Harry was mad, you know," said Laura. "No sane
man ever acted or spoke like that."
"Do you mean what he said about my personal appearance  "
"Yes."
"Well, shall I go on with my story?"
"I think so. I want to hear, sir, what you did when you
were left in London with your debts paid and one hundred
pounds to spend."
"I say, by the by," said Sir Robert, looking at his watch,
"do you know, Laura, that I have been with you tete-a-tete an
hour and a half? I must go to your father."
"And leave the story of Cambuscan half untold: is this what
you call an explanation of your extraordinary conduct?"
" No; you shall have it. You can surely trust me. But let
me go to your father. Laura, you shall have every word; but
there is a dark passage or two to come. Let, there be no cloud
over to-day's sun."




LEIGHTON COURT.                   171
CHAPTER XLV.
THEY say that a large proportion (I am sure it is one third,
and think it is more) of all the folks who go mad, are driven so
by long-continued anxiety about their pecuniary affairs. Whether
Sir Charles Seckerton would ever have gone mad I cannot say:
we know that his relief had come, but he as little dreamt -of it as
he deserved it.
There seldom has lived a man with a sweeter disposition than
had he. His careless, generous, laissez-aller temper had been
one cause, though only one, of his ruin. But it was a very
sweet temper.  No one had ever seen the dark side of it but
Laura; and she only once, for a minute, on the occasion when he
proposed to her a marriage with Sir Robert Poyntz, and she
resented it. Sir Charles's character among men was that of a
perfectly determined person, thoroughly trustworthy, sensible,
and decided, - as well able to manage his own affairs as any
man in the county. The truth never leaked out, - circumstances saved that. Tell any man in that part of the county at this
day, that Sir Charles had been recklessly extravagant, and had
only saved his position in the world by a scandalous sale of his
own daughter; and tell them, again, that the beautiful, glorious
Lady Poyntz was at one time hunted and driven into such a
state of desperation as to acquiesce in the arrangement, — tell
them this, and they will laugh at you. But so it was.
Sir Charles's temper had lasted till this very day, and this very
day it had given way. He had borne the misery and anxiety
of debt, with a tolerably certain prospect of ruin, well enough.
I have no doubt that he would have gone to Baden most decently, had it not been for that irrepressible Sir Harry Poyntz, who
showed him how he could retrieve everything, or at least keep
the whole thing in the family, by the marriage of Laura and
Robert. His fate was in his daughter's hands. The first symptom of temper he had ever shown was when she rejected his
hint about that matter with scorn. She had seemed to agree on
that occasion, but had said not one word this last two days on the
subject. He could not tell for certain what she would do; if she
rejected him there was ruin; if she accepted him all would be
well, in a sort of way; but he could not trust her. He had seen
her obstinate as a child, and since; he had seen her show fight
to more than one person; suppose she were to do so now?
Ruin!




172                 LEIGHTON COURT.
I-He had not recognized Sir Robert, to that young gentleman's
vast amusement. He had seen "the likeness," but nothing more.
Tom Squire, the huntsman, had come up to him this very morning, and Sir Charles had mentioned the likeness to him: adding,
to poor old Tom's puzzlement, that poor Hammersley was the
better-looking fellow of the two. Tom had been set on by Sir
Robert, and told poor Sir Charles, with many exaggerations, the
passages he had seen between Laura and lHammersley. Tom
could n't make out, for the life of him, what Sir Charles knew
and what he did n't. He played his part faithfully, and left him.
Sir Charles knew that Robert was coming this morning, and he
was deeply anxious to know how Laura would receive him. He
determined to make one more last appeal to her. He could not
make up his mind what she meant to do. For two days she had
kept silence, but she had worn a hunted, desperate look, which
gave him infinite disquiet in every way. He could see plainly that
she had made some resolution, but what was it? Did she mean to
acquiesce in the arrangement,.or had she determined to lay the
whole matter before Sir Robert Poyntz? I don't know what put
that last idea into his head, but it was there, and would not go
away. It got stronger as the two days went on, - got so strong
now that it seemed a certainty; and in going to seek for Laura,
he felt that he was going to hear his doom from her lips.
"Where is Miss Seckerton?" he asked of a servant in the
hall.
"In the breakfast-room, Sir Charles. Sir Robert Poyntz is
with her."
" How came he there? Who showed him in?"
"Parker (the butler) showed him in, a quarter of an hour ago,"
said the guilty-looking man, turning scarlet.
" Who opened the door to him?"' I did, Sir Charles."
" You and Parker pack out of this house in an hour! How
much did Sir Robert give you, you rascal?"
"Only two sovereigns, sir; upon my soul, only two sovereigns!"
" Go and tell Parker to be out of the house in an hour, —never to set face on me again; I shall do him a mischief if he does."
And so he was too late! And Laura was alone with the man,
— at this moment, in her desperation, betraying her father's cause
to Sir Robert. What was actually passing in that room we have
seen already. Meanwhile Sir Charles's temper and judgment had
both given way, under the long-continued strain of anxiety; and
he strode towards the drawing-room, believing himself ruined, to
announce his ruin to his wife and her mother.
They were sitting in their usual places, - Lady Emily writing




