UNIVERSITY OF N C AT CHAPEL HILL 10002022909 THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA LIBRARY PfsJ% PRESENTED BY THE WILLIAM A. WHITAKER FOUNDATION LI- THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES PRU989 F5 1883 FLOWER AND WEED. A NOVEL. M. E. BRADDON, AUTHOR OF "lady AUDLEY'S SECRET," ETC. COPYRIGHT EDITION. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1883. The Right 0/ Tianslatiou is resei-vcd. Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2011 witli funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://www.archive.org/details/flowerweednovelOObrad CONTENTS. Page CHAITER I. A Wayside Waif ....... 7 — II. More than kin 37 — III. From Sunshine to Gloom 71 — IV. Over Summer Seas ...... 87 — V. A Leaf from the Book of the Past . . . 129 — VI. A lonely Life 165 — VII. Not disloyal 1S3 — VIII. An old-fashioned Christmas 206 IX. Faithful unto Death ...... 225 FLOWER AND WEED. CHAPTER I. A WAYSIDE WAIF. "A lovely child she was, of looks serene, And motions which o'er things indifferent shed The grace and gentleness from whence they came. " Ingleshaw Castle is one of the historic homes of England, built in the days of the Plantagenets, improved and expanded in the reign of the last of the Tudors, and never debased or deteriorated by- modern alterations, adaptations, or restorations. It stands on low ground, in the heart of an extensive chase, rich in deer and ground game — a wild wood- land, where many of the great oaks and beeches are as old as the establishment of the house of Ingleshaw amongst the ruling families of England. The Castle is built of dark-gray stone, rich in those lovely gradations from deepest purple to palest green which mark the long growth of lichens and mosses, 5 FLOWER AND WEED. stealthily stealing over the stony surface, and touch- ing it with beauty. There is a grand simplicity about the noble Gothic entrance, and the great square hall with its open voof; while there is all the charm of quaintness and homeliness in the long low passages, the deep- set windows, with here a bay and there an oriel, to break the monotony of long rows of heavily mullioned casements, giving an in- sufficient light to the dusky old portraits and seven- teenth-century pictures which line the panelled walls of the low spacious rooms. Ingleshaw is one of the show places of Kent, but it is only shown when the family is away; and on this bright May morning the family, beginning and ending whh Lord Ingleshaw and his only child, Lady Lucille, is at home; and the tourist, thirsting to steep himself in the historic associations of the Castle, turns from the gate with reluctant feet. Per- haps there never was a more quiet household than this of Ingleshaw Castle. There is something akin to pain in the silence of the long corridors and the empty suites of rooms, where the effigies of departed Ingleshaws stare for ever at vacancy; where a bee comes booming in at an open pane in the mullioned window, hovers over a bowl of hothouse flowers on a Florentine marble table, and goes booming out afrain, distrusted at the dulaess of life wiLhiii stone A WAYSIDE WAIF. Q walls. Sometimes the ripple of girlish laugh ler floats through an open window of the southern wing, or the bird-like notes of a girlish soprano are heard in the distance, singing one of Mozart's tenderest melodies. Lord Ingleshaw is something of a recluse, and his only daughter has not yet made her entrance upon the bustling theatre of society, to be elbowed and hustled by that common herd to which the doting father deems his child an infinitely superior being. Her eighteenth birthday is terribly near, and next year, the father tells himself, his innocent simple-minded darling must needs be handed over to the high priestesses of the temple of fashion; must take her place in society, be wooed, won, and wedded; and then it would be to him almost as if he had no daughter. New associations, new loves, new joys, new hopes, new cares, would arise for her who was now all his own. "Well, it is the common lot," he muses, dream- ing in his library over an open folio of Bacon's Essays or Sir Thomas Browne's Ur}i Burial. "I must wait for a girl- grandchild, whom I may train up to be something like the companion and friend my little girl has been to me. She will last my time. I shall be dead and gone before she need be presented at Court." lO FLOWER AND WEED. He hcas a fixed idea that from the hour his daughter enters society she will be in great measure lost to him. This comes, perhaps, from his pro- found contempt for modern society, which he de- spises the more intensely because he has held him- self aloof from the vortex, and only contemplates its foolishness from the outside. This external view of fashionable life is like a deaf man's view of a ball-room. Lord Ingleshaw sees the puppets dancing, without hearing the music which is their motive power; and the whole thing seems rank folly: folly treading on the heels of vice. His sister, I.ady Carlyon, a dowager countess, passing young for her years, as all dowager peeresses are nowadays, a lady who lives in society and for society, has told him that Lucille must take her proper place in the world, must be seen and ad- mired and talked about, and even written about in the newspapers, before she can be properly and creditably married: and he is prepared to submit to the inevitable. He would rather his girl should be wooed by the interchange of a miniature and a few formal letters, and wedded by proxy, like a princess of the seventeenth century. Anything would be better than the turmoil and dissipation of fashion- able society, the rubbing shoulders with doubtful beauty and tarnished rank, the inevitable brushing A WAYSIDE WAIF. I 1 away of youth's tenderesi, l)loom, sinless Eve's primi- tive innocence. One little year yet remains to the fond father. Lucille is not to be presented till next season. The Earl has begged hard for this ex- tension of his happiness. "She will be horridly old by that time," says Lady Carlyon, in her hard business-like way, staring at the unconscious Lucille, who is playing a dreamy gondollied of Mendelssohn's at the other end of the long low parlour. "I'm afraid she is one of those girls whose looks will go off early. Half the beauty of her eyes depends upon that cabbage-rose bloom of hers. Nothing tells so well as youthful freshness just now. It is the only attraction with which we can counter those horrid professional beauties. If Lucie's complexion goes off you can keep her at Ingleshaw all your life, for she'll make no great rharriage." "My heart's desire is to keep her here for ever," answers the Earl; "you talk of her as if she were a Circassian slave, waiting for the next market." "That's stuff and nonsense," exclaimed Lady Carlyon; "I suppose you would like your daughter to make a good marriage?" "I should like her to marry a good man." "Well, we'll try to combine the two, though it isn't the easiest thing in the world." ' . 12 FLOWER AND WEED, This conversation took place in the Easter holi- days, which Lady Carlyon spent with her brother and her niece, trying her hardest to inspire Lucille with a thirst for the amusements and delights of that privileged circle she was soon to enter, and making only a very faint impression upon the girl's mind. A cup which is already full can hold no more, and Lucie's life at Ingleshaw was completely happy. She adored her father — the father who had been all the world of kindred and affection to the motherless girl; she loved her good-natured old governess, Miss Marjorum, v/ho had taught and trained her from her fifth year until now. She loved the historic old house, the romantic chase, the old gardens, lawns, and summer-houses, fish-pond, bowl- ing-green, arbours, fountains — that happy blending of the Dutch and Italian style which gave such variety to the extensive grounds. She loved the grave gray old stable, the pretty little mouse-coloured Norwegian ponies which she drove, the senile white cob which she was permitted to ride unattended about the chase, and the handsome young bay mare which she rode on rare and happy occasions by her father's side. She had dogs, cats, and pets of all kinds. Most of the servants had seen her grow up, and all of them worshipped her. She lived in an atmosphere of love, and had never any sense of A WAYSIDE WAIF. ■ 1 3 dulness in the silent old house to which so few visitors came. Lord Ingleshaw was by no means a cipher in his world, although he held himself aloof from fashion- able society. He was a stanch Conservative and a strong politician, voted upon all important measures, spoke occasionally, and had weight and influence in his party. He had a house in Grosvenor- square, where he occupied three darksome rooms on the ground- floor, leaving the upper and more splendid apartments to gloom and disuse. The brief, bright, happy period of his wedded life had been spent partly in this house; and the rooms were haunted by the sweet sad shadow of his young wife, who died of a fever caught in Venice six months after her baby's birth. For the greater part of the year he lived at Ingleshaw, a bookworm and a recluse, caring very little for any society except that of his young daughter. Father and child had breakfasted tele-a-tete this bright May morning in a pretty little room called the painted parlour — a gay cheery little room, with panels painted with flowers and butterflies in a grace- ful fashion that savoured of the Pompadour period. May was fast melting into June, and the windows were wide open, and the room was filled with per- fume from within and from without; flowers on tables, 14 FLOWER AND WEED. chimneypiece, brackets, and a wilderness of flowers in the garden outside. "What are you going to do with yourself this morning, pet?" asked the Earl, as his daughter hung over his chair. "Don't go and mew yourself up with Miss Marjorum in this delicious weather. All the other butterflies are enjoying their lives in the garden." "I hope you don't think me quite so frivolous as the butterflies, father? Yes, it is a too delicious morning. I meant to read Dante with Miss Mar- jorum directly after breakfast; but I think I shall keep those poor things in the second circle waiting an hour or two while I have a ramble on Puck. Dear old Marjy won't mind." She kissed her father, and was running off, when he stopped her. "O, by the bye, Lucie, I forgot; I've some news for you. I had a telegram from Bruno last night." "From Bruno!" she cried with clasped hands, while a lovely roseate hue crept over the alabaster fairness of face and throat; "and you never told me!" "Well, I suppose I wanted to keep this bit of news for a pleasant surprise: only I never could keep a secret from my girl. The telegram is from Florence, and Bruno is coming home almost directly. A WAYSIDE WAIF. 15 He will come straight here. You can tell Twyford to have his rooms got ready." "Almost directly!" repeated Lucie. "What does that mean, father? To-day?" "Hardly. He was in Florence yesterday." "True, and Florence is at the other end of the world — a three days' journey at least. To think of his coming home so soon! His last letter was so vague." "Will you be glad to have him at Ingelshaw?" "Of course I shall be glad; but I shall see very little of him. He will be always rushing away some- where — trout-fishing; or to London, or to Sevenoaks, or Tunbridge Wells. Thank goodness the hunting is all over. He can't be riding off at nine o'clock every morning to come home at half-past seven, all over mud." "Make the most of him while you have him," said her father. "He is a man now, and will have to take his place in the world as the future Earl of Ligleshaw." The girl dropped lightly on her father's knee, and nestled her head in his bosom. "Don't!" she cried. "I can't bear you to talk of anybody coming after you. God grant that Bruno's head may be as white as snow before he is Earl of Ingleshaw." 1 6 FLOWER AND WEED. "That would be to doom your father to long years of senility. However, Bruno is in no hurry, and I am in no hurry. He has a fair fortune, con- siderable talents, and I hope he will distinguish himself as Mr. Challoner before he is Lord Ingle- shaw. And now run away and have your ramble. I shall be off to catch the express in half an hour, and I have to see Morley before I go." Morley was his lordship's land-steward and fac- totum. "Dear father, I am so sorry you must go to London. I hope you will be back before vSunday." "Be sure I sha'n't stop in town longer than I am obliged; but I must wait to see this measure through the House." "How I hate measures and the House, when they take you away from me!" said Lucille. Now came tender farewell caresses; and then the girl raced off to the distant rooms which be- longed to her and her governess. She had come to a delicious period of her life, in which the bondage of the schoolroom was done with, while the restraints of society had not yet begun. Li her own small world, so safely hedged round by re- verence and affection, she did very much as she liked, went where she liked, spent as much money as she liked, cultivated the people she liked. She A WAYSIDE WAIF. tj was in some wise mistress of her father's house. She ruled the trusty old governess who had once ruled her; but though somewhat wilful as to those things upon which her impetuous young heart set itself, she was as docile and easily governed by a light hand as a thoroughbred horse. "Marjy, Marjy!" she cried, bursting into the old schoolroom, now morning-room and study, where Miss Marjorum sat with dictionaries and grammars and Italian histories laid out before her, ready for tackling Dante, — "such news! Bruno is coming; Bruno will be here to-morrow, or, at furthest, the day after to-morrow!" 'And the bells shall be rung, and mass shall be sung,'" sang Lucie at the top of her clear young voice, " for my red-cross knight." "This is indeed a surprise," said Miss Marjorum, without turning a hair. "Mr. Challoner coming to us after nearly two years' absence! I have no doubt he will be grown." "Don't, Marjy; you mustn't say such things. It's actually insulting! Don't you know that Bruno is four-and-twenty?" "Then he will have expanded," said Miss Mar- jorum. "It seems only yesterday that he came of age; and I know that up to that time he was con- tinually growing in a perpendicular direction. After Flozver and Weed, 2 l8' FLOWER AND WEED. that he began to widen and spread horizontally,' and he has been expanding ever since." "Marjy dearest, you talk as if he were Falstaff, or bluff King Hal," cried the girl. "My dear, all I wish to express is that he is a well-grown young man. And now, my love, let us attack our Dante. We are approaching one of the finest passages in the Inferno" "Marjy dear, it is such a delicious morning, and this news about Bruno is so exciting, I think if I were to ramble in the chase for an hour or so, it would compose my mind and make me more equal to Dante." "You must do as you like, my love; but I never find your intellect so much on the alert after those rambles in the chase. There is a marked tendency to yawning and inattention." "You shall find me attentive to-day, dearest. But I must have one peep at the bluebells in Hazel Hollow. Think what a little while they last!" "As you advance in life, Lady Lucille, you'll find that all earthly pleasures are as brief as the bloom of wild hyacinths," said Miss Marjorum, who fancied it a part of her duty to be for ever re- peating trite moral lessons, and scraps of old-world wisdom. A WAYSroE WAIF. IQ Lucille skipped off to her dressing-room to put on the short-skirted shabby old habit in which she rode Puck; and then, light and swift of foot, ran down the broad oak staircase to a door that opened into the stable-yard, where a groom was waiting with Puck, a shaggy gray cob, of the Exmoor breed, hog maned, stoutly built, strong as a house, with an eye which beamed with kindness. Lucille generally mounted at this door, preferring to escape the ceremony of going forth under the great Gothic archway, where the prim matron who lived in the gateway turret looked out at her through the lattice of the parlour where the visitors' book was kept, or stood in the doorway to curtsy to her as she went by. The stable-yard opened into the park, and Lucille was away and out of sight of the Castle in five minutes. It was one of those exquisite early summer mornings when to live and breathe the sweetness of the air is rapture; when the old feel young, and the young can scarce tread soberly upon the dull earth, moved to dance-measures by the ecstacy of mere existence. The soft warm flowery air crept round Lucille like a caress, as she rode slowly along a grassy ride, under the broad spreading boughs of a line of horse-chestnuts, the turf white with the fallen blossoms, and yet the trees bright i6 FLOWER AND WEED. with lingering bloom. Further on in the green heart of the chase came a little wood of Spanish chestnuts, leafy towers, their lowest boughs sweeping the grass, their summits aspiring to the blue bright sky. These grand old trees were planted wide apart, and the intervening ground was a sheet of azure bloom, save here and there where the drift of last year's withered leaves showed a patch of golden brown starred with wood anemones. Beyond this chestnut plantation there stretched an undulating expanse of open sward, with here a beech and there an oak, standing up against the summer sky in solitary grandeur, monarchs of the woodland; and then came those wide oak and fir plantations which bordered the chase for the breadth of half a mile or so throughout the seven miles of its circumference, rough and broken ground full of gentle hollows and ridgy slopes, the paradise of squirrels, rabbits, and wild flowers. Puck knew every inch of those plantations, for he and his mistress had roamed about in them at all hours and in all weathers; sometimes when the snow lay deep in the hollows, and the first of the wild snow- drops showed pale on the topmost ridges where the sun had touched them. Puck was accustomed to take his ease in these woods, tethered to a tree, while Lucille wandered A WAYSIDE WAIF. 21 on foot among the brown fir trunks, the gray lichen- clothed oaks, botanising, entomologising, sketching, or musing, as her fancy, prompted. Her childhood and girlhood had been passing lonely, save for Bruno Challoner's occasional companionship; and she had learnt to find her own amusements and her own occupations, more especially when the Earl was in London, or at Aix or Wiesbaden for his health, and life in the Castle meant a perpetual tete-h-tete with Miss Marjoram, who possessed every amiable quality except the power to amuse. In these woods Lucille had learned her lessons, day after day, from earliest spring to latest autumn; here she had read her favourite poets; here she had become familiar with all that is practical and interesting in the history of flowers and insects. The woods had been her playroom and study ever since she could re- member. To-day she let Puck crawl his slowest pace along the grassy rutty rides, stumbling a little now and then in a sleepy way, and recovering him- self with a jerk. She was thinking of that distant cousin of hers, Bruno Challoner, heir presumptive to yonder gray old castle, and the only friend and playfellow she had ever known, since the Vicar's four daughters, who were allowed to drink tea with her three or four times a year at the utmost, could hardly be called companions, 52' FLO\VER AND WEED. Bruno had spent a considerable portion of all his summer vacations at Ingleshaw. He had come here in the Long Vacation when he was an under- graduate of Christchurch; had read here — or made believe to read — with "coaches," classical and mathe- matical, soberly-clad gentlemen, in smoke-coloured spectacles, who had grown prematurely old in a perpetual grinding at Plato and Aristotle, or the integral and differential calculus; men who were steeped in stale tobacco, and who avoided Lucille as if she were a pestilence, so deep was their loathing of her sex. The classical coach was tall and thin, and wore his hair long. He had written poetry, and saw life on its Greek and ideal side. The mathematician was short, broad, and florid, and be- lieved in nothing that could not be expressed by signs and figures. Bruno went in enthusiastically for the Greek plays and the higher mathematics, but did not come out very strongly in either branch of learning. He got his degree, but it was by the skin of his teeth, as his tutor told him candidly. Since those Oxford days he had travelled a good deal for the improvement of his mind, at the instigation of Lord Ingleshaw, who was his guardian as well as his cousin; and now he was four-and-twenty, had been free of his kinsman's tutelage for the last three A WAYSIDE WAIF, 23 years, but was still beholden to him for counsel and friendship. He had made the tour of Europe, seen a little of Africa, and was coming home to begin the world as a man who, by the dignity of his future, and by all the traditions of his race, was con- strained to make some figure on the stage of life. "Dear old Bruno," thought Lucille, as she moved slowly, with sauntering rhythmical motion, under the flickering lights and shadows, amidst the spicy scent of the pines, "how glad I shall be to see him again! I wonder whether he will be as glad to see me?" She remembered their last parting, when she was not quite sixteen, and still had something of the awkwardness and shyness of early girlhood. She remembered the grave tenderness of his fare- well, and how he had entreated her to think of him while he was far away; promising that in every day of his wandering life some loving thought of her, like a winged invisible messenger, should fly home- ward to dear old Ingleshaw. Her desk was full of his letters from strange and ever-changing places, her rooms were beautified with his gifts. He had given her substantial reason to know that she had not been forgotten. A feeble shy from the old pony — Puck, who seldom shied — startled the girl from her reverie. The drooping eyelids were lifted; and there, beside 24 FLOWER AND WEED. the broad green track, lying in the hollow of a dry shallow ditch, among mosses and bluebells, and the last of the anemones, Lucille beheld the cause of Puck's alarm. A woman, quite a young woman — nay, a girl in what should have been the first fresh bloom of girl- hood — lay asleep in that mossy hollow, the azure light of bluebells reflected on her wan pinched cheek, one wasted hand lying pale and deathlike among the flowers. The thin scanty cotton gown hardly concealed the shrunken outline of the figure. The feet, one bound in blood-stained rags, the other in a boot which was the veriest apology for covering, testified to long and weary tramping upon dusty high-roads. Lucille slipped from her saddle, and, with Puck's bridle hanging on her arm, went close up to the prostrate figure. It was not the first time she had found a tramp asleep in Ingleshaw woods, nor the first time that her immediate impulse had been to relieve abject poverty, worthy or worthless, needing no higher claim upon her charity than its piteous condition. She stood looking down at the sleeper, but more keenly interested than she had ever felt before in any stray creature she had found in her domain. A WAYSIDE WAIF. 25 The face lying among the flowers was so beauti- ful, exquisitely beautiful, even in its pinched and haggard condition. The low broad brow, the de- licate Greek nose, the heavily-moulded eyelids, with their dark thick lashes, the oval cheek from which the rich growth of bronze-brown hair was swept back in a tangled mass, the melancholy lines of the pale lips, the modelling of the small dimpled chin — all were perfect, and on all there was the stamp of sickness unto death. What could Lucille do? She had no purse with her, or perhaps she might have done no more than drop a sovereign into that shrunken hand, and pass upon her way. Yet there was something in the sleeper's face that would have haunted her painfully afterwards, had her charity gone no further than this. As it was, she tied Puck to a tree, and sat down at the root of another, within a yard or so of the sleeper, patiently to await her waking, in order to see what could be done with her. She had not long to wait. Before she had been seated five minutes, looking dreamily at the sulphur- hued butterflies flitting across the mossy hollows where the wild hyacinths made broad patches of azure light, the flies grew too tormenting for Puck's patience. A sharp shake of his honest old gray head rattled bit and bridle, and at the sound that ^6: FLOWER AND WEED. pale sleeper stirred uneasily, and the heavy lids were lifted from eyes darker than night. Those dark velvety eyes looked up at Lucille, the pallid lips quivered faintly, and, as if with a painful effort, the wayfarer lifted herself into a sitting position. "Lady," she murmured in a low hoarse voice; and then the tears gathered in the large dark eyes and rolled slowly down the haggard cheeks. "Are you ill, or in pain?" asked Lucille gently. "I have been ill, lady. I was laid up in the infirmary at the Union in London with a fever; and then I got well, and they turned me out; and I set out to walk to Dover, where I've a friend; but last night I was quite done, and I slept under a hay- stack a little way from here; and when I woke this morning I could hardly move, but I just crawled across a field, and in through a gap in the fence, and the place was cool and quiet, so I laid down to sleep, or to die — I didn't much care which. You wouldn't if you was me." "You mustn't talk like that," said Lucille. "Are you hungry?" "Not now, lady. I'm past that." "And you are very tired?" "Tired! Yes; all my bones ache with tired- ness." A WAYSIDE WAIF. 27 "How old are you?" "Somewheres between seventeen and eighteen. That's as much as I know." "Have you no parents?" "Never had none to remember." "No relatives or friends?" "None, except him that's at Dover." "What is your name?" "Bess." "Your surname?" "Never knowed. I was alius called Bess." Lucille reflected for a minute or so, and then made up her mind what must be done with this worn-out wayfarer. It was more than a mile to the Castle, and it was evident that the girl could hardly walk half a dozen yards. She had dropped from sheer exhaustion. To offer her food and comfort and shelter at the end of a mile's walk would be as meaningless as to offer her a refuge in one of the stars without supplying the means of transit. No, there was only one thing to be done : Puck must carry this poor creature to the Castle. "I want to take you to my father's house, and to give you food and rest," said Lucille. "Do you think you could sit upon my pony if I were to lead him? He's very quiet." "I don't know, lady. I don't know as I could SB FLOWER AND WEED. Stand on my feet. Things look all of a swim like, as if I was in a merry-go-round." The weary head drooped upon Lady Lucille's shoulder as the girl spoke; the tangled dusty hair and gaudy cotton kerchief rested unrepulsed on the young lady's green habit. Never before had Lord Ingleshaw's daughter come into such close contact with squalid nameless poverty. "We must get you on to the pony somehow," she said. "Rest your head against this tree while I bring him to you." She left the girl leaning, limp and inert, against the red-brown fir-trunk, and went over to Puck, who was contentedly nibbling the soft flowery turf at his feet. Lucille led him to the spot where Bess re- clined, and then lifted the languid form from the ground, Bess giving what help she could, but that of the feeblest. She was evidently in a half-faint- ing condition, and would have to be held on the pony. The aged and slumberous Puck lent himself very placidly to the operation, though wondering at it. Lucille managed to lift the helpless girl on to the saddle, and to support her in a sitting position, drooping listlessly forward over Puck's mane, as she led the pony through the plantation, and by the , A WAYSIDE WAIF. SQ nearest way to the Castle, crossing the broad stretch of