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PHILIP B. MARSTON. 
 
 From Photo:— Henry Van der Weyde, 
 
 182 Regent Street, London. 
 
FOR A SONG'S: SAKE 
 
 and' OTHER STORIES 
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "song-tide," " ALL-IN-ALL," " WIND-VOICES ' 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 LONDON 
 WALTER SCOTT 
 
 24 WARWICK LANE PATERNOSTER ROW E.C 
 
 )Z2 
 
 7 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO THE MANY ADMIRERS, HERE AND IN AMERICA, 
 
 OF THE 
 
 POET AND WRITER, 
 
 AND TO ALL WHO HOLD THE 
 
 MAN 
 
 IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE. 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DEDICATION ...... v 
 
 MEMOIR ....... ix 
 
 FOR A song's sake . . . ... I 
 
 THE LADY OF THE GRAVES - - • - 73 
 
 A STRANGE WOMAN. . . . . • S7 
 
 TRAPPED . . . . . . . 112 
 
 MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT . . . . 189 
 
 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA . . . 207 
 
 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL . . .241 
 
 HER PRICE . . . . . .255 
 
 SIR CHAS. GODFREY, BART. .... 306 
 
 A THOUSAND POUNDS . . . ' . . 316 
 
 AN ^^:STHETIC FLIRT . . . . -335 
 
 HEAVY STAKES ...... 353 
 
 MLSS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY . . . -37^ 
 
 A LETTER TO EVA . . . . . ^02 
 
 HIS TRUST . . . . . . .421 
 
 LILIAN ....... 431 
 
 MISS stotford's specialty .... 469 
 
 BRYANSTONE AND WIFE .... 488 
 
 52.1321 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. 
 
 -:o: 
 
 "In this life calamity follows calamity by no apparent law of 
 cause and effect. In the web that destiny spins there is a ter- 
 rible and a cruel symmetry, which no theory of ' circumstance' 
 can explain. When once the pattern of their tapestry is sombre, 
 the Fates never leave it incomplete." To no one could these 
 words by the author of " Aylwin " be more applicable than to 
 Philip Bourke Marston, whose death in the early part of the 
 present year enfranchised him from suffering, brought him that 
 surcease for which he had long yearned with an intensity which 
 had in it no shadow of affectation or superficial emotion. He 
 dwelt continually in the shadow of a great gloom, for in addition 
 to the physical affliction which in the most literal sense darkened 
 his whole life, the evil mischances of Fate sorely wrought against 
 him. "If one were not too insignificant for the metaphor," he 
 once remarked, " I could with bitter truth assert that the stars 
 in their courses have ever fought against me." It is not given 
 to many men, especially to men so mentally dowered and in 
 some ways so advantageously circumstanced as was the subject 
 of this memoir, to experience so much sorrow with such little 
 alloy of the common pleasures of life. Those who are stricken 
 unto death are not those who make loudest wail : and there 
 are doubtless many among the casual acquaintances of " the 
 
X MEMOIR OF 
 
 blind poet '' who have thought that Marston's compensations 
 must have been numerous to enable him to bear the brave front 
 before the world which was his characteristic attitude. He died 
 ere he had fully plumbed the seemingly fathomless depths of 
 human suffering. But till fatal ilhiess overcame him he could 
 laugh with or take keen interest in the affairs of a friend, as if 
 for him life had but the same significance as for the majority 
 of men. 
 
 Philip Bourke Marston was the third child and only son of 
 the well-known dramatist and poet, Dr. Westland Marston. His 
 mother was a woman of as great charm of mind as of body, 
 and endeared herself to her son by her penetrative sympathy 
 and tenderness. Philip was born in London on the 13th of 
 August, in the year 1850 ; his second baptismal name, Bourke, 
 was that of a family connection, and * Philip ' was prefixed to it 
 out of Dr. Marston's affectionate regard for his friend, Philip 
 James Bailey, the author of ^' Festus." Miss Dinah Muloch (Mrs. 
 Craik) became godmother to the little boy, and it was for him 
 that the popular authoress of " John Halifax, Gentleman," wrote 
 the familiar and lovely lyric entided " Philip, my King." An 
 unconscious prophecy was uttered in one of the stanzas of this 
 poem, a prophecy to be only too adequately realized — 
 
 *' One day, 
 Philip, m}'- king, 
 Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way 
 Thorny and cruel and cold and grey." 
 
 Philip had two sisters ; the elder, Eleanor (Nellie), who after- 
 wards became the wife of Arthur O'Shaughnessy, author of "The 
 Epicof Women "and of other volumes of poetry; and the younger, 
 Ciceley, who in days to come was to prove to him a second self. 
 While in his fourth year, his sister Nellie was prostrated by 
 scarlatina, and in order to render Philip as secure as practicable 
 from the insidious disease he was given quantities of belladonna, 
 probably an excellent remedy, but one which proved over- 
 potent in the case of Dr. Marston's delicate and sensitive little 
 boy. The eyes are supposed to have suffered from the action 
 of the medicine ; but further, and probably more irremediable, 
 harm was endured by a blow which the child received during 
 play with some boisterous companions. Inflammation set in, 
 first in one eye and then in the other ; and ere long incipient 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTOiV. xi 
 
 cataract became only too perceptible. At this time the boy's 
 beauty was very remarkable. If I remember aright, Mrs. Craik 
 once stated that she had never seen a lovelier child — an asser- 
 tion corroborated by others who knew Philip in his infancy. 
 Lady Hardy has told me how she was perplexed by the way in 
 which he was wont to run up against chairs and tables, as if he 
 had miscalculated their distances — though he was quite of an 
 age to have estimated them properly. It was soon after this that 
 it became evident his sight was seriously affected. Some years 
 later an operation was performed, and a measure of temporary 
 relief was thus afforded ; but in a brief while it became plain 
 that a doom of hopeless blindness was in store for the poor 
 child. The best oculists were consulted, and everything that 
 loving anxiety suggested was done. But all was without avail, 
 and as the months went past even Mrs. Marston surrendered 
 her hitherto unquenchable hopes. 
 
 Philip's mental powers began to exert themselves at a very 
 early period, although of necessity his opportunities towards 
 intellectual development were sadly modified by his blindness. 
 As it was, he produced while yet in his teens some very noteworthy 
 poetry. Poems such as " A Christmas Vigil,'' lyrics like " The 
 Rose and the Wind," do not read as if they were immature 
 efforts. The latter is perhaps unsurpassed by any poem in our 
 modern literature written in an author's nonage. Philip was not 
 wholly blind — that is to say, he not only easily distinguished 
 night and day, and even sunshine and cloud-gloom, but could 
 discern the difference between men and women by their relative 
 sizes and the shape of their garments : the morning, during his 
 boyhood and early youth, was not wholly deprived of its beauty, 
 and moonlight evenings were a source of infinite solace and 
 delight. For the sea he early conceived a passion. It afforded 
 him an ecstasy of enjoyment — wherein pain almost as largely 
 prevailed as pleasure — and, taking his blindness into account, 
 there have been few more daring swimmers than Philip Mar- 
 ston. He would listen to the shingly roar upon the beach, or to 
 the strange rhythmical tumult of the seaward waves, innumer- 
 ably marching in vast battalions, or to the murmur of the 
 fretful surge where the sea slept against the shell-strewn sand, 
 with an expression so rapt, so intensely absorbed, that for the 
 time his soul seemed to look through his shadowed eyes and 
 to animate his face with the glow of its spiritual presence. If 
 
5cU MEMOIR OF 
 
 throughout his weary latter years he yearned for anything more 
 than for death, it was for the neighbourhood of the sea — its 
 ultimate silence to be about him, its moving music to be his 
 requiem. And thus it was that among the most treasured remi- 
 niscences of his desolate years of darkness were those of broad 
 spaces of moonlight and of the deep lustrous green of sea-water. 
 
 To a dear friend, Mrs. Moulton, he once energetically stated, 
 *' No ! I was not blind, then. I couldn't read, of course, or see 
 the faces of people ; but I could see the tree-boughs waving in 
 the wind, and I could see the pageant of sunset in the west, and 
 the glimmer of a fire upon the hearth, and oh, it was such a 
 different thing from the days that came afterwards, when I 
 could not see anything ! " 
 
 Philip Marston's first and not least loving amanuensis was 
 his mother, who not only wrote out for her blind boy his early 
 attempts in prose and verse, but also acted delicately and wisely 
 the part of critic. To her love he owed much, nor was he ever 
 chary of acknowledgment of his indebtedness. But partly as 
 cares accumulated upon Mrs. Marston, thus preventing her from 
 such ceaseless devotion to her son as she would fain have given, 
 and partly from purely natural reasons, Philip's most incessant 
 and most loving companion was his sister Ciceley, who may 
 without exaggeration be said to have devoted her whole life to 
 her afflicted brother. A touching tribute to her ceaseless sym- 
 pathy and love was given by the latter in the pathetic verses 
 inscribed to Ciceley Narney Marston,^ two stanzas of which I 
 may here appropriately quote. 
 
 "Oh, in what things have we not been as one ? 
 
 Oh, more than any sister ever was 
 To any brother ! Ere my days be done. 
 
 And this my little strength of singing pass, 
 I would these failing lines of mine might show 
 
 All thou hast been, as well as all thou art. 
 And yet what need? for all who meet thee, know 
 
 Thy queenliness of intellect and heart. 
 
 "Oh, dear companion in the land of thought, 
 
 How often hast thou led me by thy voice 
 Through paths where men not all in vain have sought 
 
 For consolation, when their cherished joys 
 Lie dead before them .... 
 
 » Vide "All in All" (Chatto & Windus), pp. 173-180. 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, xiii 
 
 Thy love to me is as thy precious hand 
 Might be upon my forehead if it burned 
 
 In hell, of some last fever : hold me fast, 
 Oh thou to whom in joy's full noon I turned, 
 
 As now I turn, the glory being past." 
 
 If it had not been for his bhndness, Philip Marston's youth 
 would have been more enviable than the early experiences of 
 almost any other young poet of whom there is record. Dr. 
 Westland Marston was not only a successful dramatist, but 
 one of the most popular literary men in London. There were 
 few houses in London where were frequent reunions more 
 enjoyable than those in the hospitable abode near Chalk Farm. 
 There, occasionally, would be Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his 
 brother William, Dr. Gordon Hake, William Morris, Swinburne, 
 and many other celebrities and " coming men." Philip turned 
 as naturally towards those benign intellectual influences as the 
 heliotrope to the sun : his poetic development was rapid, and 
 before he had emerged from his teens he had written — as has 
 already been said — some eminently noteworthy poetry. 
 
 While yet under twenty-one, Philip Marston loved a beautiful 
 girl, Miss Mary Nesbit. The passion of the young poet was 
 returned, and — notwithstanding the darkness in which he dwelt 
 ■ — a life of beauty and even joy opened up before the ardent 
 youth. Affectionate and indulgent parents', a self-sacrificing 
 and adoring sister, a society of which it was at once an honour 
 and a delight to be a member, a close comrade such as OHver 
 Madox Brown, the love of a beautiful girl, and brilliant literary 
 prospects — each and all of these made up a lot which, if the 
 fulfilment had equalled the promise, would have banished the 
 gloom from Philip's life. The shadow of melancholy which 
 haunts the poetic soul, and perhaps a constitutional tendency to 
 excess of emotion, combined with darkened sight, account for 
 the sad and occasionally sombre tone which characterizes many 
 of the sonnets and shorter poems written during this halcyon 
 period. 
 
 As a wave comes to a climax when its crown of foam is 
 greatest, and thereafter expends itself brokenly, so Philip Mar- 
 ston's life, having reached a certain summit of happiness, 
 thenceforth knew the shallows and no more the heights of joy. 
 
 While he was putting together the poems which were to make 
 up his first volume (a few of which, it may be mentioned here, 
 
xiv MEMOIR OF 
 
 had already appeared in the Cornhill and other magazines) 
 his mother was prostrated by what proved to be a fatal illness. 
 All who knew Mrs. Marston loved her, but to no one was her 
 loss a greater blow than to that son whom she had so lovingly 
 tended, to whom she had been as a sister and a friend as well 
 as a mother. His grief was intense, and more than ever he 
 writhed under the curse of his affliction ; if only, he yearningly 
 cried, he could have one ever-to-be-remembered glimpse of the 
 beloved dead who had been to him so much of his light of 
 life. 
 
 But the elasticity of youth and the quick succession of new 
 and vivid interests overcame his despair, and it still seemed as 
 if his coming years were not to be devoid of happiness and 
 prosperity. He did not know that the blow which had fallen 
 upon him was the first summons of his lifelong companion, 
 Misfortune. 
 
 It was about this time that he won the love of Miss Nesbit. 
 Perhaps if his eyes had not been dimmed he would have fore- 
 seen the shadow of a new and irremediable disaster. Miss 
 Nesbit was far from robust, but only a few friends knew that 
 she had developed symptoms of consumption. She bore her 
 unseen crown of sorrow bravely, and only when it became cer- 
 tain that her life was no longer secure for any length of time 
 did she endeavour to warn her lover of the inevitable. But 
 love had blinded his inner vision, and he either did not realize 
 or else refused to allow himself to believe what was with infinite 
 gentleness hinted to him. 
 
 Before I pass away from the record of his youth — for with 
 the next and most terrible calamity he became old beyond the 
 warrant of his years— I may quote a few passages from an 
 obituary notice by one of Marston's most intimate and most 
 loyal friends, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, the well-known 
 American poet and novelist, prefixing to these passages an 
 excerpt describing her first meeting with the young poet when 
 in his twenty-sixth year. 
 
 " I first met him," writes Mrs. Moulton, *' at a literary evening 
 — a sort of authors' night — at a well-known London house, and 
 I knew the blind poet would be among the guests — the one, 
 indeed, whom I felt most interest in meeting. I soon perceived 
 him, standing beside his sister Ciceley — a slight, rather tall man 
 of twenty-six, very young-looking even for his age. He had a 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, xv 
 
 wonderfully fine brow. His brown eyes were still beautiful in 
 shape and colour. His dark-brown hair and beard had glints 
 of chestnut ; and all his colouring was rich and warm. His 
 was a singularly refined face, with a beautiful expression when 
 in repose — keenly sensitive, but with full, pleasure-loving lips, 
 that made one understand how hard his limitations must be for 
 him to whom beauty and pleasure were so dear. At that time 
 the colour came and went in his cheeks as in those of a sensi- 
 tive girl. . • . How many tales he has told me of his darkened, 
 dream-haunted childhood ! He began very early to feel the 
 full pain of his loss of vision. He fell in love, when he was not 
 more than ten years old, with a beautiful young lady, and went 
 through all a lover's gamut of joys and pains ; and sometimes 
 the torture of not being able to behold the beauty of his adored 
 was so extreme that he used to dash his head against the wall 
 in a sudden mad longing to be done at once with life and sorrow. 
 Yet the love of life was keen in him, and his earliest childhood 
 was haunted by visions of future fame, which should make 
 people acknowledge that though blind his soul yet saw unshared 
 visions. His life was his education. His house was the resort 
 of many of the intellectual giants of that time ; and every day's 
 guests were his unconscious teachers. He was fourteen, I think, 
 when he first met Swinburne, who was just then the idol of his 
 boyish worship. At that time — so wonderful was his memory — 
 he actually knew by heart the whole of the first series of * Poems 
 and Ballads.' He was taken to see his demi-god, and entered 
 the sacred presence with a heart beating almost to suffocation ; 
 and went home feeling that his hopes ^md dreams had been, for 
 once, fulfilled. To the very end of his days Swinburne's friend- 
 ship was a pride and joy to him." 
 
 In 1871 a great event occurred. "Song-Tide," the first- 
 fruits of the young poet's genius, was published, and instan- 
 taneously received a warm and unmistakably genuine welcome. 
 The leading literary journals hailed the advent of a new poet, 
 and that cultivated section of the public which ever keeps its 
 eye on what new thing of promise comes to light, speculated 
 with interest as to the possibilities of the new singer. I am 
 inclined to differ from the many who look upon " Song-Tide" 
 as Marston's chief production. Notwithstanding all its beauties 
 and individual charm it is overshadowed by the genius of 
 Rossetti, and in a lesser degree by that of Swinburne. In his 
 
xvi MEMOIR OF 
 
 latest book, ^'Wind-Voices," he bad attained to a larger and 
 freer utterance ; and if be bad lived, and circumstances had 
 not proved fatally adverse, Marston would probably have ac- 
 complished work of such distinctive quality as to have ensured 
 for himself a permanent place among the leading poets of the 
 later Victorian epoch. On the other hand, there is nothing in 
 either of his later books to surpass certain poems in '' Song- 
 Tide." I shall refer again to his poetic achievements, however, 
 further on. 
 
 While there was still hope that Miss Nesbit might recover — 
 and by this time the lover's heart was often sore beset with 
 terrible forebodings — Philip Marston's heart was gladdened by 
 the receipt of the first copy of the book over which he had long 
 been lovingly engaged. In it he had enshrined his love in many 
 a beautiful sonnet and lyric, and in the delight of placing the 
 first copy in the hands of his betrothed he almost overlooked 
 what to every one else was becoming too evident. 
 
 In the autumn of 1871 Miss Nesbit was spending a visit with 
 some friends in Normandy, but the change wrought no benefit. 
 Philip Marston was a guest in the same house. A very painful 
 and very harrowing story concerning the circumstances of her 
 death has gained currency, and has even appeared in one or 
 two journals. This story, wiiich asserts that the blind lover did 
 not know of his betrothed's death, and, accidentally gaining 
 access to her room unnoticed, ascertained the truth with a fear- 
 ful suddenness and directness, is, I am assured by Dr. West- 
 land Marston, not the case, The bereaved young poet did 
 indeed sit in a voiceless, »xearless agony by the bedside of 
 the girl whom he had so passionately loved, but the calamity 
 had not arrived unexpectedly, and he had first learned the bitter 
 news from lovingly sympathetic lips. 
 
 With this great sorrow the youth of Philip Marston died an 
 early death. Simultaneously, the faint, glimmering light de- 
 serted the dimmed eyes ; bitter tears, tears of many hope- 
 less days and sleepless nights, of unavailing regret and 
 speechless yearning, quenched the flickering flame. Thence- 
 forth darkness settled down upon his life. Verily, it seemed as 
 if indeed, in his own words, " the gods derided him." 
 
 But even so supreme a loss, even such irremediable calamities, 
 cannot prevent human nature from finding rehef in possible 
 pleasures or partial diversions. 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTOM. xvii 
 
 More and more Ciceley devoted herself to her unhappy 
 brother, alleviating much of his grief, endlessly helping, suggest- 
 ing, amusing, and acting for him. She became to him almost 
 a necessity of life ; without her he did not consider it possible 
 he could endure the infinite weariness and sorrow which encom- 
 passed him. 
 
 Brother and sister went to live together in lodgings, firstly at 
 Notting Hill and later in the Euston Road. They had sufficient 
 means between them to enable them to live comfortably, and 
 Philip was entering upon that sustained intellectual drudgery 
 which brought him such bitterly inadequate monetary recom- 
 pense, but which continually extended his sympathies and won 
 for him new friends and admirers. Henceforth, except for an 
 interval when Ciceley stayed with the Madox Browns, the two 
 lived together in their London lodgings, save when they went 
 into the country or to the seaside, to France, and once to Italy. 
 For certain golden weeks, a '^sovereign season,'' Philip Marston 
 revelled, sightless as he was, in the manifold delights of Italy ; 
 Florence and Venice especially enthralled him, and throughout 
 his life the memory of this happy time remained unsered. He 
 was wont to speak of his experiences in a manner that puzzled 
 new acquaintances. He would dwell longingly on the splendour 
 of the view from Fiesole or Bellosguardo, of the glory of light 
 and shade athwart the slopes of Vallombrosa, of the joyous 
 aspects of Florence itself, of the transmuting glamour of the 
 scirocco, of sunset and moonrise upon the Venetian lagunes. 
 Still more would he puzzle people by such remarks as " I don't 
 like So-and-so's appearance : he has a look on his face which I 
 mistrust," or " London looks so sombre ; I like to see a place 
 looking as if it were aware of such things as sunlight and flowers." 
 In this there was nothing of affectation, although it is undeni- 
 able that Marston was always very sensitive to any reference to 
 his bhndness : his sister Ciceley had become his second sight. 
 Through her he saw and understood, and had pleasure in those 
 things which otherwise would have been for him more or less 
 sealed mysteries. 
 
 After this happy experience — too short, alas ! and clouded 
 with sad memories — Marston settled down to a regular literary 
 life. His means, he used to say half-humorously, were children 
 of Mercury : every note, every sovereign was winged, and de- 
 parted from his possession with an expedition which was at 
 
 \a 
 
xvill MP.AfO/k OP 
 
 once mysterious and alarming. In fact, then as alvva^^s, his 
 generosity and hospitahty knew no limits. As these means 
 gradually began to disappear, and as the struggle for existence 
 became keener, his open-handedness knew no difference, and 
 to the end he practised the same liberality. 
 
 Philip was never tired of the company of that well-loved 
 sister, but naturally he formed new and valued friendslnps. From 
 first to last, however, no one ever quite usurped the place of 
 Ciceley Narney Marston. Dr. Gordon Hake, an old friend of 
 the Marstons, and as a poet the possessor of Philip's admiring 
 regard, has, in his beautiful poem, "The Blind Boy," perpetu- 
 ated the significance of the love of this brother and sister — two 
 exquisite stanzas from which I am tempted to quote— 
 
 *' She tells him how the moiinlains swell, 
 
 How rocks and forests touch the skies ; 
 
 He tells her how the shadows dwell 
 In purple dimness on his eyes, 
 
 Whose tremulous orbs the while he lifts, 
 
 As round his smile their spirit drifts. 
 
 More close around his heart to wind, 
 
 She shuts her eyes in childish glee, 
 • To share,' she said, ' his peace of mind ; 
 
 To sit beneath his shadow-tree.' 
 So, half in play, the sister tries 
 To find his soul within her eyes." 
 
 The friend of his own age and sex whose companionship he 
 most cherished at this time (1872), was the late Oliver Madox 
 Brown. An acquaintanceship, much appreciated on either 
 side, developed into a friendship which, to the blind poet 
 especially, meant much. The two young men saw each other 
 regularly ; innumerable literary schemes were talked over ; 
 poems, stories, studies from life were discussed and criticised 
 in Marston's rooms. There one evening Oliver Brown with- 
 drew a bulky MS. from his pocket, informed his friend that an 
 acquaintance had sent him the manuscript of a romance for 
 his perusal and suggestions, and forthwith began to read the 
 strange and thrilling story of one Gabriel Denver. Once or 
 twice Philip's suspicions were aroused, chiefly on account of 
 the emotion which the reader could not refrain from exhibiting, 
 but still he was unprepared for what followed. The tale excited 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTOX, xix 
 
 at once his astonishment and his admiration, and on its con- 
 ckision he expressed what he felt in the most emphatic manner. 
 
 "What did you say was the name of that story ?" he asked. 
 
 *' ' The Black Swan,' " was the reply, in a voice husky with 
 emotion. 
 
 " And its author ? Tell me at once the author's name." 
 
 " Oliver Madox Brown." 
 
 Sincere were the congratulations, and genuine the mutual 
 joy and pride : that night Oliver went home with a foretaste of 
 fame making his heart beat wildly, while Philip sat awhile in 
 his darkness, and indulged in many a fair visionary dream for 
 his loved friend's future. 
 
 When the two were apart, each wrote to the other : in a 
 word their comradeship was complete, and to the older of the 
 twain it meant more than anything else, save the devotion of 
 his sister Ciceley. A deep and all-embracing humour was one 
 of the chief characteristics of Oliver Brown, and he was a 
 delightful raconteur : he was thus just the right companion for 
 his blind friend. The latter had of course other friends, 
 among whom may be mentioned his brother-in-law, the late 
 Arthur O'Shaughnessy : indeed, Philip Marston was one of 
 those men possessed of an occult, magnetic quality of attraction 
 which few people could resist. Wherever he went he made 
 would-be friends, and without any apparent effort to please he 
 seemed to exercise a pleasant fascination over all who came in 
 contact with him. And down to his last days he was, in com- 
 pany, cheerful and animated, often merry, and always genial. 
 He never wore his heart upon his sleeve, and even to fairly 
 intimate friends he so rarely betrayed his secret desolation that 
 many of them have been quite unable to realize what depths of 
 wretchedness his forlorn spirit was wont to dwell within. Per- 
 haps, nay I know, that there is only one living friend of the dead 
 poet who ever fully knew how dire was the grief and despair 
 which gnawed at his life. 
 
 Suddenly Oliver Brown became unwell. Philip was anxious 
 but never looked for any permanent ill-result. When, all un- 
 expectedly, he was told that Oliver Madox Brown was dead, 
 the shock was so great that years elapsed before he could speak 
 calmly of his loss. Of another bereavement, soon to follow, 
 he never spoke at all. Apart from his keen personal sorrow he 
 deplored the untimely passing away of a young writer of such 
 
x« MEMOIR OF 
 
 extraordinarily brilliant promise, believing as he did that no 
 one of such precocious mental powers had appeared since 
 Chatterton. 
 
 The young painter-romancist died in 1874. Earlier in the 
 same year was published the second edition of " Song-Tide." 
 It has been stated in one or two quarters that the pathetic 
 dedication has reference to Miss Nesbit : this is a mistake, for 
 it is indentical with that in the first edition, which appeared 
 before the death of his betrothed. In both editions the dedi- 
 cation has reference to the poet's mother. Nor, it may be added 
 here, are all of the love sonnets due to Miss Nesbit's inspiration, 
 though the majority doubtless are. 
 
 The poems comprised in the volume, " All in All," had been 
 read seriatim to Oliver Brown, but the book was not actually 
 published till after his death. At best it was a volume of sad 
 memories, and now one of the expected pleasures attendant 
 upon its publication was not to be realized. " AU-in-AU " had 
 only a limited success : its sadness was too extreme for the 
 majority of readers, and though, in point of workmanship, it 
 was superior to its predecessor, it was practically voted too 
 gloomy. Some critics went the length of complaining that such 
 a sombre tone as prevailed throughout this volume was either 
 morbid or affected : it is almost needless to say that neither 
 surmise was correct. Irremediable grief, as distinct from more 
 or less placid sorrow, is so rarely experienced by men that it is 
 not strange there should be a tendency to consider it a symptom 
 of weakness or affectation ; but if those of this bent of mind 
 will put themselves in the place of Philip Marston — unhappy, 
 often lonely, smitten cruelly by adverse fate, and dwelling con- 
 tinually in blank and terrible darkness — they will not, in all 
 probability, find themselves strongly impelled towards the com- 
 position of very joyous verse. We are at best waifs and strays 
 before the wind of circumstance, but when one is whirled hither 
 and thither in absolute darkness the outlook does not become 
 enlivening. 
 
 Marston's second volume was dedicated to his father "with 
 profoundest love and admiration." The greater portion of it 
 was occupied by poems in sonnet-form, a fact which possibly 
 conduced towards the book's limited popularity. That the 
 author's attitude was not one of absolute despair is manifest 
 from his prefatory words : "In the present volume," he says, 
 
PHILIP BOVRKE MARSTON. xxi 
 
 " I show how the love, so longed for and despaired of, is at last 
 vouchsafed with all attendant peace and blessedness, until the 
 beloved one is withdrawn, and the mourner is left but a memory, 
 under the inspiration of which he still aspires to some great and 
 far-off good ; but is met at every turn by tempters who would 
 mislead, and enemies who would drive back." The author's 
 intention was that " All in All " should form a connecting link 
 between " Song-Tide " and the final division of the series of 
 love-poems to be entitled " A Pilgrimage." The scheme in its 
 entirety was never carried out, though, it may be added, many 
 .of the sonnets in " Wind Voices " were originally intended for 
 the last-named work. 
 
 Throughout this second volume it is easy to note how fre- 
 quently the poet recurs to the theme of irretrievable loss : 
 passing years had blunted the extremity of his pain, but, keen 
 and vital, the old agony was only more subdued, not vanquished. 
 Again, there is to be noted a loving hope that in the days to 
 come, if he be remembered at all, it may be in union with her 
 whom he had so early lost and so deeply loved : 
 
 " When I, at last, with life and love break trust ; 
 
 When the soul's yearning and the body's lust 
 Are ended wholly as a tune out-played ; 
 
 If then, men name my name, and from these lays 
 The depth and glory of thy soul divine, 
 Shall not, beloved, my memory live in thine? 
 
 Our memories moveless 'mid the moving days, 
 Intense and sad like changeless stars that shine 
 
 On ruined towers of a predestined race." 
 
 In this volume also there occurs one of the noblest and most 
 simply direct of Marston's sonnets ; one which to all who love 
 and have loved must be of strong and permanent appeal. 
 
 NOT THOU BUT I. 
 
 It must have been for one of us, my own, 
 To drink this cup and eat this bitter bread. 
 Had not thy tears upon my face been shed, 
 
 Thy tears had dropped on mine ; if I alone 
 
 Did not walk now, thy spirit would have known 
 My loneliness, and did my feet not tread 
 This weary path and steep, thy feet had bled 
 
 For mine, and thy nioivth had for jiiine piade moan ; 
 
xxii MEMOIR OF 
 
 And so it comforts me, yea, not in vain, 
 To think of thy eternity of sleep. 
 To know thine eyes are tearless though mine weep : 
 
 And when this cup's last bitterness I drain, 
 One thought shall still its primal sweetness keep — 
 Thou hadst the peace and I the undying pain. 
 
 The saddest life is not without compensations : at least, this 
 stereotyped saying may pass as a generalisation. Few men 
 have ever had more friends than the blind poet of whom I 
 write ; men and women of the most opposite tastes and sym- 
 pathies were at one in their regard and love for Philip Marston, 
 
 " There is a kind of compensation," he remarked to me once, 
 *' in the way that new friendships arise to brighten my life as 
 soon as I am bowled over by some great loss. But one's 
 capacities for friendship get worn out, and it is impossible that 
 I can ever be to new friends that which I was to those who are 
 gone and am still to the one or two who are left." 
 
 About this time Philip came to know Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
 with something like intimacy. No man ever obtained from 
 him more fervent, it may without exaggeration be said more 
 worshipful, regard. As a poet he considered Rossetti foremost 
 among those of the Victorian age, and his love for him as a 
 man was deep and abiding. Nothing prejudiced a stranger 
 quicker in his view than disparagement of Rossetti : admiration 
 of the author of " The House of Life," on the other hand, was 
 a bond of immediate union. An appreciative letter from this 
 source would give him more joy and stimulus than would any- 
 thing else. For Mr. Swinburne, also, he always entertained 
 emphatic admiration and strong personal regard, and among 
 his few most treasured friendships was that with Mr. Theodore 
 Watts. None of these, however, he saw with any frequency ; 
 hence, after the death of Oliver Madox Brown, he found himself 
 in growing solitude. 
 
 It was subsequently to the publication of "All-in-all" that 
 Marston began to write for the American magazines, his first ac- 
 ceptance coming from the editor of Scribner's Magazine. From 
 this time forth he more and more devoted himself to production 
 for the American public, with the result that he is now far more 
 widely known as a poet and writer of fiction in the United States 
 than in Great Britain. He would fain have had it otherwise, 
 but his poems and stories met with almost invariable rejection 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. xxiii 
 
 in this country, and he became wearied of what appeared to be 
 a hopeless attempt. Moreover, he had to live, for his means 
 had become straitened. There was some jealousy among 
 certain of his co-equals in age, but probably his malfortune in 
 this lonely struggle with adverse circumstances arose mainly 
 from other and practically insurmountable obstacles. Anyhow, 
 it came to pass that nine-tenths of his prose-writings and the 
 great proportion of his short poems appeared in American 
 journals and magazines ; and that this clever story-teller and 
 writer of exquisite verse experienced nothing but disappointment 
 on this side of the Atlantic. Within the last year or two, one 
 discriminating editor, the popular novelist, Mr. F. W. Robinson, 
 recognized the talent for story-writing which Philip Marston 
 possessed, and commissioned several tales for his magazine, 
 Home Chimes. 
 
 In 1876, as has already been recorded, Marston made the 
 acquaintance of Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton. The friend- 
 ship arose from and was sustained upon a keen literary and 
 intellectual sympathy. Mrs. Moulton was interested from the 
 outset in the young poet and his work, and Marston was soon 
 attracted to one who evinced such kindly interest and conside- 
 ration. The affectionate devotion of this most loyal and helpful 
 of his friends did more than anything else to cheer his remaining 
 years. In Mrs. Moulton, he not only found the most perfect 
 intellectual sympathy ; her broad and cultured taste, her wide 
 experience of the world of men and women and of the world 
 of books, and the charm of her society, all helped — as he said 
 himself— to make life endurable. Every spring Mrs. Moulton 
 came to London for the season ; during her visits the blind 
 poet forgot much of his weary sadness, and even the long 
 months of absence were relieved by continuous correspondence. 
 It would have fared ill with him in his latter years if it had not 
 been for the self-sacrifice and sisterly care of this devoted 
 friend. 
 
 This friendship was formed in time, for it was not long afterward 
 that Philip Marston endured another great loss — one of the 
 most deeply felt afflictions of his life. Mrs. Moulton, as will be 
 seen, has best right to speak of this event, so I shall let the 
 narration be in her words. " I had known him and his sister 
 but a few days more than two years when, on July 28, 1878, 
 Ciceley called upon me at my rooms. Dr. Marston and Philip 
 
xxiv MEMOIR OF 
 
 were away in France, and she spoke of them very tenderly that 
 morning. She complained, when she came in, of an intense 
 headache, and after a little I made her lie down to see what 
 rest would do for her. She grew worse, and when the doctor 
 came he pronounced her illness apoplexy. My name was the 
 last word on her faithful lips ; and in the mid-afternoon of that 
 long July day she died. Quite unaware of her death — since we 
 did not know where to find them with a telegram — and while 
 she was still awaiting burial, her father and brother returned. 
 On this crushing sorrow I cannot linger. Its full bitterness I 
 shared. I think it was the cruellest bereavement that had ever 
 come to our poet. When his mother, his betrothed, and his 
 friend died, he still — as he used often to say — had Ciceley ; but 
 when she left him there remained for him no such constant and 
 consoling presence. His other sister was married, and therefore 
 was not in his daily life at all ; and at that time, even, she her- 
 self was a chronic invalid. His father Avas his one closest tie ; 
 but many sorrows had saddened Dr. Marston and broken his 
 health ; and there was no one to be to Philip what Ciceley had 
 been, as reader, amanuensis, and constant untiring companion. 
 It was the year before Ciceley's death (1877) in which, to 
 gratify a whim of mine, the well-known noveHst, R. E. Fran- 
 cillon, cast Philip's horoscope. Mr. Francillon is a loving 
 student of all mystic lore, and has studied astrology, by way of 
 amusing himself, until he has become a thorough proficient in 
 its mysteries. As a sort of test of the clear seeing of the stars, 
 I persuaded him to cast, and carefully to write out, the horo- 
 scope of the blind poet ; and in this manuscript — which I still 
 have in my possession — he prophesied, several times over, the 
 death of its subject in 1887. One never believes in such pro- 
 phecies until after their fulfilment ; but I look back, now, to see, 
 with wonder, how many predictions, even besides this final one, 
 that horoscope contained ; and they have been fulfilled, every 
 one." 
 
 In that dreary year after the death of his beloved sister, life 
 seemed to him a bitter and worthless thing. Mrs. Moulton had 
 returned to America, Oliver Brown was dead, his father — a be- 
 loved companion and friend — was in ill-health. Desolate in 
 spirit and sorely tried in mind and body, Marston sought sur- 
 cease of pain in hard work. Literature was his saving : without 
 it he had perished. 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARS TON. xxv 
 
 Although those sea-coast and inland voyages wherein he was 
 wont to take such keen pleasure were still indulged in, they 
 were no longer the same. In his own pathetic words, as he 
 spoke to me on the subject some years ago, he had undergone 
 the horrible experience of twice becoming blind. His own sight 
 waned in childhood and was drowned in tears in his early man- 
 hood ; his second sight, his sister Ciceley, was snatched from 
 him with more terrible suddenness. 
 
 Among the men and women whom he came to know about 
 this time, and whose friendship he greatly valued, were Miss 
 Mathilde Blind, Miss Mary Robinson, M. Carmichael, and 
 James Thomson, author of " The City of Dreadful Night." 
 Many an hour which would have been spent in dreary solitude 
 was made happy for him by Miss Robinson, who never grudged 
 to spare from a busy life a liberal period of her scanty leisure 
 for reading and chatting. She was almost the last of those to 
 whom he consciously bade farewell^ though neither he (perhaps) 
 nor certainly any of us knew how imminent was his death. Nor, 
 while it would be inappropriate and impracticable to give any 
 catalogue of the numerous acquaintances whom he held in high 
 regard, should mention be omitted here of Lady Hardy and 
 Miss Iza Dufifus Hardy, valued friends who had known him 
 since childhood, and who were among the privileged few who 
 followed him to the place of his long rest. 
 
 It was at the beginning of 1880 that I came to know Philip 
 Marston. In the autumn of the preceding year I was spend- 
 ing an evening with Rossetti, and I chanced to make some 
 reference to Marston's poetry. Finding that I did not know the 
 blind poet and that I was anxious to meet him, Rossetti pro- 
 mised to bring us together ; one thing and another, however, 
 intervened to prevent our speedy meeting. At last, one day in 
 January, I reminded Rossetti of his promise, and the result was 
 a line of introduction posted direct to Marston. I remember 
 that I was fascinated by him at once — his manner, his personality, 
 his conversation. On his part he gave a generous reception to 
 one who had no claim to his regard save acquaintanceship with 
 the poet for whom we had in common the most genuine love 
 and reverence. Our friendship grew steadily — but I need not 
 say more of it here than that with his death I have lost a very 
 dear and valued friend. 
 
 A year had not passed since the decease of Ciceley^ when fresh 
 
xxvi MEMOIR OF 
 
 sorrows came in the guise of the deaths of his sister NelHe 
 (Mrs. O'Shaughnessy) and her two children. PhiHp now saw 
 more of Arthur O'Shaughnessy. One day in 1881 I was sitting 
 with the former, when O'Shaughnessy ran into the room, re- 
 minded me of a promise to go to his house and hear him read 
 the proof-sheets of his new book, and asked his brother-in-law 
 to come also. In less than a week, poor O'Shaughnessy was 
 dead : sudden inflammation of the lungs had put an end to all 
 his hopes and dreams. 
 
 At Eastertide in the ensuing year Rossetti's death came 
 upon Marston with a great shock. I had been staying at 
 Birchington shortly before the end came, and not foreseeing the 
 imminent disaster, had brought back not unhopeful news ; 
 and, at Rossetti's request, I also planned to go down to Kent 
 again with Philip. We did indeed journey thither shortly, but 
 it was to attend the funeral of him whom we both had such 
 good cause to revere. When the ceremony was over Marston 
 whispered to me that he could not rejoin our friends just then ; 
 so we went along the cliffs and over the wide reaches of 
 the shorej speaking no word. As we returned, he suddenly 
 stopped, and with eager emphasis begged me to grant him one 
 desire of his. I soon discovered that this desire was that I 
 should see little of him henceforth, for, as he bitterly explained, 
 " every friend whom I love seems to be brought within the in- 
 fluence of my unhappy fate." When, later on, I became 
 dangerously ill, poor Philip sent me a letter full of remorse and 
 sorrow. He had heard that I could not recover, and he believed 
 that I had succumbed to the malign fate which pursued him 
 ancf his. Looking through the letters which he at different 
 times addressed to me, I find that note of apprehension ever 
 recurring : and I believe the same would be found by his few 
 really intimate friends. He had a belief, which was not alto- 
 gether fanciful, that he had lived the human life on earth before. 
 This idea is embodied in the following sonnet which he addressed 
 to me in the first year of our friendship, the publication of which 
 in this place may on this illustrative account be excused. 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. xxvii 
 
 MET BEFORE. 
 
 Not surely now for the first time we meet : 
 
 So seems it to me, rather I believe 
 
 That in some vanished state one had to grieve 
 For loss of other, and with weary feet 
 Went on his way finding no sweet thing sweet, 
 
 Listless and sad, unwilling to reprieve 
 
 His thought from pain by joys that but deceive, 
 Nor trusting to a friendship less complete : 
 At length through death into new life he passed ; 
 
 And there he joined his friend, then hand clasp'd hand, 
 Then soul cried out to soul, re-met at last : 
 
 So seemeth it to us, who understand 
 Each other perfectly, and know right well 
 How much there is on either side to tell. 
 
 It was in 1882, also, that another friend, to whom Marston 
 had become much attached — attracted in the first instance by 
 the common bond of unhappiness — died under peculiarly dis- 
 tressing circumstances. The public who are interested in that 
 strange and sombre poem, "The City of Dreadful Night," know 
 vaguely that James Thomson died in poverty and in some ob- 
 scure fashion. Philip Marston and myself were, if I am not 
 mistaken, the last of his acquaintances who saw him alive. 
 Thomson had suffered such misery and endured such hopeless- 
 ness, that he had yielded to intemperate habits, including a 
 frequent excess in the use of opium. He had come back from 
 a prolonged visit to the country, where all had been well with 
 him, but through over-confidence he fell a victim again immedi- 
 ately on his return. For a few weeks his record is almost a 
 blank. When the direst straits were reached, he so far re- 
 conquered his control that he felt himself able to visit one whose 
 sympathy and regard had withstood all tests. Thomson found 
 Philip Marston alone : the latter soon realized that his friend was 
 mentally distraught, and endured a harrowing experience, into 
 the narration of which I do not care to enter. I arrived in the 
 late afternoon, and found Marston in a state of nervous pertur- 
 bation. Thomson was lying down on the bed in the adjoining 
 room : stooping, I caught his whispered words to the effect that 
 he was dying ; upon which I lit a match, and in the sudden glare 
 beheld his white fiice on the blood-stained pillow. He had burst 
 one or more blood-vessels, and the haemorrhage was dreadful. 
 
xxviii . MEMOIR OF 
 
 Some time had to elapse before anything could be done, but ulti- 
 mately, with the help of a friend who came in opportunely, 
 poor Thomson was carried downstairs and, having been placed 
 in a cab, was driven to the adjoining University Hospital. He 
 did not die that night, nor when Philip Marston and I went to 
 see him in the ward the next day was he perceptibly worse, but 
 a few hours after our visit — when his farewell consisted of a 
 startling prophecy, which came true — he passed away. Thus 
 came to an end the saddest life with which I have ever come in 
 contact — sadder even than that of Philip Marston, though his 
 existence was oftentimes bitter enough to endure. 
 
 I do not regret this opportunity for narrating simply and 
 directly the circumstances attendant upon James Thomson's ill- 
 ness and death. I have several times heard, and once or twice 
 seen in print, such misleading statements that in justice to the 
 living as well as to the dead it was but fitting I should briefly 
 give the main outlines of a painful incident. 
 
 Thomson's death, and the manner of it, affected Marston 
 very deeply. To a man of his sensitive nature, the very room 
 where his friend had lain when his death-stroke came upon him 
 was haunted by something inexplicable, but tragic and oppres- 
 sive. This sense of haunted rooms — in a somewhat vaguer, 
 yet not less genuine significance than the adjective generally 
 bears — was a very real thing to him. It was for this reason that 
 one of his supreme favourites among Rossetti's sonnets was that 
 entitled " Memorial Thresholds." Readers of " All-in-All" and 
 " Wind Voices " will find numerous passages which give expres- 
 sion to it : indeed, some of his most pathetic poems were evolved 
 from this motive. 
 
 " Must this not be, that one then dwelling here, 
 Where one man and his sorrows dwelt so long, 
 Shall feel the pressure of a ghostly throng. 
 
 And shall upon some desolate midnight hear 
 A sound more sad than is the pine-trees' song, 
 
 And thrill with great, inexplicable fear?" 
 
 Probably no one has ever felt more grateful to the inventor of 
 the "type-writer" than did Philip Marston. When he pur- 
 chased, and learned the method of working, one of those in- 
 valuable machines, he found himself to a great extent inde- 
 pendent of an amanuensis. By this means he wrote all his 
 stories and poems, and also his extensive correspondence, 
 
PHILIP BOURICE MARStON, xrtix 
 
 without assistance from any one. It was, naturally, a matter of 
 no little moment to him to be able to write, enfold, and address 
 private letters without having to place expressions meant for 
 one person within view of another. For a considerable period 
 he spelt for the most part phonetically, but in course of time he 
 came to write as correctly as — and, as it was some consolation 
 to him to know, infinitely more neatly than — the majority of 
 educated people. Dr. Westland Marston generally revised the 
 type-written sheets meant for publication. 
 
 The blind poet was a rapid as well as an industrious worker. 
 From his slight and late breakfast (for from his boyhood he had 
 been accustomed to go to bed at times when the mass of his 
 fellow-citizens had been asleep for some hours) the click-click 
 of his type-writing machine might be heard incessantly till the 
 late afternoon. By dinner-time a goodly array of foolscap pages 
 would environ his chair, and several letters would lie on the 
 adjoining table awaiting postage. 
 
 He also became proficient in the Braille system, but was 
 unable to gain much satisfaction therefrom, owing to the fact 
 that few of his friends at a distance could bring themselves to 
 learn it sufficiently for correspondence. He never, however, 
 urged his desire upon his absent acquaintances, for he was quite 
 aware of the much greater difficulty in the acquirement of the 
 Braille and allied systems experienced by those who had use 
 of their eyes and whose finger-nerves were, comparatively, so 
 much more insensitive. 
 
 As each year elapsed Marston found his reputation in America 
 more and more assured. His stories and poems not only gained 
 acceptance at the hands of editors, but procured for him many 
 friends. After Mrs. Moulton, and another kind and generous 
 friend, Mrs. L. C. Bullard, the friend of oversea whom he most 
 valued was the **' Poet of the South," Paul Hamilton Hayne ; 
 for E. C. Stedman, R. W. Gilder, Whittier, and others, he had 
 a sincere regard. A glance at the books in his room at No. 
 191, Euston Road, would have convinced any new-comer as to 
 the numerous friends and admirers of Philip Marston. From 
 many well-known, slightly-known, and quite unknown poets 
 and novelists of both sexes, there were scores of volumes con- 
 taining on their fly-leaves affectionate and flattering inscriptions. 
 Nothing of this kind was more valued by him than Swinburne's 
 and Rossetti's books, given to him by their authors. There was 
 
XKX MEMOIR OF 
 
 something very pathetic in the ardent and unbroken friendship 
 between Paul Hamihon Hayne and his Enghsh comrade. Their 
 correspondence was continuous, and most of their letters were 
 lengthy epistles. Both eagerly anticipated meeting. Perhaps 
 at last their long friendship has its consummation, for Hayne 
 died last year. His death was yet another keenly-felt sorrow 
 for the friend who survived him for a few weary months.^ 
 
 During the spring months of 1884 I was residing at Dover, 
 and in April (if I remember aright) Philip came down from 
 London to spend a week or so with me. The weather was per- 
 fect, and our walks by shore and cliff were full of delight to us 
 both : once or twice we crossed to Calais for the sake of the 
 sail, spent a few hours in the old French port, and returned by 
 the afternoon boat. In the evenings, after dinner, we invariably 
 adjourned to the beach, either under the eastern bluffs or along 
 the base of Shakespeare's Cliff. The music of the sea, in calm 
 or tidal turbulence or tempest, had an unfailing fascination for 
 him. To rest upon the edge of the cliff, and hear the fretful 
 murmur of the surge far below ; to lie at full length and listen 
 to "the long withdrawing roar" adown the shelving shingly 
 strand ; to sit in some sheltered place among the rocks, and 
 hearken to the tumult of stormy waters as they surged before 
 the gale and dashed themselves into clouds of foam and flying 
 spray almost at our feet ; such experiences as these afforded 
 him, for the time being, an exhilaration or, again, a solace which 
 to him meant much. 
 
 He took keen pleasure in learning how to distinguish the 
 songs of the different birds, and all spring's sounds and scents 
 were exquisite pleasures to him. How well I remember the 
 rapt expression of puzzled delight which animated his face, as 
 one day we crossed some downs to the westward of Folke- 
 stone. 
 
 " Oh, what is that ? " he cried, eagerly ; and, to my surprise, I 
 found that what had so excited him was the crying of the young 
 
 * Since these lines were written, Dr. Westland Marston has received a 
 gracious tribute from that Southern State where Paul Hamilton Hayne 
 spent most of his Hfe. Many of the admirers of Philip Marston's poetry — 
 with recognition also of the friendship between the American poet and his 
 English comrade—have sent a large lyre made of white immortelles, with 
 the word Marston in purple flowers across the strings. I may add here that 
 in "Wind Voices " there is a pathetic sonnet addressed to Hayne. 
 
PHTLIP BOURKE MARS TON, xxxi 
 
 lambs as they stumbled or frisked about their mothers. He had 
 so seldom been out of London in the early spring that so com- 
 mon an incident as this had all the charm of newness to him. 
 A frisky youngster was easily enticed alongside, and Philip's 
 almost childlike happiness in playing with the woolly little 
 creature was something delightful to witness. A little later I 
 espied one which had only been a few hours in the world, and 
 speedily placed it in his arms. He would fain have carried it 
 away with him ; in his tender solicitude for it he was like a 
 young mother over her firstborn. 
 
 As we turned to walk homeward we met a boy holding a 
 young starling in his hand. Its feeble, strident cries, its funny 
 little beak closing upon his finger under the impression it was 
 a gigantic worm, delighted him almost as much as the lambkin. 
 
 " A day of days ! " was his expressive commentary, as tired and 
 hungry we reached home and sat down to dinner, with the deep 
 boom of the sea clearly audible through the open window. 
 
 Philip Marston had a subtle sympathy with nature which 
 amounted almost to a new sense. A cloud would rise upon the 
 horizon, and he would be the first to portend some change in 
 the weather ; it was as if his sightless eyes yet conveyed some 
 message to his mind, or as if his ears heard an ominous 
 murmur of far-off wind and rain inaudible to senses less acute. 
 Sunset, a solemn moon-rise, the company of cloud-drifts passing 
 westward and glowing with delicate and gorgeous tones and 
 hues, to these he was never insensitive, even if no friend 
 referred to them ; in some occult fashion he seemed to be aware 
 that these things were making earth and heaven beautiful. 
 
 There is none among our younger poets who has touched 
 with more exquisite truth and grace those evanescent aspects of 
 the skies, those soft fleeting hues of earth and sea ; the inner 
 vision of the blind-poet was as faithful to him as the pole-star 
 to the seaman. 
 
 And because to him the sea and the wind were always among 
 the most wonderful things in nature, endlessly suggestive, end- 
 lessly beautiful to eye and ear and spirit, his love for them never 
 grew less. But in the growing sadness of his last years one of 
 his most abiding sorrows was the loss, in great part, of the old 
 passionate love and yearning for nature. But for his blindness 
 this would not have been so, for to men and women who have 
 anything in them of spiritual life, nature is the source of their 
 
xxxii MEMOIR VP 
 
 most sacred comfort. On a mountain-slope, on a wide plairt^ 
 by the margin of the sea, the keenest grief becomes rarefied 
 till it attains to a higher and nobler plane of sorrow. 
 
 Far more deeply than some of his friends guessed did he 
 feel this passing away of the old worship. It was a genuine 
 sorrow to him, a deep and cruel disappointment. "It is as 
 though one were parting with one's last hope — one's sole 
 remaining consolation," he once remarked to me bitterly. In 
 the sonnet called " Youth and Nature " he has given expression 
 to this sense of estrangement : — 
 
 " Is this the sky, and this the very earth 
 
 I had such pleasure in when I was young ? 
 
 And can this be the dentical sea-song, 
 Heard once within the storm-cloud's awful girth, 
 When a great storm from silence burst to birth, 
 
 And winds to whom it seemed I did belong 
 
 Made the keen blood in me run swift and strong 
 With irresistible, tempestuous mirth ? 
 Are these the forests loved of old so well, 
 
 Where on May nights enchanted music was ? 
 
 Are these the fields of soft, delicious grass, 
 These the old hills with secret things to tell? 
 O my dead Youth, was this inevitable, 
 
 That with thy passing, Nature, too, should pass? '^ 
 
 Few natural incidents seemed to strike him more ominously 
 and painfully than the oncoming in mid-July of one of those 
 autumnal winds which make one vaguely realize that the sum- 
 mer is dead. The sonnet, " A July Day," was born of this 
 emotional susceptibility. 
 
 *' To-day the sun has stedfast been and clear- 
 No wind has marred the spell of hushful heat, 
 But, with the twilight, comes a rush and beat 
 
 Of ghost-like ^ings ; the sky turns grey and drear, 
 
 The trees are stricken with a sudden fear. 
 
 wind forlorn, that sayeth nothing sweet, 
 With what foreboding message dost thou greet 
 
 The dearest month but one of all the year ? 
 
 Ah, now it seems I catch the moan of seas 
 
 Whose boundaries are pale regions of dismay, 
 Where sad-eyed people wander without ease ; 
 
 1 see in thought that lamentable array, 
 And surely hear about the dying day 
 
 Recorded dooms and mournful prophecies. 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, xxxiii; 
 
 Even Spring, for which he ever yearned throughout the rest 
 of the year, brought with it latterly but little of that conscious 
 and unconscious exhilaration which it is wont to bring to all of 
 us. " Spring Sadness " was his theme rather than " Spring 
 Joy." There is one fine and pathetic sonnet where this sad 
 foreknowledge of its significance is recorded. 
 
 IN EARLY SPRING. 
 With delicate wind, clear light of the warm sun, 
 Surely I know how subtly sweet is Spring, 
 The earth and man's worn heart revisiting. 
 I would not have thy brief existence done, 
 And yet I would, O new-born Spring, that one 
 Might meet thine eyes without their mirroring 
 The ghost of many a sweet and bitter thing- 
 Old dreams, old hopes, too frail to lean upon, 
 O last descended of a hostile race, 
 
 Though in thyself so sweet and softly iair. 
 Within thine eyes ancestral Springs I trace ; 
 So some wronged woman, in her baby's face 
 May shuddering see its father's likeness there. 
 While parted raptures thrill through her despair. 
 
 The three last-quoted sonnets are from the third of Philip 
 Marston's published volumes of poetry. In 1883-84 this book 
 was issued by Mr. EUiott Stock, with the poetic title " Wind 
 Voices." Its success was immediate and emphatic. Messrs. 
 Roberts Bros., of Boston, speedily disposed of every copy of the 
 American edition, and the London publisher sold the last few 
 score at a considerable premium. The book is consequently 
 almost as difficult to obtain as " Song Tide," for it was not 
 stereotyped. 
 
 " Wind Voices " is dedicated to " Louise Chandler Moulton, 
 True Poet and True Friend." It contains much that is very 
 beautiful and very touching, and exhibits a greater breadth and 
 grip than its predecessors. I am hardly likely to be contra- 
 dicted in the assertion that it contains a greater amount of 
 genuine poetry than any volume by a Victorian poet posterior 
 to those few chiefs of song whose names are upon all our lips. 
 
 In addition to a further instalment of his exquisite flower- 
 lyrics, grouped under the title " Garden Secrets," there are 
 touching poems in memory of Oliver Madox Brown, Arthur 
 O'Shaughnessy, James Thomson, and Rossetti, and several 
 sonnets addressed to C. N. M. (his sister Ciceley). Among the 
 
 \b 
 
xxxiv MEMOIR OF 
 
 more ambitious poems are " Caedmon/' where the Saxon poet re- 
 lates before the Abbess Hilda that famous dream which resulted 
 in the Song of Creation ; " Caught in the Nets," a merman 
 story founded on a passage in Sir Richard Baker's " Chronicle," 
 wherein is described the capture of a strange, half-human 
 creature of the deep, on the Suffolk coast in the twelfth century, 
 and its ultimate escape to the " dear waves " and " some sea- 
 girl's damp and salt caresses ; " " The Ballad of the Monk 
 Julius,'' based on the familiar legend of the demon-tempted 
 monk • the ^' Ballad of Brave Women," a record of two heroic 
 Swansea fishermen's wives, which, however, is too markedly 
 Rossettian ; and " Nightshade," founded on the conclusion of 
 Oliver Madox Brown's ^* Dwale Bluth," as designed though not 
 completed by its author. The songs and lyrics scattered through- 
 out the volume are most winsome. Those beginning *' Now 
 that Hope lies sick to death," and " Love has turned his face 
 away," have much of the subtle charm of the lyrics of the Eliza- 
 bethan poets. The following poem, which I cannot refrain from 
 quoting, has an exquisite music in it recalling the happiest 
 effects of Poe and Swinburne. It is called *' The Old Church- 
 yard of Bonchurch," and is headed by a note stating that "this 
 old churchyard has been for many years slipping toward the sea, 
 which it is expected will ultimately engulf it." 
 
 "The churchyard leans to the sea with its dead — 
 It leans to the sea with its dead so long. 
 Do they hear, I wonder, the first bird's song, 
 When the winter's anger is all but fled, 
 The high, sweet voice of the west wind, 
 The fall of the warm, soft rain, 
 When the second month of the year 
 Puts heart in the earth again ? 
 
 Do they hear, through the glad April weather, 
 The green grasses waving above them ? 
 Do they think there are none left to love them, 
 They have lain for so long there, together ? 
 Do they hear the note of the cuckoo, 
 The cry of gulls on the wing. 
 The laughter of winds and waters, 
 The feet of the dancing Spring? 
 
 Do they feel the old land slipping seaward, 
 The old land, with its hills and its graves, 
 As they gradually slide to the waves, 
 With the wind blowing on them from leeward ? 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MA PS TON. xxxv 
 
 Do they know of the change that awaits them, 
 Tlie sepulchre vast and strange ? 
 Do they long for clays to go over, 
 And bring that miraculous change ? 
 
 Do they think 'twill be cold when the waters 
 That they love not, that neither can love them, 
 Shall eternally thunder above them ? 
 Have they dread of the sea's shining daughters, 
 That people the bright sea-regions 
 And play with the young sea-kings ? 
 Have they dread of their cold embraces, 
 And dread of all strange sea-things ? 
 
 But their dread or their joy — it is bootless. 
 They shall pass from the breast of their mother ; 
 They shall lie low, dead brother by brother, 
 In a place that is radiant and fruitless. 
 And the folk that sail over their heads 
 In violent weather 
 
 Shall come down to them, haply, and all 
 They shall lie there, together.'' 
 
 The sonnets, of which there is a large number, are unequal. 
 Some of the poet's finest are in this book, and perhaps nowhere 
 has he written one more powerfully imaginative than that entitled 
 '' No Death/' 
 
 NO DEATH. 
 
 I saw in dreams a mighty multitude- 
 Gathered, they seemed, from North, South, East and West, 
 And in their looks such horror was exprest, 
 
 As must forever words of mine elude. 
 
 As if transfixed by grief, some silent stood, 
 
 While others wildly smote upon the breast. 
 And cried out fearfully, " No rest, no rest ! " 
 
 Some fled, as if by shapes unseen pursued. 
 
 Some laughed insanely. Others shrieking, said, 
 ' ' To think that yesterday we might have died ; 
 
 For then God had not thundered, ' Death is dead ! ' '' 
 
 They gashed themselves till all with blood were red. 
 
 "Answer, O God ; take back this curse ! " they cried — 
 But *• Death is dead," was all the voice rephed. 
 
xxxvi MEMOIR OF 
 
 "Wind-voices" was warmly praised by "all sorts and condi- 
 tions" of critics ; the review which most deeply touched and 
 pleased the author was the long and generous article in The 
 Athencsiim, by Mr. Theodore Watts. 
 
 In the last year or two of his life Philip Marston gained a new 
 friend in the person of Mr. Churchill Osborne, of Salisbury, 
 whose admiration and affection for the poet were returned in full. 
 Another friend was Mr. Herbert Clarke, whose visits he always 
 looked forward to and with whom he spent many " forgetful 
 hours." 
 
 His health henceforth steadily declined. His power of con- 
 centration lessened, and all labour became a weariness to him. 
 " It is impossible I can live long," he was wont to exclaim, im- 
 patiently — " how unutterably thankful I would be for the end, if 
 only — if only — I k?tew what lay beyond ! " 
 
 Until the summer of 1886, however, he still wrote indus- 
 triously, though rarely in verse. In August he and his father 
 were at Brighton for rest and change of air. Every autumn for 
 some years past, it may be mentioned here, father and son went 
 away somewhere together ; neither was wont to tire of the 
 other's companionship, for the friendship between them was 
 almost as brotherly and amicable as paternal and filial. One 
 hot day, while bareheaded in the glare of the sun, Philip was 
 prostrated by a heat-stroke, which was followed by serious ill- 
 ness of an epileptiform nature. Mind and body suffered from 
 the strain, and the derangement foretold death. 
 
 So great was his vitality and power of endurance that neither 
 his father nor the friends who saw him at this time guessed the 
 imminence of the end. Mrs. Moulton was disturbed by his con- 
 dition, but when she sailed for America early in October she 
 foresaw no final breakdown. 
 
 Throughout the winter his letters were full of foreboding and 
 weariness. " You will miss me, perhaps, when I am gone, but 
 you must not mourn for me. I think few lives have been so 
 deeply sad as mine, though I do not forget those who have 
 blessed it." This was the keynote of each infinitely sad letter. 
 About mid-winter he wrote to Mrs. Moulton, " I feel that I said 
 my last good-bye to you, that 4th of October, when we parted at 
 the Euston Station. I shall be gone — somewhere — before you 
 come again. The stony streets will be here, and the bells that 
 drive me mad will ring ; but /shall be gone. You will miss me 
 
PHILIP BOURKE MAR570N xxxvii 
 
 sometimes, I think, you and a few others ; and perhaps people 
 will be sorry when they remember how dark and lonely was the 
 life I lived here." Again " If I could only sleep. I try every- 
 thing, but rest will not come. Is there anything in all the world 
 so good as sleep." 
 
 Serious illness and months of tardy convalescence pre- 
 vented my seeing anything of Philip Marston from the spring 
 of 1886 until last December. On Christmas forenoon I went 
 to see and spend an hour or so with him. He was in bed, and 
 I was shocked by the change. It was almost imperceptible to 
 those who had lately seen much of him, but as nearly a year 
 had elapsed since I had seen him (save for a few minutes on 
 one or two occasions), I found the alteration only too evident. 
 
 He was not under medical charge ; for one thing — he con- 
 sidered his ill beyond the healing of any physician. With some 
 difficulty I gained his consent to the advent of a doctor, and 
 his promise to act in strict accordance with the latter's sugges- 
 tions. Dr. Byres Moir thenceforth attended him with the utmost 
 sympathy and skill, but ere long he saw that nothing more 
 could be done than to render the invalid's last days free from 
 discomfort and pain. 
 
 On the last day of January paralysis set in, and gradually the 
 nervous system surrendered. For the next fourteen days he lay 
 speechless, as well as sightless. His efforts to make himself 
 understood were at times most harrowing. Certain desires he 
 managed to convey, but latterly his will-power was insufficient 
 even for the tremulous raising of his poor wasted hand in sign 
 of acquiescence or negation. To another friend and myself I 
 know that he consciously said farewell : blind though he was he 
 saw the shadow of death coming very near. 
 
 On Sunday, February 13th, the restlessness had gone, and 
 he spent a better night than he had done for long. It was 
 that strange apathy which sometimes precedes the final energy 
 of the act of death. On Monday morning, about 9.45, he 
 suffered from a momentary palpitation ; gave one or two low 
 sighs, and was gone. 
 
 All the fever and fret of his life was passed out of his face on 
 the day when he was laid in his coffin. At last he was asleep 
 and at peace. 
 
 On Friday, the day of the funeral, the few friends who were 
 asked to attend felt, on taking a farewell glance at the face of 
 
5cxxviii MEMOIR OP 
 
 the dead poet, that Death had never looked more beautiful. 
 Pure and white, with the pallor but not with the rigidity of 
 marble, the serene face lay amidst white flowers which inter- 
 twined with the dark hair and beard. Among the many wreaths 
 which had been sent from far and near, were one or two where 
 the laurel prevailed, so that in death also he went honoured as 
 was his due. 
 
 Philip Bourke Marston was buried at Highgate cemetery. 
 Having belonged to no sect in matters of religion, and having 
 expressed a desire to have no regular ritual at his grave — though 
 in him, I may say here, abode that large faith in ultimate good 
 which is the vital spirit of all true religions — he was lowered 
 to his rest after the following few earnest words from an old 
 and valued friend of himself and his father : ^' Our dear brother 
 whom we now commit to the grave found a difficulty in accept- 
 ing the doctrines of either Churchmen or Dissenters. But 
 though he could not distinctly recognize the intervention of a 
 Divine Power in the affairs of the world, he would not deny the 
 possibility of such a loving superintendence, and it is certain 
 that he manifested love himself to his fellow creatures, espe- 
 cially to the poor by his sympathy and generosity. He inchned, 
 perhaps, more to Positivism than to any other form of worship 
 — but to Love, whether Divine or human, we now humbly 
 commend him." 
 
 It seems fitting to say a few further words here concerning 
 the personality of Philip Marston. 
 
 Close upon five feet eleven in height, his erect carriage and 
 alert attitude afforded him a buoyant and youthful aspect. His 
 features were clearly-cut, his sensitive mouth very mobile, and 
 the expression— until the last year or so, when illness wrought 
 such ravage upon him — one of peculiar refinement and very 
 winning. He was always slight, and latterly was fragile, in 
 figure ; his hands were a musician's, supple, long-fingered, 
 delicate. This last remark reminds me how passionately fond 
 Philip Marston was of music : I have seen him quivering like 
 an aspen-leaf under its influence. He played a little by ear 
 upon the pianoforte, mainly old plaintive airs, illusive reminis- 
 cences of those folk=strains which have usually so much of the 
 vox humana in their melodies. 
 
 He was generosity itself; hospitality he was wont to exercise 
 to excess. His faculty of putting himself en rapport with the 
 
PHiUP BOURKE MA Ms TON. xxxik 
 
 prevailing mood of his company was electric, and it is this, 
 doubtless, which has led so many of his acquaintances to think 
 on the one hand, that his most intimate friends have exag- 
 gerated his habitual spiritual gloom ; and, on the other, that his> 
 unhappiness has not by them been sufficiently emphasised. 
 
 It may be said in a word, that his customary bearing towards 
 his friends was one of animation and interest ; that his habitual 
 attitude, for himself, was one of almost invariable gloom and 
 deep despondency. His interests dwelt mainly with literature ; 
 supremely with poetry. He was a much wider reader than many 
 of his friends supposed, though his knowledge was superficial 
 elsewhere than in poetry and fiction. As one who knew him 
 intimately, and to whom he has often spoken on the subject— 
 and my assertion is corroborated by Dr. Westland Marston, 
 Mrs. Moulton, and one or two others who enjoyed only a less 
 degree of intimacy — I can emphatically affirm that Marston 
 was not, as has been stated in an obituary notice by one of his 
 acquaintances, an atheist. He hated dogma and had no defi- 
 nite creed ; but he was equally averse from blatant trumpeting 
 abroad of disbelief, and even affirmed that he considered athe- 
 ism as illogical as it was undesirable a creed. He was, in a 
 word, an agnostic, with a strong tendency to hope and believe 
 that " all would be well." His keen and ready sympathy with 
 all upon whom dwelt any ban made him sometimes appear in 
 a dubious mental aspect ; and his bitter sorrows caused his one 
 dominant desire to be rest — • 
 
 " Rest, rest, a perfect rest 
 Shed over brow and breast," 
 
 Work is the surest palliative for a broken heart, and in arduous 
 and incessant labour, as has been already stated, the blind poet 
 found some measure of relief. In his later years his idea of 
 possible happiness was to be independent of literary work ; to 
 live in an old manor completely shut off from the outside world 
 by orchards, old-fashioned fragrant-flowered gardens, and shady 
 avenues of elm and beech ; to be within a short walk of the sea ; 
 there to write nothing but poetry, and then only when the im- 
 pulse was irresistible ; and there to have occasional friendly 
 visits from dwellers in distant Babylon, He dwelt on this 
 halcyon existence with a half-humorous, half-yearning per- 
 sistency which showed how keen was his longing for some such 
 
xl MEMOIR OF 
 
 peaceful passing of his remaining years. "Just imagine," he 
 would say, *' what it would mean to be beyond reach of this 
 everlasting Babel of the Euston Road ! Instead of the clatter 
 of cabs and omnibusses and the jangling din of those accursed 
 bells, to hear such blessed and soothing sounds as the rustling 
 of leaves and the swaying of boughs ; the cawing of rooks and 
 the drowsy cooing of the wood-doves ; the wind passing over 
 the grass, and the ever-varying music of the sea ! " No such 
 sweet nepenthe was to be his, however, poor fellow. 
 
 The ear accustoms itself wonderfully to any noisiness that is 
 incessant, and of the endless tumult of the busy pAiston Road 
 Marston became practically heedless; but to the intermittent 
 yet far from infrequent clangour of the church, chapel, and other 
 bells he never grew resigned. In one of his latest sonnets, if 
 not as I believe the latest, he refers to these hated bells. This 
 sonnet is published in Lippincotf s Magazine for the present 
 month (April). Appearing just six weeks after the poet's death, 
 *' My Grave" seems a sadly appropriate last utterance, a pathetic 
 " music at the close." 
 
 MY GRAVE. 
 
 For me no great metropolis of the dead, — 
 
 Highways and byways, squares and crescents of death,— 
 
 But, after I have breathed my last sad breath, 
 Am comforted with quiet, I who said, 
 ** I weary of men's voices and their tread, 
 
 Of clamouring bells, and whirl of wheels that pass," 
 
 Lay me beneath some plot of country grass, 
 Where flowers may spring, and birds sing overhead : 
 Whereto one coming, some fair eve in spring, 
 
 Between the day-fall and the tender night, 
 Might pause awhile, his friend remembering. 
 
 And hear low words breathed through the failing light. 
 Spoken to him by the wind, whispering, 
 
 " Now he sleeps long, who had so long to fight.'' 
 
 I wrote, a few sentences back, of Marston's ideal of possible 
 happiness during his later years. In his boyhood, youth, and 
 early manhood all his desires were towards action. He had 
 then no craving for rest, for the iron had not yet entered into 
 his soul sufficiently to paralyse each faculty save that of en- 
 durance. The soldier, the mariner, the pioneer — those were the 
 men whom he envied most. To be doing — that was his keenest 
 desire. In all stories of adventure, real and fictitious, he took 
 
PklLIP BOURKE MARS TON, xH 
 
 gl'eat deliojht. For a long period during his youth he lived a 
 kind of dual existence. His father has told me how Philip was 
 "always off somewhere " — India, China, America, Australia, the 
 North and South Polar Seas, the Pacific, and so forth. In those 
 imaginary voyages he was invariably accompanied by two jovial 
 and dare-devil personages whom he had named Buffalo and 
 Mackintosh. In the daring exploits upon the high seas, in the 
 wild scenes in unexplored countries, in the terrific combats with 
 bloodthirsty savages, Buffalo and Mackintosh were often tem- 
 porarily prostrated ; but they were always to hand for any new 
 voyage when their creator required them. Both ''worthies" 
 continued to be faithful companions for many years, and when 
 at last they died a natural death, their memories remained ever- 
 green. Philip always enjoyed a reference to the daring Buffalo 
 and the redoubtable Mackintosh, and, I suspect, oftentimes 
 joined them again in the land of shades and revelled in many a 
 surreptitious adventure. Although his poetic development was 
 precocious, he had no wish " to sit at home and write poetry." 
 When the glamour of recent association with Buffalo and 
 Mackintosh was not upon him, he would yearn even for the 
 unromantic life of a city clerk. Anything to be doing : that was 
 his one cry until it changed into " anything for rest." 
 
 Nothing is more surprising than the maturity of thought and 
 expression which occasionally characterises the productions of 
 young poets who have in them something of the divine breath 
 of genius. As already mentioned, such fine poems as "A 
 Christmas Vigil" and " The Rose and the Wind" — indeed, all 
 the poems in " Song-Tide " — were written before the poet's twen- 
 tieth birthday : several of his published sonnets were composed 
 between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. The following 
 ("Song-Tide," p. 179^ was written during the author's fifteenth 
 
 year. 
 
 DESOLATE. 
 
 I strain my worn-out sight across the sea, 
 
 I hear the wan waves sobbing on the strand, 
 
 My eyes grow weary of the sea and land, 
 
 Of the wide deep and the forsaken lea : 
 
 Ah ! love, return ! ah ! love, come back to me ! — 
 
 As well these ebbing waves I might command 
 
 To turn and kiss the moist deserted sand ! 
 
 The joy that was, is not, and cannot be. 
 
 The salt shore, furrowed by the foam, smells sweet ; 
 
 Oh, blest for me, if it were now my lot. 
 
xlii MEMOIR OF 
 
 To make this shore my rest, and hear all strife 
 Die out like yon tide's faint receding beat : 
 If he forgot so easily in Hfe, 
 I may in death forget that he forgot. 
 
 " A Christmas Vigil," written in Marston's nineteenth year, is 
 beyond question a remarkable poem for so young a man : its 
 dramatic vision and intensity, its poetic concision, its humanity, 
 combine in irresistible appeal. In this sad story of a ruined 
 woman's life there are passages displaying that exquisite insight 
 into and sympathy with external nature which Philip Marston, 
 blind though he was, so frequently demonstrated. This is 
 hardly a verse such as we would expect from a blind man : 
 
 "Now, when the time of the sun's setting came, 
 
 The sky caught flame ; 
 For all the sun, which as an empty name 
 Had been that day, then rent the leaden veil 
 And flashed out sharp, 'twixt watery clouds, and pale ; 
 Then, suddenly, a stormy wind upsprang, 
 
 That shrieked and sang ; 
 Around the reeling tree-tops loud it rang, 
 And all was dappled blue, and faint fresh gold, 
 Lovely, and virgin ; wild, and sweet, and cold." 
 
 But neither in " Wind-Voices " nor in either of its successors is 
 there anything more memorable than the exquisite lyric, '' The 
 Rose and the Wind." It is in point of substance as well as in 
 manner very remarkable as the work of a youth. In a letter 
 which Rossetti wrote to its author occurs the. following passage 
 of genuine as well as generous praise : " Only yesterday evening 
 I was reading your * Garden Secrets ' to William Bell Scott, 
 who fully agreed with me that it was not too much to say of 
 them that they are worthy of Shakespeare in his subtlest lyrical 
 moods." Of these '' Garden Secrets" — which are to be found 
 in '' Song-Tide " and " Wind- Voices"— the "Rose and the Wind 
 is the second. 
 
 THE ROSE AND THE WIND. 
 
 DAWN. 
 
 The Rosc.—'^\iQ.y\ think you comes the wind, 
 The wind that kisses me and is so kind ? 
 Lo ! how the lily sleeps ; her sleep is light ; 
 Would I were like the lily pale and white ; 
 Will the wind come ? 
 
PHIIJP BOURKE MARS TON, xlJi 
 
 The Beech. — Perchance for thee too soon. 
 
 The Rose. — If not, how could I live until the noon ? 
 
 What, think you. Beech-tree, makes the wind delay ? 
 
 Why comes he not at breaking of the day ? 
 
 The Beech. — Hush, child, and, like the lily, go to sleep. 
 
 The Rose. — You know I cannot. 
 
 The Beech. — Nay, then, do not weep. 
 
 Th£ Beech. — {after a paitse) Thy lover comes, be happy now, O Rose, 
 
 And softly through my bending branches goes. 
 
 Soon he shall come, and you shall feel his kiss. 
 
 The Rose. — Already my flushed heart grows faint with bliss ; 
 
 Love, I have longed for thee through all the night. 
 
 The Wind. — And I to kiss thy petals warm and bright. 
 
 The 7?(?j^.— Laugh round me, love, and kiss me ; it is well. 
 
 Nay, have no fear, the lily will not tell. 
 
 MORNING. 
 
 'Twas dawn when first you came, and now the sun 
 
 Shines brightly and the dews of dawn are done. 
 
 'Tis well you take me so in your embrace ; 
 
 But lay me back again into my place, 
 
 For I am worn, perhaps with bliss extreme. 
 
 The Wind. — Nay, you must wake, love, from tliis childish dream. 
 
 The Rose. — 'Tis thou, love, seemest changed ; thy laugh is loud, 
 
 And 'neath thy stormy kiss my head is bowed. 
 
 O love, O Wind, a space wilt thou not spare ? 
 
 The Wind. — Not while thy petals are so soft and fair. 
 
 The Rose. — My buds are blind with leaves, they cannot see, 
 
 O love, O Wind, wilt thou not pity me ? 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 The Beech— O Wind, a word with you before you pass, 
 
 What didst thou to the Rose that on the grass 
 
 Broken she lies and pale, who loved thee so ? 
 
 The Wind.— Roses must live and love, and winds must blow. 
 
 Of recent years it was often in Philip Marston's mind to write 
 a novel which would be something else than "a pot-boiler." 
 But for long he had neither time nor any likely opportunity for 
 the enterprize, and latterly he had not the energy to undertake 
 a task whose ultimate result was so very dubious. 
 
 I suppose the stories included in this volume represent about 
 a third — possibly rather more — of Marston's short tales. There 
 are one or two which I should have liked to have added, but 
 which it was not practicable to obtain in time for inclusion ; 
 but the selection, as it stands, is undoubtedly thoroughly repre- 
 sentative. 
 
XilV 
 
 MEMOIR OF PHILIP BOURKE MARS TON. 
 
 These stories their author was wont to speak of, half in fun, 
 as his Prose Bitters. It had long been his wish to see the best 
 of them published in collective form in this country, but he had 
 never been gratified in this keen desire. Very shortly before 
 his death he was glad to hear that Mr. Walter Scott would 
 issue a selection of them in a single volume : when a day or 
 two later I spoke to him concerning some details of publication 
 he could only express by gesture and hand-pressure what his 
 wishes were. It was his own desire that the volume should 
 bear its present title. The book was to have been dedicated 
 to a friend, but it has been thought better, as things now are, 
 to have a more general dedication. 
 
 And now all is over for Philip Bourke Marston — the long toil, 
 the abiding pain, the infinite weariness. Many years ago, while 
 he was in the prime of youth, tears quenched the flickering 
 flame of light in his dimmed eyes : through a darker gloom 
 than any in which he travailed here he has passed towards the 
 light. 
 
 Looking at his serene face on the day ere the coffin-lid 
 enclosed it, where something lovelier than mortal sleep subtly 
 dwelt, there was one at least of his friends who forgot all sorrow 
 in a great gladness for the blind poet — now no longer blind, if 
 he be not overwhelmed in a sleep beyond our ken. At such 
 a moment the infinite satisfaction of Death seems bountiful 
 largess for the unrestful turmoil of a few " dark, disastrous 
 years." 
 
