Dr. Eobert P. Utter. 
 

 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 SobeL 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 'OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?" "ARCHIE LOVELL," 
 'STEVEN LAWRENCE, YEOMAN," ETC. 
 
 r*. ^/ t * 4M*u* _**. *f ,^ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 SHELDON & COMPANY, 677 BROADWAY 
 
 AND 214 & 216 MERCER STREET, 
 
 UNDER GRAND CENTRAL HOTSL. 
 
 1872. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AT SWINDOIT. 
 
 "WHAT is the supposed origin of ladies' carriages, Miss 
 Bates? They are a time-honored institution, of course; 
 but in these days one likes to know more about things 
 than that they exist one likes derivations. What are 
 ladies' carriages derived from, and what is their supposed 
 object?" 
 
 " My dear Miss Dashwood I really so very amus- 
 ing!" 
 
 " Milly, listen to Miss Bates c On Ladies' Carriages.' 
 She says, imprimis, they are amusing." 
 
 " My dear, I meant nothing of the kind. I meant, you 
 know, that they are very proper " 
 
 " And you separate the two ideas ? You think that 
 nothing that is right can be pleasant. Oh, Miss Bates, 
 Miss Bates, what a fast person you are growing ! How 
 fearfully the last four years have degenerated you ! " 
 
 " What spirits ! " was Miss Bates' response to this lit- 
 tle attack upon her character; "what charming spirits 
 dear Miss Dashwood continued to enjoy! just as full of 
 life and fun as ever ! " And then, the last bell having 
 rung, Miss Bates insisted upon getting into the carriage 
 once more to kiss all her dear young friends before their 
 departure ; and, finally, in the forgetfulness of affection, 
 was very near beincr locked in, and borne away with them 
 
 961757 
 
4 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 in the express train a A i accident which all her very dear 
 young blends a^err-ed remarkably anxious to prevent. 
 
 " She means well, I believe," said Hilly Dash wood, as 
 they caught the last sight of the Bates struggling wildly 
 among a crowd of porters upon the platform of the Pad- 
 dington terminus. " She means well, but she is very un- 
 pleasant. Oh, how glad I am to be free from her! " 
 
 " She is detestable," said Jane, curtly. " I hate her 
 as she hates me ! That is right, Miss Fleming, open the 
 windows on both sides. We have need of a good fresh 
 draught upon us after all the Bates' kisses ! " And here 
 Miss Dash wood threw her hat off with visible impatience 
 at the mere recollection of her friend's caresses, and held 
 her face to the open window, through which the summer 
 morning wind was blowing freshly. 
 
 It was a lovely face ! I speak advisedly; for few faces 
 are lovely in real life; but hers undoubtedly was so. 
 Such brilliant coloring ! such abundance of dark fine 
 hair ! such liquid hazel eyes ! I don't think there was 
 anything at all in the expression of the features, collec- 
 tively, that charmed you as you looked at her. You 
 thought of eyes and lips and blooming cheeks alone. I 
 am quite sure you read nothing whatever of beauty of 
 mind or soul, as one does in romance, upon Jane Dash- 
 wood's face. You were quite content with the beauty 
 of the outward material, without going deeper, or seek- 
 ing for the exact inward charms she did not possess ; and 
 at this moment, when I first introduce her to you, dressed 
 in a simple rose-colored muslin, and with the broad June 
 morning resting full upon her faultlessly pure complexion, 
 she formed, altogether, about as favorable a type of a fair 
 young Englishwoman in the freshness of her first matu- 
 rity as you would meet, or desire to meet with anywhere. 
 
 Her sister Millicent at her side was also pretty, mig- 
 nonne^ and delicate even more frailly delicate than 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 5 
 
 Jane but with less perfect features perhaps with 
 somewhat a sweeter and less restless expression than 
 her elder sister. At the few balls to which Milly 
 had ever been (she was only seventeen, and yesterday 
 was a school-girl,) she had had quite as many part- 
 ners as Miss Dashwood, and had, on the whole, been bet- 
 ter liked by the men who danced with her. Jane was 
 beautiful enough to give herself royal airs, and took full 
 advantage of the prerogative. Millicent was only pretty 
 enough to be shy and coaxing and good-tempered, with ? 
 at times, a slight dash of willfulness flavoring the good- 
 temper : but Milly found these subjective charms quite as 
 powerful in their way as Jane's objective ones, and she 
 was not only thoroughly unenvious of her sister's supe- 
 rior beauty, but, possessed of the conviction as deep 
 down in her mind as Milly's little mind had depth that 
 she would, one day or another, rule quite as triumphantly 
 over a limited empire of her own as Jane, in all the pride 
 of her beauty and arrogance and one-and-twenty years, 
 was reigning over hers now. 
 
 This empire, reader, did not extend over the very first 
 London society, of which the Dashwood girls knew noth- 
 ing, but over that outlying and somewhat mouldering 
 province of fashion, Bath, where their father, Colonel 
 Dashwood, had been a shining light during the last twe-n- 
 ty years. Jane had now been staying a fortnight in town 
 with distant relatives to see the exhibitions, for which she 
 cared nothing, and to go to see one or two operas, for 
 which she cared a great deal : Jane Dashwood assisted a 
 very little, you see, in white silk and jasmine-wreath, at 
 the latter entertainments, not at all at the former ones. 
 And she was this day chaperoning Milly home to Bath, 
 that young person's apprenticeship at the finishing estab- 
 lishment of Miss Bates, Kensington Gravel Pits, haying 
 just expired. 
 
6 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "Yes, you are finished, Milly," Jane remarked, when 
 her indignant recollection of Miss Bates had had time to 
 cool. " Poor little Milly, of seventeen, finished ! I never 
 kissed you before Miss Bates, child ; I couldn't. Let me 
 look at you. Milly, dear, I think you look stronger than 
 you used to do; " and Jane put her arms round her, and 
 kissed her with one of those long, silent caresses that she 
 never bestowed upon any living being but her sister. 
 " Milly, we shan't be parted any more, now." 
 
 "And I shall have to learn nothing more, Jane. I hate 
 learning ! " 
 
 " So did I, Milly. I had seven years of it you have 
 only had four." 
 
 " But you were clever. You could win prizes and make 
 progress." 
 
 "And enemies, Milly. Now I dare say you have had 
 some real friends at school. I never had one." 
 
 " I have Esther," said Milly, glancing at their young 
 companion, who had betaken herself to the farther com- 
 partment of the carriage. " Esther is worth a dozen 
 common friends. I like her better than any one in the 
 world but you, Jane, although I've only known her six 
 months. She is so clever did my exercises like a key, 
 and mended my stockings most beautifully, every other 
 thread but not pretty, Jane, eh ? " 
 
 " She is distinguished-looking," replied Miss Dash wood, 
 who, like all unequivocally handsome women, could afford, 
 at times, to be generous ; " pretty is not the word for her. 
 She has just that air noble which papa is always trying 
 to impress upon our minds as so essentially aristocratic 
 
 as though little things like you and me, Milly, could 
 be statuesque, if we tried." 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " repeated Milly, the parental image evi- 
 dently coming before her mind for the first time* " Papa 
 
 how is he ? I quite forgot to ask and mamma ? " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 7 
 
 " Much as usual," answered Jane, shortly. " Philan- 
 thropy and nerves, title-hunting and polemical tea-par- 
 ties : the old routine of our house, Milly, from which I, 
 as of old, escape as much as usual." 
 
 " Where to, Jane ? Who are your dear, intimate friends 
 at present ? What have I got to look forward to ? " 
 
 "I have no friends at all," answered Miss Dash wood. 
 " I never do have any ; and I shall want them less than 
 ever now that I have got you back, Milly. But I am use- 
 fully intimate with one or two young women of my own 
 age, and in their society I walk about the streets in win- 
 ter and the park in summer. You know ! Then in the 
 winter old Mrs. Blantyre took me to the balls, when papa 
 was laid up with the gout, and in the summer young Mrs. 
 Strangways has promised to take us both to the archery- 
 meetings and the subscription pic-nics." 
 
 "What! the Mrs. Strangways you used to dislike 
 so?" 
 
 "The same," said Jane, with a somewhat hard laugh; 
 " and with the same amiable feelings still going on between 
 us ! She is a capital chaperon, Milly. Young married 
 women always are particularly when they dislike one 
 very heartily." 
 
 "I can understand that," replied Milly, after giving the 
 subject sufficient attention to grapple duly with its myster- 
 ies. " If they take you they amuse themselves, and let 
 you do exactly as you like, of course. But why does a 
 woman like Mrs. Strangways care to be troubled with you 
 at all, Jane ? " 
 
 " Because new lights may bring back old worshippers 
 to the neglected shrine, because a little stray incense - ( 
 oh, Milly, darling, don't let's talk of these people now ! 
 You will learn enough of such tactics as Mrs. Strangways' 
 without my teaching you ! Do you know, child, your hair 
 has grown darker ? I am quite positive it has. I wonder 
 whether Mrs. Dash wood will see it." 
 
8 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 And Miss Dash wood stroked down her sister's hair with 
 loving hands, looking into its texture and color with some- 
 thing of that close, long scrutiny with which children's 
 hair and cheeks and eyes are scrutinized when they come 
 back to their mother, grown and altered, after every six 
 months' absence at school. 
 
 " Fancy Mrs. Dash wood thinking of such earthly vani- 
 ties as a shade of difference in my tawny locks ! " cried 
 Milly. "Papa, of course, would like to see the article 
 * daughter ' generally improved and more marketable, 
 but no one on earth besides you, Jane, ever feels any con- 
 cern about me or my looks when I come and go. Luck- 
 ily, it does not break my heart! I really wonder some, 
 times, whether I have much feeling. or not. Oh, Jane, 
 talking of feelings, where is Pa ul ? " 
 
 Milly ! " 
 
 " Oh, never mind Esther Esther knows nothing about 
 it, and if she did it wouldn't signify. Don't be angry, Jen- 
 ny. If I thought you really cared about him I should 
 have said nothing, but as you are only " 
 
 " Only engaged to him it does not matter, " cried Miss 
 Dashwood, with her short laugh. "Miss Fleming, what 
 nonsense has Milly been telling you about me?" 
 
 " Only nonsense, I am sure," answered a calm, sonorous 
 voice, singularly different in its ring and cadence to the 
 Dashwoods. " I should be sorry to believe it anything 
 else." 
 
 " Oh, you dear, steady, severe old Esther ! " cried Miss 
 Milly. " Please don't be so like Miss Bates on the first 
 day of our freedom. I feel the prison-chill steal over me 
 again when you come out with those awful moral senti- 
 ments "I should be sorry to believe it anything else." 
 Really, it seemed like Miss Bates in person, didn't it, 
 Jane?" 
 
 "I think no two human beings in the world could be so 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 9 
 
 unlike as Miss Fleming and the Bates," said Jane, quickly. 
 "If I were any judge of such matters I should say that 
 I think both you and I, Milly, have a great many more 
 Bates qualities than Miss Fleming has. Miss Bates is 
 worldly ; so are we : yes, Milly, dear, even you, in spite of 
 your blue eyes, and your seventeen years : Miss Bates's 
 life is acting, every hour, of it ; so is ours : Miss Bates has 
 only one object to seem what she is not; our ambition 
 directed into another channel, is the same. She is odious 
 and we are delightful, certainly ; but these are adventi- 
 tious conditions beyond our own control. At heart -" 
 
 " We are both of us selfish, sordid, wicked, worldly 
 hypocrites," interrupted Milly, laughing. " How I do like 
 to hear you in your sudden fits of repentance, Jenny. 
 Come over here, Esther," she added, turning to her friend, 
 " and hear Miss Dashwood holding forth on our family 
 virtues. Don't be shy oh, I forgot! I have not intro- 
 duced you, Jane, Esther. Esther, Jane. What a color 
 you have got, Mistress Fleming, with holding your face 
 outside the window all this time. You don't look very 
 much like Miss Bates, I must confess." 
 
 Not very like, certainly ; Miss Bates being parchment- 
 hued, withered, forty-five ; Esther Fleming fresh, full of 
 life and health, and only just eighteen. - Still Jane Dash- 
 wood had been right in applying the qualified terms 
 " noble" and " distinguished-looking " to Miss Fleming's 
 style of beauty. Handsome though she was when you 
 came to know her face by heart, not two persons out of 
 a hundred would have hesitated, at first sight, to pro- 
 nounce her face inferior in good looks to either of the 
 Dashwood girls. She had, as Milly told her, a color at 
 this moment, but ordinarily she was pale ; and color is 
 after all the standard common-place criterion of beauty 
 Then she possessed none of the little piquant graces that 
 formed so many charms in the Dashwood girls. She wai 
 1* 
 
JO THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ratHer large, and decidedly strongly built: and beside 
 their two little fragile figures you would inevitably have 
 been possessed during the first ten minutes or so, with the 
 idea that she was not perfectly refined. With good room 
 to study the three young women in an open moorland, 
 say, with sky for roof and heather for carpet you must 
 Boon have reversed your first judgment ; for every line in 
 Esther's well grown frame was duly proportioned ; finer 
 far, in fact, than the Dashwoods'. Her hands had the brown 
 healthy look of hands that have lived much out of doors, 
 but they were not too large for her size, and in shape 
 were perfect as a gipsy's, while the Dashwoods' hands 
 were only short-fingered, and small, and white. Her walk 
 on the moor, mind, I don't mean in a ball-room was 
 free and stately as a Tyrol peasant girl's. The Dash- 
 woods' paces were good as far as they went, but they were 
 paces still. Then Esther Fleming's head was small and 
 admirably formed, and this is a beauty possessed by not 
 one otherwise handsome Englishwoman in a hundred. 
 Her hair was fairer by many shades than you would have 
 expected from her dark clear skin ; brown waving hair ? 
 growing golden almost in a very full light. Her face 
 no, I will leave that alone ; all descriptions of faces are a 
 mistake. I may tell you of a cheek serene and clear, of 
 black-grey eyes, of a delicate firm-cut month ; I can never 
 bring the living Esther Fleming herself one whit nearer 
 to you. You will not see her smile, half shy, half serious ; 
 you will not see the expression of her loving, thoughtful 
 eyes, with all my catalogue of charms. Read, instead, 
 the expression of the face that you were enamored of 
 when you first left school, and you will see before you 
 a more lovable heroine than any that words of mine can 
 by any possibility set forth. 
 
 " This is the wild woman of the woods that I have 
 written to you about," said Milly, addressing her sister 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. H 
 
 and possessing herself, school-girl like, of Miss Fleming's 
 hand. " Doesn't she look as if she had lived in the wilds 
 of Exmoor all her life ? Esther, what do you think of 
 Jane?" 
 
 " Your sister is like you, Milly, but " 
 
 " Prettier. Of course ; I have heard that since I was a 
 baby, and have quite left off being jealous. That brings 
 us round I don't know by what road to Paul again. 
 Don't try to blush, Jenny ; where is he ? " 
 
 "Mr. Cliichester is in Bath," Jane replied ; " or rather, 
 he was there when I left. He never stays more than two 
 or three days at a time. I can't think what in the world 
 makes him come out there at all." 
 
 " But does he really visit at our house, Jane ? 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 "Whenever he comes to Bath?" 
 
 " YeSj I believe so." 
 
 " Then it is a positive engagement. Oh, Jane, and you 
 never told me ! When is it to be ? " 
 
 " Never, Milly, if by 'it' you mean my marriage with 
 Mr. Chichester." 
 
 4< Yet you are engaged, with papa's consent! " 
 
 " Yes, that is the thing, with papa's consent," said 
 Miss Dashwood, with emphasis; "I am looked upon for 
 the time being as settled, and am accorded leave to be at 
 peace, sometimes even to refuse a ball if I like it. Oh, 
 Milly, it gives the whole house such a strange air of re- 
 pose, this little dream about Mr. Chichester. Papa actu- 
 ally allowed himself an attack of the gout last winter. 
 Fancy his succumbing to such a weakness if he had had 
 a disengaged daughter upon his hands ! " 
 
 "As he will have now, Jane," said Milly, after some 
 consideration. " I believe only I don't like to think 
 even you so cruel that you are letting this engagement 
 go on simply to mystify papa, and be at rest yourself." 
 
12 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Jane Dash wood laughed. " It is a good piece of strat- 
 egy, is it not, Milly ? Peace and freedom for the present, 
 relief for the paternal mind, and if everything, else fails, 
 Paul to fall back upon at the last. I don't believe he 
 has a farthing in the world, but as soon as it entered into 
 my head to be engaged to him Mrs. Strangways was 
 trying to take him up, and it amused me to assist her 
 I got one or two obedient little birds of mine to whisper 
 into papa's ear that he is to have eight hundred a year 
 when some fabulously old person shall die. And so, nous 
 voila!" 
 
 " And Mr. Chichester ? " cried Esther, aghast with hor- 
 ror at hearing things which she held so sacred, desecrat- 
 ed in such fashion. "Mr. Chichester what of him?" 
 
 " Oh, he is not ill-looking," said Jane, calmly, " and yet 
 not strictly handsome. Dark, slight, rather grizzled hair, 
 eyes that see a great deal farther into one's thoughts than 
 is agreeable, and a by no means good-tempered mouth. 
 For the rest, one could wish of course that he had a large 
 prospective income ; still, eight hundred a year, with 
 management, is not so bad." 
 
 " But his feelings ! " cried Esther, who could not hide 
 her indignation at such alarming levity. "His feelings ; 
 do they go quite for nothing?" 
 
 "Most entirely and absolutely for nothing," said Jane. 
 "I see you are not of the world, Miss Fleming. You be- 
 lieve that men die, as young ladies are represented to do 
 in novels, from blighted affection. It is an exploded be- 
 liefj I assure you. Nobody dies from any other than 
 strictly material causes in these days. If Mr. Chichester 
 were here I should talk in the same way that I am doing 
 now, and he wouldn't mind it in the least." 
 
 " He must have strange ideas of honor, then," thought 
 Esther ; " a strange kind of reverence for the woman he 
 means to make his wife." Then aloud, " You must make 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 13 
 
 allowance for the ignorance of my questions, Miss Dash- 
 wood. I begin to see that I belong to a generation gone 
 by. I have never lived out of a country village till the 
 last six months. I know nothing of love matters. I 
 know nothing of the world." 
 
 " Nor need you wish to do so, Miss Fleming," said Jane 
 quickly. " Nor, if you were thrown on the world, would 
 you ever be what Milly and I are now. We have had 
 unusual advantages from our cradles, and, with great 
 natural aptitude, have improved them to the uttermost. 
 I am twenty-one, Milly is seventeen, and we are both as 
 entirely free from all youthful, foolish extravagances in 
 the way' of sentiment as though we were middle-aged 
 women. Are we not, Milly ? " 
 
 " I know that I have got a most youthful desire for food, 
 at all events," - replied Miss Millicent ; " and also that I 
 am delighted to look forward to the prospect of S win don. 
 What shall we have, Jenny ? sausage-rolls or Bath buns, 
 or both?" 
 
 "I never eat in the morning," said Miss Dash wood, 
 languidly. " What a school-girl you are, Milly." 
 
 "But it will be one o'clock when we get to Swindon," 
 remarked Esther, apologetically. " One o'clock dinner 
 time and Milly and I have had nothing since eight." 
 
 " And then only a Bates' breakfast," added Milly. It's 
 all very well for you, a come-out young lady, to be so 
 grand, Jenny. Esther and I are not at all above being 
 hungry." 
 
 Accordingly, when the train stopped at Swindon, these 
 two young persons got out, and with the eagerness of 
 veritable school-girls made their way to thG pastry, Miss 
 Dashwood remaining alone in a dignified manner in the 
 carriage. She was a great deal too blaze to care for eat- 
 ing at one o'clock ; perhaps the admiring looks her pret- 
 ty face attracted from the crowded platform formed 'ip 
 
14 THE ORDEAL OF WIVES. 
 
 tenance of a more easily assimilated nature than Bath 
 buns. At all events she bore all scrutiny with the most 
 perfectly unruffled coolness, leaning her head back so 
 that her brown hair and delicate profile came out in excel- 
 lent relief against the dark cushions of the carriage, and 
 seemed unusually well satisfied and complacent when the 
 two other girls returned. 
 
 " One sausage-roll, two Bath buns, a raspberry-tart, 
 and a pint of strawberries," Milly enumerated, taking 
 these little refreshments one by one out of her bag, " that 
 is my lunch. Esther the same; bi4t sandwiches instead, 
 of saucisson. Oh, Jenny, how dreadful it must be to be 
 a used-up victim of society, like you, or a heroine in a 
 novel, in neither of which capacities is hearty eating al- 
 lowed. Then we have had an adventure, too ; haven't 
 we, Esther ? Jenny missed more than Bath buns by in- 
 sisting on being grand." 
 
 "An adventure at Swindon must be so thrilling," re- 
 marked Miss Dash wood. " The accessories are all of 
 such a romantic nature ; fat old gentlemen swearing at 
 their boiling soup, fast young Oxonians calling for their 
 morning beer, nurses wildly entreating the pert waiting- 
 girls for bottles of milk, frenzied single women imploring 
 the guard to listen to them, or choking themselves on 
 bad pastry in their fear of being left behind." 
 
 " To neither of which class did he belong," interrupted 
 Milly. "Did he, Esther?" 
 
 Miss Fleming thought " he " might have been an Oxo- 
 nian ; but he certainly was not drinking beer, at least not 
 then. 
 
 " And pray who is c he ? ' asked Jane, with sovereign 
 contempt. " Which of-your numerous acquaintance have 
 you met with, Milly ? " 
 
 "No acquaintance at all, Jane, but an exceedingly gen- 
 tlemanly, interesting-looking person. You shall not put 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 15 
 
 down our adventure in that envious and malignant 
 way," 
 
 " And what did the interesting gentleman with whom 
 you are not acquainted say to you, Milly ? " 
 
 " It was to Esther." 
 
 " I was trying to make my way to the counter, and the 
 people pushed me back," said Miss Fleming, with a de- 
 cided accession of coloring in her face, " and a tall man 
 who stood near us asked me if he could help me." 
 
 "And Esther said 'yes,' in her simple way, Jenny, and 
 he made room for us. Wasn't it thoughtful of him ? " 
 
 " And is that all ? " 
 
 "All ! why, would you have a stranger do more, Jane ? 
 I say it was most attentive. And then he was so thor- 
 oughly gentlemanly in his manner." 
 
 " So interesting ! " cried Miss Dashwood, with her lit- 
 tle mocking laugh. " How angry I am with myself for 
 having missed this Swindon Bayard." 
 
 "Interesting is a dreadful word to apply to any man," 
 Esther remarked with deliberation. " It makes one think 
 of white hands, and hair parted like a girl's, and a lisp." 
 
 " None of which our stranger possessed," cried Millicent. 
 " He was a great, broad-shouldered man, with a sun- 
 burnt face and hands. Much too manly-looking for your 
 style, Jenny ; you like " 
 
 " Eat another of those saffron lumps of indigestion, 
 Milly dear," interrupted Miss Dashwood, "and don't 
 chatter. I shall have to chaperon you with more care if 
 you take up these sudden fancies for attentive strangers." 
 
 " Don't be frightened, Jane ; he never thought of me 
 at all never looked at me, I believe. The whole of the 
 attention was to Esther, who received it just as coolly as 
 she is now eating her strawberries. I never saw any one 
 with undeniable teeth smile so rarely as Esther does." 
 
 " Smile ! why, Milly, you would not have had me smile 
 
J.6 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 at a strange young man for an act of common civility ! 
 I thanked him sufficiently, I believe." 
 
 " Quite sufficiently, I am sure," remarked Miss Dash- 
 wood, looking closely at Esther. " He was, no doubt, 
 some excellent young Wiltshire farmer going down to a 
 pig-fair, if there are such things, and " 
 
 " No," interrupted Miss Fleming, quite firmly, although 
 she smiled. " The stranger was a gentleman, Miss Dash- 
 wood." 
 
 " With black hands and high shoulders." 
 
 " With brown hands and broad shoulders. A manly- 
 looking young Englishman." 
 
 " A true descendant of the Vikings," interrupted Milly. 
 
 " Say it out, Esther. One of your favorite muscular 
 heroes, all sinews and high principles." 
 
 " Of which I could form such admirable judgment 
 while I waited for my change," said Esther, with a hearty 
 laugh. " I think we had better give up our adventure, 
 hero and all, Milly. Your sister is only drawing us out 
 in order to make us feel how thoroughly ridiculous we 
 have been afterwards." 
 
 "No," said Jane, quite gravely,"! was thinking 
 thinking how oddly such chance meetings do sometimes 
 turn out. You may meet this stranger some day, and 
 know him, Miss Fleming." 
 
 " As you met Arthur Peel," interrupted Milly. " It 
 was in a railway carriage you first saw each other, wasn't 
 it? And then you stayed with him in the same house, 
 and then it all came on " 
 
 Milly ! " 
 
 Millicent Dashwood was never conspicuously watchful 
 of any feelings or sufferings save her own ; but the mo- 
 ment she caught sight of her sister's face now, she be- 
 came sensible that her last light words had taken effect 
 too deep. Miss Dash wood's cheeks were burning red, 
 her lips quivering. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 17 
 
 "Do think of what you say, Milly," she remarked, very 
 low. You are so heedless." 
 
 "But Esther knows nothing about Arthur Peel, Jenny. 
 I never mentioned it before ; and besides, it's all off now." 
 
 " Milly," cried Miss Dashwood, passionately, " I beg you 
 will be silent. I do not choose these jests they are in 
 bad taste." And moving abruptly to the other side of the 
 carriage, she leaned her hot face towards the open win- 
 dow and quite away from her two companions' scrutiny. 
 
 Milliceut went on silently with her luncheon : Esther 
 mused. 
 
 " It is good fun to laugh at the man to whom one is en- 
 gaged," she thought ; " but bad taste even to speak of 
 some love affair that is "all off," and about which one 
 blushes crimson. How glad I am that I know nothing 
 of the world ! " 
 
 " It came to grief about money, and papa would not 
 hear of it," whispered Milly; "and Jane liked him awful- 
 ly that's all. Don't look so solemn, Esther." 
 
 " Milly, I am sorry for your sister." 
 
 " Sorry for her? sorry for our proud, handsome Jane ?) 
 She would not thank you for pitying her." 
 
 But Millicent was mistaken.- Miss 'Dashwood caught 
 
 o 
 
 the meaning of Esther's low, kind words, and she turned 
 round quickly with an altered and a softened expression 
 on her flushed face. 
 
 " You pity me, Miss Fleming," she said. " You are right 
 I need it. How glad I should be to meet you again ! " 
 she went on, after waiting a minute or two, during which 
 Esther made no response. " I arn sure we should get on 
 together, in time. You don't think so, Miss Fleming : 
 your face speaks for you. You don't think you would 
 care for any further acquaintance with such an unprinci- 
 pled, heartless character as mine? " 
 
 "I never thought that," said Esther anything like shyly 
 
18 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 for the girl, in truth, was quite unused to any sudden de- 
 monstrations of violent attachment. " I think it is im- 
 possible for people who have only just met to say wheth- 
 er they will get on together or not on further acquaint- 
 ance." 
 
 " So like our dear, wise, old Esther ! " cried Milly. 
 " You see you can't steal her from me, Jane. She is my 
 own particular friend > and means to continue so. We 
 shall write each other two long, crossed letters *a week, 
 all the summer, and in the winter meet in Bath, and be 
 Damon and Pythias again, as we were at school." 
 
 " Young ladies' friendships being famed for their powers 
 of endurance," remarked Miss Dash wood, who had quick- 
 ly rallied from her passing touch of sentiment, " I proph- 
 esy that in six weeks the letters will have died a natural 
 death, and that by the winter you will have forgotten 
 each other." 
 
 " Not so bad as that, I think," said Esther ; " I never 
 forget any one." 
 
 " What a disagreeable faculty," remarked Jane, careless- 
 ly. " The great secret of happiness in life is to forget 
 everybody, except those who happen to be amusing one 
 for the moment. Milly, dear, it is time to begin hunting 
 out our thousand and one parcels. That wretched Bates 
 stuffed them with her own hands into every impossible 
 place she could think of." 
 
 " And nothing makes papa so cross as to see heaps of 
 things being showered upon him out of a railway car- 
 riage," said Milly. "It spoils the tableau of re-union. 
 Esther, by the way, I predict that you will fall desperate- 
 ly in love with Colonel Dashwood the moment you see 
 him : all young ladies do." 
 
 And Milly was right. When Colonel Dashwood came 
 up to meet his daughters at the Bath Station, Miss Flem- 
 ing thought him the most perfectly charming old man she 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 19 
 
 had ever seen in her life. It was quite impossible that a 
 pere noble with such a benevolent, silvery head, and who 
 exclaimed, "My children!" in a voice of such honest, 
 heartfelt emotion, could have a single mean, false, or world- 
 ly attribute in his whole composition. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE COACH-BOX. 
 
 THE intelligent reader must clearly see that Esther 
 Fleming had possessed few of those educational advan- 
 tages which, in this generation, make most young persons 
 so profoundly versed in life long before the time that 
 they are eighteen. The Shiboleth of girls like the Dash- 
 woods was, for the most part, unintelligible to her ; and 
 what she did understand of it was little to her taste. 
 Nearly all the eighteen years of her life had been passed 
 in a remote village in one of the wildest parts of North 
 Devonshire ; and, until the last six months, she had been 
 profoundly ignorant even of the rudiments of ordina- 
 ary young-lady knowledge. I don't by this mean that 
 she was uneducated : she had, on the contrary, read fewer, 
 and understood more books, than ninety-nine " finished " 
 young women out of a hundred. She was thoroughly 
 competent in household work ; she could use her needle ; 
 she had learnt facts, at first hand, concerning all the com- 
 mon things of nature. She was well-educated, if by ed- 
 ucation one means the process that is to fit, not unfit, 
 young -persons for the life that lies before them. But in 
 showy, superficial accomplishments in knowledge, so 
 called, of the world she was, as Milly Dash wood often 
 declared, deplorably, heathenishly deficient. She had 
 
20 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 never been to a ball; she did not know the financial dif- 
 ference between elder and younger sons ; she had honest, 
 romantic, old-fashioned notions (poor Esther !) about peo- 
 ple always being in love with the people they married ; 
 she had never read any French book but " Telamache ; " 
 she held that old persons ought to be respected ; she 
 could blush she could feel shy. Her six months' incar- 
 ceration in a Kensington boarding-school had, of course, 
 shown her what a great number of prejudices there were 
 for her to overcome, how much information to be acquir- 
 ed, if she ever hoped to come up at all to the standard 
 of her young companions. But here the evil of these 
 six months' probation ended. Strong, healthy natures do 
 not take infection very readily from weaker ones. And in 
 spite of her close friendship with Milly Dash wood, and 
 the companionship of a dozen other girls, all more or less 
 well made up in mundane experience, Esther Fleming was 
 bringing back just the same honest, simple heart to her 
 Devonshire home, this bright June day, as she had carried 
 with her when she quitted it last in the month of January. 
 
 "Be sure you write to me to-morrow," were Millicent 
 Dashwood's last words to her, after an indefinite number 
 of parting kisses ; " and pray give my love to cousin Da- 
 vid ; and mind you don't think any more of that fair- 
 haired Yiking, Esther, dear. It would be so dreadful if 
 he was only a Wiltshire farmer after all ! " 
 
 Millicent, like many other very lively, good-tempered 
 people, had a knack of saying something not perfectly 
 agreeable at parting from her friends ; something that, 
 childish and unpremeditated though it might seem, con- 
 tained a lurking bitterness at bottom. Jane, on the other 
 hand, after being far from amiable in her manner to Es- 
 ther during the last half-hoar of the journey, took leave 
 of her with a really warm hand-pressure, and with a few 
 words about her having been kind to Milly at school, 
 which went straight to Esther's heart. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 21 
 
 "Poor Jane Dash wood! I believe hers is the best 
 character of the two," she thought, when she had seen 
 the last of their two bright faces on the Bath platform. 
 " And yet, Jane's will be the most ruined" by such a life 
 as they seem to lead. Milly hasn't depth enough to be 
 thoroughly spoilt. She will never do anything very good 
 or very bad while she lives. Poor Jane ! I should like 
 to know more about her and this Arthur Peel ; and I do 
 hope she will marry him, and not Mr. Chichester. That 
 was not a nice allusion of Miss Milly's to Wiltshire farm- 
 ers. I am quite sure none but a gentleman could speak 
 as that young man spoke." 
 
 From which soliloquy you have, I hope, gathered, rea- 
 der, that Esther is not to be a model heroine in spite of 
 all the good things I have been saying of her. What 
 model heroine would be annoyed at a little friendly play- 
 ful spite? What model heroine would have the impro- 
 priety to vindicate, even to herself, a good-looking mem- 
 ber of the other sex, of whose name, not to say station 
 in life, she was wholly ignorant? 
 
 " I wish I could find out the truth of this subject," pur- 
 sued Miss Fleming, in thought, " if it were only for the 
 sake of having a small triumph over Milly. What a 
 school-girl I have become, though, to care about such 
 nonsense; as if it can matter in the least to me whether 
 that fair-haired, broad-shouldered young gentleman, whom 
 I shall never see again, is the son of a farmer or of a 
 bishop." 
 
 Esther drew herself up in imagination at the bare sup- 
 position her own brain had hazarded ; and, I have no 
 doubt, would have forgotten the stranger's existence long 
 before she reached her own home had fate and the exi- 
 gencies of railway travelling so willed it ; but at Exeter 
 she happened to pass and repass him on the platform 
 about twenty-eight times while waiting for the North 
 
22 THE ORDEAL OF WIVES. 
 
 Devon tram; and at Barnstable she had scarcely taken 
 her place outside the Lynton coach before the Viking 
 himself was seated opposite her. If these were not in- 
 exorable workings of fate what else were they ? Esther 
 took no trouble to contend against a destiny so obviously 
 forced upon her; and answered in a very cheerful and 
 unforbidding manner when the young stranger began 
 some of those meteorological remarks with which all 
 Englishmen find it easiest to get over the first or inaugu- 
 ral difficulties of chance-made acquaintanceship. 
 
 Never having myself had personal intercourse with a 
 Viking, I am, of course, unable to say whether the stran- 
 ger bore, or did not bear, upon his face that marked hered- 
 itary resemblance which Milly Dashwood had made out 
 for him. He was, at all events, a fine, handsome-looking, 
 English lad well-grown, sunburnt, fair-haired, with 
 more perhaps of vigorous strength and health than of 
 intellect upon his face ; but with an open smile upon his 
 rather large mouth, and a keen, slightly audacious hardi- 
 hood in his blue eyes, which were not at all displeasing 
 in Miss Fleming's sight. 
 
 " I am sure my fishing-rod is in your way," he remark- 
 ed, when as much had been got out of the weather and 
 the immediate neighborhood of Barnstable as was possi- 
 ble. " Let me stow it away down here there's plenty 
 of room." 
 
 " Not unless you wish it ground to impalpable pow- 
 der," interrupted Esther, glancing as she spoke at the 
 feet of a huge Devonshire farmer who occupied the third 
 place in the seat. " I am not in the least inconvenienced. 
 I only got up to look across the country to the left. It 
 is a favorite view of mine. You can see Lundy on a 
 clear bright day, but the sun is too low and hazy now." 
 
 " You know this part of the country, then ? " 
 
 " I have lived here all my life, sir, until the last six 
 months." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 23 
 
 "At Lynton?" 
 
 " No, among the Countisbury Hills, about half-way 
 between the valley and Exmoor. 
 
 " Rather a lonely place to live in, is it not ? " 
 
 " Well, it is my home ; and North Devonshire is often 
 thought the most beautiful part of England," added the 
 girl a little proudly. 
 
 " Ah ! so I hear," the stranger answered. " I have 
 never myself been in this part of the world before." 
 
 " And you are too early to see it in its greatest beauty 
 now. August is the time : when the valleys are white 
 with the harvest, and the dwarf furze makes the combes 
 and hillsides golden, and the broad moorlands seem all 
 afire with one grand sweep of ruby purple. If you look 
 straight away over that low hill upon our right you can 
 catch an outlying ridge of Exmoor already. Do you 
 see?" 
 
 " No, not exactly," replied the young man, whose eyes 
 happened to be fixed at that moment upon Esther's own 
 profile. " I am rather near-sighted." 
 
 "You will have a better view a mile or two further on. 
 Don't you like travelling outside a coach ? " 
 
 " Yes, under some circumstances. I have not been on 
 one since I was a schoolboy." 
 
 " Which must be a great many years ago," thought 
 Esther, glancing shyly at the fresh face. " I hope you, 
 too, are not going to turn out wearied of everything 
 'blaze,' as the Dash woods call it." 
 
 " You are accustomed to coaches, no doubt," went on 
 the stranger, who seemed determined not to let the con- 
 versation stand still. "I suppose they are still an ac- 
 knowledged institution in these primitive regions ? " 
 
 " Our country is too grand for railways, sir. When 
 you see I mean," coloring a little, " if you ever see the 
 hills about our house you will say that we can safely defy 
 
24 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 the best engineers in the world. What a nice cold breeze 
 is coming up from the north ! doesn't it seem like anoth- 
 er world after that stifling, heated air of London ? John 
 Hartman," leaning over, and speaking to the coachman, 
 " what sort of weather has it been at home this spring ? " 
 < " Main fine, Miss Esther," answered John Hartman, in 
 r great cheery voice, and turning round a red face smooth 
 &s a cider-apple ; " dry and open for the sowing, and wet 
 from first o' March up to Easter. The hay's down to 
 farmer Litson's already, Miss Esther." 
 
 " And more fule he ! " remarked the gentleman with 
 the feet, sententiously. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Vellicot ? " asked Esther, to whom all the 
 red, jolly faces on the coach were evidently familiar ones. 
 " Why shouldn't Litson cut his hay when he likes ? " 
 
 " I never said he weren't to cut it, Miss Fleming ; I 
 said he were a fule for cutting it." And Mr. Vellicot 
 pointed, with a significant, colossal finger, towards a dis- 
 tant line of intensely blue uplands on the right. 
 
 " Ah, there is Exmoor," said Esther to the stranger ; 
 " and our seeing it so plainly now is a sign that we shall 
 have rain by to-morrow. Such rain we have here! I 
 don't think drops of the same size fall in any other place 
 in the world. You get wet through in about a minute 
 and a half." 
 
 " What a charming climate it must be ! Bitterly cold, 
 as far as I understand our friend in front, until March ; 
 rain for the remainder of the spring ; and daily showers 
 that wet you through in a minute and a half in summer. " 
 
 " Oh, but sportsmen don't care for getting wet," said 
 Esther, laughing. " And you know the fish always rise 
 best after rain. Is there good sport this season, Mr. Yel- 
 licot?" 
 
 " Depends on what folk reckon sport," replied the farm- 
 er, laconically. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 25 
 
 " Well, are there many fish, I mean? " 
 
 " Yes, there be fish, Miss Fleming." 
 
 "And don't they rise?" 
 
 "They do to them they knows," said Mr. Yell ioot, look- 
 ing with stolid sarcasm at his young .neighbor's bran new 
 and elaborately-scientific London rod. "Though there's 
 scores of strangers already a-lashing and a-fuling about 
 the fish, Master David killed four brace last Monday." 
 
 " He did better than that, end of May, 'fore the visitors 
 come," begun the coachman ; then a sudden recollec- 
 tion of the indelicacy of the remark, or of the possible 
 half crown he was risking, seemed to overcome him, and 
 he corrected himself; "before the weather turned off so 
 dry. Mrs. Engleheart be looking spracker than ever this 
 spring, Miss Esther, and Miss Joan the same." 
 
 " And Mr. David ? " 
 
 " Oh, Master David, he keeps much as usual much 
 as usual, Miss Esther, thank ye." 
 
 " Will he be at the mill to meet me, do you think, 
 John ? " 
 
 "Not much fear of that," remarked the farmer. "Pie 
 were up to our house last night in the' dark, Mr. David 
 were, after a pair of young pigeons for you, Miss Fleming." 
 And Mr. Yellicot followed up this information with a 
 far-off smothered sound which, when it first left its des- 
 tination, might possibly have been intended by its origin- 
 ator for a laugh. 
 
 Miss Fleming received the intelligence without the 
 faintest symptom of embarrassment ; but the young strang- 
 er, nevertheless conceived an instant dislike towards this 
 unknown David. The male cousins of very pretty girls 
 are always objectionable. David, with his pastoral gal- 
 lantries of young pigeons and wayside trysts at mills, 
 was, no doubt, some red-cheeked, rustic fool, to whom 
 this young womnn had been engaged since she was seven 
 2 
 
26 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 years old. She was not so very handsome, after all, when 
 you got accustomed to her face ; and her hands were aw- 
 fully sunburnt, although tolerably well shaped. 
 
 "Does the coach pass close to your house?" he asked 
 her in a very fine-gentleman and patronizing manner 
 " I suppose we are getting near Lynton now." 
 
 " We are still four miles away from Lynton," answered 
 Esther, utterly indifferent to any change in his manner 
 " and nearly as far from my home, which lies among the 
 Countisbury hills, straight away before us. But I shall 
 get down when we reach the valley that you see yonder ; " 
 and she pointed down a steep, leafy chasm close beside 
 the road, through which the distant roar of unseen waters 
 could be heard. " The mill down below is the nearest 
 point to my home, and the rest of the way I shall walk." 
 
 " With cousin David," thought the stranger promptly. 
 "Philomel and Baucis, Chloe and Strephon, among the 
 woods." And, although he had just decided that Esther 
 possessed very few personal attractions, he remained un- 
 commonly silent during the next quarter of an hour. 
 This travelling outside a coach, after all, was frightfully 
 boring work; particularly when the close neighborhood 
 of a young and loquacious woman made it imperative on 
 one's own sense of gallantry not to smoke. 
 
 " There he is !" cried Esther, in immense excitement, 
 as a sudden turn of the road brought them to the bottom 
 of the hill ; and the coachman pulled up close beside a 
 little mouldering foot-plank across the river. " There is 
 David, standing on the bridge ! Good-bye, Mr. Yellicot ; 
 love to Maggie, and tell her to come and see me soon. 
 Good evening, sir," and she turned with a shy but not 
 ungraceful salutation to the stranger. " I hope you will 
 have good sport, and like our country when you come to 
 know it better." 
 
 But the young man's eyes were intently fixed on a 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 27 
 
 most remarkable-looking figure which, too diffident as it 
 seemed to approach nearer, was standing in an attitude 
 ludicrously expressive at once of unbounded delight and 
 utter helplessness, upon the little bridge. Cousin David, 
 then, was no fair-faced handsome lad of twenty ; but a 
 man of grotesque exterior, with a loose, slovenly gait, 
 with long, shambling limbs, with a vacuous childish face : 
 a man of almost idiotic manner, and of middle age. How 
 sweet Miss Fleming's voice broke upon him with its 
 hearty "Good evening," just as he attained to this cul- 
 minating point of his investigation ! What a beautiful, 
 frank face it was that turned to him for a moment before 
 she left his side ! 
 
 "Good evening. I I perhaps may have the pleas- 
 ure of meeting you some day while I am in this neighbor- 
 hood?" And he actually caught himself he, a -man 
 of the world of two-and-twenty feeling embarrassed 
 under the girl's steady eyes. 
 
 " It is very likely, I think. I often go out fishing with 
 my cousin." And then Esther, after making this straight- 
 forward reply, blushed rather unnecessarily as the strang- 
 er offered his hand to assist her in her descent. 
 
 Simple though she was, some fine intuition had, I sup- 
 pose, instructed her as to the meaning of the young man's 
 altered manner. At all events, her eyes drooped beneath 
 his, and during the half minute that he firmly held her 
 hand the color on her face deepened into quite a guilty 
 crimson. Then he saw how wonderfully handsome that 
 delicate, dark face really was : beauty is so much height- 
 ened by its consciousness of our own regard ; and, I am 
 forced to confess, his hand lingered a moment longer than 
 was strictly necessary on Miss Fleming's, while he aided 
 her descent into the extended arms of the great rosy 
 country girl, who stood ready to receive her. 
 
 "Is this yours, tu^ Miss Fleming? " inquired the coach- 
 
28 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 man, taking out a small, black valise from the inside of 
 the coach, where he was struggling after Esther's posses- 
 sions among the objecta membra of the four outraged in- 
 side passengers : " I can't make more than seven par- 
 cels if it isn't." 
 
 " No ; that is mine," cried the young stranger ; but, I 
 imagine, without deceitful emphasis ; for Miss Fleming's 
 eyes were at that moment engaged in reading the name 
 upon the label; "perhaps this is the missing parcel." 
 And he handed down Esther's travelling plaid, which in 
 her hurry of saying good-bye she had left beside him on 
 the seat. 
 
 She thanked him with a smile in which, naturally, there 
 was a whole world more of acquaintanceship now that 
 she had learnt his name, and in another minute John 
 Hartman was on the box, and the coach had started to- 
 wards Lynton. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A MUSCULAR HEROINE. 
 
 THE sinking sun was shining, warm and golden, upo* 
 the farm at Countisbury when Esther and her cousin first 
 caught sight of it from the valley. 
 
 It was an irregular, low-built, stone house, entirely 
 hemmed in by desolate hills, save on the west, where the 
 landscape opened by a wild and precipitous ravine into 
 the wooded valley of the Lynn : its only approach a rug- 
 ged moorland track, never traversed save by the carts of 
 peat-cutters or herds of cattle on their way down from 
 the moors : its only neighbors the weird and giant forms 
 of the overhanging barren cliffs. The first question that 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 29 
 
 an indweller of towns would involuntarily ask himself on 
 seeing it was, how any human being could build a habit- 
 ation in such a spot ? the second, how any other human 
 being could choose the habitation, when built, to live in ? 
 And yet, as Esther caught the first glimpse of its low, gray 
 walls this summer evening, it came upon her strongly 
 that she had seen nothing half so charming as her own 
 
 ~ o 
 
 home during the six months she had been away from it. 
 The rosy white of the blossoming thorn before the door ; 
 the lichened-pointed roof glowing orange in the sunset ; 
 the masses of delicate grey stone upon the neighboring 
 hill-side ; the fading purple of the moorlands far above 
 all smote her with so much of the pathetic clearness 
 of familiar faces, for a time grown unfamiliar, that, some- 
 what to her companion's embarrassment, she leaned heav- 
 ly on his arm just when they reached the wicket of the 
 garden ; and without volunteering any explanation what- 
 ever of her reasons for doing so, began to cry. 
 
 " Don't, if you please, Esther," whispered David En- 
 gleheart, softly. " There is Joan coming out of the house 
 to meet us. She is quite sure to see you have been cry- 
 ing, and you know her objection to teai;s." 
 
 "I can't help it, David, dear," said Esther ; " it is only 
 out of joy to be back again with you. Joan herself 
 couldn't mind that." 
 
 However, she turned aside before entering the garden 
 gate ; and under pretence of addressing Patty, who, 
 weighed down by the portmanteau and all other parcels, 
 was walking cheerily beside them, managed to wipe 
 away every trace of obnoxious and foolish emotion before 
 Joan Engleheart came up. 
 
 " Here you are," cried a voice, not so much loud as 
 persistently strong and unmodulated in its tones. " Half 
 an hour behind your time, at least. Patty, girl, don't 
 carry the portmanteau by the handles ; it drags 'em to 
 pieces. Esther, how do you do? you look pale." 
 
30 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 And Miss Joan bestowed what she doubtless would 
 herself have termed a kiss upon her young relation's fore- 
 head. It felt raoie like the push from a stick or other 
 hard material, than the contact' of frail flesh-and-blood 
 lips ; however, since Esther had been accustomed to it at 
 intervals from her infancy, she took it in its mystical or 
 figurative meaning. 
 
 " How is Aunt Engleheart, Joan ? I saw Mr. Yellicot 
 on the coach, and he and John Hartman told me she was 
 looking better than ever this summer. What do you 
 think?" 
 
 " My mother is perfectly well," replied Miss Joan. It 
 was a way of hers always to answer questions by making 
 an independent statement of general facts. " Yes " or 
 "no" might be very well for persons who allowed them- 
 selves to be led by others in conversation : Miss Joan 
 was not going to be led by others in anything. " My 
 mother is well, and able to exert herself as much as ever. 
 What other affair of ours did Mr. Vellicot take the trouble 
 to express his opinion about ? " 
 
 " Nothing at all, Joan, except " and the girl turned 
 
 round with a smile to David ; " except your kindness in 
 getting me the pigeons, cousin. I have so often wished 
 for some nice white pigeons like Maggie's." 
 
 David blushed in a manner ludicrously conscious for a 
 man of his age and appearance : Miss Joan gave a single 
 and by no means pleasant-sounding laugh. " Pigeons ! " 
 she repeated, with an emphatic irony that seemed to re- 
 double David's confusion. " Pigeons ! I think I see them, 
 picking the mortar out of the chimneys, and eating my 
 early peas ! However, I needn't alarm myself. None 
 but a fool, or David Engleheart, would think of full-fledg- 
 ed pigeons stopping in a new cot, a mile away from 
 where they were bred. There's only one way to keep 
 them." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 31 
 
 " A little salt," suggested David, feebly. " I have heard 
 if a little salt is sprinkled under their new cot, it will 
 make them " 
 
 "Rubbish!" remarked Joan ; "rubbish ! Put 'em in a 
 pie and eat 'em ; that's the only thing to prevent them 
 flying away. Go in by the window, Esther. At David's 
 wish, and in spite of my mother's rheumatism, we have 
 had the tea set in the house-place to-night." 
 
 The house-place was a large stone -flagged room in the 
 centre of the building. In winter it was horribly cold, 
 and made all the rest of the house cold from its norther- 
 ly aspect and ill-fitting doors ; but for three months of 
 the year it got an hour or two of warmth and light at 
 sunset, and from the time when Esther was a little child 
 it had always been an especial jubilee for her when Miss 
 Joan would allow the supper to be placed there on a 
 summer evening. The small comfortable sitting-room to 
 the south, which the elder members of the family had 
 the good sense to prefer, possessed no charms for her like 
 the grotesque corners and closets, the huge old-fashioned 
 fire-place, the low rafted ceiling, the many-paned lozeng- 
 ed windows of the house-place : and slie felt duly sensi- 
 ble of poor David's kindness and crafty generalship in 
 having tea ready for her there on this first evening of her 
 return. Miss Joan, herself, had no taste whatever for the 
 picturesque ; and it took a good deal of argument to 
 bring her into changing any of the routine arrangements 
 of the household. And no one knew better than Esther 
 what it was to argue with Miss Engleheart. 
 
 At the present moment, however, with the rich rays 
 of the level sun streaming through the open window 
 transmuting its odorous frame of roses into gold, and 
 lighting up the oak-panneled walls into ruddiest orange- 
 brown even Miss Joan herself could not accuse the 
 house-place of looking chill or gloomy. To Esther, fol- 
 
32 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 lowing upon the horrible gentility of her Kensington 
 school-room, the hearty, homely look of the old house was 
 like going back to the familiar enchantment of a fairy 
 story, after the chilling, although improving, atmosphere 
 of Hangnail's Questions. She could scarcely believe that 
 she had been enjoying the first advantages of Kensing- 
 ton Gravel-pits for six long months. Miss Bates, and all 
 belonging to her, seemed a bad dream. The old house- 
 place in the setting sun, David's kind face, Miss Joan her- 
 self, were the pleasant home realities to which she was 
 awakening. 
 
 A reality of a very forcible nature Joan Englehart un- 
 doubtedly was. If muscular heroines happen to come 
 into fashion during the present generation, her form 
 would, I am sure, serve as a perfect model for any novel- 
 ist bent upon pleasing the popular taste to draw from. 
 Strong, sharp, and spare, there was not an ounce of super- 
 fluous flesh on her body. Muscles, bones, a tough out- 
 side covering of dark skin, indomitable eyes, and a gen- 
 eral stoniness of feature, were her leading and character- 
 istic charms. She looked like a woman, who having 
 found life unpleasant, had every intention of making 
 other people share her own opinion : and such was, in 
 truth, the key-note of her character. Human creatures, 
 as a general rule, are not hard and angular merely that 
 they may make amusing studies for other human crea- 
 tures to speak or write about, but because untoward acci- 
 dents have, at one time or another, beaten and crushed 
 them into their angularity. Doubtless, when she was a 
 baby, Miss Joan had the roundness of soul and body 
 which it is normal for the young of our species to possess 
 during the first two years of existence; doubtless, as a 
 child, she had enjoyed mischief and sweet food like other 
 children: as a young girl no, a young girl she never 
 was ! Before she was sixteen, Joan Engleheart knew that 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 33 
 
 her lot had fallen upon hard and barren places ; that she 
 was plain, ungraceful, reputed sullen, and, worse than all 
 poor. From that time until the present how many 
 gray, cold, bitter years that period embraced, she, herself, 
 only knew ! Joan Engleheart, soul and body, had been 
 progressing in the process of ossification. When Esther 
 was little, she used to beg to be whipt with a rod instead 
 of Miss Joan's fingers ; " they stung so." And this pe- 
 culiar stinging property belonged quite as much to her 
 heart and tongue as to her fingers. " Life is too short to 
 attend to such fiddle-faddles," she used to say, when any 
 one writhed, visibly, under her bitter home-truths. " Del- 
 icate discrimination, fine sensibilities ! does any one get 
 on better in the world for possessing such a mighty thin 
 skin, I should like to know ? Certainly not. Then, why 
 should I lose my time in trying to avoid pricking it ? 
 No one ever tried to avoid hurting me, and, I am thank- 
 ful to say, no one could hurt me if they wished. Life is 
 a battle : let every one make use of their own arms' in 
 fighting it. Mine are not flowers of speech and flattery." 
 Certainly they were not. If the opinion be true, that 
 to be utterly disagreeable is to be a fine character Joan 
 Engleheart's was a noble one. She was wonderfully dis- 
 agreeable. She did everything against which human na- 
 ture ordinarily revolts. She rose at unearthly hours in 
 the depth of winter. She could sit without winking 
 through the longest sermons, and afterwards repeat them, 
 verbatim, to her family in the evening. She, voluntarily, 
 was treasurer of a clothing-club. She never forgot dates. 
 She was always willing to break bad news to any one : 
 fond of cold water, of training young servants, and giving 
 servants notice, and keeping accounts, and detecting mis- 
 takes in bills, and, generally, hurting the feelings and tak- 
 ing down the self-esteem of every person with whom she 
 came in contact. Such words as the " Battle of Life " 
 2* 
 
34 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 contained no metaphor for her. Her whole life was a 
 battle. All the sordid struggles, all the hard exertion, 
 which frail human nature, in its unregenerate condition 
 seeks to evade, Miss Joan met half-way nay, seemed to 
 court with warmth ; as though she knew that her nature 
 derived vigor from every fresh buffeting she had to en- 
 counter. Poor David said it made him tired to look at 
 her, there was such a fearful amount of spiteful, iron en- 
 ergy written on her whole appearance. And her moral 
 nature was, of a truth, in strictest accordance with her 
 hard, relentless face. To the persons she loved and 
 she did love two or three persons in the world Miss 
 Joan never made what the wildest imagination could 
 call a pleasant speech. She would nurse them with grim 
 fidelity if they were sick; would sit up with them, night 
 after night; would physic them, blister them, bleed them, 
 close their eyelids, if necessary, with unerring nerve and 
 fortitude. But not at the very portals of death itself 
 would she have softened. About once a year she was in 
 the habit of taking cold a vindictive cruel species of 
 cold, quite peculiar to her own organization ; and the 
 sight of Miss Joan, with her red and tearful eyes^used 
 quite to awe all the other members of the family on these 
 occasions. If poor David had suddenly made a witty 
 speech, the phenomenon would not have been more 
 strange and disconcerting than was the unwonted ap- 
 pearance of softening or tears within Miss Engleheart's 
 eyes. 
 
 So, at the first moment of her return, Esther only felt 
 that Joan's face was something natural, homely, and fa- 
 miliar, and never missed from it the kindly affectionate 
 smile with which David had welcomed her. " Home looks 
 so bright and comfortable, Joan," she cried, as together 
 they entered the house-place, where the best tea-service 
 and old Mrs. Engleheart were awaiting them. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 35 
 
 " Dear aunt, how kind of you to have everything in 
 such nice order for me ! You are looking better than 
 ever." And she ran up and threw her arms in her hearty 
 way round Mrs. Engleheart's neck. 
 
 "You look chilled, mother," remarked Miss Joan, with 
 her own happy knack of being as crushing as every occa- 
 sion permitted. " Put on my clogs, immediately. David, 
 I will trouble you to shut the window while Esther helps 
 me to carry up the luggage. Patty," addressing the girl 
 who with round eager e^es was staring into Esther's face, 
 " why are you not seeing to the kettle ? You idiot ! " 
 
 Mrs. Engleheart a very passive, poverty-bowed wo- 
 man of nearly eighty had never for the last quarter of 
 a century disputed a single fiat of Joan's, and meekly did 
 as she was desired at once ; but David, who rarely re- 
 belled on small occasions, hesitated. " The air is so warm, 
 Joan, and the smell of the hawthorns must be such a treat 
 to Esther." 
 
 " Which is of such extreme importance compared to 
 my mother's rheumatism," remarked Joan, bristling. 
 
 " Oh, I think it is quite time to shut the window," cried 
 the girl, quickly. The air always gets chill at sunset. 
 What lovely strawberries, Joan. I liave not tasted a 
 strawberry yet this summer. Are they from our own 
 garden?" 
 
 " We always send to Exeter for our forced fruits," re- 
 marked Miss Joan. "Persons in our position can't wait 
 for the sun's plebeian operation like common folk." 
 
 Notwithstanding which gentle irony, Miss Joan felt as 
 much mollified as it was possible for her ever to feel. A 
 compliment to her garden or her household was the one 
 thing that, at times, could turn aside the sharp edge of 
 her temper ; and the sunshine of Esther's face, her radi- 
 ant, childish happiness at returning home, were influences 
 that even Joan found it impossible quite to withstand. 
 
36 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "You have not grown, child, and I don't think that 
 you have improved," was the remark, with whicli she tes- 
 tified to her softened spirit, when they were all seated 
 round the tea-table. " It is to be hoped Aunt Thalia's 
 fifty pounds have done more for your mental, than they 
 have for your bodily development." 
 
 "Not much, I am afraid," answered Esther. "I have 
 forgotten some of the things I knew when I went to 
 school, and have not learnt very much in their place. 
 T suppose I was too old to be finished, or else that finish- 
 ing can't be done in six months. Perhaps I play the 
 piano a very little better than I did when I went, and I 
 have certainly learnt to dance. For the rest " 
 
 "You dress your hair much neater than you used, 
 Esther," said old Mrs. Engleheart, who seldom heard 
 more than Joan's very high notes in any conversation 
 "David, dont you think the child a vast deal improved in 
 her looks ? " 
 
 David was, undoubtedly, in a position to pronounce a 
 competent judgment, his eyes being fixed straight upon 
 the " child's " face as she sat, not in, but scarce apart from 
 the yellow sunlight, which, partially intercepted by the 
 waving thorn-boughs, threw a mosaic of fantastic, softly- 
 changing lights upon the wall above her head. But the 
 old lady had to repeat the question twice before he was 
 aroused from his own thoughts ; and then, instead of an- 
 swering promptly, he colored up, and smiled and rubbed 
 his huge hands, and, finally, delivered himself to the effect 
 that he believed meant he rather thought Esther 
 was grown." 
 
 " Not an inch," said Joan, decisively. " Young women 
 never do grow after seventeen. I was as tall and well- 
 knit at fourteen as lam now. Esther has got pads in 
 her hair, which makes her head look bigger : that's all. 
 Talking of pads, Esther, what do you think of Patty Sim- 
 mons?" 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 37 
 
 " She has improved wonderfully, Joan. You are mak- 
 ing quite a good servant of her. What has become of 
 William Tillyer ? I remember at Christmas, Patty thought 
 herself engaged to him." 
 
 " Engaged ! " repeated Joan. " He ! he ! " actually 
 she, Joan Engleheart, laughed. " A girl of mine engaged ! 
 Well, she is disengaged long ago, I can assure you." 
 
 All servant-girls were sources of genial, vital refresh- 
 ment to the unflagging energies of Miss Joan's mind, but 
 a servant-girl with a lover was a perfect well-spring to 
 her. Waking or sleeping, a young woman thus situated 
 gave her, so to speak, a new spite in life. The bowlings 
 of midnight winter blasts she took for whistles of assigna- 
 tion demanding her own immediate presence, in a flannel 
 jacket and clogs, outside the house-door. The crowing 
 of Farmer Vellrcot's cocks at sunrise startled her into sud- 
 den action from her bed with the well-known war-whoop 
 "There he is!" on her lips. Miserable though she was 
 when inactive, she would stand in ambush for a w r hole 
 summer evening behind one of the garden trees, never 
 moving, and scarcely breathing, until that intensely longed 
 for moment came, when she could pounce upon the lov- 
 ers, and shame and trample upon the man to his face, and 
 drive the frail, detected Molly before her, with bitterest 
 degradation and contumely, to the house. No servant could 
 outwit her: nothing- could escape her. Lovers and brok- 
 en crockery, flaws in the character and in the tea cups, 
 were alike brought to light by her unsleeping vigilance. 
 I believe she would have scented a " grease pot," that 
 ne plus ultra of domestic infamy, quicker than any other 
 woman in Europe. She saw villarious plots in every one 
 of the servants' actions, and accomplices in every one of 
 their relations. Once, years ago, when they first came to 
 Counlisbury, an old man the grandfather of the Molly 
 for the time being came and asked in a deprecating 
 
38 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 voice if he might have " the wash." I wish you could 
 have seen Miss Joan's smile : she only smiled in reply. 
 As if such a woman as herself ever had " a wash ; " or f 
 if she had had, would have encouraged old men who 
 wanted " washes" about the house? 
 
 " Yes, Esther, I got rid of William Tillyer on quite a 
 new principle, and one that I mean to adopt for the future. 
 4 Show your sweetheart into the kitchen the next evening 
 he comes,' I said to Patty : ' I like all these things to be 
 quite open and above board.' Patty, great fool, did as 
 she was bid, and I went out and found them there togeth- 
 er. ' You are coming after my servant, William Tillyer,' 
 I said ; ' do you want to marry her ? ' Patty signed to 
 him to say ' Yes,' and he said it, after hanging his tongue 
 out, and diving in his pockets for an answer for about 
 five minutes. ' Very well,' I remarked, ' then I'll step 
 up to Parson Justin's to-morrow, and you shall be asked 
 next Sunday. Good-night.' I wish you had seen his 
 face, Esther. He begged and prayed, and promised he'd 
 never set foot inside our doors if I'd only let him off that 
 time. This, of course, was what I wanted ; and since 
 then Patty has had no more lovers." 
 
 " Poor thing ! " said David, kindly. " And she really is 
 young, and not ill-favored to look upon." 
 
 " Oh, David thinks it very hard servants should not 
 have their lovers to supper every evening, and wear black 
 velvet tails in their hair, and hoops under their dirty 
 gowns ! " said Joan, with kindling eyes. " Esther, will you 
 believe me that Patty wore a hoop last Easter Sunday? 
 I had my eye on her as she walked down the aisle, because 
 I suspected her of having pink ribbons inside her bonnet ; 
 but when I caught sight of the red merino skirt shaking 
 to and fro about her feet over something hard and angu- 
 lar, it quite took my breath away. However, I followed 
 her out, and in the porch, with half a dozen of her friends 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 39 
 
 round her, I twitched up her skirts, by accident, with the 
 hook of my umbrella. 'You have been at my hen-coop 
 again, then, Patty,' I said, very kindly, but holding up 
 the hoop for the observation of all her friends, among whom 
 I remember was William Tillyer's new sweetheart. She 
 cried and sulked right into the middle of the next week, 
 but has been less strict in her adherence to fashion ever 
 since." 
 
 " I don't think servants want hoops," said Esther, laugh- 
 ing ; " but I never have seen, and never can see, why they 
 should not have lovers." 
 
 " N"or I," put in David, boldly. " Here you have poor, 
 honest, enduring, obliging creatures, who get up for you 
 at horrible hours of a winter's morning, and stay out of 
 their beds late, working for you at night, and yet you ex- 
 pect them to give up, not only their strength and their 
 youth, but their human feeling to your service. It is too 
 bad, Joan. Why shouldn't servants have lovers ? " 
 
 " Because the lovers eat my bread and cheese and cold 
 meat, and we have not quite two hundred a year, cousin," 
 answered Miss Joan, as she rose from table. " What 
 makes you so wonderfully lenient upon lovers all at once, 
 David ? I should have thought it was a subject that, at 
 your time of life, you might have ceased to trouble your 
 hfead about." 
 
 I think this side-wind disconcerted David Engleheart 
 somewhat, for he rushed away immediately, and began 
 thrumming a very mild tune upon the window-pane with 
 his fingers, which was an invariable sign that Miss Joan 
 was " telling " upon him. Esther waited until Mrs. En- 
 gleheart and her daughter had betaken themselves to the 
 parlor, where Joan nightly inflicted a lengthened process 
 that she termed "readings " upon the patient old lady be- 
 fore carrying her off to bed ; then she went, softly, up to 
 David's side. 
 
40 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Cousin, shall we go out in the garden for an hour ? 
 I long to see hovv r all the flowers are looking, and you 
 have not had your evening pipe yet." 
 
 He turned and caught her hand, fondly, between both 
 his own enormous ones. "Dear little Esther! how glad 
 I am to have you back again ! You must never go away 
 again, child !" 
 
 " No, David." 
 
 "Life at Countisbury is a poor a wintry affair with- 
 out you, Esther. The first really warm sun I have felt, 
 since last summer, was just at the moment when I first 
 caught sight of you on the coach. You were smiling, 
 Esther." 
 
 " h, yes ! Mr. Yellicot was making some of his quaint 
 remarks," said the girl, with a quick evasiveness that had 
 never entered within the limits of her narrow mental ex- 
 periences until that moment. " I remember quite well." 
 
 " But it was not Farmer Vellicot who was seated next 
 you, Esther." 
 
 " No ? Who was it, then ? Oh, to be sure ! I recol- 
 lect ; " and Miss Fleming's manner became wonderfully 
 careless and indifferent. " That was a stranger, cousin 
 David." 
 
 " Ah ! You don't know his name, of course ? " 
 
 "Well! yes. I happened I did not want to know it 
 in the least but I happened to see the direction on his 
 luggage as I was getting down from the coach, and let 
 us go into the garden, cousin. Everything smells so sweet 
 and fresh, and the stars are out already." 
 
 " And his name was?" 
 
 "Oliver Carew." Esther opened the window-latch, 
 and leaned her face out, doubtless to see the stars more 
 clearly. 
 
 "Did he talk to you much on the road, Esther?" 
 
 " Yes, a little. He has come here to fish; and I told 
 him you fished and so " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 41 
 
 u And so, no doubt, Mr. Oliver Carew hopes that he 
 will meet Miss Fleming again ? " 
 
 "I really don't know: it is very unimportant," she an- 
 swered; but, notwithstanding the uncertain light, he 
 could see the color rising in her face. " Wait one min- 
 ute, David dear, till I have got my hat, and then we will 
 have one of our nice starlit walks, just to bring us back 
 to old times." And she left him, and ran upstairs with 
 all her accustomed childish spirits, the burthen of one of 
 the familiar childish songs that he had taught her, upon 
 her lips. 
 
 " Changed, changed forever ! " thought David Engle- 
 heart. " I ought to have prepared myself for this, and I 
 didn't. I was a fool ! " 
 
 And a sudden, sharp spasm of pain struck through 
 poor David's simple heart. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FLEMING BLOOD. 
 
 I FEEL that some explanation is due for introducing a 
 family of persons who could subsist upon less than two 
 hundred pounds a year to the reader's notice. 
 
 I have, in my time, read many stories in which the 
 painful subject of poverty was treated ; but have mostly 
 found its more hideous details recorded in such terms as 
 these : " The pittance of five hundred a year, allowed 
 him by his uncle, barely sufficed to maintain him in the 
 common decencies of life ; " or, " The young couple be- 
 gan their happy, but frugal mtnage upon the interest of 
 the bride's twelve thousand pounds, and poor Alger- 
 non's pay as a Lieutenant-Colonel." Such curious ideas 
 respecting extreme want, do, no doubt, arise from the 
 
42 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 circumstance of authorship itself being such a lucrative 
 craft : indeed, I remember in one old fashionable nov- 
 el, an authoress remarking that she intended to buy a 
 Cashmere shawl with the three hundred pounds she 
 should get for her next slight magazine story ; and what 
 can you expect but figurative starvation from a lady who 
 realizes a thousand or so per annum, by knocking off flim- 
 sy maga'zine sketches, and subsequently devotes the fruits 
 of her genius to Cashmere shawls? But I think even 
 the wealthiest writers should recollect, that what seems 
 death to them, may be life to other men ; and, in the face 
 of the very highest authorities, I will maintain that there 
 are persons living, to whom five hundred a year seems 
 a large fortune, four hundred a year a handsome one, 
 three hundred a year a delicious competency ; and who 
 subsist like gentlemen and gentlewomen upon less than 
 two hundred. The indelicacy of writing that last figure 
 really staggers me ; for, in the most realistic novel, who 
 ever saw decent lay-poverty done at less than three hun- 
 dred pounds a year? But, as the admission has fallen 
 from Miss Joan's own lips, so it shall rest. Yes, I abide 
 by the fact. The Englehearts lived upon the objection- 
 able sum already stated and lived upon it, according to 
 the ideas of simple country folk, like gentry. 
 
 And they were gentry, both by birth and education : 
 the only two qualifications that I know of for belonging 
 to that rank. They kept one servant, raised from the 
 Sunday School, who received four pounds per annum in 
 wages; they dressed, winter and summer, in much the 
 same style as they had done when they first came to 
 Countisbury, fifteen years ago ; and as there was no hu- 
 man creature to keep up appearances before, appearances, 
 naturally, were never attempted to be kept up. But here 
 the line which separated the inhabitants of the farm at 
 Countisbury from the small-genteel of towns faded ; or 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 43 
 
 rather, I should say, came out in broad and pleasant reliet 
 upon the Englehearts' side, and in their favor. They 
 knew none of those piteous self4mmiliations those pet- 
 ty shifts those torturing fears which are the meat and 
 drink of such men and women as try to seem that which 
 they are not to their fellows. They never try to invest 
 their quiet house with the grim, galvanic life of spurious 
 gaiety; they never sought the acquaintance of persons 
 who did not seek to know them; they never gave a 
 dinner-party ! Miss Joan had a kitchen-garden, and made 
 it pay : Miss Joan kept poultry, and made them pay, 
 also on what superhuman system, she alone knows. 
 Their house-rent cost them about twenty pounds a year; 
 their dress no, the thought of those Cashmere shawls, of 
 those lucrative fictions, gets the better of me, here. I 
 cannot descend to any more of those fearful details of 
 starvation. I apologize, with humility, for the extent in- 
 to which I have already been betrayed, and pass on. 
 
 Old Mrs. Engleheart was the sister of Esther Fleming's 
 paternal grandfather, Colonel Garratt Fleming. If all 
 the family sayings about this Colonel Fleming were true, 
 his personal charms, to which a miniature possessed by 
 Esther bore ample witness, were more conspicuous than 
 his principles ; or, at least, than his worldly wisdom 
 but the terms are identical. He certainly contrived to 
 get through a very considerable estate during his own 
 lifetime, and, on his death, left his son, newly married, 
 arid in orders, without a shilling. I dare say the son 
 troubled himself little as to whether his poverty had 
 been brought about through the goodness or badness 
 of the paternal disposition ; but, though the psychologi- 
 cal nicety did not disturb him, the poverty itself was 
 more than he could struggle against. A living of one 
 hundred and fifty pounds a year, a sickly wife, ill-health 
 of one's own, and no chance of preferment, are not in- 
 
44 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 centives to life for a man reared in the belief that his path 
 will be laid among the pleasant places of the world. Mr. 
 Fleming simply succumbed to them : " didn't take the 
 trouble to live," his cousin Joan said of him ; and six 
 months after he had followed his wife to the damp church- 
 yard from the damper parsonage, was laid to rest there 
 \ imself. 
 
 There was just enough, after the sale of his books and 
 furniture, to pay his debts, and buy his little daughter 
 Esther, aged four years, a black frock. And then arose 
 the question, who was to take care of the child ? Her 
 mother, in accordance with a peculiarity of nearly all 
 very poor persons, had had numerous relatives when she 
 was engaged to Garratt Fleming's reputed heir, but had 
 left no one belonging to her on her death; or no one 
 who could be found, or no one who wanted to adopt an 
 orphan child. On her father's side were only two Mrs. 
 Engleheart and Mrs. Tudor: both elderly, and widowed 
 sisters of the handsome, open-handed (or under-principled) 
 Garratt Fleming. 
 
 Some time in the last century these two sisters had 
 been notorious west-country beauties ; and many were 
 the stories conserved by old Mrs. Tudor of the dead gen- 
 eration who had sighed and suffered at their feet. Mrs. 
 Engleheart, as one whose charms had done least in the 
 world, was more reticent as to their bygone victories ; 
 but the few survivors whose memories could stretch 
 back fifty years, averred, that, in her youth, her beauty 
 had not only outshone that of her sister, but also of eve- 
 ry other woman of her time in Bath. However this may 
 have been, she had married for love and without money ; 
 choosing a husband, too, very much of the same stamp 
 as her own brother Garratt. Her sister had married not 
 at all from love, but with money ; and their lives having 
 flowed on and settled, like most lives, very much accord- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 45 
 
 ing to the bias they themselves first gave to them, it came 
 to pass that, when their nephew, Henry Fleming, died, 
 Mrs. Tudor was living in great comfort, and much respect- 
 ed in Bath ; Mrs. Engleheart, in great retirement, and 
 not at all thought of by anybody in North Devonshire. 
 
 It was out of the question that a Fleming should be 
 brought up by other charity than that of her own people. 
 But then, which of her own people was to be charitable? 
 " I would as lief have a monkey in my house as a child," 
 wrote Mrs. Tudor to her sister, at the time of the bereave- 
 ment ; " and Bath don't agree with children. However, 
 Garratt's grandchild must be maintained by the family, 
 and I'll tell you what I'll do. I will give thirty pounds 
 a year towards keeping her, if you will undertake all 
 the rest. Children do better in the country than in 
 towns, and Joan can work out some of her educational 
 crotchets for her little cousin's benefit." 
 
 And so it was settled. Esther Fleming, at the age of 
 four, came to the charge of her great-aunt and Miss Joan 
 at Countisbury, Mrs. Tudor agreeing to pay them the sum 
 of thirty pounds a year until the age of twenty-one, or 
 marry. 
 
 And Joan did educate her charge according to her own 
 theories, and educated her well. " Here is a girl who will 
 have to work for herself one day, or starve, she remarked 
 once to her mother, when the old lady had been wishing 
 accomplishments for Esther, and sighing about the Flem- 
 ing blood. " For Heaven's sake let us put away all such 
 nonsensical notions, mother, and teach her to be useful." 
 So Esther's attainments all became of the most solid and 
 tangible description. She understood everything to do 
 with housekeeping ; she could work thoroughly with her 
 needle ; she was excellent at figures. Above all, she was 
 trained in the most strict compliance with physiological 
 principles, -at which Miss Joan was great, and she grew up 
 
46 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 healthy, strong, self-reliant. " It might be all very well," 
 said Joan Engleheart, "for rich people to bring children 
 up, with excited brains and stunted bodies. Esther won't 
 want a hundred and fifty diseased nerves, but three hun- 
 dred and seventy-five stout muscles, when she has to earn 
 her own living. Let every one cultivate what their sta- 
 tion in life will hereafter require of them." 
 
 But I think, in spite of Joan's physiology, and great 
 common sense, the child's life would have been a horribly 
 dull one, had it not been for another, and most alien, ele- 
 ment in the household, and this was David Engleheart. 
 In all Esther's punishments, David was her tower of refuge; 
 in all her childish plays he was her companion. She 
 went out for long summer days with him while he fished ; 
 she read with him in winter. Although five-and-twenty 
 years, at least stood between them in age, David was her 
 companion (except during the last six months at school, 
 and her short visits, at rare intervals, to Mrs. Tudor in 
 Bath) the only companion that her child's life had ever 
 known. 
 
 David was a nephew of Mrs. Engleheart's husband, 
 and being early intended by a fond mother for the Church, 
 on account of what she called his beautiful disposition, 
 together with small family interest in the way of prefer- 
 ment, he received the benefit of a classical education. 
 Alas for the frailty of human hopes ! The beautiful dis- 
 position remained ; but just as the boy was leaving school, 
 the expected living was basely given to the patron's own 
 tutor's son ! From seven to seventeen, David had been 
 making long verses and short verses, and scanning Greek 
 choruses, and gaining sound views of the middle voice, 
 and preterperfect tense. He had been driven to despair 
 by gerunds ; had been whipt for false quantities ; had 
 turned Milton and Dryden into iambics; had perfected 
 himself in the intrigues of the whole of the heathen gods 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 47 
 
 and goddesses ; and now all this admirable training for 
 parochial duties was to be thrown away ! His mother 
 thought a judgment would alight on their relative, the 
 patron. His uncle took poor David into a very close 
 counting-house upon Ludgate Hill. 
 
 Here he remained, without any particular change or 
 promotion, for fifteen years nine hours. of sitting at a 
 desk daily, for fifteen years with every Sunday to him- 
 self, and Christmas Day and Good Friday for special fes- 
 tivals. At the end of this time, the death of his mother 
 placed him in possession of about seventy pounds a year, 
 when David so far flew in the face of Providence, accord- 
 ing to his uncle, as to throw up his clerkship immediately, 
 and announce his intention of living, for the future, upon 
 his own private means. 
 
 Whether this was flying in the face of Providence or 
 not, I am incompetent to say, as I am quite ignorant of 
 the nature of this kind of aeromatic performance. After 
 being stupefied for ten years at school, and miserable for 
 fifteen years in a counting-house five-and-twenty years 
 of aggregate misery and stupefaction it was not per- 
 haps altogether remarkable in David to catch at the first 
 chance of deliverance from bondage. He loathed work, 
 and London, and his cousin's business, and -his cousin, 
 himself. He had visions of a happy, useless life, with a 
 fishing-rod and a book, among green trees and daisies. 
 Was his first duty to his own worn-out jaded brain the 
 brain from whence he once dreamed such noble thoughts 
 should charm the world ; or to the guardianship of his 
 cousin's money-bags ? A letter from his aunt, Mrs. Engle- 
 heart, asking him to visit them in Devonshire, turned the 
 balance in favor of poor David's own prepossessions ; and 
 one bright summer morning he stepped forth a free man 
 upon Ludgate Hill, confused, yet tumultuously happy, un. 
 der the mingled sense of fortune and of freedom, and only 
 
48 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 very moderately impressed with the image of his own 
 base ingratitude, as laid before him by his cousin at part- 
 ing. 
 
 This was about a year before Esther Fleming was taken 
 to her aunt Engleheart's care ; and David had never left 
 Countisbury since. 
 
 " I came for three weeks, and I have stopped fifteen 
 years," was his own answer when Esther happened to 
 question him once about the antecedents of his life. " Jo- 
 an makes my money go farther than I could ever do my- 
 self, and my little room is very warm in winter. I really 
 don't see why I should ever go away. Seventy-five 
 pounds a year would not make me as comfortable any- 
 where else in the world as it does in Countisbury." 
 
 And he had good reasons for thinking so. Whatever 
 concessions to human frailty Joan Engleheart ever made 
 were for her cousin David's especial and exclusive benefit. 
 The little room he called his study was the warmest and 
 best tended in the house ; the flowers he loved most came 
 into early bloom beneath its windows ; books and prints 
 (bought at rare intervals out of Joan's scanty savings) 
 were on its walls. All his favorite belongings ; his pa- 
 pers David wrote a little his fishing manufactory, 
 his drawings, were duly dusted by Joan's own hand every 
 morning, and were never disarranged. Above all, she kept 
 his dress neat and duly to appreciate this you should 
 have seen David Engleheart's figure and she prevent- 
 ed him from losing his money. He had good reasons for 
 saying that he would never be as well off anywhere else 
 in the world as he was at Countisbury. 
 
 That some strong counteracting feeling must be at 
 work within Miss Joan's breast, when she thus violated 
 the laws of her being by studying the weaknesses of 
 another human creature, was a truth that the first fourteen 
 years and a half of his residence under the same roof 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 49 
 
 with her failed to impress upon David Engleheart. When 
 he thought of his cousin at all, it was as of a species of 
 domestic machine, unpleasant when at work, but thrifty 
 and comfort-producing in effect. One of the Dii penates, 
 of no particular age or sex, who often disturbed his peace, 
 but to whom, in consideration of clothes-mending and 
 other economic properties, due forbearance ought to be 
 shown, with regard to acidities of tongue and temper. 
 " Poor Joan ! " That an awful Nemesis, Joan Engleheart 
 in love, should one day be avenged upon him for his fif- 
 teen years of acquiescent supineness, was a revelation 
 that, with other startling truths, had only burst upon Da- 
 vid during the last few months of Esther's absence from 
 home. 
 
 What a Nemesis it was ! The poor fellow thought he 
 could have borne the ordinary strokes of fortune like other 
 men. But Joan in love! He was not an ungrateful, and 
 he was not a bloodthirsty man ; but if, just at this partic- 
 ular time, he had been told that Miss Joan had come to 
 some awful and sudden end I think it would not have tak- 
 en David Engleheart very long to rally from the shock. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A FORLORN HOPE. 
 
 THE morning after Esther's return shone out bright 
 and cloudless, and by nine o'clock she and David were al- 
 ready starting for one of their accustomed day's 
 among the valleys. 
 
 "I hope the fish will like all those gay colors," 
 Joan's parting benison at the garden gate. "You 
 8 
 
50 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 extremely ridiculous, Esther, and I really cannot apolo- 
 gize for saying it." 
 
 " I can assure you it is quite usual for people to wear 
 their skirts looped up, David," said the girl, when they 
 were beyond hearing of Joan. " Please tell me if you 
 think I look quite ridiculous, cousin ? " 
 
 Miss Fleming was dressed in a shepherd's" plaid skirt 
 and jacket ; the former looped up, according to the fash- 
 ion adjured by Miss Engleheart, so as to show a violet- 
 colored petticoat and remarkably neat, high-heeled 
 boots. In her little black hat she had stuck a single dam- 
 ask rose. These were the gaudy colors. "Do I look 
 quite ridiculous, cousin David ? Shall I frighten the 
 whole of the fish away ? " 
 
 "That must depend upon the taste of fishes," answered 
 David, rather stupidly. "I don't think you look very 
 bad myself, Esther," after a minute's consideration. * " You 
 never used to dress in this fashionable manner when you 
 came out fishing with me in old days. What have you 
 changed for ? You used to look very nice in your cotton 
 gowns." 
 
 "And pinafores. Yes, dear cousin, but I am not a little 
 girl now ; besides, I must wear out all the things aunt 
 Thalia sent me at school." 
 
 " Hang aunt Thalia ! " remarked David, with animation. 
 " No, I don't wish her hung, because she is kind to you ; 
 but hang all her plans for making you into a fine young 
 lady, and upsetting my old happy life. It would never 
 have happened but for your being away, never." 
 
 " What would never have happened ? " 
 
 " Why, my seeing through her intentions," and David 
 struck his rod, with feeble energy, on the ground. "I 
 rnight have gone on quietly for another fifteen years as I 
 have done the last. While I suspected nothing I was 
 f afe, but now Oh, Lord, what a winter it has been alto- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 51 
 
 gether, Esther ! To begin with, for about six or seven 
 weeks, -I was, to all intents and purposes, dead." 
 
 "Dead, cousin David ? " 
 
 " As dead as a man, with any miserable breath left in 
 him at all, and with Joan in the house, could be. I be- 
 lieve I had influenza first, or rather, I don't believe it, but 
 Joan said so, and made me swallow all the horriblest corn- 
 pounds in the world by way of cure. The real disease 
 was I had not you, Esther! After a child has been in a 
 a house for fifteen years," David proceeded, hastily, "its 
 absence creates a singular deadening, depressing sort of 
 blank. I didn't want to do anything, or be anything, I didn't 
 want to read, or to eat or to sleep. I think I should 
 have rather liked to die, peacefully, but that, you 
 know, Joan wouldn't let me do. She gave me gruel, and 
 made mustard plasters for me, and tormented me prodi- 
 giously, but she wouldn't let me die. More's the pity ! " 
 
 " You silly old David ! " 
 
 " Oh, Esther, that is good to hear. There will be no one 
 to laugh at me like that, no one to say, ' You silly old 
 David,' when when you are married and gone ! " 
 
 "You superlatively silly old David!" cried the girl, 
 with her merry, heart-whole laugh. " What chance have 
 Joan and I of marrying, I should like to know? Tell me 
 how you came out of this seven weeks' influenza, or stu- 
 por, and please don't let your imagination run away with 
 you in such an unprincipled manner. Joan nursed you 
 with unremitting tenderness for seven weeks, and then?" 
 
 " Then the few first warm days of spring came, and I 
 remembered that in two months and fourteen days you 
 would come back too ! Joan is not cheerful as a rule, in 
 spring. You know a way she has of putting one down 
 for being in spirits about the weather. She knows w r hat 
 these unnatural heats lead to. She knows better than the 
 birds that are twittering in the hedges. The blossom will 
 
52 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 be cut off; the churchyard full. Well, child, even Joan 
 could not depress me when I had once laid hold of that 
 definite idea you were coming back! the lengthening 
 of the days and coming out of the leaves had a new inter- 
 est for me " 
 
 " And you took to your books and your pipe again, and 
 recovered. Oh, cousin David, what a blessing Joan is to 
 you, though you don't know it! She counteracts you. 
 
 " She does indeed, Esther." 
 
 "And that is just what you want. If I had been here, 
 when you were in this ossifying state, I couldn't have 
 helped pitying you, and that would just have encouraged 
 you in giving in. There is no one like Joan for rousing 
 people out of themselves." 
 
 "And for thinking for them, and acting for them, and 
 coercing them," cried David, hotly. " Esther," after a 
 minute or two, " shall I tell you what I firmly believe will 
 be my fate ? " 
 
 " What ? final ossification ? " 
 
 " Much worse don't laugh if you please, child I 
 couldn't bear it." 
 
 " I am not laughing in the least, cousin, I am extremely 
 serious. What is to be your ultimate fate ? " 
 
 "I believe " David stopped as still as it was in his 
 organization to be, and looked utterly desolate and stony 
 "I believe that Joan will marry me." 
 
 " Cousin David ! " 
 
 "I have thought so more than once, and latterly I have 
 dreamed it was so." 
 
 " Salad for supper, David ? " 
 
 " No, child. It was a nightmare, truly, but not caused 
 by indigestion. If Joan takes anything resolutely in hand 
 ph'e does it, either at the end of months or years. It took 
 her many years to make me scrape my shoes every time 
 J came into the house, but she succeeded, and so she will 
 again." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 53 
 
 "But are you sure she has set her mind on it, and oh, 
 cousin David, do you class marrying Joan and scraping 
 your shoes together ? Please don't be angry with me if 
 I laugh I can't help it ! " And the despair of David's 
 face, and his perfect belief in Joan's unlimited capabilities 
 for evil, so took Esther's fancy, just at this juncture, that 
 she began, in truth, to laugh like a child. 
 
 " Laugh away, Esther, laugh as you like ! " said David ; 
 "I could do the same myself. Everything horrible in real 
 life is ridiculous to witness. If I read of any man having 
 a woman like my cousin Joan in love with him, I might 
 be impressed with becoming feelings of pity ; but the re- 
 ality, with myself as victim, does seem indeed a truly lu- 
 dicrous mockery." And here poor David burst into a 
 long and most unearthly laugh over the image of his own 
 impending calamity. 
 
 But there was a painful ring in his laugh that jarred 
 upon Esther's heart, and she grew serious instantly. 
 " Come away to the Riven Oak, dear David," she said, 
 laying her hand kindly upon his arm. " The valley will 
 look very different now the thorns are in blossom to what 
 it did on that dull autumn day when you and I were last 
 here together. Come away, and forget all your own silly 
 thoughts in this delicious summer day. You have just 
 got hipped and out of sorts and afraid of Joan because I 
 was away nothing more. You will have no time to 
 take up such ridiculous fancies now that I have come 
 back." 
 
 The Riven Oak was a solitary, storm shattered tree, 
 standing some paces away from the rocky path that led 
 from Countisbury to the river-side, and commanding a glo 
 rious bird's-eye view of the valley of the Lynn, clothed now 
 in all the vigorous strength and freshness of the " Manhood 
 of the year." Under shelter of this oak was poor David's 
 favorite summer out-door study ; and as he stood there 
 
54 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 by Esther's side now, listening to all the delicious, fami- 
 liar, wild sounds of the woods, and feeling the genial 
 warmth of the June sun upon his face, a feeling of peace- 
 ful happiness an oblivion of Joan stole over him such 
 as he had not known for months past. 
 
 "Do you smell the clover from the valleys, Esther?" 
 speaking in that low tone which most men's voices in- 
 voluntarily take once during their lives atone which 
 could make even his voice musical, and throwing his arm 
 lightly round her shoulder. " Nowhere but here have I 
 ever found that rich, faint, lowland smell mingling with 
 the wild scent of the moors and yet not overcoming it. 
 I would as lief be blind, Esther, as tasteless in the smells 
 of nature. They recall special seasons as no other appeal 
 to our senses can. I might see wooded valleys and hear 
 distant streams twenty years to come without thinking 
 of this particular day ; I could never stand amidst the 
 fragrance of new-trodden ferns, and heather, with clover 
 and hawthorn scent coining to me from a distance, with- 
 out having your apparition by my side in a moment 
 living and real as you are now." 
 
 " That is half fancy, David. Shut your eyes and feel 
 how a good three fourths of your picture vanishes at 
 once." 
 
 " I feel every detail, on the contrary, ten times more 
 vividly, child. I am sensible how ' all the land in flowery 
 squares smells of the coming summer ; ' I am sensible of 
 fox-gloves close at hand, although half hidden by furze, 
 in which the great wild bees are droning ; I am sensible 
 of a million lives afloat upon the air. I am sensible more 
 than ever of your presence ! " 
 
 " Oh, what an anticlimax!" interrupted Esther; "to 
 begin with quoting Tennyson, and then descend to bum- 
 ble-bees and Esther Fleming ! Still, I do think one takes 
 in a great deal more than could be painted in a picture 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 55 
 
 on a day like this, and I suppose that is why descriptions 
 word-paintings, as Miss Bates calls them invariably 
 seem to leave out half the life and freshness of what they 
 describe. What spirit would the woods have for us, Da- 
 vid, without the monotonous roar of the dear old stream 
 below ? It is that one sound that makes our Devonshire 
 woods so different to all others I have been in." 
 
 " I thought you would come back too fine a lady to 
 care for the dull delights of Countisbury, Esther. When 
 I saw a grown-up young woman, talking with such fine 
 self-possession to that person upon the coach, I assure you 
 I could scarce believe it was our simple Esther. What 
 did you tell me his name was, by-the-way ? " 
 
 "Mr. Vellicot." 
 
 " Nonsense. You mentioned another person " 
 
 " I can recollect no one but him, and John Hartman 
 the coachman." 
 
 " A person with, a fishing-rod and a straw hat." 
 
 "Oh yes, to be sure ; I had almost forgotten him the 
 stranger who was going on to Eynmouth. Mr. Oliver 
 Carew." 
 
 " I think you are blushing, Esther." 
 
 " I think the sun is in your eyes, cousin. Had we not 
 better go on our own way again ? You know you say the 
 sport is never good for anything after one o'clock." 
 
 And leaving David to follow with what haste he could, 
 Esther ran lightly down the narrow, rocky defile towards 
 the valley. If her companion had been any one in the 
 world but David, she would have felt excessively angry 
 with herself for her folly in coloring about this Mr. Ca- 
 rew; but with good blind David for sole witness it did 
 not signify much how foolish she was. Why, you had on- 
 ly to tell poor David that the sun shone in his eyes and he 
 would straightway believe himself mistaken ! Besides, 
 even if he persisted still in crediting his own senses, it 
 
56 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 would not matter very much after all. Poor old David ! 
 When they reached the valley they had still two miles 
 to walk before reaching the part of the stream where Da- 
 vid meant to fish ; and during all this portion of their 
 walk he continued more silent than usual. 
 
 "You never talk when the fish are within hearing, 
 David," said Esther, at last. " Is it from habit only, or 
 do you really think the trout at Ore Oak would take warn- 
 ing if the distant sound of your treacherous voice was 
 borne to them along the waters ? " 
 
 " I am silent because I have nothing to say, Esther." 
 
 " Oh, David, and I have been away six months ! " 
 
 " And have not returned now," he answered quickly. I 
 have not got you, Esther, my little cousin, with me. I 
 have got a young person with a vermilion skirt, a hat in 
 shape like a cheese-plate, and a festooned gown but 
 not Esther ! " 
 
 " David, that is very base. After pretending to think 
 that I looked nice you suddenly burst out upon me, like 
 Joan, about my festooned gown and my colored skirt 
 which is not vermilion, David, but very sober violet. I 
 will put on one of my old frocks and Joan's garden-hat 
 the next time I come out with you, and then you will feel 
 as if I belonged to you again." 
 
 "Shall I? Shall I ever feel that, Esther ?" he inter- 
 rupted her, hastily. 
 
 " Why, whom else should I belong to, David ? What 
 have I in the world to care for but Countisbury, and the 
 people who live there?" 
 
 Her caressing voice thrilled through every fibre of his 
 frame. " Look at me quite straight while you say that, 
 Esther." 
 
 She looked at him with perfect unabashed truth, with- 
 out the faintest uprising of color into her face. 
 
 " Quite sincerely, child, you have no wish or desire be- 
 yond Countisbury, and the people who live there." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. tf 
 
 " Quite sincerely. I am attached to you all from my 
 very heart to you most, David, and I never wish to go 
 away from you again." 
 
 " You are a good child, Esther," after looking very 
 hard into her steady, loving eyes. " You are quite true. 
 I perfectly understand you now." 
 
 And he kissed her. He felt, at that moment, that he 
 could never be querulous, or jealous, or exacting with her 
 again : that the hope to which alone jealousy, or mis- 
 trust, could belong was utterly extinguished : slain by her 
 own loving eyes : clean gone from him for evermore ! 
 
 "But you look so pale, cousin David." 
 
 " The sun is shining in your eyes, Esther. Let us get 
 on our way. It must be nearly eleven o'clock already." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RESCUED. 
 
