der the circumstances ARCHIE ARMSTRONG Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill https://archive.org/details/undercircumstancOOarms UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES /T^ u 0 p a UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES BY ARCHIE ARMSTRONG “ Men are the sport of circumstances, when The circumstances seem the sport of men.” LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE 1897 (All rights reserved ) UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. o+ CHAPTER I. Lady Frereson introduced May Daryll to London Society early in the season of 189—. That is to say, she presented her at the first drawing-room after Easter, gave a ball in her honour at 200, Lowndes Square, and promised another in June. It was generally understood that Miss Daryll paid for the balls and much besides, while it was more than hinted that the sum agreed upon between her guardian and Lady Frereson as the nett price of her ladyship’s chaperonage was more than the privilege was worth in the market of the day. In the depressed con¬ dition of agriculture, some one might have been found in a really good set, instead of a merely respectable person, whose late husband had surprised his friends by receiving knighthood on the occasion of a long-forgotten birthday of her Majesty. How¬ ever, it was discovered later on, by the inquisitive 2 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. in such matters, that the old gentleman in Devon¬ shire, referred to occasionally by Miss Daryll, and with whom she appeared to reside when not in London, was not her guardian at all, but her father by adoption, and, of course, if he wished to throw away his own money no one could blame him. At all events, as far as could be judged from appear¬ ances, he was prepared to lavish it upon a young lady, who was in every way worthy of it, and if she was, in point of fact, a mere penniless orphan, she was one whose prospects were too obviously brilliant to be ignored. Most people, for the sake of brevity, called her an heiress, a title which in itself confers a reputation for beauty on any young lady whose appearance is not absolutely repulsive. But if, as a class, heiresses are mysteriously and inexplicably plain, May Daryll, not being, strictly speaking, an heiress, had a right to be a notable exception to the rule. She had hair that might be compared to a halo, had it not been better fitted than a halo to sustain such hats as fashion, tempered by her own good taste, might impose upon it; she had eyes that were a little undefined in colour—something between blue and grey—and that lost nothing in effectiveness, at least so her friends said, from her UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 3 being to a certain extent conscious of their powers; and her complexion was beyond reproach or sus¬ picion. Nothing but nature could have given it to her, and nothing but scrupulous care could have kept it as it was. No one had ever seen her steam¬ ing on a lawn-tennis court, and if bicycling had been the fashion when she came out, she would doubtless have looked on cool and indifferent at the perform¬ ance of others. She looked well on a horse in the Eow, but was seldom seen there. Her name had been noticed in the Field reports of the runs of the Devon and Somerset stagliounds, but she must have caught the eye of Mr. Cinqfoil at the meet, for she disowned any reputation of riding hard, or indeed of doing anything to excess. In these circumstances, by the time she had gained the experience of two or three seasons, she had also widened the circle of her acquaintance enough to be able to dispense, as a general rule, with the care of Lady Frereson, though she con¬ tinued to use her establishment in Lowndes Square annually as a residence, and, of course, had her to fall back upon when other chaperons failed. Lady Frereson was admittedly not a lively companion lor a girl of two or three and twenty, who apparently 4 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. liked lively companionship, and who showed her liking by developing a sudden hut lasting friendship —it endured for many months—for a lady whose reputation for liveliness was almost in excess of her deserts. A widow who is moderately young and passably fair, who does not swathe herself from head to foot in crape, or some other accepted substitute for sack¬ cloth, wearing the fragments of a broken heart upon the sleeve of an unbecoming garment, usually enjoys some such reputation. Why she does so is hard to say. The frivolities with which she is credited are usually such that those whose experience might enable them to speak with authority, are those who are in honour bound to keep silence. And honour —well, honour is honour. Be that as it may, May Daryll’s most intimate friend was a certain Mrs. Lightfoot, a widow, and not by any means a “lone lorn widdy-woman,” but a violet-eyed, dark-haired idyll of bereaved femininity, dressing herself to perfection, without ever seeming to consider the cost of so doing, while her conversation was tinged with just sufficient misanthropy to appear cynical to some, and to warn others that she had learnt enough as Jack Lightfoot’s UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 5 wife to render her careful how she entered again into bondage. “ Anything for a quiet life,” she had once said, in answer to May, who that season was taking herself and all things seriously, “ but matrimony is not quiet.” Matrimony with Jack Lightfoot had cer¬ tainly not been so. Always restless and excited, he had made much of everything except his wife, and when he made the mistake in the Rootilpore Ladies’ Plate, which cost him his life, it was agreed that no one but he would have broken his neck in so gratuitously unnecessary a manner as a sequel to a trifling and not irremediable error of judgment. “ If he had only sat still and waited, when he found he could not get through, he would have been all right, and might have won,” said his widow, a fort¬ night later, when on her way home from India, glad to exchange the shiny East for a climate in which she could maintain a becoming coolness, life being in her opinion valueless without a complexion. In London she always enjoyed herself thoroughly, and in a modified way in the country also. She preferred the latter in homoeopathic doses. A few hours of green trees and shady roads delighted 6 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . lier, and she was considered specially adapted by Providence and education for the box-seat of a coach, looking like a picture, and having learnt enough about horses from Jack Lightfoot not to w T orry the man driving her with inane questions or answers. She was consequently much in request; but she distributed her favours pretty equally, till one day when Lord Betchworth started with her beside him to drive to Hurlingham, and brought back his party before they had had time to go half a mile, with a lady in tears and the near door-panel of his coach smashed to smithereens. From that moment Lord Betchworth was, to use his owm language, a out of the running,” and, he declared, unjustly so, for the accident was not his fault, and Mrs. Lightfoot, albeit she looked pale when she alighted, had not seemed frightened when the collision took place. As a matter of fact, her nerve was not sufficiently shaken to prevent her promising to go for a drive a few days afterwards with Major Bittlestone. “ Do you like Major Bittlestone?” said May Dary 11, looking out of the drawing-room window on the day that he had named, to see if his drag was in sight. She had been having luncheon with UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 7 Mrs. Lightfoot at her little flat near the Marble Arch, and was waiting to see her start. “ Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, frankly. “ He is so big and quiet.” “He’s big enough,” said May, “and I like big men; but as for quiet ”—she shrugged her shoulders —“ he never even speaks to me.” But Mrs. Lightfoot, who perhaps did not think such an omission showed any insuperable defect in his character, only smiled sweetly, and said— “I am sure that is not your fault, dear; I dare say you would like him if you knew him as well as I do.” “ I always think he would do very well for you,” said May Daryll, turning and facing her. “You like him, and he has money.” Mrs. Lightfoot turned a little pink; it was be¬ coming to her, but she did it because she could not help it. She had often wondered if Major Bittlestone liked her, and, in communing with her¬ self, she had had to admit that on that point, at any rate, he carried silence to excess. So, instead of answering, she sat and wondered, with her eyes fixed on the tips of her little patent-leather shoes. She was invariably chaussee to perfection, which is at 8 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. all times desirable, and, when coaching, necessary. She well knew that many men notice how a woman is shod, when the rest of her dress, over which she has lavished hours of anxious care, is lost upon them. She felt for a moment inclined to call May Daryll’s attention to these practical truths, for May Daryll was waiting for an answer of some kind, but she felt they constituted an inadequate weapon of defence, so she said instead—■ “ And I always think Harry Waterville would do very well for you, May dear. He likes you, and you have money.” “He has never said so,” said May, in an even, unruffled tone; “ and I haven’t any.” “ You will have heaps. Perhaps that is what stops him,” said Mrs. Lightfoot. “ There are men like that. You like him, don’t you ? ” “ It will be time to answer that question when he asks it of me,” said May. “You don’t expect me to propose to him, do you ? ” “ I don’t know,” said Mrs. Lightfoot. “ I believe women propose nearly as often as men; but in most cases neither actually says as much in so many words, they just both of them drift.” “I must drift down to Sir Henry Waterville’s UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 9 chambers in time for tea,” said May, smiling. “ Mrs. Topham is coming, and Guy Pendrell; and there can’t be room for many more.” “ If Nellie Topham is there with a man to talk to her, you might all jump out of the window into St. James’s Street without her noticing you, so you can both say what you like,” said Mrs. Lightfoot; “ and the season’s nearly over.” “ So is the afternoon,” said May. “ You will have to give Major Bittlestone tea before you start.” “ May,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, “ you’re the most annoyingly self-possessed girl I ever came across. Always getting all you want has made you horribly independent.” “ But I don’t get all I want; indeed I don’t,” said May, almost plaintively; “ only I don’t make a fuss about it. That sounds like four horses. Good-bye. I can pick up a cab in Oxford Street.—Thank goodness he came! ” she added to herself, as she ran downstairs. And Mrs. Lightfoot, adjusting her veil before fol¬ lowing her, bewailed the contrary dispositions of man and womankind. “ It makes it worse when they just nearly go the IO UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. way you want, and won’t go it quite. If one of them disliked the other it would not matter.” Having so delivered herself to the looking-glass, she descended, and after greeting Major Bittlestone with a grave look in her eyes, climbed up the ladder and took her seat beside him. They drove through Mayfair almost in silence, stopping to pick up a girl in Park Street and a man at the Bachelors’. Mrs. Lightfoot was noted for her kindly discreetness as a chaperon, always taking as little notice of those temporarily under her charge as she would they should take of her, and finding herself repaid by the charitable view the younger members of her own sex took of her actions. On that particular afternoon she felt she could have dispensed with the two pair of eyes and ears immediately behind her, but hoped they might be eventually well occupied. Perhaps, on the whole, for the sake of appearances, it was as well to have some one else there. The man who takes the best dressed lady of his acquaintance along Piccadilly on the box of a four-in-hand, is not exactly hiding her illuminating presence under a bushel. Along Piccadilly Major Bittlestone said nothing. There was a full season’s crowd, and his near-leader was UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. u rather fresh. Halfway down St. James’s Street, however, he broke silence. She was conscious of his deep voice saying, “ Do you remember ? ” Which was an auspicious beginning, if the place selected was ill-adapted. She was also conscious that he was looking down into her eyes. Then she saw his eyes flash forward again, and his lips tighten, heard the brake go on, and knew that he had stopped the coach in an incredibly short distance. Beyond that she never was able to speak with certainty; for, though she did not admit it to any one else, to herself she had to confess that she shut her eyes. When she opened them, both leaders were down in a struggling heap, the wheelers and the coach were almost on them, the wheelers beginning to plunge. The grooms had run forward with dismay on their faces, but were in evident doubt as to where to begin—and Major Bittlestone ? She glanced up at him apprehensively. He was looking down at the confusion with very much the same expression of tranquil interest on his face that it had worn when he was addressing her, and certainly his voice was as unmoved, though a trifle louder, as he said to the groom on his left (the other was doing what he could at the heads of the horses on the ground, to check their frantic struggles)— 12 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . “ Unhook the near-leader ! ” The man was handy enough when he knew what to do ; he unhooked the splinter bar. “ Unhook the off-leader,” said his master, in the same serene tone. And the man ran round and obeyed. The moment it was done, Major Bittlestone took the brake off, got his wheelers steady, and backed them; they struggled, were almost down, but gamely did their work and got the coach a few feet up the hill and themselves out of the neighbourhood of the leaders’ heels. Unhurt, the leaders were on their feet in a moment, and Mrs. Lightfoot had hardly realized that all danger was over and that she had not had another drive brought to an abrupt con¬ clusion, when the same quiet voice said— “ Hook on the off-leader; hook on the near-leader; let them go.” She thought she heard a man’s voice say, “Well done, Bits,” and caught a glimpse of May Daryll’s hat in a first-floor window on her left, in time to smile and nod, and then settled herself down to enjoy her own reflections, and the account given of her sensations by the girl behind her, who omitted entirely to state that when the horses went down she UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 13 had stood up, clutched the man beside her, and screamed. Major Bittlestone, who had looked rather black when she screamed—the only change of countenance Mrs. Lightfoot had noticed in him—smiled to him¬ self as he caught fragments of her recital. “ Who was the girl at Waterville’s window ? ” he asked suddenly. “ I’ve met her somewhere.” “ May Daryll, a great friend of mine,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, who had known her for three months. “ Money ? ” asked Major Bittlestone, laconically. “ She has been adopted by an old man, an uncle, she calls him ; he gives her plenty now, and I expect he will leave her everything.” “ Old men don’t always do all they’re expected to,” said Major Bittlestone ; “ and they’re a bit long dying sometimes.” “ Do you think Sir Henry Waterville would marry a girl simply for her money ? ” asked Mrs. Lightfoot. “ He would have done so before now if he’d wanted to,” said Major Bittlestone, and added, after a pause, “ I’ve often advised him to.” “ Would you ? ” asked Mrs. Lightfoot; “ I mean if you wanted money yourself ? ” Major Bittlestone smiled. H UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . “ It’s deuced easy,” he said, “ to give a chap advice you wouldn’t take yourself. Tf a man asks for your advice he ought to take it; if he doesn’t, you’re an ass to give it.” “ You like him? ” said Mrs. Lightfoot, inquisitively. Major Bittlestone nodded. “ There are tilings said about him,” she suggested, “ chiefly by otlier men, of course-” But Major Bittlestone was occupied with the near-leader again; under the influence of an aggressive fly it was growing fractious, and when the fly had been got rid of, he seemed to have forgotten her question. “ Don’t you think he would make a girl happy who married him ? ” she asked pointedly, ten minutes later, recurring without explanation to the same subject. Major Bittlestone smiled grimly. “Marriage,” he said, “is a rum thing.” Upon which profound sentiment he seemed to think they might as well both meditate, for he drove in silence for the next half-hour. She glanced up at him once or twice; he looked perfectly good-humoured and contented, and she was very thoughtful too. It was on a breezy part of Wimbledon Common, with his horses swinging along at a fast trot, with UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 15 the girl behind in the middle of an anecdote of a ball in Grosvenor Square, which, though she intended it only for the man beside her, interested her chaperon in front quite as much, that he bent his head towards Mrs. Lightfoot and said— “ Nine women in ten would have screamed—why did not you ? ” Before the girl behind began her anecdote, Mrs. Lightfoot had been thinking of what Lord Betch- worth had said to the butcher-boy who had driven into him ten days before, while she was on his box- seat. His lordship had been eloquent, fiery, and to the point, and the butcher-boy, silenced at the time, had resolved to take him as a model in future, while Mrs. Lightfoot, even after five years’ training in Jack Lightfoot’s society, had been a little horrified; so she answered, with as much expression in her eyes as she could throw into them— “Nine men in ten would have sworn—why did not you ? ” “ I like to take things quietly,” he said. “ So do I.” His team was going beautifully; he shifted the reins to his right hand, and she looked at him a little nervously. 16 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ All right,” he said with an embarrassed smile, “ you know what I am going to say.” As she did not answer, he looked even more dis¬ turbed, and then in a tone that seemed to her louder than that in which he had addressed his grooms, and that must have been distinctly audible to the girl behind, had her own flow of conversation permitted her to listen, he said abruptly— “ Will you ? ” And Mrs. Lightfoot, with all her experience and all her nerve, was so taken aback, that she could only smile and weakly murmur— “ Won’t I ? ” “ I haven’t a notion,” he confessed that evening, as they were dining alone together at the Savoy, “ what I can have said to-day to make you promise to marry me.” And the puzzled look with which he was trying to recall his flight of eloquence grew deeper as she answered sententiously— “ Unhook the near-leader.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 17 CHAPTER II. May Daryll had met Mrs. Topliam on the shady side of St. James’s Street, piloted her across the road, arrived at Sir Henry Waterville’s chambers, and seated herself by the window of his sitting-room five minutes before Major Bittlestone’s coach came down the hill and the horses fell within a few yards of her. When Sir Henry Waterville said, “Well done, Bits,” in a tone audible halfway across St. James’s Street, she said, “ Well done, Mrs. Lightfoot,” in a tone that only he could hear. “ You’d have sat just as tight as she did,” said Sir Henry Waterville; “but I don’t think I could have brought you through it as well. I always envy that man.” “ I thought you had too much of everything you wanted to envy any one,” said May Daryll. “I!” said Sir Henry Waterville. “I haven’t c 18 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. everything or anything I want; hut I don’t make a fuss about it.” It struck her as being very like something she had herself said that afternoon; but it did not seem quite easy to say so, or to ask him what it was that he wanted. Of Sir Henry Waterville she knew pretty well all that London Society had to say about him; not because she had made any particular in¬ quiry, but because her friends and others had seemed anxious that she should learn. Society seemed to have come to the conclusion that for about a dozen years Sir Henry Waterville had found it exceedingly pleasant to be a baronet with rather more than his share of good looks, and rather less than what society considered to be a baronet’s share of this world’s wealth. The former he had inherited from his mother ; the latter his father had managed to withdraw from the safe napkin of the family settle¬ ments, with a view to hundred-fold profits that never came into existence, except in prospectuses on which the name of Sir Giles Waterville figured as a director. “ I only knew when we barred the entail between us, that the governor wanted to gamble in his way, and so did I in mine,” Sir Henry Waterville used to UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 19 say; and he had been heard to add that he fancied he had had more fun than his parent for his money. At all events, it was known that two or three years after his son came of age, Sir Giles had departed to rest with his ancestors in the family vault which constituted the only unmortgaged real property left by him to his descendants, and that Sir Henry had found himself with an income sufficient to keep him on fairly good terms with his tailor and the servants at the houses where he visited, and to deter him from serious effort to increase it, until serious effort had grown, if possible, more distasteful to him than before. His baronetcy he had always declared to be socially useful but otherwise an expensive incum¬ brance, and he had declined to make it an available asset either in the City or in that other market in which baronetcies stand at a fair premium even when the holders of them are not young and pleasant to look upon. Hot that there was anything in his reputation to suggest misogyny. In fact, May Dary 11 had observed that, though the ladies under whose sheltering wing she met him in society always warned her against him, with dark hints of things she might know when she had more experi¬ ence, they, nevertheless, particularly it they were 20 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. but little older than herself, appeared to enjoy court¬ ing the mysterious dangers from which they were so anxious to save her. Personally she found him a rather reserved man, with a grave, deferential manner, and a way of talking that never jarred upon her. He was always “ quite nice ; ” that she reiterated, if ever she was questioned point-blank; the answer seemed to be understood hy her questioners, they being, needless to say, of her own sex, and any further opinions, or at all events the verbal expression of them, she was permitted to keep to herself. “Bittlestone will marry her,” said Sir Henry Waterville, after a pause. “ If she will accept him,” said May Daryll. “ You will allow women to sometimes say ‘No.’ ” “Not if they have pretty clearly shown they mean to say ‘ Yes,’ ” said Sir Harry Waterville. “ She likes him and has a perfect right to show it,” said May. “That is how people drift.” The puzzled look in his eyes made her redden as she explained, “ I mean that when they actually get engaged they neither of them quite know how it was done, or when; there is no precise moment when any question is put or answered.” “ You have learnt a great deal about it,” he said. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 21 “I don’t know,” she replied with a smile; “I have never drifted yet.” He was looking down at her with a very earnest look as she answered, and she looked up at him and met his eyes steadily, hut he brought the conversa¬ tion back with an almost visible effort, saying— “ I only meant that Major Bittlestone can marry her, and not have to put down his horses.” “And she can marry him and still wear pretty clothes,” answered May, with an uneasy feeling that she was beginning to drift the wrong way. “ Nothing like being able to live up to one’s ideals, even in matrimony,” said Sir Harry, dryly; and then some of his other guests claimed his attention. May Daryll was not much inclined for general conversation that afternoon ; but she took her share fairly well—joined in lamenting the break-up of the season ; explained how, until she returned to London to buy winter garments, and then again till the next spring, she would be buried in a Devonshire village, and disclaimed any particular taste for country pursuits that might render the life tolerable. It was pretty well understood among those who knew her, that the elderly relative with whom she lived and whom none of them had seen, was not always at 22 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . home, but that when he was, he was inclined to be exacting with regard to her being there also. It was also said by those who knew the particular part of South Devon, where May Daryll dwelt with her adopted father, that for various reasons Mr. Hagger- ston hardly took the place in county society that his means and birth entitled him to occupy; while those young men to whom May or her possible fortune were an attraction, were not always encouraged in seeking her society by their parents, although no definite fault was alleged against her. Dor a few minutes only, when the others had all gone except Mrs. Topham and Mr. Guy Pendrell, who sat in a corner together and paid no attention to any one, May Daryll found herself talking to Sir Henry Waterville, and was conscious that she was dragging the conversation round with a tremendous effort from something or other to do with chocolate creams, by saying— a Have Major Bittlestone and Mrs. Lightfoot come back yet ? ” Sir Henry Waterville seemed determined not to be serious. “ When they do,” he said, “ we will ask them whether he knelt on the mat at her feet, and what UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 23 the girl behind them thought of the whole pro¬ ceeding.” Something of what they said had been heard by Mrs. Topham from her corner, and she chimed in : “ Madge Lightfoot and John Bittlestone were in love with each other ten years ago, and she had the money and he had none ; so he never proposed, and she married Jack Lightfoot out of pique.” “ Did she ? ” said May Daryll; “ then it was very foolish of her.” “ They ought to have drifted,” said Sir Henry Waterville, glancing at Mrs. Topham, who was too absorbed in a story about Dicky somebody to hear him. “ Madge ran away from school with Captain Lightfoot,” whispered May, “and I don’t believe she knew Major Bittlestone then. Do people never tell the truth about one ? ” “ Hot often, I fancy,” said Sir Henry; “ hut they would not be so amusing if they did—to other people; besides, Bittlestone may have known her, and thought her too young, or he may have been put off by the money.” “ He ought to have known her money did not matter, so long as they were fond of each other, said 24 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. May ; “ or she ought to have let him know she did not care whether he was poor or not.” “How?” asked Sir Henry Waterville. “ It is rather difficult,” said May, “if men will not understand.” She got very red as she said it, for he was looking at her with a puzzled, doubtful face, and he too reddened a little; but Mrs. Topham was coming across the room towards them. “ Must you go ? ” said Sir Henry Waterville. “ Afraid so,” said Mrs. Topham. “ Mr. Pendrell is going to take me to the St. James’s to-night. I fancy I saw the thing that’s on there three weeks ago, but it does not make much difference, does it ? ” “Hone whatever,” said Sir Henry Waterville, gravely, opening the door. “I’ll walk up to Piccadilly with you and put you into a hansom there.” When they got into St. James’s Street, he stopped to light a cigarette. o O % “ Shall you be at Hurlingham to-morrow ? ” asked May. “ I have an engagement,” he said. “ Eeally ? ” “ I’ve promised to lunch with a man, and go and see a horse.