LEIGIHTON COURT.                  173
letters, and Lady Southmolton, having just finished her devotional
reading for the morning, knitting. The dear old lady had three
times the quickness of wit of her daughter. She no sooner set
eyes on her son-in-law's face than she rolled up her knitting,
stuck the pins in- it, put it aside on the Bible, and folding her
hands, said, " My poor Charles, - my poor dear Charles! Come,
tell us all about it quietly; what is it?"
At these words Lady Emily looked up, and when she saw her
husband's ghastly, terrible face, she began to cry. All the training in the world would never make that fat, silly body into a
heroine, like her mother. She was almost entirely in a state
of useless collapse in the conversation which followed.
"I want to ask you two some questions, and to tell you some
news. First, I want to ask you this: Had either of you any idea
that Laura became attached to that unfortunate young gentleman,
Poyntz-Hammersley, whom I, like a ruined old lunatic as I am,
admitted into familiarity?"
The old lady did not answer Sir Charles at once.  She addressed herself to her daughter, who, as her experienced eye
showed her, was making every possible preparation for making
a fool of herself, and was very nearly ready to begin the performance. She said: "Emily, my love, there is nothing like the most
perfect calmness in family affairs of this kind. If you do not find
yourself equal to being calm, I shall use such influence as I possess as a mother to persuade you to leave the room."
Lady Emily went no further with her preparations. She
merely, forgetting that weight had come with years, cast herself
into an easy-chair, which creaked, but bore up nobly, and bided
her time. A little bird tells me that, at this time, feeling safe
under the guidance of that noble old generalissimo her mother,
her face assumed an expression of the most intense curiosity; but
this is merely hearsay tittle-tattle.
The old lady turned then to her son-in-law, and said: "My
dearest Charles, you take us utterly by surprise. That sort of
thing has happened, I know, and will probably happen again; but
with regard to our Laura, I won't believe a word of it."
"Why was the match broken off between Laura and Hatterleigh?  Had this anything to do with it?"
"Laura broke off the match. Neither of them have ever
deigned any explanations; but this had nothing to do with it. It
is utterly untrue from beginning to end. May I ask what grounds
you have for such a monstrous question?"
"You are very good to me. Why don't you upbraid me with
my insensate folly for allowing them to ride about together? It is
all too true!"
" Charles, come here and kiss me."  (He did so.)  "My poor




174                  LEIGHTON COURT.
dear boy, who has been putting this nonsense into your head?
Come, tell me."
" Squire."
"A tipsy old goose! Let us dismiss the subject; it is so utterly
below our contempt. What on earth has made you bring up such
a subject, at the very time when we are all so anxious that matters
should go well with our gallant young friend over the water?"
"I fear it is terribly true. Now let me ask you, what sort of
mood is Laura in this morning? "
"Now we are coming to common sense," said the kind old
lady. " Why, I am sorry to say our Laurae is not in one of her
best moods, —a trifle rebellious against our designs for her happiness. I don't suppose for an instant that you have let those little
designs of ours reach her; but they have reached her, and she is
in a mood. She must not meet that man at present. You must
take us to London, and all will go well. Time! time!"
Sir Charles leant his back against the chimney-piece. "I have
told her," he said quietly, " with my own fool's  lips, all those lit-.
tle designs for her happiness: and he has bribed my servants,
and at this present moment is closeted with her in the breakfastroom."
Lady Southmolton lost her self-possession, for the first and only
time in that part of her history which we have to relate. She
unfolded her two white hands, and spread them abroad before
her. "Then I can only say," she said, in a tone which was almost shrill, " that the whole thing is off, and that we may give it
up utterly and forever! Laura is in a mood this morning which
I decline to describe. She has turned on her mother and on me,
and has denounced us for selling her to the highest bidder; has
told us to our faces that if there were such a thing as an Anglican
convent, she would enter it to-morrow.  She said that all which
prevented her entering a Papist one was, first that she loathed
Popery, and secondly that there. was some other reason, —in
short, got incoherent in her anger. My sweet Charles, it was a
good scheme enough; but since that foolish young man has chosen to treat her as he would have treated a girl sent out to India
to marry the first man she could catch, the whole thing is over.
It was a pretty scheme, but it is a scheme of the past. Think no
more about it. We shall do well enough with her yet."
"' Have you any idea what Laura's second reason for not entering a convent was? " asked Sir Charles.
"Not the slightest."
"I can tell you.  Robert Poyntz is my creditor for eighty
thousand pounds.  Hle can'annex' this estate whenever he
chooses. Our only chance of pulling through was his marriage
with Laura."




LEIGHTON COURT.                   175
At this point Lady Emily did make a fool of herself. I don't
think that anything would be gained by describing a silly woman
in hysterics. It was her first trial, and she broke down under it.
I only wish the-reader to understand that she did it thoroughly,
and took her time about it.
But she was quiet enough at last to let the conversation proceed. Lady Sonthmolton —who had risen from her chair, and
had helped Sir Charles to pacify her - was the first to resume
the conversation.  She took her old attitude and said, with her
kind old smile, —
" Well, my dearest Charles, my dear friend and son for so
many years, and so you are ruined?"
"Utterly i"
"Well, son, we shall have to go to Germany, and live on my
money. The principal thing we have to think of is where. I
should like Brunswick; but the Duke is not mnarried, and he is
horribly rich; and it is not cheap, whatever they may say. Dresden, dear, is very pleasant and gay, but it is horribly cold in winter; and I am a fanciful old woman, and object to the statues of
August der Stark, — they are an outrage to public morality!
HIesse is dull, Ems and Wiesbaden dissipated."
"But is there no hope from Laura? " asked Sir Charles.
"Not the least," she answered.  " She is-in one of her obstinate moods. I don't blame your family. The Seckerton blood,
my dear Charles, never shows any obstinacy. This is the Sansmerci blood, which I have unfortunately transmitted to your family, and for which I owe you all apologies. She is behaving
to-day so exactly like Southmolton's father, that I am ashamed to
look you in the face. She has not certainly put the red-hot poker in the coal-scuttle, as Lord Southmolton did to annoy me, the
first time we went and stayed with him; but she shows the blood.
It is all my fault, Charles.  Come, can't I make you laugh —?
Well, then, listen to an old woman, and let us return to the subject in hand. My dearest boy, - Brussels -"
The dear old lady's quaint consolations came to an end here,
and were never resumed again. The butler - the proscribed and
banished Parker -threw  open the room-door, and announced
" Sir Robert Poyntz  "