 Wheresoever he who is gone from us now is, surely it is well 
 with him. 
 
 " Far off is he, above desire or fear : 
 No more subjected to the change or chance 
 Of the unsteady planets." 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP* 
 
BY 
 
 PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON, 
 
 SONG-TIDK. Chatto and Windus. (Out of print. ) 
 ALL-IN-ALL. Chatto and Windus. 
 ^SAnND-YOIGES. Elliot Stock. (Out of print.) 
 
 FOR A SONG'S SAKE : AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 Walter Scott. Crown 8vo, price 4s. 6d. 
 
Of me ye may say many a hitter things 
 
 Men, when I am gone^ g07ie far away 
 To that dim Land tvhere shines no light of day. 
 Sharp zvas the bread for my soiiVs noitrishing 
 Which Fate allowed y and bitter was the spring 
 
 Of which I drank and maddened ^ even as they 
 Who wild "tvith thirst at sea will not delay. 
 But drink the brine and die of its sharp sting. 
 
 Not gentle was my war with Chance, and yet 
 
 1 borroived no mai^s swoi'd — alone I dreiv, 
 And gave my slain fit burial out of view. 
 
 In secret places I and Sorrotv met. 
 So, whetz yon count my sins, do not forget 
 To say I taxed not any one of yon. 
 
 PHILir BOURKE MaRSTON, 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FOUND. 
 
 What a wild February night it was ! All the witches were 
 abroad in the air, chasing each other through the wind, or playing 
 at hide-and-seek in and out of the great luminous clouds which 
 were from time to time hurried across the moon as she sailed, 
 pale and spectral, above the windy turbulence. Such a night 
 in the country is magical. The leafless woods are populous 
 with shapes we see not, yet whose presence we feel. Each 
 blade of grass is informed with strange life ; and what is it that 
 the trees shout to one another as the wind comes on, billowing 
 through their dark ranks. In London, even, such a night is not 
 without charm. There is a keen sense of purity and triumph 
 in the air, with a nameless fragrance, blown from what far-off 
 fields that pasture no herds of ours. 
 
 It was just the night to set a poet or painter dreaming, and 
 to fill his head with all sorts of nonsense ; so, as Herbert 
 Montague was a painter, can we wonder that, as he walked 
 from a friend's house in the Regent's Park, where he had been 
 passing the evening, back to his own modest rooms in Museum 
 Street, his mind should have been full of dreams and visions ? 
 The road on which he walked skirted the Park, and he and the 
 wind seemed to have it to themselves ; for had not the clocks 
 all round just struck one, and the good people in that most 
 respectable neighbourhood, do they not retire to rest at reason- 
 
 2 
 
t FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 able hours ? He was vvaiking en, then, dreaming and smoking, 
 when lie beca-re nvvare.of a sound so subtly sweet, so delicate, 
 so remote, that it set mod to Kim like a flower of sound, sprung 
 of the wind — a half-blown aerial lily. He stood still and listened, 
 •and the air seemed sweetened by some divine fragrance. Then 
 he went on his way, and the sound became more distinct, till 
 he discovered it to be simply the voice of a girl singing. In a 
 few moments he came up with her. She was leaning against a 
 lamp-post, and the light fell full on her face, and on the thin, 
 torn dress in which she was shivering. 
 
 " Too young for this sort of thing," thought Montague, as, 
 with a glance at her, he passed on. He did not go far before 
 an impulse moved him to return to where she was standing. 
 He had a shilling all ready to produce, but he spoke first : 
 
 " Pm afraid it's too late for your singing to be appreciated 
 to-night. Don't you think you had best go home ?'' 
 
 ** I have no home," she replied. 
 
 Herbert saw now that it was neither an English nor a common 
 face that he was looking at. 
 
 " How can that be .'^ " he asked, kindly ; " don't you belong to 
 any one.'' 
 
 '^ No — I belong to no one," she returned. " Father died this 
 morning, and they turned me out because I had no money, and 
 I've been all the time since in the streets. I'm so cold and 
 hungry that I can't cry for father, as I want to do." 
 
 She spoke English well, but with a foreign accent. 
 
 " Your father was very good to you, then .^" said Herbert. 
 
 "Good?" cried the girl — "good? I should think he was. 
 He was an angel ! " 
 
 " You are not English ? " he observed, quite interested in his 
 adventure. 
 
 " No ; I am an Italian, but my mother was English. I don't 
 remember her — she died so long ago." 
 
 '' And what do you think of doing to-night ?" inquired Herbert. 
 
 " How can it interest you what I do ? " cried the girl. " I 
 suppose I can sleep here in the street, can't I ? Oh, how cold 
 it is ! '^ 
 
 There was something in her tone half-pleading, half-defiant — 
 something in the desperate light which flashed out of her dark 
 eyes that went straight to the young man's heart, and at that 
 time a very tender heart it was. He replied, as young people 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 3 
 
 very often do, on the impulse of the moment, without at all 
 considering the consequences of their speech : 
 
 " No, my child, you can't sleep in the streets." 
 
 ^' And why not, will you tell me, please ? " 
 
 " Yes, I will, with pleasure. Just for this reason, then — that 
 I won't let you. What's your name 1 " 
 
 " My name is Mabel." 
 
 ** Well, then, Mabel, we may let our own people lie in the 
 streets, but not you, because you are a stranger. I live very near 
 here, and you must come with me. My landlady is a good soul, 
 and she will give you food and a night's shelter ; come ! " 
 
 The girl's eyes seemed to brighten, but she answered : 
 
 "Father said I was never to listen if gentlemen spoke to 
 me." 
 
 '' And he was quite right," said Herbert ; " but, you see, he 
 never thought of your being like this, and then I am not a fellow 
 who would do you any harm." 
 
 She did not resist as he drew her along, but he soon saw 
 that she was really too weak to walk, so he took the first cab 
 they met, and they drove off to Museum Street. The house in 
 which Montague occupied rooms on the second floor was one 
 of those strongholds of Bohemia of which many people read, 
 but only the Bohemian knoweth. It was kept by one Mrs. 
 Bloomfield, who, w^th a little slavy, did the entire work of the 
 house, save that her son, Master Tommy, when released from 
 the compulsory education of his school studies, was put to knife 
 and boot cleaning, or sent for the lodgers' beer, an expedition 
 which he never objected to undertake. Mrs. Bloomfield was a 
 person of moods, and as tides are governed by the moon, so 
 were this lady's moods regulated by her husband, Mr. Bloom- 
 field — Ned Bloomfield — whom dire necessity had made a house- 
 painter, and nature had designed for a " stump " orator. When 
 Mr. Bloomfield was in work, and not in liquor, a more delightful 
 landlady never gladdened a lodger's heart than she of w^hom I 
 write. Mr. G. G. Smith, on the first floor, would find, and not 
 infrequently, his simple breakfast of roll and coffee supple- 
 mented by eggs, bestowed on him by his landlady out of a 
 basket she had received from the country. Mr. Clayton, 
 perhaps the most underpaid and hardworked of all literary 
 hacks, would sometimes find the dreary chop, that unpalatable 
 resource of poverty-stricken bachelors, displaced by a fine cut 
 
4 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 off missis's own joint, smoking hot, with gravy and two vege- 
 tables, and, if you eat chops and steaks all the week, you will 
 understand how good that plate of roast mutton or beef used 
 to taste. But when Mr. Bloomfield was at the Queen's Arms 
 round the corner — where, if he was emptying his pockets, he 
 was at the same time filling the heads of those about him with 
 an amount of political knowledge by which I am sure they must 
 have been greatly benefited— his wife, who had little interest in 
 the diffusion of knowledge, became another person, and, of the 
 change, her children felt the first fruits. Master Tommy, who, 
 but the night before had been requested to move out of mother's 
 way like a dear little man, would be, from time to time, pinched, 
 spanked and shaken ; his little sister, Anna Maria Matilda, 
 receiving the same treatment ; after which they would be thrust 
 out into the area, there to cool and howl, or driven forth into 
 the body of the house, where they pranced and yelled, but 
 whether most from bodily pain, or a sense of outraged justice, 
 who shall say? When Mr. Clayton, on the third floor, heard 
 the sounds of woe, his heart would sink within him, for he knew 
 too well, by fatal experience, that his chops that day would be 
 done to a cinder, or not done at all — that the potatoes would be 
 cold and hard — and as for coals, he might whistle for them. 
 But he paid for^board, and, whatever it might be, he could not 
 afford to forego it. Mr. G. G. Smith, whose worldly circum- 
 stances were much better, and who only dined at home when 
 it suited him, on hearing Master Tommy's roar, would ring the 
 bell and countermand his dinner, if he had ordered it in the 
 house for that day. 
 
 Sundry reminiscences of Mrs. Bloomfield's moods occurred 
 to our hero as he drove towards Museum Street with his charge, 
 and there grew upon him a dismal conviction that he had that 
 very afternoon discovered Master Tommy leaping and howling 
 in the area — occasionally battering the door with his feet. This 
 recollection was not a cheerful one, but of course, now there 
 could be no going back from what he had undertaken. Arrived 
 at the familiar house, Montague opened the door with his latch- 
 key, and jerking his candle from a table in the hall, led the way 
 up the dark, uncarpeted stairs. He was in mortal fear lest he 
 should meet Smith or Clayton, or that dreadful little wag, the 
 artist Jones, who lived at the top of the house. Did two flights 
 of stairs, I wonder, ever seem so long before 1 At length his 
 
F6k A SONG'S SAK&. "^ 
 
 Own rooms were reached. In the studio the gas was ahght and 
 a bright fire burning, before which he rolled the one armchair 
 the room boasted. Having installed Mabel in this, he told her 
 he must leave her for a few minutes, and go and speak with his 
 landlady, who, he knew, never went to bed till well into the small 
 hours. How his heart failed within him as he knocked at that 
 lady's parlour door. It was opened by Mrs. Bloomfield herself. 
 
 *' Well, Mr. Montague ! " she said, sharply, '^ I hope you want 
 nothing more to-night, because, if you do, I can't oblige you, 
 that's all ! The whole of this blessed day have I been on my 
 feet ! " 
 
 " Indeed," replied Herbert, " I do know how hard you work. 
 I assure you it has often made my heart ache ! " 
 
 To which Mrs. Bloomfield said : 
 
 " Bah ! just as if you thought about it, one way or the other ! ^' 
 
 " But you must give me a few minutes' talk," said Herbert. 
 " You mustn't shut me out to-night." And with that he pushed 
 by Mrs. Bloomfield and took up his position, with his back to 
 her fire, and thus it was that he began the attack. 
 
 " I have brought you," he said, "a new lodger for that dear 
 little room which you have on my floor. I think you want 
 eight shillings a week for it ; but that's not enough. I shall pay 
 you more." And without waiting for any reply, he manfully 
 caught his bull by the horns, and grappled with it, and told what 
 we already know. Between surprise and indignation, his good 
 landlady was speechless for a moment or two. Then she burst 
 out with : 
 
 *' Well, Mr. Montague, a pretty thing you have been a gone and 
 done ! A pretty thing to do, wasn't it ? And now, if you don't 
 this very minute send that street vagabond about her business, 
 I'll come myself and turn her out by the shoulders. Just as 
 sure as my name's Sarah Bloomfield, I'll do it, and you know 
 I mean it ! " 
 
 *' Not you," returned Herbert, with a laugh. 
 
 "And why, pray? My house ain't a workhouse; I don't 
 keep a night-ward open for paupers ; nor is it another sort of 
 house, which, perhaps, you fancy it is !" 
 
 " Indeed, I fancy nothing of the kind. I know it to be the 
 most respectable, as it is the pleasantest, house in London. 
 I've tried other houses, but I always come back here. It draws 
 me like a loadstone. Don't do what you would repent to-mor- 
 
5 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 row. You're cross to-night, and why ? Because Mr. Bloomfield 
 has been perhaps a Httle too free with his money at the public. 
 By Jove ! how he does snore ! " 
 
 During the foregoing conversation, Mr. Bloomfield from the 
 adjoining room had kept up a full-toned accompaniment to his 
 wife's shrill performance. 
 
 " Snore ! " ejaculated his partner. " I should think so, and 
 so would you snore, and louder too, I'll be bound, if you had 
 drunk four or five pots of beer, and who knows how many goes 
 of whisky and gin besides ! " 
 
 ^' Very likely," he replied, with a smile, though rather at a loss 
 to know on what his landlady founded her belief in his snoring 
 capabilities. *' But," he resumed, ^' don't be hard-hearted. I 
 pledge you my word that if you don't like the young person she 
 shall walk away to-morrow, but don't turn her out to-night. 
 Befriend a young fellow who acted on a kind impulse, and let 
 me be bound to you for ever by the warmest feehng of friend- 
 ship. There are enough cruel people in the world, my dear 
 Mrs. Bloomfield. Why shouldn't you and I be a little dif- 
 ferent.^" And with this very moving speech Montague held 
 out his hand, and came off victorious, as he generally did. So, 
 while sheets were being got ready and put upon the bed, he 
 went back to his own room. Mabel had slid from the chair in 
 which he had left her, and was crouching before the fire, her 
 back resting against the chair. As he looked at her then, he 
 saw that she was much more beautiful than he had thought. 
 Her face was pale and perfect in shape ; the lips were full and 
 very red, the eyes were dark and profound, with a look in them 
 of prayer or patient protest. What brightness might be in 
 them he did not then even conjecture. This strangely beautiful 
 face was set in a frame of crisp brown hair. He produced some 
 biscuits, and beat up a couple of eggs in sherry. He was noted 
 for his ^%g beating. 
 
 '* Now you must take some of this," he said, bringing the 
 glass over to her. 
 
 " I don't feel hungry now," answered the girl, *' only sick and 
 sleepy." 
 
 *' I don't care about you taking much till you've had a good 
 night's rest," he urged, '' but you must take a little"— which she 
 did, saying that she liked it. Then he came and sat down in 
 the chair against which she was leaning. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 7 
 
 "How good you are to me!" she said, simply, resting her 
 arms upon his knees. '^ It would have been very cold out in 
 the streets all night, wouldn't it ? Would they have put me in 
 prison for staying there ? " 
 
 " Very likely they would," he replied. 
 
 " That would have been dreadful," she said, and then her 
 head dropped on his knee, and when Mrs. Bloomfield came to 
 say that the room was ready she found Mabel asleep. 
 
 *' She's too fast asleep for us to wake her,'^ said Herbert, and 
 taking her up in his arms, he carried her into the room of which 
 mention has before been made. Having deposited her on the 
 bed, he left her there in the hands of Mrs. Bloomfield, with a 
 request to that lady to wait upon him the very first thing in the 
 morning. Then he went back to his room, where he smoked 
 pipe after pipe, and indeed was so restless and full of excite- 
 ment that he never went to sleep all night. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THiE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND* 
 
 Herbert thought the morning, with the rakish London spar- 
 rows and the early milkman, would never come ; but it dawned 
 at last, as in due time all things, not forgetting love and death, 
 do reach us. The gray, chill morning looked in at his window, 
 and Mr. Clayton, who had been making a night of it, as he 
 always did whenever he received a cheque, let himself in with 
 his latch-key. Then the cocks at the back of the house began 
 to crow ; then the milk-cart, with all its clatter of cans, rattled 
 up to the door ; and, at length, came breakfast and Mrs. 
 Bloomfield. What a good thing breakfast is when one has sat 
 up all night ! Mrs. Bloomfield had had her breakfast, but she 
 would gladly sit and talk to Mr. Montague while he had his. 
 Fortunately this lady was in the best temper possible, for that 
 morning her spouse had awoke with a splitting headache and a 
 penitent heart, and as a pledge for his better behaviour in the 
 future, he had put into his wife's hands all that remained of the 
 week's earnings except sixpence. 
 
» FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 Mrs. Bloomfield had not very much to report. The child, as 
 she was now pleased to call the stranger, was certainly scantily 
 dressed. Her clothes were worn, but they had been really good 
 things once. About her neck she had a gold locket, which con- 
 tained a miniature of a lady, as didn't look foreign at all. It 
 was there and then decided that Mrs. Bloomfield was, with all 
 expedition, to go forth, and to purchase a neat outfit. So the 
 landlady went, leaving her lodger to cultivate the virtue of 
 patience. What a trial that waiting was ! He tried to work, 
 but that was impossible ; he tried looking at his watch, and he 
 tried not looking at it. He walked up and down, and smoked 
 and smoked, and at last took up his post at the window. 
 
 His glance fell upon the name of " Hunt " over a shop-front. 
 The letters of the name held his eye with a resistless fascination. 
 What sort of a man was this Hunt, he wondered — was he a 
 happy man, or had he his skeleton in the cupboard 1 He 
 wondered why he had never noticed the shop before. Then he 
 became interested in an old gentleman, who was walking along 
 and reading a newspaper, and doing both in a self-satisfied 
 fashion. There was the young man who had just brought the 
 fish to the next house flirting with the pretty housemaid, who, 
 because she was pretty, and lived in the service of a pre- 
 Raphaelite republican artist. Wore no cap, and dressed her hair 
 just as her young mistresses did, and was equally pert to trades- 
 people and visitors. Montague thought how it would be if ever 
 some profane hand should clean the windows of that house. 
 An exhausted swell, smoking a cigar, was ^whirled by in a 
 hansom. *' Whither so fast, I wonder," thought our friend ; 
 "and when would Mrs. Bloomfield come back?" To School- 
 bred's it was only a step, and she had already been gone an 
 hour and a half ; but before the second hour had expired the 
 sight of Mrs. Bloomfield, bearing a great brown paper parcel, 
 blessed the eyes of the waiting artist. His trial was not over 
 yet, however ; actually two whole hours elapsed before that 
 long-desired knock came at his door and his landlady entered, 
 followed by Mabel. Mrs. Bloomfield had good taste in all 
 things, and the dress in which she had clothed Mabel, if not of 
 an expensive material, was of a soft texture and a pretty dark- 
 blue colour. There was a neat white collar round her charm- 
 ingly shaped neck, and white wristbands round her two slender 
 wrists. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 9 
 
 '* I hope you will think I have done well, sir/' said the land- 
 lady, " 'aving to h'act on my own responsibility." 
 
 " I am sure you have done excellently," he replied; and then, 
 turning to Mabel, he said : *' I hope that you slept well, and 
 that you have eaten something this morning." 
 
 "She says she slept very well," said Mrs. Bloomfield, who 
 regarded her charge as an infant ; " and for breakfast she have 
 had a cup of tea and an ^gg and some bread and butter." 
 
 "And when do you think she had better have something 
 more 1 " inquired Herbert. For himself he could go from early 
 breakfast to seven o'clock dinner wath nothing to eat, but he 
 had an idea that women and invalids were like babies and 
 birds, and wanted to be fed constantly with food in small quan- 
 tities. Mrs. Bloomfield suggested a glass of wine after the 
 process of dressing, but Mabel cried out with a smile that she 
 couldn't take anything then— that she was not ill, but only a 
 little tired. 
 
 "Very well, then," said Herbert to his landlady, "give her a 
 nice little lunch about four o'clock. I wish I hadn't to dine out 
 to-night. Thank you very much, Mrs. Bloomfield, for all you've 
 done. I know I mustn't keep you any longer. Oh ! try a 
 bottle of this sherry. I think it's pretty good." 
 
 " Thank you, sir, and I'm very much obliged to you." And 
 with this the good soul departed. Now that the hour had come 
 for which he had been longing so eagerly, Herbert felt some- 
 what shy and scarcely knew what to say first. Finally, he 
 observed that it was a cold morning, to which his companion^ 
 seated in a chair before the fire, assented : " Yes, it's very cold, 
 indeed." Her voice struck home to him, as it had done the 
 previous night. It was a voice that surprised you by its 
 quietude. It was very low, and now and then a wonderful note 
 of pathos would vibrate through it. It was a voice so sensitive,, 
 so in harmony with herself, that from it you could have told the 
 expression of her face. It was a voice that, once heard, haunted 
 one ever after. 
 
 At length Mabel, in her turn, broke the silence. She was 
 quite self-composed. 
 
 " I want," she said, simply, ** to tell you about myself, and to 
 ask you what I am to do." 
 
 " Nothing would interest me more," answered the young man, 
 and he settled himself to listen. 
 
io FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 The story which Mabel narrated we do not pretend to give 
 in her own words. Her father, Varese, was one of those hand- 
 some, kind-hearted, not very scrupulous, adventurous men of 
 which nearly every country can furnish an example. Play and 
 love — these two words contained the essence of his life. He 
 handled the bow as skilfully as he did the billiard-cue. Then 
 he sang. It was not the power of his voice that so much 
 charmed people, but rather the subtle pathos of it and the 
 careless grace of it. At a German watering-place he met Mabel 
 Torrington. She was a pretty, romantic little thing, and he 
 sang and played her heart away in no time ; and then he 
 looked at her, as he had looked at a great many women before, 
 with those kind, wicked, splendid eyes of his, and like the 
 others, she went down before them. But this time he himself 
 was hit pretty hard. He was quite frank, and told her what 
 kind of life it was he led — but he did not make this confession 
 till he felt sure that her heart was in his own keeping. Of 
 course. Miss Torrington, who was rich and of good family, 
 knew well that her parents would never consent to such a 
 marriage, and since this grace was unattainable, the young lady 
 bore the privation very philosophically. She was of age, and 
 she chose to give herself to Varese, who lost no time in making 
 her his wife. I am glad to say that the experiment proved a 
 complete success. Three years they wandered about Europe ; 
 then she lay down one day and died, quite quickly and un- 
 expectedly, and left with him their sole child, Mabel. When 
 the girl was seven years old he sent her to a fairly good school, 
 where he especially wished her to be taught English. While 
 she was there he saw her from time to time ; when she was 
 twelve he could wait no longer, but took her to live with him. 
 
 He had never really recovered from the blow of his wife's 
 death. He frequented his old haunts, but he handled billiard- 
 cue and violin less skilfully — or was it that luck was against 
 him ? He and his little girl had often to weather hard times. 
 When Mabel was fifteen he received, quite unexpectedly, the 
 sum of two hundred pounds. With this he came to England, 
 the country of his sweet, fond, little dead wife. He went to the 
 county in which her father's house stood. He saw a fine 
 carriage drive out of the park gates. Some of her people, he 
 thought were in it. Then he walked to the little village church, 
 where so many of the Torringtons slept, and among the others. 
 
rOR A SONG'S SAKE, Vi 
 
 his wife's mother, who had died unforgiving. As he walked 
 back to the station in the soft June twilight, through which a 
 few stars, tremulous, as it were, with heat, were beginning to 
 peer — as he heard from a thicket close by the long, liquid notes 
 of the nightingale, ending in that divine gush of melody — it 
 seemed to him as if the peace of Almighty God had fallen upon 
 him. He blessed the memory of her who had gone — he blessed 
 her country and all within it. 
 
 If such moments could but last, some of us might turn into 
 saints ; for it is in these moods, that come we know not how, 
 that the heart grows strangely tractable, and at the same time 
 yearns passionately to be absorbed into some spirit of infinite 
 goodness. 
 
 The country of his love did not treat our poor friend as well 
 as his own had treated her. I mean only this, that during his 
 sojourn in England he had bad fortune from first to last. He 
 taught himself bookbinding, and with this, and cards and fiddling, 
 he and his pretty daughter got along somehow. One by one he 
 parted with all the little pleasures of life. He no longer took 
 his meals at the Italian restaurant in Compton Street. The four- 
 penny soups, the ten-penny fillet, the long cigars, the society of 
 his bearded, unwashed brothers — these were delights from which 
 he seemed shut out. 
 
 At length illness took such fast hold on him as to keep him 
 in bed. He had not taken care of the pence, and this was prob- 
 ably why the pounds, in his case, failed to show that wisdom of 
 behaviour with which the old proverb accredits them. All were 
 gone then except the last. What was to be done ? An idea 
 flashed into Mabel's head. She knew she could sing well — her 
 father had taken trouble with her voice — so one day, thinking 
 she could leave him alone for a few hours, she went out des- 
 perately into the streets and began singing. Her unusually 
 beautiful face, and equally striking voice, with her simple modest 
 manner, attracted much attention, and she returned quite rich. 
 So for a month the father lay dying, and the girl kept on 
 singing. 
 
 The house in which they had two dreary rooms was one of 
 those given up to disreputable mechanics, and dressmakers who 
 did not, perhaps, depend wholly on the needle for their means 
 of livelihood. Weary hours must those have been for the sick 
 Italian, when, in his child's absence, he tossed about on his hard 
 
12 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 bed and listened to the altercations which were always taking 
 place between the landlady and her first floor lodger, a dress- 
 maker of the type to which we have alluded. 
 
 " I'll let them know just what you're worth," would roar the 
 voice of the landlady from the bottom of the stairs. 
 
 " No, you won't, you old cat ! " the other would cry, with a 
 defiant laugh, from her place on the landing ; "how about that 
 letter which came for Smith the other day ? " 
 
 Then the landlady, who was neither young nor lovely, would 
 pass up the stairs, and for a time there would be peace. Over 
 his head all day long a journeyman carpenter sawed and ham- 
 mered, and, later, all through the night, while his daughter sat 
 by his bedside, men lurched past the door, stumbling and swear- 
 ing at every step. Sometimes a woman might be heard to 
 shriek, which would be followed by a sound of subdued voices, 
 as of people holding council. Then silence would reign till the 
 next drunken lodger sought the haven of his bed. 
 
 Now, it chanced that one day when Mabel was out singing, 
 the poor invalid, tossing restlessly on his bed, threw over the 
 table by his bedside, on which Mabel had set his barley-water. 
 The poor lips were dry and blistered by thirst ; he called and 
 called and called, but though his cry must have been heard, no 
 one answered it. In his bitter misery, too weak to call any 
 more, he lay and sobbed like a beaten child. At length he could 
 no longer endure the hell of thirst,'and, slipping from his bed, he 
 tried to make his way to where the water stood, but he fell in 
 the attempt to reach it, and, unable to return, he lay shivering on 
 the floor till his daughter came back. How she felt — what she 
 said to the people of the house— the reader can imagine. The 
 Grinv Visitor could not have been kept very much longer from 
 the door, and the accident which we have just narrated threw it 
 open to him at once. After that night Varese had done for ever 
 with all fiddling — yes, and with all love-making too. When the 
 landlady informed Mabel that she could keep her room no 
 longer, and suggested the workhouse, such fear fell upon the 
 girl that she ran out into the streets. She would sing, she 
 thought, and by that get quite enough to pay for a night's lodg- 
 ing. Then, surely, she thought, she would get a place some- 
 where as shop girl. While she had felt that her father's chance 
 of life hung upon her singing, she had sung without ever thinking 
 of the people, only regarding their money ; but to sing for herself 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 13 
 
 in cold blood ! — heart-stricken, she shrank from it. All the day 
 she wandered about London in what seemed to her hke a horrible 
 nightmare. When the night came, so famished with hunger was 
 she, so exhausted with cold, that she did the most foolish, if the 
 most natural, thing she could have done, and began to sing 
 where there was not a soul to hear her. Yes, fortunately there 
 was one, and that one was Herbert Montague, with his tender, 
 susceptible heart. So, up to the present time, that is the end of 
 Mabel's story. ^' You will help me to find something to do, 
 won't you?" she said, as she concluded. Now, in the watches 
 of the last night, Herbert had been forming his plans, which he 
 now proceeded to unfold. 
 
 '^ Mabel," he said, looking at her very kindly with those clear, 
 honest eyes of his — ■" Mabel, I am an artist." 
 
 *' I thought so," she said. 
 
 "By the things about the room ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Perhaps you know something about pictures." 
 
 " I have seen a good many pictures in my own country, and I 
 love them ; that is all I know." 
 
 " Well," said Montague, " you have just the face I have been 
 wanting to paint for years. I sha'n't tell you whether I think it's 
 a pretty face, but it's the face I want. Will you let me take 
 care of you, then, as my child, and in return let me paint you as 
 often as I wish. Should you like that? Tell me." 
 
 " Yes, I should like it," she said, shyly, but earnestly, as children 
 do sometimes when one proposes a great treat to them. " Will 
 you promise to send me away when you have no more need of 
 me ? " she asked. " But then, if you didn't tell me, I should find 
 it out and go." 
 
 " How wrong you would be, then ! " he replied, with a laugh. 
 " You would very likely go away when I most wanted you. No, 
 if you are going to be my child, you must be an obedient one. 
 And as for sitting, I shall want you no end of time, for I am a 
 most indefatigable worker. Do you really think you could bear 
 it ? " 
 
 " I think I could bear almost anything if I had it to bear, but 
 that I should ///v." 
 
 " I think by the look of your mouth you could," he said ; so 
 there and then the compact was struck, and when Mrs. Bloom- 
 field came in with lunch, she found them the best of friends. 
 
14 FOR A SONCS SAKE, 
 
 From time to time, as the girl thought of her father, the bitter 
 tears brimmed her eyes. Presently Herbert had to go and dress 
 for dinner. When he issued from his room, splendid in blacls: 
 cloth and lustrous linen, Mabel thought she had never before 
 seen anything so fine, and it must be said that a very handsome 
 fellow he was. He had a well-knit, athletic figure, a rather pale, 
 but perfectly healthy-looking face ; a brown beard, with warm 
 gold lights in it ; bright blue eyes that could look very tenderly, 
 or could flash like steel, and a good deal of crisp hair curled 
 round his small, classic head. To some people his voice was 
 charming. It was not particularly low, nor was extreme sweet= 
 ness characteristic of it, but it had a tone of manly reliance and 
 sincerity which was like the ring of true gold. About his 
 manners opinions were divided. Some say they had a careless 
 grace, others that they were decidedly brusque. 
 
 "Well, Mabel," he said, looking down at her very kindly, 
 " I must be off now. Make yourself at home here. Let me 
 see. I believe there's a novel about somewhere, I can't look 
 for it myself, everything in this den is so abominably dusty. Ask 
 Mrs. Bloomfield to find it. Be sure and eat something, and go 
 to bed early. Good-night.'^ 
 
 Then he ran downstairs, and struck out briskly in the direc- 
 tion of Tavistock Square, where lived his host for that evening, 
 Mr. Bryant Jackson. This gentleman was one of those dear 
 souls who believe in rising genius. He had always on hand a 
 stock of budding poets, and half-developed artists, and young 
 men whose comedies were always on the point of being acted, 
 but never came off. It is surprising for how long a man can 
 live on what he is expected to do ; for a certain amount of fame 
 he gives a promissory note of performance, which, when pre- 
 sented, is often not credited. Jackson was a man of good 
 judgment and real appreciation, and he was large-hearted and 
 kind. His wife, who still retained some relics of prettiness, 
 patronized her lions, or rather, the lionkins, that roamed about 
 her rooms. As soon as she thought she could do so, she loved 
 to call young men by their Christian names, adopting the 
 motherly air. How many a sensitive bard or painter has winced 
 under her patronage, has been mangled by her smirking assur- 
 ance that he would do good work some day — she felt quite sure 
 he would. No, he must not be discouraged. Mr. Jackson 
 thought there was real promise in the last picture or poem, as 
 
FOR A SONGS SslKE. 15 
 
 the case might be. They all liked her husband, and for his sake 
 and their own — for they thought it was good for them to be seen 
 at the house — they swallowed his wife with just no more of a wry 
 face over the nauseous draught than they could help. 
 
 As I have said, lionkins they mostly were ; but they lashed 
 their tails very considerably, and roared the one against the 
 other, and made, altogether, quite a successful noise. Sometimes 
 a real, full-grown lion, a hugfe monster, out of those great 
 literary jungles where the awful lions and Honesses make their 
 lairs, would appear for a little while upon the scene, and then 
 these smaller members of the leonine species would grow very 
 quiet indeed, and would frisk about their king with little conci- 
 liatory growls. There he would stand, dignified extremely, and 
 yet gentle, as for the time they were themselves. Indeed, some 
 of them, seeing how very little he roared, played at being lambs, 
 and, of course, overdid the thing. 
 
 After dinner, when the men were left with their wine and cigars, 
 Montague did not acquaint his friends with his adventure, full 
 as his heart was of it. Be it understood that he was a young 
 man of fierce morality, and as for harming a girl whom he had 
 taken under his protection, he would much rather have put a 
 bullet through his head. 
 
 These views, he knew, would not be shared by all his friends, 
 and their chaff on a matter so delicate would have angered 
 him. Nothing makes us more cross than to be credited with 
 a virtue we don't possess, or to be taxed with a fault which we do 
 not reckon on our list. 
 
 As he walked back to his rooms that night, Montague reflected 
 gravely, for the first time, on what it was that he had done, and 
 he could not disguise from himself that the act had been a some- 
 what rash one — to take another person to keep, clothe and 
 board, when he had, with all, scarcely enough for himself. But 
 she would save him a good deal in models. He must work hard, 
 and if he found the expense more than he could stand, he would 
 have to find her a place somewhere, that was all. His father, 
 who was a man of fortune and family, belonged to a very old- 
 fashioned school. He was in such a rage at his son's choice of 
 a profession and emigration to Bohemia, that he made him only 
 the smallest allowance. The father was old now and in bad 
 health, not at all likely to live many years, and though Herbert 
 knew that the old man had no love for his only son, still he ex- 
 
l6 J'OK A SONCS SAKE, 
 
 pected he would leave him his fortune, if he did nothing further 
 to anger him ; just because he was his only son, and family 
 pride in the old man was strong. When he should fall into this 
 inheritance it was easy enough to see that his charge never 
 wanted for anything. It was late when he reached home ; he 
 had just taken his bedroom candle, when his eye fell on a 
 sheet of folded paper. It was a letter, written in the prettiest 
 hand. He opened it and read : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Montague— I want, before going to bed, to 
 thank you once more for all your goodness to me. I don't know 
 what I can say more than this. I have had such a nice 
 evening. The book which you said I might read Mrs. Bloom- 
 field found for me. How interesting it is ! What a kind person 
 Mrs. Bloomfield is ! She brought me some beef-tea before I 
 should go to bed. I am going very early, because you told me 
 to. Good-night, sir." 
 
 ** What a dear little thing it is ! " he said, as he put the letter 
 into his pocket. He did not notice how blotted with tears it was. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AN IDYL OF BOHEMIA. 
 
 The two months that followed were they not, perhaps, the very 
 happiest in Herbert Montague's life 1 ICvery day he and his 
 model became more perfect friends. Her beauty delighted him. 
 What long, glad days he spent painting it. Was ever a sitter 
 fairer, or half so patient ? He had taken her in all things most 
 completely into his confidence. She knew the condition of his 
 funds as well as he did himself. Let us enter the house in 
 Museum Street one April morning. A very important gentle- 
 man from Manchester who buys pictures is being shown out by 
 Montague, whose face wears a grave, business aspect. The 
 door closed on the picture-buyer ; he dashes upstairs, taking 
 three steps at a time, and, entering the studio, cries out to the 
 young person who has been hidden from sight in her own 
 apartment ; 
 
POR A SONG^S SAI^M. if 
 
 " Mab, Mab, come here at once, my dear." 
 
 In another moment Mab is in the room, her face shining with 
 smiles as she says : '^ Bought ? I k7iew it would be ! Didn't I 
 tell you so all along ? Perhaps you'll believe me next time ! " 
 
 " Yes, you child ! But how much do you think the old boy 
 gave for it ? " 
 
 " Very, very much ? " she asks, her eyes sparkling. 
 
 " Pretty fair, pretty fair," he replies. He is scarcely less of a 
 child than she. " What should you say to thirty pounds, Mab.' 
 
 A great " Oh ! " from Mab by way of answer. 
 
 " ^ More than that,' Mab, as our friend in * Great Expecta- 
 tions ' used to say ! " 
 
 " Thirty-two ? " hazards Mabel. 
 
 *' More than that, mum.'' 
 
 ^'Thirty-five?" 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 ''Forty.?'' 
 
 "No!" 
 
 "It couldn't be fifty?" 
 
 " Upon my soul, not one farthing less than fifty-five." 
 
 Mabel clasps her hands and then prepares to resume work, 
 but Herbert calls out: 
 
 "No more work to-day, Mab ! We'll have a spree to-day, if 
 we never have one again. But what's the matter ? You look 
 quite grave over it ? Shouldn't you like it ? " 
 
 " Yes," she says, *' I should like it !" 
 
 " What is it, then ?" he inquires. 
 
 As a sensitive child when asked some question which it knows 
 it is bound to answer, while it hates to do so, stands before you 
 with twitching hands, quivering lips, and eyes filling fast with 
 tears, so stood Mabel. Then, seeing that she could no longer 
 put off the moment, she said just as a child would have done, 
 and the tears would come as she spoke : 
 
 " I don't want you to think I want a treat — that's all ! " 
 
 "Why, you foolish little thing!" he laughed, "don't you think 
 I want a treat sometimes myself, and wouldn't I much rather 
 have you with me than go alone? Run away and put on your 
 bonnet. You shall have a new one to-morrow." 
 
 Then he attired himself in his newest coat, assumed his best 
 hat, and looked, for him, quite a swell. 
 
 What should they do, on this divine April day, when the 
 
 3 
 
i8 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 whole world seemed to have yielded itself up to joy, and all the 
 mighty ravishment of Spring ? 
 
 What better thing could they have done than the thing they 
 did, which was to go up the river to Kew by the penny steamer? 
 How gently the wind blew! How delicate and warmful was the 
 pure sunlight ! The season was young, even as these two were 
 young. Mabel had never before been on one of these steamers, 
 and it dehghted her ; the people who came on board made her 
 laugh ; she wanted to know everything about each place they 
 passed; and at the music of a harp, violin, and cornet, she could 
 scarcely keep her feet from dancing. As for Montague, he 
 revelled in his holiday. On the way to the boat he laid in a stock 
 of good cigars, which he smoked without intermission. He 
 treated himself to a brandy-and-soda. The river, with its boats 
 and piers, and, over all, the soft blue sky ; the pleasant noise of 
 the water as the steamer parts it ; the notes of harp, and violin, 
 and cornet; the sepulchral voice, crying, "Turn her astern !" 
 or " Stop her ! " or the voices shouting, " Now, then, for the 
 Kew boat ! " — while Montague lives, will not these sights and 
 sounds in combination bring to his mind the memory of that 
 day, of that dear day, that day of virgin blessedness 1 Surely, if 
 days get their deserts, that one should be an angel in Paradise ! 
 
 Of course, Mabel was charmed with the gardens of Kew, but 
 the nicest part of them, she thought, was that called the 
 " Wilderness." In that uncultivated spot smoking is allowed. 
 There these two sat on the grass, pulling it up by handfuls. 
 I wonder why it is that whenever we are near grass we want to 
 pull it ? Sitting there, he told her no end of droll stories, of 
 things that had happened to him in his life, till the air rang with 
 her laughter, and she cried out : 
 
 ^' You mustn't tell me any more ! Don't you see you've made 
 me laugh so that I'm crying ? I have a pain in my side, just 
 where I know my heart is ! Oh, how could you have been so 
 absurd ? And what a dreadful person your landlady must have 
 been ! No, I won't hear any more — I won't.'^ 
 
 " Well, then, you sha'n't, for a little time, at any rate," he 
 answered, and began singing, in which she presentlyjoined with 
 her very beautiful voice. 
 
 There was nothing fit to eat in Kew, Herbert said ; so, when 
 the April twilight was falling, they came by train to Richmond 
 and to what place of entertainment but the '* Star and Garter" ? 
 
POR A SGNCS SAKE, 19 
 
 They had a simple meal. Just soup, and fish, and meat, and 
 a blazing rum omelette— and for wine, a pint of sherry and a 
 bottle of champagne — but how they did enjoy it ! The repast 
 over, they walked on the terrace, while Herbert smoked his 
 cigar. How pure the wind seemed, and how full of stars was 
 the sky ! Presently they took the train to London. As they 
 came out of Waterloo Station, they could hear Big Ben rolling 
 out the three-quarters past ten. They walked back to Museum 
 Street. Mabel dearly loved walking at night. When she went 
 to bed she fell asleep at once, just as a child does, tired out by 
 a day's pleasure. Against her will it was, for she wanted to lie 
 awake, and think how sweet the whole day had been. Montague, 
 too, thought that it had been a nice day, as, having made himself 
 comfortable in the old velveteen coat, he smoked his last pipe 
 before going to bed. It was of his guest of the morning that he 
 thought most, however — that guest who had paid him so liberally, 
 and almost promised him a fresh commission. He also made a 
 very careful study of his ward, and this was the result as he 
 summed it up : sweetness and devotion of nature very strong ; 
 sensitiveness, strong : simpHcity, strong ; appreciation, fair ; 
 intellect, inconsiderable ; a strong tendency to brood long over 
 any slight hurt. She was sure his pictures were masterpieces ; 
 she could even tell what were some of their good points ; but^ 
 of the things on which he most prided himself she had no 
 sort of knowledge. She liked novels of the romantic type. 
 What her taste was in poetry he had soon found out, and 
 made her very happy by a present of Longfellow's poems. 
 At last his study of character was over, his pipe was smoked 
 out, and he slept the sleep of the self-complacent. The 
 next day the daily routine went on, as if there had been no 
 holiday. 
 
 Often when the day's work was over, they would go and dine 
 at some little French house where Montague was not likely to 
 meet any of his brother artists. Then he would walk back with 
 her, leaving her to her books and soon to go to bed, while he 
 passed the rest of the night at his club or at the rooms of a friend. 
 That little first good-night letter of Mabel's was made a prece- 
 dent of by Herbert, and when he spent his evenings out, which 
 he did about three or four times a week, he never failed to find 
 the folded sheet on his return. What funny little letters they 
 were ! One said : 
 
to FOR A SOMG'S SAKE'. 
 
 " I have had such a pleasant evening readiiig my Longfelldw* 
 Don't you hke the * Psahn of Life,' and isn't * EvangeHne ' 
 beautiful? I keep the door locked as you tell me to. Two 
 gentlemen came to see you. They seemed very cross when they 
 couldn't get in. One said to the other that was a new freak of 
 yours to lock up the studio. That at one time a fellow could 
 come in if you were not there, and make himself at home. 
 Mrs. Bloomfield's cat has kittens. Would you mind my having 
 one 1 I sha'n't cry if you say No ; but they are such dear soft 
 little things. I am getting quite fond of the old lay figure. At 
 first, you know, I was rather frightened of it. I suppose you 
 are enjoying yourself very much. I am going to bed now. 
 Good-night." 
 
 After an evening of smoking and drinking, and such songs as 
 young men will sing and such stories as young men will tell, and 
 for the matter of that— older men sometimes, too — these simple 
 letters seemed to him a sort of mental bath, and he went to bed 
 all the better for them, He was really very fond of his chargei 
 and it pleased him to think that he had saved at least one soul 
 from that slough in which so many ai'e daily lost* I must say 
 he was very good to her, and may add that so was she to him, 
 for, when absorbed in work, he became, for the time being, 
 tmconscious of anything else. Once, after a stretch of eight 
 hours, he cried, throwing the brush aside : " There, that will do 
 for to-day ! Do you want to look at yourself, Mab 1 " A very 
 faint '*Yes" from Mab, as she arose and took a step forward, 
 put out her hands and dropped back in the chair in a faint. 
 Montague called himself a brute for his thoughtlessness in not 
 giving- her a glass of wine during all this time, or an occasional 
 rest. Mrs. Bloomfield, who was sent for instantly, appeared at 
 once, and spoke her mind with that freedom which was charac- 
 teristic of her when her inferior half had been spending more 
 than he should on drink. 
 
 " Poor, dear thing ! " she exclaimed. *' Why, you know as 
 little about women, Mr. Montague, as my boy Tommy does 
 about babies. Why, my charwoman has her meals regular ! 
 Now don't you let this thing happen again I " 
 
 " No, indeed, I will not, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield," he replied, 
 thoroughly penitent and frightened— for he had never seen a 
 woman faint before -and it was such a long time before Mabel 
 
^OR A SONG'S SAKE, %i 
 
 showed any signs of coming to herself. ^^ Dear me, Mrs. Bloom- 
 field," cried the poor fellow, ^' I am afraid she is very ill. Did 
 you ever see any one so bad before ? Mabel, my dear, don't you 
 know me } Shouldn't you like to go to Richmond to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense ! What do you suppose she knows about 
 you or Richmond .^ " broke in Mrs. Bloomfield. " There's no 
 doctor wanted, and I dare say I can get her over it this time, if 
 you'll get out of the room, and leave her to me. I can't abear 
 to see men fussing round when women are ill. The very best 
 thing you can do for the poor child, after what you have done, 
 is to take your hat and go off and get your dinner.'^ 
 
 " Very well, Mrs. Bloomfield, I will certainly do as you wish," 
 he said, and taking his hat, departed straightway. He was half 
 frantic, for he thought Mabel was going to die ; but he comforted 
 himself a little by thinking that if she had really been so ill, 
 Mrs. Bloomfield would have sent him for a doctor. He returned 
 in an hour or two, however, to find Mabel quite brisk again, 
 only very much mystified at what had happened. She had so 
 often before, in these long sittings, been on the point of fainting 
 without letting him know anything about it, and in her innerr 
 most heart she had been very proud of this self-control. She 
 wanted never to fail him, and now she had been beaten. He 
 would think her a fragile, good-for-nothing thing. 
 
 ** It wasn't that I had been sitting too long," she protested, 
 when Montague again called himself bad names ; it was the 
 weather, or something else. ^' Oh ! you won't shorten the 
 sittings, will you ? '* 
 
 " I assure you, my dear child," he said, touched through and 
 through by her emotion, " it is almost as bad for me to paint 
 too long as it is for you to sit too long. I don't faint, you know, 
 but there's a horrid sprite who comes when I am done, and takes 
 up his quarters, where do you think, but in my head 1 And 
 though he's come there of his own free will, he doesn't seem to 
 like it, and he tries to get out, but he can't, and he hangs this 
 side and that, and in front and behind, but all to no purpose, 
 except to make me extremely uncomfortable. Finally, like a 
 certain class of lodger, he departs by night, and when I wake 
 up in the morning I find him gone." 
 
 "Is that all true ? " asked Mabel. 
 
 " Upon my soul it is !" So the sittings were shortened, and 
 a repetition of the fainting fit avoided. 
 
22 FOR A SONG'S SAK3. 
 
 Now that the season has fairly set in, Herbert was out nearly 
 every evening. As a rule he kept Sunday clear for his charge ; 
 and many a pleasant country ramble they had, returning to a 
 modest supper of hard-boiled eggs, salad, cheese and beer. 
 Over this meal how merrily she would laugh, as Herbert gave 
 her funny descriptions of the people he met. Then she would 
 fill him his longest pipe, which she had to kneel down to light, 
 and as he smoked he would often have her sing to him. He 
 was glad to get to bed early, and have a long night's rest. Is 
 not what we call "pleasure" often the hardest work we have to 
 get through ? I must now tell of a transgression on Mabel's 
 part, asking the reader not to be too hard with her. 
 
 Montague had told her that she must never, on any account, 
 go out by herself in the evening, and she had promised not to. But 
 oh ! those beautiful June nights, when she sat by the window, 
 feeling somehow so like a prisoned bird, and just for this one 
 thing wishing she were a man, that she might go out and roam 
 about the streets. She used to feel quite thankful to the man 
 with the street piano, who came every Monday night, and 
 played in front of the house. She was too restless to read. 
 The Italian blood in her veins answered to the warmth of the 
 summer-time. She wanted to be out and moving in it. Long 
 she withstood the temptation, but one night the bad spirit would 
 be refused no more. She put on her bonnet, locked the door, 
 and taking the key with her, she crept downstairs and slid out. 
 She wandered, without knowing it, into the great fashionable 
 squares, where she watched all the carriages flashing past, to 
 draw up at the brilliantly lighted houses. At last, thinking she 
 had been out as long as was safe, she went home as quickly as 
 she could, let herself in with her latch key, and was thankful 
 when the perilous passage of the stairs was made. If Mrs. 
 Bloomfield should discover her, she intended to ask her to stand 
 her friend ; but, if she could help it, she thought she would 
 rather not say anything about it. The experiment had in all 
 ways turned out so well that our young lady repeated it many 
 times, and on one of these occasions, the fact came under the 
 knowledge of Mrs. Bloomfield, who at once acquainted Monta- 
 gue with it. When he heard it, he turned white with anger, but 
 remained perfectly quiet. He was not a man who got into 
 rages. He said ; 
 
 " I made her promise never to do such a thing." 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 23 
 
 *' Lor^, now, did you ? " cried his landlady ; ** and she to do it 
 after all ! I wouldn't have believed it ; no, that I wouldn't, 
 after your goodness to 'er, h'and all.'' 
 
 Shortly after Mabel had set out on her next nocturnal expe- 
 dition, Montague returned to the house. As he expected, he 
 found the door of the studio locked. He had another key, with 
 which he let himself in. Yes, the cage was empty and the bird 
 flown. So what Mrs. Bloomfield had told him was really true ! 
 He locked the door on the inside, and, removing the key, set 
 himself to wait. Cabs rattled by, boys called to each other, 
 occasionally tipsy men exchanged pleasantries with one another 
 under the lamp-post which ever regarded the house in which 
 Mrs. Bloomfield and her lodgers resided. Somewhere in this 
 London was Mabel wandering. He had been waiting just two 
 hours, when he heard a light step on the landing. Then the 
 key turned furtively in the lock, the door opened, and Mabel 
 came in. When she caught sight of him she blushed to the 
 roots of her hair. 
 
 " Good evening 1 " he said, frigidly. " I am home, you see, ear- 
 lier than I thought. I hope you have been in pleasant company." 
 
 " I've been in no company," she answered. 
 
 She was standing in the middle of the room, dark and sullen, 
 as one sees a child stand sometimes, who knows it has done 
 wrong but is too proud to ask forgiveness. This behaviour was 
 not calculated to soothe Montague's feelings of anger. He 
 waited a moment or two, and then Mabel said, with her eyes on 
 the ground : 
 
 ^' I know you told me not to go out, and I promised you I 
 wouldn't, and I have been out many times and broken my 
 promise. If you can get more out of it than that, do." 
 
 '^ Get more out of it ! " he exclaimed. " I should like to know 
 what more could be got out of it ? I've tried to be kind to you : 
 all that I could do to make things pleasant for you I have done, 
 and what do you do in return but cheat me and break your 
 word to me. You talk as lightly of a broken promise as you 
 would of a broken wineglass ! In your country promises may 
 be only little, petty, silken chains, things nice to play with ; but 
 in England we have quite a different class of article. No chains 
 of silk, but fetters of iron. After this I can never believe in you 
 again. I shall not trouble you to sit to me to-morrow. I have 
 nothing more to say." 
 
24 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 With that he took up his hat, but it took him some time to 
 find his stick, Mabel said nothing, so he passed by her, down- 
 stairs, and out of the house. He called the first hansom he 
 saw, and drove to his club. As he walked home through the 
 early June morning, he began to wonder if he had not been too 
 hard with Mabel. Had he never broken a promise — a promise 
 to meet this friend or that — when something much more plea- 
 sant had turned up at the last moment ? Women never would 
 consider promises in slight things binding, and she evidently 
 looked upon this as just a whim of his. Yes, he was sure that 
 he had been too hard ; still, she had been naughty, and it was 
 necessary that she should be punished. He would do as he 
 had said, and go through the next day without painting her, 
 but he should be glad when the day v/as over. It was broad 
 daylight when he found himself in the studio again. He was 
 in no mood for bed, so he threw himself on the sofa and awaited 
 the advent of breakfast. 
 
 While he had been beguiling the time at his club, where he 
 was very popular, Mabel had been lying on her bed, her hot 
 face pressed into the pillow, that no one might hear the sobs 
 which shook her so convulsively. Under the stinging memory 
 of his bitter words, she lay and writhed as they came back to 
 her, word after word, cutting her tender, naked heart like a 
 lash. She almost shrieked aloud. She would keep by herself 
 through the day; then, when he asked her to sit again, she 
 would tell him she was sorry. Perhaps, as he had said he 
 would never believe in her again, he wouldn't even believe 
 that. 
 
 When the morning was well come, she got off her bed, and 
 washed, as best she might, the traces of tears off her cheeks. 
 Ah, me ! but what could she do for the poor swollen eyelids 1 
 When breakfast appeared, but not Mabel, Betsy was despatched 
 with a message to that young lady's room, to the effect that 
 breakfast was ready. To this message Betsy brought back 
 the following reply : 
 
 " Please, sir, she says her 'ead aches, and she don't want 
 no breakfast.'^ 
 
 *' Well, run and fetch a tray, like a good girl, and take her 
 some tea and toast. That will be the best thing for her." Then 
 he fell to on his own repast, to which, lam bound to say, he 
 did ample justice. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 25 
 
 When Mrs. Bloomfield heard of Mabel's indisposition, she 
 knew at once what was the matter, and made haste to the poor 
 child's room, but Mabel cried out : 
 
 " I don't want to see you, Mrs. Bloomfield. I think you're 
 the unkindest person I ever heard of ! Why didn't you tell me 
 before speaking to him ? He'll never like me again. He told 
 me he wouldn't ! " 
 
 " And sorry enough, my dear, I am that I didn't," replied Mrs. 
 Bloomfield, who was quite upset to see how ill the girl looked. 
 She tried her best to comfort her, and then left her to break 
 like a thunderstorm upon Montague, who was occupied in 
 painting some drapery. 
 
 ** Well, Mr. Montague," she began, " how you can go on a- 
 painting, after almost killing that poor child by the awful things 
 you've said to 'er — 'er that 'as got no father, and no mother 
 either — I say, how you can go on with that stuff, and she in the 
 next room a-breaking 'er 'eart, is what gets over me ! " 
 
 " But, my dear soul ! " exclaimed Montague. 
 
 *^ Don't ^my dear soul' me, don't!" returned the angered 
 landlady. '* I want none of your soft speeches. It's not me 
 that wants sticking-plaster. Put it on where it's wanted." 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Bloomfield, then — since you so much resent 
 being called a * dear soul ' — surely you must own that Mabel 
 behaved very badly." 
 
 ^^ Lor', so do my children sometimes," returned the landlady ; 
 ^'and what do /do ? Why, whip 'em first, and kiss 'em after ! " 
 
 " I see ! You think I've done the whipping, but not the 
 kissing," he replied. *' Well, Mrs. Bloomfield, will you go and 
 tell her I want to speak to her ? Is she up ? I heard she had 
 a bad headache." 
 
 '^ Up ! " exclaimed Mrs. Bloomfield. ** Why, she ain't been 
 to bed all night ! " 
 
 The message with which Mrs. Bloomfield returned was, that 
 if he did not want to paint her, she would rather keep where 
 she was. On hearing this he went, in great distress, to the 
 door of her room. 
 
 " Mabel, I want you, please." 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Mab, open the door, please ; do as you are told." 
 
 Then the door did open, and she stood before him, not dark 
 and half-defiant, as on the previous night, but pale and very 
 
26 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 penitent. Her appearance fairly shocked him. He took her 
 by the hand, and led her into the studio. Mrs. Bloomfield 
 having accomplished her mission, departed. They sat down 
 together on the sofa, and he said : 
 
 ■• Look here, my dear : it was very naughty of you to break 
 your promise to me, but it was very bad of me to say all the 
 things I said last night, and I want you to forget them, please, 
 and forgive them, if you can." 
 
 " And you don't mean that you will never believe me again ? '^ 
 said Mabel. 
 
 " Not a word of it." 
 
 " Have you really forgiven me ? " she asked, her eyes filling 
 with tears. 
 
 " Of course I have ! " 
 
 Then, for the first time, he put his arm round her and kissed 
 her, and not quite as a father kisses a child. She made no 
 sort of resistance, did not even seem surprised, but a slight 
 quiver ran through her. 
 
 "Do you think it was any pleasure to me," he asked, " to 
 know that you were shut up in this room ? It was for your 
 own good." 
 
 And then he told her some things about the great city, which, 
 I am afraid, would not be news to us, thinking rightly, that too 
 much innocence is a dangerous thing. The end of it was that 
 they went to Richmond, and enjoyed the day very much. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 After that last expedition of hers, recorded in the preceding 
 chapter, it need scarcely be said that those solitary night 
 rambles of Mabel's were not repeated. However, she gained 
 permission to accompany Mrs. Bloomfield, when that good 
 lady went out in the evening to do her shopping. Saturday 
 night was Mabel's special treat, for then they stayed out very 
 late and went into all sorts of out-of-the-way places— strange, 
 narrow passages, with flaming fruit-shops on either side, and 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 27 
 
 butchers' shops with a fine display of meat — the men calling out 
 their goods in harsh, defiant voices. Mabel thought it was all 
 very bright and picturesque, as indeed it was. Herbert knew 
 how fond the girl was of flowers, and whenever he could afford 
 it, he gave her a shilling or two to spend upon them. You may 
 be sure this was a great excitement to her. How proudly she 
 came home bearing a fuchsia, or a geranium, got, " Oh, at such 
 a bargain ! " Fuchsias and geraniums, lilies-of-the-valley, and 
 roses such as one buys in London at street corners — were not 
 these with Mabel all woven into the fabric of Montague's life ? 
 Were not the flowers of the spring and the summer, all dearer 
 for her dear sake ? 
 
 As an artist he had many merits. His composition was good, 
 his colouring harmonious, his method of treating his subject 
 imaginative. 
 
 *' But why the deuce don't you draw better?" asked Mr. 
 Blackmore, his Manchester patron. 
 
 " Because I can't, I suppose," he replied. 
 " I don't believe in ' can't ' with you," said the other. " Now, 
 I'll tell you what to do. Shut the shop up here and go for two 
 or three years to Munich — that's the place for a man to learn 
 drawing. I want you to do yourself justice, Montague ; you're 
 too good a fellow to have your work spoilt for the want of one 
 thing." 
 
 These words sank very deeply into the soul of the young 
 painter, for he wished, like all of us who give our lives to Art, 
 to take some not unworthy position in her train. He knew his 
 own lack well. Yes, he must follow his friend's advice and go 
 abroad ; but what to do with Mabel ? As I have said before, 
 his funds were by no means large, and to keep up two establish- 
 ments, however humble, did not seem a possible thing. Well, 
 he must find her a place, he supposed, as a shop-girl or nursery 
 governess ; but the more he thought over this prospect for her 
 the less he seemed to like it. And then for himself.'* What 
 would life be in which Mabel would take no more any part .? 
 Dreary as a winter room in which .the fire has ceased to burn. 
 How hard it would be to part with her ! And why should he 
 part with her ? The idea struck him quite suddenly as he was 
 walking home one night. Was she not beautiful? Was she 
 not deyoted ? Above all, was not he very much in love with 
 her ? Since that kiss, of which ipention has been made, his 
 
28 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 feelings for her had undergone a considerable change. What in 
 the world was to stand in the way of his marrying her. The 
 marriage must, of course, be kept a secret till after his father's 
 death, when he hoped their means would be quite ample. I 
 have said he v/as a man who acted upon impulse, so, if he had 
 to sleep that night on the thought of his so suddenly formed 
 project, it was by no desire of his that he did so. 
 
 He was in the studio very early the next morning, but it wap 
 quite in vain that he tried to paint. Breakfast passed off 
 silently. 
 
 " Now," said Mabel, " are you ready for me to sit ? " 
 
 ^* Yes, but I have something to say to you first, Mabel. I'm 
 going away — out of England — for some years, so here I must 
 put the shutters up." He saw how the colour rushed into her 
 cheeks, and then, forsaking them, left them white as marble. 
 
 ^' Does this grieve you, Mabel ?" 
 
 " Yes } of course Pm sorry, but I thought it would have come 
 a long time ago." Then, changing hesitation for volubility, she 
 rattled on with strange glibness : 
 
 ^' You will try and find me something to do before you leave, 
 won't you ? I think I could do very well as a shop-girl." She 
 rose, and continued with increased hurry and excitement : 
 *' Gloves ? Thank you, madam — what size do you take 1 Allow 
 me ? What else can I have the pleasure of showing you to- 
 day 1 We have a very nice assortment of silk stockings, which 
 we are selling at very low prices. Anything in the way of hand- 
 kerchiefs or collars ? Thank you, madam ! . . . Can you spare 
 me for a moment or two ? I hear Tim shut up in my room," 
 
 Tim was the handsome studio tabby. 
 
 *^ No ; I can't spare you for a moment," answered Montague, 
 going to the door, and resting his hand on the handle. Then 
 he went on, with a mischievous light in his eyes : " Why did 
 you tell me a fib, Mab ? You hear Tim in your room no more 
 than I do. You hate that we should part, and you want to go 
 to your room and cry, and let me know nothing about it, and 
 then to come back and play that, on the whole, you are rather 
 glad to go. But what's the good ? Haven't I eyes to see with, 
 and a heart to feel with ? The thought of our parting is such 
 bitter pain to me, that if you, my darling, will only will it so, we 
 will never part — at least, not more than we can possibly help. 
 Tell me, Mabel, will you be my wife ,^ " 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAICE. 2^ 
 
 At his words a wonderful light came over her face, which 
 made her look more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Then 
 she said : ^' You can't really mean what you have just said, can 
 you ? " 
 
 " Do you think I should say it without meaning it ? " 
 
 " No ; of course I don't think that ; but are you sure you are 
 not speaking out of pity for me ? And your father, what would 
 he say ? " 
 
 " During the remainder of his lifetime our marriage would 
 have to be kept private. Should you mind that very much, 
 Mabel ?'^ 
 
 " Not at all, if I thought you married me just because you 
 loved me, and for no other reason in the world." 
 
 " I marry you, my darling," he cried, throwing his arms about 
 her, ** because 1 love you, and for no other reason in the world, 
 and now tell me, do you love me ? " 
 
 " Love you I " she said. If you had heard the tone in which 
 she uttered these two words, you would have known that they 
 were charged with such a treasure of love as is not often laid at 
 the feet of any man. 
 
 " Tell me about it, dear," he said, kissing her lips passionately. 
 Did she tell him ? Scarcely, I think, in words ; but by the 
 tears of great joy, by the clasp of her clinging arms about his 
 neck, by her broken utterances, by her kisses on his hand ; 
 surely by all these she told him. Of what passionate love her 
 nature was capable he never dreamed till then. The two great 
 mysteries of the world are love and death. The one is a mystery 
 of light — the other a mystery of darkness ; and it does not do 
 for us to look too closely into either. 
 
 The day following that of the little event I have just described, 
 Herbert paid a dutiful visit to his father. It happened very 
 fortunately that the elder Montague was, for him, in quite good 
 humour. Besides being rather better in health, he had met, the 
 previous evening, a distinguished academician who had con- 
 gratulated him upon his son's rare talents, and said he was sure 
 that some day he would do really fine work. The old gentle- 
 man approved of his son's plans for going abroad. As he had 
 gone in for art, the only thing was for him to try and make a 
 name in it. So he not only gave Herbert a sort of parting bless- 
 ing, but, what was far more to the point, wrote him a cheque for 
 a hundred pounds, and some of this hundred pounds was ex- 
 
so FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 pended by Mrs. Bloomfield, who had been taken into confidence, 
 in purchasing an humble trousseau for the bride. 
 
 Men say that long engagements are dangerous. We know 
 they are tedious ; still it is possible to have too little of a good 
 thing as it is to have too much of it. Courtship is a dainty dish, 
 to which justice should be done. If you were ever really in love, 
 how long the nights that parted you must have seemed ! How 
 you must have longed for the light, and for the face you loved 
 more than light. If you were a business man, was it not sweet 
 to take your secret with you into the city 1 As you thought of 
 some one some few miles from you, and recalled the colour of 
 her hair and eyes, the voice, and all the countless sweet ways 
 grown so dear to you, did not everything about you shine in a 
 great wonderful new light ? 
 
 Our friends, then, did not have as long a courtship as I, for 
 one, should like them to have enjoyed. The days of the London 
 Studio came to an end, and, I think, though they did not say so, 
 that they both felt a little sad when they came back, the last 
 Sunday, from their country ramble. 
 
 The new life to which we are going may hold for us delights 
 of which the one we leave knew nothing ; still, if the past have 
 treated us at all well, do we not say good-bye to it with some 
 tenderness and regret ? I should mistrust the man who did 
 not. 
 
 The very next day then following that last Sunday ramble, 
 they walked out in the bright September day, and straight into 
 a church, out of which Mabel came, Mabel Varese no longer. 
 They passed the day at Richmond. It was rather like a dream 
 to them both, I daresay. Then in the evening, as husband and 
 wife, they came back to the old studio. Two days after found 
 them on board the boat for Rotterdam. 
 
 I have no intention of accompanying these young people 
 arcoss the water. Their life for the next four years was doubt- 
 less full of interest to themselves, but scarcely so to us. In the 
 course of that time Herbert sent three pictures to the Royal 
 Academy. Two were accepted and well hung, and the third 
 found a home in one of our well-known picture-galleries. 
 
 In the first year after their marriage a little boy came to them, 
 and for six months it was given to Mabel to know the joys of 
 motherhood. For six months she had a baby to love, to cherish, 
 with her bosom and her lips. To trace in his features a like- 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 31 
 
 ness to his father was her great delight. She was quite sure he 
 would be a great painter. Perhaps he might have been, but at 
 this period of speculation a cold which he had taken ended all 
 dreams of the future by causing his death. For some time the 
 poor mother was quite broken-hearted. Montague did not feel 
 it so acutely, his love and his art quite filling his hfe. Which 
 loved he more — his wife or his art ? It would be difficult to say. 
 Her beauty was as fresh to him as ever. He never tired of 
 painting and praising it. He was for ever playing with her hair, 
 so temptingly dark. 
 
 " No ; really, dear," she would cry out, " you mustn't any 
 more. This is the third time to-day you've done my poor hair 
 in some extraordinary new way." 
 
 "Mustn't I, really, Mab?" he would answer, looking at her 
 with a look she loved so well to see. 
 
 " Of course you may," she would answer then, showering her 
 long hair all down again as she spoke. " Don't you know, my 
 love, my king, I would give my soul to accomplish your least 
 wish." 
 
 Yes, he did know it, and loved her perhaps better because she 
 so well loved him. 
 
 One dreary November afternoon, they returned from Munich 
 to the old house in Museum Street. In the evening Montague 
 had to meet a man in town on business. Poor Mabel was de- 
 pressed as she sat alone that night, and yet she knew not why. 
 One of Tim's descendants lay before the fire, there stood the 
 famiUar lay-figure. All was homelike, as of old, but the pre- 
 sence of her dead father seemed to be with her in the room — it 
 seemed to her as if her cold, dead baby lay on her breast. At 
 length came the quick, well-known, well-loved step up the stairs, 
 and with a puff of smoke, and a cheery "Well ! little one!" 
 Herbert came in. He was in excellent spirits, so glad, he said, 
 to be back once more in the dear old city. 
 
 The only other person besides Mrs. Bloomfield to whom 
 Montague intrusted the secret of his marriage was his friend 
 Blackmore, whom he knew to be a safe man, and being also a 
 man of a somewhat tender heart, Herbert thought a knowledge 
 of the fact would make a commission from him more certain. 
 It was a day of profound excitement to the Montagues when the 
 great man appeared. 
 
 "Mrs, Montague, I presume.^" he exclaimed, shaking that 
 
^2 POR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 lady very warmly by the hand. " I recognize you at once. Our 
 friend here follows the old masters in reproducing one face a 
 great number of times, and upon my soul, I don't think, in the 
 present case, he could do better." 
 
 " So he thinks himself," put in the painter, who, while really 
 very nervous, strove to assume an indifferent manner. 
 
 Mr. Blackmore was delighted with nearly everything he saw, 
 and the upshot of it was that he gave a handsome commission 
 for an important picture, on which Herbert was very shortly to 
 begin. 
 
 No more domestic husband than Montague could be found in 
 all London. When the day's work was over, he and his wife 
 would walk to one of the restaurants before mentioned, where 
 they would have dinner. After which they would return home 
 to a long fireside evening, he lounging in front of the fire, she 
 reading aloud (Herbert was one of those men who dearly loved 
 being read aloud to), and from time to time filling his pipe, 
 which he had grown quite too lazy to do. Occasionally they 
 would dine humbly at home, on chops, and go to the pit of some 
 theatre. His friends wondered what had come to him. Of 
 course sometimes he had to ofter himself on the shrine of friend- 
 ship. A Bohemian, living in Bohemia, he had, now and then, 
 to pass an evening with his countrymen. From these expedi- 
 tions he never returned till daybreak, and, faithful to her old 
 habit, Mabel never went to bed without leaving a little letter of 
 good-night on the table. How changed they were, how sweetly 
 changed from those first letters of hers. Forgive us, dear Heart, 
 if we look over your husband's shoulder, as he stands by the 
 fire, in this dreary winter daybreak. 
 
 " My Darling," ran her little epistle, "how lonely I am with- 
 out you this evening. I know you are obliged to go. It makes 
 me proud to feel that you would always rather stay with me, but 
 if you were to go out a great deal I shouldn't really mind it, as 
 long as I thought that you loved me. I have been reading a 
 little of Longfellow, but I was too restless to read much. It is 
 now just ten — you have been gone two hours, and, oh ! what an 
 age it seems ! I think no woman ever did love a man as I love 
 you, my saviour, my husband. I wish our little baby had lived, 
 that when you were away from me I might have seen something 
 of you in him. I am sure I shall not sleep much. I shall come 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 33 
 
 in and look after the fire, for you will be dreadfully cold, coming 
 home in the winter morning, as I know you will. Do you know 
 how wholly I am yours, for you to do just as you will ? Good- 
 night, or, I suppose I might more fitly say, good-morning." 
 
 He puts the letter away with others of a nature equally 
 effusive. 
 
 Ail through that winter, and the early part of the spring, Her- 
 bert worked hard at his picture, of which, of course, Mabel was 
 the central figure. Ah ! me, but she was proud to think that out 
 of all his pictures her face looked. 
 
 " I think, if my pictures live, Mab," he used to say, "men will 
 know what sort of a face somebody had ! " 
 
 They were sitting in the studio, one April evening, when the 
 postman's knock was heard. The letters he brought did, in the 
 course of time, find their way to the people for whom they were 
 intended, but they were first allowed to wait some time at the 
 foot of the banisters, so that if any lodger greatly desired to save 
 the legs of Betsy an extra journey, he might have the oppor^ 
 tunity of putting a wish so charitable into execution. Mabel 
 was always postman for the studio, so she ran down stairs, and 
 returned with a letter. 
 
 "A card of invitation, I suppose," said Herbert, as he opened 
 it. " Oh ! yes— it is ! * Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, at Home, Thurs- 
 day evening, the 28th of April, and Thursday evenings afterwards 
 through May and June.' Here's a line from Jackson himself. 
 He says : 
 
 " * My Dear Montague— I know you have given up all the 
 world and all the ways thereof, but I shall be really hurt if you 
 don't make an exception in favour of your old friend, B. J.' 
 
 What a bore ! " and the young man threw the card on the 
 table. " I suppose, as Jackson makes suoh a point of it, I shall 
 have to go. I'll be a man, and go to this first one and get it 
 over. A fortnight from to-day, that will be. You can kiss me, 
 if you like, Mab, and then go on reading*" 
 
 The two weeks passed off very quickly, and brought the 28th. 
 
 ^' Shall you be late home ?" asked Mabel, as she stood fasten- 
 ing a flower on his coat. ' 
 
 " You may be sure I shall get away just as soon as I can." 
 
 4 
 
34 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 '' Now, really, you must be off," she said, " or it will be absurd 
 your going at all ! " 
 
 " Must I, Mab?" he rejoined, in that tone of voice, and with 
 that look which she always felt as a caress. " I've a good mind 
 to throw off this coat, light up a pipe, and not go." 
 
 *' No, dear, go, and get it over." 
 
 But still he lingered a little ; he was specially fond of her that 
 night. At length he took his final kiss, and ran downstairs, 
 humming as he went, an air out of one of his favourite operas. 
 
 I wonder if that hansom cab that took our friend to Tavistock 
 vSquare had deposited him in the gutter instead of at Mr, Jack- 
 son's house, thereby fracturing some of his bones, and causing 
 him to keep to his bed for a month or two, whether it would 
 really have made any difference in the long-run. Have you not 
 seen an escaping thief run from the arms of one policeman 
 straight into the arms of another 1 We may dodge Fate down 
 one street — she gets us round the next corner. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MRS. FLORENCE HEATHER. 
 
 It was SO long since Montague had taken any part in society 
 that the once familiar sound of many people talking all together 
 struck on his ear quite strangely as he stood in the hall taking 
 off his coat. How once he used to like this kind of thing, he 
 thought, as he went up the staircase which he had not trodden 
 for four years. In the doorway of her crowded reception-room 
 he was greeted by his hostess. 
 
 " Here you are at last. I began to think we should never see 
 you again. I hope you have been working hard. I thought 
 your last picture excellent— I did indeed." 
 
 " I'm sure you're very good to think anything about it at all," 
 he replied, with that air of almost insolent indifference which he 
 cannot help assuming under the scourge of that lady's intolerable 
 praise. *' Hullo ! Godfrey ! " he goes on, catching sight of a 
 much younger brother artist, "what an age it is since we met." 
 
 In society we must all have our roles; some of us choose 
 
^OR A SONG'S SAKE, 3^ 
 
 badly, while others are more happy in their selection. Mr. 
 Godfrey, who was not a brilliant young man, assumed the roie 
 of enthusiast ; he gushed on every conceivable occasion ; meta- 
 phorically speaking, he was always sitting at some one's feet, in 
 which position he was often found in the way. When he spoke, 
 it was with a jerk, nay, as it were, a spasm of excitement in his 
 voice, responded to by a sympathetic contortion of his person. 
 
 Montague was one of the men whom Mr. Godfrey honoured 
 by his homage. 
 
 " Is the fault mine.^" he replied, lifting up hands and eyes. 
 *' I'm still in the old place. I used to think each ring at the bell 
 might have been you. Whenever the postman came I hoped he 
 might be bringing me a letter from you — ^but no 1 ^' 
 
 '' We must see more of each other," rejoined Montague* 
 " There are a lot of people here to-night." 
 
 " Have you been here long } " asked the other* 
 
 ** No ; I've only just come." 
 
 ^' Then you have not seen Mrs. Heather, yet ? " 
 
 *^ No ; I have not had that pleasure. Who may Mrs. Heather 
 be?" 
 
 *' It would be impossible for fne to describe her." 
 
 *' Oh, I'm sure you could," said Montague, with a smile, as, 
 perceiving his young friend was meditating a gush, he made 
 haste to pass onward. 
 
 " Oh ! Montague ! " cried another friend, arresting his pro- 
 gress, " haven't seen you this long while. Isn't she worth coming 
 some way to see ? " 
 
 " Who is worth coming some way to see ? " 
 
 ^' Who ? Whom should I mean, but Mrs. Heather ? " 
 
 Here they parted, and after shaking the hands of some dozen 
 or so ladies, Montague came upon a complete swarm of Bohemian 
 friends. 
 
 '' Why, it's never Montague 1 " cried one. " Montague in the 
 llesh ? " 
 
 *' No ; it's his ghost ! " said another ; while a third ejaculated : 
 " Ttirn him out 1 " 
 
 " Yes, but not till we've had his opinion of Mrs. Heather," 
 put in a fourth. 
 
 " Can all of you fellows talk of nothing else to a poor devil 
 who hasn't set foot in these rooms for more than four years 1 I 
 give you good notice that if you mention her name ;igain I shall 
 
36 FOk A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 go at you as a biiil does at a red flag. What is this lady, and 
 ^vhy has she so turned your heads ?'* 
 
 " By Jove ! The fascinating widow hasn't turned my head. I 
 don't like her looks ! " 
 
 "Don't like them?^' exclaimed one of the group, while the 
 central figure of the party replied : " Who the deuce, man, ever 
 supposed you would ? " 
 
 Did you ever, in the whole course of your life, even by chance, 
 stumble into admiration of the right thing ? Why, if anything 
 is just perfect of its kmd, it's enough to set your vile old back 
 up. It strikes me you were designed by Providence as a safety- 
 valve* We can't let our feelings off sufficiently. Then we find 
 you J and^ in abusing you, we really find vent for some of our 
 superfluous praise. 
 
 At this moment a hand touched Montague on the arm, and 
 the voice of his host said ; " I want to introduce you to Mrs. 
 Heather. She is an admirer of yours." 
 
 In another moment the introduction had been performed. 
 
 Me saw before him a lady of some two and thirty years, per- 
 haps \ she was just over the average height ; her figure was 
 exquisitely shaped, perfect in every ripe outline. Her face was 
 rather pale. In repose it wore an expression of almost divine 
 placidity, but when she was interested, no face was half so 
 animated. The large, luminous eyes, which looked as if they 
 might draw your soul from you, were more of a violet than any 
 other colour. A great quantity of purely golden hair waved 
 round her delicately-shaped head like the nimbus that artists 
 paint round the heads of their saints. Indeed, if you regarded 
 only the upper part of her face, you felt, almost, that she must 
 be a saint — you wanted to fall on your knees before her, and 
 there to offer your prayers, and make your confessions. If you 
 looked lower, at the red ardent mouth, at the superb neck, and 
 the wonderful figure, at the large, lovely, white strong arms, 
 in whose ample clasp it seemed that only a demigod should lie, 
 you still wanted to fall down and worship, still wanted to offer 
 your prayers and make your confessions, only the character of 
 them would have undergone a change. 
 
 Her voice — I have heard lower voices — had in it none of that 
 Sweetness which cloys you ; it was free from all languor ; it was 
 
 (tatlier a clear and vital voice, with something in it that suggested 
 blown spring- water shining in the sun. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 37 
 
 " It />y such a pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. Montague," 
 she said. " I quite began to think it was a pleasure I should 
 never have, but I perceive now that all things come to the woman 
 that waits, as well as to the man.'' 
 
 He could only say that he was very proud, if anything he had 
 ever done caused her to take any interest in him. 
 
 ** Won't you have this scat? you look tired," he said. 
 
 So she sat and he stood by her. 
 
 " Do you know," he continued, " I hadn't been in the room ten 
 minutes when I was asked by as many persons if I had been 
 introduced to you ? " 
 
 "Really?" she replied, as if she was tired of compliments, 
 and wished to avert any more. 
 
 Her complete indifference somewhat discomposed him. He 
 was wondering what remark he should hazard next, when Mrs. 
 Heather herself recommenced conversation. 
 
 *' Are you very hard at work ? " said the fresh voice. 
 
 ** I have been painting tolerably hard this winter and spring," 
 he replied. 
 
 " I am glad to hear that. May I come and see your picture 
 before it goes away ? " 
 
 " My poor studio will only be too much honoured by a visit 
 from Mrs. Heather." 
 
 " Thank you. All artists are not so amiable." 
 
 " Do you know all the people here to night ?" he inquired. 
 