velvet turf in the bright May sunshine. All that glory of sunlight and greensward, old forest trees and fallow 'deer, the distant gleam of the lake in the hollow, the grandeur of the old Castle standing solid and gray against a wooded background, was lost on Bess, whose head was never raised from its drooping posture, and for whom this terrestrial globe was just now a dim dream hovering on the verge of darkness. It needed but the faintest swing of Life's pendulum to make all dark. Lucille went into the stable-yard with her strange companion. It was dinner-time, and the men were away, all things in the yard still and slumberous as in the castle of the Sleeping Beauty; but at the sound of the pony's hoofs an old man came out of the stables, and advanced to meet his master's daughter. This was Tom Pike, the old groom who had special charge of Puck. He had taught Lady Lucille to ride, before she was advanced enough for her father to take her in hand, and he worshipped her. So when she told him to take the tatterdemalion in his arms and carry her into the Castle, he had no power to gainsay her, albeit he felt the proceeding was altogether out of keeping. One feeble protest, and one alone he made. 30 FLOWER AND WEED. "Hadn't I better take her into the saddle-room, Lady Lucille? I can get her a bit of meat and drink there." "Nonsense, Pike; the poor thing is dreadfully ill. She wants ever so much care and nursing. Just bring her where I show you." Pike took Bess upon his shoulder, as if she had been a dead fawn, and carried her into the Castle, following Lucille, who led the way to a neat little bedchamber at the end of a long corridor, and very near to her own rooms. It was a room which was generally given to a visitor's maid, and had been lately occupied by Lady Carlyon's middle-aged abigail. Here they laid the half-unconscious girl on the bed. As her head sank upon the pillow, her eyes closed, and she fell into a sleep which was almost stupor. "Go down- stairs and get me a glass of port and a piece of sponge-cake. Pike. She must have some- thing directly. She has been starved." "Looks rather like it. Lady Lucille. But don't you think my lord will be angry with me for bring- ing such offal into the Castle? She ought to have been took straight off to the Union." "I will take the responsibility of bringing her here, Pike," answered Lady Lucille. "I am not A WAYSIDE WAIF. JI" afraid of my father being angry. He is more like the good Samaritan than the Levite." "In course, Lady Lucille; but you see in those days there was no Unions; and a gentleman as pays poor rates to the extent his lordship does wouldn't lay himself out to have tramps brought into his bedrooms and laid upon his beds," "Will you go and get me that wine, Pike, before this poor thing dies?" asked Lucille piteously; whereupon Pike bolted, like an arrow from a bow. The ever alert Miss Marjorum, not so deep in Dante's hiferno as to be beyond earshot of mundane voices, heard steps in the corridor, and came trip- ping out to discover what was happening. She saw Pike's receding figure, and the half-open door of the bedroom; and she flew to ascertain the cause of this unwonted violation of the noontide stillness. Her horror on beholding the figure on the bed, the limp rag of gown or petticoat, the tattered shawl, the bandaged bleeding foot, reduced her for the moment to speechlessness. Then her loathing found words, and she exclaimed, "Lucille, in mercy's name, what is that?" point- ing to the bed. "A poor girl I found in the wood — dying of hunger and fatigue." "My sweet pet, come away! Lady Lucille, come 32 FLOWER AND WEED. away from her this instant!" shrieked the governess. "Look how dirty she is!" "Her clothes are dusty, Marjy dear, that's all. Her poor face is not dirty. I daresay she tried to be clean, poor helpless thing." "And you brought her here — yourself! This is too dreadful!" Just then Pike appeared with a small tumbler of port, and a hunch of sponge-cake, on a silver salver. "O Pike, Pike, how can you aid and abet your mistress in such dreadful goings on?" asked Miss Marjorum. Lucille took the wine, tenderly lifted the tired head upon her arm, and put the glass to the white wan lips. The girl's eyes' opened, and she drank a little wine with a choking sound like a sob; and then Lucille dipped the cake into the wine, and fed her, as she had often fed a young bird. "Lucille, come away!" exclaimed Miss Marjorum, snatching the tumbler from her pupil's hand. "She may have some contagious disease — smallpox, per- haps." "Look at her beautiful face, Marjy. Does that look like smallpox?" "I don't know; but I insist upon your leaving this room. You may have escaped from the school- A WAYSIDE WAIF. 3| room, you may shirk Dante; but I hope I have still a shred of authority." "Dearest Marjy, I will do anything in reason," said Lucille; while Miss Marjoram sternly administ- ered the rest of the wine, with as severe an air as if she had been offering the fatal goblet of poison to a superfluous member of some royal Mussulman house. "All I want is that this poor thing may be cared for and made comfortable for the next few days." "In this house?" demanded Miss Marjorum. "Certainly. I shall be very angry with any one who talks of sending her out of this house," replied Lucille, with that air of authority which Lord Ingle- shaw's only daughter very well knew how to assume upon occasion. "I said from the first she ought to have been took to the Union," murmured Pike, looking defer- entially from the governess to her pupil, hardly knowing which of the two he most feared. "Of course; the Union is too good for such a low creature. Look at her feet; she must have tramped for days. She must be a professional beg- gar." "She did not beg of me," said Lucille, ringing the bell. "You may go. Pike;" whereupon Pike pulled an imaginary forelock, and retired. Flower and Weed, 3 34 FLOWER AND WEED. Lady Lucille's summons was answered promptly by her maid Tompion, who had been sitting at work in a room opening into the corridor. "Tompion, I want you to take particular care of this young woman," said Lucille. "You will get her some soup immediately — a small cup of soup, for she has been a long time without food; and when she has eaten it, you will let her sleep as much as she likes for the next few hours. Then when she wakes you will get her a bath, and some clean linen out of my wardrobe, and one of my cotton gowns; and you will make her as comfortable as you possibly can. She is to occupy this room till she has recovered her strength, and by that time I shall have made up my mind what to do with her," Tompion had not a word to oppose to the calm authority of these instructions. She was a strongly- built wholesome woman of about thirty, who had been Lucille's attendant since the departure of nurse and nursery-maid. She idolised her young mistress, and was devoted to her duties, although she would gladly have drawn the line at attendance upon dusty footsore tramps, "I'm sure I don't know however I shall get them things off her, Lady Lucille," she said. "I expect they'll all drop to pieces when I touch 'em, like a 'Gyptian mummy." A WAYSIDE WAIF. 35 "You must do your best, Tompion," said Lucille. "You are so kind-hearted that I know you'll be good to the poor thing." "Lucille, are you coming away?" remonstrated Miss Marjorum. Lucille put her arm round the governess's skinny shoulders, and left the room with her. Bess had fallen asleep after that half-tumbler of port and half-dozen mouthfuls of cake. It was more nourish- ment than she had had for the last three days. "Lucille, you smell of tramps," said Miss Mar- jorum solemnly. "If you take my advice, you'll give yourself a warm bath before you resume the usual occupations of the day." "I will take your advice, dear. That poor thing was dreadfully dusty. But is she not a lovely crea- ture?" "Her features may be well formed; but I cannot bring myself to see beauty in such abject degrada- tion," replied the governess stiffly. "Why degraded, Marjy? Only poor and friend- less and hungry. I don't see any degradation in that. Think of Him who knew not where to lay His head." This was attacking Jane Marjorum on her weak- est and best side, for she was honestly religious. "If I thought the girl were only poor, I would 3* 36 FLOWER AND WEED. not object to your helping her," she said; "but I fear she belongs to the criminal classes." "But why, dear?" "She looks like it," replied Miss Marjorum, not wishing to be explicit. She had made up her mind that the girl was too pretty to be good. MORE THAN KIN. 3/ CHAPTER II. MORE THAN KIN. "And let me feel that warm breath here and there, To spread a rapture in my very hair. O, the sweetness of the pain ! Give me those lips again! Enough! enough! It is enough for me To dream of thee. " Lucille had her bath, and dressed herself in the prettiest of pale-pink gingham gowns, trimmed with pillow-lace — that pretty old-fashioned thread- lace which gives employment to many a village child in the leafy lanes of Buckinghamshire — and appeared radiant before her old governess at their tete-a-tete luncheon. The Earl had gone to London by the eleven o'clock express. They had the Castle all to themselves, a stately abode of quietness and peace, the old pictured faces smiling at them, or seeming to smile, in the sunlight, just as in gloomy weather the same faces seemed to frown; the per- fume of myriad flowers breathing in upon them through all the open casements, 38 FLOWER AND WEED. They lunched in the old schoolroom, which served them as a breakfast or dining room when the Earl was away. Opening out of this was Lucille's morning-room — a white-panelled chamber, hung with water-colours, and much adorned with old china and new books. Here, in front of the wide low Tudor window, stood Lucille's grand piano, her father's gift on her seventeenth birth- day; and across the ebony case was spread a tremendous work of art in the shape of a floral design on olive-green cloth, executed in gold and colours by the patient fingers of Miss Marjorum; and on this embroidered cloth stood a low, wide, green Venetian glass vase full of white azaleas and gardenias, an arrangement which satisfied all the requirements of high art. Before Lucille sat down to luncheon, she was gratified by Tompion's assurance that the tramp had eaten her soup, and was "sleeping beautiful." "Don't call her a tramp, Tompion," said Lucille; "her name is Bess. She may be no more accus- tomed to tramping than you or L It may be only an accident in her life." Tompion did not believe this; but was too well- trained a servant to argue, even with a mistress who had grown up to her hand. MORE THAN KIN, 39 Lucille laughed and talked gaily all luncheon- time. She was full of Bruno's return. "What are we to do to amuse him, Marjy, now that there's no hunting or shooting?" she asked. "We must have tennis. Those girls from the Vicarage must be allowed to come every afternoon. And we must have picnics and excursionising of all kinds. I wonder whether my father would object to my learning to throw a fly? I should so like to go trout-fishing with Bruno." Miss Marjorum held forth gravely on the impro- priety of this suggestion. "My dear Lucille, you really ought to remember that you might actually have been presented this season," she said; and this was her most solemn form of reproval. "I am very glad I wasn't," answered the girl. "I am most grateful to his lordship for the year's reprieve." "Most girls in your position would long to be out." "I haven't the faintest longing. I daresay I shall enjoy society very well when I am in it; and I do long for the opera, to hear all the music I know so well upon the piano, sung by grand singers. Yes, that must be too delightful. But I don't sup- 40 FLOWER AND WEED. pose I shall ever be happier than I have been at Ingleshaw." "My dear, however happy your lot may be, you will discover the hollowness of life," answered Miss Marjorum, winding up a very substantial lunch with cream cheese, spring radishes, and Bath Olivers. "We all do that as we advance in years." "Dear Miss Marjorum, I hope your life has not been very hollow," said Lucille, wondering a little wherein the hollowness of such a life could lie; seeing that, for the last ten years, Jane Marjorum had lived upon the fat of the land, had been in re- ceipt of a handsome salary, had been petted and made much of by her pupil, and most generously treated by the Earl; while her duties were ever of the lightest. But Jane Marjorum was not taken aback by this question. "I am of those who find out the hollowness of life before the bloom of youth has departed," she said, in a solemn voice. "I was engaged for five years to a young man whom I believed an apostle. I assisted him to keep his college terms at St. Catherine's, Cambridge (vulgarly called Cat's); and when he was ordained he proved hollow." "In what way, Marjy?" <'He sent me back my letters and presents, and MORE THAN KI>r. 4 I told me that he should ever honour me as his friend and benefactress, but that Fate had willed that he was to fall in. love with a milliner's ap- prentice at Cambridge, and that Duty impelled him to marry her. He is now rector of a parish in the East Riding, and that milliner's apprentice is on visiting terms with the county f;imilies," concluded Miss Marjorum, as if this were the crowning wrong. "So I think you will admit that / soon discovered the hollowness of life," she added, after a pause. "It was very dishonourable of him," said Lucille, wondering whether the milliner's apprentice was pretty, and wondering a little also what kind of a person dear old Marjorum was in her day of fresh- ness and bloom. She belonged to that section of the elderly whom it is almost impossible to imagine as ever having been young. After luncheon Miss Marjorum again suggested the Inferno; but Lucille was in no mood for serious study. That idea of Bruno's return, added to her interest in her new protegee, completely filled her mind. "It would be no use, Marjy dear," she said; "I should be only pretending to understand. I'll prac- tise this afternoon; and you and I will go for a long walk after five-o'clock tea." She went to her beloved piano, and played 42 FLOWER AND WEED. Mozart's sonatas for the next two hours. It was music which she knew well, and which allowed her thoughts and fancies to wander fetterless. Would he be much changed, this old companion of her childhood, she wondered, as her fingers ran over the airy passages of an allegro movement, in that neat delicate playing which is the result of much careful practice? Would he despise the simple pleasures of Ingleshaw? — the woods, the rural lanes, the meadows golden with buttercups, and flushed here and there with ruddy patches of wild sorrel; the hawthorn thickets where the thrushes sang so divinely at eventide; the old village church, whose old-fashioned homely services Lucille had attended all her life. Would all these things have lost their charm for him, now that he had seen every great city of Europe, steeping himself in the romance of a historical past, climbing Swiss mountains, fishing in Norwegian waters? "He used to be very fond of the country," she told herself; "but I am afraid it will all seem very small to him after the wonders he has seen abroad." Just before the eight-o'clock dinner Lady Lucille went to the room where the wanderer was lying. She found her much restored, but still very weak. Tompion had washed her, and put on clean linen; MORE THAN KIN. 43 and the perfect face upon the pillow looked all the more beautiful now the bronze-brown hair had been brushed, and was coiled in a loose plait at the back of the small head. "How good you have been to me, lady!" she murmured softly, looking up with a grateful ex- pression in her large dark eyes. "I did not think there was anybody in this world so good as you." "Then I'm afraid you have never read the Gospel; for that would teach you that it is our duty to help the poor and friendless." "I'm not much of a hand at reading, lady," the girl answered meekly. "I've forgot most what I was taught at the ragged school when I was a little un. There was ladies sometimes came down the alley where I lived, and they give me tracks, and says I must read 'em if I wanted to save my soul alive; but when I came in of a night, after tramp- ing half over London with a basket of violets or moss-rose buds, I hadn't the strength left in me to tackle one of them there tracks, which alius led off by tellin' me I was goin' to hell." "There is better teaching in the Gospel than in those tracts, Bess. The Gospel shows us the way to heaven. Would you like me to come and read to you a little before you compose yourself for the night?" . .... 44 FLOWER AND WEED. "Yes, lady, I should like you to come and sit by me a bit. I like to look at you, and to hear you talk; it ain't like anything as I've been used to. It's like waking up out of a bad dream and finding oneself in a new world. But you'll be for packing me off to-morrer, I dessay, sending me back to my parish, won't yer, lady?" "No, no, you poor soul. You sha'n't leave the Castle till you are strong and well; and when you do go, I shall try to find you a comfortable home where you can get an honest living. We won't talk about it now; you are to think of nothing except getting well." "I don't know that," answered the girl, with a plaintive look in the dark liquid eyes, "it might be better for me just to lie here till I die, and never know nothing more of life and its troubles." "You shall find by and by that life is not all trouble; that there are a great many things in this world worth living for." An hour later Lady Lucille came back and read some chapters from St. John's Gospel, but not be- fore she had gently sounded the wanderer's re- ligious knowledge. She found her wofuUy ignorant, her only ideas of gospel truth consisting of vague and patchy recollections of the New Testament as it had been expounded to her by a series of un- MORE THAN KW. 45 sympathetic district visitors, so various in their views as to be eminently confusing in their teaching. Gently and briefly Lucille tried to bring before the girl's mind the grand and beautiful image of a Redeemer, before she read those chapters in which Christ reveals Himself and the fair hope of a blessed immortality to His disciples. Bess listened intently, understanding not very much perhaps — the light as yet was but a faint glimmer — but deeply interested, soothed by the sweet voice of the reader, dazzled by that idea of a spiritual world which had never before been adequately presented to her imagination. She fell asleep with faint echoes of the Saviour's words floating in her half-awakened mind. Lucille went to see her protigie early next morning. Bess was refreshed and strengthened by nourishing food and rest, and was eager to get up. "If there was anything I could do for you, lady — " she began. "Call me Lady Lucille; that is my name." "Lady Lucille — that's a pretty name! — if there was anything I could do — but, Lord ha' mercy upon me! I'm such a hignorant creature, except to tramp about with a basket of flowers in spring and 46 FLOWER AND WEED. summer time, and to sell bootlaces or fusees in winter, I ain't good for nothink!" "We will soon make you good for ever so many things. I am sure you are not stupid." "Well, no, Lady Lu — Lucille, folks mostly says I'm sharp. I could turn my hand to pretty nigh anything, if I had the chance. I've sung ballads in the publics sometimes of a Saturday night: 'She vi^ore a Wreath o' Roses,' and 'We met,' and 'The Last Rose o' Summer,' and suchlike." "My maid shall teach you plain needlework. Are you clever with your needle?" "Lord, no, Lady Lucille! I never could lay hold on a needle proper. It alius slips through my fingers." "You will very soon learn. Every woman ought to be clever at needlework. The taste is born with us, I think. But the first thing I want to teach you is to pray. Perhaps, though you know so little of the Gospel, you have been taught to say your prayers?" "No, Lady Lucille; them I lived among didn't hold with praying. 'What should we be the better for craw-thumping and squalling hymns?' I've heard 'em say. 'That wouldn't get us a meal o' victuals.' " "Poor souls! they did not know how Christ MORE THAN KIN. 47 taught us to ask our Father for all good things. Our prayers may not always be answered just as we wish, or as soon as we want; but we know they are always heard, and that God gives us what is best for us." "I dessay if I lived in this house I should be- lieve that," said Bess, to whom the plainest bed- chamber in Ingleshaw Castle was like an arbour in the Garden of Eden. Lucille taught her to repeat the Lord's Prayer, and one of those ejaculatory verses in the Psalms, which, after that one sublime supplication, are of all prayers the simplest and the best. It was slow work to teach one who had never been taught any- thing since those dim half-forgotten days when the ragamuffin child had been one among a herd of other ragamuffins in a ragged school; but Lucille was accustomed to the density of the agricultural mind, and she found an acuteness of intellect in this child of London slums and alleys which pro- mised rapid progress in the future. To her maid Tompion Lady Lucille intrusted the task of teaching this city waif the art of plain needlework, and the simplest household duties. "If she really feels strong enough to get up by and by, you can show her how to arrange her room; and then, after she has had her dinner in the ser- 48 FLOWER AND WEED. vants' hall" — Tompion's jaw fell, doubtful how even the lower house in the servants' hall would brook the introduction of this vagabond damsel — "you can teach her a little plain sewing." Tompion followed her mistress into the corridor. "You don't mean to keep her at the Castle, do you, Lady Lucille," she inquired, "a young person without a character?" "We shall find out what her character is in a few days." "Just consider, Lady Lucille, she may be mixed up with burglars! What will his lordship say?" "That is my business, Tompion. You may be sure I shall not keep her here without his lord- ship's permission. I may get her a place in the neighbourhood. What you have to do is to teach her to be a handy little maid." "It ain't so easy to teach a tramp that has never been used to decent ways," muttered the re- luctant Tompion. "You will find her very clever and teachable. Her wits have been sharpened in the school of ad- versity. This is the first time I have ever asked you to do anything out of the beaten track, Tompion. I hope you are not going to be disagreeable about it." Tompion vowed that she would not shrink from going through fire and water for her mistress, much MORE THAN KIN. 49 less would she refuse to teach a characterless young female, whose habits no doubt were dirty, and whose language must needs be improper. Lucille and Miss Marjorum spent a studious morning, deep in Dante's Inferyio, the girl's eager mind leaping all grammatical fences, and seizing the spirit of the poet, the vivid dramatic power of the scene; the patient governess arresting her at every line to expatiate upon tenses and cases, re- latives and predicates, with that affection for dry detail which is the favourite virtue of all mediocre teachers. The weather to-day was less distractingly lovely. The sky wore its sober English gray; and Lucille was content to stay indoors till the after- noon constitutional walk or drive which she was in the habit of taking with her governess. Would Bruno come to-day? No, that was hardly possible. His rooms were ready; Lucille had her- self been to look at them; a charming suite of rooms in the north wing, near the Earl's own quar- ters. Lucille had arranged the hot-house flowers on tables and mantelshelf; and her own hands had composed those still lovelier gi-oups of field and woodland blossoms in low vases of dark dull green Venetian glass. She wanted him to be struck with the beauty of Ingleshaw, even after Italy. After luncheon she went to see what progress Flower and Weed. 4 50 FLOWER AND WEED. Bess was making in Tompion's care. She found the damsel sitting by an open window, clothed in one of Tompion's neat cotton gowns, with her brown hair bound up in a classic knot, and set off by one of Tompion's somewhat coquettish muslin caps. Her attire was neatness itself; and the beauty, which had been striking even in dusty rags, had been made all the more brilliant by soap-and-water and clean raiment. Lucille felt proud of having picked up such a gem by the wayside. Bess rose at the young lady's entrance, blushing and sparkling at sight of her benefactress. Tompion had been discoursing largely on her mistress's im- portance, on the lofty height from which she had stooped to raise a fallen fellow-creature from the dust. The good Samaritan was an estimable person, no doubt; but he belonged to a despised race, and was perhaps a nobody. Here, on the contrary, was the daughter and heiress of an English noble- man, whose earldom dated from the Tudors, a damsel born in the purple and ermine of life, and in whose person charity must be a virtue of sur- passing beauty. Bess, holding her needle clumsily, cobbled her seam industriously, and listened meekly to Tompion's holding forth. Slight as was her knowledge of any world above the wilderness of courts and back slums in which she had been bred, MORE THAN KIN. 5 I Bess was quite shrewd enough to know that a young lady living in such a house as Ingleshaw Castle must needs belong to the elect of this earth. Tompion, who loved "to talk, had told the waif all that could be told about Ingleshaw and its in- habitants. She told her how Mr. Challoner, her young lady's kinsman and old playfellow, was ex- pected on a visit, after his tour in the south of Europe. The south of Europe was only a sound to Bess, whose geographical knowledge was nil; but she was keenly interested in the idea of a young man who, if he had not exactly "kept company" with her benefactress in the past, was very likely to keep company with her in the future. "It's pretty well known that his lordship v/ould like them to marry," said Tompion, with authority. "It would keep the estates together, don't you see; for there's a good deal that doesn't go with the title, and that will belong to Lady Lucille by and by. And his lordship is very fond of Mr. Chal- loner." "Is he a good-looking young chap?" inquired Bess. "He's a handsome fine-grown young gentleman. You mustn't call him a chap. It's a very vulgar word." "I knovv'S a many that's a deal vulgarer," said 4* 52 FLOWER AND WEED. Bess. "Lor's, if you thinks chap vulgar, I could say words as would make your hair stand on end!" "But you must forget those horrid words. If you want Lady Lucille to be kind to you, and to take an interest in you, you must try to be genteel, like me." "O, you're genteel, are you?" asked the home- less one, with a mocking tone, which Miss Tompion disliked exceedingly. "You're the pattern I'm to cut myself out upon? I'd rather look higher, and imitate Lady Lucille." "You're an ungrateful impertinent young wo- man!" exclaimed Tompion indignantly; "and if I hadn't promised my lady, I'd wash my hands of you this instant. But Lady Lucille begged of me as a favour to teach you. proper behaviour and plain sewing, and I'll do my best to oblige her." "I ax your pardon," said Bess, the mischievous light in her splendid eyes softening to meekness as she spoke; "I didn't mean to be rude. I'll do any- thing, or learn anything, Lady Lucille wishes; but I thought if I was to copy any one I might as well copy her." "That's too absurd!" exclaimed Tompion, just as Lucille entered. "Copy her, indeed!" Her presence seemed to fill the room with sun- shine, Bess thought; and when she spoke kindly MORE THAN KIN. - 53 and praised hex protegee's neat appearance, the dark eyes filled with grateful tears. "You are ever so much better, are you not?" asked Lucille. "Pretty nigh well, my lady; only a little weak and tottery like. I shall be all right to-morrow; and if you want me to go on to Dover, why, I can do it." "That depends upon what your Dover friends could do for you." "It won't be much, my lady," answered the girl, with a despondent look. "The friend I've got there is — only — a kind of a cousin, a young man as lived in the same alley. He talked of 'listing for a soldier, and I heard tell as he'd gone to Dover; but I don't know for certain as he's there." "You must not think of going after him," said Lucille. "What could he do for you, poor fellow — a soldier, without a friend in the place? You shall stop in this house till I get you a situation of some kind. And now come with me, and I'll show you the pictures. That will cheer you and amuse you, for you don't look strong enough to do much work yet. Can you walk a little?" "Anywheres with you. Lady Lucille." Lucille took her through those pretty quaint old rooms, showed her the pictures and cabinets of 54 FLOWER AND WEED. china, which so many tourists came to see, and was infinitely amused by her curious exclamations and remarks, her utter ignorance, as of a child of three or four years old. There was much that might be taught her while she was looking at the pictures; passages of sacred history, the names of historic personages, great events in the past Her mind was a blank; but she was eager to receive informa- tion, and showed a keen interest in those pictured scenes, and all that Lucille could tell her about them. Then Lucille took her in hand, and began the laborious work of revising a form of the English language which had been acquired in Whitechapel, and enriched with the copious slang of London low life — the varieties of provincial dialect picked up in that cosmopolitan city where Bess had been reared. She had an intuitive knowledge of her own lowness, and a perfect willingness to have her speech refined and purified by her benefactress. Finally, Lucille showed the girl her own rooms; and these seemed to Bess even more exquisite than those stately panelled and pictured apartments which were shown to tourists. All the minute elegances of a girl's surroundings — the books and flowers, statuettes and water- coloured drawings, the piano, the high-art glass and MORE THAN KIN. 55 pottery, Japanese lacquer, South Kensington tapes- tries — formed one brilliant whole, which dazzled and enchanted the eyes that had only seen art and luxury through the shop-windows, while standing weary and sick at heart on the muddy pavement outside. Miss Marjorum, sitting at her crewel-work frame in the recess of a window, acknowledged Bess's curtsy with the most formal bend of which her back, long trained to formality, was capable. She did not approve of this girl's introduction into the Castle, and she was longing for the Earl's re- turn, which she anticipated would put a speedy end to Lucille's folly. She most strongly disap- proved of the girl's appearance in these rooms, where her trained eyes were no doubt taking in every detail of windows and shutters, bolts and locks, for the future use of those burglars with whom Miss Marjorum, like Tompion, believed the damsel to be in association. All such wandering damsels were doubtless more or less the companions and accomplices of thieves. And then, again, the prettiness of the creature, in which even Miss Mar- jorum's coldly critical eye could see no flaw, was one of those objectionable features in the case which could not be reasoned away. Such a being, born and cradled in the gutter, bore in her own breast the star of an inevitable destiny. 