176                  LEIGHTON COURT.
CHAPTER XLVI.
SIR CHARLES was still standing with his back against the chimney-piece: Lady Emily had sunk back in a chair, and the old
lady was as she always was. Sir Charles advanced with empressement: Lady Emily rose and bowed, but was in terror of her
red eyes. The only one of the three who kept her presence of
mind was the old lady. She resumed her knitting very carefully,
and said: " Now, here is Sir Robert Poyntz, for instance. If he
has his family's manners, he will back an old woman up against
both of you. Don't you think Brussels the most charming place
on the Continent, sir? You have never been there, - well, you
may admire it for all that. I have never been to the Mauritius;
but I admire'Paul and Virginia."'
"What do you want me to say, Lady Southmolton?" said Sir
Robert, laughing; " I will say anything you wish."
"You are very maladroit, young gentleman. India is a good
school of arms; don't force me to say that it is a bad school of
manners. You should have known what I wanted you to say;
or, failing that, should never have committed such a gaucherie as
to ask me."
"I am very sorry," said the young fellow, laughing; "but
something has happened this morning which has made me forget
the few manners I ever had."
" We can see that, sir," said Lady Southmolton. "None of
your Indian manners here, sir! Do you know, sir, that I am
one of the most terrible old women in England; and that if you
forfeit my good word, society is closed to you, sir? You are
behaving with the most unbecoming levity in my most awful
presence, sir; what do you mean by it?"
" I am not a bit afraid of you, Lady Southmolton," said Sir
Robert; " I am afraid of no one this morning."
The kind old lady looked round, to see if any more of what
some folks call "chaff" was necessary. No; the brave old lady
had held the field long enough. Sir Charles and Lady Emily
were both perfectly calm; but as she looked round, her eye
lighted on the face of Sir Robert Poyntz. She said at once,
" Come here to mne, immediately; I want to look at your face."
He came, and knelt before her. She looked into his face three
or four times, but she was baffled. She recognized his wondrous
personal beauty in a moment; and she saw something else at




LEIGHTON COURT.                   177
once which puzzled her extremely, - it was the look of his eyes.
Shoe knew well enough what was the cause of that tender brilliance in those eyes. The man was a successful lover, - she
could see that fast enough. And the man had just been closeted
with her own Laura, with a previously-declared intention of making love to that imperially obstinate young lady; he had come
fiom that audience-chamber with that flash in his eyes, instead
of looking like a whipped hound. Had Laura been false to all
her teaching? Had she allowed this man to be successful with
her after his declared intention, on the very first interview,
instead of decently fencing him off, for weeks, for months, to save
appearances?  Her own Laura could never have done that, -it
was a monstrous impossibility! Yet there was that light in the
man's eyes, which she could not mistake; and then came, sudden
and swift, the thought, "What if Laura had acted up to my
teaching, - what else could she have done? " If she had ruined
all her future prospects of happiness by allowing herself to be
won too easily by this man, whom had she, poor Laura, to thank
for giving herself to this enraptured fool, Sir Robert Poyntz? No
one but Lady Southmolton herself. She was puzzled and frightened. She said, " Get up, sir, and tell your story, - you puzzle
me. I am an old woman.  Get up, and explain that light in
your eyes."
He rose up, and turned to Sir Charles Seckerton. "My dear
Sir Charles," he said, "I am  your debtor for five hundred
pounds."
" It pleases you to say so."
" I owe you five hundred pounds for a horse of yours, which I
borrowed, and which was drowned. I mean "The Elk."  Do
you really mean to say that you have not recognized me yet, and
I laughing in your face all yesterday?"
"Are you Hammersley? "
" Of course I am. Has my beard altered me so much then?"
Lady Southmolton cared to hear no more. She went on with
her work. The story had lost its interest for her, for she had
read the denouement in Sir Robert's eyes. Her only thought
was, " Con I get these three to hold their tongues?  Everything
has gone well, and will go well, if they will only talk about the
weather and the crops, and let the Laura business stand over
for a month. This man must have made it safe with her, when
he was down here masquerading.  What did Lady Herage mean
by deceiving us so shamefully? And to think of the madness of
Charles! He must - unless he is blind, unless he had got utterly idiotic over his pecuniary affairs - have seen the whole of this
going on under his own nose, at the very time that he believed
this young gentleman to be penniless and illegitimate. And Lau8*~                               L