 " No ; very few. I've been a great deal abroad. Last year 
 I stayed six months in London, but saw no one, except the 
 kind people at whose house I was. Now, I have just come from 
 paying a long visit to Beckford, the artist, and his wife. They 
 have a beautiful house in Kent. He, you know, absolutely 
 never sees any one but one or two of his very oldest friends. 
 How I ever could have got into his good graces as to be made 
 an exception, I ca?i^t think — but so the fact is." 
 
 " He is a most remarkable artist," said Montague. 
 
 "Just before I left he completed such a wonderful picture," 
 went on Mrs. Heather, " I do wish I could give you some idea 
 of it, but Pm afraid it's impossible. Yet I want to describe it 
 to you, if I only could. Let me see." 
 
 She paused, as if she were once more seeing it rise before her 
 vision. Then she went on again, speaking very slowly ; 
 
 " It shows you a girl in bed— sick to death. She is propped 
 
38 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 by pillows. You can tell perfectly well how lovely she must 
 have been in health ; but now the face is all thin and fallen in, 
 and the eyes are so hollow ; on the coverlet is a great bunch of 
 Spring flowers, the dear old-fashioned things such as we only 
 find now in a few gardens, and I assure you, so wonderfully 
 painted that you can almost smell them. You know how he 
 can do flowers when he likes. By the bed is a table, with the 
 medicine-bottles and glass upon it. You see she has been 
 playing with the flowers. Her fingers have grown so thin that 
 from one of them a ring has slipped, and sparkles just beside 
 the flowers. Her lover is kneeling by the bed. He is a splen- 
 didly strong-looking fellow ; he has one of her hands in both 
 of his, and anything as striking and awful as the look of despair 
 in his eyes I have certainly never seen. It is a look so hope- 
 less, so intense, that it seems almost like the cry of a creature 
 on the rack. With all his strength he seems to be straining 
 deathwards, as if to draw her back, and she, poor child, you 
 can see that long suffering has triumphed over all the passionate 
 desire of love. All she wants for herself is rest—]\x^i not to 
 feel pain, to sleep for ever and ever. She has scarcely any 
 strength left, but with what she has she seems to be turning 
 feebly lifeward for his sake, and to hold his hand a little longer ; 
 but you see so unmistakably that it is only for his sake. The 
 contrast between his wild and unavailing despair, and her mild 
 pity for him, and complete acquiescence in her fate, is so mar- 
 vellously shown. The window of the room is open, and through 
 it you can see great stretches of smooth, green lawn, and trees 
 waving in the bright May afternoon. It is just, you know, one 
 of those dear days that we do get sometimes in May, made up 
 of warm winds and brilliant sunshine. Seen from that sick 
 room, what callous sunshine it seems, what an indifferent wind 
 that is bearing down all the branches of the trees ! You know 
 Nature to be unconscious, but you fancy, if she could feel, she 
 wouldn't care two of her roses for all the trouble that is going 
 on in her midst. I scarcely know of any picture which brings 
 home to one so the indifference of Nature to our pains. I do 
 hope you will see it before long ! " 
 
 While Mrs. Heather had been speaking, a strange and very 
 beautiful look had come into her eyes. It was the look of one 
 who has seen through life and beyond death, and whose soul 
 has possessed the after mystery. Her voice, too, had thrilled 
 with a tone which corresponded to the look of her eyes. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 39 
 
 " Thank you," said Herbert. ^' Do you know I think you are 
 rather a dangerous advocate?" 
 
 ^^Why?" 
 
 " Because, after such a description, any picture must to some 
 extent disappoint." 
 
 Just then Mr. Jackson brought up a new candidate for intro- 
 duction, and Montague prepared to move away. Then she 
 said, quite simply, as if she had known him some time : 
 
 "Will you come and see me at 12, Brook Street? I'm at 
 home every Monday." 
 
 *' I shall be an early visitor," he replied, as hq fell back with 
 a smile. He was at once accosted by Mr. Pinlake, as bland 
 and meek a bard as ever perpetrated a sonnet. 
 
 ^' Anything on the stocks ?" asked Herbert. 
 
 ^^ A little volume," replied the bard. " Indeed, I may say a 
 very little one^ but containing, I hope, some of my very best 
 work." 
 
 "I hope so," said Montague. "You're a remarkable man, 
 Pinlake." 
 
 " Indeed, you make me very proud." 
 
 " Yes ; but I mean remarkable as a man as well as a poet. 
 You're the first fellow to-night who has not mentioned Mrs. 
 Heather to me." 
 
 " Mrs. Florence Heather, plcase^^^ returned the poet, in a 
 deeply grieved tone of voice. " There are so very many persons 
 of that name in her late husband's family, that, to prevent the 
 least confusion arising for a moment between her and them, we 
 always say, most emphatically, Mrs. Florence Heather." 
 
 " You know her, then ? " 
 
 " I have the great happiness to be numbered among her few 
 intimate friends." 
 
 " Lucky fellow ! " responded the other. " The rooms get hot, 
 don't they ? " and he passed on. 
 
 Nearly all the ladies in those rooms were of the pre- 
 Raphaelite faith, but there were a few exceptions, and these, as 
 it were, demonstrated the facts — some appearing in the most 
 perfectly fashionable toilets, others in high-up stuff dresses, from 
 under the skirts of which protruded heavy, thick-soled boots. 
 
 For nearly an hour Montague wandered about the room, 
 speaking to people who were all of more or less interest. Then 
 he took leave of his hostess. As he was putting on his coat, in 
 
AO FOR A SONGS SAKE. 
 
 the hall, Mrs. Heather's carriage was loudly called. Just for a 
 moment he lingered, then he stepped out into the soft April 
 night, and, lighting a cigarette, made for Museum Street. He 
 found Mabel sitting with a pile of socks and shirts before her, 
 which she was actively engaged in repairing. 
 
 " Why ! you dear, dear, industrious little woman ! " he said, 
 coming in. Then he knelt down by her, as he was very fond of 
 doing, and put both arms around her, and looked up at her 
 proudly. There was in her beauty such a wonderful depth and 
 sluade. 
 
 " I think you do like to look at me," she said, in her quiet, 
 soothing voice, and her fingers began moving through his hair. 
 
 Of course she must know all about his evening, and when he 
 described, wiih great ardour, Mrs. Heather, and asked her if 
 she were not jealous, she laughed and said : 
 
 " No ; not at all ! " 
 
 " And why aren't you, Mab ?" 
 
 '^ Because you are too frank about her. I will find out fast 
 enough, and surely enough, if any other woman ever comes to 
 take my place ! " 
 
 " Put your work away, you very wise woman. I see there's 
 no fun to be got out of you, at all ! " 
 
 The next Monday afternoon Herbert presented himself at 
 Mrs. Heather's house in Brook Street. 
 
 " How good of you to come and see me ! " she said. 
 
 " I thought you would excuse my being a late visitor," he 
 replied, " but I am hard at work, and the light is, you know, 
 my master." 
 
 " I am glad you came late," she answered. ''It gives us more 
 chance of talking. I hope I shall have no more callers this 
 afternoon — some of them do bore me so ! Will you tell me 
 about the picture you are painting ?" 
 
 " With pleasure. It is taken from Rossetti's wonderful poem, 
 " Staff and Scrip." The Queen, among her maidens, is waiting 
 for the return of the Knight who has gone forth for her deliver- 
 ance. These are the lines I take : 
 
 '• ' But the Queen held her brows and said : 
 It is the cry of Victory ! ' 
 
 Upon the faces of her ladies different expressions are visible. 
 Some are flushed with triumph, others look anxious, but on the 
 
FOR A SONCS SAKE. 41 
 
 Queen's face there is a look of fatal comprehension. You should 
 see that she feels, by an awful intuition, that they are bringing 
 her lover and Knight home— dead.'' 
 
 ^' I see,'^ replied Mrs. Heather. '' If you can paint that look 
 it will be a splendid picture. But can you? There is nothing 
 else in the picture out of which you can get a great effect but 
 that." 
 
 " I think you are quite right. I have often before felt that I 
 had been misguided in my choice of a subject." 
 
 *^ I don't think so in the least," she returned, looking at him 
 with those wonderful eyes of hers. " Your soul must see the 
 look, and your hand must reproduce it." 
 
 ^' You are confident of an artist being able to master his 
 subject?" 
 
 " I know that genius can ! " 
 
 " But have I genius ?" 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 No woman knew the art of making monosyllables impressive 
 better than Mrs. Heather. The tone in which she now said 
 " Yes " implied : ^' Of course you have, and if you had ever any 
 doubt of it, you can rest assured, now that I have told you of 
 the fact." There was not in her manner the least ray of conceit 
 or affectation. It was only that she relied calmly on her own 
 critical perceptions, which were, I am bound to say, almost in- 
 variably right. She was a woman inspired to appreciate. The 
 beauty of rightly chosen words, or of wonderful colours, touched 
 her senses so sharply as to be almost pain — ^just as we, who love 
 music passionately, feel our soul stung to divine agony, when 
 from the hand of a master we hear the long drawn notes of a 
 violin. But the keen and exquisite pleasure she took in all 
 forms of beauty did not lessen the interest she had in all ques- 
 tions of thought. Her intellect was as vigorous as her imagi- 
 nation was subtle. She was one of those few women born to 
 reign. Her praise quickened Montague's pulses ; but he said, 
 almost brusquely : 
 
 " Is not our conversation growing too personal ? 
 
 ^' Then, let us change it. I hope you like my cat," and she 
 pointed to a superb Persian beauty lying at her feet. 
 
 " I do — tremendously. I suppose you are great friends." 
 *' Yes, we get along very well together. She is beautiful to 
 look at — too beautiful to have much heart. Indeed, I don't 
 
42 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 think she has any at all. Few cats have much. My beautiful 
 Persian is a blessing to my eyes. Every time I look at her 
 they send up a little thanksgiving ; but she is no comfort to my 
 hands ; she never deigns to sit on my lap. I assure you (1 
 shall shock you, but I don't mind) there have been times when 
 I have been absolutely hungry for some dear, homely tabby, who 
 would like to be stroked, who would rub her soft, dear head into 
 my hand, cat-like. My Persian looks down on aJl affection." 
 
 " She becomes you very much," replied Montague. 
 
 " Indeed.^ I never thought of it in that light, and that surely 
 should console me. Now, after this rest— that is, if you don't 
 really mind — I want to be personal again. I think you are 
 more interesting than my cat, beautiful as she is." 
 
 Was it not a fascinating voice, that voice of Mrs. Heather's ? 
 
 ^' What shall I tell you, then ? I am an only son. I angered 
 my father by my choice of a profession. I live in one of the 
 strongholds of Bohemia, and am not generally popular." 
 
 " Thank you ; but I didn't mean such details as those. I 
 wanted to hear a little more about your work — what you your- 
 self thought of your picture — if you were doing anything else as 
 well ; but if you don't wish to tell me any more, pray don't. I 
 suppose I ought never to have asked you." 
 
 She spoke with such grave, sweet dignity that Herbert, whom 
 we know to be impulsive, was mentally swept off his feet, and 
 exclaimed : 
 
 ^' There is nothing I would not tell you. You don't think I 
 have been rude, do you } " 
 
 "Yes, if you want me to speak the truth. I think you were 
 a little rude." 
 
 " And you will set me down as a prig, and never forgive me, 
 and— who knows, we might have been such good friends," 
 
 " And shall we not ? I have taken no offence." 
 
 " You have forgiven me, then ? " 
 
 " Don't be absurd. I have nothing to forgive ! " 
 
 At this juncture the conversation was cut short by the entrance 
 of Mr. Pinlake, who seemed meekly put out at finding another 
 visitor. As Montague took leave, he said : 
 
 " Shall you be at our friends, the Jacksons, Thursday week ?" 
 
 " Most decidedly I shall 1 This literary Hfe, which I suppose 
 bores you all very much, is to me something wonderful and 
 strange and delightful." 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 43 
 
 "Then we shall probably meet there ?" 
 
 When he reached home he found Mabel ready dressed to go 
 out with him to one of their quiet dinners. 
 
 "Well," she asked, as he stood with one arm thrown round 
 her neck, his fingers playing with the ends of her soft, dark 
 hair, "was she as fascinating as ever?" 
 
 " Oh, quite ! She certainly is a most charming and intel- 
 lectual woman. When it is known that we are married, I hope 
 you will be able to see a great deal of each other. Kiss me, my 
 dark-eyed beauty. Now, let us go ! " 
 
 So they do go, talking and laughing very happily, turning 
 over books at book-stalls, and looking in at old furniture shops. 
 At length they reach the restaurant for which they are bound. 
 There they partake of a modest, two-shilling table d'hote dinner, 
 with a bottle of champagne. After coffee, Herbert proposes a 
 stroll, and whither do they wander but to the very spot where 
 they first met. What a different night this one was to that 
 February one — of which the two were doubtless thinking. 
 There seemed now a soft-searching, compelling spirit of tender- 
 ness in the air. They walked back very silently, but it seemed 
 to Mabel that her husband never loved her so well as he did 
 that night. 
 
 It was a very pleasant memory that Montague entertained of 
 Mrs. Heather. Her voice teased him, like a subtle air of music 
 which ever eludes one's endeavours to capture it. If he could 
 once hear it again, he thought, it would cease thus to haunt him. 
 So when the next Monday came he resolved to look in upon her. 
 
 " What, again ?" said Mabel, when she heard of his intention. 
 
 " Why not t " he replied, gaily, brushing his hat as he spoke. 
 " She is an extremely nice woman, and then, what I am afraid 
 is still more to the point, she is a very rich woman, and, I 
 should fancy, a great picture-buyer. I have not been doing my 
 duty by you, my darling, in giving up society, as I have been 
 doing. But don't think I like it. Certainly, I would rather 
 talk to a woman like Mrs. Heather than to most of the women 
 I meet. You know too well how I love you to be jealous. 
 Good-bye for a little while, darling." 
 
 So he kisses her and goes. 
 
 When he reached Mrs. Heather's he found there a great 
 number of people. The room was full of flowers, and the 
 mistress of it was looking her queenliest. 
 
44 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 The first man to whom Montague spoke was Mr. Pinlake, 
 who observed, in a manner which was at once meek and 
 ostentatious : 
 
 " Really, I never thought I should have the pleasure of meet- 
 ing you so soon again. I suppose work is rather slack." 
 
 " Quite the reverse ! '^ replied Herbert, dryly. '^ I have left 
 my work at some sacrifice for the sole pleasure of improving 
 my acquaintance with Mrs. Heather. I see there are a lot of 
 people here that I know.'' And he moves on. 
 
 Presently great attention prevails while Mrs. Heather sings. 
 Her voice had neither the exquisite sweetness or perfect finish 
 of Mabel's, but there was a rare note in it which struck you— 
 a strange thrilling power that fascinated you. It rose and fell 
 fitfully, like a wind. She could not, of course, speak much to 
 any one person, and, as Montague had come solely for the 
 purpose of talking to her, he began internally to fume. He 
 had talked art and politics for over an hour with people who 
 rather bored him, and, as the rooms were still quite full, he went 
 to take leave. He had chosen his time, fortunately, for Mrs. 
 Heather was standing alone at a side-table, looking over a 
 portfolio of engravings for a particular one she wanted. 
 
 " How full your rooms are ! " he said. *' I am going to make 
 you one less.'' 
 
 " Don't ! " she answered, without looking up. " Stop till the 
 rest are gone, and then I will show you some really nice things.'' 
 "Do you think I want any bribe to stay ? " he replied. 
 " Of course I do, and a very heavy one too ! " 
 " Then, I may really stay till the rest are gone ? " 
 " May you .^ Haven't I just asked you ? Go and talk to 
 Miss Sprig, will you ? No one seems to be noticing her at all. 
 Will you? Thanks.'^ 
 
 " I will do anything I am told." 
 
 " Dear me ! how nice you must be. I don't find your sex 
 generally so obedient." 
 
 So he goes to make himself agreeable to Miss Sprig, which 
 he does very successfully, being in high good humour. In 
 course of time the guests do depart, leaving Pinlake and our 
 friend in possession. 
 
 " You are tired," said Montague, earnestly, looking fiill at 
 Mrs. Heather with those very eloquent eyes of his. 
 ** I don't think so." 
 
POR A SONG'S SAKE. . 45 
 
 "But I k/ioiu yov\ are." 
 
 " How grieved I am," says little Mr. Pinlake. " I think, Mr. 
 Montague, we had better follow the example of the others." 
 
 To which Mrs. Heather replies : " You will do nothing of the 
 kind ! " And when the bard pursues the matter further, she 
 says with her most queenly air : " Please, my dear Mr. Pin- 
 lake, don't say anything more about it. Don't you know, by 
 this time, that when I say a thing I mean it? " 
 
 This slight reproof does not altogether please the sensitive 
 poet, and before very long he takes himself off. 
 
 " An old friend of yours, isn't he 1 " asks Herbert. 
 
 " Oh, I have known him about a year. He is good enough 
 to believe in something about me. I am sure I don't know 
 what. Sometimes he bores me, but more often he amuses me. 
 And then you can't think in how many ways he makes himself 
 useful to me ! " 
 
 " What a happy fellow ! " said Montagiie. *' Can't / be 
 useful ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course you can 1 '^ 
 
 " What shall I do ? " 
 
 *' Show me your studio." 
 
 " I would, with pleasure, but 1 have nothing there worth 
 sliowing now. I have a few sketches, which I could bring you 
 if you cared to see them." 
 
 *' Thank you. I shall keep you to your word." 
 
 When he rose she said : 
 
 "Must you really go now. It is only a little after seven. I 
 don't dine till eight. Can't you stay till then ?" 
 
 " May I .^ " he replied, with unfeigned pleasure in his look 
 and voice. " I certainly will, if I may." 
 
 " I am glad you will, for at these great, crowded evenings one 
 gets no opportunity for anything like real talk, and I have a 
 hundred and one things I want to ask you, about books, 
 pictures, persons, disputed questions, and I don't know what 
 besides. I am so glad to find that you agree with me in think- 
 ing Tennyson the greatest living poet. Other poets, perhaps, 
 may have more robust intellects, but surely in supremacy of 
 vision he goes beyond them all. Then there is no stop of the 
 instrument which he has not mastered. His verse, which at 
 times can thunder, at other times will seem to have in it all the 
 wonderful quiet of the country just after sunset. I confess it is 
 
46 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 a quiet which depresses me, for I seem to feel through it the 
 spirit of a great, inconsolable sorrow." 
 
 " It is not that, I think," replied Montague, "but rather that 
 a peace so stainless and profound saddens us by making it so 
 apparent how different is the great peace of Nature from any 
 rest which we poor wanderers of the earth may hope to enjoy." 
 
 " I suppose that may be it," she answers, rather dreamily ; 
 ^' but, sitting here in this room, even, I feel an unutterable 
 melancholy to think of long ranges of low hills clothed with 
 quiet, and visible through the soft, summer twilight ; of wide, 
 green, voiceless pastures ; some small, uncertain note of bird 
 or insect faltering through the silence ; but for that it is so still 
 that you could almost fancy you heard the dew falling. Please 
 say something to make me cheerful again. Here is an oppor- 
 tunity for you to be useful ! " 
 
 It would be impossible to describe the charm of Mrs. 
 Heather's manners and conversation. She was emotional 
 without being sentimental, imaginative without being high- 
 flown, witty without being hard. The things she wore and the 
 things in her room were all exquisitely in harmony with 
 herself. 
 
 " I may come and see you again 1 " he said, when he rose to 
 
 go- 
 
 " I shall think it very kind of you if you will." 
 
 ** May I come often ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " May I come some afternoon when you are quite alone, and 
 bring you some of my sketches." 
 
 " I wish you would do that. Let us fix an afternoon, noW; 
 Shall we say next Tuesday ? " 
 
 *' That will do for me, perfectly." 
 
 So it was settled and they said '^good-bye" quite like old 
 friends. 
 
 Montague must have been walking in the streets for about 
 an hour before he became aware of the fact. It also occurred 
 to him that he had had no dinner. Why was he walking in this 
 manner, like a vessel drifting ? Was it that his mind was pre- 
 occupied with the thought of Mrs. Heather ? Very likely, and 
 why not? Her conversation had greatly interested him ; but 
 probably he had kept Mabel waiting for her dinner, and his 
 heart smote him, as, without any more delay, he turned his 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. A,1 
 
 steps homewards. Of course Mable had been waiting for him. 
 It is a bad sign when wives give up this fooUsh fond habit. 
 Herbert was genuinely disturbed, but when he showed her how 
 greatly to his interest as a painter the time so spent had been, 
 she seemed to see it quite in the same light. But was he sure that 
 she was really as satisfied with it as she said she was ? Through 
 his life he had known very little about women, but he had 
 always heard that they were jealous. It seemed to him half as 
 if Mabel were trying to keep something from him. 
 
 " Is anything troubling you, my darling 1 " he said, very ten- 
 derly to her. *' You couldn't be such a fooHsh child as to be 
 jealous of any one, could you, Mab ?" 
 
 " No, not if you are quite sure you love me the same as you 
 used to do," she answered, a little gravely, the warm colour rising 
 in spite of herself. 
 
 *' Love you the same ?" he responded, passionately. *' I love 
 you more than ever. My love for you grows with every minute 
 of every day ! " 
 
 " How you will love me, then, in twenty years' time, won't 
 you } " she answered, with one of her delightful smiles. 
 
 " Don't you like me to love you more and more every day, 
 Mab?" 
 
 ^' Yes ! Love me all you can, and you can never love me more 
 than I want to be loved," she said, shyly, even reverently. 
 
 He knew her voice to be the dearest and sweetest in the whole 
 world, but it did not shut out, now, another voice, whose quick 
 tones lingered in his ear. While he believed most thoroughly 
 everything he said to Mabel, while he fondled her dark hair, 
 while he called her by every endearing name he could think of, 
 he was smiling to himself to remember what a look of pleasure 
 and surprise had passed over Mrs. Heather's face when he had 
 asked so earnestly for permission to come again soon. If a man 
 is at all impressed by a woman, the most dangerous thing for 
 his peace of mind that she can do is to assume that he is further 
 gone about her than he is. Provided he sees that his admira- 
 tion flatters her, the position is at once made easy for him. 
 Tacitly, some rare privileges have been accorded to him. We 
 are all of us experimentalists, and the experiment of a long 
 clasp of the hand at parting, or of an appealing look, or of some 
 subtle 'speech— all these come very naturally to men to try, 
 and if, in the beginning, they said perhaps a little more than 
 
4^^ FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 they meant, they often end by not behig able to say as much as 
 they would. 
 
 "Put your things on, Mab," said Herbert; " late as it is, I 
 should like a stroll ! '' 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MORE OF MRS. FLORENCE HEATHER. 
 
 When a wife proves unfaithful to her husband, or vice versa, or 
 when one of the two persons engaged to be married finds else- 
 where, before the holy event is consummated, 
 
 " Metal more attractive,'' 
 
 the excuse generally made is that love came like a thief in the 
 night, and before one had time to cry " Thief !" the treasure of 
 a heart had been stolen. For my own part, I consider this ex- 
 cuse a most utter sham. I believe Love to be a thief who lets 
 us know very well what he is about. Don't you think, if we 
 listen carefully, we can hear him picking locks, and forcing 
 bolts ? I am not even sure that, as he comes lightfooted up the 
 stairs, he does not come singing a sweet old tune — the tune 
 which has been heard ever since the world began. Somehow 
 there is an excitement in fearing that this old thief is knocking 
 about in the vicinity of our treasure room. If we once owned 
 this fact to ourselves, many of us would have to spring up, 
 vanquish him on the spot, or fly. So we say : " Oh, this is not 
 Love ! " and we lie at rest. Perhaps, indeed, when our treasure 
 has been taken off, and handed in where it has been repudiated 
 as stolen property, we may rise too late, wring our hands, and 
 cry shame on the traitor. But he only laughs, the sly rascal : 
 he knows well enough that no policeman can take him into 
 custody. Don't you think Love was on larceny bent, in a certain 
 case we know of? Ah, me, but I have my fears ! 
 
 The next Tuesday found Montague wdth his sketches in Mrs. 
 Heather's drawing-room. He had hoped for a long ictc-a-tete 
 with her, but in this he was to be disappointed, for they had 
 only just begun to look at the sketches when Mr. Pinlake was 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 49 
 
 announced. The smile on Mrs. Heather's face showed very 
 plainly that she had noted the not very amiable expression 
 which darkened Montague's as the bard, with a sweet look, 
 almost ran into the room. 
 
 " You're just in time to see some of Mr. Montague's sketches 
 which he has kindly brought to show me," remarked Mrs. 
 Heather. 
 
 ^' Then I am doubly glad I came," said the poet. '^ Do you 
 know it was quite impossible for me to come yesterday? I 
 assure you I am speaking the truth." To which the lady replied 
 that she could quite believe it. 
 
 Then they turned to the sketches. 
 
 " How I like this," said Mrs. Heather. She was looking at 
 the drawing of an old country church, seen in brilliant summer 
 sunlight. 
 
 "It has," she went on, " that pathetic look of mild fatuity 
 which is, I think, just as remarkable in old places as in old 
 people — especially when you see them basking in a strong light." 
 
 '' How perfectly true what you say is," sighed Mr. Pinlake, 
 lifting his eyes heavenward as he spoke. He was always the 
 first to applaud Mrs. Heather's points, and reminds me, in that, 
 of a good-natured fellow, who, every evening during its run, 
 witnessed the performance of a friend's comedy, in order that 
 he might, as he said, establish the points. This was done by 
 applauding loudly, and convulsing himself with laughter at all 
 the best jokes, an example which the audience could not choose 
 but follow. How he managed to laugh so well every night at 
 the jokes he so well knew is a mystery to me, but that he did 
 so is upon record. 
 
 "A French peasant girl washing clothes in a brook," ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Heather, describing the next sketch she came to. 
 " Did you ever see water quite so blue, Mr. Montague ? I don't 
 think I ever did. Don't you think, Mr. Pinlake, the arm of the 
 girl is too big for her body ? One doesn't see, poor thing, quite 
 how she can ever manage to raise it.'' 
 
 Of course Mr. Pinlake perfectly agreed, and moreover, 
 laughed sweetly and lowly, and rubbed his little plump hands 
 together — proceedings which were not enjoyed by the artist, who 
 was not lacking in sensitiveness to healthy criticism. Any- 
 thing that Mrs. Heather had said directly to him, if he had not 
 liked, he could still have borne with perfect good humour ; but 
 
 5 
 
50 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 that she should appeal to Piiilake about his work, that Pinlahe 
 should sit in judgment upon it, that he should laugh at his ex- 
 pense—all this was more than he could bear ; and let us remem- 
 iDcr, too, that his temper had been very early disturbed by the 
 appearance of the gentleman in question. 
 
 ^* As it's by far the best work I've brought," he remarked, 
 moodily, " and seems to afford you so much amusement, I do 
 not think there is any use in your going further through the 
 collection." 
 
 Mrs. Heather raised her eyes, with a rather surprised look in 
 them, and said, very quietly : 
 
 ^' I think you're mistaken. If you will allow me, I will turn 
 over a few more ? " 
 
 To which Montague replied of course he had no choice in the 
 matter. 
 
 *^This is delicious !" she said, "and this," turning to another, 
 ^'how very beautiful it is. Mr. Pinlake, is this not divinely 
 lovely ? " 
 
 " Oh, quite supremely beautiful," he replied. " If you thought 
 one girl's arm. out of drawing, you must own that this lady's foot 
 is just in proportion to her form." 
 
 But Montague knew the meaning of their speech. His 
 quick eyes detected the satire that lurked in Mrs. Heather's 
 smile, and the look with which she glanced at Pinlake as she 
 spoke. 
 
 ^^ Why don't you say the truth } " he cried. 
 
 " Really, Mr. Montague, you are the first gentleman who has 
 accused me of not telling the truth." 
 
 " No ; of course, I don't mean that," he returned, '' but you 
 are silent about the things you don't like." 
 
 ^' You're an odd man. You neither like mild censure nor 
 strong praise," she remarked. " Oh, you painters and poets ! 
 What shall we do to please you ? " 
 
 " I think you always please us when you let us show you our 
 work, and tell us what you really think of it," observed Mr. 
 Pinlake, in his very blandest tone of voice. 
 
 *'That does seem to have been the result in the present case," 
 she said, with a smile. " I tell you what, Mr. Pinlake, you 
 must come very soon, and read me some more of your forth- 
 coming volume, and, mind, you must be pleased with everything 
 I say, just to reinstate me in my own good opinion ! " 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 51 
 
 But though they tried to talk and laugh there was a constraint 
 upon the little company. Presently Mr. Pinlake 'said he had 
 another call to make, and so took his leave. As soon as the 
 door had been closed on him, Montague took up the sketches 
 that were lying on the table, and tore them in pieces. 
 
 "What are you doing that for.'^" asked Mrs. Heather, in a 
 voice of studied indifference. 
 
 " Because," he replied, " because you laughed at me, because 
 you must appeal to him. You do know about my art, and so 
 have a right to speak ; but what does he know, a miserable, 
 little, inconsiderate poem-monger, who grows virtues to flavour 
 his rhymes with — Patience, Unselfishness, Trust in man, and 
 who knows what good things besides, and as he turns out poems 
 by the ream, of course the stock of these merits is exhausted. 
 None left, I assure you, for domestic use." 
 
 " Pm sorry you did that," looking at the torn sketches on the 
 table. " Some of them were as good as they coitld be ; they 
 didn't please me all equally ; and many, whether you like to 
 hear it or not, were horribly out of drawing." 
 
 " Have I been behaving badly this afternoon?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes — very badly. You have been rude and sulky; but I 
 make some allowance for you. I saw how your face clouded 
 over when your aversion came in." 
 
 " He had only quite recently became my aversion, but now 
 he is for ever hanging about. One can never have a quiet word 
 with you. Well, I am punished for my ill temper. There lies, 
 torn up, much of the work of three years. Do you want me to 
 go now, or may I stay with you a little longer?" 
 
 " At seven I must dress for a dinner party. I will be very 
 much pleased if you will stay till then." 
 
 So he grows strangely tranquil, and sits down. Her beauty 
 ever more and more draws his eyes with a resistless fascination. 
 After a pause, he says : " May I tell you something ? " 
 
 " I suppose you may, but I should think you know best." 
 
 " I want to tell you," he says, "that you have the most beauti- 
 ful face in the world." 
 
 " Thank you. We are all vain alike, you know." 
 
 " Now will you answer me a question ?" he goes on. 
 
 " Very likely ; I am sure I will if I can." 
 
 " Tell me, then, should you not have known that if I had said 
 nothing about it ? " 
 
52 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 " Must I answer that quite frankly ?" 
 
 " You must." 
 
 " Well, then, I did think that, after we had been together a 
 little time, from some cause or other you did rather like to look 
 at me." 
 
 '^ I knew you couldn't help knowing it," he answered, and his 
 looks became rhapsodies. "You make life seem so painfully 
 short," he went on. " If I were to see you for years and years 
 how many new beauties, I wonder, should I find out in every 
 hour t " 
 
 ** Now, don't be absurd," she answered, but not as if ill- 
 pleased. " I think the conversation is getting a little frivolous. 
 Suppose you read me part of a poem some one has been kind 
 enough to send me. I can't make out, for the life of me, what 
 it's all about ; but you're clever, and can, I've no doubt." 
 
 How swiftly the hour and a half goes ! The little French 
 clock on the mantelpiece strikes seven, in its sweet, silvery 
 voice. 
 
 Montague gets up to go. He holds her hand for quite a long 
 time, looks at her with a lingering, earnest look. Then he says 
 Good-bye as if he hated very much to say the words, and she 
 asks : 
 
 " When may I come to the studio ? " 
 
 "When there is something to show you. Don't you think a 
 visit from you will be something to work for .? Good-bye." 
 
 As Hannah, Mrs. Heather's maid, helps to get her mistress 
 ready, she exclaims : 
 
 " Why, ma'am, what a lovely colour you have in your cheeks 
 to-night, and your eyes are so bright. I know all the gentlemen 
 at the party will be in love with you." 
 
 At which Mrs. Heather tells her not to be foolish, but, looking 
 in the glass, is obliged to own to herself that the remarks are 
 not ill-founded. Few women can be indifferent to the homage 
 and admiration of a man who is anything in the world's eyes, 
 and when, besides this, he is a handsome man, with a manner 
 strangely magnetic towards those by whom he is attracted, the 
 result is often to cause a thrill stronger even than that of gratified 
 vanity. 
 
 As Herbert walked away from Brook Street he asked himself, 
 seriously, if his interest Jn that quarter were not growing too 
 strong, but he most satisfactorily answered the question in the 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 53 
 
 negative. He would not disguise the truth from himself, and 
 why should he ? He worshipped Mrs. Heather's beauty. He 
 worshipped her intellect. For Mabel he had a warm, petting 
 love. He had no real love for Mrs. Heather, but he worshipped 
 her, and to worship was good and pleasant. Whither he was 
 tending he scarcely knew, till he found he was at the steps of 
 his long disused club. He turned in, ordered a nice little 
 dinner, partook freely of good wine, and was very brilliant 
 afterwards in the smoking-room, where he remained till the small 
 hours. 
 
 As Montague walked home it seemed to him that the May 
 dawn was feverishly warm. The little wind there was felt like 
 a breath upon his face, an opinion in which people who 
 passed him, shivering, evidently did not concur. Standing in 
 his room, that early May morning, he thought how often in long 
 past days he had stood thus in the dawning. Among letters 
 and cards of invitation which lay upon the table was a line of 
 good-night from Mabel. It was a dear, tender little letter. 
 When he had read it he kissed it passionately, and did not put 
 it with its companions in a drawer out of sight, and labelled 
 " Mabel's Letters." No ! this letter he thrust into the breast 
 pocket of his coat. Was the man fool enough to think that a 
 little inked paper could stand between him and a new dart — if 
 love were willed to wing me.^ All that day he painted away hard 
 at his picture, which was making rapid progress, and when Mab 
 asked where were his sketches, he replied that Mrs. Heather 
 was keeping them for a day or two. It was the first untruth he 
 had ever told her, but when he came to remember that among 
 the sketches he had torn up were many he had made of Mabel 
 in the early days, and by which they both set great store, he 
 saw in what a tremendous rage he must have been. A man of 
 moderate common sense, seeing danger ahead, would have fled 
 from it, but a gentleman of Mr. Montague's superior wisdom 
 determined on pursuing precisely the opposite course. He 
 would see all he could of Mrs. Heather ; he would tire himself 
 of her, and if, when the season was over, he were not tired, then 
 good-bye. If any nonsense had crept into his head, the sea- 
 winds and the sea- waves would soon take it out. What a 
 different life was the one into which he now pUmged to that 
 which he had been leading ! All the day he painted till late, 
 then he put on his evening dress, and dined at the club, or he 
 
54 I'^OR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 ate a hurried chop at home, while Mabel would busy herself in 
 getting his things ready. I wonder, was she very fond of these 
 dress clothes? Anyhow, she did her duty by them. How 
 carefully she brushed them ! How neatly she inserted the studs 
 in his shirt ! Did he think much about her, and the lonely 
 times she must have had ? Not very much, I am afraid, and 
 then, why should he .-^ Was she not always cheerful? Did he 
 not still kiss her from time to time ? Did he not call her by the 
 old pet names ? Sometimes he would say to her : 
 
 " I shall be glad, my darling, for your sake and mine, when 
 this season is over. It won't be very long now, dear, before it 
 is, and it is certainly bearing fruit ; my hands are quite full of 
 commissions. My picture in the academy is a real success. 
 Who knows whether, in a little time, I may be rich enough to 
 acknowledge you my wife openly, and leave the old gentleman 
 to give or keep his money, just as he pleases. By the way, Mab, 
 could you play the piano, if you had one ? " 
 
 " Yes, I could play," she answered. 
 
 " You can ? Then what a fool I have been ! You shall have 
 one in to-morrow, dear. So you won't be lonely any more then." 
 And with a kiss, and a bright smile, he left her. Very handsome 
 he looked. The double life of work and excitement that he was 
 leading told on him, visibly but becomingly. His handsome 
 face looked handsomer for being extremely pale, and his eyes 
 were almost of unnatural brilliancy. Wherever Mrs. Heather 
 was, there was he, till all society talked of it. And Mabel, what 
 of her ? Had she any trouble in her heart ? Look at her this 
 June night, as she stands before her husband, fixing a flower in 
 his coat. He always wears a rose. Do you think she says in 
 her heart, in the words of our great poet : 
 
 " I shall never be friends again witli roses.'* 
 
 "Shall I do, Mab P'Mie asks. 
 
 " Yes, dear,^' she answers, cheerfully ; **you look quite irresis- 
 tible. You won't leave a lady in the room heart-whole ! " 
 
 He tells her not to be foolish, and goes. In another half-hour 
 he is making his way through a crowded room to where Mrs. 
 Heather is standing, with a little court round her, as usual. As 
 he approaches, the little court breaks up. As soon as he comes 
 she seems to care for no other admiration. 
 
 " Horribly bored, aren't you ?" he asks. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 55 
 
 " Not now," she replies. 
 
 Let us leave these people, the smell of flowers fading in the 
 gaslight, the wonderful pre-Raphaelite women, the din of voices, 
 the intellect, the love-making, the deceit, the jealousy, and all 
 the rest of it, and go back to the house in Museum Street ; go 
 gently upstairs. Faintly you hear the notes of a piano—now 
 they cease — let us enter — for are not you, as I, Ol reader, on 
 the free list of spirits ? Mabel is sitting at the piano, bowed 
 over the keys, her face in her hands ; she is sobbing to herself 
 —she, who once sang so merrily. Is she crying like this, only 
 because she is left so much alone? When Montague comes 
 home in the early dawning, she will be placidly asleep, or pre- 
 tend to be. Sometimes, thus lying, she will hear him pacing up 
 and down the studio, having taken off his boots so as not to 
 wake her. She will smell the odour of his pipe, then she will 
 hear him cast himself on the sofa, and listen to him breathing 
 heavily, as people do when sleep is caused by exhaustion. Then 
 she will get up and throw a rug over him, and look, with what 
 a love, at his pale, handsome face. Perhaps she will venture 
 to kiss his hand. Was it only her fancy, that once as he walked 
 to and fro, she heard him cry to himself : '* Ah ! great god of 
 love, help me, and let this thing not be I " or did she dream it ? 
 — she dreams of him so much. She dresses herself quietly, takes 
 very little breakfast, then goes out — on domestic duties bent. 
 When she comes in she thinks it is time to wake Herbert, so 
 she wakes him with a kiss, and has a cup of strong coffee ready 
 for him. He calls her a dear little woman, drinks it off, springs 
 up, and having divested himself of his evening clothes, and taken 
 a cold bath, seems, for the time being, to have washed off all 
 the dust of society, and is quite disposed for something to eat. 
 After which he gets to work. 
 
 " Mab," he says one day, " Mrs. Heather and her friend Mrs. 
 Jackson are coming to-morrow to see my picture. See that I 
 have a nice little lunch for them, please. You, poor child, will 
 have to keep in the next room. You won't be able to see Mrs. 
 Heather, but if it will be of any interest to you, you can hear 
 her voice. There is no chance of your confusing it with Mrs. 
 Jackson's, for, like herself, Mrs. Jackson's voice is naturally 
 shallow, and artificially sweet." Mabel smiles assent, and 
 promises to see to the lunch. 
 The next day is a sultry, slumberous summer day. Immense 
 
56 FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 heat of vailed sunlight seems to weigh upon the land. Even the 
 strawberry-sellers called out their wares exhaustedly. About 
 all the arrangements for the lunch Montague was extremely 
 fidgety — nothing seemed to please him. At length Mabel said : 
 
 " Dear, don't you think you're a little hard to please ? " 
 
 To which he answered with a sigh, that if everything else 
 went wrong, at least he knew the wine was good. 
 
 ** There, there ! Mabel," he said, with some irritability, "no 
 one's blaming you, it's not your fault, you did your best ; but, 
 of course, you don't know about these things. I know how 
 differently it would be done at Luck's. Oh, for Heaven's sake, 
 don't look as if you were going to cry ! " 
 
 " I am not going to cry," she answered. ** I suppose it might 
 be better, but I think it's very well. Isn't it time for them to 
 come ? " 
 
 If he had known what pride she had taken for getting up that 
 lunch of his, his natural kindness of heart would have kept him 
 from finding fault with it. 
 
 Just then there was a sharp knock at the street door, and 
 Mabel fled to the room, from which soon .she heard a low rustle 
 of dresses, and a voice, which she knew at once, from his de- 
 scription of it, to be Mrs. Heather's, said : 
 
 " We have brought you a few flowers, Mr. Montague, just to 
 keep us in your mind a little after we are gone." 
 
 " Do you think," he answered, " that my memory will need 
 any stimulant ? " 
 
 ** Now, please show us the picture," she soon said. 
 
 " Here it is, then, as you will see, not quite finished, though 
 very nearly." 
 
 Mrs. Jackson is instantaneous with her verdict. She pro- 
 nounces it to be a lovely thing — knew from the very first that 
 he could do fine work. 
 
 *^But what ^o you think.? "he asks of Mrs. Heather, with 
 painful impatience. " Have I succeeded or not } Let me know 
 my fate ! '^ 
 
 '* You hava succeeded," she says, speaking under her breath. 
 " I have never, in all my life, seen such a splendidly tragic 
 face. The eyes have just the look you described to me, when 
 you told me what you wished to have. It is the face of one 
 waiting quietly for the end, for the blow which she knows must 
 fall and crush her." 
 
FOR A SONCS SAKE. 57 
 
 " Of course," puts in Mrs. Jackson, " that's the great point of 
 he picture. You see she can't escape her fate." 
 
 " And what a beautiful face it is ! " says Mrs. Heather. " You 
 remember that afternoon you were so cross with me, and tore 
 up all your sketches. This is the same face I saw in many of 
 those." 
 
 Thus at length, and in this unexpected way, Mabel heard the 
 truth, for when again and again she had questioned her husband 
 about the sketches, he replied always that he could not remem- 
 ber to bring them away. " Not if she tied a knot in his hand- 
 kerchief.^ " Not if she tied fifty ! " Now she heard the truth. 
 I wonder how she liked it. 
 
 " It is," he rejoined. ^' She's by far the best model I have ! " 
 
 What more was said about the picture need not here be re- 
 lated. In due time the lunch was served, and there was a 
 clatter of knives and forks, and a popping of corks, and a great 
 deal of laughter. Luncheon over, Montague puts before Mrs. 
 Jackson a pile of sketches. 
 
 *' I want you," he says, " if you will take so much trouble, to 
 go very carefully through these, marking the ones that you 
 like." 
 
 Mrs. Heather is about to join in examining the sketches, 
 when he gives her a look which she knows now how to 
 interpret. 
 
 " I brought them all to you long ago," he says. " Please 
 take this chair," giving her the one that stands most in shadow 
 in the room. Then he throws himself on the ground at her 
 feet. " Thank you for coming," he says, in a tone of voice only 
 just audible. 
 
 *^ Thank you for letting me come," replies she, in a voice so 
 strangely and so subtly sweet. There is no ray of the coquette 
 -in this woman. She draws and holds you simply by that mighty 
 power of attraction which is hers. 
 
 " At what time have you told the carriage to call I " he asks, 
 presently. 
 
 " What a strange question to ask 1 " she answers, with a 
 laugh. " At five o'clock. Poor fellow ! did he think he wasn't 
 going to be bored so long I " 
 
 " I want to know how much time I have in which to realize 
 that you are here. It is now just half-past three. One hour and 
 a half— that is all ! " 
 
58 l^OR A SONG'S SAK^. 
 
 " And won't it seem a long time to you ! " she asks. 
 
 " Don't mock me," he answers — "don't ! Do you know that 
 I have never seen you looking quite so beautiful as you are 
 looking to-day ! " 
 
 " But you tell me that every time 1 " 
 
 *' Because every time it is the truth ! Give that to me," he 
 says, putting up his hand for the rose she is wearing in her dress. 
 
 She glances around to see if Mrs. Jackson is properly occu- 
 pied with her sketches, and, finding that lady is not looking, she 
 takes the flower from her dress and gives it to him. I am 
 bound to say of Mrs. Jackson that she made a most desirable 
 gooseberry. If she did not understand geniuses, she under- 
 stood lovers perfectly. If she lacerated men of imagination by 
 her praise, she meant well. 
 
 " That picture makes me very proud of you," said Mrs. 
 Heather. 
 
 '* Does it?" he cried, in a passionate outburst of delight. 
 " Don't you know I only paint now to win your approval ?" 
 
 " Is that quite true?" 
 
 *' Most solemnly it is.'^ 
 
 The hour and a half flies, and at the expiration of it Mrs. 
 Jackson's carriage is announced. 
 
 " May I drive back with you ? *' he asks. 
 
 " I wish you would." 
 
 " I will then." 
 
 As they are on their way to Tavistock Square, Mrs. Jackson 
 asks : 
 
 *'Now, won't you come in and have dinner with us, Mr. 
 Montague ? Florence is going to spend the evening with us. 
 Have you any other engagement ?" 
 
 " I have another engagement," he answers, " but I will break 
 it. I am due at Lady Whittier's at eight, to dinner." 
 
 •' Surely you wouldn't disappoint her?^^ asks Mrs. Jackson. 
 '* Such an important person as she is for all painters to stand 
 well with." 
 
 Mrs. Heather says nothing, but there is a wonderful look of 
 triumph on her face. 
 
 " It's well worth it,'' he answers, gaily, and then he says to 
 the coachman : " Stop at the next telegraph office you come to." 
 
 They came to one very soon ; he gets down and sends the 
 following dispatch : 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 59 
 
 " So sorry. Quite prostrated. Have hoped against hope. 
 Forgive, but don't forget." 
 
 ; When they reach the house, Mrs. Jackson flutters upstairs, 
 and Montague and Mrs. Heather are left together in the large 
 dravving-roorn^ full of flowers, from the scent of which all the 
 air is heavy. When two persons sit down very near each other, 
 and say nothing for several minutes, I opine that things have 
 gone pretty far between them. At length he speaks : ** Shall 
 you forget this day 1 " 
 
 " No, never ! " she answers. 
 
 " And I — God knows /shall not ! " he replies. 
 
 Then silence again, which he is the first to break : 
 
 " Will you let me thank you ? '' 
 
 " For what ? " 
 
 *' Just for being— {qx sweetening life, as the rose sweetens all 
 the air around it." 
 
 " I don't think," she said, a beautiful smile coming round 
 the corners of her lips, " that I want much thanks on that 
 ground." 
 
 At that moment Mr. Jackson came in. 
 
 That evening Montague thought nothing of the future; he 
 gave himself up wholly to the delight of worshipping ; his looks 
 were more passionate than the most passionate of written love 
 poems. He would have liked all the world to have seen his 
 adoration. It was past one before he left the house. He didn't 
 go to his club, nor did he go home ; but he walked about the 
 streets smoking. He could not disguise from himself any longer 
 how awfully he was fascinated by this woman. The season was 
 nearly over, and was he tired of her ? Did she not every day 
 acquire a stronger hold upon him ? What was he doing ? 
 Whither was he drifting ? He could never marry her. Then 
 he thought of his wife, who so loved him, who had served him 
 so faithfully. Should he be less a man than Jim Bludso, and he 
 quoted aloud the words of that fine American poet, Captain John 
 Hay : 
 
 " He seen his duty .1 dead sure thing, 
 And went for it thar and then 1 " 
 
 He would be a man, yet ; he would go for his duty In the 
 same way j he would see Mrs. Heather no more ; he would 
 
6o FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 return to his wife ; and, saying to himself : *' Never again, never 
 again," he went back to Museum Street. 
 
 " You didn't come back to dress for Lady Whittier's," said 
 Mabel, the next morning. " I suppose you didn't go ?" 
 
 " No, I sent a telegram. Really, I didn't feel up to it. I have 
 done with society for this season, and while I'm putting the last 
 touches to my picture, Mab, we'll have a nice, quiet week or 
 two, and then for France ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LOST. 
 
 So Montague turned to domesticity, to the old life with Mabel. 
 The early part of the day he gave to his work, the rest of it he 
 devoted to her. They went to the old places, roved about Rich- 
 mond Park just as they had been used to do. Did he know 
 how changed he was ? Did he realize how feverish his gaiety 
 was, or how long were his silences 1 So taken up was he in the 
 battle he w^as fighting, that he never noticed how changed she 
 was. Only once, when he became conscious that he had been 
 silent for a very long time, he found her eyes fixed on his with a 
 look of infinite sadness. 
 
 " Is anything the matter that you look so strangely, Mab } '' 
 he exclaimed, almost sharply, with the guilty self-knowledge 
 which often makes us unjust. " I thought you would enjoy 
 yourself, and be happy. Don't you like coming out with me } " 
 
 *' Yes, of course I do, and there is nothing the matter. Per- 
 haps the sun has affected my head for a few minutes. Don't be 
 cross, dear, you never used to be." 
 
 " I never used to be ! '' he muttered, and then to himself he 
 said : " I never used to be in hell ! " 
 
 ** Look here, Mabel, I have gone through a good deal this 
 season — more than you know of; my nerves are unstrung. If 
 at times I seem strange, you must bear with me as best you 
 can." 
 
 ** I will," she cried, and putting both her arms round his neck, 
 kissed him with one of the old, long, close, clinging kisses. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 6l 
 
 So a fortnight passed, and during that time he had not once 
 seen or heard from Mrs. Heather. He was wild for a sight of 
 her, as an opium-eater is for his opium, if some hand has de- 
 prived him of it. Brain and soul were painfully wide-awake. 
 As one in fever tosses and turns, and finds no rest anywhere, so 
 was it with him, who could find no rest, no comfort, no mental 
 posture of ease. 
 
 It was the night of Mrs. Jackson's last reception. To guard 
 himself from going to it, Montague took a stall at the opera. 
 He was passionately fond of music, and he never in all his life 
 made a greater mistake than this. The music heated his blood 
 like wine. It was like a wonderful light of sound in which even 
 things glorious were still more glorified. He was consumed by 
 a fire of longing to see Florence Heather. He agonized just 
 once more to hear the sound of her voice, just once more to feel 
 the touch of her hand. The opera over, he strolled away in the 
 direction of Museum Street ; still he kept saying to himself : 
 " There is time yet to see her ! " Should he not — just one more 
 last time.'* He stopped suddenly for a moment, on fire with 
 happiness at the thought. " Yes ! '' he said, and then *^ No ! '^ 
 and then, " Come what may, I ivillP So he called a hansom 
 cab, and springing in, promised the driver three times his fare 
 to go with all speed to Tavistock Square. I wonder what people 
 lounging about the door-step thought as the furiously-going han- 
 som drev/ up in front of the house ? There was a goodly number 
 of carriages waiting — among them Mrs. Heather's. His heart 
 gave one great bound. He should see her, then. He went up 
 the stairs, but leaned against the door-post, weak and trembling, 
 as once again he caught sight of the beautiful face, and the 
 queenly figure. In a moment he had made his way to her. 
 
 " Is it a ghost ? " she asked. *' You look as white as one. 
 What is the matter ? " 
 
 " I thought I mightn't be in time to see you," he replied, 
 faintly. 
 
 " You haven't wanted to see me this last fortnight," she an- 
 swered, with a rather scornful, incredulous smile. 
 
 " Don't let us stop here," he said, " the air is stifling. Come 
 into the conservatory. We can have it to ourselves. Come ! " 
 
 So they went, and, as usual, became the topic of conversation. 
 
 '* And I haven't wanted to sec you much this fortnight ?" he 
 began, when they were alone. 
 
62 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 ^' Not very much," she replied. 
 
 "Do you believe what you're saying? "he asked, fixing his 
 burning eyes upon her. 
 
 " I scarcely know, you're so strange to-night, What is the 
 matter ? '^ 
 
 " I'm mad ! " he rejoined. " I must have been very mad, in- 
 deed, when I could think that some singing voices and a pretty 
 jingle could divert me from coming after you. Yes, I've come 
 from the opera," 
 
 " Herbert ! " she said, with an unmistakable thrill and tender- 
 ness in her voice, "why should you wish to keep away from me ?" 
 Her hand for a moment dropped in his, in a sudden transport 
 he bent down, and pressed a long kiss on her superb bare arm. 
 There was a flush on her face, but not of resentment. 
 
 " We must stay here no longer," she said. " Come to me to- 
 morrow afternoon." 
 
 So they went back to the drawing-room. Herbert was in a 
 frame of mind hard to describe. His infatuation— even now he 
 would not call it love — had so possessed him that the possibihty 
 of the object of his adoration becoming moved in her turn had 
 never for one moment occurred to him. In his wildest moods 
 he has comforted himself by thinking that she could not be 
 harmed by his worship. Mabel should never know he had ever 
 cared about another woman. If he were mad, then on him, and on 
 him alone, would fall the consequences of his madness. Now, 
 he had said more than ever before ; and he saw that she loved 
 him ; regarded him in the light of an accepted lover. That she 
 should love him stung him with an exquisite rapture ; that he 
 should so have wronged her made him wild with mingled pride 
 and passion and pain, and a strange feverish delight. He was 
 fairly intoxicated. As he handed Mrs. Heather to her carriage, 
 she said, and with a look in her eyes which he" had never seen 
 there before : " To-morrow, then ? " 
 
 " To-morrow ! " he echoed. Then humming gaily, as men do 
 sometimes, with a sort of desperate courage, he went into the 
 smoking-room. Did any one there notice how his hand shook 
 when he poured out a bumper of Burgundy ? Through that 
 night he was silent and brilliant by turns. When all but himself 
 were gone, he trespassed on his host's hospitality, as he had done 
 not infrequently in his bachelor days, for a few hours' rest on 
 the sofa. 
 
FOR A SONGS SAKE, 63 
 
 The servants of that pleasant and Bohemian establishment 
 never knew whom they might find in the smoking-room. After 
 a short, sound sleep, Montague awoke. He looked at his watch 
 ^t was a little after ten. He buttoned his Hght overcoat, so as 
 to hide his evening dress, and left the house. How many times 
 before had he left it in this way — often with a splitting headache, 
 but always with a light heart. Now, neither head nor heart were at 
 ease. Between Mr. Jackson's smoking-room — and I am bound 
 to say of that house that it was the Bohemian's sanctuary— and 
 his own room, what a difference there was, he thought, as he 
 entered his home. What a pure atmosphere pervaded it. The 
 windows stood wide open. A large Morris jar full of sweet - 
 smelling flowers was on the table. 
 
 " Why, dear, I thought you would be home early, last night," 
 said Mabel, coming in from the next room. " Didn't you go to 
 the opera, after all 1 " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I went," he replied, " but I thought when it was 
 over that Jackson would be taking offence if I didn't show up at 
 his last evening, so I went, and, of course, we made a night of 
 it. Get everything ready, Mab ; we'll fly the day after to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " What shall we fly from ? " she questions ; and he answers 
 almost savagely : 
 
 *' From the hell of this life ? " 
 
 He throws himself on the sofa, and she comes and sits beside 
 him. 
 
 '^ You look ill, my poor boy," she says, and, laying her 
 hand upon his forehead, she adds : " How hot your poor head 
 is!" 
 
 Her sweetness, and the touch of her hand are more than he 
 can bear. He cries out : 
 
 *' Don't, Mabel, it burns too much to be touched ! " Then, 
 after a pause : " Don't mind me, my dear, I shall be better 
 soon." 
 
 Later on, when he has changed his clothes, he announces 
 his intention of taking a long walk, and seeing what that will 
 do for him. 
 
 *' I may or may not be home to dinner," he says — *^ but most 
 likely not." 
 
 Mr. Montague's long walk, as the reader may imagine, ter- 
 minated at a certain house in Brook Street. The door of Mrs, 
 
64 FOR A SONGS SAKE, 
 
 Heather's boudoir, in which no man has till now set foot, 
 closes, and these two, for the first time, stand face to face as 
 lovers. He opens his arms, and she comes into them simply, 
 as if they were her rightful home, first, he touches her soft, 
 flower-scented hair, as her head rests against his shoulder ; 
 then their lips meet, and by the summer of her kiss he knows 
 the desperate ardour of her nature. Spring weather, at its 
 brightest and intensest, is totally distinct from the larger heats 
 of summer— heats that at times burn with white light, at times 
 are sombre and pregnant with imminent storm. So much differ- 
 ence is there between passion in girlhood and passion in mature 
 womanhood. 
 
 " You love me, Florence ? " 
 
 " Should I be in your arms if I did not ? Some men," she 
 went on, " have been foolish about me, but no one ever loved 
 me as I wished to be loved till you came. It was the way in 
 which you love me that first made me love you." 
 
 His heart cried out within him, should he not tell her, there 
 and then ? No ; he had gone too far. Out of all they must 
 lose, that afternoon, at least, should be theirs. She was sitting 
 on the sofa now ; he, in his favourite attitude, at her feet. 
 
 " Tell me again and again how you love me 1 '' she says, 
 bending down. In what mad words does he reply ? Who would 
 care to hear them } 
 
 *' Do you remember the day I came with Mrs. Jackson 
 to the studio ? By evening I knew just how you loved me. Do 
 you know how you used to hold my hand, and look at me for 
 such long whiles together.^ If ever a woman's heart was loved 
 away from her, mine was. I wonder can it be good for me to 
 love you so much ? Why, the least touch of your hand can 
 make me quiver from head to foot ! " And she bowed down 
 her blushing face, and again their lips met and clove. 
 
 So the almost intolerably sweet hours, which one of these 
 two knew to be sinful, fled away, and a late afternoon caller 
 ended them. 
 
 *' To-night," said Mrs. Heather, " I have a friend coming to 
 stay all night with me ; to-morrow I have to go out to dinner. 
 I shall be back at half-past ten. Will you come ? " 
 
 " Do you think there is need to ask? " 
 
 " I should hope not ! " 
 
 So with yearning hands, and lips and eyes, they part. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 65 
 
 Herbert walks about the streets, with his blood on fire. In 
 his blind passion for this woman's beauty and intellect, he has 
 never once questioned what manner of woman she was ; apart 
 from that, wicked or noble, saint or devil, he had formed no 
 shadow of an idea. After wandering restlessly about the streets 
 for a long time, he went to his club, where he passed the night, 
 not getting home till dawn had waxed into early morn. It was 
 impossible that he could keep up, for much longer, the kind of 
 life he was leading, but it is wonderful what men can do when 
 stimulated by a great excitement. Mabel looked at him 
 anxiously, but made no comment. He devoted that day to 
 writing letters, packing, and generally putting things in order. 
 The day passed swiftly, and brought the evening. 
 
 " I daresay I shall be home early to-night, Mab," he said, as 
 he was about to leave her. " You know you must be up betimes 
 to-morrow to catch the mail." 
 
 '' I won't keep you waiting, dear," she answered. 
 
 " What are you looking sad for, Mab ? " he cried, sud- 
 denly. " Don't you like going to Paris ? I thought you 
 would?" 
 
 '^ So I do, and I'm not sad. Now, you must go, dear, be- 
 cause I know you have many things to do, but before you go, 
 kiss me, just as you used to when we were first married .^ " 
 
 So he did, and they clung together — she, in very passion of 
 noble love ; he, more in passion of remorse. Then he put her 
 from his arms gently, and went. 
 
 It is not a very pleasant piece of work that Montague has 
 before him ; he wishes to get it done, and it seems to him as if 
 half-past ten would never come ; but it comes at length, and his 
 heart turns sick as he lays his hand on the bell handle. Mrs. 
 Pleather is sitting in her boudoir. She has on a dress which 
 leaves visible her magnificent neck and arms — not a very low 
 dress, but one which enthralls as much by what it suggests as 
 by what it reveals. Diamonds light her dainty ears and shine 
 round her neck. In her hair she has one red rose. She is 
 looking her very loveliest, wonderfully happy and expectant, 
 when, after a low rap, the door opens, and Herbert walks in. 
 
 " I thought you would never come," she says, rising and 
 coming to him. " Love makes such a foolish woman of me. I 
 suppose you are not really very late." 
 
 She has put both her hands into his, and is looking up at hjm 
 
 6 
 
66 FOR A SONGS SAKE. 
 
 with those desperately dangerous eyes of hers. How ca7i he 
 tell her? And is it not even harder when he has kissed her 
 perfect mouth, and white, flawless neck ? 
 
 *^ How beautiful you are looking to-night !" he says. 
 
 " More beautiful than you have ever seen me look before ?" 
 she returns, questioningly, speaking evidently in inverted 
 commas, and with one of her most fascinating smiles. 
 
 *' Yes, I think so," he answers, taking his seat by her on the 
 sofa. 
 
 " I thought the long night and day never would go/' she 
 said. 
 
 " Heaven knows, my queen, I thought the same ! " 
 
 " You're quite sure of that .^ " 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 "Then you may kiss me. Herbert, how happy are you? 
 Tell me." 
 
 " Happy ! " he almost shrieked, springing up. " Happy ? 
 My God! I am the most miserable man to-night on all His 
 earth ! Tell me, do I look happy?" 
 
 ^' No," she answered, in a changed tone of voice, speaking 
 very slowly, and looking at him with eyes wonderful for their 
 dread. His own fell before that look. 
 
 " What has happened ? " she went on. " Will you explain, 
 please ? " Her tones were icy cold. 
 
 " Oh, Florence, how can I tell you ? I have deceived you ! " 
 
 " Deceived me ? " she repeated, as if she could scarcely 
 realize the meaning of the word. "Deceived me?" Then, 
 with a sudden rush of trust, and a grand deliberateness of re- 
 nunciation : " I don't believe it. You may fancy you have. 
 Is it not some money question ? Have I not enough for us 
 both?" 
 
 " It's no question of money," he replied, walking up and 
 down. " I have wronged you, but Heaven knows I never 
 meant to do so. Florence, we can never be anything more to 
 each other. " 
 
 " Will you tell me why ? " 
 
 "Because," he answered, " I am married." 
 
 " You are married ! " she said. There was no quiver in her 
 voice, but a cold pitiless light shone in her eyes. "Married? 
 Then, will you tell me, Mr. Herbert Montague, how, being 
 married, and at the same time making professions of love to me. 
 
FOR A SONG'S SAKE. 67 
 
 you failed to know the wrong you were doing me ? I am curious 
 to hear ! " 
 
 "Because," he cried hopelessly, "I never, in my wildest 
 moments, thought you could ever love me. I thought my 
 homage pleased you. I thought you accepted it as you would 
 have done a flower. It seemed to me you were too supremely 
 above us ever to love any one, and, God knows, least of all me." 
 
 Here she interrupted him : 
 
 " Will you tell me why ? You are not deformed. For the 
 matter of that," with a scornful curl of her lip, " you are hand- 
 some. You are no fool. You can flatter better than any man 
 I ever heard. For me, do I look like a marble woman, with no 
 blood in my veins ? There was nothing in your face or voice to 
 hint the thief and traitor that you are." Then she went on with 
 awful concentrated intensity of bitterness, shuddering as she 
 spoke : " When I think that you have kissed me, as you have 
 done ; that your arms have been about me ; that you have seen 
 my very inmost heart ; have heard from me the confession of 
 my love — I tell you, when I think of these things, I feel one 
 burning blush go from head to foot, all through me. My soul 
 blushes. It is as if a man, under seal of confession, should lay 
 bare all the most sacred secrets of his life, and, having done 
 this irrevocable thing, should find the priest, whom he had 
 thought one of God's anointed, no priest, but a juggler. Let 
 me go on, please," observing he was about to speak. ^' Do you 
 think I should have suffered your looks of undisguised admira- 
 tion, your long clasps of the hand, had I not thought of you as 
 the man who was to be my husband ? If what you say be true, 
 you must have thought me a strange woman. But it is 7wt 
 true. Oh, Art ! that I have loved you like a religion, that a 
 man like you should be one of her high-priests ! " 
 
 "What I said was most solemnly true," he broke in; "for 
 two or three hours I did yield myself up to the hallucination 
 that we were lovers, and that, God forgive me icas wrong, was 
 unpardonable. But as for trying to win your love, I would just 
 as soon have thought that I could have sung the moon down 
 out of heaven. No man was ever more in love with his wife 
 than I was with mine, till I met you. You turned my head, 
 you delighted and maddened me, you thrilled my senses and 
 my imagination as they had never been thrilled before. I 
 thought the punishment of the sin would follow me alone. You, 
 
68 FOR A SONG'S SAKE, 
 
 I thought, could not be harmed by my worship. My wife 
 knows nothing, and never shall. The sweetest, faithfullest 
 wife that man was ever blessed with." 
 
 " How well you do appreciate your blessing, don't 3^ou ? " she 
 retorted, with a smile of infinite scorn ; then, with a flash of 
 evil triumph in her eyes : " Go home to your sweetest, faithfullest 
 wife. It will be sweet for you when she lies in your arms to 
 think how you have repaid that sweetness and trust ; to think 
 that if she really knew what you were she would really scorn 
 you, even as I do, unless, indeed, she should be like my dog, 
 who fawns the more the more it is beaten. Go back to her, as 
 I wish both she and you were here— dead before me." 
 
 "Florence," he said, kneeling before her, ''will you never 
 forgive me ? " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 He tried to take her hands, tight-locked in one another. 
 
 " Don't, please," she said ; " we have done with that kind of 
 thing for ever. I hope never again to touch your hand. Will 
 you leave me now? I should like to be alone." 
 
 " I will do your will," he said, rising. 
 
 ''Thank you," she answered, ringing the bell as she spoke. 
 So, without another look or word, they parted. When he was 
 gone Mrs. Heather cast herself on the sofa. If you had seen 
 her writhing there, in an agony of baffled love and outraged 
 pride, you could not but have pitied her. 
 
 "At last," thought Herbert, " it is over. How cruel she 
 was ! " He walked restlessly about the streets till early 
 morning ; then, with almost a sigh of relief, he went home. 
 On the table was Mabel's " Good-night." 
 
 " Faithful always ! " he said, as he took it up and began to 
 read. This was what he read : 
 
 ** My Darling, — I do not want this letter to shock you. 
 You know how you found me — you saved me from starvation, 
 or perhaps from worse, who knows ? For three years you made 
 my life as beautiful as one of your own pictures. A long time 
 ago I told you that I should know when you ceased to want 
 me for your work. So, should I not find out when you ceased 
 to want me for your love.^ Dear, I have known for some time 
 that you love another woman. How could you help it .^ If we 
 could have gone about together, I think it might have been 
 
l^OR A SONG'S SAKE. 69 
 
 diffei'eilt, but we could not. I know, my darling, how you have 
 suffered in trying to be faithful to me. Now the picture is 
 done, you have no more any need of me, and when you read 
 this I shall be, oh, I don't know how far off. I told you I 
 should find out when you didn't want me, and go. Don't, my 
 darling, let any thought of me trouble you. You have given 
 me, in three years, more happiness than I believe even most 
 women know in the whole course of a long life. I don't 
 disguise from you that at first, when I felt we must part, I 
 had, at the thought of leaving you, a short, sharp pain ; but 
 when I made myself realize that it was for your good and 
 happiness, then it scarcely hurt at all. You will hear my voice 
 never again. Once, I know, you did love it dearly. I have 
 had such a bright, happy life with you, dear. You may love 
 the other woman better — I do not mean that you did not love 
 me — but I think no one will love you quite in the same way 
 that I have. These are the last words I shall ever write you. 
 My last thought will be of you ; my last prayer will be for you. 
 Now, good-bye, my saviour, my lover, my husband. 
 
 " Mabel." 
 
 Pale as death he stood there, holding the letter in his hand. 
 Mabel gone? and gone where? The thing was too horrible to 
 be true. It was a new July morning. The keen, high wind 
 was driving rain mixed with hail against the window. With a 
 dread no words can describe, he went into the bedroom. '*0h, 
 thank God ! " broke from his lips, as, instead of the empty, un- 
 pressed bed which he had so dreaded to see, he saw Mabel, 
 lying in her customary place, in her customary attitude. The 
 dark hair flowed over the pillow ; one hand lay under her 
 cheek, the other lay on the coverlet. 
 
 He realized, now, how vital was his love for Mabel ; how 
 quietly transcendent over every other feeling of his life. He 
 fell on his knees by the bedside, in very passion of thankfulness. 
 Placidly as she was sleeping, he must wake her, and once more 
 hear her voice. At the least word of his she would wake, for 
 she always slept as if hearkening for his tone. 
 
 *' Mab," he said, gently, but she did not stir. "Mab," in a 
 louder tone, *' Mab, my treasure, my sweetheart ! " still no 
 answer. " Mabel ! " the mad, questioning cry rang through the 
 room. The dread in it of a horror too great to be put into 
 
yo POR A SONG'S SAKE. 
 
 words would have haunted you ever after, had you heard it. . . . 
 The awful silence answered that question. She was gone. 
 " Mabel, his treasure, his sweetheart,'' would waken at the 
 sound of his voice never again. He sprang to his feet, he 
 looked round the room with fierce, inquiring eyes. On the 
 dressing-table stood a little bottle, labelled "Laudanum" — it 
 was empty. 
 
 He said nothing. The time had not yet come for words. He 
 went into the studio, and there in the chill light of that gay 
 summer morning, the painted eyes of his dead darhng seemed 
 to look at him. In after days he knew that their look of fatal 
 comprehension, which all the world so praised, had been seen 
 by his eyes^ not as he had thought at the time, simply realized 
 by his soul. There was only one thing to do. He rang the 
 bell with all his might. Mrs. Bloomfield will never forget the 
 sound of that sudden and violent ringing at that early hour. In 
 years to come she will often shudder at the sound of the studio- 
 bell, for it was distinguishable from all the others by a peculiar 
 note of its own. 
 
 She rushed upstairs. 
 
 " Oh ! what is it ? " she cried, as she caught sight of his face. 
 He laid his hand on her shoulder, and said, in a hoarse whisper : 
 
 " She's dead ! I'm going for the doctor," and with that he 
 left. The doctor was not far to seek. He returned with 
 Montague, said " it was a very sad case — life must have been 
 extinct for four or five hours." He shook his head, took his fee, 
 and went his way. 
 
 Good Mrs. Bloomfield's heart yearned to Montague, but she 
 could say nothing, only, as she wrung his hand, gasped through 
 her sobs : 
 
 " No stranger's hand shall touch her, my dear. I'll do it all 
 myself." 
 
 When the last sad offices had been performed, Montague went 
 in and stretched himself on the bed by his dead wife. In her 
 ears that heard not, he whispered all his love ; he told her all 
 about his infatuation for Mrs. Heather — an infatuation of which 
 now, not even the ashes seemed to remain to show that it once 
 had been. 
 
 Very few of us, under great trouble, go mad and die — that is, 
 not directly. Often the ultimate cause of death has had its root 
 in a grave. Montague seemed very near to death or madness, 
 
FOR A SONGS SAK^. 71 
 
 when, growing uneasy as time went by, and she saw nothing of 
 him, Mrs. Bloomfield went to his room. After knocking, and 
 receiving no answer, she opened the door and went in. Montague 
 was lying by his wife's side, his arm was round her neck, and 
 his hps were laid close to her cold cheek. He was whispering 
 and laughing softly, and playing with her hair, as he used to be 
 so fond of doing. Was not this temporary eclipse of reason 
 merciful 1 The doctor who had come in the morning was soon 
 again upon the spot. Another room was made ready to receive 
 the patient, who, before the night was over, was in the height of 
 brain fever. 
 
 Mrs. Bloomfield at once acquainted the Jacksons, whom she 
 knew to be Montague's most intimate friends, with what had 
 happened. Of course Mrs. Jackson told Mrs. Heather. 
 
 Mr. Jackson had only that morning left for Liverpool on 
 important business, so the two women went together to the 
 house in Museum Street to see if there was anything they 
 could do. 
 
 ^' I will come to you presently," said Mrs. Heather to her 
 friend, when they had reached the house. Then, turning to 
 Mrs. Bloomfield : " Please will you show me where she is ? " 
 
 Mrs. Bloomfield unlocked the door of the bedroom. By the 
 way, I wonder why it is that we always keep our dead under 
 lock and key, as if we thought they could run away from us any 
 further than they have. 
 
 " I will call you in a few minutes," said Mrs. Heather, and 
 the landlady, taking the hint, left her. 
 
 Then Mrs. Heather went over to the bed, and looked at the 
 dead wife of the man whom she had loved with a very genuine, 
 if not with the noblest love. 
 
 It was in very truth a beautiful face, she thought, as she 
 looked down upon it. You may be sure that her woman's 
 instinct had guessed at the probable cause of Mabel's suicide. 
 As she stood there looking and wondering — wondering what 
 manner of woman this had been, her heart waxed very com- 
 passionate. Very reverently, and with tears in her eyes, she 
 kissed the folded hands, and the white, cold lips. " Good-bye, 
 my dear," she said, ^' and sleep well ! " 
 
 Through his long and dangerous ihness, Montague was 
 nursed constantly by Mrs. Heather and Mrs. Jackson. When 
 he recovered he never knew who one of his nurses had been, 
 
f± I^'OK A SOJStC'S SAKE. 
 
 both Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Bloomfield had kept the secret so 
 we41. ~ 
 
 When Montague returned at last to the affairs of every day 
 life, it hung just for a little while in the balance, whether he 
 would seek refuge from his sorrows in stimulants and opiates, 
 or whether he would turn to a truer source of comfort, and 
 dedicate his life to his wife's stainless memory. This last was 
 what, after a little time, he choose. He was never again seen 
 in society. From time to time he saw a few old friends at his 
 house ; nor was his door ever closed against men who were 
 fighting their own hard way in the world, and to whom his 
 opinion was of great benefit always, and often of great comfort. 
 
 As for Mrs. Heather, he remembered her only too well ; but 
 he hopes that he shall never see her again. In course of time 
 she married a very noticeable artist, and people speak of her 
 now as a woman who must have been very beautiful once. Can 
 one be sure that anything short of Mabel's death would so 
 wholly have extinguished Montague's feeling for Mrs. Heather ? 
 I think not, so, had she lived, the ending to our story might 
 have been sadder and more tragic than death. 
 
THE LADY OF THE GRAVES. 
 
 During the autumn of i8 — I visited the romantic watering- 
 place of Rocky Bay, and there I formed my memorable but 
 short-lived friendship with Walter Dariil — short-lived, alas ! 
 for he was then in the clutches of consumption, and sinking 
 rapidly. 
 
 His handsome, wasted face attracted my attention from the 
 first. It was the face of a man whose life's story must have 
 been in some way tragic. 
 
 We seemed drawn to each other in some strange way, and 
 shortly before he died he told me the story of his hfe. 
 
 I shall never forget that afternoon when he approached the 
 subject. How the wild west wind came storming round the one 
 hotel of the place in which we were ! The sea was of a grayish- 
 green, flaked with white, flying foam. The window of the room 
 in which we were sitting looked out upon the shore, where we 
 could hear the thunder of the oncoming, and the prolonged, 
 serpentine hiss of the retiring waves. The fire in the room 
 flickered pleasantly. 
 
 Walter, on a sofa near me, seemed half asleep, occasionally 
 murmuring to himself : 
 
 "The jewels must be found— the rubies and the diamonds 
 and the baneful opal ! " 
 
 He started, and said : 
 
 '* How the wind blows ! I think I must have been asleep ! '' 
 Then, after a pause, he said : " My friend, there is something 
 I want you to do for me when I am dead." 
 
 I promised to carry out faithfully any commission with 
 which he might intrust me. 
 
74 THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 
 
 " I think I should die easier," he went on, " if you would 
 listen to my strange experience." 
 
 I protested my willingness to hear, and he thus commenced, 
 using no more words than were absolutely necessary, for his 
 strength was low. 
 
 I shall not break up the narrative by showing how frequently 
 it was interrupted by fits of coughing and intervals of exhaus- 
 tion, but give you as nearly as possible in his own words my 
 friend's history : — 
 
 As a child I was strangely excitable, and possessed from an 
 early age by the thought of death. Funerals, while I shrank 
 from them, had yet such a terrible fascination for me that I 
 could not refrain from following one when I met it in my 
 walks. 
 
 At night my dreams would be haunted by them, so that I 
 would wake myself with a shriek. Later on I came to know 
 why my boyhood had been so cursed by these dark visions of 
 hearses following hearses in what seemed an endless proces- 
 sion — why it was that my last thought at night was of coffins 
 and newly-made graves, why it was that I seemed to smell 
 death in the air. 
 
 Shortly before my birth my mother, who was a most sensitive 
 woman, was out driving, when the horses took fright at some- 
 thing, and, breaking away, rushed into the midst of a long 
 funera procession which was proceeding in the opposite direc- 
 tion. The carriage dashed into the hearse with such violence 
 that the coffin was flung out. 
 
 You can imagine my mother's horror at having birth and 
 death thus rudely confronted — a horror which she transmitted 
 to her child, who was that night born prematurely ! 
 
 As I approached manhood the terrible repulsion and fascina- 
 tion exercised on me by the thought of death grew less, though 
 at certain periods it would take hold of me as keenly as ever. 
 
 I could never pass a country churchyard without going into 
 it and wandering there among the graves. 
 
 I was in my twenty-second year when my doctor advised me 
 — for I was very far from strong — to try the effect of a country 
 life, early hours, no reading, but plenty of horse exercise. He 
 advised my going to a pretty village called Hampton, where a 
 brother- doctor resided, in whom he had great confidence. 
 
THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 75 
 
 Looking in the paper, I saw a furnished house advertised to 
 let at Hampton. I at once wrote and secured it. I reached 
 the village at the close of a beautiful May evening. Nothing 
 could have been more peaceful than the scene which lay before 
 me. The nightingales were beginning to try their voices through 
 the soft dusk. 
 
 On reaching the house destined for my reception, I saw, with 
 a shudder, that it overlooked the village churchyard. Was I 
 never to have a chance of escaping from the thought of death ? 
 But, after all, I was to spend but little time in the house, which 
 in every other respect was all that man could desire ; so I 
 resolved to make the best of it. 
 
 As I sat in my room I could hear through the open window 
 the notes of the organ ; some one was practising late. In the 
 morning I was up betimes, and passed the whole day in riding 
 and walking. In the evening, yielding to a temptation which I 
 had been striving to resist, Tstrayed into the churchyard adjoin- 
 ing the house. 
 
 Among the graves, one especially attracted my notice on 
 account of the beautiful flowers with which it was wreathed. 
 On the stone was cut, as part of the inscription : 
 
 " To the memory of 
 
 Charles Edward Beaumont, 
 
 Who fell fighting for his country." 
 
 I cannot say why my thoughts were so strongly drawn to this 
 dead Beaumont. I passed on after a time, studied the inscrip- 
 tions on various other tombstones, and was returning when I 
 saw, kneeling by the grave which had so curiously interested 
 me, a tall, slight figure, clothed all in black. 
 
 The young woman was surrounding the headstone with fresh 
 flowers. Startled perhaps by the sound of my advancing steps, 
 she raised her head, and the light of the setting sun fell upon 
 the most beautiful face, though also the strangest, I have ever 
 seen. 
 