 So died the solitary dream of David Engleheart's life ; 
 died by a gentle loving stroke, far easier for him to bear 
 than would have been that cruel sudden violence which, 
 had the dream lasted longer, must inevitably have await- 
 ed it. 
 
 Unfortunately, we none of us feel very keenly, at the 
 time, what intense blessings our disappointments really 
 are or ought to be to us. We quiver and writhe just as 
 if the horrible operation were not for our ultimate good. 
 We cry " any pain but this," at the very moment when 
 this pain is the one thing needful to save us. Had David 
 Engleheart known that Oliver Carew was to meet Esther 
 again to-day, was to renew his acquaintance with her, to 
 admire her more than ever, to walk part of the way 
 
58 THE ORDEJIL FOR WIVES. 
 
 home with her, to speak words that might lay the found- 
 ation of a serious and lasting attachment had David 
 known all this, do you think he would have mourned that 
 his poor foolish love had gotten its death-blow, at least 
 from Esther's own tender hand, and not from the coarse, 
 unfeeling blow of a rival ? Of course he would not ; and 
 Philosophy, doubtless, would have consoled him enor- 
 mously, as she always does, under his trouble. But he 
 knew nothing save that he had been a fool, and that Es- 
 ther would never, never love him (though Joan might) 
 while he lived : and when, a short while afterwards, the 
 girl walked away from him while he fished he felt that all 
 .the yellow sunshine had turned black and cold, and that 
 for any good his life did to himself or anybody else in the 
 world, he might just as well throw himself into the river 
 and have done with it at once. 
 
 Esther, on the contrary, never felt in happier spirits in 
 her whole life than she did at this moment of poor Da- 
 vid's black despair. It is not often that a woman, how- 
 ever young and ignorant, shatters a man's hopes without 
 being aware of it. Some slight jar, some quivering nerve 
 or broken word, gives token of the ruin wrought, even in 
 those extremely rare instances in which the blow has been 
 unpremeditated. But Esther was guiltless alike of inten- 
 tion and of knowledge That David, at his immense a^e 
 
 O ' O 
 
 past forty at least and with his striking peculiarities 
 and old-world ways of living, should be in love, was, I 
 must acknowledge, just the very last contingency likely to 
 occur to the mind of any girl of eighteen. Esther was 
 accustomed to his exactions and questionings of her affec- 
 tion ; had set them at rest as her really warm affection 
 for the poor fellow prompted her to do. What more was 
 there to be thought upon the subject ? David was happy 
 with his beloved rod, she with her own thoughts and de- 
 licious exhilaration of newly-recovered freedom. How 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 59 
 
 exquisitely tender was this warm light, glancing down 
 upon her dress through the donse foliage of the woods ! 
 how like a friend's voice was the eoft brawl of the stream 
 as its clear brown waters fell with thousands of gleaming 
 silver threads across the weir ! How distinctly the small 
 transparent pools, away from the line of seething foam, 
 gave back the many-colored forms of fan-like ash and 
 delicate-leaved water-plants upon the bank ! Would it 
 mirror back her face as clearly, Miss Fleming wondered ? 
 She leant athwart a low, moss-covered root to see ; and 
 beholding the reflex of her own figure, with the rose which 
 vanity had led her to place in her hat surmounting it, 
 instantly began to wonder led by what train of ideas 
 I know not whether Mr. Carew were fishing this morn- 
 ing, and whether, if by any accident they met, it would 
 be right for her to recognize him, or not ? 
 
 She had, by nature, not any one of the qualities that go 
 towards the making of a coquette. She was frank, mod- 
 est, true : all that a coquette is not. But yet, when a sud- 
 den turn of the path brought to her view the figure of 
 Mr. Carew advancing just at this very moment when she 
 was thinking of him, she became conscious of extraordi- 
 nary interest in the growth of some ferns among the rocks ; 
 then of the great beauty of the river itself; finally as 
 by instinct, not sight, she knew the stranger was drawing 
 nearer of the reflection of her own flushing face in the 
 water; also of a general desire not, perhaps, exactly to be 
 dead, but far away in one of the coolest, darkest nooks of 
 her own quiet garden at Countisbury. And very charm- 
 ing did her consciousness and her desire to appear uncon- 
 scious make her fresh face look in the young man's sight. 
 
 "We have had no rain, you see, in spite of all our 
 heavy friend's prognostics." Meteorological, of course > 
 Mr. Carew was true to his race and to his age ; but still 
 there was a friendly tone, there was something in tha 
 
60 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 one word " our," which, in itself, constituted, while it re- 
 newed, an acquaintance. 
 
 " And you don't find Devonshire quite such a dreadful 
 place as you thought you would?" If Miss Fleming 
 had felt horribly shy as he approached her, all that she 
 showed of the feeling was a very brilliant color now. 
 She possessed, to a high degree, those two unspeakable 
 charms in a young woman self-possession and great 
 steadiness of manner. " You begin to think there are 
 other things here besides cold and rain ? " 
 
 " I see there are," said Mr. Carew, meeting her eyes 
 with a look which would have been a compliment had 
 she chosen to receive it. 
 
 "Trout, perhaps ? Have you had good sport ? " 
 
 " That depends on what folks call sport," he answered, 
 in Mr. Vellicot's voice. "N"o: fishing is a delusion. I 
 have been here since nine this morning and have not had 
 
 o 
 
 three definite rises yet." 
 
 " And my cousin, who is fishing about half a mile oif, 
 landed two splendid trout in the half-hour that I was 
 watching him. Really, I think there must be something 
 in _ i n _ 
 
 " Knowing how to fish ? Well, it is possible ; but still, 
 under the best circumstances, the enjoyment is questiona- 
 ble. With first-rate sport it may be all very well, for a 
 short time, but it requires immense patience, a sort of 
 natural genius jather, to bring you through the initiatory 
 processes. I shall never be a good fisherman." 
 
 " La gnie c'est la patience," remarked Esther. " Any 
 one can do anything he likes, in time." 
 
 " Ah ! so we are told at school," answered Carew, " but 
 it is only a delusion. ' Any one can do anything he likes ! ' 
 What a world it would be " looking into her eyes 
 again " if wishes could bear fruit, after that fashion ! 
 How horribly children's minds are perverted by their 
 copybook moralities ! " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 61 
 
 " Yes, but you omit the two important words, in time. 
 You omit the patience. We can all wish, but " Miss 
 Fleming stopped, rather abruptly, and recollected by how 
 many hours her acquaintance with Mr. Carew could be 
 reckoned. 
 
 " But few have the endurance to attain ?" he finished 
 for her. " Well, if I was to wish at this moment it would 
 be to be the possessor of this valley, and to spend my life 
 in a perpetual summer morning beneath its shades." 
 
 "How fortunate it is for us our desires are not brought 
 to pass ! " cried Esther. " You were tired of fishing in 
 two hours, and now wish to spend all your life beside a 
 trout-stream," 
 
 "But not fishing." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 Miss Fleming grew interested in ferns again ; Mr. Ca- 
 rew first looked into the water, and then began to take 
 his rod to pieces. He was dreadfully afraid of his new 
 acquaintance going away, but not experienced enough, 
 himself, to know exactly how to set her at ease. Would 
 a commonplace about the scenery be the right kind of 
 thing to begin next ? or, like other rustics, would the 
 young person be supremely indifferent to the things she 
 lived amongst ? He remembered her saying something 
 about effects, and heather in August, and hazarded it. 
 " This is a very beautiful place, really, for England. It 
 reminds ine of Switzerland." 
 
 Esther looked up full in his face. " What ! you have 
 been to Switzerland, then ? " 
 
 " Dozens of times." 
 
 " Really ? " 
 
 "Well, not quite let me see, four, five, yes, I have 
 been there five times. I have done it thoroughly, now." 
 
 " Plow strange !" remarked Miss Fleming, musing. 
 
 " What ! to have been to Switzerland ? " 
 
62 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " No, I mean I mean that Jane must have been 
 wrong in what she thought." And then she colored 
 again an honest, ruddy color, crimsoning cheeks and 
 brow and neck ; and Oliver thought her lovely. She was 
 not shy, and yet so marvellously prone to blush (he was 
 accustomed, remember, to young ladies of the world :) 
 she was dignified and yet so thoroughly frank, so charm- 
 ingly simple. He came a step nearer ; her eyes sank be- 
 neath his. 
 
 "And who is Jane?" He felt his own self-possession 
 returning fast, as hers ebbed away. 
 
 "Jane is my friend Millicent's sister. You saw Milly 
 with me at Swindon ? " 
 
 " I did not know you remarked me there at all." 
 
 " I remember you quite well. You were good enough 
 to help me through the crowd, and when we went back 
 to the carriage we told Jane, who remarked I do not 
 like to say any more, Mr. Carew." 
 
 Esther intended this mention of his name to put their 
 acquaintance upon the most formal and frigid footing; 
 but, having said it, she knew in a moment that it had 
 taken precisely the opposite effect, and felt rather fright- 
 ened at the result. "I think my cousin will be waiting 
 for me, sir," and she half turned to go away. 
 
 "But you have dropped your flower in the river. See, 
 shall I get it for you ? " 
 
 The damask .rose, the gaudy object of Joan's animad- 
 version, had fallen from her hat into the water, and was 
 eddying fast away toward the little fall just beneath the 
 rocks. " It does not signify in the least, we have plenty 
 more in our garden," cried Esther. " Please take no 
 trouble about it." 
 
 But Oliver persevered in his attempts at rescuing the 
 flower, and after some difficulty succeeded. "I will not 
 return it to you," he remarked. "It would spoil your 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 68 
 
 " Then throw it back into the river, please." 
 
 " It is a lovely color. I remarked it when I first saw 
 you." 
 
 " It is quite a common rose, sir, not worth looking at," 
 and Esther felt an odd quickening of her breath while he 
 examined the flower so reverently ; an emotion caused 
 by shame, no doubt, over her own foolish vanity in hav- 
 ing worn it. 
 
 " I am thinking of making a collection of dried plants," 
 went on Mr. Carew ; " they are interesting memoranda 
 of one's travels. If you will allow me, I will keep this 
 for my first specimen ;" and he stuck the rose in his but- 
 ton-hole. 
 
 Esther's breath came faster. This man was a stranger, 
 was half presumptuous, yet she could not put him down, 
 and, which was worse, she could not feel displeased. He 
 looked so handsome standing there in audacious posses- 
 sion of her flower ; there was such thorough, boyish good 
 humor in his audacity ; how could she feel displeased ? 
 That it was thoroughly unprincipled, however, to prolong 
 the acquaintance a single minute more was beyond all 
 question ; and so she made another allusion to her cousin^ 
 and, turning round at once, began to walk away. 
 
 Mr. Carew walked beside her. "I suppose your cousin 
 would not condescend to impart any of his fishing knowl- 
 edge to me," he remarked, quite quietly, and as though 
 he had not for a moment imagined that Miss Fleming 
 had intended to take leave of him. " It would be too 
 much to expect that one of the great high-priests would 
 condescend to initiate a neophyte into the mysteries of 
 the stream." 
 
 "I am sure David would show you his flies, sir" (she 
 could not feel angry, being glad herself that he had not 
 taken her at her word :) "very likely you have not got 
 the right sort. We find the fish rise better to green- 
 
64 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 drakes and stone-flies than any other at this season of the 
 year." 
 
 " What ! you understand some of the mysteries, then ? " 
 
 " David and I tie our flies ourselves, generally. He 
 had a present of some from London once, and they were 
 really beautiful to look at ; but the fish didn't seem to 
 see it, and never rose to them as they do to the ones 
 we copy from nature. Shall I look at yours ? Perhaps, 
 like those of David's, they are too fine for the country 
 fish to understand." 
 
 Nothing, I am persuaded, ripens intimacy between two 
 young persons, respectively aged eighteen and twenty- 
 two, more than the juxtaposition necessarily caused by 
 one of them looking over any kind of book that happens 
 to be held in the other's hand. It took Miss Fleming 
 several minutes to inspect the different varieties of flies, 
 to give giave opinions on their merits, to admire, to de- 
 tract, to advise. When she had finished, some occult in- 
 fluence made her feel as though she had known Mr. Carew 
 half her life at least, and that it would be sheer affectation 
 for her to pretend any longer that her cousin David want- 
 ed her to return. 
 
 So when Carew asked her if they were not near the 
 junction of the Lynn waters, and* whether this would be 
 the best time in the morning to see it to advantage, she 
 answered, quite composedly, that they were within a 
 quarter of an hour's walk from Waters-meet, and it would 
 be very little out of her way to go there before she re- 
 turned to her cousin, and, if Mr. Carew pleased, she 
 would be glad to show him the path. " It is not the first 
 time I have led strangers through the woods " (her con- 
 
 T> O \ 
 
 science pleaded against its own misgivings.) " Only last 
 summer I showed that dear old clergyman all the way 
 along the Valley of Rocks, and even Joan did not blame 
 me. There can be no harm !" And as Miss Fleming's 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES*. 65 
 
 mind never took into account that the dear old clergyman 
 was fifty-five and gouty-footed and paternal, Mr. Oliver 
 Carew handsome and twenty-two, and wearing a damask 
 rose (of hers) in his button-hole, we may presume that 
 extreme simplicity really prevented her from discerning 
 these somewhat material differences in the condition of 
 the two strangers. 
 
 " This is Waters-meet, Mr. Carew. Please don't say 
 you are disappointed, even if you feel so^." 
 
 Mr. Carew was not disposed to be disappointed with 
 anything that Esther's handsome face asked him to ad- 
 mire. He already thought Lynmouth the least slow 
 place, for the country, that he had ever been in. The 
 valley was fresher than Switzerland, the streams were 
 more brown and transparent than any in the highlands, 
 everything was gold-colored (so he averred, and very 
 probably thought, in the first bran-new emotion of this 
 rustic flirtation) ; and in a few more moments Esther had 
 quite forgotten that their acquaintance dated from yester- 
 day, and was sitting on her favorite rock, close to the 
 water, with Mr. Carew leaning over her, as he animadver- 
 ted, with great warmth and eloquence, upon the varied 
 beauties of the scene. 
 
 Was it not necessary for him to bend down, if he would 
 make his voice heard at all above the rush of water? And 
 had she not rested in precisely the same manner when ac- 
 companying that dear old parson through the Valley of 
 the Rocks last summer ? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FLY-FISHING. 
 
 FALLING in love, after a day's acquaintance, with a face 
 ]ike Esther Fleming's, is not a thing of extreme difficulty 
 to a very young lad under any circumstances. To Oliver 
 Carew it came with remarkable facility upon this suminer 
 morning and among the dangerous loneliness of these 
 silent woods. 
 
 Esther had chosen her resting-place at the spot where 
 the meeting of the two moorland streams is first visible 
 among the woods ; a spot which, shut in amidst abrupt 
 and verdured hills on all sides save that of the waters, 
 forms one of the most charming Ruysdael-like woodland 
 pictures in the world. The single flash of the two streams 
 just at the moment when, parted still by a ravine of foam, 
 they break, a liquid glass of delicate grey and silver-green 
 across the bed of black projecting rock ; the glimpses on 
 the left of the Lynn valley, hung with masses of densely- 
 shadowed foliage to the summit, and with only its top- 
 most crags exposed to the yellow light of the noonday 
 sun ; the precipitous granite cliff upon the right, its ravine 
 and fissures filled with glossy wreaths of ivy, whose 
 weather-blanched roots are knotted in fantastic distortions 
 amidst the rifts of iron-grey stone ; the masses of fallen 
 rock which lie, moss-covered and overturned with the lux- 
 uriant leafage of a thousand trailing plants ; reader, if 
 you have stood on a June morning in that fairest valley 
 in England, do you not remember all these details of the 
 picture ? Seen in the cool green light of noon that 
 shaded and most exquisite green, deepened here and 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 67 
 
 there by the rich brown of hoary pine-stems, or broken, 
 at rare intervals, by quivering shafts of ruddy gold was 
 it not a dangerously lovely back-ground to a lovely face 
 of scarce eighteen ? Do you wonder that, then and there, 
 Mr. Carew thought how pleasant it would be to begin re- 
 hearsing the first act in that pleasantest drama of all our 
 lives, that he forgot the horrible dangers which await 
 young lads of fortune when they admire anything between 
 an heiress and a milk maid, and only remembered the no- 
 ble lines of Esther's glowing face, the gentle, honest eyes 
 that looked so frankly up to his. 
 
 Well, he had been better trained than to do such fool- 
 ish things : he had been duly taught how to regulate 
 both his fancies and affections. But lads of fortune will, 
 occasionally, have eyes of their own wherewith to see, 
 and, which is a vast deal more perilous, boyish, honest 
 impulses of their own to follow. . Oliver had tried hard, 
 under the family direction, to fall in love with an unex- 
 ceptionably plain heiress for some months past, and had 
 not succeeded. Without knowing one word of Esther's 
 family or estate, save that she lived at a farm and wore a 
 shepherd's-plaid gown, he was ready, as far as inclination 
 went, to ask her to accept him, and all he possessed or 
 was heir to, at that moment. Oh, desperate perversion ! 
 Oh, headlong blindness of the natural man ! 
 
 " And so Jane thought me a farmer's son. She must be 
 extraordinarily sharp-sighted." They had got, as you 
 must perceive, whole cycles away from scenery and com- 
 monplace. " What data did she go upon, do you sup- 
 pose ? " 
 
 "Milly's description of you, perhaps. Milly laughs at' 
 my heroes I mean at the heroes I like to read of I 
 mean, Esther stammered furiously, " at persons of large 
 size and sunburnt complexions." 
 
 " Thank you : I quite understand the description Jane 
 
68 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 received. A large-sized, sunburnt person. It exactly en- 
 abled her to form a true estimate of my calling." 
 
 "True?" said Esther hastily, and with a quick glance 
 at his face. " Oh ! I beg your pardon. I thought Jane 
 had been mistaken." 
 
 The visible disappointment in her voice pleased Mr. 
 Carew not a little. In a moment in one of those mo- 
 ments, which, trivial as they seem, do so much to turn 
 aside all the after currents of a man's life, he resolved to 
 play upon it. Whatever happened and already he 
 scarcely dared to ask himself what he desired should hap- 
 pen it would be amusing to himself to act for a time 
 under a false character; amusing, some day, perhaps, to 
 see the girl's surprise when she should know the truth, 
 arid discover with what new Lord of Burleigh she had the 
 presumption to fall in love. " I really cannot see any- 
 thing in the profession of farming to be ashamed of," he 
 remarked ; " but, of course, everyone has his own ideas 
 upon the subject of social disgrace." 
 
 "I see no disgrace in any employment whatever. I 
 think a farmer's must be a very happy life," cried Esther, 
 hastily. " If I were a man, I would rather follow any- 
 thing else in the world than a profession that should keep 
 me chained to a close London counting-house but 
 then " 
 
 " Oh ! you ape trying to make what amends you can to 
 me trying to apply what salve you can to my pride 
 you are very good. I thank you." 
 
 His solemn tone made Esther believe that she had real- 
 ly said something exceedingly wounding to the young 
 man's feelings, and very kind and earnest did her great dark 
 eyes look up into his face. " Surely you don't think that 
 I meant anything to hurt you, sir? Why, I have lived 
 myself, in a farm-house since I was four years old, and the 
 few friends and acquaintance that we have are quite plain 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 69 
 
 country people like ourselves. I only mean that you look 
 very unlike a farmer's son, and I think so still, but I 
 know a farmer may be as much a gentleman as a prince, 
 
 and Oh ! Mr. Carew, I would not have said anything 
 
 to hurt your feelings for the world." 
 
 Long afterwards did Oliver Carew remember Esther 
 Fleming as she then looked. The expression of her eyes, 
 lighting up with earnest kindness, the trembling smile of 
 her rich scarlet lips, even the ray of sunlight that lin- 
 gered, golden, with such vividly-bright distinctness in her 
 dark hair, he remembered them all. What he did in the 
 present emergency was to take her hand and hold it for a 
 moment in his, then assure her that, so far from feeling of- 
 fended, he had never been more flattered in his life. 
 " And I am not a farmer, myself," he added, " although 
 most of my family have followed that occupation for gen- 
 erations past. I am a soldier. Rather a different craft." 
 
 Now Esther had a distinct idea that all men in the ar- 
 my were irresistible but unprincipled ; one or two legends 
 of Miss Millicent Dashwood's supplying the first clause in 
 this belief, Joan's stories of her own grandfather, Garratt 
 Fleming, the other. But still, even with the knowledge 
 of Mr. Carew's dangerous attributes, she did not take to 
 immediate flight. It was so tempting herein the cool de- 
 licious shade ; this stranger, whom she would certainly 
 never see again in her whole life, was so unlike any-one 
 she had ever talked to before ; such an unwonted, flatter- 
 ing sensation of gratified vanity throbbed at her own 
 heart ; and then, David could not want her ! And so 
 they talked on and on until at length a sudden gleam of 
 western sunshine fell broad upon the boulders at her feet, 
 and then Esther, with a guilty start, remembered that it 
 was already afternoon. She had been passing hours, not 
 minutes as they seem while passing, with this Mr. Carew. 
 
 " Good-bye to you," quite abruptly; " my cousin will 
 
70 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 be waiting for me. I beg your pardon for keeping you 
 so long from your fishing." 
 
 " And I am not to see you any more ? " 
 
 " You said that you should only stop another day or 
 two." 
 
 " I have altered my mind. Am I not to see you any 
 more ? You never walk abroad these summer evenings 
 through the woods ? " 
 
 " I walk upon the moors sometimes," she answered, de- 
 murely. 
 
 " The moors. That is an awfully wide latitude." 
 
 " The moors round our house at Countisbury. They 
 are very wild and still. We like them better than tLe 
 valleys after the dew has fallen, David and I." 
 
 " Perhaps your cousin would have no welcome for me 
 there?" 
 
 " David has a welcome for all strangers who come to 
 Countisbury, and Joan and I would be glad to show you 
 our garden," she added, simply. " You will have no 
 difficulty in finding our house it's the only one for miles, 
 among the moors. Good-bye." 
 
 She let him keep her hand in his a moment, and then 
 left him. 
 
 David was waiting patiently for Esther just above the 
 falls among the rocks ; he had been waiting there and 
 watching her and Carew for more than an hour. " You 
 have met with your new acquaintance then, Esther ? I 
 would not disturb you." 
 
 " Oh, David, how I wish you had come up ! He really 
 is a very quiet, agreeable person and so fond of fishing ! 
 I am sure you would have liked him." 
 
 "Do you think so, child? " 
 
 " I met him, and he said he had had no sport, and 
 asked me as to what flies you used, and I just looked at 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 71 
 
 his and told him which you found were best* the green- 
 drake and stone-fly, you know, and " 
 
 " You must have exausted the subject thoroughly, 
 Esther. You have been gone near upon four hours." 
 
 " Oh, David, impossible ! How can you say so ? " 
 
 " You left me at eleven ; it is now near three. Where 
 is your damask rose, child ? " 
 
 " It fell in the water, cousin. Wasn't I right about 
 the flies ? The green -drakes and stone-flies now, and the 
 little black gnat when the days get hotter ? " 
 
 " He he's going to stay here, then ? " 
 
 " A few days more, I think, David," looking straight 
 into his face. " You are surely not angered by my speak- 
 ing a while with this young man ? I should have done 
 the same if you had been there." 
 
 " No, not angered," said poor David, gently. " I am 
 never angered with you, my dear." 
 
 He stopped suddenly, and gathered a wild rose from a 
 briar-bush that grew beside their path. " Will you wear 
 this, Esther, instead of the one you have lost ? " 
 
 " Mr. Carew has it, cousin ; it is not really lost." 
 
 " And mine is not wanted to replace it. You are true 
 to your new faith already, child !" 
 
 David Engleheart threw the flower into the water and 
 watched it for a minute or two before it floated away* 
 and was lost in the vortex of the stream. "Gone gone 
 forever," he said then, and as he spoke, he looked very 
 white and odd about the lips. "Little oaklet us go 
 home. The sun is sinking fast." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ESTHER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Miss JOAN showed no displeasure whatever on hearing 
 of Esther's renewal of acquaintance with Mr. Oliver Ca- 
 rew ; indeed, she rather constituted herself the young 
 man's upholder or champion against poor David, upon 
 their return home. " It was surely very natural he should 
 speak again after travelling for two hours in Esther's 
 company only the evening before. Would you have the 
 girl never speak to any one but dull old owls like you 
 and me, cousin David ? You look as gloomy as though 
 she had committed some dreadful offence in chattering 
 for an hour to this young man. Pray, were you and I 
 never young ourselves, cousin?" At all of which amia- 
 ble little concessions to human frailty, Esther, in silence, 
 greatly wondered. 
 
 David, with the new lights he possessed as to Joan's 
 intentions on himself, read, or thought he read, the mo- 
 tives of her leniency pretty clearly. The disposal of 
 Esther by marriage would be another bar removed be- 
 tween Miss Engleheart and himself. What a horrible 
 aggravation of his jealous pangs, of the anguish of his 
 dying passion was in the thought ! All that evening he 
 paced ui and down the terrace-walk, a book in his hand 
 of the contents of which his eyes read never a word ; 
 while Miss Joan pursued her accustomed sunset avoca- 
 tions in the garden, with great cheerfulness and alacrity, 
 and Esther's low laugh and happy girlish voice mocked 
 him, ever and anon, with their ring of perfect content- 
 ment their utter unconsciousness of his miserable state. 
 
 " Do leave off reading, David what can old Ben 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 73 
 
 Jonson say worth knowing about on such a delicious 
 ni^rht as this ? Come and look at these roses we have 
 
 o 
 
 budded, David. They have all struck but one." 
 " David, listen to the bees among the sycamores." 
 " David, how long the cuckoo sings this year." 
 " You had better leave David to his book," cried Miss 
 Joan, as all these little kindly attempts of Esther's suc- 
 cessively fell to the ground ; " leave David alone, and 
 come and help me water the strawberries. Patty with 
 her great hoofs trampled down half my plants last year, 
 and David waters his own legs more than he does the 
 ground when he takes a can in his hand, so this summer 
 I mean to do it all myself unless you like to help." 
 
 This was quite a gracious invitation for Miss Engle- 
 heart to give, and with all a child's zest for work, Esther 
 went in vigorously for watering. No pretty playing at 
 watering, as practised by young ladies in the gardens of 
 suburban villas, but solid, hard labor of alternate pump- 
 ing, carrying, and saturating the strawberries and herself. 
 Then, when old Mrs. Engleheart had to "be read to, and 
 Joan had left her alone in the garden, she stole away to 
 her favorite seat beneath the thorn-tree on the terrace- 
 walk which poor David had now vacated the only 
 point in the garden that commanded a distant view of 
 Lynmouth, and of the sea. Deep down through a vista 
 of green valleys curled up the blue smoke from the little 
 town ; the Channel rose beyond it calm and violet-colored 
 like the cloudless sky; over the far horizon the moun- 
 tains of the Welsh coast shone, delicate-hued and vapor- 
 like through the dim, aerial orange of the dying twilight. 
 A strange thrill of happiness stirred in Esther's heart. 
 Was her life to be warm and roselit like that sea ? her 
 future golden like those distant hills ? Was she, indeed, 
 to live forever in this old silent life of Countisbury or 
 
 or ? Whatever the alternative was that suggest- 
 
 4 
 
74 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ed itself, it engaged her thoughts steadily for at least an 
 hour, and at the end of that time she was still so occupied 
 with her own day-dreams as to start quite guiltily when 
 Joan Engleheart's voice again broke in upon her medita- 
 tions. 
 
 " You are out in the damp then, still ? David said you 
 had gone back to the house." 
 
 "I have been here ever since you went in with Aunt 
 Engleheart, Joan. I think David is in a dream to-day." 
 
 " David is thinking of nothing but his books as usual," 
 said Joan, tartly. " People of our age don't dream, ex- 
 cept when they are in their beds and asleep. Pray what 
 have you been thinking about all this time, Esther ? It is 
 something new for you to keep quiet so long." 
 
 " I am rather tired, Joan. We had such a long walk 
 to day, and " 
 
 " You are not in the least tired, Esther," interrupted 
 Miss Engleheart, with emphasis; " and I am sorry that 
 you think it necessary to prevaricate." 
 
 " You- have learnt it and I have no doubt many other 
 virtues at school. From the .time you were four years 
 old you never told me an untruth before : don't begin now. 
 I should find you out in one half minute : and besides," 
 Joan added, not unkindly, " deceit is unnecessary for 
 you, Esther. You are strong strong in body, brave in 
 spirit ; dissimulation is for the weak, and, for anything I 
 know to the contrary, may be their best resource. Who- 
 ever is strong enough to tell the truth will invariably find 
 it to his own interest to do so." 
 
 "Well, then, I am not tired," said Esther. "Walking 
 to the Waters-meet has made me no more tired to-day 
 than it ever did before, but I thought I would like to be 
 alone a little, and to think. That it is the truth, Joan." 
 
 No very startling confession, truly, but as the girl made 
 it her hands turned nervously cold ; and, instinctively, 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 75 
 
 she moved her face away, even in that dim light, from 
 the searching scrutiny of her companion's eyes. 
 
 " To think ! " echoed Joan : " to dream, to build castles 
 among the clouds at sunset. I know, Esther," with her 
 hard laugh. " I was once eighteen, like you." 
 
 "Yes, Joan." 
 
 " Not as young in heart as you are, for I was plain, even 
 then, and a plain woman is never exactly young at any 
 age but still eighteen. I dreamed, I hoped ; ugly though 
 I was, I knew I could be happy if anybody had loved 
 me." Joan brought out these words with an irascible, 
 resolute kind of gulp. " And no one did love me : and 
 we fell upon poverty, and dark days, and by the time I 
 was twenty I had given up sunset dreaming, and I knew 
 what life mine was to be." 
 
 " And have followed it nobly, Joan ! " cried Esther, 
 hugely touched by anything like confidence from Joan's 
 granite .lips. " You have been a faithful daughter, and a 
 good manager of your mother's straitened means." 
 
 " I possess common sense, Esther ; don't talk about no- 
 bleness and such fiddlesticks. All heroics are wasted on 
 me. I possessed common sense and endured. I knew 
 more contentment was to be got from work than from 
 idleness, so I worked ; and by this time my life, such as 
 it is, has become habitual to me and not distasteful. 
 "What I was going to say is, that at eighteen, I should no 
 more have believed I should ever grow into what I am 
 than you, with your good looks and recollection of Mr. 
 Carew's fair words, could imagine yourself Joan Engle- 
 heart now." 
 
 "Oh, Joan!" 
 
 "Esther, all these dreams are natural. I remember 
 mine, and there was no harm in them. I don't believe 
 there is any harm in yours. David was wrong in looking 
 so glum and disconcerted about your talking to the young 
 
76 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 man of course, poor fellow, he knows nothing of these 
 things, how should he ? " Esther thought of David's 
 confidences of the morning. " He looks upon you as a 
 child, and would do so twenty years hence, if you lived 
 in the same house with him still." 
 
 " Twenty years ! " repeated the girl. "We shall be all 
 old, old people long before that time." 
 
 " You will be thirty-eight, Esther. Not a bad sort of 
 age for a woman with her own home, and with her child- 
 ren growing up about her ; but a hard time of life for a 
 single woman struggling alone among strangers a gov- 
 erness with a brain just warping after twenty years of 
 work, a companion just ebbing out of the ghastly, pro- 
 fessional cheerfulness she has earned her bread with till 
 now. Yes ; middle age has few charms for such as they." 
 
 " God keep me from being either a governess or a com- 
 panion ! " cried out Esther. " I have my own two hands, 
 and the knowledge you have given me, Joan. I will 
 work cheerfully if there is need, but I will be independent. 
 I will never work to suit the caprice of others." 
 
 " ' I will I will.' That is how all young people talk : 
 they will do what they think best, and then, when real 
 life comes upon them, they find that they must do what 
 lies to their hand, not what they themselves had chosen. 
 I like your resolute spirit, Esther the more because 
 both your parents were poor, weak, shilly-shally creatures, 
 who died because they wouldn't live and do their duty, 
 and therefore it has come to you from training, not inher- 
 itance : but I would have you, even now, look your com- 
 ing life straight in the face, and not merely talk of your 
 readiness to work. My mother believes that Aunt Tudor 
 will leave her money to you. I do not." 
 
 " Nor do I," cried Esther. " She has given me a great 
 deal of money already, thirty pounds a year since I was 
 a little child, and now this last fifty pounds to send rne 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 77 
 
 to school. I have no right to look for any more from 
 her, and I shall not want it. When I am old enough I 
 will work. The word has quite a zest for me, Joan." 
 
 " And what will you work at ? " 
 
 " Oh well, whatever I find I am fittest for," said 
 Esther, cheerily. "I am not going to be depressed by 
 anything to-night, Joan. I feel that merely to live, merely 
 to suffer even, will be enjoyment. The world is so wide, 
 and there are such an immense number of years to go 
 through before I shall be old." 
 
 " What is this Mr. Carew like, child ? " 
 
 "Mr. Carew is is tall, and not ill-looking, cousin. 
 What could make you think of him ? " 
 
 " A farmer's son, I think I heard you tell David. 
 
 " Yes ; but you would never think so from his face or 
 speech, and then he is in the army, himself. How clear 
 the beacon shows to-night, Joan ! I don't think I ever 
 saw it so bright before." 
 
 "Esther, you would be happier married to a farmer's 
 son than working for your own bread. There is no 
 lonely working woman on this earth who does not daily 
 and hourly weary over her own life. I speak from knowl- 
 edge, and I am not much given to sentimental weakness- 
 es, as you know." 
 
 " And what has Mr. Carew got to do with that remark, 
 or with my future life ? " said Esther, quickly. You 
 don't think my peace of mind is endangered by every 
 stranger who speaks to me for an hour, I hope, Joan ? " 
 
 "I think you possess decent common sense, Esther," 
 answered Joan, who, while she wished to arouse in Es- 
 ther's mind a certain train of ideas, was far too keenly 
 awake to overstep her own mark by a single hair's breadth. 
 "From your description, "the young man appears to be 
 iust a careless, conceited fool, seeking his own amusement, 
 and not in the least likely to fall in love with you or me, 
 or anyone else but himself." 
 
78 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Oh, Joan ! he is not in the least conceited." 
 "All men are conceited, Esther, and most men are 
 heartless, and many men are fools ; but I have no fear 
 whatever of your peace of mind : if I had, I should for- 
 bid you to speak to Mr. Carew any more. Dan Vellicot 
 is much more likely to come as a suitor to Countisbury 
 than any handsome young gentleman who wears a sword 
 in her Majesty's service, and travels down here to while 
 away his leave of absence in fly-fishing." 
 
 And Miss Joan having finished these exhilarating re- 
 marks, rose, looked about her, sniffed vehemently, gave a 
 single low meaning whistle, and then skirted away swift 
 and noiseless as fate towards the orchard-hedge. Even 
 
 o 
 
 while she spoke, her eye had been intently fixed upon cer- 
 tain outlines not unlike those of Patty Simmons's mother, 
 with a basket on her arm, hovering stealthily about the 
 garden-wicket, and instinct (true as that of an Indian 
 trail-hunter) told her at once the point from whose ambush 
 she might best detect and pounce upon whatever fresh 
 deed of darkness her unhappy handmaid's depraved nat 
 ural affections had been leading her to commit. 
 
 " Was all that good advice meant merely to show me 
 what kind of life lies before me, or to warn me against 
 the danger of liking Mr. Oliver Carew ? " Esther won- 
 dered, as later in the evening she walked slowly along the 
 path towards the house. "Poor Joan! she need not be 
 afraid. I am not likely to forget that mine will be a life 
 
 of work and hardship, and as to this stranger I had 
 
 nearly forgotten him until Joan mentioned his name." 
 
 "How white and near the stars look." Miss Flemin^ 
 
 ' O 
 
 further soliloquized ; " that is a sign of fine weather to- 
 morrow. I shall go out upon the moors towards sunset, 
 and wear my new lilac frock, and a white rose in my 
 waist-belt no, that would look as if I wanted to be 
 asked for it again. My lilac frock, and straw bonnet, and 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 79 
 
 my muslin scarf will look best. Joan will say I have 
 been dressing myself out, but I don't mind that I ought 
 to dress more neatly now I am grown up ; and if I go 
 out by the orchard-gate none of them will notice me .... 
 Oliver Carew it is not an ugly name. I shall never 
 write about him to Milly and Jane. I couldn't bear to 
 read such nonsense as they would be sure to write, and 
 besides, in a few more days he will be gone, and there 
 will be an end of it all .... How nice the old house 
 looks, lying there white and silent in the moonlight : I 
 wouldn't like to leave it, and yet I don't think I should 
 like to live at Countisbury forever, and grow to be like 
 Joan and David. I should like, before I die, to see some 
 of those foreign places Mr. Carew talks so well about. I 
 wonder whether any one will ever care enough for me to 
 take me to them. I wonder whether Mr. Carew really 
 likes me, or only pretends he does. It was very pleasant 
 to talk to him as we sat together on the rock. I felt as I 
 never feel when David holds my hand at that moment 
 when he said good-bye. I should like all my life to be as 
 it was this morning, only with a new muslin dress, and a 
 new hat and gloves to put on every day, and with Mr. 
 Carew, or or somebody else to meet me w r henever I 
 walked. It will be very dull indeed when Mr. Carew is 
 gone. I wonder I never knew before how dull it is to 
 walk about the woods with only David to talk to." 
 
 And oh, reader ! (of the severer and more uncompro- 
 mising sex,) remember Esther Fleming's age only just 
 eighteen ! Remember she had never enjoyed the privi- 
 leges of a ball-room; had never been to an archery- 
 meeting or a pic-nic ; had never read any French romance, 
 except "Telemachus," in her life. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DISORDER CALLED LOVE. '. 
 
 Miss ENGLEHEART'S sweeping condemnation of men's 
 hearts, brains, and principles was not entirely correct as 
 regarded Oliver Carew. He was as little conceited as 
 any handsome lad could be upon whom the prettiest faces 
 of more than one London season had smiled not unfa- 
 vorably. In matters pertaining to his own gratification 
 he was hot-headed and impulsive as a schoolboy. He 
 would not have stepped a line out of the path which he 
 had been taught to consider honor, had the crossing of 
 that line been the one and only means that should rescue 
 him from death. 
 
 But in saying that he was doubtless thinking vastly 
 more of his own amusement than of falling seriously in 
 love or marrying, Miss Joan had approached very nearly 
 to the truth. When Mr. Carew had thought of marriage 
 at all, up to this period, it had been as of a necessary 
 conditio.n of existence that would doubtless come upon 
 him some day, leaving his own happy selfish life very 
 much as it was, but adding the companionship 'of a good- 
 tempered, pretty, affectionate sort of young woman, 
 whose tact and devotion to him should prevent his ever 
 feeling bored when at home, but yet never stand the least 
 in the way if he wanted to amuse himself elsewhere. 
 The domestic lot of such of his more intimate friends as 
 had married did not invariably serve as an illustration of 
 these optimist opinions ; but he was a great deal too easy 
 a philosopher to trouble himself with any deeper views 
 of life than those which his own favorably-placed circum- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 81 
 
 stances suggested. If he did eventually get a wife like 
 So-and-so's, who should bully him, or a wife like So-and-so's 
 dearest friend's, who should insist upon going to balls 
 without him every night of the week, why it would be a 
 nuisance, and he must make the best of it no difficult 
 matter when one has all the pleasantest ingredients for 
 material enjoyment so very ready to one's hand. In the 
 mean time, he was duly thankful for having escaped the 
 strong ankles and sandy hair of that wealthy young wo- 
 man his relations had desired him to win, and had every 
 intention of continuing in his present unfettered condi- 
 tion as long as possible. 
 
 But what are intentions when a well-favored face looks 
 up to yours in the loneliness of green-shaded woods ? 
 What are intentions when this face smiles at you, flushed 
 and animated, amidst the golden glory of the moors 
 at sunset ? What are intentions, what are fixed and 
 steadfast resolves, when this face turns from you blush- 
 ing, as you whisper soft adieux at twilight amidst the 
 perfumed, voluptuous silence of the summer lanes ? In 
 a fortnight from the time that Oliver first met Miss Flem- 
 ing he believed her to be the loveliest and (which charm- 
 ed him more) the most loving woman in the world ; the 
 only one he had ever admired; the only one who could 
 by any possibility make him happy. He believed that 
 he could not live very long if he were to be separated 
 from her, or at least that life under such circumstances 
 would be much too shattered and objectless to be worth 
 holding. He did not care about her position or her lack 
 of money, of these he had enough for them both : he 
 wanted her. No man who married Esther Fleming 
 could be said to marry beneath himself. He knew that 
 he should be higher and better in every way from the 
 very hour in which she promised to become his wife. 
 
 And to a certain degree he was right. Esther was not 
 
82 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 a woman to inspire any other than a worthy and an hon- 
 est passion. Mr. Carew's mental condition was not visi- 
 ibly improved by his love ; indeed, he became, if anything, 
 more awkward and less agreeable in her society than he 
 had been at first, but he was none the less bettered in his 
 spirit less selfish, less worldly, less self-seeking than he 
 had ever been before since he was born (less so than he 
 will ever be again while he lives.) And on the evening 
 when he finally determined to tell her his love he felt and 
 knew that a richer stake was about to be won or lost by 
 him than any upon which, during his two-and-twenty 
 years of life, his hopes had ever before been staked. 
 
 This state of feeling had not, of course all arisen out of 
 that one meeting in the woods, or that one twilight part- 
 ing on the moorside. Mr Carew had, through a succes- 
 sion of happy accidents, met Esther every day during the 
 fortnight of his stay at Lynmouth : had met her by the 
 seaside, in the valleys, on the moors ; once, by special invi- 
 tation of Miss Joan, had spent a long evening with her in 
 her own garden at Countisbury. Acquaintance is never 
 slow of ripening between persons whose united ages 
 scarce make forty years. A fortnight is quite enough to 
 bring the deepest passion of a very young man to matu- 
 rity. On this evening, when his confession was just trem- 
 bling upon Oliver's lips, it seemed to him as though his 
 love had already existed for years, as though no further 
 knowledge of life or of Esther could be needed than that 
 which these dozen of country walks, of lingering twilight 
 partings, had accorded him. 
 
 It was a glorious summer night ; the last night in June. 
 From the healthy uplands around Countisbury they had 
 watched the sun set until all its gold was merged in pale 
 and hiding azure above the sea ; then, when the shadows 
 deepened round the twilight moors, and the purple of the 
 night began to fall, they turned away through one of the 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 83 
 
 shaded field-paths towards the woods, and Mr. Carew's 
 voice began to falter as he talked. 
 
 Now Esther Fleming, in spite of all the self-commun- 
 ings recorded at the end of the last chapter, was not in 
 love with Mr. Carew one whit. She was flattered exceed- 
 ingly by his evident regard for her ; she thought frequent- 
 ly, "If this is love, love is a very pleasant thing, and so is 
 life." She liked to put on her best muslin frock and a 
 flower in her waist-belt, when she walked out to meet 
 him on the hills ; she liked to hear his voice sink as he 
 spoke to her ; she liked to feel, for the first time in her 
 life, that inordinately strong sensation common to all 
 women's hearts, namely, pleasure in possessing a young, 
 and brave, and handsome man for her trembling slave. 
 But she did not love him. No shade of real passion had 
 crossed her heart, no deeper emotion than that of flattered 
 vanity had made her cheek flush and her eyes sink be- 
 neath his. A girl very honestly, I was going to say icily, 
 brought up, as she had been, does not, you know, warm 
 into sudden emotion as quickly as do indwellers of towns 
 or readers of romance, or frequenters of crowded assem- 
 blies (young women in a word whose stimulated imagi- 
 nation has acted out the drama of love a great number of 
 times before the actual uprising of the curtain,) although 
 passion in such a nature as Esther's is, when once aroused, 
 strong and obstinate in proportion to the very slowness 
 of its growth. And so, not being at all in love, but only 
 fancying she was and knowing, instinctively, that Oliver's 
 declaration was coming, Esther felt intensely happy and 
 proud at the thought of accepting him, and knew none of 
 the agony, and fear, the torturing doubts, the ague fits of 
 suspense, which experience should one day tell her are 
 the sure heralds of any scene of nature and earnest 
 passion. 
 
 It was, as I said, a glorious summer night. In dark 
 
84 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 and wintry days to come, and when all the love-delusion 
 had become hollowness and vanity in her sight, how 
 clearly Esther could recall every outward sound and sen- 
 sation of that next half-hour ! the faint swirr of the scythe 
 from distant hayfields in the valley ; the sonorous drone 
 of wild bees on the wing ; the hushed cry of the cuckoo 
 from the woods ; the elastic warmth of the thyme-laden 
 air. One by one she could remember all the mass of sum- 
 mer foliage over which at the time her eyes unconsciously 
 passed, as, with beating heart and flushing cheeks, she 
 turned away from Oliver's pleading face, the pink and 
 scarlet wreaths of honeysuckle bending low around the 
 foam -like balls of elder, and tall red fox-gloves in the 
 hedges, or meeting in close embrace with the delicate ten- 
 drils of the wax-like briony across the path ; the dim and 
 mellow light cast by the transparent leafage overhead 
 yes, the single briar rose that stood out so clear in its half- 
 blown crimson against the sky just at the moment when 
 Oliver's voice no longer faltered, and she was forced to 
 meet his pleading face and answer, she remembered all. 
 
 " You will not quite forget me, Miss Fleming ? You 
 will think, once or twice during the next year, of the 
 hours we have spent together? " 
 
 " Yes, I shall think of them, Mr. Carew." 
 
 " For a whole year? " 
 
 "Anything I could remember for a year I could remem- 
 ber for my life." 
 
 "Anything? Your meeting with that old parson in 
 the valley of Rocks last summer, or with me, or any other 
 utterly unimportant circumstance. I understand; your 
 memory is good ; simply that." 
 
 Mr. Carew's tone grew ironical. He wondered whether 
 he was making a fool of himself; he reflected bitterly 
 upon the levity and falseness of all women's natures. 
 
 " I should remember things I did not care for but I 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. g-5 
 
 should not think about them," began Esther; then slu 
 stopped short. 
 
 "And you will think of our walks, and, sometimes, of 
 me ? " cried Oliver, eagerly and flushing with hope again 
 as he caught sight of her face. " Oh, Esther Miss 
 Fleming, I mean will you say that again ? " 
 
 "I did not know I had said it ; " but her cheeks were 
 covered with blushes, her lips could scarce bring out the 
 equivocation, the last instinctive effort at denial. 
 
 " Will you say it now ? " 
 
 " Mr. Carew ! " 
 
 "Miss Fleming, will you say it, and make me the hap- 
 piest man in all England? Will you tell me that you 
 won't forget me ? that I may think of you and write to 
 you sometimes, when I am away? Oh Esther!" cried 
 the lad passionately, " will you let me love you ? You 
 can't prevent that, for I love you from my soul already. 
 Will you let me hope that some day you will care a little 
 for me ? " 
 
 A subject could not have wooed a queen more humbly. 
 He never tried to take her hand ; he hardly dared to look 
 into her face. He could have proposed to marry any 
 London young lady at a ball, in the full presence of tall 
 brothers and Argus-eyed duennas, with less diffidence 
 than he felt towards this simple girl of eighteen amidst 
 the lonely silence of the country lanes. " Esther, will you 
 give me no answer ? " 
 
 " Oliver ! " 
 
 All he sought, all he wanted (just then) upon earth 
 was in that one word. " Esther, you will let me hope ? " 
 
 He looked into her eyes her frank and girlish eyes 
 and thought he read there the very fruition of hope; 
 thought that in their unabashed bright happiness there 
 was the confession of real love. 
 
 " Esther, you will be my wife ? " 
 
gg THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Some day, sir, perhaps. I am very young now." 
 
 " Never say " sir," any more. I am only Oliver to you 
 now." 
 
 "Yes, Oliver." 
 
 How the word thrilled through the lad's heart again, 
 coming from her lips. " You promise me. I arn exacting, 
 Esther; I must have more than a mere indifferent 'yes' 
 on such a subject. You promise me that you will be my 
 wife ? " 
 
 " As you wish, sir." 
 
 Long afterwards, Esther Fleming strove to assuage re- 
 proachful conscience with the thought that she did not 
 give the verbal promise he required from her. I am 
 afraid that when eyes and cheeks do not say nay, 'tis but 
 a spirit of Jesuitic casuistry that can seek refuge in the 
 fact that the lips have not promised. What are mere bare 
 words at such a time? Oliver, poor boy, never knew 
 whether she said "I promise," or "I do not;" he knew 
 simply that she had accepted him, and so thinking, trod 
 upon air for the remainder of the night. He was really 
 intensely happy, as much in love as it was possible for 
 him to be ; too newly intoxicated to reflect upon the 
 exceeding folly of the entanglement, too enamored of 
 himself to doubt for one instant the reality of Esther's 
 love. With the passion of men and women there mixes 
 some degree of bitterness, some recollection, some dread, 
 from the first moment that the enchanted cup is raised to 
 the lips. With boy-and-girl sentiment there is no bitter- 
 ness at all ; and, however mawkish older persons may 
 consider the draught, they in their simplicity do, no doubt, 
 regard it as nectar fresh from the hands of the gods. 
 Only one thing, reader, don't let us older persons attempt 
 to chronicle their first raptures. Some singularly rare 
 love scenes may come within the limits of fiction that 
 aspires to be sensible ; but the earliest stage of a very 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WITEX. 87 
 
 immature engagement is not of these. Oliver and Miss 
 Fleming lingered among the silent lanes till ten that 
 night. They thought of the stars, they thought vaguely 
 of their own delicious future. They were silent fre- 
 quently for long spaces at a time ; their conversation 
 when they spoke consisted of monosyllables, at once dis- 
 connected and inane. Could the prince of realistic writ- 
 ers could M. de Balzac himself make much out of 
 such innocuous raw materials ? I think not very much. 
 Love, to be amenable to art, must be misplaced, or dark- 
 ened by impediments, or coming very near indeed to the 
 end of the third volume ; and as Oliver's and Esther's 
 love is at present in no one of these conditions, we will 
 leave the lovers, if you please, to their own ambrosial 
 but infantine raptures, and turn to the remarkably pro- 
 saic .people who awaited Esther's return beside the frugal 
 supper table of the Countisbury farm. 
 
 " Esther is out late," said Joan, ostensibly shouting in 
 her mother's ear, but with her keen eyes fixed on David's 
 face. "We had better eat our supper, and not wait, 
 mother. Mr. Carew will have met her again ; and when 
 young people like him and Esther meet, old ones like us 
 are not likely to be remembered." 
 
 " He is a well-looking lad," remarked old Mrs. Engle 
 heart, dreamily. "I have seen him here sometimes, 
 haven't I, Joan ? " 
 
 " You saw him for one entire evening, a week ago, 
 mother ; don't you remember, we had tea under the thorn, 
 and afterwards " her eyes at this juncture pierced David 
 clean through and through " afterwards Mr. Carew 
 and Esther walked for an hour or more up and down the 
 terrace in the moonlight. Don't you remember I said to 
 you 'twas a wonder they could find so much to say after 
 such a short acquaintance ? " 
 
gg THE ORDEJIL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "Esther is a very clever girl," said Mrs. Engleheart 
 turning round to David to confirm her opinion ; " and 
 perhaps this Mr. Mr. what is his name, Joan ? is 
 serious in his attentions. Don't you think so, nephew?" 
 
 It was very possible David thought so ; but he did not 
 look up from his book. 
 
 "Unless /thought it a great deal more than possible, 
 I should not countenance all these daily walks together," 
 broke out Joan, promptly. " Mr. Carew, if he is a young 
 man of common honor, must declare his intentions after 
 all that has occurred." 
 
 " All that has occurred ! " repeated David, with a groan 
 of the spirit that Joan's sharp senses divined rather than 
 heard. " What, in heaven's name, do you mean by that, 
 Joan ? " 
 
 " I mean," said Miss Engleheart, very drily, and con- 
 fronting David full, and looking, as he felt, poor creature, 
 right into every weak part every smallest cranny or 
 interstice of his heart, "I mean that for a fortnight 
 this young stranger has met Esther daily, and has walked 
 with her for hours ; and that the girl keeps the flowers 
 he gives her in her room, and makes foolish excuses when 
 I find them there, and cannot even mention Carew's name 
 without blushing. You don't know anything about such 
 matters, cousin," she pursued, pitilessly; "but when I 
 was young I remember all this was called being in love ; 
 and if our Esther cares seriously for the young man Ca- 
 rew, I suppose it is desirable that his intentions towards 
 her should be openly declared." 
 
 Miss Joan was for sharp decisive treatment in all dis- 
 orders, mental and bodily. She knew the extent of the 
 malady under which poor David was suffering to the full 
 as well as he did himself, and was for extirpating it, as 
 one would a thorn out of the fleshly man, by sudden vio- 
 lence. The searing of a nerve with red-hot iron wire 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 89 
 
 was a remedy Joan had successfully tried upon herself in 
 toothache : could not a foolish passion be treated in like 
 manner? a moment of sharp intolerable anguish, and 
 then the pain gone forever. I think there was some wis- 
 dom in her opinion at least as regarded David. When 
 the cutting, cruel truth fell on him thus suddenly from- 
 his cousin's lips he felt, as he had not felt during this en- 
 tire fortnight, that he must rouse himself, not only to en- 
 dure, but to conquer. All these dull suffering days of 
 mechanical reading, these sleepless nights, these agonies 
 of mute jealousy, must have an end. He would have 
 to act, to give Esther to her lover, to listen to family 
 discussions on her prospects, to see her married. Loving 
 her as he did, should he not make the poor exertion of 
 striving, at least, not to cloud her happiness? He had 
 been gentle as ever with her since he knew the utter 
 hopelessness of his own passion ; but he had been moody 
 and silent in his manner when she tried to rouse him 
 unsympathizing in the poor child's natural hearty spirits. 
 This should be over now ; he would rally his forces and 
 conquer. The feeling which had been in secret the light 
 of his life so long, was at an end. He must return to the 
 prosaic middle age out of which Esther's fond young 
 face had for a few years cheated him : must go back from 
 life to vegetation ; must make such interest for his days 
 as Joan did ; must have Joan instead of Esther for a 
 companion ; succumb to Joan ; marry Joan, very likely 
 it mattered little now whether he did or not. Well, let 
 him swallow all this horrible bitterness like a man not 
 make his foolish passion any more ridiculous than it was 
 already by moping and pining like a love-sick lad. 
 
 Joan noted the effect of her gentle tonic in a certain 
 determination with which David flung aside his book and 
 seized hold of his knife and fork ; and during the whole 
 of the meal continued to administer generous doses of 
 the same wholesome draught to her unhappy victim. 
 
90 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " It wouldn't be ill in you, David, to ask Carew to din- 
 ner. I have not seen any one at my mother's table for 
 fifteen years ; but I think for Esther's sake this young 
 man should be invited." 
 
 " Yes, Joan." 
 
 " If his attentions end as I intend them to do, it will 
 be one of the most fortunate things that ever happened 
 in our family. I have had a letter this evening from 
 Aunt Tudor, and my own opinion is that she is breaking 
 up. Her feet are swelling, David." 
 
 " Are they indeed, Joan ? " 
 
 " Mother," emphatically, to the poor patient old lady 
 nt her side, " did I tell you that Aunt Tudor's feet are 
 swelling ? " 
 
 " Dear, dear ! " cried Mrs. Engleheart, in her deprecat- 
 ing way, "now I call that very odd indeed of Thalia. 
 She is two years younger than me, and when we were 
 girls " 
 
 " I know what it means, David," proceeded Joan, who 
 seldom troubled herself to hear anybody out. " I remem- 
 ber Uncle Garratt and a dozen other people going off in 
 the same way. She writes more than ever of her parties 
 and her gaiety, and her excellent health and spirits, but 
 she doesn't deceive me. She's breaking up fast." 
 
 " I thought I heard you tell your mother she was going 
 to Weymouth, and wanted Esther to stay with- her on her 
 return." 
 
 " Oh, you were listening after all, then, cousin, when you 
 never lifted your eyes up from your book. Yes, Mrs. 
 Tudor is going to Weymouth, and has asked Esther to 
 stay with her ; and that confirms my belief. She wouldn't 
 go to the seaside in the dog-days, unless she felt she was 
 ill. Now, just look what the child's position will be at 
 her death." 
 
 " We have sometimes thought it would be better than 
 it is now," suggested David. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 91 
 
 " I have never thought so," answered Miss Engleheart. 
 "I have never built upon my Aunt Tudor's goodness of 
 heart, or her sense of duty either. She helps to keep the 
 child now because it would be a disgrace not to do so; 
 but she wouldn't spare a farthing from her superfluities to 
 save all belonging to her from starvation, if the starva- 
 tion was to come when she could be no longer shamed 
 by it." 
 
 " You are severe, Joan." 
 
 " I am just, David. Mrs. Tudor, while she lives, is not 
 likely to be a hard or a miserly woman. She has too 
 much of her brother Garratt in her nature not to wish to 
 be liked. She is too thoroughly worldly not to spend 
 money where the decencies of the world require it to be 
 spent. But dead that is quite another thing. Uncle 
 Garratt was generous and affectionate to his son at the 
 very time when he was squandering the last shilling of 
 the lad's inheritance. Mrs. Tudor will be the same as 
 ever to Esther till she dies then 
 
 " Then her money will not be buried with her, I pre- 
 sume, Joan ? " David hazarded. 
 
 " Her money will be left to some one Who doesn't want 
 it, or which is much more likely will be found to die 
 with her. I took it into my head years ago that Aunt 
 Tudor had sunk her money ; and when I take up a fixed 
 opinion, Cousin David, I generally find myself right. 
 Then see what Esther's position will be. We could not 
 support her upon our income, David." 
 
 " We would try, Joan." 
 
 " We should do nothing of the kind ; nor is Esther 
 one who would live in poverty without trying to help 
 herself. Besides, our money, such as it is, dies out with 
 my mother's life and my own ; and what provision could 
 be made for her even if we could manage to support her 
 which is doubtful ? No ; Esther, unless she marries, 
 
92 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 must work. When Aunt Tudor volunteered this fifty 
 pounds' worth of accomplishments, I believe it was with 
 the notion that a wretched smattering of accomplishments 
 will be able some day or other to get the child a living 
 as a governess." 
 
 ^ "A governess," repeated old Mrs. Engleheart, who sel- 
 dom caught up more than the last words of Joan's ha- 
 rangues. " What is that you are saying ? I hope you 
 don't still keep to that dreadful idea of Esther's being a 
 governess. Oh ! if my poor dear brother, with his refined 
 delicacy, had thought that a grand-daughter of his would 
 be brought to work for her own bread ! " And the old 
 lady glanced towards the picture of Garratt Fleming, 
 which, with its imposing Hussar dress and medals, and 
 handsome tranquil face, really looked awfully well-bred 
 and condescending upon the bare oak panels of that 
 humble room. 
 
 " Oh, if Garratt Fleming had had common honor, and 
 had not wasted his sisters' portion and squandered the 
 inheritance of his own descendants!" said Miss Joan, 
 who was never bitterer than upon the subject of deceased 
 relations. "When I see what these sentiments of refined 
 delicacy end in, I thank God for being as I am honest 
 at least. I should be glad to see Esther earning her own 
 living to-morrow, if there was need ; and I am proud to 
 say the girl herself inherits none of the aristocratic feel- 
 ings of honor of our family." 
 
 "Family," repeated Mrs. Engleheart, unconsciously; 
 ' " do I hear you right ? The young man who brings his 
 suit to my niece Esther is of family, you say ? " 
 
 "Yes, mother; yes, of course," answered Joan sharply; 
 " he comes of honorable ancestors like ourselves. I am 
 thankful," she went on, turning to David, " thankful that 
 the lad is but a farmer's son, and that Esther will have hon- 
 est plenty instead of starving gentility for her portion." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 93 
 
 " If she marries him, Joan. We do take things so 
 much for granted." 
 
 " We take things as we wish them to be, very often,'' 
 answered Miss Engleheart. " I wish to see Esther happi- 
 ly settled ; and you, David, seem to have some unaccount- 
 able desire to " 
 
 " Hush, hush, Joan ! " interrupted the poor fellow, quick- 
 ly, and jumping up from his chair to hide his confu- 
 sion. " Here is Esther herself, come home at last and 
 alone." 
 
 " Carew having parted from her at the gate, Cousin 
 David. Esther would not walk by herself alone on the 
 moors at such an hour would you, Esther?" to the 
 girl, who, silent and shy, now stood at the door. " You 
 have not been walking abroad with no one with you be- 
 tween nine and ten o'clock at night." 
 
 " Mr. Carew was with me, Joan," she answered, reso- 
 lutely, but still with a tremor in her voice ; " he met me 
 far away on the moor and and walked home with me." 
 
 " Come in, child, and lay your hat down. You look 
 tired," said Joan, not unkindly. "David, can't you move, 
 and let her pass ? She mnst want her supper." 
 
 " I was going to move," cried David, very confused and 
 stupid. " I was thinking thinking Esther looked pale." 
 
 " Which is an excellent reason for keeping her stand- 
 ing at the door. Mother, you are asleep in your chair. 
 Come away to bed this moment. Mr. Engleheart " and 
 Joan turned to David with a smiling pleasantry that 
 made him shudder "I leave you to do the honors of 
 the supper-table to Miss Fleming. She can entertain 
 you with an account of her long ramble with Mr. Carew." 
 
 And, seizing Mrs. Engleheart in one hand and the can- 
 dlestick in the other, Joan strode out of the room, and 
 David and Miss Fleming were left alone. 
 
 I suppose there is not one of us but can remember the 
 
94 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 hideous firmness with which, in some great crisis of our 
 life, our own right hand has probed the wound that lay 
 all bare and quivering not an hour before. How we have 
 felt a fierce kind of pleasure in each self-inflicted pang ; 
 have called that heroism to ourselves which was, in truth, 
 but the last spasmodic struggle of some hope not utterly 
 dead. Such firmness did David Engleheart, the least 
 heroic of human creatures, feel when he was left alone 
 with Esther, now. He knew, far better than Miss Joan, 
 the state of the girl's heart. At this moment something, 
 not of innocence, not, certainly, of beauty, yet something 
 gone from out her face told him how irrevocably all that 
 he had once so coveted to possess was robbed from him. 
 The broad soft brow, the delicate scarlet lips that he had 
 bowed down before as a poor priest bows down before 
 his image of the Madonna, were his, even for worship, 
 no longer: they were Mr. Carew's. He knew it from 
 her cast-down eyes, her uncertain speech, the hurried 
 way in which her hand trifled amidst some wild flowers 
 that she had laid beside her on the table ; all the alpha- 
 bet out of which jealousy can so quickly spell the miser- 
 able truth of its own fears. Carew had spoken to her of 
 love! 
 
 As I have said, the strength that comes to many a pas- 
 sion in extremis came to David Engleheart now. He 
 found himself able to jest with Esther upon her late re- 
 turn. He asked what she and Mr. Carew could possibly 
 find to say to each other during so many hours? Had 
 the lad really anything in him on further acquaintance ? 
 He seemed not to have too much to say for himself on 
 that evening that he spent at Countisbury. Esther par- 
 ried these little thrusts as she best might, and with some 
 latent surprise at the quarter from whence they came ; for 
 David had never before, of his own free-will, so much as 
 mentioned Oliver's name before her. But the sense of 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 95 
 
 her strange, new-found happiness made her in these early 
 moments shy and embarrassed even with him ; and she 
 was conscious, for the first time in her life, of relief when 
 Miss Joan's sharp knock upon the bedroom floor over- 
 head summoned her away. 
 
 " I have something I wish to tell you, David ; " but she 
 said this without looking at him, and her hand shook a little 
 as she took up her candle from the table. 
 
 " It must be told quickly then, Esther. Judging from 
 our cousin's footstep she is in one of her little tempers 
 already." 
 
 " Not to-night ; not to-night, David, dear. To-morrow 
 is Barnstaple fair, you know ; Joan will be away all day. 
 I will tell you then. It's a secret that only you are to be 
 told as yet a secret that concerns me very nearly." 
 And then she threw her arms round his neck, as she had 
 done every night these dozen years ; and running lightly 
 from the room and up the narrow stair, left him silently 
 gazing after her in the darkness. 
 
 And Patty coming in to clear the supper a while later, 
 found him standing there still, and which roused Patty's 
 softer feelings yet more never a book in his hand. She 
 remembered how she used to stand idling about in the 
 dark at the cruel time when Joan had broken for her with 
 William Tillyer. "Am I to let Miss Esther's flowers 
 bide, Master David ? they be main withered already." 
 
 "Let them stay so, Patty; let them stay so," answered 
 David, gently. " I will put them in water for Miss Esther 
 myself. And, Patty, don't wait up for me. I am going 
 out to smoke my pipe, and I'll be sure to see that all the 
 doors are locked before I go to bed." 
 
 Long after midnight Miss Joan from her maiden-bower 
 watched the glow of David's pipe, as he passed restlessly 
 up and down the garden-path beneath her window, 
 " Smoke away, smoke away, David Engleheaf t," she soli- 
 
96 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 loquized, with many an emphatic nod of her gaunt head 
 towards the unhappy object of her regard. "Put all 
 your loves and hopes and follies in that pipe, and burn 
 them up for ever. So ; one is not enough. Fill another, 
 cousin, fill another. I have given you food enough for 
 fifty pipes to-night ! ". 
 
 The sound of his hurried steps fell on her ears still, 
 when, wearied out with watching him, she betook herself 
 to bed. They lulled her pleasantly to sleep. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 POOR DAVID ! 
 
 THE next day dawned, sultry and glowing, as few days 1 
 even in July, ever dawn upon the misty moorland heights 
 of North Devonshire. Quite early in the morning Miss 
 Joan had started by the market-coach to Barnstaple, and, 
 as was usual in her absence, a strange calm and peace 
 seemed to hang over all the little household at Countis- 
 bury. Poor Patty sang over her unmolested work ; old 
 Mrs. Engleheart, untroubled either by book or knitting, 
 basked in the warm sun at the parlor window ; Farmer 
 Vellicot's pigeons picked out the green currants and 
 gooseberries as they listed ; Miss Joan's own great Cochin 
 China fowls walked with a reprobate air -of perfect assur- 
 ance and coolness about the garden-paths. 
 
 " I think we are rather unprincipled to encourage these 
 revolutionary movements, David," said Esther, as they 
 paced slowly up and down the terrace in the early morn- 
 ing sun. " What would Joan say if she saw all her crea- 
 tures at this moment ? " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 97 
 
 " Poor wretches, let them have one happy day," an- 
 swered David. 'Tis only twice a year that any of us are 
 free, and what a freedom it is ! Why, the very air is more 
 genial than at any other time. Esther, turn your face to 
 the east, and feel if it is not." 
 
 " It's a lovely morning, David ; this promises to be the 
 first really hot summer's day that we have had." 
 
 "How much of it shall you spend at home, child ? how 
 many hours will Mr. Carew spare you to me, I wonder ? " 
 
 "David," said the girl laying her hand quickly upon his 
 arm, " don't talk like that about about Mr. Carew any 
 more, please. It is a jest no longer." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " I should have spoken to you last night if I could ; but 
 somehow, David, it was too difficult then, and I always 
 feel wlien Joan is in the house as though she can hear me 
 even when she is in another room. But now I feel I can 
 tell you all." 
 
 " I am glad you receive me into your confidence, 
 Esther." 
 
 " Well, I ought to tell Joan first, I believe, David ; but 
 it is so difficult to tell her anything one cares much about 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " Very." 
 
 " She is so matter-of-fact and hard so unlike you, 
 Cousin David. David " he felt her hand trembling 
 on his arm " can you guess my secret ? " 
 
 " I am ill at guessing, Esther." 
 
 "Mr. Carew has asked me to marry him, cousin," and 
 she looked up with her honest eyes straight into his. I 
 am so happy." 
 
 " You have known him a short time," said David, an<l 
 she was too deeply moved herself to note the tremor in 
 his voice. " Your acquaintance, I think, dates from one 
 fortnight ago." 
 
 6 
 
98 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "A fortnight and three days, David; but then I have 
 seen him so often." 
 
 "And must know so much of his character and worth 
 this stranger for whom you are willing to give us all 
 up ! We have loved you a dozen years, and he a dozen 
 days, Esther. "Well, it is natural." 
 
 David ! " 
 
 He softened in a moment at the loving tone of that one 
 word. " I don't blame you, Esther. You are acting as 
 every young woman has acted since the world began 
 rightly, no doubt, and as Providence meant you to do 
 only only don't you see 'tis hard to part from you ? I 
 have but one thing on the earth to love, and it's hard 
 to lose it." 
 
 " And you will not lose me, David," she cried, eagerly, 
 " not for years and years. We are both very young, and 
 Oliver is only starting in his profession. It is not a ques- 
 tion of losing me now merely of letting me give him 
 my promise, David. 
 
 " You have waited to consult me before doing so, then ?" 
 
 " No, cousin. Last evening, when Mr. Carew asked me 
 if I could ever like him well enough to be his wife, I said 
 yes. I was obliged to tell the truth, you know ; and I am 
 quite sure I mean I think I am quite sure that I 
 shall never like any one but Mr. Carew while I live. But 
 I could not feel happy in my promise, Cousin David, un- 
 less I had spoken of it to you, and unless you said that 
 you really approved of my choice." 
 * " And you will abide by my decision ? " 
 
 "David, that's not quite a fair thing to say. I should 
 oe very miserable if you refused to consent to my engage- 
 ment ; but I feel that I ought to be truer to Oliver Carew 
 now than to any one yes, even to you. Oh, Cousin 
 iJavid, be friends with him, and try to like hirn a little for 
 my sake." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 99 
 
 The expression of her pleading face stabbed David to 
 the heart. 
 
 " I am not at all a fitting person to consult, Esther ; 
 Joan and her mother are your guardians; I am nothing 
 to you." 
 
 He moved as though he would have turned away from 
 her; but Esther's kindly hand caught his arm tight. 
 "David, dear David, nothing to me? I thought you 
 cared for me I thought " 
 
 She could get no further; her voice choked, the great 
 tears struggled to her eyes. For a moment David Engle- 
 heart stood irresolute ; then he turned round quickly, 
 stooped, and kissed her lips. " You thought of me as of 
 your good stupid brother, Esther ; no, too old for that ; 
 your uncouth, ugly old bear of a playmate, old and grey 
 and dull enough to be your grandfather, who has just had 
 a dozen years or so of his life made bright by a child's 
 loving face, and now will not hesitate to give his darling 
 (though with some natural pangs) to the first young and 
 handsome stranger who chances to have won her heart ? 
 That was it, Esther." 
 
 "Oh, David! how can you speak s6 of yourself?" 
 But she was pale no longer, and he could see a smile 
 coming round her lips. 
 
 " And you were right, my darling ; that is what I have 
 always been to you, what I am now. All this has come 
 upon us rather suddenly, Esther, you see. You are only 
 just eighteen. I thought I had a great many more years' 
 safe possession of you yet. However, it has come, and I 
 am glad of it, for your sake, my poor little fatherless Es- 
 ther ! May Carew love you, and be faithful to you as 
 you deserve ! " 
 
 David's vacant face glowed till he looked positively 
 handsome : the thrill at his own heart went far to reward 
 him for all the anguish of the last fortnight. Poor David ! 
 
100 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 not Philip or Alexander ever gained a greater victory 
 than was this to him. 
 
 " I have been quite afraid of you lately, cousin," remark- 
 ed Esther, presently, and when they had taken one or 
 two turns upon the terrace in silence. "You have been 
 so constrained and odd with us all that I began really to 
 think something was going on that displeased you, and 
 so did Joan." 
 
 Oh ! " 
 
 " She even hinted to me, occasionally, that you did not 
 approve of Oliver's walking with me, and I was wonder- 
 ing this morning whether there could possibly be any 
 truth in it, when ah, you kind old David ! Patty told 
 me of your putting my flowers in water for me last night, 
 and then I knew you could not be really angry." 
 
 " I have never been angry with you since the day you 
 came to us, child." 
 
 " Twelve years ago, isn't it, David ?" 
 
 " Fourteen years this autumn. You were a little soft- 
 eyed child, dressed in black, and with a slow melancholy 
 way of speaking and looking straight up into one's face. 
 Esther, you crept into my heart at once, and have for- 
 gotten to leave it since." 
 
 " I have never forgotten the first night that I came, 
 David. You took me on your knee and made shadows 
 on the parlor wall for me all the evening, and then car- 
 ried me up to "bed, in spite of Joan's saying I musn't be 
 treated like a baby." 
 
 " And you held me close (a vast deal closer than you 
 would hold me now, Miss Fleming,) and said you never 
 meant to go away from me again. Do you remember 
 that?" 
 
 " Yes, I remember," said Esther, laughing, " and as yet 
 I have not broken my word. Very likely I shall stay at 
 Countisbury till you have had quite enough of me, after 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 101 
 
 all. Joan was talking to me ve? 4 y js^rib-isly the ether eve- 
 ning of the lot that awaits me when I shall be an elderly 
 woman of eight-and-thirty -^V^reijfy, ysais h'cuce/ Oh, 
 David ! " she broke off abruptly, " what sane human being 
 would look for twenty years, or look forward at all, on 
 such a morning as this ? JCven to feel the air blow on 
 one's face is enough to make one in love with the present 
 and with life." 
 
 " Let us come away to the thorn tree and our books, 
 Esther, and enjoy our one day of liberty thoroughly. The 
 sun is too hot here that is," he corrected himself 
 quickly "if Miss Fleming has no prior engagement 
 elsewhere." 
 
 "Miss Fleming has no engagement whatever until five 
 o'clock this afternoon, cousin." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " And then is to meet Mr. Carew upon the moor, and 
 take her cousin with her, if he will condescend to come. 
 You see everything is settled for you," she added, turning 
 to him with her fond smile as they walked slowly towards 
 the house: "even if you had wished to be a stern, im- 
 placable relation, we would not have let you carry out 
 your own intentions. There is only one character in the 
 world fitted for my cousin David the one he filled on 
 that first evening that I ever saw him, thirteen years ago." 
 
 " When he held you in his arms, and had you for his 
 own," thought poor David, as his hungering eyes took in 
 all the beauty of her upturned face. " Ah, if shadows on 
 the wall could make you happy now !" 
 
 But he had sense enough, poor wretch, not to put his 
 thoughts into words ; and with lingering steps, and Es- 
 ther singing as she went, they passed along the shaded 
 garden-path towards the house. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 OLIVER AS HERO. 
 
 
 
 PATTY met them at the threshold of the house-place, 
 and put a note into Esther's hand. Mr. Carevv had given 
 it her a minute ago as she was standing at the orchard 
 gate. He had gone down along the path towards the 
 Riven Oak very quick, and had waited for no answer. 
 
 Esther glanced over the three lines that the note con- 
 tained, and her heart turned sick. " I can't read with you 
 as I promised I can't stay with you to-day, David ; I 
 am going out at once." 
 
 " Is there anything wrong, child ?* can I help you ? " 
 David asked, as he followed her back into the garden, 
 " Shall I take any answer from you to Mr. Carew? " 
 
 " There is no answer wanted. His regiment is ordered 
 suddenly away. He is going to leave Lynmouth." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " To-day ; in a few hours. Tell Aunt Engleheart not 
 to wait for me, please. I don't know when I shall be 
 back." 
 
 " Mr. Carew going ? child, shall I walk any of the 
 way with yon ? " 
 
 "No, no, no! Oh! David, I can't talk even to you. 
 This is harder than I can bear." And very quick and res- 
 olute, as had been her wont from a child when anything 
 moved her strongly, she passed out though the wicket- 
 gate into the orchard, and left David Engleheart standing, 
 helplessly bewildered, and alone. 
 
 Oliver Carew going to-day in a few hours! What 
 was David's sympathy, what was David's existence to her 
 now ? What should she remember of the wistful, kindly 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 1Q3 
 
 face looking after her as she went, or of anything in the 
 whole universe, save the one cruel fact of Oliver's leaving ? 
 Since last night all her world never very wide before 
 had narrowed into one desire Oliver's presence, the 
 flattery of Oliver's eyes and he was going. It was the 
 first time in her life that anything approaching to a real 
 blow had fallen upon her, and, as she had said to David, 
 it was harder than she could bear. So she never tried to 
 strengthen herself by reasoning on her misery, by think- 
 ing how many hundreds of lovers part and meet and part 
 again without dying, or how likely it was that Mr. Carew 
 might have got a summons to return to his regiment, and 
 would yet be back with her again in a month or two. She 
 just felt (as a good many of us have felt at Esther Flem- 
 ing's age) that a crueller fate had come to her than she 
 could by possibility live through ; succumbed to her first 
 trial much as she would have done if no Joan Engleheart 
 had ever trained her to strength of mind and self-reliance ; 
 walked white and trembling and broken-hearted along 
 the path where Oliver in his note had asked her to meet 
 him ; and when an abrupt turning in the woods brought 
 him suddenly to her side, held both her ,hands out in all 
 simplicity to meet him, and burst into tears. 
 
 " You are going ! Oliver, you are going to leave me ! " 
 
 Last night she had been shy and stately even after she 
 had accepted his suit ; but all restraint, all girlish pride, 
 was swept away from her heart now. She dared be the 
 first to speak ; she dared let him see the full extent of 
 her love for she was to lose him. 
 
 "It is very sudden, Esther, but when you know what 
 it is that calls me, you will see that I must go." 
 
 " Not to-day ? " 
 
 " Yes to-day ; in a few hours. Be strong for my sake, 
 Esther. Don't look so white and piteous, or I can never 
 bear to leave you." 
 
104 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Mr. Carew, as I have before remarked, was accustomed 
 to a very different walk of life to Esther's ; a walk where 
 sudden and startling emotions do not so much obtain as 
 among the middle classes of humble country people. He 
 had often seen young women faint in crowded assemblies, 
 had witnessed, perhaps, some scenes of another class, in 
 which tears had been called in as an effective auxiliary 
 weapon. He had never seen anything at all like this 
 stricken childish face, with its passion of sudden grief, 
 and I think it frightened him a little. He was as much 
 in Love with Esther as it was in his nature to be ; but, 
 really, if love at its onset entailed such dreadfully violent 
 scenes as these, love must be a much less pleasant thing 
 than he had taken it for. 
 
 "You will listen to reason, Esther, will you not ? You 
 won't look so miserable when you hear that it is absolute- 
 ly, imperatively necessary for me to go ? " 
 
 "No, Oliver" (the unerring tact of her sex telling her, 
 not exactly what he had thought, but what he would best 
 like her to do) " no, Oliver, I will try all I can not to 
 look miserable any more." And then she did try hard to 
 keep her lips from quivering, and stammered something 
 about the note having been given to her too suddenly, 
 and how she had run very fast through the heat, and she 
 was a little sick and faint, she thought, and and all this 
 foolishness would be over directly. 
 
 " Sit down by me here, and recover yourself, you poor 
 little silly Esther," cried Oliver, drawing her kindly to his 
 side. " Why, your hands are as cold as ice ! How will 
 you ever do for a soldier's wife, if you are so sensitive, 
 my foolish child ? " 
 
 As the color came back into her face he began to re- 
 member how wonderfuly handsome she was, and how 
 much she loved him, poor thing ! After all, this sudden 
 parting was very hard : it overcame him with quite a 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 1Q5 
 
 thrill of pain to think that months, that years might pass 
 before his lips should touch that fair young cheek again ; 
 and so he told her, in language you and I, reader, would 
 not think surpassingly eloquent, but which was to Esther 
 the sweetest and finest music she had ever heard. 
 
 " I thought, for a minute, you did not feel it as much 
 as I did," she said, presently. " When I came up first 
 you looked as calm and indifferent as though nothing had 
 happened." 
 
 " Do you think so now ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no ! " with all the bright blood in her face. 
 " I know now you would not go unless you were oblig- 
 ed." 
 
 " And can you guess what it is that really forces me to 
 leave the only thing in the world that could make me. 
 go away from you like this ? " 
 
 " You are going back to the army, I suppose. Esther's 
 ideas of military obligations were somewhat vague and 
 superficial. " Your colonel won't allow you to stay away 
 any longer." 
 
 " Esther, my regiment goes abroad the day after to- 
 morrow, and I go with it." 
 
 "Abroad? not, not " the whiteness spread around 
 her mouth again in an instant " not to India, Oliver? " 
 (This was at the time when the news of mutiny had just 
 reached home.) " Say only that you are not ordered to 
 India." 
 
 " We are ordered to Malta first, Esther," answered Ca- 
 rew, quietly. 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " Then, of course, we shall wait for further orders." 
 
 " Oliver " and she caught hold of his hand in both of 
 hers " tell me the truth, please. I can bear that far bet* 
 ter than any preparation. Shall you be sent to India ? " 
 
 " I hope so, Esther." 
 
 5* 
 
106 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "Ah! I understand." 
 
 " You promised to be strong," he whispered, drawing 
 her closer to his side ; " and you give way again already. 
 I am not in India yet, remember. I may not go there at 
 all if the rebellion is put down quicker than we think 
 for." 
 
 " But you hope to go ! That is the cruellest to me." 
 
 " Esther, should you love me better if I did not ? " 
 
 She was silent. She only clasped his hands closer; 
 looked up intently with her great imploring eyes into his 
 face. 
 
 u Should you love me better if I had not the feelings of 
 every other man in England ? if I did not long for my 
 own personal share in dealing out judgment upon those 
 cowardly wretches who have betrayed us ? " 
 
 " Oh, Oliver ! " 
 
 " Esther " and here Carew really spoke with emotion 
 " God knows that I love you truly better far than I 
 ever thought myself that I could love. Let me feel that 
 my engagement to you, instead of making me weaker, will 
 strengthen and help me in my duty ; that that I can't 
 well express what I mean ; and, indeed, the lad's voice 
 was choked with his own earnestness ; " but what I want 
 to say is, that you should let me go away from you full of 
 hope and spirit, and not thinking of your poor miserable 
 face here at home." 
 
 " Oliver, don't reason with me I can't help feeling as 
 I do ! " And then, as a child checked from its sorrow for 
 a moment, goes back, with sudden passion, to its first 
 plaint, she burst almost wildly into tears, and hid her face 
 down on his breast. 
 
 If she had never really loved him before ; if she had mis- 
 taken emotions roused by a handsome face and pleading 
 voice and sunset walks, and her own first girlish pleasure in 
 being admired ; if she had blindly received all this counter- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 of nothing but his own ability, to tbe simple, manly 
 heart that is mine so entirely ? " 
 
 And then Mr. Carew's letter of course, went through 
 quite an ovation of remorseful tenderness. It would 
 have been more truthful to say, " Should I prefer a man 
 who could be brave and handsome, and yet write grammat- 
 ically, and possess at least as much brains as myself into 
 the bargain ? " But Esther .did not want to be truthful ; 
 she wanted to make out the strongest possible case in 
 favor of the man she had promised to love ; and aided by 
 her imagination and still more, as I have said, by the 
 happy chance of her lover's absence, she succeeded in 
 doing so. 
 
 Indeed, this letter, after her first disappointment as to 
 its ability had past, was a strong tie that bound her afresh 
 to Oliver. A very young woman always believes she 
 finds some new clue to the character of the man who loves 
 her in the first letter she receives from his hand. Those 
 words, "my promised wife," "your attached till death," 
 and others of a like kind which occurred several times in 
 it, appealed to all that was deepest in Esther's heart. 
 Now that she saw these things written she felt how sol- 
 emn the tie was that held her to Oliver, how sacred were 
 the promises she had tacitly taken upon herself. She be- 
 gan to think, not so much of the handsome lad she had 
 known for three weeks among the moors, as of the man 
 who called her his promised wife, and who wrote himself 
 hers until death. And it is always a gain for a common- 
 place lover when he begins to lose his individuality ! 
 
 Esther had long held opinions of her own as to what 
 should constitute the character of a man she could love ; 
 and soon as Oliver, by dint of absence and imagina- 
 tion, was placed on the throne of this visionary ideal, tbe 
 girl's memory clung to him with passion passion of 
 which she had not experienced the slightest, the most 
 
112 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 passing throb in his presence. She made pilgrimages to 
 all the places where they had been together. She found, 
 or thought she found, the exact spot where Oliver Carew 
 first spoke to her of love, gathered up some withered pet- 
 als of the wild roses on the bank, and wore them next 
 her heart in a little locket from whence she was first 
 obliged to dispossess a lock of poor David Engleheart's 
 grizzled hair. She liked more than ever to spend her 
 evenings in the house-place, the only room in the house 
 that had known Oliver's presence, and to dream, sitting 
 there in the spot she had sat by him, that she could still 
 see his handsome face shining on her in the golden light. 
 Even to walk down to the hotel where he had lodged 
 and look up, shy and blushing, to the window where he 
 used to stand, made her pulses thrill strangely. To walk 
 alone and think of him among the odorous lanes at night 
 took her into a world of passion more subtle and deli- 
 cious than any to which word or look of Mr. Carew's had 
 had power to transport her when she was with him. 
 
 " I thought you would have pined a little for the knight 
 who loved and rode away," said Joan, spitefully to her 
 once ; " and instead of that you look better and happier 
 than ever. I am glad to see you are so tough-hearted, 
 Esther, after all the nonsense David has talked since you 
 were four years old about your sensitiveness and your 
 warm affections and your painful depths of feeling." 
 
 " Why should' I grieve for Mr. Carew ? " said Esther, 
 rather hypocritically. " Surely, Joan, you would not 
 have me break my heart for every well-looking stranger 
 one chances to meet upon our moors? If Mr. Carew 
 liked to ride away, I am sure it is much better that I 
 shouldn't trouble my head any more about him." 
 
 Partly because he had himself desired that their en- 
 gagement should be secret, and partly influenced by her 
 own vague terror of Joan's tender mercies toward all 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 113 
 
 lovers, Esther had told Oliver to send her letters under 
 cover to poor David. Miss Engleheart's suspicions as to 
 the existence of any positive engagement were, therefore, 
 suspicions only. But she had sufficiently sharp intuitions, 
 even in love matters, to tell her that Esther's placid face, 
 after the terrible paleness of the first two days passed off, 
 betokened confidence at least in Carew's good faith ; and 
 the extreme lowness of David's spirits, and the visible 
 change in his demeanor towards Esther, strengthened her 
 in her belief that not only was the girl's heart won, but 
 that David himself was perfectly conscious of the despe- 
 rate folly of his own long-cherished dreams. 
 
 This was precisely the state of things at which Miss 
 Joan had desired to arrive ; and for several weeks after 
 Oliver's departure she was unusually lenient in her con- 
 duct to Esther, never questioning her as to her lonely 
 musings on the garden terrace or the moors, or the ab- 
 sent and distracted way in which she went through the 
 daily routine of her work at home. But when, gradually, 
 David began, as of old, to be the girl's companion ; when, 
 instead of Esther sitting alone in the starlight on the ter- 
 race, David got back to her side as he had used to do 
 before Carew ever came ; when long conversations and lin- 
 gering walks and evening readings became once more the 
 staple of David Engleheart's life, Miss Joan's milder feel- 
 ings underwent a sudden and sharp revulsion. Esther 
 was making David her confidant ; it was not for him but 
 for Oliver that the girl's face flushed up as she talked to 
 him. David, poor fool ! was listening for another to all 
 the tender nonsense he had coveted to hear at first-hand, 
 and would end by becoming more hopelessly besotted by 
 his ridiculous passion than ever: perhaps, if Carew did 
 prove false, would end by winning Esther, not to love 
 him Joan never thought that but to accept his hon- 
 est love and ugly face in exchange for the false fair strang- 
 er she had failed to win. 
 
114 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 With Joan to think was to act. She did not confine 
 herself to acrimonious playfulness with Esther and scarcely- 
 veiled contempt for the besotted fool David ; she resolved 
 to part them. Mrs. Tudor had already invited Esther to 
 spend some months of the coming winter with her in 
 Bath ; and so, without any discussion of the matter even 
 with her mother, Joan wrote and proposed to her aunt 
 that Esther should join her at once at the seaside. " Her 
 visit will, of course, be for three months, as you pro- 
 posed," Miss Engleheart wrote ; " and if a month of it 
 is spent at the seaside with you now she must return to 
 us one month earlier in the spring. The change to a gay 
 watering-place will be a treat to the girl after her life 
 here, and I will pay her travelling expenses from Wey- 
 mouth to Bath." 
 
 Mrs. Tudor was not unfrequently amiable when it in- 
 volved no difficulty of any kind to herself to be so. After 
 all, she wanted the girl more in her seaside lodgings than 
 at Bath. She could go to market instead of Wilson ; 
 she could carry her air-cushion to the beach ; she could 
 play piquet of an evening. The two first offices Mistress 
 Wilson Aunt Tudor's own maid performed with ex- 
 ceeding sulkiness (and all demonstrations of nerves on 
 the part of Wilson made Mrs. Tudor miserable ; where 
 should she find such an inestimable, faithful creature, one 
 so versed in wigs and dies and paint and scandals, at only 
 twenty-five pounds a year again?) for cards and cards 
 in some shape, even without playing for money, were a 
 necessary aliment to Aunt Tudor's life she was reduced 
 to the doctor's wife when, with professional kindness, that 
 lady would come and sit with her an hour or two of an 
 evening. Yes, Esther would be a decided relief. Mrs. 
 Tudor wrote back quite an affectionate response to her 
 niece's appeal ; and Joan, without any note of warning 
 or preparation, announced to Esther at once that she 
 should pack up her things and start. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. H5 
 
 It was a moment of triumphant glory to Miss Engle- 
 heart when she broke out with the sudden news to David. 
 He was sitting in his little sanctum in the sinking autumn 
 evening with Esther ; the futile pretext of tying flies to 
 occupy his hands, but his eyes those great foolish eyes 
 of his, as Joan would call them, under the evil influence 
 that possessed her ! those foolish, and not at all handsome 
 eyes of his, fixed with their accustomed mute adoration 
 upon his companion's face. Esther had not, as you know, 
 one particle of a coquette in her nature ; and of all liv- 
 ing creatures she would least have led astray poor simple, 
 trusting David. But it is difficult to speak of the thing 
 nearest one's heart without some unconscious softening 
 of the voice ; to speak of love and of a distant lover 
 without some of the' incense originally meant for the ob- 
 ject of supreme worship shedding its dangerous sweet- 
 ness upon the senses of the unhappy neophyte who is 
 humbly playing his little part of assisting at the altar. Es- 
 ther was thinking wholly of Oliver, and not one whit of 
 David, as blushing and eager, she knelt by his side and 
 repeated to him some solemn unimportant bit of intelli- 
 gence out of Carew's last letter ; but I must confess there 
 was enough in the beauty of her flushed face, in the child- 
 ish grace of her familiar attitude ; enough in the uncon- 
 scious charm of her perfect confidence and the guilty start 
 of poor David on suddenly hearing Joan's vicious snap at 
 the handle of the door, to justify all that lady's precon- 
 ceived visions as to the peril of this prolonged and un- 
 checked intimacy. 
 
 " Esther, you will go to Aunt Tudor to-rnorrow morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " Cousin ? " 
 
 " She is at the seaside, and wants you. Shall Patty 
 iron out your lilac muslin, or will vou travel in one of 
 your cottons ? " 
 
116 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Oh, Joan ? " 
 
 " Make up your mind quick. I am going, to pack your 
 things." 
 
 "But, Joan, it is very sudden." 
 
 The wrench of parting from Countisbury, from all that 
 remained to her of Oliver, made Esther's voice choke ; 
 as to David, he sat simply speechless and stupefied, un- 
 conscious what further vials of wrath Joan might be 
 about to pour upon his head. Just when he was begin- 
 ning to get a little happy again, to have at least two or 
 three hours of daily confidences from Esther you must 
 remember there are human beings, even men, who would 
 rather be the confidant of a passion than go for nothing 
 in it, would rather be talked to about another lover than 
 not bear any mention of love at all for this woman's 
 inexorable sharpness to have dragged his poor secrets to 
 light again, and for her to be avenged upon him thus ! 
 He could scarce have felt more hopelessly miserable had 
 she said, "David Engleheart you will marry me to- 
 morrow morning." Indeed, I almost think, of the two, 
 it would have crushed him less : provided, always that 
 Esther might have been present at the wedding. 
 
 "You will start, by the coach, at five to-morrow morn- 
 ing, and get to Wey mouth in time for a late tea ; " Joan's 
 voice sounded quite genial and good-humored. " Noth- 
 ing pleases Aunt Thalia more than to find people don't 
 want to eat, so I'll put you up some hard-boiled eggs and 
 sandwiches for the journey. What are you looking so 
 odd for, child ? I thought it would be a treat for you to 
 get away a month or two sooner from home, and see a 
 little gaiety at a place like Weymouth." 
 
 " I like home better than Aunt Tudor, Joan. I don't 
 care about gaieties at all ; and if you please I will write 
 myself and tell her so ! " Her voice broke again. 
 
 Miss Joan seated herself with that peculiar angular 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. H7 
 
 sharpness that always betokened the advent of a few 
 forcible opinions, and looked straight into David Engle- 
 heart's face. " David, shall I tell you what ails the girl ? " 
 she remarked with perfect callousness to her victim's ner- 
 vous writhes and deprecating gestures. " Shall I tell you 
 what ails our little Esther ? " 
 
 " Joan, if you please, I would rather " 
 
 "Our little Esther fancies herself in love with Mr. 
 Oliver Carew." 
 
 There was an awfully-guilty silence. Esther turned 
 her hot face away towards the window ; David caught 
 himself fast by the cuff of his sleeve in one of his own 
 fish-hooks, and blushed like a girl. 
 
 " In love with Mr. Oliver Carew. I don't say that she 
 has made any confidences on the subject to you, what- 
 ever I may think " dire visions of lonely days to come 
 rose before David at the emphasis of that one word * 
 "but I am just going to tell you both the result of such 
 dreams on a girl like Esther. You are not really in love 
 with the man, child." Esther turned round quickly, and 
 with an indignant denial half bursting, from her lips. 
 " If you were, I should speak differently. You think you 
 care for him wonderfully because he's the first man you 
 have ever spoken to ; and if you were to go on dreaming 
 .and loitering away your life, and reading sentimental 
 poetry, and making confidences with David here, you 
 might become so in truth What is the result? You 
 will have to battle with life, will enter upon it weary- 
 hearted, dull, spiritless all that young women are who 
 have gone through the disappointment of a first foolish 
 passion." 
 
 " But, Joan " 
 
 " I know what you would say, Esther, that Carew may 
 return and hold to whatever idle word now stands be- 
 tween you. I hope he will do so, if he is a man of hon- 
 
118 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 orable feeling and has sufficient money to maintain you. 
 But your remaining fooling away your time here at 
 Countisbury can have no influence, that I know of, over 
 the young man's fidelity. He has gone to Malta; you 
 say he is to go to India. Well, India is a great way off, 
 and a great many things may happen there." 
 