178                 LEIGHTON COURT.
ra! This accounts for much, however. One never knows these
girls. I would have gone bail for her discretion, - in fact, I did
so not ten minutes ago. I hope to goodness there will be no declaration for a month: we can defy the world then! I wonder how
far she went with him? And the man was drowned, and buried,
-at least had a stone put up to him, which is the same thing.
I am not in the habit of being utterly puzzled; but I am now.
I wonder if the four have brains enough among them to avoid
any sentimentalism for a month?"
They had. Sir Charles had shown his wish to have no further
explanations at present, by testifying the most elaborate commonplace surprise and pleasure in a humorous manner. Lady Emily,
After having done the same thing in a less degree, left the room
eind returned with Laura, who was formally introduced to the
man who had kissed her a quarter of an hour before, as an utter
stranger. Laura! Laura! you artful young lady, you carried the
farce too far, when you looked at him with languid curiosity.
You overdid your part, my Lady Poyntz; and very nearly caused
your outraged grandmother to forget her manners for the first
time in her life, and burst out laughing.
"Will you walk, my dear Sir Robert? " asked Sir Charles;
and it appeared that he would. They went out on to the terrace
together, and then Sir Charles said, turning suddenly on him,"I must have explanations, Robert, on all except one point.
That I can't allow to be touched. I- I can't explain. Now I
have you to deal with, — Hammersley to deal with. I -- I
won't explain. I am not afraid of you. I am Sir Charles Seckerton of Leighton Court once more, and you are little Bob
Poyntz, the ill-tempered boy. I won't explain what point I refer
to. I have been looking at your face, and I am puzzled. I
know how you bribed my servants, and where you have been:
on that point I will not have one word of explanation."
"Not for worlds!" said Sir Robert. "You must be very
angry with me. I have served you very badly. We must leave
that point quite alone at present; then we can defy the world!
Are you very angry with me, sir?  Can you ever forgive me? "
" One will try to forgive a man to whom one owes as much as
eighty thousand pounds."
"So much as that! Then I must take the hounds from you
as soon as —  What am I talking about?  I was trespassing
on forbidden ground. Dear Sir Charles, what explanations do
you want?'
Sir Charles wanted to know his history, and how he had come
here.
Poyntz told him the same story he had told Laura, up to the
point where he was left nearly penniless in London.




LEIGHTON COURT.                   179
"And what did you do then, sir?" said Sir Charles, severely.
"I must have everything explained; my position demands it."
Poyntz looked once at the old man, and did not know whether
to be pained or pleased. He knew the awful strait that Sir
Charles was in; and he did not know whether to be pained or
pleased at this fresh self-assertion on the part of the poor old
gentleman, the very first moment he felt himself safe. Knowing
everything, he was a little pained, on the whole. Knowing
everything, he could not help wishing that this extravagant and
somewhat selfish old gentleman had tried, after the terrible lesson he had had, to develop himself into something better and
newer, instead of trying to reassert himself back into his old position. As the day went on, Sir Robert Poyntz wished this more
and more, as Sir Charles grew more and more stilted and pompous; but, shrewd as he was, he did not know everything. Sir
Charles's self-assertion for the next week -was only what vulgar
people call "company manners."  It was the height of discretion.
Things had to be hushed up, and among them all they hushed up
the matter most perfectly, - the proof of which is that no one
but you and I know the real truth of it. The Downes faction
don't know the truth yet. "He vowed he would win her. He
came down disguised, disclosed himself to her father and mother,
and won her affections. He fled to India to avoid his creditors."
That is Constance Duchess of Pozzi d'Oro's story to this day.
Poyntz said, while walking on the terrace, "You ask me for
explanations about my life after I was left destitute? You have
no right to do so now. Do you understand that?"
"Most perfectly, Robert, - most perfectly."
"But in a week or so you will have the right. Do you understand that also?"
"No," said Sir Charles. "Don't you see, my dear boy, that,
under present circumstances, I must n't understand that?  Your
good sense will show you that I am Sir Charles Seckerton and
you are Sir Robert Poyntz for the next three weeks, or, if the
women don't object, say a fortnight. Before a fortnight has passed
I could n't outrage the county by understanding anything of the
kind."
"Well, then," said Sir Robert, with a laugh in his eyes, which
would have been visible in his mouth also had it not been clouded
with his golden beard, " will you receive my explanation as a
dear old friend of our family?"
"No, Robert. I demanded them as my right in my position as
chief man of this part of the county. Consider me as dead, and
that you are making them to Downes, who will succeed me. But
go on."
" Do you remember me as a boy? " he asked.




180                  LEIGHTON COURT.' "I can remember you."
"Was I not a fearful young ruffian?"
"You and your brother used to quarrel and fight a great deal."
"I was a tearful young ruffian.  Perhaps it is complaisance,
perhaps it is want of recollection, which makes you shake your
head, but it is true.  Shall I prove it to you? When I had been
about two months at Eton, the master of my house and Hawtrey
were talking about me. My master said,' That boy is more like
a devilthan a human being; I cannot thinly what to do with him.''Shall I expel him?' said the Doctor.'No,' said the other,'for he is not vicious, and would burn his right hand off sooner
than lie; but he's so fiendishly fierce and wild.'' Won't the others lick him into shape?' said the Doctor.' No,' said the other;' there is no one in the house dare face him; he is the most fearful irreclaimable little savage I ever saw.' So they spoke of me
that day. That night was probably the most eventful of my whole
life.
"The last thing I did before I went to bed was to have a perfectly causeless fight with a boy a stone heavier than myself, about
a matter provoked entirely by my own evil temper. He thrashed
me at last, and I went to bed swearing, and when I was alone
sobbed myself to sleep with impotent rage. I had, slept but very
little time when I was awoke by a light in my eyes; and I started wildly up, with clenched fists, thinking they were come to bully
me.
" There was a touch, sir, on my clenched hand which made me
open it. Ah, sir, I can feel it now, —the touch of five long, delicate, bony fingers, very warm and dry, but very gentle. I sat up
in bed, and looked into the face of the owner of those fingers, and
grew still, and stayed the curse which was on my lips. I never
uttered that curse, sir, and (I speak no romance) I never spoke to
that person before then or since.
~" It was Lorimer, one of the biggest boys in the school; a tall,
gaunt, weak boy, who could never play, but who must have played
at some time or another, for he was appealed and referred to in
almost everything by the others. I had noticed him about often.
I had seen him gently making the peace between little boys, and
preventing their fighting. I had seen him walking with masters.
He had been ill once, and I had heard all the boys asking one another how the' Colonel' was that morning; whereas other boys
had died, and there had been no great talk about it. I was so utterly unpopular that I had no confidant to ask about him; yet I
had got up a sort of languid interest in him. He was not in my
house, and yet here he was, sitting on my bed, holding the candle
to my face, and stroking my hair.
"I spoke not one word, -he began.  He told me, word for