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 25 “ Must you ? ” said May. “ I am going with Mrs. Lightfoot, and can bring whom I like. Major Bittlestone is going to drive us down.” The shrug of Sir Henry Waterville’s shoulders would have been imperceptible if she had not been watching him closely. “ Do come,” said May, gently. He nodded slightly, and his hand was not quite steady as he applied a second match to his cigarette. “ I’ll let Bittlestone know,” he said, " and you and I will have tea together.” She murmured, “ Thank you,” with a little smile and curtsey ; and Mrs. Topham, who had turned to see if they were coming, but was too far off to hear, whispered to young Mr. Pendrell that “ That girl’s blue eyes can do as much as most, but belladonna plays the deuce in the long run.” Mrs. “ Tophet,” as her dearest friends called her behind her back, was not always charitable when she happened to be observant, but she had not noticed the shaking of Sir Henry Waterville’s usually steady hand. May Daryll sent a note to Mrs. Lightfoot that evening to remind her of the Hurlingham engage¬ ment, and to reiterate a promise of punctuality; 26 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. writing, in conclusion, “ I don’t think I was ‘ horribly independent ’ this afternoon; I thought of you, and get hot all over when I remember all I said. —Yours drifting, May.” Which last sentence Mrs. Lightfoot ignored when she replied by bearer, announcing her engagement to Major Bittlestone, and expressing a hope for con¬ gratulations on the morrow. But the morrow never came, or rather it brought a telegraphic message from South Devon that scattered May Daryll’s plans for tea and drifting at Hurling- ham, as unexpected telegrams have scattered such plans before. She sent it, with a brief note of ex¬ planation and regret, to Sir Henry Waterville. “ Mr. Haggerston returned very ill—doctor says come at once — Mrs. Fung .” “ Mr. Haggerston,” she added in explanation, “ is, as you know, the only friend I have in the world; and Mrs. Pung, the housekeeper, who sends the telegram, is not fit to nurse him alone; he has had a seizure before. I shall take a trained nurse and do most of it myself.” May Daryll was not as altogether self-possessed as Mrs. Lightfoot declared her to be, or as she her- UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 27 self wished; at all events, she was guilty of enough tears in the train to make an old gentleman who sat opposite to her quite sympathetic, though whether they fell for what she was leaving, or for what she was going down to, she could hardly have said; probably, if she could have analyzed her feelings, she would have found that both causes were responsible, combined with a general sense of the bad luck of it all. It is not good to feel that one who has been your only stand-by from childhood, is slipping away from you; while one who might take his place and fill it as he could not, does not seem quite ready to step into it. That night May Daryll stood beside old Mr. Haggerston’s bedside, and listened with tightened lips as he struggled for breath, while Mrs. Pung sniffed in the background, causing May to turn and in an imperious whisper order her out of the room. Then May took him by the hand, but it was as she had been told on her arrival: he neither spoke to her nor knew her, and next morning he had passed away. 28 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . CHAPTEE III. On a baking-liot July afternoon the mortal remains of Jabez Haggerston were laid to rest in the green churchyard of sleepy sunny Polyton in sleepy sunny South Devon. The inhabitants at large attended the funeral, the women predominating; the men were mostly at work in the fields. And as the earth rattled on his coffin lid, they tried to realize that they would never again set their clocks by his daily walk past their cottage doors. They had talked of him often since they heard of his death, but had found that really each knew as little about him as the other. He always wore a blue frock-coat, and light-brown trousers strapped under his boots: he never varied the pattern of his curly-brimmed silk hat: (he once told the doctor that he had won a gross of them among other bets on the day Wild Dayrell won the Derby; he and May’s father, then a youngster, had gone down to Epsom and backed the horse together UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 29 on the strength of the coincidence of names, so old Dr. Pentreath understood:) he always walked up the village street punctually at midday to receive and post his letters at the village post-office : he had bought Polyton House twenty years before : he had lived there for ten months out of the twelve ever since. And now he was dead—and buried. That was the extent of their information about him, after they had gazed whispering over the low wall of the village churchyard, and from various other points of vantage; while the blacksmith and his fellow-bearers grunted and perspired as they wrestled with the massive oak coffin ; while Mr. Kerswell, the vicar, read the most beautiful service in the world sonorously, and May Daryll, very tall and slender, in her deep mourning, looked on sorrowfully, being apparently the chief and only mourner for Jabez Haggerston, Esquire, of Polyton House, deceased. After the funeral, the blacksmith and those with him wffio had borne the coffin all the way from the house to the grave side, retired to quench their thirst with cool sour cider at the Plough. Air. Kerswell, the vicar, retired to the vestry, and thence strolled home to wait under the shade of the great mulberry- tree in the vicarage garden till it was time to quench 30 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. his thirst with tea ; and Miss Daryll drove away in what was now pointed out as her brougham, with the coachman and footman sombrely resplendent in new black liveries. Then a broad-shouldered, cheerful-looking young man in tweed knicker¬ bockers, said to have recently ridden all the way down from London on a bicycle, who had been gazing at Miss Daryll’s yellow coils with respectful admiration, pushed his way through the crowd, and made for a red-brick house with green shutters, about fifty yards above the church; and the crowd itself dispersed, more slowly than crowds do where they are more frequent, to await its men-folk on their return from their labour. There was more to tell of that evening than usual after a summer’s day at Polyton. In every cottage the ceremony was described, and what Miss Daryll had worn, and how she had looked, so far as her veil had allowed them to see. They were unwilling to believe that she could be bowed down with grief • O 7 indeed, they declared that she obviously was not, and no wonder, for he was a crabbed, stern old gentleman, and of course he had left her all he had to leave. Then they all had to comment on the fact that Mrs. Pung, of all people, had not been at the UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 3i funeral. All the other servants from the house had attended, and Mrs. Pung’s importance was hardly that of a servant; she was Mrs. Pung. Some one —a shepherd, it was said, as the gossip passed from door to door—had met her driving towards Exeter in the Polyton House luggage-cart at a very early hour that morning, looking quite grand in her new mourn¬ ing, so she could hardly he incapacitated by grief. That she ought to have remained as a last tribute of respect to her dead master, all were agreed. She had been his housekeeper ever since he had lived at Polyton, and doubtless before that also, but she had been uncommunicative on all subjects. She was clearly no favourite in the village. A hard woman they called her, who had kept herself to herself, and looked after her master’s interests, or, as they put it, her own perquisites, too keenly to please her poorer neighbours. They had had little oppor¬ tunity of judging what the condition of things might have been at Poly ton House without Mrs. Pung, as she had only taken a few days’ holiday on rare occasions, choosing her time when Mr. Haggerston paid one of his periodical visits to presumably gayer scenes, and when Miss Earyll departed also, so that the house could be practically shut up. Whither 32 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. old Mr. Haggerston went when he left Polyton, none of the servants at the house could tell. Mrs. Pung re-addressed and forwarded his letters. Miss Daryll always went to London, every one knew that; that was where she got her smart clothes, distant imitations of which were concocted by sundry young ladies in the neighbourhood. A single occasion only was remembered when she had remained and kept house while Mrs. Pung was away, and then soup and jelly for an invalid were to be had for the asking at the hack door, while more than one of Mr. Haggerston’s cast-off garments had found new owners; and if Miss Daryll gave without question when she had the chance, and retired without a contest on Mrs. Pung’s return, she had afforded the village a glimpse of what might have been. Apart from that, she enjoyed the esteem which is always ready for a pretty young lady, if she will do only a little to earn it. She was always ready with a word and a smile, while she never spoilt their good effect by an undue prying into other people’s affairs. She was known to like children as long as they were fairly clean and did not touch her, and often talked quite kindly to old people, as long as they did not insist upon her looking at limbs > UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 33 suffering from any particularly repulsive form of disease. As a result the village was awaiting with satisfac¬ tion the reign of the new owner of Polyton House. Meanwhile, at the house itself, May Daryll had taken off her hat and veil, pulled up the blinds of her little sitting-room on the first floor, and rung the bell. There never was much doubt about it when Miss Daryll rang a bell, but now it sounded through the house with the resonance of mastery and ownership. “Tea,” she said laconically, when the footman appeared. The butler was presumably divesting himself of his funeral raiment. Then she stood for a few minutes near her little inlaid bureau with a copy of old Mr. Haggerston’s will in her hand glancing through it, and stopping now and then to look at herself in the long, oak-framed glass that hung over the bureau, and to pass a light finger over her fair hair. It had a ripple in it which whether due to art or nature required attention. Mr. Haggerston’s will was short, and needed no explanation; it left her everything absolutely, merely veiling the gift in a few legal phrases which even she had no difficulty in understanding. It 34 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . mentioned one fact specifically, which she had read with interest. It described her as “ May, my adopted child, the daughter of my late friend Gilbert Daryll and Ellen his wife, daughter of the late Sir George Egleton of Bultliorpe, in the county of Eutland.” She knew she had neighbours who were careful to explain that she was not Mr. Haggerston’s niece, to any one who spoke of her as such, and that the obvious rejoinder, “ Then who is she ? ” was met under such circumstances by a mournful and depre¬ catory shake of the head. “ He must have been afraid that if I knew who they were, I should want to go to them,” she said half aloud, having through much solitude learnt to talk to herself. “ Just as if I should wish to be bothered with relations ! Poor old uncle ! ” At the same time she was conscious that liow T ever inconvenient kinsmen and kinswomen, in a concrete form, might possibly make themselves, the mere fact of their existence in the abstract, and in a more or less respectable social sphere, would be of no dis¬ advantage to a young lady otherwise alone in a pleasant but conventional world. “ I have met a Mr. Egleton somewhere, or was he Captain Egleton ? I wonder if I ought to get to UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 35 know them,” she murmured; and then the butler and footman arrived with the tea-tray, all gleaming silver and china, and May threw herself back in a deep chair and looked around her luxuriously; she loved luxury. “Show Mr. Yeel up directly he comes,” she said. “ Bother Mr. Yeel,” she added when they had closed the door. It was too hot to talk business with an elderly solicitor. She understood the will, and had told Mr. Yeel so when he came to see her the day after Mr. Haggerston’s death, and left her a copy of it for her perusal at her leisure, so that now all she wanted was a little money for current expenses, till it was proved, and she could draw large cheques on her own account. Even ready money she was in no hurry for, and could wait till she returned from London. She could not exist for many more days in the black dress she had first telegraphed for. She had worn it for two days already, and her maid, the best she had ever had, could not put the hang of the skirt right. On four thousand a year one could afford to mourn with taste and variety. Besides which, there were other good reasons for spending a few days in London, before every one had left for Goodwood. 36 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . “ Four thousand a year!” she murmured, sipping her tea, and—as a sound of wheels came nearer and nearer, overpowering the hum of insects round the sunny window—she added with a sigh, “ Here’s old Veel” Then she fetched her copy of the old man’s will, and laid it in the arms of a china cupid on the table close beside her, and sat down again as the door opened. “Mr. Morden Carthew,” said the footman, and stepped back hastily into the passage outside, which he would not have done after six months’ training under Mr. Haggerston’s butler, had not the flash of anger, almost of amazement, in Miss Daryll’s eyes made him feel that, having done wrong unwittingly, he had better get out of sight as soon as possible. “ Eeally! ” was all that May Daryll could say even to herself. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 37 CHAPTER IY. Me. Morden Carthew must have heard May Daryll say “ Really! ” for though she said it to herself, she said it quite loudly, and did not show any sign of knowing or caring whether he had heard her or not. He was a dark, clean-shaven young man of about thirty, with his hair already growing thin on his temples. Besides which, he was tall, angular, and gave some indications of being muscular as well. He was also suffering from extreme nervousness, and if Miss Daryll’s manner indicated no pleasure at seeing him, there was certainly nothing in his to show that he expected to enjoy himself. “Mr. Carthew,” she said at last, without holding out her hand. “You are surprised to see me, Miss Daryll,” he answered hurriedly; “ you did not know I was back again at Exeter. You see, I have become a partner in Fenders, Yeel and Co.; in fact,” he added with a nervous smile, “ I am Co.” 38 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ Mr. Yeel attends to my business,” she said frigidly. “Mr. Yeel is very unwell,” he continued. “I know he usually attended to Mr. Haggerston’s affairs; but he is not likely to be about for a week or two, and as I have to do with the family side of the practice, I had to come.” “ Is there any hurry for me to see any one ? ” she asked, adding, as if his answer were of no importance, “ Let me give you a cup of tea.” He drew a chair towards him and sat down, while May from her deep cushions almost smiled, he looked so hot and uncomfortable. She handed him a cup of tea, and he drank some hurriedly and put down the cup. “ I was very sorry to have to call upon you,” he said deprecatingly. “ Thank you,” said May Daryll. “You are annoyed at my coming,” he continued. “ I saw you get red.” “ Mr. Carthew,” said May, “ blushes are a matter of complexion, not of conscience—and it is a warm day.” “ I made you very angry twelve months ago, by presuming to propose marriage to you, Miss Daryll. I learnt my lesson.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 39 “ I hope you are not going to repeat it,” she could not help murmuring; hut he would not be interrupted. His voice grew firmer as he went on, while the slender chair on which he sat creaked as he leaned forward in it. “I’d have given my head not to come, on my honour; but I knew you would need help, and I thought that if some one must say what I have to say, it had better be some one you know, even if it were some one you looked down upon.” “ I wish you would not be so fearfully in earnest,” said May, “ you are so much nicer when you are not. Have some more tea ? ” She filled his cup, but he did not take it, and she looked at him apprehensively. “ I am not going to say anything foolish again,” he said reassuringly. “ I did it once, and I suffered for it.” “ You did it at a garden-party, and it was / who suffered. You did it so that at least two old ladies could see what you were doing, and one at any rate could hear all you said,” said May. “I object to being made publicly ridiculous. Let us try to forget it and be friends,” she added in a more conciliatory tone. 40 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ I came as a friend/’ lie said. “ Yon came to talk business about Mr. Haggerston’s will; there it is.” He glanced at it without interest as it lay in the chubby arms of the china cupid, while a photograph of Sir Harry Waterville appeared to be contemplating it mournfully. “ I know it by heart/’ she added; “ it leaves me everything. I did not know lawyers could be so intelligible.” His chair creaked again as he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “ Tell me all you have to say now,” she went on. “I am going away to-morrow for a week or two. I think in the end I .shall let or sell this house and live in London.” The half cup of tea he had drunk had made him very hot; the beads were standing on his fore¬ head. “ I shall have between four and five thousand a year, I suppose,” she continued. “ I suppose for the present I must engage a companion of some sort. She need not be old, and I should be very nice to her. I might rescue some poor girl from running after horrid children, or being worried by some UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 4i dreadful old woman; I always feel so sorry for governesses and companions.” His chair creaked again; he was so big and heavy. “ Shall I have much more than four thousand a year ? ” she asked. “ Of course I can get on quite well with less.” “ Miss Daryll,” he said, “ I am not doing this as a lawyer should; but on my soul I can’t; I am so awfully, awfully sorry for you.” “ What on earth do you mean ? ” she exclaimed, sitting up in her chair. “ Is there anything wrong with the money ? Is not the will all right ? ” “ It was all right till Mr. Haggerston married.” May Daryll gripped the arms of her chair. “ I don’t understand,” she said. “ Married ? When was he ever married ? ” “ Marriage makes a will void,” he replied succinctly. “That will was made ten years ago, and Mr. Haggerston was married just before last Christmas.” “ Married—uncle married—to whom ? ” “ To his housekeeper, Mrs. Pung.” May started to her feet. “ I refuse to believe it,” she exclaimed. “ Mrs. Pung! ” “ They were married on the 20th of December in Essex. We have examined the Register and 42 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . questioned the clergyman and one of the witnesses. He was away from home at that time, was he not ? ” “ He was away before Christmas—yes, certainly,” said May, with a dazed look. “ Where ? ” “ He never said where he went. Mrs. Pung forwarded his letters to him to his club if she were here; but that time she only returned the day before he did, and he came back on Christmas Eve.” “ You remember that ? ” “ Perfectly,” she said. “ Oh, uncle ! uncle ! ” “ He was no relation, was he ? ” “ None. I only used to call him uncle for con¬ venience; so I shall get nothing that way,” she answered. “ My father, as far as I know, was a friend of his many years ago—a younger man than himself; he mentions him in his will.” She handed the document to Mr. Carthew, who examined it as she lay back in her chair thinking. “ Waste paper ? ” she said, as he let the copy of Mr. Jabez Haggerston’s will fall at his feet and looked at her. She was very pale, and her blue-grey eyes seemed larger than ever. “ Common, horrid Mrs. Pung! how could he ! and she gets everything ? ” “ She gets a great deal,” said Mr. Carthew, “ not UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 43 absolutely everything; they don’t suggest that he made a fresh will, so unless one turns up, the bulk of the realty—houses and land, you know—goes to his cousin and only known relation, Colonel Haggerston, who will take the other half of the personalty as next- of-kin, but Mrs. Pung will have, including dower, about two thousand a year.” “ How did you hear of it all ? ” “ Her solicitors wrote to us and we wrote to Colonel Haggerston, and did what we could to verify what they all said; we did not tell you sooner, because we wanted to be sure before troubling you.” He did not say that he had spent the last two nights in the train on her behalf. “We hope to be able to arrange something,” he said, after a pause. “ They ought to make you some sort of allowance.” “ Mr. Carthew,” said May Daryll, “ I have met Colonel Haggerston, and he is not the sort of man I care to ask favours of; and as for Mrs. Pung-” “ Well ? ” “ Puh—h—,” said May. It was a manifestation of feeling more expressive than refined, but words failed her. 44 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ You are very plucky,” lie said. “ I mean to be,” she said, “ and as to taking charity from Colonel Haggerston or Mrs. Pung—I’d rather starve! ” “ Your own relations,” he suggested, glancing down at the will —" your mother’s people-” “ I fancy they disowned her,” said May, “ and I won’t beg from them ; I won’t beg from anybody.” “ What can you do ? ” “ Go out as a governess or companion—how I have always pitied them ! ” she answered—“ or write for the papers, or go on the stage.” “ You are very plucky,” he said again, rising. “ Don’t go,” she said, “ please don’t, until I have had time to arrange my ideas a little. I have a hundred or so saved from my allowance, at the bank, and the things in this room are all mine and will fetch something ; that will keep me until I have time to look round; will Mr. Yeel give me a character, if I want one ? ” “ By George!” said Morden Cartliew, “here you are discussing details as if losing nearly five thousand a year was like losing an umbrella, when a strong man would sit down and cry.” “ A strong man would stamp and swear, not that UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 45 it would do him much good,” said May, bitterly. “ I don’t want to cry, I want to think; but all my thoughts go back to Mrs. Pung.” “ Had you noticed nothing ? ” he asked. “ Nothing at all,” she said. “ He always treated her as a confidential servant, that was all; of course I did not see them together latterly, as he only came home the day before he died.” “ Nothing more ? ” “ Nothing; he was a gentleman, and she was a servant.” Mr. Carthew had heard it whispered that, gentle¬ man or not, Mr. Haggerston had not always been fastidious as to the society in which he mixed, and even that his mysterious disappearances into another world than Polyton were simply such brief returns to its pleasures as advancing years would permit; him to enjoy, but he only nodded thoughtfully, and May went on : “ I thought her odd in her manner since he died ; but this, of course, accounts for it; this is why she wrote so many letters and saw people; still, I don’t see why she should go away before the funeral without saying anything.” “ Her uneasy conscience,” he suggested. 46 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ She had that, certainly,” said May. “ That was why she walked about all last night.” “ Where ? ” “ All over the house; I heard some one in the passage, and peeped out; she was in her dressing- gown, and she went down into the library where the coffin lay. I followed her, and could hear her crying and praying over it; she kept saying something about forgiveness, you know.” “ I don't know,” said Mr. Carthew, looking more troubled than before, “ except that I know it is a very queer business. Tell me more; did she do any cooking ? ” “ She used to take him his tea in the early morn¬ ing ; of course she had plenty of opportunities—do you think she-” “ For goodness' sake, don’t say I made any sug¬ gestion,” said Mr. Carthew. “You won’t, will you ? ” “ Libel? ” “ Slander,” he said hurriedly. “ At all events, we won’t say anything about it to any one at present.” “ And it would do me no good if she were hanged, would it ? ” said May. “ But do stay a little longer ; I want to talk about myself. Had I better advertise ? ” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 47 “We will see about that,” he said. “Mr. Yeel knows so many people, and the vicar, of course, will help you.” “Not if Mrs. Kerswell knows it; I shall have to come to you for my character, Mr. Carthew; don’t forget that the mother of a family always requires a personal reference.” “ She shall have it,” he said, growing more natural and less constrained in manner than he had been. “ If I am grave and dull enough to bore you, I shall impress any stern parent.” “ You have forgiven my rudeness ? ” she said very gently; and he looked so nervously at her that she could not help smiling. “ Don’t be frightened,” she said. “ I am only going to thank you; I won’t tell Ethel Kerswell how long you stayed.” His blush was of a more comprehensive nature than hers had been; it brought tears to his eyes. “ I shall tell her anyhow,” he said. “ I dine and sleep at the vicarage.” May laughed in spite of everything—with her eyes. “Then it is a fait accompli” she said. “ Yes,” he answered shyly; “ as far as we are 48 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. concerned it is. Her parents don’t quite know it— at least, we have not told them.” “ Then you did not propose before the whole parish, in her case,” said May. “ I taught you something, as you said just now.” He got redder still. “ I don’t know how it came about,” he said. “ I think we somehow-” “Drifted,” suggested May, as he paused; and as he looked surprised, she added with a half-sigh, “ It’s a thing a lot of people seem able to do.” “ Of course I shall tell her,” he said nervously. “About the garden-party? Tor goodness’ sake, don’t. She probably knows, and if she does not— why, I can’t afford to risk losing friends. Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Carthew,” and she held out her hand. “You are wonderful,” he said, as he took it; and he looked as if he meant it. “ I mean to be,” she said. “ Oh, mind my rings. Poor Ethel! I hope you don’t—but of course you do not shake hands with her now.” With a deeper blush than ever Mr. Carthew took up his hat and went. “ Poor Ethel! ” murmured May Daryll, as he closed the door, “he will just suit her.” Then, as UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 49 his footsteps died away down the drive, she threw herself back in her chair, and took Sir Harry Water- ville’s photograph from the little table by her side and looked at it. Then she let it fall upon her knees, and lay back among the cushions sobbing. E 5o UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. CHAPTER Y. Tn a quiet country parish a funeral is the next best topic of conversation to a wedding, and the Reverend Stuart Kerswell, sitting at tea with his wife and daughter in the shady garden of Poly ton Vicarage, had many questions to answer about Mr. Haggerston’s funeral. If he replied to those of his daughter more fully than those of his wife, it must be remembered that if two ladies will talk at once and a man wishes to quench his thirst, he cannot always attend to both; and funerals combined with hot weather make a man thirsty. “ Yes, yes,” said the vicar at last to Mrs. Kerswell; “I understand that by his will she inherits his fortune.” “I trust she may be spared to make good use of it,” murmured Mrs. Kerswell. “ Is there any reason to believe that she is in bad health ? ” asked the vicar, with a dash of asperity in UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 5i his tone. Funerals and hot weather seemed to make him irritable. “She looks delicate/’ said Mrs. Kerswell. “Fair girls often do. I hoped it might be that which gave her her discontented expression.” “ Pooh! ” said the vicar. “ To be mewed up with that old man—never to see anybody—enough to make any pretty young girl discontented.” “ My dear,” said Mrs. Kerswell, picking a crumb off her dress and dropping it into her empty cup “it was you who told me she was delicate when I said she might help in the parish.” “I merely suggested that she might be,” said the vicar; “I had no authority to state it as a fact.” “ She ought at least to take a class in the Sunday- school,” said Mrs. Kerswell. The vicar shrugged his shoulders. “ She’s a very pretty girl,” he said; “ the prettiest in the neighbour¬ hood.” It was not a logical answer, but it had the effect of turning his wife’s conversation into another channel of the same all-absorbing stream; and as he was not an authority on the construction or intrinsic value of fashionable mourning, he was allowed to 52 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. sit and hum the “Dead March” in Saul to himself in peace. But Mrs. Kerswell that afternoon did not seem to be at one even with her soft-eyed, soft-haired daughter, whose chief anxiety in life arose from her efforts not to contradict either of her parents. “ She can afford whatever she likes,” said Ethel Kerswell at last, almost firmly, summing up her view of the case. “And every one knows May is always beautifully dressed,” she concluded, with a little sigh, that suggested an unimportant infraction of the last injunction of the decalogue. “I wonder if Morden Carthew will go back to her ? ” said Mrs. Kerswell, viciously. She was always seeking support from her daughter and being disappointed. “ Mr. Carthew never speaks to her now, I believe,” said Ethel, drowning a spider in her cup with a ferocity quite foreign to her nature. “She knows plenty of other men.” “ Indeed! ” said her mother. “ One with her guardian’s consent should be enough for any young girl ” “ But it never is, if she can get more,” said Mr. Kerswell; “ and in May Daryll’s case, whoever she knows she must have met in London. The old man UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 53 never had any one here who was fit for her to speak to.” “ Mr. Haggerston never accompanied her away from here/’said Mrs. Kerswell. “No one can tell what either of them did.” “ She stayed, as I happen to know,” said the vicar, “ with persons whose social position and experience made them peculiarly fit to undertake the charge; and as for old Haggerston, I suppose he could stay where he pleased.” “ He was far too mysterious,” said Mrs. Kerswell. “ My dear,” said Mr. Kerswell, “ you cannot ex¬ pect to be accurately informed of the private affairs of every one in the parish.” Having so relieved his feelings, he put on his hat and walked towards the garden door, in the direction of which Ethel’s brown eyes had for some time been straying. As a matter of fact, though the garden wall was too high for anything except possibly his hat to have betrayed him, Morden Carthew had walked past only half a minute before, and the vicar found himself fifty yards behind him as he emerged upon the dusty road. Mr. Carthew was walking up the village street so 54 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . deeply absorbed in thought, that he tripped over a baby which had started on a crawl of exploration from a cottage door, and nearly kicked it into the gutter, under the impression that it was a dog that had got itself between his legs. Having realized his mistake he apologised instead politely, and dropped a penny upon it, which it instantly put into its mouth. He then strolled on, quite unconscious that a young man in tweed knickerbockers had keenly enjoyed the incident from the other side of the road; but he turned on realizing that some one, presumably not the baby he had trampled on, was throwing stones at him, and had hit him on the hat with a small pebble. “ Did you throw that, sir ? ” he asked fiercely. “ No, of course not; it fell from the clouds; so did you.” “ Billy Pentreath ! ” “Morden Carthew!” “ What on earth are you doing here ? ” “ Nothing, taking a holiday ; and you ? ” “ Nothing, taking a walk.” They shook hands. Mr. Pentreath was a round- faced, jovial-looking young man, with the skin peeling off his nose from unwonted exposure to the UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 55 sun. You could feel sure, as he put his hand in the pocket of his rough tweed suit, that he would draw out a pipe; as a matter of fact, he produced two, tried them, and filled the one that showed most signs of drawing, with tobacco that he seemed to keep loose in the ticket-pocket of his coat. “ I am staying with my uncle, Dr. Pentreath,” he explained. “ I’m settled in London at present, hut he wants me to come and take over his practice here ; he is getting old.” “ Ah ! he’s the principal doctor here,” said Carthew, thoughtfully. “ I don’t know how many general practitioners you think this fashionable locality supports,” said Mr. Pentreath, looking round. “ His best patient was buried this afternoon, and you have just nearly killed one of the cheap ones.” “ I want to see your uncle,” said Morden Carthew. “ Come on,” said Mr. Pentreath, “ I’ll chip in as consultant, or we shall have the county depopulated. What’s wrong—liver ? You look bilious.” “ A matter of business,” said Carthew. “ I’m practising at Exeter as a solicitor, and he can tell me some things I want to know.” “ You always did ‘ want to know, you know,’ ” 56 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . said Mr. Pentreath, adding “ How do you do, sir ? ” as he raised his cap to Mr. Kerswell. Mr. Kerswell, as cheery an old gentleman as ever grew round and rosy in a country living, shook hands warmly with them both. “ When are you coming to us ? ” he said to Morden Carthew, with a twinkle in his eye; and Morden Carthew answered— “As soon as I can,” with evident sincerity. “We are going up to Dr. Pentreath’s now.” So was Mr. Kerswell. And they all went to¬ gether to the red-brick house above the church. The hall seemed dark as thev went in from the Kf brilliant sunshine outside; and through the open door opposite them, like a picture in a frame, they could catch a glimpse of the sun-lit lawn, with the white-haired old doctor in the shade of a lime-tree, smoking a long pipe and sipping thoughtfully from a big tumbler, while beside him on a wicker table steamed a silver urn, flanked with rolls and clotted cream and fruit, and all the accompaniments of afternoon tea in the west country, side by side with a syphon and decanters. “ By George! ” whispered Dr. Pentreath’s nephew almost reverently, “ you live quietly down here, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 57 but you don’t do badly. Doesn’t it all look jolly after London and the slum work and a big hospital ? Good old boy,” he added, looking at his uncle ; “ he knocks off the liquor of his male patients, and tells his female patients not to drink tea, and drinks tea or whisky himself as he feels disposed. Come on, I’m thirsty.” Thirst with Will Pentreath was chronic, which was fortunate, as the others, to their host’s dis¬ appointment, accepted his warm welcome and then did but scant justice to his hospitality, the vicar eating a peach out of politeness, while Carthew accepted a cigarette from his friend. “ The most pernicious form of smoking,” said the old doctor; “ injuring your mucous membrane by the inhalation of super-heated smoke, killing yourself by inches with nicotine, fragments of tobacco, and rice paper; as bad as drinking yourself to death by nipping sherry.” “ My dear uncle,” said his nephew, returning his case to his pocket and filling another pipe for him¬ self, “ cigarettes bear the same relation to cigars and pipes that flirtations do to love and matrimony.” “ About as unwholesome,” growled the old doctor. “ About as harmless,” said his nephew; “ in 58 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. moderation, and with as little after effect. Both touch up the heart about equally. By-the-by, Carthew, didn’t I hear some yam about you being engaged or something ? ” Morden Carthew shook his head, with an uneasy glance towards Ethel Kerswell’s father, who might be wondering what “ something ” would imply. “ I thought you couldn’t be,” said Mr. Pentreath, in a relieved tone ; and Carthew turned hurriedly to the old doctor. “ I came to ask you a question, sir, with regard to your late patient, Mr. Haggerston. You certified the cause of death as cerebral haemorrhage. I sup¬ pose you had no doubt ? ” “ None whatever.” “ A little extraordinary, was it not ? ” “ Not at all, sir.” “ He died very suddenly, did he not ? ” “He had ample warning; I know he had had one stroke before, and he may have had others. People only drop down dead without any previous symptoms in novels and plays.” “ But, suppose-” began Mr. Carthew. “Why should I suppose when I know,” ex¬ claimed the old doctor, testily; “I tell you it was UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 59 a case of haemorrhage. There was nothing extra¬ ordinary, nothing out of the common about it; it might have cleared up but it didn’t, and if he had got better this time it would only have been to live a few weeks or a few months till the next stroke came and killed him. Suppose! Why should I suppose, forsooth ? ” “ Go it, uncle,” murmured his nephew, irreverently, helping himself to whisky and water. The old man turned to him, as if in search of some one who at least might understand him. “ My dear Will, we are talking of an old man of seventy, with a hot youth behind him, and hard arteries and a large heart. Would you mind ex¬ plaining to your friend that the death was perfectly natural under the circumstances; and that his end was probably painless, though the symptoms were distressing to look at; he appears to think I have mistaken them.” “ Anything more to say, my boy ? ” asked young Mr. Pentreath, turning to Morden Carthew, and winking the eye that was at that moment concealed from his uncle by his up-tilted nose and his tumbler. “ I am very sorry,” said Mr. Carthew, apologeti- 6o UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. cally. “But suppose some one liad an interest in his dying ? ” “ ISTo one had, except Miss Daryll,” said Dr. Pen- treath. “ I suppose you don’t suggest that she-” “ I don’t know,” said Morden Carthew; “ it will all be common property in a day or two, so I may as well tell you now. Mr. Kerswell, I know, will treat anything else we say as confidential.” Mr. Kerswell nodded, and Morden Carthew in his brief, lawyer-like way recapitulated the facts and the results of Mr. jHaggerston’s marriage as known to him.” “ By Gad,” said the doctor, “ it’s a queer story ; but a story can’t be too queer when there’s a woman m it. “ Miss Daryll would hardly believe it at first.” “ I do,” said young Mr. Pentreath, suddenly; “ I was there.” “ Don’t be a fool,” said Morden Carthew, with the direct diction of a schoolfellow and a college friend. “ I thought, by the way you were puckering your face, you were in earnest.” “ I do that when I think,” said young Mr. Pentreath, quite unruffled; “ and I put it on some¬ times for patients. I knew I had heard the name UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 61 of Haggerston before, and when uncle described the old man I seemed to remember him: blue coat with silk flaps, buff sort of bags, and a very down- the-road-in-the-old-days curly sort of a hat. I’ll tell you the village in Essex—Oak—Ash—got it on the tip of my tongue.” “ Little Ashley ? ” suggested Carthew. “ Eight. I w'as down there for some duck¬ shooting, and when I had come in from the morning flight, and was having my breakfast, they told me a gentleman had cut his thumb, so I went and strapped it up; he was in a blue funk and had a villainous, crooked, spatulate thumb and knotty joints, short nails, no line of heart to speak of, line of head all over the place, and all sorts of things I could not quite make out on his little finger.” “What’s all that?” asked old Dr. Pentreath, sharply. “ Palmistry, uncle, palmistry,” said his nephew, unabashed. The old man shook his head. “ The boy call himself a man of science! ” he growled contemptuously. “ Nemo omnibus horis sctpit ,” murmured Mr. Kerswell. 62 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . “Bali!” said the old doctor; “if Will had said that I’d have forgiven him.” “ I declined a fee, not being a local practitioner,” continued Will Pentreath, serenely, turning to Morden Carthew, “and was asked to the wedding to make up. The old man seemed to have an idea of making things lively in spite of his thumb. You know, my dear Morden, when the thumb bends in and the fingers bend towards it, you only want a funny sort of cross, that I can’t quite explain, on the third joint of the little finger-” “ I know nothing at all about it,” broke in Morden Carthew; “and the old man’s hands were very much like other people’s. Did you go to the wedding ? ” “ ISTo ; births and deaths are more in my line, and I was off to town. I saw the bride though.” “ What was she like ? ” “Well, she was not of a style I admire myself; but I suppose he thought her all right. She was what polite people call ‘ of a suitable age,’ reddish nose, grey curls, square jaw, and all the symptoms of a queer temper. The landlord swore they’d had a row already, and that she threw the knife that cut him.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 63 “ I’ll lay a guinea to a gooseberry/’ said old Dr. Pentreath, “ that that was Mrs. Pung.” “ Mrs. Jabez Haggerston,” said Carthew, bitterly. “ How could the old man do it ? ” “ Quern Deus vult perdere ,” quoted the vicar, softly; at which the old doctor shook his head. “ No good quoting Latin to young men nowadays,” he growled ; “ girls might understand you.” “ With that thumb and little finger he was bound to rob somebody,” murmured William Pentreath. Mr. Kerswell looked at him doubtfully. He had been favourably impressed at first; but a dabbler in palmistry was a new thing to his experience, and he was not quite sure that it was not his duty as a clergyman to express disapproval openly. The old doctor’s disapproval was founded on rational and material rather than on Christian reasons, and he expressed it by means of a series of contemptuous snorts. He nodded approvingly, however, later on, with restored good humour, when Carthew described the independent attitude May Daryll had adopted, and her resolve not to be helped either by those who were to divide Mr. Haggerston’s property or by her own relations, or indeed by any one. 6 4 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ Plucky girl,” said the old man; “ but still be had friends.” “ Ourselves,” said the vicar. “ I don’t think she will get much help from any one else. I always fancied they came for what they could get. Not that I ever saw much of them, however long they stayed here.” “ They may not have gone to church,” said the old doctor, “but sometimes they came to see me. I remember one at least that suffered from chronic alcoholism. I always fancied they belonged to a past from which he had almost but not quite broken away.” “ Not quite ? ” echoed Morden Carthew. “ Not quite,” said the old doctor, in a tone which showed that he did not care to pursue the subject further. “ I remember some,” said the vicar, “ to whom I was introduced, flashy-looking old fellows, with but little in common with myself, though they seemed to be fairly well educated as a rule. I have met one of them walking with Mrs. Pung, the house¬ keeper, so no doubt Haggerston and his friends had kindred tastes in such matters.” “ They probably found they could work the oracle UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 65 through her, and no wonder now we know the end of the story,” said the old doctor. “ I dare say she won’t remain Mrs. Haggerston very long; and we will hope that May Daryll too may find a remedy in marriage for the ills old Haggerston has left her heir to.” “ She’s a deuced pretty girl,” said young Mr. Pentreath; “ but she’s not cut out for roughing it, to judge by her hair and figure, which were all I could see at the funeral.” “ You shall be introduced to her at my house,” said the vicar, dryly, “ which will be better than discussing her any more now.” But Mr. Pentreath was not easily stopped. “ I could not see her face,” he said; “ but I’ll swear I heard her name before. By Jove, Carthew, was it not a Miss Daryll, I was told-? ” But Mr. Carthew was hurrying the vicar away towards the house and did not answer. “No,” said the vicar, as they walked home together, “ she is not built for roughing it.” That evening Morden Carthew discussed May Daryll’s future with Ethel Kerswell, till even Ethel Kerswell, the kindest-hearted little girl in the world, avowed herself tired of it, and suggested that her F 66 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. own was of at least equal interest to her. So as it had grown too late for them to do justice to so important a topic together, and as her secret, having lost its novelty, was eating out her soul and weigh¬ ing heavy on her conscience, he promised to discuss it with her father instead, over a pipe in the study. The old man did not show the surprise that he had expected, and together they came to as satisfactory a conclusion as could be wished for, subject to ratification by Mrs. Iverswell. It had gradually borne itself in on Mrs. Kerswell that her husband was never likely to rise to any high dignity in the Church. It w T as a disappoint¬ ment to her, for though she did not mind admitting that he would not have made a good bishop, she felt no doubt as to her own supreme fitness to be a bishop’s wife, and had always consoled herself by hoping that she might become the mother-in-law of something privileged to wear an apron and gaiters, if only in the colonies. However, Morden Carthew’s prospects were admittedly good in his profession, and might be contrasted favourably with diminishing emoluments of the Church. And so it came about that on the following morning Ethel Kerswell was able to carry off UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 6 7 Morden Carthew and exhibit him with all the pride of acknowledged ownership to May Daryll, who duly congratulated both in the garden, where she was walking up and down fanning herself. “ She’s here,” she said briefly, after she had told Morden Carthew emphatically that he was the one to be held lucky; a semi-complimentary form of felicitation which usually pleases both parties. “ Who’s here ? ” said Ethel. “ Pung,” said May; “ she made Eogers announce her as Mrs. Haggerston, and then she told me she had no need to be announced in a house that by rights should be hers. I turned my back on her and came out here.” “ She expected to get everything as widow,” said Morden Carthew. “ What about Colonel Hagger¬ ston ? ” “ He drives out from Exeter this morning,” said May. “ Here he comes ! Quick, this way ! ” They stood behind the rhododendron bushes as a lly drove past, with an iron-grey, sunburnt man inside. “ He’s very good-looking,” said Ethel Kerswell. “ That has been said of him before ; I’ll introduce you, if you like,” said May Daryll. 68 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ I don’t think you need/’ said Mr. Carthew, hurriedly. “ Hullo! who’s this, another heir-at- law ? ” A second fly, turning in at the gate as they approached it, had come suddenly upon them where there were no rhododendron bushes to cover a retreat, and Morden Carthew found himself raising his hat to acknowledge a stranger’s how, and wondering whether the salutation was meant for Ethel Kerswell, or whether the very faint inclina¬ tion of May Daryll’s head had really been intended as some sort of recognition of it. The gentleman who had bowed stopped the carriage and got out. He was not a bad-looking man at first sight, but a certain stiffness in alighting belied the blackness of his hair, and made Carthew look at him more carefully. The stiffness was borne out in its suggestion by the crow’s-feet round the eyes. They were too deep to be ignored, while his skin had a suspicious redness on the cheeks and an unpleasant yellowish tinge elsewhere. There was an air of assurance about him that seemed as if forced with a view to covering a feeling of doubt as to his reception. “ How do you do, Miss May ? ” he began. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 69 “ My name is Miss Daryll,” said May, standing with her hand on Ethel’s arm, and looking at him with as much apparent interest as if he had been a wheelbarrow. He had all the appearance of a hardened old rascal, and he had possibly in a long life met many rebuffs and knew how to receive them. Besides which, it was of no use to bandy words while a young man was standing by with the look Morden Carthew had in his eyes—a look that had a dash of amusement in it, but of that kind of amusement that dies out rapidly. So he did what was quite the best thing he could do—he replaced his hat, turned round without the slightest change of counte¬ nance or even colour, climbed back into the fly, and said, “ Drive on,” in a tone as audible and almost as steady as May’s had been. “That man has been kicked before now, and I have not,” said Morden Carthew; “ but personally I think I should prefer the kicking.” “ My dear May,” said Ethel, “ I’d give my eyes to be able to do like that. People whom I perfectly detest call me ‘ Ethel,’ and ‘ Miss Ethel ’ sounds as if a servant was speaking to one.” “ That is Mr. Eaymond Wilson,” said May in 70 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. explanation, “ an old friend of Mr. Haggerston, which meant, as far as I conld see, that uncle was too kind to order him out of the house when he came down to borrow money; then he showed his hand one day, and I had to say that if he came again I went. Uncle was furious, and he never stayed here after that; but I remember my maid had some story of his being seen somewhere with Mrs. Pung, so T suppose she has asked him to meet her here.” “Where the carcase is-” began Morden Carthew. “I fancy the vulture in her case will be a particularly hungry one, and rather thirsty too, from what uncle told me,” said May; “ and I suppose for the present I must stay in the garden.” “Oh, May, don’t,” said Ethel. “Why, we came up here on purpose to ask you to come at once to the Yicarage. Come with us now, and your maid can pack your things and send them on.” “Mrs. Kerswell asked us to say how glad she should be to see you,” said Morden Carthew. “ Mamma is very kind really,” said Ethel Kerswell, nervously; “ only she rather likes to manage people.” “ I don’t want any one to manage me but you two,” said May Daryll. “ But I can’t possibly stay here, can I ? ” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 71 It was not a warm expression of gratitude, but she felt very thankful all the same, and went with them. She heard later in the day from her maid how Colonel Haggerston had flatly refused to have luncheon in the society of his new cousin, who in her turn had refused to enter the housekeeper’s room, and how she and Mr. Eaymond Wilson had consequently had to be content with sandwiches and sherry in the library; it was the cooking sherry, the butler had said, and they had drunk it all and then ‘had words ’ together, though whether on the subject of the lack of refreshments, or on what other topic, he had not been able to ascertain, owing to the thickness and close-fitting qualities of the library door. May was mildly interested and a little disappointed. Thieves might fall out, but she had no confidence in proverbs, and had rather hoped that Mr. Haggerston’s widow, whom she never thought of or spoke of otherwise than as Mrs. Pung, would soon have become Mrs. Raymond Wilson. It is consoling to see some measure of retribution fall upon one’s enemies, even if one has not the satisfaction of bringing it about. 72 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. CHAPTER YI. For some weeks May Daryll stayed with the Kers wells at Poly ton Vicarage, growing gradually accustomed to the prospect of her future career, and doing her best to prepare herself for it with the help of her old lesson-books and Mr. Kerswell. The vicar combined a kind heart with good sense and a sound education, and did for her what few of her other friends could have done, both in the matter of the Rule of Three, English Parsing, and similar mental gymnastics, which he said made him feel quite young again, and in the answering and inserting of advertisements in the Morning Post and the Guardian. Mrs. Iverswell hinted that the parish was in danger of being neglected, and pointed out that the Rule of Three was not essential to any one desiring the post of companion to an old lady. But the idea of companionship to any elderly member of her own sex had departed from May’s mind after a week in the society of Mrs. Kerswell. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 73 She had come to the conclusion that it required qualifications either inborn or derived from practice and education, such as she was never likely to possess, while the teaching of the young seemed a less unpleasant and more possible prospect. Mr. Kerswell shook his head at any mention of such a career as might begin in the back row of the chorus of a comic opera, or in the writing of a fashion article for a weekly newspaper, and end in fame histrionic or literary. To such schemes he would be no party, and May had an inward con¬ viction that he possessed a certain amount of shrewd¬ ness, though, of course, after twenty-five years in a Devonshire parish he had his limitations. What¬ ever it was it must be a struggle; and if the highly educated women who had grown weary with the care of May Daryll in her childhood, had seen her at the mature age of twenty-three striving to master the principles of English Grammar, or clenching her white teeth as she attacked vulgar fractions in their stronghold, they would have felt themselves revenged. Mrs. Kerswell indeed declared that, after all, the only qualification of half the governesses she had known lay in their utter unfitness for anything else; but May declined to accept Mrs. Kerswell’s opinion 74 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. either as consolation or discouragement, not being quite sure for which it was meant, and asserted in reply that she should get on in time, as, though she disliked learning for its own sake, she knew she was not altogether a fool. Mrs. Kerswell raised her eyebrows at the word “ fool,” but Mr. Kerswell was not present to refer to, and as she felt uncertain whether it was biblically condemned, when applied by a young lady to herself and not to her brother, she said nothing. Ethel Kerswell encouraged May with warm ap¬ preciation and some practical assistance; but Ethel Kerswell had other things to occupy her thoughts. She wrote long letters daily to Morden Carthew, and he spent his Sundays at the Vicarage, besides coming out to Polyton at least twice a week on matters of business connected with Mr. Haggerston’s estate. Mr. Pentreath openly suggested that half- hours spent by Morden Carthew in the Vicarage garden would figure in the bill of costs to be submitted to the administrators, and May Daryll contemplated Ethel Kerswell’s happiness without envy. Mr. Pentreath did all he could towards dis¬ tracting May’s thoughts, and would have done much more if she would have let him. As Morden UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 75 Carthew’s friend lie had become a pretty constant visitor at the Vicarage. He said that the relaxing air of South Devon robbed him of all desire for active exercise, and that he had never enjoyed a holiday with his uncle so much before. He would willingly have taken Mr. Kerswell’s place, and assisted in the furbishing of May’s education; and one day, when Mr. Kerswell was absent in discharge of the duties of a Diocesan Something, Mr. Pentreath brought up an armful of books to the Vicarage and proudly exhibited them to her. She had been about to lay before him an intricate conundrum connected with the purchase of Consols at a price that, without a Continental war, they will never see again, and looked a little alarmed as he untied the string. There were limits to her brain’s capacity, and she could not desert her old friends in their tattered bindings for new volumes, without regret; so at least she said; but he winked a wink that would have been vulgar if it had not been wholly joyful and good natured; then divided the books into two little piles, pointed to one pile and said, “ Cribs, Miss Daryll! ” which conveyed nothing to her until he explained. ‘'Translations and keys, don’t you see? You 76 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. say to your pupils, ‘ My dears, these are the books you will use for your studies; your parents must buy them at once.’ They get them, or you set things out of them, which will do just as well; and you keep all the keys locked up in your bedroom, so that you can mug up the answers to the sums, and how to get them and how to do all the exercises before you have to look them over.” “ It seems very nice,” said Ethel Kerswell, examining the comprehensive assortment of educa¬ tional works before her. “Very nice, indeed; but is it quite right ? ” “ It would not be if your pupils did it,” said Mr. Pentreath; “but they won’t. Boys crib a little at the public schools, deuced little though; there’s a feeling against it, and all their work is competitive; "iris never crib at all.” o “ That,” said Ethel Kerswell, proudly, “ is because they are more honest.” “I always thought,” said Mr. Pentreath, “that it was because they did not know how. I learnt all about it when I was in for my little-go at Cambridge, and the tutor offered to lay my governor odds I did not get through, at least that was what it came to. Of course you don’t do it when you are in UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 77 for honours; and I never heard of a Girfcon girl or a Newnham girl doing it at all,” he added, bowing to Ethel. “ Morden went in for honours,” said Ethel, with a relieved look. “ Oh, old Carthew never did anything wrong,” said Mr. Pentreath. “He always got through his exams, by working for them.” Such a path to success had apparently never sug¬ gested itself to Mr. Pentreath in his little-go days, though he had worked hard enough afterwards for the examinations connected with his profession, explaining his undoubted success therein by saying that he had brought to bear upon them a brain not previously wearied by the acquirement of that which was neither useful nor ornamental. He seemed a little hurt by Ethel Kers well's disapproval. “ Cribs are grand things,” he said enthusiastically, “ for schoolmasters and lady teachers.” “ You mean governesses,” replied May Daryll; “ you need not shy at the word; your ‘ cribs ’ will save one at least from madness and despair; thank vou so much.” If Mr. Pentreath could have been alone with her at that moment, he would promptly, in so many 78 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. words, have offered to save her from hardship and despair, by making her Mrs. William Pentreath; but he had so plainly shown his wish to do so, that May was taking good care never to meet him except when Ethel Kerswell was present. His offers to escort her for walks were always declined on the score of Mrs. Kerswell’s strict ideas upon such subjects and the duties of a guest towards the smallest wishes of her hostess. She told herself that she wanted all her friends ; and that to put Mr. Pentreath out of what he possibly considered misery, would only make him more miserable still, and might lose her his assist¬ ance and cheery companionship altogether. She had an idea that the rejection in his case would have to be couched in pretty plain terms to be effectual, and very few men could turn into friends after being decisively rejected as suitors, as Morden Carthew had done. He had only done so since he had con¬ soled himself with Ethel, and there was no Ethel in the neighbourhood for Mr. Pentreath. As it was, he managed to keep up his spirits and theirs, as a rule; in fact, May came to the conclusion that he would probably continue to do so unless he was allowed to get beyond a certain point unchecked. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 79 She had a light hand in such matters, and some little experience. The answering of advertisements produced nothing satisfactory ; all those who took notice of her replies wanted too much or offered too little. “ I can’t teach Greek, and I won’t do hair, or help in the nursery,” May said; “ and ‘ all the comforts of a Christian home ’ without a salary will not comfort me when my clothes wear out.” It was at this juncture that she wrote to her friends. They had seemed fairly plentiful a few weeks before, and some had been quite delighted to take her about in London, particularly when she contributed to the expenses. But, when it came to sitting down with paper and ink before her, the list of those to whom she cared to apply grew very short; and the list of those who answered her was shorter still. Perhaps the others were abroad and did not have their letters forwarded to them. The suggestion was Ethel Kerswell’s, and did not meet with general acceptance. Of the replies received, that from Mrs. Lightfoot was the briefest and the most to the point. She telegraphed from London: “ Come and stay with me for a week; ” and May went up to her next day. 8o UNDER THE CIRCUMS TA NCES. Mrs. Lightfoot was spending August in town collecting her trousseau, though she had expressed a conviction that the difficulties that lay in the way of her so doing at such a season would necessitate the postponement of her wedding. She was in a very bad temper when May arrived, for the only fitter at her dressmaker’s whom she would allow to touch her, was taking a holiday ;at Brighton, and the only milliner who could trim a hat that suited her —a lady whom the depression in land and an improvident marriage had compelled to exercise her undoubted gifts in that direction—had filed her petition, and returned to the house of her titled father, leaving a trustee in bankruptcy to grow grey in his efforts to understand her system of book¬ keeping, and to worry her late customers with accounts, which they had hoped to settle by asking their creditor to dinner and recommending her to their friends. Under such circumstances, Mrs. Lightfoot welcomed May warmly, took her off to assist at the trying-on of three new dresses before dinner, and only declared herself ready to quit the discussion of her own affairs and consider May’s when they reached the drawing-room afterwards. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 81 May expounded her views and hopes, while Mrs. Lightfoot sipped her coffee and reflected. “ None of my friends seem to have any children. I am sure I don’t know why,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, when May paused, “ and the people I know who have are all rather frumpy.” “ I don’t care what they are,” said May, “ at least I do, really. I want them to be able to pay decently, and I should like them to be fairly nice to me, and leave me alone.” “ I won’t guarantee anybody,” said Mrs. Lightfoot. “ The only people I can think of at present have a son at Sandhurst.” “ What would that matter to me ? ” said May. “ Nothing, of course,” said Mrs. Lightfoot. “ Have you seen anything of Harry Waterville ? ” She looked rapidly at May as she spoke, but May answered steadily— “ No, I have seen no one since I left town.” “ Written to him ? ” “No.” “ Going to ? ”' “No,” said May. “Let us talk of something else.” “ Of course you know your own business best,” G 82 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. said Mrs. Lightfoot, “ and you have no money now ; but still, I suppose he is not an absolute pauper.” “He would be with me,” said May; and seeing that Mrs. Lightfoot was not going to be denied, added, “ He may be able to live as a bachelor. I should only be a burden to him ; and when it was possible, he never hinted that he wanted me.” “ He seemed to like you,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, in her most incisive tone; “ but, of course, you know your own affairs best.” “ I hope I shall never see him again,” said May, softly. “ You mean by that you are very fond of him, and you want to cut your own throat to prove it. I shan’t let you.” “ Madge,” exclaimed May, “ if you ask him here I shall walk out of the house.” “ I believe you would,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, “ and I don’t quite see how I could ask him here. He was in town, all the same, a few days ago, on his way to —some place where the shooting was good, I suppose.” “ Where ? ” “ I do not see any reason why I should tell you if you are not going to write to him.” “ I don’t wan’t to know,” said May, wearily. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 83 Mrs. Lightfoot sat and looked at her. She began by looking at her rather as if she were annoyed with her; but as May made no sign of going on with the conversation, but only stared sadly at the ferns in the fireplace, the hard lines about Mrs. Lightfoot’s face softened, and she looked sad and thoughtful too. Perhaps it was only the effort of thinking that made Mrs. Lightfoot look melancholy for a few moments, for before very long there came a little light into her eyes, which May might have noticed if she had not been staring so fixedly at the ferns. Mrs. Lightfoot was called by some of her friends a mischievous, empty-headed little woman; but at that moment whatever caused the light in her eyes made her reflect quite seriously. “ Do you know the Chedburys ? ” she said at last, as if an idea had that moment struck her. “ No,” said May. “ Perhaps that is not the name ; it may be Ched- worth,” suggested Mrs. Lightfoot, tentatively. “ I never heard of them,” answered May, without looking up. “ You never heard their names ? ” “ Never.” “ Well, I don’t know why I thought you had ; but 8 4 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . Mrs. Chedworth, when she wants to see a London doctor, comes up and stays with Lady Bibury, and I meet her there. When she is not talking about her illnesses, she is always groaning about her family and all they do that they ought not to do, and her governesses and all they don’t do that they ought to do. I never listen to the woman, but I know she said something the other day about a governess.” “ I don’t think I ever met Lady Bibury,” said May. “It would not be much good if you had,” answered Mrs. Lightfoot. “ She has quarrelled with Mrs. Chedworth. She had to say her house was not a hospital for country cousins who could afford hotels, so I must find the creature’s address and write to her direct.” A few minutes later Mrs. Lightfoot was searching through Burke’s “ Landed Gentry,” with a feminine disregard for the order of the alphabet, and the evident object of discovering the country seat of the Chedworth family. “ Let me look,” said May. “ CH comes before CL.” “Keep your spelling for your pupils, my dear girl,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, returning the book to the UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 35 table behind her. “ It is not there ; I have a notion their place is called after them, or they are called after the place.” So Mrs. Lightfoot wrote a letter, which took her some time to compose, and said, as she folded it— “ Yon had better go back to Devonshire if they want you, and write to them from your country Vicarage. It will counteract the impression that you are an intimate friend of mine.” “ You had better tell them that I am a poor but honest relation,” suggested May. “ Please be careful what you say; do remember I am not too clever.” “ My dear May,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, “ you are a gilt-edged Ollendorf in petticoats; and now let us talk about me, please.” So they sent out Mrs. Lightfoot’s letter to the post, and talked wedding-garments for an hour, in which time they only touched on the fringe of their topic, which they agreed would take days to do justice to. It was the one part of Mrs. Lightfoot’s re-entry into married life which had the charm of novelty for her. On the occasion of her former wedding she had descended from a window on the first floor of a boarding-school at Brighton, with the help of Jack Lightfoot and a ladder, and had wept 86 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. hot tears to find that the trousseau which he had promised to have ready for her was limited to two dozen pairs of gloves, the same number of lace pocket-handkerchiefs, and a hat which she hysteri¬ cally but firmly declined to wear. She had managed to get her hair put up in a knot by a hair¬ dresser whose forte was easy-shaving at twopence a head, not daring to enter any of the more con¬ spicuous shops, while the fact that ever since break¬ fast-time the town-crier had been proclaiming a minute description of her from Kemptown to Hove, made it necessary to avoid all dressmakers, and rendered escape by railway impossible till the ceremony was over. As a matter of fact she had only attained the dignity of a dress that concealed her ankles on the day on which her newly acquired husband had to rejoin his regiment a fortnight before it sailed for India. All of which Mrs. Lightfoot narrated to May for the first time in detail, though she had told her some part of it before, and May agreed that in such circumstances her wedding with Major Bittlestone ought to be on an elaborate scale ; though she confessed ignorance on many points of detail connected with the ceremony, as whether a widow had to be given away by a relative or not, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 87 and suggested that she gave herself away. Mrs. Lightfoot professed her readiness to do so, provided that the operation was not so described by the reporters of the public press; and said that it would afford a way out of the difficulty arising from the fact that none of her relations had ever spoken to her since the ladder was found leaning against the balcony at Brighton. Then they passed on to discuss questions of marry¬ ing, and re-marrying, and unmarrying, and kindred topics, such as ladies can discuss with authority, and problem-propounding novelists can only handle crudely, from want of knowledge of facts. A few years in India give a woman even more to talk about than the same period in London, and Mrs. Lightfoot had had experience of both ; while May did not mind what she listened to or talked about as long as her own affairs were regarded as settled and needing no further comment. But Mrs. Light¬ foot said no more about them, either that night or on the following day, which they spent shopping; and on the next she got a letter, not from Mrs. Chedworth, but from her husband, who said that liis wife’s health was not equal to the exertion of correspondence ; and as he was evidently favourably 88 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. impressed by Mrs. Lightfoot’s description of May, and as there had been no governess at Chedworth Hall for a month, owing to summer holidays and the dismissal of the last one for reasons which did not appear, May thought it prudent to return to Polyton, partly to secure the advantage, suggested by Mrs. Lightfoot, of dating her letters from a Vicarage, and partly to consult with Mr. Kerswell on the form her testimonials should take. In the course of a fortnight’s correspondence, Mr. Ched¬ worth said a good deal about what he wanted, but did not make it quite clear why it was he desired a lady with so many qualities more or less outside the limits of her educational gifts. His references to tact and discernment, zeal and discretion, showed an anxiety which Mrs. Kerswell, who had great experience, declared to be unusual, and which May Haryll found highly alarming; and his solicitude appeared, as far as could be judged from rather vague allusions, to be rather on account of certain elder daughters, who were not to be confounded w T ith the two little girls of thirteen and eleven, respectively, who were to be taught matters more or less rudimentary. ^lay felt fairly competent to cope with the children, but the idea of using a UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 89 salutary and wholesome influence upon young ladies presumably between the schoolroom and her own age almost terrified her into declining altogether. She doubted her powers, and was quite sure of her unwillingness to put them to the test. However, she did not like to refuse a chance. Mrs. Liglitfoot declared she had always heard that the Chedworths were much-respected descendants of a long line of admirable ancestors, and even pledged her word that they were personally charming, though May was perfectly aware that she had met none of them except the mother. Mr. Kerswell was fully equal to the occasion, and his testimonial to her character left Mr. Chedworth no possible ground for refusing her services ; while Morden Carthew sent another, written on the most imposingly headed letter paper of the highly respectable firm of solicitors of which he was a member. May groaned as she read them over and felt that she ought to blush. “ They make me out just the sort of person I have always hated,” was all she could say. 9 ° UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. CHAPTER VII. August passed away, hot, dry, and dusty, as August is apt to be in South Devon; not particularly bracing to the mind or body; and on a steamy hot September afternoon May Daryll waited for her train on the up-platform at Exeter station, and Mr. Pentreath expressed freely his opinion that with every one returning from the summer holidays the Cornishman would be both late and crowded. May listened to him in gloomy silence. She did not want to be reminded of the crowd; and his evident satisfaction at the prospect of a few more minutes in her society jarred on her nerves. Starting for her first situation as a governess was like going out for the first bathe of the season on a cold day, and she felt that, as she must take the plunge, the sooner she got rid of all spectators, and took it and got it over, the better. Mr. Pentreath looked grave, for him. He was parting from her after six weeks’ UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 9i acquaintance, and he had just missed being seen riding up to the station on his bicycle by Mrs. Kerswell, who had driven her in and deposited her there with her luggage. The circumstance might account for the lowness of his spirits, hut would not excuse them, considering that their buoyancy and the idea that they might help to sustain her own had gained him leave to be there. All the rest might have been done by a porter. They looked at one another and the silence grew irksome. “ I wish,” began May, turning her eyes from him and looking down the line regretfully, “ that I had treated my own governesses better.” “ I am sure they were very fond of you,” exclaimed Mr. Pentreath, warmly. She shook her head. “ I am sure they had no reason to be.” “ I don’t see that it matters much,” he answered. “ Retribution is rot. It never comes off.” “ One’s enemies might suffer if it did,” said May, grimly; “ but I really only meant that I wished I had learnt more; I could then teach the little girls, at any rate, without much trouble. I’m afraid even your books won’t help me with their sisters.” 92 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “They are very fortunate-” he began. But she interrupted him. “ What can they have done to want influencing ? And fancy me influencing anybody ! Oh, please don’t talk nonsense.” “ I hadn’t spoken,” he protested. “ I know you don’t value my opinion, but Mrs. Kerswell said of you last night, ‘ Considering her bringing-up, she is wonderful.’ That was not bad for her, you know. And Mr. Kerswell said, ‘ Many who have shown less promise have grown to be worthy women indeed.’ It was rather cheek of the old gentleman, but he meant it well.” May gave a little groan. “ What have I done to deserve it all ? ” She had no ambition to be a worthy woman. “ If you would only let me help you; if you would only let me save you from it all,” began Mr. Pentreath. He had never got so far before, and he got no further. “ Here is the train,” exclaimed May, hurriedly; “ and you have not bought me a paper.” The train steamed in. After a brief but severe struggle with two other passengers, he secured her a corner seat. She insisted on having something to UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 93 read, and by the time he had got it there was hardly time for him to say more. “You know what I meant by helping you,” he whispered earnestly. “ Not in the least. Do take care; you will be killed,” she said; and he had to drop back from the footboard to the platform and wave his hand to a window from which she only glanced for an instant and nodded. “ How much nicer men are when they are not so fearfully in earnest! ” murmured May to herself as she sat back on the hard seat, to reflect on the miseries of having to travel third-class, with people to whom travelling was inseparable from food, babies, and perspiration. It was a new experience to her; it seemed almost worse than the fact of having to earn a living, and nearly as bad as having to wear clothes which Mrs. Kerswell defined as suit¬ able to her position ;—May had grievously hurt Ethel Kerswell’s feelings by refusing to employ her dressmaker. After a time she read a French story-book Ethel had given her for her pupils, and wondered whether in French and German, at all events, she would be able to hold her own against them. Then she took up the paper that Mr. Pentreath 94 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . had bought her, and did not read it at all, but sat wondering why it was that a man who did for a woman all she would let him do, and was ready to do much more, should get nothing for it, hardly even “ thank you.” (She really had forgotten even to thank Mr. Pentreath, and must write and ask Ethel to do so for her.) And why it was that another man, who never lifted so much as a finger, should be able to command anything he asked for; and then perhaps never even take the trouble to ask for it. But it was not of Mr. Pentreath and the hardship of his lot that she thought most as the train flew through Devon and Somerset and on to Bristol. After Bristol came an hour on the Midland, in a carriage that had baked in the sun all day, and then, as everything—even a railway journey, third- class—must end, the train stopped at the station which she knew to be somewhere near her destina¬ tion, and she got out. There was a carriage waiting for her—a private omnibus, with a footman who asked if she was for Chedworth Hall and took her things. He touched his hat as he did so, which was rather a relief; she was not sure whether the footmen at Polyton had touched their hats to her governess. She would have seen to that herself UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 95 if she had only known, in the days when, from six years old onwards, no one, not even Mrs. Pung or the governess herself, had ever seriously questioned her authority. She almost felt inclined to order—or ask—Mr. Chedworth’s footman to have her driven to the back door that she might slip in unnoticed, and not meet any of the family till next day, but was afraid it might seem like a confession of weakness, and refrained. As a matter of fact, she was driven to the front door, and passed through it into a large, old-fashioned hall. There was a hat- stand in the corner, with two or three hats on it all of the same pattern and various ages—white, square- topped, hard felt hats, which must belong to Mr. Chedworth—and below them a rough tweed cap of markedly modern type which probably did not. At all events, there were no indications of there being any large number of people staying in the house; and every one there was had evidently gone upstairs to dress for dinner. “ Not that any one I ever knew would recognize me,” she reflected, glancing down at her black dress. Then the footman showed her across the hall and through a door at the other side of it, where he 96 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . handed her over to a small maid with rosy cheeks, who pointed ont a staircase and a door on the first landing which she said was that of the school-room. “ The back stairs,’’ groaned May to herself, as the little maid left her. “ Now for the school-room and the pupils.” There was a door open on her right, as she walked towards the stairs, the door of a very untidy room, with fishing-rods in racks on the wall, and a gun- cabinet standing open, while the table was covered with cigar boxes, bits of tow, cleaning rods and cartridges. A tall man in a Norfolk jacket stood by the window peering down a pair of gun-barrels. “ Hullo, Dolly! ” he said, looking round. " It’s not Dolly,” she murmured, as she passed hurriedly on; but he had caught sight of her profile. “ By George! Miss Daryll! ” “ It’s not Miss Daryll,” said May, in a faltering voice; but she had to turn, and the light of the window was on her face. “ Sir Henry Waterville,” she said, in a dead, dull voice. “ Are you here ? ” “ I suppose so,” he said, glancing down at a long, thin frame in brown tweed. “ It looks like me. But they did not tell me you were coming. How UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 97 long are you going to stay ? ” And lie came forward and shook hands with her. “ I don’t know,” said May, hurriedly. “ I can’t explain now. I’m the new governess. You haven’t heard, of course; but please, please, don’t tell any one you know me.” “ What’s up now ? ” he asked, with a puzzled look. “ Of course, if you have some private practical joke on, I’ll be like the grave; but the girls don’t always treat the governess very well here; in fact, she does not have a good time at all. I’d better say something.” “ Please, please don’t,” said May. “ They must not know.” He looked as if he was beginning to understand her. “ Of course if you are doing it all for love of the family, it will be all right, and you are just the right person; but I don’t see how you can know them well enough for that, and yet not well enough for the girls to recognize you.” “ I don’t know what you mean,” said May. “ I don’t know them at all.” “Oh, come,” he answered, “you need not mind talking to me; I’m in the know—in fact, I’m here on much the same job.” H 98 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. May could only look completely mystified; she did not expect to find a colleague; but he began to laugh. “We shall manage something between us. What an actress you are ! ” “ Hush! ” said May. The little school-room maid was showing a footman where to take her luggage, and May hurried up the stairs in front of them. She gave the little maid half a crown that evening to tell nobody that she had spoken to any one in the house, which had the effect that all the servants were deeply interested in the fact within an hour. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 99 CHAPTER VIII. For a minute or two May paused outside the school-room door; but to run downstairs was hardly practicable. To begin with, Sir Henry Waterville was still in the gun-room, with the door open, and in any case it scarcely seemed wise to begin what was possibly a life’s career as a worthy woman by behaving like a lunatic. So she gave a little sigh, turned the door-handle, and went in. Two little girls with fair fuzzy hair were eating their supper. They looked stupid. She came to the conclusion at a glance that she might well know more than they, and felt a little comforted. After staring at her for a few moments, they came forward and shook hands with her. “ I hope we shall be friends,” she said, but their answers were inaudible, and they returned to renew their onslaughts on the jam, peering at her out of the corners of their eyes at intervals, while she sat and watched them in silence. Having realized that she was quite indifferent IOO UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. to the quantities to which they helped themselves, and as she had expressed a wish to be a friend, they silently resolved to treat her for the time as such, and an early mutiny carefully planned between them was averted by her ignorance of the powers and possibilities of her position. Then the school-room maid came back to show her the way to her room, and said that she would bring her up something to eat when it had been done with downstairs. So May realized that late dinner was for her a thing of the past, and was glad that it should be so, if late dinner meant sitting in humbleness and listening to Sir Henry Waterville talking to somebody else. When she came down to the school-room again the two children had settled to some amusement in a corner, and as they did not seem likely to disturb her as long as she let them alone, she ate a moderately warm entree and reflected in silence. She had told the little maid that for the present she did not want her things unpacked, but that was on the spur of the moment, and she had not had time to think things over. There was one man in the world whom she had strenuously resolved never to meet again. She had a vague idea that it was a very proper resolution, and one for which she UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. IOl deserved some credit. But to form a very proper resolution and to be absolutely heroic were two different things ; and she had met him again. Fate had decreed it—a Fate that was possibly armed with a human and feminine finger—but, after all, she might blame Mrs. Lightfoot in the strongest terms that her epistolary style commanded, without de¬ liberately—or precipitately—cutting herself off from her immediate means of livelihood. The Kerswells, upon whose recommendation she had to rely, would not understand such an action; and the possible opinion of Mrs. Kerswell had never borne such weight with May Daryll before. Her possible opinion, with a full knowledge of the facts, was immaterial, as they could hardly be explained to her. Mrs. Lightfoot alone knew of the resolution, and her condonation of its collapse was a foregone conclusion. Besides, it need not collapse at all, its stability might be regulated by circumstances; in fact, circumstances ought to guide the decisions of all who were not strong enough to guide circumstances. And it was nine o’clock and time for fuzzy-haired little girls to be sent to bed by their governess. They went unquestioningly, having smothered their yawns during half an hour, for the simple pleasure 102 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. of staying up beyond their usual bed-time; and when they had gone May began to think of going too. She was tired, and weariness might mean sleep, and sleep would postpone the necessity for decision, but she heard a step on the stairs as she opened the door, and turned back. It was Sir Henry Waterville. “ I have gone up to my room to get a cigarette,” he said, following her in and shutting the door. “ I now remember that there is an open box on the billiard-table.” “ You could hardly say you were going to talk to the new_'governess.” “ I hope no one else will want to talk to her,” he said. “You told me not to say I knew you, so I did not. Horrid tiring work walking after partridges on a hot day,” he added, sitting down. She felt a little disappointed ; she had hoped that he looked tired because he had been bored. “Well,” he went on, as she went back to the chair she had left, and folded her hands and looked at him. “ I threw out some feelers, and I find they really do not know anything about you.” “ And so I told you the truth. Thank you, Sir Henry Waterville.