56 FLOWER AND WEED. Litcille spent an hour in displaying the glorieis of Ingleshaw to her protegee, charmed with the girl's intense appreciation of every beautiful thing which she saw; an appreciation which was not the less real because it was expressed in a language common to costermongers and their families. To teach her a new and more refined mode of speech was the first task w^hich Lucille set herself, and, in order to bring about this result, Bess must first learn to read; so Lucille appointed the next morning for a reading-lesson, Tompion, in the mean while, being charged to carry on the refining process by all means in her power. Lucille devoted two hours after breakfast to this first reading-lesson. She found that Bess knew her letters, and had a vague glimmering of acquaintance with the easier monosyllables in the English lan- guage; but it was very much like beginning at the beginning. Lucille's patience was inexhaustible, and the pupil's intellect as keen as a razor; so a great deal was done in those two hours, more being effected by oral instruction, by the refining process of intercourse with a cultivated mind, than by the mere spelling out words upon the page of a primer. Miss Marjorum held herself altogether aloof from this initiatory lesson. She would gladly have taken all the trouble of Bess's education on her MORE THAN KIN, 57 hands had she approved Lucille's scheme; but she would not have any part in an affair which she considered to the last degree imprudent and hazardous. "My dear, I think you know I am not one to spare my own trouble," she said, when Lucille came to the schoolroom, having left Bess to learn the mystery of an under-housemaid's work from Tompion; "but I cannot go with you in this matter. I feel that harm will come of it." Lucille knew her old governess too well to at- tempt an argument. She stopped her dear Mar- jorum's mouth with Dante; and they went down to the third circle, and floundered there till luncheon. After luncheon came rainy weather, so Marjorum retired to her room to read a dryasdust biography of a New Zealand missionary, just received from Mudie. Lucille strongly suspected that Marjorum's readings in retirement were only another name for sleep. Pleased to be alone, the girl sat down to her beloved Mozart, and lost herself in a maze of melody, in which, somehow or other, Bruno was always entangled. She had been thinking of him so much that it was hardly a surprise when the door opened softly just as she was singing "Batti, batti," and he came into the room. 58 FLOWER AND WEED. "Don't stop!" he cried, as she rose from the piano; "go on, Lucie. It is hke hearing you talk to me. How are you, dear?" he asked, coming over to her and seating himself at her side; and then in a rich baritone he took up the pleading tender melody. "O Lucie, if you knew how glad I am to be home again!" he said, at the end of the phrase. "Glad to come back from Italy, the country every one sighs to visit!" she exclaimed, her face radiant with delight. "I was afraid you would despise Ingleshaw, after all the lovely places you have seen." "The places I have seen are passing lovely; but there's not one of them to compare with the gray towers and green woods of Ingleshaw, in my mind, Lucie. Of course you expected me after my telegram?" "I have been expecting you every moment, though I suppose it was a physical impossibility that you could come before now?" "Well, yes, unless I had come in a balloon. They tell me his Lordship is in London." "Yes; there was some important division; but he will be home in a day or two, I hope." "And in the mean time I am your guest." "Yes, and I am forgetting my duties as a MORE THAN KIN. 59 hostess. You must be hungry or thirsty, after your journey. Let me order luncheon for you." "No, dear. I hmched at the Charmg Cross Hotel. I have no such low wants as meat or drink. I want to look at you, to talk to you, to see what change the last two years have made in you." "Do you find me very much altered?" asked Lucille, her eyelids drooping under the ardent ad- miration of his gaze. "Not altered. The bud does not alter when it blossoms into the rose. My bud has blossomed, that is all. And you are not to make your dehiit this season, Lucie? I am so glad of that." "Why, Bruno?" "Because I shall have you all to myself. You and I will drain the cup of bliss as it is brewed at Ingleshaw. We will be children again. We will picnic, we will light fires and boil tea-kettles, we'll revel in blackberry- hunting, nutting, mushroom- gathering. I have half a mind to resume the manu- facture of daisy-chains. It is almost exciting, for the stalks are so liable to give way at critical moments." "My father says you are to go into Parliament, and become a great politician." "Oh, I know I am an embryo Canning; but I mean to enjoy the embryo stage as long as I can. 6(5; FLOWER AND WEED. You shall help me. We'll read blue-books together. Hansard is intensely interesting to right-minded people whose brains are not soddened by novels and poetry." "I should be so proud if I could help you." "If you could? You can; you shall. You shall be my Egeria; and between us we will do as much good for England as Numa did for Rome." "Ah, Bruno, if you can find some good way of helping the poor, how proud I shall be of your political career!" said Lucie, thinking of that weed from the waste of Whitechapel which she was eager to cultivate into a flower. "There is a poor girl in this house — a creature whom I found in the planta- tion almost dying — and she has opened my eyes to the sad state of things among the London poor." "Ah, my dearest child, that is an old canker. Heaven knows how legislation is to find a cure for it! The favourite panacea of the present day is education; perhaps the coming idea may be food. When we have failed in the cultivation of sound minds in half-starved bodies, we may try again, and begin at the other end. And so you rescued some poor dying girl, and brought her home to your own house? That sounds quixotic." "O Bruno, if we were all a little more like Don Quixote, the world might be better than it is." MORE THAN KIN. 6 1 "True, dearest; the sweetest natures are those of the people who are oftenest taken in." "Would you like to see her?" "Her? Who?" asked Bruno vaguely, his eyes dwelling on the fair young face in which every beauty had developed within the period of his absence. Not easy were it to imagine a fairer picture than these two sitting side by side in the calm after- noon light — the young man tall, broad-shouldered, with dark complexion and strongly-marked features, eyes of that sombre brown which seems the natural hue of thought, but just now with a smile of much sweetness lighting up his face; Lucille, delicately fair, with eyes of limpid blue, and exquisitely chiselled features, a thoroughly patrician beauty — the two looking at each other with such happy trustfulness, two souls that were not afraid of be- traying their perfect union. "My poor girl. Her name is Bess; she has not told me her surname. I am doubtful if she has ever known one, and I don't like to ask her awkward questions." "Don Quixote is nowhere in the scale of chivalry, compared with you," said Bruno, smiling at her. "Would you like to see her?" "Not the faintest objection. I don't mind look- 62 FLOWER AND WEED. ing on at a procession of surnameless damsels, so long as you stay and look on with me." "I want you to see her, for I know you are a judge of character. Dear old Marjorum has been so disagreeable about her — calls me imprudent for giving her shelter; vows that harm will come of it; and both she and Tompion talked about burglars, just as if all poor people were thieves." "I'm afraid I should justify that idea if I were houseless and starving. I should make my poor little effort towards bringing about universal equality in the financial line. And so dear old Marjorum thinks you have picked up a she-burglar, and trembles for the safety of the family plate?" "She is so dreadfully prejudiced," said Lucille, ringing the bell. She told the tall and powdered youth who at- tended that the young person in Tompion's charge was to bring in the afternoon tea. This was Tompion's special duty, her young mistress pre- ferring the ministration of her own maid at this unceremonious meal to the statelier attendance of butler or footman; and Tompion bristled with in- dignation on receiving the powdered youth's mes- sage. But she dared not disobey. Bruno had forgotten the existence of his cousin's MORE THAN KIN. 63 protigie before the tea was brought; he had so much to say to Lucille after their long separation, so much to tell her, so many questions to ask, "You must have ffnjoyed yourself immensely," said Lucille, listening open-eyed to a rapid account of rambles from Rome to Madrid; from Dresden to Odessa; a bewildering confusion of catacombs, Escurial, royal picture-galleries, Tyrolese mountain and woodland, Danube, Prado, Norwegian fisheries, Roman Carnival. "You seem to have seen every- thing; but I think you must have travelled rather in the style of those American tourists one reads about. Confess, now, that you scampered," said Lucille. "If I did, it was that I might come home to you all the sooner," replied Bruno. The door was thrown open by the powdered youth, with that grand air which distinguishes the thoroughbred footman from the promoted knife-boy. With the same broad dignity of action the tall youth brought forward a Chippendale tea-table, and un- folded its inlaid leaves before his mistress, just in time to receive the circular Japanese tea-tray which Bess, shy, and with downcast eyelids, carried into the room. Bruno looked up at her, first with a kindly 64 FLOWER AND WEED. interest, and then with undisguised admiration. Perhaps in all his life he had never seen such per- fect beauty — not in marble or on canvas in all those art-galleries where he had feasted upon ideal beauty to satiety during the last two years. The face was not more perfect, perhaps, than those idealised models of the old painters and sculptors; only it was alive: a living, radiant, vivid beauty, blushing, tremulous, with the shy sweet sense of its own power. For a novice in the ways of civilisation, Bess performed the duties of her situation admirably. A clever girl, whose wits have been sharpened by semi-starvation, can learn anything which is a mere matter of eye and hand. Bess handed the porcelain cups and silver cream- ewer as deftly as if she had been handling porcelain and silver all her life. There was no uncouthness in her movements. Lucille detained her as long as she reasonably could, anxious that Bruno should have leisure for observation. They talked only of the lightest topics while she waited upon them; and that light airy talk seemed to Bess like a new language. Every word, every intonation, was different from the words and tones to which she had been accustomed. To her ear, naturally delicate, that refined speech had almost the charm of music. She drank in every MORE THAN KIN. 65 tone; and as she looked at Bruno Challoner, mentally comparing that tall strong frame, those finely-cut definite features, and the dark thoughtful eyes, with the wizened stunted undergrowth, or l)urly and bloated overgrowth, of the companions of her youth, the crafty mouth, the ferret eyes, this man appeared to her as a grand and godlike creature, the inhabitant of an unknown world. "Now for your opinion," said Lucille eagerly, when Bess had left the room with the tea-tray. "Do you think I have done a very dreadful thing in befriending that poor creature?" "Indeed no, dear. I don't see any sign of the burglarious temperament," answered Bruno, smiling at his cousin's earnest face; "but at the same time it may be rather difficult to know what to do with your protegee. We must ask his lordship's advice. I don't think you ought to keep her in the Castle, since you know nothing whatever of her antecedents; and, after all, the Ingleshaw plate-room, or even your own jewel-cases, might be a temptation." "O Bruno, when you have just seen her sweet innocent face!" "Not to her, perhaps, but to her friends," said Bruno apologetically. "No young woman can grow up, in any sphere of life, without having friends, Flozver and Weed, 5 66: FLOWER AND WEED. don't you know. Perhaps the best thing you could do for this girl would be to apprentice her to some country dressmaker — at Sevenoaks or Tunbridge, for instance; and if she behave well during her ap- prenticeship you might get one of your friends to engage her as a lady's-maid. I should think that must be better than being a journeywoman dress- maker." "What I should like to do is to keep her in the Castle. She could help Tompion in some light kind of work. This morning I began to teach her to read; she is horribly ignorant, but so bright and quick that it is a pleasure to teach her." "That would be all very well, if you knew her antecedents; but, as you don't — " "I have not asked her any questions about her past life; she was so weak and ill when I brought her home. I want her to feel assured of my kind- ness before I question her." "And when you do she may favour you with one of those romances which people in her position are quite capable of inventing. I don't want to dis- hearten you, dear, in your effort to do a good work: but this is a matter in whicli I think you ought to be ruled by your father's wisdom and experience." "Then I'm sure I shall have my own way," said MORE THAN KIN. 67 Lucille, with a radiant smile, "My father never denies me anything." After this they talked of themselves, and Bess was forgotten. Miss Marjoram came in presently — the Maori missionary having proved peculiarly inter- esting this gray drowsy afternoon — and was intensely surprised to find Bruno established in the morning- room. They dined together; and after dinner Bruno and Lucille went for a moonlight ramble in the parkj a ramble about which Miss Marjorum had some qualms of conscience, lest it might be con- sidered a breach of that severe etiquette to which her soul inclined. Two years ago the cousins had wandered together at their own will; for in those days Lucille was counted as a child; but now Lucille was a woman, and the line must be drawn some- where. Ought it not to be drawn at moonlit rambles? Happily the Earl would be home to- morrow; and this delicate question might be sub- mitted to him. Lord Ingleshaw did not return next day. A letter came for Lucille, telling her that the business in the Lords had hung fire, and that he would have to stay in Grosvenor-square a few days longer, so as to be ready with his vote, Lucille was to take care of Bruno, and to keep him at the Castle till her father's return. , : 5* 68 FLOWER AND WEED. Lucille found no difficulty in obeying these in- structions. Bruno found the summer days only too short in his cousin's company. Poor Miss Marjorum, always bent upon adhering as nearly as she could to her own severe code of etiquette, drove and walked with them in the broiling sun and the treacherous wind until her nose was blistered in the service. But Marjorum's presence was to them as if it had not been. They were as loving as Romeo and Juliet under her very nose; and there were times when, in these long rustic rambles, Marjorum was fain to sit down on some green bank by the wayside, sheltered by overhanging hawthorn and blackberry, while Bruno and Lucille had the world all to themselves. In one of these brief excursions into Paradise the young man caught his cousin suddenly in his arms, among the dancing lights and flickering shadows, under the luminous green of young beech leaves, and held the fair young face upon his breast while he bent to kiss those innocent lips, pleading for the right to call his dearest by a nearer and dearer name than cousin — calling her in advance, in the rapture of that passionate moment, bride and wife. "Shall it not be so, love? It is the dream of my life!" he said. MORK THAN KIN, 69 "And of mine," she answered. Then after a brief pause, in which they stood silent, lost in a happy dreamland, she said, "Will my father be angry, Bruno, do you think? I would sooner die than disobey him." "Dearest, I have some reason to believe your father will be glad." "Then all the world is full of happiness," said Lucille; and then, clasping her lover's arm with a sudden impulse, she exclaimed, "O Bruno, let us be kind to the poor! God has been so good to us — so good! And when I think how many unhappy people there are in the world, while — " "While our lives are steeped in bliss. Yes, it does seem hard, does it not, Lucie? 'There's some- thing in this world amiss, shall be unriddled by and by.' That *by and by' must seem such a long way off to those who suffer keenly to-day." They went back to the lane where Miss Mar- jorum was nodding in a placid after-luncheon nap under the shelter of blackber-ry and hawthorn. They both looked so radiant that the spinster's keen eye divined something out of the common, "Why, what mischief have you two been plot- ting?" she asked. "Only to set village bells ringing before the 70 FLOA\'ER AND WEED. blackberries are ripe," said Bruno, laughing. "Marjy, you will have to give me a wedding-present. Please don't let it be a Bible or a Church-service, for I am handsomely provided with both." FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOIVr. ft CHAPTER III. FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM- " Who hath not felt that breath in the air, A perfume and freshness strange and rare, A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere. When young hearts yeani together?" For three days of unbroken unspeakable bliss the lovers dreamed their fond and happy dream. There was not a cloudlet on the brightness of their sky. The very weather seemed made on purpose for them. Never had the chase, or the plantations, the rustic Kentish villages with their quaint old- world air, the ruined abbey with its neatly-kept gardens, and trim mansion-house hard by, the lanes, the meadows, the river — never had that fair English scenery, amidst which Lucille had been born and bred, worn a lovelier aspect. She and Bruno walked and rode and drove and idled about all through the summery days. Except for that one hour which she devoted every morning to the patient instruction of Bess, Lucille's life was entirely absorbed by her lover. Miss Marjorum felt that the bow must be 72 FLOWER AND WEED. relaxed a little in favour of lovers newly engaged. She was hourly expecting the Earl's return; and then things would fall into a more orderly course. On the third evening after that exchange of vows in the little wood at the end of the black- berry lane, Lucille sat at her piano, with her lover by her side. She was silent, softly playing a plain- tive reverie by Gounod: and it seemed to Bruno that for the last half-hour a strange seriousness had come down upon her. He could hardly see her face in the light of the low shaded lamp, but he could see that she was very pale. "I am afraid you are tired, Lucille," he said. "Rather tired. Perhaps we rode a little too far this afternoon." "Not so far as yesterday, sweet." "It must have been warmer to-day, then. I feel ever so much more tired. I have a slight sore throat. Don't look alarmed, Bruno: it will be well to- morrow, I have no doubt." "Are you subject to sore throat?" "No, I don't remember having one for ages." Bruno got up and rang the bell. Miss Marjoram was writing letters at a distant table. She kept up tremendous correspondences with the friends of her youth — chiefly of the governess profession — and had a vague but comfortable idea that her letters would FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 73 be published after her death, and would rank with the compositions of Mrs. Carter. Bruno stopped to say a few words to her on his way to the piano. He i)egged her to send instantly for the family doctor. He had come from Italy, the land of fever, and was quick to take alarm at the faintest symptom of mischief. He went back to his seat by Lucille. The girl had been playing all the time, dwelling with a lingering legato touch upon the tender dreamy music. "Is there anything wrong?" she asked, seeing her old governess confabulating in a somewhat mysterious way with the footman who answered the bell. "No, dear; but I know you are more tired than you confess, and I want you to go to bed very early and nurse that sore throat. O, by the bye, talking of your protSgee" — of whom they had not been talk- ing — "was there anything the matter with her when you found her in the plantation? I mean, anything beyond weakness and hunger? Was she in a fever?" "O no," answered Lucille; "she had been laid up with a fever at the Union, and she was dis- charged as cured; but having no money and no 74 FLOWER ,\ND WEED. friends, she wandered about in a starving condition till she fell helpless by the wayside." "I see. She had a fever, and had been cured and discharged," said Bruno, with a terrible sinking at his heart. He went back to Miss Marjorum, who had laid aside her letter, in the middle of a Johnsonian paragraph, and closed her desk, and who looked the image of trouble. He urged her to get Lucille to her room as soon as possible, but on no account to alarm her. But Lucille's quick mind had divined her lover's fears. She rose from the piano, shivering and faint, and with an inward conviction that she was going to be ill — she whose brief happy life had been almost free from malady. She went over to Bruno and laid her hand gently on his shoulder, and drew him into the recess of the window, beyond Miss Marjorum's hearing. "If I should have caught a fever from that poor thing, don't let her be sent away while I am ill," she pleaded earnestly. "My dearest, it will not be in my power — " he began. "It is the first favour I have asked you since our engagement, Bruno. Promise," she urged. FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 75 "I promise, love. I will do my uttermost to prevent her being sent away." "It is not her fault, remember, dear. She did not know that the fever was contagious. She had been told that she was cured." "Of course, dear. And who says you are going to have a fever?" said Bruno, pretending to be in- tensely cheerful. "You are only a little tired with our rides and rambles in the sunshine. If you go to bed early, and let Marjorum nurse you, I dare- say you will be quite well to-morrow morning." But Lucille was no better next morning — a great deal worse, rather; and on his early visit, before nine o'clock, the family doctor pronounced it a clearly marked case of scarlet fever. He saw Bess, and discovered that she was only just escaping from the most contagious condition of a convalescent patient, and that, when Lady Lucille took her home to the Castle, that dangerous condition must have been in full force. Tompion and Miss Marjorum had both had scarlet fever; but the carefully guarded Lucille had escaped the disease hitherto, and was a ready subject for contagion. When Bess heard what had happened she was in an agony of grief Mr. Wharton, the kind-hearted doctor, was constrained to comfort her by the as- 76 FLOWER AND WEED. siirance that at present there was no indication of danger. "But at the same time," said Miss Marjorum severely, "I must say it was a very cruel act of you to come into this house, and bring trouble and sick- ness with you." "I had better go away this minute," said Bess, drying her tears, and drawing herself up with more dignity of gesture than might be expected of a girl who had sold violets for a penny a bunch; "but you may bear in mind, lady, that I was brought into this house by that sweet angel when I hardly knew whether I was alive or dead, and that it was by her wish I stopped here. As to bringing sick- ness and trouble — well, what should such as I bring with me but trouble, that' has never knowed any- thing else? But I'll go this moment. I can go on the tramp again, and fall back into all the old ways; but I can never forget the dear young lady that's ill. She was the first lady that ever treated me as if I was made of the same flesh and blood as her- self." "No, you are not to go away," said Bruno firmly. "It was Lady Lucille's special request to me that you should not be sent away while she was ill. Torapion, you will look after this young person dur- FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 77 ing your lady's illness, and you will see that she learns to make herself useful." Bess looked at Mr. Challoner with wide-open wondering eyes. It was the first time this godlike personage had spoken directly to her. His voice thrilled her; his eyes, with their steady divinely truthful