LEIGHITON COURT.                  181
word, the conversation he had overheard about me, between the
Doctor and the Master, but I remained perfectly dumb; then he
said, --
"' Iy poor fellow, try to do better. I know you can if you
choose.  Such a one as you were never made for destruction.
Has no one ever told you of the Christ who died for you?'
"Before heaven, Sir Charles Seckerton, nobody ever had, save
one, - old Mrs. Squire, my nurse, the woman at whose deathbed
I first met Laura! With the exception of her quaint Calvinistic
teaching, I was as utterly neglected, as regards religious thought,
as any wretched boy who sweeps the streets. I knew my Catechism, Old Testament chronology, and so forth, just as I knew
my Ovid; but with regard to my religious teaching, hers was all
I had ever had, for my tutors had given me none whatever. What
wonder that I shook my head at him?
"' Will you come to me, my boy, and let me talk to you?'
" I remained silent as Memnon at midnight. He little dreamed
how soon the sun would rise on me, and raise harmonies from my
dead granite. He gave me one more melancholy look from his
large, brown, sunken eyes, -I shall never forget those eyes any
more, Sir Charles  "
A long silence. Two turns up and down the terrace, without
a word spoken on either side.
"6 His footfall had scarcely died away upon the stairs when I
arose. I was at that time, poor little wretch of thirteen as I was,
in a general rebellion against the world. I think that my idea
was, that anything in the shape of constituted authority was a
thing to be opposed, kicked, bitten, and generally defied, by every
person of the least spirit. I don't know why I took that resolution into my head, but I know that I held to it with the most
astounding resolution, - with as great resolution as I did to the
new line of conduct on which I had determined when I got out of
bed, lit a candle, and picked up my Riddle and Arnold and my
Livy 6ut of the corner where I had hurled them in a paroxysm
of rage, before I put out the light. Part of my plan had been
to refuse learning anything, to make myself celebrated as the very
worst boy in the school, and revenge myself on the world by
getting expelled. I never slept that night till my work was finished.
" I rose in the morning a perfectly different person. I rose in
my class. I was very gentle and civil to every one; I gave way
in every direction. I made no concealment, nor any assertion of
the change in me; anid,before a fortnight was gone, I began to be
recognized as a good fellow. The bitterest thing of all was that
they said, in my hearing, that it was the thrashing Yelverton had
given me before I went to bed that had changed me so. Could
you have stood that and made no sign?"




182                  LEIGHTON COURT.
" No! I could n't have stood that."
"I did; and won popularity in spite of it. You wonder at
this sudden change, - indeed, I do myself. You say'he was
more like a fiend than a boy, by all accounts; and yet, because
another boy sat on his bed for ten minutes, lie turned out one of
the best-remembered fellows at Eton.' You know I was populari."
" Indeed, Willy Downes represented you as being most popular."
"I don't know that one ought to wonder. I am very resolute,
— I was very resolute to prove myself a mauvais sujet, and was
equally so to make myself the most popular fellow in Eton.equally so after somebody said something which sent me to India.
I wish some one would guide my resolutions, - I will be answerable for carrying them out. Besides, poor Lorimer's visit had
a sentimental effect on me. Do you know that I am a bit of a
poet, and have written verses?"
Sir Charles, not seeing what else to say, said that many other
perfectly respectable people had done the same thing.
"I know," said Sir Robert.  "But I want to tell you about
Lorimer again. I never spoke to that fellow, and never would
speak to him. Not one living soul in the world, except you and
I, knows that hle came to my bedside that night.  I made one of
my mule-like resolutions; and I said, "He shall see the fruits
first, and then we shall talk more as equals." The last time I saw
him was nearly the end of the half-year. I had been doing what
I had often done lately, -making peace between two boys, one of
whora had called the other a liar. I did not succeed, because one
must fight over that, you know; but I was trying to get a retraction, and I said,'What is the good of giving the lie? -He believed what he said, - Do be reasonable, old fellow,' and all that
sort of thing; when I turned round and saw  Lorimer.  He
stopped the fight, and then he turned smiling to shake hands with
me. But the half-year was not over, and I was perfectly resolute
in my mulishness; I turned away. I never saw him again."
"Left, I suppose?" said Sir Charles, who was thinking of a
good many things.
"I went away for the holidays to our cousins, the Dorsetshire
Poyntzes (where I always went for vacations), who were exceedingly sorry to have such a young ruffian foisted upon them.  But
I won the battle there, sir.  The girls cried when I came away.
I was resolute that theyr should love me, and I made them. Then
my half-year's silence with Lorimer was finished; and I girded
up my loins, and ran fiom Slough, in nine minutes forty seconds,
to meet him, leaving my things to come on in a fly."
"And I guess that he had left?"