 " Oh, cousin ! " 
 
 " I am not thinking of death, my dear. Mr. Carew did 
 not look to me at all like one of those whom the gods 
 love. I am thinking of all the temptation to change 
 which must beset a young, light-hearted, and, I should 
 say, not over strong-headed lad like this abroad. A lad, 
 moreover, who is only bound by the most flimsy and 
 nominal engagement to any one at home." 
 
 Esther's eyes glowed with a fire that Joan understood 
 thoroughly ; but the poor child was forced either to be 
 sflent or to betray her own secret ; and so Miss Engle- 
 heart stood master of the field. David, paralyzed, as 
 usual, by the suddenness of the onset, had never attempt- 
 ed to speak since Joan entered the room. As he listened 
 to her opinion of the likely stability of Esther's love it 
 did occur to him too that his cousin's decisions, harsh and 
 unfeeling though they seemed, were not altogether irra- 
 tional. If the girl's absence from Countisbury were, in 
 truth, to uproot her fancy for Oliver, David felt that he 
 could bring himself to bear it, even though he had, single- 
 handed, to parry his cousin's attentions until her return. 
 
 Joan read something of what was passing through his 
 mind upon his face. " I really think you might try to 
 open your lips, David," she cried harshly. " It does look 
 so foolish for you, a man forty-two years of age, to sit 
 blushing and fidgeting like a school-girl when these things 
 are talked of. Do you, or do you not, think that Esther 
 should waste her life among us old people, and dreaming 
 dreams of folly, when she has a chance of mixing with 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. H9 
 
 the world and improving herself? Have the goodness, 
 for once, to give a straight-forward opinion." 
 
 "I I don't think Esther ought to offend Mrs. Tudor," 
 said David ; but he felt the baseness of his own motives 
 too keenly to look in Esther's eyes as he spoke. " You 
 might have planned her visit less suddenly, Joan, but I 
 can't be so selfish as to wish her not to go." 
 
 " Do you hear David's opinion, Esther ? " 
 
 " Yes, Joan, I hear." 
 
 " And what decision are you coming to, may I ask ? If 
 you are going to write to Aunt Tudor you must set about 
 it at once." 
 
 " I am not going to write to Aunt Tudor," said Esther, 
 deliberately. " Your advice, both of you, is so exceeding- 
 ly sensible that I have no choice but to abide by it." 
 
 " And you will travel in your lilac muslin ? " 
 
 "If you please." 
 
 " Aunt Tudor would be sure to make some unpleasant 
 lemark if you arrived in cotton, and, as you've worn it 
 already, you may as well travel in your muslin as in anoth- 
 er. Lend me your watch, David, if you please. I must 
 go and see to the hard-boiled eggs at once." 
 
 "Poor^David is fast bound," said Esther, coming up 
 kindly to his side. " Cousin, what in the world have you 
 been doing with your flies ? " All our beautiful green drakes 
 and hackles wound up into a tight little ball, and two 
 hooks imbedded fast in your sleeve ! Oh, you absent old 
 David ! " 
 
 " I was not absent, child," he whispered, when Miss 
 Joan had left them. " I was " David did not tell stones 
 well "I was feeling for you, Esther. It must be a grief 
 to you to leave all the places that remind you of your 
 short happiness." 
 
 " And yet you advised me to go." 
 
 ** I couldn't find it in my conscience to say that you 
 
120 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 should run any risk of offending Mrs. Tudor ; besides, it. 
 is better for you to have change and occupation than re- 
 main here." 
 
 " Yes, I know it. Oliver 'would say so too : that is why 
 I have brought myself to go so suddenly. He may be 
 away for years. I must do other things than dream and 
 regret and look back during all that time. I must im- 
 prove myself, and see more of life, and grow wiser and 
 stronger for his sake." 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " And, you know, David," (she said this with exceed- 
 ing deliberation and certainty,) "it is childish in the ex- 
 treme to care so much for places : no change of scene or 
 people can really have any influence on one's feelings 
 when they are very true and deep like mine. Oliver will 
 be quite as much with me wherever I go as he is here at 
 Countisbury." 
 
 And quite late that night, when Miss Joan had releas- 
 ed her from her packing, and when all te house was still, 
 Esther stole away through the dim woods to the foot of 
 that sycamore where she had parted from Carew, and 
 cried beneath it, and apostrophized it, and, I think, press- 
 ed her lips upon its bark with warmth much more credit- 
 ble to her eighteen years than to her philosophy. 
 
 " My love is only a foolish dream that time will wake 
 me from ! Change of scene will bring me to be untrue 
 to one word that I have promised ! Oh, Oliver ! are 
 you thinking of me now ? Oliver, I never knew before 
 how much I loved you ! " 
 
 At that particular moment Mr. Carew was looking in 
 the face of the prettiest girl in Valetta, and assuring her 
 that he had never before danced with any one whose 
 step, both in the waltz and the polka-mazurka, suited his 
 own so exactly. To a superficial observer of human hap- 
 piness it would sometimes seem rather a matter for rejoic 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 121 
 
 ing than regret that one half of the world can never know, 
 with minute and circumstantial accuracy, what the other 
 half does. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 A PHARISEE, comme il faut. 
 
 JOAN ENGLEHEART was right when she said that Mrs. 
 Tudor did not like seeing people eat. But Mrs. Tudor, in 
 spite of this little peculiarity, and several others of a like 
 nature, was not a mean woman. She was too intensely 
 selfish, too avid of the good opinion of others, to be 
 essentially mean. In what she could be stingy, unseen, 
 she was stingy ; in liberality that showed she was liberal, 
 liberal, occasionally, to excess. 
 
 " I have too much feeling for my own happiness," Mrs. 
 Tudor would say, when a handsome parson or fashionable 
 physician pleaded some case of misery to her. " I have 
 always been led away by my heart too much for my 
 own good, perhaps." And then, notwithstanding her 
 threescore years and ten, the recollection of so much self- 
 sacrifice and vicarious suffering would make Mrs. Tudor 
 weep veritable tears, but promptly dried with the 
 delicacy of a woman who, though she feels, does not 
 mean to parade that -feeling to the world ; and who re- 
 members whereof the bloom of her cheeks is made ! 
 
 She never subscribed to public charities even with the 
 seductions of standing in print among lords and mar- 
 chionesses. " The widow's mite should be given in secret" 
 was one of Mrs. Tudor's axioms. " Let the great and rich 
 give away in high places. Enough for me to cast my 
 poor offering into the treasury unseen ; " with only the 
 6 
 
122 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 handsome parson or fashionable doctor to act as recording . 
 angel. 
 
 What will you have ? Twenty pounds a year among 
 printed donations of twice, thrice, four times that amount 
 go for nothing in the charitable city where Mrs. Tudor 
 lived. But twenty pounds a year divided into widows' 
 mites in private life keep up a handsome reputation for 
 unostentatious alms-giving. Mrs. Tudor knew her gene- 
 ration, and was wise with its wisdom. Every one said 
 Mrs. Tudor was & charming old woman : I think every 
 one, except her family and dependents, really liked her. 
 When she stabbed your absent friends she did it with a 
 delicacy that belongs only to long and refined experience. 
 The coarse blow of a common assassin for ever reminds 
 you that if you too, have a purse, and take your eye from 
 him, you shall fall. Mrs. Tudor always perfbrmed her 
 cruel office out of the depth of her regard for her imme- 
 diate listener. "With your dear girls visiting at her 
 house, should I do right to conceal it from you ? " " As 
 the pastor and guardian of your flock, ought you not to 
 be told ? " " With your back garden close upon their 
 area, should I should I be a friend if I remained 
 silent?" And all the slaughtered character forthwith 
 rose up in the light of necessary victims offered up by 
 Mrs. Tudor at the altar of Spartan principle and friend- 
 ship. 
 
 Her flattery was as good as her scandal. The same 
 delicate flavor of well-bred discrimination made it pala- 
 table, even in inordinately large doses. To tell a woman 
 of forty that she is young and charming would be simply^ 
 gross ; but to say, " My dear friend, I have something I 
 really grieve to talk to you about : I don't know how you 
 will take it, but as an old woman who had done with life 
 before you began it, I feel that I must speak. All the 
 world is talking of that^poor fellow's evident infatuation 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 123 
 
 for you. He is but a boy spare him ! tell his mother 
 to send him to London anything. You are not offend- 
 ed, now, are you ? No ; I knew you could not be ! " To 
 say this is to possess a charming refined nature even 
 when saying disagreeable things. This was Mrs. Tudor's 
 style of flattery. 
 
 She called herself old ; and she was very old, even for 
 the city of sempiternelles where she lived ; but she held 
 old age at bay more stoutly I really believe than any 
 other woman of her age extant. She was a model of good 
 making-up. I can never see the justice of condemning, 
 wholesale, all women who paint. Condemn them utterly 
 if they paint badly ; but give homage due to all success- 
 ful works of real art. Mrs. Tudor was extraordinarily 
 well done. Her hair was a dark iron-grey, not any of 
 those blacks and chestnuts that every shifting light can 
 convert into prisms of red, green, and purple ; her eye- 
 brows were marked by one dark yet perfectly delicate 
 line ; her cheeks bore the faintest roseate tinge that the 
 genius of Paris (assisted by after processes of her own) 
 could supply ; her teeth, her figure, were all triumphs of 
 imitative art. The most difficult part of the picture, and 
 one in which so many inferior artists fail, the old, wrinkled, 
 sapless hands were never shown without gloves. I re- 
 peat it, Mrs. Tudor was well done ; and whether she, or 
 Wilson, or the mere artificers from whence her charms 
 came in gross, possessed the greater genius, I hold that 
 the result of so much thought, and choice, and patient, 
 unfaltering every-day labor was a thing to be respected. 
 
 But cultivation is required for all high taste in art. 
 When Esther Fleming first found herself again in Mrs. 
 Tudor's presence, the vision of a painted and galvanized 
 corpse tottering forward to meet her with deathly spright- 
 liness carne upon her with even more awful clearness than 
 it had used to do when she was a child. All the painful 
 
124 THE, ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 processes by which Mrs. Tudor's rejuvenescence had been 
 won the dentistry, the dyeing, the daily paddings and 
 powderings and paintings for well-nigh half a century, 
 were mysteries too occult for Esther's mind to unravel) 
 or even marvel over. She liked her Aunt Engleheart's 
 face, white and still as death itself; all passion and un- 
 rest quenched out of it by long years of poverty and Miss 
 Joan. She liked to see that old face, with the venerable 
 white hair and the little close-frilled cap, as the evening 
 light fell on it through the branches of the thorn-tree by 
 the porch ; to see the folded withered hands lying peace- 
 fully at rest ; the whole little, worn, bent form just as 
 though waiting, patient and quiescent for death to come. 
 This was the poetry of extreme, helpless old age ; and 
 Esther often at such times had spoken under her breath, 
 half in awe of the frail still life so barely withheld from 
 the final stillness of death itself. But Mrs. Tudor ! Mrs. 
 Tudor, sprightly and roseate and alert ! All the girl's old 
 childish horror of "something coming off" rushed across 
 her mind as she remembered she would have to kiss Mrs. 
 Tudor's cheek ; and every one of the little affectionate 
 speeches she had been preparing on her journey forsook 
 her memory. 
 
 Aunt Thalia's warmth of heart was equal, however, to 
 all occasions even domestic ones. "Esther my dear, 
 dear child ! " arid then, much to Esther's relief, the great- 
 est difficulty of meeting was got over by Mrs. Tudor her- 
 self depositing a very long but circumspect kiss upon her 
 cheek. " So grown I should scarce have recognized you ! 
 Wilson, has not Miss Fleming grown ? Two shillings for 
 bringing you from the railway ? Certainly not. Esther 
 love, I insist upon your not paying more than eighteen- 
 pence ; and let him carry up Miss Fleming's luggage to her 
 apartment before he's paid. Wilson, the small upper room 
 that faces the sea. I knew my dear niece would not mind 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 125 
 
 mounting a little high," she whispered to Esther, as Wil- 
 son, very rustling and dignified, marched out of the room. 
 " Yon princess in black silk would have been sour to me 
 for a month if I had dared dispossess her of hers ; and 
 my dear Esther's little feet are too young to know wheth- 
 er they run up one or two flights of stairs at a time." 
 
 Mrs. Tudor embraced her again, but without more kiss- 
 es : these risks were only incurred under the indispensable 
 press of affection at coming and going : and then Esther re- 
 marked that she did not care at all where she slept, and 
 would be very sorry indeed to put Wilson out in any way. 
 
 " And how is my dear sister? Sit down, my love, and 
 unloose your bonnet-strings. How is my dear sister Ce- 
 celia? You wouldn't have a glass of wine, Esther, after 
 your journey, now would you ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! Aunt Thalia. I never take wine." 
 
 " Dear child ! so natural ! You are very little altered, 
 love, except in height. I take an early dinner, you must 
 know, Esther; my doctor here desires it, and so I obey, 
 but it breaks in upon my habits sadly ; then about seven 
 I drink tea. Now what will you have ? " Mrs. Tudor 
 looked extraordinarily genial and hospitable. " What will 
 you have ? They can get you a chop in a minute." And 
 she stretched her hand out, figuratively, towards the 
 bell. 
 
 " I would much rather have nothing but tea," said Es- 
 ther. " I am not hungry I mean not very I had my 
 dinner on the road." 
 
 "Now do you mean it, my love ? do you positively mean 
 it ? I will never forgive you if you don't make yourself 
 perfectly at home while you are with me. Well, then, we 
 will have tea at once. And, Wilson," to that potentate 
 who had now re-entered the room, " bid Mrs. Sims send 
 up the cold duck, if you please ; it will be just the thing for 
 my niece after her long journey. Wilson will take you to 
 
126 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 your room, Esther. I would go myself, only that my good 
 doctor tells me I must refrain as much as possible from 
 walking upstairs." 
 
 And then Mrs. Wilson, condescendingly bland, but still 
 with the kind of manner which she, as a servant, natural- 
 ly felt to Esther as a poor relation, conducted her to her 
 room on the third floor a three-cornered apartment with 
 a sloping roof, a bed the size of a coffin, and a window 
 from whence you had a very nice side-view of the sea if 
 you sat upon the floor. 
 
 " You find your aunt a good deal changed, no doubt, 
 Miss Fleming ? " remarked the lady's-maid, fidgeting about 
 the strings of one of Esther's cases, but obviously only 
 giving herself a pretext to stop and talk. " Even I, that 
 am with her constant, can see it only too plain. She's 
 pitched away extraordinary the last three months, miss." 
 
 Esther could see no particular change, she answered. 
 She thought, perhaps, that her Aunt Thalia's was not a 
 face to show illness much. 
 
 "Perhaps so," said Wilson, drily. " Appearances are 
 deceitful; but then you must remember I see -missus at 
 all times, Miss Fleming. Thinner ! Why, bless you, she's 
 gone away to half what she were before her last attack. 
 I've took in all her dresses without her knowing it ; and 
 she thinks, sometimes, she's getting stout again, and tells 
 the doctor so ; but I know better. I wish some of them, 
 or some one belonging to her, would tell her a little truth 
 about her health, Miss Fleming, and then, perhaps she 
 wouldn't kill herself dressing and racketing and sitting 
 up late at night as she do kill herself, and I may truly 
 say, kill all those who have to wait upon her too ! " 
 
 Mrs. Wilson pressed her hand with much feeling upon 
 the region of her left lung, and laid her head on one side 
 with a sigh. It was evident that to her own mind her 
 twenty-five pounds a year were no equivalent whatever to 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 127 
 
 the disadvantages of being in Mrs. Tudor's intimate em- 
 ploy and favor. 
 
 "What sort of illness has she had?" she proceeded, 
 when Esther had inquired into the nature of her mistress's 
 last attack ; " why you don't mean to say your aunt nev- 
 er wrote you word that she'd had a stroke ? " 
 
 "A stroke!" interrupted Esther, looking grave and 
 shocked. " Oh, Wilson ! you surely can't mean ? " 
 
 "Yes, I do miss. I mean a stroke of paralysis. I 
 lived with the old Countess of Davenport up to her 
 death, and I knew directly I saw your aunt's face she was 
 going to be taken like her ladyship. She was a mistress, 
 if you like, Miss Fleming. Thirty-six pounds a year and 
 the best of perquisites, and a under maid kept on pur- 
 pose to set up and unlace the dresses at night ; because 
 her ladyship said from the first, c Mrs. Wilson,' her 
 ladyship says to me, C I see that your 'ealths delicate, 
 and '" 
 
 "And Aunt Thalia, Wilson? Please tell me about 
 Aunt Thalia's illness." 
 
 " Well, Miss Fleming, it was after an At Home at our 
 own house ; and missus and me was putting away some 
 of the ornaments, when she cried out suddent, 'Wilson ! ' 
 and tottered back a step or two, and fell on the sofa 
 o ! " And Mrs. Wilson went through a little impromptu 
 rehearsal, with great gusto upon the coffin bed ! " I knew 
 what it was in a minute, miss the thick way of speak- 
 ing, and dull eyes, and stiff hands, and all the rest of it 
 and I got her undressed ; and Miss Whitty, the the 
 person who lodges underneath us, you know sent for 
 the doctor. And he knew what it was, Miss Fleming, 
 just as well as I did ; and Mrs. Tudor, she knew what it 
 was, too ; but we made light of the whole matter; and 
 none of us ever called the attack by its right name, and 
 we don't now. When missus speaks about it, she says, 
 
128 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 * That time I was a little faint and giddy, you know, 
 Wilson.' And I say the same ; and so must you, of 
 course, if your aunt should happen to mention it." 
 
 "And Aunt Thalia goes out to parties as much as 
 ever ? " cried Esther. " How can she care about them 
 after such a fearful warning ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " ejaculated JVlrs. Wilson, piously, and suddenly 
 remembering the pain above her heart. "Ah! there's 
 no saying what those that belong to this world wouldn't 
 do to escape out of themselves and their own tempers 
 and fancies ! I agreed to accept your aunt's situation on 
 the highest of recommendations, Miss Fleming. The 
 Dean of Sarum's lady (who has known me since I was 
 that high, and all my family, too,) begged me herself to 
 take it ; and though I had never lived out of the first of 
 establishments before, I was willing to do so because of 
 all your aunt said about my having my time to myself. 
 Time ! why, I'd sooner live with the Countess of Daven- 
 port again on half the wages, and wait on the three young 
 ladies besides, than be where I am, Miss Fleming. Morn- 
 ing, noon, and night, I haven't a moment to myself: your 
 aunt wants a nurse, miss, as well as a maid. And though 
 I'd do as much as my strength allowed for a fellow- 
 creature" Mrs. Wilson assumed the air of a trampled 
 but forgiving martyr "a fellow-creature in real illness, 
 I don't consider myself called upon to set up o' nights 
 for people that are out at routs and card-parties, and then 
 to have to make their sick-messes, and carry their air- 
 cushion, and put up with their humors by day ! Not 
 without extra wages, Miss Fleming ! I read my Bible, 
 and I hope I perform my 'umble duties as a Christian, 
 but I know what service is." - 
 
 " And this is the woman we have been told is such a 
 treasure," thought Esther, when Mrs. Wilson, after this 
 Jittle exposition of her opinions respecting her own worth, 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 129 
 
 had left her alone. "Her great, lonely, fine-furnished 
 rooms, and this woman, with her heartlessness and dis- 
 content, are the nearest approach to a home that Aunt 
 Thalia has. I am glad to think Mrs. Engleheart will die 
 poor and quiet and unpretending at Countisbury, and 
 have Joan, with all her faults to wait upon her to the 
 last." 
 
 She felt her heart almost warm towards Mrs. Tudor 
 when she joined her again down stairs. There was some- 
 thing within her that instinctively recognized and respect- 
 ed the courage of this old woman of the world in neither 
 shrinking from, nor seeking sympathy under, the dark 
 shadow that had fallen upon her. If it was courage 
 wrongly shown (cards, rouge, parties, instead of calm 
 meditation and solemn retrospect,) it was courage still ; 
 the same stout nerve that had upheld Joan Engleheart 
 during so many years of unpitied, unassisted poverty; the 
 same strong, enduring power that, simple and youthful 
 though she was, lay dormant in Esther's own breast. 
 Yes, she looked at the old bland face that had met the 
 forerunner of a fearful death just with' the same well- 
 bred insouciance it would have shown to any other dis- 
 agreeable but unavoidable visitor, and, for the first time 
 in her life, felt that she and Mrs. Tudor were of one kin. 
 
 " You distress me, iny love, by eating so little. Really 
 you ought to have something more substantial after your 
 long journey a poached egg, now? You are quite 
 sure ? I meant you to have some cold duck, and, oh, rny 
 dear Esther ! what do you think ? " 
 
 Esther, of course, expressed her inability to have any 
 idea whatever. 
 
 "I asked the woman of the house to send it up, and 
 she informed rne my maid had eaten it for her own early 
 tea the whole of one wing, and some delicious slices 
 on the back. And she knows that if there's one thing 
 
130 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 more than another that is likely to tempt me it's a morsel 
 of cold duck." 
 
 Esther laughed. " Wilson knows what is likely to 
 tempt herself, no doubt," she remarked. " Most servants 
 do." 
 
 " She is," Mrs. Tudor lowered her voice, and looked 
 with meaning (as confidential persons upon the stage in- 
 variably look round, but fail to see the infernal villain 
 crouched under the pastebord portico, at least two yards 
 and a half from their side) towards the door : " she is the 
 greediest, the falsest, the most rapacious, odious woman 
 that I verily believe ever drew breath even amidst servants. 
 I keep her because the Dean of Sarum's wife recommended 
 her, and because she understands her business, and does not 
 rob me very outrageously; but her appetite ! Oh, my dear 
 child ! I often think what I have to go through at the 
 hands of all my maids is my punishment, in the flesh, for 
 caring about worldly vanities in my old age. And, speak- 
 ing of vanities, where did you have that dress made you 
 have on? not in the wilds of Devonshire, I am sure." 
 
 " Yes, Aunt Thalia, in the wilds of Devonshire. Joan 
 and I made it from the pattern of the white one I had at 
 school." 
 
 " Ah, dear, good Joan ! " remarked Mrs. Tudor, evi- 
 dently just remembering her niece's "existence. "Dear, 
 good, useful, industrious Joan ! how is she ? and my sis- 
 ter? You have not told me one word yet, love, as to 
 how my dear sister is looking ? " 
 
 "Aunt Engleheart never seems to change, to me," an- 
 swered Esther. " She looks just as weak and pale and 
 quiet as she did when I first went to Countisbury ; but 
 she can dress herself still; and twice this summer she 
 has walked to church and back." 
 
 " Poor dear Cecelia ! She was never very strong. I 
 should like extremely to go and see her if I could ; but I 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 131 
 
 am afraid the excitement would be too much for her. 
 We were always so passionately attached to each 
 other!" They had not met, or sought to meet, for the 
 last twenty years. " She was blonde, you know, and I 
 brune ; and the difference in age used not to show then 
 as it must now. Blondes always fade all at once when 
 they do fade. That is a dedommagement to dark women, 
 my love ; for, looking old when they are young, they wear 
 better when their first beaute du diable is over. How old 
 are you, Esther? I forget fifteen, sixteen ? Which 
 is it?" 
 
 " Oh, Aunt Thalia ! I am past eighteen. And Joan 
 and David both think I look two or three years older 
 than that." 
 
 "David! What is David? Whom are you talking 
 of, child ? I thought you had no acquaintance among 
 those savage wilds." 
 
 " But David Engleheart, ma'am ; my cousin David ! " 
 
 " Never say * ma'am ' again, Esther, I beg. It does not 
 sound vulgar from you, but it is old-fashioned and pro- 
 vincial. Call me your Aunt Tudor, or your Aunt 
 Thalia, or even Mrs. Tudor, but never ma'am. Will 
 you remember ? " 
 
 Yes, Aunt Thalia." 
 
 " And now, if you have really eaten as much as you 
 wish, love " (Esther had eaten nothing,) we will go and 
 finish our chat by the open window. Yes, sit on the 
 footstool. I like to see you so ; the pose is good. Put 
 your left arm a little lower, and turn your face up towards 
 me. That is right. Do you know you are really very 
 like your great-grandfather ? You have just poor dear 
 Garratt's eyes, but you have not the family chin. There 
 you are a Vincent. Your poor mother was a pretty little 
 woman, but without the slightest style. Do you re- 
 member her ? " 
 
132 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Only a little," answered Esther. " I remember she 
 was very white and tired-looking, and hardly ever took 
 me in her arms or had me in the sitting-room to play with 
 her ; but that is all. I remember my father much the 
 best." 
 
 " Quite right, my dear Esther ; quite right. Your 
 mother's family were very nice people very nice peo- 
 ple indeed in their own way ; but there is no occasion for 
 us to remember them. I am glad to find you growing up 
 such a complete Fleming. When I saw you last I was 
 really distressed about your voice and manners, but you 
 have immensely improved now. School has softened you 
 down." 
 
 "I am glad you think so," said Esther. "I was afraid 
 I learnt very little for all the money it cost. I am not 
 brilliant, Aunt Thalia. Years ago I used to think I 
 should be a genius, able to write books and do all sorts of 
 things. I rate my own abilities much more truly now." 
 
 " I did not send you to school to learn lessons, Esther, 
 but to acquire style and manner. You have learnt quite 
 enough, I have no doubt, with Joan at home. What you 
 want now is to know how to hide your learning and be 
 agreeable in the world. Men don't like clever women ; 
 always remember that. Softness, liveliness, grace, are the 
 qualities you must strive after." 
 
 Esther thought of Oliver, of her never-ceasing, uneasy 
 sense of her own superiority to him, and sighed. " I am 
 sure you are right there," she remarked. " I often wish 
 I was more soft and yielding than I am." 
 
 "Then you wish a very foolish thing, let me tell you, 
 Esther," said Mrs. Tudor. " Seem as soft as you choose, 
 but thank Providence for having made you really strong. 
 You will want all your strength some day, depend upon 
 it. A graceful, feminine manner, and perfect reliance in 
 herself are what a young woman needs to obtain success 
 in society." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 133 
 
 " I don't care a bit for success in society. I wish to 
 have real success I mean I wish to be really lovable." 
 
 Mrs. Tudor looked hard at her great-niece's candid, 
 flushed face, and laughed. " You are full of sentiment, I 
 can see," she observed, " in spite of Joan having had you 
 in her hands so long. Wait until you have seen a little 
 more of the world, and you will become like the other 
 young people of this generation like your friends the 
 Miss Dashwoods, for example. I wonder knowing them 
 has not put all romantic fancies out of your head ! " 
 
 "But Jane ought to be very romantic just now." Es- 
 tner felt somewhat conscience-stricken as she put forth 
 this remark. " I suppose you know she is engaged ? " 
 
 "To whom?" 
 
 " To to Mr. Chichester, I believe. I know nothing of 
 him." 
 
 " What are you getting red for, child?" 
 
 " I am sure I don't know, Aunt Thalia. It is a dread- 
 fully foolish habit of mine. I I do wish I could get 
 over it," Miss Fleming added, indignantly, and then she 
 blushed crimson indeed. 
 
 " No sign of modesty looks ill in a young person," said 
 Mrs. Tudor, complacently. " As long as you are under 
 twenty no one will think worse of you for blushing, and 
 you will find it a habit that time soon cures. Who told 
 you Jane Dashwood was to marry Paul Chichester ? " 
 
 " Pier sister Millicent. She speaks of it in all her let- 
 ters as a regular engagement. Colonel Dashwood lets 
 Mr. Chichester come to the house as often as he chooses." 
 
 " Colonel Dashwood lets most unmarried men do that, 
 Esther ; and in the rare cases where he does not, the Miss 
 Dashwoods save their lovers any trouble by meeting them 
 elsewhere. I have seen a good many of Miss Dash wood's 
 flirtations during the last five years, although my acquaint- 
 ance with the family, child, is of the slightest description. 
 
134 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Understand that. A formal offer and declension of civili- 
 ty once a year, an exchange of cards in the interval. 
 The lad to whom she engaged herself when she first 
 came out, Anther Peel, is the nephew of one my most inti- 
 mate friends, and I happen to know exactly how the Dash- 
 woods first entangled and afterwards discarded him. Then 
 came George Lawless ; then Major Burroughs. I know 
 every particular about them both. Lawless paid old 
 Dashwood eleven hundred pounds to get off at the last 
 moment ; and now this last ridiculous affair with Paul 
 Chichester ! I have seen her walking about with him, 
 and looking up into his face as she has done with a dozen 
 other men before him ; but an engagement bah ! Paul 
 Chichester may be eccentric, but he is not quite such a 
 fool as to take one of Colonel Dash wood's daughters 
 without a penny, and with their reputation, for his wife." 
 
 " And what is this Mr. Chichester like, himself? I I 
 feel a kind of interest in him, you know, as Jane's lover ; 
 but the Dashwoods give such conflicting accounts of him 
 that I can form no picture to myself either of his manner 
 or his face." 
 
 "Never speak of forming a picture to yourself, child : 
 it sounds pedantic. You want to know what Paul Chi- 
 chester is like ? Well, you will be able to judge for your- 
 self: he is here in Weyrnouth." Involuntarily Esther 
 blushed again. "He was speaking to me on the walk to- 
 day. A very good style he has ; far better, in spite of 
 his threadbare coat, than two-thirds of the young men 
 one meets. I told him I was quite sure from the likeness 
 about the upper part of his face that he was a son of Hilde- 
 brand Chichester, and, although he evidently shunned the 
 subject, he did not deny it ; and that convinces me that 
 he is the son whom I believed to have been dead, or to 
 have gone abroad, years and years ago. They were a 
 strange family always, the Chichesters," went on Mrs. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 135 
 
 Tudor. "If the stories that go about them are true, 
 Hildebrand Chichester and his son were about the 
 strangest of them all." 
 
 " What are these stories, Aunt Thalia ? " 
 
 " Nothing that can interest you, child ; nothing, at all 
 events, that it would profit you to repeat to the Miss 
 Dash woods." 
 
 Esther flushed up indignantly. I repeat nothing that 
 is told me. I should like to have heard, simply because 
 I like listening to old family stories, and and be- 
 cause you tell things in a way that interests one, Aunt 
 Thalia. But don't say a word if you mistrust me. Nev- 
 er say anything of other people as long as I stay in your 
 house if you think I am such a child that I cannot be 
 trusted with a secret." 
 
 "And if I tell you what I know about Paul Chiches- 
 ter, you will never breathe a syllable of it to those little 
 fools the Dashwood girls? never let the man himself, 
 when you come to be acquainted with him, have the faint- 
 est idea that you know more of him than of a stranger ? 
 Don't answer: I read your face, child. You believe that 
 you could be discreet as age, silent as death, and up to 
 a certain point I believe you would. At all events, as a 
 little test of your powers, also because I don't really care 
 a straw whether it is repeated or not, I will tell you the 
 story. There is madness in a good many of our old English 
 families, Esther I suppose that is a fact you have chanced 
 to come across in some of your studies with Joan more 
 especially, I have noticed, amongst those of the extreme 
 north and extreme south of the kingdom. The Chiches- 
 ters come from the border, and are not without their share 
 of the* aristocratic inheritance the ' skeleton,' " cried Mrs. 
 Tudor, pleasantly, " that mews and crouches in the unseen 
 closet of so many a rich man's house; the spectre that is 
 sought in vain to be kept at bay by men of science and art 
 
136 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 and medicine, and yet that is ever hovering over every 
 christening-feast, every marriage-breakfast, in which any 
 child of the ill fated house has past." 
 
 " But not not on him ? " broke from Esther's lips as 
 she leant forward and looked, almost with a shudder, into 
 Mrs. Tudor's bland face. " This horrible calamity has 
 not fallen upon Paul ? " 
 
 " Don't look so excited, child, or I shall tell you no 
 more. It doesn't matter to you. No Fleming has ever 
 been known to be even eccentric ; and as for the Vincents, 
 families like the Vincents never are mad, I have remark- 
 ed. Poor, good people, they are quite enough of every- 
 thing else, I am sure, without that ! Where had I got 
 to ? Ah ! I know the Chichesters have not been with- 
 out their share of the aristocratic inheritance. They are 
 a very old family not in any way connected with the 
 Dorsetshire Chichesters, Esther, remember that. I must 
 impress upon you the absolute importance of a young 
 woman who aspires to tone distinctly remembering who 
 every human being is. Sir Hugh Chichester, of Newton, 
 the great-grandfather of this young man, married the 
 eldest daughter of Lord March, and from that time until 
 the present there have, I believe, been only two decided 
 cases of the hereditary complaint among them. One, 
 Maria Chichester, a sister of Paul's father, who died quite 
 young, and was indeed more weak of intellect than pos- 
 itively diseased or warped ; the other well, Esther, I 
 will not shock your interest in the reputed lover of your 
 friend's sister by calling Paul Chichester even eccentric. 
 Hildebrand Chichester, his father, was, beyond all doubt,, 
 wrong in his mind for years." 
 
 " But are you sure he is this Hildebrand Chich eater's 
 son ? That he did not deny the relationship does not 
 actually prove that the relationship exists." 
 
 "Well reasoned, ma petite; but he not only did not 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 137 
 
 deny, he virtually confessed it. When his father was 
 dead, and his mother married again, I happened to stay 
 with some friends of mine in Northumberland, not three 
 miles from the place of his stepfather's uncle, old Lord 
 Feltham ; and speaking to Paul Chichester yesterday, the 
 whole time and place came suddenly before me the 
 pink-and-white, silly beauty of his mother always lying 
 on the sofa, and appealing to her husband for the sympa- 
 thy he would not give ; Paul himself, a dark, odd-looking 
 child, running wild about the place, and utterly neglected 
 for the sake of the heir of Newton, the child of the second 
 marriage. ' Your Christian name is Paul ? ' I said. 
 ' Then I recollect you well. When you were eight or 
 nine years old you were the strangest, the most unchild- 
 like child I ever came across. Have you forgotten ? ' 
 
 " He looked in my face steadily, and said ' No.' He 
 had not forgotten one stone or one tree of Newton. Then 
 he added, 'But I have not been there. I have not spo- 
 ken of Newton for years, nor shall I ever do so again 
 while I live. None of the people with whom I associate 
 now belong to that time or place, or know that I belong 
 to it.' And then he turned the subject resolutely, and 
 we spoke of his family and of the past no more." 
 
 " And if Mr. Chichester is indeed so well connected, 
 how comes it that he wears a threadbare coat ? I am 
 very ignorant, Aunt Thalia. I have always thought that 
 to be a lord's son, or a lord's stepson, even, would insure 
 one, at least, enough to live respectably upon." 
 
 " Then you have thought great nonsense, child ; and 
 Paul Chichester was never the stepson of a lord. His 
 mother's second husband died, as far as I recollect, about 
 six years ago, the title having in the mean time gone (on 
 the old lord's death) to his cousin, from whom, if he con- 
 tinues childless, it will of course come to Paul's half- 
 brother. The strange part of the story, the part illuslrat- 
 
138 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ing the Chichester peculiarity, I am now going to tell you. 
 Although Mrs. Chichester had brought nothing into the 
 family but her pretty face and her imbecility, old Lord 
 Feltham always made a great favorite of her^ and on his 
 death-bed requested his son to allow her her husband 
 was already ailing to remain at Newton. This wish 
 was carried out, and not only this ; Paul Chichester re- 
 ceived, I am told, an excellent education at the present 
 Lord Feltham's expense (for the younger branches of the 
 Chichesters, you must know, are absolutely penniless. 
 When Paul's mother married again the bridegroom pre- 
 sented her with the very dress she was married in). 
 Well, when the young man was about twenty years of 
 age, his education finished, Lord Feltham about to present 
 him with a commission in the army, some fearful domes- 
 tic altercation took place, and Paul the family blood 
 showing ran away from home, or, at all events, swore to 
 them all, most solemnly, that they sbtould see his face no 
 more, and left them. From different sources I have heard 
 of him afterwards as dead, or gone to the colonies, or 
 roaming about, a ruined man, upon the Continent. But 
 one thinsr I am certain of neither his mother, nor Lord 
 
 o . 7 
 
 Feltham, nor any member of the family, have ever looked 
 upon his face again from that day to this." 
 
 " And you know nothing more of the cause of this 
 quarrel ? It must have been no common thing that could 
 make a young lad throw up all his prospects, all his ties, 
 at the very beginning of life, and take of his own free will 
 to loneliness and poverty." 
 
 " No common thing, if the young lad had been of per- 
 fectly sane mind, Esther; but with an hereditary tenden- 
 cy like that of the Chichesters, the slightest, the most un- 
 founded suspicion might be enough to make him take up 
 the notion that all his family were in league against him." 
 
 " And does his manner give any indication of his in- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 139 
 
 heriting the family disease ? When you remember him, 
 years ago, was he like other children ? Aunt Thalia, the 
 story takes possession of me. I feel that, while I wish it, 
 I shall yet dread to become acquainted with Mr. Chiches- 
 ter." 
 
 " In which feeling you show your extreme ignorance of 
 the world, child. Half the people one meets have, prob- 
 ably, more of madness in their brain, certainly more in 
 their manner, than Paul Chichester. What was he like 
 as a child, did you ask me ? Well, really, you know, the 
 subject of children is one that never interests me. I could 
 not bear to be in the room with you, my love, as you may 
 recollect, until you had got well over the age of asking 
 questions and upsetting things. Paul Chichester was like 
 other children, I suppose no, I recollect, by-the-way, he 
 was not. He was taciturn. He used to come in after 
 dinner at Newton when the nurse brought in his brother, 
 and, none of the family ever paying him the slightest at- 
 tention, he had a trick of standing apart from us all and 
 staring with his great dark eyes at his mother's face until 
 the young heir had been made enough of and fed, of 
 course, with all the unwholesome things upon the table. 
 Let us speak no more of him, child ! " broke off Mrs. Tu- 
 dor, abruptly, and accompanying the remark by the little 
 deprecatory toss of her gloved hands with which it was 
 her custom to throw off, as it were, the burthen of speak- 
 ing of anything, or any person, the moment it no longer 
 amused herself. "I have so much still to hear about my 
 dear sister and her health. She should come here for a 
 change really you would not believe, Esther, how few 
 people I have met here whom I know. Mrs. Strangways, 
 and Paul Chichester, and poor good Whitty, who is com- 
 ing to-night, are all. I have mentioned Miss Whitty to 
 you, of course, have I not? 
 
 " Yes, Aunt Thalia, I believe so. Is he is Mr. Chi- 
 chester, I mean going to stop in Weymouth ?" 
 
140 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " She lives in the dining-rooms under me. I call hei 
 my spaniel. She is a good creature in her way, but tiring 
 tiring and greedy. If she could, she would get me to 
 give all my old dresses to her instead of to Wilson. 
 Draw the curtain aside, Esther, and we shall see the 
 people as they come up from the station. Who is that 
 riding with Mrs. Strangways, I wonder! hand me my 
 opera-glasses, child, and I shall see better young 
 Orchard, again, positively. How ridiculous the poor lad 
 is making himself with that woman ! You have heard 
 of Mrs. Strangways from the Dash woods ? She and Jane 
 Dashwood are extremely intimate, and I should say ex- 
 tremely well matched." 
 
 " I have heard Milly say they are intimate. Do you 
 do you think Mr. Chichester will be likely to stay longer 
 in Weyinouth ? " 
 
 " She is looking very thin ; she has lost all her youth. 
 That is invariably the way with blonde women ; they 
 fade in six months. Celia lost her complexion twenty 
 years, at least, sooner than I did. I looked as young at 
 five-and-thirty as you do now." 
 
 It was hopeless to think of turning aside the current 
 of Mrs. Tudor's thoughts, especially when the current had 
 set back towards the all-delicious subject of her own 
 youthful beauty. Esther gave herself up, resignedly, to 
 listening to the chronicles of fifty-year-old charms and 
 conquests, and strove, resolutely, but in vain, to turn away 
 her thoughts from Jane Dash wood's lover and his sombre 
 history. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE FIRST INFIDELITY. 
 
 AND what, in good truth, was Paul Chichester to 
 Esther Fleming? Why had Esther Fleming, in love 
 with and engaged to Oliver Carew, colored guiltily at the 
 mention of her friend's sister's lover ? 
 
 The reasons for emotion so unwarrantable, and of which 
 Miss Fleming herself felt so % duly ashamed, were, she firm- 
 ly believed, to be found in certain complex sentiments 
 set forth by Miss Millicent Dash wood's last letter ; and as 
 I feel I should fail in expressing these sentiments at all 
 accurately, save in the Dash wood language, I will record 
 simply what Milly wrote. 
 
 " Jane is going on in her old way with Arthur Peel, 
 who is hanging out at present at the Strangways. I 
 think Mrs. Strangways makes a catspaw of Arthur Peel, 
 and Miss Dashwood too ; but clon't repeat that I said so, 
 for it would make Jenny furious. Paul Chichester is in 
 Bath again, and seems to be rather relieved than other- 
 wise at seeing Jane sitting out half the night with Ar- 
 thur on the staircase at balls. I should not like my lover 
 to be so amiable ; but my own opinion is, there is no love 
 at all between any of them except, perhaps, where it 
 would be better dispensed with. By-the-by, Jane says 
 she is sure Paul would admire you extremely. She has 
 learnt some very odd doctrines lately about ' elective 
 affinities' (are there two ff's or one?) the results of 
 which seem to be that everybody is obliged by some 
 moral law to fall in love with precisely the people they 
 can't marry. Paul is not your style : I mean, he is not 
 
142 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 broad-shouldered and chubby, like our Swindon Yiking; 
 but, for a dark man, he is very handsome. Jenny puts 
 back the hair off his forehead, and says, ' Really, Mr. Chi- 
 chester, you have quite a Vandyck face. I admire you 
 extremely : how much I should like to be able to find 
 some one worthy of you! ' So like Jane. Then she will 
 go to a party that same evening and talk half the night to 
 Authur Peel, and come back, poor Jenny ! and cry till 
 daylight. I dare say you and Paul won't like each other 
 at all when you meet ; but Jane relies on her ' elective ' 
 theories, and, I have no doubt will warn Paul to fall in 
 love with you ; the best way in the world, perhaps, to 
 prevent him from doing so. You poor, dear, old Esther ! 
 how I do pity you, with only a tender recollection of 
 Swindon, and a miraculously-proper flirtation with cousin 
 David to keep you from stagnation ! " 
 
 Esther had put down some of the nonsense to Milly's 
 usual flighty style of writing ; but she knew enough of 
 the Dashwood girls to feel that, as likely as not, it had all 
 been repeated to Mr. Chichester himself; and, as you 
 have seen, she had not sufficient control to hinder her 
 cheeks from burning at his name. What if she should 
 meet him, be introduced to him! was her reflection when 
 at last she had escaped from Mrs. Tudor's endless stories 
 to the silence of her own little attic. Would she blush, 
 with this same contemptible folly, in his presence ? She 
 who had been able to speak of Oliver without her face 
 betraying the real emotions of her heart to color in this 
 guilty way about a person she had never seen a per- 
 son with a Yandyck face, and whom Mrs. Tudor consid- 
 ered distinguished ? No doubt, a pale, effeminate, vain 
 creature, the exact reverse of all she considered manly 
 and admirable. For the first time for weeks other 
 thoughts than those of Oliver were floating through 
 Esther's brain before she went to sleep ; and when she 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 143 
 
 woke next morning she was dimly conscious that some- 
 thing unconnected with Mr. Carew arid Countisbury had 
 mingled with her dreams. 
 
 " I am going to make you very useful," Mrs. Tudor re- 
 marked when, at eleven o'clock, blooming and airy in her 
 fresh morning toilette, she joined her niece in the drawing- 
 room. " I am going to make you carry my book and 
 cushion to the beach ; and then we can dispense alto- 
 gether with the presence of Wilson. How are you, my 
 love ? " presenting Esther, for an icy second, two gloved 
 fingers of her left hand; "Have you slept? have you 
 recovered from your journey ? That is well. Now run 
 and put on your hat : anything will do for the beach, my 
 love ; you see how I am dressed." 
 
 At Countisbury, Miss Fleming's custom was to put on 
 her hat without so much as looking in the glass ; but of 
 course, at a great place like Weymouth, any human being 
 must naturally care more for personal appearanae than 
 among the lonely Devonshire moors. When she had put 
 on her holland jacket, and her best little black hat, and 
 the narrow black velvet round her throat,, and her dark 
 neat-fitting gloves, she was conscious how well she looked 
 in the extreme simplicity of her dress; and half-guiltily 
 she started from the pleasure that consciousness awakened 
 in her. 
 
 "You only want an umbrella to be perfectly well- 
 dressed," Mrs. Tudor remarked, as she scanned her niece's 
 appearance with satisfaction. " I told you to put on any 
 thing, because I wanted to see you plainly dressed. It is 
 the severest test of a young woman's taste. Every one 
 can look well en toilette, very few in cotton and hollands. 
 When you have a blue umbrella you will be the perfec- 
 tion of simple style. I will take you at once to a shop, 
 and make you a present of one." 
 
 " But what am I to do with a blue umbrella, Aunt Tha- 
 lia? the weather is perfectly fine." 
 
144 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " That is immaterial. All young persons of distinction 
 carry blue umbrellas this season. You need not put it 
 up unless you choose ; but you must always carry it in the 
 forenoon indeed, I should say, you had better never put 
 it up. It will last you longer." 
 
 So they went to a shop and spent sixteen shillings on 
 this indispensable addition to a young person of distinc- 
 tion's dress, and then proceeded to the beach, where fol- 
 lowing her physician's advice, Mrs. Tudor forced herself 
 to sit, for a couple or so of hours, every forenoon. 
 
 JSTow Esther Fleming was still of an age when to sit 
 and dream silently at the waves is in itself a vague volup- 
 tuous delight. To watch the pale sky fading in the far 
 horizon, to watch the fisherman's sails starting forth, like 
 the trembling venture of young hope, across the bay, filled 
 her with yearning thoughts, if not of Oliver, of something 
 infinitely dearer in reality the love she had herself 
 built up for him ! And, full of such visions, she would 
 contentedly have sat out the two hours of stipulated sea- 
 air without speaking a word ; but Mrs. Tudor, in com- 
 mon, I fancy, with most other old persons, had no liking 
 whatever for being out-of-doors and alone. What dreams 
 had she ? what did a fading horizon or departing sail say 
 to her ? Her ventures had been put forth half a century 
 before. She had welcomed back to shore ships well-laden 
 with substantial merchandize in lieu of that frail, worth- 
 less ballast, with which they first set sail. Whatever in- 
 terest this Weymouth parade could yield her was on the 
 side where people rode up and down, not on that where 
 the morning sun glared on her face, and the fresh sea- 
 wind despoiled her best artificial curls, and all the afflu- 
 ence of light, and air, and life told her, with the coarse 
 ill-breeding of nature, how old, and weak, and sunless 
 she, Thalia Tudor, was ! She could care for Colonel 
 Dash's new barouche and Mrs. Blank's shabby livery; but 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 145 
 
 the sun, and wind, and dust, and heat, and ,cold by turns 
 wearied and irritated her to death. At the end of an 
 hour's complaining Esther found she could much more 
 enter into Wilson's frame of mind respecting her aunt's 
 requirements than she could have done the night before ; 
 and she was sensible of very considerable relief when 
 Mrs. Tudor descried one of her Bath friends, the Miss 
 Whitty already spoken of] approaching them along the 
 promenade. 
 
 "My dearest Mrs. Tudor ! such a delightfully-unexpect- 
 ed pleasure ! " cried this lady in a tone of the most youth- 
 ful excitement. " To think, when we last parted, that we 
 should meet so soon again, and at the seaside : really now, 
 it is most extraordinary ! Miss Fleming, I'm sure, from 
 the family likeness. How-doryou-do, Miss Fleming ? I 
 hope you left your friends in Devonshire quite well?" 
 [Miss Whitty always held it a point of politeness to in- 
 quire after everybody's relations,- whether she knew them 
 or not. " It may please It can't displease," was her 
 way 01 reasoning to herself. " If I never see them, it 
 does not signify ; if I do, it is something- like an introduc- 
 tion to have been constantly asking about them to their 
 friends." And to make acquaintance with fresh people 
 was the grand goal and winning point of Miss Whitty's 
 life.] " I am so delighted we have met," she proceeded, 
 when Esther had satisfied her as to the sanitary condition 
 of the Countisbury household. " We can take such nice 
 long walks together by the sea. Do you care for sea- 
 anemones? I am a perfect child when I once find my- 
 self among the the limpets and sea-weeds, and things, 
 upon the rocks." 
 
 " I should think you had best stop with me on dry land, 
 
 Whitty," remarked Mrs. Tudor, with a cutting laugh. 
 
 "We old women are not fitted for scrambling among 
 
 rocks, and wetting our feet, like girls of Esther's age. 
 
 7 
 
146 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Where are you lodging ? My woman tells me there is 
 not a garret to be hired in Weymouth under thirty shil- 
 lings a week." 
 
 " I have taken apartments in one of the smaller streets, 
 Mrs. Tudor," answered poor Whitty, evidently with a 
 great many high notes taken out of her by her patroness's 
 first word. " The people are not very civil ; and I am 
 afraid they take the butter already ; but I get the rooms 
 on moderate terms, and perhaps, as I shall be out a great 
 deal, the cooking and attendance won't matter." 
 
 " You can get your food with me when you will," said 
 Mis. Tudor. " I dine early here at the sea, and drink my 
 tea at six. You are free to take both meals with me when 
 you choose." 
 
 Remembering Mrs. Tudor's somewhat scant hospitality 
 to herself the night before, Esther was a little surprised 
 at this open-handed offer to any one so hungry-looking as 
 Miss Whitty. She did not yet understand the system 
 upon which Mrs. Tudor's reputation for liberality was 
 based and kept up ; but poor Whitty did. Years of pov- 
 erty and humility, and petty toad-eating, and little de- 
 ceitful gratitude, had taught her the precise value of all 
 proffered favors from richer people the exact sort of an- 
 swer it was incumbent upon herself to give. " She would 
 not for worlds intrude upon Mrs. Tudor. Nothing was 
 more disagreeable, away from home, than having people 
 dropping in at dinner-time. She would be delighted to 
 come round any evening, or every evening, after tea, if 
 Mrs. Tudor would permit her, and " 
 
 " Very well, very well," interrupted Mrs. Tudor com-| 
 placently ("'tis the creature's pride," she remarked after- 
 wards to Esther. " Whenever I try to put bread in her 
 mouth she makes excuses, as you saw ; and she's starving, 
 my dear, she's starving ! ") " You shall come to-night, 
 Whitty. My niece and I will drink our tea early, and if 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 147 
 
 you come in by seven we shall just have time for a game of 
 piquet before bed-time. I am ordered to be in my bed by 
 ten, and it tells upon me a great deal. I never shut my 
 eyes before one. It tires me a vast deal more than being 
 up." 
 
 "Perhaps the noise of the waves keeps you awake, 
 mini," suggested Miss Whitty, with one of her faint lit- 
 tle simpers. " I had an aunt once who was ordered to the 
 sea, and " 
 
 "Do you know who that is driving with old Lady 
 Fanshawe ? I know the woman's face. Who is she ? " 
 
 " Lady Fanshawe where, mim ? Oh, yes ! to be sure ; 
 in the yellow barouche." Poor Whitty was always ready 
 to merge her own stories or observations on the faintest 
 interruption from any one else. " Now I see her face. 
 It's Miss Garth, half-sister, you remember, to the late Lord 
 Riversdale. There was a great talk about her once for 
 Colonel Manners, mim : but he went to India suddenly, 
 and she got a situation as companion, you may recollect ; 
 and she's had money left her since, and lives in very good 
 style at Cheltenham quite in the dinnering set." 
 
 " I know her ; but do talk grammar, Miss Whitty ; 
 4 dinnering ' means nothing. I knew Amelia Garth ; I 
 knew Amelia Garth's mother. She comes of bad blood. 
 Old Lady Fanshawe would do better to mind her own 
 needy flesh and blood than take up with such a woman 
 as yon. Who is this coming along the walk? He has a 
 distinguished air. Ah ! now I recognize him. Esther, 
 child," in a whisper, " this is your friend's lover, whom you 
 were making so many inquiries about. Mr. Chichester, 
 how do you do ? " 
 
 And Esther, who had been listening with rather vacant 
 attention to the conversation about Amelia Garth, started 
 round, and positively trembled through all her frame on 
 suddenly finding herself face to face with Paul Chiches- 
 ter. 
 
148 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Mr. Chichester, my niece, Miss Fleming." 
 
 Esther bowed, very distantly and cold : Paul smiled. 
 " I am quite accustomed to hear your name, Miss Fleming. 
 I was entrusted with a great many messages for you, in 
 case I should meet you here." 
 
 " Oh ! I am much obliged ; " and then Esther stopped, 
 and felt more confused than she had ever done in her life 
 before. 
 
 " You were at school with Miss Dash wood, Esther, 
 were you not ? " said Mrs. Tudor with a sharp look at her 
 niece's downcast face. " Mr. Chichester has recently 
 come from Bath, and can, no doubt, give you news of 
 your young friends." 
 
 " Milly wrote me a day or two before I left Countisbury, 
 and told me all they were doing, Aunt Thalia. She and 
 Jane seem to have been very gay of late." 
 
 " Not so gay as usual, I imagine," said Paul. " I be- 
 lieve Bath is considered to be empty just at present." 
 
 " I heard of two balls and an archery- f^te in one week ; 
 that sounds gay to me." 
 
 "But it would not to them. Miss Dashwood informed 
 me in the race-week that she had danced four-and-twenty 
 hours in four days, in addition to all her morning fatigue 
 on the course. That is pretty well, I think, even for one 
 of the fastest young ladies in England." 
 
 " Do you mean Jane ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Don't you know that to be considered fast 
 is Miss Dash wood's own highest and most cherished am- 
 bition." 
 
 " I thought you pretended to be engaged to her," almost 
 rose indignantly to Esther's lips ; but as she was going to 
 speak she happened to look straight into Paul Chichester's 
 * eyes, and something she read there made her stop short. 
 She forgot her shyness, she forgot her indignation, she 
 forgot Oliver Carew. "I think Jane makes herself out 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 149 
 
 worse than she is, sir. I could never believe that she 
 was fast at heart." 
 
 " Have you seen many of your friends here, Mr. Chi- 
 chester?" interrupted Mrs. Tudor, who was inwardly 
 chafing over her niece's deplorable want of aplomb and 
 self-possession. " I have been here a fortnight, and have 
 scarce seen a dozen faces that I know. Weymouth is 
 not what it was a few years ago. These railways fill 
 every place with the same sort of company. I think I 
 shall begin to spend my summers in Bath for the sake of 
 change. Everything is bad here; the medical men worst 
 of all." 
 
 And then Mr. Chichester has to listen for about a quar- 
 ter of an hour to Mrs. Tudor's statements of all she had 
 gone through at the seaside ; varied only by occasional 
 little echoes and notes of admiration on the part of Miss 
 Whitty, whose eyes and hands and tongue always follow- 
 ed the sentiments of all wealthy persons with the regu- 
 larity of clock-work. 
 
 "Can he really care for those long stpries ?" thought 
 Esther to herself; " or is he waiting so patiently only to 
 give me the Dash woods' messages ? How I wish Milly 
 had never written me such nonsense ! If the man were 
 a coxcomb he might think "anything of me from the ab- 
 surd way I colored at meeting him ! " And then she 
 gave another stealthy look at Paul's face I suppose to 
 see if any of a coxcomb's attributes were to be found in 
 its expression. 
 
 It was a strikingly handsome face : the forehead broad, 
 the black, clear-marked eyebrows straight and delicate. 
 Esther had sometimes laughed at hearing David descant 
 from his old poets upon the beauty of greenish-grey eyes, 
 but in Paul's face she was first sensible of the singular 
 charm such eyes possess when accompanied by an olive- 
 pale complexion and hair and lashes of jet. There hung 
 
150 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 in her own bedroom at Countisbury a little old engraving 
 from one of Vandyck's pictures : it bore no name : it 
 was simply the portrait of a cavalier in velvet coat and 
 point-lace collar and ruffle :.but from the time when she 
 was six years old, and when she had to stand upon a 
 chair to view her idol closely, Esther had bestowed a 
 whole religion of secret veneration and love upon this 
 engraving. When she first began to like Oliver a feeling 
 of infidelity used to overcome her as she looked at her 
 Yandyck Mr. Carew's short British features being, as 
 you may imagine, supremely unlike the pathetic, noble 
 . type of that unknown face ; however pleasant in them- 
 selves when lit up with youth and health and the admi- 
 ration that they expressed for her. But, as she looked at 
 Paul, every detail of the picture rose, line by line, before 
 her : the dark and delicate sweep of brow ; the steady, 
 deep-set eyes of hazel-grey ; the clear-cut lips ; the reso- 
 lute chin all, even to the jet-black hair, and olive-brown 
 complexion with which her imagination had been wont 
 to give the picture life, rose before her, just as on many a 
 score of summer evenings she had seen them, half in 
 fancy, half within the little old oak frame, upon the wall at 
 Countisbury. Now she knew what had made her sud- 
 denly stop short, had made her suddenly feel that she 
 and Paul were speaking together as old friends, not as 
 strangers whose acquaintance might be reckoned up by 
 minutes. She had met alas ! for the first time her 
 childish ideal clothed with life; had found, in Jane Dash- 
 wood's lover, the type with which she had so vainly 
 striven to identify her own. 
 
 " You have seen Mrs. Strangways ? " broke in Mrs. 
 Tudor's voice. " She is a great deal aged, Mr. Chiches- 
 ter, is she not ? " 
 
 " I don't see any difference in her," answered Paul, 
 promptly. " To me Mrs. Strangways is always a very 
 pretty woman indeed." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 15J 
 
 " Oh, of course ! You young men are all wild about 
 Mrs. Strangways. A boy is riding with her to-day who 
 might be her son ? Who is he, Whitty ? They are com- 
 ing here, to the right, on horseback. Who is that silly 
 lad Mrs. Strangways has got hold of now ? " 
 
 " A son of Colonel Ashton's mim," returned Whitty 
 with her preternatural, instantaneous capacity for answer- 
 ing everything and knowing everybody's history. " He 
 left Eton at Christmas, and has got a commission in the 
 Carbineers, but won't join the regiment till February." 
 
 "And which is Mrs. Strangways?" Esther asked, with 
 an undefined sensation of curiosity to see the woman Mr. 
 Chichester admired. 
 
 " The lady on horseback on our left," answered Miss 
 Whitty. "Turn your head a little round from the sea, 
 Miss Fleming ; she will pass before us in a moment." 
 
 " Mrs. Strangways is an acquaintance of yours, then, 
 Mr. Chichester?" remarked Mrs. Tudor, when the lady 
 had gone past and bestowed a radiantly-sweet smile on 
 Paul. "An old acquaintance, probably?" 
 
 "Oh, yes! a very old acquaintance," Paul answered, 
 carelessly. " Every one who knows London well must 
 know Mrs. Strangways." 
 
 " She's a very nice-looking person, sir, isn't she ? " cried 
 poor Miss Whitty, who, on the strength of Paul's last 
 somewhat equivocal compliment, thought she might as 
 well hazard something generally pleasing. "I believe she 
 and Miss Dashwood were considered quite the two first 
 beauties in Bath last winter." 
 
 " Indeed ! " responded Paul, coolly : much too coolly to 
 meet Esther's ideas respecting what was required of him 
 as Jane's lover. "I should not myself, place Miss Dash- 
 wood and Mrs. Strangways in the same rank as regards 
 beauty." 
 
 " I should think not ! " replied Esther. Jane Dash- 
 
152 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 wood is fair and fresh and young ; and that that per- 
 son who has ridden past us is older by years, and looks 
 quite bold and worn and faded. Yes, Aunt Thalia, she 
 does : and I don't like to hear Jane Dashwood named 
 with her." 
 
 "Appearances are so very misleading, Miss Fleming," 
 suggested Whitty, apologetically. I have heard many 
 people say how much they like Mrs. Strangways when 
 they get to know her well." 
 
 " And it is never suitable for young persons, who know 
 nothing on such matters, to pronounce judgment on their 
 elders," said Mrs. Tudor, rising from her seat with diffi- 
 culty. " Mr. Chichester, my lodging is at the red-brick 
 house exactly opposite. I should be glad to see you at 
 any time if you are going to stay in Weymouth." 
 
 Mr. Chichester answered that he was going back to 
 London next morning early ; but and he looked at 
 Esther he had not yet delivered any of his messages 
 to Miss Fleming. 
 
 " Then come and do so this evening," said Mrs. Tudor. 
 
 "We old ladies," with a glance at Whitty, "shall be- 
 gin our game of cards at eight, and if you choose to en- 
 counter the stupidity of such an entertainment I shall be 
 glad to see you. Esther, my love, you are anxious to re- 
 ceive the Miss Dash woods' messages ? " 
 
 "I I shall be very happy to see Mr. Chichester if 
 he will come, Aunt Thalia." 
 
 And then she looked straight in his face, with her hon- 
 est smile : and Paul, for the first time, thought her hand- 
 some. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE STUDY OF ASTRONOMY. 
 
 No, child, you must never express any of those strong 
 opinions again. Men don't admire decision in young girls 
 of your age." 
 
 " But Mrs. Strangways is bold-looking, Aunt Thalia, 
 and I did not like to hear Jane Dash wood named with 
 her." 
 
 " Mrs. Strangways not only looks, but is, bold, child. 
 That is just the reason you should not have said what 
 you did. The truer such remarks are, the more reason 
 for young persons abstaining from making them. Mr. 
 Chichester may be au mieux with Mrs. Strangways, for 
 anything you know to the contrary ; but, at all events, the 
 fact of his having called her pretty, and of her bowing to 
 him in such a friendly manner, were reasons enough to 
 seal your lips. It has a very bad effect for one woman to 
 dispraise another before the man who admires her." 
 
 "But Mr. Chichester is engaged to Jane Dashwood. 
 What can Mrs. Strangways' beauty, or my opinion of her, 
 matter to him ? " 
 
 "Ta, ta ! child, don't be so simple and sentimental. 
 What does a man of thirty a man of the world like 
 Chichester think of Miss Dashwood when he is fifty 
 miles away from her ? As to the engagement, I don't be- 
 lieve in it. He has not the air of an engaged man at all. 
 Barring his want of means, it would be a very good match 
 for one of Colonel Dash wood's daughters, if they could 
 catch him. He is of better birth and breeding in every 
 way than themselves." And Mrs. Tudor scrutinized her 
 niece's appearance carefully, arid made up her mind, if 
 
154 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Paul had only more money, that it would not be a bad 
 thing for Esther to supplant Jane Dashwood if she could. 
 
 Esther had never looked better than on this evening, as 
 she stood beside the window waiting for their guest to 
 arrive. She had, with considerable inward upbraiding 
 put on her white muslin dress, and braided her hair back 
 from her face in that way poor Oliver liked. She was al- 
 together looking unusually flushed, and well, and hand- 
 some ; and reading this opinion of herself upon Mrs. Tu- 
 dor's face, her uneasy conscience began supplying fine 
 casuistic reasons to itself for having dressed so much and 
 for having gained such a color. " I had nothing clean 
 but my gingham, which looks so heavy by candlelight, 
 and this white muslin. It is only the frock I danced in at 
 school, Aunt Thalia ; I hope Miss Whitty won't think I 
 am too much dressed out. Indeed, I have made myself 
 quite hot and miserable thinking whether I don't look too 
 grand, as it is." 
 
 "White muslin without an ornament is always in good 
 taste," said Mrs. Tudor, mildly. " You dress your hair 
 very well, Esther. Your face will bear that severe style 
 till yon are twenty-one, and white becomes you." 
 
 " Oh, Aunt Thalia ! I think it makes me look very 
 dark. Do see how brown my hands are ! " 
 
 She held out one of her arms, which the loose-falling 
 sleeve displayed nearly to the shoulder, for Mrs. Tudor 
 to analyze. It was a beautiful arm ; slight, as yet, for 
 the girl had not herself reached to the fullness of wo- 
 manhood ; but with delicate curved lines, full of promise 
 for the future, and with a hand, tanned, certainly, by the 
 sun and wind, but lithe and delicately moulded as a 
 painter's heart could desire. " I had a great mind to 
 put on gloves, Aunt Thalia, only they would have made 
 me look more dressed still." 
 
 " And as Mr. Chichester is only your friend's lover 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 155 
 
 your brown hands don't signify," said Mrs. Tudor, drily. 
 " He will just deliver the Miss Dash woods' messages and 
 go away in half an hour, I have no doubt." 
 
 A suggestion which made Esther retire to the window 
 and gaze out in silence at the sea until a feeble apologetic 
 knock at the front door heralded Miss Whitty's arrival. 
 
 "Just run out and take her into my bed-room, Esther," 
 said Mrs. Tudor, quickly. " Wilson is much too fine a 
 lady to wait upon Miss Whitty, and I don't like her going 
 alone to my dressing-table. I wouldn't for worlds think 
 anything really bad of the poor creature, but I have 
 doubts about the pins. Pretend you wish to show her 
 the way, and don't leave her alone for a minute. Do 
 you hear ? " 
 
 " Yes, Aunt Thalia, I hear." And very hot and ashamed 
 of her office, Esther went out to watch over the rectitude 
 of poor Miss Whitty, whom she found disrobing herself, 
 in quite a cheerful and good-tempered state of mind, 
 upon the top of the stairs. 
 
 " It's a little weakness of your aunt's, dear Miss Flem- 
 ing," she whispered, " a little weakness' of dearest Mrs. 
 Tudor's, not liking any one to be alone in her dressing- 
 room, and so I am taking my things off here. Perhaps 
 we shall all feel the same some day. Elderly people re- 
 quire artifices, you know, don't they ? " 
 
 From which observation Esther gathered that it was 
 latent, even in Miss Whitty's shallow little soul, to be 
 occasionally spiteful if she dared. " Mrs. Tudor sent me 
 out to show you which was her room, Miss Whitty. 
 Surely you would like to arrange your your " her 
 hesitation was caused by the very doubtful nature of the 
 Whitty coiffure "your curls at the glass." 
 
 " Well, I will just take a peep, then," said Miss Whitty 
 girlishly, "if you're sure it's no trouble. Pray don't 
 think of getting a candle. One look is all I want." 
 
156 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 But the look, even in the fading twilight, seemed to 
 disclose many and unexpected deficiencies to Miss 
 Whitty's mind. " Perhaps it would be, as well regularly 
 to settle oneself, after all," she remarked, putting her 
 head on one side and looking plaintively at Esther. " I 
 did up a little parcel ready, you see, but not knowing 
 where I was to undress, I didn't untie it at first. You 
 wouldn't mind waiting a few moments here for me, would 
 you?" 
 
 " Oh, not at all," said Esther, who was every moment 
 nervously expecting to hear Paul's knock at the door. 
 " There will be no one but ourselves and Mr. Chichester, 
 though, and and I am sure you look very nice already, 
 Miss Whitty." 
 
 " But I am showing my frizzes ! Yes, indeed I am. 
 Why, I can feel them quite bare on each side of my head. 
 Nothing looks so bad, so indelicate indeed, as to show 
 one's frizzes before gentlemen." And then Miss Whitty 
 unfolded her brown-paper parcel, and drew forth her 
 shoes, and her brushes and comb, and her knitting, and a 
 bow for her neck, and her bracelets, and various other 
 small articles of promiscuous adornment. "How do I 
 look, dear Miss Fleming?" she inquired, after at least 
 ten minutes' preparation. u Would you kindly look and 
 tell me if my hair is right behind ? Really there is noth- 
 ing makes me so fearfully nervous as the thought of show- 
 ing my frizzes." 
 
 Now, but for Miss Whitty herself vouchsafing the infor- 
 mation, no human eye would have detected the existence 
 of " frizzes" at all, the whole head having an extraordi- 
 narily flat, denuded aspect, save where irregular forests 
 of little black satin bows, with strange pendant ladders 
 of chenille rings, and other odds and ends of millinery, 
 covered it away from sight at the back. Having heard 
 as a girl that she had a good profile, Miss Whitty, at forty- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. . 157 
 
 nine, continued to show a great deal of cheek-bone and 
 neck ; the latter wound round with different devices of 
 velvets and hair-chains, as foils to the complexion. She 
 was dressed in a barege gown of large pattern, but faded 
 colors, suggestive of having been bought in a remnant at 
 the end of a very remote Bath season ; which dress, being 
 of home make, hung rather irregularly about the skirts, 
 and displayed, whenever its wearer chanced to move in- 
 advertently, strange glimpses of precarious slate-colored 
 hooping about the ankles. Shoes, known in the trade and 
 to Miss Whitty as " prunella," with sandals that habitual- 
 ly came untied ; rusty-black mittens, rather gritty to the 
 touch ; frequent garnet rings, and a brooch containing the 
 photographic portrait of a general officer in field uniform, 
 were the finishing points of Whitty's toilette, together 
 with such minor accessories as a bag worked in beads for 
 her knitting ; a China crape scarf, in case of sudden mod- 
 esty, upon her arm ; and a very raggy-looking laced 
 pocket-handkerchief, smelling hard of bad lavender-water, 
 in her hand. 
 
 " I thought you had gone home again," said Mrs. Tu- 
 dor, pleasantly, when they entered the room. " What in 
 the name of everything ridiculous, have you been doing 
 to yourself all this time, Miss Whitty ? " 
 
 " Only just changing my shoes and doing my hair, Mim," 
 answered Whitty, feeling herself turn hot and cold as 
 Mrs. Tudor's great black eyes travelled with malignant 
 composure over every poor item of her dress. " Miss 
 Fleming was so kind as to ask me into your room, Mim, 
 and I thought, as a gentleman was coming, it would be as 
 well to settle myself." 
 
 "Ah! I see. As Mr. Chichester is an engaged man, 
 however, you young ladies need not be so very particular 
 in dressing for him, need you, Esther ? Draw my chair 
 to the table, my love, and get the cards out : we will be- 
 
158 THE, ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 gin our game at once. I am ordered to be in my bed at 
 ten, Miss Whitty, and we have lost half an hour of our 
 time already." 
 
 When Mrs. Tudor was once well launched into cards, 
 even though she played for nothing, she required no fur- 
 ther attention from any of her company ; and finding this, 
 Esther stole out through the partially-closed Venetians 
 and gave herself up, deliberately, to the pleasure of gaz- 
 ing at the sea and dreaming upon the balcony. 
 
 It was a sultry autumn night, not moonlit, though a 
 white new moon was showing faint above the line of downs 
 beyond the bay, but light with countless stars, and with 
 the dusky red of sunset yet haunting the pale sky. Esther 
 Fleming was still at an age when merely to breathe the air 
 of a hot summer night can stir the blood with a thousand 
 vague sensations of delicious unrest. She forgot Mrs. 
 Tuclor and the sounds of capote and re-pique which oc- 
 casionally reached her from within ; she forgot that she 
 ought to be miserable away from Oliver and looking at 
 the moon; she forgot did she quite forget Paul Chi- 
 chester? and was she thinking only of the old Vandyck 
 upon the wall at Countisbury, when Paul's own voice, 
 close at her side, startled her suddenly from her dreams? 
 
 " I am disturbing you, Miss Fleming, but I had Mrs. 
 Tudor's permission to do so. I hope you were not think- 
 ing of anything very important." 
 
 " Important ! oh, not at all. I I expected you ! " 
 And in her desire to be quite unembarrassed, Esther gave 
 her hand to him. "My thoughts are never of any impor- 
 tance, Mr. Chichester," she added quickly. " I was only 
 enjoying this delicious warm air from the sea for a few 
 minutes." 
 
 " Then I am sorry I interrupted you. Nothing can be 
 of greater importance to oneself than to be conscious of 
 enjoyment." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 159 
 
 "I don't agree with that creed at all," cried Esther. 
 "I think enjoyment is just the least important thing we 
 have any of us to do with." 
 
 " You believe you think so," remarked Paul, laconi- 
 cally. 
 
 " I know that I feel so, Mr. Chichester." And then, 
 finding that the fading light, or some other circumstance, 
 had hindered Mr. Chichester, up to this point, from perceiv- 
 ing that her hand was still in his, she withdrew it rather ab- 
 ruptly. " I have a horror of even looking at one's life as a 
 thing only to be enjoyed. I like to feel how good a thing 
 it is ' to suffer and be strong.' " 
 
 " Oh ! what does that mean ? It sounds like verse." 
 
 "Sounds like verse ! Don't you know that it is from, 
 one of Longfellow's most lovely little pieces ? " 
 
 " I don't think I appreciate lovely little pieces. I cer- 
 tainly never read verses." 
 4 You never read poetry ? " 
 
 "Not much; I am too old. When I was your age I 
 used to read a good deal of it." 
 
 " In those days, perhaps, you would have been able to 
 see the beauty in those lines of Longfellow's." 
 
 " Will you repeat them again ? " 
 
 " ' Know how sublime a thing it is 
 To suffer and be strong.' " 
 
 " No, I should never see any beauty in them, because I 
 should never think the sentiment of them strictly true. 
 To do what lies before one is desirable, of course, but it 
 is a great deal better if the duty happens to be pleasant.,) 
 Suffering, as suffering, is no more sublime than self-denial* 
 as self-denial, is virtuous. However," he interrupted 
 himself " it sounds pretty in rhyme, and repeated, as 
 you repeated it, Miss Fleming." 
 
 "In other words, I am not capable of arguing, but can 
 be put off with a compliment, Mr. Chichester." 
 
160 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Mr. Chichester laughed. " You said that so like Jane 
 Dash wood ! " he remarked. " I can easily see that you 
 have both been to the same school." 
 
 " Which, unfortunately, is not the case," cried Esther, 
 promptly, and with an irrepressible impulse of pique that 
 Paul should have been first to mention Jane's name. " It 
 was Milly that was my schoolfellow ; but I should be 
 very glad to be like Jane in many things," she added, after 
 a minute or two. 
 
 " Poor Jane ! she really has some excellent points ! " 
 said Paul, deliberately. " Her faults show more on the 
 surface, and her good qualities, such as they are, lie deep- 
 er than Miss Milly's. If Jane fell into good hands, I be- 
 lieve she might turn out well, even yet." 
 
 " Mr. Chichester ! " 
 
 " Miss Fleming ! " 
 
 " You are talking of Jane Dash wood ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " And she is engaged to you ? " 
 
 Paul laughed again; a low, rather short laugh he had. 
 Esther believed at first she did not like it. " I had no 
 idea Miss Dashwood had been disclosing all her secrets. 
 Really it would have been only right of her to tell me." 
 
 " And so have prevented you from giving your opinion 
 too freely ? " 
 
 " Oh, not at all. I was not thinking of that. Because 
 two persons happen to be engaged is no reason that they 
 should not see and speak of each other's faults." 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Chichester! love sees no faults at all." 
 
 " Miss Fleming, you are awfully sentimental. This 
 comes of reading poetry and gazing at the moon from 
 balconies. Has not an engaged man, or, to go a great 
 deal further, has not a man in love a brain and sight and 
 hearing just like other men ." 
 
 " Yes, but love sways them all ! " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 1(31 
 
 " That depends chiefly upon the man's own strength of 
 character. Now, imagine yourself " 
 
 " Oh, no, thank you," she interrupted him quickly ; " I 
 don't want to speak about myself at all." 
 
 " You don't know what I was going to say. Imagine 
 yourself so unfortunately placed as to be engaged, then 
 separated from the person to whom you are engaged. 
 When you were together, perhaps, you had not much time 
 for analyzation of character, but you have plenty, too 
 much, indeed, apart. You see some one else, who teach- 
 es you what the first one should have been, and " 
 
 " I should never change where I had once given my 
 word," Esther cried, warmly. " Never ! " 
 
 " That is another question. We are not talking of 
 changing, but of being able, although in love, to see faults 
 of character truly." 
 
 " I would blind my eyes to them deliberately, Mr. Chi- 
 chester. I would not acknowledge them even to my- 
 self." 
 
 "But you would be conscious of their existence, not- 
 withstanding." 
 
 " I would never talk of them to any one else, at all 
 events. I would never speak as as " 
 
 "As I did of Jane Dash wood just now. No, I suppose 
 no one would do so who looked upon an engagement as 
 a real one. You know, of course, that Miss Dash wood and 
 myself look upon ours as nothing of the kind." 
 
 " Mr. Chichester ! " 
 
 "It is part of our compact that we both may speak of 
 it as it really is at any time we think proper. I have a 
 fancy for doing so at this present moment. Miss Dash- 
 wood finds a nominal engagement tb myself a matter of 
 some convenience in the present state of her own affairs." 
 
 "And you?" exclaimed Esther, as Paul hesitated 
 slightly. 
 
162 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Oh, I don't find my position a disagreeable one, ex- 
 actly. It allows me to enter into a great many feelings, 
 experimentally, which otherwise would never have come 
 within the range of my own observation, and that has 
 made up, in some measure, for having to go through 
 a good many vastly stupid balls and parties in my attend- 
 ance upon Miss Dash wood." 
 
 " And when it is over when you have acted your 
 parts through how will you and Jane ever be able to 
 look back upon it all, or upon each other's conduct?" 
 
 " I shouldn't suppose Jane would ever think of any- 
 thing connected with me again. I shall always think of 
 her with pleasure and gratitude. She is lovable in many 
 ways, although I am not happy enough to be the man 
 who has gained her love." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Your tone is depreciating, Miss Fleming. Is there 
 anything I have said that shocks your sense of right ? " 
 
 " I can't enter into the subject, Mr. Chichester. I don't 
 understand the world. I have very old-fashioned ideas." 
 
 " Let me hear them, please." 
 
 " It would be quite useless. We should never think 
 alike. I hold an engagement to be a very solemn thing 
 indeed, and I think it nearly as bad to act one as it would 
 be to play at religion." 
 
 " But if one acquires a knowledge of an entirely new 
 class of sensation, from which, except as a spectator, one 
 is, perforce, shut out ! Is that no gain to oneself, do you 
 think ? " 
 
 " I cannot say. I atn sure you ought not to do wrong 
 merely to add to your experiences." 
 
 "Miss Fleming, do you ever read novels?" 
 
 " Yes, when my cousin Joan lets me." 
 
 " And you like them ? " 
 
 "Yes, I like some of them extremely." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 163 
 
 " Have you ever been to the theatre ? " 
 
 " I have been to the Opera twice and once to the Prin- 
 cess's. My cousin David gave me the money for the 
 tickets when I went to school." 
 
 " And don't you see that novels and plays yield just 
 the same kind of knowledge that can be gained, at first 
 hand, by oneself acting, for a while, as the hero of the 
 piece ? " 
 
 "Novels and plays are not real, Mr. Chichester." 
 
 " Miss Dash wood's engagement to myself is not real, 
 Miss Fleming." 
 
 " Novels and plays deceive no one." 
 
 "Nor do I." 
 
 "But Jane deceives her father." 
 
 Paul was silent. 
 
 "Jane deceives her father and she deceives herself, too, 
 in thinking that she will not one day repent of all this 
 folly. Although I have only seen her once, I know that 
 Jane is much too good for the people she lives among. 
 I am sure of that." 
 
 "Do youjnclude me in that sweeping anathema?" 
 
 " I don't know enough of you to say, Mr. Chichester. 
 I was thinking of such companionship as that lady we 
 saw to-day that person you thought so handsome, you 
 remember." 
 
 " I don't know whom you mean. I have seen no hand- 
 some person to-day who could be considered an evil com- 
 panion for Miss Dash wood." 
 
 " Oh, that is a matter of opinion," 
 
 " I think that a fresh, honest, although somewhat sen- 
 timental nature, is just one that it would do Jane im- 
 mense good to come in contact with." 
 
 " And is Mrs. Strangways frank, and honest, and rather 
 sentimental, then ? " 
 
 " I am not speaking of Mrs. Strangways, Miss Fleming." 
 
164 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 And then Esther found she had nothing more to say, 
 and she listened with great attention to Mrs. Tudor's 
 scoring quatorze to a king, and began playing with her 
 fingers upon the rail of the balcony; and, finally, suggest- 
 ed, rather faintly, that the air was growing cold, and she 
 t Bought perhaps it would be better to go in. 
 
 " Not at all," answered Paul in his decisive way. 
 " What should you go in for ? " 
 
 " Because it is getting cold." 
 
 " I will bring you a shawl, then. And without being 
 heard by either Mrs. Tudor or Whitty, he made his way 
 softly into the room and brought out a light shawl of 
 Mrs. Tudor's from the sofa. " Will you let me put it on 
 for you ? Thank you, you need not stoop. I am tall 
 enough to reach you'r shoulders when I hold myself very 
 upright." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Chichester, how can you talk such nonsense ? 
 You are taller than me by three or four inches." 
 
 " No, Miss Fleming, I am not. I am as inferior to you, 
 physically, as I am mentally and morally." 
 
 The words, although Paul's tone was jesting, hurt Es- 
 ther with quite a sharp pain. What woman is not pained 
 by an allusion to her intellect from the man she is pre- 
 pared to love ? " You mean that I set myself very high, 
 Mr. Chichester," she cried; "but you are just as wrong 
 in that as you are about my size. Stand close to me, 
 please, and you will see what a mistake you have made." 
 
 He stood by her side, but not close. Something in 
 her eager childish face would have withheld even a differ- 
 ent man than Paul from misinterpreting her meaning. 
 
 "Now which is the taller, Miss Fleming?" he asked, 
 when Esther had gravely held her head as high and ma- 
 jestically as possible. 
 
 " You, by a great many inches," she answered, glanc- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 165 
 
 ing up at the graceful outline of Paul's figure, as it cut, 
 sharp and clear, against the evening sky. " I am sure, 
 although I did not think so at first, that you are nearly 
 as tall as " 
 
 As ? ' 
 
 " A friend of ours, Mr. Chichester. Some one I was 
 thinking of " 
 
 " Your cousin David, in short." 
 
 " No, not exactly." 
 
 " I understand. The person you were thinking of when 
 I first interrupted you just now." 
 
 " Oh dear no. I was thinking then of of my old 
 home in Devonshire. Don't you think the sky is looking 
 clearer, Mr. Chichester ? " 
 
 She knew, even in that dim light, that Paul's eyes were 
 upon her face, and that he had seen her blush. " Don't 
 you feel a colder air coming up from the sea ? " 
 
 " I feel sensible of a great chill, Miss Fleming. It has 
 come on me suddenly in the last few seconds." 
 
 " And we had better go in, then ? " 
 
 "As you will. Yes; probably it is better, for me, at 
 all events, to go." 
 
 Elsewhere I have disclaimed for Esther every quality 
 belonging to a coquette. She had, however, enough in- 
 stinctive vanity to catch at the meaning of Paul's tone. 
 "I think you must be very sensitive, Mr. Chichester," 
 looking up at him with her shy half-smile. " You must 
 be in a very delicate state of health if you are so dread- 
 fully afraid of getting a chill." 
 
 "Afraid? No, that is not the word. The effect can- 
 not by any possibility be serious to me, but the immediate 
 effect is unpleasant. You understand ? " 
 
 Esther leant forward across the railing of the balcony, 
 and made some remark again upon the beauty of the 
 night. Those broad circles of gleaming light on the cairn 
 
16(3 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 sea betokened fine weather. She had no doubt Mr. Chi- 
 chester would have a pleasant day for his journey to- 
 morrow. 
 
 " And I shall carry with me a pleasant remembrance," 
 said Paul, coming a step closer to her. " Yes, in spite of 
 that sudden chill I got just now, Miss Fleming, I shall re- 
 member this hour that you have allowed me to talk to 
 you with gratitude. It is mine, you know! Although, I 
 dare say, you will never think of me again, you have 
 thought of me now, and I shall remember this one hour 
 out of your life as belonging to me exclusively. Are you 
 offended?" 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Chichester ! " and she turned to him with 
 that serious smile that at times made her face absolutely 
 beautiful ; " why should I be offended ? I am glad you 
 have cared to talk to me. I wished so much to meet you 
 and know you for Jane's sake." 
 
 "And for Jane's sake you will not forget me ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 I cannot take upon myself to say what answer or what 
 equivocation that " no " of Esther's was intended to con- 
 vey ; but Paul seemed satisfied with it ; and it took him very 
 nearly another hour to exhaust the subject of Miss Dash- 
 wood's messages, and to impress upon Esther's mind the 
 extreme improbability, even if they should meet, of her 
 ever giving him her full and undivided attention again. 
 " I believe I must go away now," he remarked, at last. 
 "I hear sounds of Mrs. Tudor's being about to win her 
 last game, and it will be wise of me to escape before Miss 
 Whitty requires an escort home. Don't come in, thank 
 you. I will say good-bye to you here." 
 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Chichester." 
 
 " Does myrtle grow on these sea-side balconies, Miss 
 Fleming ? A subtle sense of its presence has seemed 
 close to me all this evening. Really, if I could see where 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 167 
 
 it grows I would ask you to give me a piece. One 
 doesn't get myrtle in London at this season of the year." 
 
 "There is no myrtle here but this little piece I have in 
 my belt. It is fading already. I brought it yesterday 
 with some other flowers all the way from Devonshire. It 
 is not worth your having." And she gave it to him. 
 
 "Thank you, Miss Fleming. You are very kind ; and 
 I do not misinterpret your kindness. Thank you. Good 
 night." 
 
 He held her hand closely for a second, then left her 
 and in another minute had got through his compliments 
 to the ladies in the drawing-room, and left the house. 
 
 " The Miss Dash woods seem to have sent long" messa- 
 
 o 
 
 ges, remarked Mrs. Tudor, when Esther at last made her 
 appearance. " If the young man could really remember 
 stories that took him over an honr and a half to deliver, 
 he must be a more devoted lover than I thought him." 
 
 " And I think I must get you to show me that way of 
 turning back the hair, Miss Fleming," whispered Miss 
 Whitty, as she was preparing to depart- " It gives a soft, 
 pensive look to the face that is really most interesting." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 SCRUPLES. 
 
 WHEN Esther found herself alone for the night her first 
 action was to unlock the little box in which she kept 
 those priceless treasures, Mr. Oliver Carew's letters, and 
 spread them out, lovingly, before her sight. 
 
 She felt (in her profound ignorance of human nature, 
 her own especially) as though the very touch of these 
 letters would do her good : as though she had but to read 
 
168 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 them over to feel how marvellously superior their writer 
 was to Paul Chichester and every other man living. And 
 yet she knew, instinctively, that she dared not, in her 
 present state of mind, open the last. One or two terribly 
 ill-constructed, not to say ungrammatical sentences, rank- 
 led too freshly in her memory yet for that : the earlier 
 letters, all full of warmth and truth and tender recollec- 
 tions of their walks at Countisbury, those were what she 
 needed to calm, to refresh her in this strange fever in 
 which she found her thoughts ! And so, after going duly 
 through the initiatory rites always performed upon the 
 opening of that sacred repository, the letters were brought 
 forth slowly, one by one, and read. 
 
 She wished she had left them alone : she wished, at 
 least, she had not read them till to-morrow Never before 
 had they seemed so trite and schoolboy-like as at that 
 particular moment, when she would have given all for 
 them to prove clever, or, at least, decently well-expressed. 
 She could have written better letters when she was eleven ; 
 Joan, David, anybody could write better letters. Why, 
 some of the sentences began in one tense and ended in 
 another; and some, if you investigated them strictly, had 
 no very immediate meaning at all ; and some, which 
 should have been long and overflowing with feeling, were 
 bald and curt ; and others (full of such interesting de- 
 tails as the excellent dinners on board, or the price he had 
 settled to give for a grey mare) were involved and lengthy ; 
 and all were in the style of the "Polite Letter- Writer : " 
 and all very bitterly she reiterated this were worse 
 in thought and style, too, than she herself could have 
 written when she was eleven years old. 
 
 And what if they were ? Is it not proverbial that 
 English lads, fresh from public schools, can scarcely spell 
 their own names ? that all young men are bad correspon- 
 dents? that Oliver had, himself, asked her indulgence for 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 169 
 
 his letters? And was she in love with Oliver Care w, or 
 with his letters ? Were his generous, manly qualities to 
 be outweighed by defective syntax and doubtful orthogra- 
 phy ? He had never assumed intellect : she had chosen 
 of her own free will, to fall in love with him simply as he 
 was. This very night she had told Paul Chichester that 
 she would deliberately shut her eyes to all faults in the 
 pei-son she loved ; and here she was carping over the one 
 very small demerit that it was possible for her to find in 
 her poor absent Oliver. Paul Chichester: she wished she 
 had never seen him. In some way or other he was the 
 cause of her taking out those letters, and seeing mistakes 
 in them and bein^ bitter over them. Did she think him 
 
 o 
 
 so immeasurably superior, then, in intellect to the man 
 who was to be her companion for. life ? 
 
 Quite in a flush of indignant denial at the suggestion 
 Miss Fleming sprang up, and, after tenderly storing away 
 the letters, but wisely abstaining from reading another 
 word of them, locked up her little desk and put it away 
 out of her sight. Paul Chichester superior to Oliver ! the 
 idea was monstrous. To reflect upon its enormity at her 
 ease she hid her candle in the further corner of her room, 
 then seated herself on the floor by the window, bent 
 down her face upon her knees, and began to look out at 
 the night. 
 
 The moon, that was showing faintly across the downs 
 when Paul first spoke to her, had now travelled far away 
 southward, and was shining high and alone, on the pure 
 purple of the midnight sky. Involuntarily Esther felt 
 that she too had traveled for in the short space of the 
 last few hours that she had quitted forever the land of 
 dawning dreams had stood and looked, for the first 
 time, upon the wide sea of actuM life and actual passion. 
 Her engagement to Oliver had never made her feel thus. 
 . . What had made her feel it now ? 
 
170 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Paul Chichester ? 
 
 She wished again she had never seen Paul Chichester. 
 The chance accident of likeness to the picture at Coun- 
 tisbury gave her a kind of foolish interest in his face 
 which she was far from extending to Mr. Chichester him- 
 self. What was there, if one came to reason calmly, that 
 was superior about him? His appearance? why, most 
 people, no doubt, would think Oliver, with his fine broad 
 shoulders and ruddy face, a vast deal better looking. 
 And what mattered looks, too ? Was a man better for 
 having an intellectual forehead and refined cast of fea- 
 tures ? Could not a good round, Saxon head and face ex- 
 press just as many excellent moral, if not perhaps, intel- 
 lectual qualities, as any sombre, Yandyck countenance in 
 the world? She was not sure, now, that she thought 
 Paul Chichester at all good-looking. And his manner ? 
 abrupt and fitful ; reserved one moment, and then sud- 
 denly advancing to the most intimate confidences the 
 next! Had he behaved rightly in speaking as he had 
 done of Jane ? Had he not confessed to acting out a 
 systematic course of deception simply for the sake of the 
 pleasant sensations which his moral experience might 
 occasion to himself? And was not [another still, small 
 voice, loq.~\ was not all that he had said about Jane and 
 about his engagement half a jest ? Had she, Esther 
 Fleming, caught, in fact, one glimpse of Paul's true char- 
 acter ? Did not his face and voice tell of qualities wide- 
 ly different to any that their brief conversation had call- 
 ed forth ? Had he not talked down to her as men do 
 to foolish girls of eighteen? Oliver had not talked downj 
 to her, because because he was so young himself not 
 yet one-and-twenty, and Paul Chichester was quite old 
 thirty, she should think, a dozen years older than herself. 
 
 Still, she would certainly like to know something more 
 of him than what he was when he was talking nonsense 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 and asking for bits of myrtle ; that myrtle rankled in 
 Esther's conscience, so she tried to make quite light of it 
 in her meditations. It would, she was convinced, be pleas- 
 ant to be intimate, for once, with some one altogether 
 stronger and cleverer than herself. Joan, perhaps, was 
 cleverer ; but then Joan was not agreeable ; David was 
 book-clever, but a child in knowledge of life and of human 
 beings ; and as to Oliver well, of course he was intense- 
 ly agreeable, and had seen a great deal more of the 
 world than she had ; but Oliver only saw on the surface, 
 and had a habit of opening his blue eyes wide in rather a 
 discouraging way if she tried to engage him in any little 
 speculations on those subjects of right and wrong, and of 
 the necessity of right and wrong, existing, which to her 
 own mind had been quite familiar problems since the time 
 she was twelve years old. Oliver, in short, continually got 
 out of his depth. She would prefer getting out of her own 
 depth, and being upheld and set right again by a stronger 
 mind than her own. 
 
 Then she preferred Paul as a companion to Oliver. 
 The desolating conclusions at which she seemed fated to 
 arrive on this evening overcame Esther with quite a sharp 
 pain. Although strong enough to analyze her own emo- 
 tions, she was weak enough to feel shocked at the result 
 of her own self-questioning ! 
 
 " Oliver, you are first with me Oliver, I will never, 
 even to myself, allow that any other person can be su- 
 perior to you ! " 
 
 She made this exposition of faith aloud, for greater 
 solemnity, as she took one more look at the sea after 
 putting out her candle ; and then she went to her rest, 
 poor child ! and dreamt, not of Oliver Carew, but of the 
 little old Vandyck upon the wall at Countisbury. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE TRIALS OF TOAD-EATING. 
 
 A MONTH at the seaside was the utmost limit which 
 Mrs. Tudor's regard for health, or even for fashion, could 
 enable her to live through. She missed her whist, she 
 missed her enemies, she missed her doctor, she missed 
 her friends : she almost missed her accustomed pew in 
 church. And then Wilson was so dissatisfied. Wilson 
 averred that her bed had lumps like bullets in it: Wilson 
 never found the seaside agree for long together with her 
 head : the lodging people did not prepare buttered toast 
 to Wilson's taste. How was it possible to remain more 
 than a month in a place where Wilson could not get pro- 
 perly-arranged buttered toast for her tea ? 
 
 " I really don't know what we should have done with- 
 out you Miss Whitty," said Esther, kindly, as, on the 
 morning of their departure, Whitty was fastening on la- 
 bels and tying up parcels for Mrs. Tudor. " Aunt Tha- 
 lia would scarcely have lived through each day as it came 
 round if it had not been for the prospect of your game 
 at piquet in the evening." 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! Miss Fleming," answered poor Miss 
 Whitty, humbly. "It is very good of you to say so; but 
 I am sure playing with me for nothing must have been 
 dull work after all your aunt is accustomed to at home. 
 If I have afforded my little quota of amusement, it is, of 
 course, very gratifying to reflect on very gratifying in- 
 deed. I can never do enough in return for all dear Mrs. 
 Tudor's great benefits to me." 
 