look, awed her into silence. She stood be- fore him as before a supernaturally gifted judge, who could read her secret thoughts. "Yes," muttered Tompion, as Mr. Challoner left the room; "and she will go about the house giving other people fevers, I'll warrant! I don't know but what I've got the fever upon me myself. There's a many that have it twice." "You needn't be afraid," said Mr. Wharton. "I'll take care that there shall be no risk of further infection, if this young person will do what I tell her." "I'll do an)^hing, sir," answered Bess meekly, her eyes still fixed on the doorway through which Bruno had gone. "I'd give half my life if they'd let me nurse that dear young lady." "Why, what can you know of nursing, young woman?" asked the doctor. "Poor folks has to help one another, sir," an- swered the girl meekly. "Many's the night I've 78 FLOWER AND WEED. sat up to nurse a neighbour, or a neighbour's child. We all lived so scrooged together down our court, one couldn't help being friendly." "Yes, I know how good the poor are to the poor," said the doctor kindly. "Well, Mr. Challoner says you are to stay. We'll see, by and by, if you can be handy in the sick-room; but we must have better help than yours. I have telegraphed for a couple of nurses from an institution in London." And now came all those dismal signs and tokens of an infectious illness which send a chill to the hearts of those who can only watch and wait for the result. Lady Lucille's rooms were cut off from all direct communication with the rest of the house. Sheets steeped in diluted carbolic acid hung before the doors. A nursing sister, in a prim black gown and a picturesque white cap, emerged solemnly at intervals to receive the various necessaries for the sick-room. Bruno was forbidden all access to his cousin's apartment, albeit he had had scarlet fever, and had no fear of infection. Miss Marjorum had suffered the malady in her infancy, and had an idea that the lapse of time had prepared her for a second attack; so, although deeply anxious about her pupil, she readily submitted to the decree of banishment. FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 79 To Bruno banishment seemed almost as hard to bear as it Avas to Romeo in the morning of his love. It was so hard to be parted from his be- trothed in the very beginning of their engagement; to be so near her, and yet to be forbidden to see her, to clasp the dear hand, to whisper tender words of comfort and pity; hardest of all to know that while he walked about and chafed and fretted, in all the fulness of health and vigour, she lay pro- strate and suffering, consumed with fever, the lips he kissed yesterday parched and pale, the sweet eyes dull and heavy. He spent the greater part of the day pacing the garden-paths below Lady Lucille's rooms, look- ing up at the open Avindows, longing to hear his darling's voice, going into the house every half-hour to get the latest news of the sick-room. She was very ill, they told him, suffering a good deal from sore throat; but this was only natural. The disease must take its course. The same train which brought the two nursing sisters brought Lord Ingleshaw, summoned by a telegram from Miss Marjorum. He had arranged to arrive at Ingleshaw on this day, and had looked forward to a joyful meeting with Bruno, who had written to tell him how Lucille and he only waited her father's approval of their engagement to make 8o FLOWER AND WEED. them completely happy. Bruno knew very well that to ask his kinsman's consent was only a re- spectful formula; enough had been said by the Earl in the past to assure him that Lord Ingleshaw had no dearer hope than to see his daughter married to her cousin. But now, instead of meeting in joy, the Earl and his heir met in sorrow. True that the family doctor declared that the malady showed no sign of danger; that there was not even occasion for a second opinion. The fact that the bright happy girl lay prostrate and fever-stricken was full of pain and fear for those who so fondly loved her. "How, in Heaven's name, can she have caught this fever?" asked the Earl, looking from Bruno to Miss Marjorum. "Where has she been? What has she been doing? Is there scarlet fever in the village? Has she been visiting any sick people?" "I regret to say that the dear child's wilfulness is the sole cause of this misfortune," said Miss Mar- jorum; and then she proceeded to tell the story of Lucille's unconscious imitation of the good Sama- ritan. The Earl was a Christian, deeply and earnestly religious; yet his first thought, on hearing the story, FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 8 I was that his daughter had acted like a fool. There is such a wide distance between mechanical bene- volence — as shown in liberal contributions to all respectable charities, in large doles of bread and fuel dealt out by hireling hands — and in this per- sonal practical compassion, which brings a patri- cians's daughter face to face with the child of the gutter. ,. , . , . Lord Ingleshaw's second thought was vindictive towards Bess. "What has become of this girl? She has been sent away, of course?" he said. "I regret to say that she has not," replied Miss Marjorum, with a crushing look at Bruno. "Lucille earnestly entreated me last night that the young woman should not be sent away," said Bruno, unabashed. "I promised her that if it were in my power to prevent it she should not be sent away. She can do no further harm by remaining here." "She can only rob the house, and murder us all in our beds," said Miss Majorum. "His lordship can see her, and judge for him- self what inclination she may have that way," replied Bruno. Flower and Weed. 6 82 FLOWER AND WEED. "I'll see my daughter first," said Lord Ingle- shaw. "My dear sir, consider: at your age scarlet fever might be fatal," exclaimed Miss Marjorum. "I believe I have had scarlet fever. At any rate I have no fear of infection," answered the Earl. "They won't let me see her," said Bruno pite- ously. "How I wish I might go with you!" Unhappily, Mr. Wharton had expressly ordered that his patient was to be kept as quiet as possible, and was to see no one but her nurses. The father's authority overruled the doctor's; but there could be no such exception made in Bruno's favour. He had to content himself with pouring out his love and devotion in a hurried letter, which the Earl promised to give to Lucille. Lord Ingleshaw stayed with his darling for about ten minutes, the day nurse looking grudgingly on at his caresses, as if he were poisoning her patient. Lucille was feeble and feverish, but her eyes brimmed over with joyful tears at sight of the dear father. She put her arms round his neck and hugged him, as he bent over her pillow. "I'm afraid this is very agitating for her," mur- mured the nurse. FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 83 "No, no, indeed, father; don't go away yet. It does me a world of good to see you." Before Lord Ingleshaw left her bedside he had promised that Bess should not be sent away. The mischief that was done could not be undone; and he could not steel himself against his sick child's tender pleading. He sent for Bess, and saw her alone in the library; the girl deeply awed by the grave yet splendid aspect of the room — the walls of books, the carved oak cabinets, the massive writing-table, before which the Earl sat in his large crimson morocco-covered armchair, an imposing figure, with fine intellectual face, and silvered hair and beard. He questioned her closely, as it would never have occurred to Lady Lucille to question her, and this was the utmost he could obtain from her: She could remember neither father nor mother. She had been brought up by an old woman, who went hawking in town and country, sometimes selling one kind of goods, sometimes another — flowers and fruit mostly in London, lace and haber- dashery in the country. The woman treated her badly, beat her, and half-starved her, and as soon as she was old enough she ran away, and sold flowers on her own account, sharing a garret in 6* 84 FLOWER AND WEED. Whitechapel with three other girls, two of them match-box makers, and the third a hawker like herself. It was a hard life; but they got along somehow, till she fell ill of a fever, and they took her to the infirmary attached to the workhouse. When she recovered they turned her out; and in- stead of going back to her garret she set out to walk to Dover, where she hoped to find a young man who had kept company with her, and who had 'listed, and gone with his regiment to that place. Lord Ingleshaw made particular inquiries as to her relations with this young man. He had been employed at a horse-dealer's in Whitechapel. He was an honest lad; had never got into trouble, so far as she knew. He wanted to marry her as soon as he had saved a little money, but in the mean while he quarrelled with his master, and enlisted in a cavalry regiment. The girl answered his lord- ship's questions without flinching. He could see no sign of guilt in her manner. The story of her youth and bringing up was wretched, but as com- mon as it was wretched. She declared that she had never been in prison; she had managed to exist by honest labour, such as it was. She had no knowledge of any other name than Bess. The old woman had called her by that FROM SUNSHINE TO GLOOM. 8$ name. Her young man had called her Starlight Bess, after a character in a play. "We will give you a surname at once," said the Earl, "My daughter found you on a May morning. Suppose we call you Elizabeth May? I shall allow you to remain at the Castle in Tompion's charge for the present; and I hope you will take pains to learn all she can teach you. By and by I will see what can be done to place you in the way of earn- ing your living. You must forget all about the young man at Dover. He is a soldier, and will have to go wherever his regiment may be ordered. You had better tell me his name, by the bye." "Tom Brook." The Earl wrote the name in his pocket-book. "And you must promise me that you will hold no communication with him while you are in this house." "I can't write," said the girl simply. "Very good. But you must understand that you are not to communicate with Mr. Brook by any other means. And now you can go." The girl, no longer Bess, but Elizabeth May, lifted her soft eyes gratefully to the Earl's face, made him a curtsy, and retired. "She is the prettiest creature I ever saw," 86 FLOWER AND WEED. mused his lordship; "and she has the air of a lady, in spite of her vile English. This must be some waif from the superior classes that has drifted into the gutter." OVER SURIMER SEAS. 87 CHAPTER IV. OVER SUMMER SEAS. "And ever as we sailed, our minds were full Of love and wisdom, which would overflow In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful; And in quick smiles whose light would come and go, Like music o'er wide waves." MiDSUMMER-DAY had comc and gone, and June was nearly over, before Lady Lucille was so far convalescent as to sit in an armchair by the open window of her dressing-room, and take afternoon tea with her father. The fever had been worse than Mr. Wharton apprehended. A famous physician had been down from London four times, merely to approve Mr. Wharton's treatment. Nurses and doctor had watched with unwavering care; and now the peril was past and gone, and Lady Lucille, pale, wan, and ethereal, reclined luxuriously in a nest of downy pillows, and sipped her tea, while her father watched her with eyes that were dimmed by happy tears. There had been a time — one terrible never- to-be-forgotten night — when he feared to lose this one jewel of his home. 8.8 FLOWER AND WEED. Lady Lucille had had three nurses instead of two. Elizabeth May had pleaded with the doctor to be admitted to the sickroom, as a mere drudge to wait upon the trained nurses; and she had proved herself a genius at nursing. "I believe she has a genius for everything," said Lucille, looking up at the girl who stood beside her chair, ready to take the cup and saucer which were almost too heavy a burden for the weak wasted hands. "Now that I am so much better, we can go on with our reading-lessons, Elizabeth." "I shall be so glad of that, Lady Lucille. I have been learning with Tompion every day; and I've read to myself at night when I've been wakeful; and I think I've got on. But it will be so much nicer to learn with you." "She has left off using vulgar expressions," said Lord Ingleshaw approvingly. "She reads her Bible daily, and she has been to church with Tompion. I think she is getting clearer ideas of what Chris- tianity means." Elizabeth looked at him gratefully with those gazelle eyes of hers. He, too, like Bruno Challoner, was one of the demi-gods, judged by that standard of humanity which was alone familiar to her. She looked with reverent admiration at the straight clearly-cut features, the thick gray hair brushed OVER SUMMER SEAS. 89 smoothly back from the broad open brow, the com- manding gaze of the gray eyes, under strongly marked brows, darker than the hair. Among all her companions of the past there had been no such face as this, Bruno Challoner was in London. Lord Ingleshaw, seeing that he was fretting himself into a fever, had insisted upon his leaving the Castle directly Lucille was pronounced out of danger. "I'll send you half a dozen telegrams a day, if you like," said his lordship; "but I won't have you hanging about the corridors to question the nurses, or pacing the terrace, under Lucille's windows, half the night." During the first fortnight of his betrothed's ill- ness, Bruno had been in frequent communication with Elizabeth, who was, indeed, his chief informant about his darling's condition. She seemed more sympathetic than the hired nurses. She brought him messages from his love, and carried back his own loving messages and the flowers which he had gathered to adorn his darling's room. She was full of intelligence, divining his every thought, as it seemed to Bruno, with that wonderful keenness bred of stern necessity. Her devotion to the young lady, whose charity had opened the gates of a new world for her, was obvious in all her conduct. go FLOWER AND WEED. "I believe that for once in my life I have met with the black swan, gratitude," Bruno told him- self. And now Bruno was getting rid of his life, as best he might, an exile from Ingleshaw. He slept at the house in Grosvenor-square, dined at his club, spent his days in masculine society, talked politics with incipient Cabinet Ministers flushed with the small triumphs of their first session, and planned his own entrance into public life. He had no heart for the amusements of London while Lucille was still an invalid. His spirits rose and fell in unison with the telegrams from the Castle. He would accept no invitation, and go to neither opera nor theatre. His only evening resort was the Strangers' Gallery in the House of Commons, where he com- bined instruction with amusement. Never did three weeks of his life hang more heavily on his hands. She, who little more than a month ago had been Wild Bess, Black-eyed Bess, of Whitechapel, but who now answered meekly to the name of Eliza- beth, had ample occupation for her mind during this glowing summer-tide. Her introduction to Ingleshaw Castle had been like a new birth. Pygmalion's animated statue could hardly have OVER SUIVIMER SEAS, 9 1 begun life more newly than this girl, suddenly- transferred from the slums to the palace. Her eyes shone wide with wonder at a world where all things, animate and ihanimate, were strange and beautiful. She had an intense appreciation of the Beautiful which surprised Lucille, who had been taught by the severely Aristotelian Marjoram that taste was the product of education, and was not to be expected from the ignorant. Even Miss Marjorum was forced to admit that Elizabeth May showed a wonderful quickness at acquiring knowledge; but while owning as much as this, Lucille's governess in nowise sank her pre- judice against her pupil's protegee. She would have disliked Elizabeth less had she been dull and slow. There was, to her mind, something uncanny, some- thing impish, in this excessive quickness, this mar- vellous adaptability. That a creature plucked out of the quagmire of destitute dissolute East- end London could acquire all at once the graciousness of a lady, the low and musical tones of voice, the quiet measured movements, the tranquil beauty of educated girlhood — ay, of girlhood taught and trained through the slow course of years by Miss Marjorum — was a miracle that troubled and vexed the governess exceedingly. Of course this refine- ment was all surface — mere acting at best — a re- g2 FLOWER AND WEED. markable instance of mimetic power in the lower classes. Unfortunately, the Earl and his daughter were too ready to be deceived by these mimic graces. Already this characterless creditless damsel was accepted as a member of the Ingleshaw house- hold, and sat at meat with the upper servants, or was served apart in her own bower — she who should have been proud to eat with kitchen-maids and footmen. There was no more talk of ap- prenticing her, or finding her service elsewhere. She was to learn the duties of an abigail from Tompion, and on Tompion's marriage with the under-butler — an event which had been impending for the last five years — Elizabeth May was to take Tompion's place. In the mean time there were small and gracious duties allotted to her. She dusted the books and china in Lady Lucille's rooms; she arranged the flowers, handling with light and delicate touch those exquisite exotics which were to her verily the revelation of unknown worlds. Lucille often made these flowers the text for a brief lecture on the countries from which they came, Elizabeth listening delightedly to the description of those far-away tropical regions. During those quiet days of Lucille's convalescence, the girl whom she had rescued from ignorance and destitution was almost always in her company. It OVER SUMMER SEAS. 93 was In vain that Miss Marjorum prophesied dismally upon the evil consequences of this familiarity. The girl behaved so well that it was difficult to object to her presence. She Was so eager to learn, that it would have seemed in the last degree illiberal to withhold knowledge. And it was the higher order of knowledge for which this virgin mind thirsted. When Lucille read passages of Milton or Shake- speare, Elizabeth listened enthralled. That story of Hamlet — that passionate tragedy of Romeo and Juliet — how deep was the magic of these to the listener, whose imagination, for the first time, be- held that awful picture of Hamlet and the Ghost, or glowed with delight at the image of Juliet bend- ing from her balcony to whisper to her lover in the sweet silence of the Italian midnight! To be eigh- teen, intelligent, of an impassioned temperament, and to hear those stories for the first time! What could surpass that rapture? To hear them, seated in an Italian garden, steeped in the perfume of countless roses, warmed to the very heart's core by the sunshine of July! And a few weeks ago this girl had lived in a loathsome alley, polluted with unspeakable foulness, clamorous with rough riot and vilest speech. Against these Skakesperean studies, this intro- duction of the gutter-bred girl to the sublimest 94 FLOWER AND WEED. heights of imaginative literature, Miss Marjorum protested vehemently. "What do you mean to make of her?" she asked, "Don't you see that you are spoiling her for domestic service by trying to give her these elevated tastes?" "I am not trying," answered Lucille. "Elevated taste is as natural to her as his song is to the thrush. Can't you see that God created her full of imagination and cleverness, and that she has only been waiting the opportunity of development? She need not spend her life in domestic service. She takes so kindly to education that I shall teach her all I can; and I know you will help me, dearMarjy, and by and by we shall find plenty of use for her intelligence. If you will only take her in hand, she may some day earn her living by teaching others, as honourably as you have done for the last twenty years." This argument was unanswerable, and the soft- ened Marjorum replied gently, "You forget, my dear, that it is not every one who has the teacher's capacity. The power to im- part information is a peculiar gift. This girl may be quick in picking up ideas, in a superficial sort of way; but I doubt if she possesses any of the OVER SUMMER SEAS. 95 solid qualities which go to make a competent in- structress of youth." "Only try your hand upon her, Marjy dear. I'm sure you could make something out of a black girl from Otaheite." Marjorum, thus flattered and caressed into com- pliance by the pupil whom she fondly loved, and in whose married home she hoped by and by to make her nest, allowed her prejudices to be lulled to sleep. She took Elizabeth in hand, and put her through a severe educational process for a space of three hours daily; and once having put her hand to the plough. Miss Marjorum drove her furrow vigor- ously. She was glad to have an occasion for the bringing forth of that educational machinery which Lucille had outgrown and done with. The equator, Lindley Murray, latitude and longitude, the sidereal heavens, the earth's formation, the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, were all brought into play. Elizabeth laboured and learned obediently, inde- fatigably. It was dryasdust work; but her bene- factress wished her so to learn; and she never faltered, any more than she had faltered when Tompion introduced her to the feminine art of needlework by making her sew interminable seams in the stiffest calico. When her morning studies were over Elizabeth ,96 FLOWER AND WEED. had her reward in an afternoon and evening given to music, art, and poetry. Her mind grew and widened under this double tuition. The knowledge of dry hard facts helped her to a higher apprecia- tion of poetry. Never, perhaps, did education pro- ceed so quickly. And now Lucille was so far recovered that the doctor declared she needed only a change to sea air to become as strong and well as she had been before that fatal May morning; so Miss Marjorum was despatched to Weymouth, attended by the under-butler, to find a furnished house facing the sea; and having selected one particular house, dis- tinguishable only by its superior freshness and purity of furniture and decoration, from a terrace of houses all exactly alike. Miss Marjorum telegraphed the accomplishment of her mission; whereupon Lord Ingleshaw himself escorted his daughter to Wey- mouth, attended by Tompion and Elizabeth May, who travelled together in a second-class carriage, an opportunity which Tompion improved by various remarks upon favourites, flatterers, and sycophants in the abstract, and of the brief tenure of favour usually enjoyed by such persons; all of which sen- tentious utterances Miss May heard with the calm smile of scorn, feeling herself as much superior to Tompion as she knew herself inferior to Lady Lucille. OVER SUMMER SEAS. 97 Lord Ingleshaw spent a few days with his daughter, who was now in such perfect heaUh and spirits, that this change of air prescribed by the doctor seemed a mere formula. They drove about the shady rustic roads, sailed on the summer sea, explored the arid heights of Portland, drank of the Wishing- well, admired the White Horse, and tho- roughly enjoyed life in this calm restful fashion. And then Lord Ingleshaw departed on a visit to a friend in the North, where there was to be great slaughter of grouse a little later on. "I daresay Bruno will be running down to have a peep at you," he said on the morning he left Weymouth. "I have given him permission to come." Lucille blushed and sparkled, and kissed her father by way of answer. She had been longing to see her lover for the last month. He had written to her daily, but she had been forbidden to answer his letters, which seemed a hard thing. He had sent her books, music, trifles of every kind calculated to beguile the tedium of illness, and she had only been allowed to thank him through that stately me- dium, Miss Marjorum. She had not been allowed to look at the letter which conveyed her gratitude, lest scarlet fever should be transmitted by a look. And now he was coming, he was coming! She could have shouted for joy. Tremulous with hope Flower and Weed. 7 9 8 FLOWER AND WEED. and gladness, she stood on the balcony overhanging the bright picturesque bay, and looked along the parade for that gracious fly which should convey Mr. Challoner and his portmanteau from the station. The Italian band was playing Don Giovmmi below her windows — melodies brimming over with joyous love, like that which filled her soul. "Surely, my dear Lucille, you are going for a walk or a drive this delightful morning!" said Miss Marjorum, coming in from the back drawing-room, where Elizabeth sat meekly writing out a page of grammatical analysis, with the laborious slowness of one to whom penmanship and grammar were new arts. "No, Marjy dearest, not today. I am watching for Bruno," answered Lucille from the balcony. "Deh, vieni alia finestra," played the band be^ low, while the happy bathers splashed and bounded in the blue water beyond that crescent of yellow sand. "But, my dear Lucille, you have no justification for expecting him this morning, or even to-day," expostulated Miss Marjorum. "His lordship merely stated, as a general fact, that Mr. Challoner was now at liberty to pay you a visit." "And do you think he will not come directly he is free?" exclaimed Lucille. "Would I not go to OVER SUMMER SEAS. QQ him — lilce an arrow from a bow — if I were told I might go? I expect him this instant." "You will, at least, allow that he can hardly- come, until the train brings him, and there is none due till half-past three." "How horribly matter-of-fact you are!" cried Lucille. "No, I suppose he would come by train. Post-horses would be slower, and balloons are so erratic. Please give me the time-table." She ran rapidly over that bewildering docu- ment. "No, I can't make out anything. My brain is in a whirl. The trains seem to go everywhere ex- cept to this place. Yes, here is the column at last. Weymouth — Weymouth! No; not till half-past three. How horrible!" "Had you not better go for a nice country drive?" suggested Miss Marjorum. "It would divert your mind." "Nothing less than an earthquake would divert my mind," retorted Lucille impatiently. "I don't believe in your time-table. I'll go and sit on the beach, if- you like; but I shall be expecting Bruno every instant. Has Elizabeth finished her lessons?" Miss Marjorum inspected the page of analysis in the stiff newly-acquired round-hand, looking down at the exercise majestically over Elizabeth's shoulder. lOO FLOWER AND WEED. "Yes, she has just finished." "Then she can come with me," said Lucille, putting on her hat and gloves, and taking up a volume of Shakespeare. "Bring your work, Lizzie, and come and sit on the beach." Elizabeth ran off to put on her hat, and returned in two minutes, the image of propriety, in her neat- fitting black cashmere gown, linen collar, and small black straw hat. She carried a basket containing an antimacassar, for she had already advanced from endless calico seams to high-art needlework. The two girls tripped lightly down to the beach, away from the bathers and the children, to a spot that was almost secluded, though the confined limits of the bay do not give much opportunity for seclu- sion. They found an empty boat which helped to screen them from the rest of the world, and, seated in its shadow, Lucille opened her Shakespeare. "I am going to read to you, Lizzie. Shall it be Romeo and Juliet ?