LEIGHTON COURT.                    183
"Dead, sir, -dead of consumption! When it was announced
in school, they wondered why I burst into such a tempest of tears.
Others cried too, a few of them, but none like me. And that
interview betwixt him and me is known only to you and I, -to
God and himself.  The fellows of my time, at Eton, believe to
this day it was the thrashing I got from poor dear Yelverton the
night before."
Several turns were talen up and down the terrace before either
spoke.  Sir Charles had by this time found out that things were
going well with him. He was the first to speak," Now, I am going to have no more sentimentality.  I have adjured you, on your allegiance to the county, to tell me, the head
of that county, what you did with yourself that year in whlich
you were missing. You have practically refused, and put me off
with romantic stories which have made me cry, whereas I want
to laugh. Come, Bob, old boy, tell me all about it. I used to tip
you; let me have my fun for my money. What did you do?"
" I had rather not say; I am ashamed of myself. But what
could I do?"
"Out with it."
"Well, I rode steeple-chases.  Let's have no more of this."
"I suppose I must n't ask your imperial highness hoaw it was
you favored me with a visit; and what the deuse Sir George
Herage meant by sending you here under false colors?"
"I hardly know what you mean. The facts are these. I was
riding a horse for sale there, and Sir George Herage recognized
me, and I rode some horses for him; and he promised to hold
his tongue about me, and who I was; and then there was a confounded row about one of the girls,.-I never said six words to
the girl; and then Harry came to stay there, and there was a
general row. Harry denounced me in the stable-yard; and then
Sir George told me privately that you wanted a fellow, and I
thought I would come and see the old place, for I was hunted to
death; and I came, and no one knew me but Tom  Squire and
his mother. I was very happy here. I got very fond of you.
I bullied you royally, though, did n't I?"
"You did indeed.  But they said you had hunted at Pau?"
"That will pass for truth; I was there six weeks."
"Steeple-chasing? "
"0, hang the steeple-chasing! Don't bring that up again."
"But we were always hearing from  your brother that you
were in India?"
"A pure fiction of Harry's, which he put about when I disappeared from society. It was convenient enough for me. Inever
contradicted it. I never went to India, as you will hear, until a
year ago."




184                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"There is one other thing I must ask you. Lady Herage sent
us word that you were the illegitimate brother (don't laugh) of
yourself and Harry; that is why I received you as I did."
"That must be poor Harry's doing; that bears his mark altogether."
"Is there such a person?"
"There is. I-arry wrote to me about him the other day, asking me to take care of him; but I have never seen him in my
life. Now, I want to ask you one thing. When you take into
consideration how utterly lonely and neglected I have been all
my life, do you pronounce that I have done well or ill?"
"I think you have done wonderfully well i"
CHAPTER  XI, VII.
C' IN time," said Sir Charles, " we shall find out how you came
to be drowned.  How  pleasant and old-timelike your voice
sounds to me, Robert! I was very fond of you."'
Sir Robert laid his hand on the old gentleman's shoulder and
went on,-' I was very happy here. I could not have, stayed after
Harry came, of course, but my visit was cut short accidentally."
" Indeed!"
"Yes. It happened all in one minute, that an irrepressible
sense of my degradation and uselessness came over me, - was
forced on me. I took one of my sudden resolutions, and in ten
minutes was turning old Squire out of bed to put it in force."
Sir Charles asked no questions about the cause of this singular
resolution, but thought the more.
"I wanted him to get me' The Elk'; I ordered him to do
so. I need not tell you he would sooner obey a Poyntz than a
Seckerton. In ten minutes more I was in the saddle, ready for
a wild ride of five miles across the sands to Berry Head, before
the flowing tide."
"In the natnme of heaven, what made you so mad?"
"I partly wanted to fly from the place, and partly I wanted,
with my usual impetuosity, to get into action at once; and the
doing something desperate and wild suited my humor too. Tom
Squire did not know where I was going until he saw me turn for
the sands; and then he startled the night with a cry which I
should have thought would have reached you, and ran after me.




LEIGHTON COURT.                   185
When I was a few hundred yards out on the sands, I turned.
The Point was black behind me, and nothing was distinguishable
under the dark hanging woods; but there came a wild shout of
despair fiom them, which was repeated twice and died off into a
wild wail; and I was alone far out on the sands, with the crawling sea on my right. I steered by the light on Brinkley Cleve.
When I looked back I could see only one light, - that fiom a
window in your house. It was the only light for very far, and I
waved my hand in farewell to it."'"It was the light in my daughter's room; we calculated on the
circumstance at the time."' "When I was, as I guessed, about half-way across, I began to
see the utter folly of which I had been guilty: before I guessed
that the water was less than two hundred yards off, it suddenly
slid past the horse's feet; and though I managed to splash out of
it again, it was only for a moment, for it was all round. l.My pace
became a walk, and I was, I guess, two miles from shore. I had a
presentiment, which almost amounted to a certainty, that I should
come to no harm; but things began to look very awkward indeed,
and I began to shout. The water was above the horse's girths
before a boat was near enough to answer me. I got on board.
The poor horse neighed to me, as though to ask me by what
means we had come into this strange position, but contentedly
followed the boat out into water deep enough for him to swim. I
held his bridle, and encouraged him with my voice; but the swell
was a little too heavy, and before we were half-way to the shore
his head went down; and I, finding that I was only dragging a
dead weight, let go of the bridle, and that was the last of'The
Elk.'
" Now a new idea seized me, which was in many ways pleasing
to me. I determined to disappear, leaving no traces of myself. By
giving the men - who were Teignmouth men, not likely to land
here - a couple of pounds, and pretending that I should get into
trouble about the horse, I persuaded them to say nothing about it.
They, after a night's fishing, landed me at Teignmouth. I immediately went off to London, to Harry. I threw myself upon his
generosity, and asked him to get me a commission in a regiment
going to India. The negotiation would have gone right from the
first, if I had not somewhat foolishly threatened, in case of his refusal, to disgrace the family by enlisting in a dragoon regiment.
To my dismay he jumped at the idea, and was very much taken
with it indeed. He said it was a capital way to make an ass of
myself without any expense, and strongly urged me to do so. He
saw he was teasing me, and went on; but my imperturbable patience was too much for him, and he yielded. I think you know
everything now."