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 103 He shrugged his shoulders without answering; he was not conspicuously inquisitive, though he evidently expected to be enlightened. “ I will tell you the whole story,” she continued, “ if vou care to hear it. You remember old Mr. Haggerston who adopted me—I told you all about him once—— ” and she went through it all in a few words. Sir Henry whistled softly when she had done. “ Poor you! I beg your pardon, I understand now.” His dark eyes had as much expression in them as most men’s. “ You see, I don’t want to be pitied, or to be anything but a governess, so don’t pity me,” she said, breaking the silence again. “ I think I can manage these children. They have gone to bed now. I dare say I ought to have set them lessons first.” “ They will forgive you that,” he said; " but——” “ I dare say I shan’t mind it very much,” she went on hurriedly. “ I don’t know,” said Sir Henry; “ I said some¬ thing to you downstairs about the others; their father told me he was corresponding with a new governess, and that he had mentioned them. How much did he say ? ” 104 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ He said something about guiding or influencing elder girls.” “ I suppose he added generally that he required some one with tact and resource.” “Well, don’t I answer the description ?” " Perfectly,” said Sir Henry ; “ but I do not think he quite accurately described what he wanted. Ho doubt he will tell you a good deal about it to¬ morrow ; but I may as well take you behind the scenes first, then you will understand. Dick Ched- worth and my mother were cousins, not that that has anything to do with it.” “ Except to account for you,” said May. “ There is a Mrs. Chedworth too; Madge Lightfoot mentioned her” “ Mrs. Chedworth finds fault with the children and the servants when she feels well enough, but beyond that she does not trouble herself with household management. Did Mrs. Lightfoot send you here ? ” “ She wrote about me to Mrs. Chedworth. She did not tell me they had anything to do with you,” said May, looking at him steadily. “ Then Mrs. Chedworth handed the letter to her husband,” continued Sir Henry, reddening slightly, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 105 “ and he did the business. He has done it for years. If Mr. Chedworth had lived fifty years sooner, he would have gone down to posterity on a marble monument as a pattern to English fathers. He has lived on the place all his life, farmed some of his own land and looked after the rest, drunk his port and kept his cellar well-stocked, read the lessons in church, and ruled his tenants and his household. He has also expected a family of growing daughters to sit round him from year’s end to year’s end and admire his methods. I forgot to say that by letting his town house, and restricting the hospitalities of Chedworth to a few of his own contemporaries, he has saved enough money to provide for the future of his daughters without earning their gratitude.” “ Then he has plenty of money ? ” said May, thinking of her own modest stipend. “ Quite so,” continued Sir Henry ; “ and an uncle who died a year or two ago, seeing that the boy, who is at school, was provided for, thought fit to bequeath about a thousand a year to the eldest daughter Blanche.” “ So much the better for her,” murmured May. “ And the worse for her relatives,” said Sir Henry. ic6 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ She is just twenty-one; she has got engaged to a man old enough to be her father, and a sweep to boot; the result of a first taste of liberty to an overgrown school-girl. Ascot week and an in¬ judicious cousin began the job and finished it. Any¬ how, she swears she’ll marry him; and, if the parents don’t consent, she’ll bolt with him;—and that is what they have engaged you for.” “ To marry the elderly sweep ? ” “ To stop her in any way you can; talk to her, reason with her, gain her confidence—it would be something if you could gain her confidence. She is forbidden to correspond with him, and probably does so; she is equally forbidden to see him, but I hear he has taken up his quarters at Thorpeleigh, about three miles from here.” “Well,” said May, her nostrils dilating, “go on. You may as well say it. I am to be a sort of spy on this girl—or go ? Is that what you mean ? ” “Mr. Chedworth ought to have told you before you came. You can’t do it—I know you can’t. It is different for us.” “ Why you, of all people ? ” “I have not done much hitherto to sustain the credit of the family, and I am supposed to know the UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 107 ways of the world; so they made an excuse of the shooting. Dick Chedworth is getting a bit stiff for walking much now, and he likes some one to manage for him. I had not been asked near the place for years.” It struck May forcibly that Mr. Chedworth was the proper person to regulate the matrimonial affairs of his own family; and that a governess might reasonably expect to have extraordinary secret service considered in her salary, if she chose to have secret service thrust on her at all, however easily Sir Henry Waterville might acquiesce in being made use of by his relatives. Sir Henry Waterville seemed to be taking more interest in Miss Blanche Chedworth’s engagement than he did in most things; he looked anxious and worn. “ Of course you won’t take it on,” he said at last. “ Old Chedworth was very good to me once, and I am bound to do what I can, though no one can really do anything.” “ Did you say that she was of age,” asked May. “ Of age, and her money absolutely her own,” he replied. “Dick Chedworth did not realize that it was possible for a daughter to snap her fingers at a io8 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. father’s authority without the heavens falling, till she snapped hers and the heavens stayed where they were. Her sister Dorothy does not snap her fingers, by the way, having no money; but they could not do a great deal to her if she did, so she backs up her sister quietly all she can.” “ I came as a governess,” began May, “ and not to stop a girl, whom I never saw, from marrying the man she wants to—not that I care two straws what she wants.” “ I quite understand ! ” he said. “ The last gover¬ ness, by-tlie-by, helped the matter on; I suppose the old rascal squared her. Anyhow she was sacked by the Chedworths.” “ I don’t mean to be squared,” said May; “ and, if it comes to sacking, I’d rather sack myself.” “ Will you stay for a little time, if I ask you to ? ” he asked. " I don’t know,” answered May. He looked at his watch. “They will all be going to bed soon,” he said. “ I suppose I have been in my room writing letters. I never write letters, and they know it. Good night.” He turned back as he opened the door. “ Miss Daryll, I have been talking of my own UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 109 people’s affairs, and not about yours, but I am most truly sorry for you.” “ Thank you, Sir Henry Waterville.” “ You know that I am. I have hardly had time to realize it yet, and all it must mean to you, but I am very truly sorry for you.” “He said it,” said May to herself as the door closed, “quite as if he meant it; he seems very anxious, too, about his cousin.” And she walked to the window, opened it and leant out, thinking. IIO UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. CHAPTER IX. The school-room windows at Chedwortli gave upon a portion of the garden devoted apparently to the growth of straggling laurel-bushes, and to the accu¬ mulation of such rubbish as the gardeners might from time to time feel disinclined to wheel farther. May had heard the servants talking below her in the kitchen or servants’ hall, and could still hear them going to bed noisily, so presumably only the windows of the servants’ quarters and of the school¬ room looked out that way, and untidiness was of no consequence, while at night the moon silvered the tops of the laurel bushes and the heaps of dead leaves impartially with the rest of the landscape, and dark shadows hid all defects. The air was fresh and cool as she looked out; though perhaps it would have been fresher if the stable-yard had been further off. Beyond the laurel bushes a path shone white, leading as far as could be seen towards a gate, and thence presumably into the woods beyond. The UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. iii moonlight and shadows looked very peaceful, and May wished herself among them. It might perhaps be pleasanter not to be quite alone among the shadows. There are solitudes which it takes two to appreciate properly, but there could be no particular enjoyment to be found in strolling through them with one wholly occupied with the entangled affec¬ tions of somebody else. To go alone would be better than that, and to think everything over quietly away from the bare stuffy school-room. She could could easily slip down the back stairs, and find the door which she could see below her as she leant out of the window. Then she changed her mind. There was a dis¬ tinct rustling among the bushes, and the shadows were dark enough as contemplated from above. “ Phwut,” something whizzed through the air, and struck the wall close to her head, making her draw it back precipitately, while the rustling continued. A few moments later a little packet came flying through the open window and fell behind her, and as she looked out again a small shadow separated itself from the other masses of blackness below and whistled interrogatively. “ I have no answer to go back, and I can’t 11 2 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. whistle,” said May half to herself in a matter-of- fact tone; and, either because her voice travelled in the still night, or because a dog in the stable-yard had begun to bark, the small shadow flitted hurriedly away as she closed the window, and becoming more substantial as it emerged upon the gravel, trotted on two sturdy legs across the path. She saw it jump a sunk fence into a field, and gradually lost sight of it as it made its way in the direction from which she could hear a church clock striking eleven. “ The elderly sweep’s messenger will have to practise throwing, or he will break windows,” said May to herself, turning to look for the little package. She knew what it would be like before she handled it; a smudgy envelope without an address, and weighted with a stone inside. “ How like an elderly sweep and a school-girl! ” she added, as she sat down and laid it on her knee and looked at it. “I must be careful, or I shall get the ‘ sack,’ like my predecessor.” It was not particularly easy to know what to do with the letter. To hand it to Mr. and Mrs. Ched- worth was obviously the right course for a conscien¬ tious educator of youth to take. But conscience will at times land one in the inexpedient if not UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 113 properly kept in check. May Daryll had only been a governess for about four hours, and had not defi¬ nitely accepted a position of trust in matters outside the ordinary scope of her duties. Besides which, without being absolutely superstitious, an undefined idea of a retributive Nemesis made her feel that, however indifferent she might be to the vagaries of Miss Chedworth’s affections, she would like to do as she would he done by. She had no parents to disobey, and had always rather sympathized with those who had than regretted her own isolation. Of course it was possible to destroy it; but then the messenger would in time testify to its due delivery. Of course, again, it was easy to feign ignorance of the destination of an undirected letter, open it, and be guided by its contents. The more strictly private portions of our neighbours’ correspondence would probably interest most of us, if we had not a code of honour, with the fear of a retributive Nemesis supporting it in the background; but there was no such interest to stimulate May Daryll to indepen¬ dent investigation. Her lip curled as the idea of opening the letter passed through her mind, and she threw it on the table beside her. After all, what did it matter to her if an elderly sweep wrote letters I UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 114 to an overgrown school-girl whom she had never seen. The school-girl was twenty-one, only a couple of years younger than herself, and there were plenty of other things that interested May more closely than the supervision of her correspondence. All questions, however, with regard to that par¬ ticular letter were to be settled for her. She was not even to be allowed till the next morning in order to consider its fate more coolly by the light of a fresh day. Some one knocked at the door. It was a small thing, but it made her feel that if the school-room was her sitting-room, it was on a dif¬ ferent footing to the other sitting-rooms of the house. And then, as if the knock was a mere formality, before she had time to say “ Come in,” two girls in evening dress entered and introduced themselves; or, rather, one of them, who was rosy and brown¬ eyed and looked nervous, accosted her as they shook hands, saying— “ How d’ye do, Miss Daryll ? Have you every¬ thing you want ? Blanche thought you mightn’t.” May glanced round the bare room rather hope¬ lessly, and said, “ Yes, I think so,” in answer to the question, and then sat down again and looked at Blanche, whose face certainly did not show any UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 115 particular anxiety as to the requirements of her younger sisters’ governess. It did not take May Daryll long to come to the conclusion that in classing the eldest Miss Ched- worth as a school-girl, overgrown or otherwise, Sir Henry Waterville had a little undershot the mark, and her subsequent experience confirmed her first impression. Blanche Chedworth had had, more or less re¬ cently, the advantages of an expensive education in various strictly conducted establishments at home and abroad. Her father had had no objection to having his house quiet, or to shifting the burden of discipline on to other shoulders, while it was easy to do so; and if his daughter’s knowledge of the world and its ways was theoretical rather than prac¬ tical, she had all the appearance of a well-developed and moderately intelligent young woman of a year or two older than her actual age, with full red lips and a pair of restless dark eyes. Her lips did not smile, they parted as if realizing that her teeth were white and regular: and the shifting of her eyes was not apparently from any bashfulness or wish to escape observation; they gave the impression of wandering in search of other eyes to look into them. 116 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . Perhaps it was the perceptible shadow under her eyes that made her look older than she really was. It struck May Daryll that Mr. and Mrs. Chedworth might well have found their eldest daughter a source of anxiety, even if she had not been financially inde¬ pendent of them. When she happened to close her lips her chin came forward, and then she looked as if the power to lay her ears back alone was wanting to complete her expression. There was a rather awkward pause, during which Miss Dorothy Chedworth sat down on a bench and drummed with her toes on the floor; then she looked as if she was going to whistle and changed her mind. Her sister’s restless eyes wandered over May’s plain black dress with as much show of interest as if she had been a newly covered chair, and then they lighted upon the letter that lay on the table, and became alive. “ Mine,” she said laconically, moving forward and taking it. She did it with ostentatious carelessness, but so promptly that there was no question of stop¬ ping her. “ Indeed,” said May, freezingly. Miss Chedworth reddened and went on. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 117 “ If any more come in the same way, Miss Daryll, please keep them for me.” “ I beg you will not have any more sent in the same way,” said May, Miss Chedworth looked May up and down two or three times rapidly from head to foot. Miss Ched¬ worth’s dress had been designed as a dinner dress for Ascot week —- Ascot week spent at Lady Bibury’s; and her hair had given her maid half an hour’s thoughtful work before dinner. May glanced down at her own neat black garments, and felt herself tingling all over. “ I may not,” drawled Miss Chedworth; “ but I shall do as I please.” It was May Daryll’s turn to redden. She had been credited with independence of thought and expression herself, but there are things which it is more pleasant to give than to receive. Blanche Chedworth was still eyeing her in a way in which she was not accustomed to be eyed, while Blanche Chedworth’s younger sister was looking at them both nervously. “ You will do precisely as you please,” said May, taking up a book with a dignity she felt was super¬ ficial. The book was a work on arithmetic, and he was holding it upside down. 118 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ I intend to/’ answered Miss Chedworth, “ and yon can do the same; but I thought we had better understand one another at once.” May continued outwardly to study decimal frac¬ tions, inverted, and felt herself growing scarlet. “ Of course I know you are only here to spy on me,” continued Miss Chedworth. “ I am not aware,” began May, glancing over the top of her book; but Miss Chedworth interrupted her. “ Oh yes, you are ; if you did not know it before, Sir Henry Waterville has told you.” “ I beg your pardon,” began May again. “ Either in the gun-room or here,” blurted out Miss Chedworth. Dorothy leant forward and touched her arm, but it seemed to rather incite her than otherwise. She shook her elbow and went on: “ He said nothing about having seen you when your name was mentioned at dinner, nor about having known you before.” Her last sentence was a shot in the dark, but it silenced any guns May might have had left in her battery. “ I suppose you did not wish it known,” continued Miss Chedworth, as a parting shot. “ Perhaps you UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 119 would rather keep it close; you can, if you choose,” and, followed by her sister, she swept out of the room. May Daryll dug her nails into the palms of her shapely little hands, and her expression was not much pleasanter than that of her aggressor had been. “ Oh! ” she exclaimed aloud with a little gasp, “ what a-” She stopped, as no word of suffi¬ cient force presented itself, and only added mourn¬ fully as she rose to go to her room, “ If only I had my money! ” She felt that, in Miss Chedworth’s shoes, she should not herself be exactly tolerant of criticism and interference; though the reflection did not make her feel any more charitable towards her. And so she went to bed thinking of Blanche Chedworth’s insolent eyes, until she took to thinking of Sir Henry Waterville instead, and wondering why he cared even if his more or less distant cousin did marry an elderly sweep ; and why, during his talk with herself, he had half urged her to go, and then asked her to stay. At all events he had distinctly asked her to stay; he would hardly have done so purely in order to make use of her; he would surely have done his best to get rid of her if—if Blanche 120 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Chedworth’s eyes looked less insolent when he gazed into them, or if he objected for particular rather than general reasons to her fortune being absorbed by the elderly sweep. The question of staying or not she had definitely postponed to the morrow when she fell asleep. Meanwhile Blanche and Dorothy Chedworth had sent their maid to bed, and were brushing their hair elaborately in Dorothy’s bedroom while they dis¬ cussed the situation. “She does not look a bad sort,” said Dorothy, tentatively. “ I dare say she will be all right now,” answered Blanche. She seemed more interested in the ques¬ tion of whether her hair was or was not coming out under the brush, than in any question of May’s possible merits. “You were awfully rude,” continued her sister. “ Suppose she went and told the governor.” “ She won’t,” said Blanche, confidently ; “ and if she did, I shouldn’t care.” “ I should,” said her sister. “ I went with you, you see.” “ My good Dolly,” murmured Blanche, and shook her head and sighed. Dorothy never quite did UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 121 justice to her training. They had always been inseparable. Blanche had led her into all the mis¬ chief possible in the past, and though she had often left her to extricate herself from a scrape, had never taught her to do so with promptitude and decision, or to take the consequence of her acts with defiant indifference. Consequently Dorothy was not, either in love or war, the support and assistance that she might have been. She had been present at the attack on May, but had added nothing to the ferocity of the on¬ slaught. Indeed, besides actually trying to lay a restraining hand on Blanche, she had coughed once deprecatingly, declaring afterwards that it was an accident. “ My good Dolly,” repeated Blanche, “ I am twenty-one and you are nineteen, though you don’t look it.” Dorothy was shorter than her sister, and more cheerful looking. Her mouth did not draw down at the corners, nor her chin come forward when her wishes were thwarted. “ I can’t be pig-headed, like you, Blanche,” she said mournfully. “ Firm,” suggested Blanche. 122 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ Obstinate,” corrected Dorothy, going as far in her criticism as an adoring younger sister might dare. She was always stronger in speech than in action. Blanche was not in the least offended. “ One is as good as the other/’ she said in¬ differently. “ If you are grown up and have money of your own, what can your parents do ? They can’t lock you up, they can’t beat you. You don’t care if they turn you out of doors, and you tell them so. You really can make it very unpleasant for them; it’s awfully nice.” The awe-inspiring niceness of making things very unpleasant for her parents did not impress Dorothy ; she wriggled and dropped her brush on the floor. “ They can make it very unpleasant for you,” she said. “ At least they have for me ever since you have been like this.” “ I haven’t cared a pin,” said Blanche. “ I have, though,” said Dorothy. “ They think I back you up; they don’t know I try and persuade you.” Her sister laughed. “ Fancy you persuading me! Why, you can’t even persuade Rex to lie down unless he wants to; and if he took it into his head to sleep on your blue UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 123 silk over there, he would snore on it till he chose to get off.” Rex was a brown dog of uncertain temper, and equally doubtful parentage. His mistress called him an Irish spaniel, but his orthodox whip-like tail was said to owe more to her scissors than to his ancestry. He was not a house-pet from any natural sweetness, either moral or physical; but when it suited his convenience he lived in her bed¬ room. “ Rex is under perfect control,” said Dorothy, indignantly. “ So am I,” said her sister. “ But I like doing the controlling for myself.” Dorothy shook her head and sighed. “ I have no money, like you.” “ Never mind,” said Blanche. “ They can’t starve you, and they must clothe you; and if they did shut you up you couldn’t be duller than we always have been here.” “ But I am not dull,” said Dorothy, pulling Rex’s ear as he lay on the counterpane, an attention which he acknowledged with a low growl. “ You annoy me,” said Blanche. “ I was going to say that if you did not want to bring three or four 124 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. dogs and a few tame pole-cats, you might always come and live with us.” “ Perhaps Mr. Wilson would not like that,” sug¬ gested Dorothy. “ Mr. Wilson,” said Blanche, contemptuously, “ will have to like what Mrs. Wilson tells him to. He says he is very fond of me, you know.” “ Blanche,” said her sister, looking rather alarmed at her own courage, “ are you very fond of him ? ” Blanched laughed at her solemnity. “ Of course you think him very nice,” continued Dorothy. “ He is a bit more amusing than the old gentle¬ men we see here,” said Blanche, “ and I’m going to have my own way. Why did they try to stop me, if they did not want me to go on ? ” Her answer made Dorothy thoughtful. It seemed to her to put the matter a little unfairly towards her father and mother; besides which, there was always a want of romance in the way in which Blanche talked to her about her fiance , which prevented Dorothy from according to her the warmth of sympathy she would have wished to bestow. What support she did give she gave from force of habit, or under compulsion. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 125 “ I shall be a charming young widow, shan’t I, Dolly ? ” said Blanche, Hashing her eyes at herself in the glass ; but Dolly only sighed again. “ They will never let you be married from here. They will never ask him to the house even for the weddiug,” she said presently. “ I don’t care,” retorted Blanche. “ I hate weddings, and white does not suit me.” “ I suppose you will run away ? ” asked her sister. “ There won’t be much running about it,” Blanche said contemptuously; “ the train is fast enough for me. They do everything they can to annoy me. It is bad enough having one’s letters looked over as though they were going to be opened; but when it comes to Harry Waterville and the governess, it is too much.” “ I wonder if he did know her before ? ” said Dorothy, thoughtfully. “ I told you so,” said Blanche; “ one of the servants caught them talking together five minutes after she came into the house. What business has he to know governesses ? ” “ I suppose he knows all sorts of girls,” suggested Dorothy. “ I suppose he does,” said Blanche ; “ but he’s not 126 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . going to bring them here to interfere with me—Harry Waterville of all men! ” “ It’s not his business, certainly,” admitted Dorothy. “Well, it’s his business to find himself a girl with money ; I’d forgive him that; but not the way he’s doing it.” “ Do you think he really means that ? ” “ I don’t know, and I don’t care.” “ But would you ? ” “Never mind what I would do.” “ But he may be really doing it only because he thinks he ought to,” said Dorothy. Sir Henry Waterville had many points that com¬ mended him to her; he had a masterful way with animals of all kinds, and a comprehensive knowledge of their ways, and weaknesses, and ailments ; he also was the only man under fifty who had been invited to Chedworth since she had been “ grown up ”; so there were many reasons for her wishing to treat him as a friend and have him so treated by Blanche. But Blanche only sneered and shook her shoulders impatiently. “ Thinks he ought! When a man who has muddled his own life thinks he ought to teach you UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 127 how to manage yours, you don’t feel inclined to do what he says.” Dorothy looked inquiringly at her. “ Did Mr. Wilson tell you that ? ” she asked. Blanche nodded. “ He says he could tell me a great deal more, but he won’t; he is not so spiteful as Harry.” “ I don’t know whose advice you ought to follow,” said Dorothy. “ I suppose you won’t take father’s, and wait a little ? ” “ I won’t take anybody’s,” said Blanche. “ I will do wdiat I please.” With the announcement of which resolution she left her sister preparing to occupy as much of her bed as Bex established in the middle of it might be persuaded to allow her. 128 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. CHAPTEE X. When May Daryll came into the school-room next morning, with a vague feeling that she had missed her early tea and did not want any breakfast, she found her pupils there before her, and wondered how much sooner she ought to have appeared. “ Miss Habbergon used to have Scripture lessons for three-quarters of an hour—three whole quarters of an hour,” remarked the elder of the two fuzzv- haired little girls, tentatively. “ Oh,” said May. “ Perhaps you don’t approve of long Scripture lessons, Miss Daryll ? ” suggested the other little girl. Miss Habbergon was presumably the lady who had been “ sacked ” for sympathizing with Blanche Chedworth, and had retired, under compulsion, after instituting the irregular method of delivering letters to which May had been introduced the evening before. Miss Daryll hoped that the disgrace to which her pupil had referred was eating into Miss UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 129 Habbergon’s soul beyond the consolation of Scripture lessons, and said hurriedly— “ I think you might take me out and show me the garden till breakfast comes ; we will begin lessons afterwards/’ “ Come along,” said her elder pupil, “ we shall like that. That is our cousin, Sir Henry Waterville, smoking on the grass. He is staying here. Do you think he will get his feet wet ? ” May wondered as she went downstairs how much the length of the Scripture lessons might have shortened Miss Habbergon’s tenure of office, and to what extent her pupils might have contributed to her downfall by their observation of her methods in other matters. But nothing was to be gathered from their stolid faces. They went down a back staircase and out by the little door she had thought of using the night before ; both seeming to be appropriated to the school-room and its inmates. As they passed through the shrub¬ bery the little girls pointed out their gardens and the hard-worked patch of grass on which they played cricket and lawn-tennis. The slowly lifting haze and the dew heavy on the grass gave promise of a baking day, and May Daryll wondered if Miss K 130 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Habbergon ever refreshed herself with cricket with the thermometer rising towards eighty in the shade, after a course of Scripture and other lessons. There was no shade on the brow T n square of trampled turf. “We are not allowed in front of the house,” re¬ marked one of the children in a tone of warning, “ I should not like papa to catch us there.” While her sister added— “ I don’t know if you would like to go there, Miss Daryll, Miss Habbergon was always wanting to.” May felt that she was not likely to forget any example that her predecessor might have left behind her; and hoped that, at all events, there was no injunction on the part of Mr. Chedworth to prevent those privileged to walk in front of the house from coming also to the back of it. If there was one, Sir Henry Waterville was trangressing it; she could hear his steps on the gravel behind her, and wondered for a moment whether she ought to retreat or not, but it was too late. “ Good morning,” said Sir Henry Waterville, raising his cap to May. “ Good morning, Cousin Harry,” cried the little girls in unison, appropriating the salutation to them¬ selves, and evidently doubtful as to whether they UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 131 ought to introduce their new governess, and, if so, how to do it. Sir Henry Waterville looked at his young relatives and reflected. “ I’ll bet you a shilling to nothing each you can’t jump into the field without tumbling on your noses,” he said gravely. “ Hot,” he added, turning to May as they ran off up the path, “ that that will get rid of them for long.” “I have seen their sisters,” said May to him, hurriedly ; and she went on to give in outline some account of her interview with the Misses Chedworth. She left out the portions that referred to himself; they struck her as difficult to deal with. Sir Henry blew a ring of cigarette smoke, and sent another ring through it accurately and thought¬ fully. “ We are a nice family,” he said bitterly ; “ the whole thing rather amuses me, but you cannot be expected to stand it. I suppose you will refuse to stay ? ” “ I don’t know,” said May, with her eyes on the ground. There had been a suggestion of regret in his tone, but she waited as if for something more definite. 