^^ "Whatever you like, Lady Lucille." Lucille began at the ballroom scene, the dawn of Juliet's love, and went on, skipping a scene here and there, to the balcony scene. She had nearly finished this when there came a step upon the loose pebbles of the beach, and she dropped the book suddenly, and rose to her feet. OVER SUMMER SEAS. 10 1 Yes, it was Bruno! She would have known his steji among a thousand. Another moment, and she was dasped to his breast, still sheltered by that friendly boat, while Elizabeth walked away dis- creetly, leaving the lovers to themselves for a little while. There is a universal etiquette in these things, founded upon the universality of human nature, which prevails from Mayfair to Whitechapel. "My darling, how more than happy I am to be with you!" exclaimed Bruno. "I never thought that I should live to consider it my greatest misfortune not to have had scarlet fever. My own one, do not think that it was my vile cowardice which parted us all this time. I had no fear of the fever. I would have watched by your pillow day and night, if I had been allowed. But I could not rebel against your father. I best proved my love of his daughter by obedience to him." "I know, Bruno. I have never doubted your unselfishness or your love. But it has been a long parting. I did not think, it possible days and hours could seem so long," said Lucille naively. "Be assured they have not seemed longer to you than they have been to me, love. And now let us sit side by side, and you shall tell me all you have to tell. Thank God you are well again — the very image of blooming health — and lovelier than ever!" I02 FLOWER AND WEED. "But how did you get here, Bruno? Marjy and I examined the time-table; there was no train due till half-past three," "Perhaps you only looked at one time-table, I came by the Great Western," "What, are there two railways? How sweet of the Great Western to bring you ever so much sooner than I hoped!" And then they gave themselves up to lovers' talk, which must seem mere drivel, sheer imbecility, if set down formally in black and white, but full of deepest tenderest meaning for these two. They sat under the hull of the big lubberly fishing-boat, and told each other all they had thought, and felt, and suffered during the weary time of severance, Elizabeth strolled upon the beach a little way off, within call, should she be wanted. She looked back now and then at those two figures under the boat, but they gave no indication of wanting her, though she had been strolling up and down that stretch of sand and pebble for one slow sunny hour. For the first time since she had been at Weymouth she felt inexpressibly lonely; for the first time since she had seen the place the beauty of that southern bay, shut in from the outer world by green head- lands on one side and by Portland's bold peninsula on the other, began to pall upon her. In a moment, OVER SUMMER SEAS. IO3 as it were, her soul grew weary of blue sea and yellow sands, summer sky, undulating green hills, and all the glory and freshness of the summer day. What was it all to her, or to any lonely uncared-for creature, more than a picture on a wall — a thing in which she had no part? "Better to be in Ramshackle-court, where I had plenty of people of my own kind to talk to," she thought sullenly, when the second hour had begun, and the lovers still sat, absorbed, their heads bent towards each other, like flowers inclining on their stems. An hour ago she had been Lucille's com- panion, and life had seemed full of interest. Now she was Lucille's servant, a being quite remote from the young lady's existence. Nature had given this child of the gutter warm feelings — some good, some bad. Among the latter was jealousy, of which she had more than the com- mon share. She almost hated Bruno for having banished her from Lady Lucille's company. Yes, even Bruno, that demi-god, whose voice had tones which moved her almost to tears — whose eyes had glances that made her shrink and tremble. Better to be among her own people, amidst iiltli and squalor, evil ways and evil language? No, that was a lunatic's impulse. Could she, who had escaped from that pandemonium into the paradise I04 FLOWER AND WEED. of refinement and clean living, calmly contemplate the being flung back into that gulf of horror? No; a thousand times no. And yet, without sympathy, without the company of some one she loved and admired, the placid luxury of her present life was hateful to her. She had grown fastidious in this new atmosphere. Food and raiment, air and sun- shine, comfort and shelter, were no longer all-suf- ficient for her. Heretofore in a life of perpetual want and difficulty the cravings of physical nature had been paramount. Now the spiritual nature predominated. The sharper pangs of heart-hunger had begun. At last, when she had grown as weary of that smiling summer scene as ever she had felt of those Avet windy streets, along which she had toiled, drabbled and muddy, with her basket of sickly flowers, in the days of her slavery, Lucille and her lover rose and walked slowly across the sands to- wards that lonely figure. "We are going home, Elizabeth," said the lady. "It must be nearly time for luncheon." "Nearly!" exclaimed Bess. "It is half-past two. I heard the clock strike ever so long ago." "Poor thing, why did you wait for me? I dare- say you have been longing to go to your dinner," said Lucille compassionately. OVER SUMMER SEAS. I05 "I don't care a straw about dinner," answered Bess contemptuously; "only — only I don't like to be left and forgotten — as if — as if I was an um- brella." The delicate face flushed deepest carnation, and the large dark eyes sparkled with an angry fire, as the girl spoke. Bruno burst out laughing, moved by the absurdity of this outbreak of temper in a brand snatched from the burning. ''I am sorry I forgot you," said Lucille gently, but with a gravity which reminded Bess of the gulf between them. "Mr. Challoner and I are going to luncheon. Take the books and the basket, please, and make haste back to your dinner." Lucille and her lover walked slowly towards the parade, leaving Bess to gather up the books and work-basket from under the lee of the boat. "A decided exhibition of the cloven foot," said Bruno, smiling. "I begin to think you've caught a Tartar, Lucille." "She was never impertinent or ill-tempered be- fore, I don't understand it in the least." "I'm afraid I do. You've heard the vulgar proverb about setting a beggar on horseback. You have been rather too indulgent with that young person, and she is beginning to give herself airs. May I inquire what is the position which she oc- I06 FLOWER AND WEED. » cupies in your household? Is she your companion, or your maid?" "She will be my maid by and by, when Tom- pion marries; and, in the mean time, Marjy and I are trying to educate her. She is so quick and in- telligent that it is a pleasure to teach her." "Is there not a fear that you may make her too clever for her place? Tompion never struck me as an intellectual prodigy." "Poor Tompion! she is very dull." "Exactly, but an efficient servant." "An excellent servant," admitted Lucille. "Which I fear this young person will never be- come under your present process. My darling, your sweetness is spoiling her. You have made her in- solent already; and the next thing will be the ne- cessity of her dismissal." "No, no, Bruno; you do not know what a beauti- ful nature she has. I cannot tell you how devoted she was to me while I was ill — what an untiring nurse, what an affectionate companion." "I know she was deeply anxious about you, as she had good reason to be. I saw her very often in those sad days at Ingleshaw. She was the only person who ever gave me detailed information about my darling." "And she used to bring me flowers and mes- OVER SUMMER SEAS. tOJ sages from you. Sometimes when my mind Avas all astray, and it was difficult for me to understand what people said to me, she would take pains to let me know that you were near and sorry for me. Do you want me to forget all that, Bruno, now that I am well and that you are with me?" "No, dear, but I want you to be reasonable, A girl picked out of the gutter is a rough diamond at best. Such a gem must require a great deal of polishing before it is worthy to shine side by side with my pearl of price." All Lucille's thoughts on that day of reunion were given to her lover. They lunched together. Miss Marjorum — very sharp set after the unac- customed delay — counting for no more than if she had been a painter's lay-figure. They went for a long ramble together after luncheon, Lucille being eager to make Bruno acquainted with the rural beauties of the surrounding scenery. The landscape around Weymouth is not particularly poetic or strik- ing; but it is rustic and pretty, fertile, varied by hill and hollow, with more timber than is usually to be found in the region of the sea. Bruno thought those country lanes, those grassy hills, the realisa- tion of paradise. The lovers walked and talked, and talked and walked, forgetting time and distance, mankind and the world, until they had need to I08 FLOWER AND WEED. hasten in order to reach the house on the parade in time for the eight-o'clock dinner. "I am afraid you must be dreadfully tired," said Bruno, as they neared the town; "I ought not to have let you walk so far." "I don't feel as if I had walked a mile," an- swered Lucille; "I never felt stronger or better in my life." Tompion was waiting to dress her young mistress, and during that hurried toilet Lucille had no time to make any inquiry about Elizabeth, nor was Tompion disposed to volunteer information. She had been standing on her dignity ever since Eliza- beth's appearance in the household. Bruno and his betrothed spent the evening ab- sorbed in each other and Mozart, while Miss Marjo- rum slumbered placidly in the twilight of the back drawing-room, feeling that she was fulfilling all her duties as a dragon of prudery by the mere fact of her presence. Her slumbering figure, the very image of middle-aged repose, was also the incarna- tion of the proprieties. The next morning was gray and showery; but Bruno, too happy to sleep late o' mornings, had left his hotel for an early swim before the blinds were drawn up at the house on the parade. When he had had his swim he went for a walk on the sands, OVER SUMMER SEAS. lOQ careless of light showers. Sea and sky were a dull gray, with gleams of watery light touching the waves here and there. He had walked some distance, and was nearing the point of the bay, when he overtook a solitary young woman in black. He recognised the tall slim figure, the graceful walk, that free untutored grace which comes of an active life. "Good-morning, Elizabeth," he said, overtaking her; "you are out very early." She started at the sound of his voice, and turned to meet him, with the same vivid carnation which he had noted yesterday — a blush that might mean surprise, anger, shyness, anything, but which heightened her beauty. "Why shouldn't I be out?" she asked. "I sup- pose the sands are as free to me as to you, though I am a servant." This was an impulse of her old unregenerate nature, which prompted her to defiance of her superiors as a kind of self-defence. "All the world is free to youth and intellect," said Bruno coolly. "Why are you so disagreeable? I thought you were a good-tempered, well-meaning young woman, when I saw you at Ingleshaw." "I hope I shall always mean well to those who are good to me," answered the girl; "but I don't I I O FLOWER AND WEED. like to be taken up like a plaything, and cast aside and forgotten." "How do you mean?" "Till you came I was with Lady Lucille almost every hour of the day. She taught me, she read to me, she let me sit by her when she played the piano; I got to know all her favourite tunes. But when you came she left me on the beach and for- got me. I have not seen her or heard her voice since then. All yesterday afternoon and evening I sat alone in my little room at the top of the house, and watched the sea." "Why prefer solitude when there were Tompion and Mrs. Prince in the housekeeper's room? You might have been with them." "No, I mightn't. I hate them and they hate me. I have been a flower-girl; but I am not a servant, and I can't get on with servants." "Then I'm afraid you'll have to leave Ingleshaw Castle. You can hardly expect to spend your life in the drawing-room with an Earl's daughter." "Lady Lucille said she was fond of me, and that she wanted to teach me to be a lady. Why cannot I be with her, if she likes to have me?" "Because you are a foolish and ungrateful young woman," replied Bruno, hardening his heart against this girl, whose lovely eyes were fixed upon his OVER SUMMER SEAS, I I I face with an appealing look which was full of pathos. "You are not content to enjoy Lady Lucille's society when it is convenient to her to have you with her. You give yourself offended airs because she prefers her future husband to a person whom she has known only two months, and of whose character and belongings she knows nothing." "When I love people I love them with all my soul; I love them until love is like a pain — a slow gnawing pain that eats my heart," answered the girl impetuously. "What difference does it make to me that Lady Lucille is an Earl's daughter? She and I are made of the same flesh and blood, are we not?" "No doubt; but eighteen years' culture and training are in themselves a distinction, to say no- thing of hereditary influences," said Bruno, answer- ing his own thoughts rather than that passionate speaker. He had been wondering at the delicate beauty, the grand carriage of this gutter-bred creature; the daring with which she asserted herself, and claimed indulgence for her passionate feelings — she who be- longed to the class which has been taught from its cradle to cringe and whine. And then gravely yet kindly he took her to task for her folly. 1 1 2 FLOWER AND WEED. "My good girl," he said, "you are altogether wrong in your manner of looking at your new life. Lady Lucille has been very kind to you — kinder than one young lady in twenty would have been; so kind that she has run counter to the opinion of her father, her governess, and myself, in order to gratify her inclination to help you. But this good- ness of hers can give you no claim upon her, beyond the common claim of your helplessness. You have no right to exact more than it is wise or convenient for her to give. If you are willing to be a true and faithful servant to her, to respect her position and your own place as a servant, there is no reason she should not please herself by keeping you in her service; but if you are subject to jealous tempers, she had better find you a place elsewhere, where your affection for your mistress will be less in- tense, and your notions of a servant's duty will be clearer." Elizabeth's heart beat loud and fast as she listened to his cold and measured words. Was it hatred of the speaker which made her so angry? Her passionate soul revolted at the idea of these differences of rank, which made it an impertinence in her to love her benefactress with a jealous and exacting love. Ever since she had been able to think she had been a Radical. Her daring intellect OVER SUMMER SEAS. Ilj had overleapt the barriers of rank and fortune. Tramping in the mud — bonnetless, almost shoeless — she had looked at the women in carriages, and had told herself that she was as good as they. To her, as to the rugged philosopher Carlyle, it had seemed that the difference between beauty in the gutter and beauty in a three-hundred-guinea barouche was only a question of clothes. She had never heard of hereditary influences — the slow and gradual development of privileged races, the per- petual imperceptible education of favourable sur- roundings. "If I was to be no better than a servant — a dog to fetch and to carry, and to eat and drink and get fat — why did Lady Lucille teach me, and read to me, and let me hear her play?" asked Bess. "She never did as much as that for Tom- pion." "And she was very foolish when she did it for you. She has spoiled the makings of a good servant." "I'll try to prove you wrong in that," answered Bess, frowning defiance at him. "If I am to be a servant, I'll be a good one. I'll show you that I can keep my place as well as any of them." "I shall be very glad to find you can do so," Flower and Weed, O 114 FLOWER AND WEED. replied Bruno, turning upoii his heel, and leaving the damsel to her reflections. It was not without compunction that he so left her. He would have liked to have said something kind at parting; but she had shown him the danger of over-much kindness. She was evidently a person who must be ruled with a high hand. He breakfasted with Lady Lucille and Miss Mar- jorum, and left them almost immediately after breakfast. He had some business to transact at the other end of the town, he told Lucille — a fact which she was inwardly inclined to resent. What business had he to be anywhere except with her? When he was gone. Miss Marjorum summoned Elizabeth to her morning studies in the back draw- ing-room. The girl came, the image of meek obe- dience, but with pallid cheeks, and red rings round her eyes. "You have been crying," said Miss Marjorum severely. "I had the toothache," faltered Bess, with her swollen eyelids drooping over the dark eyes. "And you cried because of the toothache? What childish want of self-command! Are you aware of the great mass of suffering that is always going on in this world; and can you shed tears for any petty pain of your own?" OVER SUMMER SEAS. I I 5 "One's own pains hurt most," answered Bess. "I daresay other people cry about theirs." "Only people who are without fortitude and submission to the will -of God," answered Miss Mar- jorum. "All suffering is sent us for our benefit." "Then I had rather not be benefited — in that way," said Bess, so meekly that her instructress could hardly resent the remark. Then came the usual morning's work — multipli- cation-tables, weights and measures, English gram- mar, a little geography, a little English history — just that elementary knowledge which would bring Elizabeth May on a level with the lowest form in a Board school. But dryasdust as the lessons were, Elizabeth gave all the powers of her mind to the comprehension and digestion of them. She learnt with a quickness that astonished her teacher, who had never before taught any one with whom lessons meant rescue from the dismal swamp of ignorance and vulgarity. Elizabeth was still bending over her page of parsing when Bruno came in, flushed and joyous- looking, smelling of sea-breezes and sunshine. "Lucille, I want you to come for a cruise in my yacht," he said. "Your yacht!" exclaimed Lucille, starting up from her work, delighted at her lover's return. 8* 1 I 6 FLOWER AND WEED. "That is a tremendous joke! How should you come by a yacht?" "In the most sordid and commonplace manner — I have hired one." "Then that was your business this morning?" "Precisely." "O you darling! Pray forgive me." "For what?" "For my wickedness. I thought it was so un- kind of you to have business at the other end of the town when I wanted you here." "My business was to charter a vessel in which we can explore the coast between Bournemouth and Dawlish. You behold the skipper of the Urania sloop, forty tons, crew five men and a boy. For one month certain I- am her proud proprietor." "And you know how to yacht?" inquired Lucille naively. "I had some small experience in that line in the Mediterranean; but I have engaged the captain of the Urania — an old salt. You needn't be afraid to trust yourself on my boat." "I would sail across the Atlantic with you in a cockle-shell," said Lucille. They were standing on the balcony, out of every- body's hearing, and could afford to be foolish. "We should both go to the bottom," answered OVER SUMMER SEAS. II7 Bruno; "but it would be happiness. There she is! How do you like her? Lovely, isn't she?" he asked, gazing seaward. "I did not know you had any friends here," said Lucille, looking along the parade with a by no means rapturous expression. She thought her lover had been talking of some fair promenader. "No more I have, sweet, nor hardly a feminine friend in this wide world except you. The Urania, love, yonder against the blue. I sent her round that you might look at her. Are not her lines graceful?" "She looks very pretty, and how coquettishly she bobs to the sea!" said Lucille, as the Urania dipped her nose to the water. "When am I to go on board her?" "Directly after luncheon, if you like. We might come home to a nine-o'clock dinner." "Never mind luncheon. Let us pack up some biscuits and things, and go at once," exclaimed Lucille, with her eyes on the sloop. "She doesn't take the slightest notice of us. Have you any means of communicating with the captain?" "Only a handkerchief I told him to keep his eye on these houses," answered Bruno, waving his white silk handkerchief "Now he will lay to, and 1 1 8 FLOWER AND WEED. send a boat on shore, and you and Miss Marjorum can come as soon as you please." Lucille ran to the back drawing-room to tell the governess what bliss awaited her. "We are going at once — at once," she ex- claimed, after she had rapidly related Bruno's ac- quisition of the Urania. "Put on your mushroom- hat directly, like a darling, and bring your biggest sunshade. You can come, Elizabeth. Run down and tell Prince to pack a basket of luncheon, with everything nice that she can get in five minutes — wine, too, for Mr. Challoner, and lemonade for us. And you can bring some nice books with you, though I don't suppose any one will want to read; and my crewel-basket, though I'm sure I sha'n't work," Lucille was gone before Miss Marjorum could question or remonstrate. There was nothing to be done but obey. If she declined to go, the lovers would assuredly go without her; and though the proprieties, as observed betAveen engaged people, might be stretched to allow of a country walk, they would be seriously outraged by yachting without a chaperon. Miss Marjorum loved not the sea, nor the sea her. At her best, she could just manage to escape sea-sickness by maintaining a statuesque immobility which hardly permitted her to think. OVER SUMMER SEAS. IIQ She would have liked to do her voyages under the influence of chloroform, were that possible. All the gray clouds had drifted away; the sky was one unbroken blue. Poor Miss Marjorum could not hint a doubt of the weather. She went up to her room, and put on her brown mushroom-hat, and was ready to start when Mrs. Prince's basket was packed — a task which took so long as to make Lucille impatient. At last everything was ready, and in less than a quarter of an hour afterwards they were all on board — Miss Tvlarjorum seated in a luxurious nest of cushions and shawls, outwardly the image of repose, but inwardly suffering, a Quarterly Reviav lying open in her lap, at an interesting paper on Herder, of which she was incapable of reading a line; Lucille dancing about the deck after Bruno, looking at this and that, and asking innumerable questions; Elizabeth May sitting in a corner apart, the very furthest corner available, working diligently, and never lifting her eyes from her work. She had been told that she ought to remember her position as a servant, and she wanted to show Bruno Challoner that she did so remember herself. They went coasting around by picturesque cliffs; they saw caves, and other wonders of the shore — jelly-fish, and other marvels of the deep. Life, for 120 FLOWER AND WEED. two out of these four, was steeped in the sunshine that lights an earthly paradise. The summer sea, the summer air, were full of rapture. The other two sat still and silently endured — one the agony of suppressed sea -sickness, the other suppressed heartache; though why her heart should ache Elizabeth May hardly knew. "Why should the sight of their happiness make me miserable?" she asked herself. "Am I made up of envy and jealousy?" Many days came after this — long summer days of peerless weather, fresh seas, and flowing sails. They spent every day on the Urania. Miss Mar- jorum's silent sufferings grew less acute. Custom dulled the edge of agony; or it may be that, in the language of the captain, Miss Marjorum was getting her sea-legs. Elizabeth went with them every day, always provided with her work-basket, but she worked very little now, and no longer sat in a re- mote corner. Were she ever so willing to keep her place as a servant, it was not easy for her to do so, when Lucille was inclined to treat her as a companion; and Lucille was so inclined always most especially on board the yacht, where the in- nocent happiness of Bruno's betrothed overflowed in kindliness to everybody. She had the sweetest words and looks even for the sunburnt weather- OVER SUMMER SEAS. 121 beaten old sailors. She made much of them, and gave them dainties out of her ample picnic-basket, and spoiled them for future service, giving them false views of young la'dyhood. Bruno hired a funny little piano, built on pur- pose for a yacht, and to this he and his betrothed sang many a lover's duet on calm evenings. By and by Lucille discovered that Elizabeth had a fine contralto voice, whereupon she taught the girl to take part in the "Canadian Boat-Song," "Blow, Gentle Gales," and other sea-going glees. Bruno felt that it was foolish, wrong even, to make this girl the companion of their lives, she whose earlier life was unknown to them, save by her unattested record of bare facts. He remonstrated with Lucille, and then gave way. It was true that Elizabeth was an exceptional person; the lowness of her bringing up had left no indelible stamp of vulgarity. She grew more refined in manner and diction, nay, even in ideas, every day of her life. It was im- possible to dispute her innate superiority; a rough diamond perhaps, but assuredly a diamond of purest water, and one that took kindly to the polishing process. She had never lost her temper since that first day. If the lovers forgot or neglected her, she sat apart and held her peace, patiently awaiting Lucille's 122 FLOWER AND WEED. pleasure; or she sat at Miss Marjorum's feet and read aloud, her instructress feeling very proud of her progress. For nearly six weeks they lived this happy life. Lord Ingleshaw sometimes joined them for a few days; and on those occasions Elizabeth May fell into the background of their existence, keeping re- spectfully aloof from the grave gray-bearded elderly man, whom she regarded with deepest awe. They explored every bit of the coast, from Durlstone Head to the Start Point, sometimes spending a couple of nights on board the Urania, until Miss Marjorum grew so familiar with Neptune, that it was a wonder to her to think she had ever been a bad sailor. In all these summer' days of varying weather Elizabeth never wearied of the sea, whether she sat alone and apart, absorbed in her own thoughts, or joined in the amusements of Lady Lucille and Mr. Challoner. The sea was a source of unfailing delight to her. It was the wildest grandest thing she had ever seen. Mountain and moorland she knew not, nor prairie, nor forest; the green fields and low hills of Kent were all she had seen of Nature's grandeur, until she came suddenly face to face with ocean. Her first experience of a tempest was rapture. She stood on deck, lashed and beaten OVER SUMMER SEAS. 123 by the rain, buffeted by the wind, and watched the lightning gleaming on the dark leaden waters, and the livid white crests of the waves that seemed to leap up against the bfackened sky, and gloried in the tumult of the scene. She loved the calm summer aspect of the sea all the more intensely after she had seen the might and horror of the storm. The happiest days must end. September was nearly over. The days were shortening, the evening breezes were growing chill, albeit the noontides were as sunny as midsummer. Bruno was to sur- render his command of the Urania in a day or two; and Lucille and her governess were under orders for Ingleshaw Castle, where his lordship had already taken up his abode in readiness for the pheasant -shooting. There was to be no parting between these happy lovers; but their sea-going days were over; and Lucille's spirit was shadowed by a faint cloud of melancholy at the thought that such blissful days could come to an end. "I wonder whether we shall ever come to Wey- mouth again?" she said, looking dreamily at the picturesque bay from her low luxurious seat on deck. "I don't know, love; I think our next yachting experiences should be in more romantic waters — off the Orkneys or the Hebrides." 