 Neither have I ever seen so sad a face. The large, dark, 
 wonderful eyes seemed very well-heads of sorrow ; moreover, 
 they seemed to have in them knowledge of things supernatural, 
 while the unrelieved blackness of her dress rendered still more 
 striking the extreme pallor of her beautifully shaped face. 
 
76 THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 
 
 Though the mouth was red, it looked as if it had never smiled, 
 nor ever could smile. 
 
 She rose, and unlocking the church door, passed in. I lin- 
 gered outside, and soon heard the slow, solemn notes of the 
 organ. Were they wakened then by the same hands that had 
 wrought the music of the night before — almost the first sound 
 which had reached me in my new abode } Can you see how 
 clearly it was to be from the first 1 
 
 The twilight fell, but I lingered. It was the " Dead March in 
 Saul " which, played with passionate, despairing melancholy, 
 floated through the church. More than once was it played 
 through ; then followed the wonderful " Moonlight Sonata." 
 
 It was appropriate, for the moon was beginning to rise, raining 
 down over all its white miraculous peace. I wondered if the 
 dead people underground knew anything of it, or if they heard 
 the chirping of the crickets in the grass above them. 
 
 For an hour I stayed, listening ; then the music ceased, and 
 the tall figure, clothed all in black, passed from the church into 
 the moonlight. As she moved, dark and noiseless, among 
 those silent homes of the dead, she seemed to me the reigning 
 spirit of the place, and to myself I called her, as indeed she 
 seemed to me, " The Lady of the Graves." I remained unseen 
 in the shadow of the church, till I felt she must be out of sight. 
 Then I came out of hiding, and went into my house. 
 
 That night my dreams were of her and of men long dead. 
 They were sable dreams, and through them all was a music of 
 lamentation. 
 
 The next day found me so weak and depressed that I carried 
 my letter of introduction to Dr. Spenser. I found him a middle- 
 aged man with a cheery manner. 
 
 Seeing my depressed condition, he very kindly asked me to 
 dine with him that evening, and I accepted the invitation gladly, 
 for I hated to be alone. I spent most of the day in country inns 
 talking to whomsoever I might chance to find there — anything 
 but to be by myself. 
 
 Thankful I was when seven o'clock struck and I could repair 
 to my doctor's house, not knowing that in that very place, and 
 that very evening, I was to meet my fate, my love, my beautiful 
 Lady of the Graves — my Marah. But so it was. 
 
 After dinner, when we were alone, my host, in a few words, 
 told me Marah Beaumont's history. 
 
THE LADY OF THE GRAVES. ^y 
 
 Her mother, passionately beloved by her husband, died in 
 giving birth to this daughter, her second child. Associating his 
 daughter with this disaster to his life, Mr. Beaumont shrank 
 from her from her birth, and christened her Marah. 
 
 Marah grew up a strange, reserved girl, idolizing her brother 
 Charles, who seemed to have been to her brother, sister, mother, 
 father, in one. He fell fighting in the Crimea. 
 
 The shock of his loss nearly killed Marah. It was now two 
 years since Charles's death, yet his sister would not lighten her 
 mourning. Not a day passed but she visited his grave. Mr. 
 Beaumont spent most of his time on the continent ; and, as the 
 doctor and his family were all attached to Marah, Beaumont had, 
 at their suggestion, let his house furnished, and consigned her 
 to their protection. 
 
 I learned with surprise that it was this very house that I had 
 rented, having made all my arrangements with the housekeeper, 
 a somewhat singular and reserved old lady. 
 
 That night, when I went home, I knew myself, for the first 
 time, to be in love. I was so restless that, instead of going to 
 bed, I wandered about the country. 
 
 The nightingales all sang of love, and not of their ancient 
 griefs. The owls chattered of love, and not of prey. Where 
 shadow and moonlight blended I seemed to see forms of lovers 
 clasped in one another's arms. But enough of these fancies. 
 
 I became rapidly intimate with Marah, so that we spoke fre- 
 quently of her brother and visited his grave together. 
 
 What was it about her that so wholly fascinated me ? In part, 
 it was her strange, forlorn beauty, which suggested a fair 
 country — fair but forsaken — seen for the first time in the light of 
 a setting sun ; partly it was her earnest, twilight voice, partly 
 the silent grace of her movements, and the unexpected way in 
 which she would come and go. But, above all, it was that, in 
 some way impossible to define, she was utterly unlike any 
 woman that I had ever met or ever heard of. 
 
 With all her beauty, there was a nameless something which 
 seemed to forbid that beauty's appropriation ; and yet, to me, 
 this prohibition of Fate seemed only a new attraction. She was 
 eight years older than I, and that inspired in me a deeper adora- 
 tion than I could have felt for some one of my own age. 
 
 I shall not forget one midsummer's eve. I had been for a 
 long walk, and returned to my house as the twilight was 
 
yS THE LADY OF THE GRAVES. 
 
 deepening. The door stood open, and I walked straight into 
 the dining-room ; and there, sitting in the window's recess, was 
 Marah, her fair face fallen into her hands. 
 
 At sight of me she would have risen, but I prevented her. 
 
 " Marah," I said, *' it is good of you to have waited for me." 
 
 "I came," she answered, and I could tell by her voice that 
 she had been weeping — " I came that we might sit together, you 
 and I, where I have sat so often with him." 
 
 Then I laid my hands on hers — long, slender hands they were 
 — and said : 
 
 " Marah, I have known you but a little while, and yet, with all 
 my heart, with all my body, with all my brain, with all my soul, 
 I love you. Young as I am, a curse seems to hang upon my life. 
 You, and you only, can take my curse away. Will you take it 
 away ? Will you be my wife ? " 
 
 For answer, she flung her arms round my neck and strained 
 me to her, while all her body shook with sobs. 
 
 "" Marah," I cried, " you love me ? " 
 
 *' Yes," she answered, and her voice was broken — ^^ yes, I love 
 you more than my own soul. I love you, but I dare not marry 
 you. Your life is cursed only in your fancy. In time you would 
 come to hate me, and ah ! merciful heaven ! how could I bear 
 that ? I love you, but I must not marry you. You must choose 
 some happier woman. You think yourself cursed, but I kjiow 
 that I am! Was I not with Death from the first? Am I not 
 called Marah r 
 
 I swore to love her, to cherish her in every way, to share her 
 sorrow more gladly than any other joy, and to be her slave. I 
 prevailed at last, and all that evening we sat entranced in deep 
 rest and happiness. 
 
 That very night I wrote to Mr. Beaumont. His consent to 
 our marriage was speedily obtained. For a wedding-present he 
 gave Marah some wonderful old jewels which had been in his 
 family for many generations. 
 
 ''They are too beautiful for me," she said, turning them 
 over. 
 
 I thought they were not worthy of her beauty. 
 
 We were married in September, and went abroad for our 
 wedding-trip. I knew my love, on the whole, was happy in her 
 grave, serene way ; but sometimes it would seem to me as if she 
 were standing between two great shadows, and the light would 
 
THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 79 
 
 die out of her eyes and leave her face gray and hopeless ; or, 
 without seeming cause, the sudden tears would break from her 
 eyes. 
 
 If I questioned her, she would say it was only because she 
 was not strong, and she would put up her lips to be kissed and 
 ask me to be patient with her. 
 
 Not in gay cities like Paris and Vienna can I picture her now; 
 but I have visions of her as she moved by my side through the 
 twilight streets of Bruges, or I see her winding down the staircase 
 of the old hotel, with carved swans for the balustrade ; or she 
 is moving noiselessly through old cathedrals, where she would 
 often kneel down just as the common people did, saying that it 
 was good to pray there. 
 
 I wonder if she knew just how much I loved her — how in all 
 things I strove to do her will ? I was happier than I had ever 
 been before. 
 
 All that troubled me was the vague sense of misgiving which 
 seemed to hang about my darling, and the knowledge that she 
 was never strong. 
 
 My morbid moods recurred at longer and longer intervals. 
 Still, they did recur. 
 
 After our happy wanderings we returned to Hampton for 
 Christmas — fools, not knowing that we were such ! 
 
 The severity of that winter was almost unparalleled. Hamp- 
 ton Station was about a mile from our house, and that Christ- 
 mas Eve on which we arrived such a heavy snow-storm had 
 fallen as to delay the train ; and, having sent no notice of our 
 arrival, we found it impossible to procure any carriage, so that 
 we were compelled to struggle on on foot through the driving 
 snow. 
 
 " Cold, and still as death — is it not 1 " she asked. 
 
 I kissed her cold mouth, and put my arm more tightly round 
 her, and strove to cheer her with talk of home joys. At length 
 we reached the house. 
 
 But that night, while the simple villagers sang carols beneath 
 our windows, my darling lay in bed, with burning cheeks and 
 hands, and madly-throbbing head. 
 
 I would have sent the singers away, but she said : 
 
 " No, dear ; let them stay. Charles would have had it so." 
 
 Morning brought no alleviation of her symptoms. Her illness 
 became serious and threatening. Often she wandered at in- 
 
8o THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 
 
 tervals, talked of Charles as if they were again children together. 
 Then, recovering consciousness, she would fix her eyes full on 
 me, and say : 
 
 " Mind, if I die, you bury me in the same grave with Charles. 
 Dear, I shall grieve to leave you, if indeed it must be so, but 
 I shall be so glad to see him once more ! " 
 
 Almost she smiled, and that smile roused in me a demon of 
 jealousy, and I answered : 
 
 " So long as you can see him, what do you care that I shall 
 be left here alone ? " 
 
 She began to cry, and I cursed myself for the words I had 
 uttered, and fell on my knees by the bed, with my head upon 
 her bosom. 
 
 *' But you will not die," I cried. " This is no more than a 
 feverish cold." 
 
 But though I tried to delude myself with these words, I had 
 at heart the sickening sense that she was slipping from me. I 
 knew how fragile her constitution was. 
 
 Sometimes she was wholly delirious, and seemed in terrible 
 distress, clasping her hands against her side. For ten days 
 I did not close my eyes. I could eat no food, and lived almost 
 entirely on brandy. I would have no one nurse her but myself. 
 We fought death, as it were, hand-to-hand — Dr. Spenser and 
 I. We drew out the cold, which at first had threatened to strike 
 inward ; we quelled the fever. But what skill could combat 
 the exhaustion which followed ? She felt that she was going 
 from me, and when I could not help showing her that my heart 
 was broken, for the heart of pity in her, the tears would fall 
 fast down her poor, wasted cheeks. 
 
 On the eleventh night, feeling that it would be physically 
 impossible not to yield to sleep, I reluctantly accepted Mrs. 
 Spenser's offer to keep for a few hours my vigil. I slept as 
 people under such circumstances do sleep — a long, dense, 
 dreamless sleep. 
 
 When I awoke, it was in the gray, cold light of the implacable 
 winter morning. I sprang up instantly, full of my love. 
 
 I heard the door of her room open and shut. I heard the 
 doctor's voice speaking in low tones. I heard the sound of a 
 woman's suppressed sobbing. 
 
 My heart seemed to stop beating, for I knew then that she 
 had gone from me. For me there was no longer Marah jn the 
 
The lady of the graves. it 
 
 World. Coming out of my room I came on Spenser, who saw 
 by my face that I knew. 
 
 " We would have wakened you," said his wife, " but she 
 passed away in her sleep so peacefully." 
 
 Then I went into the room. There on the bed, with lace at 
 her neck and wrists in harmony with the marble whiteness of 
 her marble face, but with the peace of God, it seemed to me, still 
 hovering in her beautiful face, cold and motionless, lay my 
 three months' bride ! 
 
 I kissed the mute, unresponsive lips, the closed Hds, the cold, 
 dark hair. It seemed to me that my heart and brain must 
 burst, for I could shed not one tear. 
 
 All that day I sat by her in the room of death. Of course 
 the room was fireless and, they told me, cold ; but I felt it not. 
 In the evening those awful men came with their black burden, 
 but I would not let their hands come near my love, who was then 
 a saint in heaven ; so I and Spenser laid her in her narrow 
 bed. 
 
 When I saw her lying there, a fresh sense of grief, blended 
 with a mighty increase of my old childish horror of death, 
 suddenly came upon me. 
 
 My head swam round ; my heart beat so fast as almost to 
 stifle me. I had meant to pass the night alone with my dead, 
 but I sprang up, trying to reach the door. I heard my own 
 shriek as I fell to the ground. Then all was dark. 
 
 I was conscious next of strange, shifting scenes and illusive 
 forms, like, yet unlike, people I had known. 
 
 There came a day at last, when I awoke to consciousness of 
 real life, and gradually to the remembrance of what had hap- 
 pened ; but that grief, though very real, seemed yet sanctified 
 and softened, as it were, by a great distance. 
 
 I had been prostrated, I learned, by brain fever. When it 
 abated, I was told that my life had been despaired of, and that, 
 for at least a month to come, it was necessary that I should be 
 kept in a state of the profoundest quiet. I was to sleep as much 
 as possible, and to be well nourished. 
 
 Almost the first question asked of the doctor was, if Marah 
 had been duly laid to rest with her brother, as she desired. 
 
 " All," he replied, " was just as I would have it to be." 
 
 Then he bade me ask no more questions, and think of nothing 
 but getting well. 
 
 7 
 
82 THE LADY OF THE GRAVES. 
 
 It was then early April, and the purity of the young spring, 
 innocent of all large heats of sun, seemed to flow into my 
 veins ; nor did it seem a bitter thing to sit in the soft April 
 twilight, and there to let the tears have their way, thinking of 
 her who was now no more in this world, but in another one, 
 joined to the brother she had so loved. 
 
 I would look up to the stars, wondering if any one of them 
 might be her home ; but I did not wish to speak of her. 
 
 Once Mrs. Spenser approached the subject, but I put it aside, 
 asking her to wait till I was stronger. 
 
 Day and night did I pray to my love that from her far place 
 she would so influence my life as to make me worthy of being 
 there re-united to her. Was I stronger than I had thought ? 
 
 One evening, when I was sitting alone, watching the April 
 sunset in a sky half pure blue, half black with thunderous 
 clouds, watching the virginal green branches of the trees as 
 they tossed in the blithe spring wind, which, though cool this 
 evening, had in it a wonderful sweetness and zest, an uncon- 
 trollable longing to be once more in the open air came upon 
 me. 
 
 If I asked permission I knew it would be refused. I listened. 
 The house was perfectly quiet, but for a servant who was sing- 
 ing over her work in the kitchen. 
 
 Supporting myself by a stick, I crept downstairs, then out 
 into the fresh wind and gold light of the setting sun. I went a 
 few steps down the garden, with the songs of birds in it, and 
 heard, blown about by the wind from near clover-fields, the 
 violent note of the cuckoo. 
 
 I opened the garden-gate. Ah, whither should my first pil- 
 grimage be, if not to my love's grave ? 
 
 I passed into the churchyard. I tottered onward to the grave 
 I knew so well, by which I had first seen h'er. There I came 
 upon the ghost of her, watching, as it were, by her own grave. 
 Nay, not her ghost, but her very self I 
 
 *' Marah— Marah !" I called. 
 
 She rose, wavered, and then, with a low cry, flung her arms 
 about me. Upon my neck I felt her cold hands. 
 
 " Love," she cried, " it is I. I am not dead, but yours only." 
 
 Could I still believe my senses .^ Scarcely. Later on, when 
 I was calmer, I came to hear how she had lain in a trance, which 
 even the practised eye of the doctor could not distinguish from 
 
THE LAD V OF THE GRA VES. 83 
 
 death, till at last^ and only just in time, her agonizing internal 
 convulsions resulted in a faint moan, which roused those present 
 as if it had been the crash of doom. The shock was too much 
 for me, and all that night I relapsed into delirium. 
 
 Dr. Spenser and his wife had meant to break the joyful news 
 to me gently, but I had forestalled them. 
 
 I regained my health slowly. The presence of Marah so ex- 
 cited me that I was only allowed to see her briefly every day. 
 
 It was on midsummer's eve, just a year since I had told her 
 ot my love, that we were, so to speak, remarried, that we again 
 began to live together, quite by ourselves, as husband and wife. 
 
 Shall I ever forget the awful stillness of that dark midsum- 
 mer's eve, and its sky charged with coming storm ? 
 
 The Spensers, who had been staying in the house, had left us, 
 and we vx^cre alone together for the night — I and my love — who 
 had come back to me, as it were, from the land of Death. 
 
 So absorbed was I in this thought that I started violently at 
 the sound of her low voice as she asked me of what I was 
 thinking. 
 
 " What," I answered, " could I be thinking of but of you ?" 
 
 As the clock struck twelve, she said, lying in my arms : 
 
 " The sound of that clock came very near readying you over 
 my grave." 
 
 Her Vv'ords made me shudder, and I thanked God with all my 
 heart for having given my love back to me. 
 
 Were v\^e as happy as we had been in the early days of our 
 marriage ? 
 
 As the weeks went on I could not help asking myself that 
 question. The fascination Marah had for me was greater than 
 ever. Indeed, it was so intense as to be almost painful. Yet 
 I felt that we were both of us changed. Sometimes she would 
 say : 
 
 " Why do you look at me so long without speaking? Say 
 something, or I think I shall go mad.'' 
 
 It is true that when I looked at her I seemed to lose the power 
 of speech. 
 
 One evening, at the beginning of August, I was sitting by 
 myself, thinking of Marah and of death, seeing again her white 
 face in the coffin, and having terror of it. 
 
 Suddenly a cold hand fell upon mine. I sprang up and away 
 from her with a wild cry. I said : 
 
84 "rim LADY OF TuF. GRAVES. 
 
 " I had forgotten you were not dead." 
 
 *' Perhaps/' she answered, quietly, " you would rather not have 
 remembered ? " 
 
 I tried to laugh, and said that dead people come to life could 
 not be like other people. 
 
 Against what happened I strove manfully, I think, but vainly. 
 The added fascination which she had for me was tainted. It 
 was the old morbid fascination of death. I would go to the 
 grave where she had so nearly been laid. I would fancy her 
 lying within it, and again I would picture her coffined face. 
 Then, with dread and desire, each enhancing each, I would go 
 to the house to clasp her in my arms, my dread, beautiful Lady 
 of the Graves. 
 
 Sometimes I would wonder if it were not all a delusion, and 
 Marah no more than the phantasm of a madman's brain. Then 
 terror of my wife would come upon me, so that I would shun 
 the sight of her. 
 
 Day by day she grew whiter and thinner— more like one 
 dead — and it seemed to me that there was a look of mournful 
 reproach in her eyes which I had never seen there before. I 
 can scarcely say why that look should so have maddened me, 
 but it did. 
 
 In September I went quite alone to London, to see if that 
 change would be of any help to me. I strove to keep the thought 
 of Marah from my mind— I strove in every possible way to 
 divert myself, but, oh, how vainly ! In crowded streets, in 
 theatres, in drawing-rooms, in the gaslight and in the sunlight, 
 and in the darkness, always, I saw before me that white, coffined 
 face. 
 
 I returned to Hampton, hoping that her real face would lay 
 this dreadful spectre of it. I returned, quite unexpectedly, one 
 grave, quiet afternoon* A few birds were singing dubiously 
 through the damp haze which hung over everything. 
 
 As I passed the well-known church a tall figure flitted out 
 from among the graves, and seeing nie, gaVe a low cry. 
 
 It was Marah. 
 
 But as she came near I shrank from hei", saying : 
 
 " No, not now, Marah ; you smell of death. God help me, 
 but I think you are dead yourself ! " 
 
 She passed into the house, and, though I dreaded, I had to 
 foLow. 
 
THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 85 
 
 **What were you doing in the churchyard ?" I asked. 
 
 " Laying flowers on my brother's grave. At least your dead 
 wife may tend her dead." 
 
 She passed on, and I did not attempt to follow her. 
 
 Was I cruel to her in these days ? Why did I not leave her ? 
 Because,f,while I hated her — yes, I think it had come to be 
 hatred — she yet retained for me an awful, ghastly fascination. 
 
 I dreaded to hear her voice, her footfall— dreaded to see her 
 face ; yet she drew me to her as the North Pole draws the 
 magnet. My old horror of death returned to me more strongly ^ 
 than ever, and among the funerals moved the spectre of my wife 
 — the ghost that would not be laid. 
 
 Was there no way in which I could break from this fearful 
 thraldom ? 
 
 I spoke of it to no one — not even to my doctor — who, I can 
 see now, detected something strange in my manner. 
 
 '^ Why do you hate me ? " she said once. *' What wrong have 
 I done you ? " 
 
 " What wrong did I do you," I answered, " that you should 
 haunt me thus? Can one live with the dead, and not go mad?" 
 
 We had separate bedrooms. That night I was in my own 
 room. I awoke from a light sleep with an irresistible sense that 
 I mitst see Marah, or the phantom of Marah. Perhaps I should 
 find her bed empty and the phantom gone. 
 
 I took a lamp, and, shading its light with my hand, went 
 stealthily into her room. I crept close to the bed and gazed. 
 
 Yes, there upon the pillow, framed in its dark hair, lay that 
 white, awful face just as I had seen it lie in the coffin. 
 
 I just touched one cold hand which lay upon the coverlet \ 
 then a voice seemed to whisper in my ear: 
 
 "End this ! Bear it no longer. Dispel this phantom ! " 
 
 I set the light down, and dashed a heavy pillow over the white, 
 strange, wasted face. With all my might I cast myself upon 
 that pillow, crying : 
 
 *' Now, now, now, leave me for ever ! " 
 
 When I drew the pillow away the face was there, but the eyes 
 were changed. By a sudden blaze of sure knowledge I was 
 aware that my wife Marah lay there, and that I had murdered 
 her. 
 
 Still, the thought of my own death filled me with terror, and 
 such a death as I should have to die on the discoveiy of my 
 
86 THE LADY OF THE GRAVES, 
 
 crime. Cold drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. Was 
 there no way to escape detection ? 
 
 With fiendish promptness I thought of a way. The house 
 was only one story high, and divided from the road by a low 
 wall. A tree pushed its branches against it just outside the 
 window. By the use of this tree a dishonest person could reach 
 the room. 
 
 I found my wife's jewel-case, and wrenched open the lock. I 
 dropped one ring upon the floor, as if to indicate it had been 
 dropped in the hurry of plunder. I raised the window, let 
 myself down by the tree, and, going straight to a deep, disused 
 well, dropped all the jewels therein. 
 
 I re-entered the room by the same way, and, going noiselessly 
 to my own room, waited till I should be aroused by the intelli- 
 gence that my house had been broken into, my wife murdered, 
 and her jewels stolen. 
 
 Now my confession is made. When I am dead, I want you 
 to go to the house at Hampton and to have the disused well 
 searched for the jewels, which you will restore to Mr. Beau- 
 mont. 
 
 My crime was, I think, the crime of a madman, but my re- 
 morse has been an agony which will make death welcome. I 
 love my wife now with all the old strength and tenderness, and 
 I cannot help thinking that if there is a life after this, when I 
 have suffered more still, perhaps some dim, purgatorial land 
 of tortures, that God will pity me, as I know she does, and join 
 me to her in the city that is not built with hands. 
 
 Two days after this tale was told Walter Darill passed away 
 into the mystery of things. The trust he left me I duly fulfilled. 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 When Mr. Gordon West, who had spent his summer hoHday 
 visiting various French watering-places, turned his steps in the 
 direction of Etretat, he had very Httle idea that there was his 
 fate waiting for him — that the 30th of September, the day on 
 which he arrived, was to influence his whole future life. 
 
 The season was over, the salon was closed. The hotels re- 
 mained open for the accommodation of the two or three visitors 
 who still lingered. Gordon reached it on Monday, and proposed 
 to leave on the following Friday for England. 
 
 It was a thorough-going seaside afternoon when he found 
 himself in the courtyard of the Hotel Blanquet, the fame whereof 
 had often reached him. The high autumn wind was vital with 
 the keen scent of the sea, whose great foam-crested waves came 
 in with a sound of thunder, flinging their spray high into the 
 cold wind, which the failing warmth of the sun did all it could 
 to ameliorate. He took a brisk turn about the place, dropped 
 into the library and bought a French novel, and longed for the 
 hour of dinner as one does at a strange place, when, from igno- 
 rance of its ways, he does not like to venture far a-field. 
 
 What kind of a man was this English tourist 1 To begin with, 
 he was a handsome fellow— about that there could be no doubt. 
 Men did not dispute it ; young ladies, waxing confidential, spoke 
 to each other of his splendid, half-tender, half-audacious looking 
 
88 A STRANGE WOMAN 
 
 eyes. They sighed over his beautiful dark curly hair, his aristo- 
 cratic face, his perfect hands — neither too large nor too small, 
 so white, strong and firm. But they always closed their re- 
 marks by asking one another if they ever had seen, or ever 
 hoped again to see, such a figure — such a perfect blending of 
 strength and grace. And all they said was very true ; the ad- 
 mirable way in which he bore himself, set off to the best his 
 advantages of face and form. Moreover, he had a voice very 
 pleasant to hsten to. It was a full and very vital voice — a tone 
 of strength and good humour ran through it. 
 
 By the recent death of his father, he had become possessed 
 of a good fortune and estate ; so, altogether, he was a desirable 
 fiarti. Some day he intended to marry, but he wisely resolved 
 first to exhaust the sweets of a bachelor life. 
 
 The red September sun was setting into the cold white waves, 
 when at last the table cPhdie bell sounded, but covers on the 
 long table had only been laid for six persons. 
 
 When West entered the room, he found there assembled a 
 French lady ; her son, who was lame, and had a sweet, grave 
 face ; a very fat and not very amiable-looking Frenchman, and 
 his daughter, about ten years old, who chattered all through 
 the meal. 
 
 The sixth place remained for a time vacant. To a sensitive 
 nature there is something irresistibly comic in the fact of five 
 people, three of whom were strangers to each other, sitting 
 down to dinner at a very long table. In the stillness which 
 prevailed, the fat Frenchman could be heard taking his soup 
 with long, deliberate sips. 
 
 "Who will the sixth person be, I wonder ? " thought West, as, 
 having finished his soup, he was consulting the wine-list. 
 
 He had just given his order, when there was a sohfroti-frou 
 in the room, accompanied by a delicate scent. The place 
 opposite him was taken by a lady. 
 
 A look, at first of great surprise, and then of extreme content, 
 passed over the face of Mr. Gordon West, for he saw at a glance 
 that the new-comer was beautiful, and the sight of a beautiful 
 woman was always quite sufficient to put him in good humour. 
 
 The lady who had just taken her seat was about the average 
 height ; her deliciously-moulded figure was well set off by the 
 most perfectly-fitting dress imaginable. The pallor of her 
 exquisitely-shaped face was excessive, yet there was a fascip" 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN. 89 
 
 ation in it. The mouth was well-formed, the lips full and red. 
 The wonderfully dehcate nostrils indicated a sensitive and 
 highly-strung organization. The large dark eyes had in them a 
 look of great weariness ; the hair was perfectly black — very 
 thick, strong, short, and crisp. Rings shone on her long, slender 
 fingers. 
 
 " French or English, I wonder } " thought West. " Neither, 
 perhaps. There's an Italian look about her." 
 
 With the appearance of the fish, the little girl belonging to 
 the fat Frenchman became very excited, crying out : 
 
 " Oh, papa, I saw this fish this morning when it was alive ! I 
 was on the beach with Marie when a fishing-boat came in, and 
 Monsieur Dagon was there, and the men began throwing the 
 fish out one after another ; and, says Monsieur Dagon, pointing 
 with his cane to one, ^ How much for that?' And the man 
 says, ' One franc fifty.' And monsieur says, ' One franc, and 
 no more.' 'One franc twenty-five,' said the man. ^ One 
 franc / ' said monsieur, very slowly, just like that. ' Well, I 
 suppose I can't help it,' said the man. Oh, but he did look 
 cross ! " 
 
 To this papa remarked only that a franc was quite enough for 
 it, and suggested to his child the advisability of talking less and 
 eating more. 
 
 The lady with the lame son here helped herself to cider. 
 Such a proceeding on such a cold night made West shiver ; 
 and he turned with a glow of content to his bottle of good old 
 Burgundy. 
 
 The room was ill-lighted and distressingly cold. 
 
 " Oh, the sea was rough this morning," recommenced the 
 irrepressible little lady. " The spray came right in our faces, 
 papa. A man came up and asked me if I saw a lot of birds 
 flying about, and I said I did, and he said, ' Well, that's a sign 
 there will be a lot of windy weather.' What makes birds come 
 in windy weather, papa .^ Is it, do you suppose, because they 
 like it?" 
 
 The father gave some reason which seemed entirely to satisfy 
 his child, and then for a little while the meal proceeded in 
 silence. 
 
 Mother and son had smiled at the little girl's prattle, as if 
 they thought it the right thing to do ; but West and his vts-d- 
 vis seemed too much occupied with each other to have any 
 
90 A STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 thoughts for smiles. They knew instinctively that they were 
 each thinking of the other. They surveyed one another fur- 
 tively between the courses. 
 
 The wind could be heard sweeping round the house, and 
 West made up his mind to venture a remark, so he said, in his 
 very pleasant voice : 
 
 " I think the wind is rising even higher." 
 
 '' I hope not." 
 
 " You dislike the wind ? " 
 
 " I dislike the wind when I am on the sea, as I shall have to 
 be on Friday." 
 
 " You are going to England } I suppose it's not your first 
 visit .^" 
 
 " It is my country," with a pretty laugh. 
 
 " Mine, too," replied West, in his native tongue, laughing in 
 his turn. 
 
 The beautiful stranger had a very attractive voice — it was low 
 and lingering. All she said, she said with earnestness ; his 
 remarks did not seem at all to embarrass her. 
 
 " Don't you think it's rather cold for this sort of thing ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 All the six persons were shivering over iced pudding of a very 
 humble description. 
 
 She answered, with a smile : 
 
 " I shall give it up. I don't know how I shall get warm to- 
 night. It's really colder than it should be for the time of year." 
 
 '^ I'll tell you what," said Gordon, " let us take the kitchen by 
 storm. There was a cheerful fire there when I came in ; 
 doubtless there is one still. I think our friend, the cook, would 
 be quite accessible to a little bribe. Should you feel disposed 
 to venture ? " 
 
 " I would venture anywhere, I think, to get warm." 
 
 " Then I will lose no time in seeing how the land lies." 
 
 He returned shortly with the pleasant information that the 
 cook professed himself only too much honoured. 
 
 " Where will you have coffee served .^" inquired West. 
 
 " Where it's warmer," she replied, rising. 
 
 " Let me show you the way, then." 
 
 And they left the other poor shivering mortals to get warm 
 as best they might. 
 
 To reach the kitchen they had to cross the courtyard. The 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN. 91 
 
 wind was so violent that West offered his fair companion his 
 arm. She declined this with what seemed to him the most 
 remarkable vehemence, and walked forward, as if in fright. 
 
 Plowever, when they reached the kitchen she was quite com- 
 posed again, and looked even more beautiful for the disorder 
 into which the wind had blown her hair. 
 
 ^' Pray smoke," she said — "pipe or cigar ; I like the smell of 
 either." 
 
 ^'Really?" he asked. 
 
 " Really," came the grave affirmative. 
 
 Then he lost no time in filling and lighting a handsome 
 meerschaum. 
 
 It then occurred to West, for the first time, to speculate upon 
 the age of his companion. Somewhere near twenty-eight, he 
 settled in his own mind, and that about hit the mark. 
 
 " Do you like this place," he began, by way of reopening 
 conversation. 
 
 "Yes — very much ; but then I have only been here since 
 August. I like the walks round about it, and the air of it gives 
 me fresh life." 
 
 " You are travelling with friends ? " he asked, sending a cloud 
 of smoke from his pipe slowly. 
 
 " I live alone, I travel alone — I shall always be alone," she 
 answered, with an amount of suppressed bitterness that quite 
 took West by surprise. 
 
 Who coidd this Ijeautiful woman be, whose manners were so 
 wildly unconventional, and yet had nothing in them that could 
 be called fast.^ And how could such a beautiful creature come 
 to be still unmarried } 
 
 " I am alone, too," he said. " My father and mother are both 
 dead, and I have neither brother nor sister — don't you pity me.'^" 
 
 " Not in the very least ! What a man means by loneliness is 
 boundless freedom — freedom to be as bad or as happy as he 
 pleases. You know it is so," she went on, seeing that he was 
 beginning to smile, in spite of himself. 
 
 His smile was very winning, especially when he was making 
 futile attempts to keep it under. 
 
 " I won't dispute it. There is truth in what you say. Still, 
 you know, we do get tired of being alone." 
 
 " And then you marry — for change and convenience." 
 
 " Some of us do. I don't think I ever should. It must be 
 
92 A STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 such a glorious sensation to be downrightly in love with one's 
 wife ! Nothing in all the world, you know, can come near that- 
 Without being a remarkably rich man, I have enough to enjoy 
 myself pretty freely in all ways. But I know a little hardwork- 
 ing country curate— if he gets enough to eat, it's as much as he 
 does get. As for wine, he would as soon think of buying a bottle 
 as I should think of not buying one. But he is in Paradise — he 
 experiences joys of which I have no conception. And why ? 
 Just because he is madly in love with his v,'ife, a little dumpy, 
 pudding-faced thing, and with no charm of manner to atone for 
 her fearful plainness. How can I let a little country curate 
 outstrip me in this way ? " 
 
 " Why dojz^t you fall in love, then 1 " 
 
 *' Just at present," he replied, with a laugh, " I v/ouldn't if I 
 could, and I couldn't if I would." 
 
 " Do you suppose your curate's wife is as happy as her 
 husband ? " 
 
 "I fancy so. Their happiness is the talk for miles round. It 
 is a blessing for them that they should be all in all to each other ; 
 if they did not desire the society of each other, I don't know 
 who would." 
 
 The lady laughed — a rather forced laugh. Her hands lay on 
 her lap, and she kept opening them and closing them, and her 
 eyes yearned. 
 
 Outside the wind shrieked on, making the roaring of the sea 
 seem less tremendous than it otherwise would have done. 
 
 West had grown restless, and he began walking up and down, 
 casting his eyes round the room, that they might seem more by 
 chance than by desire to rest on that strangely beautiful face. 
 
 Presently he said : " You don't look at all English." 
 
 " No," she answered ; " my mother was an Italian." 
 
 After a little more talk the lady rose, and, complimenting 
 West on the complete success of his experiment, wished him 
 " Good-night " very graciously, and left him to his own reflec- 
 tions, which were not altogether of a tranquillizing order. 
 
 This strange woman had made a profound impression on him. 
 
 How the wind buffeted him when at length he rose and crossed 
 the courtyard to reach his bedroom. Through its shout and 
 bluster he heard the continuous coming and going of the great, 
 cruel waves, distinguishable through the darkness by a line of 
 white foam. 
 
J STkAMGE WOMAhK 9j 
 
 ** Sy io^Q, I How cold it is ! " he exclaimed, as, shiveringly, 
 he drew the bedclothes round him. 
 
 Few things in their way are drearier than to lie awake through 
 a long, cold, stormy night. As West listened to the wind raving 
 outside, he wondered how the hotel, which was but slightly 
 built, could withstand it. 
 
 After a while he managed to get some broken rest ; strange 
 dreams came to him, and through them all looked out one face. 
 
 As soon as light was well come, he sprang out of bed and 
 dressed himself. 
 
 He was a splendid swimmer, and the height of the waves did 
 not in the least disconcert him. The sun was shining brightly ; 
 the wind was undiminished. 
 
 It seemed a revel of wind and light and sea—a revel in which 
 he wished to lose no time in taking his part. 
 
 In a few minutes more he was in the thick of it. He was 
 tossing on the crests of the waves, the sun right over him and 
 the wind all round him. 
 
 As he rose on the waves, which came against him in vain, and 
 which, indeed, he seemed to master, he was regarded with much 
 interest and admiration by some fishermen on the beach, also 
 by the proprietor of the hotel. 
 
 " What is it 1 " inquired a woman's voice. 
 
 It was our friend of the previous evening. 
 
 *' Look ! " returned the other. *' It is your countryman who 
 swims in a sea like this." 
 
 The lady looked in the direction in which he pointed, and 
 smiled as if she were even well-pleased to know herself half- 
 English. 
 
 There is nothing in women— not even beauty — which men love 
 So universally as women love courage in men. 
 
 Not till he was a speck scarcely visible did the swimmer show 
 any signs of returning. 
 
 An hour afterward he entered the courtyard of the hotel, 
 smoking an excellent cigar. 
 
 *' I say ! " he called to the cook, who was passing. " I hope 
 you're getting a good breakfast ready for us, my friend — my 
 hunger is something awfuL Think of me as seven men, and 
 allow accordingly." 
 
 '' Good-morning ! " said a sweet voice, which he had heard 
 mentally through the wind and the waves. "You surely deserve 
 
94 ^l STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 breakfast. I witnessed your swimming achievement from afar. 
 It must have been very dangerous." 
 
 " What danger there is lies in getting back. Just, you know, 
 when you put your feet down, a big fellow rolls you over, and 
 sends you flying out to sea again. Of course, if this happens a 
 good many times, it begins to tell on a man's strength, but I 
 have been in rough seas enough, and have only twice been really 
 hard run for it." 
 
 Then the breakfast-bell sounded, and they moved to the 
 salon, where they were regaled with shrimps, ham — very hard 
 and salt — mutton chops, and mashed potatoes, an omelette, 
 grapes, and cheese. 
 
 " Well, well, it might have been worse," said our hungry 
 friend, as he swallowed his last grape, and tossed off his last 
 glass of Burgundy. " Waiter, coffee and cognac." 
 
 West had discovered from the proprietor of the hotel, the 
 name of the English lady. She was a Miss Brougham. 
 
 "Won't you let me drive you somewhere?" he said, as 
 she was about to leave the room. " I feel in a way as if 
 we were cast on a desert island, and were bound to help one 
 another." 
 
 " I feel just so, too," she answered, smiling, " but I am afraid 
 all the helping will be on your side." 
 
 So it was arranged that she would accept his offer, and a 
 ramshackle little carriage, drawn by a very lean horse, soon 
 made its appearance. 
 
 "He certainly is not a thing of beauty," said West, as they 
 drove off. 
 
 " Nor a thing of strength, either, I am afraid," she answered, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 The two drove many miles, and I am bound to say that from 
 time to time, they looked at each other, and to judge by the 
 smile which generally followed these looks, it would have 
 seemed that they were mutually satisfied. 
 
 As they were on the homeward .road. West asked his fair 
 companion if she had ever driven. She answered in the 
 negative. 
 
 "Then take your first lesson, now," he said, pulling up sharply. 
 The artful rogue knew well enough that such lessons cannot be 
 taught without much touching of hands. 
 
 Miss Brougham had been in the most buoyant spirits, but at 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN, 95 
 
 this proposal she looked perplexed. She seemed to desire a 
 lesson, and yet to hesitate. 
 
 '' Do," resumed West, " take the reins. No, not like that. 
 Please let me settle them in your hands." 
 
 For the first time he set his firm, lithe fingers on her hands. 
 He was getting to look more and more at her, and he observed 
 then a strange look, as of pain, which she was trying to suppress, 
 pass over her face. 
 
 " No ! we haven't got them quite right yet " 
 
 He knew well enough that he was needlessly prolonging this 
 pleasantest part of the lesson ; but the pupil ended the lesson 
 very abruptly. With a short, sharp cry she wrenched her 
 hands away, and clasped them under her cloak. 
 
 " Have I hurt you ?" he cried, in horror. 
 
 " No, no ! — only I don't want to drive. It was a sudden 
 pain." 
 
 She was silent through the rest of the drive, and her weary 
 eyes seemed to look even wearier. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mr. West was not at all given to the practice of self-deception. 
 He had met Adelaide Brougham on a Monday ; on the follow- 
 ing Wednesday he announced to himself that he was desperately 
 in love, irremediably fascinated, hopelessly spellbound. To 
 look at her beauty threw him into a fever of excitement ; there 
 was a subtle magnetism for him in every movement of her 
 gracious body, in every tone of her voice. 
 
 He was attracted and perplexed by her manners, which were 
 so free, while she shrank from any overt sign of demonstration 
 on his part. Pie managed to pass the greater part of his time 
 with her. When she was in her room writing letters, he hung 
 aimlessly about the courtyard, smoking and wondering if she 
 would never have done. 
 
 The wind continuing so violent, Miss Brougham resolved to 
 postpone her departure for another week. West also made the 
 same resolution. 
 
 The Monday following his arrival was a bitter day for this 
 
9^ A STRANGE IVOMAlf. 
 
 love-sick youth. In vain between morning coffee and eleven 
 o'clock breakfast did he look for the object of his adoration. 
 She came not, nor did she come at breakfast-time. 
 
 He inquired of the waiter about the missing one, and heard 
 she was confined to her bed by a severe headache. He looked 
 at her vacant place gloomily, and put extra brandy in his coffee ; 
 then he went for a long walk. 
 
 It was a day of high winds and casual rains. He walked and 
 walked, and smoked and smoked, and thought the day never 
 would go ; but at length the desired evening did come, and the 
 thought that he should see her again put him into tremen- 
 dous spirits as he walked back. 
 
 But he was doomed to disappointment, for still her place 
 remained vacant. I can assure you that through that evening 
 he was in no very sweet frame of mind. He took a walk in the 
 wild, windy moonlit night, so suggestive of a certain kind of 
 music. Then he returned and went to bed, with a strong sense 
 of having been shamefully used. 
 
 " I began to think I should never see you again," he said the 
 next day. 
 
 They were walking up the cliff to the little windy chapel, 
 where mostly sailors' wives come to pray. 
 
 " I am very glad you missed me at all," she replied. *' I 
 thought of you when the pain in my head would let me think of 
 anything. You don't know what a long day it seemed to me. 
 I thought it never would go ; but it did go, and the night 
 brought such delicious sleep ! '^ 
 
 " Do you still mean to go on Friday ? " he asked. 
 
 *' Yes. Whatever the weather is, I shall go then.'' 
 
 '* I am also going over that day. Will you let me take charge 
 of you ? " 
 
 " I should be only too delighted ! " she answered. 
 
 Half-an-hour afterward they were standing in the chapel, 
 which they had wholly to themselves. 
 
 " I wish I believed more in prayer than I do," she said, 
 suddenly ; " then what a comfort it would be to pray." 
 
 "What would you pray for V^ he asked. 
 
 And she answered, with her eyes to the ground : 
 
 " To be as other women are." 
 
 "A very vain prayer," he said, " for that you will never be. You 
 are the most bewilderingly fascinating woman that evef lived 1 " 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN, 97 
 
 " Thank you," she replied, with a faint smile. " I know I am 
 one of the most unhappy." 
 
 "Won't you tell me what your trouble is?" he said, coming 
 very near her. 
 
 But she shrank from him, and said : 
 
 "Not now. Perhaps some day. Who knows?" 
 
 The following F'riday found our friends on their way to 
 Havre in a carriage from the hotel. The steamer did not start 
 till midnight, so they had time to dine at Etretat before leaving. 
 
 Perhaps neither of them will ever forget that drive. The 
 wind had all fallen away ; the heavens seemed brimming over 
 with large lovehness of saintly moonlight. 
 
 They spoke but Httle. The kind of conveyance in which they 
 were was not altogether favourable to conversation. But when 
 they drew up by the way — which they did pretty often — all 
 French drivers being alike thirsty and sociable — they re- 
 marked in low tones on the beauty of the night, or West 
 would ask her if she were cold, and she him if he did not want 
 to smoke, at which, nothing loath, he would light a cigar. 
 
 Then the driver, pipe in mouth, would issue from the road- 
 side cafe^ mount his seat, exchange last good-nights with his 
 friends, swear at his horses, crack his whip, and again they 
 would proceed upon their way. 
 
 Whether it was the moonlight or not, I cannot say ; but as 
 they were nearing Havre a quite irresistible feeling impelled 
 Mr. West to draw very close to his travelling companion, and 
 to lay his hand upon hers. 
 
 Just to touch her hand thrilled him with exquisite delight. 
 For about half a minute he felt it lying under his ; then it 
 began to tremble, then, with a start and something like a cry, 
 she drew it away as she had done on a previous occasion. 
 
 " Are you vexed with me ? " he asked, in his most tender voice. 
 
 " No," she answered. " I am not vexed with you ! " 
 
 All too shortly it seemed to West that they descended into 
 Havre, then the driver cracked his whip furiously, and the 
 streets were driven through in what he evidently considered 
 style. There is always something fresh and striking, see we it 
 never so often, in the night view of a town, from which we are 
 going to turn directly to make our way through the dark, peri- 
 lous sea to another land. You are passing through the midst 
 
 8 
 
98 A STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 of people, some happy, some unhappy, some sick, some in 
 health, some feasting, some sleeping. They abide, but you do 
 not endure there ; from the midst of lives on which you speculate, 
 you go to fulfil your own life, it is even possible that you may 
 never again set foot on land. Surely West and Miss Brougham 
 were not the only travellers who felt this as they made their 
 way through the high bright streets to the quay. Henceforth 
 a continental town by night, with carriage lamps flashing, and 
 the jingle of bells, will always recall to them the glow and 
 romance of that night. 
 
 They soon reached the quay where the Wolf lay, getting 
 steam up fast. The process of lading was going on with great 
 activity. West saw Miss Brougham on board at once, then he 
 went to see after the luggage. The second bell had sounded 
 when he found himself beside her again. The passengers 
 were not numerous, but they were fairly representative. There 
 \v2iS pafef'fajni lias, very important and ,hot from altercation; 
 there were the gay young dogs, who chaffed and smoked and 
 strutted about the ship, as if it were their own exclusive 
 property, and the dainty httle French lady, talking very fluently 
 in her own tongue, occasionally speaking the prettiest broken 
 English. 
 
 The Wolf was evidently soon going to depart, the steam was 
 roaring and the engineers were getting to work in earnest ; the 
 mails had been sent in. 
 
 "Any more for shore 1 " cried a voice. Then the sound of the 
 steam ceased suddenly, two or three persons ran hastily up the 
 plank, then it was withdrawn — good-nights were exchanged 
 between the sailors of the Wolf and their brethren on shore 
 • — there was a movement, a splash, they were off. At length the 
 harbour was cleared, and the ^^^ stood out into the moonlight 
 and the open sea. 
 
 " You will go down, now, I suppose ? " inquired West. 
 
 " No, I shall stay on deck all night, I like it so much better. 
 The sea is almost as calm as a river, is it not ? Let us take a 
 turn up ana uown. How well the Havre lights look from the 
 water 
 
 They had had the deck to themselves, at least the part of it 
 they traversea. For a little while they stood leaning against 
 the bulwark, looking down — 
 
 *' The moonlit waters white." 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN, 99 
 
 Very pleasant was the sound of the water as the rapidly re- 
 volving screw divided and churned it. 
 
 *' Do you go straight to London ? " inquired West. 
 
 *' No. I don't live in London. My home is in the Isle of 
 Wight. I have a delightful old house there." 
 
 " I should like to see your home," he replied. 
 
 ^' That does not seem difficult of accomplishment. I don't 
 think you will find the doors closed against you." 
 
 '* I take you at your word," he answered. 
 
 " How else should I mean to be taken ?" 
 
 " May I call on Sunday evening ? " 
 
 *' Most certainly you may." 
 
 West's heart began to beat fast. Who was this woman to 
 whom he was so losing it .^ What would be the end of it all } 
 
 Presently West found a nice, sheltered seat for his com- 
 panion. 
 
 " Now let me wrap you up cozily," he said ; but she shrank 
 away from him, and answered : 
 
 " I am quite equal to doing so myself. You wouldn't do it 
 as well." 
 
 " Perhaps I shouldn't," he replied, not too well pleased. 
 
 Then he bade her good night. He walked up and down in 
 dreadful restlessness. What a flavourless, savourless thing life 
 must have been, he thought, before this interest had come into 
 it. 
 
 And she — she lay there coiled up in rugs, her hot hands 
 locked tight in one another. 
 
 " Oh, will it never, never, 7iever be .^" she moaned, under her 
 breath. ^' Must the act of another, before I was conscious of 
 being — before my eyes had seen the light — waste my whole life 
 utterly ? Ah, how strong he is/' she went on, ''how manly, how 
 tender ! " 
 
 Then, as she thought of something, a great shudder possessed 
 her whole body. 
 
 When West went below in the gray of the early morning, he 
 found the inmates of the cabin all tranquilly slumbering. He was 
 desperately hungry, and somewhat refreshed by the sight of the 
 steward, who at once went to boot-cleaning. 
 
 However, he procured from him some biscuits and a potation 
 of brandy-and-water. This breakfast was regarded with much 
 4isfavour hy paterfamilias^ who happened just then to wake up. 
 
100 A STRANGE WOMAN. 
 
 and who thought any one in the last degree culpable who did 
 not as he did, or would have done. 
 
 When West returned to the deck he found everything there 
 greatly alive. The sea was shining and quivering under a bright 
 sun. Groups of passengers stood here and there, talkative 
 and hungry. Another half-hour saw them in Southampton 
 water. 
 
 "Good-morning," said a well-known voice, and, looking round, 
 West saw Miss Brougham. 
 
 " I hope you managed to get some sleep," he said. 
 
 '' Oh, yes ; part of the time I slept charmingly. The captain 
 tells me we shall be in by nine or a very little later." 
 
 The man who enjoys a breakfast on board ship, I venture to 
 say, enjoys it as no other meal can be enjoyed. After the 
 tedious, uneventful night, after the stimulating effects of the 
 fresh morning air, how good it is to sniff the rashers of bacon, 
 the odour of tea and coffee, to behold the joint of prime English 
 beef, to revel in crisp toast and fresh butter. Only now, to 
 think of these things has roused in me such a hunger that, by 
 your leave, I will not write another line until I have well fed. 
 That is just what all the passengers on the Wolf^ who could do 
 so, did, for there are those sad, much-to-be-compassionated 
 souls for whom the delight of a breakfast at sea is a thing nofl' 
 existent. 
 
 ^' In what part of the Isle of Wight is your home ? " asked 
 West, as he and Miss Brougham stood again where ihey h^id 
 stood the previous night. 
 
 " It is close to old Bonchurch," she answered. " It is called 
 ^ The Firs.' We must be passing quite close to it now, I should 
 think." 
 
 The captain was as good as his word. A few minutes after 
 nine saw the Wolf safely in dock, discharging at once her 
 passengers and her steam. 
 
 By ten o'clock. West had seen his own and his companion'^ 
 luggage through the Custom-house. 
 
 " I suppose you will go straight to Cowes," he asked ; '' there 
 is a boat which you can just catch, if you like." 
 
 Miss Brougham did like, so West saw her on board again, 
 She just let him touch her hand at parting. 
 
 " Wc shall meet to-morrow evening," he said. 
 
 " Yes/' she answered, earnestly, " I shall expect you." 
 
A smANk?^ I WQMil\K ^ \) ] ' lot 
 
 Thefe was no more tinie tQ*)3e4ost,»arrfh?^afl$q l?a,stcn on 
 shore. ' ' ' " ' 
 
 He watched the little ship till it was out of sight. Then he 
 began to consider what he should do. 
 
 He had felt it would be best for him not to accompany her 
 into what seemed her own domain. The thought that there 
 was a strip of water between them aggravated him so much 
 that in three or four hours that source of aggravation no longer 
 existed. 
 
 The more he thought of this woman the deeper grew his in- 
 fatuation. 
 
 Arrived at Cowes, nothing would serve him but to push on 
 with all the speed he might, so that he should sleep that night 
 near her. The thought that he was going where she was filled 
 him with delicious excitement. 
 
 It was about ten o'clock when he reached Bonchurch, that 
 beautiful and peaceful spot, the beauty of which is tender and 
 compassionate, and its peace the peace of spirits made pure 
 through much tribulation. 
 
 Not at all too well pleased at seeing so late a visitor, seemed 
 the waiters at the hotel where he put up. 
 
 The Firs he found upon inquiring was about ten minutes' 
 walk distant. It was close to the old church, and could not be 
 mistaken. Thither, while his meal was being prepared, West 
 turned his footsteps. 
 
 Gentle as May was the October night, lit by a sweet, pensive- 
 looking moon. A wonderful hush lay over everything — a hush 
 through which occasionally the voice of a cricket faltered. 
 
 There was in the ineffably soft, pure air the supreme rest 
 following some divine attainment. 
 
 He had proceeded a few steps only when he heard the sea — 
 a continuous flowing sound of a sea agitated by no waves. 
 
 He soon reached the old church which leans, with all its dead, 
 to the sea — the sea which, I make no doubt, shall one day take 
 it into its large embrace, and hide it away with all its other 
 pains. 
 
 Think you the dead take thought of this as they lie there 
 through long nights and days ? Do they hear the sea calling, 
 and whisper each to each under ground : '^ How long, oh, 
 brother, before we be moved from here — before waves and not 
 grasses stir above us 1 " 
 
102 A STJPiAisrGE: WOMAN, 
 
 Do they,!ok^iglits'Qf 'shouting winds, when they seem almost 
 to hear the se'aTDariiig aft'n-eir f6et, turn colder, thinking that 
 the hour of their change is upon them ? For I imagine a dead 
 man liketh well to take his ease, and, if he be well-housed, 
 desireth not to change his quarters. 
 
 But it is with living, not with dead, folk that we have to do ; 
 so let us back to our story. 
 
 *' Yes, there is the house in which she is even now," said Mr. 
 West to himself, as he surveyed with passionate worship the 
 high, moss-covered walls of The Firs. 
 
 A rambling, old-fashioned house, from what he could make 
 out. He stood there in an ecstasy of delight to know himself 
 so near her again. 
 
 A vision of sulky and sleepy waiters rose before his mind's 
 eye and compelled his return, but not before he had said many 
 times softly, under his breath — 
 
 *• Good-night, my lady, my beautiful, my mysterious love ! " 
 
 The fatigue of the day and the sea-voyage produced their 
 good work, and, excited though he was, sleep overtook his 
 thoughts of her — or, rather, turned them into dreams of her. 
 
 Not restful dreams, however. She would call him to her, and 
 when he came command him to fly. Once she was standing on 
 the edge of a chff, her face turned from it, and quite unconscious 
 of her danger. He stepped to her, and threw his arm round 
 her to draw her back. She gave a wild shriek, wrenched her- 
 self free from him, and fled — he knew not whither. 
 
 The power of the dream awoke him ; but he fell asleep again, 
 and this time slept so late that when he awoke it was to hear 
 the church-bells. 
 
 The thought flashed across him that if he went to church he 
 might see her there ; but he thought it, on the whole, pleasanter 
 not to anticipate the evening meeting. 
 
 What could the mystery about her be ? he again asked him- 
 self, as he dressed. Unconventional she certainly was to a most 
 remarkable degree. On the other hand, she was free from all 
 those arts which stamp ladies of a doubtful class. 
 
 Upon one point he was very clear, which was, that were she 
 low-born or high-born, rich or poor, saint or sinner, he would 
 win her and make her his wife — that even if her past had been 
 what she might have to regret, henceforth no one should have 
 right in her but himself. 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN. I03 
 
 He had the whole of the solemn coffee-room, and the solemn 
 waiter therein to himself. 
 
 Breakfast over, he walked to the pretty lady town, Ventnor, 
 which Death makes to be perpetually in season. They often 
 look cheerful enough ; yet to me a great sadness rests upon 
 these frontier towns of Death. Still, flirting goes on there ; the 
 brothers of sick folk meet the sisters of other sick folk, and out- 
 side the sick room in the bright, open air, there is room for a 
 little harmless diversion, though a good many funerals and 
 wheeled-chairs go by. 
 
 West threw himself on the little strip of beach, and began 
 throwing stones into the sea. 
 
 The serene autumn day wore slowly but surely away. At five 
 o'clock West dined ; then with a feeling of delicious pleasure 
 to think that the precious moment had at last come, he walked 
 down to The Firs. Through the Sunday evening peace went a 
 not unpleasant peal of church bells, and smote him somehow 
 with a keen sense of vanished boyhood. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 "Is Miss Brougham at home?" he inquired of the servant who 
 opened the garden-gate to him. Miss Brougham was at home, 
 and West followed up a long garden-path to the house, and 
 was shown into a room, which he supposed to be the drawing- 
 room. The furniture in it was elegant and uncomfortable. 
 There was a handsome cabinet of old china which he was ex- 
 amining when the door opened. He turned, and once again 
 they stood face to face. 
 
 " So you have come ? " she said. 
 
 *' Did you think I should not ? '' he answered. 
 
 " Oh ! I shouldn't have been greatly surprised. Do you like 
 my china 1 " 
 
 " Yes, I admire it greatly." 
 
 " Let us sit in the library," she said, after a pause ; " this 
 room is only meant for very formal visitors. There is to me 
 something chilling in the very air of it. No fire, however large, 
 could, I believe, warm it." 
 
104 A STRANGE IVOMAN. 
 
 Indeed, the library was a very different kind of room. It was 
 ringed round by books ; it contained a harmonium, a sofa, and 
 a few low, comfortable chairs. The thickness of the carpet 
 rendered one's step noiseless ; it was lighted by a shaded lamp. 
 
 " This is a famous room," said West. 
 
 Then for quite a long time they remained silent. Out of this 
 strange position what was to arise ? 
 
 " You have a number of books," he began. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You read a great deal } " 
 
 " A great deal. I have nothing else to do. From any trouble 
 I have to try and take refuge in my books." 
 
 " But I hope that you have not many troubles." 
 
 "We won't speak of them now," she answered, in her low, 
 strangely sweet voice. 
 
 She was leaning back in a low armchair ; the red velvet 
 cushions on which her head rested showed off her dark hair 
 well . 
 
 They talked of the Isle of Wight, of books, of music. 
 
 When at length he took his leave she walked with him as far 
 as the gate. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, suddenly. 
 
 *^ For what ? " she asked. 
 
 " For letting me come to see you." 
 
 " I don't think thanks are needed for that." 
 
 They had reached the garden-gate by this time. 
 
 He asked whether he might come again ; the permission was 
 granted. 
 
 " How still it is ! " he said. " But what sound is that V 
 
 " Oh ! it is only an owl." 
 
 " I like the sound," he said. 
 
 "Yes? So do I." 
 
 Mr. West seemed to find it very hard to get out of the gate. 
 After a long silence he said, " Good-bye ! " and in a tone that 
 meant a good deal. 
 
 He took her hand and held it fast ; it trembled in his ; then 
 she said, simply — 
 
 " Don't, please." 
 
 " You are not angry with me, are you 1 " 
 
 *' No, not in the least. Good-night." 
 
 In another moment the gate had closed upon him. 
 
A STRANGE WOMAN, ^ I05 
 
 He went and walked on the shore. There was a cruel hunger 
 gnawing at his heart. Would she never love him ? Would 
 there always be on her side this barrier of ice ? 
 
 Now, unless a love.affair has something about it which differs 
 from the ordinary run of such things, it is not very interesting 
 to follow ; so I propose to skip some days in the present history, 
 because they were distinguished by nothing remarkable. 
 
 West went to The Firs often, and remained as mystified as 
 ever. He began to think, however, that in time he might be 
 necessary to Miss Brougham's peace of mind. 
 
 Then a time came when he could endure suspense no longer, 
 so at the end of a gray October afternoon he walked up the long 
 garden-path of The Firs. There he met her. 
 
 " Come to the house," she said. "You shall have afternoon tea." 
 
 He assented, and in a few minutes more they were in the 
 library. 
 
 While expecting the servant to enter with tea, he made some 
 observations at random. He was thinking all the time how he 
 should begin the subject he had at heart. 
 
 " What is the matter with you to-day ? " said Miss Brougham, 
 when the servant had brought in tea and left the room. , 
 
 "Do you really want to know ? " he asked, turning round and 
 looking straight at her. 
 
 " Yes, very much." 
 
 " Then it is this," he went on, speaking very slowly. " I love 
 you — tenderly, desperately. Tell me what hope there is for me." 
 
 He ceased and kept his eyes fixed upon her. What meant 
 the expression on her face ? Surely pride and pleasure rushed 
 for a moment into her eyes, but were almost instantly replaced 
 by a look of such hopeless pain, a look of such mad longing, 
 that it was keen almost as a cry. 
 
 "Speak !" he said. "Why do you look so? Is it pity for 
 me because you don't love me ? '' 
 
 Then she said : 
 
 "It is pity for you ; but not because I don't love you. It is 
 pity for myself, too." 
 
 " Then, if you love me, my darling," he cried, " why, in God's 
 name, need you pity us ? Are we not free to do as we like ? " 
 
 " No," she answered, "we are no^ free to do as we like." 
 
 " Adelaide, tell me what this mystery is, for you must be mine 
 — nothing shall stand between us." 
 
io6 A STRANGE WOMAN 
 
 " How can I tell you ? " she said. "" Through no fault of mine, 
 I have been cursed. Listen, then ; I love you, and you have a 
 right to know." 
 
 Then she began her strange story, as follows : 
 
 " I have told you before that my mother was an Italian. She 
 was very beautiful, and her nature was as sensitive as her face. 
 She was married when she was twenty to Mr. Brougham, who 
 worshipped her. Through her girlhood she had been loved 
 desperately by a countryman of her own, a strong, fierce man 
 of bad character. When he heard she was engaged to be married, 
 he came to her, gnashed his teeth and groaned with rage and 
 pain. He implored for a kiss, but my mother positively re- 
 coiled from him. It is impossible to say what might have 
 happened, had not Mr. Brougham at that moment entered the 
 room and driven out the unwelcome visitor. 
 
 " A day or two after this they were married, and went straight 
 to England. No, don't," she said, as he was about to take her 
 hand, "please don't. When. I have told you the end of this, 
 you will know why, and then you will shrink from me as from 
 something unnatural." 
 
 " Never, my love," he answered. *' Come what may of it, 
 mine you shall be. But now go on." 
 
 " What more there is to tell will not take long — but it cursed 
 all my life. I scarcely know how to tell you," she continued, a 
 slight colour coming into her face. "Well, my mother had been 
 married about a year, and expected soon to be mother. It was 
 summer time, and they were staying at a French watering-place. 
 They had taken a small house — a little wooden gate and two or 
 three yards of ground divided it from the road. You walked 
 straight into the salon. 
 
 *' Here my mother was sitting one evening alone, my father 
 having left her to make some purchases. She was lost in 
 thought about the future, so that she neither saw nor heard any- 
 one enter the room. Then an awful shadow fell in front of 
 her, and a voice, at sound of which her blood turned cold, cried 
 in Italian, * At last I have found you ! Now, my little witch ! I 
 will kiss you as much as I please. If you call out I will kill 
 you.' 
 
 " Then he caught her in his arms and kissed her. How long 
 she had to endure the horror she could not say. She heard an 
 oath and a blow ; her husband stood by her, and her persecutor 
 
A SIRANGE WOMAN. 107 
 
 lay dead at her feet. They thought at first he was only stunned. 
 
 " My mother shivered and cried, and was put to bed ; a few 
 hours afterward I was born. 
 
 " Don't you begin to see, now, how it fell that I was afflicted ? 
 Don't you see that the awful horror of those minutes that my 
 mother went through, made on me an ineffaceable impression ? 
 
 '' You have heard, doubtless, how fear, caused to a mother by 
 some animal, had imparted to her unborn offspring a terrible 
 and lasting recoil from the sight of that animal ; how even a 
 longing on the mother's part for some fruit or other dainty has, 
 if unsatisfied, left its traces on the very form and face of the 
 child ! It is thus that the horror which filled my mother at that 
 vile man's embrace, gave to me a revulsion stronger than reason ; 
 an intuitive and ungovernable recoil from the signs by which 
 men show their attachment to women. I love you ! Oh, I 
 love you ; but now you know why it is that when you take my 
 hand in yours, I thrill with pain instead of pleasure. Why ! if 
 you were to kiss me, I think I should go raving mad. And yet 
 — oh, God ! how I long to be loved ! " 
 
 "Yes," he said, quietly. " I understand it all now." His face 
 was as pale as hers ; he knew now from what that great pallor 
 of hers arose. 
 
 After a pause she resumed. " The one hope of my life has 
 been that I might love some one so much that my love would be 
 stronger than this awful revulsion. I waited, I looked ; but till 
 you found me I cared for no one in that way. As soon as you 
 saw me, you took my heart from me. Dear, I have acted 
 selfishly toward you. I have let you hope when no hope was. 
 But I hoped against hope, forgive me. Take my hand ; let 
 me see how long I can bear it." 
 
 He did as she bade him. The hght was low, but still there 
 was enough to see her by. Her face was paler than ever ; her 
 lips compressed, growing every moment more so. The fingers 
 of the other hand were clenched in her palm. The hand he 
 held grew cold as ice, and trembled. She was striving with all 
 the force of a strong nature to endure it to the uttermost. 
 
 At last she could endure no longer, and a cry of exquisite 
 agony broke from her lips. 
 
 " Would you like such a wife 1 " she said. 
 
 Then he spoke : 
 
 *' My darling, I love you. Only the more do I love you for your 
 
io8 A STA'AJVGE WOMAN. 
 
 trouble. Though you may really never be more to me than you 
 are now, if so you will we will marry. I have seen much of 
 the world. I will love no other woman, in any way, but you. 
 I know, dear, there will be pain for me in it, but I shall be with 
 you — I shall hear you — above all, I shall see you. Come, I 
 shall take care of you, and you shall take care of me." 
 
 '' Oh, how noble you are ! " she moaned. " But, my dear, it 
 can never be — bless you ! Go and leave me to my fate." 
 
 '* Never ! " he repHed. '' Only tell me one thing — have you 
 spoken to no doctor ? " 
 
 " I have — to two." 
 
 ** And they said— what ? " 
 
 *' The first said nothing could be done. The second said 
 there was one faint chance, but to try it might be attended by 
 such dreadful consequences to myself and others that he would 
 not advise it." 
 
 " Then there is hope ! " cried West, feeling the blood rush 
 through his veins. *' Tell me," he whispered, "(^//the doctor said." 
 
 *' He told me," she answered, *' that if a man I loved — and who 
 loved me — would, against my will, and utterly in spite of my- 
 self, hold me and kiss me many times, in the great shock to my 
 nerves, my unnatural revulsion viight be overthrown. But that 
 the experiment was much more likely to send me mad, or to 
 end in my doing some physical injury to myself or him." 
 
 " Dear," said West, very earnestly, " let us test this chance." 
 
 " But," she answered, moaning, ^' I don't want to go mad, 
 and I know I should." 
 
 "/believe you would be cured." 
 
 But she shrank from him, crying, " Don't come near me, or 
 you will kill me. Oh, it is awful to feel like this, and yet I am 
 so hungry for love." 
 
 *' It shall be as you please, my poor darling," he said, but 
 she noted the trouble in his eyes. 
 
 It may be imagined that West got no sleep that night. He 
 walked up and down his room, about as desperately miserable 
 as a man well could be. Never to hold the woman that he 
 loved close in his arms — never to feel her kiss answer his — 
 never to feel her heart beat to his— to live with her under these 
 circumstances would be to endure untold agony. Yet to live 
 away from her— to have no right in her— how could he bear 
 that pain ? 
 
STRANGE WOMAN. ^ . 109 
 
 As he paced to and fro, the wind rose and the rain fell. He 
 threw open the window and leaned out that he might feel the 
 wind blow the large raindrops against his face. 
 
 It was a north-east wind, but it seemed warm to him, in his 
 condition of mind and body. He wanted to feel the cold of an 
 Arctic winter in his blood. He longed for waves — for waves 
 icy cold — he longed for the quiet, awful embraces of the winds 
 which the North Pole chills. Under the gusty and ever- 
 increasing gale he heard the sea beginning to rouse, and the 
 noise of waves grew louder and louder. 
 
 Oh ! that night of rain and wind and waiting ! Do you think 
 he will ever forget it ? At length a chill, wet, dreary day broke 
 over land and sea. 
 
 No trouble is great enough to throw an Englishman out of 
 his daily life. His dearest may lie dead or his fortunes be 
 shattered, still he will sit down to his accustomed meals. It 
 may be scarcely more than a pretence of eating that he makes, 
 but he will make it. 
 
 So it was that, notwithstanding the disturbed state of his 
 nlind, Mr. West, when the time came, took his place in the 
 coffee-room. As the solemn waiter brought in his breakfast, 
 West could not help wondering how any man could be so uni- 
 formly solemn. 
 
 In his excited state of nerves he became almost hysterical 
 over the thought. He swallowed a few mouthfuls of toast, 
 drank some tea and went out. It was too early to go to the 
 Firs, so he walked along the shore. 
 
 Through all the days of his life, that day will stand out to 
 him. He will remember that dreary seaside walk, the dull, 
 dirty-looking sea rolling in heavily under the bleak north-easter. 
 The rain was pouring down as if it meant never to leave off. 
 Not a sail was visible ; only some screaming seagulls swept 
 over, and now and then plunged into the waves. 
 
 He must have been walking to and fro a long time, for when 
 he looked at his watch he found it was considerably past eleven. 
 So he turned to the Firs. 
 
 As he went up the garden the wind wailed through the trees 
 like desolation. He found Miss Brougham in the library. 
 
 ** How ill you look ! " she said. 
 
 ^' You don't look much better, my poor dear," he replied. 
 
 *' I have been awake all night," she answered. 
 
no A STRANGE WOMAN, 
 
 '' So have I." 
 
 " I have thought it all over," she went on, " and, if you are 
 willing, we will try it." 
 
 A great light of hope kindled his face as he said: "Bless 
 you ! " 
 
 Then there was an awful silence. The wind went on wailing 
 round the house ; dead leaves hurried past the window ; the 
 fire flickered, and a cuckoo-clock in the hall went through the 
 hour. 
 
 West looked at Adelaide. Her face was blanched but reso- 
 lute, prepared to meet the worst. 
 
 " I am ready," she said, in a low voice. 
 
 She could not keep from trembling, such a great shivering-fit 
 was upon her. 
 
 '' Wait just one moment more," she cried, as he took a step 
 toward her. 
 
 At length, resolved to end for them both this torture of wait- 
 ing, he caught her in his arms and pressed his lips on hers. 
 
 Her face must have been awful to see. She shuddered and 
 struggled in his hold, drawing in her breath with a sound as 
 people do when straining every nerve and muscle. 
 
 Suddenly the servants heard a wild, prolonged shriek ring 
 through the house. It was the cry of their mistress, and they 
 rushed at once to the library, whence the sound proceeded. 
 
 The shriek was repeated ; the door was locked. Everything 
 grew silent again. 
 
 It was some time before John, the gardener, the only man 
 about the Firs — and he a very old one — could be found. How- 
 ever, he was able to force the lock. The door was thrown open, 
 and there, in the centre of the room, stood Mr. West, his face 
 white and set. He was holding Miss Brougham in his arms ; 
 she had her face bent down, and her teeth were meeting through 
 the flesh of his right hand. 
 
 " Stand back ! " he said to the servants. *' You shall know 
 everything in good time." 
 
 Then, with a supreme effort, he got his hand free, and, raising 
 her face, kissed her again and again. She remained passive ; 
 then, suddenly, she flung both her arms about his neck, sank 
 her head upon his shoulder, and burst into passionate tears. 
 
 " Thank God, my darling ! " cried West, as he strained her 
 to his breast. " We are saved ! " 
 
A STRANGE WOATAN. . ill 
 
 Of course, all this much mystified the servants ; but the 
 doctor had soon to be sent for. He was consulted, and thought 
 it best to say that Miss Brougham was subject to fits, in which, 
 if she were not physically restrained, she might do herself some 
 serious injury. 
 
 It was very fortunate that a man as strong as Mr. West hap- 
 pened to be present at the time. 
 
 It was not for the lady of the Firs that the doctor had come, 
 but for West himself. Those white, sharp little teeth had made 
 sad havoc. He had to pay for his happiness, for, in spite of all 
 that could be done, the wound grew so threatening and virulent 
 that the hand had to come off. 
 
 " I fancied it would end so," he said, when the doctor pre- 
 pared him for his loss. " This hand has done good work in its 
 time," and he regarded it affectionately. 
 
 No doubt he fell to thinking how it had once plied an oar in 
 the university boat-race ; how many a sea-wave it had parted ; 
 how many a partridge it served to bring low, and how much 
 work of a very different kind it had done. 
 
 When Adelade heard about her lover's hand she was incon- 
 solable. 
 
 *' Dear," he said, " I shan't mind it vejy much, \i yotc don't. 
 Do you suppose it will make you love me less 1 '^ 
 
 '' Love you less ! Only more— more — more ! " 
 
 "Frankly," he said, with a smile, "I'm a greedy fellow. I 
 should have liked to have kept both, but, since I could not, I 
 would rather have my love than my right hand. Kiss me, 
 sweetheart." 
 
TRAPPED. 
 
 ■:o: 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A WILD Stormy evening near the end of October — an evening 
 when the rain, whirled and driven by the raging sou-wester, 
 became a veritable scourge to lash the face and eyes of any one 
 who might be exposed to its fury. One person, whom we shall 
 know later on, was so exposed. This person, then, was making 
 his difficult way along a road in the wild country of Blankshire. 
 He held a bag in one hand and a disabled umbrella in the 
 other. Between his teeth he gripped a pipe, at which he pulled 
 hard to keep it alight. There were trees on either side of the 
 road, and as the hurricancj^like a great wind- sea, went billow- 
 ing about the land, he could hear many a bough snapped short 
 by the stress of its strength. In the lulls of the tempest one 
 would seem to hear strange unearthly voices calHng and reply- 
 ing, but the lulls were brief indeed, and always resulted in 
 more violent outbreaks, as if the wind had rested to gain fresh 
 force. 
 
 Outside of man— as he has been manifested to us in some of 
 his dealings in past ages — nothing seems possessed by such a 
 fiendish spirit as a really great wind, if attended by rain. The 
 roar of an angry sea is a thing grand and terrible to hear ; but 
 the wind exults and delights like a fiend in all the dreadful havoc 
 that is going on — a feminine fiend, albeit we have been taught 
 to regard the wind as of the masculine gender ! And the voice 
 
TRAPPED. ^ 113 
 
 of the fiend shrieks and yells for more and more disaster, more 
 and more glut of death, till it breaks into a shrill falsetto, and 
 is answered by the immense, deep boom and heavy roll of the 
 great waves as they come and go. 
 
 *' Yes, have it your own way, fiend ! " ejaculated the man. 
 There was good reason for his ill-temper, for he was drenched 
 to the skin, and was almost blind with the rain in his eyes. 
 " No ! " he went on, " no one in sight ! not a soul to speak 
 to ! " and he uttered another malediction on the weather. 
 
 At that very moment he could hear a sound of wheels coming 
 rapidly in his direction. The conveyance, however, whatever 
 it might be, carried no light, and for the violence of the wind — 
 which seemed at times as if it must leave him senseless upon 
 the ground — he could not tell, certainly, whether the wheels 
 were coming on the right side or the left of him, so he shouted, 
 with his uttermost strength, trying to match his voice against 
 the wind : 
 
 *' Look out there I and stop I " 
 
 After this had been vociferated three or four times, a light 
 cart came to a halt in the middle of the road, a few yards from 
 where the foot-passenger was standing. 
 
 " Right you are, governor I " said the cheerful voice of the 
 driver. " Rough weather I " 
 
 " How far is it to the nearest village, the way I am going ?^' 
 inquired the man in the road. 
 
 " How far ? " answered the man in the cart. " Well, there 
 ain't what you may call a real village nearer than Popilton." 
 
 " And how far may that be ? " 
 
 "Just about four miles.'' 
 
 " Can I get a bed there ? " 
 
 '' When you get to Popilton — if you ever do, a night like this 1 
 you go to the Three Jolly Drummers and try. They have beds 
 there, and good beds, if they ain't full. That's the trouble— it's 
 run on a good deal by sporting gents. Glad to drink your 
 health, sir ! " 
 
 To this friendly willingness the other responded by a sound 
 which for themoment utterly mystified and dumbfounded the man 
 in the cart. It was, however, nothing more than a French oath, 
 hissed between the teeth with true French vindictiveness. 
 
 The English are brutal ; the French are vindictive. 
 
 The man in the cart speedily recovered himself, and turning 
 
 9 
 
114 TRAPPED, 
 
 round, shouted after the fast - receding figure of the foot- 
 passenger : 
 
 " You don't want nothin' for your money, do you ? " 
 
 This sarcasm, the point of which was, to say the least of it, 
 doubtful, was followed by a long string of those unsavoury ex- 
 pletives in which a wronged Briton gives vent to his indignation ; 
 but regardless of everything except the weather, the stranger 
 held resolutely upon his way, talking to himself, sometimes in 
 English, sometimes in French. It spite of the wind, which dealt 
 him great blows at every step, and the rain which lashed him, 
 he could not have been walking more than an hour when he 
 distinguished lights ahead of him, and in a few minutes more 
 found himself in the one, wet, shivering street of Popilton, which 
 in its present aspect looked forlorn enough. But one shop in 
 the street was to be seen open, and that was, of course, the shop 
 of the place ; it sold candles and groceries, and cheese, and 
 sweets, and apples and nuts, and drapery and tobacco, and pipes 
 in which to consume the same, and stationery. In fact, it is 
 difficult to say what it did not sell ; the wonder was that so 
 small a shop could have held so much material of various 
 kinds. 
 
 The traveller, who was footsore, for he had walked far that 
 day, and whose clothes were heavy with rain, opened the door, 
 which caused a little bell attached thereto to tinkle sharply, and 
 admitted himself and a stupendous gust of wind, which almost 
 extinguished the one candle by which the shop was lighted. 
 The traveller knocked the ashes of his pipe out against the 
 counter, and asked for an ounce of tobacco. While it was being 
 carefully weighed,'he inquired his way to the Three Jolly Drum- 
 mers, and having received his direction, once more went on his 
 road. This time he had not far to go, as the inn stood at the 
 bottom of the street. 
 
 He looked up at the sign, on which the Three Jolly Drummers, 
 so reputed, looked anything but jolly, as portrayed by the hand 
 of the village artist, who doubtless in his time had been a wag. 
 But the inn itself, even from outside, had a cheery aspect, its 
 windows being lined with red blinds, which, lit from within by 
 lamp and fire, made a delightful glow of colour. 
 
 Gladly enough the wayfarer walked into the warmth and light. 
 He closed the door behind him, went up straight to the bar, 
 and asked the pretty country girl who was serving behind it if 
 
TRAPPED. 115 
 
 he could have a bed for the night. The girl was afraid not, but 
 she would speak to her mistress. 
 
 Oh, moments of agonizing suspense I After he had eaten and 
 drunken, was he to be housed for the night? To stretch his 
 weary limbs between clean, fragrant sheets — to fold his arms, 
 and rest, and fall asleep watching the bright fire-light flickering 
 on the wall — hearing the wind and the rain beating round the 
 house, and he safely out of their reach — this, or to go forth again 
 and walk probably a dozen weary miles before any town where 
 he might reasonably expect shelter could be gained ? 
 