 Esther had never yet been able to find out what were, 
 in real, solid fact, the benefits accorded to Miss Whitty 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 173 
 
 by Mrs. Tudor. She knew that Whitty occupied the 
 parlors beneath Mrs. Tudor's drawing-rooms in Bath, and 
 that she was always ready to play double-dummy or pi- 
 quet when required, or to prepare the rooms for a party, 
 or to make tea in the back drawing-room, or to put away 
 the plate again in silver-paper, or clean the vases, or wind 
 up the time-piece, or perform any other office for which 
 Mistress Wilson was either too high or too low. But 
 none of these things appeared sufficient, to Esther's un- 
 tutored mind, to constitute a debt of gratitude on the 
 part of Miss Whitty. She could never hear of any bene- 
 fits more substantial than a rare tea, or rarer dinner, or 
 occasional present of mouldying jelly, disclaimed, no 
 doubt, by Wilson, after a party ; and, ignorant of the 
 thorough spaniel qualities inherent in persons of the 
 Whitty tribe, she began to think her a very amiable wo- 
 man indeed for putting up with all Mrs. Tudor's tempers, 
 and persisting still in regarding her as her own especial 
 benefactress. 
 
 On this occasion of their journey home to Bath, Miss 
 Whitty was to accompany them, Mrs. Tudor, from mo- 
 tives hereafter to be unfolded to Esther, generously pay- 
 ing the difference between first and second class, to ena- 
 ble her to travel in the same carriage with herself. And 
 so, from very early in the morning, Miss Whitty had been 
 packing and unpacking, and cording and uncording, with 
 a ready subservience to all Mrs. Tudor's caprices that 
 called forth many withering smiles on the face of Wilson. 
 
 " Loto's not to come with me, ma'am," that potentate 
 announced with true autocratic abruptness, at a very 
 early period of the day. " I've had her once, and I'm 
 not going to have her again, not on any account, Mrs. 
 Tudor." 
 
 " Oh, but Wilson," expostulated Mrs. Tudor, aghast. 
 
 "I'm not going to have Loto again, ma'am," Wilson 
 
174 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 repeated, with an inexorable sniff of resolve. " I know 
 my own place, and I travel in my black silk. I had quite 
 enough of such disgusting imdelicate works when we 
 came, and I wouldn't have them over again if I was paid 
 for it." 
 
 And she glanced at Miss Whitty, who, hot and patient 
 was sewing up the parrot's cage for the third time, as 
 though to indicate a fitting person though not paid for 
 it to fulfill the office that was so much beneath herself. 
 
 And then it was, when Wilson had left the room, that 
 Mrs. Tudor made the generous offer to Miss Whitty of 
 accompanying them first class. " It wouldn't be agreea 
 ble for you, my dear, to be getting in the same set of 
 carriages with Wilson, and niece and myself will be very 
 glad of your company." 
 
 Esther thought the offer exceedingly kind for Mrs 
 Tudor, as it really involved an expenditure of several 
 shillings in hard money. But poor Whitty looked rather 
 red and hesitating as she tendered her gratitude ; and 
 then, in a very weak suggestive voice, remarked, that of 
 course Loto would go with the other dogs. 
 
 " Loto will not go with the other dogs, Miss Whitty," 
 said Mrs. Tudor in a fierce manner, contrasting forcibly 
 with the humble one she had used towards Wilson. 
 " Loto is not going with the other dogs, to get bitten and 
 worried, or catch the distemper. Esther, my dear, you 
 will have no objection to my little favorite being in the 
 same carriage with us ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, Mrs. Tudor ! Oh my dear Mim ! " exclaim- 
 ed Whitty, in a moment, " I shall be very glad to take 
 charge of Loto, very glad indeed. I'm sure it's the least 
 I can do, after your kindness in paying for me. I only 
 only meant, you know, that perhaps the railway people 
 might not allow her in the carriage." 
 
 "Loto must be wrapped up, Miss Whitty," remarked 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 175 
 
 Mrs. Tudor, with slightly relaxing severity. " I ain per- 
 fectly aware of that. Loto must be wrapped up." 
 
 " In my shawl ! " cried Whitty, with exultation. " In 
 my shawl. Dear little creature ! so she must, of course- 
 I wonder I didn't think of it before." And, under the 
 prospect of this new favor, she seemed more perseveringly 
 amiable, and desirous of being made use ofj or in any 
 way trodden under foot, than usual, during the rest of 
 the morning. 
 
 "Mrs. Strangways leaves Weymouth to-day," she in- 
 formed Esther shortly before they left. " I heard it from 
 my lodging-girl, who knows the chambermaid's sister at 
 the York. She goes by the two-twenty train as we do. 
 Wouldn't it be a remarkable coincidence." (Whitty 
 thought everything was a remarkable coincidence) " if we 
 were to travel in the same carriage ? She's going back to 
 Bath to join her husband. He's a queen's messenger, you 
 know, and returned from St. Petersburg last night. The 
 telegraph the telegram, I mean to say arrived quite 
 late in the evening, and she sat up packing half the night. 
 Most devoted, wasn't it ? " 
 
 "Devoted to return to her husband? Well, Miss 
 Whitty, I really can't see it quite in that light. Besides, 
 as she is not leaving till this afternoon, she might have 
 deferred it till the morning, and so have spared herself the 
 trouble of being devoted at all." 
 
 Esther had been conscious, -before ever seeing her, of 
 an instinctive dislike .to Mrs. Strangways ; and that bow 
 and smile she had once seen her accord to Paul Chiches- 
 ter, strangely enough, had not dispossessed her of the 
 prejudice ; so she was by no means warm in her manner 
 when Mrs. Strangways came up, an hour later, as they 
 were waiting upon the platform for the train, and proffer- 
 ed a very friendly renewal of acquaintance with Mrs. Tu- 
 dor. Mrs. Strangways had seen Mrs. Tudor several times 
 
176 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 on the beach, but had not known whether Mrs. Tudor had 
 recognised her or not. Sometimes people did not care for 
 the trouble of making or renewing acquaintance by the 
 seaside. She had met Mrs. Tudor at old Mrs. Bradshaw's 
 last winter, and at Mrs. Kennedy's too. The general was 
 laid up with the gout again. Mrs. Tudor had heard it, no 
 doubt? "And this," turning composedly, and staring 
 straight into Esther's face, "this is Miss Fleming, I am 
 sure. I have often heard of Miss Fleming from my friend 
 Jane Dashwood." 
 
 The words and manner were, of course, irreproachable ; 
 yet Esther felt that Mrs. Strangways implied, "this great, 
 raw, country-looking girl must be Miss Fleming. There 
 can't be two such persons in the world as the Miss Flem- 
 ing I have heard of." And with that inborn dignity of 
 hers, which was fully equal to all Mrs. Strangways' arti- 
 ficial assurance, she turned away as soon as Mrs. Tudor 
 had introduced them, and began quietly asking Miss 
 Whitty as to the disposal of the luggage. 
 
 " Oh, it's all right, I think. I'll just look at my card 
 again. Six cases of Mrs. Tudor's and yours, and four of 
 Wilson's, and my own box, and the parrot's cage, and 
 umbrella, and air-cushion, and hand-bag, and basket. It's 
 all quite right ; but, oh dear, Miss Fleming, how much I 
 wish it was safe for Loto to go with the other dogs ! he's 
 so very strange, and I think I must say disagreeable in 
 his temper to-day." 
 
 If poor Miss Whitty had an aversion in the world it 
 was for dogs ; if there had been anything she could have 
 refused to a person with an income of more than six hun- 
 dred a year, it would have been to carry a dog wrapped 
 up in her shawl. And then Loto, even for a fat old lap- 
 dog, was so superlatively disgusting ! Loto made asth- 
 matic noises as she breathed ; Loto had a disagreeable 
 filminess over her eyes ; Loto was vicious, and treacherous 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 and snapping, and odious in every sense. The sufferings 
 of the celebrated young Spartan with his fox were scarce- 
 ly greater than what Whitty endured as she .pressed Loto 
 to her heart in her endeavors to screen her from the porters 
 at that Wey mouth station. 
 
 " Keep her head covered, Miss Whitty, keep her head 
 covered," said Mrs. Tudor, when they had taken their 
 places in the carriage. " Don't mind her trying to bite, 
 it's only a playful way she has. Keep her well covered 
 up, and seat yourself back. The guard will be coming in 
 directly to see the tickets." 
 
 "And if I should be found out! " cried Miss Whitty, 
 who, between her exertions with Loto and the fears inci- 
 dent to her sex and age, that some one had taken her lug- 
 gnge, was in a state of most remarkable heat. " If they 
 find the dog out at the last, what am I to do ?" 
 
 " Please don't raise such absurd difficulties, Miss Whit- 
 ty," said Mrs. Tudor, tartly. " If you let the creature be 
 seen, of course I shall have to pay for it. But, remem- 
 ber, if you do, make no application to me. Discussions 
 with common people destroy me. For the time being 
 Loto is yours ; I wash my hands of her. Esther, my dear, 
 come and sit with me at my end of the carriage. It is 
 necessary for Miss Whitty to have a window to herself, 
 in case poor Loto requires air." 
 
 By dint of incessant feeding with sandwich and bis- 
 cuijts, to say nothing of occasional sharp nips round Lo- 
 to's throat, Miss Whitty actually succeeded in evading all 
 the official vigilance of Wey mouth, and Esther was just 
 hoping that they were to travel without Mrs. Strangways 
 for a companion, when, at the last moment, a clear ring- 
 ing laugh announced that lady to be still waiting upon the 
 platform. 
 
 "Empty carriage here," drawled a tall, silly-looking lad 
 of eighteen, glancing superciliously for a moment, with 
 8* 
 
178 THE OR DEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 very elevated eyebrows, across poor Miss Whitty's shrink- 
 ing figure. " Room here, Mrs. Strangways, if you don't 
 mind being so near the engine." 
 
 " Oh I shall be quite safe, thank you. Minnie will take 
 care of me, won't you, Minnie ? Good-bye, Edward. Now 
 mind, we are to see a great deal of you in town next 
 spring. I shall never forgive you if you don't come and 
 see me at once. Good-bye." And then there was a very 
 warm leave-taking, and, as it seemed to Esther, a rather 
 conspicuous affectation of tenderness on " Edward's " face, 
 as he whispered parting compliments in the ear of this 
 lady, who, in spite of her tiny hat, and turned-back hair, 
 and manner of girlish heartiness, was still very nearly old 
 enough to be his own mother. 
 
 " Edward " continued to stand by the carriage, carry- 
 ing on an inaudible conversation with Mrs. Strangways 
 until the train started ; and then, and not till then, could 
 Mrs. Strangways' eyes disengage themselves sufficiently 
 from the fastening of her glove to perceive that there 
 were other occupants beside herself in the carriage. 
 " Mrs. Tudor, how very glad I am ! You are going to 
 Bath, of course ? We shall . be fellow-travelers for the 
 remainder of the day, then ! And Miss Fleming. I had 
 not perceived you before ; these horrid walls in the centre 
 divide the carriages so completely in two." 
 
 " I think those walls are the great advantage of the 
 Great Western and its branches," said Esther. " They 
 enable one just to see as much as one chooses and no more, 
 of one's fellow-passengers." 
 
 It was unlike Esther Fleming to make so rude a speech, 
 but some invincible desire seemed to propel her towards 
 being disagreeable to Mrs. Strangways. Her Aunt Tha- 
 lia heard her with complacence. It was a decided imper- 
 tinence for a woman like Mrs. Strangways to pretend she 
 had not seen her, Mrs. Tudor, sooner j a woman in a doubt- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 179 
 
 ful set, with a questionable reputation, and an income de 
 pendent upon her husband's services as queen's messenger ! 
 Mrs. Tudor was glad to see that Esther, young as she was, 
 knew how to set people down, on occasion, and also what 
 kind of people it was right to set down. 
 
 " I think I know that little lad's face you were talking 
 to, Mrs. Strangways ; he's one of the Stantons, just the 
 same silly white face as his mother. I suppose he and 
 your young people are friends. Has your eldest son left 
 school yet ? I forget." 
 
 " My eldest son, dear Mrs. Tudor ! my children are quite 
 little. Minnie, darling, corne and say how do you do to 
 Mrs. Tudor." 
 
 But Mrs. Strangways' eyes flashed. The ages of her 
 three eldest children were bitter drops in her cup, thorns 
 in her side, weapons of cruel sharpness, ever ready to the 
 hand of all female friends who chanced to stand in need 
 of any extraneous weapon of attack. Date's of all other 
 kinds may be falsified ; but what can put back the livingj 
 tangible attestation conveyed by children of eleven, twelve 
 and thirteen years of age ? Children tall of their age, 
 too. The only way, and that a precarious one, of sup- 
 pressing such evidence is to keep any unpleasantly-old 
 children as much as possible at school, and out of sight ; 
 and this Mrs. Strangways did, reserving for her own com- 
 panion her youngest child, Minnie, who by reason of be- 
 ing pretty, and like herself, and small of her years, and 
 considerably younger than the others, absorbed very near- 
 ly all the maternal instincts which Mrs. Strangways' scan- 
 tily-endowed nature could supply. 
 
 The results of alternate, unbounded indulgence and 
 absolute neglect, want of exercise by day, and sitting up 
 late at night, did not seem to be very happy ones on 
 Miss Minnie Strangways, whose small face was sallow and 
 pinched, and, even at five years old, already wore a good 
 
180 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 deal of the anxious, restless look of her mother's. " I don't 
 want to change my place, thank you, ma," was her an- 
 swer to her mother's request. "I don't want to come by 
 you. I like to stop here and look at this woman and her 
 dog." And then Minnie perched her small feet up on the 
 opposite seat, and re-commenced staring poor Miss Whitty 
 out of countenance with an air of cool superiority and 
 aplomb that was good to see. 
 
 " Your daughter appears used to have her own way," 
 said Mrs. Tudor, " like most of the other young people 
 of this generation." 
 
 " Oh, poor little thing ! she is shockingly spoiled ; so 
 much with me, you see, and no companion of her own 
 age. I believe, really, I ought to get her a governess, 
 but it would take her so much out of my hands, I can't 
 make up my heart to it." 
 
 " And you would find a governess a very heavy ex- 
 pense, Mrs. Strangways, as you travel so much. I believe 
 I have heard that you frequently join Mr. Strangways 
 when his services carry him abroad ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, Tom will have me go to meet him whenever 
 I can. It is a great pity it obliges me to part from the 
 other children. Minnie and I had to rush off to Austria 
 last Christmas, and when we got to Vienna, Mr. Strang- 
 ways had left for somewhere else, and I had to stay there 
 in all the horrid, cold, German winter by myself." 
 
 " So I heard," remarked Mrs. Tudor curtly : the world, 
 in general, had not been behind hand in making many kind- 
 ly surmises as to that last Viennese expedition of Mrs. 
 Strangways. "Esther, my love, come and sit by me. 
 Do you remark that little village to the left? That is 
 where your Aunt Engleheart and I once lived in our 
 young days." 
 
 Mrs. Strangways leant her head back quickly in her 
 corner, and the expression of her face told Esther that 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Mrs. Tu dor's manner had taken effect. After expressing 
 due interest in the two farm-roofs and half a church spire 
 that could be seen through the trees, she began to reflect 
 what kind of life this woman's opposite her must be : this 
 woman, in the prime of life still, with children, sufficient 
 means, all the things that go so long a way towards mak- 
 ing up happiness ; but whom, in spite of all her cool as- 
 surance, so many chance shafts from alien hands had pow- 
 er to wound, and upon whose handsome face unrest and 
 discontent were already written in handwriting not to be 
 mistaken. 
 
 Mrs. Strangways was very handsome ; perhaps it 
 would not be too much to say that she was beautiful. 
 She had taken her hat off now, and was leaning her head 
 back with her eyes closed, so Esther was able to scrutinize 
 her closely. The delicate blue-veined temples, off which 
 the blonde, luxuriant hair was braided back, the straight 
 fine brows, the full rich lips, the graceful lines though 
 slightly shrunken now of cheek and neck, all belonged 
 to a higher class of beauty than anything Esther had 
 seen before. Her own opinion might be that Mrs. Strang- 
 ways' eyes, in spite of all their blue, were cold and hard of 
 expression ; that the mouth was sensual, the whole 
 beauty too Cleopatra-like. The beauty itself was indis- 
 putable. No man would stop to ask himself what kind 
 of mind or soul looked out from so perfectly fair a face ! 
 No man would think herself, Esther Fleming, anything 
 but a dark, heavy-looking girl, beside Mrs. Strangways, 
 although one was eighteen and the other two or three 
 and thirty at least. What did Paul really think of her ? 
 Esther wondered. He had evaded the subject; he had 
 implicated opinions the reverse of favorable of her as a 
 companion for Jane. But then, how sweetly Mrs. Strang- 
 ways had smiled upon him ! Whatever else his senti- 
 ments, any man receiving a sweet smile from such a mouth 
 
182 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 could have no other opinion than that Mrs. Strangways 
 was one of the most beautiful, the most fascinating wo- 
 men in the world ! 
 
 Just as she reached this point in her meditations, Mrs. 
 Strangways opened her eyes. " You know Paul Chiches- 
 ter, Miss Fleming, don't you ? " she asked, abruptly. 
 
 " I know him slightly," answered Esther, and she felt 
 thankful that she possessed self-control enough not to 
 color before Mrs. Strangways. "His engagement to 
 Jane Dash wood has of course, made me hear a good deal 
 of him." 
 
 Mrs. Strangways laughed, and her laugh had a very 
 bitter ring in it. " Paul Chichester's engagement to Jane 
 Dash wood! How simply you said that, Miss Fleming ! 
 Has Jane really made you believe Mr. Chichester will 
 marry her ? " 
 
 " Miss Dash wood has said very little to me on the sub- 
 ject. I believe the engagement is considered an open 
 one." 
 
 " Open, but none the less sure of ending in smoke ! 
 Why, every one knows that poor Jane Dash wood is over 
 head and ears in love with some one else. And as to 
 Paul as to Mr. Chichester, I mean he never makes 
 any concealment of his fixed intention of not marrying at 
 all." 
 
 Miss Whitty, from her corner, heard this and looked 
 up quite excited. " Mr. Chichester never means to marry ! 
 What a remarkable thing, and such a young man, too \ 
 There must be something in the back-ground, for certain ; 
 better not inquire, perhaps ! Miss Fleming, who would 
 ever have thought, that moonlight night when he was 
 giving you Miss Dash wood's messages on the balcony be- 
 hind the curtains, you know, that he was not a marrying 
 man ? I don't know that I have been so surprised by 
 hearing anything for a long time. If one was intimately 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 183 
 
 acquainted with Colonel Dash wood, now, it would be 
 positively one's duty to acquaint him of the circumstan- 
 ces." 
 
 " Of what circumstances, Miss Whitty ? " asked Esther, 
 with a quiet smile. 
 
 "Why, of Mr. Chichester giving out he does not intend 
 to marry, and yet continuing to court Miss Dash wood all 
 the time. It is just the kind of thing to break a young 
 girl's heart : really I have no patience with such men." 
 
 " I don't think you need have any fears for Miss Dash- 
 wood, She is not a girl at all likely to break her heart, 
 nor I should think was Mr. Chichester a man to act dis- 
 honorably." 
 
 " You speak with warmth, Miss Fleming," said Mrs. 
 Strangways. " Paul Chichester should be indebted to 
 you for your kind defence of him." 
 
 It was with great difficulty Esther could restrain her- 
 self from resenting the implied impertinence of the 
 speech ; but she did so: and probably her cool silence ir- 
 ritated her antagonist more than the bitterest retort she 
 could have made. It was evident to Mrs. Strangways 
 that the girl knew more of the whole matter than she ei- 
 ther said or intended to say ; evident that Paul was not 
 a stranger to her, and that, while she professed to believe 
 in his engagement, she was not one whit surprised to hear 
 of his intention of not marrying. Was there more still than 
 this ? Could Paul, who professedly never 'admired any but 
 fair, refined women, be taken by the rude hearty good- 
 looks, the mere country flesh-and-blood comeliness of a face 
 like that ? 
 
 Mrs. Strangways leaned her head back in the corner of 
 the carriage, after curtly desiring her daughter to come 
 and sit beside her at once ; Miss Fleming commenced a 
 cheerful conversation with Whitty upon the probabilities 
 of Loto's sleep lasting until they reached Bath and pos- 
 
184 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 sessed, I suppose, by that sort of magnetic influence which 
 communicates itself to any two women who are, or ever 
 shall be, rivals not another word, not another look was 
 exchanged between them during all the remainder of 
 the time that they continued in enforced companionship. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 AN UNKNOWN R I Y A L. 
 
 A FRIEND was waiting on the platform at Bath to receive 
 Mrs. Strangways when they arrived a tall and hand- 
 some friend; older, and very different looking to the 
 Edward of Weymfmth ; but who, apparently, stood quite 
 as high as that young gentleman himself in Mrs. Strang- 
 ways' regards. 
 
 " Is that her husband, Aunt Thalia ? " Esther asked, as 
 she and Mrs. Tudor were standing waiting for Whitty and 
 the luggage. "Is that very good-looking person who is 
 talking to Mrs. Strangways her husband ? " 
 
 " That very good-looking person is Arthur Peel," answer- 
 ed Mrs. Tudor, " Whatever man you see beside Mrs. 
 Strangways, at any time, or in any place, you may feel 
 very safely assured is not her own husband. That woman 
 is outstepping all bounds. I shall desire you to be careful 
 in recognizing her until I have made out, exactly, at what 
 houses she is received at present." 
 
 Esther had not time then to trouble herself further 
 about either Arthur Peel or Mrs. Strangways, but the next 
 morning, during an early visit that she received from the 
 Dashwoods, she mentioned the twilight meeting which she 
 had seen the night before on the platform. " Is it neces- 
 sary for Mrs. Strangways' safety that some one should 
 always receive her and see her off when she travels, Miss 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES 
 
 Dashwood ? or do you suppose that " Edward " and Mr. 
 Peel were both what poor Miss Whitty would call 'happy 
 coincidences? ' " 
 
 "Coincidences! not a bit," said Jane; and her face 
 turned rather red. " The little wretch you saw at Wey- 
 mouth was one of her boys, no doubt, the fearful boys 
 that she always manages to get round her in the country 
 or at the sea-side faute de mieux ! (and as Mrs. Strang- 
 ways grows older it is an undoubted fact that her wor- 
 shippers grow younger) ; as to Arthur " 
 
 " As to Arthur, Jenny ? " asked Millicent, somewhat 
 maliciously. 
 
 "Well, I don't mind saying deliberately, that Mrs. 
 Strangways writes to him I have seen her notes num- 
 bers of times writes and asks him, in that sort of way 
 she has, to meet her at such an hour on such a day. " It 
 would be quite a kindness to Mr. Strangways, who has 
 another engagement," etcetera. Then, of course, Arthur 
 goes. How could he refuse to go, even if he wished ? " 
 
 "And with what object does she ask him ? " said Esther. 
 " What can be any woman's object in compromising her 
 own self-respect for so very slight a reward as Mr. Arthur 
 Peel's companionship ? " 
 
 " I suppose when we are past thirty, we shall know,'' 
 replied Jane, petulantly ; " that is to say, if we are still 
 eager and athirst for attention and willing to cast our rep- 
 utation away with our own hands, sooner than not be 
 spoken of at all, as she is. Wait till you have known her 
 longer before you try to analyze Mrs. Strangways' mo- 
 tives, Miss Fleming. If you have a turn for moral dis- 
 section, like Paul, I can assure you her character is well 
 worth attention. I used to study her, myself, until, one 
 day, the thought struck me that most probably she was 
 what I should be myself, in another dozen years, and then 
 1 gave up the whole investigation in disgust. You have 
 
186 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 seen Paul, by the way? he told me all about you in a let- 
 ter oh yes, he does write to me such queer love- 
 letters I must show you some of them ! Do you like 
 him ? He was very guarded, and didn't say whether he 
 talked to you for five minutes or five hours, or alone or 
 before your aunt. Do you think him handsome ? do you 
 think I have chosen well ? " 
 
 ; " Esther thinks him too good for you, Jane," said MilJy, 
 as Esther hesitated, visibly. " You know you always pre- 
 dicted that they would like each other amazingly at first 
 sight elective affinity, and all that. Don't be jealous, 
 now, if your own prophecies turn out to be true ones. 
 Esther thinks him a great deal too good to be wasted on 
 such a very remarkable description of engagement as 
 yours." 
 
 " I think I know scarcely anything of Mr. Chichester," 
 said Esther. " I should say he was not a man to be judg- 
 ed of after a single day's acquaintance." 
 
 "Nor after many days' acquaintance added Jane. "I 
 have watched him pretty closely through a good many 
 of his moods, and I verily believe I know him less now 
 than I did on the first day I ever saw him." 
 
 " And yet you must have had singularly good oppor- 
 tunities of judging of his character," remarked Miss 
 Fleming, with emphasis. 
 
 " Yes, better than if our engagement had been a real 
 one. I see you know all about it ; and I must say it was 
 base of Paul to be the first to tell you. When people are 
 really engaged, they, of course, never speak or look at 
 each other without acting their state necessitates it. 
 Now Paul with me has been as open as with an ordinary 
 friend more so, perhaps, from the very fact of our sham- 
 engagement shutting out the possibility of misconstruc- 
 tion on either side." 
 
 "But surely Mr. Chichester must be the last man living 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 187 
 
 to fear misconstruction, Miss Dash wood. As he openly 
 proclaims the impossibility of his ever marrying there 
 cannot be danger for any one, however intimate with 
 him." 
 
 " Who told you that Mr. Chichester was never going 
 to marry ? " 
 
 " Mr. Chichester himself." 
 
 " On my word, Miss Fleming, he seems to have made 
 the most of his time at Weymouth, short though it was ! " 
 
 " He said nothing at all decided upon the subject I 
 mean " for Esther here recollected Paul's vague hints 
 to her on that moonlight night whose merest recollection 
 still had power to stir her heart so strangely. " I mean, 
 nothing that could be put into actual words. It was Mrs. 
 Strangways who said so." 
 
 " Mrs. Strangways ! what an excellent, disinterested 
 authority ! Did she know, I wonder, that you were ac- 
 quainted with Paul ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! She saw us speaking to him on the parade 
 one morning and then, I believe, Miss Whitty told her 
 about his talking to me on the balcony that evening I 
 mean " 
 
 " Oh ! pray don't explain. It is quite evident the flirta- 
 tion has commenced in good earnest. I wish you joy of 
 it, Miss Fleming, and I will promise you never to feel jeal- 
 ous ; but still, as you have already reached the balcony 
 stage, I think it my duty, as a friend, to state that Mrs. 
 Strangways' information, though spiteful, is quite correct. 
 Paul Chichester will never marry." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " He told me so once, perhaps with a man's true vanity, 
 thinking I might be in danger if he did not ; and there 
 was something in his face when he said it that made me 
 feel him to be sincere painfully sincere. Milly enter- 
 tains all sorts of wonderful theories of her own as to the 
 real cause of his intentions in this matter." 
 
188 THE ORDEJIL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " And of his moodiness and oddness too," interrupted 
 Milly. " I don't know what you mean by " theories," 
 Jane. I judge by facts ; and I am sure the extraordinary 
 things we know about Paul are quite enough to make 
 any one think as I do." 
 
 " The extraordinary things being that, when I was in 
 own, I happened twice to meet him in Covent Garden 
 with a bouquet of white flowers in his hand, and that here, 
 in Bath, papa frequently sees him buying white flowers in 
 the market. Miss Fleming, what supposition do you im- 
 agine Milly grounds upon this foundation ? " 
 
 " That Mr. Chichester is fond of flowers, I should 
 think," said Esther, with a little laugh : but, in spite of 
 herself, her spirit sank somewhat as she spoke. 
 
 "Fond of flowers! what nonsense !" cried Miss Milli- 
 cent, indignantly. " As if men were ever fond of flowers 
 or ever bought them for themselves ! Besides, what was 
 the time when you met him in Covent Garden? ten 
 o'clock in the morning. Is it likely he would go out at 
 such an hour to get flowers for himself? "Would he, here 
 in Bath, be seen out in the market before breakfast, and 
 then walking away with his flowers across Combe Down 
 in a pouring rain if they were for himself? The thing 
 speaks for itself! " 
 
 " Then whom are they for, Milly ? " And, having had 
 time to prepare herself, Esther believed that she now 
 spoke very calmly and collectedly. " Who is the happy 
 recipient of Mr. Chichester's white bouquets ? " 
 
 " Ah ! there is the mystery. Jane suggested that he 
 might be privately married, perhaps ; but that supposi- 
 tion could not possibly hold good. Who ever heard of a 
 man getting up early to buy flowers for his wife ? and 
 the most expensive ones, too ! Papa took it for granted 
 they were all coming to Jenny, and brought us home such 
 a description of them roses, and azaleas, and everything 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 189 
 
 that was hardest to be bought. Do you remember, Jane, 
 you borrowed my last five shillings, and went out and got 
 some like them at once, for fear papa should begin mak- 
 ing inquiries, and get to hear more than was convenient ? " 
 
 "Yes; and those I saw him with in town were just of 
 the same expensive kind," Miss Dashwood replied. 
 "Moss rose-buds, and white heath, and rhododendron, 
 early in May." 
 
 " Then, whoever it may be that the flowers reach, she 
 has good taste," said Esther, rather shortly. " And, as 
 none of us have any real interest in Mr. Chichester, I don't 
 see why we should trouble ourselves by speaking of things 
 that can only concern him." 
 
 " You are quite right, Miss Fleming ! " cried Jane, 
 starting up suddenly, in her impulsive fashion. " Milly, 
 we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for giving way to 
 such undignified curiosity. I shall never speak about 
 those flowers of Paul's again." 
 
 " But I shall," cried Milly, who was not at all prone to 
 sudden revulsions of delicacy. " Nothing is greater fun 
 to me than routing out a mystery ; and I have long de- 
 termined to come at the meaning of Paul's flowers, and his 
 oddness, and his stealthy comings and goings, and every- 
 thing about him. I have had a capital scheme in my head 
 for some time past; and you, and Esther too, although 
 you may be too high-minded to give me any assistance, 
 will both be just as curious as me to hear the news, when 
 I have got it." 
 
 " What should you say if I made a right guess about 
 it all, now, Milly, and so saved you your trouble? Mr. 
 Chichester may have been getting flowers all this time for 
 Mrs. Strangways. She is a person who, I should imagine, 
 would not mind receiving those sorts of small attentions, 
 and he mentioned having been acquainted with her in 
 London as well as in Bath." 
 
190 - THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Now I fully believe that Esther said this to turn aside 
 the tacit reproach which she felt her former remark must 
 have conveyed to Jane ; at the same time, and giving her 
 credit for any amount of honest simplicity, I cannot help 
 thinking she had also some desire, some latent curiosity 
 herself, to hear Mrs. Strangways' name mentioned by 
 the Dash woods in connection with Paul's. 
 
 "You dear, verdant old Esther!" cried Milly. "So 
 like you to fix upon the one wicked thing in the world 
 that will never come to pass ! Paul Chichester won't 
 have Mrs. Strangways' goodwill at any price, will he, 
 Jane?" 
 
 " I think it a great pity you try to talk slang, Milly 
 dear ; you do it so badly, and it dosen't become you." 
 
 " Oh ! that's very fine, Miss Dash wood. I have heard 
 you say the same thing a dozen times, at least ; but you 
 always want us to seem better than we are before Es- 
 ther." 
 
 " What is it that you have heard me say, Milly ? " 
 " That Paul won't have Mrs. Strangways at any price." 
 " I am sure I never said it in those words, which, put- 
 ting aside their vulgarity, don't mean anything whatever." 
 " Then you have said it in others quite as expressive," 
 persisted Milly. " I remember, perfectly, one night at the 
 Strangways' (that night papa did not go, and you would 
 sit out half the dances with Arthur Peel,) just as we were 
 leaving the cloak-room you congratulated Paul upon Mrs. 
 
 Strangways' attention to him, and he said " 
 
 " My dear Milly, it is time for us to go," interrupted 
 Jane ; but she reddened somewhat guiltily. " You have 
 talked quite nonsense enough for one occasion, I am sure." 
 But Milly was not to be silenced. " And Paul shrug- 
 ged his shoulders, and said, " No, MissDashwood, I must 
 really disclaim the happiness you assign to me. Mrs. 
 Strangways is not all likely to take any trouble about so 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 insignificant a person as myself. ' Le jeu ne vaut pas la 
 chandelle.' I remember it so well because I asked you 
 what that meant in English as we were driving home." 
 
 " Then all I can say is that it's a great pity you have 
 not better things to remember, Milly. Any man living 
 might be excused for making a stupid remark at the fag 
 end of one of Mrs. Strangways' stupid ' At Homes ; ' 
 but it is really too bad that such speeches should be chron- 
 icled." 
 
 And then Miss Dashwood so resolutely changed the 
 subject by discoursing about the gaieties that they were 
 to have during the ensuing winter, and her hopes that 
 Miss Fleming would be induced to join in them, that Es- 
 ther (whatever in her heart she might desire) had no fur- 
 ther opportunity of hearing Paul Chichester's name that 
 day. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 CALUMNIATED. 
 
 JANE DASHWOOD had said rightly that Mrs. Strangways' 
 nature would furnish a good subject for moral dissection ; 
 but she was wrong in believing it one that Esther's simple 
 mind could ever have conducted. 
 
 Esther, like all untutored people, had strong instinctive 
 likes and dislikes, and could form incisive and frequently 
 correct opinions as to nearly every person she was thrown 
 with ; a far wider experience than any that she, happily, 
 possessed would have been required to study closely, a 
 character so complex and so artificial as Mrs. Strangways. 
 
 "Eager and athirst for attention; willing to cast her 
 own repute away with her own hands sooner than not be 
 spoken of at all ; " Jane Dash* wood's precocious knowledge 
 
192 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 of the baser side of human nature had prompted her to 
 give a tolerably true summary of one part of Mrs. Strar g 
 ways' character in the remark, that to Esther had seemed 
 almost unintelligible. Supine in affection, cold in love, 
 passionless in passion, there was yet one desire in this 
 woman's soul, that no food could satisfy, no surfeit 
 satiate. She could neglect her children, neglect her home, 
 give up her worldly reputation even, so that she could but 
 purchase that which was a thousand times dearer to her 
 than all the admiration of men, and the world's ac- 
 knowledgment of such admiration. 
 
 To win this, yes, even in any one individual case upon 
 which she had set her mind, she could be patient for 
 weeks, or months, or years ; could make a thousand pain- 
 ful and unworthy sacrifices, could bear with indifference 
 or rebuff or insult. The notes which Arthur Peel's sense 
 of honor had allowed him to shovV" Jane Dashwood, were 
 but one sample of the hundred insidious modes of attack 
 that Mrs. Strangways could bring to bear upon the object 
 that, for the time being, she had in view. She was too 
 indolent, possibly too really weak, for the commonest 
 exertions of life to which her master passion did not lend 
 an interest. If she got up to breakfast when she was 
 living at home it made her faint : attempting to teach 
 one of her children his letters was an actual torture 
 to her nerves ; to take the commonest care of a house- 
 hold of three servants was a superhuman exertion . to 
 her. But she could go to five balls a week ; could 
 travel, without halt, from London to Vienna ; could go 
 through labyrinths of small intrigues, whose details were 
 all tedious and laborious in the extreme, when she had 
 an object to encompass. The same spirit unflinching, 
 unresting, unscrupulous that lay in her fragile body 
 would have made a first-rate general, a first-rate states 
 man, a first-rate head of the Society of Jesus. Mrs. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 193 
 
 Strangways being only a woman, and a pretty woman, 
 her peculiar genius had narrower scope for action. But 
 genius it was. This insatiate passion for love it is 
 neither passion, nor love itself; it goes with a tempera- 
 ment never made by nature to experience either has 
 been, I suspect, the real motive-power which has made 
 the great majority of celebrated women celebrated. The 
 cold white hand under whose sway England rose to her 
 greatest glory belonged, you must remember, to just such 
 a woman as Mrs. Strangways. If she had been a queen, 
 clo you think she would not have won the hearts of her 
 people, and have chosen the popular religion, and have 
 carried on platonic loves with half her court, and mur- 
 dered any younger fairer woman who chanced to stand 
 in her way? 
 
 It is on the focus from which we look at things, moral 
 as well as physical, that their magnitude depends. As a 
 queen Mrs. Strangways might have been as good and 
 great as Elizabeth. Bound down by fortune, forced to 
 be content with the admiration of dozens and not 
 thousands, to intrigue for the regard of a court made up 
 of men like Authur Peel, to stab her rivals by words not 
 by the dagger, she was only a miserable, disappointed 
 woman. Already, after a reign of just a dozen years, her 
 courtiers were beginning to grow slack in their devotion ; 
 her rivals, bitterer test ! to fear her hatred less. Already 
 she was obliged to stoop to humiliating concessions, such 
 as making Jane Dash wood her companion, unless she 
 would lose every satellite who used to do homage round 
 her throne. The ambition which would have made a 
 queen great ; the fixed, unshrinking purpose which would 
 have carried a man on to the attainment of any of the 
 honest desires of life,- had brought her to two-and-thirty, 
 scarce beyond her youth, and stranded her there, without 
 any other view of the future than this certainty that 
 9 
 
194 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 every year should bear her more hopelessly away from the 
 empire which it had been the struggle of all these years of 
 alternate victory and defeat to win ! 
 
 Mrs. Strangways had married early, and the first two or 
 three years of her married life had been passed in Paris, 
 where her husband then held some small office about the 
 embassy. A great many people held those two or three 
 years responsible for all the errors of her subsequent 
 career. She had learnt French morality, they said, during 
 her Parisian experiences : this is what comes of spending 
 one's youth among the wickednesses of a foreign capital. 
 
 Others, wider in their views, held that a nature so 
 thoroughly vain and unscrupulous would have ripened 
 into much the same maturity wherever she had lived ; 
 indeed (and, whatever the theory, this was true,) that 
 Mrs. Strangways did care more for her children and her 
 home in her extreme youth than she ever cared again 
 for either in England. Whether her passionate thirst for 
 admiration was inborn, or partially grafted on her nature 
 by the examples of wedded life that she saw in French 
 society, she was, undeniably, at her present age as perfect 
 in the science of pleasing, as finished in every seductive 
 grace that art can give, as any velvet-eyed Frenchwoman, 
 de trente ans, who ever drew breath. As perfect ; but 
 very far from as happy. 
 
 A Frenchwoman lives and moves and has her being 
 avowedly only for successes of society. It is an institu- 
 tion of her country that she should remain at home the 
 two or three first years after her marriage, then commit 
 her son and daughter to the care of their grandmother 
 or governess, and betake herself to her vie de jolie femme 
 in earnest. She is adored till she is thirty ; after thirty, 
 she adores. The two phases of adoration divide the 
 twenty best years of her existence pretty equally ; and at 
 forty she sinks quietly into a dressing-gown and devotion 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 195 
 
 for the rest of her life. Circumstances, not any extraordi- 
 nary bias of her own nature, make her what she is, and 
 French society recognises in her simply the brilliant spoilt 
 child of its own creation. Her family, including the hus- 
 band, regard her as a model-wife and mother of a family, 
 and a touching epitaph shall one day be suspended above 
 her grave in Pere la Chaise, recording all the angelic do- 
 mestic virtues and affections of which she was so fair an 
 example when on earth. 
 
 But Mrs. Strangways was an Englishwoman. Not the 
 usages of conventional life, but her own innate tenden- 
 cies, joined to the empire with which beauty of no com- 
 mon order had endowed her, conspired to make her what 
 she was. Every hour of triumph she enjoyed she had to 
 purchase by hours of humiliation ; every night of intoxi- 
 cating success by days and weeks of bitterest mortification. 
 All the homage she received from one sex was made 
 good to her in worse than positive neglect or insolence 
 from the other. She struggled against all this bravely. 
 When everybody so nearly cut her after that last Viennese 
 expedition alluded to by Mrs. Tudor, she gave an im- 
 mense fancy ball and sent invitations to people who had 
 passed her without recognition the very same day, and 
 bore up against dozens of refusals, and looked handsomer 
 and brighter than ever when the evening of her ball 
 came, and finally fought her way back to the position 
 she had so nearly lost by her own unaided pluck and de- 
 termination of not allowing her enemies to cast her 
 down. 
 
 But do you think there was so little of humanity in 
 this woman's heart that she did not feel every indignity 
 - yes, every small stab, every ingenious little cruelty, 
 that was put upon her at that fancy ball ? Do you think 
 Mrs. Strangways, or any other woman, ever fought long 
 against the united hosts of her own sex without thou- 
 
196 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 sands of pointed shafts rankling, however hid away, with- 
 in her breast ? Mrs. Strangways endured it : she could 
 have endured more, sooner than give up the one passion 
 which was the very breath of her life : but she felt every 
 cold look, every supercilious bow, to the full as sharply 
 now as she had done when she first began to receive 
 them a dozen weary years ago. More sharply, probably; 
 she had youth and the feelings of youthful beauty to the 
 fore, then ; she who had so many slaves among men could 
 easily bear the want of a few friends among women. 
 But now when she began to see men's eyes following 
 younger faces than hers abroad, when she began to have 
 more frequent and less occupied hours at home, her tired 
 heart dwelt with bitterer emphasis than ever upon every 
 look or word of slight that she endured, while still the 
 desperation ofw r aning power made her more resolutely 
 loath to accept the lot by which alone her peace with 
 her own sex could have been sealed oblivion. 
 
 Mrs. Tudor, bordering on fourscore years (sixty of 
 which, at least, had been spent in frivolity) Mrs. Tu- 
 dor, whose own youthful follies were probably still re- 
 membered by herself, although buried away from every 
 one else beneath the accumulated dust of half a century 
 Mrs. Tudor thought it right to find out, precisely, who 
 was visiting Mrs. Strangways before returning the call 
 which she paid to herself and Esther, two days after their 
 meeting in the railway carriage on their return from Wey- 
 mouth. 
 
 " We owe these things to ourselves and to society, 
 child," she remarked, virtuously, to Esther. " It is not 
 what Mrs. Strangways does that it concerns us to pry 
 into; indeed, our charity as Christians demands that we 
 should not be over-scrupulous as to each other's personal 
 and hidden failings. If a certain class of people still visit 
 Mrs. Strangways, we will return her call this afternoon ; 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 197 
 
 if not, I will leave a card upon her in the course of the 
 week; and our manner when we meet her next can show 
 that we don't desire any continuance of her acquaint- 
 ance." 
 
 And Miss Whitty, who usually performed any little 
 dirty work of the kind for Mrs. Tudor, was sent off at 
 once to ascertain, through such underhand domestic chan- 
 nels as her abilities could suggest, what families of con- 
 sideration in Bath still continued to invite Mrs. Strang- 
 ways to their houses. 
 
 The result was satisfactory alike to Mrs. Strangways' 
 repute and to Mrs. Tudor's nice moral sense. 
 
 " The Davenports and the Wardlaws, mini ; and since 
 her fancy ball, Dean Oxenham's family, and I can't tell 
 you how many besides. A good many people were giv- 
 ing her the cold shoulder after all the odd stories that 
 were afloat upon her return from Germany ; but what 
 with her great ball, and her constant tea dansangs, and 
 one thing and another, she's quite up again in public es- 
 teem. Most surprising, really, Miss Fleming, how some 
 people can do everything, and yet be visited. I can as- 
 sure you, the stories about her last spring " 
 
 " Miss Whitty, I must beg of you not to repeat anything 
 disparaging of Mrs. Strangways to my niece," interrupt- 
 ed Mrs. Tudor, the whole of whose scruples had received 
 their quietus at the mention of Dean Oxenham's name. 
 " These scandals are not in any way improving for young 
 people to hear, and it would be much more becoming in 
 you, at your age, to refrain from trying to injure the rep- 
 utation of others." 
 
 " But as we were talking about it this morning, mini, I 
 thought " 
 
 " If you were talking about any subject this morning, 
 it is quite sufficient reason for your not talking about it 
 this afternoon. Miss Whitty. At all events I must beg 
 
198 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 of you not to repeat any idle Bath gossip to my niece, 
 in my presence." 
 
 Miss Whitty looked duly guilty for having presumed 
 to think lightly of any one who was visited by the Dav- 
 enports, and the Wardlaws, and (since her fancy ball) by 
 Dean Oxenham's wife and daughters; and Mrs. Tudor 
 and Esther, in another hour, were receiving very sweet 
 smiles from Mrs. Strangways herself, in the rose-colored 
 light of that calumniated lady's own drawing-room. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A SERIOUS BKINGING-TJP. 
 
 A GOOD deal of a certain kind of gaiety might soon 
 have fallen into Esther's way had she chosen to make 
 the most of it. One dinner, one "At Home," and one 
 card party were, however, quite enough to convince her 
 that the dissipations that suited Mrs. Tudor at threescore 
 years and ten, were by no means seductive to herself at 
 eighteen ; and with very sincere goodwill she begged for 
 the future to be left out of all entertainments in which 
 the amusements of people of her own age were not the 
 primary matter of consideration. 
 
 Mrs. Tudor was not likely to dispute a point which 
 promised to save herself the purchasing of white kid 
 gloves and evening dresses for Esther. She thought her 
 dear niece showed a very praiseworthy principle in not 
 wishing to acquire that taste for society which must so 
 inevitably unfit her for her quiet life at home. She would 
 wish her dear niece in this, as in everything else, to con- 
 sult her own feelings as long as she remained her guest ; 
 and her dear niece soon found that she would have five 
 or six evenings in every week very much, indeed, at her 
 own disposal. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 199 
 
 The consequence of this freedom to Esther was a great 
 and growing intimacy with Jane Dashwood. Milly made 
 profession still of the deepest regard for her old school 
 friend ; but the elements of real affection for anything or 
 person beyond herself were quite rudimentary in poor lit- 
 tle Milly's shallow nature. She had liked Esther at school, 
 as she candidly avowed, because Esther wrote her exer- 
 cises, and mended her stockings for her. She liked her 
 now because she was a complacent listener to narrations 
 of successes, and also in Millicent's opinion not good- 
 looking enough ever to stand, at any time, in one'? own 
 way. But Jane, who with all her faults could love, had 
 taken a real liking to the repose of Esther's face and na- 
 ture from the first day on which they ever saw each other 
 in the train. Possibly like Milly, she, too, imagined Miss 
 Fleming to be one who would never rival her in the clos- 
 est interests of her life ; but she saw, too, in her a strong 
 calm character, wholly opposed to her own feverish and 
 fitful one, an original fresh way of thinking widely differ- 
 ent to the hackneyed flippancy or assumed reserve of the 
 young women she had hitherto dignified by the name of 
 friends. Esther was the only person of her own sex, ex- 
 cept her sister, with whom she had ever felt anything like 
 real interest in talking ; and then Esther did not admire 
 Arthur Peel, and Arthur Peel only thought Esther a fine- 
 looking girl, not at all in his style. It was on the occas- 
 ion when he had expressly stated his final decision on this 
 important subject, that poor Jane first carne, self-inviled, 
 to spend the evening with Esther, and ask her to allow 
 her, Jane Dashwood, to be her friend for life. 
 
 Esther's temperament was not one that urged her on 
 into sudden and violent young-lady friendship under or- 
 dinary circumstances ; but still Jane Dashwood's com- 
 panionship was welcome to her. It was difficult to write 
 to Oliver, or even to think of him, during all the hours 
 
200 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 in which Mrs. Tudor left her alone. To her who had seen 
 so little of life there was infinite zest in all Miss Dash- 
 wood's savoir vivre and stories of her own conquests, 
 and triumphs, and regrets. It was not unamnsing to hear 
 Jane talk of Paul. He was the last man, Esther assured 
 herself, for whom, even if disengaged, she could entertain 
 any other feeling than curiosity; but still it was not un- 
 interesting, in default of better matter, to have his char- 
 acter set forth in Jane's lively way, and from the Dash- 
 wood point of view. 
 
 With such mutual sources of interest, confidence could 
 scarcely fail of proceeding rapidly between two young 
 women of the respective ages of eighteen and twenty- 
 one. At the end of a fortnight Esther knew every one 
 of the antecedents of Jane's life, except such portions of 
 
 it as belonged to Arthur Peel ; and Jane had received 
 
 c> ' 
 
 every confidence Esther had to give, except the recountal 
 of those few short weeks that had been the exclusive 
 property of Mr. Carew. 
 
 "I am quite glad to see Jane becoming intimate with 
 you, Miss Fleming," Mrs. Dashwood observed to Esther 
 the second time she saw her. "It would be something 
 new to me to see either of Colonel Dash wood's da-ughters 
 caring for anything more vital than dress, and vanity, 
 and balls. If you find that you acquire the slightest in- 
 fluence over poor Jane, may I may I ask you, as a 
 duty you owe to yourself and her, too, to try and turn it 
 to a serious account ? " 
 
 Esther answered, as civility demanded, that she would 
 be very glad indeed to do anything to serve Mrs. Dash- 
 wood ; but she had already obtained sufficient insight in- 
 to Jane's temper to know that whatever influence was to 
 be gained over her must be an indirect one. She might 
 be swayed by example or by love ; the kind of war of ex- 
 termination that her stepmother had carried on against 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 201 
 
 her, ever since she was seven years old, was, Esther felt, 
 the precise means of making poor Jane's heart stand firm- 
 est rooted in its own rebellion. 
 
 Mrs. Dash wood was a woman of undeniably good in- 
 tentions. She held firm views as to her own perfectly 
 elect state of mind and excellent future prospects in anoth- 
 er world, and really did her best to convince the people 
 she lived with of their errors. Esther's ignorance of theo- 
 logical matters prevented her from discerning whether 
 Mrs. Dashwood's views were high, or low, Calvinistic, or 
 Tractarian, or broad. Whatever may have been her doc 
 trines, however, she held them to the extreme, and made 
 her family duly miserable by their propagation. For, in 
 addition to her views, Colonel Dashwood's wife had nerves. 
 Views and nerves both in the same woman ! When she 
 got worsted in her frequent theological and moral argu- 
 ments with Jane, she had nerves to fall back upon at the 
 crowning-point of her defeat. When Colonel Dashwood 
 offended her by his worldliness, in any shape that involv- 
 ed neglect of herself, she could, at the very shortest no- 
 tice, attire herself, metaphorically in her grave-clothes, 
 and propose to meet her end. Every man whatever, 
 in the bracing atmosphere of masculine confidence, he 
 may assert to the contrary every man that breathes is 
 utterly subjugated and powerless when his wife makes 
 preparations for death. If he struggles, he is made to feel 
 himself a brute, and has to give in in the end : if he does 
 not struggle, he is made equally to feel himself a brute, 
 and has to give in at the onset. Her step-daughters were 
 sufficiently out of the reach of her immediate and person- 
 al power to bear a great many of Mrs. Dashwood's death- 
 throes with fortitude ; but long experience had taught her 
 husband that his wisest course lay in prostrate and abject 
 submission, and it was quite beautiful, when he was asked 
 to a whist party or a club dinner, to hear the conditional 
 9* 
 
202 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 acceptance " depending on poor Mrs. Dash wood's wretch- 
 ed state of health ; " that was all the meek, submissive 
 old Colonel dared to give. 
 
 And yet the meek, submissive old Colonel was far from 
 miserable in his thraldom. Years had accustomed him 
 even to Mrs. Dashwood ; and some of his more intimate 
 friends, including his own children, went so far as to say 
 that there was a point of view from which the austerity 
 of his wife's views, and the feebleness of her health, were 
 by no means distasteful to Colonel Dashwood. They sav- 
 ed him from the expense of entertaining; and to be sav- 
 ed expenditure in any shape was what Colonel Dashwood 
 lived for. When he summed up in his mind the dinner- 
 parties, the balls, the theatre tickets from which Mrs. 
 Dashwood's views saved him, I can really quite believe 
 that the calculation served to reconcile him to a great 
 many of the intestinal broils and personal bullyings that 
 were his everyday food. The girls had to be married of 
 course:, indeed, Colonel Dashwood's view of daughters 
 went no farther than the primary expense of their dress, 
 and his own ultimate hopes of making over this ex- 
 pense into the hands of another man ; and with a woman 
 fond of them, and of the things they liked, a woman such 
 as their mother might have been had she lived, what would 
 not have been required of him in costly entertainments 
 every winter ? If you set up for ball-giving at all, you 
 must, according to all the laws of watering-place civiliza- 
 
 / O C> L 
 
 tion, give two large balls a year. The supper for a ball 
 costs so much; item, waiters ; item, musicians ; the mu- 
 scians alone sufficient to buy his fish in the Bath market 
 for a twelvemonth: and then come smaller parties, and 
 impromptu teas, and dinners, and all the reckless expendi- 
 tures that women abandon themselves to, when once you 
 give them their head at all. When Colonel Dashwood 
 pondered over these things, and saw that his daughters 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 203 
 
 managed to be invited out and admired merely on the 
 strength of their own good looks, and one inexpensive, 
 semi-polemical " At Home " a year I repeat it, I can 
 quite believe he felt duly thankful for the nerves and 
 views, and blessed saving of money generally, that the 
 second Mrs. Dash wood, together with her nice little for- 
 tune of so many thousand pounds, had brought to him. 
 
 But Jane and Milly saw in their father's ready submis- 
 sion to his wife's wishes only another cause of righteous 
 detestation to their stepmother, another element of dis- 
 cord in their loveless, disunited home. All the practical 
 efforts of Mrs. Dash wood's religion, were, as far as they 
 were concerned, deprivation of the things they cared for. 
 All Colonel Dashwood's philanthropy (and he was very 
 philanthropical took chairs at meetings, and made long 
 twaddling speeches after the manner of his kind) was 
 put off, his children said, on the threshold of his own 
 house, and never extended to them. As Esther got to 
 know more of their own home and of their training, she 
 wondered less and less at the scanty affection bestowed by 
 the Dashwood girls upon the members of their own fam- 
 ily, and at the cool and systematic deceit existing between 
 every one of the entire household towards the rest. 
 Upon Milly, faulty though she was, her bringing up had 
 exercised a less powerful influence for bad than upon 
 Jane. Millicent Dashwood's, like her father's, was a tem- 
 perament precisely fitted for extracting the greatest pos- 
 sible amount of personal gratification, and the very small- 
 est of personal suffering, out of any position of life, in 
 which she might find herself placed. Her loves, her 
 sympathies, her dislikes, were all of the same moderate 
 and prudent temperature. You could just look onward 
 twenty or thirty years, and imagine her then as Colonel 
 Dashwood was at present ; performing all expedient du- 
 ties well, and digesting her dinner, and living within her 
 
204 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 income, and caring very little for anything beyond her 
 own ease and being very well thought of by the world at 
 large. 
 
 Was she upright? was she conscientious ? ~No one liv 
 ing -.no, not herself ever knew as much as that of 
 Millicent Dashwood. Common sense and thorough self- 
 ishness and a cool temperament kept her as they keep 
 hundreds like her from ever infringing any law, the in- 
 fringment of which should entail penalty on herself. She 
 simply did not know the meaning of refined or fierce 
 temptation, and consequently it was impossible for her to 
 be tempted beyond her power of resistance. Jane's sen- 
 sitive organization and utter deficiency of moral strength 
 made her whole life a series of struggles and failures; of 
 struggles against conditions and temptations too strong 
 for her ; of surrenders to things which, even while they 
 conquered her, she had enough nobility of soul to revolt 
 from and despise. And Milly, like the true little Pharisee 
 that she was, already indulged in much secret thankful- 
 ness to Providence that she was not as poor dear Jenny 
 in her frequent short-comings, and spasmodic endeavors 
 after impossible perfection. 
 
 The fact was, no real moral discipline in childhood had 
 fitted Jane Dashwood either for the temptations or the 
 weariness of ordinary human life. Mrs. Dash wood, in ac- 
 cordance with the traditions of her class, had early talked 
 a great deal to her step-daughters about their sins, and 
 spiritual helplessness, and need of repentance and forgive- 
 ness ; and Millicent, by the time she was eight years old, 
 had improved so much upon her instructions as to be able 
 to mourn, in the orthodox, casuistic argot, over all the 
 iniquities of her childish days, and obtain little prizes of 
 tracts and picture cards as a recompense for the sensitive- 
 ness of her conscience. But Jane could not play fast and 
 lose with her own soul, even then. She could no more 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 205 
 
 lament over unfelt sins than she could steal the almonds 
 and raisins from the sideboard, and go to sleep half an 
 hour afterwards unhaunted by remorse, like Milly. What- 
 ever she felt was real : and so, as she faithfully believed 
 all that she was told in such matters, her conscience be- 
 came really excited into precocious and unnatural sensitive- 
 ness. She thought herself fallen and lost, and she preferred 
 despairing hymns to story books, and she heard mysteri- 
 ous calls and voices, and sustained raptures and trances. 
 
 " And so I got used up in religious feeling, as I am now 
 in everything else," she said to Esther, once. "I do 
 things that I ought to repent for, as I repented then, and 
 I can't. All the straining after repentance before I really 
 knew what wrong was seems to have exhausted my re- 
 penting powers for life." 
 
 She was mistaken in this, as her constant fits of self- 
 upbraiding proved. Her temperament was too acute a 
 one for even Mrs. Dash wood's training to have wholly 
 deadened its capacities for suffering. But her repentan- 
 ces were still merely emotional, like those she had played 
 at when she was a child : passionate revulsions of feeling 
 bearing no fruit whatsoever beyond present tears and 
 speedy longings after renewed and stronger excitement. 
 
 Esther Fleming was the first person she had known in 
 whom her feverish unsettled spirit could find anything 
 like repose. Esther was so little excitable, so strong, so 
 rarely moved ! Everything she said and felt was so real, 
 so unlike the sentiments developed in the Dashwood 
 atmosphere. Religion with her had been, as a little child, 
 to learn her lessons, to weed the garden, to mend her 
 clothes, to go to church, to obey. Miss Joan abhorred 
 questioning children about" their feelings ; " fostering 
 their vanity, and training them to be hypocrites, as 
 though that won't come fast enough without any assis- 
 tance of ours." She held that the only way to train them 
 
206 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 was to bring them up in stern obedience to all natural law, 
 moral and physical, to make them temperate, enduring, 
 self-reliant, strong ; and trust to their early-instilled un- 
 reasoning reverence for church and Sunday, and their 
 Bibles, to keep them right in theology. And probably 
 her theory was as right as any theory of education ever 
 can be ; Esther's nature, at all events, had not developed 
 badly under it. 
 
 " You would be better if you thought less about yourself 
 altogether, Jane," she would answer when Miss Dash- 
 wood had been mourning over the decay of her repenting 
 powers. " I am not at all sure you don't at heart like the 
 sensation of being wicked. Self-analyzation, as you call 
 it, may be a very fine and useful exercise, but I can't help 
 thinking that if you would just give up flirting with 
 Arthur Peel, and not seek so many occasions of falling, 
 it would be more to the purpose." 
 
 Esther did not know then how near poor Jane's heart 
 her foolish passion lay. When she found what the girl's 
 love for Arthur Peel really was, she could never bring her 
 lips to say anything harsh or strong-minded upon the 
 subject again. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 ONE morning early, Miss Dashwood came round alone 
 to ask Esther to walk with her. Milly had gone to spend 
 the day with some friends of her own, and Jane felt a 
 strong inclination for a quiet country walk ; besides, she 
 added, she had something very particular indeed, that she 
 wished to talk to Miss Fleming about ; something con- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 207 
 
 cerning which she desired especially to ask Miss Fleming's 
 opinion. 
 
 " You must give me yours on something equally impor- 
 tant to me," said Esther. " I have had an invitation this 
 morning to a party at Mrs. Strangways for next Thursday, 
 and Aunt Thalia and I cannot decide whether I shall ac- 
 cept it or not." 
 
 "Paul will be there," said Jane, laconically. "I had a 
 note from him this morning, to say that he will return to 
 Bath next week." 
 
 " And is Mr. Chichester sure to be at any party given 
 by Mrs. Strangways, Jane ? " 
 
 "Quite certain, Esther under some circumstances. 
 There will be people at Mrs. Strangways' house on Thurs- 
 day whom Mr. Chichester cares to meet." 
 
 " I am sure everybody seems to be taking up with Mrs. 
 Strangways now," cried Miss Whitty, who was busily 
 disrobing Mrs. Tudor's chandeliers for an approaching 
 tea-party. " Whom do you think I saw with her this 
 morning, Miss Dash wood ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I am sure I don't know," answered Jane, turning 
 sharply away. 
 
 " Why, Miss Lynes the Miss Lynes the heiress, and 
 Mrs. Strangways, and Mr. Peel was with them, on horse- 
 back. I was coming back from my little early walk on 
 the common, and I knew who it was directly, though I've 
 not been introduced. Miss Lynes's face is so familiar to 
 me from her likeness to her uncle, Sir Samuel Lynes, 
 whom I've played with scores and scores of times when I 
 was a child." (It was a peculiarity of Miss Whitty's to 
 have played with everybody when she was a child : 
 knights, baronets, poets-laureate, generals, dukes ; nothing 
 short of royalty stopped her.) " And most surprised I 
 was, dearest Mrs. Tudor, I can assure you, to see Sir 
 Samuel's niece in such company." 
 
208 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Then your surprise was very ill-placed, Miss Whitty," 
 replied Mrs. Tudor. " A clothier's niece " 
 
 " Oh, dear mini ! an army agent's " 
 
 "An army agent's, a clothier's, a tailor's niece, like Miss 
 Lynes, may be well content that her fifty thousand pounds 
 have brought her at all into the society of gentlemen and 
 ladies. Mr. Peel means to marry the young woman, I 
 hear, and, considering the family of ruined spendthrifts he 
 belongs to, 'tis about the best thing for him to do." 
 
 Esther saw that Miss Dashwood writhed visibly under 
 Mrs. Tudor's last words, and began to talk of other things 
 as soon as they left the house ; but Jane, of her own will, 
 recurred at once to the theme of Arthur Peel and Miss 
 Lynes. 
 
 " Your aunt is right, Esther ; all the town is mention- 
 ing their names together. I know, of course, that there 
 is nothing in it ; how can there be ? the very idea is 
 preposterous ; but still it makes me sick and miserable 
 even to hear his name spoken of with any other woman's. 
 That's what I want to talk to you about. We'll not walk 
 in the town, we'll go away through the park to the com- 
 mon, where we shall meet nobody, unless, indeed, we are 
 lucky enough to fall in with that riding-party Miss 
 Whitty told us of." And then Jane laughed rather bitter- 
 
 iy- 
 
 The ordinary Dashwood idea of a walk consisted in 
 making the greatest number of turns that were possible, 
 without being actually notorious, before the club-house, 
 and up and down the principal gangways of Bath ; and 
 Esther felt a good deal relieved that for once they were 
 to go away into the country and be spared the manoeuv- 
 ring which walking for two consecutive hours along three 
 streets demands. It was a clear, still day of late autumn ; 
 the air summer-like, but for its intense stillness and fra- 
 grance from the dying woods ; the coloring on the sur- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 209 
 
 rounding amphitheatre of hills full of those tender hues 
 of russet-gold and delicate greys which render some 
 mornings in December fairer than all the brightest days 
 of May or June. 
 
 " Bath is a beautiful place," Esther remarked as they 
 turned in the upper park to look back across the town. 
 " If I was condemned to live in any city all my life, I 
 think I would choose this." 
 
 " And I would sooner choose any other in the inhabit- 
 ed world," said Miss Dash wood. " I hate, I detest, I 
 loathe Bath Bath, and its people too." 
 
 "The people you have spent all your life among, 
 Jane?" 
 
 " The people I have spent all my life among, Esther. 
 Leaving out papa and Milly, I shouldn't shed a tear at all 
 the people I know in Bath being swallowed up by an 
 earthquake at this moment." 
 
 " The riding party on the common to be excepted, of 
 course." 
 
 "Arthur Peel excepted ; the other two might share the 
 general fate, for any wish of mine to the contrary. Not 
 that either of them have injured me, or have it in their 
 power to injure me," she added quickly. " Mrs. Strang- 
 ways detests me, but as to poor Miss Lynes, with her 
 great fat white lymphatic face, I shouldn't think it was in 
 her to like or dislike any one ; and I ani'Sure I could nev- 
 er have the slightest feeling of either kind towards her." 
 
 "And are you sure that Mrs. Strangways does detest 
 you, Jane ? She is always wanting you to be with her ; 
 she is dreadfully affectionate to you in her manner. What 
 can you have ever done to make her detest you as you 
 say she does?" 
 
 "Not any one particular action, perhaps. It is not 
 one great palpable injury, but a series of small rivalries, 
 that make dear friends like Mrs. Strangways and me de- 
 
210 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 test each other. I am a dozen years younger than she is 
 men ask me to dance oftener than they do her. She 
 can look back upon scores of times when my vanity has 
 been gratified at the expense of hers. Paul Chichester, 
 who would not under any conditions pay her attention, 
 became my friend the first day he saw me. Are not these 
 sufficient reasons for her to hate me ? " 
 
 " And yet she always wishes you to be with her." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she has got to the point where rival aid has 
 to be called in. A humiliating point that, Esther, eh ? 
 I wonder when I am thirty whether I shall be what Mrs. 
 Strangways is now ? " 
 
 u God forbid, Jane," said Esther. " I hope you will be 
 happily married, and caring nothing for balls and parties 
 long before then." 
 
 u Married to whom ? " 
 
 Esther hesitated. Miss Dashwood's position as nomi- 
 nally engaged to one man, and unconditionally in love 
 with another, made the question a rather difficult one to 
 answer. 
 
 " Married to whom ? " repeated Jane. " Speak out, 
 Esther, I want to have your opinion." 
 
 " I hope you will be married to a man you can respect, 
 Jane. You would never be happy unless you did respect 
 him." 
 
 " Shall I tell you what I think of that style of moral 
 sentiment, Esther ? I think, like all copy-book things, it 
 means nothing whatever. No pretty little axioms can fit 
 everybody; good and bad, passionate and phlegmatic, 
 alike. Respect and esteem may be necessary elements to 
 some people's love ; they are not to mine. I can love 
 without either." 
 
 "I spoke, of happiness, Jane." 
 
 "And love is happiness. When I am married to Arthur, 
 I shall be happy, whatever he is, whatever he has been. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 211 
 
 It is just the one subject in which reason does not enter, 
 you see, Miss Fleming. I suppose you allow that ? " 
 
 "I I don't think I know much about very passionate 
 love," said Esther ; and recollecting her numerous re- 
 markably cool judgments upon the defects in Oliver's 
 character, the truth was borne in upon her, not without a 
 sense of shame, that Jane's attachment, hopeless and mis- 
 placed though it might be, had yet stronger vitality, more 
 of the genuine element of love in it than hers. "I don't 
 think I know much about passionate love, except what I 
 have heard, and read in books. I think, now, that I could 
 always reason, whatever I might feel." 
 
 " And pray to Heaven that you may always feel so ! " 
 cried Miss Dash wood. " Pray that you may never love 
 any human being better than yourself ; above all, that you 
 may never commit the desperate folly of staking your 
 hopes of happiness upon the miserable chance of any 
 man's heart being as stable as your own." 
 
 " Have you done that, Jane ? " 
 
 " Have I not done it ? you should say. Am I not giv- 
 ing up the best years of my life, giving up all other pros- 
 pects or hopes ; am I not ready to sacrifice everything 
 my own soul if it would help him to Arthur Peel ! and 
 how does he return it all ? Don't speak, please, don't 
 say anything ; I can bear to say these things, but not to 
 hear them said. Does Arthur really love me, Esther ? He 
 must do that ; " she turned her face, white and excited, 
 to Esther: "he must do that," she repeated passionately. 
 " Men are not like women, of course : they require excite- 
 ment, amusement, a thousand things that look like infidel- 
 ity, yet are not really so. Arthur's whole life is spent in 
 committing actions that make me miserable, and still, at 
 heart, I know he loves nie. Why, just think how long 
 our engagement has been going on three years ! It makes 
 me old to think of it." 
 
212 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "Engagement! I never knew before that there was any 
 thing like an engagement in the case," said Esther, with 
 a feeling of more interest in Jane's love affairs than she 
 had ever known before. " Do you mean me to think that 
 you are actually engaged to be married to Mr. Peel ? " 
 , " Well, yes. I don't see the good of making any more 
 half-confidences. In our way, Arthur and I are engag- 
 ed." 
 
 " Oh, Jane ! and I have laughed at you about it, and 
 said such things about Mr. Peel ! How I wish you had 
 told me all from the first ! " 
 
 " Never mind," cried Miss Dashwood, with rather a 
 forced laugh. " You need not take it so dreadfully au 
 serieux. I said we were engaged in one way, and our 
 way would not be yours, Esther. I amuse myself pretty 
 well, as you see, in this odious life of ours at Bath, and I 
 dare say Arthur pines no more than other young Guards- 
 men pine in London. Whatever you have said is not 
 half so bad as what people in general say of both of us." 
 
 "But people in general don't know that you are engag- 
 ed to each other, I suppose." 
 
 " Not now. My little attentions to Paul have drawn 
 others as well as papa on the wrong scent, as I meant 
 them to do. Very good-natured of Paul to help me out 
 so well, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " I don't know, Jane. I am dense in such matters. I 
 don't quite understand the advantage of it." 
 
 "It is very simple. Papa thinks I am safe, and does 
 not watch me. Mrs. Dashwood thinks some one is really 
 going' to be fool enough to take me off her hands, and ab- 
 stains occasionally from bullying me. Between them I 
 get my freedom, and see Arthur, and write to him as much 
 as I choose. And Mr. Peel himself is regarded as so per- 
 fectly free, that all the world set him down as about to 
 marry Miss Lynes." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 213 
 
 "But if I were in your place I don't think I should 
 like such perfect liberty as that." 
 
 " You wouldn't care if you knew, as I do, that all these 
 reports are utterly malignant and preposterous," exclaim- 
 ed Miss Dashwood. " Arthur marry Miss Lynes ! with 
 his fastidious tastes and admiration of refinement ! I 
 should like you to see her, Esther; I should only like 
 you once to see her ! You wouldn't be so desperately 
 sure of her becoming my rival, if you did." 
 
 Miss Dashwood's wish was destined to be accomplished. 
 Almost while the words were yet on her lips, a sharp 
 turn in the path brought them in full sight of three peo 
 pie on horseback, who had just turned into the upper 
 park from the common, and Esther recognized instantly 
 that two of the three were Mrs. Strangways and Mr 
 Peel. 
 
 " A most extraordinary coincidence, as your friend 
 Miss Whitty would say, Esther. Please talk away to 
 me, and let us have the manner of being unconcerned 
 as we pass. Mrs. Strangways and that that other per- 
 son will be hoping to see me look annoyed : but they 
 will be disappointed. Do look at the heiress's figure ! 
 Arthur likes delicate mignon lines must not that waist 
 be fearfully seductive to him ? " 
 
 Miss Dashwood tried hard to make her manner natu- 
 ral, and probably succeeded well enough ,to prevent Mrs. 
 Strangways and that that other person from detecting 
 the effort; but Arthur Peel knew, long before they reach- 
 ed her, what kind of feelings were masked by Jane's 
 smiling face and ringing laugh. He felt horribly ill at 
 ease himself. Women can carry off such a situation read- 
 ily enough : indeed, I have known some of them, who 
 are never so thoroughly natural, and in their element, as 
 when they have to play one lover off against another, 
 doling out equal hope to both, and utter despair to neither. 
 
214 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 But coquetry is not inborn in men, in Englishmen, at 
 all events. There are male coquettes, as there are male 
 milliners and male dancers ; but Nature asserts herself in 
 every case. Just when the last perfection in art is re- 
 quired, they lack those finer graces of the sex whose at- 
 tributes they are infringing, and become ridiculous. Ar- 
 thur Peel could carry on any number of flirtations apart ; 
 could parry jealous questionings with a mixture of aplomb 
 and indignant tenderness that belonged almost to the^ 
 highest stage of science ; but yet to the very highest he 
 could not reach. Meeting the woman who loved him, in 
 the company of the woman whose fifty thousand pounds 
 he desired to possess, he looked more foolish, more awk- 
 ward, than any school gill of fifteen would do if sudden- 
 ly called into a position in which just the same amount 
 of tact should be required of her. 
 
 But, whatever the feelings of the others, Mrs. Strang- 
 ways, at least, looked radiant, and would on no account 
 pass Jane and Esther with merely bowing. She stopped, 
 she shook hands, she made playful surmises as to the object 
 of their early walk : finally she introduced Jane to Miss 
 Lynes. The heiress nodded with the affability that her 
 wealth and her magnificient mount and her groom behind 
 her, and her present success with Arthur, warranted her to 
 feel : Jane drew up her little figure and inclined her head 
 about three-quarters of an inch with an awfully supercil- 
 ious ghost of a smile, extending as much to Mr. Peel as 
 to Miss Lynes. 
 
 "Have you walked far, Miss Fleming? Arthur inquir- 
 ed, bringing his horse nearer to the path and farther from 
 the heiress, but not daring to address Jane herself. " We 
 did not see you on the common. I suppose ah 
 
 He was assisted out of his dilemma by Jane. That 
 one word " we " had sent all the angry blood from her 
 heart to her cheeks, and Mr. Peel knew before she spoke, 
 the kind of answer he had to expect. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WirFP 215 
 
 " We haven't been far, Mr. Peel. Milly has gone to 
 spend the day with those dreadful school-friends of hers, 
 the Stnithetts, and as I never can stand the cotton atmos- 
 phere for more than five minutes without a sensation of 
 choking, I made my escape, and asked Esther to come 
 out with me here for a little purer air." 
 
 It was not a refined thrust : Jane was the first to con- 
 fess herself afterwards that she had been positively un- 
 ladylike. But it took the desired effect at the time. No 
 fine shaft could have pierced so tough a skin, morally and 
 physically, as Miss Lynes's ; but the slightest allusion to 
 trade made her actually shiver. She was so exultingly 
 proud of her money, so thoroughly ashamed of the way 
 in which her money had been made ! 
 
 " Who are the Smithetts ? " she cried, in that quick fa- 
 miliar way with which people of her breeding always try 
 to throw off their confusion. " I never met them out 
 I never heard of them. Are they in society ? " 
 
 " Some persons visit them," said Jane, in a frightfully 
 clear, syllabic manner. " I believe old Mr. and Mrs. 
 Smithett belong to a highly respectable class of persons. 
 The daughters, from being ashamed of their parents and 
 of their business, are insufferable. Is that really one of 
 Stone and Mason's horse, Mrs. Strangways ? It is a much 
 more decent-looking creature than any papa ever gets for 
 Milly and me." 
 
 " Oh, I hope you won't get any hack-horses when you 
 ride with me again, Mrs. Strangways," interrupted Miss 
 Lynes. " They're such miserable screws, I don't care to 
 be seen with them ; and you know you can always have 
 one of mine, whenever you like. I keep three, beside the 
 groom's." 
 
 Arthur Peel had always felt a mild chronic distaste for 
 Miss Lynes's person ; but at this moment it rose into 
 something very near strong repugnance. Her corpulent 
 
216 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 figure, her stunted features had never stood out in such 
 strong relief as they did now, with Jane Dash wood's deli- 
 cate form and proud little patrician face straight before 
 him. Her bragging pride of wealth and innate vulgarity 
 of soul had never revolted him as they did now, with 
 Jane's mocking wit ready to call them out and treasure 
 them for his especial gratification and benefit hereafter. 
 
 How devoutly he wished Jane Dashwood had Miss 
 Lynes' s money or half of it ! He thought he would 
 marry her to-morrow with half of it, and let Miss Lyne's 
 and her three horses, besides the groom's, go to the deuce. 
 He almost thought, looking at the two young women to- 
 gether, that he would marry Jane without a penny, and 
 leave Miss Lynes with all her wealth for some one of 
 stronger stomach than himself. 
 
 He almost thought so : but Arthur Peel was too old a 
 hand ever to act upon any foolish impulse. A delicate 
 lithe figure and proud little patrician face are very nice 
 things indeed for a man who can afford to pay for them 
 which he could not. He was over head and ears in 
 debt ; his family were bankrupts ; his only hope of being 
 able to save his commission, or his position in life at all, 
 rested upon his being able to bring his own handsome face 
 to a good matrimonial market as speedily as possible. As 
 much love as it was in his nature to feel he felt at this 
 moment for Jane Dashwood ; as much disgust as any wo- 
 man, young and well-disposed towards himself, could fill 
 him with he felt for Miss Lynes ; and for an instant, as I 
 have said, the desperate folly of being true to the one and 
 throwing up the other did enter his brain. 
 
 That instant was enough to show him the danger of al- 
 lowing feeling ever to dally with principle. Young 
 women, however vulgar, with fifty thousand pounds to 
 their portion, are not readily met, and are quickly lost. 
 Already two or three men of family as high, and with 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 217 
 
 position less desperate than his own, were steadily in pur- 
 suit of Miss Lynes. A little well-founded jealousy on 
 her part, a slight suspicion as to the disinterestedness of 
 his motives, and his game might be up. 
 
 Mr. Peel turned his eyes resolutely from Jane Dash- 
 wood's face, and fixing them upon Miss Lynes, asked her, 
 in rather a low voice, if she was ashamed of riding with 
 him, as he was on a hack-horse ? If so, she had only to 
 speak, and, whatever the violence to his own feelings, he 
 w r ould go at once in an opposite direction. 
 
 " You droll creature ! " cried Miss Lynes in her loudest 
 tone. "As if I had ever taken the trouble to look what 
 your horse was like ! Nothing like the vanity of men I 
 do believe and all the time, do you know you are losing 
 your flower? I shall take care how I waste one of my 
 rare winter roses upon you another time." 
 
 And she leant forward, and with an air of the most per- 
 fect, recognized familiarity adjusted a flower that was 
 nearly falling from Mr. Peel's buttonhole. 
 
 It was more thnn Jane Dashwood's strength could bear. 
 She had marked Arthur's low tone; she intercepted the 
 look which passed from his eyes to the heiress as she 
 stooped forward towards him now ; and a feeling nearer 
 akin to positive anguish than any he had ever yet caused 
 her, contracted her heart. That he could never love Miss 
 Lynes, she knew ; but, tempted by his own need, might 
 he not be brought in time, might he not already have 
 brought himself, to the thought of marrying her? 
 
 " Esther, it is time for us to go on. These November days 
 are so short, and we have not got half through our walk 
 yet." 
 
 " And we were to have been at the Oofton's at two? 
 and it is now half-past one," said Mrs. Strangways, look- 
 ing at her watch. "Thank you, Jane dear, for reminding 
 me of the time. I could not get those young people on 
 10 
 
218 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 when we were in the country. They persisted in calling 
 it warm, and looking out for violets, in spite of all my as- 
 sertions about its being the depth of winter. Miss Flem- 
 ing, I am to see you on Thursday, I hope? That is right. 
 Come early with Jane and Milly. You will have an op- 
 portunity of renewing your acquaintance with a Wey- 
 mouth friend that is, if Miss Dash wood will give you] 
 carte blanche for doing so." 
 
 And then Mrs. Strangways' affection for her young 
 friends could not be satisfied without another warm shake 
 of the hand ; and Jane had to submit to another patroniz- 
 ing nod of triumph from Miss Lynes, as, laughing and 
 talking in an under tone to Arthur Peel, she rode off by 
 his side. 
 
 " Well, what do you think of my rival now ? " she 
 cried, after a minute, to Esther. " Do you think there is 
 imminent danger of Arthur Peel's falling in love with 
 Miss Lynes ? " 
 
 " With Miss Lynes, herself, no ! " 
 
 "But with her money, yes. You think her rare roses 
 in November, the three ' orses besides the groom's ' will 
 tempt him ? I don't, Esther. It is not in Arthur's na- 
 ture to sell himself to such a woman as that. Look at 
 them together! Did you ever see such a contrast ? I 
 can tell by the turn of Arthur's head, even at this dis- 
 tance, that it is she who is doing all the talking just 
 in the same forward way that she volunteered to button 
 his coat for him. I suppose, however hideous a woman 
 is, men feel flattered at having love made to them with 
 such outrageous warmth but to return it by love ! 
 Ah, that is another thing." 
 
 Through the long vista of leafless trees Miss Dashwo.od 
 continued to watch the riding-party as long as they were 
 in sight. Just as they turned into the town park, and 
 when the archway across the road would in another mo- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 210 
 
 nient have shut them out of sight, Mr. Peel turned, 
 checked his horse for an instant, and raised his hand to 
 his hat. 
 
 The blood rushed up crimson into Miss Dash wood's 
 face. 
 
 " Do you see him, poor fellow ? Esther, do you see 
 him ? He wants me to know by that look that he wishes 
 he was here, and that his companions are odious to him. 
 How wrong I was to show such annoyance before those 
 women as if it could matter to me Mrs. Strangways 
 having entrapped him, for once, into riding with her and 
 Miss Lynes ! I was very wrong wasn't I ? " 
 
 " You acted naturally, Jane," said Esther, who felt her- 
 self unable to decipher such worlds of meaning in Arthur's 
 parting salutation. " Mr. Peel seemed quite intimate 
 enough with Miss Lynes to justify your annoyance. 
 Shall we walk on a little quicker ? the common is some 
 distance from us yet." 
 
 But all Jane Dash wood's desire for the country was 
 gone. " There is no good in walking up that terrific hill, 
 Esther. It is quite as pleasant here. Let us sit down 
 for a few minutes and rest. I have yet something I want 
 particularly to say to you. 
 
 Esther knew that something particular, with Jane Dash- 
 wood, must mean the only subject of real interest to her 
 in the world her own love-affairs ; accordingly, she was 
 quite prepared for another indignant outburst about 
 Arthur Peel's seeming flirtation with the heiress. When 
 Jane began to speak, however, all indignation had left 
 her voice, and her face was as soft and gentle as though 
 no tornado of fierce jealousy or quick repentance had just 
 swept across her heart. 
 
 " You think my love and my trust, too, are unreasona- 
 ble, Esther. I am quite sure you do ; but you don't know 
 what has made them both so deep in my heart. You 
 
220 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 don't really know how long and hoy} I have trusted Arthur 
 Peel." 
 
 " Three years, you told me, Jane. You must have been 
 almost a child when your acquaintance with hirn first be- 
 gan." 
 
 " I was never a child, Esther ; we were not brought up 
 to be children. I was just as much a woman at sixteen 
 as I am, or as Milly is now. But I was not quite sixteen 
 when I first met Arthur. I went to spend the Christmas 
 holidays with my aunt Robarts, papa's sister, in Leicester- 
 shire ; and Arthur who was going to stay in the house, 
 too, travelled down in the same carriage with me. He 
 was quite a boy then, he had only just got his commission^ 
 and he was as simple as possible, much simpler than I 
 was. Well, you know how such things go on ! We 
 played battledore and shuttle-cock, and sang duets, and 
 g.ive each other flowers, and went through all the estab- 
 lished stages of a boy-and-girl flirtation ; and then, one 
 evening in the greenhouse, he made me an offer. I don't 
 think I cared very much about him, but I accepted him 
 because I always meant to accept the first man who offered 
 to me. The Robartses encouraged it all immensely, and 
 papa wrote me the only affectionate letter I ever had from 
 him in my life, and everybody let me know, directly or 
 indirectly how wonderfully clever I had been at sixteen 
 to get hold of such a catch as Arthur Peel." 
 
 " The engagement was a permitted one, then ? " 
 
 " Permitted ! I should think it was permitted. Arthur 
 had an old aunt living at that time, who was expected to 
 leave him the whole of her money, something like twenty 
 or thirty thousand pounds, and we all felt sure we had 
 got hold of this money, and thought Arthur the most 
 delightful, promising, excellent young man living. Well, 
 the aunt died, about six months after I was engaged, and 
 left every shilling she had to her solicitor. When Arthur 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 221 
 
 wrote and told me of his fallen prospects, and said it need 
 make no difference to us, and his profession in time would 
 be enough for us to many on, I first really felt that I 
 loved him. Papa was in a great rage, and stormed about 
 Arthur, as if he had taken us in, instead of being disap- 
 pointed himself. He said the engagement shouldn't go 
 on a day, that it was a mockery for a penniless cornet to 
 talk of marrying one of his daughters, that the Peels 
 were a dissipated, ruined family (I never heard of their 
 bad morals before, you must know,) and he should have 
 me back upon his hands in a twelvemonth, if he was fool 
 enough to consent to such a beggarly marriage. If I 
 was pretty enough to get as good an offer as Mr. Peel's 
 had been at sixteen, I should be sure to have another as 
 good if I waited. As to love, he and Mrs. Dashwood 
 both knew very well I had accepted the offer simply be- 
 cause it was an eligible one. Mrs. Robarts had informed 
 them my manner showed that pretty plainly from the first, 
 and so on. 
 
 "I didn't make any opposition, for I knew, if they chose, 
 they could hinder me from seeing Arthur; but I swore in 
 my heart I would never give him up as long as he himself 
 wished to marry me. I had accepted him half through 
 vanity, half through worldliness ; but at the first word of 
 being false to him, under his fallen prospects, something 
 stronger seemed to rise up in my heart, and I have kept 
 to it. Yes, Esther, I have kept to it ever since." 
 
 " I am sorry for you, Jane. Whatever other people 
 may think, I say you determined right." 
 
 "Sometimes I think so, too; but, you know, wrong is 
 so mixed up with right, or so grows of it, that however 
 one starts one seems forced into evil as one gets on. I 
 may have been right in determining to stand by Arthur, 
 whether he was rich or poor, but I have been wrong a 
 hundred, a thousand times, in all the deceit and prevarica- 
 
222 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 tion, and sometimes the downright falsehoods, of the last 
 three years. Just in the same way wrong seems in time 
 to become right. Papa was worldly and harsh in making 
 me break with Arthur Peel as he was then ; but I believe, 
 if I could judge dispassionately, I should consider any 
 father right, who held his daughter back from marrying 
 such a man as Arthur Peel is now." 
 
 " Oh, Jane ! can you say this ? " 
 
 " I can both say it and feel it. If we had married 
 early, if we had been openly engaged, he might God 
 knows if it be so, but I try to think it ! he might have 
 been different, for my sake. But only bound as he has 
 been to me (and such, even, as our engagement is, we have 
 ourselves broken it off half a score of times,) he has had 
 nothing to hold him back from becoming like all the rest 
 of his family. It is inborn in every one of the Peels to 
 be extravagant and dissipated, and a gambler. His two 
 eldest brothers are outlawed, the third is following fast 
 on their steps, and Arthur himself " but here Miss 
 Dashwood's voice trembled, and she stopped short. 
 
 " I wish you had married him long ago," cried Esther. 
 " It is not very like me to counsel runaway marriages, 
 but I do think a runaway marriage would have been bet- 
 ter for you both than the sort of engagement that binds 
 you now. Marry Arthur Peel while you still love each 
 other, and while there is a hope of reclaiming him. I will 
 be your bridesmaid, Jane." 
 
 Miss Dashwood laughed bitterly : then the quick 
 blood started to her cheek again. "Your proposal might 
 have been worth listening to three years ago, Esther. 
 We were younger and simpler, and more sentimental then 
 than we are now. Arthur Peel, at two-and-twenty, is a 
 great deal too old to commit an action of such surpass- 
 ing folly as to add a penniless wife to the heavy burthen 
 of his other incumbrances." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 223 
 
 " Jane, do you mean ? 
 
 " I mean, cried Miss Dashwood, starting up suddenly, 
 " that Arthur and I thoroughly understand each other and 
 ourselves. We are engaged in our way, which, as I told 
 you, would never be yours, and if I talked to you for a 
 hundred hours, instead of one, you would know no more 
 about us than you do now. You would still be Esther 
 Fleming, and we should still be Arthur Peel and Jane 
 Dashwood. Oh, no," she added, as Esther turned towards 
 the common which was to have been their destination 
 " oh, no, let us get on home at once ; we want a few 
 turns in Milsom Street, to enliven us after all this soli- 
 tude. Country walks are very innocent and charming, 
 and sentimental in theory, but in practice va ! 
 
 " What do you mean to wear on Thursday ? Papa and 
 Mrs. Dashwood are so shamefully stingy that Milly and I 
 will be obliged to go in our washed muslins. How t wish 
 philanthropy occasionally bore fruits at home as well as 
 abroad ! " 
 
 The tide had turned again : all that the fickle nature 
 contained of seriousness had evaporated. Blue grena- 
 dines and white silks ; gored skirts and plain ones ; the 
 advantages of fair women over dark women in possessing 
 a wider range of becoming colors : these formed the sta- 
 ple of Miss Dashwood's conversation during the remain- 
 der of the day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 RIVAL CHAKMS. 
 
 WHEN she first left Countisbury Miss Fleming would 
 have scouted the idea that she could ever find pleasure 
 
224 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 either in dress, or in parties, or in anything save letters 
 from Malta during Oliver Carew's absence. 
 
 As the evening approached, however, on which she was 
 again to meet Paul, she could not hide from herself that 
 she was looking forward with an unusual amount of in- 
 terest to the event ; also that she made more little rehear- 
 sals with flowers and muslins and lace for several succes- 
 sive evenings than she had ever done before in her whole 
 simple life. 
 
 Was she growing vain, avid of general admiration, or 
 
 and this question gave her conscience a sharper prick 
 
 were all these rehearsals proof of a desire to stand well 
 with one man, and that one another than Oliver? 
 
 " You look distinguished, Esther, said Mrs. Tudor, as 
 her niece stood before her for approval on the evening of 
 the party, "and it is the highest praise I could give you. 
 The simple unstudied style suits you. Little mignon 
 persons require small fripperies ; large dark women de- 
 mand few and flowing lines. Our styles are the same. 
 I never wore more in my hair in my life than you have 
 now. Our cast of features can afford to set fashion aside." 
 
 Esther was dressed in a black lace that Mrs. Tudor's 
 own cast-off stores had furnished forth. A single scar- 
 let flower was in her hair, a gold bracelet, a loan also of 
 Mrs. Tudor's, was her only ornament. But that name- 
 less something, which neither dress nor fashion, nor 
 always birth, can give ; that fine grace which, lacking a 
 better word, we call distinction, was Esther Fleming's in- 
 herited portion, and Mrs. Tudor was right when she 
 added to her other praise a prophecy that her niece would 
 be by far the most refined and best-bred young woman in 
 Mrs. Strangways' rooms. 
 
 " Some families take up every plebeian face that they 
 have the misfortune to be allied with, Esther, but we re- 
 tain our own features, excepting Joan, whom I regard as 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 225 
 
 a mere accidental offset, the one crooked branch you will 
 see on the handsomest tree. We shall continue to show 
 our good blood through a dozen generations. Your 
 mother, poor thing, had no beauty and no birth either. 
 I believe I have told you so before, but you have not in- 
 herited a look no, not a single feature from her. You 
 have Garratt Fleming's face, line for line, and I cannot 
 pay you a higher compliment. Your dear grandfather 
 was unfortunate in his domestic concerns." This was 
 Mrs. Tudor's pretty way of stating the fact that a man 
 was an unprincipled spendthrift ; " but he was the noblest- 
 looking man and the most perfect dresser of his time. 
 Enjoy yourself well, child, and be sure, if Colonel Dash- 
 wood offers to pay their share of the fly, you take the 
 money at once. It shows very ill-breeding ever to make 
 any difficulty about the settlement of small accounts." - 
 
 This last injunction of Mrs. Tudor's proved her to be 
 ignorant of the finer part of Colonel Dash wood's char- 
 acter. He accompanied his daughters to the carnage ; 
 he took and held Esther's hand with that paternal warmth 
 he seemed always ready to feel for all young women ex- 
 cept his own children ; finally, he remarked how kind it 
 was of Miss Fleming to call round for Jane and Milly. 
 They must do as much for her the next time they were 
 all going to the same party. But Colonel Dashwood 
 knew, as well as Mrs. Tudor herself, when it was decently 
 possible to be spared eighteenpence. 
 
 " Papa has given me a color for the evening," said Jane 
 as they drove off. " It does make my cheeks burn so 
 when I hear those polite little roundabout ways of being 
 mean that our family excel in." 
 
 "I hope your dress isn't very fresh, Esther," cried 
 
 Milly. "What is it, black ? Oh, how dowdy! however, 
 
 it's all the better for us. I was afraid you would have a 
 
 new white muslin, and we are in our old washed ones. 
 
 10* 
 
226 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 You have got a bouquet, I see, so have I. Wasn't it 
 good of Jane ? Papa presented us with two shillings to 
 buy flowers just fancy, two shillings, twenty-four pence 
 between us and she gave up her share to me. Jenny's 
 always so good in these little things." 
 
 "I wish you would have mine, Jane," cried Esther; 
 "they are very good ones that were sent to Aunt Tudor 
 this morning; but they are not of the least use to me. 
 Do take them off my hands as a kindness." 
 
 Jane Dashwood's nature was not irrevocably selfish, like 
 Milly's, but the temptation of a hothouse bouquet was a 
 strong one. She thought of her washed muslin ; of Miss 
 Lynes' certain costly freshness ; she knew Arthur had so 
 often told her so that one of her most irresistible poses 
 was when she held her lips upon a bouquet and half rais- 
 ed her eyes towards her partner's face. " It seems dread- 
 fully selfish to rob you, Esther, but if you really don't 
 want them." 
 
 " I am very glad to give them you, Jane," said Esther, 
 thinking with a little pang of her unbroken black dress. 
 "You know better what to do with such things than I 
 
 o 
 
 do." 
 
 " It is thoroughly base of yon, Miss Dashwood, for all 
 that," remarked Milly, when Esther had made over her 
 sole ornament into Jane's hands. "We poor wretches 
 who are on our promotion want adorning more than en- 
 gaged people, you know." 
 
 "That is just why I am selfish, Milly," replied Miss 
 Dashwood. " I am so utterly thrown on rny own resources, 
 so hopelessly on my promotion again ! Paul usurped, in se- 
 cret, by mysterious influences, and openly by Miss Fleming, 
 and Mr. Peel given by the unanimous consent of all his 
 friends to Miss Lynes. It is a pity there are not a few 
 willow-leaves among these flowers, Esther. My position, 
 to-night would make them a very appropriate endowment 
 for me." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 227 
 
 "You don't mean that, Jenny," said Millicent. "You 
 know that in spite of your washed muslin you are bent on 
 Miss Lynes's utter discomposure and retreat, and feel very 
 sure of it, too. I wish I had some especial work on my 
 hands like you. It is so insipid dancing and talking with 
 everybody and not caring for any one in particular. I 
 hope John Alexander won't have managed to get there, 
 though. He's all very well when one spends the day 
 with his sisters, but I could not stand looking intimate 
 with him before people." 
 