124 FLOWER AND WEED. "I think I would rather come here again; we can never be happier than we have been here," said Lucille softly. "Yes, yes, we can; our souls may take a higher flight in bolder grander scenes; we will sail under Italian skies, over the tideless blue of the Mediter- ranean. I will show you Capri, Paestum, Cyprus; there shall be a perpetual crescendo in our happiness!" "That cannot be, Bruno; nothing can surpass perfection; and I have been perfectly happy here." "You are too logical for me," he said, with a faint sigh. "How wearily you spoke just then!" exclaimed Lucille, looking at him with sudden anxiety; "you have had such a pale and tired look for the last few days, Bruno. I hope you are not ill." "111? no; I was never better in my life. But there is a certain tameness in this coast; it is just possible to get tired of it. I am glad we are going back to Ingleshaw." "For the sake of shooting those poor phea- sants. What a pity that even the most amiable Englishman should be created with a propensity to murder!" This was their last day. They had gone for a long sail, and it was late in the evening when they neared Weymouth, under a full moon, , OVER SUMMER SEAS. I25 This day had not been so perfectly happy as other days, Bruno was tired, or out of spirits. Lucille could not tell which. He did not interest himself in the sailing of the yacht, never touching a rope all through the day, he who was usually so active. He lay on a rug at Lucille's feet, reading a newspaper or talking to her, in a somewhat list- less fashion. And now, in the moonlight, he was pacing the little deck, with a restless air that seemed like a rebellion against the narrow space to which he was confined. Lucille went down into the cabin to fetch an extra wrap, and stayed there for about a quarter of an hour talking to Miss Marjorum, who was com- fortably esconced on the sofa, placidly digesting a very good dinner. On her return to the deck, Lucille saw Bruno and Elizabeth seated side by side, the girl's face clearly visible in the bright moonlight — a pale impassioned face turned towards Bruno, with tears streaming down the cheeks. He had his hand on her shoulder, and he was talking to her in a voice so low that it was drowned by the faint plash of the waves, yet with an unmistakable earnestness of manner. For a few moments Lucille stood aghast. The passionate imploring look in the girl's eyes, the attitude of the man, which seemed one of appeal or 126 FLOWER AND WEED. entreaty — what could these mean except that one hideous treason which would change the colour of Lucille Challoner's life? She stood as if changed to stone; she felt as if she had suddenly stepped upon the edge of an abyss, saw the black gulf yawning below her, and knew that she must fall into it. Only for a few moments did she stand looking at those two figures in the bows, every line clearly defined in the broad silver light, and then she advanced towards them with a quiet step, and looked at them with a frank and not unfriendly gaze, slow to believe in evil, despite this agony of doubt gnawing her heart. "Is there anything the matter, Bruno?" He had started ever so slightly at her footstep, but he looked up at her now steadily enough, with grave unabashed eyes, his hand still resting lightly on Elizabeth's shoulder. "Only the realisation of my own fear. This girl is not happy in the artificial life she has been leading with us. It does not suit her temper or her temperament. You must find her more occupa- tion, regular duties, a place to fill in your father's household, or in somebody else's. This idle orna- mental life of ours wearies her." He rose from the bench, leaving Elizabeth sit- ting there, silent, downcast. O^'ER SUMMER SEAS. 12"] "Is this true, Elizabeth?" asked Lucille. "Yes." "Then you should have made your complaints to me and not to Mr. Challoner; he can hardly be expected to understand your feelings," Lucille an- swered, in colder accents than Bruno had ever heard before from her lips. "What did she say to you, Bruno?" Lucille asked presently, when she and her lover were stand- ing side by side, out of Elizabeth's hearing. "O, I hardly know!" he answered, with a touch of impatience. "Another outburst of temper like that of which I told you six weeks ago. You have been most unwise in your treatment of her. In- stead of being grateful, she is discontented with her position. I warned you against this result, Lucille." "How harshly you speak, Bruno! I could not help being fond of the girl, and I did not think she could be ungrateful," said Lucille slowly. She had hardly recovered from the bewilder- ment which had seized her at sight of those two figures — the pale face wet with tears, the passionate eyes turned towards Bruno. Her lover's explana- tion, given with such a cold matter-of-fact air, went far to satisfy her; but it was not altogether satis- factory. Unused as she was to encounter false- 123 FLOWER AND WEED. hood, unsuspicious as she was of wrong, she had yet an unhappy feeling, as of one who walks in the dark with a vague sense of danger close at hand. She could hardly see the lamp-lit semicircle of the bay, the white houses gleaming in the moonlight, for the tears that clouded her eyes, tears wrung from a nameless agony. She hardly spoke to Bruno during the business of landing, and it was only when they were on the doorstep that Bruno found anything to say to her, and then it was but to bid a brief good-night. All their plans were made for the next day — Bruno was to meet them at the station and escort them to Ingleshaw. A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF TIIE PAST. 12g CHAPTER V. A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. "Sir, you and I must part, — but that's not it: Sir, you and I have loved, — but there's not it." It was the first week in October, and the woods at Ingleshaw were deepening to that sombre green which precedes the glory of the autumnal reds and yellows; the chestnuts had already put on the tawny hue of decay, and the russet leaves fell heavily on the soft grass in the avenue; but oaks and beeches held their own yet against the de- stroyer. The gardens were vivid with gaudy autumn flowers; but the roses still bloomed in sheltered places, and the hothouses were full of summer bloom. Life at Ingleshaw Castle moved upon more con- ventional lines than that unceremonious existence on board the Urania. Lucille and her lover no longer spent their days in almost unbroken com- panionship, albeit they were living under one roof. Lord Ingleshaw was fond of shooting, and expected Flovjer and Weed, 9 130 FLOWER AND WEED. Bruno to be equally enthusiastic; so these two spent most of their mornings in the woods, with a keeper and a couple of dogs, shooting pheasants in the old-fashioned country-squire or country-parson style. Lucille's aunt. Lady Carlyon, had arrived at the Castle on a visit of indefinite duration. "I shall stay as long as ever you contrive to keep me amused, my dear," she said; "so it will be your own fault if I go away soon. Ingleshaw is quite the dullest place I know; but there is a soothing influence in its dulness which always makes me feel better afterwards — like what people say of the Engadine, don't you know. It's not that you feel particularly well while you are there, but you find yourself in such splendid health directly you get away." To amuse Lady Carlyon was no light duty. She liked her niece to go to her at half-past eight with her early cup of tea, and read little bits of the newspaper to her before she got up. This helped her brain to awake, she said. She required company in her morning saunter round the gardens- She wanted her niece's sympathy with her crewel- work, an art which she carried to great perfection, but for which she required a good deal of as- sistance from other people. She liked to have one A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST, I3I of Mr. Anthony Trollope's novels read to her; and she entered warmly into the loves and perplexities of his young people. She liked to hear her favourite bits of Mozart. In fact, she liked to keep Lucille about her in an elegant kind of slavery all day long; while poor Lucille was longing to be trudging through the woods, following the far-off sound of the guns, so as to meet the sportsmen after their morning's work, and sit on some grassy bank with them while they ate their picnic luncheon. Lady Carlyon professed herself delighted at her niece's engagement. "I think I could hardly have done better for you myself, if I had brought you out next season," she said. "No doubt your father always intended you and Bruno to marry. It is such a comfortable way of adjusting things. Bruno will have the estate, and you will have a good deal of money, without which Bruno would have found it rather difficult to manage." "Aunt Ethel, you surely don't think — " began Lucille, turning very pale. "I don't think that he cares more for the money than for you!" cried the dowager; "of course I don't. What a silly sensitive child you are! Everybody knows that he adores you; but the money will be very useful to him, all the same. It 9* 1^2 FLOWER AND WEED. will make it much easier for him to be a good landlord. Nobody ought to depend solely on land nowadays. Your father tells me that you and Bruno are to be married at Ingleshaw Church early in the new year. I should have preferred West- minster Abbey, and the height of the season; but George is a person with whom it is quite useless to argue. He does not intend you to be presented until after your marriage, which will save trouble, he says. What an absurd idea! You ought to have made your hit as one of the beauties of the season before you were married. It would have been a cac/iei for you when you began your career as a wife. But men have no foresight; and my brother is just forty years behind the day in all his ideas." "But T would ever so much rather be married quietly at Ingleshaw than have a grand London wedding, aunt Ethel," answered Lucille. . "Well, it will save a good deal of money, and that seems to be all the aristocracy think about nowadays," said Lady Carlyon contemptuously. "I am sure //lai is not my father's reason," said Lucille. "Perhaps not. Your father was always fond of hiding his light under a bushel. Give him his worm- eaten old books and a quiet corner, and he is con- A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 33 tent. And now, Lucille, how about your trousseau? It is time you began to see about that." "Dearest aunt, when I don't even know in what month I am going to Be married! There is plenty of time." "There is never plenty of time where dress- makers are concerned," answered Lady Carlyon, with authority. "I know what the creatures are, and how little trust there is to be put in them. If you want the best people to work for you, you must give them good notice." "Why cannot Miss Sanderson make my gowns, aunt? She has done very well for me hitherto." Miss Sanderson was the chief milliner and man- tua-maker of Sevenoaks, and was looked up to as a great authority on Paris fashions. "My child, you have been in the nursery," shrieked Lady Carlyon, "and it did not matter a straw what you wore. But do you suppose Miss Sanderson is the proper person to launch you in society? Half a woman's success, nowadays, de- pends on her dressmaker. Your gowns fit you well enough, I allow. It is really wonderful how these country dressmakers contrive to fit so well, when a forty-guinea gown from Regent-street will come home all wrinkles. But it is not enough nowadays that a woman's gowns should fit. They must be original, 134 FLOWER AND WEED. daring. Every new gown should be a new depar- ture. I have been reflecting seriously upon this matter, and I have come to the conclusion that your dinner and visiting gowns must be made by Munt- zowski." "What an extraordinary name! Who is Munt- zowski?" "Quite the newest dressmaker in London. She is a Pole, and a born artist. Forty years ago Balzac declared that the Slavonic temperament was the artistic temperament; but this is the first develop- ment of the Slavonic mind in dressmaking. Munt- zowski's gowns are something hors li'gne. She has a feeling for colour, an audacity in her outlines, un- known hitherto. Dressed by Muntzowski you will be the rage." "Dear aunt, if you knew how little I care about my gowns, beyond wearing the colours Bruno likes best — " "Don't affect eccentricity, Lucille. It is every sensible woman's object in life to be dressed better than her neighbours. In what else can a woman shine? Can she ever hope to play or sing as well as the people she can hire? Can she paint as well as a professional painter? or sit her horse as well as a country squire's daughter, who only lives to follow the hounds? A woman of fashion cannot A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 35 afford to fritter away her time upon accomplish- ments. There are two things in which she ought to be perfect — her gowns and her conversation. I shall take you up to town next week to see Munt- zowski." Lucille laughed at her aunt's intensity, but pro- mised to do whatever her father desired with regard to that mountain of new clothes which the feminine mind considers indispensable to matrimony. It was natural to her to be gracefully and prettily dressed; and her own artistic taste had always modified the fashions which Miss Sanderson recommended to her notice. To please her father — to please Bruno — had been her highest ambition; and she could not imagine a state of being in which the admiiation of the outside world would be of any value to her. Lady Carlyon heard of her niece's goodness to Elizabeth May — heard, and disapproved, just as Miss Marjorum had disapproved. She thought the scarlet fever was only a just consequence of Lucille's folly. "I only hope it will be a lesson which will make you wiser in the future," she said. "But I am very sorry to find you have kept the ungrateful minx in the house." "It was not her fault I was ill, aunt," remon- 136 FLOWER AND WEED. strated Lucille; "and she nursed me devotedly through my illness." "Nursed you devotedly, indeed! Artful hussy! Of course, once having got her nose inside the Castle, she was eager enough to stay. I saw her in the corridor the other day, and I didn't at all like the look of her. Sly, Lucille, sly. The sooner you get rid of her the better." "I am sure you misjudge her, aunt," said Lu- cille, with a troubled look. Her mind had never been clear about Elizabeth since that night on board the yacht, "I never misjudged any one in my life," replied Lady Carlyon positively. "I always begin by think- ing badly of persons of that class; and I have never been disappointed in the result. What are you go- ing to do with that young woman?" "I intended her to fill Tompion's place — " "To take her as your own maid? Absurd!" "I'm afraid she is too good for that." "Too good!" shrieked Lady Carlyon. "A crea- ture rescued from the gutter, who has never been taught hairdressing, and cannot have a notion of altering a gown — a chit utterly without experience! What could she do for your figure or your com- plexion, if either were to give way suddenly?" Lucille did not enter upon these details. She A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 37 hoped that it would be very long before her toilet became a work of art, like her aunt's. "I have changed my mind about Elizabeth," she said. "She is so intellectual, so quick at learning, so superior in all her ideas, that I think she would do better as a nursery governess. She might begin in that way — teaching young children, and carrying on her own education all the while; and by and by she would be fit for a superior situation." "O, as a nursery governess — to trudge about country lanes with troublesome children — she might do very well. But that is a way of being buried alive which a young woman with her good looks will not endure long, I'm afraid," added Lady Carlyon. The return to Ingleshaw had ended the daily, and almost hourly, association between Lady Lucille and her protegee. The Earl's presence at the Castle altered the manner of his daughter's life. It was no longer possible for her, had she been so in- clined, to have Elizabeth May about her as a com- panion. Elizabeth fell naturally back into the place which had been at first given to her. She occupied a little room communicating with Tompion's large and airy chamber. She worked industriously at plain sewing, and did any light housework which Tompion could find for her to do. She attended to 138 FLOWER AND WEED. the flowers in Lady Lucille's rooms, and this, of all tasks, seemed her favourite occupation. But although she was relegated to the position of a servant, her education still went on. Miss Mar- jorum had very little to occupy her now that Lady Carlyon was established at the Castle, and was glad to employ her superfluous energies in urging Eliza- beth May along the thorny path of culture. She gave three hours a day to the task of tuition, de- lighted to have so docile a pupil, entranced by the sound of her own voice as she pronounced those Johnsonian sentences which had gone over the heads of so many young scions of patrician trees, but which had never been so meekly and reverently listened to as they were by Elizabeth. The field which had so long been left fallow, this virgin soil of a young untutored mind, now gave the promise of a splendid harvest. Miss Marjorum entered heartily into the notion of Elizabeth's beginning a life of usefulness as a nursery governess, "It is the most honourable career open to a woman," she said. "It is the one profession which a lady can enter without a blush. The governess can pass through life without overstepping the bounds of maidenly modesty. She need never come in contact with the ruder sex. She is a nun with- out the restraint of the convent. And under her A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 39 fostering care are developed the minds of the future. She is the intellectual mother of great men and ac- complished women. Many a distinguished savant can trace his success in life to the care with which his governess prepared him for Eton. Many a woman of rank owes her social triumphs to the thoroughness with which she was taught her French verbs." Elizabeth listened with a faint sigh, and a silence which Miss Marjorum took for assent. She was very eager to learn: yet it did not seem to her that an earthly paradise opened before the footsteps of a nursery governess. To walk about the Kentish lanes with little children dragging at her skirts, to sit in a rectory parlour teaching the alphabet or cutting bread-and-butter — well, it would be an honourable drudgery among fair and cleanly sur- roundings; but it would be no less a drudgery than the old life of the muddy streets and the flower- basket. And in this new life there would be no one to care for her; while in the old life there had been some one who loved her passionately — some one of whom she now thought with a shudder — but whose love had been sweet to her once. She saw very little of Lady Lucille now, and when they did meet it seemed as if there were a gulf between them. Lucille was kind, but her man- 140 FLOWER AND WEED. ner was statelier than it had been. She expressed an interest in Elizabeth's studies; but the old friendly- warmth, the girlish playfulness which had made Elizabeth forget that they were not equals, had al- together vanished. One day the girl took courage to ask if she had offended her patroness. "No, Elizabeth," Lucille answered gravely; "but you have disappointed me a little. You remember what Mr. Challoner said that last night on the yacht." "Yes," faltered Elizabeth, with downcast eyes. " He told me that you were not happy; and then I saw that my first plan for your life was a mistake. You could not be as I had fancied, my maid, and almost my companion. Your jealous temper would not allow that." "Only jealous because I love too well," said Elizabeth, still looking downward, and with a hectic flush upon her cheeks. "I do not think that is the best kind of love. I saw then that I had been mistaken, and that it would be better that your new life should be inde- pendent of mine. You take so kindly to education, and you are so young, that it is only fair your mind should be allowed to develop itself As a lady's- maid you could have very little opportunity for im- A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. I4I provement; as a governess your education need never stop." "And when I am old I shall be a kind of learned machine, like Miss Marjorum," said Elizabeth. "Surely that will be better than selling flowers in the streets," answered Lucille coldly. "Yes, that was a dreadful life," said the girl, with a faint shudder. "I sometimes look back and wonder how I ever bore it; but when I look forward there seems nothing much worth living forth. Life seems all blank, somehow." She set down the vase of flowers which she had been arranging, and left the room. Her step was slow and heavy. She had a tired listless air which struck Lucille, whose eyes followed her to the door. "She is changed in some way," thought Lucille. "I can't understand her." Now that it was fully understood that Elizabeth May was to be educated, and was to earn her living by and by as a governess, she was no longer obliged to associate with the servants; and this was an in- finite relief to her. They were much more respect- able, much better mannered, than the rifii-aff com- panions of her girlhood; but she had found it harder to get on with them. Their world was not her world. They despised her on account of her ante- cedents; they disliked her as an interloper, and 142 FLOWER AND WEED. were utterly unable to recognise that inborn superi- ority which raised her above them. She had now escaped from all association with the servants, ex- cept Tompion, who was more kindly disposed towards her now that she was no longer intended for Lady Lucille's own service. Elizabeth took her meals in the little sitting-room where Tompion worked, in company with a sewing-machine and a bloated spaniel of affectionate temper, which Tompion had reared from puppyhood to asthmatic age. It was a lonely life which she was now leading at Ingleshaw Castle, a life which gave her ample leisure for thought, and for the contemplation of that future which, as she had said, seemed blank and empty. Sometimes of an afternoon, when she had finished her task of needlework, she would go for a lonely ramble in the park. Lady Lucille had given her leave to go where she liked within the boundary of the fence, which enclosed a space of between six and seven miles in circumference. It was drawing towards the end of October, and those warm sunshiny days on the blue water seemed to belong to a remote past, when Elizabeth started upon one of these lonely rambles. The sky was a dull gray, and there was a stormy feeling in the air; but Elizabeth was not afraid of bad weather. She had grown very weary of the silence of the A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST, 1 43 corridor outside her lonely room, and even the endearments of the obese spaniel, which insisted upon clambering into her lap, had not been suf- ficient to beguile her mind of its sadness. Her steps grew lighter when she was out in the air, under the dull autumn sky. She paused on her way down-stairs to look out of a window from which she could see Lucille, Bruno, and the two girls from the parsonage, playing tennis on the wide level lawn. How bright and gay those figures in pink and blue gowns looked under the gray sky, against the velvety green sward, the warm red wall! What an air of happiness in those quick movements, that light laughter! "1 suppose God meant them to be always happy," she thought; "but I was born different. When I came here I thought I was going to be happy; yes, I was quite happy — as happy as I could be in heaven; and then — " She ended with a long sigh, and turned im- patiently from the window. Her last look at the lawn showed her Bruno talking confidentially to Lucille, as they stood aside in a pause of the game. The wind was tossing the fir-tree tops when Elizabeth entered the plantation where Lucille found her asleep in the fair May morning. Every- thing wore a different aspect now. There were 144 FLOWER AND WEED. hardly any flowers left — a tuft of harebells here and there on a grassy knoll, a belated orchis, a few autumn violets. The firs looked dark and wintry, and every gust swept a shower of yellow leaves from the young oaks. Elizabeth had rambled a long way round the chase before she entered the plantation, and now she sat down to rest almost on the spot where Lucille found her. "I wonder what would have happened to me if she had not come this way that day? Should I have lain here till I died, or should I have found strength to crawl a little further along the dusty road that leads to the Union? Even then I don't know if they would have taken me in. I should have been only a casual." She spoke these last words aloud, in a low quiet voice, as she sat listless and meditative, with one ungloved hand straying idly among the bracken on the bank by her side. "Not much comfort for casuals anywhere, eh, Bess?" said a voice close at hand; and a man, slender, lithe, sinewy, rose with a sudden undulating movement, like a snake, from the deep rank fern. The girl looked at him with wide bewildered eyes; and, as she looked, every vestige of colour faded out of her face; even the parted lips whitened, as her breath came and went flutteringly. A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 45 "Tom, is it you?" she faltered faintly. "Who should it be? Did you expect Jack — or Joe — or Bill — or Jim?" he asked, with a harsh laugh, gathering himself into a sitting position upon the bank, and stretching out a sinuous arm with the evident intention of encircling the girl's waist; but she drew herself suddenly away, with an angry look in her dark eyes. "What's the matter, my lass? Sure to goodness, you're not going to turn your back upon me because you're up in the world, and I'm down!" "You left me to starve," answered Bess, with lowered eyelids, sitting as far from him as the bank allowed, her attitude and countenance distinctly ejj- pressive of abhorrence; "I don't quarrel with you for that. Perhaps you couldn't help it; perhaps you didn't care. But when you left me once, you left me for ever. You and I had done with each other." "No, we hadn't, lady fair," said the man, look- ing up at her from his lower place, with a cunning grin. "It might have been so if I'd had my way. But you and your pal, the city missionary, worked it out different. You wanted all things correct and reg'lar — church and parson; love, honour, and obey, and all the usual patter; and, by the living Jingo, you shall obey!" Flozvey and Weed. 10 146 FLOWER AND WEED. "I should have died in this wood, if it hadn't been for the young lady who found me, and took me to her beautiful home, and brought me back to life by her kindness," said Elizabeth, still look- ing downward, staring sullenly at the grass, with its infinite variety of hue, from green to russet. "Yes, and pampered you, and made a fool of you, and had you taught to play the lady," sneered the m.an. "I know all about it." "How do you know?" "Because I'm not a fool, and am used to keep my eyes and my ears open. I've been on the tramp for the last three weeks, and it was only yesterday a§ I dropped into this blooming bit of country, and stopped for a meal of victuals at the Cat and Fiddle — a neat little old-fashioned sort of a pub at the end of the village. The rum cull of the casa hap- pens to be a friendly sort of a chap — very .free with the patter; so I let him jaw. I asked him a few leading questions about that blooming Castle over there, which I could see the tops of the towers over the trees, like a scene at the poor old Vic; and he jawed no end about the Hurl, and the young lady, and how she was the most charitable young lady as