 The landlady herself now appears, buxom and smiling, the 
 picture of good humour. To such landladies belong only the 
 best of beds. She is very sorry that all her four beds are occu- 
 pied. *' Such a bad night, too ! " She " is quite put-about, that 
 she is ? Would ask him if he did not mind to sleep on the sofa 
 in the bar-parlour, but so full have they been for the last week 
 that she and her husband are obliged to sleep there themselves ! " 
 
 The traveller asked if there was any place where he could sit 
 down, and was shown at once into the before-mentioned parlour, 
 where a bright fire was burning. He sat down by it and de- 
 manded bread and cheese, and, first of all, a glass of hot brandy 
 and water. ^' That's one of their good English notions," he said 
 to himself, as he threw his bag aside, and saw that the rain had 
 drenched all its contents as it had drenched him. 
 
 Top-coat he had none. He set down before the fire his soft 
 felt hat, which the rain had made painfully sodden and heavy, 
 and from which under the fire's heat the steam ascended. 
 
 The stranger, standing with his back to the fire, the glass of 
 comforting brandy and water in his hand, proved to be of slight 
 but well-made figure. He was graceful in all his movements, 
 but graceful more as a woman than as a man. His face was 
 intellectual, with something hard and subtle — a physiognomist 
 would have said cruel — about the lips. His eyes were brightly 
 and clearly blue. He could not have been more than thirty 
 years old, but his forehead was seamed by deep lines, as of one 
 who had greatly lived. This, however, only added to the in- 
 terest of his face. His hands were long, white, and well-shaped. 
 He had the look and voice and manner of a man well-born. He 
 was standing ruefully eyeing his soaked bag, when a vehicle 
 drew up sharply in front of the door, and a man's voice, strong 
 and cheery, greeted the landlady. 
 
ii6 TRAPPED. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Cooper ! Overtaken by this wretched weather ! 
 Drove over to Colstone to do some commissions for the ladies, 
 and you see how I am rewarded ! Near the Firs, as I am, I 
 can't get past here without a pint of your famous ale, and a 
 minute's warm at your cheerful fire. Full as usual, Mrs. 
 Cooper ? " 
 
 " That you may say, sir, so full that there's a poor gentleman 
 in the parlour as I can't take in nohow, although the gent's all 
 but drowned ! " 
 
 "Dear, dear !" replied the new-comer, walking into the parlour. 
 He was a powerfully-built, broad-chested young fellow, over- 
 flowing with animal spirits and good nature, an Englishman of 
 the best type. He inclined his head towards the other occupant 
 of the room, and remarked that it was a night not fit for a dog 
 to be out in. The other agreed, and smilingly sketched his 
 position as we know it. 
 
 " No," repHed the Englishman, " I don't suppose you can 
 count, in these wild parts, on getting housed under twelve or 
 fourteen miles. Well, I'm sorry for you with all my heart ! " 
 
 " It's a dreadful night for the gentleman to have to go on in, 
 and he soaked through already," said the landlady, bustling in 
 and setting a foaming tankard of ale upon the table. *' Well, 
 if we can do no more for you, sir, we'll keep you as warm as we 
 can while you're here," and she flung a fresh pine-log on the fire. 
 
 The rich potent ale sent even an added glow of good-fellow- 
 ship to the new-comer's always warm heart. He looked at the 
 stranger steaming himself before the fire, and at the bag con- 
 taining his drenched change of linen. The man was well- 
 dressed, and a gentleman to all appearance. He thought 
 vaguely of the stranger who fell among thieves — the cases were 
 not identical, but there was a resemblance between them. He 
 drained the contents of his tankard, and said as he set it down : 
 
 " I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir ; but if you 
 want to know who I am, this will at least tell you my name," 
 and he handed the other a card, on which was engraven : 
 
 '* HORACE GILBARD, 
 
 Old Court, Inner Temple." 
 
 The recipient of the card bowed his acknowledgmentj and 
 Mr. Gilbard went on ; 
 
TRAPPED. 117 
 
 " I don't live down here ; I am at present on a visit to an old 
 lady, a dear friend of mine, whose^daughter I hope will shortly 
 be a dearer friend still — in fact, the dearest friend a man can 
 have ! I am now on my way to their house — The Firs — and if 
 you will come with me and let us put you up for the night and 
 see after you, I know they would be only too glad. Why, man 
 alive, it would be sheer madness to go on ! To let you do so 
 would be like letting you take your own life. You'll come with 
 me and we'll make you comfortable." 
 
 " You are but too good," returned the stranger, speaking with 
 a slight foreign accent ; and I shall accept your proffered hos- 
 pitality with the utmost thankfulness, for — as you say in England 
 — I am pretty well beat. You have given me your card — pray 
 accept mine." 
 
 The card which he handed to Gilbard, who only just glanced 
 at it, was inscribed : 
 
 " M. ALBERT D'AURELLES." 
 
 In a very few minutes the score had been settled and the two 
 men, seated side by side in the high dogcart, were driving at 
 an almost perilously swift rate through the loud, tempestuous 
 night, Gilbard shouting aloud to warn any unfortunate foot- 
 passenger out of the way, although the light cart swerved from 
 side to side as if it must every moment sway over altogether. In 
 the course of a few minutes more they reined up sharply ; Gil- 
 bard called aloud, and his call \vas answered by the clamorous 
 barking of many dogs. Then the great gates of the carriage- 
 drive swung back, and a man appeared, lantern in hand, ready 
 to take the horse when the house was reached. 
 
 " Yes, that will do, Jones I " exclaimed Gilbard, as he sprang 
 down. " She'll want a good feed of corn to-night, for she's 
 come fast and far. Now, Monsieur d'Aurelles, if you will 
 kindly come this way, I will leave you to get acquainted with 
 the smoking-room, while I see that a bedroom is made ready 
 for you. The smoking-room is my institution here, and I am 
 rather proud of it ; I think it is, or should be made, the joUiest 
 room in the house." 
 
 An hour after this, behold Monsieur Albert — having luxuriated 
 in a warm bath as only a man at once cold and weary can luxu- 
 riate—attired in his new friend's clothes I'— which, to put it 
 
ii8 TRAPPED. 
 
 mildly, were amply big enough for him, though what would 
 have made any other man look absurd, he carried off with a 
 sort of negligent grace. In a minute more, he was entering with 
 his benefactor a large, solidly-furnished, oaken-wainscoted, old- 
 fashioned dining-room. It was lit by many candles, and a 
 large crystal, rose-shaded lamp, which depended by long 
 chains from the ceiling. A brilliant wood-fire burned in the 
 immense open fireplace. Near to it two ladies were standing, 
 whom Gilbard at once introduced as Mrs. and Miss Lennard. 
 
 '•' I have to thank you more than I can say, ladies, for your 
 kindness to a wayfarer and a stranger. It will be yet another 
 grateful recollection I shall have of your country when I am far 
 away from it," said Monsieur d'Aurelles, bowing very low. 
 
 Mrs. Lennard, whose future son had really wronged her by 
 calling her an " old lady," was the model of a gracious English- 
 woman, midway, it might be, in her fifties. Warm-hearted and 
 kind to weakness, she replied that they were only too happy to 
 have been of any service. Really, and he was not English? 
 Well, she should never have thought it, though, now he called 
 her attention to it, she could just discern a slight foreign 
 accent. Then the four sat down to table, and the late dinner — • 
 late, indeed, to-night — was served, to which Gilbard did such 
 justice as a healthy Englishman can, especially when he has 
 been long exposed to bad weather. But the Frenchman, who 
 but an hour or two before had felt ravenous, found himself now 
 only able to taste of each dish. Of wine, however, he drank 
 feverishly, like a man whose throat is parched by thirst. His 
 place at table was opposite Miss Lennard's, so that it would 
 have been impossible for him not to know before dinner was 
 over what she was like to look at. And what did he see in her? 
 
 He saw a woman who might have been six or seven and 
 twenty, about the average height, with an exquisitely developed 
 figure, if anything a trifle too abundant in its gracious outlines 
 • — and yet, who shall say? She was dressed in a long, flowing, 
 tightly-fitting silk, as if she tried by her dress to appear older, 
 not younger, than she really was. The face was pale, and 
 beautifully shaped ; the mouth small and unusually sensitive. 
 In the eyes, which were of a soft grayish green, there was a 
 dreamy, far-away expression, as if they were looking for some- 
 thing she had missed in her life. 
 
 The classical head was crowned by folds of wonderful red- 
 
TRAPPED, 119 
 
 gold hair. Her fingers were long and slender, but firm to touch, 
 showing that nervous strength which is generally inseparable 
 from a really passionate nature — and that such a nature was 
 hers, her mouth bore witness. When called to the affairs of 
 everyday life, the dreamy look would quite vanish from her 
 eyes, and they would seem to become at times very well-heads 
 of mirth, suggesting clear waters which the wind and sunlight 
 surprise together. Her laugh had in it the depth and fulness 
 which comes with matured womanhood, and which is totally 
 distinct from the clear silvery treble of a girl's laughter. I am 
 not here saying which of the two yields the more delightful 
 music. I am simply distinguishing between them. 
 
 Her manner was a rapid alternation of langour with anima- 
 tion — the animation taking you by surprise as an unexpected 
 wave will, breaking suddenly over a quiet sea. Her voice had 
 in its quieter passages something of the peace and purity of 
 moonlight. In its gayer phases it was characterized by a gentle 
 vehemence. If the terms seem irreconcilable, the fault is not 
 mine. I can only see her as seen through the eyes of Albert 
 d'Aurelles ; only hear her as heard through his ears. Rather 
 than through the eyes and ears of her lover ? Yes, even so. 
 Horace Gilbard felt all the charm of his betrothed, though he 
 would have been at a loss to say in what it consisted. But the 
 Frenchman, among other things, was a poet, and he had a poet's 
 love of analyzing whatever he came across. So he analyzed 
 Miss Lennard's charm, as well as the influences it produced 
 upon him. 
 
 After dinner, in the smoking-room, he asked Gilbard with 
 courteous interest some questions concerning her, and learnt 
 that she was a great reader. In conclusion, the young fellow 
 said : 
 
 " I trust before Christmas time to take her out of this. It's 
 lonely for her — confounded lonely ! " 
 
 Shortly afterwards, they retired for the night ; but how dis- 
 appointing to D'Aurelles was the long-looked-forward-to time 
 of rest ! The bed yielded him none. He ached in all his 
 bones ; he burned and shivered by turns. He heard the wind 
 storming about the house, and through it he heard the clock of 
 the church which stood close by chime all the hours. 
 
 There are times when a man is possessed by a feeling of 
 tragic forlornness which no words can depict, when he seems 
 
120 TRAPPED. 
 
 even forsaken of himself. Such hours were those to Albert 
 d'Aurelles, as he tossed from side to side upon his bed, and 
 longed for the first glimpse of morning light. When it came, 
 he fell into an uneasy doze, through which he seemed to fancy 
 Miss Lennard's presence in the room. Later on, he awoke to 
 find himself in a highly feverish condition, and to hear from 
 Gilbard that the doctor had been sent for and would shortly be 
 upon the spot. 
 
 The attack from which Albert suffered, although sharp, was 
 brief : and within a week of his arrival at The Firs he was able 
 to leave his room. Horace Gilbard had been compelled the day 
 before to leave for London, assuring his new friend that the 
 women were born nurses, and would take excellent care of him. 
 
 He was so weak from his illness as to find the dressing of 
 himself quite a labour. It was late in the afternoon when he 
 descended, leaning on the arm of a servant, who informed him 
 that there were visitors in the drawing-room, and Miss Lennard 
 thought he might not be strong enough to see them, so he was 
 to be shown to her own sitting-room, where he would be quite 
 quiet. 
 
 This room was a charmingly-furnished, odd-shaped, old- 
 fashioned apartment, situated in a remote corner of the house. 
 As the door was opened, a delicious perfume came out as it 
 were to meet him, at the same time Miss Lennard advanced to- 
 wards him. 
 
 " I am so very glad to see you," she said, holding out her 
 hand. " That is where you are to sit, please," indicating a 
 luxurious easy-chair drawn up close to the fire. *^ Shall I ring 
 for candles, or do you prefer the firelight only, till it gets abso- 
 lutely dark?" 
 
 He took the chair to which she signed him, and replied that 
 nothing could be more acceptable than the fire-lit dusk. 
 
 Then, close by the window, came an unexpected shouting of 
 many boys : 
 
 ' ' Please to remember the 5th of November, 
 
 Gunpowder, treason, and plot ! 
 I see no reason why gunpowder treason 
 
 Should ever be forgot ! 
 Holloa, boys ! holloa, boys ! make the bells ring ! 
 Holloa, boys ! holloa, boys ! God save the Queen !" 
 
 For a long time afterwards these matchlessly-foolish words 
 
TRAPPED. 121 
 
 clove to his memory, as the most trivial words, the most 
 meaningless incidents will, when associated with any important 
 train of events in our lives. 
 
 " The noise startles you ? " said Catherine Lennard. 
 
 She rang the bell, and bade the servant dismiss the boys with 
 a shilling. 
 
 He asked what it meant. 
 
 " I forgot you were not English," she said, smiling, and then 
 explained to him the old English custom of carrying about on 
 the 5th of November an effigy of Guy Fawkes, to become at 
 night the fuel for a bonfire. "Do you really feel stronger ? " she 
 asked, in a voice that harmonized well with the soft twihght. 
 
 *' Yes, really," he answered, looking from the fire in her 
 direction, and past her to the tall, windless trees outlined against 
 the sky. " Stronger, but still pleasantly weak. I can never 
 thank you sufficiently for the goodness you have all shown to 
 me." 
 
 " Please don^t talk of thanks, but tell me if there is anything 
 I can do for you." 
 
 " Am I to answer quite frankly ? " 
 
 " You are." 
 
 "Then I will ask you to say some poetry to me. Mr. Gilbard 
 let out that you were fond of it. Oddly enough, to love 
 genuinely what so few people know anything about, is also a 
 weakness of mine." 
 
 " How glad I am ! What shall I recite ? " 
 
 " Choose for yourself, please." 
 
 After a moment's deliberation, she began repeating some of 
 the most dramatic of Tennyson's poems. The deep melody 
 and suppressed passion of her voice in reciting thrilled him to 
 his heart's centre. When she paused, he told her a little French 
 cha?tson^ which delighted her ; and when he saw how she kept 
 murmuring over to herself the last lines of it, he admitted that 
 the lines were of his own composition. 
 
 A harmless pastime enough, one would think, this of two 
 people sitting in the firelight and quoting poetry against each 
 other. But few things in this world that are nice are harmless 
 — very seldom, indeed, where the sexes are concerned. 
 
 Presently Mrs. Lennard, having got rid of her visitors, bustled 
 in, and candles were lit. After this, dinner was served ; after 
 which, and having smoked one pipe in the smoking-room, 
 
122 TRAPPED. 
 
 Monsieur d'Anrelles played a game at ccarte^x^h Mrs. Lennard, 
 and then, quite wearied out, went to bed ; and there, as he watched 
 the firelight fairies come in and go about the room, he fell 
 asleep, to dream of the strange, lovely eyes, and even stranger 
 and lovelier voice, of Miss Lennard. She did not dream of 
 him, but she did think it was a blessing to have met at lasc 
 with any one who could share her love of poetry as this man 
 did. In all ways Horace was dear and desirable to her except 
 in this one way alone, that he proudly vaunted his impervious- 
 ness to the refining influence of the high arts. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The next day Albert d'Aurelles arose much earlier. It was 
 three months since he had left behind him in France the 
 woman to whom he had vowed his heart — a beautiful and a 
 passionate woman, though, unlike Caesar's wife, her reputation 
 was, I am afraid, not above suspicion ! But it was generally 
 beheved that this, her latest love, was really an affair of the 
 heart. Indeed, what else could it have been, for D'Aurelles 
 was far from being a rich man. Somewhere in the wildest part 
 of Brittany he owned a small house, in which his only sister 
 lived with him. It was reported that now he had gone to 
 England to try his luck as a teacher of languages, and for once 
 report spoke correctly. 
 
 Three months separated from the lady of his heart — three 
 months, during which period she had nourished him only on 
 paper kisses, had chastened him with paper chastenings — three 
 months' absence, and the man a poet ! Is any one surprised to 
 hear that he was just in the condition to take once more the 
 sweet fever ? The man at that time was not wholly lost. He 
 would not own to himself that he was in love with the betrothed 
 wife of his benefactor, who most likely had preserved him from 
 death ; but he owned to himself that he did want some more 
 intimate relationship than that which at present existed between 
 them. 
 
 So one day when they chanced to be alone together, he broke 
 silence by saying : 
 
TRAPPED, 123 
 
 ^ To-morrow, Miss Lennard, I must resume my journey.'^ 
 
 '* No, you must not ; the doctor says you must remain quiet 
 for at least three days longer." 
 
 " Does he indeed ? What a very obliging doctor ! " 
 
 " I am glad you think so, I was afraid you were becoming 
 weary of your captivity." 
 
 " I assure you my captivity is charming to me." 
 
 After a pause he resumed : '^ Miss Lennard, I have been 
 wishing to tell you a little about myself." 
 
 ''Yes.?" and her eyelids drooped over the work she held in 
 her hand. 
 
 '* I should like you to be my confessor ! I have never seen 
 any one before to whom I felt I could speak of myself. Will 
 you be my confessor } " 
 
 " Do you expect absolution ? " 
 
 " I might like it, but I scarcely dare expect it ! " 
 
 *' Confess what you like, and withhold what you like. I am 
 no longer a schoolgirl ! Are you going to begin with- the latest 
 heroine of your poems, the lady who causes you such exquisite 
 delight and such equally exquisite suffering.?" 
 
 " We will come to her in time, if you insist." 
 
 " I insist on nothing." 
 
 It was, of course, a very romantic confession that Monsieur 
 Albert d'Aurelles had to make. He came of a very old family. 
 He early had quarrelled with his father on political grounds, he 
 — Albert — being a most ardent Republican. In the revolution of 
 '71 and the overthrowing of the Second Empire, he had taken 
 a very active part. Then came a string of love episodes, each 
 one of which was flawed. Either he grew tired, or the lady 
 grew tired, or they both grew tired. So, with his loves and his 
 poetry, his scanty means, his blue blood, and his Republican 
 proclivities, his handsome face and his low voice, he was alto- 
 gether just the kind of man to impress a nature which all its life 
 had been craving for romance. 
 
 Tell me now, my opium-smoker, or my drinker of absinthe, is 
 not the craving which some natures have for romantic interests 
 just as keen, and often as disastrous in its results ? It has 
 wasted many a life, and gone near to breaking many a heart. 
 
 During the following days, Catherine asked herself no 
 questions. She lived in a beautiful dream. He did not make 
 love to her, but he put his life, as it were, into her hands, and 
 
124 TRAPPED, 
 
 that is perhaps the subtlest way in which a man can make 
 love. 
 
 Still, he admired her, he was not swept away by her until the 
 last night of his stay at The Firs. He had unexpectedly ob- 
 tained occupation as tutor in a neighbouring family, whither he 
 was to depart on the morrow. Mrs. Lennard, whose facile 
 liking had been easily won by the courteous, gracious, handsome 
 young foreigner, had invited a few guests to dinner in his honour 
 on this his last evening under her roof. The dinner was unusually 
 elaborate, the wines of rare excellence. There are times in a 
 man's life when all things seem to conspire against him to drive 
 him into a particular course. Such a time was that evening to 
 Albert d'Aurelles. The wine warmed his blood ; the thought 
 that he was so soon to leave the house disposed him to be 
 sentimental. 
 
 Catherine Lennard wore a dress of unusual splendour, which 
 showed to perfection her entrancingly beautiful figure, leaving 
 bare the superb neck and glorious arms. She had flowers in 
 her hair, and the scent of them seemed to him like a caress. 
 He found himself suddenly dazed, bewildered by her. Why, 
 she was simply marvellously lovely ! It had been his lot to be 
 all these days under the same roof with her, yet only now to 
 realize how triumphantly beautiful she was ! 
 
 When the after-dinner wine had gone round, and the other 
 men joined the ladies in the drawing-room, he escaped to the 
 garden to smoke a cigarette and think of her. 
 
 Though the month was November, the west-wind, as it came 
 sweeping through the trees, was balmier than it often is in an 
 English spring. There was a soft hurry of light clouds across 
 the sky, and now and again an ecstatic revelation of pale 
 angelic moonlight. These nights, full of gentle turbulence, with 
 their delicious alternations of cloud and moonlight, have in them 
 that divine blending of spiritual hope and earthly regrets which 
 is suggested to us by some of Chopin's loveliest nocturnes. It 
 was a night to cast a glamour over everything. He was lost in 
 thinking of Catherine when he heard a light step near him, and 
 the soft rustle of a woman's dress. Just then the moon was 
 free of the clouds, and its light fell upon Miss Lennard's face. 
 
 " Did you think I was a ghost .^" she asked, coming up and 
 standing so close to him that he could feel — and thrilled in 
 feeling — her dress brush against him. 
 
TRAPPED, ' 125 
 
 Me Could smell the flowers in her hair, over which his face 
 just leaned. How desperately dear her tones were ! How low, 
 and how they lingered ! 
 
 " You will be cold," he said. 
 
 " No : I have on a light shawl." 
 
 " Do you think it is thick enough?" he asked, letting his hand 
 fall and rest upon her shoulder. 
 
 " Yes, I think so — don't you ? " she rephed, and did not draw 
 away from him. 
 
 There was silence for a space between them, an electric thrill 
 quivering in every gust of the wind that swept about them. 
 The hand on her shoulder went round the beautiful neck, and 
 played with the brooch which held the shawl in its place. And 
 still she did not draw away from him, but he could feel a sudden, 
 swift shiver go all through her. 
 
 " To-morrow I go into exile ! '' he said. 
 
 "And to-morrow /shall be lonely ! " 
 
 " Shall you be a little sorry ? " — with a very distraction of 
 tenderness in his voice. 
 
 " You have no cause to ask that ! " — in slow, low tones, 
 spoken almost under the breath, but laden with the sweet 
 despair of a love confessed which should never have been 
 felt. 
 
 Did she press a shade nearer to him?— or was it but the wind 
 which blew the folds of her dress yet closer against him ? At 
 any rate, he bent down with a low cry of desperate entreaty, 
 and their lips met and clung together. In that kiss, which 
 mingled the rapture of greeting with the agony of farewell, it 
 seemed that they were striving to concentrate the whole passion 
 of their two passionate natures. When at length their lips 
 severed, she was so shaken by the storm of joy which had 
 passed over her that she leant upon his shoulder, unable to 
 speak, pressing her hand against her wildly throbbing heart. 
 
 They were in a condition to care little what people might say 
 or think ; but to avoid absolute discovery it was needful that 
 they should part at once, she going first to her own room to 
 settle her disordered hair and cool her burning face ; he to the 
 smoking-room, from which, being fortunate enough to find no 
 one there, he could pass to the drawing-room with the excuse 
 of the " after-dinner cigar " for his absence. 
 
 Presently Catherine reappeared, saying she had not been 
 
126 TRAPPED. 
 
 able to resist a turn in the garden — it was such a fascinating 
 night ! D'Aurelles remarked that he had been less worthily 
 occupied. 
 
 " Yes, I think I can guess — the smoking-room has been your 
 attraction ? " 
 
 *' I fear you are right. Still I do not need to be absolutely 
 out in it to agree with you that it is a fascinating night. Won't 
 you play us something?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, very gladly," and she went to the piano and sat 
 down, and played like one inspired. 
 
 The music she played seemed to Albert to be thrilling with 
 her own personal magnetism. In time the guests left, and he 
 had to say good-night to the ladies, with an almost imperceptible 
 pressure of the hand for Catherine. 
 
 An outbreak of passion between two people situated as these 
 two were, looks differently Avhen viewed in the light of morning 
 to what it did over night. The woman is generally the first to 
 recover, and openly to court a repetition. However noble 
 women may be, they are as a sex less loyal than men. We 
 know that men are often unfaithful to their wives and sweet- 
 hearts while they are vowing them the uttermost devotion ; but 
 still— although they have the precedent of ages to go upon that 
 a man may take for himself licenses not to be endured in his 
 wife — the man suffers for his disloyalty more acute remorse of 
 heart than he will own to himself He says he is no worse than 
 other men, or he invents special theories for his self-justifica- 
 tion ; whereas if a woman transgress in this way, she, with 
 everything in the way to make it seem a step of much greater 
 magnitude, feels no remorse. Her one sole care is that she 
 shall not be found out. 
 
 So when Catherine reflected in the misty light of the 
 November morning on what had happened the foregoing 
 evening, she felt not so much remorseful as perplexed. Was 
 she to marry Horace, loving the Frenchman? — or was she to 
 be frank with him ? 
 
 But Albert, although not a scrupulous man, du/ feel remorse. 
 He knew that Catherine would not be a dowerless bride, that 
 her fortune was in her own control ; so much he had learned 
 from Gilbard's trustful confidence in him ; but, to do him justice, 
 he shrank from the thought of betraying that con^dence, and 
 no mercenary speculations entered into his mind. 
 
TRAPPED. ^ 127 
 
 At that time there must have been some little good in the 
 man. He kept saying to himself : 
 
 " The fellow saved my life — I wouldn't mind but for that. 
 One can't take one's life at a man's hands and then rob him of 
 a woman ! No, it won't do — one must draw the line somewhere. 
 There shall be no repetition of last night ! " 
 
 It is noticeable in all weak natures that they know no medium 
 course ; they delight in extreme sensations. 
 
 Catherine's position was a different one after the episode of 
 the past evening. Even had she resolved to throw over Horace 
 Gilbard, she could scarcely offer herself to Albert d'Aurelles as 
 his wife. 
 
 The advance must now come from him. But he resolutely 
 made no advance. She gave him opportunities of being alone 
 with her, which he avoided. Still, in spite of his avoidance, 
 they happened once to be left for a few minutes alone together. 
 
 As soon as the door shut behind Mrs. Lennard he saw 
 Catherine rise and come to the fire, near which he was sitting ; 
 he saw her lean against the mantelpiece and let her eyes wander 
 in his direction. He heard her sigh. He both saw and heard 
 her toying with her watch-chain. He stroked the Persian cat 
 lying at his feet, and said nothing. How the minutes hurried by ! 
 
 " What are you thinking of?" she asked, in a low voice, that 
 was almost tragic in its intensity. 
 
 " Of last night," he replied. 
 
 " And what of it t " was her next question. 
 
 " That it must never happen again." 
 
 He would not kiss her, nor touch her ; but he could not help 
 rising and standing close beside her. 
 
 "Are you ashamed of me ?" she asked. 
 
 '^ Of you, no ; but of myself, yes." 
 
 *' If you think so badly of yourself, what must you think of 
 me?" 
 
 " I think of you," he answered, almost fiercely, "that you are 
 the most adorable woman God ever made ! " 
 
 " Will you come again and see me ? " she asked. 
 
 Her hands looked as if they wished to be held, and the 
 beautiful lips seemed mutely to ask for a kiss ; but he controlled 
 himself, man-like, consoled in a measure by the thought of what 
 he was making her suffer. 
 
 " No, I will not ! " he said, vehemently* 
 
128 TRAPPED, 
 
 "Why will you not?" and though the tone was low and 
 earaest, there was surely in it just a little quiver of triumph. 
 
 " Because you are dangerous ! because women like you ought 
 to have ' Dangerous ' branded on the forehead ! " 
 
 " And if we had, do you think you would take warning and 
 shun us ? " 
 
 " No, perhaps not ; men are such fools about women ! But 
 I will see you no more ! '' 
 
 It is impossible to say how much longer his strength might 
 have endured, but at that moment the door opened and Mrs. 
 Lennard returned. Half an hour afterwards he had taken leave 
 of mother and daughter, and was on his way to the place of his 
 future employment, not, however, more than three miles distant. 
 
 As he drove thither, he felt that unduly exalted triumph in 
 having resisted a temptation, which in weak natures is short- 
 lived and replaced by intolerable depression. 
 
 He had not been in the house of his employers an hour when 
 this reaction set in, and he endured agonies of longing to see 
 Catherine Lennard once again — once more to feel her lips laid 
 to his, once more to feel about his neck the clasp of her strong 
 clinging arms. Unfortunately for him, studies were not to begin 
 that day. It was past noon when he arrived at the house, and 
 the rest of the day was passed in becoming acquainted with the 
 two lads who were to be his pupils, their parents, the house they 
 lived in, and the grounds which surrounded it. They were not 
 bad people in their way, and they doubtless imagined themselves 
 to be giving the tutor a treat, while he, poor man, was burning 
 up with desire to see again the fair woman he had left but a 
 couple of hours ago. 
 
 As soon as dinner was over, he announced his intention of 
 w^alking over to The Firs, where he found he had left something 
 of importance. In a few minutes more he was hastening on his 
 way as only lovers and escaping thieves know how to hasten. 
 In less than three-quarters of an hour he found himself inside 
 the gates of The Firs 
 
 '* Who ever can it be at this hour ?" exclaimed Mrs. Lennard, 
 as the door-bell sounded and the dogs began to bark. 
 
 "Who, indeed ?" echoed Catherine, suddenly raising in front 
 of her face the light hand-screen with which she had been 
 toying. Then the door opened, and Monsieur d'Aurelles 
 walked inr 
 
TRAPJPED. 129 
 
 Mrs. Lenriard was full of kindly surprise at seeing him back 
 so soon, but Miss Lennard said : 
 
 " I quite expected he would appear soon. You will see he 
 has left something behind. Whatever they may please to s^y, 
 men are more forgetful than women." 
 
 "You are perfectly right, Miss Lennard. I have forgotten 
 something— ^a most valued cigar-case. It is in one of the bureau 
 drawers. With Mrs. Lennard's kind permission I will run and 
 fetch it." 
 
 But he had scarcely reached the door of what had been his 
 bedroom the night before, when he heard a light step following 
 swiftly down the corridor. He was right in feeling sure she 
 would contrive to see him alone. He paused, and their eyes met. 
 
 " I came to bring you this," she said, holding out a key. 
 " The bureau was locked after you left and the key removed. 
 Here it is." 
 
 " Thank you— I want nothing of any key. The case I spoke 
 of is at this moment in my pocket. Catherine ! my love ! so 
 desperately dear ! you know what I came for ! " 
 
 He advanced to her, but she drew back, saying : 
 
 " You said there was to be no repetition of that night. '^ 
 
 He looked at her as he had looked at many a woman before 
 —with a strong, compelling look. He uttered her name in just 
 such a tone as he had many times before uttered the names of 
 other women. " Catherine ! " he said, just that and nothing 
 more, but in a tone of infinite, pleading tenderness. Few women 
 could have resisted such a look and such a tone — least of all this 
 woman, with her warm, eager nature. In another moment her 
 arms were about his neck, while his were straining her close to» 
 him. One long, ecstatic kiss 1 Then she forced herself free 
 from his arms, saying she must return to the drawing-room ;; 
 she had been away dreadfully too long already. 
 
 After a short imaginary search for an imaginary objed.^ lie 
 also returned to the drawing-room, chatted for a few minuties 
 with Mrs. Lennard, and then took his leave. 
 
 The following day Catherine received a letter fron> Albert 
 ■d'Aurelles, to which she duly replied^ the closing sen-tenee of 
 her letter being : 
 
 " Wait just a little I I cannot tell them yet. 
 
 *' To all eternit^js y(nii« ! '^ 
 to 
 
I30 7 RAPPED, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 About ten days after this, Catherine Lennard was sitting in her 
 boudoir. The time was afternoon, and all outside, looking cold 
 and gray, only served by contrast to make the bright fire- lit 
 interior the more attractive. 
 
 Miss Lennard occupied a low chair in front of the wood-fire, 
 into which she was gazing, her delicately shaped chin propped 
 in her slender hands. It cannot be said that at that moment 
 she looked the embodiment of happiness. 
 
 *' To-night," she said to herself, "come what may, I will write! 
 I know it is a shame to keep him in ignorance — but, oh ! it is so 
 hard ! '' 
 
 Just then there was a quick light tap at the door ; it opened, 
 and let in the object of her thoughts, the man who at that 
 moment believed himself her betrothed husband, his good, 
 kindly face, with no lack of resolution in it, radiant with 
 health and good-humour, his curly hair looking curlier than 
 ever. 
 
 *' Horace ? '^ she exclaimed, in unfeigned astonishment. 
 
 *' The same, my dear — and sooner than you expected ! " he 
 replied, bending down and kissing her lips heartily and honestly, 
 but not with that enthralling refinement of sensuality which had 
 made the Frenchman's kiss a living love-poem to her. " How 
 perplexed and dismayed you look ! " he went on, gazing into her 
 eyes, but speaking in a tone of affectionate banter. '' Come, 
 let's have the news ! Has a bad fox been getting at the 
 chickens ? or won't the hens lay as many eggs as they ought ? 
 Which one of all the sea of troubles incident to a country life 
 is it, my dear, that thus overshadows you ? Doesn't that sound 
 as if it were out of a book ? But, my darling, there is nothing 
 really wrong, is there ? You know I have always laughed at you 
 for looking solemn about things which seemed to me trifles when 
 I came to hear them ? " 
 
 " You will not think this a trifle, I know,-' she said, her voice 
 low and dreadfully in earnest. 
 
 A .sudden terror blanched his face as he replied : 
 
 " Catherine ! It is not about yourself? You are not ill in 
 any way ? *' 
 
TRAPPED. 131 
 
 "Yes, it is about myself ; but I am not ill— only dreadfully 
 ill at ease till I have told you something." 
 
 " Tell me, then, my darling," he said, holding both her hands. 
 
 " No, don't ! " she cried, protestingly, trying to draw them 
 away. 
 
 *' Have I done anything to vex or grieve you, Catherine?" 
 
 ^' You ! Heavens, no 1 not you !" 
 
 '' Who, then ? " 
 
 " Only I, myself, and that because I have to grieve you ! " 
 
 "Be brief!" he almost commanded, and still he would not 
 let her hands go. 
 
 " How can I tell you ? " she said, and then broke out, im- 
 petuously, '^ Horace, if the woman you loved discovered after a 
 year that she was not in love with you, as she had striven to 
 fancy herself, but only very fond of you — would you still want 
 to marry her 1 " 
 
 He did let her hands go then, and stood up with a sudden recoil. 
 
 ** Horace, speak to me — speak to mel " she pleaded. 
 
 In any crisis, the bravest of women is terrified by a man's 
 silence. 
 
 '* Yes — yes,'^ he rejoined, faintly, " in a minute ! '^ After a 
 pause, he went on, " So this is what you have to tell me 1 I 
 have known women who have married men only through quiet 
 affection, and who after marriage have fallen very much in love 
 with them." 
 
 "Yes, but not when they are already in love with another 1 " 
 
 She rose and reached out her hands beseechingly to him. 
 
 *' Oh, Horace, don't be too hard with me, or with him ! Do 
 you think we would have loved each other if we could have 
 helped it ? Though it hurts you now, you will find it in the end 
 to be for your good. We have few tastes in common. I should 
 never have satisfied you — nor you me. You will find the right 
 woman suited to make you happy as I never could have done — 
 as the right man has been sent from far away to make me happy 
 7J5,you never could have done ! " 
 
 She stopped. He did not take her outstretched hands ; he 
 only asked — and asked it with terrible quietness : 
 
 " Who is this man that has come between us ? and what is 
 his name ? " 
 
 She trembled for a moment^ and then spoke clearly the name 
 of her lover, Albert d'Aurelies. He started^ visibly. 
 
ij2 TMpP&d. 
 
 " That man 1 The man whose hfe I saved ? Oh ! but it was 
 worthy of a Frenchman ! " Then turning on her with sudden 
 fierceness, " Where is the man ? Is he in the house ?" 
 
 " No, he is not. It will do you no good to know where he is. 
 We could not help loving one another ! " 
 
 " True," he rejoined, bitterly. " What is criminal in a woman 
 towards her husband, is not criminal until she becomes his wife ! 
 But his life all the same is ruined ! I can do nothing — I wish 
 to do nothing — except to ask you a few questions about this 
 man. Do you know who he is ? — who are his relatives ? " 
 
 *' He has told me everything about himself that I desire to 
 know." 
 
 Horace was silent for awhile. Then : 
 
 *' Catherine," he said, "have no bitter memory of me! It 
 was not your fault that I could not hold your love ! and for the 
 pain you have given me, and which I must bear as long as I 
 live, I forgive you ! God bless you, my poor love ! " and with 
 these words, a short pressure of her hands, he went from the 
 room. 
 
 He mounted the stairs quickly towards the bedroom which 
 had always been allotted to him. As he expected, he found 
 there the bag which he had intrusted to one of the servants on 
 arrival. He descended to the hall, bag in hand, and there was 
 met by Mrs. Lennard. Tears were in the good lady's eyes as 
 she pressed his hand, and, kissing him on the forehead, said : 
 
 " I am so sorry, dear ! And you won't stay to dinner? Won't 
 you come in and have a glass of wine ? " 
 
 " No, I must get back to London as soon as I can. Good-bye ! 
 Find out all you can about him 1 " 
 
 So the door closed behind him, and he went out into the dreary 
 gray November evening, seeming, as he walked, to hear her 
 voice following him. Now in front of him, now on either side 
 of him — he still seemed surrounded by her presence. He walked 
 rapidly along the lonely road, sometimes crying aloud to himself 
 with the frightful incredulity of grief. 
 
 "No, it can't be — it ca7tH be I " then realizing with griefs 
 fearful reaction of certainty that it was. 
 
 In a short time he came to Popilton, where the lights of the 
 " Three Jolly Drummers " shone cheerfully through the dense 
 November dusk. He stopped, and looked at the house where 
 he had taken pity on the man who had repaid him for that help- 
 
TRAPPED. f^^ 133 
 
 ful compassion by wrecking the one dear dream of his Hfe. 
 How many times, when returning from a long walk across 
 country, he had paused at that noted hostelry to refresh himself 
 with a pint of its famous ale, his strong heart beating cheerfully, 
 his young blood glowing warmly at the thought of his rapidly 
 approaching marriage, and the fair woman waiting at The Firs 
 to greet him ! Out on it for a faithless friend to have played 
 him such an ill turn ! He shook his clinched hand at it, and 
 then passed on. 
 
 When the door had closed behind him, Catherine had cried 
 a little, but her eyes dried quickly, and she drew a sigh of 
 infinite relief. A meeting between the two men had been 
 avoided, and on the whole things could not have happened better. 
 
 When Albert came that evening, Catherine at once told him 
 the good news. 
 
 " Now," he said, " you have done with him from this time 
 henceforth ! He is blotted out of your life and out of your 
 thoughts." 
 
 '' Blotted out of my life by his own choice henceforth, I should 
 think he would be ! " she replied. ^' But out of my thoughts— 
 I cannot promise that ! Would you wish me not to be sorry for 
 the poor boy ? " 
 
 "Yes, I would," he replied, shortly, and walked away to the 
 other side of the room, a hard, cruel, sinister look about his lips. 
 
 ^' If you wish to sulk, she said, rising and moving towards the 
 door, "you can do so alone ! " 
 
 At that time the man was absolutely in her power. He came 
 at once to her side, and entreated her forgiveness. So their 
 first approach to a love-quarrel ended, and all through the rest 
 of the evening he was a very hero and lover of romance. He 
 begged hard to have the wedding-day fixed swiftly, and as there 
 was no reason for delay, and Catherine had no will to refuse his 
 entreaty, the marriage was arranged to take place early in 
 January. Catherine's fortune was settled upon herself, so there 
 was little trouble about settlements. 
 
 On the weeks that elapsed before the wedding there is no 
 occasion to dwell. 
 
 One January day Horace Gilbard came on the news, in the 
 first column of The TmieSy of Catherine Lennard's marriage to 
 Albert d'Aurelles. He started and recoiled, while sparks of fire 
 sprang to his eyes. Yet he had expected it j he bad known it 
 
r34 TRAPPED. 
 
 must be so. So we know that hope for the life of some dear 
 one is dead in us ere Hfe itself had quite died out. Do we ex- 
 pect a miracle } Do we think that Almighty God in our case, 
 for our little particular prayers, will forego His GodUke will ? — 
 reverse the decree He has sent forth ? 
 
 No, we do 7wt expect to see our all but dead get up and walk ! 
 We are not like those of old who believed that their king could 
 keep the sea from on-coming — yet when death, whom we have 
 seen approaching for so many days, has knocked at the gates, 
 defying any to do battle with him, has passed across the 
 threshold, entered the room, and made our dear one his for ever 
 — are not the days that follow fraught with a strange surprise, 
 as keen as if we had not known for so long that the suffering 
 we had watched coidd end no way but this ? 
 
 So was it with Horace ; and as he sat before his fire that 
 January day he maddened afresh at realizing how irrevocably 
 now she was gone from him, the wife of another ! Our bitterest 
 experiences must all be lived out alone. For our daily vexa- 
 tions, for even our moderate troubles, there is balm in Gilead, 
 if we will but seek for it — which some of us are too proud to do ! 
 But for the great memorable sorrows of our lives, which even 
 when they have passed leave us branded in heart and face — 
 never to be really again our old selves, though once more we 
 take our seat at meat with men, and are seen once more in the 
 market-place — for such sorrows will any tell me, who have suf- 
 fered, if for them there is balm in Gilead ? Nay, there is none ! 
 If we do not fall before the enemy at once, we do our battling 
 alone, and none have sight of it. 
 
 So let us leave Horace to do his battling alone, through that, 
 for him, so black and bitter winter, which was then in its second 
 month. Let us only say that it passed, and even he was gladder 
 when he could say with the Psalmist : 
 
 " The time for the singing of birds has come ! " 
 
 And the time for other things had come as well. So, while 
 nightingales were giving away their souls in music to the moon- 
 light and the trees, and occasionally to a moonstruck poet, the 
 sopranos shrieked through their operatic performances, the 
 tenors melted softly through theirs, and the basses growled 
 through theirs, while the boxes and stalls presented the appear- 
 ance customary to them in the London season. 
 
TRAPPED, . 135 
 
 Now, love of music in Horace Gilbard was, unfortunately, 
 larger than his balance at his banker's, so that he did not 
 generally aspire to more than a modest seat in the pit, How- 
 ever, he almost always managed to get into the first row, and 
 there, one hot, never-to-be-forgotten June evening, just as the 
 first act of " Lucia di Lammermoor " had been concluded, he 
 started to see two persons enter a box on the grand tier — a man 
 and a woman. The man was Albert d'Aurelles : the woman was 
 a well-known actress, whose beauty was said to be greater than 
 her morality. Beautiful certainly she looked as she sat there, 
 with her splendid dark eyes, her dark, lustrous hair, and her 
 magnificent bosom and snowy shoulders so abundantly bare. 
 Even Gilbard, whose mind was quite filled by the thought of 
 another woman, had to own that this one, in her own bold, 
 reckless way, was good to look at. 
 
 D'Aurelles, whose evening clothes fitted faultlessly, looked 
 wonderfully handsome, the hard, sinister lines round his mouth 
 being scarcely visible. Gilbard looked full at him, but the 
 Frenchman appeared not to see him, and was wholly devoted 
 to his fair companion ; and Gilbard sat and looked, and hated 
 them both. He took no pleasure in the music, and was glad 
 when Lucia! s sorrows came to an end. He was due that night 
 at a large ball, and once, on leaving the opera-house, he took a 
 hansom to his destination. 
 
 He would stay but a few moments, he thought, as he made 
 his way up the spacious staircase, and was greeted by the 
 strains of a well-trained band, which was playing one of Strauss's 
 most enchanting waltzes. 
 
 " My love — my poor love," he was thinking to himself, as he 
 went up the stairs, " where are you, I wonder ? and was it for a 
 man like this that you left me ? — a man who would break your 
 heart without one pang of regret, if ever it stood between him 
 and his pleasures ? A man whose blood could burn like fire 
 and his heart be cold as ice ! Fire and ice — how shall one 
 escape from between these two ?" 
 
 How sick he was of the whole thing which he had seen so 
 many times before that season ! There were the same girls 
 with the same dollish faces flirting with the same inane young 
 men, whom it seemed impossible to imagine in any other cos- 
 tume but evening dress. There were the same little jokes being 
 made, followed by the same little languid laughs. Gilbard 
 
136 TRAPPED, 
 
 made his way through a group of people clustered in the door- 
 way, shook hands with his hostess, and then remained for a 
 moment rooted to the spot. For there, at only a few yards' 
 distance from him, talking to one of the inane young men, she 
 stood — the one love of his heart ! the beautiful lady of all his 
 dreams ! She was moving her fan slowly backwards and forwards 
 with the old matchless grace of gesture which he knew so well. 
 He could see the weariness with which her companion inspired 
 her. He went forward, and, taking her hand, said, with some- 
 thing just a little forced in his manner : 
 
 " I thought we should never meet again ! " 
 
 " Are you sorry to have your expectations disappointed ?" 
 
 The same low, subtle, sweet voice as of old, with now a rather 
 weary note in it, which only made its music more captivating. 
 She was perfectly self-composed. 
 
 " I only wonder that we have not met before," she went on. 
 " We have been in London since the beginning of last month, 
 and have been to so many places where I thought it quite likely 
 we should meet you. Mamma is here — have you seen her? 
 How v/arm it is ! Do you think you could find me a cool 
 corner anywhere ? " 
 
 He gave her his arm, and, with his heart wildly beating, he 
 led her toward a curtained recess, where an open window let in 
 such air as the sultry night could lay claim to. He found her a 
 seat there, and stood by her side looking down upon her, drink- 
 ing in the perfume of the flowers she wore in her hair. 
 
 By day and by night, asleep, awake, he had dreamed of meet- 
 ing her, but never like this ! and now they had met, the minutes 
 were rushing by, and he could say nothing. 
 
 "Well ?" she asked, when he had gazed at her for some time 
 vv^ith rapt eyes. *' Do you find me changed ? " 
 
 " Yes, a little. You are as beautiful as ever, but you have a 
 weary look. Catherine, are you as happy as you thought you 
 should be?" 
 
 '' Yes, quite as happy. Albert is very, very good to me." 
 
 " Is he here to-night ? " 
 
 " No ; he had to spend the evening with some old friends ; 
 but he will come to take me back. Of course, it is natural that 
 his own old friends should want to see him." 
 
 Horace could only listen. How could he tell her what he 
 knew ? 
 
TRAPPED. 137 
 
 " I can measure his love," she continued, "by his jealousy." 
 
 " My dear/' answered the young man, with a heartful of 
 tenderness in his voice, " I hope he gives you better proof than 
 that. Both men and women, if their natures be exacting, will 
 often guard jealously what has ceased to attract them. It is 
 not love, but that sordid sense of proprietorship which is at first 
 rightly associated with love, and which, outliving love, is by 
 itself mean and unlovely." 
 
 " Thank you, but that is not our case yet. All the same I 
 am obliged for your little sermon. I always told you the 
 Church had a loss in you ! Now, w^ould you mind taking me 
 back.?" 
 
 " There, now ! " he said, " I have offended you ! But indeed, 
 indeed, I wish only for jK^^/r happiness. I have long ceased to 
 hope for any for myself ! Won't you forgive me 1 won't you 
 believe me, Catherine ? W07iH you forgive me ? " 
 
 He looked so genuinely heartbroken that she laid her fingers 
 lightly in his outstretched hand, nor did she chide him when 
 for one moment he raised those long, slim fingers to his 
 lips. 
 
 " Still, you must take me back now, please," she said. Of 
 course he did her bidding. Almost as soon as they left the 
 cool and shady recess, they came face to face with Albert 
 d'Aurelles. ;iThe two men could not avoid recognizing each 
 other, which they did as coolly and formally as possible. The 
 Frenchman looked portentously dark, and told his wife that it 
 was late, and they must go at once. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " I am ready." Then turning to 
 Horace, she added, graciously : " Good-night, Mr. Gilbard. 
 Come and see us, you will always find me at home on Thursdays 
 from five till seven." 
 
 " You forget I have not the pleasure of knowing your London 
 address." 
 
 " How stupid of me ! 20, St. George's Terrace. Can you 
 remember '^. " 
 
 *' I shall not forget." 
 
 So once again they had met and parted. 
 
 The drive home, for husband and wife, was a silent one ; 
 indeed, neither of them spoke till they had entered the house. 
 Then the master thereof, paying for it out of his wife's fortune, 
 spoke, and his voice sounded harshly. 
 
138 TRAPPED, 
 
 " Wc may as well understand each other at once, Catherine," 
 he commenced. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, leisurely unclasping her bracelets, 
 *^ nothing could be better ; only we must do so quickly, as I 
 want Marie to brush my hair." 
 
 " Well, the point is this, then — I will stand no resuming of 
 any intimacy with Gilbard. Do you hear } " 
 
 '* Certainly, my dear. You speak loudly enough, but I am 
 not impressed. I am your wife, not your slave, and I will see 
 and know whom I like." 
 
 She was still in love with her husband, very much in love ; 
 but, unlike most women, love had not quelled her native pride. 
 Albert looked at her as a man may at a beautiful wild animal 
 he has resolved to tame, yet does not quite know how to set 
 about it. 
 
 " You have not got a weak riian to deal with," he said, with 
 suppressed rage, letting his fingers close almost cruelly upon her 
 wrists. *' You will be watched." 
 
 " Shall I } Let go of my wrists, please, and ring the bell for 
 Marie. I am tired and wish to get to bed." 
 
 He did as she bade him and left the room. 
 
 As Marie brushed out her mistress's hair that night, she could 
 not help noticing a strangely pleased smile come and go about 
 the corners of her mouth. Women are as ambitious to subdue 
 hearts as great statesmen are to dictate to their country. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Madame D'AurF-:lles's first visitor the next Thursday was 
 Mr. Gilbard. " I am glad you have come early," she said, " so 
 that we can have a little talk before the others come. Tell me, 
 now, what you are doing — studying for the Bar still .^ How 
 warm it is ! Do you mind lowering that bhnd? Thanks !" 
 
 " I am yours to command in all things," he rejoined, coming 
 and standing a little nearer to her. 
 
 How beautiful she looked in her exquisitely fitting, long 
 traihng dress ! At that moment the door opened, and, contrary 
 
TRAPPED. 139 
 
 to his usual practice, Albert walked in, to be present at his wife's 
 afternoon. 
 
 At his entrance Catherine showed signs of pleasure, in which 
 Horace Gilbard did not participate ; but the Frenchman looked 
 well pleased with himself. 
 
 It was, nevertheless, a relief to the three when other callers 
 arrived — amongst them an aesthetic, conceited, biHous young 
 man, who informed Gilbard that he and every one else had a 
 moral self, and that to sin against that self was the unpardon- 
 able sin. 
 
 "And," he added, with supreme contempt, in spite of his 
 evident biliousness, " as Morality is but another name for 
 Beauty, he who sins against the laws of Beauty sins against 
 Morality ! Will you inform me if you admire pictures ? " 
 
 " No, I do not." 
 
 *' The highest poetry ? " 
 
 " No, nor the lowest." 
 
 '^ Will you tell me, then, in what form you do adore the 
 Beautiful.?" 
 
 " No, I will not," returned Gilbard, with savage rudeness ; 
 and he walked away, leaving the bilious one dumbfounded ; for 
 some people were in the habit of regarding him as a kind of 
 oracle. 
 
 Gilbard lingered a little to see if there would be any 
 opportunity of conversation with. Catherine. As it appeared 
 there would not be one until they were again alone in the 
 presence of her husband, he went his way, out into the bright 
 sunny afternoon with a strange, bewildered kind of feeling in his 
 head. 
 
 To see her in this way, surrounded by other people, was a 
 worse thing than not seeing her. Yet, could he make up his 
 mind to stay away from the house on these Thursday afternoons ? 
 He went to his club, and there dined in the vilest of tempers. 
 His brother-members remarked it, and wondered what had 
 come to Horace Gilbard, who, as a rule, was one of the best- 
 tempered of men. 
 
 The next Thursday afternoon he again presented himself at 
 the house in St. George's Terrace. This time he arrived late. 
 Monsieur d'Aurelles was on the scene again ; he w^as engaged 
 talking to a group of ladies ; his wife stood near the doorway. 
 
 *' I thought you were not coming," she said. 
 
140 TRAPPED, 
 
 *' And I have only looked in for a minute or two. Tell me, 
 will you be at the opera on Saturday ? '' 
 
 " Yes ; I am going with mamma. Albert has a club dinner, 
 I believe.'' 
 
 Where is the woman who can forbear experimentalizing upon 
 the man who is in love with her, whether he has any right to be 
 so or not ? As Catherine d'Aurelles said those words, she 
 looked at him to see what effect they would produce ; and 
 she saw the blood leap into his face — the light into his eyes. 
 
 " I think I will go, now that I have shaken hands with you," 
 he said. 
 
 " No — why, how absurd you are ! Stay and help me ! 
 There are so few men and so many women — see how they 
 absolutely surge about my husband ! Are you going to be good 
 or not } " 
 
 " I told you last Thursday that I was yours to command.'' 
 
 ^- And you are still in that mind ? " 
 
 " I am always in that mind." 
 
 "You will stay, then ?" .' 
 
 " Surely I shall stay — till I can serve you no more by staying." 
 
 The following Saturday night saw Horace Gilbard again at 
 the opera, seated in the stalls this time. He paid less attention 
 than usual to the music, and when the drop had fallen on the 
 first act, he quitted his stall, and quickly reappeared in a private 
 box occupied by two ladies — the one elderly, the other might 
 have been about thirty, but looked somewhat younger, and was 
 possessed of unusual beauty. 
 
 " I thought I should never see you again !" said Horace, as 
 he bent ever Catherine's chair. . 
 
 " What can you mean, when you saw me only last Thursday, 
 and the Thursday before as well ?" 
 
 " That was 7iot seeing you ! I have not really seen you 
 since we met at the Grays'. How warm it is here ? Don't you 
 want to take a turn in the corridor ?" 
 
 She rose, and they left the box together, to mix with the other 
 pairs who were lounging or promenading leisurely in the com- 
 paratively cool corridors. There was doubtless plenty of flirtation 
 and intrigue going forward, heartaches and headaches being 
 laid up for the morrow ; but these two were innocent enough. 
 The woman who was with Gilbard should, he knew, have been 
 his wife, and she was another man's, and he, Gilbard, loved her 
 
TRAPPED. 141 
 
 more than ever ! But because you envy a man some treasure 
 in art, on which it delights your soul to gaze, does that mean 
 that you are going to turn burglar some fine night ? Certainly 
 not. It means nothing of the kind ! 
 
 She was the first to speak. 
 
 " Well ? " she asked, ^' Have you nothing to say to me ? '^ 
 
 " No. What should I have to say t It is enough to be with 
 you — to look at you." 
 
 These words were spoken in low grave tones. As a suitor he 
 had been remarkable for his gravity, though boyishly ?/;/grave 
 at other times. 
 
 *' Don't speak so," she said, in a voice equally low. 
 
 " Why not ? Where is the harm ? While I love you and you 
 are indifferent, there can be no harm." 
 
 " But it seems to me there is harm. Let us talk of something 
 else." 
 
 " I don't want to talk of anything else." 
 
 *' Then we will be silent." 
 
 " Very well — I am content." 
 
 " It is too absurd !" she said, with one of those outbursts of 
 mirth which contrasted so delightfully with the habitual queenly 
 languor of her manner, when they had been pacing up and 
 down for a few minutes in solemn silence. "Why do you 
 look so serious ? " 
 
 " I suppose," he replied, with native simplicity and undi- 
 minished gravity, "because I am trying to take it in — trying to 
 realize that I am here with you — that I can see you, hear you, 
 feel your hand on my arm, smell the old jasmine perfume escape 
 from your dress just as it used to do in old days ; and for 
 anything I know, such an hour may never come over again ! " 
 
 Her answer was a pitying pressure of the hand that rested 
 on his arm. Shortly afterwards they returned to the box, where 
 Gilbard remained installed for the rest of the evening. When 
 the opera was over he saw the ladies to their carriage. 
 
 " Good-night, and thank you," was all he said to Catherine, 
 as he handed her into the brougham ; and his look and his 
 touch and his tone did all indeed convey a sense of most 
 profound heart's thanks. 
 
 Then he lit a cigar and walked away through the crowd 
 streaming out of the opera-house, only to get entangled in 
 another stream discharging and dispersing itself from a neigh- 
 
142 TRAPPED. 
 
 bouring theatre. As he walked across the road, absent-mindedly 
 recalling the touch of her hand in his, the tones of her voice, 
 the likeness of her face, he heard a man's voice shout at him with 
 a French execration. He started back to see a lighted phaeton 
 which, drawn by two high-stepping horses, was coming on at a 
 rapid pace, and would infallibly have run him down but for the 
 driver's warning shout and restraining hand. The horses, for 
 an instant checked, resumed their speed, and the carriage 
 flashed by. 
 
 '* We all but ran him down, did we not ? " remarked the other 
 occupant of the phaeton. She was a lady sumptuously dressed 
 and alight with diamonds. She spoke in tones of uttermost 
 nonchalance, as if for her part she did not care a hand's turn 
 whether he were run over or not. But her companion looked 
 dark and struck the horses sharply. 
 
 ^' If I had known him," he thought to himself, " I might have 
 been less careful !" for the light flashing on Gilbard's face had 
 shown him who it was, though Horace had been too suddenly 
 startled to recognize the driver of the phaeton which dashed 
 past so swiftly. 
 
 D'Aurelles drew up in front of a small house, situated in one 
 of the most expensive quarters of London. He tossed the reins 
 to a man-servant, and helped Violet Lyndale out. The name of 
 the beautiful young actress was at that time ever on men's 
 tongues^ Entering the house, they turned into a splendidly- 
 furnished apartment, where a table stood spread with shining 
 silver and spotless damask. Violet Lyndale drew off her gloves 
 and threw her hat aside. 
 
 *' What are you thinking of," she asked, glancing at Albert 
 d'Aurelles, " that you look so cross t " 
 
 " Of a lost chance," he answered, scowling. 
 
 *' Of the man you did not run over ? " 
 
 " You have discovered it with your usual penetration,'^ 
 
 *' A rival ? " 
 
 ** Yes, an old one." 
 
 " I shouldn't mind, were I you, about an old one. But come, 
 make yourself agreeable, /want lobster salad, and champagne, 
 and some one to say pretty things to me !" 
 
 *'And you shall have all three, my beautiful darling!" he 
 answered, kneeling down and pressing his lips against her fair 
 firm throat. 
 
TRAPPED, 143 
 
 " That is better," she answered, a well-pleased light in her 
 eyes. " You see I have your diamonds in my ears and in my 
 hair ? " 
 
 " You have looked your loveliest to-day," he answered. 
 
 " Do you think all the men at your dinner were in love 
 with me ? " 
 : " Of course they were ! How could they help it ? " 
 
 *' I'm always amused to have boys in love with me," she went 
 on ; adding, with a touch of childish delight in her voice, '^ they 
 do look so foolish, don't they ? ''^ 
 
 Albert assented, and still kneeling at her feet, his hands 
 toying with the lace and jewels at her throat, asked her if she 
 had enjoyed the drive to Eichmond and back, the dinner, 
 the company, the view on the river ? To which she replied 
 that she had indeed enjoyed it all. And let it be said of 
 Violet Lyndale, that whatever was to come, at that time she 
 enjoyed life as keenly as a child. She meant no harm to any 
 one — only she had no idea that there was such a thing as what 
 is called moral responsibility in the world. 
 
 Poor butterfly, flashing its bright wings in the summer 
 sunshine ! It hath but a day to live, and shall not that day be 
 sweet ? Shall we grudge it the sunshine and the flowers 1 
 
 •' Do you think you ever loved any one ?" he asked, later on, 
 when he had drunk champagne to his heart's content and lighted 
 his cigarette. 
 
 ^' Yes," she answered, " I think I love you ! It is a fine thing 
 to have a poet for my lover ! And you will write a book of 
 poems to me, won't you? Of course it will be dedicated to me," 
 she went on, with intense business-like earnestness ; " and there 
 will be a portrait of me at the beginning? Let me see, which 
 would be the best dress to be taken in ? Which do you really 
 think I look prettiest in ? '^ 
 
 She looked so lovely in all, that he could scarely make up his 
 mind. Then she wanted to know how long he would be writing 
 the book, and almost cried with vexation when he told her that 
 he had no idea, and that to do her justice, something called 
 inspiration was needed, " which, unlike your actress's tears," he 
 said, " is not always laid on ! Some days I write a good deal, 
 some days a little, some days nothing at all." 
 
 " Would he promise to have the book ready by the 
 autumn ?" 
 
144 TRAPPED. 
 
 " No, he would not, but he would promise to take her to the 
 Derby. 
 
 And Catherine lay awake and knew not the ways of her truant 
 lord. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A HAPPY, yet rather an anxious man, was Albert d'Aurelle§ 
 in those days. Thanks to his wife, he was in good circumstances,- 
 He was even then fond of her ; indeed, had scarcely ceased to 
 be in love with her, though he was making love to another 
 woman, and taking his wife's money (which Catherine trusted 
 largely to his management) wherewith to buy costly presents 
 for Miss Lyndale. Yet, whatever he became in later days, at 
 that time the man's worst faults sprang from the imperative need 
 that his nature had for excitement. The woman who had held 
 his fancy longest, of whom indeed he often thought even now, 
 between his wife and his mistress, was his latest love in France — 
 a resolute, desperately passionate woman — a woman totally unlike 
 any other that he had ever seen. But she grew jealous of him, 
 and that angered his pleasure-loving nature, so that bitter words 
 were uttered on both sides. It was after his last parting from 
 her, while still keeping up a correspondence with her, that he 
 came to England and met Catherine. 
 
 Still often at night he dreamed of Delphine ; her intense 
 warm brown eyes, with sometimes a piteous look of appeal in 
 their depths — such a look of heartbreaking wistfulness as we 
 see often in the eyes of a suffering dumb thing — would haunt ■ 
 him, and he would hear again the urgent music of the swift 
 sweet voice ; would see the tall, serpentine figure swaying 
 towards him with its incomparable grace. Let us rejoice, and 
 let our womenkind rejoice with us, that there are no glass doors 
 let into our hearts, through which, when we are dreaming, they 
 can come and peep ! 
 
 These were, as I was saying, happy times to D'AurelleS;, • 
 because of his new riches and because of the excitement of a 
 perfectly new love. He was a poet, and he had been married 
 four months, and for three out of those four he had scarcely-. 
 
TRAPPED, 145 
 
 seen another woman besides his wife. Yet they were anxious 
 days, too, because he wished to avoid detection, not at all to 
 prevent pain to Catherine — he was much too selfish ever to 
 think of that ! — but because he had a wholesome horror of 
 *' scenes." Yet he was determined to see as much of his new 
 love as he could. Then he was somewhat troubled about money 
 matters. Large as was the balance at the banker's over which 
 he had control, it could not for very long endure the inroads 
 which were being made upon it to gratify Miss Lyndale's taste. 
 
 It was very well to have a poet for a lover, but had his hands 
 been empty it would scarcely have been so well. Many of the 
 gifts were as yet unpaid for. He must in time make some 
 excuse, and induce his wife to sell out some of her capital. It 
 would be a bore to be poorer by so many hundreds, and it would 
 make a scene, and that would be horrible. Still it was the only 
 thing to be done, and would have to be done some day, and the 
 next time he went in search of fresh quarry, he must not fly so 
 high! 
 
 He had never before had money at his command, and he spent 
 it as an extravagant boy might. Meanwhile, through all his 
 thoughts there ran an unworthy suspicion of the wife for whom 
 he still cared in a way (in whom he felt the proud and absolute 
 sense of proprietorship which was 7iot to be experienced in the 
 case of Miss Lyndale), and of the man whom he had supplanted. 
 
 " She had cared for him once ; might not his turn come again ? 
 As for Gilbard, he knew how he himself in Gilbard's place should 
 have behaved." 
 
 So while he pursued his pleasure with the fair actress, and 
 purchased her gifts with his wife's money, he treated that 
 wife as if she were half a criminal. On the nights when she 
 went into society without him, he always demanded on her 
 return a rigorous account of the evening, a list of the people she 
 had seen. On those occasions when she had to report the name 
 of Horace Gilbard, it meant her having to endure a succession 
 of small spites from Albert for days after. Most very sensual 
 men are also very cruel, and verily D'Aurelles was no exception 
 to the rule. He took an exquisite delight in punishing ; and 
 though it was no fault of Catherine's that she sometimes met 
 Gilbard in society, it pleased him to punish her all the same as 
 if it had been. 
 
 But still the woman remained infatuated, for he had his moods 
 
 II 
 
146 TKAPPED. 
 
 of tenderness, and he had studied women and the art of love, 
 and then, too, women often love best the men who treat them 
 worst. 
 
 One afternoon she asked him if he would take her to the 
 Derby. He replied shortly that he would not ; that it was a 
 disreputable English institution, to which he would neither take 
 nor let his wife go. He was in a bad temper that afternoon, for 
 he had been to call on Violet, and had found a man there whom 
 he could not outstay, as he had a dinner-party at his own house, 
 and he had to get back in time to dress. Catherine coloured a 
 little at his refusal, but she said nothing. 
 
 The Derby day of that year, for a wonder, was a fine day. 
 The night previous to it Albert had not returned to his house ; 
 his wife believed, as he had often told her, that he had chambers 
 where he sometimes found it more convenient to pass the night. 
 At about ten o'clock in the morning, a break, with its comple- 
 ment of gaily-dressed women and men, with flowers in their 
 button-holes, drew up in front of Madame d'Aurelles's door, 
 and in a minute more Catherine descended the steps, looking 
 very beautiful, with a curious smile about her lips. 
 
 " You're quite right, my dear," said Mrs. Gray, a pretty, little 
 languid society-woman. " I broke my husband, just as you will 
 break yours ! " 
 
 Mr. Gray, of course, was not of the party. Ill-natured people 
 said that Mr. Gray had been broken to such good purpose that 
 he saw much more of other ladies than of Mrs. Gray. 
 
 One fine Derby day is just like another. How well we know 
 the road— the stream of wagonettes and carriages, out of which 
 fair women seem to bloom like human flowers ; the omnibus ; 
 the horse and trap; the humble donkey- cart; the crowd of 
 pedestrians all swarming the same way ; the brass band ; the 
 separate musical instruments trying to do business on their own 
 account ; the good-natured chaff between those riding and those 
 on foot ; the smell of good cigars and bad. Ah, me ! how well 
 we know it all ! The favourite for the great spring race, and 
 very much in favour, too, was a horse called " Firefly " — " Sea 
 Bird " and " Pretty Boy " being good second and third. The 
 women, of course, made books with the men, who allowed them 
 to hedge in the most obliging fashion. 
 
 They were Hearing Epsom, when a phaeton, drawn by two 
 high-stepping horses, passed them, Catherine started, turned 
 
TRAPPED. 147 
 
 pale, and closed her lips tightly as if to prevent herself from 
 calling out, for she recognized in the driver of the phaeton her 
 husband, beside whom sat a woman, whose striking features 
 were at that time, through the shop windows, familiar to every- 
 one. Those of the party who knew D'Aurelles wisely said 
 nothing. Others, less well-informed, seeing how pale Catherine 
 turned, were prompt with sympathy and smelling-bottles. Two 
 young men grown wise before their time, looked at one another 
 significantly. They had predicted something of the kind, when 
 they had heard of Madame d'Aurelles' scheme for asserting her 
 wifely independence. 
 
 " Felt sure he would take Violet " — for the matter was town- 
 talk. 
 
 Catherine was a proud woman; she recovered herself quickly, 
 and made fresh bets, and became unusually animated ; her eyes 
 glowed, and there was a very becoming flush upon her cheek. 
 
 D'Aurelles, also, had seen his wife, though he did not appear 
 to recognize her ; only his companion noticed his quick glance 
 at the break and his suddenly turning his gaze on his horses. 
 
 *' You have seen some woman there," she said, *' whom you do 
 not want to recognize ! " 
 
 *^ Right, as usual," he answered, calmly, lighting a cigarette. 
 " No less a woman than my wife." 
 
 '^ You are married, then 1 " 
 
 ^' Most surely I am." 
 
 "And you did not tell me ? " 
 
 " I did not. There were surely pleasanter topics of conver- 
 sation than my marriage." 
 
 '* True," she answered, with a laugh ; it was not a matter of 
 thrilling interest ! You don't think * Copperplate' will win, do 
 you } I was talking to a man yesterday who said he did not feel 
 at all sure that he would not ; and if he does, oh ! the gloves I 
 shall lose ! " 
 
 " / shall lose more than gloves in that case," replied her 
 companion, trying to appear unconcerned, but not getting on 
 very successfully with the endeavour. 
 
 An hour afterwards the race had been decided, against 
 everybody's expectation, with the exception of a fortunate few, 
 whom a special providence must have had in charge. The 
 despised " Copperplate," scarcely expected to made a bad 
 fourth, had won 1 
 
148 TRAPPED, 
 
 The event meant ruin to many people, and amongst them 
 Albert d'Aurelles. As a rule, he was not an incautious man in 
 such ventures as these ; but now debts were gathering all about 
 him, debts which his wife's money must meet, unless by some 
 brilliant stroke of good fortune he could procure aid in some 
 other way. Of course, to sow such a crop as would yield him 
 the desired harvest, he had to give tremendous odds ; but it 
 seemed to him impossible that this horse, out of all the other 
 horses, most of whom seemed so infinitely superior in all points, 
 should win ! Of course, there was a risk — how slight it was, 
 though ! What a blessing it would be to feel himself a free man 
 once more — to avoid that scene which he knew must come when 
 his wife began to suspect, as she inevitably would, how and 
 where his money had gone ! The horror of such a scene 
 grew doubly strong when he saw that Catherine recognized 
 him and the woman in whose company he was. 
 
 When it was known that *' Copperplate " had won the race, 
 he turned so pale that Violet thought he was going to faint. 
 But he did not. He drank off some champagne, and rolled 
 up and lighted a cigarette. 
 
 *' Have you lost very much .^" she asked, not without a touch 
 of genuine trouble in her voice. 
 
 " Everything — that is how much," he answered ; " but if you 
 don't mind, we'll get out of this, and drive back." 
 
 The actress assented, and they made their way out of the 
 crowd, and drove away in the direction of London. Again they 
 passed quite close to the break wherein Catherine sat, and she 
 could not help noticing the dreadful change which had come 
 over her husband's face. Much as she thought she scorned 
 him just then, she almost pitied him, too ! Since that encounter 
 between the two vehicles, a sort of cloud had fallen over 
 Madame d'Aurelles and her party which no amount of false and 
 forced gaiety could dispel. 
 
 Albert drove to London at a rapid pace, the swift movement 
 seeming to suit him well. He scarcely responded to Violet 
 when she spoke, so that at last she desisted from her prattle. 
 At another time she would have told him that he was stupid 
 and that unless he promised to make himself more agreeable 
 he should not take her out again ; but just now there was, 
 something in his white face and fixed eyes which rather 
 frightened her ; so she gave herself up to the delights afforded 
 
TJ^APPED. 149 
 
 by watching the road. At length the drive came to an end, 
 and they drew up in front of her little bijou of a residence. 
 Albert handed out his fair companion, and followed her up 
 into the pretty, flower-scented drawing-room. 
 
 "Well," she asked, when they had stood silent for a few 
 minutes, "you were silent all the drive! Have you nothing 
 to say to me now ? " 
 
 '^Yes, I have at least one word to say, and that is, 
 * Good-bye!'" 
 
 " What I you won't stay to dinner ? '^ 
 
 " I don't mean for to-day only," he answered. " I mean 
 good-bye for ever ! Have you forgotten that I told you I was 
 a ruined man? And you are not the woman who wants a 
 ruined man for a lover ! " 
 
 *' Albert, is it really as bad as that?" 
 
 "Yes, quite as bad as that." 
 
 "Why, my dear, how sorry I am!" and going up to lum 
 she passed her hands across his face, making, as she did so, 
 a soft, purring sound. " Don't you think you will ever be 
 rich again ? " 
 
 " No, never !" he answered, desperately, but firmly. 
 
 " Then I suppose we really must say good-bye," she replied ; 
 " for I couldn't do without pretty things — could I ? " 
 
 " Good-bye !" he said, harshly, and moved to the door. 
 
 He was just leaving the room when she called to him to 
 come back for one moment. When he came she threw her 
 arms about his neck, telling him how fond she was of him — 
 that she should never like any one else so much ! 
 
 "No more!" he said, almost fiercely, and with that he 
 went from the house into the bright May evening. 
 
 The streets were gay with many carriages, and musical 
 with many cornets played by ambitious young men. He 
 knew not where he should go, but to his own home not yet. 
 
 If that was a disturbed evening for Albert, what kind of 
 an evening was it for his wife. 
 
 Her friends left her at her door. She made a pretence at 
 dining, so that the footman who stood behind her chair 
 should not wonder. She was more innocent of the world's 
 ways, this woman who had passed so much of her life in the 
 country, than many younger women. She had never thought 
 it possibW to doubt this husband of hers who had been so 
 
150 TRAPPED. 
 
 jealous of her every movement ? She had not learnt, as most 
 wives have to learn, that there is one law for them and 
 another for their husbands. 
 
 She went into the drawing-room, and, saying she would 
 not have the lamps lit, sat alone in the darkness — not 
 absolute darkness, because of a lamp-post which stood just 
 opposite the house, and looked in like a big eye watching 
 her. Somewhere near at hand the music of a street-piano 
 hovered in the soft evening air, and to her death-day she 
 Avill remember the tune it played, and to her death-day she 
 will hate it. 
 
 In the first dreadful shock of her surprise she had felt 
 scornful and indignant ; but now, in the force of a great 
 reaction, bitter tears flowed from her eyes — those beautiful 
 eyes of hers ! — and violent sobs shook her, as she asked her- 
 self between them what she had done to merit such disgrace. 
 She had loved him with all the strength of a strong nature. 
 During the days of their engagement he had told her that 
 she had given him back his youth ! And was almost the first 
 use he made of it, to desert her ? He had told her even 
 after their marriage how exquisitely she suited him in every 
 way. 
 
 At the first sight of him by Violet Lyndale's side to-day 
 she had been angry — bitterly angry ! But had that been 
 dignified or just t she asked herself now. Was it his fault 
 that she lacked the charm to hold him ? What a bitter dis- 
 appointment it must have been to him when he found that 
 she could not ! But, oh ! it was cruel to think that she had 
 lost him because of whatever failure ; and with all her heart 
 she hated the woman who, she feU. sure, had schemed to take 
 her husband away from her ! 
 
 Dear soul ! she pictured in her mind's eye the desperate 
 struggles he must have had with himself before yielding to those 
 alien charms ! When he was with het\ his wife, what cruel 
 remorse of heart he must have suffered ! No wonder he had of 
 late not seemed himself. It was as if that oldtimc charm^ — a 
 *^ love-philtre" — had been given him, to take his heart from her 
 and make it another woman's. 
 
 No, a great curse had fallen upon her, under which she must 
 bow her head. She w^ondered if it was a punishment for her 
 having broken her faith to Horace ! And yet to have married 
 
TRAPPED. 151 
 
 him, loving another man all the time, would have been wicked ! 
 So she sat alone in the darkness, and idealized an unfaithful 
 husband's peccadillo into a piece of old Greek Fate ! How 
 pitifully little she knew the man she had to deal with, who, as 
 he paced up and down the street, calmer then and smoking a 
 first-rate cigar, was thinking not at all of Violet, but of his 
 gloomy prospects in the future, and of the dreadful scene that he 
 feared, when he must tell his wife all, and that her money must 
 save them from disgrace, after which they would probably be as 
 poor as beggars. 
 
 As far as the man knew anything about love at that time, he 
 probably loved his wife better than any one in the world ; but 
 his swiftly excited, restlessly unsatisfied nature demanded con- 
 stant novelty. Indeed his very unfaithfulness to his wife made 
 him in a way fonder of her. To know that he had such a secret 
 from her gave zest to the relationship. Of real tenderness the 
 man had none, although he could assume it very well. 
 
 At last he said unto himself that there was no good in 
 putting it off any longer — the sooner it was over the better ! 
 He dropped into a public-house, swallowed a glass of brandy, 
 and went on his way home ! 
 
 His wife was sitting in the drawing-room, dark, but for the 
 lamp outside, which continued to watch her, when she heard 
 the door-bell ring violently. Then the hall-door opened and 
 closed, and she heard her husband's voice asking some question 
 of the servants. Then his step was on the stairs, and he came 
 into the drawing-room. He could just discern her figure by 
 the lamplight v/hich fell in from outside. He was quite as well 
 pleased that there should be no light in the room. 
 
 " What ! all alone in the dark, Cathy ? " he began, with an 
 assumption of tenderness in his voice. 
 
 *• Yes," she rejoined; " I have been so for some time." 
 
 Her voice was tired and pitiful through her much weeping. 
 He could hear in her tone how she had been grieving. After a 
 pause he spoke again, coming nearer to her. There was some- 
 thing strange in this scene, carried on between two persons in 
 almost total darkness — yet the tones of a voice may often repre- 
 sent looks. 
 
 "Cathy," he said, "if you had not gone against my most 
 earnest wishes, you would have been spared something which I 
 see has pained you." 
 
152 Trapped. 
 
 '^ It was better for me to know," she answered, h6r voic6 
 quivering, made heavy with its tears. " Don't think I blame 
 you. The fault was not yours, dear ! It was my failure that I 
 could not keep you — could not hold you, as another woman 
 might have done. You have still tried, for my sake, to play 
 
 that you loved me .'' 
 
 Here her voice broke, and he knew that she was shedding 
 bitter tears. 
 
 *' Nonsense I " he cried, taking her hands from before her 
 eyes, and holding them in his. She did not attempt to with- 
 draw them, nor did she shrink v/hen he kissed her cheeks and 
 poor wet eyeUds, and even then, in her great sorrow, her blood 
 thrilled to his kiss. 
 
 " You are quite free," she said. " You must make her and 
 yourself happy. I blame you for nothing." And as she spoke 
 he felt her fingers tighten round his. 
 
 "What in the world do you mean, darling.'^" he broke out, 
 impatiently, his tones growing shrill in his excitement. " The 
 wretched woman you saw with me is simply so much beauty to 
 be bought by so much gold ! — a splendid animal, nothing more ! 
 Go to her ! — make her happy ? She is nothing to me ! I was 
 thrown into her society, and, I confess, I let things go too far 
 — the kind of thing which will happen to a man whether he is 
 married or not, though very often his wife finds out nothing 
 about it. I have never loved j<?^ less ! It was a mere affair of 
 the senses, which ought not to be mentioned in your pure 
 presence. I am sorry it has happened — sorry that you found it 
 out ; but let us make no scene about it, nor talk as if a man, 
 because he was married, was therefore inevitably out of the 
 reach of temptation ! " 
 
 He ceased, and she drew her hands away. It seemed to him 
 that she recoiled from him, and that a shudder went through her. 
 '* Catherine," he said, after a pause, " have you nothing to 
 say to me ? " 
 
 " Not to-night, I think," and her tones were cold as snow j 
 there was in them now no vestige of her late weeping. 
 