132 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ Look ! ” shouted the little girls from the edge of the ha-ha, nerving themselves for a grand effort; and the next moment they were rolling on the dewy grass beyond. Sir Harry Waterville called out to them— “ You shall have the money if you can do it in ten tries,” then he turned his back on them, and said to May, “We shall have a battle royal this morning ; that old villain Wilson is coming here at eleven.” “ The elderly sweep ? ” she asked. “ The elderly sweep. He writes like a foreign potentate about to deliver an ultimatum, and Dick Chedworth is groaning with gout and spoiling for a row. I shall be there, I suppose, but he won’t let me do anything—that is, nothing active; he thinks it would cost him more than he could afford, and says he is a magistrate, and we must not take the law into our own hands, it would be too expensive. I tell him the law you take into your own hands is the only law worth paying for.” “ Do you care so much about it all ? ” asked May. “ I like to help a man who asks me to. Of course this wants delicate handling, and he insists on going to work the wrong way,” said Sir Henry UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 133 Waterville. “ It is not my fault if Dick Chedworth can’t see that the Eoman father is played out. He believes indulgence and amusement are unnecessary for young girls, and he knows that they are costly.” May thought of the tact, discretion, and influence that she had been engaged to exercise, and concluded that Mr. Chedworth’s desire for them was an out¬ come of Sir Henry’s arguments; but, as she did not consider that Blanche was likely to prove a very satisfactory subject for their display, did not volunteer any suggestion. “ I hate to see a girl ruin her life,” said Sir Henry. May thought her own acquiescence in such a view might be allowed to depend to a certain extent on her feelings towards the girl and, as her pupils were coming towards them, said nothing. “ Have they jumped their confounded ditch ? ” said Sir Henry, looking at them. “ It is your turn with them now. Send them in to put on dry shoes and stockings, and I won’t talk any more about Blanche.” “ I must go in, too,” said May. “ Are you fond of a garden, Miss Daryll ? ” he asked with an air of distant politeness, as he handed 13+ UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. half a crown to his small cousins for division. His change of tone was so sudden she almost laughed. “ The early air is very good for one,” she answered, bending over a rose and smelling it. “ So aggressively wholesome that I have to correct it by smoking before breakfast, which always disagrees with me,” he said, lighting another cigarette, and raising his cap he strolled off towards the front of the house. “ What do you think of him ? ” said the eldest little girl to May as they went upstairs. “ Miss Habbergon used to say he was lovely, but he never spoke to her.” • May changed the subject to the question of wet stockings, and during breakfast did her best to ascertain the points to which Miss Habbergon had led them on the path of learning before being compelled to discontinue her guidance. She was pleased to find that, with the help of the books with which Mr. Pentreath had provided her, and her own really excellent education, of which she was inclined to depreciate the value, she would be perfectly able to cope with the task before her. She had never been able to remember any occasion on which her own governesses had reproached her with dulness, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 135 whatever else they might have laid at her. door, and they had usually been fairly plain-spoken in telling her of her faults, having no one else to recount them to. Mr. Haggerston used to listen to everything with a polite smile and an expression of thanks and of complete confidence in the lady complaining. Mr. Chedworth, on the other hand, was regarded by his younger children if not with terror at all events with awe, though apart from assisting in the punishing of their delinquencies he did not seem to take any very active interest in their progress. However, they really seemed to be very fairly tract¬ able little girls, and May wondered, as she saw them poring over the first tasks she set them, whether they would cease to be amiable as they ceased to be small, and at what period of their development their eldest sister’s most prominent qualities might be expected to show themselves. The course of instruction had run with unex¬ pected smoothness for a full hour, when a message arrived that Mr. Chedworth would be glad to see Miss Dary 11 in the library as soon as she found her¬ self disengaged; so she provided her pupils with matter whereon to exercise their minds in her absence, and went downstairs at once. 136 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. It was a pleasant change, after the bare school¬ room, to find herself in a well-furnished room with walls covered with books and pictures. The pictures were chiefly portraits of Mr. Chedworth’s ancestors, and the books, so far as they were not county histories and the sermons of bygone generations of verbose divines, had been compiled with a view to helping the unpaid magistracy in disposing of the complicated questions brought to their notice by modern legislature; hut they combined to give a general effect of rest and solid comfort. Mr. Chedworth did not look either restful or com¬ fortable. He was a handsome elderly man with a grey moustache, short hair almost white, and a rather red face, that got redder occasionally as his lips set under a twinge of gout. He shook hands with May, and expressed regret that Mrs. Chedworth could not at present make her acquaintance, also that Mrs. Chedworth should have had to leave to himself all the correspondence in the matter of her engagement, and he intimated that her daughter’s conduct was responsible for much in Mrs. Chedworth’s indisposi¬ tion ; while May bowed acquiescence and sympathy. “ Sir Henry Waterville has explained our unfor¬ tunate situation,” he said, turning his eyes in the UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 137 direction of Sir Henry Waterville, who was sitting on a deep window-seat caressing a rook-rifle, and occasionally sighting objects outside with an expres¬ sion not quite amiable in the eye that peered along the barrel; otherwise his attitude had all the rest¬ fulness that was wanting in Mr. Chedworth. Sir Henry acknowledged the reference to himself with a slight bow. He evidently had given his own version of their meeting in the garden, and obeying her wish had said nothing of their previous acquaintance. Mr. Chedworth continued. “ Sir Henry has formed a high opinion already of your intelligence and discretion, Miss Daryll. You are perhaps younger than I expected to see you, but we must admit you fully to our family councils. What can be done with a daughter who has bestowed her affections imprudently, and who at all times refuses to listen to reason ? ” “ Who will not obey her father,” put in Sir Henry Waterville, as if drawing a distinction; and Mr. Ched¬ worth said, “ Quite so,” and looked towards May as if waiting for a reply. “ Is it possible that the distractions of more suit¬ able society in London, for instance, might induce her 138 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. ‘"Chuck him,” suggested Sir Harry Waterville, as she paused for a word; and she looked at him re¬ proachfully. She had tried to realize the position of a worthy woman, and was flattering herself that her voice had borrowed something of the tone of Mr. Cliedworth’s stately sentences; it had sounded very hollow and unnatural in the big room. “ Sir Henry suggested London nearly three months ago,” said Mr. Chedworth; “ I am afraid the attractions of London in September would not be great.” May had heard that Homburg was agreeable and that Scotland possessed a healthy climate, and said so, rather doubtfully, not being sure whether the season was suitable for either. Mr. Chedworth shook his head lugubriously. “We cannot all spend money as we might wish to,” he said; “ with the present burdens upon land, with an estate requiring my own presence-” “With the death duties,” added Sir Henry from the window, as if to save time—his cousin spoke slowly. “ Quite so, Henry; with the death duties hanging over us.” Sir Harry Waterville began to whistle softly. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 139 May, from what she knew of Poly ton House and its outgoings, had put down Mr. Chedworth’s expen¬ diture at between four and five thousand a year, and wondered what his surplus income might amount to. There was a slightly contemptuous ring in Sir Harry Waterville’s whistle and Mr. Chedworth was frowning, so she hurriedly made a suggestion. “ Perhaps if Miss Chedworth met other men here, young men—you know what young girls are.” “ My cousin precisely does not know what young- girls are,” said Sir Harry Waterville from the window-seat. “ I could bring down two or three young fellows at any time, easily; particularly when we shoot the coverts.” “ Surely there are more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream,” said Mr. Chedworth. “ It is one way, all the same,” said Sir Henry, “ and Blanche is not a cat. She is a young girl with an unruly devil in her, but she has seen very little of life.” “ In my day young girls did not wish to see life,” said Mr. Chedworth. “ In your day they whipped those who wanted it,” murmured Sir Henry, in a tone just audible to May, adding in a louder voice, “ I have also suggested 140 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . having Mr. Wilson here and letting Blanche see plenty of him.” “The cat and the cream again,” protested Mr. Ched worth. “ He would probably get drunk at dinner, when the novelty wore off,” said Sir Henry Waterville. “ Anyhow, I should like to see him teach his future father-in-law poker; he plays a good game with his own pack.” “ I will not have him under my roof,” said Mr. Chedworth, sternly. “We have just had him here. If you had come a few moments sooner, Miss Daryll, you would have seen him. I have finally forbidden him the house.” “ And he went out with his tongue in his cheek,” added Sir Harry Waterville, “with me longing to help him across the hall. If he is young enough to get married, he is young enough to take a licking.” “ I don’t suppose he would mind much, as long as he could screw the damages out of me,” said Mr. Chedworth. " Of the two, the course Miss Daryll advises would be the least costly. We will con¬ sider it.” “We have considered for three months,” said Sir Harry, taking careful aim with his rifle at a sunflower UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 141 on the other side of the drive. It must have been about the level of Mr. Wilson’s head when he passed it a short time before, and the hammer clicked viciously as he pulled the trigger. “ If you only saw the brute! ” he said to May. “ I don’t want to,” she answered indifferently. “Don’t you think I had better get back to my lessons ? ” She found it difficult to keep up the tone she thought suitable to a worthy woman when talking to Sir Henry Waterville, and came to the conclusion that she had better not speak to him when Mr. Chedworth was present; but Mr. Chedworth was at the other side of the room, looking out of the % window. “ What do you say to driving to Thorpeleigh, Henry, for the second-post letters ? I dare say Miss Daryll has some small purchases to make.” He paused, and added nervously, “ I think I heard the wheels of Blanche’s pony-cart just now. I dare say the children would like to accompany you.” “ They had better stay at home,” said Sir Henry. “ Miss Daryll, old Wilson has got half an hour’s start towards Thorpeleigh. Blanche is following him ; shall we start in pursuit ? ” 142 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ Henry, Henry,” remonstrated Mr. Chedworth, “ pray do not jest! I trust that she does not really meet him—at least not now that I have strictly for¬ bidden her to do so.” “ My dear Dick,” said Sir Henry Waterville, " she probably would not wish to if you had not.” Mr. Chedworth frowned. “ At least,” he said, “ they will not dare to do so before you.” “ I have not any great faith in the power of my eye,” said Sir Henry Waterville. “ Be quick, please, Miss Daryll. I am going to show you how a certain chestnut horse of Mr. Chedworth’s can trot when he is fairly extended.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, 143 CHAPTER XI. It did not take May long to put on her hat and veil, and to give her pupils a fresh supply of sums and exercises wherewith to occupy their small minds till the leisure hour arrived to which they assured her they were entitled before luncheon. They looked a little surprised at realizing how small an amount of her society they were to enjoy during the first morn¬ ing of her reign; but the fact of her being received by their father and cousin upon terms of intimacy, evidently in no way diminished their respect for her. She came downstairs feeling that her new station in life was making her reckless of her personal appear¬ ance, and that she had got herself ready in the same time that the coachman had occupied in harnessing the horses; but she was commended in dignified tones for her promptitude by Mr. Chedworth, and consoled herself with the thought that if anything in the world mattered at all, of which she was doubtful, it was of some importance that she should stand well 144 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. with her employer. A few minutes later she was sitting beside Sir Henry Waterville in a dog-cart that was spinning along the road at a pace pleasant enough for her, but which might be trying for the chestnut horse with his autumn coat heavy upon him. “This is nothing to the pace he will go in a month’s time,’ , said Sir Henry, drawing his whip across the chestnut’s shoulder, and looking at him critically; but she did not answer, and he glanced down at her. “What are you thinking about so earnestly ? ” he said. “ I was thinking,” she said, “ that there are com¬ pensations in—most things.” “ Even in the love affairs of my confounded young cousin. Is that what you mean ? ” he asked. She nodded. “ I don’t suppose the governess would have been sent out for a drive with you in the ordinary course of events.” “ In the ordinary course of events I should not have been asked to spend September here,” he said, “ and I should not have come if I had been; but I ran down for a day or two in July, and Dick worried me to come again.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 145 “ I suppose you only go to places that amuse you ? ” said Mhy, checking a little sigh. “ I go to places that I think will amuse me, which is a rather different thing,” he answered, and added half apologetically, “ I don’t suppose Chedwortli strikes you as particularly lively, does it ? ” “ There is a certain amount of excitement to be enjoyed at times,” said May, her thoughts going back to her own first evening in the school-room and Blanche Chedworth. ‘‘And you and Mr. Ched- worth seem to have assumed that I, at any rate, am going to remain.” He looked a little uneasy as he met her frank grey eyes. “ I did not tell him all that you told me,” he said. “ I told him what a treasure he had got, and how well he ought to treat her; it will all strengthen your hand, whatever you have to do. I said nothing about Blanche and that letter. Blanche is hopeless.” May did not say anything. She saw that such decisions as she might form would have to be arrived at and carried out unaided, and she felt no inclina¬ tion to waste either thought or conversation on Miss Chedworth. So Sir Harry Waterville continued— “ I know you think me a fool for taking trouble L 146 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . about the girl and helping her father, but I owe the old blackguard one.” “ Mr. Chedworth ? ” asked May, looking across the brown fields, and yawning a little. “ Hardly,” he said. “ I meant old Wilson. Per¬ haps, too, if you were in my shoes you would look at it all in a different light; perhaps if I tell you now —but it’s rather a long story.” “ Then do not let us bother about it,” said May. She thought he looked a little disappointed, but she was determined to banish Blanche and all con¬ nected with her from her mind ; not that she meant to banish Sir Henry Waterville. He might have talked about himself as much as he liked, so long as he left every one else out of the story; and if he could not understand that without being told in so many words, so much the worse for him, or for both of them. “ I am afraid you take no interest in us all,” he said, in a tone of regret. “ Could you not get up a little if we had a bet about this business ? I’ll lav you any odds you like, either way. By-the-by, you never paid me those gloves I won off you at San- down in the spring. You said you always paid up. I think you put it that you were not like other girls.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. M 7 “ I said that when I could have paid up—if I had only remembered to,” said May, her thoughts going back to the sunny slope of the race-course and all the casual easy brightness of a few months before. She gave a little shudder as she looked down at herself, and over the bare, dusty stubble round them. “ If I ever win gloves again, I shall ask to be paid in strong makes, and wear them for ever.” “ I am pretty well broke myself,” said Sir Henry Waterville, in a tone of sober reflection. “ It’s not a nice feeling when you get to the bottom dollars.” “ Is there nothing you can do ? ” After all, if he would talk about himself, there was no reason why she should not hazard sugges¬ tions. She would let him know what was passing through her own mind, if he would only tell her what was in his. If he 'was contemplating the possibility that occurred to her, in that relation at all events she would interfere in Blanche’s future, treating the matter from a purely outside point of view. Her personal interest in it was over; and if a certain friendly sympathy for Sir Henry Water¬ ville remained, she had a right to give expression to it. But she would like to be sure of her ground. At all events she could not read his thoughts by 148 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . looking at him, or only to a limited extent. He was apparently at that moment giving undivided atten¬ tion to a wheel-track that ran beside them in the dust. There could be no doubt that his zeal in the rescue of Blanche from her elderly sweep was hardly in accordance with May Daryll’s previous observa¬ tion of his character. “ They have gone this way,” he said, breaking silence suddenly and turning the chestnut’s head down a narrow road that ran between two hedges to the right. “ Dorothy drives on these occasions. Blanche has the decency not to take out a groom.” “ So had you,” said May. “ I am to hold the horse, and perhaps see a fight—at least Chedworth is lively for the governess—and that is the only reason for your taking me.” He looked a little hurt. “ This road leads to a path across the fields, that will take the old blackguard to Thorpeleigh : they will have given him a lift. I dare say we are late; shall we go on ? ” May shrugged her shoulders; and he touched the horse again with the whip. “ If we must, we must,” was all the acquiescence she would vouchsafe. Sir Henry smiled with a slight grimace. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 149 “ Needs must when the devil drives. You are giving me a new character. I am generally the one driven. Steady! ” he added. “ Here they are, coming back. All right; there is room to get by.” He nodded to his cousins as he passed them. One of his wheels was in the ditch, so he had an excuse for not saying more. “ This road only goes to Banker’s farm! ” Dorothy Chedworth called out as they got clear of one another. Blanche had looked straight in front of her with an expression that made May wonder whether a mule ever looked insolent as well as vicious. “ That is where we are going! ” Sir Henry shouted back, touching the chestnut with the whip again, and adding to May, “ There is a cart-track as well as a path; we may as well go on and get the letters.” “The younger one seems the least objectionable of the two,” said May, dispassionately. “ Dorothy is a very good girl by herself,” said Sir Henry Waterville; “but women are like dogs, when two get together they lead one another into mischief.” A few hundred yards further the road came to an 150 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. abrupt end, and Sir Henry Waterville got out and opened a gate. They jolted along a cart-track that ran between two hedges, and passing close to a farm¬ house, found a corresponding lane that led them out through another gate into the main road a few hundred yards from the village of Thorpeleigh. Except to explain that the foot-path passed more directly over the hill than the cart-track, and that it consequently led straight into the village, Sir Henry said little. He let fall one or two comments upon the condition of the land as they passed it, but May did not feel inclined to criticise Mr. Bankers agriculture. “ I often think I might have taken to farming like Dick Chedworth, but my place has been out of my hands ever since I came of age,” said Sir Henry, regretfully. May thought of Mr. Chedworth’s broad back and red face, and preferred him as he was—clean-built and lithe, with as much sunburn as a fortnight of September sun might account for. He showed her, as they approached the village, the stile which Mr. Wilson would have to cross if he was walking over the farm by the footpath. “There he comes. I knew we should hit him UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 151 off,” he said, pointing with his whip and pulling up his horse to a walk. “ Miss Daryll, should you like to see a future member of the family cut dead ? ” A tall thin man in a dark suit was approaching the stile just as they got near it. “ Is he so old ? ” whispered May. “ Look at the dye,” said Sir Henry, and as the man came close to the stile he almost stopped the chestnut altogether. The person whom he was look¬ ing at with the kind of interest with which a man looks at a dead reptile, paused on top of the stile and, ignoring Sir Henry’s cool stare, raised his hat towards May. “ Observe the teeth,” said Sir Henry, and set his horse going again; “ I saw his own sent down his throat fifteen years ago. But what the devil did he mean by smiling at you ? ” “ But it is Baymond Wilson,” said May; her eyes had shown recognition in spite of herself, and she had hardly checked a bow in her surprise. “ Of course it is,” said Sir Henry. “ But you only called him Wilson; now I under¬ stand better.” “ Is he a friend of yours ? ” “ He was a friend of uncle’s,” said May. “ One 152 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. of the worst he had. I am on your side now. At any rate, she ought not to marry him.” “ I don’t suppose you know much about him that we do not,” said Sir Henry. “ I told Blanche my¬ self that he gave up the stage to be a professional gambler, and failed at that because he was a more or less habitual drunkard. She said I must know him pretty intimately to be so well-informed; and, I suppose, went and told him all about it.” “ I dare say he is all that,” said May. “ He had to keep sober at Polyton. He used to come down to borrow money from uncle ; then I put a spoke in his wheel, and I believe he tried to work it through old Mrs. Pung.” “ I wonder he did not propose marriage to you,” said Sir Henry; and May gave a little laugh. “ But he did,” she said—“ at least that is what I took it for. You know his high-flown, theatrical way of talking. You should have heard him vowing vengeance when uncle ordered him out of the house.” “ I dare say he put that old woman up to it all,” said Sir Henry. “ I wonder if he is after her now.” “The servants heard him quarrel with her at Polyton, after the funeral,” said May. “ Besides, he wants to marry Blanche Chedworth.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 153 “ Two strings are all right so long as they don’t get mixed up,” said Sir Henry Waterville. “ What is there to stop a man from killing an old woman and marrying a young one, and all in a week if he wants to ? ” May laughed. “ You ought to write a book on the subject, like people write about keeping bees and making jam— ‘ Marriage for profit and pleasure,’ by Sir Henry Waterville, Baronet. It would not be a bad title.” “ I am afraid my name would not add much to its value,” he said more gravely, she thought, than he need have, when she was trying to amuse him. He was certainly not in good spirits. They stopped at the post-office, and received a handful of letters and newspapers. May handed to Sir Henry such as were addressed to him, and he put them in his pocket without so much as glancing at them. She turned over one which was addressed to her, and examined the postmark and superscription. “ I wonder whom it is from ? ” she said. Sir Henry looked over her shoulder. “ I should say from a young man whose initials were M. C. Why he should write them on the 154 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. envelope I do not know; but it would save one from opening a lot of letters if every one did it.” “ It must be from Mr. Cartkew,” said May, slipping her finger under the flap of the envelope. “ I forgot he had gone to Weymouth ; he is engaged to a friend of mine, you know.” “ I did not know,” said Sir Henry; “ and if he is he ought not to write to you. Did he ever want to marry you ? ” “ I don’t see that that concerns you,” said May, getting rather red as she glanced through the neat closely written pages. “ He takes more interest in my affairs than you do. Listen ! ” “ My dear Miss Daryll, “ I came down here three days ago, and the business which brought me will probably make it necessary for me to remain some days longer. I have just written to Ethel to tell her I am going to insist on our being married this summer, and that I shall confer with her parents on the subject upon my return to Exeter.” “ Ethel is my friend Ethel Kerswell,” May explained. “The gentleman’s interest in your affairs seems UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 155 quite overwhelming/’ remarked Sir Henry Water- ville, and she continued— “ One of the reasons for which I am writing to you is as follows : You will remember that Mrs. Pung (I suppose I ought to call her Mrs. Haggerston) has, ever since the funeral, held no communication with us except through her own solicitors, and they have carefully refrained from mentioning anything that could give us any clue to her whereabouts. Yester¬ day, to my surprise, I came face to face with her here, upon the Esplanade. She must be living here, but where I do not know, for she knew me, of course, and directly she saw me she got into a Hy and drove away. I could not run after her, and the driver, whom I have since questioned, did not put her down at the door of any house. I intend to discover her address, and possibly procure an inter¬ view. I only wish that Dr. Pentreath’s diagnosis of the cause of Mr. Haggerston’s death corroborated the effect that her obvious uneasiness of conscience has upon my mind. Will Pentreath is coming here to stay with me ; you know-” May paused and looked doubtful; there was a want of perfect tactfulness about Mr. Carthew that she had often regretted. 