never was, and how she'd picked up a beautiful young creetur in the wood, at death's door, and had took her home, and kind of 'dopted her like — a A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST, 1 47 pore young thing as was on the tramp to jine her sweetheart at Dover. Now I can't say if it was the mention of Dover, or whether it was the old Cat and Fiddle's patter about your good looks, and your black eyes, and your name o' Bess, which he dropped promiscuous, that put me up to trap; but it corned into my blessed noddle that this young 'ooman was my gal, and none other." The landlord of the Cat and Fiddle was Tom- pion's maternal uncle, and Tompion's evenings out were sometimes spent in the private parlour of that rustic inn; so Bess was not surprised at the publican's readiness to talk about Ingleshaw Castle and its inhabitants. "wSo I makes up my mind to hang out at the Cat and Fiddle for a night," pursued Tom, sprawling at ease upon the bank, "and I loafs about to-day till I falls in with you. I've been up at the Castle and had a look about me, and I heerd there as you was fond of walking alone in the woods; so I prowled about here till I seed you; and an uncommon chilly welcome I've got for my pains." "What do you want with me?" asked the girl sullenly, flashing one angry glance at him and letting her eyelids fall again, as if she had looked at some- thing hateful. "You beat me." 148 FLOWER AND WEED. "Only when I was mad with the drmk, my lass." "Mad with drink? yes. You spent the money upon which we might have lived a decent life — like Christians, or at any rate like human beings — on drink that changed you into a savage. You made me work for you as well as for myself. You let me starve, and you left me." "Only when I'd got into trouble, and London was too hot to hold me." "You told me you'd enlisted, and that your regiment was going to India." "There was a touch of romance in that, Bess. I thought you was hard on me, and I wanted to melt your stubborn heart. . I had some thoughts of taking the Queen's shilling when I left London, but I thought better of it on reflection. Liberty's worth more than a bob, and I had no fancy for thie guard- room or the cat." "You told me nothing but lies, then? You never went to Dover?" "Not any nearer than Rochester. I've been working in a circle within thirty or forty mile of London." "What kind of work have you been doing?" The man looked meditative, felt in his pockets A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 149 for a short pipe, found it, filled it, lighted it, and then replied carelessly, "Odd jobs — any think. You know I'm pretty handy." "Stable-work?" interrogated Elizabeth. "Partly stables. A fellow that's down on his luck can't afford to be particklar. And now tell me what kind of a berth you've got up yonder. It was like your luck to drop into such quarters. And, O scissors, ain't we smart! A brand-new black gound as fits us like our skin, and sech ladylike boots! Blest if ever I knowed you'd such a pretty foot, Bess!" he added, looking admiringly at the slender foot with its well-developed instep, which Bess tucked under her gown with an angry movement as he spoke. "Well, I'm blowed! That's the first time I knowed it was high treason for a husband to ad- mire his wife's foot," exclaimed Tom Brook, with an injured air. "All I can say is, as I said afore, it was like your luck to get free quarters at Ingle- shaw Castle." "It was the first good luck that ever came my way: and now I suppose you've come to spoil it all." "No, I ain't. I'm not such a selfish beggar as that. I'm not agoing to say, 'Bess, you're my wife, 150 FLOWER AND WEED. and if I must tramp the country, you must pad the hoof alongside o' me.' No, you've got a good home, and you'd better stick to it as long as ever you can. But I want you to bear in mind all the same as I'm your husband, and to be civil and pleasant spoken when you and me meet promiscuous, as we have this afternoon." "You mean that you are to hang about this place, and that I am to meet you — secretly?" she asked. "I don't know what you mean by hanging about. If I find I can get a job of work in the village, I shall stay; if I can't — " A knowledge of certain dark antecedents in Mr. Brook's early life — escapades which in his class of life had counted only as the wild oats of youthful indiscretion, and of which Bess herself had thought lightly enough when she married him — now inclined her to suspect his motives. "What work can there be for you in such a place as Ingleshaw village?" she asked. "There's always work for me where there's horses," answered Tom Brook. "I'll get somethin' to do, don't you be afeard; and I won't spile your little game. You shall play the lady up at the Castle for the next six months, if yer like, till I've made a potful of money, and can come and claim yer, with A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. I 5 I a. good coat on my back and a top 'at on my 'ed, like a born gentleman. But you'll have to bear in mind you're my wife, and be civil and obedient in the mean time, my lady. I'm not going to stand any gammon." His wife looked at him with eyes in which dark fires of scorn and hate were strangely blended. She hardly knew herself, in that moment, whether she most despised or most hated him. Yet she had loved him once, or believed she loved him, when, of all the brutes among whom she herded, this brute alone had shown a touch of kindness and pity for her, and had cherished her, after his rough fashion, with a feeling which was not altogether brutal. But now — now that her ears had grown used to another language, that her eyes had looked upon another race — the face and the voice, the tones, the movements of this man, who was by law her master, inspired such aversion, such an infinite, unspeakable loathing as she had never felt in her life before — no, not for the vilest of that vile herd in which she had been born and reared. She was a creature of strong feelings; one of those fierce tropical natures which crop up now and then among the sober northern races. Her love and her hatred had ever been more intense than other people's; and now she 152 FLOWER AND WEED. shrank shuddering and abhorrent from the man whose caress had once seemed a friendly shelter. "You left me of your own accord," she said, in low resolute tones. He could hear the change in her accentuation, just as he could see the refinement of her appearance — every line softened, every hue more delicate than in the old days. "You lied to me of your own accord. I followed you — as far as I could go — on the road to Dover, dying of hunger all the while; followed you till I fell down in this wood, and never thought to get up again. You left me in the workhouse infirmary, dying, as you were told. You sent me a scrap of a letter to say you had enlisted, and were going to Dover with a regi- ment that was under orders for India in two month's time. When I got round again, you told me I must get on as best I might till better times^ — when you should have served your time, and could come back to London and make a home for me. That was all falsehood from beginning to end. You only wanted to get rid of me — civilly. And now I want to get rid of you — civilly. I will live the rest of my life alone, remembering that I am a married woman, for the sake of my promise in the church; but I will never acknowledge you as my husband, or live with you as your wife." She confronted him steadily as she spoke, looked A LEAF FROM THE COOK OF THE PAST. 1 53 him through and through, and defied him, every feature in her grand and beautiful face rigid with the intensity of her feeling. No man, looking at her, could doubt that she meant what she said, and would carry out her resolve to the bitter end. "Won't you, my lady!" exclaimed Mr. Brook, scowling at her savagely, but with a half-timorous irresolution in his looks, as of one not quite pre- pared to cope with this fiery spirit. "We'll see if we can't compel yer. The law's uncommon hard upon husbands and wives when they go for to shirk their 'sponsabilities. You'll find the law come down upon you heavy, if I once say the word." "But you won't say the word. You daren't go to Lord Ingleshaw, and say, 'I'm an honest man, and that woman is my wife.' You daren't face him. He's a county magistrate, and the kind of man to read you like an open book." "Who said I was going to Lord Ingleshaw?" ex- claimed the man, with a sudden change of tone; "not that I'm afeared o' yer Lord Ingleshaws, or any other blessed old blokes of the same stamp. I've held their 'osses afore now, when I've been down on my luck, outside o' the Hadmirality or the 'Orse Guards, and I know what shaky old coves they is — gone at the knees and weak in the pastern- jints. Didn't I say as I wasn't goin' to spile yer 154 FLOWER AND WEED. game? I only wants a bit o' civility and friendly feelin', for the sake o' old long Sims, as we say in. the classics. Come, old gal, be civil to a feller, and tell us what you've been a-doin' of all this time." So addressed, Bess relented a little. The hard lines about her mouth relaxed, the darkly brooding eyes shed a gentler light. She told her husband briefly how she had been saved from death by Lady Lucille's Christian charity, and made a new creature by her generous affection. "Well, she must be uncommon green," remarked Mr. Brook at the close of this narration, "to pick up a young woman as might have been a regular old hand — an out-and-out gaol-bird — and to take her into sech a house as Ingleshaw Castle, and give her the run of the place ! ' And I suppose there's as much silver there — in the way of forks and spoons, and tea-urns and dish-covers, and sechlike — as would stock a silversmith's shop," "There is everything beautiful in the house; but Lady Lucille cares more for flowers and china, and books and music, than for all the silver in the world; and so do L" "Ah, that's the way with young women. They're jest like children, caught by pretty colours what strikes the eye. But if I was a nobleman, I'd have my dinin'-table a mask of solid silver jugs and A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 55 tankards, and dish-covers and butter-boats, and sech- like. I'd never eat off anything but silver; and I make no doubt Lord Ingleshaw eats his victuals off solid silver every day of his blessed old life." "I don't know," answered Bess indifferently; "but I shouldn't think it likely. He's a very simple- minded gentleman, plain in all his ways; but he is a gentleman. I never knew what the word meant till I saw him — and one other." "Ah, I knows the kind o' bloke," said Mr. Brook, with an astute air — "fine spread o' shirt- fi-ont and shepherd's-plaid kickseys, a gold-'eaded cane and a double-barrelled heyeglass. And now tell us all about the 'ouse; a reg'lar harmy o' servants, I'll be bound; all eatin' their 'eads off, like pampered 'osses." Bess did not tell him the number of the servants; nor did she gratify him with any details as to the interior arrangements of the Castle. Her suspicions had been aroused by his eagerness upon the subject of the Ingleshaw plate. She had never known him concerned in actual crime; but she knew that his interpretation of the law of property was easy, not to say loose; and she was determined to give him as little information as possible — only so much, in fact, as he could wring from her by persistent ques- tioning. Nor, when he persisted in a course of in- 156 FLOWER AND WEED. quiry which seemed suspicious, did she hesitate to give him misleading answers. He was too acute, too thoroughly steeped in cunning, not to see that she was deceiving him; but he did not broadly accuse her of falsehood. He heard her with a mocking twinkle in his rat-like eyes, whistled a snatch of the last popular melody which had thrilled the music-halls of Bermondsey, cocked his hat over his brow, and pocketed his empty pipe, as he rose from the bank where he had been reposing. "That'll do," he said. "Ta-ta, my lass. When I want to look you up, I shall know where to find you." He walked slowly away without another word, vanishing among the dark straight fir-trunks into dim leafy distance, leaving Elizabeth May still seated, drawn close up against the tree, as she had drawn herself when first he approached, instinctively shrink- ing from him. She sat pale, motionless, with fixed eyes, while the light faded, and umber and purple shadows thickened in the dimness under the trees. She sat there till she looked only a dark blotch upon the dusk of the woodland. Yet, thus seated, thus faintly distinguishable, she was seen by a man who came sauntering along the narrov/ woodland path smoking A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. I57 a cigarette. He came close to her, bent over her, looked her full in the face; she looking up at him with agonised eyes, but never stirring. "Elizabeth, what is the matter? why are you sitting here alone in the dark?" He had questioned her once before about her- self and her own feelings — that night on board the yacht — and had got nothing for his pains but tears and a passionate protest against Fate — broken burn- ing words, which had stirred some strange half- dormant passion within him, which thrilled respon- sive to that subtle unexpressed passion in her. On that fatal night he had known that she loved him: and he had known as certainly that he loved her. From that hour to this they had never spoken to each other, had avoided each other's path as much [, as possible, or had met and passed with averted looks, or that blank icy stare which sees nothing. "Elizabeth, what has happened?" he asked; and the unconscious tenderness of his tone moved her like sweetest music. "Not very much. I have been brought face to face with my old life, that is all." The tears welled into her eyes and poured down her ashen cheeks ; her breast heaved with passionate sobs. That sympathetic voice of Bruno's had loosened the fountain. Till now she had hardened her heart 158 FLOWER AND WEED. to bear her burden; but his sympathy was more than she could bear. "You have heard something, or seen some one," he speculated. "How white you are, and your hands are icy cold!" touching them as they lay loosely clasped in her lap. "Elizabeth, you are crying!" The sight of her tears made him forget every- thing. Another moment — a moment in which his heart beat like a sledge-hammer — he was sitting by her side upon the bank, his arm round her waist, her head resting on his shoulder. "My dear one, I would give my life to comfort you!" he cried passionately. Only for a moment did she rest in that embrace, and yet it seemed to her as if she had been lifted into the empyrean, as if she were in a diviner, purer world, where nothing less than perfect joy could live; felt as Helen may feel, resting in the arms of Achilles, in that sacred isle where death dwells not — perfect beauty, perfect manhood, courage, honour inviolate, linked for ever in immortal union. Only for a moment did Bess abandon herself to that entrancing dream of loving and being beloved by him who was to her as godlike as Achilles; and then she remembered who he was, and who she was, and that this earth around and about them A LEAF FROM THE ISOOK OF THE PAST. I 59 was no fair shadowland, in which the miracles of love may triumph over the hard facts of destiny. "You forget yourself, Mr. Challoner," she said quietly, slipping from his encircling arm, which loosened and released her readily enough. Yes, for an instant he had forgotten himself, and Fate, and that dear girl who three months ago had filled his life v/ith gladness by the frank avowal of her love. And now, sitting here in the gloaming, looking into those dark eyes, hearing that low thrill- ing voice, the love of his boyhood and his youth seemed to him as a bondage and a slavery, from which death would be a cheap deliverance. "Yes, I have been brought back to the thought of my old life," pursued Elizabeth, with quiet gravity, "and of what I was before Lady Lucille saved me ■ — of how I spoke, and looked, and thought even; for I don't suppose I was any better than other people among whom I lived." "You were better: you could never have been like them. You were among them, but not of them," protested Bruno. "Well, perhaps I may have been a little less vulgar than the man I saw to-day." "What man?" "My husband." "Your husband!" l6o FLOWER AND WEED. "Yes; I am a double-dyed impostor, am I not?" said the girl, with a bitter laugh. "When Lord Ingleshaw questioned me about my past life, I was afraid to tell him I was a married woman, for fear he should refuse to let me stay at the Castle, and should want to send me on my way, with a few pounds in my pocket perhaps, to look for my hus- band; so I told him Tom Brook was my sweet- heart." "And Tom Brook is your husband?" asked Bruno slowly, as if every word cost him an effort. "Yes." "Would it be too much to ask who he is — what manner of man?" "A scamp — a vagabond — a man who works in stables and cab-yards, but who lives by his wits mostly. He was kind to me once, when everybody else in the world was rough and cruel. When I was lying ill in a garret, alone all day long — for the girls who shared my room were out at the factories where they worked — Tom Brook came to look after me; brought me a couple of oranges, or a bunch of cheap grapes, when my lips were parched with fever; sat beside me and talked to me; and I was grateful to him. He was the first man who ever treated me kindly. Even such rough kindness as his was sweet — it was so new. When I got A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. iGl better he followed me about, and wanted to be my sweetheart. Once, when a man was rude to me in the street — one Saturday night — the kind of man we used to call a swell, Tom Brook knocked him down. On Sundays he used to come to tea with the other girls and me, and used to take us for walks, and give us coffee or ices at the little Italian shops round about. Sometimes he took me to the play; and then one morning he told me that he'd got the City missionary to speak to the parson, and that the banns had been given out for the last three Sundays, and he and I were to be married. We went straight to the church with the missionary, who gave me away, and signed the book in the vestry. He was a good old man, and I should have been a better woman if I had listened better to his teaching, and tried to read my Bible; but perhaps, if you knew what life is like in the alley where I lived, you wouldn't wonder that I didn't do it." "And so you became Mrs. Thomas Brook," said Bruno, in biting tones. His whole nature seemed hardened by the idea of this marriage. "I hope you were happy in your domestic relations." "Happy! Well, I had some one who belonged to me — a strong arm to knock down anybody who tried to insult me. I wasn't quite such a forlorn creature as I had been; but I was a slave, and I Flower and Weed. H 1 62 FLOWER AND WEED. had a hard master. When he was sober he made me wait upon him hand and foot; when he was drunk he beat nae. When he got tired of his work, and the kind of life he was leading, he left me — left me when I had most need of his kindness, for I was lying at death's door in the infirmary at the Union. You know what happened to me when I came out of the Union." "How did he come here to-day?" "He heard of me at the village inn, and waited about here to see me." "Did he want to take you away with him?" "No; but he says he shall claim me by and by, when he is better off. O Mr. Challoner, can he claim me — has he the power to take me away with him?" "He is your husband. That is a position of some strength; and no doubt you are fond of him. You would not refuse to share his home and his fortunes." "I would kill myself sooner than acknowledge any right of his over me." The pale steadfast face, the light in the fixed eyes, told that this was no empty threat. Bruno sighed heavily, and sat staring at the ground. A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 1 63 "Yet you liked him once," he said meditatively — "liked him well enough to marry him." "That was when I was in utter darkness, God help me! — when I thought he was better than other men — just as a man set upon by wolves would hail a dog as his friend. Those other men I knew were like wolves." "Poor soul, poor soul!" sighed Bruno. "Well, I'll tell Lord Ingleshaw your pitiful story, and he will help you to keep this husband of yours at a distance. You should have told his lordship the truth in the first instance. It would have been better." "Yes, I know that now. I was too cowardly then to tell the truth; but now I would sooner cut my tongue out than tell Lord Ingleshaw a lie." "That's well, Elizabeth. God meant you to be noble and stanch and loyal — God made you brave as well as beautiful. And now you had best hurry home before it grows dark. Shake hands. Don't be afraid. I was a madman just now; but all that is past and gone. We both mean to be true." He held out his hand — they two standing face to face in the autumn twilight — and she put her own hand into his. Both hands were deadly cold, but they clasped each other with a clasp that II* 164 FLOWER AND WEED. meant self-respect, loyalty to Lucille, and that highest of all human virtues — a stern adherence to difficult duty. And thus they parted: Elizabeth walking quickly back to the Castle; Bruno lighting another cigar, and sauntering further into the dark- ness of the wood. A LONELY LIFE. I 65 CHAPTER VI. A LONELY LIFE. "Kisse me, quod she, we be no longer wrothe." It was quite dark before Elizabeth arrived at the Castle, and the long range of windows on the first floor shone with the soft light of lamps and wax-candles, and here and there the ruddier glow of a fire. It looked like that fairy castle which Elizabeth had read of in those familiar tales of witch and goblin which had been her easy intro- duction to the realm of poetic literature. A plea- sant place to live in — a happy and wonderful house, as compared with that dim dwelling in the gloom of a fetid alley to which Elizabeth had been wont to return at this season last year. Yet, such a strange intangible thing is happiness that she went back to that old historic mansion with a heart as heavy as that she had carried to her lodging in the London slum. She had learnt the mystery of new pains and sorrows, new needs and longings, which reached beyond the region of every-day wants. She had known the pangs of Lazarus, and in the I 66 FLOWER AND WEED. days of her poverty had envied the rich, thinking it impossible for them to suffer; and now she knew that Dives has his gnawing canker, his troubled slumbers, his sorrowful dreams, as well as Lazarus. Elizabeth went round by the stable-yard on her way to the Castle, not caring to enter by that im- posing doorway which would bring her face to face with the porter and the groom of the chambers. She wanted to go in without being seen by any one, if it were possible. There was a small door in a turret, which opened on a winding stair that led up to the corridor close to Tompion's rooms, and towards this door Elizabeth directed her steps. She passed two men standing near the yard-gates, in confidential conversation; and she hurried on with fluttering heart and quickened steps, for one of those men was Tom Brook. She scarcely drew breath till she was in her own little room,, inside Tompion's; and then she sat down with a beating heart, and began to wonder what Brook and the groom could have found to talk about, and whether she was the subject of their conversation. She felt that Brook's presence in the stable-yard meant evil to her — that he was dogging her footsteps with some malicious intent, in spite of his promise not to interfere with her good fortune. She had defied him, when it would perhaps have been wiser to A LONELY LIFE. 1 67 conciliate him; but for her very life she could not have cringed to him, or affected any regard for him. If he was to be her foe, she must bear his enmity. Better that than his friendship. She received a summons to the library soon after breakfast next morning; and, for the second time in her life, she found herself alone with Lord Ingleshaw. He had heard her story from Bruno. He reproved her gently for her want of candour about Tom Brook. "You told me a falsehood," he said, "when truth would have served your purpose much better; and I hardly know whether I ought to believe you now." "You may believe me, my lord," she answered, looking at him with such pathetic earnestness that he could not find it in his heart to doubt her. "Think what a lost ignorant creature I was whe In first stood in this room, face to face with you, as I stand to-day. I scarcely knew right from wrong. But since that day your daughter has taught me a great deal. She has taught me to read the Gospel, and to believe in it and love it. She has taught me my duty to God and man." "If you have learned as much as that in less than six months, you have learned more than many of our greatest philosophers have compassed in a l68 FLOWER AND WEED. lifetime," said Lord Ingleshaw, smiling at her earnestness. "Well, Elizabeth, if this husband of yours is a brute, you shall not be forced to live with him; I'll answer for that. So go about your daily work with a contented spirit, and fear no- thing." "Thank you, my lord. I will try to be worthy of your kindness," the girl answered meekly. "But there is one thing I ought to tell you. Tom Brook was in the stable-yard last night, talking to one of the grooms. I saw him as I came in. I don't know that he had any evil intention; but I thought I ought to tell you." "Quite right. To Avhich of the men was he talking?" "I believe it was Compton, my lord." "Very good; I'll speak to Compton. When you told me this Tom Brook was your sweetheart, you said he was an honest lad, and had never been in prison. Was that true?" "Quite true that he was never in prison, my lord, to my knowledge. But he had companions and friends that I didn't like. Some of them had been in prison. The men who hang about a horse- dealer's yard — " "Are not the noblest members of our race," interrupted his lordship; "I am quite sure of that. A LONELY LIFE. l6g But you have no reason to suppose that )^our hus- band belonged to the criminal classes — that he had ever been concerned in a burglary?" "No, my lord." "That will do." Elizabeth curtsied and withdrew, and Lord Ingleshaw went out to the stables, inspected his stud, and took occasion, e7i passant, to interrogate Compton, who was either very stupid or very artful, and could give no further account of his interview with Tom Brook than that he had been standing at the yard-gate, and the man had asked him to direct him back to the village. He had lost his way in the park, and did not know how to regain the high-road; which, from the geography of the place, showed a curious lack of intelligence on the part of the inquirer. Time passed, and nothing more was seen or heard of Tom Brook. Elizabeth pursued her studies — improved herself in a plain English education, and in the use of the needle and sewing-machine — in the peaceful solitude of Tompion's sitting- room. It ought to have been a life of placid and perfect contentment for one whose earlier years had been full of toil and trouble; but, if Elizabeth May was happy, her physical nature did not thrive upon happiness. Her cheeks grew hollow, and the only 170 FLOWER AND WEED. colour that ever came into them now was a hectic scarlet, which glowed and faded with every sudden emotion. Her eyes had a feverish light, and the tall graceful figure, which had rounded to womanly perfection in the summer, had now fallen away to palpable attenuation. Tompion complained of Elizabeth's daintiness, and made it an offence in this young person that she had not a better appetite for the liberal fare of Ingleshaw Castle. "It's always the way," said Tompion, waxing confidential over the tea-tray in the housekeeper's room. "Set a beggar on horseback, and we all know where he'll ride. It makes me quite ill to see her dinner sent away, just mucked about a bit, but none of it