 She rose and moved towards the door. He laid a detaining 
 hand upon her arm, but she freed herself, and said, with not 
 the faintest quiver in her chilly voice : 
 
 " Have the goodness to let me pass, if you please. I am 
 tired, and wish to go to my own room." 
 
TRAPPED. 153 
 
 *^ Vou are my wife,'' he replied, fiercely, "and you shall not 
 go from this room until you have answered me my questions." 
 
 " I am your wife — 7iot your slave ! But what are your ques- 
 tions you wish me to answer?" 
 
 " You have heard my explanation about that wretched woman. 
 Do you mean to believe or disbelieve it? Answer that." 
 
 " I have to believe it," she answered, still coldly as ice. 
 " You have left me no other choice. I could wish you had ! " 
 
 " You wish I had ! Do you want me to be in love with the 
 woman ? " 
 
 " Since I am not free to leave the room till your questions 
 are answered," she said, " I will speak now, and once for all ! 
 And afterwards, mind, the subject is not mentioned between 
 us. Do you know what your explanation, so obviously genuine, 
 has done ? " 
 
 " No, and I don't care ! " he rejoined, the native insolence of 
 his temper aroused by the dreadful, quiet contempt of her tones. 
 But she went on, without heeding the words which she knew 
 were false : 
 
 " It has killed my love for you. It has killed my faith in you. 
 It was not your fault, I thought, if / lacked the charm to keep 
 you mine. I said, ' Love is all powerful — not to be resisted ! 
 He found out too late that he had not loved me as he had at 
 first thought he did.' At first to-day I was angry, but when 
 I thought of your bitter disappointment in finding that I was so 
 little to you, when you had thought I should have been so 
 much, I grieved for you. I began to think what countless ways 
 there were in which I might have fallen short. I thought how 
 you must have been tortured between temptation and remorse, 
 and as I sat there in the darkness my heart bled for you as well 
 as for myself. I was ready with my forgiveness when you came 
 in. I wished only to sacrifice myself for your happiness. I had 
 lost you, but I loved you still ! " 
 
 " You never had lost me ! " he put in. 
 
 "That is just it!" she answered, with terrible distinctness, 
 each word crystallized into a veritable ice-flower. " I could still 
 have loved you, though apart ! In such a dreadful crisis of your 
 life I would have helped you, against my own heart. But to 
 hear from your own lips that it is no crisis, nothing but a 
 common affair with a common woman ! and that you chose to 
 associate me with such a woman in your life, to divide yourself 
 
154 TRAPPED, 
 
 between your mistress and your wife, to be unfaithful to me for 
 the first pretty face that caught you, and to say that all the time 
 you loved me ! Yes, I believe that you do love me now — I 
 believe that you love me as much as you could love any woman 
 — you who, I see now, have never dreamed of what a sacred 
 love could be. I suppose the law constrains me still to live 
 with you as your wife, but I tell you," and her tone changed 
 to one of passionate bitterness, *' I tell you I am a proud 
 woman, and that you have struck my love for you dead, dead, 
 dead ! A long life would not be long enough for me to show 
 how I despise you ! God ! is it possible that you are the same 
 man whom only this morning I loved with all my heart? It 
 can't be — it ca7i!t be ! and yet I know it is ! Now that I have 
 spoken, am I free to leave the room ? '' 
 
 He made no answer, but opened the door for her. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, acknowledging the courtesy as she 
 swept out. 
 
 For a moment, as she passed him, the light in the hall showed 
 them each other's faces. Hers was cold and scornful, with a 
 cruel brilliance in the eyes. His was appallingly white, the lips 
 set tight together. 
 
 He closed the door and threw himself on the sofa. With the 
 dreadful perversity of things, he had fallen in love with his wife 
 all over again. Her coldness and her scorn had moved him as 
 her sweetness and tenderness never had done. Yet he had lost 
 her ! Yes, strange as it may seem, in such a little while Love 
 had died. All romantic loves must die just as inevitably as 
 human beings die. The love between married persons, which 
 after years or months, as the case may be, loses the zest of 
 romance, has no less died because it has passed into a kind of 
 jog-trot friendship. Some loves die long, lingering deaths, with 
 spurts as of fresh hfe in them at times ; and some drop dead in- 
 stantly, as this had done, slain by a man's falseness. 
 
 Albert had seen much of the world, and he knew that no dead 
 thing in it is as dead as a dead love. What becomes of us after 
 death we cannot tell ; the hardest thinkers among us can only 
 conjecture ; but that a dead love rises up never under any cir- 
 cumstances whatsoever we know for certainty — for a terrible cer- 
 tainty, those of us who have seen on the dead king's face his 
 look of awful unforgiveness ! 
 
 After some time Albert roused himself, and went to the 
 
TRAPPED. 155 
 
 smoking-room, where he sat long, smoking cigar after cigar, 
 and helping himself liberally to brandy. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Early the next morning he requested an interview with his 
 wife. He found her, as usual, perfectly dressed ; her manner 
 was indifferent and composed, while he for once appeared 
 nervous and ill at ease. 
 
 " Catherine," he began, " I have something to say to you 
 which I could not say last night.'' 
 
 " Yes 1 " she said. " I am hstening." 
 
 He went on : " What I have to say can be said in five words. 
 I am a ruined man !— a disgraced man — if I cannot pay my 
 debts. I have got into debt. I thought to retrieve everything 
 yesterday, and lost everything ! " 
 
 '*What do you propose doing?" inquired his wife, who had 
 started at this disastrous news, but almost instantly regained 
 her self-composure. 
 
 " Do ? " he answered. " What can I do ? — nothing ! " 
 
 " How much money shall you require ? " 
 
 " Twenty thousand pounds." 
 
 *' Out of my fortune '^. That will leave five thousand pounds, 
 on the interest of which we shall have to live." 
 
 *' You are going to save me, my darling } " he cried. 
 
 " Don't, please ! " she said, as he held out his hands to her. 
 " I have no fancy to be the wife of a man publicly disgraced. 
 I will order the carriage, and drive to my lawyer's at once." 
 
 He looked at her with longing admiration as she rose and 
 left the room. 
 
 In a few days Madame d'Aurelles' fortune went to satisfy her 
 husband's creditors. The house and furniture were disposed 
 of, and the married couple retired to The Firs, where they 
 meant to live. 
 
 The evening before leaving London, Catherine was sitting by 
 herself, when Gilbard walked in. Of course this " frightful 
 smash " was town-talk. 
 
156 TRAPPED. 
 
 *' I heard you were going to leave London," he said, " so came 
 to say good-bye. What a dreadful affair it has all been ! " 
 
 ** Yes, indeed ; but the worst of it is over now. The Firs is 
 left to us, and there we must live, you know, with few servants 
 and half the house shut up. It will be lonely. Will an old 
 friend come and see me sometimes, do you think ? " she asked, 
 with the old exquisite sweetness in her tones. 
 
 " There is nothing an old friend would more long to do," he 
 replied. " But your husband ?" 
 
 " / shall be mistress at The Firs ! Come when you like. 
 Horace, how good you are to have forgiven me ! '' And as she 
 spoke she let her hand rest for a moment on his. He raised it 
 and carried it to his lips. 
 
 *' I shall love you always," he said, in his grave tones. 
 
 " Are you sure of that, Horace ? " 
 
 " Very sure." 
 
 *' Then how wrong I have been ! For only unhappiness can 
 come to you out of such a love ! " 
 
 " No ! " he said — " A thousand times no ! To love you with- 
 out hope is a better thing than to love a less perfect woman 
 with hope. Just to sit here with you like this is more blessed- 
 ness than any man deserves." 
 
 "You poor, foolish boy ! " she said. She was his senior by 
 some years. He took her hand and she let it remain in his a 
 few moments. He will always remember with loving gratitude 
 that soft summer twilight. It will be a blessed refuge for his 
 thoughts to seek out in his long uncomforted days. Her hand 
 in his, the sense of her presence close to him, her beauty divinely 
 indistinct in the half-light — the passion and the romance of it 
 will come back to assuage his sore pain. 
 
 " I will go now," he said, presently. 
 
 He had no fear of facing her husband, but he was reluctant to 
 mar the evening with the sight of him. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, gently, " I think you had better go 
 now." 
 
 *' I thank you," he said, getting up. ** You have been very 
 good to me. God bless you, my heart's one love, and make you 
 happy ! " 
 
 "Good-bye, dear," she answered, pityingly. And so they 
 parted ; he, to walk on his way home, now fortified and trans- 
 figured by a memory : she, to sit with clasped hands, brooding 
 
TRAPPED, -^ 157 
 
 over the ruin of her life. She was thankful that the next day 
 they were to leave town. 
 
 The summer passed eventlessly enough. Albert and Cathe- 
 rine said little to each other. He was attentive to her in every 
 way that he knew how to be, and she accepted his attentions or 
 declined them with unvarying coolness. Even Mrs. Lennard 
 said it was quite touching, his devotion ! and almost reproved 
 her daughter for being so cold. 
 
 *' After all, my dear," she said, " I have no least wish to ex- 
 cuse Albert — he behaved shockingly ! — still I do think you have 
 punished him enough ! Wives have forgiven their husbands 
 for such things before this. We should remember that to ' err 
 is human, to forgive divine ! " 
 
 And Catherine said : 
 
 '* Mamma, dear, I have no desire to punish him. I cannot 
 help it that he killed my love for him. I could no more make 
 myself other to him than I am, than I could keep this rose from 
 withering ! There, let us talk no more upon the subject. He 
 will find consolation in time, I have no doubt. But my life is 
 ruined, and it is his work ! " 
 
 In late September a few men and their wives, with a sprink- 
 ling of unmarried folks of both sexes, came down to The Firs 
 for the shooting, according to the long-standing hospitable 
 custom there. Amongst the men came Horace Gilbard. Albert 
 had heard his wife announce to her mother her intention of 
 asking him, and though he swore a great deal inwardly, he said 
 nothing aloud. He was desperately in love with his wife — that 
 is, as he understood love. Her coldness kept his passion ever 
 alive, and though he knew he could not bring her dead love to 
 life, he determined to lose no chance of winning at least her 
 toleration. For this end he strove to gratify her every wish, to 
 interfere with none of her schemes, till, as we have seen, Mrs. 
 Lennard thought his devotion quite touching. 
 
 Horace was at a loss to understand the warm welcome ac- 
 corded to him by his host, who in London had seemed to regard 
 him with anything but favour. He mentioned this change to 
 Catherine one day when they were alone She smiled her 
 long, slow smile, and said : 
 
 " I told you I should be mistress here." 
 
 This was a very trying time for Albert d'Aurelles. His 
 jealousy was roused ; he morbidly imagined all kinds of evil, 
 
158 TRAPPED, 
 
 but he kept pace with his purpose. Whether he was with 
 Gilbard in the open air, on slaughter bent, or with him in the 
 smoking-room, his manner was uniformly civil, if not to say 
 absolutely hearty, while the care he strove to take of his wife — 
 for she would not always endure it — remained undiminished. 
 
 Gilbard had brought with him a quaint little black-and-tan 
 terrier, a new purchase, an animal of no great value : but as 
 Catherine seemed to have taken a fancy to it, he begged her 
 acceptance of little " Topsy," and she, after a slight hesitation, 
 was pleased to accept his gift. This Albert noted, and with no 
 pleasure. Still he restrained himself, and things went on 
 peaceably enough for about a fortnight. During that time, 
 Topsy, who was a pugnacious little dog, had attacked with some 
 show of force a delicately-built spaniel, the property of Albert. 
 
 He and his wife happened to be in the grounds at the time ; 
 they had just come in from riding. With a look of rage, which 
 the occasion quite failed to justify, Albert descended upon the 
 too pugilistically inclined Topsy, and with his riding-whip ad- 
 ministered to it a sound thrashing, only desisting at his wife's 
 earnest entreaties. 
 
 " Take care it does not happen again/^ he said, " or it may 
 go more hardly with your favourite ! '' 
 
 But it did happen again. Only two days afterwards Cath- 
 erine was crossing the hall when she heard a sound of snarling 
 and barking. She hurried forward, suspecting what was wrong. 
 At the same moment her husband appeared, and seized, from 
 the wall where it hung, a real instrument of torture, a whip 
 with curled and knotted lash, used for the subjugation of some 
 huge mastiff or fierce bloodhound. Before she could utter a word 
 the cruel lashes, wielded with all the man's uttermost strength 
 of rage, the stronger for having been so long kept under, fell 
 with frightful effect on the little offender's back, eliciting absolute 
 shrieks of agony. But the fiendish part of the man's nature 
 was up now, and while she prayed for mercy on her pet, he 
 grasped her wrist with his left hand and held it as in a vice so 
 that she could neither fly nor interfere, while his right hand 
 rained down mercilessly blow after blow. In time the shrieks 
 failed into a wail, and then into a sound, half-sob, half-moan. 
 
 " There ! " he cried, when he had sated his fiendish rage, 
 flinging the whip from him ; " your favourite will not need a 
 second lesson ! " 
 
TKAFPED. 159 
 
 '* At least finish your work ! " cried Catherine, who was white 
 with passion, as she threw herself on the ground beside Topsy. 
 " You see the dog is dying ! Kill it outright ! " 
 
 '' That you can get a servant to do," he answered, lighting a 
 cigarette and strolling away. 
 
 "It shall not suffer another moment ! " said Catherine, and 
 taking up the whip, which had a heavy metal handle, she dealt 
 with her firm strong hand, just where she knew it must be in- 
 stantly mortal, the one merciful blow that would put her pet out 
 of its suffering. 
 
 The incident, as may be imagined, changed her cold indif- 
 ference towards her husband into loathing of him. It also 
 inspired her with terror of him, as it did Mrs. Lennard on her 
 daughter's account. Further sorrow was in store for Catherine. 
 Before October closed, that gentle mother's pure and blameless 
 life passed away, after an attack of congestion of the lungs, 
 which terminated fatally on the fifth day. Up to almost the 
 last her recovery had been hoped for. Before she sank into 
 the final stupor, she expressed a wish to see Horace Gilbard 
 alone. Of course he came to her at once. Then she bade him, 
 speaking with dif^culty between her short and laboured breaths, 
 not to desert her child, now left to the sole care of a man who 
 could prove himself such a brute. There was no knowing what 
 such a man might not do in a fit of rage. 
 
 Horace promised he would do his best never to lose sight of 
 Catherine for long, and he tried to comfort the mother by re- 
 minding her that great brutes were as a rule great cowards ; 
 but with all due regard for traditional wisdom I venture to 
 thmk that more than one exception will be found to prove that 
 rule. 
 
 Of course with Mrs. Lennard's death the shooting party came 
 to a close ; even Gilbard had reluctantly to take his departure ; 
 and The Firs was deserted, but for a few servants and the 
 master and mistress thereof. 
 
 Those were sad months to poor Catherine which followed, 
 shut up in the big deserted house, saddened by the memory of 
 her mother, alone, quite, but for the servants, with a man for 
 whom she had not only no love, but from whom she now shrank 
 with a feeling akin to fear — she who before had never dreamed 
 of what fear might be.. 
 
 The most bearable hours in the clay were l,hosc when she 
 
i6o TRAPPED, 
 
 took her breakfast by her bright dressing-room fire, wrapped in 
 some dainty morning robe, and reading one of her favourite 
 vokimes. Later on the dull work of the day would begin, there 
 would be household directions to be given, calls to be made, 
 callers to be received, as the neighbours did their best to "cheer 
 poor Madame d'Aurelles's " solitude. Luncheon and dinner, 
 tete-d-tete with her husband, were silent meals, but for the ex- 
 change of a few observations of a purely formal kind. Dinner 
 over, she would retire to the drawing-room, where she had 
 passed so many a happy evening with her mother. 
 
 There, while she sat before the glowing fire, even while she 
 turned over the pages of the newest novel, she would be think- 
 ing of the dreadful failure her life had been. Other women, 
 not loving, had married and had been happy and prosperous in 
 all ways ; but she, because she had so high an ideal of love, 
 would not desecrate that ideal. In putting Horace away from 
 her when she discovered that she never had loved him as it was 
 in her nature to love, she thought she had done only what was 
 right. And how had it turned out ? Her youth had passed in 
 her own dreams of romance, and now it was over ! God, to 
 realize that it was over I That was what hurt her so. 
 
 Nothing but this one dreadful fact seemed real ! Other women 
 in her position might have addressed themselves to other in- 
 terests, but this was not possible to Catherine. Her nature was 
 too intensely, too profoundly romantic, to feel interest in any- 
 thing which did not use those great emotional forces which lay, 
 by many people quite unsuspected, beneath the langour of her 
 manner. 
 
 If all the circumstances of the case had been known, Albert 
 would have got no pity, because men so placed never are pitied. 
 The untempted, and therefore the faithful, husbands hail the 
 opportunity as one on which to flaunt the banner of their virtue ; 
 the ////faithful ones think that a man who could not keep such 
 a little affair dark from his wife must be a fool who deserves all 
 he gets ! And yet the man did deserve some amount of pity. 
 Many other women would have loved him in spite of his un- 
 faithfulness. On the discovery of it there would have been a 
 dreadful scene ; red lavender and all the rest of it ; protestations 
 on his part never again to be untrue in act or word — protesta- 
 tions which to him would mean nothing, and then would have 
 followed forgiveness, and joy of the forgiven— who would draw 
 
TRAPPED. i6l 
 
 a long breath and pledge himself to be more careful if ever again 
 his feet strayed from the path of rectitude ! 
 
 For Albert, Catherine had made no scene. She had only, as 
 we know, turned to ice. If she was lonely, I think he was even 
 lonelier. He took to regularly frequenting the " Three Jolly 
 Drummers," where he would sit in the bar talking to those who 
 came and went, smoking, and drinking much brandy-and-water. 
 It wanted but a day or two to Christmas. Was any Christmas 
 angel abroad on the air, I wonder, through the wild wind and 
 the swirling snow, through the snow-charged clouds, which, 
 parting from 'time to time, revealed the moon's flying face? 
 Was any power trying to bring two sundered souls together 
 again ? One thing is certain, that as Albert sat there, early in 
 the evening, sipping his first glass of brandy-and-water, a cloud 
 seemed to roll away from his spirit, and to show him the face 
 of his wife as he remembered it before she had become his wife ; 
 and to the man's strong passion there came a great, resistless, 
 all-sweeping-away rush of soul love ! He asked himself how he 
 could have wronged her ? how he could have been unfaithful to 
 her ? A madman ! nay, worse ! Oh, surely, surely he had not 
 lost her beyond recovery ! He was alone and she was alone ! 
 Once more he would cast himself at her feet. He had sinned 
 against other women and been forgiven. Why should this 
 woman be alone implacable 1 He would go to her. 
 
 He left his brandy-and-water scarcely tasted, and went out 
 into the night — the night of wild wind and fitful moonlight. 
 The little village was deserted, and the only sound of life which 
 the wind brought with it was the baying of some deep-chested 
 watchful dog. He reached the house, and rang a peal at the 
 bell. Catherine, sitting in the drawing-room reading, started to 
 hear the hall-bell at that hour. It could not be her husband 
 back so early ; who could it be, then ? But after all it was her 
 husband, she saw, as the door opened, and he walked in. He 
 shut it behind him and came over to where she was sitting. 
 
 *' Catherine I " he said. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, without raising her eyes. 
 
 " Catherine, I can bear this no longer ! I have sinned against 
 you, and I have repented. You must come back to me, my 
 wife ! You must love me again ! " 
 
 He knelt down by her and caught her hands in his. How 
 slight and cool and white they were, with soft old lace clinging 
 
 12 
 
i62 TRAPPED. 
 
 around the wrists ! How fair she was, with the lamplight and 
 the firelight falling on her warm-tinted hair, and on her dress, 
 which showed to such advantage the full seductive figure ! 
 
 She looked at him with mild surprise in her soft steadfast 
 eyes ; then she said, with neither pity nor resentment in her 
 voice : 
 
 ^' You ask for something which it is not in my power to give 
 you. You might as well ask me to give you a star out of the 
 sky. I loved you once, and I love you no more. I have not 
 the power to make dead things live again. I am sorry for 
 myself and sorry for you, but I cannot make things otherwise 
 than they are." 
 
 She rose and moved towards the door, but he intercepted 
 her, and, reclaiming her hands, spoke, while his eyes burned 
 into hers. 
 
 "Catherine, is this final? Are these your last words tome 
 on this subject ? '^ 
 
 "I could never speak differently. Let me pass, please. I 
 am tired. I wish to be alone." He caught her to him, as it 
 were ; crushing her against him, while he kissed her fiercely till 
 she was breathless ; then he stood holding her with one arm, 
 the other raised as in the act to strike. *' Are you going to 
 treat me as you did my dog?" she asked. *' Well, I would 
 much rather bear your blows than your caresses — besides, then 
 I could be divorced." 
 
 *' No ! " he replied, his eyes full of rage ; " I would like to 
 treat you just in the same way ; but Frenchmen do not beat 
 their wives ; unfortunately, it is not the custom of the country. 
 Go now, and may God never forgive you ! " 
 
 With that he passed from the room, and she heard the great 
 street-door thunder behind him. She sat alone, and her heart 
 was bitter within her. 
 
 He returned to the "Three Jolly Drummers," and there dranl: 
 brandy till his brain reeled and the homeward path seemed to 
 sway beneath his feet. He had never really been drunk before, 
 and the experience was unpleasant. He awoke in the morning 
 somewhat disgusted with himself, his throat parched, his head 
 throbbing. Following the prescribed course, he ate hard biscuits 
 and drank brandy-and-soda, with such good effect that before 
 long he was himself again, and again in the evening frequented 
 the " Three Jolly Drummers," taking care, however, to drink 
 
TRAPPED, 163 
 
 more soberly ; but for all that the demon of drink had him in 
 his clutches. 
 
 That sick craving for stimulant which, once acquired, seldom 
 leaves a man till life leaves him and death makes his lips dust, 
 had taken hold of him. The confirmed drunkard, avoided by 
 his friends, left wholly, as a rule, to himself, is regarded by most 
 people as a happy, easy-going kind of gentleman, who takes up 
 with melancholia as an amusement, who regards fits and such- 
 like pleasantnesses as special favours on the part of a benign 
 Providence, especially benign to him. 
 
 ^' Poor fellow ! " say the most charitably disposed of us. 
 '' What a pity it is he is so self-indulgent ! " If such a hfe were 
 bared to us, what should we see 1 No festival, verily ! I think, 
 but a horror of great darkness, a man mentally prostrate, held 
 by the glitter of insatiate eyes, secured in the clutch of unre- 
 lenting hands, of a monster who is breaking him, body and 
 soul ! No, it never strikes his good friends that he is the most 
 miserable of men, set apart from his happier brethren, doomed 
 to see the dreadful end coming nearer and nearer to him every 
 day, yet powerless to avert it, for to all practical purpose he is 
 as powerless as is a fly in the web of a spider. Now and then, 
 but very rarely, some strong-winged angel with triumphant 
 blast may come to the rescue, but, as a rule, the malady is with- 
 out cure. Of course there are various stages of the complaint, 
 and some reach the later stages more rapidly than others. 
 Such was the case with Albert d'Aurelles ; and through winter 
 and early spring he drank, under protest of his better self; so, 
 though he drank a great deal too much, there was yet something 
 of method in his madness. 
 
 CHAPTER VII* 
 
 As spring eaine on Catherine's health declined, and when May 
 was come, with its festival of birds and flowers, she was weak 
 and at a low ebb of vitality. Her doctor said that she must 
 have change ; but her means were small. The physician spoke 
 to D'Aurelles, who then bethought him of his cottage in France, 
 on the coast of Brittany, where his sister lived* 
 
i64 TkAPPED. 
 
 "We will let The Firs, and go to Brittany for the season,'' 
 he said to Catherine. '* My sister Aglae is gocd, and will take 
 care of you/' 
 
 And Catherine, willing enough to be out of England, con- 
 sented. So it was settled, and one clear moon-lit May night 
 found husband and wife on their way to St. Malo. 
 
 Catherine went below almost at once ; Albert, cigar in mouth, 
 paced the deck. He, too, was glad to be on his way to France, 
 his own country, where so much romance had befallen him ; he 
 leant over the ship's side watching the shining tracks of water 
 made by her on-pressing keel, hearing, as half in a dream, the 
 steps of the sailors as they came and went, or now and then, 
 through the stillness, the cry of " Boat ahead ! " 
 
 At length the long shining reaches of Southampton Water 
 were traversed, and the ship, as it were with a more confident, 
 or rather more imperious, tread, went out into the sea and the 
 crisp sea-air. Ah, happy sea-air, which the sea keeps ever 
 chaste and strong ! A sailor had caught the exhilaration, and 
 was singing to himself as he went about his work. Albert was 
 thinking of many things when he heard a light step beside him, 
 and felt a hand upon his arm. 
 
 "Albert!" said a low, but withal penetrating, voice. He 
 started as though he had been stung — but by pain or passion 
 who shall say ? He turned, and faced his old love. 
 
 " So we meet once more," he said, taking her outstretched 
 and perfectly-gloved hand. ^' It is an odd coincidence." 
 
 " It is not odd," she rejoined. "It is no coincidence. It is 
 Fate." 
 
 " Have you been in England long } " he asked. 
 
 " About a month." 
 
 " Where are you going now ? " 
 
 "Why, to St. Malo, of course.'' 
 
 "And then, where?" 
 
 " Where yotc are going I Oh, my friend, I have Wearied {ot 
 you and waited for you ! " She stood close to him, laying both 
 her hands on his arm, and while her passionate dark eyes shone 
 in the moonlight : " I knew you must come back to me," she 
 went on. " But tell me — where are you going } " 
 
 " To stay with my sister." 
 
 " At St. Jean ? The air is perfect. I will stay there, too/' 
 
 " Delphine," h^ said, " I am not travelling alone." 
 
TRAPPED, 165 
 
 *^ No 1 And who is your companion ? " 
 
 "My wife, and my curse ! " he replied, passionately. 
 
 " You ought never to have married,'^ she answered. " And 
 an Englishwoman ? Those women of snow ! The thing i§ 
 impossible ! " 
 
 '^ It is irrevocable," he said, drearily. 
 
 ** But you have me still," she whispered, pressing closer to 
 him. 
 
 " Yes ! " he cried, turning on her with the desperate look of 
 one famished for some womanly love, some passion, some ten- 
 derness ! " I have you, and I was a fool to leave you, my queen I 
 I might have known that you, and you only, w^ere for me the 
 world's one woman ! '' 
 
 " That is nonsense," she answered, quietly. " You could never 
 be content with only me ; but you would come back to me as to 
 no other woman. That I do know ! " 
 
 They were unseen of any just then. He kissed her, and felt 
 his kiss returned. 
 
 By eleven o'clock the next morning the boat was alongside 
 the quay of St. Malo. Dear St. Malo ! so dirty and so pic- 
 turesque ? After breakfasting at one of the hotels, and an 
 interval of rest, Albert and Catherine proceeded in a somewhat 
 ramshackle carriage, one such as Brittany proudly vaunts^ to 
 their destination. 
 
 After two hours of jolting through long, poplar-bordered roads, 
 and much swearing on the part of the driver, and much un- 
 necessary flogging of his unhappy horse (nowhere are horses so 
 shamefully ill-treated as in France), the primitive village of St. 
 Jean was gained. St. Jean is much like most French villages, 
 only perhaps a little more deserted than most. They first 
 passed the unfailing blacksmith, who seemed to be perennially 
 engaged in shoeing a much-belaboured and very lean horse ; 
 then the cafe, wath a glimpse through its open door of a vista 
 of wooden benches and tables, and men playing dominoes and 
 drinking coffee. How Frenchmen of the labouring class always 
 seem able to find time for these recreations is a mystery which 
 has never been solved to my satisfaction. Then they passed 
 the great shop of the place, in which you could buy grocery and 
 hosiery, and all manner of hardware goods, and much else be- 
 sides. Also, behind the shop was a small room which served as 
 a second cafe of the village, where you could buy glasses of 
 
1 66 TRAPPED, 
 
 eaii'de-vie over the counter for ten centimes ts. petit vern\ Then 
 there was the little church, to which the good went ; a druggist's, 
 a few cottages, and that was about the whole of St. Jean — if 
 we except the dogs and the begging children who seemed to 
 divide the street between them. The children, of course, pur- 
 sued the carriage, but the driver shouted at them and slashed 
 the foremost of them with his whip, at which they dispersed, 
 some laughing, others yelling. 
 
 The house known as Les Ormes was about two miles outside 
 of the village. It stood back some way from the road, and was 
 surrounded by a growth of wild, unkempt, elfish-looking trees, 
 through whose branches the wind, when there was any, moaned 
 drearily. As the carriage drew up in front of the house, the 
 sun was beginning to set ; it struck on the trees, and the wilder- 
 ness-like garden, and on the white lace cap of Mademoiselle 
 d'Aurelles, which only partly concealed her grey hair. It must 
 have turned grey prematurely, for the face was the face of a 
 woman who has not yet reached the middle period of life ; it 
 was not a prepossessing face ; the forehead was low, the 
 eyes resolute, and of a clear grey ; the lips were thin, and about 
 the corners of them lurked that look of cruelty at times dis- 
 cernible in her brother. 
 
 " You may be good to me — but I shall be surprised if you 
 are 1 " said Catherine to herself, as she greeted her sister-in- 
 law. 
 
 Les Ormes was not a cheerful house. The ample garden 
 which surrounded it had all run to waste. In a corner of it, 
 supposed to be fenced off, a pig had its habitation ; but the 
 fence was a slight one, and quite as often as not, dirty and 
 bloated, he might be seen waddling and ruminating, as only a 
 pig can ruminate, about the grass-grown paths of the garden, 
 where the sighing poplars stood. 
 
 On the lawn a cock and hens and chickens pecked and strutted 
 to and fro, and seemed to be for ever full of talk. They had no 
 business to be there ; but the poultry-yard door was scarcely ever 
 closed, and, like other things, they naturally preferred being where 
 they knew they had no right to be. Occasionally they were joined 
 by a self-important turkey. When thus reinforced, they would 
 make an invasion into the heart of the enemy's camp — namely, 
 into the parlour through the open window. Sometimes they 
 would find it unoccupied, and would take possession with much 
 
TRAPPED, 167 
 
 glee ; then they would be discovered and dispersed entirely, like 
 the true cowards they were, seeing that not even a turkey is a 
 match for wicked man. 
 
 A great curly dog, chained up on account of his fierceness — 
 and who on seeing any one leaped madly to the end of his chain, 
 howling and foaming at the mouth with rage because he could 
 not lodge his teeth in that person's flesh — did not brighten up 
 the surroundings of the house, which in itself was remarkably 
 old and remarkably dirty. The woman-servant of the place, 
 Aglae d'Aurelles's right hand, looked well-nigh as old as the 
 house, and of her voice only a whisper seemed left. 
 
 The first thing Catherine did on going to her bed-room was 
 to throw open the window. The room smelt musty as a long- 
 closed church. 
 
 "Are you hungry?" asked Aglae, of her sister-in-law, a little 
 later. 
 
 " No, thanks." 
 
 " That is lucky, for there is not much in the house. Soup 
 and bouilli — that is all." 
 
 "That will be more than enough," replied Catherine ; and 
 till the meal was served she went into the garden. 
 
 Cheerless as it was, it was less cheerless than the house. 
 She wondered if such a change of air as this was going to benefit 
 her as the doctor hoped it would. Before seeing them, we all 
 acquire impressions of places, and she had fancied the house 
 where her husband's sister lived a much smaller place, but 
 standing in the midst of a bright flower-garden overrun with 
 sunlight. Then she had hoped to like her husband's sister, of 
 whom she had also conceived a very different impression from 
 the reality. 
 
 As soon as the meal was finished, Albert rose and went out, 
 saying he should not return till late ; and shortly afterwards, 
 Catherine went wearily to bed, to lie awake and hear the hours 
 go by, and occasionally the dismal howling of the dog and 
 rattling of his chain. As day dawned, a fact to which the birds 
 gave glad assent, she fell asleep and dreamed of Horace Gilbard, 
 and, as is the case sometimes, loved him in her dream much 
 more than she had ever done in her waking hours. 
 
 She rose late, and having taken coffee in her own room, went 
 to the salon — a room not less depressing in its aspect than the 
 other apartments of Les Ormes, Like the rest, it had a musty 
 
1 68 TJ^APPED, 
 
 smell. Over the bare slippery floor no rugs were strewn ; the 
 furniture was old and looked worm-eaten ; on the centre table, 
 which was draped in a heavy, pall-like looking cloth, stood a 
 few books and a card-plate ; on the mantelpiece was, of course, 
 the inevitable French clock. An e^^clamation of pleasure 
 escaped her as she caught sight of a piano. She was so weak 
 that the smallest exertion tried her, but she rose from her chair 
 and crossed the room to where the instrument stood — only to 
 find that it was locked. She had just regained her seat when 
 Marie-Jeanne handed her a card bearing the name ; 
 
 ^'MADAME DESCHAMPS." 
 
 ''Ask her to enter," said Catherine, wondering who the 
 stranger might be* 
 
 In a moment Marie-Jeanne ushered in a fashionable, over- 
 dressed woman, whose age might have been about thirty-five, 
 though it was difficult to say, the handsome face, with its 
 passionless lips, and bold, brilliant eyes, was so obviously 
 ^' made-up." She was a large woman, but still retained a shapely 
 figure, as large women may do who have not brought forth olive 
 branches. 
 
 " As an old and dear friend of your husband's," she began, in 
 tones that rang clear and belMike, '* I have taken the liberty 
 of calling upon you." 
 
 " It gives me pleasure to see you," answered Catherine, rather 
 overpowered by the other woman's dominant presence. 
 
 The stranger regarded her from head to foot as if she had 
 been some curious kind of animal, 
 
 Catherine returned the look languidly, and then said, in tones 
 as languid : 
 
 " Do you think we have ever met before, madame V 
 
 " Yes," returned the other, nothing abashed. " I fancy we 
 met on the St. Malo boat. You look ill— is that the case ?" 
 
 " It is so. I am far from strong. My husband has brought 
 me here for the benefit of my health." 
 
 " Then he has brought you to a strange place ; but when you 
 know him a little better you will know that his loving-kindnesses 
 are sometimes a little odd. But perhaps you are too weak for 
 callers ? I wanted to see you, and I have seen you, so nov/ 
 will wish you good-day." 
 
TRAPPED. 169 
 
 " I am not strong," replied Catherine, extending her hand, 
 and making no effort to detain her visitor. 
 
 A few minutes afterwards, Aglae d'Aurelles came in, and, 
 going to the table, glanced at the card-plate, in which lay 
 Madame Deschamps' card. 
 
 ** So she has been here, has she ? " she said, with a strange 
 smile. " I am glad I was out of the way." 
 
 '^ Who is she ?" asked Catherine, still languidly. 
 
 " One of his old loves — a discarded mistress !" replied the 
 Frenchwoman, brutally. *' I thought they had quarrelled, but 
 they seem to have come together again." 
 
 **And I have been allowed to shake hands with such a 
 woman ! " cried Catherine, starting up, no longer languid, but 
 trembling all over with indignation, the flame of it on her 
 cheeks and in her eyes. ** How dare you insult me in this 
 shameful way ? How dare you ? " she exclaimed, turning upon 
 her husband, who had just entered, her voice thrilling with the 
 sense of the wrong which had been done her. 
 
 He was smoking, and remained quite unmoved, save for a 
 look of evil triumph in his eyes ; then he remarked, coolly : 
 
 " Is the firework display over ? It was certainly brilliant ! 
 Because, if so, let me inform you of a fact which you seem to 
 have forgotten. I shall have whom I like to visit at my house, 
 and for as long as I choose. This lady had a curiosity to see 
 you, and she had my free consent to gratify that curiosity." 
 
 '' I will return to England this very night ! " Catherine cried, 
 vehemently, white and trembling. 
 
 ^' No you will not," he replied. "You are too weak. Your 
 own life you are free to risk if you choose, but not the life of my 
 unborn child ! " 
 
 For the child that might be he cared nothing, but it gave him 
 a hold over her. She had been ice to him when he had been 
 fire ; and to humiliate her in every way that he could was the 
 manner in which he revenged himself 
 
 She knew that his words were fatally true, that she was too 
 weak, indeed ! that only by a great effort of will now had she 
 kept herself from fainting ! Still mastering herself, she managed 
 to get out of the room without faltering and with her head held 
 high, for indignation lent her strength. 
 
 "You are a charming husband, so thoughtful and tender," 
 remarked Aglae, when th^ brpther and sifter were alone. 
 
170 TRAPPED. 
 
 " She has a spirit, and I will break it," he answered. 
 
 Two or three evenings after this, Catherine was sitting in the 
 salon before dinner, when she heard her husband's voice. 
 
 " My wife," he said, as he threw open the door, " will, I know, 
 be charmed to welcome you ! " 
 
 He entered with Delphine Deschamps, her hand resting 
 confidently upon his arm. Catherine rose without a word, and 
 moved towards the door, which Albert shut, and set his back 
 against it. 
 
 " It seems to me, my friend," said Madame Deschamps 
 indifferently, throwing herself into a chair, and regarding the 
 rings on her fingers, " that if I am to be entertained you will 
 have to do it all yourself. Madame d'Aurelles docs not seem 
 amicably disposed towards your friends." 
 
 " Madame d'Aurelles will do what I tell her," he said, fiercely. 
 
 " I think not," said Catherine, who had retained perfect self- 
 possession. Then swiftly she passed through the open French 
 v/indow into the garden, re-entered the house by another door, 
 and went straight to her room, where she remained for the rest 
 of the evening. She was without candles, or dinner ; and 
 though she rang the bell repeatedly, it was unanswered, so she 
 undressed in the dark and went to bed. 
 
 Her room was over the saloji. As she lay still, she could 
 hear the voices of her husband and the woman he had dared to 
 bring into the house, into her presence. They seemed to be 
 talking fa^t, and more or less excitedly. Her tones at times 
 became almost resonant ; his, fitful and unsteady. Then there 
 was a sound of chairs being pushed back, and then a woman's 
 shriek rang through the house. Catherine sprang out of bed, and 
 rushed down to the salon^ whefe she found Madame Deschamps 
 cowering in a corner of the room, while Albert stood in front of 
 her, his eyes on fire with rage and drink, and a knife in his 
 hand. 
 
 " Save me, save me ! " cried the terrified woman. " He has 
 struck me, and now he would kill me ! " 
 
 *' He is drunk," said Catherine, wresting the knife from his 
 hand and casting it to the other end of the room. Then, taking 
 the brandy-bottle from the table, she flung it through the win- 
 dow into the garden. At the same moment Albert, raising his 
 hand with an imprecation, lurched, and fell heavily to the 
 ground. 
 
TRAPPED, 171 
 
 " There he can lie till he is sober," said Catherine. ^^ It will 
 be the best thing for him." 
 
 " I told him he drank too much, and the quarrel began with 
 that," said Madame Deschamps, recovering her composure, as 
 she put on her hat and mantle and turned to go. *' I thank you 
 for saving my life," she added. 
 
 " I don't think he would really have killed you," answered 
 Catherine. And so these two parted to meet no more. 
 
 The next day Madame Deschamps left the room in St. Jean 
 which Albert had taken for her, and when he came to his senses 
 he found this note in her somewhat large handwriting : 
 
 "After your last night's conduct, I hope never to see you 
 again. You are a drunkard and a brute, and I wish your wife 
 joy of you ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Albert swore many oaths ; and going to the aiiberge^ sat there 
 the whole day drinking, and at night had to be carried home. 
 The next day found him in a sober frame of mind ; and, as if 
 ashamed of himself, he remained at home all day and avoided 
 drink. So between drunken bouts, and fits of shamed-faced 
 sobriety, the next two or three months wore away ; and one 
 bright July day the old village doctor appeared at Les Ormes, 
 and shortly afterwards the baby face of a little daughter lay on 
 Catherine's bosom. 
 
 As the days developed the little life, she was glad to see in 
 the baby features no likeness to its father. Yet for him, as it 
 were, a new feeling had come with the new life. He was un- 
 happy, lonely, disappointed. That was why he had taken to 
 drinking. He had wronged her in the early days of their mar- 
 riage. When she had most believed in him, he had desecrated 
 her feelings for him ; what had been holy fire in her he had 
 turned to ice. Verily her loss had been very great ! But was 
 not his loss great, too ? He had pleaded with her ; she re- 
 membered how he had pleaded, and still she had been marble 
 to him. What she had said was true — she could not make a 
 
172 TRAPPED, 
 
 dead thing live ; but she might have been more pitiful, she 
 need not have told him the truth so bitterly ! She might have 
 feigned a little warmth, even if she had felt none. If God 
 judged man as she had judged him, what hope of mercy would 
 there be ? 
 
 So it came to pass that when she was again up and about, 
 there was a marked change in her manner to him. She spoke 
 to him of " our child," tried to interest him in it, and one even- 
 ing when he was sitting with the brandy-bottle before him, she 
 came in, and laid her hand on his shoulder, and said : 
 
 " Don't, just to please your wife ! I want you to take me for 
 a moonlight walk ! " To her surprise, he rose and did as she 
 desired ; and they walked, almost in seeming like happy man 
 and wife, through the sweet grave beauty of the late summer 
 evening, at that point of time when the year first begins to 
 think about death. 
 
 But the work of reform Catherine had proposed to herself was 
 impossible now. It was too late. When he was in liquor, 
 which on the whole was more frequently than not, he treated 
 her either with brutality, or with maudlin affection, and she 
 could not tell which of the two more alarmed and disgusted her. 
 
 One September afternoon, when it was all quiet, and a soft 
 haze hung over everything, Catherine, having left the baby 
 asleep, was wandering about the garden, which in spite of its 
 neglected condition had a kind of forlorn beauty about it, when 
 she was startled from a reverie into which she had fallen by a 
 footstep, and looking up she saw Horace Gilbard at her side. 
 
 "Why, what a glad surprise I" she said, giving him her hand. 
 "You are the very last person I should have thought of seeing !" 
 
 " I suppose because I am so completely out of your thoughts? " 
 
 " No ; you are wrong. You are in my thoughts very fre- 
 quently." 
 
 " You are looking very ill," he said, in tones of dreadful ap- 
 prehension, fixing his fine dog-like eyes upon her face. 
 
 " I am a little tired," she said, as they began walking together. 
 " My life is not a happy one, you know." 
 
 " It is a death in life ! " he answered. 
 
 " You got my address from The Firs, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes, and I was determined to find you out. I knew you 
 were suffering." 
 
 *'I will be better, I hope, when we are back at The Firs. But 
 
TRAPPED. 173 
 
 tell nie about yourself, Horace. Is there a Mrs. Horace Gil- 
 bard yet ? " 
 
 " There never will be/' he replied, in his deep, low tones. 
 " I can love no woman unless in all ways she is my ideal. I 
 will marry no woman that I do not love. And for me the world 
 holds but one ideal woman, and she is another man's wife." 
 
 " How faithful you are ! " she said, and let him take her hand, 
 but drew it away swiftly as her husband, flushed from drink, 
 came suddenly on the scene. Her eyes asked Gilbard to go 
 — which he did, having exchanged a few words with D'Aurelles. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, Albert hissed in her ear : " Revenge, 
 revenge ! That man whom I have always hated was holding 
 your hand ! That is ground enough for a duel, and this little 
 pleasantry will cost him his life, if my hand is what it was !" 
 
 " Listen," she said, giving each word deadly emphasis. *' If 
 you do that, by everything in which I most believe, I will kill 
 myself, and haunt you night and day, and curse you night and 
 day, till you go mad with fear. This man is my friend, and 
 loved me once. Do you make life so sweet to me that I should 
 care to keep it ? What I say I will do, / do ! You know me, 
 Albert ! '' 
 
 Yes, he did know her. She had attacked him on what she 
 knew to be his vulnerable point. He came of a superstitious 
 family, and in his present shattered state of nerves, he was 
 only too ready to fancy visions and conjure up ghosts. 
 
 " You love this man ? " he said, coming close to her. " Tell 
 me the truth." 
 
 " He is my friend, and I will protect him ! " 
 
 " You were glad enough to be rid of him once," he sneered, 
 *^ and to fall into my hands." 
 
 *' Before I knew the thing you would become," she replied, 
 making as if she would walk past him to the house. 
 
 " It was you that drove me to drink," he said, stopping hei*. 
 " When I loved you most, you were a snow devil, and now you 
 reproach me ! " and, swept away by a fit of ungovernable rage, 
 he raised his clenched hand and struck her on the forehead. 
 
 She gave a low cry and fell to the ground. For the first time 
 in her hfe she had fainted. On Albert this seemed to have a 
 sobering effect. She was carried to the house, and when she 
 recovered, it was to find him beside her on his knees entreating, 
 forgiveness. 
 
174 TRAPPED. 
 
 When Horace called the next day, Albert was out, but he 
 found Albert's sister, who had evidently received her instructions, 
 and who followed Madame d'Aurelles and her guest from place 
 to place. 
 
 " It is insufferable," said Catherine, speaking in French, and 
 glad that she should be overheard. Then to Horace : " Come, 
 and take me for a walk in the woods ; we have wonderful woods, 
 not more than a mile away." 
 
 Of course he was only too glad, and so they escaped. 
 
 '*A11 the same," she said, when they were alone, "it was a 
 risky thing to do, but I was determined she should not have her 
 way. We must be careful how we meet at all. Our meeting 
 yesterday resulted in this," and she pushed up her hair and 
 showed him the traces of a blow. 
 
 With all the eloquence Horace could muster, he pleaded with 
 her to leave this man. That she could obtain a separation he 
 had not the least doubt. 
 
 " Your very life here is not safe," he said. " To think of your 
 being at the mercy of a druken brute such as this wretch has 
 become, and of that hateful, sinister thing, his sister, who would 
 do his will in all things ! Catherine, in a few days I must return 
 to England. I shall have no peace, day or night, if I think of 
 your living here in these people's power ! Tell me, tell me, that 
 you will get a separation ? " 
 
 " Don't be so troubled, my dear," she said, tenderly, adding 
 with a sad smile, " I can take care of myself." 
 
 " You won't leave him, then ? " 
 
 " No ; that is, certainly not yet. I might have to do so, if 
 things get to be much worse than they are ; but I am always 
 hoping that they will be better." 
 
 " They never will be," he said, " never I " 
 
 " Well, let us talk no more about it," she answered, gently 
 and firmly. " You used to say in the old days that when my 
 mind was made up to anything, no power in earth or heaven 
 would keep me from it." 
 
 " And you are the same still ? " 
 
 " I suppose so. Would you like me to be another woman 1 " 
 
 *' No, only changed in that, for this once, because I am so 
 terribly anxious about you ! " and his face of torturing anxiety 
 was a thing pitiful to behold. 
 
 <* Don't look so dreadfully sad!" she almost pleaded. "I 
 
TRAPPED. 175 
 
 want you to amuse me, for the little while we are together— to 
 take me out of myself." 
 
 "Amuse you?'' he groaned — '^amuse you, when I believe your 
 very life to be hanging on a hair ? Catherine, I would try to do 
 even that for you ; but how shall I ? How begin ? Shall I tell 
 you the latest witticism from Punchy or the political rumours 
 which were in all men's mouths just before I left Eng- 
 land?" 
 
 He spoke with a desperate levity more terrible than any tears 
 would have been. 
 
 " No," she answered, " I don't think that would amuse me. 
 Have you forgotten there are two things women like — sweet- 
 meats and scandal ? Have you neither for me ? " 
 
 " Sweets I have none, and of scandal but a small store.'* 
 
 " Well, such as it is, let me have it. Have you forgotten how 
 long I have been out of the world ? " 
 
 So he gave her all his little odds and ends of news ; and they 
 walked about the woods together much as they had done in the 
 old far-off days about other woods and under other skies. Such 
 a lull in nature often comes before some crisis. When it was 
 time for them to part, he looked round. There was not a soul 
 in sight, and she answered the yearning in his eyes by raising 
 her lips for him to kiss. 
 
 " There," she said, " don't be too unhappy ! " 
 
 So they parted, and that evening at sundown a mad wind 
 sprang up, and went storming over the land like a great wind- 
 sea, and ships were wrecked and great trees uprooted. 
 
 The next morning Catherine was sitting alone in the salon, 
 when Gilbard walked in. 
 
 **' How are you ? " he asked, his voice fraught with a lover's 
 concern. 
 
 " I am as well as usual, quite." 
 
 " No fresh horror has happened ? '' 
 
 *' No, really." 
 
 " That is well. I had such a dreadful dream last night.'^ 
 
 " But you don't believe in dreams ?" 
 
 " Not altogether. Just a little, perhaps. In my own expe- 
 rience I have known some strange dreams come strangely and 
 dreadfully true ; so that now, when I dream anything horrible, 
 I think of those other dreams, and while the spell of it is upon 
 me I am unhappy. Morbid, I know ; and in the nineteenth 
 
176 Trapped. 
 
 century one shduld not be morbid. All the sanie, there ai*6 
 some weaknesses one cannot help." 
 
 " It was imprudent of you to come to-day," she said, " when 
 you were here yesterday." 
 
 " Forgive me," he answered, " I have come to say good-bye.'^ 
 
 " What !— you are going ? " 
 
 *• Yes, to-night. I have been called back on business sooner 
 than I expected." 
 
 " I am sorry," she said, and her face fell ; " for I have no 
 friends here. Madame Lefevre, the doctor's wife, comes to see 
 me sometimes. She is a kind, well-meaning little woman, but 
 she wearies me with her incessant stream of small talk." 
 
 She looked so sad and tired that he came close to her. 
 
 " People may be coming," he said ; *^ I want to say good-bye 
 to you now." 
 
 She had risen and was standing near the stove. 
 
 *' Good-bye !" she said, with great sweetness and regret in her 
 voice. 
 
 *' God guard and bless you, my life's one, only love .^ " he 
 cried, and their lips met in a close farewell kiss. They started 
 apart as the door opened suddenly, and Albert came in. Had 
 he seen ? He said nothing, but the look in his eyes told them 
 that he had. The door was scarcely closed behind him when it 
 opened again, and this time Marie Jeanne announced Madame 
 Lefevre, the doctor's wife, and the voluble little Frenchwoman 
 entered. She had come, she said, to spend a long morning with 
 her dear Catherine. There was so much she wanted to tell her, 
 and she knew dear Catherine would be amused to hear. 
 
 Albert chatted with the visitor for a little while, then he rose, 
 and, excusing himself by saying that he had business of im- 
 portance — business which would brook no delay — he left the 
 room and the house. 
 
 Gilbard took a hurried leave and followed him. D'Aurelles's 
 hard, set face, and the look in his eyes, troubled Catherine's 
 faithful lover, and he resolved, scarcely knowing what would 
 come of it, to follow him and find out, if possible, what this 
 " important business " might be. If D'Aurelles went on foot, 
 nothing would be more easy. Yes, he was going to walk. He 
 closed the garden-gate behind him, and turned in the direction 
 of the nearest market-town. Horace followed, keeping at a 
 discreet distance. 
 
TRAPPED. 177 
 
 It was a gray day, with occasional glimpses of bleak sunshine 
 through the trees on either side of the road, the wind-swept 
 road, from which it was pleasant to get into the comparative 
 shelter of the town. D'Aurelles walked fast, but Gilbard kept 
 him in sight all the way. D'Aurelles went into a cafi^ but came 
 out, after a short time, none the worse for liquor, to Gilbard's 
 surprise. Had he some motive to-day for keeping his head ? 
 In front of the gunsmith's he stopped, went in, and Gilbard saw 
 a revolver taken from the window. He narrowly escaped being 
 discovered, as Albert came out rather suddenly, thrusting 
 something into his breast-pocket. He paused in front of 
 another cafe^ looked in longingly, then resolutely turned and 
 went his way, out of the town. 
 
 The village of St. Jean could be reached either by the road or 
 by the shore. Albert had come by the road, but for his return 
 he chose the shore. The tide was coming in, but was yet far 
 off from the cliffs. There would be ample time to allow of 
 the passage being made. Along the shore Gilbard followed — 
 still, of course, at some distance behind. The wild wind whirled 
 the sand and flying foam in his eyes, but through the storm, 
 which was rising higher and higher, he never lost sight of his 
 man. The sea raged, the wind shrieked, the gulls clamoured. 
 He followed. 
 
 That revolver ! what was the meaning of it ? What would a 
 desperate man not do, thus armed 1 And what was he to do ? 
 Overtake him ! speak to him ? Could he do anything by speak- 
 ing ? If he roused his anger, and took the contents of the 
 weapon in his own body, would that be regarded as her expia- 
 tion for that kiss? If D'Aurelles shot him, would that save 
 Catherine ? Would it not rather leave her in deadly danger, 
 unprotected and alone. Would her husband not wreak on her 
 his vengeance for that farewell caress ! That the kiss and the 
 revolver were associated, Horace felt sure. He had brought this 
 peril upon Catherine, and now, what should he do to shield her ? 
 He could do only one thing. He followed. At least this gave 
 him time to think. 
 
 The sea thundered upon the shore ; and higher and higher 
 the wind howled and raved along the cliffs. Horace was 
 drenched with spray every now and then, as some great wave 
 leapt up in showers of foam. But his hands burnt ; his head 
 throbbed as he asked himself again and again how he would 
 
 13 
 
178 TRAPPED. 
 
 prevent what he believed to be Albert's deadly purpose ? He 
 might die for Catherine, but then how could he defend her ? 
 
 Presently Albert paused, but for nothing more important than 
 to endeavour to light a cigarette. He endeavoured in vain ; 
 for however he strove to shield the light with his hands, the 
 fierce wind blew it out every time he tried. He swore, and 
 went on a few steps ; then he hesitated, looked about him, and 
 retraced his way a little, and, turning his back on the sea, went 
 up to the cliff, stooped down and disappeared. For a moment 
 Gilbard wondered ; then the mystery was clear to him. For 
 the purpose of lighting his cigarette, D'Aurelles had entered 
 one of the many caves which line that part of the coast. As 
 Gilbard lingered near, waiting for him, far above the roar of the 
 wind and sea came a harsh crash like thunder, the sand and 
 spray flew in his face like a shower of small shot, and the solid 
 ground seemed to shake beneath his feet ! 
 
 It was as if some immense weight had been projected from 
 the cliff's side. Indeed, this was just what had happened, as 
 Gilbard, staggering back startled, immediately perceived. A 
 huge boulder had been dislodged by the force of the wind, and 
 had fallen on the sand, completely blocking up the entrance to 
 the cave which the doomed man had entered, and wherein, like 
 any wild beast for whom the snare had been laid, he was indeed 
 trapped ! 
 
 Did a shriek pierce outwards from its depths ? or was it the 
 wind.? Gilbard could not tell. He only knew that the man 
 who had been the curse of the woman he loved, whose black 
 heart he believed to be planning her death, was trapped ! that 
 she was safe from him ! It would not have been possible for 
 Gilbard's unaided strength even to stir the huge mass of fallen 
 rock. Was it his duty to rush and shout for help ? — that the 
 man, so rescued, might carry out what he believed to be his 
 purpose .? or that, at best, he might waste away her life by his 
 drunken brutalities } No, the hand of God was in this ! 
 
TRAPPED, 179 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The steamer would leave St. Malo at six o'clock. He would 
 just have time to catch it. He turned and ran at the top of his 
 speed, as if pursued, back to the high road. The wind hurried 
 after him ; the gulls clamoured more wildly than ever ; the 
 sight of the great staggering waves dizzied him ; his brain was 
 reeling, and like one pursued he fled ! A light cart was passing 
 swiftly along the road ; Gilbard paid the man lavishly for a 
 "lift" to St. Malo. That morning he had sent his luggage 
 thither to be put on board the boat in readiness for him. 
 
 The steam was up and roaring, and the gangway was about 
 to be withdrawn when Gilbard rushed on the quay, gesticulating 
 to them to wait for him. The men who were about to haul in 
 the plank held their hands, and he sprang upon the deck of the 
 Helena^ bound for Southampton. 
 
 The sailors on board shouted to the sailors on shore, who 
 shouted back ; ropes were cast loose, and the Helena steamed 
 through the harbour, and, through the stormy September twi- 
 light and the tumult of the sea, stood out for England. 
 
 It was a wild sea, indeed. Even the steadiest seamen stag- 
 gered. As though she had been a thing mortally stricken, the 
 good ship quailed and thrilled as the great waves struck her. 
 Presently they were abreast of a lighthouse, and under it, Gil- 
 bard knew, lay that part of the shore he had quitted such a 
 brief while ago ; he was close to it again, but now in reality as 
 far from it as if he were already in England. There were only 
 two or three passengers on board beside himself, and they at 
 once went below. Supporting himself by a rope, and drenched 
 by the waves as they burst over the ship, Gilbard stood in the 
 twilight, white with foam and loud with wind. With nightfall 
 the gale seemed only to increase, and being chilled to the bone, 
 he followed the example of his fellow-passengers and went 
 below. 
 
 He took a little brandy from a flask and flung himself on a 
 sofa. Overhead he could hear the lurching steps of the sailors 
 as they came and went. Now and then came the cry of " Boat 
 ahead ! " The engines groaned heavily as they contended with 
 the opposing waves. Gilbard's travelling companions groaned 
 
i8o TRAPPED. 
 
 too. The Frenchman, who was nervous, said he believed they 
 were going down ; to which the Englishman, who was sea-sick, 
 replied that he didn't care if they were. Then to Gilbard, lying 
 in his berth, there came a kind of vision. Far away beyond the 
 ship, he saw into a cave. In it were strange sea-loving things — 
 which he saw as it were from a light in his own eyes, for no 
 light was there — and amongst them a man ran madly backwards 
 and forwards, dashing himself against the unyielding rock till 
 he was one mass of wounds. 
 
 Horace sprang up with a cry. His fellow-passengers were 
 too wholly absorbed in their own misery to pay any attention to 
 him. The voice had spoken ! He was a murderer ! Had he 
 hastened for assistance, the fallen mass of rock could have been 
 removed. An animal trapped is shot or knocked on the head, 
 as the case may be, not left to die in darkness, and of thirst and 
 starvation ! He had done something which never in all his life's 
 days could he undo ! The frightful thought made the cold 
 sweat break out upon his forehead, while his brain seethed, and 
 his mouth felt as dry as sand. He argued with himself, tried to 
 think that it was his life against hers ; under the curse of his 
 life her own was withering ! Yet if he had only thought, there 
 were other ways of saving her — though he saw it now too late. 
 He might have outstripped D'Aurelles, gained Les Ormes by 
 some short cut, warned her of her imminent danger, put forth 
 all the power of his will, and forced her to fly at once. But in- 
 stead, he had let this thing come to pass. He had left a human 
 creature to the fate of being buried alive ! 
 
 Overhead, to and fro, went the steps of the lurching sailors. 
 Over the deck swept the wind and the sea — the ear could 
 scarcely distinguish the one from the other. From side to side 
 rolled the ship, at times seeming all but to heel over, and only 
 recovering herself as by a miracle. For his own part, thought 
 Gilbard, he should be glad if she did heel over, so that he might 
 forget in death the frightful thing he had done. But could the 
 deed not yet be undone ? The instant they reached South- 
 ampton he would telegraph to Catherine, telling her to have 
 that part of the shore searched for a cave, the mouth of which 
 had been blocked up by a fall of rock, and in which her husband 
 was imprisoned ; but she herself was to come to England at 
 once, because he knew that her husband had designs upon her 
 life. Ah, would it be too late .'^ 
 
TRAPPED. i8l 
 
 A great wave thundered on the deck. What hissing sound 
 was that ? The ship faltered, stopped, and then rolled heavily 
 and helplessly. 
 
 "^>^, mon Dieu, mon Dieu / '^ cried the little Frenchman, 
 smiting his hands together in abject terror. " Now, indeed, we 
 are lost !" 
 
 " The water has burst into the engine-room, and put out the 
 fire ! " exclaimed Gilbard, who at once divined what had hap- 
 pened. He rushed up to the drenched deck, whereon even the 
 sailors could scarce keep their footing, and ascertained, as soon 
 as he could get any one to speak to him amid the turmoil, that 
 his conjecture was the right one. 
 
 All that dreadful night the Helena rolled like a helpless log 
 on the waves. Downstairs the Frenchman prayed continuously, 
 and the Englishman groaned and ewore. Gilbard remained on 
 deck, heedless of the risk he ran. 
 
 *' How long could a man live without food?" he asked the 
 captain suddenly. The captain replied he need not be anxious 
 on that score ; they were well provided. Gilbard rejoined that 
 he felt no anxiety, but repeated his question. The captain sup- 
 posed'about three days, and hastened back to the bridge. 
 
 In spite of winds and waves, the Helena weathered the 
 storm, and with daylight the gale somewhat moderated. It was 
 then discovered how far they had drifted out of their course ; 
 and they proceeded under canvas, but very slowly, as the wind, 
 still very high, was against them. All day they made but small 
 headway. At sundown the wind rose again to a gale, and again 
 they had to lie to, expecting every moment that the vessel could 
 not endure the strain put upon her and would go to pieces. This 
 was what every one dreaded except Gilbard, and his one and 
 only dread was lest it should be too late before he got to England. 
 All the night as they lay rolling from side to side, he saw the 
 wild, desperate eyes of the man in the darkness of the cave, but 
 the figure was prostrate now ; any hope of deliverance had been 
 given up. The thought consumed him like a flame. His hands 
 were ice, his brain fire. The captain remarked that he looked 
 ill, and recommended breakfast. He answered that he could 
 not eat ; that his getting to England within a given time was a 
 matter of life or death. The captain replied that for his own 
 sake as for that of every one else, he should do his best, but 
 they might be thankful if they got there at all. 
 
iSz CAPPED, 
 
 The night passed, and again with daybreak the gale mode- 
 rated, and under canvas, as on the previous day, they beat 
 about, endeavouring to regain their course. And now, alarmed 
 by his own symptoms, Gilbard forced himself both to eat and 
 drink. It was a mistake. 
 
 They had been out three days, and might be out three more, 
 or more still, said the captain ; it was quite impossible to tell 
 while this weather lasted. 
 
 It was ten days after she left St. Malo that the Plelena^ fatally 
 disabled at the last, was towed into Southampton docks by a 
 sister vessel which had picked her up. Of the three passengers 
 on board, one seemed to have lost his reason, and lay help- 
 lessly and wildly raving of dark caves and of telegrams to be 
 sent. Horace Gilbard was suffering from acute brain fever. A 
 letter was found upon him, addressed to "H. Gilbard, Esq., Arts 
 Club, London." He was at once conveyed to a hospital at 
 Southampton, and the secretary of the club was communicated 
 with, the result being that several of his friends came down from 
 London to look at the sufferer, where he lay tossing upon his 
 bed, evidently undergoing the most horrible torments ; now 
 fancying himself at sea, now in the terrible darkness of some 
 dreadful cave, now striving wildly to dictate some message, yet 
 never able to succeed ! More than once the doctors gave him 
 up ; but at last the fever abated, and one morning, weak and 
 exhausted, he awoke to consciousness, but it was days before 
 he could associate the facts of the last month together in his 
 mind. 
 
 He ascertained that the Helena had been ten days on the 
 voyage. He had been ill on land for fourteen days. Ten and 
 fourteen ! — nearly a month ! Nothing could be done now. He 
 must accept his punishment. Others before him have been 
 consumed in hell-fires of remorse. Let us hope it is accredited 
 to them in the life to come. 
 
 As soon as he could travel, he returned to London, to his 
 chambers. The last time he had crossed their threshold, it had 
 been as an innocent man. Now the curse of a horrid crime, 
 though not perpetrated by himself, lay upon him, and in his 
 heart so separated him from his fellow-men that he exiled him- 
 self from all society. He never went to his club, and people 
 wondered what had come to their old friend and brother-member, 
 Gilbard. 
 
TRAPPED, t83 
 
 Occasionally he was met in the streets, lookhif]^ more like a 
 ghost than like a man, saying in answer to all inquiries as to 
 why he never came to the club, that he was not quite himself 
 again. 
 
 Then in confidence it was whispered that he did his walking 
 between the hours of two and seven a.m., and this was true. 
 
 Oh, those never-to-be-forgotten walks, when London seemed 
 to him, indeed, a veritable *' City of Dreadful Nights," as de- 
 picted by the late James Thomson, in a poem which for firm 
 power it would not be possible to match ! Mostly, Gilbard's 
 dreamy beat was over the various bridges. He would lean on 
 the parapet and look down into the river. Beyond, it was the 
 sea ; and beyond that — what ? 
 
 Once he found a woman, driven to despair, in the act of at- 
 tempting to throw herself over. 
 
 " Listen to me," he said. "Life is bitter to me, with an awful 
 secret which I can tell to no one, and yet I live, because I may 
 yet serve one who is dear to me. If there is no one whose life 
 yours could aid or your death make wretched, I have nothing 
 to say. But if help is all you needj I will help you ! " 
 
 And so he did, and rescued one family from misery. And 
 his own misery, for which there was no cure, had come to him 
 through his zeal to protect the woman he worshipped. 
 
 Those dreadful mornings, when through the yellow winter fog 
 the lurid winter sun shone like a ball of fire ! Then, worn out 
 in mind and body, he would creep back to his rooms, to fall 
 asleep, and dream, perhaps, that it was all a dream, and thank 
 God rapturously that it was so ! Then to awake. Oh, the 
 ang^uish of knowins: the dream false ! 
 
 Waking, late one afternoon, he found, amongst his other 
 letters, one from Catherine d'Aurelies. 
 
 He opened it quickly, and read it with eagerness. It informed 
 him of what he knew too well, that on the day he left for 
 England her husband had disappeared. He had been traced 
 to a gunsmith's, where he had bought a revolver, but since he 
 left that shop nothing had been seen or heard of him. It did 
 not seem as if he had contemplated going away, as the balance at 
 his banker's had not been touched, and he had but little ready 
 cash with him. The whole thing was shrouded in mystery. She 
 
i84 TkAPPBD. 
 
 had accepted an invitation from some friends living near The 
 Firs to come and stay with them until The Firs should be 
 vacated. She hoped, if it were not too far, he would come 
 down to see her. Her friends (whom he would remember, the 
 Blackstones, of Greythorpe) would make him welcome. She 
 wanted very much to see him, and was always most sincerely 
 his friend, Catherine. 
 
 She wanted him.'^ Of course he would go to her. He took 
 the next day's train, and reached his destination just as the dusk 
 was falling. She received him alone in much such a room as 
 had been dedicated at The Firs to her especial service. It was 
 in such a room, half-library, half-boudoir, about two years ago, 
 that she had told him the bittentruth — that she loved another 
 with the love that a husband had a right to claim. It was twi- 
 light then, too, and she was sitting by the fire. 
 
 How it all came back to him ! 
 
 Now she held out both hands, and said, with heartfelt earnest- 
 ness in her tones : 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad to see you ! How cold your hands are ! 
 Come and sit by the fire ! " and she drew him to the hearth, still 
 keeping his hands in hers; he could feel the rings on her fingers. 
 She seated herself near to him, and said : " Aren't yoic a little 
 glad to see me ? " 
 
 '^ Very glad," he replied — and his voice sounded weak and 
 hollow. 
 
 ^'What is the matter.^" she asked, quickly. '* Your voice tells 
 me that you are ill." 
 
 " No, not now ; but I have been." 
 
 And then he told her about the long, dangerous voyage to 
 Southampton, and the subsequent fever. 
 
 "/was answerable for your illness," she said. " It was be- 
 cause you were so troubled about me ! " 
 
 " I think you were partly answerable for it," he replied ; and 
 then, more to himself than to her : "How I suffered ! I thought 
 I should have gone mad ! " 
 
 She knelt down by him, took one of his hands, and leant her 
 rose-soft cheek against it. 
 
 " My saint ! " he said. 
 
 " No," she answered. " No saint, my dear, but a very weak 
 and, if you like, a very womanly woman ! ^' 
 
 Later on, they spoke of Albert ; but Horace could not disclose 
 
IkAPPED. 185 
 
 his dreadful secret, though it was for her that the awful sin had 
 been sinned. 
 
 He could not, of course, stay at Greythorpe all the time, but 
 he took a room permanently at the " Three Jolly Drummers," 
 and came and went frequently. He could not fail to see the in- 
 creasing tenderness of Catherine's manner to him, and a warm, 
 soft light in her eyes which he had never perceived there in the 
 old days when he had dreamt that she loved him. He knew 
 that when a certain number of years have passed and nothing 
 is heard, of a missing husband, the law mercifully allows the wife 
 to regard him as dead, so far at least as, in the event of her 
 second marriage, to exempt her from the liability to prosecution 
 for bigamy should the vanished husband reappear. Thus, if 
 Catherine were minded to marry him, a few years hence, he 
 might be her husband without revealing the secret of Albert's 
 death. But even were she so minded — for, after all, what she 
 felt might be mere gratitude — could he ever, in any time to come, 
 marry the wife of the man he had murderously left to perish ? 
 Always between himself and Catherine he saw the wild eyes of 
 the desperate and dying man. 
 
 She noticed the change in his manner, and it perplexed her. 
 She was wholly at a loss to what to attribute it. Sometimes he 
 would lay his hand on hers, and then take it away with a 
 shudder. 
 
 One day she asked him if he liked her no more. 
 
 " I shall love you," he answered, "till I die — to the uttermost 
 limits of being ! I am not a happy man ; but you must ask me 
 no questions." 
 
 *^ Certainly not, if you wish it so," and her tone was cold. *' I 
 tell you all my thoughts. Yoii know all my life ! " 
 
 ^' If I only could \.€\\. you ! " he groaned, and burst away from 
 her. 
 
 So the days wore on, and brought the welcome spring, when 
 Catherine returned to live at The Firs. 
 
 Gilbard still retained his room at the " Jolly Drummers," and 
 dined often at The Firs with Madame d'Aurelles, who was now 
 generally regarded, and appeared to regard herself, as widowed. 
 
 One evening after dinner they were sitting on the lawn. 
 Catherine had been reading, and the book lay open on her lap ; 
 her eyes still bent upon the page. His were bent down ; he was 
 lost in bitter meditation. Would Conscience never, never stay 
 
1 86 TRAPPED. 
 
 its inexorable hand from the Lash ? Would there be no least 
 respite on this side of the grave ? God ! it would drive him 
 mad, this remorse that poisoned all the air he breathed ! 
 
 Between them and the faded light of the setting sun there fell 
 a shadow ! With a cry of almost insane terror, Horace sprang 
 up and recoiled. Catherine started and pressed her hand upon 
 her heart ; her face was white and her voice faint and faltering, 
 as she said : 
 
 " Albert, is it you ? Where have you been ? What is the 
 mystery ? " 
 
 *^ I will tell you," he said, feebly, sinking into a garden-seat ; 
 and they saw how wasted were his face and figure. 
 
 "God in heaven be praised for this!" Horace cried, in his 
 heart, overcome with great relief. 
 
 Then, interrupted by questions from time to time, the man 
 supposed to be dead and come to life again told his tale. 
 It appeared that in the cave where he found himself im- 
 prisoned he had discovered kegs of brandy and tobacco ; this 
 showed him that the cave was used by smugglers as a kind of 
 storehouse, and gave him some measure of hope. Also groping 
 about, he found a bag of biscuits. He forced one of the kegs of 
 brandy, and on that and the biscuits he lived for a day or two, 
 which seemed an eternity. At last he heard strange sounds 
 above and behind the cave — voices — a shot \ There were people 
 near. Presently there was a rumbling noise at the upper part 
 of the back of the cave, and a rock rolled gratingly aside and the 
 blessed light of evening streamed in. The rock had concealed 
 a secret entrance leading from the cliff. Down a rugged sort 
 of stairs came two men bearing a body. 
 
 '' He won't spoil sport any more," said one. 
 
 It was the coast-guard whom they had shot. Other men fol- 
 lowed them ; they instantly perceived Albert, and he was seized 
 by many hands, with cries of "A spy ! a spy !" He protested 
 and explained in vain. 
 
 *' We must make a clean job of it," said one man, " or there 
 will be no safety for us !" And, drawing a pistol, "he was about 
 to lodge the contents in Albert's brain, when a commanding 
 voice exclaimed : 
 
 " Stop ! I knew this man once, before I took to this business, 
 and he did me a good turn. His story may well be true. Spy 
 or no spy, I'll not have him shot. We'll set him down where 
 
TRAPPED, 187 
 
 his barking will harm no man. Never take life unless there is 
 no other way out of the difficulty. We'll take him with us, and 
 teach him to work the ropes." 
 
 The others yielded a grudging obedience to their captain, and 
 Albert was left unharmed, but tied hand and foot and shut up 
 in the cave with the body of the murdered coast-guard until 
 past midnight, when the gang returned, and they were both taken 
 out ; the body was flung into the sea, and Albert into the bottom 
 of a boat, which was rowed out a short distance to a sailing- 
 vessel, up whose sides he was dragged. Once fairly at sea, he 
 was unbound, and on the whole not treated badly. He gladly 
 learned how to *' work the ropes," but his health, enfeebled by his 
 intemperate habits, broke down. After some weeks he was 
 rowed ashore one night, and left on the coast of Spain, v/hile 
 the ship, having done her business there, went sailing away. 
 
 He had had ten pounds in his pocket, and through the inter- 
 vention of the captain, who stood his friend, not more than 
 half had been taken from him. He found his way to the nearest 
 town, and procured shelter for the night. The next day he was 
 seized with inflammation of the lungs ; he was kindly nursed 
 by the sympathetic Spanish women, at whose mercy he found 
 himself, and who were all goodness to the forlorn stranger ; but 
 his illness was serious, and terminated in consumption. Never- 
 theless, he recovered sufficiently to work, for the decline was a 
 lingering one ; and he made friends among these strangers, who 
 procured him some light task to do. 
 
 Then, as he grew worse, a yearning to see his wife once more 
 before he died came upon him, and he got money enough to- 
 gether for his homeward passage. He could have written for 
 money to his bankers, but he admitted that his first wicked plan 
 had been to leave Catherine in the belief that he was dead, and 
 to trap her into a marriage with Gilbard, and then to appear 
 and blight their hopes. But when he saw Death coming very 
 close, he gave up the scheme, and perhaps was even a little 
 penitent. 
 
 In conclusion, he said to Catherine : 
 
 '* As I must confess soon to God, I will confess to you that 
 but for that fallen rock that blocked up the cave, you would not 
 sit there to-night. I had made up my mind to kill you, though 
 I killed myself after. I had bought the revolver for that pur- 
 pose. Even when I seemed to hate you, the thought of another 
 
iS8 TRAPPED. 
 
 man's touching you maddened me, so that when I saw hhii kiss 
 you I swore to kill you, and him, and last, myself ! It was a 
 brave plan, but the gods ordained otherwise." 
 
 The listeners shuddered ; then Catherine said : 
 
 *^ I forgive you, for I think that brandy had made you almost 
 irresponsible for your thoughts or actions ! " 
 
 Well, there is little more to tell. Before the spring ripened 
 into summer, Albert d'Aurelles died. It would be a farce to say 
 that many tears were shed over his grave. 
 
 The evening after the funeral, kneeling at Catherine's feet, 
 Horace confessed his secret. She heard him through, and not 
 without a tremor shaking her, as he described the horrors of his 
 remorse for the crime he believed himself to have committed. 
 
 When he had made an end of his story, she passed her hand 
 across his hair, which had turned quite grey during the last few 
 months. 
 
 " My poor Horace ! " she murmured, softly. " What have 
 you not borne for me ! I am glad that his death does not lie 
 at your door ; you are free from all guilt, whatever might have 
 been/ But you should have told me all. I can understand 
 that, loving me as you did, believing, as was truly the case, that 
 my life was in danger, you did not, until too late, realize what 
 it was that you had done. You would have undone, if you 
 could. Fate, not your will, prevented you. The long voyage, 
 that you could not have foreseen, made you powerless ! Every- 
 thing was against you ! If you had told me, I would have 
 talked to you, and I think I could have comforted you a little ! 
 My poor darling ! " she said, in her lowest and most caressing 
 tones, " how you must have suffered ! " 
 
 " Yes," he answered, as he clasped both her hands in his, " I 
 have known the tortures of the damned ! Some day, Catherine, 
 I shall know, shall I not, the felicity of the blest ? " 
 
 " I hope so, Horace," she whispered, and their lips met in a 
 long kiss. 
 
MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 :o: 
 
 When Mr. Lessing, barrister-at-law by profession, novelist by 
 choice, let himself into his chambers one morning, at the primi- 
 tive hour of 5 a.m., it seemed to him that he could hardly be 
 the same man who had quitted those identical chambers pre- 
 cisely seven hours ago. 
 
 He had left them weary and out of spirits, a man on whom 
 existence had really palled. He had begun life early. For 
 sixteen years, from twenty to thirty-six, he had gone on ringing 
 all the changes that could be rung on all the pleasures of the 
 senses. They had fallen now from pleasures into accepted 
 necessities, as inveterate smokers lose the zest of an after-dinner 
 cigar. 
 
 On the whole, he was rather a passionless man ; he had been 
 many times near marriage, but he had never, till this morning, 
 felt what love really was. Society called him an abominable 
 flirt, because he went very far with women, but had only in one 
 case proposed. It regarded him as a selfish monster, who went 
 about seeking whom he might devour. Now this was not the 
 case. Selfish the man may have been ; cruel of design he was 
 not. The truth is, that when life began to pall upon him, he 
 tried desperately, with all the strength of his nature, to fall in 
 love. Women seemed to find a great fascination in him. And 
 when the eyes of a certain pretty girl brightened at his subtly- 
 implied compliments, he felt a very pleasurable sensation. She 
 had such a sweet, low voice that he loved to be near her, 
 just that he might hear it. He admired her, and made 
 
190 MISS MOWS RATS EXPERIMENT. 
 
 up his mind that this was love in good earnest. It was 
 not the wild bliss he had imagined it would be^ but that was 
 doubtless because he was by nature cold. He proposed, and 
 was accepted, but a month after the engagement there began to 
 grow up in his mind an awful doubt as to whether this were 
 indeed love. 
 
 To be bound, to give up the freedom of a bachelor life, for a 
 woman whom, if he did not really love, he must in time, ac- 
 cording to the laws of his nature, inevitably sicken of, not 
 quietly like and endure, as some men could, seemed to him a 
 horror into which he could not, would not plunge ; but he hoped 
 he was mistaken — hoped he did really care for her. He knew the 
 poor little girl worshipped him, and that her health was delicate. 
 