 Which little exposition of feeling, I think, pretty sure- 
 ly affords the key-note to Miss Millicent Dashwood's gen- 
 eral views of life. She liked knowing the Smithetts and 
 spending days with them, because they were rich, and 
 wealth was the one thing that Milly, in her inmost heart, 
 most yearned after and respected. She liked John Alex- 
 ander's attentions very well indeed when only his sisters 
 were by to witness them. She could even look forward 
 a few years and picture herself marrying John Alexander, 
 if she were not sufficiently lucky in the mean time to meet 
 with any one who happened to be a gentleman as well as 
 rich. But to meet Mr. Smithett among a room full of 
 decent people, to have to receive his attentions and lis- 
 ten to his silly jokes and vulgar laugh, with other persons 
 listening to them too, would have given Milly about as 
 much pain as anything not directly and absolutely wound- 
 ing her own self-love could have power to inflict on her. 
 
 Next to money, the opinion of her little world was 
 Millicent Dashwood's god. I think, though the struggle 
 might have been sharp, she would really sooner have giv- 
 en the Smithetts up, with their dinners, riding-horses, 
 presents, John Alexander's attentions, and all the other 
 benefits that she received from them, than have it said by the 
 people at Mrs. Strangways' ball that she was intimate with 
 a family of stocking- weavers. Any foolish sentiment 
 
228 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 about the Smithett girls themselves, or inconvenient grat- 
 itude for any of the kindness they had shown to her, it 
 was not at all in Millicent Dashwood's way to feel. 
 
 Not many people had arrived when they reached the 
 Strangways' and the first object that met Jane's eyes on 
 entering the cloak-room was Miss Lynes standing in soli- 
 tary and absorbed attention before a cheval-glass. The 
 heiress was dressed in a brocaded' pink silk, of a hue and 
 texture gorgeous to behold. This dress was made with 
 excess of trimmings, with fringes, with bows of ribbon, 
 with bouquets of flowers, with lace. From poor Miss 
 Lynes's head (that piece de resistance to all innately taste- 
 less or newly-made women) depended a coronet of many 
 colors, fern-leaves, grasses, fruits ; all things of merit and 
 price in themselves, but very hideous to look upon in their 
 present position. 
 
 As she continued intent upon her employment, which 
 was to hinder her hair from parting, as thinnish sandy hair 
 has a habit of doing upon high, nude, glossy foreheads, 
 Jane Dashwood danced lightly behind the unconscious 
 heiress, and by pantomimic gestures conveyed to Esther 
 and Milly her own sense of the varied graces of her 
 wealthy rival's dress and figure. Just as she had com- 
 menced a very graphic representation of the set of two 
 square-looking red elbows, Miss Lynes caught sight of her 
 in the glass, and turned round sharply. 
 
 " La, Miss Dashwood, how you startled me ! I declare 
 I never heard you come in at all. I'm so used to servants 
 it seems quite odd to do anything for myself. Do you 
 think my hair will do? " 
 
 " Oh, perfectly, I should say," Jane answered, looking 
 slowly up and down Miss Lynes's figure. " Your dress 
 is quite magnificent." 
 
 " This ? La, no, I think it very plain, I can assure you ; 
 but for a little party it don't lo<5k well to be over-dressed 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 229 
 
 Your sister, I suppose ? " looking at Milly. " You're not 
 out yet, are you ? " 
 
 It was not in Millicent Dashwood's nature to be any- 
 thing but civil to the owner of fifty thousand pounds, and 
 she answered very sweetly indeed that she was out. She 
 had been to balls for the last six months. 
 
 " Dear me ! I thought from your dress you weren't ; " 
 and she glanced at Milly's skirt, which, like Jane's had 
 shrunk from its pristine length in washing. "Just set the 
 door open for me," she added, turning to Esther. " It's 
 enough to tear one's dress to pieces cramming in and out 
 of these little pokey bedrooms." 
 
 Esther looked straight between Miss Lynes's eyebrows 
 for a moment, then turned away, and the heiress, with all 
 the rustle of vulgar assurance, stalked away by herself 
 down stairs. 
 
 "Oh, you dear old Esther!" cried Jane, and in her ex- 
 ultation she ran up and embraced Esther round the waist. 
 "I never saw such a lovely take-down in my life so ut- 
 terly demolishing, and yet so dignified. I would give 
 anything to have let that woman's impertinence down as 
 you did." 
 
 "If her skin is not as thick as a buffalo's, which it looks, 
 she must have felt your sarcasm when you were praising 
 her looks, Jane," said Milly. " Did you ever hear any- 
 thing so odious as her telling me that my dress was short? 
 Only that I knew you and Esther were quite strong 
 enough without me, I would have let her see pretty plain- 
 ly how intensely vulgar I thought her." 
 
 " She is not worth thinking about," interrupted Jane, 
 quickly, as the sound of approaching steps told that more 
 people were arriving. " If you are ready, Esther, we will 
 go down at once. It would be the height of indecorum 
 for three young women without a chaperon to enter a 
 room in which more than half-a-dozen people were as- 
 
230 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 semblecl. Miss Lynes, you see, has nestled her innocent 
 head under Mrs. Strangways' wing already." 
 
 There were, however, a good many more than half-a- 
 dozen people in the room when they entered ; and Miss 
 Lynes, though, in the metaphorical language of ball-rooms, 
 under Mrs. Strangways' care, was, in commonplace speech, 
 already flirting hard with Mr. Peel upon a remote and 
 isolated ottoman. 
 
 A glance less than a glance an instinctive momen- 
 tary chill told Esther, as she went in, that Paul was not 
 there, and she at once retreated quietly to a corner, with 
 a general sense of extreme weariness of spirit, and with no 
 other desire than to be a passive spectator of what was 
 going on about her for the remainder of the evening. 
 
 " Vous me manquez je suis absent de moi-m^me!" 
 I suppose, at some period of life, every human being, in 
 some form of speech or another, has repeated that line of 
 Victor Hugo's to his own heart. Esther Fleming, who 
 knew nothing whatever of sentiment, and had never read 
 a word of French poetry, was repeating it now, but un- 
 consciously (and, after all, that is the only way to do such 
 things truly. All the fine arorna, all the exquisite half- 
 pain of love is gone, when we are once thoroughly con- 
 scious of what we are about). She really thought the 
 rooms were dark to her because she had no taste for balls^ 
 no zest in little intrigues and triumphs like Milly's ; no 
 one strong interest like poor Jane's ; and when she took 
 her place between two frightfully-old Bath young ladies 
 upon a sofa, quite simply and seriously believed herself 
 to be intent on watching the arrival of Mrs. Strangways' 
 guests not the door through which Paul Chichester's 
 face might possibly appear. 
 
 Mrs. Strangways' guests, whatever they might think or 
 speak about their hostess, at any other time, were very 
 numerous this night; and Mrs. Strangways, dressed with 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 31 
 
 all the exquisite art that to her was second nature, and 
 with a slightly heightened shade of pink upon her cheeks 
 looked superbly handsome as she received them. 
 
 Did she remember the slights, the coldness, the positive 
 insults to which she had submitted at different times from 
 nine-tenths of these smiling guests of hers ? Did her 
 smiling guests remember the condemnation they had so 
 often and so loudly expressed of the woman who was en- 
 tertaining them, as they now shook her by the hand? 
 
 Esther asked herself this while she watched repetition 
 after repetition of the some little comedy of bows and 
 smiles and compliments, as group after group of white 
 and pink and blue floated up to Mrs. Strangways and 
 away again. But poor Esther was, you know, quite bar- 
 barian in all her ideas of life and of right and wrong. 
 Who thinks of what they have once said of a hostess, 
 when they are just going to spend a pleasant evening at 
 her expense? Who remembers that the Dean of Sha- 
 rarn's wife and daughters were once so bitter to one, when 
 the Dean of Sharam's wife and daughters are just going to 
 give tone and respectability to one's whole party ? Every 
 one pronounced that Mrs. Strangways was looking charm- 
 ing, and that her rooms were lit and decorated with an 
 effect that only her Parisian taste could produce. Mr. 
 and Mrs. Strangways (with Minnie in white muslin, as a 
 sort of domestic angel by their side) smiled and talked 
 to each other, and to their child, in the intervals of enter- 
 taining their visitors, with a harmony and affection quite 
 rare to see. And Esther probably the only honest per- 
 son present felt herself to be positively misanthropic 
 and bad of heart, for wondering how much of genuine 
 truth lay beneath all this outside show of excellent taste 
 and kindly feeling. 
 
 Just as the first dance had ended, she heard Mr. Chi- 
 chester's name announced. The crowd of people be- 
 
232 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 tween herself and the doorway prevented her from see- 
 ing him, even if a certain feeling of shyness had not hin- 
 dered her from seeking to meet his eye ; but the running 
 commentaries of the two aerial virgins at her side soon 
 put her in possession of what Paul was doing with him- 
 self. 
 
 " Look at him, Isabella, at that Jane Dash wood's side 
 already, although she has only eyes and ears for Mr. Peel, 
 and giving her a bouquet, too ; what infatuation ! No, 
 he is only showing it to her; he is coming this way." 
 ^Esther's pulse quickened a very little. " How foolish it 
 looks to see a man with a bouquet ! Why, he's coming 
 over to us. Oh, Bella dearest, I do believe he's going to 
 ask me to dance." 
 
 But Mr. Chichester, as it turned out, had other inten- 
 tions. He returned the expectant smiles of the two vet- 
 eran nymphs with a low bow, and then passed quietly 
 on to Esther's side. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 
 " SITTING OUT." 
 
 I AM afraid you have forgotten me, Miss Fleming. 
 Your face does not show the faintest sign of awakening 
 recognition." 
 
 Her face was blushing beautifully : Paul thought so as 
 she raised it to him. 
 
 " I recognize you perfectly, Mr. Chichester. I heard 
 your name announced, and thought you would come to 
 speak to me that is, of course, after you had gone to 
 speak to Jane." 
 
 And then she gave him her hand ; and felt that she 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 233 
 
 had re-opened the acquaintance with great tact and dis- 
 cretion. It made her feel so thoroughly at her ease to 
 allude to Miss Dash wood at once. 
 
 " After I had spoken to Jane, of course," repeated Paul. 
 " Jane is looking very well this evening, and dancing with 
 Peel, too," he added, lowering his voice. " Poor little 
 Jane ! I am glad to see all these reports about Miss 
 Lynes have not had the effect of making her miserable. 
 It must be a horrible blow to a pretty woman to be ri- 
 valled by a plain one." 
 
 " A horrible blow, Mr. Chichester, but not so bad as to 
 be beaten with one's own arms. It would be more bear- 
 able to a very lovely person to be outshone by money or 
 rank, or ability, or anything in the w^orld than superior 
 loveliness to her own I should think so, at least," she 
 interrupted herself quickly. " I know nothing at all prac- 
 tically, of such things." 
 
 Oh ! " 
 
 " How do you come to be informed of the reports about 
 Miss Lynes, Mr. Chichester? I should have thought 
 even Bath scandal had not wings sufficiently strong to 
 travel to London." 
 
 " I have several .channels of communication with this 
 place," answered Paul. "Jane Dash wood writes to me, 
 as you know, and then, a few days ago I was in Bath, 
 myself." 
 
 "A few days ago? since I have been here ?" 
 
 " I was in Bath last week. Why do you look sur- 
 prised ? " 
 
 " I thought Jane would have mentioned it, that is all. 
 She generally tells me everything that is going on." 
 
 " But Jane did not know it. My comings and goings 
 are very fitful at all times, Miss Fleming, and I have other 
 interests in Bath as well as Miss Dashwood." 
 
 " Indeed. I was not aware of it " began Esther ; 
 
234 THE, ORDEJIL FOR WIVES. 
 
 then she stopped herself abruptly. All Milly's hints and 
 stories about Paul came suddenly on her recollection, and 
 gave other meaning to the remark, which, for a second, 
 she had foolishly believed contained a half-allusion to 
 herself. 
 
 In spite of all her self-command, her eyes rested with 
 visible aversion upon the bouquet of rare flowers that he 
 held in his hand. No doubt these were destined for, or 
 in some way connected with, the same mysterious per- 
 sonage of whom she had heard so much. 
 
 Paul seemed half to guess her thoughts. 
 
 " You look disapprovingly at my flowers, Miss Fleming. 
 Are they not good ones ? I had hoped you would admire 
 them," and he held the bouquet out as though he expect- 
 ed her to take it. 
 
 But Esther only bent her head down slightly. "They 
 are beautiful flowers, Mr. Chichester. There cannot be 
 two opinions as to the merits of white camellias and 
 heaths at this season of the year." 
 
 " Then why do you look at them with such undisguis- 
 ed contempt? " 
 
 " I never look at flowers with contempt. I am not ac- 
 customed to see men carry bouquets, and I think it rath- 
 er " 
 
 " Pray do not hesitate." 
 
 " Rather effeminate, then, espscially for you. Camel- 
 lias and white heath would suit Mr. Peel better." 
 
 " And you really think that I carry a bunch of flowers 
 for my own gratification, Miss Fleming ? " 
 
 "You did not give them to Jane just now, when you 
 had an opportunity of doing so. If they are not for her, 
 of course they must be for yourself." 
 
 "I do not see that that is a positive sequitur. There 
 are other persons in the world besides Jane Dash wood 
 and me." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 235 
 
 " And you bring such flowers as those to a ball with 
 the vague intention of bestowing them on any possibly- 
 interesting people you may meet. You must have a 
 great deal of money to throw away, I should think." 
 
 "I bought these flowers neither for Jane nor for my- 
 self," said Paul, gravely. " I brought them from town 
 for a person to whom such things give pleasure a per- 
 son who never goes to balls, Miss Fleming and when I 
 reached Bath I found it was too late to send them to 
 their destination to-night. They would have withered by 
 to-morrow, and I brought them here for you. Will you 
 have them ? " 
 
 Esther hesitated. These flowers, after all, then, were 
 destined for the same hands that had received all Paul's 
 former gifts ; and yet and yet her heart throbbed with 
 a reasonless emotion, wildly akin to joy, as he told her 
 so. The straight-forward words, his calm eyes looking 
 so fully into hers, were they not most unlike those of a 
 lover speaking to an indifferent person of the woman that 
 he loved ? 
 
 The color fluttered to her face. A strange look, half- 
 curiosity, half-pleasure, stole over Paul's. 
 
 " You refuse my gift wholly and without reserve, Miss 
 Fleming ? " 
 
 "I I oh, Mr. Chichester, I am so fond of flowers ! " 
 And she took them, and raised them to her face. 
 
 No subtle odor in the old home-garden on breathless, 
 autumn nights, no fragrance of fresh woods even wan- 
 dering in their cool shades with Oliver had ever smote 
 her sense with keenest delight as did the faint perfume of 
 these few hot-house flowers in the hot atmosphere of Mrs. 
 Strangways' drawing-room. She smelt the jessamine 
 again upon the balcony at Weymouth. She saw the 
 stars shining on her through the soft purple of the night. 
 She looked at the moon which had travelled away so far 
 
236 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 above the silent sea, and knew that she too had travelled 
 far from the land of childish peace, and was standing 
 with a wonder, half-pain, half-rapture, upon the shore of 
 actual life and actual passion ! 
 
 " Esther, you lazy creature," broke in Jane Dash wood's 
 voice close behind her, " this is the second dance that you 
 and Paul are sitting out together. I really cannot allow 
 such things when you are under my protection. You 
 must get up and dance, merely to save appearances. 
 
 " But, my dear Jane, you know I don't care for dan 
 cing." 
 
 " That doesn't matter. If people sit out in Bath they 
 are more talked about than if they dance any number of 
 times together; and it would be too trying to my feelings 
 if Paul was to get himself talked about. Mr. Chichester, 
 will you ask Miss Fleming for this waltz ? " 
 
 Miss Dashwood was looking wonderfully handsome ; 
 her cheeks flushed scarlet, her blue eyes full of light ; for 
 she was taking Arthur Peel's arm, and her ears were 
 drinking in all the poison of his most tender whispers. 
 He had duly gone through the ponderous duty of one fast 
 dance with Miss Lynes, and was now contrasting her hea- 
 vy tread and cumbrous waist with Jane's light little form 
 and graceful supple movements. " It is like riding a thor- 
 oughbred after galloping on a dray-horse, Jenny," he had 
 whispered to his partner in the first turn of the waltz. 
 "No wonder such an exquisite simile had made poor Jane's 
 eyes light up with pleasure, although she knew full well that 
 Arthur had done his best to make. Miss Lynes smile upon 
 him during every moment that he had danced with her. 
 
 " Mr. Chichester, did you hear my request ? Will you 
 ask Miss Fleming for this waltz ? " 
 
 " I don't know whether Miss Fleming waltzes," said 
 Paul, looking at Esther. " If she does, I shall be delight- 
 ed to become her partner." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 237 
 
 Esther had never danced except with the girls at school, 
 and she had a vague feeling that it would be wrong for 
 her to begin any wider experiences during Oliver's ab- 
 sence. 
 
 " You know I don't dance much, Jane. I only learnt 
 six months, and I am not at all sure of getting well through 
 this awfully quick pace that everyone seems to go at." 
 
 " Then, if you have never waltzed, don't begin now," 
 said Paul quickly. " There are advantages in sitting out 
 quietly, which those people who rush through the night 
 at the rate of a dozen miles an hour cannot at all appre- 
 ciate." 
 
 Jane Dash wood shrugged her pretty shoulders and then 
 whirled away with Arthur Peel. She knew instinctively, 
 better than Esther did the meaning that lay in Paul's 
 words, and how soon he and his companion would find 
 that they suited each other. Did the thought give her 
 pain ? Not an approach to the anguish which any defal- 
 cation, even the slightest, of Arthur's cost her, but some 
 faint pangs notwithstanding. Mock though his alle- 
 giance had been, she had held sway over Paul Chichester, 
 had known him listen for half an evening contentedly to 
 her lively chatter ; and there was too much of coquetry 
 engrained among the better qualities of Jane Dashwood's 
 heart for her to look on at the secedance 'of any one out 
 of her dozen vassals without displeasure. 
 
 " You are all taking to the heavy style," she remarked to 
 Arthur Peel in the next interval of the waltz. " You to 
 Miss Lynes, Paul to poor Esther. Milly and I will have 
 no chance left, unless we can add a few cubits to our stat- 
 ure, and half a hundred weight or so to our bulk." 
 
 " ' Poor Esther ' looks doosed well " Mr. Peel remark- 
 ed. I never thought anything of her before, but, by Jove, 
 if she was a little more animated you'd all have to look 
 out, Miss Dashwood. I never saw a finer set head and 
 
238 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 shoulders in my life, and your friend Paul seems to think 
 so too." 
 
 Now it is quite impossible for me to state with certain- 
 ty what opinions Mr. Chichester was forming. I may 
 say, however, that he had a tolerably fair opportunity of 
 arriving at the conclusions assigned to him by Arthur 
 Peel. On the plea of gaining greater quiet he had per- 
 suaded Miss Fleming to move to a kind of small con serva-, 
 atory, or alcove, leading out from the drawing-room, 
 dimly lighted as Mrs. Strangways knew how to light, and 
 where soft-falling crimson velvet draperies showed forth 
 in delicate relief one or two marble statues of rare excel- 
 lence grouped in the centre. 
 
 The dim light, the simple lines of falling drapery suited 
 Esther's style of face admirably, better than all the 
 glare and brilliancy of the ball-room. Paul noted, as he 
 had not done before, the noble contour of cheek and throat, 
 the broad soft brow, the peach-like texture of the clear 
 dark skin ; all the charms which in some quiet somewhat 
 severe faces like Esther's grow stronger with time rather 
 than strike you on the first occasion that you look at them. 
 She had none of Mrs. Strangways' queen-like features 
 and brilliant decided coloring ; none of Jane Dashwood's 
 piquant changing graces ; but Paul was just beginning to 
 see in her a loveliness greater than either the loveli- 
 ness of entire freshness, both body and soul, the loveli- 
 ness of repose, the loveliness of thought. 
 
 You could not think of Mrs. Strangways as she must 
 be in a few years hence without picturing to yourself the 
 wreck of a fair woman, well preserved, doubtless, to the 
 last, but a wreck still. Jane Dashwood owed every one 
 of her attractions to bloom and youth. The little infan- 
 tine features, the constant smile, the flitting color, all the 
 seductions of twenty would be insipid, if not actually 
 charmless, in another dozen years at latest. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 239 
 
 But you could think of Esther Fleming as beautiful at 
 thirty; beautiful with children growing up round her; 
 beautiful with all her fresh youth and color faded, and, 
 with her dark hair grey. She possessed the essentials of 
 abiding beauty eyes with love and thought in them, 
 features rather grandly cut than soft or pretty, a com- 
 plexion of perfect delicacy, but not too bright or fragile 
 to go through the wear and tear of common life. 
 
 An unwonted feeling of peace came over Paul Chiches- 
 ter's weary spirit as he looked at her. He had never met 
 any woman before whose beauty had not in some sort 
 troubled while it charmed him, calling up vain spectres 
 of the youth and passion of which his colorless life was 
 shorn ! Esther alone soothed him. As he looked at her 
 involuntarily the painless years of his long-buried youth 
 came before him ; involuntarily rose the hope of some 
 nameless peace that the future might hold in store for 
 him. Hope to him, who had so long given over the 
 vaguest shadow of hope If he analyzed this at all, must 
 it not crumble into ashes in a second, as all other hopes 
 had done ? 
 
 I suppose just because the emotions they aroused were 
 intangible and vague, faint murmurs of far-off happiness 
 not any present incarnations of vivid living pleasure, did 
 Esther's face and voice sink quickly into Paul's heart, 
 and he dared surrender himself to the spell without any 
 of the harsh self-warnings with which he ordinarily arm- 
 ed himself against all syren seductions or allurements. 
 He thought, or believed he thought that he would like to 
 know Esther was engaged ; that while she undoubtedly 
 awakened thoughts of quiet love she was not a woman to be 
 himself in love with ; that if friendship were ever possible 
 with a girl of eighteen it would be so for Esther Fleming 
 He thought all this, and looked more closely at Esther 
 Fleming's delicate drooping profile, and long dark lashes, 
 
240 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 and young round cheek, surrendering himself, I must con- 
 fess, to the perilous pleasure of this analyzation with such 
 thorough good-will, that before half an hour had past ev- 
 ery one in the room was saying how shamefully Jane 
 Dashwood had been thrown over again, and how Mr. 
 Cbichester had just made some new girl an offer behind 
 the curtains in the back drawing-room. 
 
 " Yes, Miss Fleming, I like to think of you as not waltz- 
 ing." They were on the same theme still. Nothing is 
 more significant of on-coming liking than when the most 
 trivial subject takes so long to exhaust. "There are just 
 one or two people in the world whom one likes to believe 
 unsophisticated and fresh. Now all freshness must, by 
 the inevitable sequence of natural laws, be gone from any 
 woman who has been pressed and jostled through a few 
 hundred or a few score yes, or one such a crowd as we 
 are looking at now." 
 
 " That is a very sweeping condemnation of yours. All 
 girls dance, except some very few like myself who have 
 been brought up in the wilds of the country all their 
 life." 
 
 " Then those few are the only ones whose hearts can 
 be fresh. There are some feelings as fragile as the flowers 
 all these young ladies wear on their breasts, and which 
 are heated, and withered, and broken by the close pressure 
 of the first waltz. Such flowers don't get fresh again, 
 however pure the air and water may be you give them 
 next day." 
 
 " No, but young ladies are really not as susceptible as 
 flowers, Mr. Chichester. Of course it is very pretty and 
 romantic to think they are; but I should think, in plain 
 truth, most of the girls we see here go through their 
 waltzes and galops without thinking of what they are do- 
 ing or of their partners either. Waltzing is the business 
 of their life, neither less nor more." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 241 
 
 " Exactly, you could not express their condition more 
 clearly; but how many phases must they have gone 
 through before arriving at a stage in which a score of 
 successive crushes, and a score of successive men to sup- 
 port them through the crushes, awaken no other sensation 
 than that of going about any ordinary business? The 
 flowers don't wither any more because there is no more 
 life in them. Those natural unsubstantial ones that the 
 first ball or two dried up for ever, are replaced by good 
 artificial ones, no longer perfumed or fragile, but showy 
 and well painted, and an excellent imitation of nature, 
 and warranted not to suffer in any way under any cir- 
 cumstances in which they may be placed. Now, my own 
 tastes are singular, perhaps, but I see more beauty in one 
 little tuft of purple thyme from the moors than in all 
 these Paris-made roses and lilies that fill Mrs. Strangways* 
 rooms." 
 
 " So do I, Mr. Chichester ; but though I can't argue, I 
 feel what you sny about dancing is not quite fair. If I 
 had lived in a town, like the Dashwoods, I should have 
 got to like waltzing from the time I was fourteen, as they 
 have, and yet I don't believe I should have been the 
 whited sepulchre that your nice little metaphor implies. 
 I know I should not," Miss Fleming added in rather an 
 indignant tone. " I could join in the dancing this mo- 
 ment, and not be any the worse for it at the end of the 
 evening." 
 
 " Possibly," said Paul coolly ; " there are some excep- 
 tional natures against which evil glances without wound- 
 ing, but it is better not to have met the stroke at all. 
 I would like to know through what hands even my tuft 
 of wild thyme had passed before it came into mine." 
 
 Involuntarily Esther looked full round upon him, and in 
 the honest blood that rose up and spoke out of Oliver in 
 her face, there was a confession. Paul read it in that full 
 11 
 
242 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 gaze, in that flush of childish shame, and he read it aright ; 
 read it as few men of his age similarly placed would have 
 done. 
 
 " And if it was not for me at all, Miss Fleming, if it was 
 kept by the hand that first plucked it, I could find infinitely 
 more refreshment in the one breath I was allowed to have 
 of this piece of wild thyme than in being permitted free pos- 
 session of any hot-bed flowers here. Look at Mrs. Strang- 
 ways " he interrupted himself rather abruptly "how > 
 long, I wonder, is it since her wild thyme days ? Had 
 she ever any ? It is difficult to think of such a look hav- 
 ing ever risen on her face as came up on yours just now, 
 Miss Fleming." 
 
 "I can't conquer my dislike to Mrs. Strangways, though 
 I can give no reason for feeling it," said Esther, glad to 
 escape to less interesting but more neutral ground again. 
 " Look at her manner as she stands there looking into Ar- 
 thur Peel's face, and whispering to him, and making him 
 hold her fan and button her glove for her ! " 
 
 "Miss Fleming, don't be severe. You don't know all 
 the secret turnings, the miseries, the temptations of Mrs. 
 Strangways' life. 
 
 " I should be sorry to know them. I only think of her 
 as Jane Dash wood's associate, and I am quite certain some 
 day she will play Jane false if it is in her power." 
 
 " Their characters are very different ones," said Paul, 
 coolly. " Jane has no moral self-possession, no command 
 over either her feelings or her temper. A sudden burst 
 of passion, or a sudden revulsion of repentance, would 
 undo all her strongest resolves in a moment. Mrs. Strang- 
 ways is unembarrassed by temper in any form. She 
 knows, intuitively, the precise point of strongest resist- 
 ance in any thing or person that she desires to win, and 
 throws herself upon it without either heat or noise. Her 
 victories are won in her dressing-room, in her own cool 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 243 
 
 brain, before she attempts to win them abroad; and what- 
 ever she has set herself resolutely to conquer she conquers. 
 Of course, Jane must lose in any game where they play 
 on different sides. Mrs. Strangways, in addition to her 
 beauty, is a person of a very high and unusual order of 
 ability." 
 
 " Don't ask me to share in your admiration of her, Mr. 
 Chichester. The only favorable thing I can bring myself 
 to say of Mrs. Strangways is that she is beautiful, extreme- 
 ly beautiful, more lovely than anything I ever saw before 
 out of a picture. When I have said so much I must be 
 silent." 
 
 <c She is very beautiful," said Paul, and as he spoke Mrs. 
 Strangways passed before them, and Esther saw that her 
 eyes and Chiehester's met. " Beautiful with that fair lux- 
 uriant beauty which, as far as mere physique goes, is al- 
 ways, to me, the highest type of all. I never saw such 
 masses of real golden hair as hers upon any other English 
 woman's head." 
 
 " And what are the mental qualities you think of so 
 high and noble an order, Mr. Chichester ? " 
 
 " Those we were speaking of just now ; her self-reliance, 
 her keen insight, her courage ; but I don't think I made 
 use of the words grand or noble, Miss Fleming, did I? " 
 
 "I am ignorant of the world," cried Esther, rather 
 hotly. " I am accustomed to think of, married women as 
 satisfied with their children and homes. It is repugnant 
 to me to see a person of Mrs. Strangways' age as eager 
 and athirst for admiration as a foolish girl of seventeen." 
 
 "And you don't think it possible that you judge her 
 too severely ? " 
 
 " I think it is very possible, but I know I shall never 
 change in my own opinions." 
 
 " You don't, think that strong natural tendencies, that 
 years of bad training, that unbounded temptation, ought 
 
244 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 to be taken into account when you pass judgment upon 
 such a character as Mrs. Strang ways' ? " 
 
 "I want to pass no judgment at all. I know what I 
 shall always continue to think." 
 
 " Miss Fleming, suppose for a moment that Mrs. 
 Strangways had had the good fortune to be a man, how 
 would you judge her then ? Her beauty, conquests, the 
 admiration she receives, are the breath of her life to her : 
 all that some other kind of ambition would have been to 
 her peculiar temperament if she had been a man. 
 During the dozen years of her youth this ambition of 
 hers has been fulfilled to the utmost. I suppose scarcely 
 a woman living has been more admired or held more ab- 
 solute sway over men than Mrs. Strangways. Paris, 
 Vienna, London, even, have successively acknowledged 
 hers as the most beautiful face of its day. Well, at thirty 
 an age, mind, at which ambition begins to settle into a 
 more fixed passion than in youth Mrs. Strangways has 
 to renounce all that she has lived for hitherto ; to see her 
 victims chained to the cars of younger conquerers ; and 
 if she makes a struggle to retain any place whatever in 
 the dominions where she once reigned as queen, to be 
 called as eager and athirst for admiration as a foolish girl of 
 seventeen. Would you pity or condemn a man called 
 upon in the prime of his youth to give up his dearest 
 hope in life as Mrs. Strangways is called upon to give up 
 hers ? " 
 
 It was a subject which most young ladies in that room 
 could have entered upon with the same zest, and in the 
 same spirit of cool inquiry as inspires the writer of an 
 ordinary analytical French novel ; but Esther shrank, 
 with unaccountable shyness, from discussing it with Paul. 
 
 u I should never bring you to think as I do, Mr. Chiches- 
 ter. My ideas are too provincial and old 7 fashioned to be 
 breathed aloud in such an atmosphere as Mrs. Strangways' 
 drawing-room." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 245 
 
 " Then suppose we go out to the refreshment-room, and 
 argue the subject fairly," Paul suggested. "I see Jane 
 Dash wood and Peel are there by themselves, but I dare 
 say they are too much taken up with their own concerns 
 to listen to such sensible conversation as ours." 
 
 Now I am quite unable to say whether the conversation 
 that took place in the refreshment -room during the next 
 hour and a half was sensible or not ; I can only record 
 that Mr. Chichester and Miss Fleming seemed to derive 
 very intense interest from it ; that it was renewed among 
 the geraniums and camellias on the landing after supper ; 
 that it was carried on with unflagging zest up to the last 
 moment when Paul handed Esther into her carriage at 
 Mrs. Strangways' door. 
 
 " And I maintain," said Milly Dashwood, as they were 
 driving home, " I maintain that for thorough-going, steady, 
 undeviating flirtation our dear quiet Miss Fleming goes in 
 with a heartier good-will than any human being I ever 
 saw, Mrs. Strangways, you, Jane, and I and everybody else 
 included. Did you ever know before that Paul had it in 
 him to look as he has looked to-night? Positively I 
 heard some one say he was the handsomest man in the 
 room." 
 
 " I never saw Paul look really interested before," an- 
 wered Jane : but there was a slight shade of bitterness 
 in her voice. " I told him just as we left, with five or six 
 people listening, that he and I were engaged no longer ; 
 and the way in which he acted the part of an injured lov- 
 er was faultless. Nothing brings a man's faculties out 
 like finding for the first time that some one really appre- 
 ciates him. Don't you think so, Esther ? " 
 
 But Miss Fleming was unaccountably silent, and con- 
 tinued go during all the remainder of their homeward 
 drive. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 
 
 THE RED-BRICK HOUSE. 
 
 Miss FLEMING threw away her bouquet yes, every 
 flower that Paul had given her next morning: she said 
 to herself that she would dally with disloyalty no longer, 
 would drive away by force all alien thoughts or images at 
 once and forever from her breast. 
 
 What had she to do with any man but Oliver ? What 
 mattered it to her, an engaged woman, that Paul Chiches- 
 ter's voice was eloquent, his thoughts akin to hers, his 
 face like the little long-loved Yandyck upon the wall at 
 Countisbury? An honest sunburnt face, not too intel- 
 lectual, but set upon a pair of stalwart manly shoulders, 
 a hearty boyish voice expressing commonplace, boyish 
 thoughts, were the themes upon which duty and honor 
 alike told her her imagination must dwell. Why had she 
 ever seen Paul ? with a sigh this. Why had she been 
 brought to feel that such a horrible temptation as infidel- 
 ity could ever come within her reach ? 
 
 As she was sitting alone, Mrs. Tudor not yet up, in the 
 cheerless winter morning, vacillating between good in- 
 tentions of writing a letter to Malta, and haunting regrets 
 that she had not kept one poor little spray out of Paul's 
 bouquet, a loud double knock came at the house-door; 
 and in another minute Millicent Dashwood ran, her face 
 beaming with excitement, into the room. 
 
 " Put your hat on, Esther ; I'm on the scent at last ; 
 put your hat on at once. I'll tell you what it is as we 
 go along something about Paul. Jane is waiting for 
 us in the cathedral yard ; and we can go up the short 
 way across the hill to B ." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 247 
 
 " But for what, Milly ? What are we to go to B 
 
 for, on this particular uninviting winter's morning ? " 
 
 " To see Paul Chichester, and find out his secret. Will 
 that content you?" 
 
 Apparently it did, for Esther ran upstairs, and got 
 ready in a very meek and unquestioning frame of mind 
 (perhaps she thought the sharp winter morning would 
 brace her sufficiently for the effort of that Malta letter,) 
 and in another ten minutes was walking between the two 
 Dash woods up the narrow frosted lane which led the 
 nearest way from the city to B . 
 
 " This is exclusively a scheme of Milly's," remarked 
 Jane, in a dignified manner, as they emerged at length 
 into the high road. " Mr. Chichester's comings and goings 
 are, 1 beg distinctly to state, a matter of the most perfect 
 indifference to ma; and if they were not, I would not 
 stoop to looking after him or any other man in the world. 
 As Milly is bent, however, upon finding out the destina- 
 tion of all Paul's white flowers, it certainly is better that 
 we should be here in a body than that the silly child 
 should run after him alone." 
 
 "It would not have deterred me, Miss Dash wood, even 
 if you had been too dignified to come," cried Milly, in 
 her pert way. " At this hour of the morning there's no 
 fear of seeing any one but the victim himself; and I 
 could carry off my part quite well enough with Paul to 
 prevent him from even thinking I was looking after him." 
 
 Esther stopped suddenly. 
 
 " You don't mean to say, Jane, that we are following 
 Mr. Chichester ? Milly, you never told me this. If he 
 was to see me to see us, I mean what would he say 
 of us ? I don't think I can go any further." And then 
 she blushed crimson. 
 
 You can imagine the outpouring of Dashwood irony 
 at this exhibition of shyness, the little reminiscences of 
 
248 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Mrs. Strang ways' conservatory, the speculations as to 
 whether talking to one man during an entire evening, or 
 taking an early country walk for the good of one's health, 
 involved the greater amount of moral delinquency ? To 
 escape it all, Esther felt that she would go anywhere, spy 
 anybody's actions even Paul's. "I don't care about 
 Mr. Chichester seeing me," she remarked, after walking 
 on passively and in silence for some minutes, "you know 
 that very well. I only thought, from what you said, that 
 he knew Milly meant to watch him." 
 
 "It would not disturb my peace of mind if he did,'' 
 cried Miss Milly. " I haven't any of the fine feelings 
 about Mr. Chichester that everyone else seems to possess 
 to such an alarming extent. If Paul Chichester, or Ar- 
 thur Peel, or anybody I happen to know, acts one kind 
 of life and carries on another, I like to come to the real 
 meaning of it all voild tout. If Mr. Chichester pays de- 
 voted attention to Esther Fleming up till two o'clock in 
 the morning, and then at eleven in the forenoon is seen 
 
 carrying a bouquet of flowers to some lady at B , I 
 
 gay appearances are against him, and it is the duty of 
 society to get up the best-organized evidence possible for 
 the future hearing of the case." 
 
 " And and he really has been seen with these 
 flowers again, then ? " Miss Fleming asks, faintly. 
 
 " Seen this morning with a superb bouquet, Esther dear 
 heaths, azaleas, camellias everything far better than 
 he took for you or Jenny ; which was it ? last night 
 As soon as I saw him pass from our back drawing-room 
 window, I put on my hat and ran off for you, like a true 
 friend ; and now you may depend upon it we have fairly 
 got the wretched criminal in our toils. He always goes 
 tip the hill by the high road, and never extends his walk 
 beyond the second milestone. I heard that much from 
 his own lips the other day. And unless he goes about 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 249 
 
 five miles round through the woods, he must return by 
 this road. What a general of armies I should have 
 made ! " 
 
 Persons possessed of that inferior order of tact that 
 arises from the head, not the heart, like Miss Millicent 
 Dashwood, generally succeed, I have observed, in the 
 small undertakings of life. After walking slowly up and 
 down one half-mile of road for about three quarters of an 
 hour, Milly's generalship culminated in success. Paul 
 Chichester, utterly unconscious that he was being watch- 
 ed, appeared in sight round a belt of fir-trees, which, at 
 about two hundred yards' distance, formed the turning of 
 the road. 
 
 " And after all we never saw what house he came from ! " 
 cried Milly. " Just like my wretched luck ! If we had 
 been five minutes sooner we should have commanded a 
 
 view of every house between this and B . However, 
 
 we must do the best we can give Paul as much rope as 
 possible, and afterwards make out who lives in all the 
 houses nearest this way. Please don't blush so alarming- 
 ly, Esther," she added, when they were within a few 
 yards of Paul. " Mind, if you feel guilty, I do not. I am 
 taking an early walk on the hills for my health, and if 
 sore pressed have a mythical pot of currant-jelly in my 
 pocket for one of mamma's Sunday scholars mythical 
 also who resides upon the common." 
 
 And Milly, and, indeed, Jane too, put on a little air of 
 utter girlish unconsciousness as they approached that 
 would have deceived a much more cynical and suspicious 
 observer than Paul Chichester. Had they not been trained 
 to act under every description of circumstance which a 
 young woman's life can impose upon her ? Trained in the 
 highest histrionic school of all religious hypocrisy as lit- 
 cle children ; trained in mock-modesty and real assurance 
 as school-girls ; trained as grown-up women in every sub- 
 11* 
 
250 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 terfuge and artifice of social life ? As Esther glanced at 
 them now and felt with painful consciousness the blush- 
 es of her own guilt-betraying face, she felt how fearfully 
 far behind her savage bringing up had left her in this, as 
 in so many other of the first, common amenities of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 "You are out early, young ladies, walking off the ef- 
 fects of your last night's dissipation, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh, Milly and I are always early walkers ! " answered 
 Jane, coolly. "As to Esther, I believe five o'clock is her 
 normal hour for starting with cousin David upon the Dev- 
 onshire wilds. The wonder is, seeing you, Paul ! I 
 thought eleven was the earliest hour at which any young 
 man of the present day could ever think of encountering 
 the fatigues of breakfast. 
 
 "But I am not a young man," answered Paul. "I am 
 not young, I am not fashionable, and the duties of my 
 life force me, of necessity, to be an early riser. 
 
 Something in the tone of his voice made Esther turn 
 -. she was gazing intently at one of the leafless hedge- 
 rows until now and look at him full. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine any man wearing less 
 the air of a lover who has just quitted his mistress than 
 Paul Chichester did at that moment. Years seemed add- 
 ed to him since they had parted not ten hours ago at Mrs. 
 Strang ways' house years charged with the burden of 
 dark and heavy life. His face was fearfully pale ; his eyes 
 heavy ; his dress uncared-for. 
 
 " Have you been for a very long walk, Mr. Chichester ? 
 asked Milly, in her childish little tone. " I think, but I 
 am not quite sure, I saw you pass by the back of our 
 house this morning." 
 
 "Yes; I was on my way to B then," answered 
 
 Paul, quietly. " It is my daily walk when I am in Bath. 
 Have you recovered from last night's exertion, Miss 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 251 
 
 Fleming ? I need hardly ask, though." And his eyes 
 told Esther what he thought of her looks. 
 
 "I don't know what Miss Fleming's exertions were, but 
 listening to Mr. Chichester," cried Milly. 
 
 " Listening to Mr. Chichester and consuming an ice very 
 slowly every hour and a half, and supporting herself un- 
 der the weight of Mr. Chichester's flowers. By-the-by, 
 Paul it was a common habit of the Miss Dashwoods to 
 call every man they know by his Christian name 
 " where do you get all your flowers from ? Do white 
 azaleas and camellias spring up unbidden beneath your 
 feet in January, or are you, after all, a Rothschild in dis- 
 guise ? The latter, I suspect. Such a bouquet as I saw in 
 your hands about two hours ago could not have been 
 bought under well seven and sixpence at least." 
 
 " I am delighted to think that I, or anything I do, can 
 inspire Miss Millicent Dash wood with interest," said 
 Paul ; but Esther noted that his lip trembled a very little 
 as he spoke. " Hothouse flowers cannot be got for noth- 
 ing in January, Miss Milly, and I am not a Rothschild in 
 disguise, but a poor devil who often does not know how 
 he will get his dinner from day to day, and whose tailor's 
 bill well, I leave you to judge what that would be if 
 it were ever paid ! " 
 
 And Paul held out his arm and ostentatiously display- 
 ed a sleeve whose texture the term " ,threadbare " would 
 be scarcely adequate to represent. 
 
 " I don't see that we have got any answer about the 
 flowers, though," said Jane rather maliciously. "Although 
 my right to question you is over, Paul, I must say I think 
 it intensely mysterious where all these lavishly-delicious 
 bouquets go every day ; don't you, Esther ? " 
 
 Paul looked quickly into Esther's face, but she gave no 
 answer. With shame and contrition she felt that to her 
 this was no trifling matter, as it was to the Dashwoods ; 
 
252 THE, ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 that her heart was contracted with quite a sharp anxiety 
 as she waited to hear what extenuation Paul could plead 
 for his strange prodigality. 
 
 " My flowers go to a person who cares for such things," 
 he remarked, testily, as Esther gave no sign of speaking; 
 and there was something in the tone of his voice which 
 might have told even Millicent Dash wood she had best 
 ask no more. " To a person who cares for such things 
 a person to please whom I consider no sacrifice ridicu- 
 lous." And an ominous red rose in Paul's dark face. 
 
 " Then they are all for one person ! " cried out Milly, 
 clapping her hands. "I was sure of it! Don't be angry, 
 you good old Paul ; we'll promise never to tell a creature 
 anything about it, only for you, who have always pretend- 
 ed to be so staid and wrapped up in yourself and nobody 
 else ! I declare, as long as I live, I shall always credit 
 every confirmed old bachelor I know with some wild ro 
 mance of mystery after this." 
 
 " And you call Paul an old bachelor, you silly child ? " 
 said Jane. " He will hardly thank you for that." 
 
 " Why not ? " answered Paul. " I am almost thirty al- 
 ready (and, to Miss Millicent that is as old as forty or fif- 
 ty,) and I am so resolutely determined upon continuing 
 as I am now all my life, that she is perfectly right in look- 
 ing upon me and calling me what I very soon shall be 
 a confirmed old bachelor." 
 
 Then pride or some other feeling made Esther speak at 
 last. 
 
 " Do you like this weather, Mr. Chichester ? " And her 
 voice was, or she intended it to be, as thoroughly calm 
 and indifferent as though she had taken no part or inter- 
 est in any of their conversation. "To me it is the worst 
 kind of winter's day possible cold and dull and deso- 
 late. It suits this scene well. What sort of people, I won- 
 der, can choose to live in such a road as this ? " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOX WIVES. 253 
 
 And in spite of herself she really did shudder as she 
 looked along the dreary road down which Paul had even 
 now come. 
 
 "Yes, I wonder," cried Milly, nothing daunted in her 
 own intentions. " Paul, what sort of people live out here ? 
 There are no gentlemen's houses at all that I can see, ex- 
 cept that red-brick one away on the left. Who lives there, 
 do you know ? " 
 
 " Not in the least." 
 
 "And in the little white terrace that we see in the dis- 
 tance." 
 
 "That white terrace contains, as far as I can guess from 
 here, eight or ten houses," said Paul. "Do you expect 
 me to be acquainted with the names of all their inmates ? " 
 
 " I want to know if you are acquainted with any one 
 among them all ? As Esther says, it awakens one's curi- 
 osity to know what kind of human creature could, of its 
 own free-will, come and settle down and exist by the side 
 of such a road as this." , 
 
 " Then I regret to say that, as far as I am concerned, 
 your curiosity must remain unsatisfied. I know no more 
 than you do of the place or of its inhabitants either. Young 
 ladies, good morning to you. I have already kept you 
 too long standing here in the cold." 
 
 And after just lifting his hat, but without offering to 
 shake hands with any of them, Mr. Chichester turned 
 round abruptly and walked away. 
 
 Milly was loud in her delight at the success of her own 
 scheme. 
 
 " The thing is all as plain as possible. What should he 
 have been in such a rage for except at seeing that we had 
 found him out? Now, the next thing to ascertain is, 
 what kind of people live up here ? grandes dames or demi- 
 monde f I made a rapid calculation as we were talking 
 to him, Jenny, and frcm the short time that had passed 
 
254 THE ORDEAL FOR 
 
 since we last turned by the fir-trees, I am convinced he 
 could only have come out of one of the houses just be- 
 yond the turnpike. The thing is to make out who lives 
 in them. Half-and-half people are just the ones it is so 
 difficult to get at the truth about." 
 
 " And what right have we to find out anything in the 
 matter ? " cried Esther, hotly. " I for one, declare that I 
 have no interest whatever in Mr. Chichester's private life, 
 and that I decline assisting in any way at attempting to 
 solve what he chooses shall be hidden. What he said on 
 the subject was quite enough, I think, to make us feel that 
 we should let it rest. He may be engaged, he may be 
 married, as you suggested the other day, Milly, but, 
 whatever it is, he evidently has some secret he chooses 
 to keep, and which none of us have the slightest right to 
 investigate." 
 
 Jane Dashwood, quickly mutable in little as in great 
 things, came round in a moment to Esther's way of think- 
 ing. "I'm ashamed to feel what mean things you and I 
 are always doing, Milly, though, if the truth is told, I do 
 them more to get rid of another two or three hours of 
 life than out of real intrinsic meanness ! Let us give up 
 Paul and his mystery now and forever. It's twelve al- 
 ready, and I've got to dress and be at Mrs. Strangways 
 for luncheon at two." 
 
 " To meet Arthur and Miss Lynes, Jenny ? You must 
 remember I haven't got great interests in life, like you, to 
 save me from my own small, mean, inborn tendencies. 
 At least you'll walk with me to the turning of the road 
 once more ? There can be nothing dishonorable in that, 
 can there, Miss Fleming ? " 
 
 By dint of persuasion, or sheer pertinacity, Milly Dash- 
 wood usually carried her point. She got her companions 
 back to the turning of the road. She did more ; she got 
 them to stand by and listen while she questioned a milli- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 255 
 
 ner s girl returning, band-box in hand, towards Bath, as 
 to the capabilities of the neighborhood. 
 
 Young ladies? no, there were no young ladies in any 
 of the houses hereabout, leastways not to her knowledge. 
 
 Where had she been herself? 
 
 Carrying a cap home to old Miss Williams, the last de- 
 tached white house that you saw at the winding of the 
 road. 
 
 And who lived in the terrace of small h ouses next ? 
 
 She didn't know. Madame Helene only served ladies, 
 and she had never had to carry anything to such places 
 as that. 
 
 And who lived in the great red-brick house close at 
 hand ? 
 
 Why, Dr. Wilmot, of course. She thought every one 
 had heard of Dr. Wilmot. Only yesterday she had car- 
 ried up a wreath with a half-smile this to one of the 
 ladies at Doctor Wilmot's. 
 
 "A young lady ? " asked Milly, eagerly. 
 
 "Young ? Oh no, Miss, at least not that I know of, 
 but I didn't see her myself. You know, of course, miss, 
 who Dr. Wilmot is ? the great mad doctor that people 
 come from all over the country to consult." 
 
 " Thank you, that will do. My friend must live further 
 on. And we have just had our walk for nothing," re- 
 marked Milly, when the girl had left them. " Old Miss 
 Williams, and a row of poor cottages, and Dr. Wilmot, 
 the mad doctor. What a mean, disgusting thing curiosity 
 is, when you begin to find out that you can't satisfy it." 
 
 They turned round at once towards Bath, and in anoth 
 er minute the Dash woods had forgotten Paul's existence, 
 and were entering, heart and soul, into, the dissection of 
 some other person's private and personal history. But 
 when they reached the belt of firs that marked the wind 
 ing of the road, Esther turned and glanced across that 
 
256 THE ORDEAL FOR WI^ES. 
 
 cluster of houses one of whose thresholds Paul's step 
 must have crossed not many minutes before. 
 
 Long afterwards she remembered every outline of that 
 fiozen silent landscape; remembered, with a shudder of 
 pain, one lonely red-brick house, standing out, dark and 
 desolate, against the leaden winter sky ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 FOREWARNED. 
 
 DOES not some horrid realistic Frenchman, but one who 
 understands the anatomy of such things, say that every 
 present lover has at least twenty chances to one in his fa- 
 vor against every absent one ? 
 
 These mean little Gallican aphorisms have not an exalt- 
 ing effect in the view they give one generally of human 
 character; but their philosophy contains an undeniably 
 large amount of truth in most matters pertaining to love. 
 Esther Fleming, loyal, honest-hearted, and upright as she 
 was in all other dealings of her life Esther Fleming 
 found, at the end of scarce another ten days, that her 
 whole heart was becoming wrapt up in Paul ; that at one 
 accustomed hour of the afternoon her ear listened greedi- 
 ily for his well-known knock ; that her life was very 
 blank from the time when he left upon one day until her 
 hand was again in his the next ; and that the very thought 
 of writing her letter to Malta was an exertion not to be 
 contemplated without fatigue, almost but this she did 
 not yet acknowledge with positive and strong repug- 
 nance. 
 
 Of course if Paul had been absent and Oliver present 
 it would have been otherwise. Paul, grave, reticent, in- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 257 
 
 tellectual, was precisely a man of whom Esther's girlish 
 imagination could have made much in absence, while poor 
 Oliver was very much more favorably represented by his 
 own handsome, lively, open-hearted presence than by any 
 of Esther's lonely thoughts concerning him and his own 
 undeniably commonplace although affectionate letters 
 when he was away. As things came to her, however, 
 Paul visiting her daily, Oliver writing once a fortnight 
 ill-spelt narrations of his Malta gaieties and his unchange- 
 able passion for herself, how was Miss Fleming to be saved 
 from the horrible crime of seeing that she had made a 
 great, an irrevocable error upon the threshold of her life. 
 
 Such matters are not in young women's own keeping, 
 whatever some amiable readers of mild fiction may re- 
 quire one to say. It is a pleasing sentiment that first 
 love is the best, deepest, holiest of all our lives ; that 
 when a girl of eighteen shall have once said " I love," her 
 dictum is to be immutable as that of the"Medes and 
 Persians. 
 
 But like many other pleasing sentiments, the common 
 experience of common every-day life contradicts it flatly. 
 
 The first love of most very young men and women is an 
 inflated, artificial, shallow mistake, and it is well, exceed- 
 ing well for them when the mistake culminates in infidelity, 
 not marriage. 
 
 I hold Esther Fleming to be quite above the standard 
 or conventional type of young lady : her love for Oliver 
 to have been quite above the ordinary type of young 
 lady first love ; and yet it was but counterfeit, base coin, 
 an image, a faint echo of the genuine abiding strong pas- 
 sion of which her largely-endowed nature was capable. 
 
 Real love needs time and space for development. If 
 Esther had seen Paul first at Countisbury she would 
 probably have felt for him what she had felt for Oliver, 
 only time would have ripened the crude fruit into maturi- 
 
258 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ty, sentiment into passion. As it was, fate destined her 
 to imagine in one man what she was subsequently to find 
 realized 'in another, and I rather think that Paul was not 
 a loser by the circumstance. A sudden passion, struggled 
 against and argued with, is apt to be stronger than one 
 gradually unfolding itself, in the common course of things, 
 out of the half-friendly, half-romantic beatitudes of a mild 
 first love. 
 
 But these heresies, I beg distinctly to say, are mine, 
 not Esther Fleming's. Esther had the most perfect 
 belief in all the recognized platitudes, concerning the im- 
 possibility of caring for anybody twice in one's life, the 
 most thorough horror for people who changed. If she 
 sinned she did not attempt to call her sin virtue. If she, 
 pledged to one man, was growing passionately to love 
 another, she recoiled with repugnance from her own 
 frailty. 
 
 And Paul" saw that it was so. 
 
 Paul saw what combat was passing in the girl's heart ; 
 Paul knew, although she had never told him so in words, 
 that Esther Fleming was engaged to marry a man she 
 did not love, and that already, yes already, her face light- 
 ened at his, Paul Chichester's corning ; her hand trembled 
 when he held it ; her breath faltered and sank as they sat 
 alone together, day after day, in Mrs. Tudor's drawing- 
 room in the dangerous trembling half-light of the winter 
 afternoon. 
 
 Did he act honorably in thus coming daily to see her ? 
 You must judge him in that, reader. I know that he 
 acted humanly, which is perhaps about as much as one 
 can expect from most men. His life was, and had been 
 for years, a sterile life lighted by only one affection, and 
 that an affection which withheld him from all other love, 
 from honest and legitimate love the most. Without hav- 
 ing conceived anything of actual passion for Esther Flem- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 259 
 
 ing, he liked her extremely ; and it is pleasant, though one 
 knows it cannot end in much good, to see a handsome 
 young cheek flush, and dark eyes light at one's coming. 
 And she would soon forget him when he was gone, he 
 hoped (he did not hope so in the least, be it understood, 
 but he said to his conscience that he did,) and then, no 
 doubt, her fancy would go back, poor child ! to its allegi- 
 ance. And if there was any danger in his frequent visits, 
 surely her natural protector, Mrs. Tudor, would be sensi- 
 ble of it, and forbid him to come, which she had not 
 done. 
 
 I say he acted humanly, and precisely as I myself 
 would have done ; first in coming to see Esther, and after- 
 wards in employing all these small casuistries to set his 
 own misgiving at rest. But at the same time I respect 
 you immensely for thinking otherwise, and I hope when 
 you are, some time, placed in a like position to my hero's 
 for Paul is my hero that you will fully carry all 
 your fine Spartan principles into practice. 
 
 Whatever her danger, Esther was in no lack of friend- 
 ly fingers to point it out to her. Mrs. Tudor was a great 
 deal too worldly wise to forbid Paul the house, or indeed 
 to put any outward or visible check upon their growing 
 intimacy : such weak preventive measures were wholly 
 opposed to her straightforward, Napoleonic way of at- 
 taining her end. " Thrown too much together ? stun 
 and nonsense, Whitty ! " she replied, when Whitty once 
 ventured to suggest, as she often did to Esther . herself, 
 that the girl's peace of mind might be imperilled. " Noth- 
 ing is so ridiculous to me as to hear elderly people talk 
 that kind of sentimental twaddle. If a young woman 
 has been honestly brought up, and cornes of an honest 
 stock, like my niece, her principles can't be endangered, 
 I imagine, by Mr. Chichester's or any other man's hand- 
 some face. What then ? her heart ? Bah ! her heart must 
 
260 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 grow stouter if she is to live in the world, not a convent. 
 She may see just as much of Mr. Chichester as she pleases. 
 Nothing is better for forming a young person's character 
 than receiving in moderation the attentions of an educat- 
 ed and handsome man whom she knows she cannot mar- 
 ry. It increases her sense of her own strength, and does 
 away, too, with the ridiculous school-girl folly of consid- 
 ering herself in love with every man who is commonly 
 civil to her." 
 
 " I know you to be no fool, child, and so I let you re- 
 ceive Mr. Chichester alone," she would say to Esther, in 
 her curt, crushing way, of an evening after Paul had been 
 there. " Paul Chichester's fortunes are as broken as his 
 coat is threadbare, and he comes of a family in which 
 those who are not mad are spendthrifts ; but Paul Chi- 
 chester himself is an undeniably agreeable person. Get 
 him to read Italian to you again, my love, by all means ; 
 it is an improving exercise, and his accent is first-rate." 
 
 And if the girl's fancy had only been aroused, her heart 
 untouched, there was a tone in the bland, half-pitying 
 praise which would have damaged a lover's cause a vast 
 deal more than putting him out at the house door and 
 forbidding him ever to cross the threshold again. 
 
 Jane Dashwood, too ('twas but human nature she should 
 do so,) pointed out with vigilance to her friend the false 
 position in which any woman must place herself who 
 should become seriously attached to Paul. He was poor; 
 his means, however derived and even that was a mys- 
 tery were precarious; hia temper was fitful, even to 
 eccentricity ; he made scarcely any secret as to the exis- 
 tence of a tie which withheld him alike from society and 
 from the possibility of marrying! Mrs. Strangways, who 
 had been intimate with some connection of his in London, 
 knew for a fact that there was something more than com- 
 monly suspicious about his way of life. He did not even 
 
THE ORDPdL FOR WIVES. 261 
 
 give people with whom he was most intimate his real ad- 
 dress. Sometimes they would hear nothing of him for a 
 month together. Sometimes he would be seen occupying 
 a stall at the Opera during four or five consecutive weeks ; 
 at others would be recognized walking in some remote 
 suburb of London, dressed well, worse, much, than she, 
 Jane Dashwood, had ever seen him, and with a person, 
 yes, a person, Esther, actually leaning in broad daylight 
 upon his arm. Was he, could he be a man on whom it 
 would be anything less than midsummer madness to place 
 one's affections ? 
 
 And the more Miss Whitty warned, and Mrs. Tudor 
 sneered, and Jane Dashwood reasoned, the more did Es- 
 ther Fleming's heart become bound up in Paul. 'Tis only 
 the poor emasculated love of artificial natures that will 
 ever be influenced ft-om without. The robust love of a 
 healthy organization can assimilate praise and dispraise of 
 its object, just as they come, and derive equal nourishment 
 to itself from either. 
 
 CU AFTER XXVL 
 
 GONE. . 
 
 " THIS is my last evening, Miss Fleming. To-morrow I 
 go back to London and to work. Well, I shall be better 
 for my holiday the nearest approach to a real holiday 
 that I have had during the last nine years." 
 
 Paul had come to take his leave ; and, Mrs. Tudor not 
 having returned yet from her drive, Esther, very nervous 
 and uncertain in her *oice, was receiving him alone, and 
 trying to be as unconcernedly lively and commonplace 
 as she could. 
 
262 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " I wonder whether you are really as hard-worked as 
 you say, Mr. Chichester. Do you know at times I think 
 you are a grand seigneur in disguise, a Rothschild, as Mil- 
 ly said when she was talking to you about the flowers 
 that day on the hill do you remember?" 
 
 Paul's face grew dark. 
 
 " I remember well, Miss Fleming. I am not likely to for- 
 get ; and you do right, very right, to remind me of it 
 now. God knows it's seldom I forget what I am and 
 what my bondage is ; but with you I have forgotten it, 
 yes, Esther, for the last three weeks I have let myself 
 dream of what my life, differently ordered, might have 
 been." 
 
 He came close to her, and looked with a long, with a 
 painfully eager gaze into her eyes. 
 
 " For a short time longer, Esther, a short half-hour, at 
 most, don't waken me ! don't speak of of the mission 
 you saw me on that bitter morning. It was a mission 
 wholly unconnected with you, child a mission which, 
 in fact, cuts me off from you, and everything else in the 
 world worth living for. Esther, let me look at you ! So, 
 turn your face round to the window so that the light from 
 the lamps may rest on it. I like to look at you. I like 
 to take in all I can of your face to-night the last night, 
 most likely, that you and I will ever meet while we live." 
 
 Esther was accustomed to Paul's abrupt transitions of 
 spirits, to the fits of fearful depression that were wont to 
 come upon him without a moment's warning and without 
 tangible cause ; but she had never heard him speak, had 
 never seen him look, as he did now ; and all her heart 
 came into her voice as she strove to give him some in- 
 different answer. Indifferent, when she yearned to com- 
 fort him ! to bid him tell her what burthen it was that 
 darkened his life and let her share it with him, arid 
 it by her tenderest sympathy ! 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 263 
 
 "I don't think you need speak so seriously, Mr. Chiches- 
 ter. Why should we not meet again after to-night ? I 
 may come to stay in Bath with my aunt Thalia again, and 
 meet you as I have done now." 
 
 " You will not stay with Mrs. Tudor when you are 
 married, and I should not care to meet you even if I 
 could do so. Our parting is to-night." 
 
 She turned from him ; she clasped her hands with a 
 quick impatient gesture that did not escape Paul's no- 
 tice. 
 
 " You may marry, too, Mr. Chichester. I was speaking 
 of what is likely to happen not of bare probabilities." 
 
 "Your marriage is not a bare probability, Esther" 
 he fell into this way of calling her by her Christian name 
 with a perfect naturalness that made it impossible for her 
 to notice it. " Be frank, for the very short time that we 
 shall see each other now. You are as certainly engaged 
 to marry as I am bound hand and foot, soul and body 
 never to change from the state in which I now am. 
 Tell me that it is so. I think you may show that poor 
 degree of confidence in me before we part. Tell me the 
 truth. I can bear it better than you think." 
 
 I I " but then Miss Fleming broke down. 
 
 " Go on," said Paul, and forgetting, I suppose, what he 
 did, he took her hands into his. "Look upon me as a 
 very old friend and brother, and let me hear your secret." 
 
 " I have been engaged, Mr. Chichester, I have promised 
 to marry a good and honest man, to marry him, and he is 
 away, and if I had been worthy of his love I should have 
 never changed God help me, as I have changed within 
 the last few weeks ! " 
 
 She brought out the first part of this confession very 
 firm and resolute and decided ; but at the last few words 
 her voice faltered again, and Paul felt that the hands he 
 held turned fearfully cold and clammy. 
 
264 I HE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Esther, do you know that this is a moment of fierce 
 temptation to me? " he whispered. "Do you know that 
 if I listened to what my own heart is prompting me I 
 would say, ' Love me and be mine, and let us go to the 
 other end of the world, and forget duty and law and 
 sternest misery in our love for one another ! ' ' 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Chichester ! oh, sir, you frighten me ! " and 
 she drew her cold hands away from his. " I don't think I 
 have given you any right to say such things to me." 
 
 "Esther, I don't say them. I only tell you what I 
 should say if I listened to the voice of the tempter. As 
 it is " he walked a step or two away from her, in his 
 abrupt way, and his voice suddenly seemed to lose all its 
 new-found warmth and tenderness " as it is, I will tell 
 you the real truth about our relative positions. Don't be 
 afraid. You will hear no more nonsense no more about 
 flying lo the other end of the world and forgetting duty 
 and everything else in each other. I am going to say one 
 or two plain truths in a very plain way. And about you, 
 first, Esther you forgive me this one evening for calling 
 you so ? You are very young, you are very ignorant of 
 life, ignorant of yourself, even, and of the reality of your 
 own feelings. You think you like me a little, just at pre- 
 sent. . . . No, don't be indignant ; hear me out, and you 
 won't accuse me of overmuch vanity ! Your kind child's 
 heart warms to me because* I wear a threadbare coat and 
 because some subtle instinct tells you that my life is a 
 miserable one. You have known very few people hither- 
 to ; none, probably, with a threadbare coat and a general 
 suspicion of ill-fortune like, mine ; and so, for the time 
 being, you have made a hero out of me a hero of pov- 
 erty, Men entendu ! Well, Esther, in six months in six 
 weeks more likely you will look back and remembei 
 Mr. Paul Chichester as he really was, and you will known 
 that your heart has never swerved from its first faith, and 
 in time you will marry, and " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 265 
 
 " I have heard enough of myself and of my own feel- 
 ings," interrupted Esther, hotly. " If you knew me bet- 
 ter, Mr. Chichester, you would not speak like this. I am 
 not so weak and childish as you think ! " 
 
 She looked handsomer than he had ever seen her, in 
 her flush of indignation, half outraged pride, half wound- 
 ed tenderness that he should rate her love so low. But 
 Paul dared not no, for his life he dared not say a word 
 to lead her on to deeper confession. With all his strength 
 of will could he withstand those quivering scarlet lips if 
 they confessed there, close beside him in the twilight ! 
 that her feeling for him was not the passing, romantic 
 fancy of a child ? 
 
 " I have told you your position, Esther, and you are 
 not pleased with me, now I will tell you mine ; there will 
 be nothing in that that can, by possibility, offend you. I 
 am don't turn your face away ; the half-hour is going 
 fast I am a man of already almost middle age, a man 
 who, even in his youth, had no share in the common 
 pleasures and feelings of other ordinary lives. I am 
 bound, Esther, fast bound, to a hard and colorless lot, 
 from which there is neither hope nor possibility of my ever 
 being set free. Till about a year ago I never went be- 
 yond the duties every day brought to me. I resigned 
 myself with the kind of patience that is less virtue than 
 indifference to absolute solitude, absolute forgetfulness of 
 the world I knew when I was a boy the world of edu- 
 cated men and women. Then, chance would have it so, 
 I suppose, I came across Mrs. Strangways in London. 
 She was introduced to me by some old friend of mine, al- 
 most the only friend of my youth whom I still know, and 
 asked me, from caprice, no doubt, to her house, where I 
 first saw Jane Dash wood. Shall I tell you the rest? 
 Shall I tell you after playing out Jane's petite comcdie 
 12 
 
266 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 a feeling of passing amusement all that the last few- 
 weeks have made me really feel ? " 
 
 She stood perfectly silent She could not meet his ear- 
 nest eyes. She could not trust her voice to speak. 
 
 " The last few weeks have made me feel that I am hu- . 
 man, again, Esther. I had quite forgotten what it was to i 
 feel so, and I think it is wholesome to be brought back 
 however sharp the after-suffering to a knowledge of 
 what God originally intended me to be. I know that placed 
 altogether differently, and if I had met you when both 
 were free, I would have asked you to be my wife, and we 
 should have worked out the rest of our life together well. 
 Esther, don't grudge me the good you have done me ! It 
 won't harm you, it won't harm your husband, for you to 
 think, some day, 'I once knew Paul Chichester a poor 
 devil against whom life went hard and for three weeks 
 or so I let him see me and waste his foolish heart upon 
 me, daily, while I well, I was very young, a dreaming ro- 
 mantic girl, and his poverty and his misery touched me, 
 and I thought I rather liked him, and was glad of his so- 
 ciety, for the time being.' This won't injure you, Esther. 
 Imagine but you scarcely can, for you don't, in the least, 
 know what my life is imagine what it will be for me, 
 through the long dark years that lie before me till I die, 
 to look back and say, ' One pure and noble and unselfish 
 woman's heart took an interest in me, once. I have lived : 
 for three weeks out of how many blank and desolate 
 years ! Esther Fleming cared for me ! ' ' 
 
 The sound of his faltering voice, the sight of his agitat- 
 ed face, swept all shyness, all foregone resolves, from 
 Esther's heart. She knew only that she was standing 
 there beside the man she passionately loved ; listening to 
 a farew r ell that she felt to be an eternal one. 
 
 " I may seem light and childish to you, Mr. Chichester, 
 but I am not so. I have made one great, one fearful mis- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 267 
 
 take, but it will be my last. I shall not change again, re- 
 member ! I tell you this, now that I am parting from you, 
 and see if I do not keep my word ! " 
 
 " I pray God that, whatever your life is, it may be a 
 happy one ! Child good-bye ! " 
 
 He eame close : a mighty, well-nigh irresistible impulse 
 urged him to take her to his breast and let her bind her- 
 self to him by words from which she could not, hereafter, 
 depart ; let her promise that if she could not marry him 
 she would, for his sake, remain single while she lived. 
 He knew enough of her character to feel sure that, in a 
 moment of exaltation like this, such a sacrifice would not 
 be a whit too high for her to offer. And he felt that he 
 was a man : with all a man's selfishness ; all a man's nat- 
 ural horror at giving up the one thing he covets most to 
 to possess into the keeping of another ! 
 
 It is good to think how human nature, in rare and ex- 
 ceptional cases, does sometimes shine forth. 
 
 Paul clasped Esther's hand closely, warmly that he 
 he must do after what had passed between them but he 
 never raised it to his lips, never asked her for another 
 promise than the one which she herself had in all inno- 
 cence given him. 
 
 "He is of a mould too heroic," cried the poor child's 
 heart, when five minutes later she had watched Paul's fig- 
 ure fade in the distant street, and desolation had closed 
 in upon her. " He might at least have heard me out 
 when I would have offered to give up all my life for him ! " 
 
 And then she went up into her room and flung herself 
 on her knees before heaven and vowed while she asked 
 forgiveness for her infidelity to Oliver, that she would 
 remain faithful to Paul Chichester until she died. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 BUT the new love did not set Miss Fleming free from 
 the old engagement. When the next day came round, 
 bringing with it Mrs. Tudor and her plans for Esther's 
 worldly advancement, and the Dashwoods with their 
 small excitements and projects of immediate pleasure, 
 and, worse than all, a long letter from poor David full of 
 little home-news and generous kindly allusions to Oliver 
 Carew : when the next day came, bringing with it the in- 
 evitable dull reaction that e very-day-life must bring after 
 any strong and vivid emotion, Esther realized, almost 
 with horror, the position into which that single half-hour's 
 self-devotion and self-abandonment had betrayed her. 
 
 One thing alone was certain : she must break with Oli- 
 ver Carew at once. Then rose the questions what col- 
 oring could she give to her change of faith ? and by what 
 means could she communicate the fatal news which, for 
 aught she knew to the contrary, was to ruin Mr. Carew's 
 peace for ever. 
 
 In his last letter, received only two days before Paul 
 left, he had bidden her write to him no more at Malta. 
 Ie had just heard of the dangerous illness of his uncle, 
 and, in all probability, would have to return to England 
 by the next mail. After this could she venture to send a 
 letter containing intelligence so delicate addressed only 
 'to Oliver Carew, Esq., Poste Restante, Valetta," as all 
 her former letters to him had been directed ? He might 
 come to England, then ; might be in England now, on 
 his way to Bath to see her; and looking into his eyes 
 and witnessing his desolation, she would have to tell him 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 269 
 
 that she loved him no longer, had transferred her love to 
 another man a man, too, who had not sought her, and 
 whom as long as she lived she could never marry. 
 
 The thought that she might at any moment see Oliver 
 thus weighed upon Esther's spirit like a continual night- 
 mare. She grew pale and thin ; she started at every knock 
 that came to Mrs. Tudor's door ; at every step, almost, 
 that she heard upon the stairs. Waking or sleeping, two 
 faces were ever before her. One, pale and shaken with 
 agitation, telling her of a love that must begin and finish 
 with its first avowal, the other, flushed with life and hope, 
 returning to claim the promises, every one of which her 
 heart had already broken. 
 
 " I don't think your visit here has done you any good, 
 child," said Mrs. Tudor, sharply, one evening. They 
 were sitting together, dressed, ready to start for a party 
 at the Dash woods. "You are looking white, and old, 
 Esther ; are you fool enough to be fretting about Paul 
 Chichester?" 
 
 Esther was kneeling before the fire, gazing abstractedly 
 among the fantastic forms of its changing embers, and 
 still tracing Paul's features or Oliver's in every momentary 
 shape that they assumed. At the sound of Mrs. Tudor's 
 voice she turned round suddenly. 
 
 " Aunt Thalia, you frightened me. T was thinking of 
 Paul Chichester, though not in the kind of way^that you 
 mean. I am not fool enough for that." 
 
 " You are right, child. Chichester has no money. 
 Whoever marries to poverty is a fool, and remember 
 remember this always, remember that I told you so to- 
 night you have a life of poverty before you, Esther. 
 You understand rne? " 
 
 " Perfectly. I have known it ever since I could under- 
 stand anything. Joan has brought me up with no other 
 idea." 
 
270 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Of course, of course she has done right ; " but Mrs. 
 Tudor did not look in her great-niece's face, and her hand 
 shook more than ordinarily as she applied herself to the 
 buttoning of her glove; "I never misled Joan nor any 
 one of them. You mind that, girl, whatever they try 
 hereafter to say to you about me, I never misled them 
 and I don't mislead you now. Your life will be one of 
 poverty. You must look out for a man with money, and, 
 although I give you credit for too much sense ever to love 
 any man better than yourself, I tell you that I consider 
 you allowed Paul Chichester's attentions to go too far. 
 Nothing disgusts a man with money like seeing one of 
 those meaningless flirtations that you have been carrying 
 on now." 
 
 " But there is no man with money to be disgusted," 
 said Esther, with rather a forced laugh. " Who has there 
 been in Bath to care whether I have talked to Mr. Chi- 
 chester or not ? " 
 
 " There are always men with money everywhere," said 
 Mrs. Tudor, peevishly. "Young Langton was quite dis- 
 posed to talk to you at the Rooms on Monday, but you 
 had neither ears nor eyes for anything but that poor mis- 
 erable poverty-struck Chichester." 
 
 " Aunt Thalia, if Mr. Langton had a million a year I 
 wouldn't marry him ! I have a pair of useful hands I 
 have stout broad shoulders. I can work. The prospect 
 of poverty has no terrors for me ! " 
 
 Mrs. Tudor looked at the girl's face, strong and self- 
 reliant even in its pallor, and her heart yearned towards 
 her. 
 
 Before the great change comes, have you not seen how 
 old people go back drawn, God knows by what mys- 
 terious cords, to the habits and feelings of their childhood ? 
 An old French emigre I knew came down a week or two 
 ago to breakfast and spoke to his servants and children, 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 271 
 
 for the first time they had ever heard him, in the long- 
 forgotten patois that his foreign nurses had talked to him 
 nearly a century before. By noonday he was dead ; borne 
 away by a stroke seemingly as painless as the sleep which 
 had, in those long-buried days, overcome him in his nurse's 
 arms. During the last three or four days Mrs. Tudor had 
 become at once softened and harsher in her bearing to 
 those about her; had dared, openly, to scold Mistress Wil- 
 son ; had actually given a brooch to Whitty, a garnet one 
 of little value (but think of Mrs. Tudor giving anything 
 concerning which there was no pet parson or physician to 
 stand as recording angel) ; had alternately lectured and 
 caressed Esther in a manner wholly different to the usual 
 well-bred indifference with which she treated relations. 
 
 ~No softening or Christian principle, no mysterious fore- 
 knowledge of death acting under her conscience, changed 
 Mrs. Tudor thus, I think. In her extreme youth, before 
 the apprenticeship of a mercenary marriage had first begun 
 to train her for the life of the world, she had been impul- 
 sive, almost generous ; and these long-extinct and most 
 unprofitable habits were coming back now, mechanically, 
 without will, without knowledge of hers, just like the old 
 French emigre's long-forgotten patois. 
 
 " You have the blood of our race in your veins, Es- 
 ther," and she actually stooped forward and leant her in- 
 ert, automaton-like hand for one instant upon the girl's. 
 <c The Fleming blood in your veins, and the Fleming 
 courage in your heart. Garratt's son was the only one 
 bearing the name, who had no spirit, and he was a Mor- 
 timer, rnind, a Mortimer in face and in heart. If your 
 grandfather had never seen Honoria Mortimer, the poor 
 whey-faced little innocent, he took for his wife, he wouldn't 
 have ended as he did. We were poor. I gave up my 
 fine feelings. 1 didn't marry the man I thought I loved 
 when I was sixteen, and see how I have ended, Esther, 
 see how I have ended ! " 
 
272 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Esther looked up almost with a shudder at the old fig- 
 ure, stuck round with the fashions of youth still, but with 
 the great lustreless eyes staring, wan and piteous, from 
 the shrunken withered face, which to-night no amount of 
 rouge could keep from looking corpse-like. "Yes, Aunt 
 Thalia, I see how you have ended." 
 
 " I have had comfort all my life, child, and society, and 
 friends, and I've been able to give a great deal to others 
 my charity-books are on the left-hand side of my bu- 
 reau : you will find every farthing I have given during 
 the last five-and-twenty years written down each with its 
 own date. I have kept up the name of the family, and 
 been of use and good to the world, while Cecelia has 
 mouldered her wretched life in poverty, and poor Garratt 
 died, in the prime of his years, out of sheer debt, and 
 shame, and want. They gave way to impulse, you see, 
 to fine feelings ! to love ! They married beggars, and beg- 
 gars they both became while I child, are you listen- 
 ing to me ? " 
 
 "Aunt Thalia, I am listening." 
 
 "I gave up all/" her weak shrill voice brought this 
 word out almost with a shriek. "All! Youth, hope, 
 love, the man I loved : and the sacrifice bore good fruits. 
 He was handsome, Esther; I saw him first through the 
 grille of the Convent des Soeurs, Grises, when Cecelia and 
 I were school girls there. He came in the holidays to see 
 Antoinette de Vismes, his sister, you know, by marriage, 
 and we walked together in the summer evenings sous les 
 tilleuls sous les tilleuls, et il faisait si beau ! Je portals 
 toujours ma petite robe grise de pensionnaire, mais il me 
 trouvait bien. Esther^ child, what do you mean, sitting 
 staring at me like that ? " she interrupted herself, ab- 
 ruptly. " I'm not ill I never felt better in my life. 
 Ring the bell for Wilson, no, I forgot, tap three times for 
 Whitty. I have left my card-purse up-stairs, and she 
 must go for it." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 273 
 
 Mrs. Tudor's face, that had softened, had almost looked 
 young while her tongue had strayed back to the familiar 
 days, the familiar scenes of her youth, was set into ada- 
 mant by the time Whitty's deprecating step entered the 
 room. She was wholly unsuspicious of His coming whose 
 cold hand already gripped her fast, whose sure forerunners 
 were these fitful resurrections from her long-dead youth ! 
 but she knew, dimly, that she had been speaking without 
 her own will, and in a way that it was not common for 
 her to speak, and she wished to efface the impression of 
 her weakness from Esther's mind. 
 
 " There's sixpence short here, Whitty," when the poor 
 soul had fulfilled her errand like the good fawning spaniel 
 that she was ; " sixpence short. "Tis no use counting it 
 again, Esther, I know perfectly what there was when 1 
 left it," with a glance at Whitty. " Oblige me by going 
 up to Wilson, Miss Whitty, and ask her if she can find a 
 sixpence for you upon the dressing-table or the floor of 
 my room. The money's right, child," she whispered to 
 Esther when th-ey were alone; "but Whitty, out of her 
 own wretched purse, will produce a sixpence sooner than 
 anger me. How I hate sycophants ! " 
 
 And Mrs. Tudor was right. She knew every turn of 
 her follower's character well ; could play upon all the 
 baseness and littleness of that poor nature as upon an in- 
 strument. Very mild and apologetic Whitty came back 
 with a sixpence. "I found it in your left slipper, ma'am, 
 such a curious place !" 
 
 And then the sixpence was dropped, with a grim smile 
 and a hope that her honestly-restored property would 
 bring her luck, into Mrs. Tudor's purse, and she and Es- 
 ther proceeded down stairs to the carriage. It was the 
 last piece of kindness or condescension that Miss Whitty 
 was destined ever to receive at her patroness's hands ! 
 
 During their drive to Colonel Dash wood's house Mrs. 
 12* 
 
274 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Tudor was quite herself, at her best in her withering re- 
 marks on Whitty's meanness, and her cool pleasantries as 
 to the Dashwood family generally, and the set of people 
 one was sure to meet in such a house. 
 
 I don't know whether the abrupt transition would have 
 reassured Esther, if her fears had been once awakened 
 concerning Mrs. Tudor's state. But, to say truth, Miss 
 Fleming was in a condition when the mind refuses to give 
 strong attention to any subject but one ; when everything 
 in the actual, tangible world is dream-like by the side of 
 one eloquent voice that speaks, one warm and living hand 
 that presses in the imagination. Looking out into the 
 lighted street as they drove along, she though-t of no 
 object upon which her eyes rested, thought of no word 
 Mrs. Tudor was uttering, save with just sufficient mechani 
 cal attention to say " yes" or " no " as occasion demanded. 
 All her heart was with Paul Paul setting out ao-ain 
 
 o o 
 
 upon the dark and uncheered road of which he had told 
 her ; Paul thinking, perhaps, at this moment of her as of 
 a flighty, romantic girl who had given her heart to him 
 without his ever asking for such a gift Paul who, how- 
 ever he might cloak the mystery over, was beyond all 
 doubt bound hand and foot to another woman than her 
 even as she was still bound, in honor, to Oliver Carew. 
 "You look deplorably 111," was Millicent Dashwood's 
 friendly whisper to her when they entered. " Even Jen- 
 ny, with Arthur Peel gone back two whole days dosen't 
 pine as visibly as you do for Paul. Depend upon it, it's 
 a mistake to regret any man, Esther ! I never mean to 
 do so as long as I live, and I'm not sure that I won't 
 make John Alexander propose to me this evening. Any- 
 thing to break the dullness of one of papa and Mrs. Dash- 
 wood's mixed parties. Look at the awful set of cautions 
 round the room, listen to the awful silence that prevails 
 already ! " 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 275 
 
 A bfill was a thing never given in the Dash wood house ; 
 Mrs. Dashwood considering such festivites too carnal, 
 Colonel Dashwood too expensive. As the Miss Dash- 
 woods were, however, invited to the houses of all the 
 gay Bath people, and as the carnal-minded and the right- 
 eous can, on occasion, eat cold turkey and trifle at the 
 same board, it was the custom of the family once during 
 the winter to give a " drum " to which every creature of 
 their joint acquaintance was invited. From these " drums" 
 dancing was, as a matter of course, excluded : cards, how- 
 ever, were admitted in the back drawing-room and 
 music, as a grand neutral territory, upon which the fastest 
 young lady or the slowest curate can conscientiously 
 meet, was the established entertainment of the night. 
 
 Those who are acquainted only with the quiet, well- 
 bred stagnation of ordinary London " At Homes " can 
 form but a dim and partial notion of a provincial " drum." 
 Everybody knows everybody else, by name and sight : 
 everybody's set is at daggers drawn with all the other's 
 sets : everybody is determined that no human power 
 shall induce them to speak to any one they don't wish to 
 visit, in that house. Imagine such elements as Mrs. 
 Strangways, Mrs. Tudor, and about eight very low- 
 churchmen and their wives, in the limited area of two 
 small rooms ! Whist, and an exceeding run of ill-luck 
 and bad partners, occupied Mrs. TudorV interest pretty 
 well as the evening progressed, and Mrs. Strangways, who 
 never failed at eliciting some kind of homage out of 
 some one, made an unhesitating dash at a very young cu- 
 rate, and in spite of the looks of half the elderly women 
 of his flock, kept him at her side for the night. The two 
 great leaders of the fast card, and the fast dancing sets 
 were provided for : but what was to become of the re- 
 maining sixty-six people who filled the rooms? In vain 
 were interminable relays of weak negus pushed round 
 
276 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 through the crowd by the solitary, indefatigable hired 
 waiter ; in vain did supercilious tenors break down in 
 impossible duets with nervous shrill-voiced sopranos ; in 
 vain did Jane and Milly exert themselves to bring togeth- 
 er, morally, those sixty-six persons who, physically, were 
 wedged into one inextricable sulky mass. All attempt at 
 enlivenment was fruitless. It was the yearly Dash wood 
 " drum." What did any one come for but to be sulky 
 and speak to none of the dreadful people you always met 
 at that house, and get away as soon after supper as was 
 decently possible ? 
 
 Esther Fleming, who had sat in one place thinking of 
 Paul the whole night, was probably less bored than any 
 other person present; but even in her state of semi-som- 
 nambulism it was impossible not to be sensible of extreme 
 relief when she found herself driving along through the 
 clear winter night again, free to look through the window 
 into the now dim-lighted street, and to dream of Mr. 
 Chichester still. 
 
 For the rest, her state of mind was on this particular 
 night untroubled. She had not the faintest idea whether 
 the Dashwoods' party had been a failure or success. She 
 bore with unexampled meekness all Mrs. Tudor's sharp 
 temper when they reached home, and the exhausted state 
 of the card-purse was fully established. She gave no heed 
 to Mrs. Tudor's ghastly face, to the deathly, clammy feel 
 of the hand that touched, but never pressed hers as they 
 bade each other good night. 
 
 What human being of eighteen, in the first and most 
 intoxicating stage of love, ever took note of such small 
 things as the failure of a friend's party, or the loss of a few 
 pounds, and of a great deal of temper at whist, or of the 
 ghastly whiteness of a face that shall be a corpse before 
 morning? 
 
 We go from the world solitary as we come into it, as we 
 live and suffer in it. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 977 
 
 Esther Fleming went to her pillow to dream the rosy un- 
 truths from which to-morrow, like every succeeding day 
 of her life, should wake her ; Mrs. 1 Tudor to the last vision 
 she should know of diamonds and 'of hearts of her 
 present lonely luxury, and of the far-off summer evenings 
 when she walked in the garden of the Paris convent 
 " dans ma petite robe grise de pensionnaire, et il me 
 trouvait bien ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 UNTO THIS LAST. 
 
 " COME down at once, Miss Fleming, come down, or 
 you'll be too late. Your aunt's been 'took' again." 
 
 Esther started from her sleep from a delicious dream 
 in which she and Paul were together and unfettered ; and 
 saw Wilson standing by her side, frightened and useless, 
 as is the manner of her class to be in all sudden emergen- 
 cies, and with a face as white as her night-dress. 
 
 " Great God, Wilson ! is Aunt Thalia in danger ? and 
 so well when I left her last night." 
 
 " She was took all of a suddent, miss. I left the door 
 of the dressing-room ajar, and I went in and looked at 
 her before I got into bed, and she was sleeping beautiful, 
 like an infant ; and after I'd been asleep an hour, or it 
 may be two, I heard a cry or groan like, and I thought to 
 myself ' she's took,' and I started up and found her 
 so!" 
 
 And Wilson gave a ghastly pantomimic representation 
 of her mistress's state by contorting her own face. 
 
 Esther drew on her dressing-gown and a shawl and ran 
 
278 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 down to Mrs. Tudor's room. From the time she was a 
 child, she had been so often and so solemnly impressed 
 with the idea that she was never to enter that sanctuary 
 unbidden, that, from mere force of habit, she stopped 
 now, and tapped softly at the door. 
 
 "Lord love you, miss, you may go in," said Wilson ; 
 " she won't know you she'll never know anything more 
 in this world. Stop, if you're nervous, and I'll go in 
 first." 
 
 She went in softly, and pushing back the curtains from 
 the head of the bed, disclosed Mrs. Tudor's unconscious 
 form to Esther's gaze. 
 
 On the dressing-table, lit up by the flare of Wilson's 
 hastily-lit untended candle, lay outspread (carelessly ex- 
 posed as it was her wont to leave it at night) all the 
 sacred dressing paraphernalia : the creams, the unguents, 
 the false dark hair, the perfumes, the rouge pots, the kaly- 
 dors, of the dying woman. A set of pearl ornaments that 
 she had worn the night before lay side by side with the 
 empty card-purse and the velvet-bound prayer-book that 
 Esther had always seen on her aunt's table closed 
 since she was a child. On a couch at the foot of the bed 
 was outspread the dress she had taken off, brocaded silk 
 of exquisite French-grey hue ; on the wall, suspended in 
 a fashion of Mrs. Tudor's own, for the due recovery of 
 shape, was her last Parisian crinoline. Pearls and dia- 
 monds upon the dressing table ; silks and crinoline around 
 the room ; on the table by the bedside the silver night- 
 lamp shedding its light, with ghastly fullness, upon Mrs. 
 Tudor's face. Pearls and diamonds ; gold and silver ; 
 rouge and kalydor and unclosed velvet prayer-book ; and 
 on the bed what ? A picture of mortality so fearful 
 that for the first moment Esther shrunk back, sick and 
 aghast ; an image of life (for life this surely could not be) 
 with sense, with recognition, with consciousness, with all 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 279 
 
 but breath, gone : without even the inalienable heritage, 
 the last look of humanity the look of pain left upon 
 the half-closed, sightless eyes and contorted features. 
 
 " She has been so ever since she was took," said Wilson 
 aloud ; and leaning over her mistress charily, as one might 
 do over a newly-unfolded mummy, or other unpleasant 
 but curious object. "Hearken to her breathing, Miss 
 Fleming. I'd an uncle took in the pralisiss, and he 
 breathed just so for seven hours and a half, and then died 
 quiet and comfortable." 
 
 Esther motioned her to be silent, and then bent, all her 
 first horror gone, over the stonily-passive face upon the 
 pillow. 
 
 " Aunt Thalia, can I do anything for you ? Is there 
 any one you would like to see?" 
 
 But not the faintest movement in any part of the frame 
 gave token that Mrs. Tudor heard. 
 
 "You might as well begin talking to the dead at once, 
 Miss Fleming," said Wilson. "Don't you know that you 
 should never speak to a dying person, nor yet touch 
 of 'em ? It makes them die harder. You watch here 
 and don't move and don't speak, and I'll put on a few 
 things and go rouse Miss Whitty and the house. The 
 doctor must be sent for, of course, for form's sake ! " 
 
 Wilson withdrew to her own apartment, which com- 
 municated with Mrs. Tudor's, and made quite an elabor- 
 ate toilette black silk dress, lace collar and sleeves, cork- 
 screw ringlets, and brooch while Esther stood and listen- 
 ed, silent and awe-struck, to each unnaturally-heavy, ster 
 torous breath that the dying woman drew. The minutes 
 appeared to pass like long hours when she was left alone 
 Wilson having swept away with the candle downstairs 
 in the great dim-lighted room with her unconscious charge. 
 It seemed to her as if every one of those fearful breath- 
 ings must be the last; as though it were impossible Hie 
 
280 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 could still dwell upon those rigid lips which seen in this 
 light, and by her awe-struck imagination, seemed already 
 changing every moment not into death, merely, but in- 
 to death in some of its most fearful and repulsive after- 
 stages. 
 
 Esther had often pictured Mrs. Engleheart dying, when 
 she had seen her sitting in the porch at Countisbury, with 
 the sunset fading from her old blanched face ; and the 
 thought had always struck .her then that such a death 
 would be lovely lovelier than anything in the bereft, 
 helpless woman's life could have been for years. But the 
 suddenness of Mrs. Tudor's seizure, its physical horror, its 
 environment of jewels and gewgaws and vanities, smote 
 upon the girl's heart with an almost supernatural terror. 
 She felt that Wilson's heartless commonplaces were better 
 than this silence, Wilson herself, in her silk and ringlets, 
 a more human thing to look upon than the reflection 
 which half a dozen mirrors gave back at every turn of 
 Mrs. Tudor's dying face ; and it was an intense relief to 
 her when she at last heard a tremulous knocking at the 
 door, and saw the figure of Miss Whitty standing there 
 in her dressinor-^own. 
 
 o o 
 
 Now Miss Whitty was not by any means an unfeeling 
 person at heart ; and she came and sniffed, in a becoming 
 manner, at the first sight of her benefactress. But Miss 
 Whitty had seen a great deal of death (by her own ac- 
 count had closed the eyes of half the distinguished people 
 in the land,) and Esther, to whom death, or even illness, 
 was new, thought there was something extraordinarily 
 hard and professional in her general treatment of the sick 
 room. 
 
 She walked on tiptoes, it is true all women of the 
 Whitty class do that with a creaking exasperating cau- 
 tion that, if the patient had not been long stages beyond 
 all outward discomfiture now, must have driven her dy 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 281 
 
 ing brain to distraction ; but she also poked violently at 
 the expiring fire looking round at the bed between each 
 blow of the poker, as much as to note what effect the 
 noise was taking upon the patient ; she got ready perfect- 
 ly useless hot water; she drew some blinds up and some 
 curtains down, obviously with no more coherent purpose 
 than that of producing as much indirect disturbance 
 as possible ; finally, and when the doctor's muffled step 
 was already on the stairs, she took the velvet prayer-book 
 from the toilet-table ; seated herself, sniffing again, by the 
 head of the bed ; and, when the handle of the door turn- 
 ed, began to weep audibly over the place at which the 
 book had chanced to open the Public Baptism, I believe, 
 of such as are of riper years. 
 
 Mrs. Tudor's medical attendant w&s the most popular 
 ladies' physician in the place. Is it necessary to say that 
 the popular ladies' physician of an English watering-place 
 must possess a tall and graceful figure, longish hair waving 
 back from his temples, and a fine white hand with almond- 
 shaped nails. His eyes fell upon Esther Fleming's hand- 
 some face the moment he entered, and he gave her a smile 
 which, while duly chastened by the deep melancholy of the 
 occasion, was sufficiently pronounced to show the dazzling 
 whiteness of his teeth. Then he advanced to Mrs. Tudor'g 
 side, looked at her, touched her pulse for a moment or 
 two, and folded his arms across his chest. It was his fav 
 orite pose ; and a good one. At this particular moment 
 he speculated as to whether the dark-eyed young person 
 behind the curtains thought so to. 
 
 " Is there is there any hope ? " whispered Miss Whit- 
 ty, with great agitation. " We we should like to know 
 the worst ! " 
 
 " When was Mrs. Tudor taken ill ? " 
 
 "About an hour ago, sir." And Wilson, with one ot 
 Mrs. Tudor's cambric handkerchiefs to her eyes, placed 
 
282 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 herself between the physician and Miss Whitty. " I was 
 watching in ray room, and I heard a noise, sir, and I knew 
 it must by my poor lady, and I ran, and 
 
 "I know. And she has not spoken since ? Go and get 
 mustard for plasters, and keep perfectly quiet." 
 
 When Wilson had left the room, followed, after an in- 
 effectual attempt at conversation, by Miss Whitty, Esther 
 came up to the doctor's side. 
 
 " Will there be any change, or is this the last ? " she 
 whispered. 
 
 " The last, in all human probability." And so sympa- 
 thizing was this good physician that he took the girl's 
 cold hand and held it warmly in his own. "I will stay 
 here for a time. You must try to keep yourself calm." 
 
 And he looked down into her face, and remarked the 
 exceeding length and darkness of the lashes that rested 
 on her white cheek. 
 