eaten," "Perhaps she is ill," suggested Mrs. Prince, the housekeeper, who was a fat kindly creature, and meant well to everybody, so long as no one wanted to dig her out of her armchair. "Lor', no; she's well enough. It's nothing but airs and graces," retorted Tompion. "She's in the sulks because Lady Lucille don't take so much notice of her now that she's got her aunt and Mr. Challoner to occupy her time." "And the poor thing feels being taken up for pastime, and then let drop again," said the house- A LONELY LIFE. I71 keeper. "Well, I don't much wonder at that; I shouldn't like it myself." ^'' Fou wouldn't, of course, Mrs. Prince; no more should I," replied Tompion, with a dignified air; "but such dirt as that oughtn't to be particular. She ought never to have been brought into such a house as this; but, being brought in through my young lady's mistaken kindness, she ought to be too thankful for all that's done for her. Nursery governess, indeed ! a pretty kind of person to teach gentlefolks' children! You should have seen the rags I took off her back the day Lady Lucille found her." "They were clean," said the housekeeper; "that's something to her credit. And I must say she has a natural gentility about her that has often made me wonder — and that quick at learning! Miss Marjoram says she never met her equal." "Miss Marjoram is an old fool," protested Tom- pion, purple with jealousy, "and so fond of teaching that she would teach a cow, if there was nothing else in the way to be taught." "She never taught you, Tompion," said the butler, grinning. "I should think not, indeed!" ejaculated the damsel, with a contemptuous toss of her head; "I 172 FLOWER AND WEED, should like to see her take such a liberty! Old Marjoram knows her place better than that." Elizabeth, disliked by the servants, and left to her own resources by Lady Lucille, led a life that was passing lonely; and it is not in solitude that weak humanity can best cure those inward fevers which consume the soul and fret the nerves. In Byron's familiar phrase, Elizabeth was eating her own heart in that dull and placid life at Ingleshaw. On many an October afternoon, as she wandered far afield in her solitary walk, she had thought it would have been better for her to be toiling with yonder rough and noisy hop-pickers, resting after the long day's labour amongst that rough herd under the stars, with a stone for her pillow, like Jacob, than to live in the lap of luxury at Ingleshaw Castle. Yet there were moments when she felt a thrill of pride and delight at realising the change in herself, physical, mental, moral, remembering what she had been, and seeing what she was. Once, when she had dusted the china and arranged the flowers in Lady Lucille's dressing-room, she paused for a minute, startled by her own reflection in the cheval-glass — the tall slim figure, the neatly-fitting gown, the refined look, the graceful carriage. A LONELY LIFE. 173 "I don't think any one would know I had been picked up out of the dirt," she said to herself, proud of her own beauty, which had acquired the crowning charm of refinement. And yet the glory of freshness and colour was gone, and it looked a fragile fading beauty, as of one doomed to an early grave. One day Lucille was struck by the change in her p7'otegee, and questioned her closely about her health. Elizabeth would not admit that she was ill. She owned to feeling tired sometimes, and to sleeping badly; and that was all. Lucille was kinder to her, more friendly and familiar, that day than she had been for a long time. "Mrs. Raymond is going to Brighton with her children soon after Christmas," said Lucille. "It would be nice for you to go with her, and get ac- customed to the family and to your new duties. The change of air would do you good. I believe it is change you want." Mrs. Raymond was the wife of Lord Ingleshaw's land-steward — a bright pleasant little woman, who had shown some interest in Elizabeth's history, and had volunteered, knowing that history, to take her as nursery governess for her young brood, so soon as Elizabeth should be competent for the post. "I am not a bit afraid of her antecedents," said 174 FLOVv'ER AND WEED. Mrs. Raymond, "for, as my children and their governess are hardly ever out of my sight, I cannot very well be taken in. I shall be able to read Elizabeth like an open book before she has been with me a fortnight," Elizabeth accepted this future engagement with Mrs. Raymond as her fate, allotted to her by the benefactress to whom she owed everything. She had been introduced to Mrs. Raymond's three chubby daughters and one chubby son, the youngest of the brood, and talked of everywhere emphatically as "the baby," a proud distinction which he merited in somewise by being the fattest and healthiest two- year-old infant in the parish of Ingleshaw. Elizabeth was not fond of children; but she was constrained to admit that, as children go, Mrs. Raymond's off- spring were favourable specimens. They were pictures of health and cleanliness, always prettily and sensibly clad, amiable and sociable in their manners, and with more than the average amount of intelligence. Elizabeth felt that if her life was to be spent with children, it could hardly be better spent than in the Raymond nursery. Mrs. Ray- mond had always treated her with particular friend- liness; while Mr. Raymond was one of those delight- ful and easy-going husbands who are only at home at meal-times. He passed his days in a light dog- A LONELY LIFE, I75 cart, driving about the Ingleshaw estate, or going journeys in quest of prize cattle. Elizabeth was touched by Lady Lucille's interest in her health; but the idea of a change to Brighton had no exhilarating effect upon her, "You'd like to go, wouldn't you?" asked Lucille, vexed at her indifference. "Brighton is a charming winter place — so gay and smart, and with such lovely shops. You have never seen anything like it. Wouldn't you be pleased if Mrs, Raymond could manage to take you?" "I don't care about it — much," faltered Eliza- beth, "But of course I would go if you wished it. Lady Lucille." "What wish can I have about it, except for your sake?" exclaimed Lucille, provoked at a coldness which seemed inexplicable: "you seem to care for nothing, to be interested in nothing." "Yes, yes, I do care for something, with all my heart," cried Elizabeth eagerly, falling on her knees and clasping Lucille's hands and kissing them passionately, "I care for you. I want you to love me and trust me as you did once — be- fore—" "Before what?" asked Lucille, looking down at her with intent questioning eyes. The two women 176 FLOWER AND WEED. looked into each other's faces, as if their two souls were giving up their secrets, each to each. "Before that night on the yacht, when I was weak and wicked, and complained to Mr. Challoner of my fate — I who had so much reason to be grate- ful to Providence and to you. I have grown wiser since then, Lady Lucille. I have learned to govern my jealous temper, to be thankful for the blessings of my life; and when I am with IVIrs. Raymond I mean to work very hard, and to be the best gov- erness her children ever had." "I believe it is in your power to be anything you like," said Lucille, touched by her earnestness, and ready to repent that half-defined suspicion which had turned her heart from Elizabeth. She raised the girl from her knees and kissed her, for the first time in her life. "If ever I forget that kiss or am unworthy of it, let me be remembered as Judas was remembered," said Elizabeth; and from this time her intercourse with Lady Lucille resumed much of its original friendliness, to Tompion's inexpressible disgust. This was in December, when the park and chase were white with snow, and the drifts were lying deep in all the hollows. Inside the Castle all was warmth and brightness, wood-fires glowing on the wide old hearthstones, and the brazen dogs A LONELY LIFE. : 177 glittering and flashing in the fireh'ght, while the odours of hot-house flowers, roses, mignonette, hyacinths, lilies of the valley, were intensified by the warmth of the rooms. "The last snow I remember changed to mud and slush half an hour after it fell," said Elizabeth, "and the last cold winds I remember seemed to blow straight at my bones. Winter means quite a different thing for the rich from what it means for the poor." The poor were not forgotten by Lucille in that hard weather. She was full of thought for them, full of anxiety to help them. She made Elizabeth her assistant in all her charities, and the girl's knowledge of the needs of the poor, their ways, their prejudices even, was of much use to her. Elizabeth was indefatigable in trudging from cot- tage to cottage, in visiting the sick. She sat up for several nights with a girl who was dying of con- sumption, and nursed her as if she had been a sister. Her conduct was so excellent at this period that Lucille put aside that old painful suspicion as an unworthy doubt, and gave Elizabeth her com- plete confidence. Bruno was absent at this time on an electioneering expedition to a borough in the North of England, with Lord Ingleshaw, and Lucille had leisure to devote herself to the care of her Flower and Weed. 12 lyS FLOWER AND WEED. poor. She had cared for them and ministered to them from her childhood upwards; but just now, at the approach of Christmas, she had special duties to perform. And she wished this particular Christ- mastide to be a golden memory for all the poor in Ingleshaw parish, inasmuch as her own cup of joy was full to overflowing. Nothing had been heard of Tom Brook since that October twilight, and Elizabeth began to think of her interview with him almost as if it had been a bad dream. It belonged to the past, and had brought no evil consequences. She seemed happier — nay, she was happier — now than she had been for a long time. Restored to her benefactress's favour, and able to make her- self useful as Lucille's almoner, winning many a blessing from the sick and the aged whom her daily visits cheered and comforted, she no longer felt that life was blank and empty. Bruno's absence was a relief to her. She was no longer troubled by the dread of meeting him suddenly in the corridor or in the garden; no longer startled by the sound of his voice in the distance. Her life was more peaceful without that disturbing element. But he was to return for Christmas, and Christmas was drawing near. Lady Carlyon had departed to another of her A LONELY LIFE, I 79 happy hunting-grounds — a fine old abbey in the Midlands, at which Christmas was kept in a much more fashionable and festive manner than at Ingle- shaw; where the greatest excitement provided for that season was the tea for the mothers, aunts, and school-children, and the supper for the men and youths in the great mediaeval hall. At the Abbey there were to be amateur theatricals and a fancy ball. Lady Carlyon was full of plans for her costume for the ball — which was to be wonderfully effective, and to cost a mere nothing — and she had an idea of performing in one of the plays, if people were very pressing. She went away in the highest spirits, pledging herself to return at least a week before the wedding. "Every detail of your trousseau is arranged," she said. "I can leave with an easy conscience." When she was gone Lucille resumed all her old girlish habits, read Italian with Miss Marjorum, practised a great deal, rambled in the park, visited in the village, and made a companion of Elizabeth. Mrs. Raymond and her babies came to afternoon tea in the old schoolroom, in order that Elizabeth — Miss May, as the steward's wife called her — might get used to her future charges. Altogether, it was a social and happy time; and when Elizabeth thought of her position and her surroundings a l8o FLOWER AND WEED. year ago, and of the drunken brawling which was the only distinguishing mark of the Christmas season in Ramshackle-court, she lifted up her heart in thankfulness for the blessed change. "There is something very sweet about that girl," said Mrs. Raymond to Lucille, after tea, when Elizabeth had retired to the corridor to play hide- and-seek with Dotty, Totty, Lotty, and the fat baby. "I really think you found a pearl that day in the wood, Lady Lucille." "Yes," answered Lucille, with a faint sigh; "I know that she has a noble nature. She is so self- sacrificing, so good to the poor. And yet there is a mystery about her which sometimes worries me. I can't quite understand her." "Dear Lady Lucille, the noblest natures are apt to have hidden depths," answered Mrs. Raymond; "and one must consider this girl's bringing up. I daresay there are times when the memory of old miseries weighs her down — makes her irritable, perhaps. And then she has not a relative in the world. She may feel her loneliness more than we suppose, seeing other people with so many ties. I shall do my best to make her happy when she comes to me; but it will be a great change from the Castle to the Dower House." Mr. and Mrs. Raymond occupied a charming A LONELY LIFE. l8l old house near the park-gates, which in former days had been the portion of the dowagers of Ingleshaw; but which the more frisky dowagers of the present era would have voted the abomination of desolation. It was a roomy, rambling, half-timbered edifice, smothered with roses planted by an old-Avorld dowager, and with an idyllic garden and orchard. "I think Elizabeth will be ever so much happier at the Dower House than she is here," said Lucille. "She will have more to do, and a more settled position." "Well, here I grant she is a little like Mahomet's coffin, suspended between heaven and earth," as- sented Mrs. Raymond laughingly. "She will have a livelier life with us; for Totty, Dotty, and Lotty are most amusing children. They really do say such extraordinary things that one can never feel dull in their company," pursued the fond parent. "They are so witty that I sometimes catch myself wondering that I can be their mother. And I'm sure they don't inherit their comic ideas from George, for one has to go over a joke three times to make him understand it." Being so well disposed towards Elizabeth, Mrs. Raymond readily consented to take her to Brighton with the children, when they went there for their winter holiday; so it was settled that Miss May's I 82 FLOWER AND WEED. duties were to begin at that time, and her associa- tion with Ingleshaw Castle, save as an occasional visitor to her benefactress, would then come to an end. Bruno and Lucille were to be married on the 20th of January, at which time Mrs. Raymond and her family would be still at Brighton. The Ray- monds had not been invited to the wedding, which was to be attended by none but relations, with the single exception of Miss Marjorum, who almost ranked as a relation. NOT DISLOYAL. l8; CHAPTER VII. NOT DISLOYAL. "Irene, I have loved you, as men love Light, music, odour, beauty, love itself; Whatever is apart from, and above, Those daily needs which deal with dust and pelf" "Christmas is coming, and Bruno," exclaimed Lucille, on the morning of Christmas-eve, as she worked with Miss Marjorum, Tompion, and Eliza- beth May at the decoration of hall, staircase, and corridor. Lord Ingleshaw objected to holly and ivy in the rooms in which he lived — clocks and lamps and picture- frames embowered in greenery gave him an uncomfortable feeling. "Make the hall and corridor as festive as you please, my dear," he said, "but don't let me see a Madonna by Guido staring at me like an owl out of an ivy-bush, or my Sevres china made a mere vehicle for the exhibition of holly-berries." "It may be vulgar, old-fashioned, Philistine," said Lucille, afe she twisted an elaborate wreath of variegated ivies and glittering red berries round the massive oaken newel at the head of the stair- 184 FLOWER AND WEED. case; "but I should like Bruno to feel that it is Christmas-time directly he enters the Castle." Lucille and her three assistants worked with good-will, from breakfast to a late luncheon; and among them they contrived to make the old hall, the wide shallow staircase, and long low corridor delightfully suggestive of Christmastide in the olden time. The polished oak panelling made such a good background, the many-coloured light from the painted window at the end of the corridor so helped and heightened the effect. The Earl and Bruno, who were coming from the North that day, were not expected until dusk. It would be afternoon tea-time before they could arrive, the most delightful time at which to welcome them. Lucille's morning- room was glorious with hot- house flowers, bright with the soft red firelight, tempered by a ground-glass screen. The quaint little tables — Queen Anne, Japanese, Dundee — were daintily arranged by Lucille's own hands. Each low luxuri- ous chair was in its most appropriate place; the fair young chdtelaine herself in a dark-blue velvet gown, all slashed and puffed with deepest red, and with a red satin petticoat just peeping below the dark-blue drapery of the skirt. It was one of Lucille's trousseau gowns; and Tompion had told her that it was very unlucky to wear it — a tamper- NOT DISLOYAL. I 85 Ing with futurity, which must result in something awful; but Lucille was bent upon looking her very best when Bruno and she met, after an agonising separation of nearly three weeks. The gown fitted her as never gown had fitted her before; and she stood in front of the cheval-glass innocently ad- miring herself. "Well, Lady Lucille, it do give you a figure!" exclaimed Tompion; "but, for all that, I shouldn't like to wear it if I was you. I should feel I was flying in the face of Fate." "I don't think Fate will take any notice of my new gown," said Lucille, pirouetting lightly, just to see the effect of the dark-blue stocking and the Queen Anne shoe. "And I want Bruno to be pleased. What is my finery meant for except to please him?" "No, Lady Lucille, that's not it," protested Tom- pion, with a superior air. "Your trousseau is to do credit to your position as his lordship's only daughter. That's what you've got to study." "I shall study nothing except my husband's happiness," answered Lucille; "and I hope that's what you mean to do, Tompion, when you are married." Tompion breathed a despondent sigh. "I never can bear to think of my marriage," lS6 FLOWER AMD WEED. she said; "for when I marry, you'll be having some stuck-up French maid who'll want you to paint your lips and pencil your eyebrows." "No, she won't, Tompion; at least, she won't make such a suggestion a second time, I can assure you." Tompion's marriage, which had been talked of for the last six years, had again been deferred un- conditionally; and Lucille was to enter upon her new state encumbered with an old servant. Lucille waited for the returning travellers alone in the winter gloaming, Miss Marjorum having dis- creetly gone to afternoon tea at the Vicarage. She sat a little way from the shaded hearth with an unheeded book in her lap, listening for the ring of wheels and horses' hoofs upon the frost-bound road. There it was at last; and then a sonorous peal at the big bell. Should she go to meet them? Had it been her father alone who was returning, she would have flown to the hall, and would have been in his arms before he could take off his overcoat. Had it been the Bruno of old days, she would have run to the head of the staircase to give him a laughing welcome. But a new sense of shyness restrained the betrothed bride. She waited by the fireside, with her heart beating fast and her colour NOT DISLOYAL. 187 coming and going, like the light and shadow on a rose that sways to and fro in the wind. "Well, little lady, here you are at last!" said Lord Ingleshaw, as he and Bruno came into the firelight, bringing the frosty out-door atmosphere with them. "What a deathlike quiet there is in the house — almost like coming into a tomb!" "Is that all the praise Lucille is to get for her Christmas decorations?" asked Bruno, when he and his betrothed had kissed, and she stood shyly at his side, hardly daring to look up at his face. "I thought the hall and staircase looked lovely." "It all had a goblin air, to my mind," said the Earl, "such unearthly stillness." "Dear father, you forget how quiet the Castle always is," said Lucille. "Of course he does," exclaimed Bruno. "His lordship is demoralised by a great bustling hotel in a manufacturing city, Avhere the waiters have as many different tongues as stopped the works at Babel, and where eager-looking Americans are al- ways rushing in and out of the coffee-room. For my part, I am charmed to get back to the quiet of the fairy castle; and I should be content to be snow-bound here until — until my wedding-day." He drew Lucille a little nearer to him as he spoke, the twilight favouring such gentle caresses. 1 88 FLOWER AND WEED. He had come back to Ingleshaw determined to be very happy, to value to the uttermost this treasure of a pure and lovely woman's love which Providence had given to him. What could he ever have better in life than this perfect blessing, this constant in- centive to good deeds and holy thoughts, this per- petual inspiration, this second conscience walking at his side and guiding his steps, and always point- ing upward? "Come now, Lucille, you see before you the member for the North-Eastern division of Smoke- shire," said the Earl, laying his hand on Bruno's shoulder. "How does he carry his dignity? Do you think he has grown?" "Miss Marjorum will be sure to say so," an- swered Lucille, laughing; "or, at any rate, she will declare that he has expanded." "His pockets have had to expand considerably, I can assure you," said her father. "Now that legislation has done its uttermost to insure the in- corruptibility of electors, elections are just a little more expensive than they were in the days of rank rottenness. The voters are just as greedy, and they are not half so candid." "Have you ever observed anything of the pro- fessional beauty about me, Lucille?" asked Bruno. "Well, not exactly." NOT DISLOYAL. ' lOQ "Yet I assure you there was as much eagerness to photograph me as if I had been the Lily herself. All the local photographers fell upon me like a pack of hounds. They told me it was customary for the member to be photographed; and it was furthermore customary for him to have his photo- graph enlarged by a twenty-guinea process, and provided with a handsome frame. The high-souled creatures would have scorned to accept a sixpence in the beaten way of bribery; but they all wanted to run me in for forty pounds' worth of photo- graphy. And this was only typical of the general sentiments." "But why didn't you order the photographs?" asked Lucille naively. "I should have been en- chanted to have them." "What! six or seven enlarged me's? There are at least as many photographers in Billingford. No, I refused to yield to the charmers — first, because it would ha\e been the encouragement of cool im- pudence; and secondly, because it would have been indirect bribery." "But if you looked at things in such a Roman manner, and steadfastly refused to bribe, how was it you spent so much money?" asked Lucille, much puzzled. "Ah, how indeed? You see, I had an agent." I go FLOWER AND WEED. "And he bribed for you?" "He spent the money — on electioneering ex- penses. But now I am a member of the British Senate, and I am going to set about righting the wrongs of the universe. Is not that a great privilege?" "I am very proud to think your talents will be of use in the world," said Lucille, seeing him, in the middle-distance of life, as Prime Minister. "But members of Parliament are never at home of an evening, are they?" she added regretfully. "O, we must try to get the early-closing move- ment adopted at St. Stephen's. We ought, at any rate, to have our Wednesday evenings and our Saturday afternoons, like the counter-jumpers in small country towns." A footman brought in lamps, while another brought the tea-tray; and Lucille's attention for the next five minutes was occupied with the delight of pouring out tea for the two people she loved best in the world. The shaded lamp gave only a sub- dued light, so she was not afraid of her happiness being too much in evidence. The sweet young face beamed with happy smiles; the soft blue eyes were luminous with delight. "What a delicious thing in frocks!" said Bruno, sitting down close to her, on a capacious saddle-bag NOT DISLOYAL. IQI ottoman, and touching the velvet with the tips of his fingers. "Your Maidstone dressmaker is improv- ing. There is a bold. effect in those crimson slash- ings against dark blue which does credit to our county town." "I am sorry to say this is not a Maidstone gown. It is Madame Muntzowski's." "Indeed! Some other local genius! Sittingbourne, perhaps, or Sevenoaks?" "Oh, Bruno! Madame Muntzowski is the new Polish dressmaker in Brulon-street." "She may live in Park-lane for aught I care, so long as she preserves the knack of making you look so utterly lovely!" Lord Ingleshaw had ensconced himself in the deepest and softest of the plush-covered armchairs. He had set down his empty cup already, and was half asleep, basking in the warmth and perfume, after a long cold railway journey. The lovers could talk what nonsense they pleased. Bruno had not felt so happy for ever so long as he felt this evening. It seemed to him as if the old fresh sweet feel- ings had returned to him; those unspeakable feel- ings which had made the commencement of his courtship like a blissful dream. He had struggled with, and had overcome, that fatal fancy which had ig2 FLO^VER AND WEED. SO nearly wrecked his happiness. He had fought against that strange and unheaUhy fascination which had made Elizabeth May's image a haunting thought by day and night. He knew that he had been on the threshold of hideous falsehood and wrong, and he had recoiled horror- striken at the idea of his own infamy. Lord Ingleshaw slumbered for nearly an hour in that comfortable plush-lined nest by the fire, lulled by the low murmur of loving voices, as by the sound of falling waters on a summer noontide. Lucille and her lover could have talked to each other for hours. He was full of his electioneering experiences, of great plans for the future; measures of all kinds for the enlightenment and happiness of his fellow-men; measures which he was going to get passed in the very teeth of prejudice and opposition, fighting as St. George fought the dragon, as Macaulay fought for Catholic Emancipation, "How proud I shall be of your victories!" said Lucille; "and I am sure that no one can stand up against you. Eloquence like yours will overcome everything." "Ah, my dearest, it is so easy to talk by this fireside, with one sweet sympathetic listener. I shall seem a very different man to myself even at Westminster, with some facetious member of the NOT DISLOYAL. 1Q3 Opposition crov.ing like a cock in the midst of my boldest flight of oratory, and my right arm working involuntarily like an automatic pump-handle." "No one will crow while you are speaking," said Lucille, with conviction; "I know you are a heaven-born statesman, like William Pitt." Miss Marjorum came in presently, and found Lord Ingleshaw snoring, and the lovers so deep in talk that they were unconscious of that nasal ac- companiment to their conversation. The spinster's entrance dissolved the spell. His lordship started up and declared that he must dress for dinner, Bruno followed his example, and Lucille was left alone with her governess, who was brimming over with the last parish news. Lucille pretended to listen; but she was glad when Miss Marjorum went off to decorate herself for the evening, and left her alone with her happy thoughts. She sat down to the piano, and played her favourite bits of Mozart by memory. How those tender passionate airs, the " Vedrai carino," "Batti, batti," and "Voi che sapete," lent themselves to the reveries of love! The little dinner of four was the gayest thing in dinners. The Earl, refreshed by a warm bath and a careful toilet, had recovered from the effects of his long cold journey. Bruno was in the highest spirits; he talked a great deal about his election, Flo7x.