 Indeed he strove manfully to fancy himself in love. A 
 bachelor whose domestic attendance is meagre knows what it is 
 to wrestle with a fire fast going out. He stimulates it by 
 fencing it round with his daily paper, greatly scorching the 
 same. When, after this stimulant, the flames which have 
 received temporary increase of life again subside, he casts sugar 
 on with a reckless hand ; he fans, he puffs, but all in vain. The 
 little flame collapses and goes out. So strove Lessing to stimu- 
 late the fire of his love, or what he hoped was love. When he 
 called in the evening and found the fair one was out, he tried 
 all he could to imagine himself miserable. He talked of her 
 to certain people who he knew never wearied of praising her. 
 He tried the effect of a quarrel, and strove to think he was 
 desperately unhappy over it. On that occasion she showed a 
 quiet dignity which pleased him, and gave him a little fallacious 
 hope. He tried, ye gods ! how he did try, to see in her the 
 charm that other people saw. Why, there was a man he knew 
 to be almost out of his mind with love for her. He liked to 
 draw this man out about her. Nothing, on the whole, stimu- 
 lated his feeling so much as that did ; as nothing so much 
 stimulates a fire as spreading a paper close in front of it ; but 
 everything proved vain. The feeling, which from the first had 
 not been love, went out irrevocably. The thought of the girl 
 became a nightmare to him. He lay awake and thought of her, 
 and shivered. One day he could bear it no longer, and he 
 asked her to free him, which she did, and again displayed such 
 quiet dignity that he was half tempted to ask for his reaccept- 
 ance. She went abroad, and he heard no more of her. 
 
MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT, 191 
 
 After that he had many times fancied himself a prey to the 
 grand passion ; but he wisely deferred any absolute proposal 
 till he was confident of being really and lastingly in love, which 
 he always found out in time that he was not. Yet he went so 
 far as to get certain girls talked about, which was very unplea- 
 sant for them, and not at all right on his part, and procured for 
 him the reputation of a flirt of the worst character. 
 
 The last hours of the May night preceding the day of which 
 I am writing, were, therefore, always to be memorable in Mr. 
 Lessing's life. For then it was that, at a certain brilliant recep- 
 tion, he met his fate — stood face to face with the woman who 
 made him know, for the first time in his life, what love really 
 was. When he left the house, after passing a couple of hours 
 there, he was too excited to go back to his chambers, so he 
 went to his club, where none of his friends could make him out, 
 he appeared so wild and excited. 
 
 As-he walked to his chambers, through the soft May morning 
 virgin-pure and tender, Love walked beside him, and whispered 
 in his ear : 
 
 '' Met at last ! Escape was possible once ; now escape is 
 possible no more. Lovest thou me?" 
 
 '' With all my heart," Lessing answered. 
 
 So they walked home together, and Love came in and abode 
 with Mr. Walter Lessing. 
 
 The barrister threw himself on the sofa, and clasping his 
 hands behind his head, surrendered himself wholly to recalling 
 two hours of the past night. Again he was in a crowded room, 
 again he heard his hostess say : 
 
 " Mr. Lessing, let me introduce you to Miss Mowbray, an 
 admirer of your books." 
 
 He had always fancied that the woman with whom he should 
 some day fall in love would be of the Ophelia type ; but it was 
 no Ophelia whom he saw then. As he lay there on his sofa, 
 he seemed to see her again almost as distinctly as if she were 
 present. She was a woman of perhaps thirty — about the average 
 height. Her figure was glorious ; he had never seen one before 
 which seemed to him perfect. This was the Venus de Medicis 
 made manifest in the flesh. Her dress displayed the magnifi- 
 cent column-like neck, fair as rose-tinted marble ; and the 
 large, fair, white, strong arms, with their queenly, indolent 
 droop. 
 
192 MISS MOWBRATS EXPERIMENT. 
 
 The colouring of the perfectly-shaped, intellectual face was 
 beyond praise. What a red, ardent mouth, niade for songs and 
 kisses ! The warm, brown hair with gold lights ghnting in it 
 was wound in folds round the small, classically-moulded head. 
 After talking to her for some time, he discovered that her beau- 
 tiful eyes changed their colour frequently. At times they were 
 softly and purely grey ; at times they were just divinely blue ; 
 at times, blue touched as with light of green sea water. Not 
 only did he see her again, but he heard her, and that was quite 
 as much of a sensation. 
 
 It would have been impossible for any one to have defined 
 the subtle, instant, electric, all-potent fascination which people 
 found in Miss Mowbray's voice. It was low and sweet and ex- 
 pressive, but so are many voices. It had in it a special 
 magnetic charm. It was a voice that haunted you, but to hear 
 it was always a fresh surprise. It was the most sympathetic 
 voice ever heard. 
 
 The flower in his button-hole smelt of her. He arose and 
 went softly about the room. All was just as he had left it seven 
 hours ago. There on tlie mantelpiece lay his pipe, but half 
 smoked, as he had put it aside when he went to dress. There 
 on the floor, close to the sofa, lay the volume that had fallen 
 from his hands, as he dozed after dinner, wondering dreamily 
 whether he should go out, or straight to bed. 
 
 Sleep was out of the question, so he changed his clothes, took 
 a cold bath, and went into the streets. He walked on and on, 
 till he found himself in the country. 
 
 Night had fallen when he was again in London. Glad with 
 a great, unspeakable joy, and worn out in body, he fell asleep 
 that night speedily, but through his sleep he did not lose con- 
 sciousness of his love. 
 
 Three days after he dined with young Mowbray at his club, 
 and then one afternoon he made a formal call upon the ladies. 
 Only Miss Mowbray was at home. Due regret was expressed 
 on both sides for the absence of her mother. 
 
 Miss Mowbray's manner fascinated him as much as did her 
 face, voice, or figure. She talked earnestly, and she talked 
 wxll. He knew not how the time must be going on, but still he 
 sat there. She seemed to put him under a spell, so that he 
 could not move to go. At length he roused himself, and said 
 almost stupidly, with a look of bewilde.rmept upon his face ; 
 
MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT. 193 
 
 " Really, I must go now." 
 
 "If you must go, I have to thank you for a most pleasant 
 afternoon," she said, simply. 
 
 " It has been more than a pleasant one to me," he replied, 
 speaking slowly, and with difficulty. " If I had known, if I had 
 dreamed of an influence in the world as potent on my work as 
 yours might be, I would never have done any work till we had 
 met." 
 
 "Do you mean one word of what you say?" she asked, quite 
 quietly. 
 
 " I mean every word of it, most absolutely. What should 
 make you doubt me 1 " 
 
 " Reading your books, I suppose. Your men always flatter 
 your women, and then laugh at them." 
 
 " But I am not a man out of my books." 
 
 " No, but I think I can see a family resemblance between 
 creator and created." 
 
 " You will know me better some day." 
 
 Then he took one long look, as if to fill himself fuM of her, 
 and left. Miss Mowbray seemed somewhat thoughtful as she 
 went to change her dress for dinner. 
 
 She never exacted homage ; she only just seemed to tolerate 
 it. One night, at a crowded evening reception, he managed at 
 last to make bis way to her. She was looking beautiful and 
 weary. 
 
 " How they have been boring you," he said, almost indignantly. 
 
 "Yes, they have rather, I must confess." 
 
 " I'm so glad I have come." 
 
 " Then you are sure that you don't bore me ? " 
 
 " I do bore you sometimes, but not always." 
 
 " You are wrong," she said, earnestly ; " you never bore me." 
 
 Did she care for him, or would she ever care for him, in the 
 ■way he wished her to ? This was the question that he was for 
 «ver asking himself. At times he almost felt certain that she 
 did ; at other times he was equally despondent. He was so 
 much in love that he dared not ask his fate, but as he did not 
 conceal his passionate admiration, and was certainly not re- 
 pulsed, he could not* help thinking that on the whole he had 
 good grounds for hope. The season over, he gladly accepted 
 Mowbray's invitation to visit them in September, for shooting. 
 
 That month would have been a month of wild, happy excite- 
 
 14 
 
194 MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 ment, had not Mowbray, with masculine obtuseness, engrossed 
 nearly all his friend's time ; but there were dear evenings, when 
 Mowbray would go with Lessing to invade his sister's private 
 sitting-room. He was very proud of his beautiful sister, and 
 liked well to hear her read ; and on one of these happy occa- 
 sions, worn out by the day's sport, he fell asleep lying on the 
 floor, with his head propped on his arm ; and Lessing and 
 Miss Mowbray were virtually alone together. 
 
 " Read something," he said. 
 
 " I have been reading/^ 
 
 " But read more." 
 
 "Why?" she asked, in her wonderful voice, and raising to 
 his face her glorious eyes, in which just then the green sea lights 
 were shining. 
 
 " Because I wish you to." * 
 
 " Are you quite sure that is a sufficient reason ? " 
 
 " I think it would be, if you realized how much I wish it,'^ 
 
 '"' But you see I don't realize it." 
 
 ** I hardly ever see you now," he went on. 
 
 " No ; you prefer the partridges." 
 
 " You know I don't." 
 
 '* Why, certainly, I think you do." 
 
 " Do you really know me so little .^" he answered, in his most 
 subtle tone of voice, the soul in his eyes yearning to her. 
 
 " I'm not a good reader of character," she replied ; then for 
 some time they were both silent, while round the house the 
 autumn wind moaned drearily. 
 
 " How suddenly grave you have grown," he said ; " an hour 
 ago you were all smiles." 
 
 " Perhaps it's the wind," she answered ; " doesn't it souud 
 like a forlorn spirit seeking vainly for rest } " 
 
 Then she asked him, after a pause, and suddenly : 
 
 " Where you ever at the English cemetery at Florence ? " 
 
 " Never ; were you ? " 
 
 " Yes, many times." 
 
 Then they were silent again ; and as in a sort of vision 
 Lessing seemed to see the pleading, large blue eyes, the delicate 
 face, the purely gold hair of the woman he had thought he loved 
 once, and cast aside. 
 
 " It's a melancholy night," he said. '' I'm not surprised it 
 should make you think of churchyards." 
 
MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT, 195 
 
 He was sitting close to her ; his hand touched hers, then 
 folded it in a close clasp. He bent down and kissed it. She 
 made no resistance. She quivered a little, that was all. What 
 words she might have spoken, there and then, who shall say, had 
 not just then Mr. Mowbray aroused himself, and borne his friend 
 away to the smoking-room. 
 
 The next day Lessing resolved to know his fate absolutely, 
 though, on the preceding night, he had thought he could fore- 
 cast it with some certainty. It was a wild, windy autumn day, 
 with a heavy, sunless sky. He went straight to Miss Mowbray's 
 sitting-room. 
 
 " I am an early visitor, am I not .^ '' he began. 
 
 " Well, I suppose for you it must be considered an early 
 call." 
 
 ^ Her manner was somewhat constrained ; and surely he 
 detected in her eyes a look of comprehension. She knew of 
 what he had come to speak ; of that he felt there could be no 
 doubt. 
 
 " Do you mind being called upon so early, Miss Mowbray?" 
 
 " Not in the least." 
 
 " I have not done wrong then ? " 
 
 " Not at all. I am generally prepared to receive visitors." 
 
 He found it more difficult to begin speaking about the subject 
 so near to his heart than he had imagined. Breaking at last an 
 awkward pause, he said : 
 
 " I am here to know my fate from you. I love you. I have 
 never disguised the fact. I could not have disguised it had I 
 wished to. I have been too frightened to speak, but now I can 
 keep silent no longer. Helen, your answer — Life or Death ?" 
 
 Outside the wind raved on ; inside the fire flickered, and a 
 cinder fell. 
 
 Miss Mowbray was looking down at her hands clasped on 
 her knees ; her face had grown very white in the last minute. 
 
 " Speak, speak," he cried. " I cannot bear suspense. Life 
 or Death ? " 
 
 " Death," she said, and no more. 
 
 He staggered back as if some one had struck him a heavy 
 blow. She did not look up. Then he began in a bewildered 
 way : 
 
 " I don't understand you. You are not the woman to flirt 
 heartlessly. When a woman receives, and seems pleased to 
 
196 MISS MOWER ATS EXPERIMENT, 
 
 receive, a man's unbounded admiration, she is encouraging 
 him to hope. What does a woman mean when she lets a man 
 that she knows loves her hold her hand as I held yours last 
 night. I want to know what it does mean ? " 
 
 She raised her eyes for the first time now, and looked at 
 him ; then she said, speaking in a tone of voice even lower than 
 usual : 
 
 ** At the English Cemetery in Florence there is an unpretend- 
 ing grave, which I have visited many times, and which my 
 friends in Florence keep always fragrant for me with flowers. It 
 is the grave of an English girl, who died when she was twenty 
 years old. I made her acquaintance at Florence, just six 
 months before her death. Her name— — " 
 
 " Was Alice Richmond ? " 
 
 " Yes." { 
 
 " And she lied to you about me ? Well, no, perhaps she 
 didn't lie ; but she did not tell you, for she could not know, how 
 desperately I strove to cling to the idea that I was in love with 
 her. In God's name, would it have been for her good that I 
 should have married her not loving her? With my tempera- 
 ment, I should have come in time so to hate her as to make her 
 life one torment. Though I hear from you to-day for the first 
 time that she is dead, I remember still my foreshadowing of 
 how I should have felt had I been compelled day after day to 
 see in my path those big dolls' eyes of hers, and to hear day 
 after day her pretty babyish prattle ; but what has she to do 
 now, thrusting herself in between you and me?" 
 
 " Do you think," Miss Mowbray replied, quietly, '^ that I 
 could ever love a man who behaved to a woman as you did to 
 her? What had you to do with self-pity ? After you had once 
 won her heart, but one course was open to you, and that was to 
 marry the girl and to make her happy. And is she your only 
 victim ? How many other women have you made dupes of? I 
 am not sentimental enough to imagine that your treatment of 
 her directly killed Alice Richmond ; but that it did so indirectly 
 I most solemnly believe." 
 
 " And you thought you would make yourself your friend's 
 avenger ? Have the comfort to know your vengeance has been 
 complete." 
 
 " I designed no vengeance," she said. *' When I saw that 
 you admired me, I did not undeceive you, as I should have done 
 
MI^S MOWBkAY'S EXPEktMRNT. 197 
 
 another man ; I thought I would let you find the facts out for 
 yourself. Do you think it was unpardonable ? Do you think I 
 had no justification ? " She smiled, and there was a cruel light 
 in her eyes. 
 
 " If Ahce Richmond died," he exclaimed, " because I cast 
 her off, finding I had no love to give her ; yes, cast her off — get 
 all you can out of these words — you are not so easily freed from 
 me as I was freed from her. You have kindled a fire which you 
 shall quench or burn in. You must, you shall love me. 1 will 
 haunt you day and night ; and though I died to-night, my ghost 
 should haunt you." 
 
 " I am frightened of no man," she answered, calmly, " and I 
 don't believe in ghosts." 
 
 He took her hand between both of his, and though she had 
 just said that she was frightened of no man, she dared not, when 
 she met his eyes, withdraw it. 
 
 " I love, love you," he pleaded. " You have made a new 
 world for me. Life had grown to be with me only death in life 
 till I met you ; then, for the first time, I knew really what life 
 meant. I will not live to die again ! Helen, be merciful. 
 Promise that you will try to love me. O, my love, I love you so 
 desperately ! If you are not mine wholly, then love of you will 
 drive me mad. You do not dream what it is to love as I love 
 you." 
 
 " That I concede, v/illingly," she answered ; ^' but these fires 
 quickly burn themselves out, and leave no trace behind." 
 
 " This fire will never smoulder, never be extinguished." 
 
 " So they say in novels ^ 
 
 " For God's sake, Helen, don't sneer !" 
 
 " I am not sneering, but I hate scenes." 
 
 She drew her hand away and rose. 
 
 " Upon this subject neither you nor I can have anything more 
 to say." 
 
 " Are you utterly without heart?" 
 
 '' I don't know ; the question doesn't particularly interest 
 me." 
 
 He spoke no word, but held the door open for her to pass 
 out. A minute after he followed. He went straight to his own 
 room, and packed. The afternoon delivery had brought him 
 letters from London, and he excused his abrupt departure on the 
 ground of important business. In a short time everything was 
 
198 MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT, 
 
 arranged. He shook hands with Mowbray, Mrs. Mowbray, and 
 lastly with Helen. 
 
 *' Remember what I told you this morning," he said, as he 
 held her hand — ah, surely not for the last time. 
 
 '' You told me so many things, and you know my memory is 
 not good." 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye," and then he was gone. 
 
 Arriving in London, he went straight to his chambers — to 
 those same rooms he had entered that May morning when his 
 whole heart was one fire of love for her, when the world seemed 
 re-created ; and it seemed to him now that love, stronger than 
 ever, burned in his heart. But what of his future? He smiled 
 grimly, recalling that he had once fancied himself a cold-natured 
 man. Something was to be done, but what 1 How was he to 
 win her love ? Somehow or other it 7nust be accomplished. He 
 paced up and down, grappling with his fate — a struggle which 
 is always a slightly unequal match, as he found before the night 
 was over. 
 
 At length he could stand his rooms no more, and he dashed 
 into the streets. The rain was pouring down in torrents ; a 
 dreary north-east wind prevailed. Though the blood burned in 
 him, though his thoughts were all centred in one object, he 
 took in a sharp and distinct sense of the crowded, wet London 
 streets, the streets he knew so well. They were the same 
 streets, but they seemed to his fevered imagination like ghosts 
 of their former selves seen through a blood-red mist. The 
 jingle of street pianos, the roll of wheels, the voices of the 
 passers-by talking one to another, had in them for him a 
 hollow ring. In time he came to the river. There everything 
 was still, except for the ceaseless pouring of the rain, and down 
 that dark way of water lay the sea. Life was a dark river 
 flowing to a darker sea. A violent fit of shivering took him, 
 while at the same time his hands burned. He made his way 
 back to his chambers, thinking that fever lay before him, in 
 which conjecture he was right, for the next morning his land- 
 lady found him delirious. After this he was conscious of 
 nothing definitely, till he woke one night about the middle of 
 October. Some one was sitting by the bed, and a friendly 
 voice asked : 
 
 " You know me, old boy ? " 
 
MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT, 199 
 
 " Yes," he replied, in a faint whisper, for his strength was 
 low. "You are Mowbray. Have I been ill long?" 
 
 " More than a month ; but you will be all right soon. Now 
 swallow some of this, and go to sleep again." 
 
 The sick man did as he was told. Nature came to his aid, 
 and he slept long and profoundly. Day by day he gained 
 strength, and by the middle of November was once more him- 
 self in bodily health. 
 
 But the fire of his love burned only more fiercely. He found 
 out from Frank Mowbray that his mother and sister were going 
 to winter in Paris, and he left England at once for the bright 
 French city. 
 
 He met Miss Mowbray, for the first time after their parting, 
 at the house of a mutual friend. A number of persons, both 
 English and French, were present. He snatched an oppor- 
 tunity of speaking to her alone, in a corner of the room. 
 
 "Are you surprised to see me ?" 
 
 " No, not particularly. If you know what is for your own 
 comfort, I should think you would rather pass the winter in 
 Paris than in London. I heard of you from my brother when 
 you were ill. I was sorry to hear of your illness. What nice 
 people there are here to night, are there not ? " 
 
 " Shall you be at home to-morrow afternoon if I call 1 " 
 
 " Yes, I think so." 
 
 " I shall come, then." 
 
 Then they were swept apart, to come together no more that 
 night. 
 
 The next afternoon he presented himself at the Mowbrays' 
 pleasant apartments, in one of the best quarters of Paris, but as 
 Mrs. Mowbray was present all through his visit, it was, on the 
 whole, a dull affair ; only with his eyes could he express his 
 worship of Helen. 
 
 She seemed neither to like nor dislike him — to be simply 
 indifferent to him ; and this indifference was to him the hardest 
 thing to be borne. 
 
 In the course of a few days fortune favoured him. He met 
 her in the Louvre, and she was by herself. It was near the 
 hour of closing. She was standing before the Venus of 
 Milo. 
 
 " It always makes one think of Heine, doesn't it ? " she said ; 
 ** of how he must have felt when, for the last time, from his 
 
200 MISS MOlVBkArS EXPERIMENT. 
 
 poor, broken body, his soul burned through his eyes on that 
 supreme beauty that had long been his delight, and made him 
 feel that, bitter as life had been, it had still been worth living." 
 
 " I think I love it almost as much as the great German did," 
 he replied. Then Miss Mowbray turned away. 
 
 " I am going now," she said. 
 
 " You will drive home, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No ; I shall walk." 
 
 " If I may, I will walk back with you." 
 
 " I shall be extremely glad." 
 
 They walked along for some time in silence. At last he 
 said, suddenly : 
 
 " I wish you'd hate me." 
 
 " Do you ? What a droll idea ! I would if I could, to 
 oblige you ; but I don't think I could." 
 
 " You only scorn me." 
 
 " I do not respect your behaviour to women, certainly." 
 
 " But I tell you I am a changed man." 
 
 '^ Perhaps so ; yet, but for you, my friend might have been 
 living now." 
 
 " You make me hate her memory," he answered, fiercely. 
 " Helen, I am growing desperate. You must give me hope ; 
 you must come to care something for me." 
 
 "Must I?" she answered, indifferently. "If you have the 
 power of changing my nature, I suppose I shall." 
 
 At the door of her hotel he left her, and turned away, more 
 deeply fascinated, more terribly in love than ever. 
 
 She was the one interest of his life ; in her all his thoughts 
 centred. His love grew almost a madness ; he could not sleep 
 at night for thinking of her. He became wild and haggard- 
 looking. 
 
 Toward the end of winter the Mowbrays returned to England, 
 and went directly to their house in the country. Of course 
 Lessing left Paris at the same time ; but as they did not ask 
 him to visit them, he had to pass two whole months without 
 seeing Helen ; still he knew that in the season they sJioidd 
 meet. In time he thought his persistent love must triumph. 
 
 He was right ; they did meet, and it was in the lobby of a 
 theatre. He had been watching her all through the perform- 
 ance, feeding his eyes greedily upon her. Besides herself and 
 mother, there was in their box a tall, handsome intellectual- 
 
Miss a/oivba'Jv's exferimumt, iqi 
 
 looking man, whose attentions were extreme. This fact made 
 Lessing's blood boil. 
 
 *' I have not seen you for some time," he began, as they met 
 on the way out ; " but you see we are fated to come together." 
 
 The man of the party was introduced as Mr. Clifford. The 
 two men did not seem to regard each other with favour. 
 
 *' Shall you be at the Grays' to-morrow ? " she asked. 
 
 " I shall." 
 
 *' Then we shall meet there." 
 
 Just then their carriage was called, and they passed out to it. 
 
 When he entered the Grays' drawing-room, late the next 
 night, light, brilliant dance music was sounding through it. 
 He at once caught sight of Helen Mowbray. She was dancing 
 with the man he had observed at the theatre on the preceding 
 night. 
 
 Lessing was standing with his eyes following her movements, 
 when a well-known and cheery voice accosted him. 
 
 " Well met, old boy." It was Franlc Mowbray, whom he 
 had not seen for some time. " What has become of you all 
 this while .?" he added. 
 
 Lessing replied somewhat absently. He was thinking that 
 to-night he was in the very room where he had first met the 
 woman who was to be the one love of his life. Just there, 
 where he was then standing, had they stood that night. Later 
 on he had managed to get her a seat in a quieter part of the 
 room. There was a tide of people between it and himself now, 
 but yonder was the very corner. The rooms were flooded to- 
 night ; there would be no chance for a quiet word. 
 
 "A lot of people here," remarked Mowbray. *' I suppose I 
 must plunge into the midst of them soon. Been here long ? " 
 
 " No ; I have only just come." 
 
 " How do you like the look of my future brother-in-law ? 
 There's plenty of him, isn't there ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " Lessing rejoined, turning white as 
 death, while his heart gave a great bound. 
 
 " Why, my dear boy, it's easy enough to make out, surely ; '^ 
 then, regarding the changed face of his friend, the truth flashed 
 upon him, and he wondered that he had never suspected it before. 
 
 " You are not well, old fellow," he said, kindly. **The heat 
 of the room has knocked you over ; come with me and have a 
 glass of champagne." 
 
202 MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT. 
 
 "As many as you like," the other answered, with a forced 
 laugh, making a desperate attempt to be gay. 
 
 When the two friends returned from the refreshment-room 
 the music had ceased, the men were paying the women stupid 
 compliments,'and the latter were fanning themselves. As usual, 
 a group of admirers clustered about Miss Mowbray. Lessing 
 had not partaken sparingly of champagne, and through this 
 group he made his way confidently. He bore himself well, and 
 there was a defiant light in his eyes. 
 . *' I hope I'm not too late for a waltz with you," he said. 
 
 " No," she answered ; " I think you're just in time. I did 
 not mean to dance the next waltz, but an old friend is not to be 
 refused ; besides that, you are an unusually good waltzer." 
 
 The music struck up again, and in a moment more Helen 
 was borne away in the dance. It seemed to Lessing as if he 
 were almost mad with joy. He forgot everything but the 
 delight of holding her warm, breathing beauty so close to him. 
 
 "Are you happy? " he asked h«r, in a whisper. 
 
 '* Happy and sorry, too." 
 
 '' Sorry for what ? " 
 
 " Sorry for you ; I know what it means, now." 
 
 "Do you think what you dream of will come to pass?" he 
 said, speaking under his breath. 
 
 " Most certainly I do." 
 
 " But it will not." 
 
 " Will it not ? " she answered, dreamily. Life to her then 
 was strange and lovely and mysterious. Her heart was very 
 full of pity for the man whom she was beginning to realize that 
 she had wronged. " It's a dangerous business to meddle with 
 souls, and matter enough to save our own." 
 
 When the waltz was over, he drew her away to a little room 
 close by, which was quite unoccupied for the moment. 
 
 " Here you will find a seat," he said. " How splendidly 
 beautiful you look to-night. A great deal too beautiful to be 
 any man's wife except mine, and only mine because I worship 
 you as you deserve to be worshipped. I am your fate, as you 
 are mine. Do you think you can escape from that fact ? Do 
 you think you can fly from me ? I would follow you to the 
 ends of the world. Sometimes I think you are a saint ; some- 
 times I think you are a beautiful fiend ; but always you domi- 
 nate my life. The sound of your voice makes me faint with 
 
MISS MOWBRAY'S EXPERIMENT. 203 
 
 happiness and wonder that any thing so beautiful should 
 belong to this world of ours. My hand remembers the touch 
 of yours till it clasps it again. Just now, when my arm was 
 round you, I thought you must have heard above the music 
 the beating of my heart, I was so filled and thrilled with de- 
 licious excitement. 
 
 " Hush ! you musn't say such things to me now/' 
 
 " Nay, but I 2vill tell you how I love you. I look at men 
 who can love other women, with a kind of dull wonder. In 
 you all opposing charms are reconciled. In you is the sum of 
 every man's desire." 
 
 He glanced round quickly to see that no one was by, then he 
 caught both her hands and kissed them passionately. 
 
 " Helen, I am mad with love for you ; my soul burns as in a 
 fire. Don't you pity me ? " 
 
 *' Yes, I do pity you ; but take me back now, please." 
 
 In a few days' time people began to say that Lessing had 
 either taken to drink, or was going mad. He could hardly 
 understand himself. A desperate excitement, keen almost as 
 sharp pleasure, had come upon him. He slept little, indeed 
 hardly at all ; but his strength did not fail him. When would 
 the reaction come ? When it did, it would be something to be 
 dreaded. 
 
 One very hot, still June night, while Miss Mowbray was en- 
 joying herself very much at a ball, her hostess came to her with 
 rather a grave face. 
 
 " My dear," she said, " a messenger from the Great Central 
 Hotel has just arrived with a letter for you." 
 
 Helen turned pale as she took the letter, — paler still when she 
 saw it was in her brother's handwriting. She broke the seal 
 and read : 
 
 *' I have had an accident ; excuse yourself to Lady White, and 
 drive at once to the Great Central Hotel." 
 
 In a few minutes more she was on her way. The horses 
 went at their best pace, still the drive seemed to her in- 
 terminable. 
 
 At length the carriage drew up in front of the Great Central 
 Hotel. 
 
 " You will wait," she said to the coachman, and then asked to 
 be shown to Mr. Mowbray. 
 
 *^ You will say Miss Mowbray, if you please." 
 
204 ^i^SS MOWnRAV'-S EXPKRtMENT. 
 
 They passed down a thickly-carpeted passage. 
 
 "This is Mr. Mowbray's sitting-room, madam," observed a 
 servant of the hotel. As they paused in front of a door, he 
 threw it open and announced " Miss Mowbray." 
 
 It was a handsome, spacious apartment in which she found 
 herself. On the table stood fruit and wine. On the sofa, with 
 his face buried in the cushions, lay a figure. 
 
 " Frank," she said, coming over to him, " what is it ? What 
 is the matter ? Speak to me ; look at me." 
 
 Suddenly the figure turned and confronted her, and she 
 uttered a cry of horror to see not her brother, but Lessing. 
 
 "You seem surprised," he said, and passing swiftly before 
 her, he locked the door and removed the key. 
 
 " I am surprised and outraged. The letter, then, was a 
 forgery 1 " she asked. 
 
 " I am compelled to own that it was. Your brother is away 
 for the night. No harm has been done. It was inevitable that 
 I should have an interview with you in private. Sit down, my 
 beautiful queen." 
 
 " How dared you ? " she cried, scorn and hate flashing from 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Helen, pity me. I am distracted by my love for you." 
 
 " I did pity you ; but do you think a woman would ever for- 
 give a fraud of this kind.'' Never, I tell you, never! If you 
 would preserve one fraction of self-respect, you will instantly 
 release me from the offence it is to be in the same room with you.'' 
 
 " You carry it with a high hand, but it will not do," he said. 
 
 *^ Will you not free me ? " 
 
 " Not till you have heard all I have to say.'' 
 
 *' Then will you be as brief as possible ? " 
 
 " I will." 
 
 She dropped into a chair, while he paced to and fro. 
 
 " Helen, when I told you that you had kindled a fire which 
 you must quench or burn in, I knew what I said to be truth. 
 You wronged me as a woman never yet has wronged a man." 
 
 " Your reason, if you please, for decoying me to this place ? 
 That is all I wish to know.'' 
 
 " That is what I was coming to. My reason for bringing you 
 here was to tell you that you should marry me^ or no one. Call 
 me wicked, fiendish, what you will, but I will 7iot think of you 
 in another man's arms." 
 
MISS MOlVBI^Ars EXPERIMENT. 205 
 
 " I told you some time ago," she said, sneeringly, and rising, 
 *'that I have a disUke to scenes. I have no fear of you. I 
 shall marry the man I love, and who loves me." 
 
 *' Will you swear to your fidelity ? " he asked. 
 
 " I will," she answered, seriously. '' I swear by the God 
 who I believe guides and governs this world, and before whom 
 we shall all appear and be judged ; by my unshakable belief in 
 the life hereafter ; by every thing I hold sacred, — most 
 solemnly, that I will marry no man but one, the man I love. 
 I have heard what you have to say ; will you nov/ consent to 
 free me 1 " 
 
 " This is the only way in which I will free you," he said, 
 coming close to her, and drawing from his pocket a small 
 pistol. " One cry for help, and you are dead on the spot." 
 
 With a low moan she shrank away in terror, hiding her 
 blanched face in her hands. What could she do 1 She looked 
 into his eyes, and saw a strange glitter in them. For some 
 time there was perfect silence ; somewhere a door closed — that 
 was all. How pitiful, how almost abject, she looked now ; she 
 who but a little while ago had borne herself so proudly. At 
 length she said, in a whisper : 
 
 " Come here, please." 
 
 He went over to her. She took both his hands and looked 
 up at him with her great beautiful eyes full of mute prayer. 
 
 " Fm in your power, I know," she began ; but for God's sake 
 be merciful. I am happy. I want to live, and to marry the 
 man I love. This madness of yours will pass, and then we 
 shall both be happy. O spare me ! spare me ! See, I will be 
 tender to you. You may put your arms round me, and I will 
 kiss you. Are my kisses nothing to you ?" 
 
 " Don't tempt me," he answered. " I brought you here that 
 you might make your choice between marriage with me, or 
 death ; you have chosen death." 
 
 He filled her a glass of wine, but she put it from her. Her 
 face, white with terror, must have looked all the more ghastly 
 in contrast with her ball-dress and the diamonds sparkling on 
 her neck. 
 
 " No," she cried, springing up and reaching out her hands to 
 him, " I have not chosen death. I repent of the foolish oath I 
 took. I will marry you. There, let us go ; " and she moved to 
 the door with feverish haste. . 
 
2o6 MISS MOWBRAY S EXPERIMENT, 
 
 " It is too late," he answered. " I made you take that oath 
 to try you. Can I think that a woman beheving in God and 
 rehgion would break such an oath ? No ; you would break 
 your promise to me, which you would be quite justified in 
 doing.'' 
 
 " You don't know me," she pleaded. '' You don't know with 
 what terror I shrink from death. Besides, the very desperation 
 of this action makes me feel as I never did feel till now, how 
 you do love me ! Do you want to throw me away 1 I tell you 
 I will marry you ; you have wakened a new self in me." 
 
 He stood for a moment with a light of hope gleaming in his 
 eye. 
 
 " If I could only believe you,'' he said, losing, for the moment, 
 consciousness of everything but hope. For her purpose that 
 one moment was enough. 
 
 As swiftly as a panther which has been unseen lurking round 
 her prey springs upon it at last, strikes and captures it, so 
 sprang this woman upon the man in front of her. Her teeth 
 fastened his hand, out of which she wrenched the pistol, dis- 
 charging its contents in the air, while at the same time she 
 cried desperately for help. 
 
 ^' There's no occasion for violence," remarked the man. " No 
 man is a match for a woman ; you have vanquished me.'' 
 
 Then the doors were burst open. 
 
 To the charge brought against him Lessing made no defence; 
 but after all it was to a madhouse, and not to a jail, that he was 
 consigned. Those of his friends who knew him intimately were 
 not surprised to learn that insanity was in his family. 
 
 So ended Miss Mowbray's experiment. 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 ■:o:- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Arthur Featherstone was a fortunate man. At the age 
 of twenty-five he was not only an accepted suitor, but, in virtue 
 of his very first attempt, a successful dramatist. Daily he had 
 the gratification of reading in the papers and on the street 
 placards that Mrs. Brakehill would appear every evening as 
 Leonora in the immensely successful drama of " ^ What Evi- 
 dence ? ' \ written expressly for her by Arthur Featherstone, 
 Esq." 
 
 Mrs. Blanche Brakehill was the rage that season in London. 
 Her portrait hung on the walls of the Royal Academy. The 
 windows of stationers and art repositories were crowded with 
 photographic portraits of her both in and out of character, in 
 various attitudes and divers dresses. Haberdashers showed 
 new scarfs entitled " The Brakehill ; " music-sellers displayed 
 the " Brakehill Waltzes," the title-page whereof was adorned 
 with a lithograph of the new actress as Leonora. 
 
 Certainly Featherstone had reason to feel proud. I am in- 
 clined to think that his pretty betrothed would rather he had 
 chosen some path in literature which did not lead behind the 
 scenes, where, to her unsophisticated imagination, lay a world 
 of evils and enchantments. That her hero came back from 
 such a world unscathed, seemed to her such a miracle that her 
 natural admiration for him was not untouched with awe. 
 
2o8 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 Indeed, Featherstone himself felt it a striking change to pass 
 from the glare and excitement of the Sun Theatre to the pretty 
 little drawing-room at Kensington, pervaded by the delicate 
 odour of spring flowers, where Sophie Lenthurst read, studied 
 music, did a little fancy work, and copied— an occupation in 
 which she was always happiest— her lover's nearly illegible 
 manuscripts. 
 
 Now, Featherstone was not for a moment, not even in thought, 
 unfaithful to his pretty betrothed ; yet he could not be ignorant 
 of Mrs. Brakehill's charms. What man, indeed, could have 
 been indifferent to those dark, deep eyes of hers — eyes that 
 could kindle with fire or melt with infinite tenderness into looks 
 that were at once appeals and caresses ? What man, we ask, 
 could have noted without admiration the bright, mobile face, 
 the sweet, red, passionate mouth, the dark hair and the shadow 
 of the hair on the white forehead, the figure so ripe in its 
 development, yet so supple in all its movements? Who, again, 
 could have been insensible to the captivation of her manner, 
 which at one time was almost child-like in its frank simplicity ; 
 at another, fraught with the most intense earnestness ? If, for 
 instance, you caught her studying a new part, you would find 
 something almost ominous in the expression of her counten- 
 ance, while she would speak of the character in those low, 
 hushed tones which most of us use unconsciously when we 
 enter some darkened room which death has recently invaded. 
 
 It chanced one night — as I am bound to say it did chance 
 two or three times a week — that something occurred to Feather- 
 stone about which it was necessary to speak to his heroine. 
 The curtain, he conjectured, on this particular occasion, would 
 be just falling on his arrival, and he would thus catch her before 
 her husband came to take her home. 
 
 Mrs. Brakehill's reputation, let it be clearly understood, was 
 quite above suspicion. Robert Brakehill had fallen in love with 
 her, for her beauty, I suppose, when she was a mere girl. He 
 had married her, and under his wing the young actress had 
 nestled securely. Never was she seen in society without him. 
 
 Nightly he brought his charge to the theatre, and nightly, 
 no matter how attractive the society at the club, returned for 
 her in his brougham at the close of her performance. 
 
 Little was known of her, but it was reported that her origin 
 
 as on one side foreign — Italian, it was generally surmised 
 
TtlE avtRe^ss and her drama. 209 
 
 and, judging by certain indications of her face, the rumour was 
 probably correct. But to return to Featherstone. 
 
 He pushed open the stage door of the Sun Theatre and went 
 in. It was somewhat later than he had expected. The music 
 was playing for the comedietta with which the evening's enter- 
 tainment closed. The stage, which was full of bustle, seemed 
 in one way like the deck of a ship when about leaving port. 
 
 Mrs. Brakehill, however, had not yet left the theatre. 
 Featherstone found her in the greenroom in earnest conver- 
 sation with a man whom he had not seen before — a man of 
 some forty years of age. He had a well-proportioned and 
 graceful figure, abundant brown hair, here and there touched 
 with gray ; a pale face lit with large, bright eyes. If not, 
 strictly speaking, a handsome face, it was certainly a striking 
 one — a face which you would not easily forget. 
 
 The person in question was dressed, on the whole, in excellent 
 taste. A critical observer might have detected in his appear- 
 ance just the least suggestion of foppery ; but it was so slight 
 as to be scarcely discernible. 
 
 *' Ah, I'm glad you've come," said Mrs. Brakehill, breaking 
 off her conversation as she caught sight of Featherstone. " I 
 want to introduce you to my dear friend, Mr. Waters. Only 
 think, he has been detained all the spring in Italy, and has seen 
 me to-night for the first time as Leonora, I want you both to 
 be such good friends." 
 
 Then followed the introduction. 
 
 " I consider myself very fortunate, Mr. Featherstone," said 
 the stranger, bowing courteously, and speaking in low, sweetly 
 modulated tones — "very fortunate, indeed, in having the pleasure 
 of making your acquaintance thus early on my return to England. 
 Need I say what enjoyment I have derived from witnessing the 
 performance to-night ? Among many other admirable qualities, 
 of which perhaps I am not entitled to speak, your drama has 
 the rare merit of giving our friend here a fit opportunity for the 
 exhibition of her powers." 
 
 " I am glad of your approbation," replied Featherstone. 
 
 Then Mr. Brakehill came in, and seemed equally surprised 
 and pleased to see his wife's friend. 
 
 As the two engaged in conversation, Featherstone turned to 
 Blanche, observing that the hour was probably too late to talk 
 over business. But he got no answer. She was smiling to 
 
 IS 
 
210 THE AC7'RESS AMD HER DRAMA. 
 
 herself, taken up heart and soul in Hstening to her husband, 
 who was relating that on the preceding night at the end of her 
 great scene in the third act, the whole house rose and cheered 
 like one man. The *' house " had a very unpleasant habit of 
 omitting to do this when Featherstone was one of the audience, 
 which he not infrequently was. He wondered why it chanced 
 so. He could have liked exceedingly to see such a. demonstra- 
 tion. He now spoke to Mrs. Brakehill a second time, and more 
 peremptorily : 
 
 " I see it's of no use trying to get your attention to- 
 night." 
 
 " I am afraid it is not. But come again, soon ; I have a great 
 deal to say to you." 
 
 " About what } " 
 
 " Oh, you shall know all, in time. Now go to Sophie, you bad 
 boy ! She wants to see you." 
 
 " Who told you so ? " 
 
 " My own woman's heart." 
 
 " Have you any ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 So he shook hands and went away vexed, he scarcely knew 
 why. There was something in this man Waters from which 
 Featherstone's whole nature absolutely recoiled. Yet he could 
 assign no reason for this fact, and, given as he was to analyze 
 all subtle intuitions of the human mind, he hated to find himself 
 at fault. 
 
 " Well," said he to himself, at last, as he entered his chambers, 
 " I will justify my antipathy or overcome it." 
 
 A few days after this he called on Mrs. Brakehill, by appoint- 
 ment, at her charming residence on the Kensington side of 
 Hyde Park. His object was to discuss with her the plot of a 
 new play. 
 
 She was quite alone in her daintily-furnished boudoir, through 
 which a soft, roseate light was diffused. 
 
 After business had been talked of, the conversation turned 
 upon Waters. 
 
 " I half feel as if you didn't like him," she said, looking in- 
 quiringly at Featherstone. 
 
 " Indeed ! Why, what could I allege against him 1 " 
 
 " Nothing, I know ; but be frank, and say what you 
 think." 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 2U 
 
 ** Frankly, then, he is a man I should mistrust." 
 
 " How mistaken you are ! He has been the kindest friend 
 to us. You should hear Robert's opinion of him." 
 
 "Ah, Brakehill is a dear, simple soul." 
 
 " And for that reason I value his opinion more than yours. 
 You writers are like ogres, who go about seeking whom they 
 may devour. A simple gentleman is not interesting enough for 
 you. You must look below the surface ; and here the truth is 
 on the surface. Mr. Waters is just what he seems — a kind man 
 and a perfect gentleman." 
 
 " I bow to your judgment," said Featherstone, rising ; " but 
 don't forget you have called me an ogre." 
 
 "Yes, but a very nice ogre," she rejoined, with one of her 
 most captivating smiles ; adding, archly, " especially when you 
 write me beautiful speeches that bring the house down." 
 
 He had not gone far from the house before he met Brakehill 
 and Waters, engaged earnestly in conversation. 
 
 " I am just from your place," said Featherstone. 
 
 *' So I supposed," replied Brakehill. He was a man with a 
 kind, florid face and a singularly boyish manner. " I heard," 
 he went on, " there was a plot to be talked over, so I made 
 myself scarce. She is peculiar in those things" — he always 
 spoke of his wife as she — ^* and does not like any third person 
 present — not even her husband. Hard lines for a married man 
 — eh, Waters?" 
 
 Waters smiled blandly, in recognition of the pleasantry, and, 
 addressing himself to Featherstone, said, in his very sweetest 
 tones : 
 
 " You will be doing the public a real service — that is, as 
 regards its pleasures — if you will only induce our friend to try 
 her hand at comedy." 
 
 *' Ah, I wish you would," put in Brakehill. *• IVe said to her 
 again and again, ' My deal* child, you could be just as great in 
 comedy as in tragedy.' " 
 
 " Yes ; but pardon me, my dear fellow," said Waters, still 
 speaking in his perfectly modulated voice, " a dramatist has an 
 influence over his heroine in guiding her selection of parts 
 which not even her husband can acquire. Let us leave our 
 cause, then, in Mr. Featherstone's hands." 
 
 "1 hope it will prosper," answered Featherstone ; and, refusing 
 the warmest invitations to return and dine, he went on his way 
 
212 THE ACTRESS AND HEk DRAMA. 
 
 to the house at Kensington, where he knew a place had been 
 kept for him at the dinner-table. 
 
 The first of June was to be a trying day for Sophie Lenthurst 
 and Arthur Featherstone. It was the one fixed by Sophie's 
 mother for leaving England for Switzerland, where they were to 
 spend their summer holiday. Featherstone was to join them 
 in a month's time, but he could only do so by working like a 
 galley-slave day and night, for commissions were crowding in 
 upon him. 
 
 You may be sure, however, that on the morning of the first of 
 June he was at Grove Lodge betimes. You may be equally sure 
 that Sophie was well through all her packing arrangements so 
 as to wholly devote the last hour before leaving the house to her 
 lover. 
 
 For some time they sat silent in a pretty modestly-furnished 
 drawing-room, which had in it a delicate odour of flowers. 
 Sophie and flowers went well together. Through the open 
 window came the cry of "Flowers all a-growingand a-blowing !'^ 
 which to these two seemed like the refrain of a melancholy 
 poem. What could London want with flowers when Sophie was 
 going to leave it ? And Sophie's canary-bird went on singing 
 ■ — singing as if nothing were about to happen. 
 
 "How sorry I am you are going, little one,'^ said Featherstone, 
 presently, drawing her shivering head to his shoulder. 
 
 She pressed his hand for answer, her control of her voice 
 being just then rather dubious. At length she said, but almost 
 in a whisper : 
 
 " I would so much rather stay in London with you." 
 
 " What, among all the chimney-pots and all the glare, rather 
 than have mountains and lakes, glaciers and all the rest of it?'"' 
 
 He did not find talking quite so easy himself as it seemed to 
 be when he began. 
 
 " What do I want with mountains and streams, and all the 
 rest of it," she answered, with an effort to smile through her 
 tears, "and you not there? — making yourself ill, perhaps, in 
 this horrible London with overwork." 
 
 " No ; I promise not to kill myself. I want to see you again 
 too much for that." 
 
 " And you will write to me often, if only a few words ? I 
 know you won't have time for more.'* 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 213 
 
 *' Every night, my little lady, last thing, I shall write to you 
 what I have been doing through the day, and post it." 
 
 In any fiction that attempts to follow real life there must 
 necessarily be a sameness about love-scenes, especially about 
 those between parting lovers. 
 
 Let us, therefore, suppose the billing and cooing over, and 
 Featherstone, on a platform at Charing Cross Station, waving 
 his hand to his beloved as the train moves almost noiselessly 
 away. 
 
 The day was intensely hot, and the hour was as yet early. 
 Featherstone wandered restlessly about the streets, examined 
 various book-stalls, and, of course, found nothing worth notice. 
 
 Then he thought he w^ould try to w^ork, and for this laudable 
 object went straight to his chambers, where he found a telegram 
 from Mrs. Brakehill ; she had a professional love of telegraphing. 
 
 The present telegram was brief, and rather more peremptory 
 than usual : 
 
 " Be at the Sun Theatre to-night. Don't fail. Important." 
 
 It was quite in vain that Featherstone strove to work ; so, 
 instead, he wrote several pages of a letter to Sophie. The 
 extreme heat of the day seemed to have conquered the natural 
 shade and coolness of his chambers. He smoked pipes and 
 cigars alternately, took refuge in iced claret, and finally concluded 
 that part of his gveat heat was born of his own restlessness. 
 
 A man in such a frame of mind is generally glad when his 
 dinner-hour comes. Very glad was Featherstone when, the 
 long hours having worn away, a quick-going hansom set him 
 down at the steps of his club. 
 
 There, having comfortably dined and smoked a cigar, he lit 
 another and turned his steps in the direction of the Sun Theatre, 
 with, for the first time, a vague feeling of curiosity about Mrs. 
 Brakehill's telegram. 
 
 It was a wonderful night. The air seemed glowing wath the 
 heat of the departed sun. There was no least breath of wind. 
 But for the warm, passionate blue of the sky, through which a 
 few sultry stars were beginning to appear, you w'ould have 
 thought a thunder-storm imminent. 
 
 A Londoner rarely thinks of such a night in connection wnth 
 the open country. When he goes for his long looked-for 
 
214 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 summer holiday, the evenings, especially by the sea, are 
 beginning to turn chill. 
 
 A night like the present is intimately associated in his mind 
 with the close of the London season ; its quick succession of 
 deceptive attractions ; its crowded and brilliantly lit rooms ; 
 women fair and young, upon whom the stress of the season has 
 told, nevertheless — all the intrigues, successes, failures, and 
 heart-breaks which have been focussed in three or four short 
 months. 
 
 "I wonder how many fellows are making themselves unhappy 
 about women to-night ? '^ thought Featherstone, as he slipped 
 through the stage-door of the theatre. 
 
 Mrs. Brakehill was in the midst of that great speech which 
 wound up the third act — the speech, you may remember, in 
 which the heroine reveals to her lover that passionate devotion 
 for him which, till then, certain weighty reasons have obliged 
 her to conceal. 
 
 Featherstone had often called Blanche Brakehill heartless, 
 both to her and to himself; yet now, as he stood listening by 
 the wing, he wondered if it were possible for a woman destitute 
 of feeling to interpret thus magically the subtlest, strongest, 
 highest emotion of which our nature is capable ; every tone was 
 like a close and passionate caress. 
 
 Her voice seemed almost weighed down by its great freight 
 of love ; yet so exquisite was the articulation that every word 
 was distinctly audible in the remotest corner of the house. 
 
 He knew well, too, how look, gesture and attitude harmonized 
 with every inflection of her voice. Her acting to-night was 
 finer even than usual. 
 
 At the close of the scene she had to give up family, friends, 
 fortune, for her lover, to whose name an undeserved stigma was 
 attached. As if her soul were borne up on wings, her voice rose 
 to some far, almost impossible, height. For a moment or two 
 it quivered with such rapture of enunciation as if love had been 
 deified by the consciousness of its might ; then, as if failing 
 beneath the too great ecstasy, she flung wide her arms and sank 
 on her lover's bosom, moaning between half-suppressed sobs of 
 infinite joy and half-restrained bursts of divine mirth : " Safe, 
 safe ! Safe in your love at last ! " 
 
 The audience, which had throughout been electrified with 
 breathless silence, rose with what seemed almost a yell of 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 215 
 
 enthusiasm. ^^ What god inspires this woman to-night ? " 
 ejaculated Featherstone. His own heart was beating fast and 
 there were tears of excitement in his eyes — such tears as come 
 when the heart is whirled round in a storm of music ; or when 
 in some grand moment of nature, amidst wind and thunder, 
 the visions disclosed by the lightning flash across us. Again 
 and again the actress was recalled, till the orchestra, by striking 
 up the music for the next part, got the tumult somewhat under, 
 as a fire is got under by water. Then Mrs. Brakehiil passed to 
 where Featherstone was standing. She was flushed with 
 triumph ; there was an almost unnatural brilliancy in her eyes. 
 
 " Bravo ! " cried Featherstone, clasping both her hands in his 
 " You have surpassed yourself to-night." 
 
 "Are you satisfied with your heroine ?" 
 
 " Can you ask me ? '^ 
 
 "We have no time for talking now; you must come back 
 with us to supper to-night." 
 
 "To-night ? Thanks ; it will be impossible." 
 
 " You must come." 
 
 " My dear lady, I have discovered that a man cannot serve 
 two masters. My master is work, not pleasure, and work I 
 must serve." 
 
 " I cannot stay now. Go round to the front and see me in 
 the next act. After that, if you are still in the same mind, come 
 back and tell me so. I wonder how many men would refuse to 
 come and see me when I ask them .^ " and, with one of her most 
 fascinating smiles, she tripped to her dressing-room. 
 
 Featherstone did as he was bid. Entering an unoccupied 
 private box, he glanced mechanically round the theatre. The 
 first man his eyes rested on was W^aters, in the front row of the 
 stalls. The two men recognized each other. Waters bowed 
 and smiled blandly ; then, after a little time, he slowly rose 
 and left his seat. That a man should leave the theatre after an 
 act of a play which he had probably seen often, was not in the 
 least singular ; but that he should wait to do so until the cur- 
 tain was just rising, puzzled Featherstone. 
 
 His own appearance in front of the house seemed to have 
 been the signal for Waters to leave it. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " thought Featherstone, as he strove to dismiss 
 the trivial incident from his mind, " my own plots are turning 
 my brain." 
 
2i6 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 
 
 The next and last act, as usual, passed off with all success ; 
 and, as soon as the curtain had fallen, Featherstone again re- 
 paired behind the scenes. Ke had to wait a few minutes while 
 Mrs. Brakehill was changing her dress. Soon, however, she 
 came to him, still flushed with triumph, still looking even more 
 lovely than was her wont. 
 
 " Well," said she, in her most winning tones, and just resting 
 her hand on his arm, '^ has that hard heart of yours been 
 softened ? " 
 
 " If you mean is my master less rigorous — no.'* 
 
 " At least you will drive home with me for a few minutes' 
 talk ? Mr. Waters has to meet my husband and another man 
 at the club on business. They will not be long, however, and 
 until they come we can talk of your idle work. We did so want 
 you to stay to-night, because Robert has to go to Paris to- 
 morrow, and it may be the last pleasant little supper we can 
 have this season." 
 
 " I will see you home with pleasure," said Featherstone. 
 
 So they left the theatre in the luxurious brougham which was 
 in waiting. Still the warm and yet blue sky overhead, and the 
 solemn, sultry stars. 
 
 Carriages flashed by theirs, bearing some beauty, perhaps, to 
 a new conquest. Somehow it seemed to Featherstone that he 
 realized, as he had never done before, all the romance and 
 intrigue which daily go on in this great city of ours. And had 
 he not his own share of romance ? 
 
 How much would many men have given to occupy his present 
 position — a position which had really been forced upon him. 
 Not from the height of his five and twenty years, but from his 
 height as dramatist and reader of human nature, did he regard 
 himself with a mental smile of satisfaction — satisfaction to feel 
 that his head was quite unturned, and that, by the side of the 
 fascinating actress, pure as the starlight came to him the thought 
 of Sophie, who was now probably sleeping contentedly in Paris 
 after the fatigue of her journey. 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 217 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mrs. Brakehill scarcely spoke until they were seated in her 
 boudoir. Then she began, as if scarcely knowing what to say : 
 
 " I wish you would stay to-night." 
 
 " Please tempt me no more," said Featherstone. 
 
 He wanted to get to his work, and, be it also admitted, he 
 wanted to write to Sophie. 
 
 " If you could see my table littered over with almost illegible 
 notes — brain deposits from which plays are hereafter to start 
 full-grown — you would really pity me." 
 
 " I do, I do ; but I am afraid women are selfish in their 
 wishes." 
 
 " Now, please," he added, " will you tell me the import of 
 your telegram ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered, as if trying to recall herself. " Let 
 me see. I was — oh, yes, it was about my new part. I want 
 you, if you can, to give me a little more to do in the third act." 
 
 " And is that what you call important ? " said Featherstone, 
 with a smile. 
 
 ^^ Yes, to me, if not to you." 
 
 " Then, really, this is all you wanted me for.^ " 
 
 No answer. Featherstone rose in alarm, for the face of his 
 companion had suddenly turned pale, and she was leaning back 
 exhaustedly, one arm thrown over her chair, the other pressed 
 to her heart. 
 
 " Please open the window," she said, just audibl}^ " Oh, my 
 heart ! I am stifling." 
 
 Featherstone flung wide the window. He leaned out for a 
 moment into the warm, starlit night. Then, all at once, a 
 strange feeling beset him — this woman's persistency in detain- 
 ing him ; the emotion which she, generally mistress over 
 herself, could not control ! 
 
 It seemed as if a mystery was gathering round which he 
 could neither penetrate nor escape. 
 
 "Come here, please," cried Blanche, almost beseechingly. 
 " Help me to the sofa." 
 
 He ran to her, and in his arms half carried, half-supported 
 her there, 
 
2i8 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 "Thank you," she said; "I feel just a little better now. 
 Don't let go my hand ; there seems a sort of magnetism in 
 your touch which revives me." Then with a faint and far away 
 smile : " Did Sophie ever tell you what nice hands you have ? " 
 
 " Sophie says a great many dear, foolish things to me." 
 
 " Tell me something about her. Oh, but I forget — you have 
 work to do." 
 
 " Do you think, Blanche, I could leave you, ill as you are, 
 until your husband comes back .^ '^ 
 
 His blood was kindling under the touch of those beautiful 
 fingers. 
 
 " You are kind and thoughtful. I shall be much better soon. 
 Is Sophie jealous ? " 
 
 " I don't think so ; but I have never given her cause to be." 
 
 " Supposing you were faithless to her, what would she 
 do.>" 
 
 *' Well, in that very impossible event, she would cry her eyes 
 out, when I wasn't by, and then meet me with a sweet, distant 
 manner, with more of pity than reproof in it." 
 
 "And would that be all.'^" exclaimed Blanche, her eyes sud- 
 denly kindling, and her voice regaining its old strength ; "what 
 a meek little soul she must be ! Why, if any man / loved were 
 faithless to me — say Robert — I should like to tear his heart 
 out ! I would sell my soul, yes, and a hundred souls, if I had 
 them, only to inflict on him all the suffering I could dream or 
 devise ! " 
 
 " Bravo ! " cried Featherstone, clapping his hands. " I must 
 really give you a jealous heroine to act. What a pity your 
 audience on this occasion has been limited to one ! " 
 
 " Do you think I am always acting, then 1 " 
 
 " More or less ; though, perhaps, sometimes unconsciously to 
 yourself." 
 
 She was about to frame some reply, when Waters and Brake- 
 hill entered. 
 
 " Only fancy, Robert," she exclaimed, rising, " Mr. Feather- 
 stone talks of not staying to supper I You won't let him go, will 
 you } " 
 
 " Really, my dear child," returned Brakehill, " if your per- 
 suasions have been ineffectual, I can hope little from mine." 
 
 " Indeed," said Featherstone, " I am obliged to go." 
 
 He longed with a nameless longing to be out of the house ; 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 219 
 
 yet some subtle spell seemed to be sapping his powers of re- 
 sistance. 
 
 " Surely," pleaded Waters, with grave earnestness in his 
 voice, " surely, you will not deny your heroine this request ? " 
 
 Featherstone had really pressing work to do ; yet, was not 
 his extreme desire to get away partly morbid ? He thought it 
 was, and that it would not do to let such a feeling master him. 
 He would let work go, then, for this night. Even if he stayed 
 late, he could still conclude and post his letter to Sophie. 
 
 " I can resist no longer," he said, calling up a smile ; " I will 
 stay." 
 
 '* Thank you! thank you!" exclaimed Blanche. "As a re- 
 ward, I will flirt with you all night ; and," with a smile at her 
 husband, " lest Robert should be jealous, he shall wear my 
 flowers." 
 
 Taking a rose from her bosom, she fastened it in his button-hole. 
 
 Though Featherstone strove to be gay, that strange mistrust 
 of ill, which he already detected and combatted persistently, 
 came back. What was the meaning of it ? Were there indeed 
 such things as occult and sympathetic warnings? Had anything 
 happened to Sophie ? The thought turned him cold. Yes, he 
 would still contrive to slip away early and write to her. 
 
 The group then descended to supper, which was a little 
 banquet. The room was brilliantly lighted, and the air heavy 
 with the scent of flowers. The wine flowed freely, though 
 Featherstone drank but little. 
 
 Again he spoke of going, but his objections were overruled. 
 The light seemed to grow even more sultry. 
 
 "I hope it's not impertinent," said Waters, "for me to express 
 my admiration of Mrs. Brakehill's necklace." 
 
 It deserved admiration, being a cluster of very fine and 
 effective diamonds. 
 
 " Yes, it is rather pretty," she replied, unclasping it from her 
 beautifully-formed throat. " But it seems quite a weight to- 
 night ; it coils heavily round my neck like a serpent.'' 
 
 "A royal chain to be strangled by," laughed Featherstone. 
 " Splendid, indeed ! " 
 
 It seemed too costly a toy for common occasions. Perhaps 
 Blanche had just put it on that he might see it. 
 
 " It was mysteriously sent home to me one day," she said, 
 *^ without a hint of the giver." 
 
220 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 *' By Jove ! he must have been a Croesus^ Waters," said 
 Brakehill. 
 
 Mr. Waters, who had just suspended his interest in the 
 matter to watch the shuffling lights of gold and green in his 
 wine-glass, rejoined in his tone of bland placidity : 
 
 " Or perhaps, Bob, some hopeless adorer who loved to ruin 
 himself." 
 
 As she resumed her necklace, the conversation turned upon 
 other offerings made to Mrs. Brakehill by her professional 
 admirers. Of these she pointed out with pride an antique silver- 
 hiked scimiter over the mantelpiece. She had fallen in love 
 
 with it on a visit to Lord B 's show place in Yorkshire, and 
 
 the generous owner had caused it, with a complimentary line, to 
 be deposited in her carriage. 
 
 After some time Mrs. Brakehill, pleading fatigue from her 
 public exertions and a slight headache, rose to retire. Her 
 husband, to whom she wished to speak for a minute, also left 
 the room. 
 
 " Well, you must wait till Brakehill returns," said Waters. 
 *' Let me play host and suggest a glass of this chambertin. It 
 goes admirable after champagne." 
 
 *' Thanks," laughed Featherstone. ^' I fear I'm in a mood for 
 excitement." 
 
 And, topping off a couple of glasses quickly, he lit a cigar. 
 
 After some twenty minutes, Brakehill came back, and con- 
 versation was resumed. In this, however, Featherstone bore 
 his part but flaggingly. He felt strongly that he must now 
 resist further temptation and take his leave. 
 
 Though the hour was now too late for work, he must not fail 
 to conclude and post that letter which he knew Sophie was 
 expecting. But in spite of his wish to leave, the power to do so 
 seemed almost to have collapsed. He was aware of a difficulty 
 in answering questions, even in comprehending them ; of a 
 growing lethargy which his moderate indulgence in wine by no 
 means accounted for. Suddenly there struggled through his 
 density of brain a recollection of the spell over his will, and 
 the strange presentiment of evil which he had formerly expe- 
 rienced. He would quit the house at once ; to delay would be 
 to succumb. 
 
 " Good-night, Brakehill," he said, rising, and striving to speak 
 resolutely and coherently. 
 
The actress and HEkJyRAMA. 221 
 
 Though Brakehill still plied him with hospitable entreaties, 
 he held out his hand to take leave ; but his gait was un- 
 steady. 
 
 " My dear fellow, you look quite ill," said Waters, in his 
 dulcet, mesmeric voice. 
 
 "Who shall prevent me?" burst out Featherstone, with a 
 violence unnatural to him, and in loud but unsteady accents. 
 
 "Why, I, as your friend; he is not fit to go yet, Brakehill, 
 and must not.'' 
 
 " Must not ! " shouted the detained man. " I tell you, I will ; 
 I will free myself from — what do you mean, Brakehill 1 " 
 
 For Brakehill had soothingly placed his hand upon his sleeve. 
 There was no need, however, of further friendly contest with 
 the young dramatist. While endeavouring to support himself 
 by his chair, he sank into it unresistingly. The lights began to 
 swim before his eyes ; the voices of his companions grew fainter 
 and fainter. 
 
 After a while all around him seemed vague and confused. It 
 was as if a crust had formed round his brain and deadened his 
 sense of actual things. Nevertheless he retained a certain per- 
 ception of sounds — sounds such as fever catches and fancies in 
 disturbed sleep, and weaves into the mesh of its hallucinations ; 
 he heard stealthy movements in the room, yet felt that he was 
 dreaming and powerless to speak or stir. His brain was going 
 round and round, as to a mystic tune, in which mingled near 
 whispers ; then sounds as of doors gently opening and closing ; 
 next a shrill, sudden utterance — half- laugh, half-moan — followed 
 by a noise dull and heavy. 
 
 Then, as it were, a breath of wind came over him, then 
 silence, and he seemed to be drifting down a stream, with green 
 banks on either side, Sophie on the bank above him, and he 
 could not reach her— Sophie reaching down to him with loving 
 hands, praying him to come to her, and he could not ; Mrs. 
 Brakehill gazing at him from the other bank, no longer young 
 and lovely, but old and ugly, the face thin and fallen in, the 
 hands lean and scraggy. 
 
 Ah, and she was laughing 1 He knew, if he could only hear 
 it, how horrible that laughter would sound. Then, suddenly, 
 his dream seemed arrested. He had gained the top of the 
 bank, he knew not how ; but Sophie was gone ; Mrs. Brakehill 
 was gone, too. 
 
222 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 
 
 Could he move bis hand ? He would try. He could. What 
 was it he touched in front of him — the table ? Yes ; and this 
 was a chair he was sitting in. 
 
 As through a haze one makes out familiar objects, he began 
 to remember the events of the preceding day, beginning with 
 the hour in Sophie's drawing-room. How far off that hour 
 seemed ! 
 
 He must have been asleep. He felt stupefied, though not as 
 a man feels when he has taken too much Avine. Yet he must 
 have been asleep some time, for the wax candles were burning 
 low, the flowers on the tables were drooping, and the morning 
 light was stealthily creeping in. 
 
 He made these facts out by slow degrees ; then the strange- 
 ness of his being alone suddenly occurred to him. Had they 
 left him there to sleep t 
 
 There might be yet time to post Sophie's letter. He knew 
 the ways of the house ; he would leave it. If people came, as 
 they doubtless would, to look after him, they w^ould simply find 
 he was gone ; his unnatural sleep must have been due to the 
 overwrought state of his brain. 
 
 He rose and moved somewhat unsteadily toward the door, 
 feeling rather than seeing his way. He had only gone a few 
 steps when he stumbled against something in his path. It was 
 a prostrate figure. 
 
 *' Well, perhaps, after all," was his first thought, " we may 
 have been having a drinking bout — at least, here is one of us 
 down. Now, who is it .^ " 
 
 Taking a candle, he bent down to look, but recoiled with a 
 cry of horror ; for there, still with the flower fastened in his 
 button-hole by his wife, lay Brakehill — motionless, lifeless — a 
 wide, terrible gash drawn across his bloody throat. 
 
 His eyes had a fixed frantic look. His shirt and the floor 
 round him were drenched with blood. 
 
 Featherstone picked up a weapon close by, which was wet 
 and had almost slipped from his hand. It was the very scimiter 
 
 that had hung over the mantelpiece — Lord B 's gift to- 
 
 Blanche ! Great heaven ? What should he do ? 
 
 At that moment the door opened a little way, and Mrs. Brake- 
 hill, in her dressing-gown, appeared on the threshold. 
 
 *' Are you, gentlemen, ever going to break up ? " said she, in' 
 her sweet voice. ** Waters went hours ago. Why don't you-" 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HRR DRAMA, 223 
 
 answer ? " Then she came in. " My God ! what is this ?" she 
 cried, as her eyes fell on the body of her murdered husband! 
 Then, turning to Featherstone with blazing eyes : " Oh, wretch. 
 Yoii have done it ! I heard you quarrel ; I grew uneasy at the 
 silence, and — oh, heaven ! " 
 
 "Are you mad?" cried Featherstone, ''that you should say 
 this to me ? You may be overheard." 
 
 "And why should I not be overheard? I tell you, j^// have 
 done it." 
 
 Before Featherstone could reply or interpose, she had rung 
 the bell, roused the house, and left the room. 
 
 Stupefied with horror, he stood motionless. At length he 
 heard a cry, '* Help ! help ! Police ! police ! " rend the still 
 morning air — a cry soon followed by a hurrying of feet through 
 the hall. 
 
 He was conscious of nothing more till a heavy hand was laid 
 upon his shoulder ; then he turned to face his position. Sophie 
 would have to go without her letter. 
 
 The policeman, who had already mutely arrested Featherstone, 
 turned to Mrs. Brakehill, who had entered with him, while not 
 only the agitated domestics, but passengers from the street, had 
 gathered together in the room. 
 
 Two more of the police now entered, raised the lifeless form 
 of Brakehill and laid it on a couch. 
 
 "You charge this person with the murder of your husband?" 
 said the first functionary of the law, with the mechanical 
 impassiveness of his class. 
 
 She then proceeded with her relation. She had left her hus- 
 band and the accused man with a friend, whom she and one of 
 the servants, retiring late to rest, had heard long since leave the 
 house. 
 
 She had heard high words of menace addressed by Feather- 
 stone to her husband — a fact to which the same servant also 
 bore witness. She had felt a little uneasy, but it was not till 
 she found her husband had not entered his bedroom at daybreak 
 that she became really anxious. 
 
 Unable to endure longer suspense, she had then risen and 
 gone down to the dining-room. There she found her murdered 
 husband's body, and Featherstone standing over it. No one 
 else was present. 
 
 " And there," cried she, suddenly perceiving the stained 
 
224 ^'//-^ ACTRESS AND HEk DRaMA. 
 
 weapon—" there is the instrument with which he effected llU 
 crime.'' 
 
 Early that morning Featherstone was brought before the 
 magistrate of the district and committed for trial. 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 The summer was over, and all metropolitan holiday-makers, 
 except a privileged few, had returned to the horrors of a London 
 November, with its thick fogs and quagmires of mud. 
 
 Amongst the placards which adorned dead walls or scaffold- 
 ings, by far the most conspicuous was that which announced 
 Mrs. Brakehill's approaching reappearance at the Sun Theatre. 
 
 Although some people thought that that event should have 
 been longer delayed, it must be remembered that the vocation 
 of an actor denies leisure even to grief, and that several 
 months had already elapsed since the occurrence of her 
 domestic tragedy. 
 
 During this interval Featherstone, though " committed " for 
 Mr. Brakehill's murder, had not yet been brought to trial. He 
 had been stricken down by an attack of brain fever, from the 
 effects of which he was now slowly recovering — coming back to 
 life in all probabihty only to quit it, since he could not disguise 
 from himself— nor did his lawyer attempt it — that his case was 
 a bad one. 
 
 Those were dark days for Sophie. Many women in her posi- 
 tion would have been utterly prostrated ; but in that slight, 
 fragile form of hers beat a strong, brave heart, the indomitable 
 courage of which so sustained her that she could minister to 
 him, whenever the regulations of the prison permitted, the solace 
 of her presence or her tendance. 
 
 Besides, she felt certain that the innocence of her lover would 
 be established. There were times, indeed, in the dead watches 
 of the night, when the thought would flash upon her of how it 
 would be should it prove otherwise. At such times her terror 
 seemed to take a spectral shape, and some hideous phantom 
 seemed to gaze into her eyes with eyes of fire. It would be all 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 225 
 
 she could do to keep from shrieking aloud, while her teeth 
 chattered and she shivered in every limb. 
 
 These terrible visitations, however, were but rare. Even with 
 the morning returned her faith that all would go well. 
 
 A week before her reappearance at the theatre, Mrs. Brake- 
 hill was sitting in her charmingly-furnished boudoir. Dusk was 
 falling ; but instead of ordering her lamp, she gave herself up 
 to a firelight reverie, scarcely a pleasant one, if judged by the 
 expression of her face, which wore a look that gradually 
 darkened, as if struggling hope had been overcome by fear. 
 She started when the door opened and Waters walked in ; but 
 she said, quietly, scarcely turning her head : 
 
 "Good afternoon. I saw nothing of you yesterday evening." 
 
 " No, darling," he answered, taking both her hands and 
 kissing her. " Quite unexpectedly I met Lady Wynville at the 
 Gaiety matinee. She is only here en route for Paris, and 
 insisted on my dining with her." 
 
 "Was her daughter there 1 She was, or you would not have 
 accepted. You love that girl. Oh, you might as well be frank 
 with me," she said, with a slight, hard laugh, that had more 
 menace in it than mirth. " Let my hands go, please." 
 
 *' Certainly, if you wish it ! Well, Blanche, I ivill be frank 
 with you. The thing can be put off no longer. I love you now 
 as I have always done. I am a cold man, not given to fall in 
 love. You are the only woman that ever moved me. To mo 
 you are ever fascinating— ever adorable. But I will not disguise' 
 from you that 1 am worldly and ambitious." 
 
 " And you think this girl will marry you 1 " 
 
 " She is going to do so ; it is this fact that I came to tell yoU"."" 
 
 She sat perfectly silent. So he went on without much mis- 
 giving and with Some show of ardour : 
 
 " Blanche, my darling, whoever I may call my wffe, I shall be^ 
 married really only to you. Can we not be all to each othei^' 
 that we ever have been ? " 
 
 Had he seen her lips pressed tightly together, or the strange" 
 light in her eyes, he would not have done what he did, which^ 
 was to bend over her caressingly. She sprang up as if she' had' 
 been stung, while her eyes, now meeting his, seemed all at once- 
 filled with infinite hate and scorn. 
 
 " How dare you," she said — "how dare you insult me in tliis- 
 way ? Do you think I will ever forgive it to you 1 Not as long* 
 
 16 
 
226 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 as we two live ! What ! I to serve your passion, she to bear 
 your name ? For me the disgrace, for her the honour ? I gave 
 myself to you because there seemed no chance of our marrying. 
 But, now, and, my God, after all that has been ! " 
 
 *' I think I would leave the Almighty's name out of the 
 business," he replied, with a sneer. 
 
 " Perhaps so,'' she said ; " but if I had no pity, I had no fear. 
 There is nothing more to be said — leave me ! " 
 
 " You will be more reasonable in a day or two." 
 
 *' Perhaps so " — her voice was very low — "will you go now, 
 or shall I ring for my servant ? " 
 
 " No ; I should be sorry to put you to that trouble ; only act 
 as well next week as you have done this afternoon, and your 
 triumph will be sure. Farewell." 
 
 When the door had closed behind him, she sat still some 
 little time, as if too stricken to move. At length she rose and 
 began a hurried walk up and down the room. 
 
 She had not loved the man who had just left her with any 
 high or noble love. Thoit it was not in her to give. The 
 strongest feeling of which she was capable was the desire to 
 triumph. She had been enthralled and spellbound by this cold 
 nature, which only she could kindle. She had loved him with 
 a love fierce, violent, unholy ; but it had been the one great 
 passion of her life. 
 
 The days — full of fierce, turbulent struggle for Blanche, of 
 darkness and horror for Sophie — passed on their course. 
 
 The night for the former's re-appearance on the stage came 
 at length. 
 
 A marked feature in our poor human nature is its passionate 
 interest in the morbid and the terrible. That a crowd should 
 eagerly rush to inspect a house which fire has devastated, or in 
 which murder has been committed, is not, perhaps, surprising ; 
 but there are those for whom the very houses that adjoin the 
 gutted building have a fascination — those who will count it a 
 rare privilege to buy their ounce of tobacco at the same shop 
 where the latest hero of the police-sheet made similar purchases, 
 till that awkward incident befell him which put a final end to his 
 smoking, as to his recreations in general. 
 
 The diseased excitement thus evinced is by no means con- 
 fined to the so-called vulgar. 
 As might have been expected, therefore, from the tragic 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 227 
 
 events we have related, the Sun Theatre was densely thronged 
 in all parts, on the night of Mrs. Brakehill's re-appearance. 
 
 No sooner had the booking-office opened than every box and 
 stall was secured. A completely new play honoured the occasion. 
 But there was really no need for it. Had the manager chosen 
 even one of our great master-pieces, I believe the house would 
 have been no less crammed. 
 
 The new decorations, the fair faces, the splendid toilets made 
 the Sun Theatre quite pleasant to survey, while the musicians 
 were tuning up for the overture. 
 
 In front all the talk was, of course, about the heroine of the 
 night. One young lady wondered how she could have appeared 
 on the stage again ; another thought it showed great nerve, and 
 very much admired her ; a third wondered how she would look, 
 and " whenever the music would begin." 
 
 Then the critics lounged in, trying how to disguise their 
 interest, and not to look less bored than usual. 
 
 Behind the scenes there was, of course, all the bustle and 
 excitement inseparable from the first night of a new play. 
 Without, however, lingering at the wing or peering into the 
 green-room, we will go at once where probably many would 
 like to accompany us, that is, to Mrs. Brakehill's dressing-room. 
 We find her in a chair in the front of her looking-glass, where 
 her faithful attendant. Flower (herself quite a bewitching young 
 lady), is arranging the beautiful dark hair of her mistress. 
 
 *' Why, I declare !" Flower exclaims, in her sweetest tones, 
 " you do not seem the very least bit excited about to-night." 
 
 " No ; I am quite calm to-night." 
 
 " And what a lovely part you have," went on the other. ^* Oh, 
 I say, won't you have a lot of bouquets ? I should think Mr. 
 Waters would throw half-a-dozen himself." 
 
 Mrs. Brakehill started, as with sharp physical pain. 
 
 ** Have I hurt you, ma'am ?" cried the vivacious Flower. " I 
 thought I was brushing your hair quite gently." 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing," replied Mrs. Brakehill. " I was looking 
 for my handkerchief." 
 
 " There ! they are striking up the overture. How it excites 
 me. I declare I shall have to go on the stage myself, one day. 
 At all events, I could take the part of a lady's-maid." 
 
 " Foolish child," said the actress, with a smile. ^* I have no 
 intention of letting you leave me— 1 like you a great deal too well.'* 
 
528 TtiE ACTRESS AHD tiER DRAMA. 
 
 At which the handmaiden protested that it was her unshakable! 
 resolve to live and die in the service of her mistress, who really 
 had a great fascination for her. 
 
 Then Mrs. Brakehill rose. Flower remarking, as she put on 
 that lady's simple dress for the first act, that it did seem a shame 
 to hide such a beautiful neck and such lovely arms ; but she 
 added, more cheerfully : 
 
 " You will be able to show them in your great ball scene, in 
 the fourth act, won't you ? " At which Mrs. Brakehill smiled 
 rather faintly, and said : 
 
 " Why, Flower, I believe you are more vain of me than I am 
 of myself ! " 
 
 The finishing touches were then given to the toilet, which was 
 in the most perfect taste. The music ceased, and loud applause 
 announced that the curtain had risen. 
 
 The call-boy's summons came, and Mrs. Brakehill went to 
 take her position at the wing. 
 
 The stillness which falls behind the scenes after the curtain 
 has gone up contrasts strangely with the noise and bustle which 
 precede its rising. People move stealthily, as if bent on theft 
 or murder behind the " set." In the green-room they speak in 
 voices carefully moderated, and at the wings only in whispers. 
 
 "And here she is ! " exclaimed Mr. Prince, who acted the 
 father of the play heroine. This was Blanche's cue, and she 
 went on. 
 
 The house rose and thundered its applause. The men shouted 
 " Brava ! " the women waved their handkerchiefs. You would 
 really have thought that the murder of the unfortunate Mr. 
 Brakehill had in some way redounded to the nobility of his wife 
 as a woman and to the greatness of her talent as an actress. 
 
 At length the tumult subsided. A few indefatigable young 
 men tried to awake a fresh outburst ; but, having been severely 
 and simultaneously hissed, they gave in, and, after looking round 
 defiantly and superciliously, at length settled themselves to 
 enjoy the night's performance. 
 
 We shall not attempt to follow the plot of the piece, which 
 was somewhat melodramatic. The first act passed off with con- 
 siderable animation, the principal performers being called before 
 the curtam. 
 
 Of course, all the talk was of Mrs. Brakehill. Some people 
 thought she looked even better than before the murder of her 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 229 
 
 husband. Others, more romantic, said they could see unmis- 
 takable signs of keen suffering in her face ; but all agreed she 
 was acting with less spirit than usual. 
 