 " Thank you, I am glad you can stay. It is fearful to 
 see her in such a state, and to be able to do nothing for 
 her." 
 
 Esther went back to her place at the other side of the 
 bed; the doctor seated himself and began to look at his 
 nails it is a great resource to a doctor to have almond- 
 shaped nails ; and then, after a few minutes, the women 
 came back, and some fruitless remedies were tried and put 
 away again ; and then the room lapsed back into silence, 
 and the winter morning dawned. 
 
 Dawned, pale and ghastly upon the livid face of the 
 dying woman ; upon Miss Whitty, yawning over her 
 prayer-book; upon the favorite physician, with his hand- 
 some eyes fast shut; upon Wilson, with the ostentatious 
 cambric to her face, and making sharp calculations as to 
 the amount of spoil that was likely to fall into her hands. 
 Dawned upon velvet draperies and silks and diamonds 
 and pearls ! The Beulah within whose pleasant shades 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 283 
 
 one was waiting for the messenger from the Shining City ; 
 dawned upon all the worldly pomp and vanity of this 
 pilgrim of fourscore years, who was now to cross the 
 dark river, unwept for and alone ! 
 
 They never knew the precise moment at which the 
 great change came. Mrs. Tudor gave no more sign of 
 consciousness to the last than she had done from the first 
 moment when she was struck down speechless and mo- 
 tionless. Those who watched her knew not the exact 
 moment at which the spirit fluttered from its prison ; but 
 before eight o'clock that morning the prison-house was 
 vacant and cold ; and Miss Whitty was sealing strips of 
 paper across the drawers and cupboards ; and Wilson was 
 showing extraordinary zeal in getting all small and por- 
 table articles put into order ; and every one who approach- 
 ed the chamber of death was already as sympathetic and 
 obsequious in their attentions to Miss Fleming, the heir- 
 ess, as they had been to Mrs. Tudor herself, not twelve 
 short hours before. 
 
 We all know the beautiful legend of Addison's death- 
 bed. I hold the moral of deathbeds like Thalia Tudor's 
 to be not a whit less instructive. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE MAMMON OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 two days of her life Esther Fleming knew the sen 
 sation of being a reputed heiress. For two days every 
 one told her she was the inheritress of her Aunt Thalia's 
 money, and treated her, under this belief, with the great- 
 est consideration and kindness. 
 
 Colonel Dashwood insisted upon taking all necessary 
 
284 THE ORDEAL FOR WITHES. 
 
 melancholy arrangements off the bereaved young crea- 
 ture's hands ; Mrs. Dashwood, merging sectarian differ- 
 ences in the broadest philanthropy, offered to come and 
 read with her ; Milly hoped, in a multitude of tiny notes, 
 that dearest Esther would never forget how she, Milli- 
 cent, had been her earliest friend ; the good physician 
 hvas personally anxious about her looks ; Wilson recol- 
 lected she had liked Miss Fleming's expression from the 
 first moment she ever set her eyes upon her; Miss Whit- 
 ty made many meek demonstrations of personal regard, 
 with suggestions as to the necessity in which every young 
 lady of fortune must stand of a middle-aged person, ac- 
 customed to the best walks of society, for traveling com- 
 panion, confidant, house-keeper, chaperon. 
 
 For two days only : on the third, Mrs. Tudor's solicitor 
 came down from London, curt, cold, business like, and 
 then Esther Fleming's one Aladdin -like dream was over. 
 Mrs. Tudor's whole capital had been sunk, five-and-thirty 
 years before, in a life annuity. The office would defray 
 the expenses of the funeral (taking the trouble from Col- 
 onel Dashwood's hands,) and all Mrs. Tudor's personal 
 property consisting solely of trinkets, clothes, and pic- 
 tures was bequeathed, by will, to her dear great-niece 
 and god-child, Esther Fleming. 
 
 I ask no mature reader to sympathize with Miss Flem- 
 .ing's fatuity on the occasion ; but I think many people, 
 under one-and-twenty, will, at least, believe me when I 
 record the fact that her first sensation, on hearing of her 
 regained poverty, was one of joy. Amidst all the obse- 
 quious flattery of the last two days, one heavy, one crush- 
 ing thought had never left her : she must hold to Oliver 
 now. Poor, she stood on equal terms with him ; nay, 
 was not he, with the worth of his commission, far higher 
 in the social scale than the penniless country girl living 
 in a farm-house on the charity of very poor relations ? 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 285 
 
 But rich, sought after, in a better position than his own, 
 she knew that she would never have moral courage enough 
 to be true to herself and to her own newly-discovered 
 feelings. How could she make him believe that her 
 change towards him had arisen, in reality, before Mrs. 
 Tudor's death ? How take back, in her worldly prosperi- 
 ty, the allegiance she had been so prompt to swear when 
 her youth and love were all the wealth she had to offer 
 him, all the wealth that he had sought ? 
 
 Simple, uncalculating, unworldly by nature, I maintain 
 that these were literally the first and bitter reflections of 
 Esther's heart when she found herself regarded as Mrs. 
 Tudor's undoubted heiress. That she was free again, free 
 to look in Oliver's face and say, " I like you too well, I 
 honor myself too much, to marry you," was her first 
 thankful emotion when the altered manner of all her fresh- 
 found friends and dependants made her realise fully that 
 she was again plain Esther Fleming of Countisbury Es- 
 ther Fleming the heiress no longer. 
 
 " And all I can say is, that I expected it from the first," 
 wrote Joan Engleheart, in her bitter letter on the occa- 
 bion. "Selfish and worldly she has lived, selfish and 
 worldly she has gone to the place where such people 
 go ! Thalia Tudor has done a bad deed. May God re- 
 ward her for it ! And I command you to buy no shred 
 of mourning, beyond what you can find of black among 
 her wardrobe ; no, not so much as a new black ribbon to 
 your bonnet. We don't mourn her, and we won't mock 
 heaven by pretending we do. Take good heed of her 
 jewels as you travel. The emerald set is the best. Sew 
 them, as I showed you once, about your person, and prate 
 to no one of what you've got. Your proposal of giving 
 the women Whitty and Wilson any of her clothes, is the 
 proposal. of a fool, and I forbid you to give away one far- 
 thing's worth. You will want it all, child, and the thirty 
 
286 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 pounds a year gone too, and everything rising as it does. 
 With all her avarice, you may be sure these sharpers 
 preyed enough upon the old woman while she lived. I 
 don't understand your fine sentiments about having es- 
 caped a great many bad things in escaping money. I 
 never brought you up to talk such idiocy. Money is a 
 good thing, and you have missed it, like the rest of us, 
 and your life will be one of work and hardship, as mine 
 has been. Come home directly after the funeral, and' 
 spend nothing on the road. Your friend, 
 
 ENGLEHEART." 
 
 And then, on a morsel of paper, furtively slipped inside 
 the cover of the letter, these words: "Dearest Etty. 
 There's something in the world better than money, and 
 you have got it. DAVID ENGLE HEART." 
 
 No relation of Mrs. Tudor's save Esther Fleming went 
 to the funeral ; no tears were sh<id, or attempted to be 
 shed, when all that remained of 
 
 " The toil and grief of fourscore years, 
 Put up in a white sheet tied with two knots." 
 
 went to its last rest. In high spirits, and a new black 
 silk, Mrs. Wilson had betaken herself to a fresh place 
 with better wages, that very morning. In the afternoon 
 Miss Whitty went out, primed with funereal news, on a 
 round of visits, and Esther was left alone. 
 
 She had not been in the least degree depressed, a& I 
 have said, by Mrs. Tudor's disinheriting her ; but on this 
 afternoon a great weight did seem to hang upon her spirits. 
 A funeral, like a marriage, leaves the mind coo highly 
 wrought for any of the unexciting employments of the 
 common days of life ; and this whether we have felt any 
 really strong concern or not in the person married or 
 buried. Joan's letter of the morning had brought Esther 
 
THE ORDEAL FOE WIVES. 287 
 
 Fleming back vividly to the future that lay before her at 
 Countisbury. She would break with Oliver, would re. 
 turn home, and then what? What zest could she take 
 in the old childish interests now? the household work, 
 the summer walks with David, the winter readings by the 
 little parlor fire ? Who that has tasted of the first (alas ! 
 that it should be so) the best draught of passion, can look 
 forward to a return of the pure, untroubled past without 
 a shudder? She wanted to be near Paul ; to hear the hum 
 of the same London life as he heard ; to walk along the 
 streets, where, by faintest possibility, she might one day 
 chance to see his face among the crowd. What had she 
 to do with Countisbury ? She was as much severed from 
 it from the low grey house, the shady garden walks, 
 the woods where she had walked with Oliver as though 
 
 o 
 
 the time could be measured by years, not weeks, since 
 she left it last. A death lay between that time and this 
 the death of her own first youth ; of the childish, happy 
 youth that Oliver Carew's love had never so much as 
 stirred. 
 
 Thinking these things, beside the fire, with her head 
 bent down between her hands, Esther sat through the 
 fading winter afternoon ; and so wrapt in her own dull 
 prospects was she, that when a loud double knock came 
 suddenly at the street-door it scarcely served to rouse her 
 an instant from her abstraction. No one could be calling 
 for her on the day of the funeral, and if visitors did come, 
 the people of the house had orders to say that Miss Flem-. 
 ing was not well, and wished to be undisturbed. What 
 indeed, could the poor disappointed young lady wish to 
 hear of condolence or exhortation or cheerfulness on such 
 a day as this? 
 
 " But the gentleman says he is sure you would see 'iiini f 
 Miss Fleming. A young gentleman quite a young 
 gentleman, miss." 
 
288 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 not the gentleman who used to come to see 
 me " and Miss Fleming started up with suddenly awak- 
 ened interest "I mean, to see poor Mrs. Tudor? " 
 
 " Oh, dear no, not Mr. Chichester," explained the land 
 lady compassionately (does not every member of the race 
 know, by instinct, whether a man is rich or poor ?) ; "a 
 very fine gentleman, miss. Tall, and with long, fair mus 
 tachios, and quite the air of an officer about him." 
 
 It was Oliver. The fierce beating of Esther's guilty 
 heart told her that. Oliver, and she had not conned hei 
 part through ; had not schooled her tongue into one of 
 the expressions wherewith to confess her guilt. 
 
 "I will see this gentleman. I believe I know who it is. 
 He is an old friend of our family : ask him to come up, 
 please." 
 
 She clasped her hands together rigidly; she called up 
 every thought of Paul to strengthen her now in her sti- 
 premest sudden need. The landlady, with thoughts intent 
 upon her upholstery looking its best before the stranger, 
 drew down the blinds and lit the gas ; and then there was 
 a minute's respite if respite that awful century could be 
 called, during which Esther heard his step, his voice upon 
 the stairs and Oliver Carew entered the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 BROKEN OFF. 
 
 SHE walked forward steadily, and with outstretched 
 bands, to meet him ; but for the life of him Oliver Carew 
 could not have tried at that moment to take Esther Flem 
 kw t in his arms and kiss her. 
 
 What is it that makes us all know intuitively when 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 289 
 
 people have ceased to love us ? The eyes, the lips, arc 
 there, just as when they told us their last fond falsehood ; 
 the hand is ready for us to grasp, the cheek for us to kiss, 
 and lo ! a spectre, the ghost, perhaps, of our unknown 
 rival, steps between and freezes us with awful foreboding 
 of that which is to come. 
 
 Oliver Carew had as good an opinion of his own pow- 
 ers as perhaps any man in England, and Esther a thou- 
 sand-fold handsomer than when he left Esther, softer, 
 more womanly, more shy than he had ever seen her ; her 
 downcast cheeks flushed crimson, her lips silent and trem- 
 bling was within a yard of his arms, and he never offer- 
 ed to take her in them, or so much as to raise her cold 
 hand to his lips. 
 
 " I have startled you, Esther. You did not expect to 
 see me in England so soon. I only landed yesterday, and 
 had not time to write and tell you I was coming. Esther, 
 are you glad to see me ? " 
 
 She raised her eyes slowly to his face. 
 
 "You you have come in a time of trouble," she stam- 
 mered. "My Aunt Thalia was buried to-day." 
 
 " And you are alone ? My poor little Esther ! " He 
 took her hand again and clasped it more warmly ; " how 
 glad I am that I came on to Bath to-night." 
 
 Would he kiss her now ? Looking so close down on 
 the delicious temptation of that fresh face, was the spec- 
 tre laid already ? I suppose some intuition made Esther 
 Fleming think so ; for, with the quick tact that the sim- 
 plest of her sex possesses, she managed to return to her 
 place beside the fire, to make Oliver Carew take a chair 
 at (at least) three yards distance from her, and then went 
 back, just as though he had said and looked nothing in 
 reply, to her own first remark. " Yes, you have returned 
 in a time of trouble. My Aunt Thalia was buried to- 
 day." 13 
 
290 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Her fingers began to trifle with the folds of her black 
 dress. Mr. Carew watched her closely. Had she come 
 into possession of her aunt's money, and did she wish to 
 be quit of her engagement for that reason ? 
 
 It was not a noble suspicion. But Oliver really knew 
 very little of Esther, beyond her soft complexion and 
 long eyelashes ; and the school in which he had been 
 brought up is one apt to make young men have many 
 suspicions with regard to young ladies. How would it 
 be to let her play her own game out ? withhold the secret 
 of his birth and of his fortune, which five minutes before 
 he had had such generous intentions of disclosing, and so 
 let the foolish boy-and-girl entanglement end ? There 
 were plenty of other fair women besides Esther Fleming 
 in the world : fair women who, if they were mercenary 
 like her, could, at least, bring equal birth and education 
 and rank to his own as their dowry. 
 
 Her first faltering words made Mr. Carew rather 
 ashamed of himself. 
 
 " Yes, 1 am in trouble. The death, even of a very old 
 person like my Aunt Thalia, is solemn, although one can't, 
 of course, pretend to feel real grief for it ; and then, too," 
 stealing a quick look at his face, " I have had to bear a 
 great deal of condolence from friends during the last few 
 days. My Aunt Thalia's money dies with her, instead 
 of coming to me as every one thought it would." 
 
 Oliver sprang up and was at her side in a moment. 
 
 " Esther, what does that matter to you ? Why need 
 you trouble about anything to do with money ? " 
 
 " I don't trouble," she spoke very quick and decided, 
 for she wished to spare him the humiliation of softening 
 before her ; " I don't trouble at all. I said only I had 
 had to bear the condolence of friends. For the money 
 itself, I am glad, yes, very glad, it has not come to me. 
 I don't want money. I don't envy rich people their lives. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 291 
 
 I have been brought up to work, and a life of work will 
 suit me best." 
 
 " Esther, you shall never work." 
 
 It was all useless. She could not stave off the inevita- 
 ble moments, the horrible pain of confessing the entire 
 truth. Oliver's whole face was softening (he had taken a 
 place close beside her on the sofa) ; his arm was already 
 almost round her waist. 
 
 " Esther, I, too, have some news to tell you. I am in a 
 very different position to what I held when I left you last. 
 My cousin, of whom I have spoken to you, is dead, and 
 j 
 
 He had got her hand in his, and all the old lover-like 
 manner was returning fast. The blood rushed hot and 
 confused across Esther's brain ; she knew not, she cared 
 not, what words they were that rose to her tongue to 
 speak. All she did know was that she must tell' him; 
 that Carew's lips must never toucli her lips, his hands 
 clasp her hands as they were clasping them now. 
 
 " I must not deceive you, Oliver. If I could I would 
 have said this in a letter, but I didn't know where to 
 write, and I was afraid the letter might be lost. We 
 were very young, you know, when you met me at Count- 
 isbury, last summer, and our engagement was made hasti- 
 ly, before, indeed, w r e knew anything of each other's 
 characters ; and and isn't it far better to speak the 
 truth out, than to go on blindly as we began, and both be 
 miserable for life ? " 
 
 People never say exactly what they mean to say, nor 
 indeed, exactly the truth, on occasions like this ; but had 
 Esther taken a quarter of an hour to prepare herself, and 
 to soften down the coming humiliation, it would have 
 made no difference. The form of words in which his dis- 
 missal was couched mattered nothing to Oliver Carew. 
 The monstrous idea of Esther Esther, poorer now than 
 
292 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 she had ever been rejecting him him, Oliver Carew, 
 just as he was going to tell her of his newly-acquired rank 
 and fortune ! w r as all that his mind c'ould grasp : and, in- 
 deed, for a few seconds, he positively could not bring him- 
 self to believe that the girl was speaking seriously. He 
 could compass, you recollect, the idea of her giving him 
 up because of her own superior wealth ; but to change 
 from any other motive, to change when he was just going 
 to be the most generous man living, in keeping to his own 
 foolish engagement no, it was impossible ! The simple 
 creature was awed, as she well might be, by thinking of 
 any further difference having arisen in their position in 
 addition to that enormous one which already existed 
 and this was all. 
 
 " Don't fear, Esther, I shall never alter to you. We 
 don't know a very great deal of each other yet, as you 
 say ; but I know quite enough of your goodness, your 
 your " a certain determined look in her eyes flurried 
 him your truth, to make me sure that I have chosen 
 wisely." 
 
 " Oliver, I have not been true. I have changed utterly 
 since you saw me last." 
 
 He started up, and the color rushed into his face. 
 
 " Not true ? and you have written, you have pretended 
 to keep to your engagement all this time ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have written, I have striven to keep to my en- 
 gagement to you. I wouldn't believe for a long time 
 that it was possible I could really have been mistaken in 
 what I thought I felt, but I know it now I know it for 
 certain now and I ask you to forgive me for ever hav- 
 ing, even for one hour, deceived you. I deceived myself 
 first ; don't you see that ? I hoped and prayed that I 
 might come back to rny faith to you, and when I found it 
 was not to be so do believe me when I say that my 
 sufferings were horrible. I am lowered in my own sight 
 as much, I think, as it is possible to be lowered in yours." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 293 
 
 Now Esther Fleming was just acting as well as it was 
 possible for her to act; as truthfully, as honestly, as any 
 woman ever acted in confessing her own infidelity. But 
 Oliver recognized neither generosity, nor truth, nor honor. 
 He was wounded to the core; pierced in a deeper feeling 
 far than his love : and smarting with all the first cruel 
 smart of outraged vanity, he spoke : 
 
 " I might have expected this. I might have expected 
 that a love so quickly won wouldn't have overmuch root. 
 T have been a fool. Not one man in a hundred would have 
 held to such an engagement as a serious one. You have 
 extricated us both well from a ridiculous position, and I 
 have to thank you for taking the onus of doing so upon 
 yourself." 
 
 Then Esther's eyes flashed fire, and her cheeks glowed. 
 
 "You speak very ill when you speak so, Mr. Carew. 
 My love for you was not light ; my engagement to you did 
 not place you in any ridiculous position. I was only a girl, 
 an ignorant country girl when I met you last summer, and 
 your pretty speeches and your town manners flattered me. 
 Yes, this is the truth, sir, and I mistook my own pleased 
 vanity for love ; and when you were away I dreamed of 
 you, and in my dreams made a hero of you quite dif- 
 ferent to what I know you really are. And then I came 
 away, I came away from Countisbury, Mr. Carew, and I 
 met some one not like you at all -= some one with 
 plain manners, and who never flattered me, and, even while 
 I still wrote to you, I came (in spite of all I tried) to find 
 out what feeling one should have to the man one married, 
 and I know quite well I never, no, not for a single hour, 
 have had that feeling for you." 
 
 Mr. Carew's very lips grew white with rage. 
 
 "You are awfully outspoken, Miss Fleming! open and 
 frank where most other young ladies, I should think, 
 would be silent. As you are so extraordinarily eommurii- 
 
294 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 cative, you will surely not withhold my successor's name 
 from me ? Who is the gentleman with plain manners 
 and an unflattering tongue who is so happy now as to 
 have Miss Fleming for his promised wife ? " 
 
 " I am no man's promised wife, Mr. Carew. I shall nev- 
 er marry while I live ! " And thinking of Paul, all in- 
 dignation died down in her face. " I began my life with 
 a great mistake in becoming engaged to you. I shall 
 end it, mistakenly, perhaps, still, but with truth. I shall 
 never change again, and I shall never marry." 
 
 She was more than handsome : she was lovely at this 
 moment ; with tears just quivering in her dark eyes ; with 
 her hot cheeks glowing; with a suddenly-subdued, mourn- 
 ful expression lighting up all her face. In the full flush 
 of her careless beauty, in the midst of her love for him at 
 Countisbury, Oliver had never so coveted to possess her 
 as with the accustomed fatuity of human nature he 
 did now that he had irrevocably lost all chance of ever 
 doing so. 
 
 " Esther, forgive me what I said. I should have kept 
 my temper better if I didn't feel so distractedly miserable 
 at the thought of losing you. Esther, I worft give you 
 back your promise. This ridiculous fancy about a man 
 who, you confess, doesn't love you, shall not make my life 
 and your own miserable. I won't ask you to marry me 
 now, or for a long time, if you choose, only," he carne 
 close to her; he bent down till she felt his breath upon 
 her cheek ; he stole his arm with gentle force round her 
 waist " only feel for me as you did last summer ; only 
 feel the childish dream, the flattered vanity, whatever you 
 said it was. I will trust to time for the rest." 
 
 He held her close ; and his hand trembled, and his voice 
 shook in spite of all his efforts to keep it steady. For Esther, 
 although she never faltered in the slightest degree in her 
 resolution, she did, at this moment, feel her part a very 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 295 
 
 hard one to play out ; did think that she liked Oliver Ca- 
 rew as much as was possible stopping immeasurably 
 short of love; and that she had behaved cruelly, perfid- 
 iously, wickedly altogether in getting to like Paul so much 
 better than her affianced lover. 
 
 Very young people are so fearfully thin-skinned : it is 
 such an agony to them to have to sink from the highest 
 place in any one's good opinion. And then, Oliver was so 
 really and seriously agitated, and agitation is so contagious. 
 It was comparatively easy work to tell him everything when 
 he was standing before her with supercilious affectation of 
 indifference, and making sarcastic speeches in depreciation 
 of their love and of its genuineness. 
 
 "I couldn't go back even to what I felt last summer; 
 and and even if I could, Mr. Carew, I don't think that 
 kind of feeling would be the right sort to begin married 
 life with. I like you very much indeed, just I think as I 
 could like a brother if I had one ; but I look don't be 
 angry again, please I look upon you as a boy, and I 
 feel that I ought to consider the man I marry as superior 
 to me in all things, you know." 
 
 She meant this as a kindly, gentle way of putting his 
 love aside and retaining his friendship ; but not one 
 form, out of the many stereotyped forms of rejection, 
 could have angered Mr. Carew more. Superior. He did 
 not stop to ask himself whether the implied superiority 
 were social or mental, or only moral : the monstrous ad- 
 jective itself was what utterly staggered him. Superior! 
 Esther Fleming superior to him! He loosed his arm, as 
 though it had been stung, from her waist; he stood him- 
 self at the space of about two or three feet away from 
 her ; he looked straight and with unspeakable fierceness 
 into her face. 
 
 " Miss Fleming, I think I understand you rightly. You 
 consider yourself superior to me ?" 
 
296 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " I never said so, Mr. Carew. I said I felt that the man 
 I married ought to be superior to me in all things." 
 
 " That is precisely the same a mere play upon words. 
 Perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me the exact 
 tokens of inferiority to which you allude." 
 
 Esther was never so pained in her life. She had loved, 
 or pretended to herself to love, this man ; had promised 
 to become his wife ; and now she was to stand and look 
 in his face and, if she spoke truth at all, inform him that 
 she looked upon him as a well-grown school-boy possess- 
 ing not a tithe even of the intellect which nature had be- 
 stowed upon herself. 
 
 "I would rather much say no more, Mr. Carew. All I 
 wish is that we should part as friends." 
 
 But Mr. Carew had no such wish. He interrupted her 
 angrily as she attempted to stammer out some softening 
 excuses; and the first sound of his voice aroused Esther's 
 scarcely stifled pride. 
 
 "You have mistaken our position from the first, Miss 
 Fishing; and, after what you have just said, Lean have 
 no delicacy in setting you right now. I arn not the poor 
 farmer's son that in a foolish moment I represented myself 
 /THbd you in Devonshire. I have prospects I should 
 rather say, I am in a position, wholly unsuited to yourself 
 and the life to which you have been brought up. What 
 these are, what even my name is how it does not matter 
 for me to tell you. We are not at all likely to meet again, 
 and if we did, it would be a meeting in which recogni- 
 tion would be impossible to us both. All I wish to say 
 to you is, that in giving me up you are giving up a very 
 great deal more than you can possibly dream of, and also, 
 as I before said, are taking the pain of breaking off a 
 most foolish entanglement out of my hands. Miss Flem- 
 ing, good-bye ! " 
 
 I am very sure that Oliver Carew was never so bombas- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 297 
 
 tic, so silly, so nearly approaching to mean vulgarity as 
 when he delivered himself of this speech. But, consider- 
 ing his age, his vanity, and the really great social advan- 
 tages that he knew himself to possess over Miss Fleming, 
 I cannot say that I greatly wonder at the outbreak. It is 
 such a fearfully disgusting thing to a man to be deliber- 
 ately rejected ; such a fearful humiliation, when he has 
 supposed any amount of human superiority to rest on his 
 side, to be told kindly, gently, that he is too young, too 
 mentally inferior, for a foolish girl of eighteen to look 
 up to ! 
 
 "Good-bye to you, Miss Fleming" he#epeated grimly ; 
 < C I will not intrude myself upon you any more." 
 
 Then Esther raised her eyes full to his. She was very 
 quiet ; but she prepared to speak with a fixed lip, with a 
 scarlet spot bright upon each cheek, just as she used to 
 be when she was a child, and Miss Joan would vainly try 
 to argue or whip her into confessing some fault she had 
 not committed. 
 
 " Mr. Carew, shall I tell you what I think of you?";'^ 
 "Do simply what you please, Miss Fleming." 
 "I think you generous and open-hearted up to a cer^ 
 tain point the point at which anything like real self- 
 sacrifice begins. You would have held to your word and 
 married me, in spite of all the difference of position that 
 you tell me of; that I believe. But you have no spark of 
 the true and manly generosity which should have made 
 you honor me for breaking our engagement, and shrink 
 from saying one unnecessary word to take any more away 
 from my self-respect. You are not superior to me, Mr. 
 Carew. You may be the son of a marquis or of a duke, 
 but you are not superior to me; and married to you, I 
 should have daily felt this, and have been lowered by the 
 thought. You are young and good-looking; you say you 
 have money and rank ; there will be plenty of young 
 13* 
 
298 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ladies in the world ready to marry you, but not one of 
 them will be a worthier wife to you than I should have 
 been if you had married me." 
 
 " Esther, you have never loved me." 
 
 This short cutting of the knot that she, with trembling 
 hands, had awkwardly striven to untie ; this sole reply to 
 the most arrogant speech of all her humble life, touched 
 Esther's conscience more than any other six words that 
 Oliver Carew could have chosen. 
 
 " I know I have not, Mr. Carew ; that was why I felt 
 so ashamed to see you. I mistook childish sentiment for 
 deeper feeling, as I have already told you ; and perhaps 
 if I had not happened to meet with the person I have 
 mentioned, I should have grown in time to care for you 
 really." 
 
 Hurt, angry, bitter though he was, Carew did yet, from 
 his very heart, admire Esther at this moment. It had done 
 him good to be told so frankly that she considered her- 
 self his equal notwithstanding all the advantages of birth 
 and money which he had told her of. It did him good to 
 hear her frankly say that she had never really loved him. 
 As in the lonely Devonshire moors she had inspired him 
 with a perfectly new belief in the possible child-like puri- 
 ty of a demoiselle a marier, so now in her rejection of 
 him, newly-acquired rank and riches and all, she afforded 
 him the young, the sought after, the spoilt Belgravian 
 hero - an insight he had certainly never had before into 
 the simple disinterestedness of which some human hearts 
 are capable. 
 
 " I was wrong to speak to you as I did, Miss Fleming. 
 Will you forgive me before we part ? Remember I am 
 more hardly placed than you, for I have never changed." 
 
 " Forgive you ? Oh, Mr. Carew, oh, Oliver, it is I that 
 have every need to be forgiven ! All I wish most now 
 is that we should part friends. After after having liked 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 299 
 
 each other so much, there is something dreadful to me 
 in the thought of our using such words to each other as 
 we have done." 
 
 She looked so irresistibly handsome, pleading to him, 
 with her softened eyes and upturned face, that Oliver 
 found it no hard matter in spite of all his smarting vanity 
 to take her hand and hold it and make his peace at once, 
 and entirely. 
 
 Human nature is so constituted that the bitterest quar- 
 rel, the most final rupture, of a very young man and a 
 very handsome woman, shall have more of love than of 
 any other element in its composition. They were parting 
 for ever ; and Esther had deliberately rejected him ; and 
 the pride of both had been wounded to the quick within 
 the last quarter of an hour : and yet, as Carew left the 
 house, he felt that he would willingly give up all his newly- 
 inherited wealth and rank to be able to call Esther his ; 
 while Esther, strong-minded though she believed herself, 
 cried bitter tears, half for herself, half for Oliver, well on 
 into the dawn of the next winter day. 
 
 If women were to act instead of weep during the first 
 twelve hours of reaction, I believe very few lovers would 
 find their dismissal to be irrevocable. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 A LOVER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF. 
 
 BUT when all reaction was over; when she was able 
 from the solitude of Countisbury to look back dispassion- 
 ately upon her conduct ; Esther Fleming knew that she 
 would not recal Oliver if she could, knew that she had 
 
300 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 never lovecl him, knew that even her recollection of him, 
 like every other thought and feeling of her nature, was 
 becoming merged in one dream one hopeless, one 
 haunting,* half-miserable, half-delicious dream her pas- 
 sion for Paul. 
 
 I say " passion " advisedly. Of the sentiments exchang- 
 ed between Miss Fleming and Mr. Carew among the 
 moors, 1 confess frankly my inability to speak ; but in com- 
 mon, I fancy, with yourself, oh reader of ordinary experi- 
 ence, and more than five-and-twenty years, I feel myself 
 tolerably competent to interpret the symptoms of that real 
 and malignant disorder which had overtaken Esther now. 
 
 Shall we go through a record of them ? the old, old 
 story ; the burning pain ; the torturing jealousy ; the .de- 
 lirious dreams from which reason perpetually wakes up 
 the sleeper with so sharp a stab of memory? Ah, well, 
 'tis the one date that never quite grows old ! The senti- 
 mental, and, I am ready to admit the fairest, purest, 
 brightest side of love is a blank to most of us many years 
 before thirty ; but no man or woman can ever quite rake 
 out the ashes of that one portion of their lives when a 
 strong and utterly hopeless passion held them in its 
 grasp. 
 
 You deny this, madam, I know. You aver that the 
 blooming spring, when you were engaged to poor Captain 
 Johnson, unfortunately drowned off the coast of China, 
 and the^subsequent summer, when dear, good SirObediah, 
 your present happy possessor, was paying his addresses to 
 you, are the seasons to which, from your calm unruffled mat- 
 ronhoocl, you look back, whenever you are foolish enough 
 to look back to these sort of things at all. But what of 
 that packet of blurred letters that you burnt the night 
 before you married Sir Obediah ? What of the marginal 
 annotations that may yet be faintly trnced upon the pages 
 of your unread Shelly? What of the fierce spasm at 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 3Q1 
 
 your heart upon that one evening of the year that you 
 (and only another in the world save you) know to be an 
 anniversary? Those two sanctioned matrimonial engage- 
 ments, delightful though they must have been, and credit- 
 able to your character as a daughter and everything else, 
 are not, madam, permit me to say, the seasons burnt in 
 upon your memory. Do you recollect distinctly the color 
 of poor Captain Johnson's hair? Do you remember in 
 the least clearly what Sir Obediah used to say during 
 those lengthy afternoons when you had to submit to the 
 affianced endearments within the sacred precincts of your 
 mamma's back drawing-room? Time and change and 
 children wipe out all such nonsense from one's heart, 
 you say. But then, they do not wipe out the details of 
 those dark November nights when you used to sit, hour 
 after hour, waiting with sickening eagerness to catch the 
 first sound of a footfall on the pavement, the first sight of 
 a face which, even while you looked upon it, you knew 
 could ne^er in truth be anything to you. 
 
 Don't you know that a painter will look back with a 
 more tender yearning to his ambitious first picture that the 
 critics laughed at, than to all the great works by which 
 his name has been won ? that the poem which the world 
 rejects is the headstone of the temple in the poet's own 
 heart? Tis simply an inherent part of human nature to 
 remember the passionate, the miserable, the disappointed 
 seasons of our lives more clearly than any other. And 
 being a part of our nature, there is nothing especially to 
 deny or blush at in the fact. You are no worse wife to 
 Sir Obediah because, once in three years, you look at the 
 marginal notes upon the pages of your unread Shelley, 
 or because, sitting among your children in the quiet au- 
 tumn night, all the feverish unrest, all the madness, all 
 the pain of those November nights of a dozen years ago, 
 come back to you so vividly ! 
 
302 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 And as the hopeless passion of our own lives is the one 
 that does not die for us, so the hopeless passion of others 
 are the only ones in which, as grown men and women, 
 we take anything like abiding and hearty interest. Look 
 at all the great love-stories of the world from Helen 
 to Maggie Tulliver : is not every one of their heroines in 
 love with another man than the rightful hero? and- isn't 
 that fatal infidelity just what we care most to hear about ? - 
 
 Esther Fleming was not in any respect a Helen ; nor 
 was she much of a heroine at all ; but her passion for 
 Paul was as strong, poor child, as the strictest exigencies 
 of art could demand. She knew that he would never 
 marry her ; worse, that he was bound by ties stronger 
 than death to another woman ; also that, in all human 
 probability, she would never again feel the pressure of 
 his hand, never hear the sound of his voice while she 
 lived. 
 
 And over that thought she brooded and sickened ; sick- 
 ened through the long bright summer, through' autumn, 
 through winter. Month succeeded month in ever-increas- 
 ing nauseous monotony, and still her passion grew and 
 strengthened. In time she got to portion out the day 
 and night into hours, giving to each hour some imaginary 
 employment for Paul, and in imagination living it out by 
 his side. Can you imagine the desperate jealous misery 
 that would follow upon such a plan ? Waking or sleep- 
 ing, at noonday or at midnight, he was never thoroughly 
 absent from her thoughts ; and yet every thought of him 
 was still an image disconnected with herself; nay, more, 
 was directly opposed to the possibility of his ever loving 
 her. 
 
 If she could only see him her heart would cry out 
 in its bitterness only see him, only breathe the same 
 air he breathed, only live in London, in some street where 
 she might, once or twice a month, perhaps, see him walk 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 3Q3 
 
 past her window,- she thought she could bear her burden. 
 To see him, to be near him, might lay this phantom which 
 her imagination seemed never tired of calling up with 
 such cruel force, such mockery of life, in his absence. 
 
 A man or woman who could succumb thus at five-and- 
 twenty to any grief, not strictly and exclusively personal, 
 must be exceeding near a fool ; but in a girl of eighteen 
 this very intensity of prostration, this immense capacity 
 for suffering, was a sign of strength. In proportion to 
 the fierceness of the conflict would be the profoundness 
 of the peace when it came. 
 
 During the dull winter days, when she would sit gaz- 
 ing unoccupied from her window upon the drf ary waste 
 of moorland round the house ; during the sleepless nights, 
 when she walked feverishly up and down before the pic- 
 ture which she called Paul's, in her little room, the cry 
 would burst involuntarily from her hot lips "Let me 
 cease to suffer : let me cease to have this capability of lov- 
 ing ! " And then his face would come before her ; in an 
 instant she would hear his voice ; feel all the poisonous in- 
 toxication of his presence, and shudder lest her prayer be 
 answered. Better die than lose him utterly ! Better go 
 through every accumulated pang that every successive 
 hopeless day brought to her, than outlive her love, and go 
 back to such a peace as the only one possible for her 
 must be the dead lethargy of indifference ! 
 
 Now, strong though her love undoubtedly was, I am 
 far from thinking that Esther Fleming could have suffer- 
 ed thus had she been living in any ordinary round of so- 
 cial life instead of the Devonshire moors. You may 
 suffer, God knows ! as much in London or Paris as in the 
 remotest country village of Yorkshire ; but you suffer 
 differently. More keenly, I think, while it lasts, but with 
 an anguish that is much sooner over. You put your skel- 
 eton assiduously out of sight for a great many hours, at 
 
304 THE ORDEJ1L FOR WIVES. 
 
 least, out of the twenty-four. You dress, ride, talk, dine, 
 dance, flirt during each interval between the hours when 
 you and your skeleton stand face to face ; and, sharp 
 work though it may be at first to go through all these 
 duties, you finish by finding that they have done one 
 good service to you helped you, marvellously quickly, 
 to be untrue to yourself! In the country you not only 
 have positively nothing to take you from your trouble ; 
 you have time to idealize it. As solitude had developed 
 Esther's fancy for Mr. Carew into what, had she never 
 met Paul, would have passed for love, so now jt develop- 
 ed her love for Paul himself into passion : passion height- 
 ened, of (fburse, by its hopelessness and absolute sever- 
 ance from its object. 
 
 Neither Joan nor David could be blind to the change in 
 her. David, poor fellow, on her first return had ventured 
 once to comment on her pale cheeks and sobered spirits, 
 accounting for the symptoms, in his simple way, by the 
 intensity of her regard for Mr. Carew, the amount of 
 emotion she must have sustained on meeting him again. 
 Her answer undeceived him promptly : 
 
 " I feel nothing whatever about Mr. Carew. I am en- 
 gaged to him no longer. We found out our mistake mu- 
 tually, and remedied it in the only way possible. Please, 
 David, never mention Mr. Carew, or love, or any such 
 folly to me again. If I suffer, I like to suffer silently. It 
 will all be over before long." 
 
 Such an answer was enough for David, and he succum- 
 bed to it, and got accustomed to Esther's pale cheek, and 
 silent tongue, and joyless tread : indeed, if I mistake not, 
 was sensible of a certain selfish satisfaction in seeing her 
 thus, and in thinking that her love, by whatever violent 
 death it had died, was dead her heart, however misera- 
 ble, untenanted. This pale, listless woman was, after all, 
 nearer to him than the blooming girl had been the girl 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 3Q5 
 
 full of life and the dreams of life, wandering through the 
 woods where she had walked with Oliver, and making 
 him, whether he willed it or no, the confidant of her 
 hopes. 
 
 But Joan, being a woman, and consequently not in love 
 with Esther, saw much nearer into the truth. If the girl, 
 of her own free will, did not choose to marry Oliver 
 and this much-persevering endeavor had enabled Miss 
 Joan to worm out her pallor and silence and listlessness 
 could none of them be laid to Mr. Carew's charge. You 
 might fret for a week or so after the termination of an 
 idiotic fancy, Miss Joan argued ; but you wouldn't go 
 pale for months, and heave long sighs, when you should 
 be taking your food with an appetite, and walk up and 
 down your bedroom till morning (as she often heard Es- 
 ther do) unless some faint spark, if not of hope, of ex- 
 pectation, mingled still with your grief. 
 
 Joan Engleheart's personal experiences of love were 
 scant : an attorney's clerk, seen for two days at seventeen, 
 and David Engleheart now, being the raw material out of 
 which they were fashioned. But women, the hardest, the 
 least loved of them, possess inspirations, that come not to 
 the aid of men, in the art of uprooting the secrets of 
 other persons' love affairs. Before Esther had returned 
 six weeks Joan knew that she was in love with another 
 man than Oliver; by winter all that she'needed to learn 
 was the name of Oliver's successor. Of his existence she 
 was as convinced as she was of her own determination to 
 marry David, or of any other accomplished fact of her 
 life. 
 
 One December afternoon, the snow falling thick, the 
 bitter night already gathering on the hills, Miss Engle- 
 heart abruptly walked into Esther's bedroom. 
 
 The girl was sitting there as usual ; no, more acutely 
 suffering than usual, for she had received a letter that day 
 
306 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 from Jane Dash wood in which Paul's name was carelessly, 
 mentioned ; and when Joan entered she never sought to 
 explain why she was leaning against the window without 
 work or book in her hands, but turned her face almost 
 sullenly towards the pane, against which the drifting 
 snow was beating with the unutterably dreary sound that 
 only the indwellers of a home twelve miles away from 
 the nearest market-town can appreciate. 
 
 Miss Engleheart walked straight up to the little old en- 
 graving whose position had mysteriously changed of 
 late, being now exactly opposite Esther's bed and star- 
 ed at it intently. 
 
 " I don't see the good of keeping that rubbishing old 
 print any longer," she remarked, incisively. "The frame 
 wouldn't be bad, re-gilt with some of the stuff out of 
 David's bottle ; and I'll mount that nice little drawing of 
 Hatherton school and put it in for you." 
 
 And Joan raised her hand to the picture. 
 
 Then Esther turned round with flushing face and kind- 
 ling eyes. 
 
 " That print is mine, Joan. You called it mine when I 
 was a child, and mine I have always considered it. I 
 don't want it touched. It isn't rubbish. The drawing of 
 Hatherton school is rubbish. I should hate to look at 
 it," 
 
 "You are aware, I suppose, that you were born at 
 Hatherton, Esther ? " 
 
 " Perfectly aware of it, Joan. If there was one thing 
 wanting to make me detest the drawing it would be 
 found in the fact that I was born at Hatherton." 
 
 " By which amiable speech you mean me to infer that 
 you wish you had never been born at all, I conclude?" 
 
 " I don't think I wanted you to infer anything, cousin. 
 Life isn't so very delightful that one needs an especial 
 memorial of the place where one first entered upon it, I 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 3Q7 
 
 think. For the rest, I like the little portrait in that old 
 frame. I like it better than anything else I possess, and 
 I don't wish it interfered with." 
 
 " Which of your friends do you consider it like, 
 child?" 
 
 Esther turned her face again to the window. 
 
 " The snow lies deep in all the drifts already, Joan. I 
 never saw it yet lie so deep before New-year's day. We 
 shall have a fearful winter." 
 
 " We shall have a cold one, Esther. You used to be 
 never tired of the hard weather, and the frost and snow, 
 and your walks upon the frozen moors with David. Per- 
 haps the winter wouldn't seem such a fearful prospect to 
 you if you were to try to employ yourself as you used." 
 
 "I don't see that there is anything for me to do, Joan. 
 I read as much as I can read every day; I walk out 
 regularly ; I do all you ask me to do about the house." 
 
 " And take not an iota of interest in anything, Esther. 
 You read, you walk, you work, mechanically ; and then 
 steal away to this cold room, without a fire, and sit, star- 
 ing intently out of the window, or gazing up at yonder 
 old fool in the picture-frame, by the hour together. 
 Whose face do you consider it like, child ? Tell me that; 
 and I shall know as much as I care to know of your 
 secret ; only don't go through the unnecessary deceit 
 of saying that you think it like Mr. Oliver Carew." 
 
 " I never say things that are not true, as you know per- 
 fectly well, cousin. That little engraving is like " and 
 chilled though her blood was, it rushed hotly here to Es- 
 ther's face "like some one I met while I was with Aunt 
 Thalia last year. His name doesn't matter. You will 
 never see him : in all probability I shall myself never see 
 him again while I live." 
 
 Miss Engleheart bent her face forward, and looked 
 straight as an arrow between the girl's eyes. 
 
308 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Esther," she remarked, curtly, after carrying on this 
 agreeable process for about two minutes, " I mean you to 
 leave Countisbury." 
 
 " Cousin Joan !" 
 
 " You shall go out, as you have often wished to do, as 
 
 governess ; or I will write and ask Jemima Watson to 
 1 vite you to Hatherton, which, considering that she is 
 your own mother's cousin-german, and has never given 
 you anything but a three-and-sixpenny Bible in her life, 
 wouldn't be so very much for her to do ; but leave home 
 you shall. I know the kind of effect that pining for love 
 will have upon a girl of your age ; and after the way thrft 
 I have brought you up, and your getting so well over 
 measles, and scarlatina, and all the rest of it. But this is 
 what comes of fashionable schools and gay Bath acquain- 
 tances. A year and a half ago you were a hearty country 
 girl, full of honest enjoyment in your e very-day life, and 
 now " 
 
 " Now," finished Esther, as Miss Joan rose and com- 
 menced a vicious tattoo with her sharp fingers upon the 
 window-panes, " now I am useless and without spirit, 
 and the duties and amusements of my life are alike with- 
 out taste to me. There's no use in our telling untruths to 
 each other, Joan ; it has never answered since I was a 
 child ; we won't begin it now. You may or may not be 
 right in saying that I am pining for love, but you are per- 
 fectly correct in your description of my state ; and I be- 
 lieve you are right in saying I should leave home. Only, 
 not to Jemima Watson, cousin not to another country- 
 house and to more idleness and brooding. I want work : 
 if work lay before me, I would do it ; yes, and in time get 
 a kind of consolation out of it." 
 
 She threw the book aside that had been lying in her 
 listless hands ; then walked opposite to the little picture 
 and standing there, seemed to take silent counsel with 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 3QQ 
 
 that unknown face. Did it comfort her ? did a sudden 
 hope of meeting Paul bound to another woman, irrevo- 
 cably severed from her although he might be thrill 
 through her heart ? I think too well of Esther's princi- 
 ples to give her credit for succumbing to so lax an im- 
 pulse; but I am bound to say that her numbed hands had 
 suddenly grown warm with life ; that a genial sensation 
 was stirring at her heart again ; that on all her face, even 
 in that dim light, there were visible signs to Miss Joan of 
 the old hearty childish interest in a new and welcome 
 plan. 
 
 " Talk of love, talk of constancy ! " she observed to 
 David, ten minutes afterwards ; for Joan was too acute a 
 judge of human nature, too practised a tactician ever to 
 push up any advantage too close at first ; and instead of 
 stopping to argue with Esther, had swooped^ down upon 
 David at once, in his little study, with the fell news of 
 the girl's approaching departure. " Love ! constancy ! in 
 a girl of nineteen. Yes, as much of it as you choose, and 
 to as great a number of men in rotation. First, love and 
 constancy to Carew ; then, for the last six months, love 
 and constancy to this fool of whom this engraving keeps 
 her in mind ; and now, flushing cheeks and dancing eyes 
 at the first word of going from home, and so running a 
 chance of adding another name to the list. I'll tell you 
 what it is, David Engleheart," and Miss Joan turned her 
 back to the hearth in a manner not usually affected by 
 the softer sex, " romance is a very pretty thing, and youth 
 and beauty are very pretty things; but we are too old 
 and plain and stupid to understand them, or to try to 
 keep them under our wing any longer. Esther must leave 
 Countisbury." 
 
 "I don't think I understand you, Joan." 
 
 " Then I will be perfectly straight-forward and above- 
 f board, David." Oh, how the poor wretch winced at this 
 
310 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 well-known preamble to any of Joan's most cutting speech- 
 es. " I will be perfectly straightforward. You are past 
 forty-three years of age ; Esther Fleming is nineteen. 
 You have thought yourself in love with her for the last 
 two years. She has befooled you, unintentionally, mind, 
 I say no harm of the child, but befooled you, as every young 
 girl must befool a blind, besotted man of middle age who 
 puts himself in the idiotic position that you have done. 
 It is high time that all this should end ; and it shall end.' 
 I have decided so this evening." 
 
 " Yes, Joan, yes," he faltered meekly. " Esther is to 
 go away away a little. I understand." 
 
 " Esther is to go away for a year," said Joan, utterly 
 ignoring him and his remark too. " Her friend, Miss 
 Dashwood, will, she tells me, be ready to find her a sit- 
 uation ; and it will do the girl good brace up her ener- 
 gies, teach her not to sentimentalize to be away for a 
 certain appointed time^from home, and thrown upon her 
 own resources. After the year is over she shall come back 
 if she chooses. My mother's house, and after her death 
 mine, will always be open to Esther. If she finds that a 
 life among strangers suits her, let her keep to it, in God's 
 name. If not, she shall return to Countisbury and carry 
 out a plan of honest independence which I have often hud 
 upon my mind. Yes, the whole thing is settled." 
 
 Miss Joan turned round, seized the poker, and gave 
 one fearful stroke into the heart of the fire ; then, with 
 the blazing embers lighting up every line of his awe- 
 stricken face, she leant over and confronted her unhappy 
 kinsman full. 
 
 "David Engleheart ! " she ejaculated "if you had the 
 heart, if you had the common spirit of a man, you would 
 speak now ! " 
 
 " Speak, Joan ? " he echoed, passively. " I have got 
 nothing to say. Perhaps 'tis all for the best that Esther 
 should go away for a time." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 3H 
 
 " And you think that kind of foolish subterfuge will 
 avail you now ? You think " she let fall the poker full 
 upon his outstretched, slippered feet " that I am to be 
 blinded any more by your convenient assumption of child- 
 ish simplicity ? No, Mr. Engleheart, no ; I can assure 
 you that from this night forth everything in this house is 
 going to be placed upon an entirely different footing ! 
 You must declare yourself or we part. I have looked 
 after you like a child for fifteen years, put up with your 
 ways and your whims and your tempers," he wrung his 
 hands in feeble deprecation " and, which was worse, 
 have witnessed your infatuated hankering after a girl who 
 might be your grandchild." 
 
 "Grandchild?* Oh lord, Joan, draw it milder, draw it 
 milder ! Grandchild ? why, I am only forty-three, and 
 Esther near upon nineteen. I couldn't well have mar- 
 ried at five years old you must allow that ? " 
 
 "Your indecent jests do not for one moment turn me 
 aside from the subject, sir, and are most especially ill- 
 timed and brutal upon your lips ! " And here hundreds 
 of little spiteful bones, unknown to anatomists, seemed to 
 be called into sudden action in the region of Miss Joan's 
 neck as she dipped her head forward, after the manner 
 of some ferocious bird, athwart her helpless prey. " What 
 I said, I repeat. I've looked after you like a child, 
 and pampered you, and slaved for you, for fifteen years ; 
 and now, after it all, I am not, no, Mr. Engleheart, I 
 am not going to be trifled with any longer." 
 
 David sprang to his feet, with a curdling terror that 
 Miss Engleheart was going to seat herself upon his knees, 
 and pushed his ten fingers wildly up through his lanky 
 hair. 
 
 " What, in God's name, do you mean, Joan ? and what 
 do you want? Trifled with you! great heavens! have I 
 ever tried have I ever wanted to trifle with you in any 
 way whatever ? I If You must be dreaming, Joan." 
 
312 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 But he knew very well she was not ; he knew well the 
 old terror of two winters back was culminating in a tan- 
 gible form, and his eyes glazed with hopeless and abject 
 terror. What if she should take him in her arms, kiss 
 him, affiance herself to him, marry him, for aught he knew 
 marry him this very night, standing there in his slippers ! 
 
 "All that friendship can dictate, cousin Joan! I I 
 mean, you know, you've been very good and taken care 
 of me and my clothes and everything and I'm very 
 grateful, I'm sure ! Shake hands, please, and don't let's 
 say any more about it. I I I " 
 
 "You, you, you are a base, perjured, infamous man if 
 you leave this room without declaring yourself, David 
 Engleheart ! Look me in the face like a man, if you dare, 
 and tell me you don't know how we stand to each other ! 
 If you hadn't a heart of stone you'd speak now, for Es- 
 ther's sake, you would. Monster ! " 
 
 " For Esther's sake,? Oh lord, Joan, say everything 
 plain and out if you please. For Esther's sake ! I'm 
 I'm no, I don't see it ! I'll be hanged if I do, and I 
 never shall see it ! For Esther's sake " 
 
 " You should establish her a respectable home if, after 
 the first year, she doesn't continue to like her life as a 
 governess. My mother's great age, as you perfectly well 
 know, makes her life a thing of utter uncertainty. Any 
 day, without illness or warning, she might die ; and then, 
 I ask you, if indeed you have the capacity for reflection, 
 to answer where would Esther Fleming's home be ? " 
 
 o 
 
 " Why, here, of course. When poor Aunt Engleheart 
 departs, as in the common course of nature 'tis but likely 
 she, some day, must, you and I won't, in all human prob- 
 ability, die on the same day, Joan, eh ? " 
 
 "And you think, you think that I should continue to 
 live with you no blood-relation, even and my moth 
 er gone? Mr. Engleheart, your coarse jests have already 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. gJ3 
 
 taught me what you consider to be humor. You now in 
 suit me with your low immorality. 1 live with you unless 
 my mother's presence sanctioned it ? Oh ! " 
 
 Miss Engleheart planted herself well between David 
 and the door; folded her arms across her breast, and be- 
 gan one touch of love makes the whole sex kin to 
 cry ; yes horrible though it was to look upon to 
 shed positive tangible tears. 
 
 And then David Engleheart knew that his hour was 
 come. He could have resisted much, under other circiim- 
 stances ; but Joan weeping, and standing with her back 
 tight against the door, and demanding of him to marry 
 her, was a combination to withstand which the powers 
 heaven bestowed on David were utterly insufficient. 
 
 " If you really wish, Joan I mean if you think it pos- 
 sible anybody could be any happier by such an arrange- 
 ment and that you'd be good to Esther, you know 
 never hard or jealous of her any more but give her a 
 home here as long as she chooses to remain in it, why of 
 course of course I'd be very happy. I mean, in time, 
 you know, when I've got rather more used to the thought, 
 and so on ! " 
 
 It was not perhaps the response of a very impassioned 
 lover, but Joan found no fault with it ; and when Esther 
 came in to tea, half an hour later, she found David seated 
 at work at his writing-table as usual ; Miss Joan vigor- 
 ously casting up her clothing-club accounts at the further 
 corner of the room. 
 
 Miss Engleheart had sense : fairer and younger women 
 might profit by her example. Having once got your fish 
 upon the hook, let him rest awhile. When a man has 
 promised to marry you, don't drive him to madness by 
 demanding any work of supererogation at his hands. 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MILLY'S SUCCESSES. 
 
 THE twelvemonth that had passed in pain and monot- 
 ony to Esther Fleming had been an eventful, an eminent- 
 ly successful one to the two Miss Dashwoods. As I am 
 writing Esther's story, not theirs, I do not need, here at 
 least, to enter upon the details of their successes. Let 
 the facts tell their own story. At the time when Joan re- 
 solved that Esther should leave Countisbury, Jane had 
 been engaged really, openly, substantially engaged 
 to a man of birth and fortune, for the last three months ; 
 while Milly, poor little innocent, undesigning Milly, was 
 already a married woman, with a fair settlement, a Lon- 
 don house, and an undeniable position of her own. 
 
 But not with John Alexander for her husband. Milli- 
 cent had just begun to decide that the home life of an 
 English maiden, however pretty to read of in nice little 
 high-church fictions, was not one which she cared to con- 
 tinue indefinitely; and that, sooner than go on like Jane, 
 year after year, each filled with a series of domestic con- 
 tentions and fruitless triumphs, she would even take John 
 Alexander lack of aspirates, lack of ancestors, ungainly 
 person and all for a husband. Millicent's sensible and 
 not sentimental mind had, I say, just arrived at these 
 conclusions, and she was beginning to give Mr. Smithett 
 unlimited encouragement at every public place where she 
 chanced to meet him, when another actor appeared on the 
 scene, and in less than a fortnight her plastic affections 
 were definitely and legitimately engaged. 
 
 There are men (heavy obtuse men, only thoroughly 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 315 
 
 awake to the merits in themselves which nobody e]se dis- 
 cover) who are wonderfully easy to win when an already 
 half-snared prey serves as decoy-duck to the lure. Mr. 
 Marmaduke Scott was one of these. He came to Bath, 
 proposing to stay a fortnight ; saw Millicent Dashwood's 
 pretty little face every morning at the pump-room, saw 
 her of an afternoon in the park, saw her everywhere, but 
 still with John Alexander's form, John Alexander's petits 
 soins attending her ; and fell more foolishly in love with 
 her than he would have done had she been thrice as pret- 
 ty but with no John Alexander to arouse his, Marmaduke 
 Scott's, vanity. 
 
 " Curse the fellow for a conceited cad ! I could cut him 
 out in a day, in an hour, if I would ! " This was the in- 
 sidious whisper with which the demon of self-love first 
 prompted Mr. Scott on to his fall ; aided, I will not deny, 
 by many upturned timid glances of encouragement from 
 the young lady herself; for Milly always made inquiries 
 respecting the position of any stray men who appeared I 
 and, even with poor Smithett coming on fast, held firm 
 hold upon all the foregone conclusions of her little mer- 
 cenary creed. 
 
 It did not take long for Mr. Scott to put his first vague 
 aspiration into deeds. Milly saw at once the nature of 
 the great inert mass of stupid humanity that was begin- 
 ning to dog her steps ; the exact point in which the 
 strength of her own position lay. John Alexander must 
 be covertly kept on in closest attendance ; she must turn 
 from John Alexander a look of pain for him, of rapture 
 for another, upon her face whenever Scott approached ; 
 must make him believe himself to have cruelly, perfid- 
 iously, but irrevocably, replaced the first object of her 
 girlish fancy in that young heart. And all this she did ; 
 and into the very pitfall designed for him did Marmaduke 
 Scott plant his two big feet. 
 
316 THE ORDEJ1L FOR WIVES. 
 
 There was not likely to be much delay as regarded the 
 Dashwood family. Jane and Millicent, between them, 
 never allowed the lover to feel himself for a moment 
 bored that frightfully dangerous symptom for a lover to 
 sustain before the wedding day; Mrs. Dashwood showed 
 herself as much alive as the most carnal-minded mother 
 could have been to the rapid but inexpensive preparations 
 attendant upon a bridal trousseau; the Colonel, with 
 equal parental diligence, pushed the settlements forward, 
 and took care to have them as ample and as tightly secur- 
 ed upon his daughter as possible. All went on admira- 
 bly, even to the minor details of poor John Alexander 
 still haunting Milly's steps thus fanning up the blaze 
 of gratified vanity to the last ; and, almost before Mr. 
 Scott's cumbrous machinery for thinking had enabled him 
 to realize what he was about, he found himself handing 
 Colonel Dashwood's youngest daughter into a travelling 
 carriage, with lovely bridesmaids and idiotic groomsmen 
 and weeping relations and faithful servants, looking at 
 him in one confused group from the doorstep of Colonel 
 Dashwood's house. 
 
 Now I am far from saying that to find oneself unexpect- 
 edly the owner of so attractive a creature as Millicent 
 Dashwood is, just at first, a depressing circumstance in a 
 man's life. Barring that one glimmering suspicion that 
 he had been a fool, which did overcome him incidentally 
 as he handed his bride into her travelling carriage, Mr. 
 Scott was very well content with his new wife, and found 
 his honeymoon in Paris, and Milly's smiling face and 
 insatiable appreciation of new dresses, and their solitude 
 a deux at the Opera, and their little dinners at the Trois 
 Freres, very much indeed to his taste. But at the end of 
 five or six weeks perhaps it took about this time for 
 Mr. Scott fairly to grapple with an idea and as Milly's 
 smile settled down into the natural moderate ratio of do- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 317 
 
 mestic cheerfulness, and both of them began insensibly to 
 feel relieved when the solitude & deux at dinnner or the 
 Opera was broken by another person then, I do say, it oc- 
 curred to Mr. Marmaduke Scott's mind to ask himself 
 why, in the name of heaven, he had tied himself to his 
 Millicent? And the only satisfactory answer he could 
 ever, even up to this day, find to the question was com- 
 prised in these five words : " I have been an ass." 
 
 He was not a man to be made at all lastingly miserable 
 by any earthly circumstance, as long as his two thousand 
 a-year and his appetite remained, to him. You remem- 
 ber the description of Haldor? " Whatever turned up, 
 Haldor was never in higher nor in lower spirits, never 
 slept less nor more, on account of them, nor ate nor drank 
 but according to his custom. Haldor was not a man of 
 words short in conversation ; told his opinion bluntly, 
 and was obtuse and hard." 
 
 Not unlike him was Mr. Scott. "Full of coarse 
 strength, strong exercise, butcher's meat, and sound sleep," 
 there was little place left for sentiment in his composition ; 
 and whatever amount of affection it was in him to feel 
 was already given away to his little daughter, the only 
 child of a former marriage. He was not made at all mis- 
 
 o 
 
 erable by discovering that he did not love Milly, nor she 
 him ; but he often repeated to himself the same formula 
 as on his first discovery of the facts, to wit, " I have 
 been an ass ; " and he also very resolutely determined 
 that, having been an ass concerning Milly once, he would 
 not be an ass concerning her for the future. 
 
 Scott had all the persistent clearness incident to a 
 thoroughly shallow mind. When he once believed a 
 thing, his belief never progressed nor developed ; but it 
 also never vacillated. The English constitution ; the 
 English church service ; madeira with lobster ; claret 
 with salmon ; white burgundy with venison ; these were 
 
818 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 the great fundamental beliefs of Mr. Scott's mind : and to 
 these was added, as Milly very shortly discovered, anoth- 
 er : namely, an Englishman's supremacy over his own 
 household. 
 
 During the first six weeks or so of her marriage, Mrs. 
 Scott had indulged in very nice little dreams, indeed, re- 
 specting her own future life. This dear, good, heavy, 
 old Marmy would be so easily managed ! Give him his 
 dinner and his wine and Marmy wouldn't care about her 
 amusing herself in her own innocent way. But on the 
 very first occasion when she strove to take the reins 
 Scott was engaged to a men's dinner, and she persistent- 
 ly proposed dining with her dear friend, the Baroness 
 
 Z , and going to the Opera without him such a 
 
 sample of Marmy's docile nature was called forth as made 
 her sensible that the one great item freedom had not been 
 included in the otherwise successful bargain of her mar- 
 riage. 
 
 " You've not been well brought up, Millicent," kind 
 friends had managed to whisper various Dash wood anec- 
 dotes to Scott since his marriage, " and you and your 
 sister have gone on a cursed deal too fast for your repu- 
 tation already. But you're my wife now, and by G ! 
 if you want to go to operas and balls by yourself, you 
 may, but you won't live with me, too." 
 
 Mr. Scott made this kindly speech quite in his accus- 
 tomed tone, and with his great white face as unmoved as 
 ever ; and then he went off, quietly, to his own amuse- 
 ment, and Milly cried till she was sick, as she looked at 
 the lovely white silk and pearls in which she had meant 
 to appear, and thought of the ruthless monster to whom 
 she was tied, while she lived. 
 
 If Jane had been Scott's wife, she would have openly 
 rebelled; no doubt whatever of that; have rebelled and 
 been defeated, and rebelled and conquered, and then hare 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 319 
 
 been defeated again, and then, and then have ended, 
 probably, as so many a generous, impassioned, faulty na- 
 ture does, and when phlegmatic, suspicious, commonplace 
 drives it to despair. But Millicent was sure to make the 
 very best, in a worldly sense, of every position in which 
 she found herself placed. Her husband was tyrannical, 
 jealous, obstinate. Very well. Through his tyranny, his 
 jealousy, his obstinacy, must she manage him : a different 
 life, certainly, to the easy one which she had planned in 
 those early days when she believed Marmy to be a nega- 
 tive not a positive fool ; but an enviable fortunate life 
 still ; with position ; with money ; a life very far better 
 to that which, as the plainest of Colonel Dash wood's pen- 
 niless daughters, she had ever dared to hope for. 
 
 And so, the first blind six weeks over, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Scott understood each other ; and they returned to Lon- 
 don, and took a pretty little house as near the abodes of 
 real greatness as possible, and furnished this house, and 
 gathered a circle of acquaintances around them, and got 
 on well together. 
 
 The fundamental principle of "getting on" between 
 married persons living in the world may be broadly class- 
 ified under two heads : scientific, covert welfare; profound 
 indifference. The relations between the Scotts partook 
 of both these characters ; and the result was a more than 
 usual amount of getting on. Their friends declared it 
 was quite a pleasure to look at these two young people, 
 they seemed so evidently to understand each other's 
 characters, and to live in such thorough harmony and 
 accord. 
 
 What did the world know, or care, that Mr. Marma- 
 duke Scott's daily thought was, " I don't love her, I was 
 an ass to marry her, and I distrust her to the very core. 
 But she has got my honor in her hands, and so long as 
 we live together I'll watch her, and keep her straight, 
 
320 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 whether she wills it or no, by my watching." The wife : 
 " Marmaduke is a bore, a suspicious, horrible, stupid, jealous 
 wretch ; but I did well for myself in marrying him, and I 
 mean to uphold my own position as his wife." 
 
 The world saw that Mr. Scott attended his wife sedulous- 
 ly to her balls and operas ; that Mrs. Scott freely accord- 
 ed to him the liberty which young wives occasionally 
 have the folly to feel jealous about ; and the world pro- 
 nounced them a happy and well-assorted couple. 
 
 As you may imagine, Millicent was not a person to be 
 especially cognizant of the existence of her own family, 
 now that she had fairly outstripped them in money and 
 social position ; and letters descriptive of Colonel Dash- 
 wood's desire to look up old London friends, and of Mrs. 
 Dash wood's to " sit " for a time at the feet of the momen- 
 tary Gamaliel of spiritualism, called forth no other answer 
 from the lamb newly-severed from the flock than a kindly 
 offer to look out for lodgings for Papa and Mamma if 
 they should come to town. But as regarded Jane it was 
 different. Millicent could not love : nature not having 
 given her the de quoi through which alone that painful 
 and ill-paying process can be conducted : but she was 
 human, and Jane had been the only creature who had 
 loved her since she was born, and Jane was handsome 
 and would attract people about the house, and Jane would 
 listen and take counsel with her respecting the furniture 
 and the servants and the dresses and the dinner parties 
 which were already the real hearty interests of Millicent's 
 life. Jane would be useful : Jane's companionship would 
 be grateful to her : and so, after a good deal of contention 
 with dear Marmy, and when circumstances, per force, 
 made him abstain from contradicting his wife, Miss Dash- 
 wood was invited to come and take up her abode with 
 the newly-married pair. 
 
 She came ; and, as I have told you, she conquered. At 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 321 
 
 the time when Esther resolved to follow Joan's advice 
 and come to London, Jane Dashwood had been for more 
 than two months the promised wife of Lord Feltham. 
 
 " Don't expect romance, please," she wrote to Esther, 
 when arrangements had finally been made for the latter 
 coming to London. " Don't expect romance, and don't 
 think I am a bit changed from what I was. I met 
 Arthur Peel last night (my fiance has rejoined his regi- 
 ment at Corfu, you know) and talked to him well, for 
 half the evening. Esther, you may remember it is a 
 little peculiarity incidental to Arthur Peel and myself to 
 do so whenever we meet, and he assured me that Miss 
 Lynes will have fifty thousand pounds upon her marriage 
 day, and I told him that Lord Feltham has at least three 
 thousand a year, besides his landed property. Don't the 
 wicked flourish ? and won't I be glad to have you to 
 come and stay with me when I am married ? 
 
 " Oh Esther, Esther ! I look out from my window 
 upon this London street, and I see occasionally a dark 
 unhappy figure stealing wearily though the rain and fog, 
 and I don't know in my heart by how much, if by any, I 
 am better than one of these ; and at this moment I al- 
 most wish, yes, I would to God I had the courage, as 
 other wretches have, to walk away through the dark down 
 to the river and throw myself in there and be at rest ! 
 
 " Don't write me any answer. Spare, congratulations 
 till we meet." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 AN ENFANT TERRIBLE. 
 
 I HAVE mentioned that Mr. Marmaduke Scott had been 
 already married and was the possessor of one little daugh- 
 14* 
 
322 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ter. This child was between four and five years of age 
 at the time of his second marriage; and, before she and 
 her step-mother had lived under the same roof for a fort- 
 night, Millicent was sensible how sharp a thorn in the 
 flesh a step-child a step-child of only four years old, 
 was likely to prove. 
 
 Dogged in most things, there was one point respecting 
 which Mr. Marmaduke Scott showed positively abnormal 
 doggedness ; namely, in his determination that his daugh- 
 ter should never be brought up anywhere save in his own 
 house. He had neglected the child pretty consistently 
 ever since her mother's death ; leaving her with servants 
 of all nations, and of whom he knew nothing, often for 
 weeks, sometimes for months, together, when he was ab- 
 sent on his continental rambles. But to his one pre-gone 
 conclusion he had always remained firm : she should be 
 brought up with him. 
 
 Natty, poor little wretch, might, with great advantage 
 to herself; have been left with some of her father's rela- 
 tions in England, or her mother's in France, or at any 
 decent school in either ; but Mr. Scott was not to be ar- 
 gued with in the matter. The child should not be put 
 away from him. He had no belief in relations ; he held 
 girls' schools to be immoral. Natty should travel with 
 him : and travel with him Natty did ; deriving, as afore- 
 said, her rudimentary ideas of right and wrong and the 
 world in general from whatever French bonne, Swiss 
 governess, or cosmopolitan courier it might please Prov- 
 idence to place her under. 
 
 " She is a little monster," said her stepmother, in a mo- 
 ment of free expansion, to Jane Dashwood, when she was 
 first summing up the advantages and disadvantages of 
 having married Marmy to her sister ; " a precocious, pry- 
 ing, pert, little, hardened monster; but she must be 
 taught, if only to keep her so many hours a day out of 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 323 
 
 my way, and a nursery governess won't cost more than a 
 nurse especially if I make it a part of the bargain that 
 she shall do my plain sewing as well as the child's. The 
 bore will be having such a creature at all. A young 
 woman, perhaps, who will imagine herself a lady, and 
 upset the servants by making them wait on her. Oh, if 
 the little scheme of education was to be carried out by 
 me alone, shouldn't dear Miss Natty be at a good strict 
 school before next Monday morning." 
 
 However, the scheme of education had not to be car- 
 ried out by Mrs. Scott at all, and Natty growing day by 
 day more unmanageable to the household at large, and 
 oppressive to her stepmother in particular, a nursery 
 governess had grown to be looked upon as a crying and 
 urgent necessity, when Esther Fleming's announcement 
 of her wish to meet with such an engagement arrived. 
 Milly, falling back upon one of the pious phrases of her 
 childhood, clasped her little plump hands together, and 
 called it a special and obvious answer to her prayers on 
 Natty's behalf; Natty, herself, expressed a vigorous in- 
 tention to hate, oppress, and generally rebel against Miss 
 Fleming from the first moment of her arrival ; Mr. Scott 
 inquired if the woman was a fright that Millicent was so 
 doosed anxious to get hold of her ? Jane Dash wood at 
 once wrote off a kind letter, the concluding words of 
 which I have shown you, requesting Esther to undertake 
 the training of Natty's early years. And Esther under- 
 took it. She felt as though it mattered little to her into 
 whose service or into what service she entered. To be 
 the companion, as in her early governess dreams she had 
 hoped, of a refined and educated woman, who would 
 work with her, and through her, for one common good, 
 her children ; or the hired dependent, half servant half 
 confidant, of one so essentially little minded as Millicent. 
 All she wanted was work; work to which she must hour- 
 
324 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ly attend ; into which, however distasteful, she would 
 conscientiously strive to throw all her strength. Work, 
 and to be in the great city that held Paul ! 
 
 So she made no demur at any of the small mean condi- 
 tions which Millicent forced Jane to set forth in her offer. 
 She was obdurate when Miss Joan would have made her 
 rebel against repairing two wardrobes, and sitting up after 
 parties (to save poor Watson,) and coming to sing when 
 required in the drawing-room, and, ordinarily, taking all 
 her meals with Natty, " who is never to be a moment* out 
 of dear Esther's sight," all for the modest income of twenty- 
 five pounds a-year. 
 
 To feel small slights or injustices from indifferent peo- 
 ple the heart must be unoccupied, the nerves acutely 
 sensitive hence the cause, perhaps, why governesses, as 
 a body, are so morbidly alive to the necessary evils of their 
 position. To Esther, full of life and the passion of life, 
 her heart charged to overflowing with one only too absorb- 
 ing interest, her nerves as little irritable as youth and health 
 could make them, it was simply a matter of indifference 
 what were Mrs. Scott's demands, or how much or how 
 little of the society of her patrons she would have. She 
 would rather have undertaken those menial duties and 
 have received that pitiful twenty-five pounds a-year, than 
 have entered the best house, have received the highest 
 wages in London. And why ? The Scotts knew Paul. 
 Through Jane Dash wood's agency she would be certain 
 to meet him, feel the clasp of his hand, look into his face 
 once more. 
 
 Does any human being deserve pity who possesses 
 youth and the capacity for loving and being miserable. 
 
 I think not. I think we waste our sympathy grievous- 
 ly upon all heroes and heroines of romance. When men 
 and women need pity is when they have ceased to be 
 able either to love or to suffer ! 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 DOUBLY FALSE. 
 
 MRS. SCOTT and Miss Dashwood had gone out to a 
 dinner-party, and would not be at home till eleven, was 
 the welcome that awaited Esther in her new home. Would 
 Miss Fleming have the goodness to go upstairs at once, 
 and have her tea in Miss Natty's nursery ? 
 
 Miss Hatty's nursery so Mr. Scott willed it was 
 the best room in the house ; and on entering it Esther 
 at once saw, in the minute appointments, the pictured 
 walls, the costly carpeted floor, that some one had Miss 
 Natty's personal comforts at heart. Was it her step- 
 mother ? . As she looked round for the little baby face 
 she had prepared herself to see, a small woman a wo- 
 man, judging from her height, of about four years old, 
 but with cool, worldly manners, and a firm, unembarrass- 
 ed step approached from a low chair by the fireside, 
 and extended to her its minute hand. 
 
 " Mrs. Scott and Miss Dashwood are out. Come near 
 the fire ; you must be frozen after your long journey." 
 
 And then two sharp black eyes commenced a deliberate 
 inventory of every detail of Miss Fleming's dress, of 
 every line of her face ; an inventory such as only one of 
 these terrible children can take ; and which, while the 
 victim is ashamed visibly to writhe under it, he feels to 
 be more remorselessly correct than any which a grown 
 man or woman, with ever so much knowledge of the 
 world, would have the capacity to take. 
 
 "I hope you will love me, Natty, dear. I am quite 
 prepared to love you." 
 
 Miss Scott gave a short laugh ; a laugh not in the slight- 
 
326 THE ORDEJ1L FOR WIVES. 
 
 eat degree ill-bred, but such a one as you might imagine 
 some very used-up cynic bestowing upon a ludicrously- 
 gushing, although possibly good-hearted, country gentle- 
 man who should proffer the tender to him of eternal 
 friendship. 
 
 " 1 like all the world, Mademoiselle Fleming. We shall 
 be the best of friends, I am sure." And Natty looked 
 between Esther's brows, and reading there more than she 
 liked of determination, vowed to herself to kick her upon 
 the earliest occasion when they should enter together up- 
 on the delicate intricacies of words in three letters. " My 
 dear mamma ah, there are more than two years she is 
 dead taught me to love all the world. I don't remem- 
 ber her, mademoiselle ; but I have seen seen ou elle 
 dort, in Pere la Chaise, and a little white boy, with only a 
 chemise on, holding his hands so ! above his head. The 
 day before we left, you know, papa and I, he took me 
 there, and it was very damp, and papa wouldn' step on 
 the grass, and he walked up and down and he smoked, 
 oh, a very long time five minutes, tout au moins on 
 the gravel walk before mamma; and then I cried, and he 
 took me to the bonbon shop, and gave me a boxful a 
 pink box, with a real little looking-glass inside the lid, and 
 such good bonbons avec de la creine, mademoiselle how 
 do you say it ? creme inside the chocolats, and that love- 
 ly stuff that brings tears to your eyes, du rhum, n'est ce 
 pas ? in the little rose and white dragees. Mademoiselle, 
 have you been in Paris ? I have been there four, five 
 times, and in Vienna, too. Our courier in Vienna was 
 was allerliebst ! Ah, bon Dieu, if I had only got poor Carl 
 here ! " 
 
 And then the good temper vanished abruptly out of 
 Natty's face, and she turned away with the air of one who 
 evidently held life to be a very poor, mistaken, used-up 
 affair, indeed, to the fire. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 327 
 
 Jane Dash wood's letter had not prepared Esther to find 
 an angel in Marrnaduke Scott's child ; but for anything 
 so old, so knowing, so upsetting of all her early legends 
 respecting childish innocence as this fraction of a human 
 being, she was unprepared. 
 
 " I haven't been in Paris, Natty," she remarked, when, 
 later, they were sitting together at tea ; the child quaint- 
 ly doing the honors to the best of her small powers ; " I 
 haven't been in Paris ; but I have lived in a place that 
 I'm sure you'd like a great deal better a farm-house in 
 the country, with a garden, and under one of the trees in 
 the garden a swing. What should you say to that?" 
 
 " I have swung in the Jardin Mabille, and it made me 
 ill at my heart. It was Easter Sunday, and Carl took me 
 there ; and while he went to dance with Mademoiselle 
 Zizine, a man took me up and called me his angel, and 
 treated me to a swing out of goodness, understand 
 and it made me ill, like the steamer. I've been to a farm- 
 house, too. I've seen as much as you. A farmhouse at 
 Hampstead, and Polly and I and a gentleman had straw- 
 berries and cream there. Va done mademoiselle ! where 
 else have you been ? " 
 
 "To school, Natty; a place I'm sure you have not been 
 to. I was at school with your mamma." 
 
 " You mean Milly. She's not my mamma. Watson 
 Bays so. My mamma's in Pere la Chaise; ,and it's a good 
 thing for her ; a very good thing!" Natty nodded her 
 head significantly. 
 
 " Child, who teaches you to say such things ? " Esther 
 asked. " Why is it a good thing that your mamma is 
 dead?" 
 
 " She wouldn't be happy if she was alive. People ain't 
 happy when they fight ; and Watson told cook papa quar- 
 relled with my real mamma just as bad as he does with this 
 one. Every time they cotne from a party they quarrel oh, 
 
328 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 they quarrel so that I heard them one night from my 
 room ; and Milly doesn't speak the truth to papa, Miss 
 Fleming. One day she said Mr. Mortimer hadn't been 
 here, and he had been here all the afternoon, and I told 
 papa so I did!" and about five small demons flashed 
 out of Natty's eyes ; " Milly didn't dare punish me then, 
 because of papa ; but next day she came in the nursery 
 and made Polly dress me in my old green frock, when 
 Dick Lawson was coming to tea. I hate her for it, that 1 
 I do ; and when I'd a new white one, with a dear little 
 blue ruche all round the skirt ! and whenever Mr. Morti- 
 mer comes I'll tell papa again, that I will ! " 
 
 To turn the child from herself, her own loves, her own 
 hates, her own dresses, would have been simply as impos- 
 sible as to have turned Milly Dash wood, in days gone by, 
 from her loves, and hates, and dresses. For frivolity, 
 for worldliness, for selfishness, Natty might have done 
 perfect credit to Millicent as her own daughter ; and, 
 even while she launched forth her tiny shafts most 
 bitterly against her step-mother, Esther could scarce for- 
 bear from smiling at the child's instinctive appreciation of 
 all the leading and congenial points in Mrs Scott's char- 
 acter. Natty was obviously not to be pitied, according 
 to the old sentimental way of pitying step-children. It 
 would, all her life, be a good stand-up fight between her 
 and whomsoever should be put in authority over her just 
 as it was virtually a stand-up fight now between Millicent 
 and her husband. 
 
 " And well for her so ! " thought Esther, when she went, 
 later, to look at the child asleep, and marked the resolute 
 expression of the poor little round infantine features. 
 " Well for her, well for this little child, well for all women 
 who have got it born in them not to suffer for any one 
 not to love any one but themselves." 
 
 And then she betook herself to the window and leant 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 329 
 
 her face against the pane, and tried to choke back he^ 
 tears as she wondered how many miles Paul was from hei 
 at that moment ? and with whom he was ? and whether 
 he had bought the bouquet of white flowers that day ? with 
 all the other questions which that delicious passion, under 
 whose dominion she was, is in the habit of alternately fev- 
 ering and chilling the hearts of its unhappy victims. 
 
 Between eleven and twelve o'clock the Scotts and Jane 
 returned. As Mrs. Scott was very fatigued, however ; 
 had fainted, or intended, to faint, or something of that 
 kind ; and Mr. Scott was in the sulky condition normal to 
 him after all parties, Esther Fleming, much to her own 
 lelief, was informed that she would not be required to 
 come down to the drawing-room that evening. 
 
 "Don't think it unkind," cried Jane, who had rushed 
 up at once, in her warm impulsive way, and borne Es- 
 ther off to her own room. " Milly really isn't strong 
 indeed', it would be much better for her if she didn't go 
 to parties at all and Mr. Scott is so fearfully cross, I 
 don't wonder at her not wishing you to get your first im- 
 pression of him to-night. Esther, whatever else Lord 
 Feltham may turn out, I hope he won't be sulky. I 
 could stand any other form of temper, but even from a 
 man I didn't love I could not stand sulkiness. If Feltham 
 takes it into his head to sulk like dear Manny I shall run 
 away from him in three months." 
 
 "But is it real, Jane?" and Esther looked earnestly 
 into her face. " Is it all in real sober earnest ? You are 
 going to marry him ? " 
 
 "Real! I should rather think so! " but her lauejh was 
 
 O 
 
 hollow. " Wait till you see his letters, his trinkets. So- 
 ber earnest ? Oh, Esther, if you knew all I have had to 
 go through all that I go through still ! " 
 
 She seized Esther's hand between her own two feverish 
 ones, and kissed her in that passionate way which, com- 
 
330 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ing from one woman to another, tells so indisputably that 
 some strong emotion concerning a man must be' the latent 
 motive-power. " I am glad you have come. I want you. 
 I want some one that I need tell no lies to : some one 
 that I can really talk to for the short time that will be 
 mine about about Arthur. Esther, I have seen him 
 to-night. He knew I was to be at the Dalzells, and he 
 actually w^alked round from his club, and met me at the 
 door, as I was going to the carriage, this cold winter 
 night ! He doesn't come to the house, you know Mr. 
 Scott won't have it, horrible bear ! now that I am engaged 
 but he meets me everywhere ; when we walk, when 
 we go out to parties, to the theatre. Do you think that 
 looks as if he was going to marry Miss Lynes? Speak 
 what you think, please, quite plainly. I'm accustomed to 
 all disappointments." 
 
 " I didn't know that Arthur Peel was even said to be 
 engaged to Miss Lynes, Jane ; but I think the fact of 
 your being engaged should be enough to make him leave 
 off paying you attention ; and I think Mr. Scott acts hon- 
 orably to Lord Feltham in not allowing him to come to 
 the house." 
 
 " Honorably ! " cried Jane, with a little hard laugh. 
 " What a word to apply to the thought or actions of any 
 man, in as far as women are concerned ! Vanity, selfish- 
 ness, falseness those are the qualities I recognize, only 
 in different degrees, in all men. Mr. Scott is intensely 
 selfish, and thinks it for his advantage, socially, that his 
 sister-in-law should remain true to an eligible suitor. 
 Lord Feltham is intensely vain, and vanity made him 
 wish to be the owner of my well-looking face, and to cut 
 Arthur out. For Arthur himself " 
 
 She sank her head down, weariedly, against the man- 
 tlepiece ; and then, looking again at the lines of that 
 lovely face in repose, Esther knew that it had changed 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 331 
 
 from what it used to be. Miss Dashwood bad not grown 
 tbin to tbe point wbich takes from beauty. The round, 
 fair cheek, the exquisitely-modelled chin and throat were 
 there, in all the perfect softness that must belong to a 
 blonde Englishwoman of less than two-and-twenty ; and 
 yet, despite all the brilliant bloom and rounded lines, the 
 face had oldened visibly during the last twelve months. 
 Of passion as strong as her nature could feel, Jane had 
 had ample experience ever since she was seventeen ; but, 
 whatever some moralists may say, it is not passion, it is 
 the renouncement of passion, which really hardens the 
 heart and lines the face. Since her engagement, Jane 
 Dashwood had striven to efface Arthur Peel from her 
 heart; had striven, in her way, to be true to the man she 
 meant to marry ; and these two or three months of her 
 engagement had made her older and more miserable than 
 so many years of the former life, with all its excess of 
 hopeless but unstruggling passion would have done. 
 
 "Jane, I think you have done very wrong in accepting 
 Lord Feltham." 
 
 " Esther, I have done very right in accepting Lord Fel- 
 tham. Such a life as mine has been for the last three 
 years can't go on forever. Very few women marry the 
 man they are insane enough to love first, and the few 
 who do are not over-happy in their lives, I hear. I shall 
 never marry Arthur Peel never, never,' never !" She 
 raised up her face, and looked oh, with what a look ! 
 into Esther's eyes. " It was a dream, and he was nev- 
 er worthy of me, and if I had married him both of us 
 would have been miserable in six months. I know all 
 that, and I know, too, that love even the very maddest 
 love can't drasr on through a divided existence forever. 
 
 O 3 
 
 One can live down everything, and the best way to live 
 love down is by marrying. I am fortunate in being en- 
 gaged to Feltham, because he has money money and 
 
332 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 position, of both of which, as I grow older, I shall be 
 fond ; and, besides, if I had not married him I should cer- 
 tainly have married some one else. Lui ou un autre! 
 it matters little. I shall be a good average wife ; the 
 better for knowing so well beforehand what life and all 
 its temptations are ; and you are very mistaken, Esther, 
 i i thinking that I have acted wrongly. Wait till you see 
 me as Lord Feltham's wife, and then tell me whether he 
 and I are not both to be envied." 
 
 " And the conclusion of your letter to me, Jane, where 
 you spoke of some poor wretch making her way through 
 the night to the river, and said for very little you would 
 change your fate with hers ? " 
 
 Miss Dashwood laughed the question off; began to talk 
 of Millicent's marriage, of Mr. Scott, of the child, of her 
 own parties and successes finally of Paul. 
 
 " You are as fatally far gone upon him as ever, Esther, 
 I presume ? If you are, I can look him up for you at once. 
 You know, of course, that he and Lord Feltham are half- 
 brothers ? " 
 
 " Paul Chichester and Lord Feltham ? Great heavens, 
 Jane ! are you in earnest ? " 
 
 " Why, you don't mean to say you did nob know it be- 
 fore? I took it for granted you did when I first wrote to 
 announce my engagement. They are brothers, but have 
 not met for years and years. One day, when I was talk- 
 ing to Lord Feltham, I mentioned Paul's name accidental- 
 ly, and then out it all came. Amusing to have been en- 
 gaged to them both, one in joke, the other in earnest, 
 eh'? " 
 
 All the story, the dark hints respecting Paul that Mrs. 
 Tudor had given her at Weymouth, came back, sudden 
 and clear, upon Esther's mind, and her heart died within 
 her at this threatened confirmation of their truth. 
 
 " Are you quite sure the estrangement was all Paul's 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 333 
 
 fault?" she stammered. "Did Lord Feltham give you 
 no details of the family quarrels ? " 
 
 "Well, Esther, dear, to tell you the honest truth, I 
 wasn't interested enough in anything belonging to them 
 to ask many questions, even if I had thought it discreet 
 to do so, which I did not. When young men break with 
 their relations in that determined sort of manner, 'tis not 
 difficult to guess what kind of reason lies at the bottom 
 of it all ; indeed, Lord Feltham more than hinted that 
 Paul had been entangled hopelessly entangled ever 
 since, and was so now. I didn't like Paul a bit the less 
 for it, mind, nor his brother the better for his look of con- 
 scious superiority as he told me ; but it was in quite the 
 early days of our engagement, when everything, of course, 
 must be rose-colored and charming, and as I saw the sub- 
 ject was not an agreeable one, I just said that I had known 
 Mr. Chichester slightly, and let it drop." 
 
 "And Paul Mr. Chichester did he and Lord Felt- 
 ham ever meet in this house ? " 
 
 " N~o. I happened to see Paul a night or two afterwards 
 at the Opera the only public place at which one ever 
 meets him and then I told him Lord Feltham hap- 
 pily was not with me of my engagement. From that 
 day till this he has never been near the house, but now, 
 with his brother away (I told you, did I not, that Lord 
 Feltham had gone to Corfu? He does not sell out till 
 the spring, and by my express wish rejoined his regiment 
 in the interval) and with you here, no doubt we shall be- 
 gin to see Paul's face again ; that is, if dear Manny should 
 happen to approve of his visits. You have no idea what 
 a jealous monster that is, Esther. Poor Milly has only got 
 to speak to any man twice, and Mr. Scott insults him, if 
 he comes to the house. What should you do if you were 
 married to such a wretch ? I should simply run away, 
 co'te que cofite. Life is too short to be spent in fighting 
 any man." 
 
 
334 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Life is too short to be spent in loving any man ! " 
 cried Miss Fleming, bitterly. " Jane, are all men unprin- 
 cipled, I wonder, and all women fools ? " 
 
 " Most undoubtedly they are, in their relations to each 
 other,", said Miss Dashwood, with cool emphasis, "and 
 every year that you live you will come to know it with 
 greater certainty. All men are unworthy wholly un- 
 worthy of anything like true or honest love ; all women 
 are fools enough, once or twice in their lives, to be really t 
 in love, except, perhaps women of the Mrs. Strangways' 
 stamp ; and what they must go through in wounded van- 
 ity I dare say quite equals the torment of other people's 
 foolish attachments. The happy state., I am convinced of 
 it, Esther, is to be not one atom in love with the man you 
 marry; tor him to be fond not ridiculously or jealously 
 fond of you, and also to possess a great taste and great 
 capacity for constantly making you all sorts of nice ex- 
 pensive presents. This is my state now, and if I could 
 only get over my old folly thoroughly, I should be really 
 happy. Grandes passions were never really intended for 
 silly little women like Milly and me. They require height, 
 as these new wreaths do, to carry them off. By-the-way, 
 what do you think of this tiara I have on ? It is an aw- 
 fully grand one, you must know, made out of some of the 
 Feltham diamonds. Do you think a tiara coming so much 
 to the front of the head becomes me or not ?" 
 
 Now Esther was not one whit disposed to talk of 
 wreaths or tiaras, or any other kind of head-dress. Her 
 heart was bitter within her : bitter against Paul for the 
 fresh confirmation of the guilty secret, whatever it was, 
 that bound him to his strange and suspected life ; bitter 
 against him because he had, after all, been going to the 
 Opera, living, enjoying himself as usual, while she had 
 been wasting her heart in foolish dreams at Countisbury ; 
 bitter against him because because she loved him. Can 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 335 
 
 I assign to her any better reason ? But when do women, 
 the simplest, the worst-trained among them, betray to 
 each other this particular phase of suffering the first, 
 the keenest, perhaps, of all : suspicion without the right 
 to be suspicious ; jealousy without the right to be jeal- 
 ous ? She thought dear Jane looked very well indeed 
 with a tiara coming so much to the front of the head ; 
 and what beautiful brilliants they were ! and how well 
 they contrasted with the sweet simplicity of that little 
 gold bracelet upon Jane's arm ! 
 
 " The first present poor Arthur ever gave me ! " cried 
 Miss Dashwood. " See, here's the date inside, and when 
 you touch that spring, a little piece of his hair and of 
 mine. Do you think it will be right for me to keep it 
 when I am married ? Right or wrong, I shall do so. 
 There are some few things it would just kill me to part 
 from, and this is one of them." 
 
 She put the bracelet between Esther's hands, then 
 walked up to the toilet-table, took off her tiara, her neck- 
 lace, her rings, and pushed them all aside with a quick 
 impatient gesture into a heap. 
 
 " I hope you'll never know the sensation of having sold 
 yourself, Esther. It's not an elevating one. When I am 
 dressed in Lord Feltham's jewels, and meet Arthur, as I 
 did to-night, I ask myself how much better I am than any 
 of the women of another class whom we have been 
 taught to regard as lost in this world and the next ? My 
 sale is for life, certainly ; but I don't see that the length 
 of the term can make any moral difference. The sale 
 the motives of the sale remain the same." 
 
 " jN"o, no, Jane; that is your passionate, one-sided way 
 of viewing your own conduct. You intend, once married 
 to Lord Feltham, to be true and faithful to him, and to 
 banish Arthur Peel from your heart. If you did not 
 really at heart mean to be true, to the best of your ability, 
 
336 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 your conscience would not p^rick you as it does about this 
 little bracelet. No one who was going to do a very great 
 wrong could be troubled by the thought of a small infi- 
 delity"." 
 
 Miss Dash wood made no answer. Possibly she thought 
 Esther's arguments weak ; possibly she thought the whole 
 subject one of those which do not gain much by ventila- 
 tion. " I think I am very selfish in keeping you up after 
 your long journey," she began, when both had remained 
 silent for some minutes; "but before we say good-night, 
 there is just one thing I should like to tell you some- 
 thing about Lord Feltham. Would you mind staying 
 one quarter of an hour longer to hear it ? " 
 
 " No ; I would like to stay. This arm-chair and warm 
 fire make me disinclined to go away. Has it anything to 
 
 do I mean, has it any any connection with Paul 
 
 Ghichester?" 
 
 "None at all, Esther." And Miss Dash wood came and 
 put her hand kindly round the girl's neck. " Let me give 
 you a bit of very sincere advice don't love Paul. When 
 he first went away from me to you in Bath, I was a little 
 bit jealous; I don't mind confessing it; and that hindered 
 me, perhaps, from warning you as heartily as I ought to 
 have done about the danger you ran in being intimate 
 with him. He can never marry ; he has told me so him- 
 self; others, his own brother even, have told me that he 
 is irrevocably bound for life. Why should you care for 
 him? You are young, you are handsome, the .world is 
 full of people who only need to know you to like you. 
 Why should you go and fix your heart upon a broken- 
 down, penniless man like Paul Chichester ? These things 
 can't be undone afterwards, Esther ; the outset is the 
 time for the struggle. Resolutely keep your mind from 
 Paul. When his face, when his voice will come before 
 you, get up, read, talk, rush away out of the room, out of 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 337 
 
 tne house, anything to eScape from yourself. It is 
 not the man himself; you know, it is your own imagin- 
 ation that makes you in love up to a certain point the 
 point after which no effort can save you any more ! Es- 
 ther, you are too good to ^waste your life as I have done. 
 Take my advice. I afii as old as a woman of thirty in 
 everything to do with tne bitter folly of love. Take my 
 advice ; give up thinking of Paul. He is not worthy of 
 you ! " 
 
 " I don't want him to be worthy," said Esther; but she 
 shielded the firelight away nervously with her hands. 
 "He is no more to me than. any other man. I am going 
 to teach little Natty; I am going, heart and soul, to at- 
 tend to my duties. No fear of my dreaming of him or 
 of any one else ; I shall have no time. And, besides, Mr. 
 Chichester does not care one atom for me. He liked me 
 as a man of that age might like an unformed, plain, coun- 
 try girl at Bath, nothing more. It is nearly a year since 
 I saw him, and he hasn't even written me one line in all 
 these weary months." 
 