186                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"Are you going to stay in the army?" asked Sir Charles, in
an off-hand manner, as if it was no concern of his.
"That is exactly as Laura chooses," said the heedless Robert.
"I beg your pardon," said Sir Charles, quickly.
"I was saying," answered Robert, reddening, "' that it is just
exactly as Lawrence chooses, -  Sir John Lawrence, you know.
Ilte has been kind to me, and I shall be entirely guided by him in
this matter."
Sir Charles said, "Yes, I understand"; and the next time that
Robert made a joke he laughed at it very loud and long, to make
up fbr his self-denial on this occasion.
There remains but little more to tell.  Another chapter, and
our tale is finished.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
A YEAR or more passed by, and the Great Indian Mutiny had
burnt itself into darkness and silence. It was all over, except
telling the tale of the dead.  Still, in London, and elsewhere, after each mail houses would be seen with the shutters up for a
week; and bevies of girls, who but a week ago were dancing in
their finest clothes, would begin to creep out at dusk in deepest
mourning, and say, to those who knew them well enough to speak
to them in their grief, " that mamma was not so wild to-night, but
oh, that it was so very very dreadful --  "
In these times - the times when the excitement had died out,
and the dull grief was making itself felt, and we were beginning
to count the cost — it so happened that Lord Hatterleigh was
spending the last few days of his honeymoon at Dover.
He had married a lady who was pleased to call herself Scotch,
for what reason I am unable to explain. Eer father, the Marquis
of Ericht, lhad certainly large possessions in Scotland; but if' he
claimed to be of any particular race, it should have been to be
Scandinavian-French.  However, he chose to call himself Scotch,
to wear a kilt, and to have that other barbarous English invention,
the bagpipes, to play to him at meals.  I-is daughter also was a
perfect devotee on the matter of Scotch nationality, and it was no
one's business but their own; and therefore we will yield so far,
under protest, as to say that Lord HTatterleigh had married a
Scotch lady, - and an excellent good business he had made of it.
With her we have nothing to do.  She was a lady at all points,




LEIGHTON COURT.                   187
and we can or need say no more. With regard to him we may
say a few words.
He had grown into a big and somewhat handsome man; now
that he had let his long black beard grow, he would pass muster
anywhere, - nay, do more than pass muster. His broad shoulders were still so loosely hung, that one could not help wishing
that some drill-sergeant had taken him in hand, and forced him to
hold his really fine head higher. There was only one symptom
of his old muffishness left about him. He had clung to that old
valetudinarian self-considering creed, which lie had got, after all,
from his mother, as long as he could; but he had been driven
from point to point of it, -first by Laura Seckerton (now Lady
Poyntz), and secondly by Lady Jane Portobello, his present
bride, — until he had hardly any of it left. The old creed was
very dear to him, but he had been laughed out of it. He made a
stand at a certain point: he took to wearing spectacles. That
there was nothing the matter with his eyesight he had to confess
to Bradbury, at whose shop he bought his spectacles. And so
Bradbury gave him a pair with flat glass lenses. These spectacles were only the last appeal for extra consideration by a man
who had been taught by his mother to appeal to the pity of society, and who was growing out of that humbug rapidly. What
need to say more of Lord I-atterleigh?  Some say they know
him, and that he is showing an honesty, and what is more, a power which is making itself felt. You could count on your fingers
the men who are able, so well as he, to remember old inconsistencies, and to hang them up to ridicule.
It so happened that Lord Hatterleigh and his wife were walking on the pier at Dover, up and down, taking their airing in the
full blast of a southeasterly wind, when they noticed a movement
among the sailors on the quay, and at the same time saw that a
large ship was coming into the harbor. He asked the reason of
the harbor-master, who was known to him.' It is the Supply, my lord, with invalided troops from India.
We sent a boat out to her, and the officer commanding the soldiers has persuaded the captain to put in here. He prefers
taking his men on by rail to Chatham, to forcing the ship round
to Chatham by sea. There are many dead, and many dying."
" My love," said Lord Hatterleigh to his bride, " we had better
go home to lunch."
"George," she said, "I must see these men land. I don't want
to go back to lunch; I must see this."
" Your mother would be furious if she heard of it."
"It will not be at all a fit sight for you," said Lord Hatterleigh.
"But we need n't tell her," said Lady Hatterleigh.
"But my mother would never forgive me," said Lord Hatterleigh.




188                  LEIGHTON COURT.
"Then tell her to mind her own business. Do let me stay,
George!"
After this appeal there was no more to be said, and there never
is.  WVhen will women gain the secret of' power?
Tile ship was alongside the pier by this time, and the London,
Chatham, and Dover Company had a special train ready for
them; and the victims of the war began to creep ashore, — some
nearly well, but looking like old men; some maimed, walking on
crutches; some beyond everything, carried with hanging limbs
in the arms of the sailors. But there was one among them on
whom every one looked with greater interest than the others, and
that was the officer in command of this regiment of ghosts, himself the most ghostly object there.
He was a very tall and handsome man, in full uniform, covered
with Crimean and the older Indian decorations. One armless
sleeve was looped up over his breast; but it was not that which
drew all eyes to him, for there were plenty like him in that respect, -it was his face. There were pale faces there, but none
so deadly white as his; and there were sad faces too, but none so
sad and worn as his. Lady Hatterleigh called her husband's
attention to him, saying," If I look at that man much longer I shall begin to cry."
Lord Hatterleigh turned and looked the way she indicated, and
as he did so exclaimed, -
" Bless me, how dreadful! It is Hilton; and his arm gone."
His good-natured soul overflowed at the sight of his old acquaintance in such a plight; and he made towards Hilton, and
took his solitary hand in both of his. A very faint smile came
over Hilton's face when he recognized Lord Hatterleigh behind
his beard and spectacles, but it died away again.
"Come, you can laugh still, you see: it was my spectacles you
were laughing at, or my beard? I won't ask how you are, for you
are vely ill indeed, and must be taken care of. You must come
to Grimwood instantly, and my wife shall nurse you. I am married now, you know.  Hilton! Hilton! what have you been doing with yourself?  You have been at death's door. You must
come home with us to Grimwood directly, and be nursed. The
women will all be fighting who is to attend on you. The Duchess
of Pozzo d'Oro is at Hoxworthy with her father; you remember
Constance Downes?  And again," he continued, taking off his
spectacles, and fixing an honest, manly eye on General Hilton's,
"there is Lady Poyntz; she would form one of' the Nightingale
sisterhood, my dear fellow. How you and Laura used to squabble and fight, to be sure! She is down there also -"
4" Lady Poyntz!" said Hilton, clutching his arm; "is she
ftere "