156 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “What do you know ? ” asked Sir Henry Waterville. “ Only that Mr. Pentreath would do anything he could to help me.” “ Goodness ! ” said Sir Henry Waterville. “Is he another of them ? ” “ You might say,” said May, “ that they showed their good taste.” But Sir Henry Waterville was not a man who said what he was expected or desired to say ; while the horse was for some reason occupying his attention ; and a few minutes later they were driving up the avenue with the library windows in full view. The footman who opened the door intimated to May that it was either Mr. or Mrs. Chedworth’s wish that she should bring her young charges down to luncheon, instead of dining with them upstairs in the school-room. Sir Henry Waterville heard the message and explained. “It is a sort of trotting out that takes place periodically. When you have gone upstairs again we shall solemnly discuss the progress they are making under your care. I shall bear witness to the wonders you have worked in less than twenty-four hours.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 157 “ Don’t,” said May. “ You know I shall hate it.” “ I am afraid I shall not,” said Sir Henry. “ In fact, I arranged for it to-day. I fancy, after the success with which we have pursued my fair cousin, the atmosphere at lunch may become a bit too heavily laden to be pleasant. Children at meals are a bar to rational conversation—also to family rows.” So, in the big oak-panelled dining-room May Daryll ate her lunch, seated between the two crinkly haired little girls, and near to their mother. Mrs, Chedworth was much as she had expected to see her; she lay back among her cushions, showing no other noticeable sign of ill-health ; she had the complexion smooth and pinkish without brilliancy, that her two youngest daughters had inherited from her, and the same dead yellowish hair; except that in her case it had an undercurrent of grey in it. May could compare it with her own golden coils by looking in the glass at the back of the oak side¬ board. Mrs. Chedworth addressed herself during the meal chiefly to her younger children, who practically ignored her. Her observations were not such as May Daryll could respond to in their stead— trivialities about their dolls which they despised, or 158 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . their pets which they neglected ; so May sat and wondered whether she was wasting sympathy in feeling sorry for her. She noticed that Sir Henry Waterville was scrupulously attentive and polite to her, while her husband was ponderously polite with¬ out being attentive, and her elder daughters scarcely looked in her direction. It was not difficult to see that Mrs. Chedworth counted for little, if she counted for anything at all in the establishment. Most of the talk was between Sir Henry Water¬ ville and Dorothy Chedworth. While Blanche crumbled her bread in gloomy silence, they discussed dogs and ferrets and kindred topics dear to Dorothy ; the recent arrival of five small puppies in one of her own particular kennels had been a not unlooked-for event; but the fact that two of them had entered the world clad in long black wool, while their mother was a smooth-haired fox terrier of pure descent, proclaimed a mesalliance that Dorothy could hardly speak of without tears. Apart from the original cause of his arrival, Dorothy regarded Sir Henry Water ville’s visit as a godsend. He knew more about horses than the coachman, and could talk of them and of all other living things in a manner that commanded her respect. Her mother objected to UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 159 dogs in the house, and would have banished even Eex, had her word carried more weight; her father thought ferrets were best looked after by a keeper, and her sister loathed both. May wondered, as she glanced round the table, how Mr. and Mrs. Chedworth came to possess two daughters so different from one another and from themselves. Sir Henry Waterville, who had studied problems of heredity as applied to the animal world, could have explained that such incidents corroborated all his pet theories. He would have laid down that it was necessary to breed carefully for generations in order to eradicate a bad point or obtain with any degree of certainty the qualities aimed at, while even then, when all appeared to be safe, there might occur a startling throw-back to some long-forgotten ancestor. Dorothy, for example, might have inherited her country tastes from her father and grandfather, and developed them for herself, while Blanche ex¬ hibited nothing that was manifest in either parent except a certain amount of obstinacy and selfishness which she had brought to high perfection, and for her want of filial affection and respect for the con* ventions of her family must have gone back to the days of the Stuarts. It was on record that in those i6o UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. troubled and distant times tlie heir of Chedworth deserted the family traditions, and almost forfeited his estate by eloping with the daughter of a Puritan divine. So that if their descendants inherited to a certain extent the ancestral qualities of their Puritan fore-mother, it was also only to be expected that the independent views in matters matrimonial shown by both her husband and herself should now and then assert themselves as well. But May Daryll cared nothing about heredity, and only wondered how Blanche managed to be what she was in such sur¬ roundings, having always believed in the power of circumstances and education, and fancied that there would be as many good sons as good daughters if the sons had as few opportunities to be otherwise. Blanche Chedworth was an unpleasant fact, what¬ ever might be the original sources of her unpleasant¬ ness. May avoided looking in her direction during luncheon, though she was conscious that Blanche’s eyes rested on her once or twice; and after the meal was over she took her pupils upstairs at once, and found that they expected afternoon exercise in the garden and in the wood. The wood was pleasant and shady, but it was a hot day for walking, con¬ sidering the time of year. When they returned to the UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 161 house May saw Blanche Cliedworth strolling along the path by the ha-ha. As May turned with her pupils towards the side door by which they were to enter, Miss Cliedworth turned also, and coming up to May while the children were wiping their dusty shoes on the mat, said to her in a low voice and as coolly as if she was making a remark on the weather— “ Miss Daryll, perhaps you could not help coming to-day, but you had better be careful.” And May, who had made up her mind what to say, answered quietly— “ I should like to talk to you, Miss Cliedworth, at another time.” She felt that after making such an offer she could at least claim to have done her best. She felt very doubtful as to whether it would be accepted, and as to whether she wished it to be. But she had no need to make up her mind on the subject. Blanche, at any rate, was not troubled by doubts either as to the matter or the manner of her reply; with a cool, deliberate stare her eyes travelled over May before she answered. “ I know of nothing that concerns me—and you, Miss Daryll.” M 162 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Then she turned on her heel deliberately and sauntered towards the front of the house, and May wondered whether physical violence might not under exceptional circumstances be resorted to among young ladies excusably and with good effect. She felt at that moment that nothing short of it would satisfy her. She formed the resolve, as she had formed it several times already, but even more definitely, to tell Mr. Chedworth that she could stay in his house no longer. She had recollections of servants at Poly ton leaving at the “ end of their month; ” Mrs. Pung had used the expression and acquiesced in the custom. May wondered if it applied to governesses. But for the next few days she had no chance of testing the question. Mr. Chedworth was laid up with gout; coming down¬ stairs late in the day and remaining inaccessible in his study, while after dinner he claimed Sir Henry Waterville s society and conversation ; and as Sir Henry was shooting over the Chedworth farms on the first day, and on the next somewhere else in the neighbourhood, she saw nothing of him either. Mrs. Chedworth sent for her once, and consulted her about a dress, and asked her to write for her to the dressmaker, but she did not feel inclined to broach UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 163 the subject of her leaving with Mrs. Chedworth. Tor a moment before breakfast on the second morn¬ ing Sir Henry Waterville spoke to her in the garden. He got so far as telling her that Mr. Wilson seemed to have left the neighbourhood for a time, and then Blanche came in sight, while the next day was Sunday, and May never saw him at all. On Monday evening he came into the school¬ room, looking tired, and complaining of a long hot day’s walking for few birds. “ It is not easy to get away,” he said, “ so you may as well talk to me now I am here. Chedwortli is asleep in his chair, but he won’t sleep for ever.” So May left the French exercises she was correct¬ ing, and came and sat near him in the closest approach to an easy-chair that was allowed her, a broken-down wicker one, while he leant against the mantelpiece. May told him of what had passed between her and Blanche, on the day when they had driven out to intercept her. She told it dispassion¬ ately, leaving him to fill up the blanks from what he knew of Blanche’s manner. “ Then you will go ? ” he said. “ I knew you would. I wondered you had not told Chedwortli before now,” 164 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . He said it in a tone so full of regret that she looked at him. inquiringly, and said— “ You asked me to stay.” “ I did, and I do,” he answered. “ Why ? To help Mr. Chedworth to manage his daughters ? ” It was a point-blank question, and he looked at her point-blank with troubled eyes as he answered it. “ Hot altogether,” he said. “ I suppose you had better go.” “ I will stay if you ask me to,” said May. His eyes Hashed back into hers, and he moved as if he was going to bend over her where she sat. She was quite ready with her answer to anything he might say; a couple of days before she had felt that if she could stop him from thinking of fettering himself for life with Blanche Chetworth, she could do so without claiming any personal advantage for herself from any decision she might help him to arrive at. In his presence, after two days of the solitude of the Chedworth school-room; she did not feel so self-denying; and she would; have expressed herself, if asked, as ready to share poverty with him as she would have been to pay off the mortgages on the Waterville estates if Mr. Hag^erston’s will had UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 165 stood. But she could hardly say so unasked; even her readiness to quit Chedworth for a life without luxury in Sir Henry Waterville’s society would hardly rank as self-sacrifice, such as might entitle her to broach the subject. But whatever might he Sir Henry Waterville’s views on drifting, he was evidently not disposed to row with the tide. He turned and leant with his elbows upon the mantel¬ piece, while the light that had flashed into his eyes died out of them, and the tired look came back as they left her face. A moment later May was not sorry that four feet of hearthrug divided them, and that her own attitude was consistent with polite attention, or even with sleepiness and boredom. Her eyes fell as the door handle clicked, and she had guessed who it was before she looked round. Whether Blanche Chedworth had found her days without direct or indirect collision with her father or any one else monotonous, or whether she thought that she might as well hear what May had to tell her about Mr. Baymond Wilson, having learnt from him that they had been acquainted, or whether Dorothy had remarked that Sir Henry Waterville had gone towards his room, and was probably 166 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. acquainted with the back staircase that led to the school-room, Blanche Chedworth stood in the school-room doorway with a look as full of insolent amusement on her features as they were capable of. Then, either having considered the situation before¬ hand, or being a young lady of rapid decisions, she backed herself into the passage and slammed the door. Her look was lost on Sir Henry Waterville, as his back was turned; May gathered it to herself and reddened. “ Damn,” said Sir Henry, audibly, and without apology. May nodded assent. “ Blanche, I suppose ? ” he said; and she nodded again. “Well, I have saved you from another encounter with her; I had better go downstairs. Give me a chance of talking to you again. I can’t say it all now.” He stooped towards her for a moment and his hand touched hers; then he drew himself up and went out quickly, without slamming the door as Blanche had done, and May sat and wished that Blanche might return while she felt equal to doing justice to the occasion; but Blanche had gone back to the drawing-room. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 167 CHAPTEE XII. Mobden Carthew and his friend Pentreath sat on the Esplanade at Weymouth and smoked their after¬ breakfast pipes. Morden Carthew was bringing his to a conclusion with a view to the business of the day. Will Pentreath was already refilling a capacious briar with the contemplative deliberation of an idle man. The business that brought Mr. Carthew to Weymouth was not nearly completed, at which he grumbled occasionally with no great show of sincerity. It seemed to cause him little real anxiety, save in respect of the safety of the money to be earned by way of costs, and except in that connection he never mentioned it, so that Will Pentreath knew nothing of its nature. Since the young doctor's arrival, the evening before, dusty and travel-stained, having journeyed from Poly ton on his bicycle, they had talked of widely different matters. After dinner Morden Carthew had men¬ tioned the presence of Mrs. Jabez Haggerston in 168 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. the town, and hinted at the suspicions that he never ceased to nurture against her. His friend had scoffed at theories which he declared had not the slightest foundation, except in the naturally un¬ charitable mind of a member of the legal profession, and had staunchly upheld the opinion of his uncle as to the cause of Mr. Haggerston’s death, after which he led the conversation into the side channel of the fate of May Daryll, her present position and the possibilities of her future, from which he did not allow it to be diverted until Morden Carthew dozed in his chair, and they both agreed it was bed-time. The next morning Morden Carthew had confessed himself a little sleepy from late hours, but Will Pentreath had spent an hour before breakfast in the salt water of Weymouth Bay, and proclaimed himself much refreshed thereby. “ There was a deuced fine girl bathing this morning,” he remarked, puffing at a pipe that bubbled internally. Morden Carthew had already moved to windward of it. As Mr. Pentreath had occupied most of the previous evening between dinner and midnight in the confession and reiteration of his hopeless love for Miss Daryll, Morden Carthew came to the conclusion UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 169 that either the sea air and water had worked wonders, or that his own pointedly given good advice of the night before had borne more fruit than he had dared hope. “ Deuced fine girl! ” said Mr. Pentreath. “ There were three of them, but the other two were no¬ where.” Morden Carthew remembered that in his younger day Mr. Pentreath’s heart was reckoned susceptible, and that in other respects a dozen years had not made him much different to what he was at Cam¬ bridge, so presumably it was susceptible still. “I know what you are thinking of,” said Mr. Pentreath, which was only partly true. “ Of course I don’t compare any of them with her, you know. She would not do such a thing.” “ Not bathe ? ” asked Carthew, absently. He could not quite have pictured May Daryll issuing into six inches of water from the steps of a Weymouth bathing-machine; but the mention of her had brought his thoughts back to Mrs. Hagger- ston, and the eccentricity of her conduct, which he was trying to persuade himself was only that of an irritable and possibly drunken old woman. “ She would not go out before breakfast with a 170 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. lot of men whom she hardly knew,” explained Mr. Pentreath. “ Brothers,” suggested Morden Carthew, chari¬ tably. “Not they,” said Mr. Pentreath. “ They all came from different directions, and one was a soldier and another was a sailor, that I’ll swear. There are a lot quartered down here. I wonder if they do it every morning? One could easily get to know some of them.” Morden Carthew frowned slightly. He began to think he had been unnecessarily eloquent in point¬ ing out that a young lady might be charming and beautiful, without being absolutely fitted for the domestic tranquillity of a country doctor’s establish¬ ment; and was glad that at least he had not gone so far as to point to himself as an instance of a moth who had fluttered round the candle and come away sufficiently unsinged to settle elsewhere. Mr. Pentreath would probably have remembered the anecdote, and ignored the moral of it; and his chaff was sometimes a little clumsy. At all events, he did not look heart-broken. A tendency to increase in weight, and the fact that the skin was peeling off his nose, were the only sources of UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 171 anxiety with which the most observant friend would have credited him. “ Of course you may be right/’ he added regret¬ fully, after a pause. “ She may be a bit above me.” Morden Carthew nodded gravely. “ One may do much to serve and help a woman/’ he said, in his quiet, earnest way, “ whoever she is, and even though she will never reward one as one might wish.” “ I wish I only had the chance,” exclaimed Will Pentreath. “ I wish she was out there drowning,” he added, waving his pipe generally seaward. “ I don’t suppose she does,” said Morden Carthew; but his friend’s attention was already diverted, and he was looking eagerly up the parade. “ Here she comes,” he said in a whisper. Morden Carthew started. “ Hot Miss-” “ Ho, no,” interrupted Mr. Pentreath; “ the girl who bathed. Look ! ” Morden Carthew looked, and realized the catholic impartiality of some natures where the fairer sex is concerned, as a very robust young English¬ woman went by, rosy-cheeked, dark-haired, and nearer six feet than five. Her eleven stone of 172 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. solid femininity were as different from May Daryll’s slender grace as anything he could have conceived. “ Those are the other two with her,” said Will Pen- treath. “Not a patch on her. Three friends, you see. ISTo relation to one another. Look at their features.” “You are so very observant,” said Morden Carthew. “You might do something for me with your talents, instead of staring young women out of countenance whom you will never know.” “ I don’t think they mind a sort of respectful look of admiration,” said Mr. Pentreath. “ They would rather have it than think you did not see them at all; and I mean to know them, too. People here go along by the shore towards Portland, in spite of all the new houses on the way, if they want to take a walk without being seen,” he added in an informative tone. “ You are so resourceful where ladies are con¬ cerned,” said Morden Carthew, “that I wish you would do what I want.” “Ah, you mentioned something just now,” said Mr. Pentreath, airily. “ Of course all these things are nothing to an engaged man.” Morden Carthew said nothing as to their appro¬ priateness in a man who professed himself deeply UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 173 in love already; he was g’lad to see the wounds caused by May Daryll were healing so healthily and naturally, and he was watching a carriage that was coaling along the roadway behind them. “ Here comes Mrs. Pung,” he said. “ She has put the fly-driver into old Haggerston’s dark blue livery, with a black band round his arm for mourn¬ ing. I want to And out where she lives ; and then, if you can get inside the house, Will, why, there are a lot of things I want to know.” “ Never was such a chap for wanting to know,” said Mr. Pentreath, with a rueful face, contem¬ plating Mrs. Jabez Haggerston as she rolled by in her widow’s weeds with a pug dog in her lap. “ Yes, that’s the old girl I saw married. I wonder if her hand is as full of villainy as his. I told you about his spatulate thumb and the cross on his little finger.” O “Eot!” said Morden Carthew, tersely. “ This is serious.” “ So is palmistry, when you get a coincidence like that,” said Will Pentreath. “ By George! we shall never get anything out of a woman with a face like that.” “ I call it a rather weak face,” said Morden 174 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Carthew; “ and I should like to know if she is afraid of you as well as of me; after that, you may get as much else out of her as you can.” Will Pentreath took a slip of paper out of his friend’s hand and ran his eyes over it. “ I see,” he said. “ c Who was Pung ? When did he die ? Where did he die ? ’ I shall have to get rather friendly with the old lady, shan’t I, before asking for all her family history ? I can read your notes over as I go along, and have a shot at your meaning. Lucky I brought out my machine.” His faithful bicycle was standing behind him. He had insisted on bringing it out and propping it against their seat, in order to demonstrate the efficiency of something new in the way of head- locks. He lifted it into the road while Morden Carthew followed Mrs. Haggers ton’s retreating vehicle with his eyes. “Look sharp,” he said; “and for goodness’ sake don’t say I had anything to do with your coming.” He knew, being a young man of cool and lawyer¬ like intellect, that he was not likely to produce any great effect on May Daryll’s fortunes by aim¬ lessly intruding his friend upon Mrs. Haggerston’s privacy. It was a shot in the dark ; but as long UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 175 as it was not traced to his hand, it would not do much harm to any one; and if it irritated Mrs. Haggerston, at least he could derive pleasure wholly unworthy of a cool and intelligent young lawyer from causing her annoyance. “ It is something to reconnoitre an enemy/’ said Mr. Pentreath, slipping from the step into the saddle. “If you can get back alive/’ Morden Carthew called after him, as he glided away in pursuit of Mrs. Haggerston. He had not very far to go. She had evidently been shopping and taking her exercise early in the day; and, after he had gone a little way along the road by which he remembered riding into Weymouth the evening before, he saw her alighting in front of him outside a trim little villa surrounded by a low wall that was surmounted by an iron railing painted green. “ Right,” said Mr. Pentreath to himself; “ I will give her time to take her bonnet off, and then I’m in for it.” So he proceeded slowly half a mile further on the road towards Dorchester, exciting the admira¬ tion of three small boys by riding side-saddle and various other feats of cycling as he passed them; and then, having consulted his watch, returned 176 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. downhill at a furious pace, and dismounting outside the green railings, took his bicycle inside the gate, walked up to the door of the little villa, and rang the bell. It was a neat little house, with, appa¬ rently, a dining-room on one side of the front door and a drawing-room on the other, and a little conservatory beyond whichever room was situated on the left hand. After a few moments a servant girl came to the door, and he stepped inside at once, saying, with a serene and confident smile which he had got ready while waiting for her— “Mrs. Haggerston is at home, I know, and is expecting me. Please show me in.” “ When you are acting for a firm of lawyers, it is of no use to tell half-truths,” he had reflected, while standing on the doorstep. And the servant said, “ Yes, sir; ” and seemed to take him as a matter of course. “ Come in,” said a voice from the dining-room in a not very pleasant or friendly tone; “ I know what you have come for.” “ Then you know more than I do,” murmured Mr. Pentreath, following the servant. “ At all events, I don’t surprise them.” UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 177 Mr. Jabez Haggerston’s widow was sitting in an easy chair, resting after her drive. There was a gleam in her eye as she turned towards him that seemed to him to be reflected from the decanter at her side; then it vanished, and a stare of blank astonishment took its place. “ I think you have forgotten me,” he said hurriedly, recognizing the fact that it was not he who was expected. “ I was able to render some small assist¬ ance to your late husband on the morning of your wedding-day; ” he paused and shook his head solemnly, feeling that his tone was a little too explanatory and businesslike; “ a cut finger, you recollect ? I was the doctor who bound it up.” “ Well,” she said fiercely. Her face had turned visibly pale, all but her nose; still, what courage she had left was of a savage order. “Well,” she said again, “ do you want paying ? ” “My dear madam,” said Mr. Pentreath, “on the contrary.” What might be the contrary to wanting to be paid he did not pause to consider. Her eye was upon him, and he felt that his hasty explanation of a desire to renew a pleasant acquaintance was in¬ coherently given and altogether insufficient. N i 7 8 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . “You want money,” she said again, persistently, as soon as he paused, “ or you come as a spy from those lawyers.” “My dear lady,” said Mr. Pentreath, unmoved, “ there was some talk of proving your marriage, hut of that there can be no question. I saw you enter the church, and I should recognize so striking a personality among a thousand.” “Well,” said Mrs. Haggerston, “so could a dozen others. You’ll get no money out of that.” She seemed determined to regard him as a clumsy but unimportant blackmailer, so he glanced at tire heads of conversation that Morden Carthew had jotted down for his benefit, and went on with as much outward show of confidence as he could muster. “ I think I had the good fortune to know your first husband,” he said in a friendly tone. “ Had you ? ” said Mrs. Haggerston, almost cheer- fully. “Yes,” said Mr. Pentreath, wondering what she would say if he took a chair uninvited. “ Mr. Pung, you know.” “You are a liar,” said the widow, point-blank. “ I never was married before.” “ Indeed! ” said Mr. Pentreath. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 179 “ You never knew a housekeeper called Miss Anybody, did you ? ” said Mrs. Haggerston. As his confidence evaporated, hers obviously increased. She helped herself to a glass of brown sherry, and looked at him mockingly. “ There’s no money in this job for you, young man. Every scamp wants to screw money out of this old woman, but it takes a better man than you to do it. Now go! ” As he prepared to do so, not seeing what else he could do, she seemed to relent for a moment, and, looking away from him into the empty fireplace, said in a quieter tone— “ How’s the young lady ? ” “ Miss Daryll ? ” he asked. “ Yes, poor thing! ” she said. “ If the thieves around me would leave me a halfpenny-” she stopped suddenly, and glanced suspiciously at him. “ Go ! ” she said again, so fiercely that he prepared to back towards the door with his face to the enemy, anxious as he was to pursue the conversation in the new course it had taken; but she seemed to be listening to something and not attending to him. Then the front door bell was rung sharply. He knew it was the front door bell from hearing the wire grate along i8o UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. the wall of the little hall. There was no trace left in Mrs. Haggerston either of ferocity or confidence; the look of fear which had come over her features when she first saw him had returned, and she got up hurriedly and came towards him. “ Stop a minute,” she said in a low tone, “ there’s some one at the door.” “ That’s all right,” said Mr. Pentreath. “ I’ll open it.” “That you will not,” she said, passing him and going into the hall. The servant was just arriving from the back premises. Her mistress sent her away again with a wave of her hand and a few whispered words, and returned to Mr. Pentreath. “ Come this way, young man,” she said; “ I have a character to lose.” The idea of causing a scandal in the select circle of Mrs. Haggerston’s acquaintance almost restored Mr. Pentreath to his usual spirits; and he smiled broadly on her as she led him through a glass door at the end of the dining-room into the little con¬ servatory beyond, and thence into the garden. “ There! ” she said, in a relieved tone, “ directly the girl opens the front door you go away; and don’t UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 181 you come back again unless you want the police after you.” “ Whoever it is will have seen my bicycle,” he suggested, almost apologetically. “ All the more reason you should get away sharp,” was all she could say before the bell pealed again, and she hurried into the house, closing the conser¬ vatory door behind. Peeping round the corner of the conservatory to the front of the house, as the front door was opened, Mr. Pentreath caught sight of a tall well-dressed man entering, and chuckled quietly. He had been amused at the idea of scandalizing Mrs. Haggerston’s friends, he had never thought of risking a collision with a jealous suitor. “ Eather hard lines on the old lady,” he said to himself; “but anyhow he can’t see me till he gets into the dining-room.” He hurried to his bicycle. He had left it more or less behind a bush, and as he lost no time in getting it out of the gate, it seemed quite likely that Mrs. Haggerston’s gentleman friend would know nothing of his visit. He proceeded rapidly back to his lodgings, and when Morden Carthew came in gave him a pictu- 182 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. resque account of his adventure—an account that did rather more than justice to the alternative fear and ferocity of the old lady and his own discomfiture. He was without conceit, and was quite satisfied to laugh at himself, particularly as Morden Carthew did not laugh at all. “ She evidently did not wish him to see you,” said Carthew, frowning, and lighting a pipe to keep his friend company and aid reflection. “ Unless she did not want me to see him,” hazarded Will Pentreath. “ That,” remarked Morden Carthew, “ is absurd ; but if she had taken on another man after hurrying poor old Haggerston into the grave-” “ That,” interrupted Will Pentreath, “ is damned absurd.” He never allowed his uncle’s diagnosis to be questioned. “ You doctors,” began Morden Carthew, “ never allow that any man in your own profession can be wrong.” " You lawyers,” retorted Will Pentreath, “ never allow that any man in any profession can he right.” After which they ate their luncheon in silence, and quitted all subjects connected with the late Mr. Haggerston for a day or two. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 183 CHAPTEE XIII. Mr. Chedworth used to open the post-bag in the interval between prayers and breakfast, a period during which his elder daughters were theoretically supposed to make their appearance. But May, who had found out on the second day after her arrival that she and her pupils were expected to be present at family worship, had only met Dorothy in the hall once before retiring to the school-room, and had on all occasions found the congregation that listened and responded to Mr. Chedworth’s stern accents consisted of herself, the two little girls, and the servants. She usually left one of the former behind to bring her any letters that might be for her. Mr. Chedworth not only opened the bag, but did it in so leisurely and contemplative a manner, that the female servants had a private contract with the postmaster to suppress any correspondence addressed to them until it could conveniently be fetched. An Aldershot, for instance, or Plymouth 184 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. postmark was believed to have more than a passing interest for their master when it appeared on an envelope addressed to a housemaid whose home and near relatives were known to be at Thorpeleigh. “ One letter for you, Miss Daryll,” said her messenger on the morning after Blanche had broken in upon her conversation with Sir Harry Waterville in the school-room. May had other things to think of, even after thinking of them all night, so she let the little square grey envelope lie beside her plate. " Cousin Henry never reads his letters,” said one of the little girls. They were too indistinctive to be worth identifying by names. “ Cousin Henry throws his away without opening them,” said the other—they were given to capping and supporting one another’s remarks; “ but then, Cousin Henry’s letters come in long envelopes, and they don’t smell nice like yours.” The use of scented paper was one of Mrs. Light- foot’s vices. Early widowhood has a demoralizing effect on women, and her education had been in¬ terrupted by matrimony, so her friends forgave her. The suggestion of Sir Henry’s bills came oppor¬ tunely. A man might be fond—in the modern sense of the word—without being foolish as well; UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 185 and if he could not pay for his own luxuries, he might be excused if he paused before rendering himself liable for the necessaries of another. May was almost inclined to pause too. A poor man’s wife might be a better lot than that of a rich man’s governess; but it was a sphere of labour that could not be quitted for another at one month’s notice from either party, as provided for in her case by Morden Cartliew. Besides which, there could be no doubt that whatever Sir Henry Water- ville had looked or implied, some men acquire a habit of looking and implying more than they mean, and he had, as a matter of fact, said nothing. All of which reflections were quite out of place with two small girls waiting open-mouthed for milk and marmalade. The housekeeper said that the quantity of jam consumed in the school-room under the sway of Miss Daryll was beyond precedent, and had sent a message to that effect; so, having for¬ bidden her pupils to help themselves, she had to attend to their requirements, and then, with a cup of tea before her, she tried to distract her thoughts with Mrs. Liglitfoot’s letter. May Daryll had almost forgotten the letter she had written to Mrs. Lightfoot, reproaching her for having thrust her 186 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. against her will into the society of Sir Henry Waterville; but Mrs. Lightfoot had not, though she had waited a day or two before answering it. She was full of penitence, and her explanations covered five pages. She had known that the Chedworths were connected with him, but had had no idea that he ever stayed with them. Why should she be aware of the relationship, if May, who knew him so much better, was not ? And how should she know that May was ignorant of it ? The three arguments were inconsistent; but a page of minor ones intervened, and May disbelieved and forgave her. After all, it was his presence that was making her life tolerable. Of her own affairs Mrs. Lightfoot wrote also. She and Major Bittle- stone were not to be married till Christmas. By these means he would only miss a month’s hunting at a time when frosts were hardest and most frequent, and fields most crowded by holiday¬ makers, while they could be at Monte Carlo when all her friends were there; and to go abroad without the certainty of meeting half the people she met daily in London would, of course, be unendurable. Under the circumstances, she was quite looking forward to the honeymoon. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 187 “ There was a letter for Blanche under papa’s plate,” said the little girl who had brought up Mrs. Lightfoot’s epistle. “He put it on the top of the slop basin as I went out.” “We used to do that with Miss Habbergon’s letters,” said her sister, “when the watei; was hot enough to make a good steam.” “Eat your breakfasts,” said May, austerely. She did not feel at that moment much impressed with the amiability of childhood or the wisdom of parents. It struck her that to open Blanche Chedworth’s letters would probably lead to an outburst, while to do so surreptitiously would justify it. Mr. Ched¬ worth’s manipulation was not likely to be delicate enough for him to do it without being discovered. The little girls munched their breakfasts, and May read Mrs. Lightfoot’s letter through a second time. It conveyed an invitation to her wedding, assuming that May would at the date fixed be enjoying a Christmas holiday. May wondered upon what duties Christmas would find her employed. Three more months of Chedwortli seemed a long time, when contemplated definitely. Mrs. Lightfoot also made playful and pointed allusions to the moral influences that she assumed May to be exercising on the elder 188 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. daughters of the house. Her remarks fell rather flat as May thought of Blanche Checlworth. And Blanche Chedworth brought her thoughts back to Sir Henry Waterville and the difficulty he found in attending to the letters that came to him in long envelope^ and did not smell sweet. Then she realized that breakfast had lasted longer than usual, and that lessons must begin when the table was cleared. She cust a passing thought on Mr. Pentreath as she prepared herself for the setting of tasks to her pupils. The books with which he had provided her endowed her with the authority that proceeds from certainty of knowledge,, and saved her at least two hours’ work in a day. Two hours’ leisure meant two hours of weary thought upon her own affairs, but did not make her any less grateful to Will Pentreath. She felt herself lucky in having tractable pupils that morning, who, whether they worked or were idle, were always quiet. Mr. Chedworth’s discipline, combined with that of her predecessors, seemed to be taking a more successful course with them than it had with Blanche. So they passed an uneventful morning together, ate an uneventful midday meal, and prepared to UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 189 take an uneventful walk in the Chedworth woods. May had begun to wish that the spell of fine autumn weather would break, in order that she might miss for once the treadmill of her afternoon walk. She was waiting for the children while they were being got ready by their maid, when she heard Blanche’s voice on the stairs, sending them down into the garden, and she realized, almost instinctively, that the afternoon was not to be uneventful. She always felt, when she saw or heard Blanche, that the influences most appropriate for employment upon her would be physical rather than moral, but she felt glad, as she saw her come into the school-room a minute later, that physical violence is not usually resorted to by young ladies socially above the costermonger class, for Blanche looked capable of anything, particularly as at that moment she seemed almost incapable of speech. “ This was your doing! ” she gasped, holding up a torn envelope. May had been right; it showed every sign of being clumsily tampered with, and she had ample opportunity of judging, as it was being held within two feet of her face. “ I do not know what you are talking about,” she 190 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. said quietly, glad at the same time that she did know and was in a measure prepared. a 0h, indeed!” sneered Blanche. “You did not tell my father I was still getting letters and show him how to open them ? ” “Miss Chedworth,” answered May, drawing her¬ self up, and wishing she was six feet high for the occasion, “I have never mentioned your letters to your father, and I decline to discuss anything while you speak as you do.” She looked Blanche straight in the face as she spoke, and Blanche shifted her insolent stare to the point between May’s eyes, which is the next best substitute if you cannot quite meet your adversary’s glance. “You are paid to stop me from marrying Mr. Wilson,” she muttered sullenly. “ I am paid to teach your sisters,” said May, steadily. “ You want to stop me.” “ I should be extremely glad to see you married to Mr. Wilson,” said May, with an evident truthful¬ ness that went home, for Blanche reddened. “ He can tell me as much about you as you can about him,” said Blanche. .UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 191 May did not answer. She threw as much con¬ tempt into her grey eyes as she could, and succeeded fairly well, though it was wasted on Blanche, who was looking at the carpet. “ What can you tell me about him ? ” said Blanche, tauntingly. “ That he has no money ? ” May still said nothing. v o “ It’s a lie; he has eight hundred a year. I have seen his banking book! ” “ Indeed! ” said May, indifferently. Blanche caught sight of the contempt in her eyes, and her own flashed viciously. “Yes, indeed! ” she exclaimed. “And as for his wanting my money, what else does Harry Water- ville want, and why does he take so much interest in me, though he does come to see you every evening ? ” May was prepared for something of the sort, so she continued to look quite cool and unmoved, and Blanche bit her lips. They were full red lips, but they turned downwards at the corners. There is not much profit to be got by insulting a perfectly irresponsive member of one’s own sex, and Miss Chedworth may have realized that her conduct was not that generally associated with well-born damsels 192 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . even in their wrath; but her lips drooped lower at the corners, and her eyes were as defiant as ever as she turned on her heel. “ He proposed to me twice last week.” She let it fall as a parting and Parthian shot, slamming the door a moment later, without waiting or turning her head to observe its effect. She would not have seen much if she had. May seemed to herself to have been growing harder since the afternoon of Mr. Haggerston’s funeral and Morden Carthew’s visit to her. She was always telling herself that nothing mattered, and she never seemed to need the telling. She had five minutes to herself after Blanche slammed the school-room door, and she knew that her heart ached, but she went on telling herself that it did not matter, that nothing mattered, and though her heart was aching still, she only looked a trifle pale and tired as she joined the children in the garden. The galling moments of the day where those in which she had to perform her duties before inquisitive little eyes, whose owners were well aware, as was every servant in the house, of many things worth knowing about going on around them; but she was getting used to it, as to everything else. The little girls did not find UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 193 their governess a very lively companion that after¬ noon ; it was only the liberty which they enjoyed under her rule that made them tolerate her. There seemed to be no getting away from them, and no means of communicating with any one else. Mr. Chedworth had gone to Bristol on business, and Sir Henry Waterville was with him. They returned at five, but then it was too late in the day to trouble Mr. Chedworth with notice of her intention to quit his service ; and the only glimpse she had of Sir Henry showed him talking to Blanche upon the lawn. After all, nothing that Blanche had said needed corroboration. She might not be more truthful than any other young lady with restless eyes and lips that turned downwards at the corners, but what she said explained a good deal. It accounted for a zeal that May had never before imagined Sir Henry Water¬ ville exerting in any good cause, and for a constraint of manner that was quite different from his usual grave friendliness. A somewhat careworn look might he expected of any one about to undertake the charge of Blanche’s future, particularly if his chance of doing so depended on the defeating of another. The bills he was in the habit of destroying unopened he had always with him, at any rate in o 194 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. the period about quarter days. He never denied their existence; he referred to them as if they were necessary evils of life, as naturally to be expected as a deluge of rain by a farmer with his hay half cut, and apparently easier to endure with a tranquil mind. The little girls eyed her inquisitively all the time as she thought matters over, and later, when they both came in from the garden just before bed-time, they seemed to be talking of her, while one of them, still breathless with running up the stairs, showed the other a shilling, and said something audible about bull’s-eyes as she walked across the room. “ A note for you, Miss Daryll,” she said to May. “ A note from Cousin Henry.” It was sealed, possibly in deference to the fate of Blanche’s correspondence and out of respect to the school-room tea-kettle, and May let it lie on the table beside her until the children went reluctantly upstairs; it lay there for half an hour longer before she opened it. She glanced through it at last, it was written in pencil—possibly hurriedly. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 195 “My dear Miss Daryll, “ I asked you last niglit to stay on here for a reason that must have been plain to you. After what Blanche has told you I know you cannot do so. I should have liked to have told you myself; all I can do now is to see that the Chedworths put no obstacles in the way of your going. “Yours very truly, “ More truly than you can know, “ Henry Waterville.” It was an odd way to sign himself, almost under the circumstances impertinent, which Sir Ilarry Waterville had never been, and tactless, which Sir Ilarry Waterville had never seemed capable of being. At first, just for a moment, she made up her mind not to reply, not to write the letter she had been sketching out in her head all the afternoon; and then there came the feeling that there was one man in the world who could do nothing for which she could not forgive him, and that at all events it was not too late. She could write it better than she could say it verbally; she could maintain the tranquil and dignified position of a disinterested third person, giving good advice to one in need of it. Verbally 196 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . the tranquillity might vanish, and with it the dignity and the disinterestedness. She would write it soon, so that there should be no chance of its being too late, either from Mrs. Lightfoot’s or from the Kerswells ; Mrs. Lightfoot had written from London and spoken of being there for a day or two. But perhaps it would be better to keep clear of Mrs. Lightfoot, leave no address at Chedworth, and put none on the letter. Then it would be from an obviously disinterested person, whom he would never see again, that Sir Henry would hear what marriage with Blanche Chedworth and all her money meant, in the opinion of a purely and obviously dis¬ interested person. At all events the first thing must be to quit Chedworth, and if the details of doing so must be left to the morrow and the force of circumstances, the details of what followed might be left to the morrow as well. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . 197 CHAPTEK XIY. May Daryll’s employer was a man of strong and over-mastering convictions, and the one which he cherished most obstinately, and from which his wife had many years before endeavoured in vain to rescue him, until she gave up in despair and took to hypo¬ chondria as an amusement, was that he was a practical farmer, and that so much of the Chedworth estate as he had farmed ever since he inherited it, would, without his daily supervision, become a howling wilderness, and its owner a penniless out¬ cast. This belief on his part had reduced half a dozen honest and competent bailiffs to despair, followed by resignation of the emoluments and duties of their office, and thrown his younger daughters into a state of chronic if smothered re¬ bellion, ever since they were old enough to pine for a pantomime. When they became of an age to think about seasons in London, they found their mother in the habit of making periodical expeditions in 198 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . search of medical advice, while their father had not put on a frock coat and high hat for ten years, except for church and quarter sessions, and had no intention of doing so. They also found him strengthened in his views that neither his stock nor his daughters could be trusted without his eye upon them even for a day or two; and the result of Blanche’s first visit away from Chedworth, in the independence of her separate income, had confirmed his opinion in respect to his daughters, without modifying it so far as it affected his cattle. Mr. Chedworth’s zeal as a farmer was therefore indirectly responsible for the unsatisfactory attitude of his elder children towards him and for the presence of May Dary 11 in his household, while it was the direct cause of her leaving his younger daughters to twist their fingers in their crinkly hair in the endeavour to master a long and tedious chapter of French history, while she sought for their father in order to lay the resignation of an untenable position before him. A score or so of store cattle had been bought the day before, to fatten at Ched¬ worth until they might be sold at a profit later on; and as his bailiff, after thirty years’ experience in various counties, could not be trusted to do all that UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 199 was needed for them on their arrival, he had started off alone, immediately after breakfast, for the farm, and he had also said, according to the butler, that he should not be back until late in the afternoon. Bread and cheese amid stalled oxen were more pleasant to him than the luxuries of his own dining¬ room and his eldest daughter’s tantrums therewith. To trouble Mrs. Chedworth was out of the question. She rarely appeared before luncheon, and might not even do as much as that for a week to come. May Daryll felt that what she had to say had best be said quickly and put beyond recall, and that it would be all the better to say it where she would not be interrupted. Sir Henry Waterville, whatever ambitions he might have for the cultivation of his own encumbered acres, had never veiled his contempt for his cousin’s devotion to his bullocks and pigs; and he at any rate would not be there. So she laid before her pupils enough food for their young minds to satisfy their appetites for learning during an hour or two, and sallied forth in search of her employer. But the butler did not tell her, because he did not know, or because she had asked no questions bearing on such points, that Mr. Chedworth had turned aside to speak to his gardener in the vinery, 200 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. while Sir Henry Waterville, moved by a desire to make all things as easy for her as might be, had thrust a handful of cigars into his pocket wherewith to overcome the rustic scents of the farmyard, and had sallied forth, like her, in quest of his cousin. He had seen Mr. Chedworth go into the green¬ house, and had strolled out of the garden by the path that lay in view |of the school-room windows, and into the wood beyond. May followed it, know¬ ing that it led generally towards the farm, and hoping to find her way thither when it emerged from the coverts. Walking rapidly along, she came upon Sir Henry Waterville seated on a fallen tree, smoking with all the outward appearance of tranquil contemplation. “ I came out to find Mr. Chedworth,” she said rather stiffly as he rose and took off his cap. “ So did I,” he said, glancing back along the path by which she had come. “ He will be here directly.” “ I want to talk to you, too,” she added, following the direction of his eyes. After all, the letter which she had sketched out in her head had refused to take a satisfactory form, and there was more to be said than she had at first thought in favour of a personal interview. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 201 He turned towards a narrow foot-track hardly visible in the thick undergrowth, and they passed together out of sight of the main path into the wood. A cock pheasant rose and dashed away among the trees, shouting defiance; hut Mr. Cliedworth, over whose head it passed a second or two later, was too much occupied by mental pictures of the possible condition of his bullocks to inquire what had dis¬ turbed it, and as they stood still and listened, they could hear his footsteps growing fainter as he pro¬ ceeded towards his farm. “ Just a little further,” suggested Sir Henry; and after a few minutes’ pushing through the nut bushes and brambles, they came out in a mossy ride, where another tree that had been blown down in an autumn gale and left to lie gave room for both of them. May sat down, and nerved herself for an effort. She had been mistaken when she thought she was growing colder and more self-possessed; but it was too late to retreat. “ Sir Henry Watervilie,” she said, “ I have one question to ask you; and I have no right to ask it.” “ Go on,” he said; “ ask away.” 202 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ Is Blanche Chedworth a girl whom any man in his senses would marry ? ” “ I have a cousin who is a barrister/’ said Sir Henry, “ and he once warned me to beware of apparently simple questions.” “ But is she ? ” insisted May, a little nettled at his easy, indifferent tone. “ That,” said Sir Henry, “ is a question that would be best put to Mr. Baymond Wilson.” “ But I want to put it to you,” said May. He had seated himself a few feet away from her, and was looking at her in silent inquiry from under the brim of his cap, so she felt she must go on, and did so. She reasoned that she was risking a good deal. She had a misgiving at times that she was indulging in heroics, and that, in trying to be eloquent, she was in danger of being ridiculous; but she hardened her heart, avoided his dark eyes as she saw a tinge of surprise come into them, and looked steadily in front of her. Blanche was rich —she granted it. Blanche was good-looking—she granted it. Blanche might improve—she granted it; there was, at least, plenty of room for improve¬ ment. She might be persuaded to give up Mr. Wilson, and then of course she had the money. UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 203 It was a fact worth repeating, but would it make up for everything ? She knew the value of money herself ; none better. She was realizing it more and more every day; she was far from getting used to the want of it. But was the game worth the candle ? He knew—it was not easy to find a word for what she hoped he knew, and he did not help her; he knew the—interest—that she took in him; he must know it, if not, she must declare it to him, and beg him—urge him—pray him—as a friend who took an interest in him, to think what misery worse than poverty—and of course she knew that poverty was misery—would be the lot of the man who married Blanche Chedworth. When May began to excuse herself and what she was doing on the ground of the interest she took in him, getting redder and hotter with every word she spoke, he pulled his cap further over his eyes, and she felt that he was still looking at her more keenly than ever. But she did not notice his slightly puzzled expression until she glanced at him as he rose and stood in front of her, just as she finished, or rather paused for breath. Then he said quietly, as if it was a point that required some ex¬ planation, but was possibly not of great consequence— 204 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. “ I don’t quite see what Blanche Chedworth has to do with me.” “You want to stop her from marrying Baymond Wilson ? ” said May, after a pause. He was not making things any easier for her. He shrugged his shoulders. “She is my cousin, and I had nothing else to do. What of it ? ” “ You want to marry her yourself,” said May, simply, looking him full in the face for the first time. “ I want to marry Blanche! ” he repeated after her, slowly. “You never thought of that for yourself.” “ She told me,” said May. “ She said you had asked her to.” Sir Henry Waterville smiled grimly. “I am obliged to Blanche. A downright absolute lie is easy to tell, and does its work quickly; but it is also easy to contradict. Did you believe it ? ” “You said as much in your note last night,” May began, feeling for it instinctively in her pocket; but he stopped her. “ I had a row with Blanche on the lawn in the afternoon, and she said she had told you something, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 205 but did not say she had told you that. I thought it was something quite different. Do you believe me?” May sat silent. It was not because she was not ready to disbelieve every word Blanche said, it was rather because she could not find words in which to express herself, and was getting even hotter than before, as she thought of all she had said already. “ I can easily answer her,” he said. “ I can tell you what I thought she must have heard and told you. I ought to have told you long ago. I meant to in the school-room the other day; but it is not the kind of thing that is easy to lead up to.” He sat down again on the trunk beside her, smoking his cigar with long deep puffs, looking straight in front of him, much as she had done. “Well?” said May, glancing at him. The lines round his tired eyes seemed more marked than she had noticed them before. “ I am married,” he said simply. “ Married! ” repeated May, looking at him in a dazed way. “ Married,” he said, in a hard, level tone. “ Married fifteen years ago. Blanche’s father and 2o6 UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES . mother know it. I thought she might know it too. Old Wilson does. I knew him in those days, and he helped the business on. He must be keeping it up his sleeve.” He had dropped his cigar end on the ground at his feet, and was grinding it into the mossy turf with his boot heel, as if it was something he could kill and bury and forget.