 And then her voice stopped with singular unphilosophi- 
 cal abruptness, and the great tears gathered slowly in her 
 eyes. 
 
 Miss Dashwood looked at her with genuine pity. To 
 her and she really had had ample experience no 
 possible misery could be so great for a woman as to love 
 without fortune. Even while she was mad enough still 
 to care for Arthur Peel, all her opinions respecting love 
 were cynical, hard, worldly, as Milly's. She had no be- 
 lief in the worthiness of any man. Of Paul Chichester's 
 real character she could not form half so true an estimate 
 as Esther, in her innate childish longing to believe in 
 another's goodness, had done. He was poor, embarrassed, 
 living on evil terms with his family what should make 
 him thus but the same class of selfish, vices of which she 
 15 
 
338 T HE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 had seen so many samples among the. Peels and dozens 
 of others ? All men, according to the Dash wood creecu 
 were vicious, all men were natural enemies; to be van- 
 quished and discomfited by all weapons, and with the 
 least possible risk to the vanquisher. And Jane had 
 enough esprit de corps perhaps enough real generosity 
 to feel genuine regret as she looked in Esther's face 
 and read there that one who should have been a victor 
 was already among the ranks of the slain. Lost far more 
 irrevocably than she had been with all her love and mad- 
 ness for Arthur. For Esther she dimly and yet intuitive- 
 ly felt was a woman who would love for life ! 
 
 She had too much knowledge to launch another direct 
 shaft against Paul ; but as the tears slowly swept away 
 from Esther's eyes she began to speak of Lord Feltham ; 
 and to speak of any man was, in Miss Dash wood's present 
 mood, to denounce the whole race as false, unworthy, 
 perjured. 
 
 "Before I had been engaged to him a week, he began, 
 with the accustomed fine sense of honor of men, to tell 
 me of his last love-affair, and of all that it had cost not 
 himself, but his beloved when the affair was broken off. 
 It is about this that I want to tell you, Esther, just to 
 hear what idea you take from it of my fiances character. 
 She was a most worthy person, according to his making 
 out ; one, I am sure, far more likely to suit him than I 
 shall ever be sincere, simple, outspoken : something, I 
 should fancy, both in mind and face, like yourself, 
 Esther." 
 
 Esther looked up quickly. The very idea was void of 
 reason, and yet and yet a sharp pang of suspicion did, 
 involuntarily contract her heart. 
 
 " And where was the first romance acted out, Jane ? 
 Who was this simple, sincere, outspoken person, of whom 
 you are the successor '? 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 339 
 
 " Oh, those were just the things he would not tell me," 
 replied Miss Dashwood. "It all took place about a year 
 and a half ago the summer before last, I think. He 
 went to some wild country place for fishing in Wales, 
 I believe and met a well-looking young farmer's daugh- 
 ter one morning gazing at herself in a stream, and she 
 fell in love with him on the spot this part, naturally, 
 was shadowed forth rather than put into words and 
 then all the commonplace story followed, as a matter ot 
 course." 
 
 " And the farmer's daughter offered to marry him, I 
 suppose ?" suggested Miss Fleming ; but as she spoke she 
 turned her face quickly away into shadow. " And out oi 
 sheer pity he was forced to consent. Is that the end ot 
 the story ? " 
 
 " Well, not exactly. No man, even as vain a one as 
 Feltham, has the face quite to make such an assertion as 
 that; it carries its falsehood written too palpably upon 
 the surface. The farmer's daughter was wildly, passion- 
 ately in love, and carried away by country air and com- 
 passion, his lordship, in a rash moment, asked her to 
 become his wife." 
 
 " What a noble piece of generosity ! " 
 
 " Then came the parting. Pie was ordered away sud- 
 denly to join his regiment, which was supposed to be 
 under orders for India (pity it had not gone there, Es- 
 ther ! ^1 believe, at this moment, I could get up a little 
 morsel of sentiment about him, if I thought he was being 
 killed upon a field of battle instead of snipe-shooting at 
 Corfu,) and the poor disconsolate Phillis was left to mourn. 
 Well, can you guess what first began to wake him to his 
 folly ? Not meeting some one worthier of him, not 
 calmly reasoning over his weakness, but the poor girl's 
 own letters." 
 
 Esther gave one little instinctive start of surprise. 
 
340 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " They were badly spelt, no doubt, she cried. The faulty 
 orthography revolted against Lord Feltham's delicate 
 sense of refinement." 
 
 " That's what I thought, and I asked him to show me 
 one." 
 
 " Go on, Jane." 
 
 "And he refused to do so. How interested you look, 
 Esther ! Have you got to that point in which any account 
 of men's small basenesses has especial interest for you ? 
 I sincerely hope not. It would not be exactly honor- 
 able, you know, to show one woman's love-letters to 
 another, although it is perfectly honorable to boast of hav- 
 ing gained, then cast aside, her heart. However, though 
 he did not most probably could not produce them, 
 Lord Feltham was able to give me a very fair idea of the 
 nature of his first love-letters. He gets none such from 
 me, I can answer for it." 
 
 " So badly expressed, do you mean ? " 
 
 " So full of generous feeling, of honest confidence, Es- 
 ther. Little though he meant me to think so, this poor 
 country girl was, I am convinced, far above her lover both 
 in heart and brain. All the jealous misgivings of her 
 own heart, all her fears that she did not really love him in 
 the way a woman should love the man she marries, were 
 poured out in these letters, and what do you suppose was 
 the result? 
 
 "'For the sake of my own word I would have married 
 her,' his lordship confided to me, ' and having once pass- 
 ed that word no consideration of her lowly birth or w r ant 
 of fortune would, for one moment, have had weight. 
 But her letters frightened me. I could stand any form 
 of temper, I could reconcile myself to indifference, but a 
 woman with a passionate, exacting, self-questioning, self- 
 torturing disposition would just drive me wild. These 
 fine characters for play or novel are the ones to make a 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 341 
 
 man like me utterly wretched in domestic life.' He 
 wasn't quick enough to see how poor the compliment was 
 that he implied to me by such a speech, and you may be 
 sure no look or word of mine enlightened him ; but I did 
 feel, Esther, yes, I did, how small he was! How great a 
 fool to have given up a woman who could love him, how 
 thoroughly little to be able to speak of her like this to 
 her successor ! " 
 
 " He has only lately succeeded to his title, you say ? " 
 and Esther's voice was singularly low and unmoved as 
 she asked this. 
 
 " Only about a year ago, but, to do him justice, I don't 
 believe that that, or any worldly consideration, had any- 
 thing to do with his breaking off his engagement. He 
 was summoned back hastily to England to attend his 
 cousin's death-bed; went as a matter of course, to see 
 his lady-love ; as a matter of course the cooling process 
 having been once set up was more utterly disittusione 
 the moment he did see her, and one fine morning or win- 
 ter evening, I forget which, found himself Lord Feltham 
 and a free man at about the same moment." 
 
 " His name before then was ? " 
 
 " Care w, of course. The Honorable Oliver Care w. I 
 remember quite well dancing with him two or three sea- 
 sons ago, and wondering whether the raw material would 
 ever come into anything like shape as it got older. Little 
 I thought then I should have anything to do with the 
 shaping of it ! You have never seen his photograph, 
 have you ? Let me get it for you, and say whether it is 
 astonishing that any poor little simple country girl should 
 go near to breaking her heart for such an Adonis ! " 
 
 Miss Dashwood went to her dressing-table, took a small 
 case from it, and put a portrait into Esther's hands. Oli- 
 ver Carew's portrait. 
 
 Miss Fleming looked at it quite calmly ; listened to Jane 
 
342 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Dashwood's running commentaries upon its defects and 
 beauties ; and gave not the faintest visible sign of emo- 
 tion as she did so. Very few men possess this kind of 
 courage : all women do. It is the instinct of conceal- 
 ment given by nature for self-preservation to the weaker 
 creature : nothing more. All a mistake to call it either 
 superior power of endurance or superior capacity for de- 
 ceit. In supreme moments, and with one of her own sex 
 present, any woman can conceal^ or act, or feign any pas- 
 sion whatsoever, and this without effort, almost without 
 consciousness of her own. The beetles who extend their 
 feet in the air, and pretend death when you touch them, 
 don't, I fancy, go through any process of mental or mor- 
 al ratiocination prior to that action. 
 
 " He seems to have good eyes, Jane, and rather a nice 
 mouth. I admire Lord Feltham." 
 
 " Because you have never seen him. His photograph 
 is handsomer than himself, as is always the case with men 
 of tolerably straight features and no mind, no expression. 
 Do you think him handsomer than Paul, for example ? " 
 
 "They bear no comparison. As far as feature goes, 
 Lord Feltham might be considered the best-looking." 
 
 " And how do you judge of him after what I have just 
 told you ? He must have a great deal of delicacy, of 
 generosity, must he not, to choose me for his confessor on 
 such a theme ? " 
 
 " I have no-doubt there are many men who would do 
 the same. Vanity, desire even to appear well with you, 
 might make him lightly betray the confidence of this un- 
 known country girl. And, besides " but here her voice 
 did falter a little " you don't say that she wished him 
 to be faithful. He did not tell you that the infidelity was 
 wholly on his side ? " 
 
 Jane Dashwood laughed ; and, although the whole 
 matter was disconnected with Paul, disconnected with 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 343 
 
 the man she loved, Esther felt she almost hated her for 
 that light laugh so hard is it for any woman to see 
 even a rejected lover in the keeping of another. 
 
 " As I have told you so much, Esther, I may as well 
 tell you all. The story isn't a particularly interesting one 
 to you or to me, still it is a good illustration of the truth 
 of what I said to you, that any man is unworthy of the 
 honest love of any woman. This country girl, whose 
 name even I don't know, evidently loved Lord Feltham 
 a thousand times better than I or any one else will ever 
 love him while he lives. He tired of her tired of the 
 very strength of her exacting honest love broke with 
 her when his coldness had roused her temper to the 
 utmost, and then told me, her accidental successor, every 
 particular of the love affair ! He did more. I hate him 
 for it. He gave me a relic of hers ! You shall see it. I 
 can't bear to have it in my possession. According to 
 my weak faulty code of honor there is treachery in my 
 ever having seen it. What do you say ? Your ideas are 
 fresher and truer than mine in these things." 
 
 She went to a bureau, and presently took from it a 
 little packet which she gave into Esther's hand. " Open 
 it and look, Esther, there is nothing much to see. 'Only 
 a woman's hair,' only a woman's ribbon, you know. The 
 old, old story." 
 
 Esther opened and found a little 'blue silk neck-tie, 
 one she had worn that last night when they were together 
 on the moors, and which Oliver's urgent prayers had 
 made her yield to him as they parted at the garden gate. 
 " He gave you this ! " she cried. " It was false ! it was 
 very false ! " 
 
 " And, indirectly, it contradicted his own account," 
 said Miss Dash wood. "No girl, not the most ignorant, 
 the most forward, ever gave such a gift as that to a man 
 unless he sued for it. Don't misunderstand me, however," 
 
344 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 she added, " by thinking that Lord Feltham brought his 
 love-tokens to me, and boasted of them in cold blood. 
 Of that, I should hope, for his own sake, even his vanity 
 is incapable. As far as the ribbon first coming into my 
 hands goes, I must confess it was my fault. I was in a 
 miserable temper one day (it was quite early in my en- 
 gagement, and Arthur had met us together and congrat- 
 ulated me, poor fellow ! without a quiver on his lips,) a 
 temper in which the only hope of distraction lies in 
 making some one else as miserable as oneself, and so 
 when Feltham wanted to begin the accustomed love-mak- 
 ing I drew myself away from him that I always do in 
 spirit, mind, if not openly and told him I was convinced 
 he did not really care an atom for me, that his heart was 
 with his first pastoral, simple love, and so on. You know 
 no, you don't know, the kind of way one has of tor- 
 menting, without really alienating, any man who is fool 
 enough to be tormented. He listened to me a long time 
 without being much moved ; at last, when I had said 
 something very bitter, he jumped up and the blood flew 
 into his foolish face, and he asked me, very hot and nerv- 
 ous, how he could prove to me that he loved me, and that 
 my suspicions were wrong. 'Give me up whatever relics 
 you possess of your first foolish love,' I cried. 'Not the 
 letters, for it would bore me to death even to look at 
 them, but everything else. I won't believe you care for 
 me if you don't promise to give up all the girl's presents 
 to me at once.' 
 
 " He looked irresolute, so I held my handkerchief to 
 my face, and then well then, naturally, he promised. 
 He had but one relic, he said, one poor and worthless gift, 
 which it would have been better for him to have destroy- 
 ed with his own hands ; however, as I wished it, I should ' 
 have it, and I had it, of course, that night. Esther, how 
 I hate weakness in men ! A man of common honesty 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 345 
 
 ought to have given me up sooner than have let me touch 
 what had belonged to another woman. Don't you think 
 so?" 
 
 But Esther made no answer. She was not in a condi- 
 tion to speak. Not alone her faith in Oliver that had 
 never been strong but her belief in all love, her hope 
 in life, her faith in Paul, seemed ebbing from her fast, as 
 she sat there with her own little faded neck-ribbon in her 
 hand. Even as her first girlish love had been betrayed 
 and died, so, a voice seemed to say to her, would her pres- 
 ent one. And love was her life ; and all the feelings at 
 which Jane Dash wood sneered were the feelings she con- 
 sidered holiest and best worth possessing; and if this 
 new creed were really true and the old one hollow, she 
 felt it would be a very good thing indeed just to die at 
 this moment with the little relic of her girlish life in her 
 hand, and the passion so warm and strong and full of vi- 
 tality yet in her heart. If she lived and found Paul 
 worthless, what should hinder her from becoming like 
 Miss Dash wood or Mrs. Scott? 
 
 " You are half-asleep, Esther," broke in Jane's voice, 
 " and it is just like my selfishness to keep you here listen- 
 ing to things about which you cannot possibly feel any in- 
 terest. Go off to your bed, dear," and she leant over 
 and kissed the girl's flushed cheek ; " you ought to have 
 been there two hours ago at least only just tell rne be- 
 fore you go what you think I ought to do with poor Phil- 
 lis's neck-ribbon ? " 
 
 " Burn it," said Esther, curtly. " If you like I will do 
 it for you." And she rose and held her hand out to the 
 fire. 
 
 "I well " Miss Dash wood hesitated "perhaps it is 
 best so after all ; Lord Feltham is not likely ever to ask 
 me for the thing again." 
 
 "Not at all likely," returned Esther, with a laugh ; " he 
 15* 
 
346 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 regarded it simply as a trophy of the woman who had 
 loved him, not as a relic of the woman he had loved. 
 Let us hope that Phillis has outlived the remembrance of 
 her folly as utterly as he has." 
 
 And then she dropped the ribbon into the fire, and 
 stood and watched patiently until the last shred of its 
 frail fabric had consumed away into ashes. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 DANGEROUS. 
 
 PERHAPS there are few more edifying scenes in the 
 drama of social life than that afforded by two thorough 
 women of the world who have been intimate, who have 
 clashed, and who are now living, and purposing to live, 
 on terms of great affection and esteem. How they meet, 
 how they kiss, how they admire each other's dresses ! how 
 they stab, how they wound, how they injure in every pos- 
 sible way, and how they smile amidst it all ! 
 
 Men quarrel grossly somewhat as inferior animals 
 . quarrel : an insult, a blow ; a sarcasm, a direct reply ; . a 
 rivalry, a definite estrangement. In a woman's feuds 
 there is the essentially human element the capacity 
 for feigning, for ambuscading, for patient, long-suffering 
 hatred, for the outpouring of sudden deadly venom 
 months, years, after the first wound has, to the eyes of 
 careless beholders, healed. 
 
 Women are better lovers of the other sex,- and better 
 haters of their own, than men ; who, among other mascu- 
 line qualities, are really capable of genuine friendship and 
 of genuine forgiveness. If you have offended a commonly- 
 honest man, and he is once able to get over the offence 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 347 
 
 and take your hand, I don't think you have more to fear 
 from him than from another; but let a woman injure a 
 woman, in anything pertaining to men, and show me one 
 solitary case in which hearty, absolute forgiveness is the 
 result. 
 
 I am cynical, you say ; this is a one-sided view of hu- 
 man nature : there are women who take delight in each 
 other's success, who absent themselves at opportune times, 
 that their friend may marry the man they themselves 
 love. Ah, well, I have heard of all these things in fiction, 
 and in pretty little poems also, but I have not found them 
 confirmed by what I have read of women in history, nor 
 by any experience I have gleaned in contact with my 
 kind. When I meet with such generosity in life I will 
 gladly bear witness yes, on that moment I will sit down 
 and write and publish some book wherein my new expe- 
 rience shall be frankly, generously recorded. Until then, 
 I must speak of things as I find them. 
 
 Novelists, at best, are one of the doubtful benefits of 
 an advanced stage of civilization ; but what would novel- 
 ists be if, from highest to lowest, each one of them did 
 not speak his own small personal experience of men and 
 women to the world. How would a naturalist be for- 
 warding science, who, after a careful, minute investiga- 
 tion of the habits, say, of a Chimpanzee ape, should de- 
 clare " these are not what a Chimpanzee's domestic mor- 
 als ought to be ; let me rather ascribe to him the charm- 
 ing instincts and affections of a Kooloo-kamba ? " Why, 
 such a man's testimony would be that of a fool. Let him 
 describe the Chimpanzees he has seen ; let a novelist de- 
 scribe the men and women he has seen ; and let other 
 historians paint the habits of the virtuous Kooloo-kambas, 
 or of the idealized, passionless creatures of the human 
 species across whose path a kindly Providence may have 
 cast them. 
 
34:8 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 It was a year or two before the commencement of this 
 story that Mrs. Strangways first carne across Paul Chi- 
 chester, thoroughly by accident, in the box of a mutual 
 friend at the opera. Paul was then much as I have pre- 
 sented him to you ; moody, fitful, and wearing an exceed- 
 ingly threadbare coat ; but in one of those eccentric fem- 
 inine caprices which no sane man would even so much as 
 attempt to solve, Mrs. Strangways fell in love no, I am. 
 loath to use that word Mrs. Strangways fell into a fan- 
 cy for him. 
 
 She was in the zenith of her power then ; a dozen men 
 in the house would have given months of patient hard 
 work to obtain but half of the looks which she accorded 
 to Paul's unconscious face that first night. And she knew 
 that he was indifferent, and liked him the more for it ; 
 and the flatteries of men whose attention, up to that time, 
 had seemed the one thing in London worth coveting, be- 
 came suddenly stale, flat, and unprofitable in her sight > 
 and when she went home it was to dream, not as usual 
 of the people who had envied her successes, and of the 
 instrument by which the successes had been won, but of 
 one sombre unknown face, of one low voice, which had 
 not spoken above a dozen words into her ear. As much 
 as it was in such a nature to feel a regard in which no 
 small vanity, no idea of personal triumph could enter^ 
 Mrs. Strangways did feel it, in those early days, for Paul. 
 
 With her resources and her determination, she was not 
 long in bringing him to her house. " Mr. Chichester will 
 not go to parties," said the friend in whose box she had 
 seen him : " the opera is the only place of amusement to 
 which he ever goes, and even there his visits are rare. 
 That you saw him once in rny box is a matter of purest 
 accident. We are old friends of his father's family, and 
 about twice a year he cornes in, unexpectedly, as he did 
 last night, to dine with us. For the rest, we don't even 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 349 
 
 know where Paul Chichester lives. Notes left for him at 
 such a stationer's in New Bond Street find him." 
 
 Notes left at that stationer's in Now Bond Street very 
 soon did find him ; invitations to dinner, invitations to 
 morning concerts, invitations to evening parties ; every 
 kind of invitation with which a man's temptation can be 
 compassed. He refused them all, systematically ; that 
 Mrs. Strangwa} r s expected ; and then he came to call at 
 the house. I believe he only meant, in his heart, to leave 
 a card ; but fate which certainly does seem to assist 
 unworthy persons as well as good ones fate willed that 
 at the very moment when he was standing, rather irreso- 
 lutely, at Mrs. Strangways' door, Mrs. Strangways her- 
 self returned from her afternoon ride, and Paul, as a mat- 
 ter of simple courtesy, had to assist her from her horse, 
 and then accompany her into the house. 
 
 It was just in the dusk of a'winter's afternoon, and in- 
 stead of ordering lights, Mrs. Strangways stirred up the 
 fire into a ruddy blaze, and seating herself on a low ot- 
 toman beside it, began to talk to Paul as if she had known 
 him twenty years at least. Her lithe and rounded figure, 
 her mass of falling golden hair never showed to greater 
 beauty than when she was en amazone. She looked doubly 
 beautiful by the kindly aid of this soft light, and height- 
 ened by every charm of a voice and manner that more 
 than a dozen years had trained to perfection in the science 
 of seduction. 
 
 When Paul found himself in the cold street, walking 
 home to his hard prosaic life, that night it did come upon 
 him, strongly, that there are things sweeter than duty in 
 this world ; that he was acting quixotically in giv- 
 ing up all the rest of humanity for the sake of the one 
 poor blighted life that happened to have a moral claim 
 upon him ; that and here lay the most dangerous temp- 
 tation of all it might, at least, lighten his dark, dull ex- 
 
350 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 istence to look occasionally at the world into which he 
 should nevermore in reality enter ; it would enable him to 
 work better, more heartily, more genially, if sometimes 
 once or twice in a month he were to abandon himself 
 to the perilous pleasure of gazing upon the refined and 
 lovely face, of listening to the gentle syren accents of the 
 woman he had left. 
 
 In another month he had become intimate with her. 
 Only at certain hours on certain days, was he free ; but 
 every one of these hours (all twilight ones) he gave to 
 Mrs. Strangways, who invariably remained at home and 
 alone when she knew that he was coming, There was no 
 one to interfere with their intimacy. Mr. Strangways 
 was abroad ; friends or children never entered the room 
 when Paul was in it. Everything was against him ; the 
 circumstances, the time of meeting, his own isolated life, 
 his companion's only too evident preference for his soci- 
 ety. And still his head continued sane, his heart whole. 
 
 He was not a man to love through, or, consequently, 
 to be won by, the senses alone. That dim-lighted, 
 luxurious little drawing-room, with its voluptuous atmos- 
 phere of hot-house flowers, its pictures, its statuettes; 
 Mrs. Strangways, in all the abandon of her dangerous 
 loveliness, were wholly insufficient to compass Paul's en- 
 slavement by themselves. Had mind, had soul, had 
 genuine passion, even, suddenly arisen, Phoenix-like, from 
 that merely lovely shell of hers in addition to all its un- 
 deniable physical charms, I cannot take upon myself to 
 say that his strength of will would have been superhuman. 
 As it was, he never, no, not for one moment, stood upon 
 the threshold of danger. 
 
 For a man like him to fall into an entanglement from 
 which principle, from which reason alike held him back, 
 some part of his own better nature must, from the onset, 
 be enlisted against himself. He must honor, even while 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 351 
 
 he dishonors ; he must take refuge against that contempt 
 which is the deatn of love by dwelling on or imagining, 
 whatever of gold is separable from the clay whereof his 
 idol is made. 
 
 But Paul, from the first, knew that there was no gold in 
 Mrs. Strangways. He was too worldly-wise, too shrewd, 
 not to perceive that all her best poses, moral as well as 
 physical, were poses that had been gone through a hundred 
 times before. He was too fresh, too genuine of heart, 
 not to detect the false ring, the base a\loy of Palais Royal 
 gold, discernible through all her most exalted sentiments 
 and little childish outbursts of self-sacrifice and self- 
 forgetfulness. 
 
 As a beautiful picture, as an all-but-finished actress, he 
 admired her ; as a charming companion the zest of 
 novelty yet upon their acquaintance he sought her ; as 
 a woman, however artificial, however erring, he liked her 
 and would have spoken well, of her till he died, for her 
 undisguised preference for himself. More than this she 
 had it not in her to influence him. Just at that particular 
 time, the ice of long habit broken, his imagination warm- 
 ing around subjects so long forbidden, Paul Chichester's 
 loyalty might easily have been estranged, and by a far 
 plainer woman, one far less skilled in pleasing than Mrs. 
 Strangways. But it was not to be so. Mrs. Strangways 
 continued his sole acquaintance, and for Mrs. Strangways 
 he never felt one spark of genuine love, or even of that 
 other compound of selfish pasion and selfish vanity which 
 men and women of the world are accustomed to dignify 
 by the name. 
 
 She failed, and, as a matter of course, was sensible of 
 her failure, and yet she did not hate him! He was so de- 
 void of vanity, so thorough, so manly, so delicate in all 
 his intercourse with her, that even Mrs. Strangways heart 
 could not keep from liking him under the very assurance 
 
852 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 of her own defeat. She had begun by wishing to enslave 
 him ; she ended by being for at least six weeks en- 
 slaved ; yes, and guilty though such a feeling must, of 
 necessity, be, by about the honestest influence of all her 
 poor, false, wasted, frivolous life. At the end of these six, 
 weeks it occurred to Paul that he was acting as he had 
 no longer any right to do in coming so often to see her ; 
 a look, a word, a tone, something, I scarce know what, on 
 Mrs. Strangways' part, conveyed this knowledge to him, 
 and he at once began to make his visits more rare. She 
 was not quite sure of him as yet ; not quite sure that his 
 coldness was not feigned part of that same game she 
 had herself so often played out and tired of, and by dint 
 of much exertion and many subtle manceuvers she suc- 
 ceeded in inducing him to come to a large ball at her 
 house. If he was using one of the ordinary weapons in 
 such warfare, she would bring forward the acknowledged 
 best system of counter-attack. Mr. Chichester should see 
 the woman towards whom he would profess a waning in- 
 terest surrounded, courted, admired by a score of other 
 men. 
 
 He saw her so ; and whatever poor remains of his first 
 feelings for her yet lingered they received their death-blow 
 that night. Drest, excited, flushed with success, Mrs. 
 Strangways actually repulsed him. His feelings towards 
 a woman he had worshipped would not have been height- 
 ened by seeing her an object of passing devotion from a 
 roomful of other men. Personal vanity must be predom- 
 inant in a man whose love can be rekindled by such small 
 jealousy as this; and of personal vanity Paul Chichester 
 had singularly little. Mrs. Strangways, floating before 
 him in her ball-dress, possessed successively by a dozen 
 and a half of partners in those hot and crowded dances, 
 was a person with whom he had, simply, no concern, no 
 interest whatsoever. He might see her again by her own 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 353 
 
 fireside in the twilight; might, accidentally, fall foack into 
 his old liking for her at such a place and at such an hour. 
 At this ball she was less than nothing to him ; and, hours 
 before Mrs. Strangways' wearied head was laid upon its 
 pillow, he had stolen away unseen, got back to his home, 
 and forgotten her and her ball and all belonging to her 
 in a cool and dreamless sleep. 
 
 She knew from that night upon what footing they were 
 to stand to each other ; and still she did not hate him ; 
 nay, more, she did not strive or even wish to hate him. 
 In the most lost and humiliated lives we know that one 
 strong, I had almost said one pure, passion will occasion- 
 ally God alone knows how struggle up into being, 
 and exist and have vitality, amid all the corrupt and 
 choking influences of the moral charnel-house in which its 
 unhappy possessor lives. Higher up in the social scale 5 
 in a class not reputed guilty, the class to which Mrs. 
 Strangways belonged, it does, likewise, occasionally chance 
 that one almost natural, almost noble sentiment will drag 
 on a precarious existence for a time among the hosts of 
 vain, of false, of unworthy ones with which such hearts 
 are filled. 
 
 Of this kind became Mrs. Strangways' regard for Paul. 
 If he chose for weeks together not to come near the house 
 she bore his neglect with patience, and received him, 
 when he did come, with an almost genuine flush of pleas- 
 ure. She hoarded the brief, cold notes he had once or 
 twice occasion to write her (putting them away, not with 
 other, later trophies, but in her little old school-girl's desk, 
 where her father's letters still lay) ; she looked forward, 
 as she could look forward to nothing else, to the rare oc- 
 casions when he consented to go with her to the Opera. 
 When he was with her there she would have turned away 
 from the stereotyped flatteries of the most sought-after 
 man in London to listen to the very plain, and frequent- 
 
54 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ly very scanty words that fell to her from Paul Chiches- 
 ter's lips. 
 
 It would be pretty, in the abstract, to believe that this 
 one better influence, this one fact of honestly liking an 
 honest man who ministered to not one out of all the 
 worse qualities of her nature, would have had some kind 
 of exalting influence upon such a character as Mrs. 
 Strangways'. I speak of facts. It had no exalting in- 
 fluence at all. With him, she could well-nigh act herself 
 into momentary simplicity; holding one of his notes, a 
 book that he had lent her, in her hand, she could almost 
 imagine herself such a woman as might have won his re- 
 gard. At all other times, under the press of all the daily, 
 hourly temptations of her life, Mrs. Strangways was Mrs. 
 Strangways still ; nay, more, the very thought of the 
 one man she had failed to win made her more desperate 
 in the pursuit of every other object in which success 
 was certain and forgetful ness possible. 
 
 It was at this time that, restless and dissatisfied, she 
 persuaded her husband to let their London house and 
 take one in Bath for a year ; and it was there she first 
 made Jane Dash wood's acquaintance. Paul was going up 
 and down to Bath just then (on that unknown quest 
 which afterwards filled Milly's heart with so intense a 
 curiosity,) and almost before Mrs. Strangways' and Jane's 
 first vows of eternal affection had had time to cool he 
 was drawn into enacting the part of Miss Dashwood's 
 accepted suitor. And this leads me back to the remark 
 with which I commenced this chapter namely, the 
 edifying sight afforded by two women of the world who 
 have clashed and are still living on terms of outward 
 affection and esteem. 
 
 All the bitterest feelings of Mrs. Strangways' nature 
 and, mind, her capabilities for hate were immeasurably 
 superior to those for loving were called into passion- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 355 
 
 ate life by Paul's defalcation, m6*ck though his new allegi- 
 ance might be. She detested the sight of Jane's face, the 
 sound of her voice, of her very foot-step ; and still, true to 
 the instinctive rules of strategy which nature seems to 
 "implant in such women's brains, she invited the girl more 
 and more to her house, and professed towards her a con- 
 tinually increasing amount of strong personal affection. 
 
 Jane neither liked Mrs. Strangways nor disliked her, 
 save in a mild contemptuous way, in those early days. 
 Few human beings, either in love, or literature, or any 
 of the great battle-fields of life, dislike a competitor sim- 
 ply because they have outstripped him. It was when her 
 friend had taken up the same weapons in her turn when 
 sharpest of all reprisals, Mrs. Strangways had lured Arthur 
 Peel to her side; and with no mock engagement here, 
 but with the tangible fifty thousand pounds of Miss Lynes 
 that Jane began to feel with what kind of enemy she 
 had "o deal. It was in vain for her to say that her lover 
 did not, in truth, admire Mrs. Strangways; had not, 
 in truth, one thought of selling himself in marriage to 
 Miss Lynes ; the facts remained unalterable. Arthur 
 Peel's daily visits at the Strangways' house, Arthur Peel's 
 public devotion to the heiress, were things as patent 
 now to the circle that knew them in London as they had 
 been a twelvemonth before to the circle that knew them 
 in Bath. 
 
 And still she and Mrs. Strangways kissed when they 
 met, and still Mrs. Strangways was untiring in offering 
 her chaperonage to balls, concerts and operas. She had 
 forgotten Paul ? you suggest: had forgiven Jane for being 
 the cause of his first infidelity? Mrs. Strangways was 
 not a woman either to forget or forgive even in small 
 offences, much less in the one event of her life in which 
 her own heart had made its nearest approach to strong 
 and genuine feeling. Her game was -a sure one. She 
 
356 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 knew every turn of Arthur Peel's weak mind ; was already 
 the recipient of his hopes, the mediator, little wanted, 
 between himself and MissLynes; his confidante in every- 
 thing save the secret jealous attentions which, ever since 
 her engagement with Lord Feltham, he had not ceased to 
 offer to poor Jane. And these Mrs. Strangways divined, 
 and, if it had been in her power, would have furthered. 
 Jane Dash wood should have him to the last to the last ! 
 should believe he loved her up to the very moment when 
 his marriage with Miss Lynes was announced. And 
 
 then 
 
 And then she, Henrietta Strangways, would be avenged ! 
 Before judging her, or any other of the women of our 
 time, too hardly, however, we should in justice remember 
 that the days of secret poisonings, of little venomed pres- 
 ents of gloves and flowers, are over ; and that moral 
 Btabs are really the only ones they can accord to their 
 rivals. Remember, too, that for a temperament like hers 
 the sense of one defeat is more poignant than the recol- 
 lection of a hundred successes ; also, that during all her 
 false and disappointed life the nearest thing to a natural 
 uncalculating affection that she had ever known had been 
 her regard for Paul ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYI. 
 
 LISTENING TO GIUGLINI. 
 
 THREE or four days after Esther Fleming's arrival Jane 
 Dashwood ran one morning into the nursery, where she 
 w T as laboriously striving to impress some rudimentary 
 moral truths upon Miss Natty's mind, and informed her 
 that she was to be led into great and exciting dissipation 
 that very night. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 357 
 
 " Mrs. Strangways writes and proposes to take you and 
 me with her to the Opera. She has made up quite a 
 large party ; and we are all to return to her house to 
 supper afterwards. Good-natured, is it not ? I imagine 
 her reason for inviting us to be twofold first, that I 
 may have the gratification of witnessing Miss Lynes' at- 
 tentions to Arthur during the entire evening ; secondly, 
 that Paul Chichester may be led into going by knowing 
 he will meet you. However, we'R accept. Giuglini is to 
 sing, which you, I suppose, will care for. And I want 
 you to see Arthur and Miss Lynes, and tell me what you 
 think now of the state of affairs between them." 
 
 " If you meet Arthur, I shall tell my papa ! " cries out 
 the enfant terrible. u You know you're not to meet him. 
 You're to marry Lord Feltham, as you've promised. And 
 Miss Fleming isn't going to the Opera. Mamma said 
 last night she didn't approve of governesses being brought 
 out of their place." 
 
 Miss Dash wood rewarded this infantine outburst first 
 by pinching Miss Natty's ear till she screamed, then by 
 silencing her with a huge lump of chocolate (always Miss 
 Scott's prime object of adoration,) and pushing her out 
 of the room. " How I pity you, Esther! With all your 
 good qualities having to train that imp. If I was in 
 your place I should compromise with my conscience at 
 once. Dose her with chocolate till sne was sick, and 
 never attempt to coerce her or teach her anything. You 
 are conscientious ; and, as a natural consequence, at the 
 end of four days you look as pale and harrassed as if you 
 had bad five years of such work. It will do you good to 
 go to-night," she added, kindly. U I have already settled 
 with Milly that we are to accept." 
 
 When Esther left home she had resolved within her- 
 self to accept of no invitation, to partake of no gaieties 
 that might be presented to her. But her heart did cry 
 
358 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 out too strong for resistance to go and hear this opera 
 to run this chance of meeting Paul. She longed, she 
 longed passionately to see him! Her new life, with its 
 round of cold and irksome duties, already weighed upon 
 her. It was not possible for her to think more of Mr. 
 Chichester here than she had done at home wherever 
 she was, was he ever out of her thoughts ? but while she 
 thought of him there had been only a haunting dream ; 
 here, amidst strangers, amidst alien and repulsive tasks,, 
 it amounted almost to sharp and constant pain. And, 
 besides this, she knew now that Oliver did not love 
 had never loved her ; and that knowledge shook her in 
 her belief of all men above all, of Paul. If she could 
 meet him, just feel the pressure of his hand, just feel his 
 eyes upon her, once more, she felt that it must still some- 
 thing of the restless fever in her heart : not for one second 
 re-kindle hope : she regarded Paul, or said to herself that 
 she regarded him, as bound by as strong a tie as marriage, 
 but give her oh, plausible casuistry ! just one thing 
 in life worth living for the feeling that he remembered 
 her, that he regarded her still with somewhat of his an- 
 cient kindness. 
 
 She had learnt of late to school herself sufficiently to 
 keep down the blood that would some weeks before have 
 leapt into her face at the mention of Paul's name; but 
 she at once professed herself to be strangely anxious to 
 hear the " Trovatore," and, above all, to hear Giuglini sing 
 in it ; and during all the remainder of that day many 
 and biting remarks as to the folly of persons craving after 
 excitement out of their reach were dealt out to her by 
 Mrs. Scott. 
 
 Milly was not, I think, more positively bad -hearted than 
 other women, but her littleness of character made her an 
 essentially cruel task-mistress to any person who chanced 
 to be under her power. There are Aspasias, there are 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 359 
 
 Brinvilliers, by the score, who are generous and* faithful 
 mistresses to their own dependents ; I never knew a wo- 
 man of the viceless virtuless type of Millicent Scott who 
 would not be a tyrant where she could. Natty, for very 
 physical fear, she durst not, her husband she could not, 
 coerce : Esther, as poor, as dependent, as intrinsically 
 superior to herself in all things, seemed to Millicent's 
 moral sense the most fitting subject in the world for house- 
 hold subjection. And then her training under Mrs. Dash- 
 wood enabled her to do this kind of work with such unc- 
 tion ! with so strong an intermingling of principle ! with 
 so much virulence ! with so many tests ! 
 
 It was not for her to dictate ; but she did feel it her 
 duty to advise. A woman who, like Mrs. Strangways, 
 neglected all the most sacred duties of life, was not, in 
 her opinion, a fitting chaperon for any unknown, unpro- 
 tected young woman. Was it was it possible that Es- 
 ther could attend to her next day's duties ? could take 
 dearest little Natty, as she, Milly, so especially desired, to 
 early service, if the quiet routine of duty were once bro- 
 ken in upon by irregular hours and false excitement ? 
 
 " Milly, much as I love her, is a thorough compound of 
 papa and of Mrs. Dash wood, too," said Jane, as they were 
 driving along on their way to Mrs. Strangways' house. 
 " A perfect specimen of the mingled selfishness and 
 hypocrisy which our education so studiously sought to 
 foster in us. Well for her that she has married a man 
 who, with all his temper, all his obtuseness, doesn't cant ! 
 I never liked Marmy so well as when I watched his face 
 while Millicent was improving the occasion by bullying 
 you at dinner. He has, at least, the instincts of his kind, 
 I suppose, and knows, though he could give no reason for 
 knowing, that you will be good to the brat." 
 
 Esther was silent, both then and during the entire 
 drive. She had not felt she had scarcely heard one 
 
3GO THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 of Mrs. Scott's strictures upon her conduct. She was 
 unconscious of Jane's good-natured efforts to take away 
 the edge of their bitterness. All thought, all feeling, all 
 consciousness, was absorbed in one nervous half-hope, 
 half-sickening dread of seeing Paul ; and by the time they 
 were ushered into Mrs. Strangways' drawing-room, this 
 feeling had increased to such an extent that she was 
 forced to take Jane Dash wood's arm she, ordinarily so 
 calm and self-possessed and cling closely to it for sup- 
 port. 
 
 A glance round the room told her that Paul was not 
 there, and her heart beat free again. Mrs. Strangways 
 and Miss Lynes were sitting alone, their coffee-cups in 
 their hands, and evidently enjoying the interchange of 
 familiar thought before the fire. 
 
 " So good of you to come ! " cried Mrs. Strangways, as 
 she rose and advanced with both hands cordially out- 
 stretched. "Jane, dear," and then an interlude of kisses, 
 " I havu't seen you for an age ! Miss Fleming, I am so 
 very glad to renew our acquaintance. You remember 
 Miss Lynes, do you not? No? then let me introduce 
 you again. Miss Fleming, Miss Lynes." 
 
 The heiress half rose from her chair, and slightly un- 
 closed her eyelids at Esther, extending at the same time 
 a cool three fingers to Jane. Six months in London un- 
 der Mrs. Strangways' care for they now lived together, 
 Miss Lynes' ample means greatly benefiting the Strang- 
 ways' manage had not improved this young person's 
 tone. She was beginning to see what money really is, 
 not only among a limited provincial circle, but in Lon- 
 don. She was growing accustomed to see pretty and 
 high-born women neglected, for her sake, by men whose 
 attentions rich and pretty and high-born were alike eager 
 to win ; and the effect was precisely what this kind of in- 
 fluence never fails to bring about in a character of innate, 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR W1TES. 
 
 mean vulgarity. She gave herself airs ; she affected to 
 treat with coolness women into whose society she plumed 
 herself in her heart at being admitted ; she played fast 
 and loose with half a dozen suitors, Arthur Peel included, 
 at a time ; she displayed her wealth with disgusting os- 
 tentation at all times and seasons ; she led her intimate 
 friend, Mrs. Strangways, a life which really, in the general 
 summing up of accounts, ought justly to be put against a 
 great many of the sins and shortcomings of that imper- 
 fect lady's life. 
 
 And she got to dress worse than ever. Have you not 
 remarked that in some persons bad taste is cumulative ? 
 strengthening with years, fed and kept up by the assist- 
 ance of first-class tailors, milliners, and all other appli- 
 ances which its possessor may have at hand. One great 
 feature of Miss Lynes was that she rustled so prodigious- 
 ly. Rising up now, preparatory to putting on her mag- 
 nificent swans'-downed opera-cloak, there was a sound as 
 of the whirling of autumn leaves from many forests. 
 Surely the Lyons fabricant who turned out that resplen- 
 dent inch-thick yellow silk must have been told it was 
 for an English heiress, who desired that the world should 
 not only see but hear the outward evidences of her wealth. 
 Mrs. Strangways smoothed down its bristling splendor 
 with a loving hand, adjusted the heavy burnous carefully 
 over the broad shoulders, and then took a glance only 
 one furtive glance at the image of herself, as she ap- 
 peared standing there at Miss Lynes' side. 
 
 It was a sufficiently striking contrast. Mrs. Strang- 
 ways never looked better than in the dress which she wore 
 to-night black velvet. Her undulating yellow hair was 
 braided back plain from her face, leaving only a profu- 
 sion of little natural curls, or rather circlets than curls, 
 upon the temples ; a diamond tiara was placed very for- 
 ward upon her forehead ; diamonds set, like the tiara, com- 
 16 
 
362 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 pletely a jour quivered upon her matchless throat and 
 arms. Looking at her you felt that Helen, Cleopatra, 
 Guinevere, all the women who have set kings and king- 
 doms in arms for their sake, must have been cast in some- 
 what such a mould as this. Dark eyes they may have 
 possessed ; but I am convinced all the real conquerors of 
 the world the women who have conquered heroes 
 must have had the same luxuriant masses of supple wav 
 ing yellow hair hair whose slightest touch is a caress ! 
 
 Poor Esther remembered strongly at this moment Paul 
 having once told her that his admiration was for fair 
 women ; and her heart sank, involuntarily, as she looked 
 at Mrs. Strangways' superb beauty, and remembered that 
 in the shadow of that beauty Paul was to meet her again 
 for the first time. Women of ordinary looks, or possess- 
 ed, liKe Esther, of a beauty in which intellect is supreme, 
 are invariably far more jealously afraid than they need be 
 of the mere sensuous loveliness of other women. They 
 have no idea how should they have? how little such 
 loveliness interferes with their prerogative. Let a wo- 
 man like Mrs. Strangways have known a man three weeks 
 without enslaving him, and, as far as that man is concern- 
 ed, she is less to be dreaded than half the little quiet, 
 plainish, Jane Eyre-like women whom you may count 
 among your friends. Women won't believe this: they 
 think that men, yes, even their own husbands and lovers, 
 must always be ready to succumb, heart and mind and 
 soul, to any very handsome siren who chooses to exert 
 her power; but they are wrong. The same beauty does 
 not charm all senses ; and when, by some hidden want, it 
 fails to do so, it is oftentimes all but repulsive, I mean as 
 regards any feeling of love. 
 
 " We must send into the dining-room for Mr. Peel," said 
 Mrs. Strangways, as she consulted the time-piece. " Torn, 
 of course, won't go ; he never will go anywhere at the 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 353 
 
 last ; but it would not be fair to deprive Miss Fleming, 
 who has never heard Giuglini, of any of the opera." And 
 she rang, and desired the servant to let the gentlemen 
 know that the carriage was already waiting. 
 
 " And where is Paul ? " asked Jane, bringing in his 
 name to hide the blush and tremor which would over- 
 come her still whenever she expected Arthur Peel. " I 
 thought Paul was to have dined with you, and that we 
 should all go together." 
 
 " Who can rely upon Mr. Chichester ? " answered Mrs. 
 Strangways, with a careless little shrug of her shoulders. 
 "I, for one, have quite ceased ever to think he will do 
 any one thing that he is asked to do. ' If he possibly 
 can get away from his other engagements, he will join 
 us at the Opera,' he wrote me word this morning ; and I 
 suppose with that vague hope we must all," and she 
 glanced at Esther, "strive to be content. Mr. Peel," as 
 that gentleman entered the room, " how good of you to 
 answer my summons so quickly ! Tom not coming, of 
 course? I thought not. I forget whether you made 
 Miss Fleming's acquaintance in Bath. Mr. Peel, Miss 
 Fleming." 
 
 Arthur shook hands with Esther and with Jane, and 
 then, in obedience to a look from Mrs. Strangways, offer- 
 ed his arm to the heiress. As Esther followed them down 
 the stairs, and marked the pretty imbecilities which Mr. 
 Peel whispered, with as much warmth as his chronic 
 state of boredom would allow, into Miss Lynes' ear the 
 tone of voice in which Miss Lynes deprecated his flatter- 
 ies by such remarks as, " Oh, la, Mr. Peel ! now, how can 
 you ? You silly creature, I declare I won't go in the 
 same carriage with you, if you go on in this way ! " and 
 the like as she marked all this, it occurred to her very 
 forcibly that, however jealous Arthur Peel might be of 
 Lord Feltham however much he might yet, at unseen 
 
364 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 times, haunt poor Jane's path one fixed resolve was in 
 his heart to possess the fifty thousand pounds of Miss 
 Lynes. 
 
 And she knew also before they had been at the Opera 
 half an hour, that Mrs. Strangways was not indifferent 
 about Paul Chichester's coming ; that Mrs. Strangways 
 was dissatisfied, though the box was beset with men all 
 eager to pay her attention ; that her eyes glanced quick- 
 ly towards the door whenever it opened, and then sought 
 to read upon her, Esther Fleming's face, some signs of the 
 same feeling which disturbed her own peace. 
 
 [What intuitive faculty oftentimes corrector in its 
 results than any effort of reason is it that makes un- 
 taught people guess so near the truth when they have to 
 judge of things and persons essentially artificial ? No 
 one could be stronger than Jane Dash wood at improving 
 upon slight suspicions, supplying small links when they 
 were wanted to hasten the fall of a suspected person's 
 good name, and such work. And yet, with all her quick- 
 ness, Jane Dashwood was as often wrong as right in her 
 judgments upon the most ordinary motives, the most ordi- 
 nary emotions, of her compeers ; while Miss Fleming (who 
 knew no more of the world of such people as these than 
 De Voltaire's " Ingenu " knew of the world of the Pere de 
 la Chaise and of Monseigneur de St. Pouange) Miss 
 Fleming saw clearly, after half an hour's- quiet watchful- 
 ness what every one of her companions was driving at ! 
 Perhaps an illustration may serve as an answer. If you 
 go, on a pure winter's day, into the sitting-room of an or- 
 dinary German habitation, crowded with men and women, 
 you are sensible, at first, not of impending asphyxia alone, 
 but of all the distinct abominations the tobacco-smoke, 
 the baked air, the garlic, the humanity which goto make 
 up that most unclean atmosphere. In an hour's time if 
 you once overcome your nature and stay you not only 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 breathe the vitiated air like the rest, but are unconscious 
 of your own diminished vitality : all the sharp recoil of 
 disgust, all the fine discrimination of an hour ago gone : 
 you are one of them. But I only throw out the illustra- 
 tion. I don't moralize.] 
 
 As time went on, however, as she felt that the moment 
 drew near in which she and Paul should meet, all recol- 
 lections of the people she was playing a part amongst, 
 all outward perceptions even of that crowded house and 
 of the mock, or stage actors, became blank to Esther. 
 Since they parted, nearly a year ago, she had so incessant- 
 ly brooded over Paul, and over her own love for him, and 
 over her vague hopes, and her distinct despair she had 
 so overlaid reality with dreams, as scarcely to remember, at 
 last, the manner of their parting the footing upon which, 
 in actual truth, they stood to each other. But now every 
 word of that last twilight interview returned unbidden 
 upon her mind ; and above all, and with cruel clearness, 
 did she remember that she had all but offered to give up 
 her life to him if he would accept it, and that he had not 
 he had not accepted it ; he had parted from her 
 coldly. She felt again the old desolation close upon her, 
 as she watched his figure fade in the distant street ; felt 
 again the passionate anguish with which she had prayed 
 God that night to pardon her, as she swore while she liv- 
 ed &at she would be true to Paul and to her new faith. 
 
 And so much misery a year of never-ceasing suffer- 
 ing just because Mr. Chichester had chosen to amuse 
 himself by making her a half declaration at parting a 
 declaration which meant nothing at the time, and which 
 he had probably never taken the trouble to remember 
 since ! She had just repeated some such form as this ; 
 involuntarily putting it into words, as people do when, 
 by mechanical process, they think to overcome unwelcome 
 emotion, when the door of the box opened quietly, and 
 Paul Chichester took the vacant place close beside her. 
 
366 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Mrs.,. Strangways looked round, and her face alone 
 would have told Esther who it was that arrived ; but she 
 knew it already. Why do none of the persons who con- 
 cern themselves about communication with the spiritual 
 world seize hold upon and make much of this wonderful 
 prescience by which human beings in love become cog- 
 nizant of each other's presence ? To have messages from 
 departed friends written in large letters and doubtful 
 grammar upon one's arm, is an experience that only falls 
 to the few. All men or women who have loved can look 
 back upon a time when, without hearing, or seeing, or 
 knowing, they felt the presence of the person loved, 
 whether that presence entered into church, ball-room, 
 theatre, synagogue, or any other building. 
 
 Is the affinity of the spirit or of the flesh ? I don't know 
 in the least ; I know that it exists, and Esther Fleming knew 
 it, too ; and in the wild thrill of her pulse, the sudden tight- 
 ening of her breath that it occasioned, quite forgot that it 
 was her duty to look round and bid Paul welcome, and 
 hide, by a cool, unconscious manner, all these ridiculous 
 tumults which it is so utterly indecent for young women 
 living in the world to feel. 
 
 So Paul Chichester leant over her, and spoke first. 
 " You are too absorbed in Giuglini to take any notice of 
 me, Miss Fleming ? " 
 
 " Giuglini I have not been listening to him," and then 
 she turned and gave Paul all the glowing delight of her 
 honest face. " Oh, Mr. Chichester, I am so glad to see 
 you again ! " 
 
 Their hands, their eyes met : and the curtain rose upon 
 precisely the same scene of the great tragedy, love, where- 
 on it had fallen twelve months before. 
 
 " You told me then you would never see me again," 
 said Esther, " and you were wrong. I knew it at the 
 time." 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 357 
 
 "And what has made me wrong?" Paul whispered. 
 " How is it that you are here, and alone ? " 
 
 "I have come to live with Millicent, as governess to 
 Mr. Scott's little daughter," answered Esther, demurely. 
 
 " Of course. I have heard that already ; but my ques- 
 tion is not answered. How is it that you are away from 
 home, and yet alone? " 
 
 " Because all, all that I spoke to you about once is over. 
 Don't you remember I told you when I saw you last that 
 it should be over ? It had no real life in it from the first^ 
 Mr. Chichester, and it was a happy thing for both of us 
 when it died outright. The the other person is going 
 to marry some one far better suited to him than I could 
 ever have been, and I " 
 
 "And you ? " said Paul in an eager whisper that made 
 the blood start, whether she willed it or no, to her face. 
 
 " I am free, Mr. Chichester, free and alone, as I intend 
 to remain during the remainder of my life." 
 
 "Oh!" And then there was along silence. One of 
 those silences which, placed as they were, and with music 
 stirring the pulses, and with the perfect solitude of a 
 crowded assemblage all conspiring to assist, will go fur- 
 ther, as you know, towards maturing love into passion 
 than any number of words that the most eloquent human 
 tongue could compress into a similar space of time. 
 
 " When do you go out ? " said Paul, at length, with no 
 particular relevance, as it seemed, either to the opera or 
 the rupturing of Esther's engagement. " I mean where, 
 and .at what hour, do you take the young Scott out to 
 walk ? " 
 
 " I take the young Scott in the Square from twelve 
 till one on fine days," answered Esther. " That is, if 
 Milly has nothing else for me to do. The child gets her 
 afternoon walk with the nursemaid." 
 
 " And is that all of the open air that you are to have 
 every day?-" 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "I suppose so, but it is quite enough. I don't care in 
 the least for walking in these dull London streets." 
 
 " What made you come, then ?" 
 
 "Mr. Chichester!',' 
 
 "What made you leave your wholesome country home 
 and come to London ? You had better have stayed where 
 you were." 
 
 "I don't think so. The Dash woods told you, I dare 
 say, that Mrs. Tudor left me nothing when she died. My 
 friends in Devonshire are too poor for me to burthen them 
 always. If I would live I must work and I like work," 
 she added, with a quick instinct of pride. 
 
 " Then why not work in the country ? It would have 
 been far better for you." 
 
 She hesitated : she looked down. 
 
 " I heard of no one who wanted me in the country. I 
 wrote to the Dash woods I mean, I mean I wished to 
 come to London." 
 
 Paul scrutinized her narrowly. Lit up by the first 
 flush of meeting, he had not noticed how much her face 
 had changed during the last year. He saw it plainly 
 now. Her cheeks were paler ; the expression of her 
 mouth was more sad; her eyes looked at you with the 
 look of a woman's eyes, not a child's. What had changed 
 her ? What feeling but one ever suddenly initiates a 
 girl of nineteen into the maturity of life and of suffer- 
 ing? 
 
 "You were quite wrong in wishing to come to London, 
 Miss Fleming. All children, and indeed young people 
 generally, imagine they have a longing for great cities, 
 and what do they gain when they corne ? What do they 
 gain, and how much do they lose? However," he added, 
 -and, I must confess, a good deal in answer to the wistful 
 disappointment of her eyes, " I must not complain of 
 your resolution, however much I may think that the 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 369 
 
 country would be best for yourself. I hope, now that we 
 live within a few miles of each other again, I shall be 
 allowed sometimes to come and see you as I used in 
 Bath ? " 
 
 After which remark, as Esther vouchsafed no answer, 
 they steadily gave their attention to the last act of "II 
 Trovatore ; " while one of them, at least, began to realize 
 how marvellously like heaven sitting at the back of a 
 crowded opera-box and listening to Giuglini's singing 
 can be. 
 
 "Non ti scordar di me," Paul whispered, as he put on 
 Miss Fleming's cloak for her when the opera was over. 
 And then she felt that she had an actual tangible happi- 
 ness something which, whatever the future might bring, 
 was yet hers inalienably to cling to until she should see 
 him again. 
 
 One of the most pathetic things about a hopeless or 
 forbidden passion is the foreboding with which it constant- 
 ly looks onward, and, as it were, forearms itself against 
 the coming dark hour. Don't you remember the sonnet 
 in which the mighty hand that touched every remotest 
 spring of human love and human suffering paints this 
 very phase of which I try to speak in dull and blunder- 
 ing words 
 
 " Against that time, if ever that time come, 
 When I shall see thee frown on my 'defects." 
 
 Happy love, tending calmly onward to its earthly end, 
 knows nothing of this foreboding, this haunting prophetic 
 shadow of the time when all shall be over! And still 
 the law of compensation is unerring. Happy love, from 
 its first dawn to its fruition, knows no such moments as 
 one of these self-torturing, utterly hopeless passions can 
 yield. 
 
 If Esther had been engaged to Paul Chich ester do you 
 16* 
 
370 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 think that careless whisper of his would have occasioned 
 her such wild' rapture, or indeed any rapture at all ? Of 
 course not. It would have been common love-making. 
 
 And common love-making is not a rapturous employ- 
 ment. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 DIAMONDS WTN. 
 
 MRS. STRANGWAYS' supper was a success. The women 
 were all young, or fast, or pretty ; most of them all three ; 
 the champagne was undeniable ; Mr. Strangways had 
 gone to bed. It was a success. Did any of the men 
 and women who assisted at it enjoy themselves ? 
 
 Three, at least, did not. Mrs. Strangways, who, how- 
 ever well other successes were working, could never 
 quite get over the old pain when Paul was present ; Jane 
 Dashwood, who was quite away from Arthur Peel the en- 
 tire evening ; and, lastly, Arthur Peel himself. He took 
 Miss Lynes to supper ; he outshone himself in vacuitous 
 small-talk during the whole time that the meal lasted ; 
 he held undisputed possession of her during that hour es- 
 pecially dear to flirtation, between the time when supper 
 ended and the departure of the guests. And still Arthur 
 Peel's spirit was disquieted within him, and his heart sore. 
 
 The real, stern part of any duty commences with the 
 first positive sacrifice it demands; not in the making up 
 of one's mind to perform it. Arthur Peel had determin- 
 ed, months ago, to give up Jane Dashwood and to mar- 
 ry Miss Lynes ; but, somehow, the enormity of the act 
 had always hitherto been brought before him in a modifi- 
 ed and softened light. Miss Lynes had had other atten- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 371 
 
 tions on, and that had relieved him from a great deal of 
 heavy work ; and Jane especially since her engagement, 
 had been always ready to smile upon him the moment he 
 quitted the odious side of the heiress ; and Mrs. Strang- 
 ways, too, had employed all her finished art to prevent 
 him feeling overmuch the oppressive weight of Miss 
 Lynes' preference. 
 
 But to-night he felt that fate was dead in his favor, and, 
 as I have said, his spirit was disquieted within him. Jane 
 had answered him only by curt monosyllables at the 
 Opera, and flirted outrageously the whole of the rest of 
 the night with his greatest friend, little Tregelly of the 
 Blues. Mrs. Strangways had either looked, or pretended 
 to look, upon his engagement with Miss Lynes as an ac- 
 complished fact, and never came near them or gave him 
 assistance in any way. The heiress herself, wrought up- 
 on by Giuglini's voice or Mr. Strangways' champagne, or 
 both que sais-je f the heiress gave him very plainly 
 to understand that she had had quite enough of the pres- 
 ent unsatisfactory state of affairs, and that unless he 
 could make up his mind she would make up hers, and give 
 the next man on her list, old Morty Delamaine, the bene- 
 fit of the doubt to-morrow morning. 
 
 Now Arthur Peel meant devoutly that he, not Morty 
 Delamaine, should marry Miss Lynes ; and so of course 
 the moment he clearly saw what she meant him to do he 
 did it. Did he wish her to refuse him ? Great heaven ! 
 how could he ? when honor, name, everything that men, 
 even the weakest, the most lost, crave after was to be built 
 up for him by her money ! He fervently wished that she 
 would accept him, marry him, at once ; but when the 
 words that sealed his fate came (she had just taken a 
 huge mouthful of chicken salad and turned her great 
 white face with a look of disgusting, amative exultation 
 full round on his) his heart, little emotional as he was, 
 
372 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 seemed to get cold and heavy as stone. This large lump 
 of eating and drinking, and far worse, loving humanity was 
 his: his, however he might hate her, however he might 
 neglect her. His ! And opposite sat Jane, the only wo- 
 man for whom he had ever known or could know any- 
 thing approaching to love, looking handsomer, of course, 
 than he had ever seen her ; soft, gentle, yet full of animated 
 life ; and engaged to Lord Feltham, and flirting desper- 
 ately oh, desperately, because so quietly ! with little 
 Tregelly, and evidently not caring one jot whether he was 
 making Miss Lynes a passionate last appeal or merely im- 
 ploring her not to make herself sick upon chicken salad. 
 
 Arthur Peel was not sentimental, neither did he possess 
 any greater amount of fine feeling than is ordinarily to be 
 met with among young gentlemen living the life that he 
 led ; but as much acute suffering, as much mental disturb- 
 ance as his not largely-endowed nature could sustain was 
 his portion that night. If the heiress had been only four 
 or five degrees less obtuse, or had taken only four or five 
 fewer glasses of champagne, she must have seen how large 
 a portion of the love-making fell to her share ; how ab- 
 sent were the replies of her beloved in these first rosy 
 moments of legitimate endearment ; how resolutely, fierce- 
 ly fixed were his eyes, not upon her, but upon Jane Dash- 
 wood's face. 
 
 But, happily for her own peace, when you consider the 
 kind of life she was about to purchase for herself, Miss 
 Lynes was now, as at all times, stoutly cased in the triple 
 armor of unrefinement and supreme egotism. Arthur 
 Peel had offered to her, and she had agreed to accept 
 him. How awfully delighted he must be, and how un- 
 worldly she was to take a man without a farthing because 
 she had a fancy for him ! and how good it would be to 
 see Jane Dashwood's face when she should invite her to 
 be her bridesmaid ; and what lovely teeth Mr. Peel ha.d 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 373 
 
 when you caught glimpses of them and of his beautiful 
 red lips beneath that .sweet, silky moustache ! These, I 
 think, were the prominent ideas or emotions that passed 
 through the bride-elect's mind ; and by the time supper 
 was ended, and she was pressing Arthur Peel's arm as he 
 escorted her to the drawing-room, her convictions were 
 settled as to his being the most ardent, most demonstra- 
 tive lover in the world. 
 
 Reader, if you are intimate with any woman of Mrs. 
 Strangways' type, don't you know and knowing, you 
 must appreciate the peculiar, indescribable atmosphere 
 of her small sans f aeon parties ? No uncongenial element 
 enters into them. There are no chaperons, rarely any 
 married men. You have never, by any chance whatever, 
 any music to listen to, or cards to play, or dancing to do. 
 You are never bored. You always stop 'late. Men who 
 would go to no other evening party in London would go 
 to Mrs. Strangways', and go a second and a third time. 
 Men hard as flint during the last ten years of their lives, 
 men who would neither marry nor flirt, nor compromise 
 themselves in any other way whatever, had been known 
 to become as wax in the hands of herself and of her staft 
 on these occasions. 
 
 To-night the spell was at its culminating point. 
 Whether some hearts were heavy or gay, one out of 
 every duo dispersed about the dim recesses of those two 
 little dangerous drawing-rooms meant something ; and 
 think what an enormous proportion this is in a game 
 wherein both sides are never equally earnest, and where, 
 in the vast majority of cases, neither is one whit so ! Lit- 
 tle Tregelly told Jane Dashwood, definitely, at twenty 
 minutes past one A.M. that he would hold himself respon- 
 sible for the consequences if she would break off her en- 
 gagement Tregelly, who until this moment had never 
 approached within a hundred miles of love with any un 
 
374 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 married or marriageable woman before ! Miss Lynes, as 
 you have seen, had obtained fast and irrevocable hold 
 upon Arthur Peel ; and Paul Chichester well, in spite 
 of principle, of fixed resolve, of mere common sense and 
 common honor, Paul, with every word he uttered, was 
 giving poisonous, cruel sustenance to that dream which the 
 unconcealed happiness of poor Esther's face but too plain- 
 ly betrayed to him. 
 
 "You, at least, have enjoyed yourself," whispered Jane 
 Dashwood, as they prepared to depart ; and, as she spoke, 
 she laid her little stone-cold hand upon her friend's. " As 
 I sat listening to all the nonsense that empty fool chose 
 to talk to me I looked at your face and envied you en- 
 vied you the power of believing as you believe Paul's 
 fine false words now ! Esther, stand by me," she added, 
 quickly, and with a ghastly attempt at a smile. " Here 
 comes Mrs. Strangways ; and I know the expression of 
 her face. My hour is come. Arthur is gone ! " 
 
 When was a woman's instinct ever wrong in such a 
 matter ? Mrs. Strangways swept up to their side with 
 her noiseless step, drew Jane's cloak closer, with her own 
 hand, across the miserable, passionately-throbbing breast, 
 hoped they had enjoyed themselves, hoped they would 
 soon accompany her to the Opera again, and then stooped 
 and whispered a word in Miss Dash wood's ear. 
 
 " You look surprised," she remarked, as, notwithstand- 
 ing her own forewarning, notwithstanding training, not- 
 withstanding pride, the color ebbed back out of Jane's 
 face in this bitterest moment of defeat ; " and yet every- 
 body must have seen what was coming. I have looked 
 upon it as settled for so long that when Augusta whis- 
 pered the news to me just now I had really no fresh con- 
 gratulations to offer. Miss Fleming," and she turned to 
 Esther, " I don't know why we should make this any se- 
 cret from you. Mr. Peel is to marry Augusta Lynes," 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 375 
 
 " Esther isn't likely to take any interest in other peo- 
 ple's love-affairs to-night," cried Jane ; and steady though 
 her voice was you could detect quite a hard, unnatural 
 ring in it. " Really the way in which my old friends are 
 forsaking me is fearful. Even though one is engaged it 
 is not a pleasant feeling, is it, Mrs. Strangways, to see the 
 old worshippers kneeling at new shrines ? I never 
 thought Paul's manner could be full of tenderness and 
 petits soins as it has been to-night ; but then Miss Fleming 
 is the first woman except myself whom I have ever 
 seen Paul Chichester in the least admire. Thank you for 
 your chaperonage and pleasant party, clear ; and good- 
 night." 
 
 Arid then they kissed. 
 
 "But for the last time the last time ! " cried Jane, 
 m her paroxysm of childish misery, as they were driving 
 home. "I kept up the farce to the last because I would 
 give her no additional pleasure in her hour of hateful 
 triumph ; but wait till I have had my last interview with 
 Arthur wait till I have met with Arthur Peel once 
 more, and you will see what terms I mean to stand upon 
 with them all." 
 
 " And I'll write to Lord Feltham ! " this burst out a 
 moment or two later " I'll tell him to come home, and 
 I'll marry him yes, before they are married ; and I'll 
 set about getting my trousseau ready to-morrow after- 
 noon, after I have seen Arthur. I'm not going to break 
 my heart: don't pity me, Esther don't pity me! I 
 shall marry Lord Feltham, and be among a set of people 
 to whom all Miss Lynes' money will never admit Mr. 
 Peel; and it will be best so. Esther, he hates her. I 
 should go mad if I didn't know that. He hates, he loathes 
 her, and takes her so, contemptible wretch as he is ! loath- 
 ing and all, for the sake of her money. Great heaven! 
 what men are, that one should go so nigh to breaking 
 one's heart for any of their falsehoods ! " 
 
376 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 When they got home Jane's mood had cooled, and she 
 said all she wanted was to be alone and to sleep. But 
 right through that night, yes, till the next cold winter's 
 day had dawned, Esther heard the sound of Miss Dash- 
 wood's restless footsteps pacing up and down the room 
 above her head. 
 
 And as she listened it was borne in upon her with re- 
 markable distinctness to feel if one so fickle could suffer 
 thus, what she, with all her larger capabilities for misery, 
 would have to go through when her hour of awakening 
 should likewise come ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 A HOLOCAUST. 
 
 MR. ARTHUR PEEL'S face, as he sat alone at breakfast 
 on the morning after Mrs. Strangways' party, was a com- 
 plete unwritten sermon upon the vanity of all human de- 
 sires. 
 
 He had lived, he had worked for one sole object during 
 the last twelve or eighteen months the attainment of 
 Miss Lynes' money: and this was the hour of fruition 
 he had won it. Position, ease, honor from henceforth, in 
 stead of the career of shame and what probably to him 
 was worse of absolute privation, into which he must 
 have followed his brother's footsteps, in a very few more 
 months, had the present Golconda turned out barren to 
 him. He had won. His path was to be from henceforth 
 among the promised places of the earth : and lo ! all 
 seemed suddenly the vanity of vanities to him ; and his 
 Chateau Lafitte was bitter to his taste ; his Cabana un- 
 soothing ; the contemplation of his own face in the mir- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 377 
 
 ror before him unflattering. Chateau Lafitte, Cabana, 
 image of Arthur Peel's well-cut features Miss Lynes' 
 image mingled with, and spoilt them all ! 
 
 Nature will assert herself occasionally even in the case 
 of the most artificial dandy extant ; and when she does 
 do so, and a man, young and physically strong still, is on 
 the eve of selling his own body and soul for money, his 
 feelings, I can assure you, are about the bitterest and the 
 most self-abasing of which human nature is capable. A 
 girl sells herself and nature id est, her weakness, her 
 helplessness, her necessity for another's support, cry out 
 and absolve her, somewhat, to her own heart. A man 
 sells himself, and all that belongs to manhood within him 
 cries shame upon the barter ! With hands, with shoul- 
 ders to work as a free man, he submits, voluntarily, to the 
 position of a well-fed slave for life a slave, too, often- 
 times, to the crudest, the meanest, the most pitiless of all 
 slaveholders a woman without true generosity of soul 
 herself, and with secret, jealous knowledge of the reasons 
 for which her victim married her in her heart. 
 
 And in Arthur Peel's case all natural, instinctive dis- 
 gust at the part he had pledged himself to play, was 
 heightened tenfold by the bitter, haunting knowledge of 
 Jane Dash wood's face, of her flashing eyes, her curling 
 lips, as he had last seen them the night before. In a 
 niche, apart from the large-eyed Parisian graces and 
 impossibly-posed dancers which filled Mr. Peel's room, 
 hung a simple little portrait, in crayons, of a girl's head 
 Jane Dashwood at seventeen. The eyes, the lips seemed 
 smiling on him with the expression of those first days in 
 which Jane ever loved him in mocking contrast to the 
 eyes and lips that had scorned him twelve hours before ; 
 in horrible contrast to those other eyes and lips that now 
 were his his own legitimate, dearly-bought property, 
 until death, a chance too remote even to hope for, should 
 take them from him. 
 
378 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " I shall get used to it I shall get used to it all ! " 
 was the sole form of consolation that reiterated itself 
 through the limited arena of Mr. Peel's brain. " A fellow 
 doesn't know, in six months, whether his wife's handsome 
 or ugly ; and I shall meet Jane when she's married to 
 
 Feltham, d him! and she'll be sure to flirt like beans ; 
 
 and perhaps she'd have done the same if she'd married me, 
 and one gets used to everything; and a fellow doesn't 
 know in six months whether his wife is handsome or ugly, 
 
 d her ! " And then the eyes looked down on him 
 
 from that girlish face upon the wall, and the clock above 
 the chimney-piece struck one ; and he remembered that 
 at three o'clock he was to be at Mrs. Strangways' house, 
 ready to undergo all the privileges of an engaged man in 
 his first tete-a-tete interview with his betrothed. 
 
 The sudden realization of this last immediate duty dis- 
 gusted him more than all former vague, intangible pros- 
 pects had done. Would Miss Lynes' eyes assume the 
 same affectionate expression which, under the influence of 
 champagne, they had done the night before ? Would it 
 great heavens ! would it be expected of him to be ardent ? 
 He could kiss her, he thought, when he went and when 
 he came away, pretty easily ; but heavy love-making, for 
 two or three hours ! love-making that would at all 
 come up to the demand which the expression of her face 
 seemed to foretoken ! And then, if he didn't do every- 
 thing that was expected of him, the chance of losing her ! 
 You are never sure of an heiress until your back is turned 
 upon the altar of St. George's ; and old Morty was obvi- 
 ously only too ready to be brought on at a moment's no- 
 tice ; and no doubt he would be able to get up any 
 amount of passion that would be required of him. 
 
 Mr. Peel's mind was not accustomed to any very great 
 influx of ideas at any time; and really the amount of 
 thinking and all unpleasant thinking that he went 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 379 
 
 through during this forenoon, quite overcame him. He 
 had risen very early in the morning, between nine and ten, 
 I believe as the fatuity of our nature generally makes 
 men do on the first day, from whence life is to be more 
 disagreeable to them than before had arisen early; had 
 smoked five cigars ; had taken his brandy-and-soda ; had 
 looked at his breakfast ; had drunk his Lafitte ; and now, 
 at one o'clock, felt as though about a month of ordinary 
 life had elapsed since he rose from his bed. 
 
 " It's thinking so much," he decided at last, with one 
 of those incisive intuitions which we are accustomed to 
 regard as the exclusive property of genius. " Nothing 
 bores a fellow's head like thinking ; and there's no good 
 in it either, for you only think the same thing over and 
 over again, and a man gets used to everything; and in 
 six months " . . . et cetera. And then he desisted obsti- 
 nately from pacing up and down the room, and flung him- 
 self down in his easy-chair before the fire, and looked at 
 his slippers (which had been worked by Jane,) and won- 
 dered on what kind of principles Feltham had conducted 
 his engagement a speculation which brought him round, 
 quite easily and without any exertion of his to the pros- 
 pect the afternoon held out before him and, the expression 
 which the heiress's eyes, under the influence of Moet and 
 affection, had worn the night before. 
 
 At the same moment, Jane Dash wood was thinking of 
 him, as she stepped into a hired brougham at the door of 
 her sister's house. Thinking of him with brain on fire, 
 with resolve of sharp and instant vengeance in her heart ; 
 with all the superiority that an ordinarily clever woman 
 must possess over an ordinarily stupid man in any passion- 
 ate crisis of life. 
 
 In all other phases of love I have observed that men 
 act and women feel : in infidelity, on either side, women 
 
380 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 pass at once from the subjective to the objective : and 
 this almost without a variation. A man who has been 
 betrayed suffers silently, or goes to Iceland, or doesn't 
 suffer at all. A woman either nominates a successor, or 
 plans direct, sharp punishment upon the guilty one in the 
 first hour of her abandonment. All unreasoning crea- 
 tires do the same. Look how a child rebels from the 
 pain which, in maturity, he knows he must accept. Dur- 
 ing the long and bitter night, only two ideas had been 
 present in Jane Dash wood's brain : first, to bruise every 
 fibre of Arthur Peel's heart, if she could, before finishing 
 \vith him for ever; secondly, to recall Lord Feltham, and 
 to begin the purchase of the trousseau at once. Action 
 she must have ; and by the time the day had dawned her 
 mind had definitely resolved upon the shape in which her 
 revenge should show itself. 
 
 " Don't come don't come with me," she cried, hastily, 
 when Esther's face showed repugnance to the scheme she 
 was proposing. " If you think it improper, don't do vio- 
 lence to your feelings. I can get Lawrence to go with me 
 or I can go alone. What do I care about appearances ? " 
 
 "But to go to the barracks, Jane ! Young women of 
 our age to go alone to the Knightsbridge barracks ! If 
 you were to write to him instead, now ' 
 
 Miss Dash wood laughed disdainfully. " You are just 
 as bad asMillicent, Esther. All women are just the same 
 in such things. Maintain the letter, never mind the spir- 
 it of the law ! I repeat to you, I am going to visit Arthur 
 Peel this morning, and I ask you, for the last time, to ac- 
 company me. How are either of us to be injured by such 
 a deed, pray? I know by your face what you think : Lord 
 Feltham might hear of it. Let him do so and give me 
 up, and I will marry some one else in six weeks the best 
 thing for both of us, perhaps ! Paul might give you a 
 sermon ? Let him do so, and give over paying you mean- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 381 
 
 ingless attentions at the same time. It would be the best 
 thing that could happen to both of you ! " 
 
 As well argue with a wild cat brought to bay, as with 
 one of these small, blonde women newly robbed of her 
 love, and, worse far, newly wounded in her vanity. Jane 
 at that moment would have given up her life, her reputa- 
 tion, her very beauty, almost, but to lower Arthur Peel, 
 heart and soul, in the dust ; and, seeing this, Esther put 
 aside her own scruples and consented, without another 
 word, to be her companion. Only as they drove along, 
 and as she marked Jane's flushed cheek and tiny clenched 
 fists, and heard the bitter scorching words that ever and 
 anon broke from her tongue, she did thank heaven that of 
 all this she had not even the rudimentary elements in her 
 own nature. She loved Paul passionately. Beauty, life, 
 repute well, perhaps she would have given them all if 
 such gifts could in anything have ministered to his good. 
 But to turn against him by a hair's breadth, under neg- 
 lect, under cruelest betrayal to turn against him no, 
 this was not in her, and she thanked heaven that it was 
 n-ot. She had little cause to do so. The majority of our 
 thanksgivings are as mistaken as the majority of our 
 prayers. Women who rebel, who fight, who humiliate, 
 who elect successors, are of the many : women who ac- 
 cept, and live their love and their despair out, are of the 
 few. And nature is beneficent. The many (in number- 
 less other things than love) are really and intrinsically the 
 wisest and the happiest of the earth. 
 
 If his lawyer had walked into his room and informed him 
 that seventeen of his relations were dead, and he had in- 
 herited his twentieth cousin's estate and the title in York- 
 shire ; if all the Hebrews of his large eastern acquaintance 
 had appeared, and offered to burn his own bills before his 
 eyes ; if Morty Delamaine had walked in to communicate 
 the fact of Miss Lynes having changed her mind, or to 
 
382 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 challenge him, Arthur Peel, to instant single and mortal 
 combat ; if any, or all of these circumstances had oc- 
 curred to Mr. Peel at once, his brain could not have un- 
 dergone more absolute, unconditional vertigo than it did, 
 half an hour later, on the sudden appearance of the two 
 young women in his room. 
 
 "You are not to announce us to Mr. Peel," Jane had 
 said to the servant, whom she knew well, and who, open- 
 eyed and open-mouthed with horror, recognised in her 
 one of the young ladies who had dismounted in the ' 
 barrack-square. " It's a joke the fulfillment of a bet ; 
 Mr. Peel knows about it, and won't be surprised to see 
 us." And then, without faltering a second, she walked 
 up to the door the man pointed out, gave one decisive 
 tap, waited for Arthur's voice to bid her enter, and walk- 
 ed in. 
 
 He was staring at his slippers still ; and an expletive 
 rather more forcible than his present state of mind might 
 have promised, rose to his lips at his servant's supposed 
 interruption. As he half-turned his head he heard the 
 rustle of a silk dress. He sprang up, expecting well, 
 whatever he expected, it was not half so bad as what he 
 saw. His face, his lips turned livid. The apparition 
 which strikes death to Don Giovanni, preparatory to the 
 blue fire of the last scene of all, is not more appalling to 
 that unhappy reprobate than was the sight of the woman 
 he best loved to Mr. Peel. 
 
 " Jane You here ! " 
 
 " Yes, Arthur, I am here." 
 
 When a woman is going to be pitilessly cruel or gross- 
 ly unjust to the man she loves, she nearly always comes 
 up to time with a smiling face and nerves of steel. This 
 is their warfare, you must remember; these are their mo- 
 ments of courage, the brief standing-point often out 
 of God knows how many years of patient slavery or 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 383 
 
 wrong! For the first time in her life, Jane found herself 
 where imagination had so often taken her, in Arthur 
 Peel's room. In one second, with one glance, her eyes 
 took in every little familiar detail that told of her among 
 his belongings. Her Tennyson, stolen from her long ago, 
 and when they were at the boy-and-girl, or sentimental 
 scene of the tragedy ; her drawings on the wall ; her 
 photograph upon the mantlepiece ; her portrait taken in 
 the first flush of her youth and freshness, and looking now 
 straight into his faithless face. She saw all these : she 
 felt herself for the first time in his room a frightfully 
 dangerous influence to a woman as much in love as she 
 was and her voice was as steady, her cheek as unvary- 
 ing as the voice and cheek of the coolest general who ever 
 lived under the opening fire of a battle. 
 
 " I am here, Arthur. Miss Fleming and I have come to 
 pay you a morning visit. I hope we have not disturbed 
 you too early ? " 
 
 " Of course not. I I wish, I mean I think you 
 might have sent for me. Really I don't like to " 
 
 "To see us here !" Miss Dash wood finished for him, as 
 Mr. Peel stood, the very picture of shame and shyness, 
 staring first at one, then at the other of his visitors, and un- 
 consciously holding the end of his cigar far away behind 
 him. "We will waive the incivility of the remark in 
 consideration of its entire sincerity. You don't like to see 
 me here. I never/ thought you would. However, I have 
 come on an errand of considerable importance to myself, 
 and I will behave well to you. I will not keep you 
 long." 
 
 If she had been tempestuous, as he had seen her so 
 often before, Arthur Peel would probably have borne what 
 was coming better; but his sense of the tornado which 
 those set lips, those calm polite words must forebode 
 crushed him into a state bordering on literal, absolute, 
 
384 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 terror. He had ridden " into the jaws of death " with the 
 rest, without as much as a flush upon his fair girlish face ; 
 "and, by Jove ! I'd rather go through that again, rather 
 face a dozen Cossack regiments at once," he explained, 
 when recounting the scene to one of his friends after- 
 wards, "than have to stand there, like a cursed fool as I 
 was, under the fire of that girl's eyes. Hang her ! " Mr. 
 Peel would add, sulkily for when he had got to the 
 stage of confession he was already Miss Lynes' lawful pos- 
 sessor "Hang her ! what right had she to come down 
 upon me in such an infernal demoniac temper? an en- 
 gaged woman, and flirting with half the men in London 
 besides ! And I'd neither sense nor spirit enough to tell 
 her so that's always the way with a fellow's head ; ev- 
 erything comes into it afterwards ; and at the time I 
 mean when you're mixed up with women you've no 
 more idea what to say or do than than " 
 
 And then, Mr. Peel's brain not being fertile in imagery, 
 he was wont to fill up the vacuum by adding "the doose ! " 
 which, if you take it as a pet name for the embodiment 
 of evil, was, to say the least, inconsequential : that astute 
 personage (I speak as dramatic art has shown him forth) 
 being never at a loss what to say or do in any situation ; 
 above all, in those wherein you are mixed up with wo- 
 men. 
 
 " No ; I will not keep you long, Mr. Peel." She had 
 to go on herself, for no word came from the young man's 
 lips, and Esther Fleming, who wished herself in the re- 
 motest part of the earth, was pretending to examine a 
 florid but anatomical portrait of Mademoiselle Parepa 
 on the wall. " I have come on an errand which can be 
 executed in five minutes. You are going to marry Miss 
 Lynes, I hear." 
 
 " Jane," he stammered out, " What was I to do ? I am 
 a ruined man. You know it and you gave me up first ! ' 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 385 
 
 " I don't think I am questioning your good sense or 
 your thorough liberty to make any person you choose 
 your wife. I simply wished to hear the truth from you. 
 You are going to marry Miss Lynes?" And now the 
 muscles round her mouth did tremble : the mouth is al- 
 ways the first feature to turn traitor : and, you know, 
 this was the very wrench of death to her ; and she was 
 looking into the eyes of the man to please whom during 
 three years of her life she would at any time have sold 
 her own soul, looking into them for the last time while 
 she should live ! " You are going to marry her. I have 
 not been misinformed ? " 
 
 "I repeat, Jane, that you gave me up first." 
 
 "Mr. Peel, spare prevarication for some occasion when 
 it can by possibility stand you in good stead. It is sim- 
 ply foolish now. A.re you going to marry Miss Lynes ? " 
 
 "lam." 
 
 Her face grew white all over, all power of speech for a 
 minute forsook her: and only the fierce voice of passion- 
 ate, natural jealousy cried out in her heart ! For a min- 
 ute a minute only ; then she calmed again. " I did 
 not think I had been misinformed ; indeed, for a long 
 time past I have seen what it was intended you should 
 do ; but I thought it right to let you make the statement 
 plainly. Mr. Peel, you have not had time yet to show 
 Miss Lynes my letters, have you ? " 
 
 " Miss Dashwood ! " 
 
 " Oh, please don't be indignant. You know I never 
 can endure anything like a scene, and you must remember 
 you used to show me Mrs. Strangways' notes whenever I 
 liked to take the trouble to read them. You haven't had 
 time yet to show mine ? tell me truly, please." 
 
 " If you think me dishonorable enough to do such a 
 thing, I wonder you care to take my word as a denial." 
 
 " Dishonorable ! " You should have heard the empha- 
 17 
 
386 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 sis on the word. " Dishonorable ! Mr. Peel, I am one- 
 and-twenty, and I have known you intimately for more 
 than three years. I forget all about honor and dishonor 
 as we were taught to define them in our school-themes . 
 I know only the distinctions that exist between them in 
 men's minds. How you deal with each other in the great 
 affairs of gambling and horse-racing I neither know nor 
 care. Where such small matters as a woman's peace or a 
 woman's reputation are concerned, all men of your class 
 are dishonorable to the core and you above them all. 
 I haven't a father or a brother at hand to do the office for 
 me, so I have come now to put it out of your power to 
 injure me. Give me back my letters, please." 
 
 The tone in which she made the last request was quiet, 
 almost passive. She clasped her hands together, and 
 leaning them upon the mantelpiece, rested her cheek 
 down weariedly upon them. You may recollect that at 
 the moment when Oliver Carew had finally lost Miss 
 Fleming he coveted more to possess her than he had 
 ever done in the days when her heart, of right, was his. 
 I regret that I have only the same class of feeling to im- 
 pute to Arthur Peel. If I wrote sensation novels nothing 
 should induce me to be guilty of this kind of tame reit- 
 eration ; but being only an humble depicter of such men 
 and things as I have seen, I can't avoid going in well- 
 worn grooves. And the majority of human creatures are 
 so trite, so consistent, so uniform even in their moments 
 of strongest emotion, of deepest passion ! Arthur Peel 
 looked at these clasped hands he had kissed so often, at 
 that delicate pale cheek, at those half-quivering lips, and 
 was sensible of as much acute loathing to Miss Lynes, as 
 much fierce jealousy of Lord Feltham, as much disgust 
 against his debts and himself and the whole world in a 
 mass, as it is perhaps possible for a man well used up in 
 London life, and with originally shallow pasions, and a 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 387 
 
 very small amount of that great reflector and multiplier 
 of the passions brain, to sustain. 
 
 " I never thought we should come to this, Jane ; upon 
 my soul I didn't ! I hope you don't mean to be bad 
 friends with me always." 
 
 He touched one of her hands nervously, imploringly, 
 and put his face close to hers. Miss Dash wood drew her- 
 self away from him coldly. Under any other circumstan- 
 ces in the world such an appeal coming to her from 
 Arthur must have had some effect. But nearly all wo- 
 men when they are jealous (of a legitimate object) recoil 
 from a personal appeal as they would from an insult. I 
 don't explain this : but I know it is so. 
 
 "Mr. Peel, you make me feel what I incurred in com- 
 ing here without a man to protect me. I don't know, 
 though, that I particularly admire you for wishing to 
 convey the reproach. You have no right, you know you 
 have none, to regard me in another light than a stranger, 
 even had I come here actually alone. You have no right 
 to remind me of the past any more than you have to the 
 possession of my letters or of this ! " 
 
 She walked straight across to the sketch of herself 
 
 o 
 
 that I have mentioned, took it down from the wall, and 
 began, but with trembling hands (for her courage was 
 going fast and passion gaining ground,) to remove it from 
 the frame. 
 
 " Jane, that, at least, is mine. You shall not take it 
 away ! I'll show it to no one while I live, but I will not 
 part from it. It is mine ! " 
 
 " Legally yours, no doubt." Anil now she looked at 
 him with the kindling glow in her eyes that he knew so 
 well. "Legally yours ; but by all moral right, by all just 
 right, mine. I won't trust even this to you. When you 
 are married, you shall not have it in your power to show 
 my picture to your friends, and say, ' That's the girl's face 
 
388 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 who loved me for years, who would have loved me 
 always if I had only chosen to take her.' Boast of me, 
 you will, no doubt, but you shall have no tangible proof 
 that I can make away with to bear evidence to your 
 words. This picture belongs to my past life, sir ! my 
 past life ! that you destroyed for me just as pitilessly as 
 I destroy this poor piece of paper now. Let it all go to- 
 gether. I regret none of it." 
 
 She looked one instant at the picture of her own happy, 
 girlish face, then tore it deliberately across three, four 
 times, walked back to her place, and flung the fragments 
 in the fire. 
 
 Have you ever been present at a holocaust of this kind ? 
 Do you know the strange, shocked sense like witness- 
 ing the death of a living thing that such an act of vio- 
 lence occasions ? Esther Fleming, whose interest was, 
 of course, only the vicarious one that all persons under 
 twenty-five must feel in all love affairs Esther Fleming 
 felt quite a spasm of pain as the sharp rending of the 
 paper fell on her ears. Arthur Peel grew crimson to his 
 temples. 
 
 " You have done what you had no right to do, Jane. 
 You have robbed me of a thing that might have been of 
 use to me in the kind of life I am going to lead for the 
 future a thing it would never have harmed you for me 
 to keep." 
 
 Justice and truth were on his side in this ; and Jane 
 knew it, and was the bitterer for the knowledge. Be- 
 sides, her blood was up, as some men's is after the first 
 death-stroke they bestow in action. The first act which 
 ministered to her revenge had stirred in her the desire 
 for further vengeance. 
 
 "Jane Dashwood's picture, as she was three years ago, 
 could be of no use to Miss Lynes' husband now. It is 
 the picture of a person who exists no longer. Three 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 389 
 
 years ago Jane Dashwood was young, loving, with all her 
 
 faults, and now Mr. Peel, why do we waste time in 
 
 this way ? Give me my letters, please. You haven't 
 burnt them, you know ; you told me so not a week ago. 
 Give them to me. I have brought back every one of 
 yours." 
 
 And she drew a packet from her pocket (not a very 
 large packet : following an inevitable natural law, Mr. 
 PeePs love-letters had covered about one-tenth the bulk 
 of paper that had been consumed by her to him,) and 
 threw it down before him upon the table. 
 
 Not Mr. Redpath himself, suddenly convicted in the 
 very act of indorsing one of his nefarious bills, could have 
 looked more abjectly conscience-stricken than did Arthur 
 Peel as he proceeded to unlock a table-drawer and bring 
 forth from it Jane Dash wood's letters. He had kept them 
 all. In this kind of folly I believe that women are fully 
 equalled, occasionally outstripped, by most very young 
 men. From the long school-girl love-letters, written in 
 the first days of their engagement, down to the short 
 notes, often consisting of only two or three blurred lines, 
 which she had written to him since her engagement with 
 Lord Feltharn, he had kept them all. The whole writ- 
 ten record of so much folly and of so much love; of 
 endless falsehood, and yet, in one sense, of the best and 
 truest part of two otherwise wasted and artificial lives. 
 
 " They will make a goodly pile," cried Jane, with her 
 little hard laugh. " Mr. Peel, may I ask you to give me 
 some string? It will really be as much as Esther and I 
 will be able to do to carry them away between us." 
 
 He gave her what she wanted ; he watched patiently, 
 feeling and I believe I may add looking the most 
 utter fool, while she tied the letters up in two compact, 
 carefully-arranged packets. But not till she had quite 
 done till she had risen and told her companion she was 
 
390 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ready to depart did a word pass his lips. Then it 
 came ; quite with a natural outburst. I think the better 
 of Mr. Peel for feeling something so like a sob come in 
 his throat as he spoke. "You are harder on me than I 
 deserve, Jane. I am a ruined man : it is forced upon me 
 to marry Miss Lynes ; but I was not the first to be false, 
 and I have never ceased to love you." 
 
 She threw the packets of letters upon the table, and 
 turned upon him full. Small and blonde though she was, 
 the greatest tragic actress of them all might have copied 
 from her in this moment of intense, jealous passion by 
 far the most frequent kind of tragedy that the monotony 
 of modern life ever shows to us. She was too essentially 
 feminine to be any thing but quiet in her gestures and in her 
 voice. It was in the scorching fire of her blue eyes in 
 the tension of the muscles round the mouth in the un- 
 conscious iron clench of her small hands, that an artist 
 would have read the true embodiment of passion. No 
 need of noise, no need of violence for a Lucretia or a 
 Norma who could rival life like this ! 
 
 " You were not the first to be faithless ? Mr. Peel, 
 those words are false, and you know it ! I accepted Lord 
 
 Feltham because because you told me to do it ! You 
 
 know the night well, at the Opera, when you told me, and 
 I did accept him next day. And I cared for you on that 
 day just as I'd done from the first, and I wrote and told 
 you so. The letter was in my hand a minute ago ; and I 
 said, if you only spoke one word I'd break it off and 
 marry you, and try to make the best of poverty and dis- 
 grace, if need be, for your sake ! You know what you 
 answered if, indeed, in one long tissue of falsehoods you 
 should chance to remember this especial one you talked 
 of your love being too great to let you bring me to pov- 
 erty, and that, miserable though it made you, you would 
 rather see me marry with the prospect of becoming rich 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 391 
 
 and great God ! why do I repeat it ? why do I 
 remember it ? All my own falsehood, all my treachery 
 to Lord Feltham, I take upon myself: that hasn't got to 
 bespoken of to you. To you I have been faithful, sir! 
 faithful, with the miserable, contemptible fidelity that 
 an ill-used horse or dog will show towards a cruel master, 
 through three long years ! Last night I woke up to see 
 the truth, to see that I have loved something of my own 
 imagination, not you not the poor, weak, vain creature 
 that I now know Mr. Arthur Peel to be. Everything 
 has turned out best for us both. Married to Lord Felt- 
 ham, I shall have position ; married to Miss Lynes, you 
 will have money. We shall see nothing more of each 
 other : and to me, at least, the lesson of the past has been 
 a wholesome one. Mr. ^eel, good-bye." 
 
 But Mr. Peel never took her outstretched hand. He 
 was in that state of utter, voiceless collapse to which 
 nothing but a woman's tongue can ever reduce an Eng- 
 lishman (a Frenchman can weep on many occasions per- 
 taining to love). That Jane Dash wood could look in his 
 face and tell him she had never loved him was mon- 
 strous ; but that she should convict him, as she really 
 seemed to do, of gross dishonor, was worse. He felt he 
 wasn't a bit guiltier than all other young men of his moral 
 and mental calibre; that he had only played fast and 
 loose with the girl, just as she had done with himself; 
 and that even if he had not offered to Miss Lynes, the 
 chances were ten to one that Jane would have married 
 Feltham in six months. To all the rest of the truth, of 
 the pathos underlying her passionate and unjust words 
 which you, I hope, see Mr. Peel was naturally blind. 
 The few high qualities in a faulty, artificial character like 
 poor Jane's, are rarely discernible by inferior minds ; and 
 Mr. Peel was grades and grades beneath her, both in 
 heart and brain. He knew that she had glossy hair and 
 
392 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 white teeth, fair complexion and rounded waist; also, 
 that she possessed a bad temper and infinite tenderness 
 for himself: nothing further, except, perhaps, at this mo- 
 ment, when it was dimly dawning on the chaos of his 
 thoughts that she was capable of demoniac jealousy and 
 revenge, and that Miss Lynes, with her lethargic tempera- 
 ment and thick waist, might, after all, be the best sort of 
 thing to possess as a wife ! 
 
 " Don't you wish to shake hands with me, Mr. Peel ? 
 Very well, we will part without shaking hands, then. Es- 
 ther, you will help me to carry away a portion of my own 
 property, won't you ? I am really ashamed to have kept 
 you waiting so long." 
 