LEIG1ITON COURT.                  189
"Not the dowager, you know: not Maria Huxtable, - Laura
Seckerton, I mean. She pitched me overboard, you know, and
married Sir Robert Poyntz, who had been down there before, masquerading, as a fox-bunter from Leicestershire, and got drowned,
and buried, and sundry. Not that MIiss Seckerton did not behave
nobly, sir, -but that is not to'the purpose.  You must come to
Grimwood, and all the old set will vie with one another in taking
care of their dear old Bayard."
General Hilton did not speak for nearly a minute; and then
he said, very low, but without a quaver in his voice,
" How monstrous kind you are, Hatterleigh! If I ever had
been upset in a sentimental way, I should be'so now. I am not
at all sure that I could have answered you a moment sooner than
I did, though. I am very weak and ill, and your wonderful kindness has, I will confess, discomposed me. Will you do something
for me?"
" Is there anything I would not? " said Lord Hatterleigh.
" I want you to go to the'Lord Warden,' and ask if any one
is waiting for me there. Lest you should be puzzled, I must tell
you that I had persuaded the captain to come in close enough to
land me here. I thought that Chatham, or even London, would
not do so well under the circumstances. We have all had to land
here, as you see."
Lord Hatterleigh's face grew pensive, but rapidly began to
brighten again.
"It is well as it is," he said. "I was beginning to get uneasy
at what seemed to me an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances: now I see it was designed. You asked me if I would
go to the' Lord Warden' for you with an inquiry. I can answer that inquiry for you, and the answer is 6 Yes.'"
Nothing more worth mentioning was said. The special train,
with the wounded soldiers, moved away, leaving General Hilton,
with Lord and Lady Hatterleigh, standing on the pier. There
were a few feeble cheers as the carriages moved on, and a few
wasted hands were waved towards the kind and gentle general,
who, in all his own agonies, had crept about from deck to deck, to
see to the wants of the strange soldiers who had been committed
to his care.
Then the three walked to the hotel; and Hilton soon was
alone in his rooms, lying on a sofa, watching the door, waiting
eagerly for each footfall on the corridor. But no footfall came,
and after a time he turned from the door, and buried his face in
his hand.
There was no footfall in the corridor, and he never heard the
door open; but after a time he was aware of a presence in the
room, and he said, " Is it you?"




190                   LEIGHTON COURT.
And a voice answered, c" George! "
"Maria, come to me, -O  Maria, come to me! I have been
through one hell of blood ferocity, and doubt about the righteousness of my cause; and since then through another of physical
agony, of ghastly remorse, of wild triumph. Ever since I lost
my arem, and the fever came on me, and brought me to what you
see, there has been a devil dancing before me, and crying,' On
which side is the Dacoitee?  On which side is the Dacoitee? —
on theirs or on yours?'  Come to me, and drive him  away.
Come to me, and never leave me again  "
And so she came to him; for there was no cloud between
them  now.  Lord Hatterleigh, coming in later, found the wild,
mournful look gone from his face, and the old Hilton of last year,
smiling and happy, before him. " We will come to you at Grimwood after our honeymoon, Hatterleigh," he said, - a promise
which was fulfilled before two happy months had rolled past.
Leighton Court, Berry Morcambe (otherwise Poyntz Castle),
Hoxworthy of the Downeses, and Grimwood of the Hatterleighs,
and a new one, Ewbank, the residence of General and Mrs. Hilton, -are very charming country-houses, somewhat too far from
London perhaps, but still very charming indeed, whose history
for eighteen months seemed to be worth the telling. Their present occupants are in possession of health and happiness, apparently unclouded.
In conclusion let me say, using far more beautiful words than
any which I could write:
" In vertue and in holy almesse dede,
They liven alle, and never asonder wende,
Till deth departeth hem this lif they lede.
And fareth now wel, my tale is at an ende,
Now Jesu Christ, that of His might may send
Joye after wo, governe us in His grace,
And kepe us alle that ben in this place."
THE END.
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Cs.












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Ticknor and Fields.                        5
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6               List of Books Published by
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FROTIJINGHAMi'S  (RICHARD)  A  Tribute to Thomas
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T'cklnor and Fields.                      7
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8                 List of Books Published by
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Ticknor and Fields.                          9
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10                List of Books Published by
JAMIES'S  (HENRY) Substance and Shadow; Or, Morality
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Ti'cknor and Fi'elds.                      11
KINGSLEY'S (CHARLES) Poems.  1 vol.  16mo.  $1.25.
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12               List of Books Published b&
LONGFELLOW'S (H. W.) Poems. With Portrait.  2 vols.
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The Vision of Sir Launfal. 1 vol. 16mo. 75 ects.




Ticknor and Fields.                        13
M2IACCKENZIE'S (KENNTETIH R. H., F. S. A.) The Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass. Adorned
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14                List of Books Published  by
IMOWA TT'S (ANNA CORA) Autobiography of an Actress;
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Ticknor and Fields.                           15
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Ticknor and Fields.                            17
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Ticknor and Fields.                       19
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