 " Jane ! " he exclaimed, as she moved towards the door, 
 and the reality came full upon hLn that he was losing her 
 had at this very moment lost her for ever, " don't go 
 yet. Say a friendly word or two first. When we meet 
 for the future, you don't intend we should be perfect 
 strangers, do you ? " 
 
 " Perfect strangers," answered Miss Dash wood. " Strang- 
 ers in the fullest acceptation of the word. I do not in- 
 tend to know Miss Lynes, and consequently I shall be un- 
 able to know you. This is as much a parting as if you 
 or I were destined to die to-night." 
 
 She hesitated a moment Esther Fleming had dis- 
 creetly gone on alone then she turned: she rushed 
 back to him, flung her arms up once more round his neck, 
 covered his face with kisses, and left him ! 
 
 They were the last kisses of passionate love that any 
 woman's lips should give to Arthur Peel while he lived. 
 Such things are very rare, you know ; can't be bought, 
 can't be commanded ; only come at the very rare crises 
 once or twice, say in a man's life ! 
 
 And this was such a crisis. It was, as Miss Dash wood 
 had said, as irrevocable a separation as though one of 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 393 
 
 them had died that night. When she next met Arthur 
 Peel again, a day or tyro afterwards, in Miss Lynes' com- 
 pany, she looked him straight between the eyes, and cut 
 him without a pang. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 BUT though she kept up bravely, shielded away every 
 mark of suffering not from the world alone, that had 
 been easy, but from those immediately around her Jane 
 Dash wood went through a very "hell of time" during 
 the first days succeeding that visit of hers to Arthur. 
 
 At first, of course, she fell into the common error of 
 temperaments like hers ; thought she would be utterly 
 changed at once ; after that the great shock of parting 
 all her old self, all her old passionate love must be dead 
 swept away for ever. Then, the first excitement over, 
 came the common surprise at finding how very little of 
 herself was indeed gone ; how cruelly, constantly Arthur's 
 face haunted her still ; how dull and tasteless were her 
 days without the delicious intoxication of his flatteries 
 and his love. 
 
 " He would never love her any more ! " She had broken 
 with him; had offered him the last deadly affront of cut- 
 ting him in the presence of Miss Lynes; and pride and 
 reason, and a sense not wholly perverted of honor, all 
 cried out that it was for her good that they should meet 
 no longer, should become as strangers in each other's 
 presence. , And yet still was this the bitter outcry of 
 Miss Dashwood's heart: " He would never love her any 
 more ! " She knew well (not theoretically, but by that 
 17* 
 
394 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 combination of worldly experience and natural instinct 
 which supplies reason in her sex) that this was the case ; 
 and she was right. A judgment sharper than all that 
 moralists hold over our heads lies in the simple, natural, 
 or physical law, that while men may, and do return to a 
 neglected duty or sullied legitimate love, no fire will ever 
 rekindle the ashes once burnt out of a passion without 
 affection a passion such as Arthur Peel's had been for 
 Jane. " He would never love her any more." She knew 
 it, and her heart literally sickened under the blow. Some- 
 thing of the reality and awfulness of life, of life as it 
 must be when love and playing at love, and when youth, 
 and admiration, and beauty should be past overcame 
 her. She went out as usual ; she drove, she rode, she 
 danced, dressed, flirted ; but a dull, dark weight lay for 
 more than a fortnight upon her brain ; and the first ob- 
 ject poor little, Jane ! upon which anything like light 
 rested, was the vision of Oliver's far-off handsome face. 
 
 She felt nothing; no one spark of the passion of love 
 for him, either then or afterwards. But I have already 
 remarked to you that she belonged to that enormously 
 large section of women whose first instinct, after disap- 
 pointment in love, is to nominate a successor ; and I think 
 myself it showed a great deal of natural right-heartedness 
 in her, that, after so fierce a revolution, the legitimate heir 
 did quietly take the empty place, and not an alien. It was 
 not from worldly wisdom ; it was not from absence of 
 temptation. Simply and truly, as much of regard as Jane 
 could now bring to any man, she gave to Feltham in this 
 first revulsion of feeling. And she never changed again. 
 
 Women whom circumstances early render passionless, 
 become very honest, or very much indeed the reverse. 
 Jane was one of the first class : her nature, in spite of all 
 education, was a pure one. She could have committed 
 any amount of folly of wickedness, if you will when 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 395 
 
 she loved. Love gone, all her great capabilities were gone 
 too. She has, at this present time, her diamonds for, 
 surely, it doesn't take away your interest to forestal the 
 catastrophe by forty or more pages, and tell you boldly 
 that she and Lord Felthara are married diamonds, 
 emeralds, carriages, box at the opera, hosts of friends, 
 and two little children. She is not at all callous to mon- 
 ey and the enjoyment money brings ; she is fonder than 
 most fashionable young mothers of her children ; she 
 doesn't flirt much; she likes Feltham pretty well. She 
 leads the usual life that most of us lead, in short ; and at- 
 tends church, and performs regular duties as sedulously 
 as that little arch -hypocrite her sister Milly. But, to me, 
 Lady Feltham's life is always one about which an infinite 
 pathos rests. For, deep down, buried away under the 
 cumbrous burden of all her prosperity and all her virtue, 
 I know what skeleton lies yet unmouldered ! 
 
 We pity, in fiction, a conscience laden by one over- 
 whelming guilt, like Eugene Aram's, but it seldom occurs 
 to us to speculate as to how many of our intimate friends 
 may deserve far tenderer pity women especially. 
 Among all the successful people of your acquaintance, 
 how many, do you suppose, are not haunted by the 
 thought of some murder, or, at all events, justifiable hom- 
 icide, to which, during some of the stages of their up- 
 ward career, they were accessory ? For some it was hon- 
 or that had to be put out of the way ; for some, youth ; 
 for some only love; and unimportant, from a commer- 
 cial point of view, though love may be, I think its ghost 
 walks longest. 
 
 After thirty, Lady Feltharn, beyond doubt, will see how 
 well her life has turned out for her; and she will flirt, 
 perhaps, rather more, and take greater interest in her 
 dress, and like to go oftener to Paris than she does now : 
 and then she will certainly interest me no longer. 
 
396 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 But she is a great many years from thirty now. And 
 if you watch her narrowly at the Opera, you may note 
 her lip quiver when Arthur Peel's face first appears be- 
 side that of Madame Z in the accustomed stage box 
 
 (for MissLynes has quite failed in rendering him domes- 
 tic) ; and she keeps, but never wears, the little bracelet 
 he first gave her ; and when " the rain is on the roof," 
 and she stands, at times, and watches her children in their 
 sleep little lads, both of them with the true Carew face 
 tears come in her eyes that shouldn't come there, 
 looking at so fair a sight. 
 
 "Lady Feltham has really turned out wonderfully!" 
 say her discriminating friends. " Who would ever have 
 expected to see her so well-conducted after the mad way 
 she used to run after that scapegrace, Arthur Peel ?" 
 
 And the astutest of them all has never guessed what 
 talisman it is that holds Lady Feltham's frozen heart in 
 safety. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 BY FIRELIGHT. 
 
 LORD FELTHAM was recalled, and the trousseau pro- 
 ceeded indeed, it was a daily occurrence for Miss Lynes 
 and Miss Dashwood to ignore each other's presence, as 
 they gave mutual bridal commands at Howell and James', 
 and Elise's ; and every one thought Miss Dashwood look- 
 ing so well (" spirits completely forced, my dear ! how 
 can it be otherwise, after all she's gone through in that 
 foolish love-affair of hers ? ") and the bridesmaids were 
 engaged, and all but the wedding-day was fixed. 
 
 And still, while the marriage in which no love was, ap- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 897 
 
 preached and throve ; the love in which was no marriage, 
 grew daily more hopeless and more strong, as is the cus- 
 tom in such things. Three weeks after Mrs. Strangways' 
 party, Esther Fleming knew that Paul Chichester's pres- 
 ence had become her life ; his absence her worse than 
 death; knew honest, ignorant Pluron as she was! 
 that, but to brighten or in any way better the lot of this 
 one poor and suspected, and littte-thought-of man she 
 would rapturously sacrifice every prospect, hope, possi- 
 bility of other happiness in her own. 
 
 Chance had thrown Paul and her together, in the way 
 that it generally does throw together any two people who 
 would be better kept apart. With Mrs. Scott in the 
 house, any young woman holding a dependent position 
 would, you may feel very sure, have been well shielded 
 from all danger or temptation of love. But only the sec- 
 ond day after Esther's meeting with Paul, Mrs. Scott be- 
 thought herself to have fainting-fits ; and Marmy, in his 
 nervous anxiety for there are responsibilities which ren- 
 der fools and philosophers alike akin and helpless rushed 
 off for the family-surgeon ; and the family-surgeon (who 
 was just going to give his attendance for a month, at a 
 hundred guineas a week, to Sir Levy Leontifiore, at 
 Brighton) said nothing would save Mrs. Scott, or the 
 expected heir, save the Brighton climate. And so to 
 Brighton it was promptly decided Mrs. Scott must go. 
 
 But it would kill her, she averred, to take Natty. Nat- 
 ty's screams pierced her head: Natty's temper shattered 
 her nerves : and, besides, what would become of the ser- 
 vants, unless Miss Fleming was left to look after them. 
 
 Jane and Mrs. Dashwood disliked each other so cordial- 
 ly, that it was out of the question to think of their both 
 going to Brighton at the same time for although she 
 was only her step-mother, and although she didn't like 
 her, and though Marmy detested her, and though Mrs. 
 
398 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Dashwood had never had any but spiritual experiences 
 in her life you know Millicent Scott too well, I hope, to 
 think that she would have outraged society by not hav- 
 ing "Mamma" with her at this epoch. Besides, Jane 
 must stop in town and look after her trousseau, if the 
 wedding really was to be in April ; and what would Jane 
 do without Miss Fleming for a companion ? Marmy was, 
 by these arguments, reduced to seeing himself in the 
 light of a brute and a fool for having ever wished that 
 Natty should have a few weeks of sea-air ; and Esther 
 Fleming was left the possessor of the most absolute and, 
 at this particular season of her life, the most dangerous 
 freedom. 
 
 She was upright to the core ; but she was very human, 
 and had all the temptations that go with strong impulses 
 and strong affections. And early spring was coming on, 
 and she knew it did Natty no harm nay, that it un- 
 froze the little old prematurely-hardened heart to let her 
 roam abroad in Kensington Gardens, or where they would, 
 with Polly the nurse-girl, during the two fading twilight 
 hours of these mild March days. That Paul Chichester 
 came two, three, gradually four times a week at this hour ; 
 that Jane was almost always from home when he came ; 
 that she looked, that she longed for his coming ; that day 
 by day, even if their words grew colder, their eyes were 
 reading to each other page after page of the old forbid- 
 den story. Could she help all this ? 
 
 She said she could not ; and to Miss Dashwood, and 
 even to herself, employed much subtle casuistry whenever 
 the peril of these visits was brought too prominently be- 
 fore her reason. Mr. Chichester came simply because her 
 grave, sober life was in accord with his, and that they 
 could talk of subjects in which each had the same kind 
 of interest. Talk ? why, of what did they talk ? Of 
 nonsense of sentiment? Never. They discussed upon 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 399 
 
 abstract subjects; upon the harder duties of life ; upon 
 books. Often the greater part of the visit would be con- 
 sumed in Mr. Chichester taking up book after book from 
 the drawing-room table and descanting upon portions of 
 their contents to her. " And if it happens to be poetry, 
 Jane Shakspeare it generally is he somehow always 
 chooses descriptions of scenery, or friendship, or or 
 something of that kind ! " ~No doubt, now she came to 
 reflect on it, this was what Paul Chichester did come so 
 often for. He liked reading aloud ; and she well, she 
 thought it very improving for a young person who meant 
 to be a teacher, to educate her ear and cadence by listen- 
 ing to so good a reader. 
 
 Men of a somewhat washy nature do occasionally feel 
 the mere sentiment of love : men of robuster fibre know 
 as much as is to be known of the mere passion. But the 
 union of the two of purest, tenderest sentiment, of in- 
 tense, vital, earthly passion ; the perfect blending of af- 
 fection and desire, of heart and brain, of soul and sense 
 
 is never found, I have no hesitation whatever in haz- 
 arding the opinion, save in a woman's heart, and not in 
 more than one out of one thousand of these. 
 
 Poor Esther was of the salt of the earth. Her affec- 
 tions large ; her brain large ; her physique unexceptiona- 
 ble ; her whole life purely nurtured. Just how we can 
 imagine when our imagination chances to be very vivid 
 
 that women were once intended to love men, she loved 
 Paul. She felt herself not his inferior, although so dif- 
 ferent in mind, and yet she yearned to be his slave ! She 
 had none of the little jealousy about her own intellect 
 that she had felt in the earlier stages of their intimacy. 
 She liked to talk well when she talked with him. She 
 liked sometimes to be able to differ from him ; even to 
 bring him round to her opinion. And then, in the mid- 
 dle of some discussion perhaps on the origin of evil ; 
 
400 THE OR'DEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 they were fond of choosing this new and easily settled 
 subject she would see that the poor fellow's shirt lacked 
 a button, or his threadbare coat a stitch, and all her heart 
 would go out to him with love ; that warm, wide, wo- 
 man's love that ever seems to me to have something of 
 maternity in its element ; and the intense, passionate, 
 despairing wish that she had the right to minister to all 
 the little common wants, so evidently neglected now, of 
 his life. 
 
 Such a friendship can never remain friendship long. You 
 may read descriptions of Platonic attachment, descriptions 
 of scenery and friendship written by Shakspeare or any 
 other poet; you may investigate the origin of evil ; may 
 speak in measured voices ; may shake each other's hands 
 with icy shortness at going and coming. Nature will assert 
 herself still. When the trees are full of sap in April, it is 
 but the accident of one sudden morning's heat that is 
 needed to clothe the yet cold branches with the life and 
 color of the spring. 
 
 One afternoon, they had spent three hours together as 
 usual ; and, the child not having returned, and the dull 
 March twilight having almost become darkness, they had 
 taken, for no reason that I can assign, to standing one on 
 each side of the hearth although the weather was far 
 from chilly and speaking scarcely a word. Of late Es- 
 ther had avoided all such silence, flying instantly to the 
 commonest and most obvious subterfuge the weather, 
 Natty's lessons, Jane Dash wood's trousseau the instant 
 that she felt one of these insidious but deadly dangers to 
 be coming on. But in all natural processes one of 
 which I hold the passion of love to be you pass into 
 new developments as completely without volition or con- 
 sciousness of your own as the caterpillar changes into the 
 chrysalis, the chrysalis into the butterfly. Miss Fleming 
 had gone through the stage of sudden silences through 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 4Q1 
 
 the stage of feeling their danger, through the stage of 
 talking about things for which she cared nothing, to avert 
 that danger. This afternoon her condition had progressed 
 by one more step. She knew that they were both silent, 
 that such silence was dangerous, that the danger could be 
 averted, temporarily, by conversation of any kind ; and 
 she attempted conversation of no kind! Only stood, 
 with cold, clasped hands, and perfectly rigid stiffness, and 
 knew that Paul's eyes scarcely left her face a moment, and 
 that she could feel could almost hear every sicken- 
 ing, distinct beat of her own feverish heart. 
 
 It was decidedly another step : another, and very near- 
 ly the last. I know of only two possible further develop- 
 ments for love that has become passion and that has ceas- 
 ed to straggle. Only two : and the story of nearly all 
 our lives can be written in this very short sentence : pos- 
 session, or an irrevocable severance ; no return along that 
 road whose upward transit was so sweet ; no return to 
 the pleasant resting-places, the tranquil hours, the dreams 
 better than all fruition of that delicious pilgrimage. 
 Love that has become passion and that has ceased to 
 struggle must end in one of these two possession or 
 severance. 
 
 And in either, broadly speaking, love dies. And love 
 is human youth, and human hope, and- human happiness : 
 all that, during the brightest years, at least, of our exist- 
 ence we sum up whenever the word " life " is on our lips. 
 
 Paul was the first to speak. He chose for his subject 
 one concerning which he had never spoken to her before 
 Lord Feltham's character. 
 
 "No; I shall not be able to see you so often after his 
 return, Miss Fleming. Jane Dashwood has told you of 
 course, upon what terms I stand with my mother's fami- 
 ly ?" 
 
 " She has told me that you and your brother do not 
 
402 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 meet, Mr. Chichester; and I think no better of you for 
 allowing such an enstrangement to exist. What can 
 there be in Lord Feltham to make you cherish such a 
 bitter feeling after so many years ? " 
 
 " In Feltham himself, nothing." 
 
 " You admire your brother's character, then ? " 
 
 " No ; but I dare say he is quite as good a fellow as 
 circumstances have let him be. He is weak and unambi- 
 tious, doubtless : but what can you expect from a man 
 whom fortune places at the winning-post without the 
 trouble of the race, who has never had the slightest train- 
 ing, either by disappointment or any other kind of moral 
 discipline ? " 
 
 "I think a man's own nature should make him strong," 
 Esther answered, promptly ; for even yet she had not 
 wholly outlived her bitterness against poor Oliver. " I 
 don't think a man should need training of an especial 
 kind to bring out the common qualities of manliness and 
 honesty in his heart." 
 
 " Easily said, Miss Fleming ; but, depend upon it, con- 
 tinued worship and flattery from nurses, tutors, compan- 
 ions, the whole world, from one's cradle to one's dotage, 
 are perils that may warp any but the noblest natural cha- 
 racter, and that Feltham never had. From what I re- 
 member of him as a child, I should say he will get on ex- 
 cellently well in the position to which it has pleased God 
 to call him, and will make Miss Dash wood quite as happy 
 as she deserves." 
 
 "Oh, no doubt," no doubt, said Esther, hastily. "It 
 is not in Lord Feltham to feel any very high or exalt- 
 ed sentiments." 
 
 " Miss Fleming, do you know my brother ? " 
 
 She had never meant to tell him or any other creature 
 living of her engagement to Oliver ; but during the last 
 few days a strong impulse had been upon her to let Paul 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 4Q3 
 
 Chichester know everything that her life had to tell. 
 Not, God knows ! from forwardness, from any hope of 
 gaining him in marriage r did she not know that to be 
 hopeless ? but rather from a despairing, instinctive sense 
 that a great crisis the crisis of parting was coming 
 on ; a desire that as much of her as any man should ever 
 possess all the history of her poor foolish life should be 
 given to him before that hour came. This, and, perhaps, 
 with the sublime inconsistency of love, the latent hope 
 that it would, it must, touch him to know how willingly 
 she had given up rank and wealth and position where she 
 herself could not give love in return. 
 
 " I have known your brother. I have known him very 
 well." And then, in broken sentences, as you may believe, 
 with hesitation, with need of frequent questioning from 
 her companion, all the story was told. 
 
 As she faltered out the last words of her confession, 
 she took courage and looked up into Paul's face. The 
 firelight shone upon it full : she could not, she could not be 
 mistaken in what she read there. Never during these 
 three weeks had one quiver of a muscle, one flush, one 
 pallor on that determined face given her even a moment's 
 respite from reason ; but now no, she was not mistaken 
 all Paul Chichester's face was soft as she had never 
 seen it before ; only as in dreams her fancy had so often 
 cruelly shown it to her. The hardness had gone from his 
 mouth, the lines from his brow : not alone his expression, 
 his very features seemed changed younger, handsomer, 
 fuller of life. 
 
 " You never loved him, Esther ? Tell me perfectly, 
 honestly." 
 
 " If I had, I shouldn't have changed, Mr. Chichester. 
 I am not a woman to love more than once while I live." 
 
 And then she shrank back fearfully, and turned her 
 face quite away from him towards the fire. 
 
404 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Paul Chichester looked at her drooping profile, and 
 knew that she was his his now, his always ; yes, what- 
 ever should hereafter divorce them, whatever man should 
 some day call her wife. He did not love her as she loved 
 him. Men don't feel strong, blind, reasonless passion for 
 women of poor Esther's worth ; but he knew that to pos- 
 sess her for his companion would be to raise his darkened 
 existence into vivid, healthy life ; he knew (and this to a 
 man is a great deal more than any love of his own) that 
 she worshipped him ; that for the freedom hopelessly to 
 worship, she had given up the position and money and 
 youth that his brother had to bestow upon her. And 
 noble though Paul's heart was to the core, he was not at 
 all superhuman in his nobility. The wealth, the position 
 of his alienated family had been bitter drops in his cup ; 
 and it was sweet, yes, sweeter than pure unmixed love 
 itself, to know that for him, poor, friendless, outcast, a 
 woman like Esther Fleming had thrown their wealth 
 aside as worthless dross. 
 
 And as he felt all this, and as he looked at her pure and 
 steadfast face, and as he yearned to go to her and clasp 
 her to his breast and bid her stay there, a cold whisper 
 shuddered in his ears, a white face rose before him, and 
 one terrible word a word it was not in him to disobey 
 rang through every fibre of his heart duty ! Duty, 
 with 'which no inclination went hand-in-hand. Duty, not 
 to a woman possessing youth and strength and beauty, 
 like this one, but to a poor, bereft, forsaken creature, 
 whose life, by hardest fate, must be bound horribly close 
 to his, and yet whole dreary worlds apart, so long as they 
 both should live. 
 
 Rigidly just natures are prone, by virtue of their very 
 consistency, to fall into injustice. We don't stop still, 
 such persons fail to remember ; we live. If we were in 
 the position of bricks, well imbedded by mortar in a stone 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 4Q5 
 
 wall, an action right for us once must be right ten years 
 later, twenty years later, always. But, instead of stop- 
 ping, we not only live but change in our own natures, just 
 as much as in the outward circumstances of our lot. 
 Thus, a really noble action, an impulse straight from the 
 heart of a lad of twenty, will, if carried out through ten 
 or fifteen years of life, most probably degenerate into 
 persistent folly, or, which is worse, mechanical, outside 
 ceremonial, without the faintest reason or necessity for its 
 fulfillment. At twenty, Paul's heart had revolted against 
 what he considered the inhumanity of cold, worldly sense ; 
 and it was heroic of him then to take up the position he 
 did. At thirty, his life had narrowed and narrowed under 
 the dead pressure of one self-inflicted duty, until he had 
 quite forgotten to ask himself if this indeed was justice ? 
 If his own body and soul had no real claim upon him ? if 
 duty might not now consist in breaking free from the 
 trammels in which for ten long years he had walked with 
 bleeding, but as yet unfaltering feet ? 
 
 I say, no light of the kind had as yet dawned across 
 the one fixed purpose of Paul's life. If it was ever to do 
 so, now was the last moment when he would have given 
 it admittance. He might alter deliberately, through rea- 
 son never swerve in a moment of sudden temptation 
 or sudden passion. 
 
 " You can only love once in your life ? A mistake, 
 child, a great mistake. When you have lived longer, 
 when you have felt more, you will know how wonderfully 
 elastic your heart is, above all, in its capacities for suffer- 
 ing. We have never quite done with any hope or any 
 misery until we die. A year ago I thought, honestly, I 
 should never know anything more about human love of 
 any kind while I lived, and now " 
 
 He stopped himself short ; then he came suddenly clos- 
 er ; he put his arm half round, but yet not clasping, her 
 
406 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 shrinking figure as she stood neither daring to answer nor 
 to look into his face. 
 
 " Esther, I won't deny to you that I have felt pleasure 
 in hearing that you wouldn't marry Oliver, in spite of all 
 the worldly advantages he had to offer you. I don't, I 
 can't be blind, child, to your kindly liking for me. Es- 
 ther, you're the only woman I ever desired to possess as 
 my wife. If I was free to do so, I would give up my life 
 to make you happy; but I am not free I never shall 
 be and I feel to-night that I am not safe in coming 
 any more to see you like this. I thought, three weeks 
 ago, I should be," he went on hurriedly, for at this 
 juncture something very like a stifled sob broke from 
 Miss Fleming's lips. "I thought I was stronger than I 
 am, and that I could bear to look in your face, and listen 
 to your voice ; and know that now and for ever I must 
 be no more than a stranger to you. I find that I cannot 
 do so ; and I had best stay away from you till my folly is 
 cured. Esther, will you forgive me ? " 
 
 For a minute pride, wounded vanity, resentment, stirred 
 in her breast ; and she looked at him coldly, and drew 
 away from the cruel, mocking temptation of his half- 
 embrace. Then a love, mightier than all pride or vanity 
 or resentment, ebbed back, with a sudden rush, across 
 that generous heart. She clasped hold of the hand he 
 offered her ; she looked straight into his eyes. " I've 
 nothing to forgive, Mr. Chichester. You have made me 
 happy by what you said I never hoped for any more. 
 And don't stay away forever, please. I mean I mean 
 I don't think I could bear it if I thought you and I 
 wouldn't be friends as long as we live! " 
 
 It was a love stronger than death, the love of this poor, 
 untutored, country girl. 
 
 As Paul Chichester walked away from the house that 
 night, the image of her faithful face, the sound of her 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 4Q7 
 
 pleading voice, haunted him with a strange sense of self- 
 reproach ; and then, for the first time these ten years, 
 the possibility of his own freedom, of his own return 
 with honor to life and love, did flash, dimly and indis- 
 tinctly as yet, across his mind. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 BY GAS LIGHT. 
 
 BUT he came to visit her no more. He wrote her a 
 note next morning which, with all other relics of that 
 time, will, I doubt not, lie upon Esther's breast when she 
 is in her coffin recapitulating, in a few kind words, the 
 reasons for keeping apart that he had given her the night 
 before ; adding, too was it possible for him to do other- 
 wise ? some expressions of the infinite pain the sever- 
 ance must cost himself. But this was all. He gave no 
 sign of relenting or of change. He came to visit her no 
 more. 
 
 She knew then that her dream was definitely over. Of 
 marriage she had long since ceased to think ; but love, but 
 friendship, but all of Paul was riven from her now. She 
 knew this ; and she suffered with that triple-fold agony 
 that only very exceptional natures like hers are capable 
 of. She yearned for Paul (does any word but that ex- 
 press the part that the soul plays in human passion ?) 
 She brooded ovor the thought of him day and night and 
 hourly, with a stronger appreciation of his worth and of 
 the fitness there was in herself to be his companion. She 
 sorrowed for him with that purely physical sensation 
 which the great materialist philosopher defined as the ir- 
 
408 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ritable condition of certain nerves closely connected alike 
 with the digestive organs and with the brain. 
 
 Women of weaker temperament exhaust themselves in 
 one of those forms only make a religion of their grief j or 
 a sentiment ; or, more frequently still, only a source of 
 bodily disease to themselves. Esther Fleming did all 
 three, in her own robust, uncivilized fashion, and (liker to 
 a savage still) she gave no moan under her sufferings. 
 Her cheeks were white, her sleep no sleep, her meals un- 
 eaten ; but who was there to notice these things in a per- 
 son holding such a position as hers ? Natty, finding her 
 lessons more negligently attended to, began to have la- 
 tent suspicions that she had misjudged Miss Fleming ; 
 and that, after all, her present governess would turn out 
 just as pleasantly neglectful as all former bonnes and 
 nurses had been. Jane, in hourly entanglements of white 
 silk and lace, and hopes of crushing and eclipsing Miss 
 Lynes, would have noticed nothing short of positive ill- 
 ness in anybody unconnected with millinery. And these 
 were the two human souls in London who took the most 
 real interest in Esther Fleming's life. 
 
 She felt, at first, that there was a signal injustice in her 
 disappointment making so little change to the world. 
 Every sense and sound of common life jarred on her al- 
 most with a rough actual pain. Miss Dashwood's self- 
 engrossed conversation, the child's merry play, the very 
 sight of the servants at their work, or of the people pass- 
 ing along the streets, was inexpressibly irksome to her. 
 
 We would never in youth have the sun to shine upon the 
 faces of our dead. We would have the heartless spirits 
 of the whole world crushed so that they might not mock 
 us in our first, new, overwhelming taste of the reality of 
 sorrow. And the sun shines deep down into the grave 
 where our firstborn is to lie before night : and the great 
 world ; and, which is bitterer, our own small section of 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 409 
 
 the world gets up, and hopes, and rejoices, just the same 
 upon the day when we learn that we are to stand from 
 henceforth outside all hope and all rejoicing ! Later on 
 in life (when the sun has shone into a great many graves 
 since that little unforgotten first one,) we turn with a 
 dreary stoicism, or perhaps with truer philosophy, to the 
 thought that others are rejoicing who have once mourned 
 like us ; even as we shall one day stand at a marriage- 
 feast while they are occupied in the preparation of their 
 funeral-meats. But Esther was at an age still to hug her 
 grief with passion ; to turn from every thought of com- 
 fort ; to quarrel with the whole universe because it show- 
 ed no immediate sympathy with Paul and herself. 
 
 " You really should try to write in a more lively style," 
 was Millicent's reply to one of the curt, formal letters she 
 forced herself to write about the house and the servants. 
 " The doctor says it is very bad for me not to have my 
 spirits constantly amused." 
 
 " I hope you'll get up your color again soon, Esther," 
 said Miss Dash wood. " I have set my heart upon hav- 
 ing every one of my bridesmaids handsome, if its only 
 to make a contrast to Mrs. Peel's." 
 
 "Do play louder, Miss Fleming," cried Natty. "I 
 want you to run about on your hands and knees and 
 bark, while I do the man in Punch." , 
 
 These are specimens of the kind of sympathy she re- 
 ceived. 
 
 Sympathy, if she had got it, would have done her no 
 good. Would time ? She asked herself this, one gloomy 
 afternoon, as she sat alone, as usual, brooding over her 
 never-dying pain in the silent room where she had heard 
 Paul's voice last. Would time enable her to live down, 
 or live out, her love and her misery together? Ten years 
 hence, when she was thirty, a middle-aged woman, would 
 she come, like Joan, to feel a hard, loveless interest in 
 18 
 
410 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 the common things of life ? To rise every morning with 
 no particular hope, and go to rest with no particular dis- 
 appointment. Oh, if such a time was indeed to come, 
 that she could get over those intermediate years ! that 
 she could be old and callous without consciously going 
 through the fearful intervening process of ossification ! 
 
 She rose, she walked to the window and looked out on 
 the square ; dull and dark and silent as it befits a respec- 
 table London square to be; and standing there, listening 
 to the patter of the rain upon the pavement, and gazing 
 listlessly at the hurrying forms of the occasional passers- 
 by, a sudden remembrance come across her mind it 
 was a Saturday; a day on which Paul always passed a 
 certain crossing into Oxford street, about two miles dis- 
 tant from the Scotts' house, at five in the afternoon. She 
 knew this fact well; first, from his having explained to her 
 that Saturday was a day on which his visit to her must 
 always be later than usual; secondly, because she had one 
 afternoon chanced to meet him when she was walking 
 along Oxford street, with the child, and he had said, 
 laughingly, "If ever you want me on a sudden mission of 
 life or death, and it should chance to be Wednesday or 
 Saturday, you would be as certain to meet me at this par- 
 ticular spot at this hour, as you would be of seeing the 
 clock over the post-office yonder. I have gone this road 
 for more than three years, and never remember being at 
 the crossing more than ten minutes late during that time." 
 
 The remembrance of the fact came suddenly across her 
 mind ; and with it a wild, a reasonless impulse to start 
 abroad in the cold and gloom and rain upon the chance 
 of seeing him. Miss Dash wood was out; the child was 
 spending the day with some friends ; no one would 
 want her, would miss her, and Paul would be utterly un- 
 conscious of her presence. It was scarcely past four now. 
 If she started at once she would be there long before he 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 4H 
 
 could by possibility pass ; would take shelter in a station- 
 ers shop which she recollected, and watch him, unseen, as 
 he went by. A dreary comfort, enough ; but something 
 something to stand between her and a certain horrible 
 symptom of whose presence during the last forty-eight 
 hours she had been vaguely conscious in her mind a 
 dull, leaden incapacity to think or feel or suffer; a loath- 
 ing of life, an absence of desire even to return to happier 
 things. Better see Paul's face again, better revivify the 
 old tortures at their worst than give way to this. 
 
 She dressed herself, forgetful of the rain, in a light 
 cloak and her usual little thin schoolroom dress, and then 
 started, in a bitter cold wind and with the rain driving 
 sheer in her face, upon her errand. When she got to the 
 end of her walk it was still a quarter to five ; and as 
 she was ashamed to remain too long with no ostensible 
 object in the shop, she walked up and down until indeed 
 she was thoroughly wet to the skin, for the rain was 
 pouring now, until five minutes to five. Then with that 
 extraordinary sense of guilt of which most of us are sus- 
 ceptible when we are not going to commit anything 
 wrong, she walked into the shop. 
 
 The girl behind the counter eyed her sourly as she en- 
 tered, bringing with her the cold, .clinging fog of the 
 street, and desired her, tartly, to observe that there was a 
 stand for umbrellas at the door. 
 
 " I am very wet and 1 should be glad to have shelter 
 for a few minutes," Esther stammered, with all the con- 
 scious shame of a tongue unversed in artifice. " And I 
 want a copy-book and some pens, and a bottle of ink 
 blue ink, if you please." 
 
 Now, the shop woman knew as well as she knew herself 
 that the girl came into the shop with intentions respect- 
 ing something or some person unconnected with stationery. 
 Still, a customer is a customer ; and London shopkeepers 
 
412 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 are whole worlds beyond the capacity for curiosity in 
 any matter not directly affecting their own interest. In 
 a country town a woman thus placed must, by a law of 
 her nature, have asked questions : the Londoner, her first 
 disgust at the damp over, just produced the copy-book, 
 pens, and blue ink, and lapsed back into indifference over 
 her embroidery. If the girl had fallen down in a fit, or 
 fallen dead, or stayed five minutes, or an hour, or indeed 
 any time short of the period at which the gas was turned 
 off, she could scarce have brought her mind up to the 
 exertion of thinking of her again. 
 
 Five o'clock struck, and then the quarter past five ; and 
 then the fog thickened so that it was impossible to dis- 
 cern the features even of the nearest passers-by ; and then 
 the sickening thought came upon Esther that Paul must 
 have past without her seeing him, and that all that remain- 
 ed for her was to go home again. She was bodily weak ; 
 had scarcely eaten anything all day ; and in addition to 
 her disappointment a chill of childish terror overcame 
 her at the thought of having to walk alone through the 
 crowded desolation of London streets. In all her life 
 she had never so realized that state which the Germans 
 happily term " God-forsaken " as at this moment. She 
 was too thoroughly beaten for any of the old instincts ot 
 pride to come to her help ; too bodily miserable, too cold, 
 too wet, too weak, to be conscious of the unreasonable- 
 ness of her despair. In fact, she had walked a mile or two 
 through the rain to see a certain human face; and had 
 missed seeing it : and now had just to walk home again 
 to a good dinner, and good fire, and every other crea- 
 ture comfort of life. But in imagination, she had rous- 
 ed herself by strong endeavors into making one more 
 effort at seeing the only thing she desired to live for ; and 
 had missed it ; and there was nothing more to make her 
 hold on to this wretched mockery of life ! And one of 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 413 
 
 the grand characteristics of the disorder of love is that 
 all its greatest tortures, like its greatest enjoyments, are 
 those which the sufferer's own imagination coins. Hence 
 the reason why they are so far worse to bear than those 
 of other passions. For in imagination not the body only, 
 not the mind suffers; but the soul ourself! That 
 which one day we can conceive of as enjoying or as suffer- 
 ing in an entirely different state to this unequal partner- 
 ship in which it is now involved. 
 
 Among the beautiful fancies which so many of the old 
 Catholic legends unfold, none is, I think, more beautiful 
 than the well-known image of what shall constitute hell. 
 " For in this is hell : that, after the dissolution of this 
 earthly body, the soul shall straightway be drawn upward 
 towards God, and shall see Him and feel His presence ; 
 and then, when she has tasted to the full the exceeding 
 rapture of love, shall be severed from all love and all light 
 for evermore." 
 
 Of such a hell most of us have had some foretaste 
 through the medium of our earthly desires. Esther Flem- 
 ing experienced its very dregs of bitterness now, when 
 after the short-lived, pictured rapture of seeing Paul, she 
 had got outside the shop door and stood a second irreso- 
 lute, with the cold wet wind beating cruelly in her face, 
 before she could summon up courage enough to make her 
 way home along the dark, and by this time crowded, pave- 
 ment. 
 
 "Esther!" said a voice close behind her ear, as she 
 stood there shrinking and irresolute. " Child ! what, in 
 God's name, brings you here at such an hour ? " 
 
 Had a ray of warm, delicious light direct from heaven, 
 had the ecstacy of gazing upon an angel's face been sud- 
 denly vouchsafed to one of the saints of old, some win- 
 ter's midnight, in his icy, barren cell, it could scarce have 
 flooded his heart with rapture greater than that which 
 
414 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 smote Miss Fleming's frozen breast as she heard Paul's 
 voice. From darkness to light, from cold to warmth, 
 from absence, from despair to him ! It was a sudden 
 break from heaven : I used no metaphor. The nearest ap- 
 proach to a foretaste (or a recollection) of another state 
 than any of us can ever know. And in the instinctive 
 bound of all human hearts in moments of intense human 
 passion like this ; in the sudden involuntary rush of 
 thankfulness we know not to whom ! in the realiza- 
 tion, for about twenty seconds, of our own capacity for in- 
 finite happiness, is an indirect evidence of God and of the 
 godlike within us, which I really think metaphysicians 
 have too much neglected. 
 
 Twenty seconds Esther's beatitude lasted no longer. 
 Then came reality ; burning humiliation that Paul should 
 have seen her ; burning shame for the words in which, 
 unless she took refuge in direct falsehood, she must explain 
 being met in such a position. 
 
 " I came out too late," she stammered. " I wanted a 
 copy-book for Natty," and I took shelter here, and I think 
 it got very suddenly dark to-night." 
 
 He did not reply by one word ; but he took her hand, 
 drew it quietly within his arm, and walked on with her 
 down the street. When they had gone about a dozen 
 yards, he led her under a large projecting portico, which 
 at once formed a protection from the weather, and also, 
 owing to the house being empty and the door un.ligb.ted, 
 from the observation of the passers-by. 
 
 " Esther, are you aware that it is raining hard ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know it : I shall soon be home." 
 
 " Do you know," laying his hand upon her shoulder, 
 " that you are in a poor, wretched little cloak, and that 
 you are wet through ? " 
 
 "Not not quite, I think, sir." 
 
 "Do you know," taking her cold, gloveless hand in 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 415 
 
 both of his, " that you are chilled to the very bone, and 
 that if you are not laid up with fever to-morrow it will 
 be no fault of yours ? " 
 
 " I don't think it would matter much if I was ; but I 
 ahall not be ; I'm not going to be ill." 
 
 "Do you know that it is dangerous, that it is wrong, 
 for a girl of your age to wander about alone in the streets 
 of London at such an hour ? " 
 
 She was silent : but she tried, quite in vain, to take her 
 hand away from him. 
 
 " Esther, what did you come out here for to-night ? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Esther, what did you come for ? Will you tell me, 
 or will you let me guess ? " 
 
 She was stonily silent for a minute or two as was her 
 custom always before the overflow of any strong emotion 
 then out it came. " I thought I'd see you once more, 
 and I waited and you didn't pass, and I thought I had 
 missed you, Mr. Chichester." And then a stifled sob. 
 
 There was an ominous silence for two or three minutes ; 
 after which an empty cab happened to drive slowly down 
 the street in their direction, and Mr. Chichester hailed it. 
 " You had better let me see you home," he remarked, 
 after he had placed Esther inside ; " it is too late for you 
 to go alone." And as she neither said yes nor no, he got 
 in beside her, and they drove off. 
 
 " Poor, little, cold hands ! " said Paul ; and he took one 
 of them in his again ; " poor, little, kind, patient face, 
 that would brave cold, and rain, and darkness for my 
 sake ! " 
 
 And he kissed her. 
 
 " Esther," after a minute or two, " I have told you, 
 cruel times enough, that I can't marry you. I don't 
 repeat it now, because" and here Paul's own voice fal- 
 tered " because, child, now that I see what kind of 
 
416 THE, ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 materials your love and your character are made of, I 
 scarce know what is honor and what is duty for me. But 
 I swear one thing, from this night forth the choice shall 
 rest with you. I'll not leave you again, never fear that ! 
 You shall know all my life, and such as it is my life is 
 yours." 
 
 I don't think all men would take this tone at the 
 precise moment when a woman had compromised herself 
 irrevocably for their sake ; but you must remember Paul 
 was not a man of the world, and also that there was a 
 decided taint of eccentricity in the Chichester blood. 
 
 " The choice mine ? Oh, Mr. Chichester ! how can that 
 ever be ? I know you can't marry me, and I submit to it. 
 All I wish is that we should remain friends, and that when 
 I go back home you should write to me once or twice 
 in a month, perhaps, at first." 
 
 " Esther," drawing her closer to his side, " do you mean 
 what you say ? Would a cold compact of friendship 
 really make you happy ? " 
 
 " I don't think I spoke of happiness at all, Mr. Chiches- 
 ter. I'm not likely to be very happy while I live." 
 
 " Are you not happy now ? " 
 
 " Sir, I am frightened ! I wish I was at home with 
 Jane." 
 
 He let go her hand ; he took his arm from round her 
 instantly. " You will be home with Jane directly, and you 
 will then, at my request, go straight to your bed, and try 
 to sleep. With a weaker constitution than yours, such 
 an escapade as the one you have thought fit to engage in 
 to-night might cost a brain fever, but I am not afraid of 
 you. Esther," after a minute, " do you consider yourself 
 engaged to me ? " 
 
 " No, Mr. Chichester ; I do not, indeed. I know very 
 well that I am not." 
 
 "I'm not certain of it myself; but we shall both be 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 417 
 
 surer on the point in a few days. Miss Fleming, have I 
 ever told you where I live ? " 
 
 " You have not. You have put rne down, consistently, 
 whenever I have even tried remotely to find out." 
 
 " Then I will tell you now. I live in St. John's Wood 
 
 Richmond Cottages ; no, you will never remember 
 all that. I'll give you the written address when the cab 
 stops. Will you come and pay ine a visit ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " That is right. You put on no conventional affecta- 
 tion, because you know I wouldn't ask you to do a thing 
 that would really harm you. Come, let me see ; Sunday 
 
 Monday lean manage to be at home all Tuesday 
 afternoon. Come on Tuesday, between three and four in 
 the afternoon." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Chichester." 
 
 " And prepare, child " they were within a hundred 
 yards of the Scotts' house, and somehow her hand was in 
 his again " prepare for a dark story, for I'm going to 
 tell you mine ; prepare for a dark household, for I'm going 
 to introduce you to mine, a'nd also," fora moment he hes- 
 itated, fearfully agitated, " to the companion of my life. 
 Esther, good-night." 
 
 He took a letter, containing his address, from his pocket, 
 and gave it her as they stopped at the 'Scotts' house : he 
 kissed her cold hands three or four times over, arid then 
 they parted without another word. 
 
 He loved her ; his kisses were warm upon her hands, 
 upon her lips ; it was to rest with her to be his wife or 
 not. But as Esther stole up unnoticed to her lonely room, 
 the very chill of death itself seemed to be upon her heart. 
 
 She knew that if a renunciation was to come from her 
 
 lips, she would be inflexible, even though the whole of 
 
 her happiness should be the sacrifice she must offer up. 
 
 This morning she could have done it, perhaps, in a differ- 
 
 18* 
 
418 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 ent spirit : could have said, even as the Hebrew maiden 
 said of old, "Do to me according to that which hath pro- 
 ceeded out of thy mouth." But the first touch of pos- 
 session had swept over her love now, and unleavened it 
 for ever of the heroic. 
 
 Paul had kissed her ! 
 
 What was duty, what was heroism, if all that remain- 
 ed to her of life thirty or forty arid years, perhaps 
 had to be passed away from Paul ? 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 PAUL'S HOME. 
 
 THE succeeding days passed by in a kind of dull dream, 
 the nights in a state of feverish excitement, wherein real 
 sleep or coherent reasoning waking were alike denied to 
 her ; but still Esther Fleming kept as usual to her duties, 
 and was in no danger of brahi fever. On Sunday she 
 struggled with the child as usual through the first three 
 questions of the catechism ; on Monday she attended Miss 
 Dashwood through one of her daily courses of millinery ; 
 on Tuesday the day that was to be the black or white 
 day of her life she even forced herself to sit down and 
 write a letter to David. If things ended as as her own 
 foreboding told her they must end, she would not, she 
 thought, be able to write just at first ; and so it would be 
 well now, while she could yet measure her strength, to 
 forewarn them of her return. 
 
 " I am well in health," she stated in this letter, which 
 was quite calm and well expressed, and written in her 
 usual hand, " but I am doubtful if the life here is one I 
 can live long. Remind Joan that she once said she thought 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 419 
 
 I could earn my livelihood, if I chose it, at Countisbury, 
 and beg of her to be prepared at any time for my return 
 home." 
 
 She was cairn when she left the Scotts' house ; calm 
 till she began to feel that she must be close to Paul's ; 
 then all her courage forsook her, as woman's courage does 
 forsake them, in a second, and with the very inconsistency 
 of cowardice, she stopped the cab suddenly, and dismiss- 
 ed it without even asking the driver how far she was still 
 from her destination. 
 
 As chance willed, she was already there. She had 
 scarcely walked a dozen hurried steps when the well-known 
 accents of Paul's voice struck on her ear. In another mo- 
 ment her hand was in his, and she was standing scarce 
 knowing what she did or said in her agitation, at the 
 threshold of his house. 
 
 "I thought you would do something of the kind," he 
 remarked, after hearing her singularly inconsequential 
 reasons for dismissing the cab. " I felt sure you would 
 either have lost the address altogether, or forgotten the 
 number, or made some other equally trivial mistake ; and 
 so, as a kind of forlorn hope, I stationed myself at the 
 gate to look out for you. I hope you admire my flowers, 
 Miss Fleming ? This piece of ground between the house 
 and the area rails, which I dare say you country-people 
 would consider too narrow for a garden-path, is what we 
 Londoners are proud to call a garden. Stay a moment, 
 and I believe I can really find you one or two white vio- 
 lets." 
 
 His voice was very quiet, too quiet to be thoroughly 
 natural ; his face pale, and more worn than she had ever 
 seen it, save on that day when she and the Dashwoods 
 had followed him in his walk. Miss Fleming felt that he 
 was striving to rally, not her nerves alone, but his own 
 before taking her into the house. And feeling this, she 
 
420 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 did rally yes, and was able to stand and talk to him 
 for some minutes, almost in her old unconstrained man- 
 ner, as he gathered her a few spring-flowers and pointed 
 out, but with somewhat forced spirits, the capabilities 
 which a dozen square feet of London earth might, in a 
 master's hands, afford. 
 
 " I don't think you have noticed the plate upon my 
 door yet," he remarked, when the conversation had dropped 
 so suddenly and utterly that there was no longer the 
 barest excuse for remaining outside ; " or, if you have 
 noticed it, you are too well-bred to let me be aware that 
 you have done so. Look here, and confess by how much 
 your interest in me has deteriorated!" 
 
 This was what the plate bore. 
 
 PAUL CHICHESTER, 
 
 Teacher of Mathematics. 
 
 "Mr. Chichester, nothing could alter me," said Esther, 
 very low and very hurriedly. " As far as this goes, I am 
 not even surprised. I've often thought that you knew 
 something, by experience, of the kind of life that mine 
 is destined to be." 
 
 "I don't think you know what that is, Miss Fleming, 
 but come in come in at once," he interrupted himself 
 quickly. " We are cowards, both of us ; but the inevi- 
 table moment can't be staved off any longer, try what 
 we will. Come in : I bid you welcome to my house. 
 You are the first visitor that has ever crossed its threshold 
 since I inhabited it." 
 
 He opened the door, drew her hand within his arm, 
 and led her into a small sitting-room on the ground-floor, 
 his own especial room, as Esther's instinct told her the 
 moment that she entered it. 
 
 " You look pale, Miss Fleming. You have not recov- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 421 
 
 ered from your exploits on Saturday. Sit in this easy 
 chair it's my own, and therefore you may rely upon 
 its being comfortable and wait patiently while I get 
 you a glass of wine. Pardon me, you must take it. For 
 the time being, you are in my power, and must d,o just 
 what I tell you." 
 
 He took both her hands and made her sit down in the 
 place he had offered ; then he helped her to take off her 
 cloak and hat ; and then he got her a glass of wine 
 performing all these offices with that kindly little mas- 
 culine roughness, so infinitely sweeter to women than are 
 the finished graces of men merely accustomed to society 
 and versed in the minute science of conventional petits, 
 soins. 
 
 Mrs. Strangways had never once made Paul under- 
 stand that he was to put on her opera-cloak, unasked, 
 during all the time she had had him for an attendant. 
 
 " That's better : there's a tinge of color in your face 
 now. You look a shade more like the healthy young per- 
 son who stood beside me that first night on the balcony 
 at Weymouth ; a shade less like the ghost that flitted 
 suddenly before me in Oxford Street on Saturday. Es- 
 ther, do you feel strong ? " 
 
 " Quite strong, now. I was a little tired till you made 
 me take the wine." 
 
 " You're not in the least nervous ? You wouldn't give 
 way at anything you had to hear or see ? " 
 
 " I would not give way a bit. I never do. I haven't 
 been trained to it. My cousin Joan hates scenes. You 
 need not be afraid of me, Mr. Chichester." 
 
 "That is right. Now, answer me one question. Have 
 you ever heard anything about my family-history ? " 
 
 "Nothing; except that you have separated yourself 
 from your relations for years. You have told me that 
 yourself, you know ; I also heard something about it from 
 my Aunt Thalia, before I ever saw you at Weymouth." 
 
422 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 "Very well. Now I am going, in the fewest possible 
 words, to give you the reason of this estrangement. 
 Among other things you have heard, no doubt, that mad- 
 ness, in one form or another, is supposed to be hereditary 
 in our family ? " 
 
 "Yes, I have heard it." 
 
 " Esther, when I was a child of seven years old, my fa- 
 ther died. Not so much, of course, from what I recollect, 
 as from what I have gained from others, I know now that 
 he was a man averse to worldly pursuits; sedate, studious, 
 ambitionless. He was also poor. As he neither cared for 
 society nor for advancement as he neglected his rich 
 friends, and spent what money he had upon his poor ones 
 there was, naturally, reason enough for the world in 
 general to call -him eccentric the family malady devel- 
 oping itself under one of its milder forms. My mother 
 especially the very weakest of God's creatures I ever 
 knew failed to discover any of the noble points in 
 Hildebrand Chichester's character. She came of a com- 
 monplace family. She was herself (I speak quite coldly, 
 Esther, I outgrew the whole of my love for her) the very 
 type and essence of commonplace, and all the better parts 
 of her husband's nature were simply a sealed book to her. 
 Like all such minds, she was thoroughly fixed in her opin- 
 ions. Nothing shook her in any idea she had taken up. 
 She neither retrograded nor progressed. My father was 
 eccentric: she had married into a mad family, and must 
 make the best of it. She spoke frequently of the mys- 
 terious dealings of Providence, and of the cross she had 
 to bear; and, I suppose, would have been convinced by 
 nothing short of direct revelation that Hildebrand Chi- 
 chester was a man of great mental, as well as moral 
 strength, who had had the ill-fortune to ally himself with 
 a woman considerably below the dead level of mediocrity 
 in all things. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 423 
 
 " I get warm when I speak of my father ; and I began 
 by promising you that I would be brief. I must condense 
 more. When I was seven years old, he died suddenly ; 
 and, as his income had been derived nearly exclusively 
 from an annuity, his widow and children were left very 
 badly off indeed. Well, Providence, which had before 
 provided my mother with a poor and eccentric husband, 
 stood her in better stead now. She was still a very 
 beautiful woman I will show you a likeness of her some 
 day ; her weeds and her seclusion were neither of them 
 of very long duration ; and just one twelvemonth after 
 my father's death, the Honorable Frederick Carew had 
 seen her face sufficiently often in public places to fall in 
 love with her, and offer to make her his wife. 
 
 "Esther, though I tell you I outlived my love for her, 
 some of the old pain overcomes me as I have to speak in 
 direct words of my mother's conduct. But the story 
 can't be told otherwise ! I was not her only child. A 
 daughter, several years older than myself, was her first- 
 born ; mark this, her first-born child. A creature with 
 a fair face like her own ; but from whose innocent lips 
 neither heartlessness nor injustice could ever come. A 
 creature on whom, in our language, God's hand was heav- 
 ily laid ; but who was yet never to know any of that 
 worse bitterness of life which it is the .exclusive preroga- 
 tive of human thought and human intelligence to feel." 
 Paul stopped abruptly. 
 
 " And this child died, Mr. Chichester ? " Esther asked, 
 but with trembling lips, for her heart began to divine a 
 ghastly truth ; " died, and her mother never mourned 
 for her ? " 
 
 " This child lived. This child lives I may well 
 say so, for she is, and always will be a child. This child 
 is the companion of my life. Wait, and I will tell you 
 all. 
 
424 TH E ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " When ray mother entered upon her second engage- 
 ment, she divined that so heavy a burthen as a helpless, 
 imbecile child would not be an incentive to marriage in 
 the mind of Mr. Carew ; divined rightly there, as you 
 Vrlil see and my sister's very existence was studiously 
 ignored before him. I recollect perfectly being trained 
 never to mention Magdalen ('twas my father's favorite 
 name, and he had her called so, little thinking that the 
 hapless child would never know either temptation or re- 
 pentance while she bore it!) I recollect being trained 
 never to mention her in Mr. Carew's presence ; and I 
 acted my part with the aptitude that I remark most 
 young children show for falsehood, simply as falsehood * 
 and my mother acted hers; and the settlements were 
 drawn out, and the wedding-day was fixed, and they 
 were married ! 
 
 " I remember that day as clearly as I remember my 
 meeting with you on Saturday. My mother never in- 
 tended, of course, to attempt to conceal her daughter's 
 existence from Mr. Carew after the marriage. What she 
 wanted was for the marriage to pass over quietly, and then 
 to prepare him by degrees, during their wedding-tour, 
 for the child whom she would have to present to him up- 
 on his return. And to carry out this plan she had hired 
 the small furnished house we lived in for another quarter, 
 and had engaged a woman for the special purpose of tak- 
 ing charge of Magdalen and myself until her return. But 
 the truth was destined to come out somewhat more blunt- 
 ly than she had calculated on. Mr. Carew was introduc- 
 ed to his step-daughter upon his marriage-day, and through 
 my agency, thus : 
 
 " My mother informed me I was too young to accom- 
 pany the bridal-party to the church, but promised me 
 that I should appear at the breakfast upon their return 
 at which honor, I doubt not, I was as proud as children 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 425 
 
 ordinarily are of any opportunity of displaying themselves 
 in new clothes. At all events, I recollect as I stood alone 
 at the dining-room window, waiting for their return, a 
 sudden desire coming across me to exhibit myself in my 
 new finery to Magdalen. I was perfectly aware that, ibr 
 some cause I did not understand, she was to be kept out 
 of Mr. Carew's sight, and had no intention of disobeying 
 my mother's orders. The gratification of my own vanity 
 was simply what influenced me, and, as this is a passion 
 nearly as strong in some children as in most men, you will 
 understand that I did not reason long, when the intoxicat- 
 ing image of poor Magdalen's surprise had once taken 
 possession of my fancy. 
 
 " Esther, the girl was not then what in after-years she 
 became. Of sequence, of coherence of ideas she was, I 
 am willing to believe, incapable, although my own recol- 
 lection don't supply me with evidence on the point. That 
 she was able to join in my play, that she was suscep- 
 tible of pain and pleasure, I know. I recollect, at this 
 moment, the surprised look of her face when I rushed in 
 upon her in my bridal array, the eagerness with which she 
 fell to examining the different details of my dress 
 above all, a little knot of white flowers and ribbon, that 
 one of the servants had pinned upon my breast. You 
 know, or you can guess at her love for white flowers (for 
 whom but her should I ever have spent the money that 
 you have known me do?) During the last few months 
 even that has weakened; but for years the constant pos- 
 session of fresh white flowers was the solitary desire of 
 her life, the solitary thing that gave her pleasure. And 
 this has always seemed to me to be connected with some 
 dim recollection of my mother's marriage-day the last 
 day, mind you, on which anything belonging to human 
 affection or human interest, was her portion. 
 
 "If she thought so much of my dress and of one 
 
426 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 wedding-favor, how must she be impressed by the sight 
 of the grand breakfast-table, and all its profusion of orna- 
 ments and flowers, down below? The transition of 
 thought was an easy one ; and chance favored me, by the 
 absence of Magdalen's nurse, in carrying it into execution. 
 You know how time would pass to two young children 
 looking at new and forbidden sweets ! Before I thought 
 I had been five minutes in the room, there was a sudden 
 awful sound of footsteps in the passage, a murmur of 
 voices, a rustling of silk, and my mother and her husband 
 stood at the door of the room. 
 
 " God forbid that I should attempt, minutely, to des- 
 cribe that scene to you ! My mother's weak endeavors to 
 screen herself from the result of her own falsehood, Mr. 
 Carew's coarse rage, the astonishment of the guests, poor 
 Magdalen's stupefied face, as she turned first to one then 
 to another, in the vain endeavor to understand the con- 
 tention of which she dimly understood herself to be the 
 cause ! every one of these details is imprinted for ever 
 upon my brain, but I need not speak of them to you. 
 The results of that day, the sequel of the story, are all 
 with which I have any concern now." 
 
 " ' Let her be taken, let her be taken for ever from my 
 sight !' These, or words like these, were what Mr. Carew 
 employed, when, his passion having somewhat cooled, my 
 mother was attempting to reason with him. ' I'd as soon 
 live in a mad-house myself as have one of these creatures 
 brought under my roof! The young one,' turning with 
 a glance to me, ' is bad enough, but him I bargained for. 
 Of the other I will know no more than I did an hour ago. 
 And you, madam,' he added to my mother 'will do 
 wisely in furthering my forgetful ness.' " 
 
 " Well, Esther, from that day I saw Magdalen no more. 
 
 "You know what a child's memories, what a child's 
 affections are ! Upon my mother's return from abroad I 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 427 
 
 went to live at Newton. I had the freedom of a country 
 life, the liberty which is the usual portion of unloved, un- 
 tended children. At-the end of a twelvemonth I had my 
 little brother Oliver. What should I think of Magdalen ? 
 I was forbidden to speak of her. In time I remembered 
 her only as I remembered London and my father, and all 
 the other things gone for ever out of my life. The scene 
 upon my mother's marriage-day had not been of a nature 
 to make me wish for any renewal of the subject. I knew 
 that Magdalen, for some reason beyond my grasp, was 
 under a ban, and that only some very slight difference be- 
 tween us my age, perhaps, or my utter insignificance 
 prevented me from sharing the same fate. 
 
 " I don't want to use any hard words. Mr. Carew and 
 my mother acted, doubtless, according to the light that 
 was in them. He was not the only man in the world who 
 would have repudiated the forced duty of taking under 
 his charge an alien, imbecile child. There have been 
 numberless instances of women feeling not alone want of 
 affection, but actual repugnance for their own offspring. 
 As regards myselfj I have no cause of complaint against 
 the Carews. My stepfather looked upon me from first to 
 last with complete aversion ; but the old Lord Feltham 
 took somewhat of a liking to me half I think out of 
 spite to my step-father, whom he despised, and was wont 
 to call half-witted and on his death-bed made his only 
 son promise to assist my mother in my education and 
 start in the world. 
 
 " And this Francis Carew, afterwards the late Lord 
 Feltham, did. He was a man of as small a brain, of views 
 as narrow, as his cousin looking with the same righteous 
 horror upon the hereditary curse of the Chichesters, and 
 pronouncing as just the sentence of banishment that 
 had been passed upon my unhappy sister. Personally, 
 too, I believe he disliked me; he had no children of his 
 
428 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 own, and the subject and the sight of children alike irri 
 tated him : but he had a strong idea (much stronger than 
 had my stepfather whose passions were too strong for him 
 to be cautious) of keeping all family disgrace, foremost 
 amongst which he classed poverty, out of sight of the 
 world. His cousin Frederick had been fool enough to 
 marry a widow without money and with children. One 
 of these children, an idiot, they had wisely shut away for 
 life ; the other, not an idiot, couldn't be so easily disposed 
 of. Then he must be educated. The future Lord Felt- 
 ham's brother must be in the position of a gentleman. 
 The boy must be educated : and educated I was. I went 
 to Harrow, I went to college, and on my twentieth birth- 
 day was informed by Lord Feltham that he was about to 
 obtain for me a commission in the army." 
 
 " And then you broke with them all, Mr. Chichester ? 
 This is the part of the story I have already heard." 
 
 " Then I broke with them, Esther. You are right. 
 Then I broke with them ! On my twentieth birthday, 
 after tendering my thanks to Lord Feltham and my step- 
 father for the assistance they had given my mother in my 
 education, I inquired, in the midst of a full family con- 
 clave, for my sister Magdalen. 
 
 " My mother cast her eyes towards heaven and search- 
 ed for her handkerchief, Lord Feltham and my stepfather 
 put the question curtly aside. So I repeated it. LTp to 
 that time I had been treated as a boy, I remarked, on the 
 subject of my sister. Now that I was a boy no longer, I 
 wished to hear where she was living, as I intended to go 
 and &ee her." 
 
 " Do you remember the day I married your mother, 
 sir ? " cried out Mr. Carew, whitening with rage. " Be- 
 cause, if you do, I wonder at your daring to allude to this 
 subject in my presence." 
 
 "I answered that I remembered it accurately as hi- 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 429 
 
 deed I did and I also added that I felt shame when I 
 counted up the number of years that had since elapsed 
 without Magdalen's face having been seen among us." 
 Then he added 
 
 " No, Esther. I will not go into it all to you. Why, 
 in truth, should I ? I am not seeking to shock you with 
 accounts of the cold inhumanity of those narrow hearts 
 and brains, but simply to show in what especial manner 
 Magdalen came to fall into my hands. 
 
 " When our conversation was ended, Lord Feltham 
 gave me my unhappy sister's address, with fullest warning 
 that unless I left my family disgrace to moulder where it 
 was, I was to look for no more assistance from his hands, 
 and that evening I bade rny mother farewell and left 
 Newton. 
 
 "'You are mad, Paul,' were her last words to me. 
 After all Lord Feltham's kindness and my prayers you 
 are going to turn out just as senseless and headstrong as 
 your poor, dear father. Magdalen is perfectly well cared 
 for where she is. What good can it do either you or her- 
 self to disturb her?' 
 
 " I replied that I would judge for myself, and I did so. 
 Yes, Esther, I did so! Before noon of the next day I 
 held my sister in my arms. 
 
 "But, great God, how changed ! My childish remem- 
 brance was of a soft-faced, soft-voiced girl, who used to 
 laugh and join with me in my play, and whose vacancy 
 of intellect was at least not glaring enough to show itself 
 to me I saw a wan, faded woman ; with less, far less 
 than a child's intellect, but with an unspeakable unmistak- 
 able look of the pain that ought only to belong to us, who 
 think and know what life is, upon her vacant face. I re- 
 membered a girl who used to kiss me and soothe me, in her 
 poor way, in all my childish sorrows; I found a woman in 
 whose bereft heart all capacity for, all knowledge even of 
 
430 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 human affection, was for ever withered and dead. What 
 she might have been, I can never know. I have refrain- 
 ed long from even speculating on that point. What she 
 was as a child I know, what I found her I know. And 
 at the time I rested simply upon that knowledge and 
 acted on it. 
 
 "She had lived with the people, an honest enough 
 country laborer and his wife, in whose hands I found her, 
 nearly four years, they informed me. They didn't know 
 her name, nor yet where his lordship had had her kept 
 before. There was no particular change in her state 
 during this time, only perhaps she noticed less. Her 
 health was pretty good, considering she lived quite in two 
 rooms, and never took the air. They weren't accustomed 
 to mad people, and wouldn't be sorry to give her up now 
 that the children were growing older. Lord Feltham had 
 put it in their way because a brother of the man, or of 
 the woman, I forget these kind of details, had been his 
 father's valet. 
 
 " You look white, child. The story is a sickening one, 
 but 'tis nearly told. The moment I saw my sister Mag- 
 dalen's face, rny determination was formed. All I had to 
 do was to find out the money obligations under which I 
 stood, as regarded her, to Lord Feltham and Mr. Carew. 
 In answer to my inquiries on the subject I was referred 
 to the family solicitor, and from him I learned that Mag- 
 dalen Chichester had been supported, strictly, through 
 and upon her own means. With the strange foresight of 
 parental love, my father had appointed in his will that, 
 should my mother marry again, the sum of fifty pounds 
 a year was to be applied under my mother's guardianship, 
 for her use ; and in the event of this second marriage, it 
 was further appointed that upon my attaining the age of 
 twenty-one I was to become rny ' afflicted sister Mag- 
 dalen's sole guardian for the remainder of her life.' The 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 431 
 
 rest of the money, scarcely amounting to a hundred 
 pounds a year more, was left to my mother, and this Mrs. 
 Carew now enjoys, and, I doubt not, will enjoy for another 
 quarter of a century, at least, as pin-money. On her 
 death, I believe, it is to come to me. 
 
 "I become her guardian, Esther, as I am now and ever 
 shall be. It was no fine or exalted sentiment whatever 
 that made me act as I did. Any man possessed of com- 
 mon human passions or human affections must have done 
 the same. Upon one side, the bounty of people whom I 
 despised, and the cold-blooded renunciation of one of the 
 nearest and strongest ties of life upon the other, work 
 and poverty, certainly, but independence, and the power 
 to stand by the poor, bereft being who had no friend on 
 earth but myself. Lad as I was, and accustomed till then 
 to defer wholly to the will and opinion of others, it never 
 even occurred to me to doubt as to what my line of con- 
 duct must be. Accident decided by what means my 
 bread and Magdalen's should be earned. The brother of 
 one of my college friends required a travelling tutor for 
 six months. I accompanied him, leaving Magdalen in 
 good hands during the interval, found that I had some- 
 what of a specialty for tuition, and on my return I 
 was just one-and-twenty then succeeded in obtaining a 
 mathematical mastership to a private school near Kensing- 
 ton. 
 
 " Those were uphill days, Esther, as you may believe. 
 But, although my abilities are not more than those of 
 other men, I had an indomitable determination in me to 
 succeed that would, I believe, have moved mountains. 
 Nothing daunted me ; nothing disappointed me ; I had Mag- 
 dalen's pale face to strengthen me. I had the thought of the 
 Carews to goad me on to fresh endeavors. I have suc- 
 ceeded. During the last six years not one farthing of the 
 interest of rny sister's money has been touched. I have 
 
432 TH E ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 even yearly added something to the capital. If I died 
 to-morrow, Magdalen, with the money sunk as I intend 
 to sink it for her, would have enough to live in the corn- 
 fort and the care that her state demands, and will demand 
 more every year that she lives. Yes, thank God ! I have 
 succeeded. And, looking back to these nine years of 
 work, I don't think I can say my life save for her, poor 
 soul has been an unhappy one. More than this, Es- 
 ther, these years of work have had the strongest influence 
 for good upon my own mental growth. . . . 
 
 "... Why should I turn with shame from that blot 
 upon my 'scutcheon, which is in truth no blot. I shouldn't, 
 child, save for something in your eyes which pleads to me 
 not to speak of it. I am by nature wholly of the tem- 
 perament of my father and his people the same capacity 
 for passionate, reasonless emotion, the same innate distaste 
 for action, the same fitful humor, the same tendency to 
 profoundest, moody melancholy. How can I tell what I 
 night have become in the life of mental inactivity which 
 the army would have opened to me ? As it is, from the 
 time I was twenty my life has been one of never-ceasing, 
 healthy work. My brain has been habitually submitted 
 to the mechanical processes of reason until I have got to 
 hold it, so to speak, in my own command. We contain, 
 each of us, you know, within ourselves the antagonistic 
 powers which may with special training counterbalance 
 almost any so-called irresistible or hereditary tendency of 
 the bodily organism. So finely balanced is the machine, 
 that a grain may turn it to either side ; but I have always 
 maintained, and will always maintain, that as long as 
 disease has not actually changed the structure of the 
 organ and so destroyed the possibility of reasoning, it is 
 in the power of the will to cast that grain. To the 
 man whom birth has placed in that awful border-land be- 
 tween sanity and insanity, and who once becomes a slave 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 433 
 
 to his lower nature, any of the commonest shocks of life, 
 any disappointed hope, any delusion of the senses, may 
 be fatal. The man with the same birthright, but whose 
 brain during the progress from youth to maturity has 
 been made flexible and habitually obedient to the dictates 
 of the rational will, may suffer will suffer more 
 keenly than other men while he lives ; but he will not be 
 mad. The entail to the darkest of all human heritages is 
 cut off in him, cut off I speak it reverently by his 
 own diligent cultivation of such poor materials as were 
 granted to him. 
 
 "Esther, the story is told. Wait a minute or two, and 
 I will bring Magdalen to see you." 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 MAGDALEN. 
 
 THIS, then, was Paul's secret. No ill-assorted marriage, 
 no fidelity to a passion that his heart had long outlived, 
 was the barrier that stood between him and a new love ; 
 but simply a very plain, very commonplace duty the 
 care of a forlorn and imbecile sister, whom not so much 
 an irresistible duty but the wanton neglect of her first nat 
 ural protector had cast upon his hands. 
 
 One of the strange inconsistencies of human nature is 
 its unwillingness to accept any other blow than that 
 particular one for which it stood prepared. For a wholly 
 different, for, in one sense, a far more difficult position 
 than this, Esther Fleming was armed, and would, doubt- 
 less, have fought the fight out well. But her heart had 
 contracted with the sharp pangs of cruellest disappoint- 
 ment during all the latter part of Pjiul's history; and, 
 19 
 
434 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 when he prepared to leave her, no one word, either of 
 surprise or consolation, found its way to her lips. 
 
 What, indeed, was she to say ? Severed from him by 
 such a rival as she had dreamed of, all the pride, all the 
 nobleness of her heart must have cried out, "Keep to 
 her. Cherish to the last the life that has been bereft of 
 all else for your sake ! " This she knew she could have 
 said ; could have thanked him for the confidence he had 
 given her ; have promised to remember him with affection 
 while she lived, and then have gone away gone far 
 away, home to the old house at Countisbury, to drink 
 alone and in silence the dregs of the bitter cup her life 
 had proved to her. 
 
 But what was she to say now ? Full of youth and the 
 passion of youth, was she to cry, " For this phantom, for this 
 ghost of a duty that others could fulfill as well, give up 
 your life and all that my love could make your life to 
 you ? Love, youth, hope, what are they, compared to the 
 straight and narrow path wherein you have decided it is 
 your duty to keep ? " This, of course, was what Paul 
 would expect from her ; this, of course, was the renunci- 
 ation that to a lukewarm love like his would be so simple. 
 For her it was worse than death ; it was bitterness that 
 even the last few weeks had not prepared her for. And 
 pride and reason alike told her that she must speak thus. 
 He had said that the issue was to be left in her hands. 
 What remained for her than to corroborate the fiat that he 
 himself had already tacitly pronounced, by telling her his 
 history ? 
 
 No thought of Paul's self-sacrificed life ; no thought of 
 all the loveless years of his youth ; no respect for the 
 very highest qualities it had ever been given her to know 
 in any man, rose in Esther's mind during these first few 
 minutes. She was capable of it all hereafter ; but now 
 she was simply a woman, smarting under the severest 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 435 
 
 stroke a woman's vanity can sustain the belief, namely, 
 that she has given passionate love in exchange for calm, 
 tempered, reasoning friendship. And so, as she walked 
 to the window, through which the soft sun of the spring 
 afternoon was streaming, and as she smelt the sweetness 
 of the spring flowers from Paul's tiny garden outside, 
 she realized (many human beings, I fancy, have done the 
 same) that love was a madness ; that it had brought her 
 no one experience save misery since she had known it; 
 and that she could pray yes, that she could sincerely 
 pray God to set her free from it and from all influence 
 of Paul from this very hour. 
 
 I don't know whether she actually began the petition 
 or not ; for,, just as her thoughts reached this point, the 
 door of the sitting-room opened and Paul came in 
 Paul and his sister. 
 
 At the sight of her at the sight of that poor face, so 
 like Paul's in outline, so removed from his by the whole 
 world of soul and brain Esther's heart sickened and 
 stood still. A minute before, outraged pride, wounded 
 love, had been paramount in her breast ; but at the first 
 sight of her unhappy rival all petty, all selfish feeling was 
 swept away forever. She stood literally hushed, speech 
 less, motionless, as she gazed on the face of Magdalen Chi 
 Chester. Just as one full of life and health might stand 
 hushed, if led abruptly from the outside, noisy world into 
 a silent chamber of death. 
 
 Was it not death, indeed ? death far more fearful than 
 all mere bodily mortality? There was nothing in the 
 slightest degree repulsive in the appearance of Paul's sis- 
 ter. In repose, and with the expressionless eyes down- 
 cast, a sculptor might have taken her chiselled features 
 still as a model for the wan, passive, patient face of some 
 mediaeval saint. What chilled you so inexpressibly when 
 you first saw her was the quenched look, the utter want 
 
436 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 of every human expression, the expression of suffering, 
 even, upon her face. Earlier in life, when the weak brain 
 had possessed somewhat more of vitality, she had possibly 
 been able to suffer more ; for hers was conspicuously one 
 of the cases in which, year, by year, and while the bodily 
 health may improve, the one ray of intellect seems to 
 flicker more and more feebly. But all that was over now ; 
 and severance from Paul would just have cost her no 
 more, not so much perhaps, as severance from her nurse 
 or from her accustomed room. She took her meals; she 
 walked out in the sun ; she went to her rest when they 
 bid her; she got up when they bid her ; but all passively, 
 without even the slight irritability of temper which, some 
 years before, she had been used to show. Upon all God's 
 earth no being could live in whom not intelligence alone 
 but all the ordinary physical senses of our nature were 
 more utterly void and blank than in the bereft companion 
 of Paul Chichester's life. 
 
 " Give her your flowers," he whispered, coming closer 
 to Esther. " A flower is the only thing that will rouse 
 her attention, and even for them, I think, she has well- 
 nigh ceased to care. What ! would you draw back ? " he 
 added, as Esther faltered visibly. Can there be anything 
 in her of which you should stand in dread ? Let me have 
 them, then, and I will give them to her." 
 
 "No, Mr. Chichester," and Esther's voice was perfectly 
 calm; "I would rather give her them rnysel Will you 
 have my flowers, please ? Your brother has just picked 
 them fresh from the garden." And she walked a step or 
 two forward ; she took Paul's flowers from her breast 
 what right had she to them, to anything of his ? and 
 held them out to his sister. 
 
 She just raised her eyes to Esther's face, took the flow- 
 ers passively, and then stood, as a child stands in the pres- 
 ence of strangers, waiting to be bid to move or to speak. 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 437 
 
 " Magdalen will go back to Susan," said Paul, coming 
 back tenderly to her side ; " and Susan will take her out 
 in the sunshine. Will Magdalen give her hand to Miss 
 Fleming ? " 
 
 She looked at him as she had looked at Esther, without 
 speaking a word ; then held out her hand, letting the 
 flowers fall unheeded to the ground as she did so. Esther 
 Fleming took it took that nerveless, unoffending hand 
 which yet, as she believed, had cut in twain the one golden 
 cord of her life, held it reverently in both of hers, and 
 kissed it. 
 
 "And I love you better than I thought I could love any 
 woman," said Paul, when he came back a few minutes 
 later and found her, pride gone, harshness gone, self, alto- 
 gether, gone, meekly restoring his flowers again to their 
 place. "Esther, let me kiss you thus thus for 
 that kiss you gave her the only kiss, God help her ! 
 that any lips, save mine, have given her since she was a 
 child. You are worthy of a better fate, my poor Esther ; 
 but, as heaven has willed it, so must it be." 
 
 "Paul, you shall never leave her! " but she threw her 
 arms round his neck as she said it. " I will love you al- 
 ways ; but I will never come, by one inch, between you 
 and your duty to her." 
 
 CHAPTER XLIY. 
 
 ALONE. 
 
 IT is not invariably the case that young women in a 
 state of advanced civilization love men more the better 
 they think of them ; rather the reverse, I imagine. But 
 
'438 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 Esther did not belong to a highly civilized type- The 
 Dash woods' views of men, and of what men must be, had 
 never really touched her. She held still to a lofty ideal. 
 She believed as rigidly in honesty and truth as she did in 
 the old-fashioned Christian religion that Joan had taught 
 her ; arid the only times when her love for Paul had ever 
 shaken was when occasionally somewhat lax notions res- 
 pecting traditional articles of her faith had fallen from his 
 lips. 
 
 But now she saw him, for the first time, as he was. 
 She was brought face to face not with any ideal at all, 
 but with Paul Chichester the living man, and her love 
 was heightened immeasurably. In nineteen cases out of 
 twenty or probably that estimate is altogether false; 
 in ninety-nine out of a hundred the hour in which two 
 people in love first see each other in their true character, 
 is the hour in which " both perceive they have dreamed a 
 dream" and awake from it. But Esther's imagination 
 rare accident ! had built up an ideal very near to what 
 Paul really was ; and she knew now that her instinct had 
 been correct, that he was cast in that mould wherein the 
 man must be cast whom she was to love for life the 
 most perfectly heroic, the Christian mould, namely. (I 
 endorse nothing, reader ; I am but the recorder of my 
 heroine's opinions.) If Paul had at times seemed to 
 waver where she was sure, had not his whole life been an 
 actual working interpretation of her religion of the 
 highest, of the only true light by which she believed it is 
 given to men to walk ? Could there be a more Christian 
 conception of duty than to accept unconditionally such a 
 life as his had been ? Could any faith be greater than his 
 belief that his bitter lot had been simply the one best 
 suited to him ; not the mere result of blind and cruel 
 chance, but the mysterious workings of a will whose per- 
 fect love and wisdom it never even occurred to him to 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 439 
 
 qnestion? Could any virtue be nobler than the life-long 
 fidelity with which he had stood to his self-imposed yoke 
 courageous and unshrinking, yet humble as a child as 
 to the merit of his own abnegation ? 
 
 She had loved Paul long ; almost from the first hour 
 she ever saw him. She had loved him passionately, in- 
 stinctively; with that wild craving of the whole heart and 
 brain which, while it can find no reason to offer, for its ex- 
 cess, holds in its own nature the very core and essence of 
 all true love perfect and unknowing sympathy. But 
 now she found an outward and visible form of the supe- 
 riority she had hitherto only yearned after, in her idol. 
 She saw him crowned with the fairest ornament, the di- 
 vinest beauty that can ever encompass a human soul. 
 She saw him suffering, resigned, brave ; and from loving, 
 by an easy transition, she fell to worshipping him. 
 
 The first grand dogma of all primitive human religion is 
 sacrifice, and Esther was essentially primitive and essential- 
 ly human. As soon as she worshipped Mr. Chichester she 
 felt (she had not done so before the day she worshipped 
 him, mind,) with all the glow of fresh enthusiasm, that 
 her life could no longer be the colorless, loveless life she 
 had pictured, but a life well spent, because utterly sacri- 
 ficed to her idol. 
 
 A letter from David Engleheart the morning after she 
 had been to visit Paul, held out, as it seemed to her, im- 
 mediate counsel and aid in the position in which she now 
 stood. At another time she must have laughed have 
 laughed, and then have wept, over the minglement of the 
 grotesque and the really sad in poor David's letter. But 
 with the sublime selfishness of love, all the significance his 
 letter bore for her now was simply in as far as its con- 
 tents could affect her relations with 'Paul. 
 
 " Come to us any day," the poor fellow wrote. " Your 
 little room is in order, and only waiting to receive you. 
 
440 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 And, Esther, don't be surprised, but when you come if 
 you are not here in the next fortnight Joan will have 
 married me! When I got your letter, my dear you 
 mustn't be offended with me if 1 was wrong the 
 thought struck me that you weren't happy in your new 
 life, and I told Joan so, and proposed she should send for 
 you back at once. Well I could laugh, child, I could 
 put down my pen and laugh, though, God knows ! it is no 
 jesting matter she flew back straight to the old subject 
 (and after dropping it, and almost letting me feel myself 
 quiet and comfortable for weeks past.) If you were to 
 come back to Countisbury, your home must be made a 
 permanent home for you ; and if Aunt Engleheart died 
 good Lord ! why do I go through all the dreary farce 
 again ? We've been asked in church, Esther ! Been 
 asked in church, and after the third time of asking, I be- 
 long to Joan Engleheart, and shall walk to the parish 
 church and be married to her at any moment she chooses. 
 Don't congratulate, or condole, or anything, please, when 
 you write, but just say what day you'll come, and Patty 
 and I will be there to meet you at the bridge. And Es- 
 ther, my dear, don't pity me, even in your heart. I'd 
 marry fifty Joans to get you to live with me ; and consid- 
 ering the poor kind of fellow I am, and all the good she's 
 been to me, and how she looks after my money and every- 
 thing, I believe I'm making only a right return by taking 
 her for my no, I mean by letting her take me for her 
 husband. Her plan for you is I don't like it, though, 
 and don't think it necessary that you and she together 
 should organize a little day-school for the better kind of 
 children hereabouts. Farmer Villicot would send you 
 five at once, and the promise of a continued supply for 
 another dozen years, and John Williams would send two, 
 and altogether Joan thinks you would start with ten or 
 twelve at least. Heaven knows, a school is sorely wanted 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 441 
 
 for the young savages, but I don't like to think of Esther 
 Fleming engaged on such a task." 
 
 But Esther Fleming did like to think of herself as so 
 engaged ; and as she walked about and discharged her 
 duties in the days succeeding her visit to Paul, her cheeks 
 were flushed, her step was elastic, her eyes were full of 
 light. Of course you are right; it wouldn't have lasted ; 
 no enthusiasm lasts; but it was quite genuine for the 
 time, and, as must ever be the case with all genuine emo- 
 tion, Esther believed firmly herself in the eternity of its 
 duration. 
 
 "You shall have one week to decide," were Paul's last 
 words when he had walked home with her on Tuesday. 
 " For one week I shall neither see you nor write to you ; 
 then, this day week, at this hour, I shall come and hear, 
 and abide by your decision. Only, before you give it, I 
 shall tell you honestly whatever effect these intervening 
 days may have worked on myself;' 
 
 And, as I have said, during these days she walked erect, 
 and performed her duties bravely, and only cried by 
 nights, and believed quite sincerely that she was strong 
 enough to part from Paul and live all the remainder of 
 her life away from him without a murmur. 
 
 " Whatever it may be hereafter (if there is any here- 
 after,) I don't believe in good people being rewarded in 
 this world," said Miss Dash wood, suddenly, as they were 
 sitting together before the fire on the last night of 
 Esther's probation. "Out of all the half-dozen people I 
 know intimately, you are, beyond question, the best, and 
 you are ending in grief, and all the rest of us well, or 
 what we are willing to consider as well. Arthur marries 
 Miss Lynes ; I, Lord Feltham ; Milly has an excellent 
 income, a man she finds it possible to live with, and now 
 this week-old son, whom, no doubt, as being part of her-- 
 self, she'll love. Even Mrs. Strangways prospers. I 
 19* 
 
442 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 heard to-day that her husband has been appointed to an 
 excellent official post in Russia, and that she's going to 
 take all her dear children with her, and devote herself to 
 their education, and think nothing of the world. In 
 other words, if the Russians think her too old to dance, 
 she'll go in for domesticity, flavored by quiet home flirta- 
 tions, till the eldest girl is sixteen, and then return to the 
 world, and flirt and manoeuvre vicariously. Yes, this is 
 how all we of the world prosper, and you, Esther, who 
 would outweigh us all put together in the balance of 
 moral good if such an unpleasant machine existed, 
 which it happily does not you are going to wear your- 
 self out teaching children in Devonshire, and giving up 
 your life to a man who gives you up for a Quixotic sense 
 of duty. Of a truth, virtue doesn't pay, and I find it 
 better to be vicious ! " 
 
 "I don't think anythings pays," said Miss Fleming, 
 meekly. " Love certainly does not, and pleasure, you say, 
 does not ; of riches I have had rro experience. If noth- 
 ing brings reward in this world, as well try duty, which, 
 at least, may advance us in the next." 
 
 "I like to hear good people say those things," cried 
 Miss Dash wood, with the hard, short laugh that was daily 
 growing common with her ; " it brings them so complete- 
 ly to our own level after all. Self, self! Self-advance- 
 ment, in this world or the next, is the one thing we live 
 for, good or bad, fast or slow. Esther," breaking off, and 
 her voice changing in a second, " I hope you'll think of 
 me sometimes ? " 
 
 "I shall think of you, Jane. I shall have little to hin- 
 der me from thinking of old friends." 
 
 " I fancy, you know, I should have been different if I'd 
 married Arthur. If ever you marry Paul don't inter- 
 rupt me ; his sister might die ; there's at least a bare pos- 
 sibility of it if ever you marry Paul, and you find that 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 443 
 
 being the wife of a man one loves passionately is happi- 
 ness, think of me, Esther, and of what I ought to have 
 been ! I shall never be sentimental again like this while I 
 live," added Miss Dash wood, huskily. " In speaking 
 this once to you, I'm saying good-bye to all the old life, 
 and to whatever of good there was in me. I shall try 
 not to make Lord Feltham miserable. I shall try to*re- 
 spect him, the more so because you once liked him " (for 
 with rare delicacy, with fine intuitive generosity, Esther 
 had had the courage to tell the whole truth to Jane, and, 
 in telling it, to make Oliver's character shine.) " I shall 
 do my duty, and in time I shall come, no doubt, to take a 
 pleasure in my diamonds ! But, Esther," she came close, 
 and laid her cold, little hand upon her friend's, " there 
 was something capable of better things in me. When I 
 laughed at the idea of goodness just now, and called love 
 and goodness as selfish as doing what I'm going to do ! 
 I didn't mean it. Poverty and work, and self-sacrifice 
 and all, Esther, you're better off than I am Paul loves 
 you ! " 
 
 * * * *:.** 
 
 On the afternoon of the next day, Esther Fleming 
 stood, at the appointed hour, by the window of Mr. 
 Scott's drawing-room, and waited for Paul Chichester's 
 coming. The smell from the lilacs in the square brought 
 Countisbury vividly before her. She could see herself in 
 the house-place, going through her monotonous daily 
 tasks ; could see herself in the long summer evenings, a 
 saddened woman, walking slowly up and down the ter- 
 race, where, two years ago, a girl herself used to 
 walk with elastic step and a heart full of buoyancy and 
 trust in the future ; could imagine how a very few more 
 years would bring her quite close to Joan and David ; 
 and how one or two faded letters, and the old Vandyke 
 upon her wall, alone would remind her with a start, at 
 
444 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 times, that she too had once been young ; that hope, that 
 love, had once been in her very hands ; and that love and 
 hope had just passed away, silently but irrevocably, out 
 of her life, as her youth had done. 
 
 " Esther, you never heard me come up. Miss Dash- 
 wood was going out as I reached the house, and gave me 
 leave to enter. Let me look at you, child. So ! It is 
 good to see your face again." And Paul took her in his 
 arms. 
 
 For a minute she let him hold her so; for a minute she 
 could not remember one of the sentences the well- 
 turned, admirable sentences in which she had resolved 
 to pronounce her own death warrant. And Paul profited 
 by her silence so far as to hold both her hands in his, and 
 read steadily all the suffering and all the resolve of that 
 downcast, palid face. 
 
 " Esther, let me speak first," he said, when his survey 
 was completed. " It will be best so." 
 
 " No, Mr. Chichester, no ; " and she drew her hands 
 away resolutely ; " I don't want strengthening by any- 
 thing that you can have to say. I have thought it all 
 out : I know exactly what I must do." 
 
 And then she tpld him, but not at all in well-turned 
 sentences, how she meant to abide by her first resolution, 
 and what her plans were for the remainder of her life. 
 
 "And you don't intend to marry me ? That seems 
 wholly to have past out of your mind." 
 
 "No, sir, I don't mean to marry you. You know you 
 told me as we walked home that you would never bring 
 a wife under the same roof with your sister. You are 
 right in that, and it is also right that while you live your 
 sister should not be put away from under your roof. 
 These things simply are so ; I choose the one path there 
 is for me to walk in." 
 
 For a moment Paul was silent; as a man may well be 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 445 
 
 who stands looking back, for the last time, upon the home, 
 however dreary, however loveless, which yet has been his 
 home for years; then he spoke, and his voice never fal- 
 tered, never changed again. 
 
 " Esther, during the last week I have thought as much, 
 probably I have reasoned more, than you, and I have 
 come to a wholly different conclusion. To what I said 
 when I saw you last, I hold still. A young fresh life, 
 children's fresh faces, couldn't grow up under the same 
 roof with Magdalen." 
 
 " Never never ! " she clasped her cold hands passion- 
 ately. "You needn't repeat a word ; I know it all." 
 
 " You should never be brought under the same roof 
 with her, and I know you too well to think that you 
 would ever propose that she and I should be parted. I 
 was wrong in saying the decision must come at all from 
 you ; the decision is for me. Esther, if my sister was 
 now as she was even some years ago, I would not hesitate. 
 If she knew me to the extent of missing me, or of look- 
 ing for my coming, I would not part from her that I 
 say and know to be truth. As long as her heart held to 
 me by the very frailest thread, she should have had no 
 rival ; but the time is past, long and for ever past, when 
 she was sensible of affection even for her own personal 
 attendant. Do you remember meeting me one winter's 
 morning near Dr. Wilmot's house at Bath ? " Did she 
 not remember it? did she not remember the lone, red 
 house standing out, dark and desolate, against the winter 
 sky ! " Well, at that time my sister was living under his 
 care. I had heard of his great ability in her class of dis- 
 orders, and contrived I need hardly say at what a 
 sacrifice- to get her under his care. When she left him 
 he pronounced his verdict upon her state, an utterly hope- 
 less verdict, I do not need to tell you. At the same 
 time he made me an offer, should I desire it at any future 
 time, to take her entirely into his charge. 
 
446 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 " Esther, I know that she will be better with him than 
 with me, and with him I have placed her. I'm not a man 
 who takes long to decide in these things. I felt it my 
 duty to take her away from the Carews and work for her, 
 and I did it. You have awakened me now to an altogeth- 
 er new sense of life ; you have made me feel that I owe 
 more to myself than I can possibly owe even to the very 
 nearest human tie I have. I have done the task I set my- 
 self, Magdalen is well provided for life, and I am free 
 free to live, to breathe the healthy, common air of daily 
 life, and have the cares and joys of other men. Will you 
 do more than you have already done ? Having brought 
 me back to desire life, will you make my life indeed worth 
 holding ? Will you spend it with me ? " 
 
 She said not a word ; only instinctively she held her 
 hand out instinctively she moved a step nearer to his 
 side. 
 
 " Your answer involves no question of Magdalen, mind. 
 Four days ago I took her to Dr. Wilmot's charge ; if you 
 refused to marry me I should still leave her there, and 
 carry out the plan I have formed. My plan is this and 
 it is not new, three years ago, when my sister was very ill 
 and the probability of my being left alone was forced up- 
 on me, I resolved upon it I shall go to Australia." 
 
 Paul ! " 
 
 " Why do you look so miserable, child ? " 
 
 " I could never bear you to go; 'tis to the very end of 
 the world! " 
 
 " But the end best suited for a man like me. I have 
 two friends, schoolfellows of mine, in Australia; one in 
 the city of Adelaide, the other on a sheep-farm two or 
 three hundred miles off; I shall go straight to Adelaide. 
 My friend edits one of the first daily papers there, and 
 will put me on his staff immediately I arrive. If I get 
 on in town I shall lead a town life ; if not but I don't 
 
THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 447 
 
 fear I will invest the very little money that I possess 
 in the world in a sheep-walk. No looks of yours would 
 change my intentions, my little Esther ! I've had enough 
 of the old world. With my new desire of life has come 
 a craving for a new field, for thoroughly fresh employment. 
 The question is, will you come with me ? You are not un- 
 suited for a colonial life." 
 
 " I can sew, and I can bake, and indeed do all about a 
 house, sir. The thing is " 
 
 " Go on, please." 
 
 " Do you really want me? I don't know " here she 
 blushed furiously ; " but I feel as if it was all my doing. 
 I mean that, through me, in some way, your life has 
 changed, and now you think all you can do is is to 
 take me with you ! Mr. Cbichester, I shall be an expense ! 
 You will be better alone." 
 
 "Possibly. A wife is an incumbrance ; and then I shall 
 have my friend's fire-side to go to, his children to sit upon 
 my knees. Will you write to me sometimes, Miss Fleni- 
 ing?" 
 
 She looked at him ; and he took her to his breast and 
 kissed her. 
 
 " You are making a miserable marriage," Paul remark- 
 ed, after a long silence. " Milly has married well, and in 
 another month Jane will have married well. They will 
 both of them have as many friends as they choose to pay 
 for possessing, and you yes, I mean to take you at once ; 
 you will not be Lady Feltham's bridesmaid, you will be 
 on your voyage to Australia, poor, friendless and alone." 
 
 "Alone?" but the thought made her come closer to 
 his side. " Alone ? Oh Paul, I shall be with you ! " 
 
 MORAL. 
 
 Reader, if you are a man of fortune and desire the assis- 
 tance of a young woman in getting rid of that fortune 
 
448 THE ORDEAL FOR WIVES. 
 
 for you ; if your heart yearns after a companion who 
 shall dress extravagantly, who shall sit with credit at the 
 head of your table, who shall make your house generally 
 attractive to your friends, do as Marmaduke Scott, and 
 as Lord Felthani did. You need not be at the trouble of 
 travelling to find what you require. London, Paris, Bath, 
 Brighton, Cheltenham ; wherever you may be you will 
 find the material ready to your hand. 
 
 Reader, if you are 'a man of education but no money, 
 and are so inconceivably single-minded as to wish to pos- 
 sess a woman who shall be bound to you for life ; if you 
 have visions (God knows how, in this generation they 
 come into your head !) of a wife who shall work with 
 and for you, cook your meat and mend your shirts, be 
 your housekeeper and the mother of your children, and 
 your own intellectual companion and truest, tenderest 
 friend go and search for your ideal among the Devon- 
 shire Moors ! You won't get her in large cities out of the 
 classes from whom men take their wives. 
 
 And, unfortunately, the Devonshire Moors are every 
 day becoming more enclosed. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 ,ong 9 s Classical Atlas. Constructed by WM. 
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SHELDON & COMPANY'S 
 
 StibKcal Commentary on the New Testament. 
 
 By Dr. HEHMANN OLSHAUSEN. Continued after his 
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