 " It won't do," said one critic to another ; " she is trusting to 
 the situations, and doing nothing for the part herself." 
 
 "And a poor enough part it is, so far," replied the other. 
 
 On the night of this theatrical event so long looked forward 
 to, Waters was dining with a friend at his club. 
 
 Waters was a man who, while he thoroughly enjoyed the 
 pleasures of life — all those, at least, that could be derived from 
 the senses — kept his reHsh for them by avoiding excesses. 
 
 On this night, however, he had indulged in wine more freely 
 than was his wont. The two men were sitting at coffee, when 
 Sir WiUiam Boulton, whose guest he was, said, as he lit a 
 cigar : 
 
 " What do you say, Waters, to looking in at the Sun 
 Theatre ? Lady Grace and her mother will be glad to see 
 us in their box. I hear Brakehill has only one good scene, and 
 that's at the end of the fourth act. Come, what do you say ? " 
 
 The other did not seem very warmly to second the plan. 
 
 " I tell you what it is, old boy," cried Sir William, with a 
 laugh : " you don't want Brakehill to see you with that pretty 
 wife of yours, that is to be." 
 
 " No, upon my soul, you're wrong," said Waters. 
 
 " Come, then, and face the enemy. At such a distance you 
 can afford to be brave. I want to see if she has been pining for 
 you. She is certainly a fine-looking woman, but to my taste just 
 a shade less of her would be an improvement." 
 
 Waters was unorthodox enough to return from coffee to 
 champagne, after having drained two glasses of which he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 *' Well, I'm your man — lead on ! " 
 
 That last glass, beyond moderation, is often an important 
 factor, not only in the life of the drinker, but in the lives of 
 others. 
 
 All through the evening Mrs. Brakehill had kept her eyes 
 fixed on private box A, which was one of the most conspicuous 
 in the theatre. 
 
 On this occasion it was occupied by two ladies. One was 
 well advanced in life. Shs had a full, round, good-natured, but 
 thoroughly foolish face, Her companion was quite young. 
 
2.30 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 Her face was oval, her complexion fair, her eyes soft and sleepy, 
 her mouth small, but somewhat scornful in its expression. The 
 reader need not be told that the two women were Lady Grace 
 and her mother. 
 
 Just at the close of the third act, when the house was so 
 hushed that you could have heard a pin f^iU, as Mrs. Brakehill, 
 in low, passionate tones, described the retribution due to a 
 faithless lover, she heard the door of a box gently open and shut. 
 Two men had entered box A, one of whom was leaning over 
 Lady Grace's chair. From the actress to this man flashed a 
 look swift as lightning and charged with meaning. On that 
 look the curtain fell. 
 
 " By Jove ! " cried Benson, the critic of the Moon^io Jenkins, 
 the critic of the Earthy " did you see that ? " 
 
 " You mean that averted side-look of Brakehill's ? The best 
 thing she has done to night. I half-fancied it might have set 
 the place on fire ! " 
 
 " Oh, but the look was at that box. Waters is there. I think 
 there will be a storm in that quarter before very long." 
 ''What quarter ? " asked uninitiated Jenkins. 
 "You haven't heard about the affair? Oh, it's no end of a 
 joke. I could manage a brandy-and-soda. How do you feel?" 
 Jenkins's feelings going in the same direction, the two censors 
 rose and made their way to the bar of the theatre, where they 
 found a few brother critics, with one or two semi-literary young 
 men, who liked to be seen in their company. 
 
 Some members of the group soon began to make merry over 
 their liquor, at the expense of author and actors, while the more 
 knowing ones talked apart of Mrs. Brakehill and Waters. One 
 man deposed to having met that gentleman in the lobby, and 
 gave it as his opinion that the gentleman had been dining, on 
 which the interlocutor, pulling out his watch, remarked that he 
 had not dined yet, and that he envied any man who had. 
 
 While this was going on, while young men were paying 
 private box visits to fair ladies, for which purpose chiefly some 
 of them were come, and while the orchestra was playing its 
 most spirited music for the fourth and last act, the heroine of 
 the night sat in her dressing-room, trembling and white as 
 death, her marble-cold hands locked tightly in each other. 
 Flowers thought she was going to faint, and poured eau-de- 
 Cologne on her forehead. 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 231 
 
 "Oh, what is the matter, my dear?" said the poor maid. 
 ^' You do look so bad. Let me take your dress off. It's high 
 time to change for the next act." 
 
 But Mrs. Brakehill sat lost and silent. She was seeing again 
 the look with which Waters had answered hers — a look of quiet 
 insolence, which said plainly as words : " Yes, you don't like 
 the position, do you ? You would like to spring. Do you think 
 it would be advisable ? " • 
 
 *' Do let me begin, ma'am," implored faithful Flower. ^' We 
 shall never be ready if you don't. Remember the next act is 
 your ball scene, and you must look lovely. I say, didn't they 
 applaud you when you came off? Now, my dear, do rouse 
 yourself. Why, there's the music ! " 
 
 Yes, the music had begun. It went on playing while scene- 
 shifters and carpenters got ready the next set, now and then 
 swearing good-humoredly at each other. Light-hearted and 
 light-heeled actresses came singing from their rooms to the 
 wing. Through the half-open door of his room the manager 
 might be seen gaily chatting with his friends over libations of 
 champagne, or brandy-and-soda, for, whatever the critics might 
 say, the new piece w^as going capitally with the house. 
 
 Spite of the general and noisy animation without, ]\Irs. 
 Brakehill still sat moveless and abstracted until Flower almost 
 forced her to swallow a few mouthfuls of wine, which seemed 
 to revive her. 
 
 " Now we shall do ! " cried the delighted tire-woman, as she 
 found herself able to proceed, though still slowly, with the 
 dressing of her mistress. 
 
 Suddenly the actress turned round, with a dangerous and 
 evil fire in her eyes, and exclaimed fiercely, " It is to be, then. 
 You have taken your part ! " — words which happened to occur 
 in her next scene. 
 
 Flower, who thought she was rehearsing, ejaculated, " Splen- 
 did, splendid !" and clapped her hands ; adding, however, "But 
 we must really make haste.'' 
 
 " Mrs. Brakehill called ! " cried the call-boy from without. 
 
 Blanche had only just begun to put on the elaborate ball- 
 dress in which she was to go through the business of the last 
 act ; but she was now as excited as she had before been 
 lethargic. Her eyes glittered, and, even through her rouge, a 
 bright spot burned on either cheek. 
 
2^2 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 She looked "glorious," Flower said, as she lit her dainty 
 ears with two great drops of light in the shape of superb 
 brilliants. 
 
 Blanche talked and talked, passing rapidly from one matter 
 to another. Then she laughed and sang snatches of songs ; 
 but when, for the second time, the alarming announcement came 
 that the stage was waiting, she was found sobbing hysterically 
 on the shoulder of her maid. ^ 
 
 Poor Flower, almost beside herself, prayed her to be com- 
 posed. 
 
 ** You know," she said, " they can't raise the curtain till you 
 are ready. Do listen to the noise ! On my word, they are 
 hissing ! The brutes in the gallery are hooting and whist- 
 ling." 
 
 Indeed, the audience had reason to be displeased ; for the 
 hour was late, and the music had more than once ceased and 
 recommenced. And now the manager came to Blanche's door 
 to ask what was the matter that she did not appear. 
 
 Learning the true state of the case, he was about to bespeak 
 a few minutes' more patience from the audience on her behalf, 
 when the lady darted from her room and said she was ready. 
 
 "Don't be frightened," she said, "for the play shall be a 
 success." 
 
 Then she turned and kissed Flower. In another minute the 
 curtain had risen on the appeased audience. 
 
 The new act was one which afforded Blanche great oppor- 
 tunities for the display of her power, and of these she fully 
 availed herself. In the preceding acts there had been an im- 
 pression that the great Mrs. Brakehill was not all that she 
 used to be ; but now every look and tone came home, and the 
 riveted crowd felt, and with truth, that they had never seen 
 such acting before. I wonder if they ever will again ? 
 
 Even the performers who acted with Blanche, when they 
 were once off the scene, spoke of her with amazement. 
 
 *' Brakehill is superb. She is carrying everything before her. 
 I thought at first she was gone." 
 
 " Not she," put in another. " Don't you see, she was holding 
 in for this." 
 
 The audience listened as if they were spellbound, and when 
 the play neared its close, passed from fierce excitement into 
 pathos, the women wept unrestrainedly, while the men, to 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 233 
 
 avoid doing so, knitted their brows, and looked sternly before 
 them. Then came the last word — that word which divides an 
 author from his fate — and the curtain fell. A hurricane of 
 applause followed. Then the curtain again rose, and instantly 
 the actress stood almost knee-deep in a rain of bouquets and 
 wreaths. Over the storm of sound, her voice rose clear and 
 piercing, commanding silence. There was something awful 
 in the instant cessation of madly clapping hands and cheering 
 voices. It was as if the angel of death had touched all 
 present. 
 
 Mrs. Brakehill's face was white and ghastly, but she did not 
 tremble, neither did her voice falter, when she began to 
 speak. 
 
 " I thank you all," she said, '' for your kindness ; but I have 
 a graver matter to speak of. In that box" she pointed to one 
 from which Waters was slightly leaning forward ; " in that 
 box stands the murderer of my husband ! " 
 
 The effect produced by these words were electrical. Lady 
 Grace sprang up ; but Waters, with a half-stifled oath, put his 
 hand on her shoulder, and forced her into a chair. " Would 
 you make a scene," he whispered, " and ruin me ? Don't you 
 see the woman's mad ? " 
 
 All eyes were riveted on his box. 
 
 " That's he ! that's he ! " cried many ; but as he again came 
 forward and made a sign with his hand, there was again a dead 
 silence. 
 
 " Is any medical gentleman present ? " he asked, slowly and 
 softly. " This poor lady is my friend. I half-feared it would 
 be so ; under the excitement her brain has given way." 
 
 " No, no ! I am not mad," cried the voice from the stage. 
 " That man is my husband's murderer. I will prove it. I will 
 prove it : " but here consciousness deserted her, and Blanche 
 fell motionless on the stage. 
 
 *' Poor thing, poor thing !'' said a few of those in the stalls, 
 evidently disposed to accept Water's statement. 
 
 " He is going 1 he is going ! " burst forth from many in the 
 pit and gallery, in tones of menace. 
 
 ** To the stage-door to inquire," said Waters, to a gentleman 
 in the stalls, who immediately circulated the information. 
 
 After a minute or two had passed, the manager came forward 
 to state that Mrs, Brakehill, suffering from a recent shock, and 
 
234 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 
 
 from the strain of the night's excitement, was still insensible^ 
 but that the best medical aid had already been volunteered. 
 
 When Blanche had been conveyed home, the statement of 
 Waters received an authentic corroboration. The physicians 
 pronounced her really mad. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It was the day of Featherstone's trial— a dull, dreary, January 
 day. The court was crowded and great excitement prevailed, 
 though not of course, to the degree that Avould have been the 
 case had Blanche Brakehill been called as a witness. Time, 
 however, though it had in some measure restored her bodily 
 health, had not given back her reason. Hopes, indeed, 
 were entertained that she might in time recover it, but they 
 were too vague to form a ground for further delaying the trial. 
 To resume, the witnesses had been examined on both sides. 
 Amongst these had been W^aters, who swore that he left Brake- 
 hill in his usual health late on the night preceding the dis- 
 covery of the murder ; also that he had left with him Featherstone, 
 who was, or who feigned to be, overcome with fatigue. 
 
 The servants repeated what they had stated before the 
 magistrate — that on retiring late they had heard loud words 
 (the sense of which escaped them) between their master and 
 Featherstone, and that they had also some time afterward 
 heard the street door open and close, a fact which tallied with 
 Waters's account of his departure. 
 
 The nature of the evidence for the defence will be seen from 
 the concluding remarks of Mr. Sergeant Belford, the prisoner's 
 counsel. 
 
 *' I ask you to remember, gentlemen of the jury," said the 
 learned advocate, " that the prisoner whose fate you will have 
 to decide is known as a gentleman of irreproachable reputation, 
 of a humane and social disposition, of a happy and even 
 temper. All this has been deposed to by those who knew him 
 in the intimacy of private life, by various members of the club 
 to which he belonged ; by those, also, who knew him in his pro- 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 235 
 
 fessional life — the manager and the leading actors of the Sun 
 Theatre. 
 
 *' Bear in mind, too, I entreat you, that Mr. Featherstone, 
 at the date of the murder, was engaged to be married ; that he 
 had in his keeping not only his own happiness, but that of one 
 dear to him. Bear in mind that he could have no motive for 
 the crime of which he now stands accused, that he was highly 
 prosperous as a dramatic author, and that his success was in a 
 great measure due to the talents of Mrs. Brakehill. What utter 
 madness, then, would it have been for him to raise his hand 
 against her husband, with whom, as with herself, he had long 
 been on the most friendly terms ? We find, therefore, not only 
 that he had no motive for perpetrating this crime, but every 
 motive against it. 
 
 " The only facts, indeed, on which the case against this 
 unfortunate gentleman rests are his presence in Brakehill's 
 house, subsequently to the murder, and the evidence given 
 before the magistrate by Mrs. Brakehill, that he had been found 
 by her kneeling beside her dead husband, with a blood-stained 
 weapon in his hand. 
 
 " Mrs. Brakehill, as you have heard, cannot be examined 
 here to-day, as to the truth of her statement. But, gentlemen, 
 1 put it, is it not highly possible that the deprivation of reason 
 under which she now suffers, had attacked her for a while under 
 the first shock of her husband's murder, and that her testimony 
 was that of a woman deliriously excited, if not insane, at the 
 time it was given ! But were every word of that evidence true, 
 could any fair mind regard it as conclusive of this hitherto irre- 
 proachable man's guilt.'* And what, gentlemen, is the testimony 
 borne by those two eminent physicians, Doctor Holt and 
 Doctor Williams ? They both examined Featherstone on the 
 day when the murder was discovered, and subsequently, and 
 they both tell you that his symptoms were those of a man slowly 
 recovering from the effects of a powerful opiate. They fully 
 confirm, in a word, the statement of the prisoner before the 
 magistrate, in which he expressed his strong conviction that he 
 had been drugged. Even could Mrs. Brakehill's statement be 
 relied on that on encountering him he seemed dazed and 
 confused, that fact would quite cohere with the opinion of the 
 physicians that an opiate had probably been administered. But 
 even were doubt possible on that point, how else but * dazed 
 
236 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 and stupefied ' could a man appear who had suddenly seen in 
 his path the murdered body of a friend — a friend who had 
 shortly before seemed full of health and animiation ? What 
 more natural than that Featherstone, on reviving to conscious- 
 ness, finding himself alone, the time morning, and knowing the 
 ways of the house, should prepare to leave it ? 
 
 " He goes toward the door, he comes suddenly upon the 
 prostrate body, he kneels and examines it, his eye is arrested by 
 the murderous weapon, He acts as, I believe, any man in his 
 place would have acted— he takes it up, and vvhile in his horror 
 he asks himself what is the best thing to do — how the awful 
 news is to be broken to the person whom the tragedy most 
 intimately affects — that very person herself appears, and accuses 
 him of the murder of his friend. 
 
 *' It is not my duty to explain this fell deed, or to suggest its 
 perpetrator. It is sufficient for me to show that it has not been 
 brought home to the prisoner. Amongst the speculations to 
 which this mysterious event gives rise, what is there to shut out 
 the possibility that it may have been due to BrakehilFs own act ? 
 The wound was precisely of that kind which a man may inflict 
 upon himself. 
 
 " The Brakehills, though the wife was in receipt of a large 
 salary, lived in a state of luxury which was possibly beyond 
 their means, and it has been proved to you that the unfortunate 
 husband very shortly before his death, had lost largely on the 
 turf. Heavy losses, concealed jealousy, however ill-founded, of 
 a wife who attracted so much homage, or other motives, may 
 have impelled him in a moment of excitement to the fatal act. 
 
 " I do not say that any of the suppositions are probable, but 
 I put to you whether, at least, they are not more probable than 
 that a man of unblemished character should have committed so 
 foul a murder upon a friend whose interests were one with his 
 own } " 
 
 The sergeant sat down amidst considerable excitement. The 
 Crown prosecutor then did his best to lessen Featherstone's 
 chance of life by a long-winded reply, after which the judge 
 summed up to the effect that certain facts given in evidence 
 doubtless told forcibly against the prisoner ; that if they left no 
 reasonable doubt of his guilt it was not necessary to have 
 evidence of motive — the law would presume it ; that, if how- 
 ever, they could entertaip a reasonable doubt, either from the 
 
T^iE ACTRESS And her drama. 235? 
 
 testimony of the medical men, or from that borne to the 
 prisoner's character, he ought certainly to have the benefit of it. 
 In brief, this dignified functionary lucidly restated all the 
 difficulties of the problem, and invited the jury to solve it. 
 
 The fateful twelve were absent from their box just a quarter 
 of an hour. On their return the question, " Gentlemen, are you 
 all agreed in your verdict ? " was duly asked ; the answer, " We 
 are," was duly returned. 
 
 ** Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?'^ 
 
 *' Not guilty," said the foreman ; and from the late spellbound 
 crowd burst a cry of relief, followed by a shout of applause, 
 which was at once sternly repressed. 
 
 Thus from Featherstone the horror of a shameful and violent 
 death had been averted. The life, however, to which he had 
 been restored offered to him a future from which the strongest 
 fortitude might have shrunk. 
 
 He had been absolved by the law, but he felt that by the 
 world generally he would be suspected, even if not condemned. 
 And, besides, a man who had been tried for murder could never 
 be Sophie's husband. 
 
 It was under this bitter thought, most of all, that he bent as 
 the officials helped him into the cab which was to bear the 
 broken-down man to his old abode. 
 
 When the populace caught sight of him many cheered, but 
 not a few hissed. He was lost and stunned. He did not even 
 draw up the window as the cab drove offi 
 
 How strange it seemed to be back in the old place, to see 
 the old books on the shelves, the likenesses of a few chosen 
 friends on the mantelpiece ! 
 
 Of course, the first thing to be done was to write to Sophie. 
 For this purpose he went to the familiar writing-table, and on 
 opening the drawer he came upon his half-completed letter to 
 her, written that ill-starred day on the night of which began for 
 him the great trouble of his life. 
 
 He was reading it over curiously, as the composition of 
 another man, and had just reached the words, " My own 
 darling love, light and summer of my life, you of whom the very 
 thought is a benediction," when the door opened, and he was 
 given a letter which had just been delivered by hand. It 
 was from Sophie. He first kissed the seal, then broke it and 
 read : 
 
238 THE ACTRESS AMD HER DRAMA, 
 
 " Some one who was in court for me, my dearest, brought me 
 the news. I knew it could be no other. Still I feel weak. The 
 fight with my trouble for you has been so long. You will dine 
 with us to-night. You must be prepared for aunt making no 
 end of fuss over you. Please come, dear, the very soonest you 
 can, for I long to see you more than words can say. 
 
 " Sophie." 
 
 An hour afterward Sophie was sitting alone in the drawing- 
 room. Her face is indeed worn and tells of weary and sleepless 
 nights ; yet a bright spot of excitement burns on either cheek. 
 She has on her prettiest dress, and altogether looks adorably 
 sweet and tender. 
 
 The house occupied by Sophie and her aunt, stood in a road, 
 the quietude of which was almost melancholy — a quietude 
 which certain regularly-recurring sounds seemed only to in- 
 tensify. 
 
 There you can hear the postman at least ten doors off. Mrs. 
 Paynes, who lives next door, borrows the Times for a couple of 
 hours a day, and every afternoon at three and five o'clock the 
 shrill cry of " Paper ! " rings down the road. 
 
 If the milkman is disposed to be chatty with the housemaid 
 or cook, as he frequently is, the conversation in the area is 
 overheard in the drawing-room. Mr. Smith who lives oppositej 
 is an invalid. He dines early and invariably has fish for supper. 
 This you know by hearing every evening at seven o'clock the 
 cry of " Fish, ho ! " If at the time you are thinking of nothing 
 in particular, and are by nature of a reflective turn, you wonder 
 how any invalid can eat so much fish ; you wonder what result 
 such a course of fish eating would have upon yourself ; you 
 wonder if he has a particular fish for every night in the week — 
 if Monday means cod-night, and so on — you wonder what is the 
 fish for this night ; you think what {\^\ yoic would like it to be. 
 In this still spot a street cry gives birth to endless re- 
 flections. 
 
 Before a caller plies knocker or bell, you know he is imminent 
 by hearing him mount the many and steep steps to the hall- 
 door. It was at this sound that Sophie now sprang up, clasping 
 her hands upon her heart. She then sat down again, trembling 
 as once more she heard the familiar resolute knock. 
 
 Ah, how often had it set that fond heart of hers beating. In 
 
THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA, 239 
 
 another moment she was in his arms, weeping tears of irre- 
 pressible joy and thankfulness. 
 
 " My poor darling," she said, when the first minutes of meeting 
 were over, " how worn you look ! " 
 
 " And you," he answered, " look half like a ghost. Sophie," 
 he went on, after a pause, " I'm going away — far away, and for 
 a very long time. Perhaps I shall never come back again. 
 Shall you miss me ? '' 
 
 " You are going away ? " she said, looking up in his face with 
 more wonder than trouble in her eyes. 
 
 '^ Yes, sweetheart, just as far as I can get. Sophie, a man 
 placed in my position never recovers from it, unless the real 
 criminal be discovered. The majority may believe in his 
 innocence, but there will always be others to say, 'Such and 
 such a thing looked strange and dark,' or, * Such and such a 
 point has never been cleared up.' To say the least of it, there 
 are people in the world who will think it quite likely that your 
 affianced husband is a murderer. Would it be well in me, dear, 
 to bring you such a fate ?" he asked, with a bitter smile. 
 
 " I don't understand you," she replied. Her hands were 
 locked fast in each other ; on her face lay the shadow of a great 
 despair. " If in the time we have been parted you have got 
 over loving me, I would so much rather that you told me the 
 truth. Won't you tell me the truth, please?" 
 
 *' Sophie, my love," he answered, bending down and covering 
 her hand with kisses, " most solemnly I have told you the truth, 
 and most solemnly this is the truth also — that I love you more 
 than ever." 
 
 "If that, indeed, be the truth," she said, and the shadow had 
 passed from her face, " if you go away, you do not go without 
 me." 
 
 " God bless your noble heart ! " he cried, his voice quivering ; 
 " but you don't realize what this would be. Besides, I know 
 myself too well. Suppose, in spite of everything, I let you 
 become my wife, how do you think I should repay this grand 
 devotion ? Why, by being often moody and wretched ; I could 
 not help it. And you No, this thing cannot be." 
 
 '* Can't it ? " she said. There was no note of fear in the clear 
 voice which, though low, expressed decision, confidence, and 
 wondrous love, while her eyes were full of a great triumphant 
 light. " If you would be so unhappy with me, then how far 
 
240 THE ACTRESS AND HER DRAMA. 
 
 more unhappy would you be if all companionless ? Arthur,'^ 
 she cried, passionately, " my lover, my king ! if all the world 
 believed you guilty of this crime, do you think I should love 
 you one whit the less ? I love you, and I am not ashamed for 
 you to know it. Life holds only two terrors for me — the dread 
 of losing your love, or that of losing yourself. If you leave me, 
 you take every vestige of joy out of my life. Do you wish to 
 turn all my days into an agony of hopeless longing ! Will you 
 go?" 
 
 She was looking straight at him with those eyes of hers, 
 alvva^'s beautiful, but now glorified by love. 
 
 '' I may go," he answered, " but not without my wife." 
 
 So this brief but critical talk ended in the joy of both, in cX 
 sense of peace and consolation on Featherstone's part which he 
 had never dreamed could be his again. 
 
 How strange it seemed to him to rest that night in his own 
 bed ! What a contrast was there between the cheery, fire-lit 
 room and his prison cell, between his thoughts there and his 
 thoughts of Sophie now ! 
 
 The wedding was hurried on, it being the opinion of all 
 concerned that the interest of his new condition would more 
 than anything divert Featherstone's mind from morbid re- 
 collections. 
 
 For a while, indeed, this result followed his marriage. But a 
 time came, and before very long, when the Sense of disgrace- 
 indelible though unmerited — weighed heavily upon him. I 
 cannot say that, on the whole, he was much better than he had 
 predicted of himself. He would often, for long whiles together, 
 be silent and gloomy. Then Sophie would know that he had 
 . unlocked the closet and was looking at the skeleton within. « 
 
 At such times she never said anything ; but she would often 
 sit at his feet and hold his hand close to her heart, or lean her 
 cheek upon it. His emphatic " Bless you, my treasure 1 " when 
 the mood had passed from him, repaid her for all, for it showed 
 her that he had known and been consoled by her mute sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Ah, these women of ours ! If they are plagues, are they not 
 comforts, too ? 
 
AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH 
 HOTEL. 
 
 :o: 
 
 Long stretches of deserted shore ; limitless wastes of sand 
 blown like smoke by the wind, which in the neighbourhood of 
 La Crosse — a little place on the French sea-coast — seemed never 
 to need rest ; low sand-hills, with lean sea -grasses shivering at 
 their edges, reaching out far into the sea — these were the scene. 
 On the beach stood the one hotel of the place, a long, low, 
 rambling building. Even in summer, in the .height of the 
 season, when a band blew its brazen music under its windows, 
 it could not have been called altogether a cheerful place. In 
 the autumn it was all closed, with the exception of one wing, 
 which was kept open to harbour an occasional visitor or two ; 
 and, at this dreary time of the year, shore and hotel looked just 
 .J;he refuge for a jilted lover, jilted in the most heartless manner. 
 
 The jilted lover, in the present case, was Mr. Walter Locker. 
 Without doubt it is a bad thing even to be crossed in love, but 
 to be jilted, to find your ideal woman no more than a heartless 
 flirt, that is worse. 
 
 Some men under these bitter circumstances console them- 
 selves with society ; others, and these are perhaps the harder 
 hit, want, like wounded animals, to get away from their fellows. 
 So it was with Mr. Locker. 
 
 His friends had helped him to discover this remote seaside 
 retreat, where he might be alone with nature, his grief, and his 
 dead faith — where, if the mood took him, he could address any 
 
 17 
 
242 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL, 
 
 one of them, or all three, in poems, which, for the present at 
 least, his friends would run no risk of hearing. On this last 
 item they congratulated themselves ; and they were most friendly 
 in assisting him to find this remote retreat. They advised him 
 to stay a long, long time. Most likely they had had some ex- 
 perience of love-sick bards, and knew they could but postpone 
 their evil day. While he is away he will spoil whole reams of 
 paper with his grief, the reading of which will be finally 
 inevitable. 
 
 " This poem," he will say, *' was written when I thought my 
 heart must break ; this was an inspiration of the winds ; this 
 was whispered by the sea ; and this I had in confidence from 
 the moonlight." 
 
 But let us look forward no more ; sufficient for the day is the 
 evil thereof 
 
 Round about La Crosse was much good rabbit-shooting, and 
 from the occupation of constant slaughter his friends hoped 
 much for their afflicted poet. 
 
 " Yes," he sighed, bitterly, as he surveyed the scene before 
 him on one wild, windy October afternoon. " Yes, this is the 
 place for me — the place of places." 
 
 A strong north-west wind prevailed, and it blew the sand 
 from the shore and the foam from the sea in the eyes of the 
 unhappy poet ; but above the wind the sun shone, and touched 
 with sharp light the wild crests of the vast, on-coming thundering 
 waves. Great, splendid, broad pieces of seaweed, warm from 
 the sea's tumult, and smelling of the sea, were cast momentarily 
 upon the strand. Locker picked up piece after piece, and drank 
 in its pungency. 
 
 He walked along the shore, he inspected the boats, pulled 
 up high and dry, and wondered how many storms they had 
 weathered. The sea air did its work. Rebel against the fact 
 as he might, it remained a fact all the same — he was getting 
 hungry. He retraced his steps to the modest hotel. It wanted 
 yet an hour to dinner. He went to his room, and tried to be- 
 guile the time by unpacking. 
 
 It was a small room, and when the wind blew violently it 
 shook with it. It looked straight out to sea, and when there 
 was a high sea on you could hear, even though the windows 
 were shut, the sound of the waves confused with the shriller 
 note of the gale. 
 
AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL: 243 
 
 At six o'clock the welcome bell rang out through the wind, 
 and Walter Locker proceeded very gladly to the salle-d-manger. 
 The waiters had been dispensed with when the regular season 
 ended, and the landlady herself, a good, buxom body, waited at 
 the table. It was laid for two persons only. 
 
 " Who will be the companion of my meal ? '^ thought Locker, 
 as he began upon some very watery soup. 
 
 To reach the salle-d-manger from the sleeping apartments 
 one has to cross a courtyard ; and, while Locker was asking 
 himself the question we have just mentioned, the door flew open, 
 letting in a tremendous rush of wind, which, with a shriek, 
 threatened for a moment to extinguish the light, and, being shut 
 out and defeated, wailed menacingly. 
 
 " Ah, Madame Omont, what a night ! " exclaimed a fresh, 
 clear, and singularly buoyant voice ; and the speaker seated 
 herself opposite Locker. Of course you had divined that the 
 other guest would be a " she." 
 
 Our bard was very susceptible to the charms of the fair sex, 
 as where will you find me a bard who is not ? Long before the 
 simple repast had been concluded he had taken in the good 
 points of his vis-a-vis. She was tall, and he liked tall women ; 
 she had a well-shaped, lithe figure. Her face, cut clearly as a 
 cameo, seemed bloodless — a peculiarity which, while it some- 
 what detracted from her beauty, gave her face a special indi- 
 viduality not without its own fascination. Her eyes were clearly 
 and coldly blue. Her small, classically-shaped head was covered 
 with a great deal of light, fluffy, golden hair, which, surrounding 
 her face like a frame, seemed to make it even paler by contrast 
 with this aureole of brightness. 
 
 Her manners were unusually self-possessed. They were a 
 triumph of quietness. 
 
 While Locker partook of fish and wondered what it might be ; 
 while he dispatched, almost at two mouthfuls, a small piece of 
 warm, tough — oh, how tough ! — underdone mutton ; while he 
 made equally short work of an equally small piece of veal, the 
 lady, whom we may as well at once introduce to the reader as 
 Miss Bertha Hardy, carried on an animated conversation with 
 the landlady, who, as I have said before, did the honours of her 
 table. 
 
 The lady, who was evidently English, though she spoke 
 French with a perfectly French accent, remarked : 
 
244 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL. 
 
 ** Oh, niadame, I have had such a delightful walk to-day. I 
 must have gone miles and miles/' 
 
 " And mademoiselle was not frightened to go so far by her- 
 self?" 
 
 *^ Frightened ! when I had my dear old dog, Czar, with me ? 
 Why, I'd go with him to the end of the world, and feel no fear. 
 Now give me some more mutton, madame ; you don't want to 
 see me die of starvation before your eyes, do you? Mind, a 
 larger piece than before ; I am desperately hungry ! " 
 
 Madame laughed, and left the room in search of more pro- 
 vender. 
 
 " The allowance does seem rather scant," observed Mr. 
 Locker, with a smile and a respectful glance at his companion, 
 who answered, returning his smile graciously. 
 
 ** Oh, it's too bad, you know, because meat and vegetables 
 are wonderfully cheap here ; but I think madame will do what 
 she is told. Shall we bring about a reform ? You have no idea 
 how hungry this place will make you after a little while. Ah, 
 here is madame ; now let us open fire ! '' 
 
 This Mr. Locker did, and to such good effect that when the 
 meal was concluded he did not feel hungry. 
 
 " Do you like this place?" he asked his companion, as they 
 tried to survey each other not too intently across the table. 
 
 "Yes, I think so. It is just the kind of place to come to if 
 you want to be alone. The evenings are heavy, that is true. I 
 hope Madame Omont will ask us into the kitchen ; it is warmer 
 there." 
 
 The invitation came, and in the pleasant hour that ensued the 
 two wanderers were quite on good terms, and in possession of 
 each other's names. 
 
 " A fascinating woman, certainly," thought Locker, as he lay 
 awake listening to the sea-wind raving round the house. 
 
 He was up early the next morning, enjoying the high wind 
 and the strong, windy light. Why is it that we so seldora 
 realize morning? On this occasion sea and shore seemed 
 possessed by it. 
 
 " Good-morning. What a nice smell there is of the sea in the 
 air, is there not ? " said the buoyant voice that he knew, now, 
 for Miss Hardy's. 
 
 "What a fine sea it is !" he rejoined. "Just look at those 
 great, green, moving masses, their white foam-crests glittering 
 
AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL. 245 
 
 in the sunlight. Ah," he added, " the sea is as cruel as a 
 woman." 
 
 ^' Do you think women are crueller than men ? " she answered, 
 with a laugh. 
 
 " I think," he replied, gloomily, " that they are as much more 
 cruel than men as cats are more cruel than dogs." 
 
 " Well, I think cats are much nicer," she said, " so it's equally 
 balanced. I wish it did not want such a long time to breakfast. 
 I shall go and write a letter or two." 
 
 " And I shall walk about and smoke, so we shall both be 
 content." 
 
 Returning to the hotel in a couple of hours, he found Miss 
 Hardy with Madame Omont's little girl upon her knees. She 
 was bending her face over the child and saying, in perfect 
 French : 
 
 " Oh, my poor little darling ! what a cut on your hand ! Let 
 me bind it up. It is dreadful, and you bear it with such a brave 
 spirit ! " 
 
 '^ She cut herself with a knife," Miss Hardy observed, 
 explanatorily to Locker. 
 
 '* May I examine the wound 1 " he asked. " Why it is a mere 
 scratch," he said, laughing. 
 
 She informed him that men knew nothing about such things, 
 and carried the little girl to her mother, who quite took Locker's 
 view of the case. 
 
 Miss Hardy had surprised him. Those blue eyes had not, to 
 his thinking, bespoken such a pitiful nature. 
 
 " You are fond of children ? " he asked, as they sat down to 
 breakfast. 
 
 " Yes," was the answer ; " how can one help being fond of 
 what is small, pretty, and helpless ? " 
 
 " But all children are not pretty." 
 
 " I think that, up to a certain age, nearly all children are. 
 I cannot say as much for madame's meat, but her eggs are 
 excellent." 
 
 He asked her if she had been reading. 
 
 " Yes," she replied. " Thackeray, to whom it seems to me 
 that I am always ungrateful. I enjoy his books so much while 
 I am reading them, but, when I have finished, I ask myself 
 what really great, memorable scene stands out to me, and find 
 I have been merely entertained. I suppose the death of Colonel 
 
246 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL. 
 
 Nevvcombe is meant to be very heartrending, but it does not 
 move me. However," she added, after a pause, and with a 
 burst of laughter, " if you knew me better, that would not 
 greatly surprise you." 
 
 " But I am surprised. You are quick to feel for the sufferings 
 of others." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she said, rapidly, and looked down at her long, 
 slender hands. 
 
 " Who is your favourite novelist .f*" he asked. 
 
 " Really, I don't think there is any novelist that I care much 
 about." 
 
 "Or poet?" 
 
 "Browning, a little, perhaps." 
 
 ** But you read novels and poems ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I read them to pass the time ; one must do some- 
 thing. What people call very dry books are those from which I 
 get the most pleasure ; and you cannot get such books here. I 
 wonder how that poor, dear little wounded thing is. I must see 
 after it. It did not seem to me that her mother was sufficiently 
 grieved." 
 
 " I think," Locker said, with a smile ; " that you wrong her 
 mother." 
 
 She smiled in return, and went from the room. 
 
 To describe Locker's daily life would be as tedious as to have 
 lived it — not beinga rejected lover — would have been. He walked ; 
 he shot no end of rabbits ; he wrote melancholy verse ; he wrote 
 letters to his friends, which he could not help wishing that they 
 would preserve, as he thought they would read well, when the 
 history of his sad life should come to be written. Still, day by 
 day, and hour by hour, his interest in Miss Hardy, his new and 
 strange acquaintance, deepened. She wandered about by her- 
 self day and night fearlessly. She treated Locker with as much 
 easy familiarity as if he had been quite an old friend. There 
 was something in her manner that was icy cold, yet at times she 
 surprised him by an outburst of feeling, which, as in the case of 
 the wounded hand, was quite disproportioned to the event that 
 caused it. 
 
 " Shall you stay here through the winter 1 " he asked her one 
 day at the end of November. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I think so ! It's just the kind of place to spend 
 Christmas in ; and you ? " 
 
AN ADVENTURE AT A ERENCH H07EL, 247 
 
 ** I ? Well, certainly, I should scarcely yet like to see Eng- 
 land, and all that England means to me." 
 
 Of course, he had confided his grief to her, and she said : 
 
 ^' I am sorry for you. I suppose it is very painful, but I have 
 never had a like trial to go through, for I have never been in 
 love." 
 
 He had fondly imagined that she, too, might be suffering 
 under a love disappointment, and he had written quite a nice 
 sonnet in which he pictured her and himself as soul joined to 
 soul by the tie of a common grief. 
 
 After a while madame's little girl, truly a pretty little thing, 
 with long, warm, brown hair, and large, soft, rather sad-looking 
 grey eyes, took a fever. The fever was not an infectious one, 
 and Bertha made herself useful in nursing ; for the matter of 
 that, so did Mr. Locker, who sometimes sat up with the child at 
 night. 
 
 Now it happened one morning, just as the hard, pitiless 
 December dawn was breaking, that a little voice called out from 
 the bed : 
 
 *' I want to go out in the boat with father ; oh, let me go, let 
 me go ! " 
 
 Her father had been drowned at sea many years ago. 
 
 " Yes, my child, you shall go," he said. 
 
 ** Yes," she echoed feebly, and in another minute she had gone 
 to find her father on a sea where no compass of man's inven- 
 tion guides, whence no boat returns. 
 
 Hot tears sprang to Locker's eyes as he bent down and closed 
 those of the dead child, and kissed the thin little face. 
 
 Madame Omont, quite worn out, was most likely still sleeping. 
 He hoped, before she awoke, for an opportunity of informing 
 Miss Hardy of the melancholy event. One woman, he thought, 
 could break it to another so much better than a man could. He 
 left the room, and found Miss Hardy, who had risen very early, 
 sitting in the salle-d-manger. She was reading a book with 
 apparent interest. 
 
 '' I have sad news," he said ; " Julia is dead." 
 
 ** Yes," she answered, scarcely raising her eyes from her book. 
 
 *' Just wait till I finish this chapter. No, never mind ; that 
 will do another time. How grieved 1 am ! what can be 
 done?" 
 
 Her way of receiving his tidings greatly puzzled and surprised 
 
248 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL. 
 
 Locker ; she had professed to be so much attached to the 
 child. 
 
 She willingly undertook the sad office of breaking the shock 
 to Madame Omont. 
 
 ** How much braver women are than men," he said ; " now 
 it seemed to me that I could not do this, and you at once, with- 
 out shadow of hesitation, accept the task. 
 
 " Or is it," she questioned, with a flitting smile, after which 
 she looked grave again, *' that women have less feeling 1 " 
 
 Perplexed and fascinated, Locker went to his own room, for 
 which he was getting quite an affection. 
 
 The last day of the year was to be, for a long time to come, 
 memorable in the annals of La Crosse. Madame Omont's child 
 had been buried, and the poor woman would have utterly aban- 
 doned herself to grief, but that she had still her two guests to 
 provide for — so she struggled on. It was a day of wind and 
 driving, arrowy sleet. As the time wore away, the wind in- 
 creased perceptibly. At sunset it blew a gale, and the sea, 
 rising under it, waxed awful. 
 
 As the two guests of the hotel sat at dinner, they could hear 
 the frantic shrieking of the wind, the regular thunder of the 
 waves, then the deadly, snake-like hiss when a vast ninth wave 
 would reach over the sands and dash its spray against the 
 windows. 
 
 " What a night to be at sea ! " observed Bertha, mixing wine 
 with her water, as she spoke. 
 
 "A storm like this means sure death to many," he answered. 
 Just then there was a momentary lull of the wind, one of those 
 lulls in which it gathers strength for a greater outbreak of fury. 
 Suddenly they heard a sharp spluttering sound. Miss Hardy 
 went on with her soup, but Locker sprang up. 
 
 '* Did you not hear that ? " he cried. " It was a rocket, it 
 must be from a ship in distress." 
 
 " Perhaps so," she answered, but she went on with her dinner. 
 Walter Locker walked out. It was as much as he could do 
 to close the door behind him, the wind blew so violently against 
 it. Yes, he was right ; another rocket darted into the darkness. 
 The lights of the distressed ship were visible. In another 
 moment many eyes were on the outlook, and there was a con- 
 fused sound of voices. 
 
 • La Crosse possessed a life-boat ; this was at once got ready 
 
AN ADVENTVkR AT A PRENCH HOTEL, ' 249 
 
 and manned. How weird the men looked in their tarpaulins, 
 with the light from their wind-blown torches flaring on their 
 weather-beaten faces. 
 
 Locker asked if he could be of any use, and was given to 
 understand that he would be in the way, rather than anything 
 else. At length the boat was ready, and with a yell of defiance 
 the men drove her into the sea and the night. Soon the track 
 of their voices was obHterated by the might of the wind. 
 
 Women made pale by fear ; mothers, sisters, and sweethearts 
 were talking to each other in excited groups. 
 
 "I like to be out in a night like this," said Miss Hardy, 
 coming up to where Locker was standing. " There is some- 
 thing very stimulating in a storm. Do you think they can be 
 saved, or must they all be drowned ? " 
 
 " It is impossible to say. It is an awful sea for any boat to 
 live in. The wind is too strong for you to stand alone in it ; 
 please take my arm." 
 
 She accepted his offer, and even at that moment he felt the 
 blood thrill in him as he held her arm tightly to his side. 
 
 In the course of time they heard, over the roar of sea and 
 wind, a shout out of the awful waves. Then the sound was 
 blown away by the wind, then it was heard again. Then the 
 life-boat with its rescued souls grew visible, tossing, as it 
 seemed, helplessly in the waves. Still it came on. It was 
 nearly to the shore when a monster wave towered up dark, 
 malign, irresistible, and burst over it. A cry of despair from 
 the men as the boat keeled over. A shriek of horror from the 
 women — that was all Locker heard. Casting his coat aside 
 with strength that was born of the occasion, he plunged into 
 the seething waters. He caught at one of the storm-worn 
 sailors, and dragged him from his doom. He reached the 
 shore with him, and then again plunged into the thick of the 
 battle. This time, however, the sea was too much for him. 
 The current swept him away ; wave pitched him to wave. 
 " Now, come death," he thought, ** and who cares ?" 
 
 He was wrong, however, his time was not yet come. Perhaps 
 the gods had too much compassion for the world to deprive it so 
 suddenly of one of its younger poets. With infinite danger to 
 themselves, the Englishman who had risked his life for theirs 
 was rescued by the men of La Crosse. 
 
 But the shock and the cold proved more than his not very 
 
250 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL. 
 
 strong constitution could stand. He wandered in mind all that 
 night, and the next morning was found in a high fever. The 
 fever went to the brain, and for many days to come the doctor 
 looked grimly as he entered and left the hotel, which he did 
 sometimes twice a day. 
 
 It was a mild February day, when, having escaped the danger 
 of dying from fever on the one hand, or the sinking through 
 total exhaustion on the other, Locker awoke to a sense of con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 It was about five in the afternoon. He was lying in the little, 
 wind-swept room he knew so well. There was no wind now. 
 Through the window he saw a sky of faint, pathetic blue. 
 Some one was sitting by his bed ; it was his pale-faced, gold- 
 haired fascinator. Then she had been helping to nurse him 1 
 She must have a tender heart, after all. 
 
 " Have I been ill long t " he asked, faintly. 
 
 " Yes, a long time." 
 
 " How long ? " 
 
 " Six weeks." 
 
 "When was I taken ill.?" 
 
 " The last day of the year." 
 
 *' And now it is what ?" 
 
 *' To-day is the 15th of February. But you must ask no more 
 questions. The doctor said you were to be kept perfectly 
 quiet." 
 
 " You 7mtst answer me one more." 
 
 "Well, what is it.?" 
 
 " Have you been helping to nurse me ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How good that was of you ! " 
 
 " I see no goodness in it at all. Now you must have some- 
 thing to take, and then go to sleep again, and be obedient." 
 
 Plenty of rest and nursing did their work with Locker. I 
 wonder if he was, on the whole, glad or sorry to fmd that some- 
 where in his wanderings he had lost his love-griefs, which had 
 been the reason of bringing him to La Crosse ? 
 
 That happened to be an unusually mild February, and he 
 was soon able to sit in the courtyard of the hotel, and then to 
 take short turns by the sea. The desire to be constantly in 
 Miss Hardy's society was growing an absolute passion with 
 him. Her voice, which 1 have said was buoyant, was also very 
 
AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL, 251 
 
 low in tone, and had a most soothing influence upon him. 
 Then he hked her grace of swift, unexpected movements. She 
 fascinated him, as the snake fascinates the bird. 
 
 One day she came into the courtyard with a deeply black- 
 edged envelope in her hand. 
 
 " I have bad news," she said, speaking in her usual tone of 
 voice. " My mother is dead, and I must go to England to look 
 after my sisters, who are all much younger than I am ; but it is 
 too late to catch to-night's boat. I am sorry to leave this place. 
 I dislike England so intensely. Ah ! I forgot that you do not 
 know. I am going for a long walk," and she went away rapidly. 
 
 " Certainly she has wasted no love on her mother," he mused, 
 as he followed with his eyes the tall, slight figure till it was out 
 of sight. 
 
 He was only strong enough still for the shortest walks, and he 
 felt aggrieved at her for taking a long one, which must lose him 
 so much of her ; now, too, that she was going away. What 
 would life be when she had left ? He shuddered as he asked 
 himself that question, the question which lovers have so many 
 times to ask themselves, and the true answer to which would 
 be : " Greatly changed, of course, horribly uninteresting, but 
 bear it long enough, and something will turn up." 
 
 He sat thinking of her for a long time. Then he fell asleep 
 and dreamed of her. 
 
 ** No," she was saying in the dream, " I cannot let you come 
 to my house. What do you think my sisters would say .f* It is 
 too cold." 
 
 These last were real words, and they awoke him. She was 
 standing by his chair. 
 
 " It is too cold for you to be asleep out of doors," she said ; 
 " the spring is not come yet." 
 
 '' Yes," he assented, dreamily. " I am so glad you are 
 come back ! What is the time ? " 
 
 " Just four. I have been away three hours." 
 
 " Will you stay with me all the rest of the day? You ought 
 to, you know, because I have been so ill. You know I'm far 
 from well yet." 
 
 "Very likely I will." 
 
 " And you won't go to bed before half-past ten ? " 
 
 " Not unless I feel sleepy." 
 
 *^ But you won't feel sleepy 1 " 
 
2S2 AN ADVENTURE AT A TRENCH: HOTEL. 
 
 " How can I tell, till the time comes, how I shall feel ? " 
 
 " Because I shall be so entertaining/' 
 
 " You must be very different then to what you have been the 
 last day or two." 
 
 " Let me see — from four till half-past ten ! I shall see you 
 then to-day for just six hours and a half more ! " 
 
 " And after one o'clock, to-morrow afternoon, I suppose you 
 will see me no more at all." 
 
 " Surely you are not going to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Most certainly I am. I should have gone to-day, but it 
 was just too late." 
 
 "Then I think it is very unkind of you to leave me alone three 
 hours, if you knew it was to be the last day." 
 
 " Do you?" she answered, in an indifferent tone of voice." 
 
 She was letting her cloak fall from her shoulders. 
 
 " Perhaps by falling asleep here I have taken a chill that 
 will bring on a relapse and kill me." 
 
 "Perhaps so," she rejoined, throwing her cloak over her arm, 
 and walking straight into the hotel. 
 
 In the salon of the hotel, in which these two had passed so 
 many evenings — for Madame Omont had very often company, 
 when, of course, she did not ask them to the hospitality of her 
 bright, clean-looking French kitchen, and Locker had grown to 
 be glad of madame's company evenings — well, I was going to 
 say, that in this salon was a piano, so they would often beguile 
 part of the evening with music. They sighed that night as 
 they rose from the table, to think that, perhaps, they two should 
 never dine together again. His was a very genuine sigh, and 
 her's — well, she certainly did sigh. Then they went to the salon, 
 which had rather a faint, musty smell from being used so little 
 of late. That smell — which is often met with in hotels out of 
 the season — will always recall that night to Locker. 
 
 He was lying on the sofa, and she had just finished playing a 
 waltz of Chopin's, when he said, suddenly : 
 
 " Come here, will you ? " 
 
 She came over at once to the sofa, and asked if he felt HI. 
 
 " No, not ill, but there is something I must say to you. Draw 
 one of those chairs here, and sit close by me ; I am not strong 
 enough yet to speak in a loud tone of voice, and you must lose 
 no word of what it is that I have to say." 
 
 She drew a chair close to him, as he desired, and he began : 
 
AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL, 253 
 
 " When I first came to this place, I was, as you know, the 
 most miserable of men. I was without hope. I met you ; you 
 interested me from the first. Then you fascinated me ; then 
 I loved you. Answer me, Bertha, cannot you love me in 
 return ?" 
 
 He took her hand in his ; it was, as it always was, pleasantly 
 cool ; the expression of her face was unchanged. 
 
 " Why don't you speak ? " he cried. 
 
 "Because I am wondering whether I should tell you the 
 truth or not." 
 
 " You owe me the truth." 
 
 " Indeed ! I scarcely agree with you ; but, all the same, 
 I think I will be frank with you. The truth, then, is this : I 
 don't love you one jot. I love no one ; I never have loved, and 
 I never shall ; not only is it that I love no one, but I care for 
 no one ; I am without an emotion. You are handsome and 
 pleasant and tender, yet, if you died here before me, it would 
 not give me one thrill ; my pulse would not move faster by one 
 beat. When men love me, as you do, I am neither sorry nor 
 glad. I am simply indifferent. I never knew a case like mine. 
 You think you have seen me moved at times. When I was 
 with my family and friends I wished to keep my secret. 
 I went to the extreme. I feigned to be too pitiful over Httle 
 troubles, while I was unconsciously hard in real sorrows. No 
 one could make me out, though I think one person suspected 
 the truth. I grew weary of the strain of trying to act like 
 other people, and on my father's death came here. I shall 
 never know either the pain or joy of love." 
 
 She stopped short, with a cold, wintry smile upon her face. 
 
 "And you can smile ? " escaped from him. 
 
 " Yes, I can smile." 
 
 " Why did you nurse me when I was ill ? '^ he asked, suddenly 
 and almost fiercely, turning his burning eyes full on her. 
 
 " I had sense enough to know that it was what humane people 
 in my place would have done." 
 
 " And not because you loved me in the least ? " • 
 
 " Not in the very least." 
 
 He had been sitting up, but at those words he fell back on 
 the sofa, with a terribly hopeless look upon his face. 
 
 There was a pause ; then he said : 
 
 " J3ertha, will you marry me ? " 
 
254 AN ADVENTURE AT A FRENCH HOTEL. 
 
 " Do you want to marry a statue ? " 
 
 " I want to make you my wife ; will you marry me ? " 
 
 " I would as soon marry you as not. Yes, then." 
 
 He threw his arms round her and kissed her, and her lips 
 coldly and mechanically responded. Don't you think he was a 
 happy lover ? 
 
 Mr. Locker took charge of Miss Hardy to her home. Then 
 he went to London, a rather distracted man on the whole. He 
 could not bear to be out of Bertha's presence ; but the thought 
 that he could never marry her soul drove him wild. 
 
 *' You can never tell what may come in time," remarked his 
 friend, Will Hamilton, a handsome young painter, with whom 
 the poet talked the affair over. " The girl is awfully good to 
 look at. I'll do a picture of her for you." 
 
 It was the following September that Bertha Hardy became 
 Mrs. Locker. It was strange to this woman to know herself a 
 wife ; strange seemed it to her to know, afterwards, that she 
 should be a mother ; but it was to be, and in due time a son 
 was born to these two. 
 
 And then it seemed that a miracle was wrought in the heart of 
 Bertha Locker. She began to love — began to feel that some- 
 thing could be dearer to her than herself. She had been in- 
 capable of a wife's passion, but she was fully capable of a 
 mother's devotion. She hung over the cradle of her baby in an 
 ecstasy. She kissed its foolish Httle lips, as if they had all the 
 bliss of the world. She called on her husband to share her 
 worship. Did he ever see such eyes — such lovely golden hair? 
 As to the latter. Locker was tempted to say that he must fetch 
 his microscope to discover it ; but he prudently refrained. He 
 humoured all his wife's delusions. He saw now that she could 
 love, and he could not help believing that his own turn would 
 come some day. 
 
 Who should know human nature if not a poet, and has not 
 Tennyson written — 
 
 " And the child, too, clothes the father 
 With a dearness not his due — " ? 
 
 Locker quoted Tennyson to himself, as he watched his wife 
 kneeling before her small idol ; and the man is not wholly 
 unhappy who can still hope. 
 
HER PRICE. 
 
 :o:- 
 
 " Death only can take from a man his pride of soul." 
 
 " Has the great man come yet ? '' 
 
 " You mean the great Russian, Ivan Petrovitch Orlofif, the 
 implacable enemy of freedom, the sworn friend of the 
 oppressor ?" 
 
 ^''Even he." 
 
 " Oh, he affects fashion, and turns up everywhere late." 
 
 " Does he know into what a hornet's nest he is coming ? And 
 why does our republican friend, Featherstone, have such 
 people ? " 
 
 "I don't know what he may have heard, I'm sure. As for 
 Featherstone, perhaps he means to try a conversion. His wife 
 is beautiful enough to convert any one. 
 
 *Bid me to live, and I will live 
 Thy Protestant to be — ' 
 
 That's her favourite song, you know." 
 
 The foregoing conversation took place between two young 
 men, one night, near the end of May. They stood in the door- 
 way of a crowded and brilliantly-lighted room. While they 
 were yet talking, there was a commotion on the stairs, and a 
 servant announced, with much evident satisfaction at having 
 such a big mouthful to discharge— 
 
 " Ivan Petrovitch Orloff and Serge Accolaivitch Zenbrowsky." 
 
256 HER PRICE, 
 
 It was the great statesman at last, with his private secretary. 
 Orloff was a tall, slight man. He had a cold but very clearly 
 cut face. He held himself proudly. About the corners of his 
 pliant lips lurked a half-amused, half-disdainful smile. Hair 
 and eyes were both light. 
 
 The private secretary, who received, of course, comparatively 
 little attention, was by no means unworthy of it. He was more 
 robust than his patron. His handsome face was strangely boyish 
 for his age, which must have been fully thirty. His fine, warm 
 brown eyes had a look of indolence in them — the look of one 
 who had more dreamed about living, in the large sense of the 
 v/ord, than actually lived. The mouth, with its full, pleasure- 
 loving lips, was withal painfully weak. About Orloff there was 
 no sign of weakness anywhere. His bearing was strong — there 
 was strength in the resolute lips, strength in the lithe, well- 
 shaped fingers. He looked like a man who had fought with 
 Destiny, and who had conquered, and set his heel upon it. The 
 news of the great man's arrival now ran from room to room. 
 Those who stood near enough to hear, said that his voice had a 
 singular charm. It was low and full, and somewhat slow in 
 utterance. He spoke English well, but with a decidedly foreign 
 accent. 
 
 When he beheld his hostess, he confessed that she was good 
 to see. But, if the great man regarded her with favour, what 
 shall be said of the great man's secretary ? Her beauty stormed 
 his heart, and he capitulated without a struggle. And what was 
 this Mrs. Featherstone hke, of whom men made so much talk? 
 It must be said she was an attractive woman to look at. She 
 was about the average height, but with a superbly moulded 
 figure. Her low evening dress revealed white, magnificent arms, 
 tapering down to the exquisite blue-veined wrists — her glorious 
 shoulders, and firm, white throat, against which any man, with 
 blood, not water, in his veins, must have longed to press his 
 lips. Her complexion was darkly clear, for she was of foreign 
 origin — supposed by many to be Eastern, perhaps merely 
 because her name was Zuleika, — her eyes were brilliant, full of 
 rapid fire — the mouth small, red, sensitive — the hair of a blue- 
 black hue, and very abundant. But what was more about her, 
 than even her great beauty, was the sense of sex, which escaped 
 from her like scent from a flower. This aroma, which can 
 so intoxicate men, does not belong alone to beautiful women. 
 
HER PRICE, 257 
 
 I have sometimes observed it in women most people would call 
 plain. Mrs. Featherstone dressed well. She had a beautiful 
 woman's love of sumptuous attire. As she stood there, using 
 her fan as though she had been a Spanish woman, a diamond 
 cross shining at her throat, it occurred to one of the young men 
 we have before mentioned to whisper to his friend : 
 
 "So fair, 
 She takes the breath of men away 
 Who gaze upon her unaware." 
 
 To which the other assented. Then the fair woman beckoned 
 to them and presented them to Orloff as countrymen of hers, 
 much interested in everything Russian. Indeed, both the young 
 men happened to have visited Russia, and managed to say some 
 handsome things about it. 
 
 " You can boast a great novelist," remarked Walter Graves, 
 the younger of the two men, he who had quoted Mrs. Browning. 
 
 *' Turgenieff, I presume," answered the Russian. '* Yes, a 
 man of great powers. Yet, were mine the power to do so, I 
 would suppress most of his books." 
 
 *' What in the world would you do that for ? " asked he known 
 as Bob Blake, who, being very democratic indeed, had a manner 
 which was literally no respecter of persons. 
 
 " Oh, simply because I consider their teachings often 
 dangerous. Doubtless you think we have not enough freedom 
 in Russia ; but I tell you I know the Russian people, and we 
 have too much.'' 
 
 " I suppose you think so," returned the other ; " the 
 Americans thought they knew their nation, and that the negroes 
 were born to be slaves, as you think the Russians were born 
 to be." 
 
 "You are quite correct. That is my opinion," said Orloff, 
 imperturbably ; and at that moment Mr. Featherstone brought 
 up more people who desired to be introduced to the great man. 
 Featherstone and Orloffwere much of a height, but Featherstone 
 had a finer figure. He would not have been called handsome 
 except when he was under the influence of excitement, when a 
 radiance seemed to come upon his face, and his eyes seemed 
 like a soul on fire, and it is to be said that he was very often 
 under the influence of strong excitement. 
 
 " He talks too much open republicanism," some of his more 
 
 18 
 
258 HER PRICE. 
 
 temperate friends would say. " Tlie worst of Featherstone is 
 that he shows his hand so ; yet, with all his talk, he's really not 
 an immoderate man — certainly not a nihilist, for he's dead 
 against assassination or anything of that kind." 
 
 Serge Accolaivitch Zenbrowsky could do nothing but gaze at 
 Mrs. Featherstone, while his heart beat fast. At length he said : 
 " You have many fine poets in England. I have been reading 
 lately the works of Mr. Tennyson. They are charming." 
 
 " Yes," responded Mrs. Featherstone, in her low, twilight 
 voice, " did you read them in English ? " 
 " Yes, madam, I read them in English." 
 " Have you read much of our literature ?'^ 
 *' No, not so very much ; not so much as I want to. Will 
 you tell me what to read ? Will you make me know your 
 country ? Will you civilize me ? Will you make it a compact ? " 
 Mrs. Featherstone's beauty had somewhat the effect of 
 champagne upon Serge — it had gone to his brain. He was 
 generally a silent, reserved man, but, as we see, his tongue had 
 been loosened, and he spoke to some purport. 
 
 " Mrs. Featherstone regarded him for a moment with a glance 
 which seemed to be questioning what line of conduct she should 
 pursue. Then she lowered her eyes and said : 
 
 " I don't think you need much civilizing, but I will tell you 
 some books that you ought to read." 
 
 "Bah," he protested, **my English is shocking !" 
 " Well," she answered, with a smile, slow and sweet and 
 subtle — it was one of her great charms — " your English, perhaps, 
 might be better. See — I am at home every Tuesday, from four 
 till seven, to receive my friends. If you like, you can come at 
 three, when you have time to spare. No one ever really comes 
 before five. We would read together for a couple of hours . One 
 hour of English for you, one hour of Russian for me. You see, 
 I demand an exchange." 
 
 Zenbrowsky flushed with pleasure as he said that that would 
 be something to live for. This very to-morrow was Tuesday — 
 was he to coine then ? 
 
 " Yes — why not ? " she answered. " The sooner we begin 
 the better." 
 
 The next moment Orlofif, whose practice it was to arrive late 
 and leave early, came up, bade his hostess good-night, and the 
 two Russians left the room together. As they went down the 
 
HER PRICE, 259 
 
 stairs they paused to listen to Mrs. Featherstone's magnificent 
 voice. She was singing in superb fashion those glorious old 
 words of Herrick : 
 
 TO ANTHEA. 
 
 WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING. 
 
 Bid me to live, and I will live 
 
 Thy Protestant to be, 
 Or bid me love, and I will give 
 
 A loving heart to thee. 
 
 / A heart as soft, a heart as kind, 
 
 A heart as fond and free 
 As in the whole world thou canst find. 
 That heart I'll give to thee ! 
 
 Bid that heart stay, and it will stay 
 
 To honour thy decree, 
 Or bid it languish quite away 
 
 And't shall do so for thee ! 
 
 Bid me to weep, and I will weep 
 
 While I have eyes to see. 
 And having none, yet I will keep 
 
 A heart to weep for thee. 
 
 Bid me despair, and I'll despair 
 
 Under that cypress tree. 
 Or bid me die, and I will dare 
 
 E*en death to die for thee. 
 
 Thou art my life, my love, my heart, 
 
 The very eyes of me — 
 And hast command of every part 
 
 To live and die for thee. 
 
 Twenty minntes later beheld them in one of the Langham's 
 most luxurious sitting-rooms, smoking their final cigarettes and 
 drinking brandy and soda, which they found a grateful novelty. 
 
 " She's a nice-looking woman, that Mrs. Featherstone," said 
 Ivan Orloff, casting his arms up above his head wearily. 
 
 *' She is more than that," replied the secretary ; " she is with- 
 out exception the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." 
 
 " Bah," ejaculated the other, "you will not say so in ten years ! 
 But then you are an infant." 
 
 " I never again expect to see so beautiful a woman," replied 
 the secretary, " nor do I desire to." 
 
26o HER PRICE, 
 
 " Well, my friend, I am glad you are pleased. Do you know 
 anything of these people? You know more about this place 
 than I do.'' 
 
 " I know next to nothing," answered Serge, emptying his 
 glass, and throwing away the end of his cigarette. " I believe 
 they hold advanced views." 
 
 " Oh, that's it, is it } " mused the other ; " it's interesting to 
 meet people who hold advanced views. Well, good-night ; I'm 
 tired." 
 
 A word or two must here be said concerning Ivan Orlofif, 
 who was at this time fifty-two years of age. There was no 
 doubt about the man being hard and cruel, but he had a sense 
 of justice, too. He would have used the knout freely, but he 
 would never have inflicted great punishment for small offences. 
 Where the offence had been great, there great should be the 
 punishment. All the influence he had in Russia, and that was 
 large, he exerted in the cause of tyranny. He was an especially 
 dangerous man, because he was a brave man. Even the most 
 hardened assassin shrinks from taking the life of a man who, 
 whatever his faults may be, is known to be no coward. Not 
 many people had reason to love him. One man had, however, 
 and that was Serge Zenbrowsky. His mother died when he 
 was all but a baby. His father, who was an intimate friend 
 of OrlofPs, became reckless and dissipated a large fortune, and 
 died when Serge was not much past eight. The boy seemed 
 to have no relations, and Ivan Orloff, then a young man of 
 thirty, beginning life on his own account, took the friendless 
 boy to share his fortunes. Perhaps the fact that he, too, was 
 an orphan, may have had something to do with this praise- 
 worthy action. Later on was discovered another soft place in 
 his heart. He fell in love with a beautiful young Russian lady 
 — proposed and was accepted, and for a time all went well \ but 
 one day they quarrelled over their political views. He spoke 
 violently, and swore he would never ally himself with any one 
 who could hold such an opinion, which was — the right of free 
 speech for all persons. 
 
 He left her house in a passion, and left St. Petersburg for 
 a fortnight, at the end of which time his rage was greatly modi- 
 fied. He was a proud man, but he had grown suddenly most 
 desperately hungry to eat humble pie. He might disagree 
 with her opinions, but she had a right to them, and what might 
 
HER PRICE. 261 
 
 not argument do in time ? He returned at once to St. Peters- 
 burg, meaning to ask forgiveness, but he was too late. They 
 had hidden away for ever that shining head which he had 
 meant to lay upon his shoulder. He was partly answerable 
 for her death, for she had but delicate health, and when she 
 imagined herself cast off by Orloff, whom she adored, she broke 
 down altogether, and in this weak state she fell an easy prey to 
 a malignant low fever then much in the air. Thus ended Ivan 
 Orloff's love-story. After that he never took particular notice 
 of any woman, and became more conservative than ever. 
 Doubtless he may have thought, in the gloomy recesses of his 
 mind, " If it had not been for her opinions she might have been 
 with me now." 
 
 Well, he educated Serge Accolaivitch Zenbrowsky. Things 
 prospered with Ivan Orloff, and before long he was known as 
 one of the richest men in Russia. Seeing that Serge Zen- 
 browsky somewhat chafed under his dependence, he appointed 
 him, in his twentieth year, to the post of his private secretary, 
 which he had held ever since to their mutual satisfaction. The 
 work was abundant — although Orloff was not an exacting task- 
 master — and the salary ample. I have said that there was 
 a look in Serge Zenbrowsky's eyes, as if he had rather dreamed 
 of life than lived, and this, in great measure, was true. From 
 boyhood up he had been fond of poetry, and his life went by in 
 day-dreams and castle-building till he became Orloff's secre- 
 tary. He had less time then for dreaming, and that was a good 
 thing for him. He had had many flirtations. The feelings 
 produced by these he had imagined to be the grand passion, 
 and in his heart of hearts he thought the grand passion a dis- 
 appointment ; but as he lay awake in the small hours following 
 the night of which I have been writing, he knew that up till then 
 he had never experienced it. 
 
 *' Now," he thought, feverishly, *4t has come in very earnest" 
 — and so it had. 
 
 Mrs. Featherstone, the next day, received him in her own 
 especial sitting-room, which was daintily furnished. As he 
 followed the servant up the broad staircase he heard her 
 singing— 
 
 " Bid me to live, and I will live 
 Thy Protestant to be, 
 Or bid me love, and I will give 
 A loving heart to thee." 
 
262 HER PRICE, 
 
 Her voice was as beautiful as her face — a wonderful voice — 
 a full-sustained contralto. If one could imagine such a thing as 
 voices having colour, one would have known there must be in 
 it a note of deep crimson. 
 
 " You are very fond of that song/' he said, when they had 
 shaken hands. 
 
 " Yes, I am ; but how did you know I w^as ? " 
 
 " Because you sang it last night, and now sing it when you 
 are alone." 
 
 " Did I sing it last night .^ I had quite forgotten doing so." 
 
 " My memory, madam, in such things, is better than yours." 
 
 " So it seems — but don't call me madam, if you wish to be 
 made an Englishman. It's what shopmen say." 
 
 *' Then what shall I call you ?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, if you like, you can say * Mrs. Featherstone,' occasion- 
 ally. Do you fmd the air too heavy with the scent of these 
 roses ? It's a little oppressive, yet I rather like it." 
 
 Serge avowed his complete happiness and contentment with 
 everything. 
 
 " What shall we read, then 1 " she asked, leaning back in 
 her low chair and contemplating absently the rings upon her 
 fingers. 
 
 " That you are to decide." 
 
 "Am I ? Well, then, it shall be Swinburne's * Songs before 
 Sunrise ! ' " and moving across the room to a book-case, she 
 returned with the book in question. 
 
 " See," she said, seating herself, " I will first read the poem 
 aloud, that you may enjoy the sound of it. Then you shall read 
 it to me, for the purpose of receiving instruction." 
 
 The poem chosen by Mrs. Featherstone from that mighty and 
 noble volume is one of the finest included therein. It was " Ma- 
 ter Triumphalis." She read those superb words, in which 
 tyranny is so fervently denounced and freedom so extolled, her 
 breath coming and going quickly as she did so, the colour in 
 her face deepening with her visible excitement, her eyes flashing, 
 her sensitive hps quivering. 
 
 " Well," she said, when she had made an end, fixing her eyes 
 full upon his face. 
 
 "You read it magnificently," he said, "but it is a wicked 
 poem." 
 
 ** Wicked to you," she answered, " because you Icve what is 
 
HER PRICE, 263 
 
 wicked. Listen to this word-picture of your own country." 
 And she read from the wonderful " Eve of Revolution " — 
 
 *' I set the trumpet to my lips and blow. 
 
 The day is broken northward. 
 Lands through all their lengths are loud with chains, 
 
 Strange tyrannies and vast — 
 
 Tribes frost-bound to their past — 
 Waste where the wind's wings break, 
 Displumed by day-long ache, 
 
 And anguish of blind snows, and rack-blown rains, 
 And ice that seals the white sea's lips. 
 And ice whose monstrous weight crushed flat 
 
 The sides of shrieking ships — " 
 
 " It is not true," he observed ; " the land is no longer 
 ' Loud through all its length with chains.' 
 
 I would we had some of the chains back. Had I my way every 
 nihihst should suffer death for his belief. I would Ivan Orloff 
 had even more influence at court than he has. But it will 
 spread, it will spread ! " 
 
 *' Stop ! " she cried, and her tone was imperious and her 
 gesture one of command. 
 
 Zenbrowsky did stop, and looked as much alarmed as if he 
 had done something very dreadful. She pressed her hand to 
 her side as though she had been hurt. Then she remarked, 
 more quietly — 
 
 " Ypur viev/s are not my views. I thought you would have 
 known that, and I fancied that, knowing it, you might have 
 abstained from the free expression of yours. Shall we begin 
 the lesson ? " 
 
 " Not till you can say you have forgiven me," cried the 
 unfortunate Serge, clasping his hands together. 
 
 " Your views I hope never to forgive, but I will try to forgive 
 this expression of them. Only don't shock me again, because, 
 as far as I know myself, I am not, I think, a very forgiving 
 woman." 
 
 Serge promised not to offend again, and the reading was 
 resumed. When the clock struck four Mrs. Featherstone rose, 
 and saying they must go to the drawing-room lest callers should 
 come, she led the way thither, and there they read Russian 
 poems till they were disturbed by the first caller, who happened 
 
264 ^^A^ PRICE. 
 
 to be Mr. Graves, who did not look too pleased at fitiding 
 another man installed before him. Shortly after, Serge took 
 his leave and Graves was alone with his idol, for his idol she 
 was, though he knew his love was as hopeless as it was mad. 
 
 He was a painter, and it did him good just to come and bask 
 in her beauty. 
 
 " I wonder you should have that fellow about," he remarked, 
 as soon as the door had been shut upon **that fellow." 
 
 " Doyou ? Why?" she asked, settling the folds of her dress. 
 
 " Because," he replied, with some warmth, " I thought you 
 were a lover of freedom. I never thought you would have had 
 tyrants and the dependents of tyrants under your roof." 
 
 " No .'*" she answered, with provoking coolness. She could 
 not help taking pleasure in teasing him. 
 
 ** Do you mind telling me if you have changed your views 
 since last night ? " 
 
 " No ; my views are the same as ever they were, but this 
 half-savage Russian, with his odd English and his handsome 
 face, amuses me. We have been reading English and Russian 
 together this afternoon. I read him some things from ' Songs 
 before Sunrise.' He got too excited, and I had to bring him 
 to contrition." 
 
 The arrival of fresh guests put an end to the conversation. 
 
 Mrs. Featherstone was changing her dress for dinner, when 
 her husband walked into her dressing-room, kissed, first, the 
 bare white shoulder, then the small, sensitive mouth, and said — 
 
 "Well, darling, I must be off to the meeting. They have 
 sent for me, so you will have to dine alone again." 
 
 " I sha'n't like that," she answered, "but I know you ought 
 to go." 
 
 '* Yes, I must go, for I am really the only man on the com- 
 mittee who knows how to speak at all about the redistribution 
 of land. Some go too far, and others don't go far enough." 
 
 " Are you sure, dear, that you go far enough ? " 
 
 " Yes. I think I am sufficiently advanced," he said, with a 
 laugh. 
 
 " Have you written any more of your ' Despots and Slaves ' 
 to-day? " she inquired. 
 
 *^ No," he returned, " it goes on but slowly. However, I am 
 not sure that the age is ripe for it yet." 
 
 ** You are Ralph the cautious," she said, with the faintest 
 
KER PRICE. 265 
 
 suggestion of a sneer discernible in her voice and in the corners 
 of her mouth. 
 
 " And you," he answered, good-humouredly overlooking the 
 sneer, which had not escaped him, " are Zuleika the hot-blooded 
 — by the by, did your Russian charmer come? " 
 
 ** Oh, yes, he came." 
 
 *' And did you succeed in showing him the error of his ways ? " 
 
 " I could hardly do that in one afternoon, but I made him 
 ashamed of himself once." 
 
 " Well, that was something. If I speak jestingly, God knows 
 my heart is heavy for the wrongs of all down-trodden nations ; 
 and in the freest of countries, which I think ours is, what slaves 
 the rich make of the poor ! While thousands every year are 
 left to die, like rats poisoned in their holes, because forsooth, 
 this man has need of money to regale his friends with straw- 
 berries, when they are five shillings a dozen. W^e pay fabulous 
 prices for green peas, and count wine cheap at three guineas a 
 bottle, while children die for want of bread. But I must stay 
 no longer. Keep up heart, and let us, at least, go on with the 
 good work, and do all we can." 
 
 He kissed her once more, ran swiftly downstairs, and was 
 driven to a hall at the East End of London, where a meeting of 
 a decidedly revolutionary character was to be held. But we 
 need not follow him except to say that Graves and Blake were 
 both upon the platform. They both thought Mr. Featherstone's 
 views were not extreme enough, especially Mr. Graves, who 
 that night was absolutely rabid. 
 
 Before the week was out, Ivan Orloff, who prided himself on 
 speedily becoming acquainted with the customs of the country 
 he might be visiting, made his call of ceremony on the Feather- 
 stones. Politics were ignored, and no man, when he liked, 
 could be more agreeable than Ivan. On this occasion Mr. 
 Featherstone was present, and he also made himself specially 
 agreeable. 
 
 *'There is something strangely dangerous about that man,"said 
 Mrs. Featherstone to her husband, as soon as they were alone. 
 
 ** As dangerous as a deadly snake," he replied. " He has 
 that strength of character which alone gives permanence to 
 evil. It would be a blessing for his country were he to perish 
 from off the face of the earth." 
 
 " Even so," she said, and became strangely thoughtful. 
 
266 HER PRICE, 
 
 The month which followed passed like a dream to the secre- 
 tary. Besides his unfailing weekly visit to Mrs. Featherstone, 
 he called frequently on other days—and, in addition to these 
 meetings, he met her often in society — at the opera, in crowded 
 receptions, or at garden parties ; and the more he saw her, the 
 more deeply enamoured did he become. Though he was happy 
 it was in a feverish sort of way, which would not let him rest at 
 night. He grew pale and haggard-looking. 
 
 One night when Orloff and his secretary were strolling back 
 to their hotel from a house where they had met Mrs. Feather- 
 stone, the former broke silence by saying — 
 
 ** You are in a reverie, my friend." 
 
 The other started as though a ghost had spoken, and said — 
 
 *^ Yes ; I was thinking about something rather earnestly." 
 
 *' You have been thinking," replied Ivan Orloff, "of certain 
 dark eyes and blue-black hair. You were thinking of Mrs. 
 Featherstone." 
 
 " You are right," cried Serge Zenbrowsky, excitedly. *' I 
 deny nothing — I confess everything. I am horribly, horribly, 
 horribly in love with her " 
 
 **You were that the first night," repHed Orloff. "It was 
 never a secret to me, but I thought I would let you choose your 
 own time for telling me. When a man is really in love, have a 
 confidant he must, even though he should get laughed at." 
 
 "I know it," cried poor Serge. "I could keep silent no 
 longer." 
 
 *' I have found out all about these Featherstones," went on 
 Orloff. *^ They are socialists : people who hound on the rabble, 
 as men do dogs to attack some nobler animal. They call them- 
 selves levellers of class distinctions, enemies of tyranny. I 
 would I had them all under my sway for a little time" — and 
 Orloff set his teeth. 
 
 ^ I knew all that the first Tuesday I went to call there," 
 replied Serge. 
 
 "And still you can feel a passion for such a person?" 
 
 " I can. I feel hells and heavens of passion in me, and I can 
 feel a blind adoration which, I beheve, would make me do her 
 will without questioning. There is more music to me in the 
 least tone of her voice than in all the cadenced music of the 
 world — more beauty in her face and figure than in all the 
 pictures that ever were-painted. When I don't see her for two 
 
HER PRICE, 267 
 
 days together I feel starved. Did you ever hear a woman get 
 so much out of that httle word * yes ' as she does ? " 
 
 Serge was quite right. With a lover's quickness he had 
 touched upon one of Mrs. Featherstone's peculiarities, which 
 was the way she had of using the word " yes." 
 
 One Tuesday, when she and Serge were alone together, he 
 said : 
 
 ^^ May I come to-morrow to finish this book if you are dis- 
 engaged 1 We are so near the end of it." 
 
 She gave him a swift look, and said rapidly under her breath — 
 
 "- Yes." 
 
 " You are very good to let me see so much of you," he had 
 said, and she had answered in a low tone of voice : 
 
 " I like you to come." 
 
 " You've no business to be in love with her, you know, 
 speaking from a strictly moral standpoint," remarked Orloff. 
 " You say the man treats you decently." 
 
 " He has taken to forcing his politics down my throat." 
 
 ^' Still you go to his house and appear his friend." 
 
 " Well, and if I do, whom does it hurt ? " 
 
 "At present, no one except yourself I wonder what the 
 woman means ? Of course she knows you are in love with her. 
 Any fool could see that, and Mrs. Featherstone's not a fool. 
 
 Serge half feared, half wished that Mrs. Featherstone should 
 know he was in love with her. If she did know it, it was clear 
 that she was not offended, for her manner to him was not cold. 
 Indeed, she seemed to regard their friendship as something 
 very special. However, he spoke not again till he and Orloff 
 were within their apartments. 
 
 Then Orloff began pacing up and down, always with him a 
 bad sign, and brought up sharply in front of Serge, who was 
 lying back in a big chair smoking, a dazed, far-off look in his 
 eyes, which Ivan's voice, raised considerably above its usual 
 pitch, served to dispel. 
 
 " Well," he asked, '* what are you going to do now ?" 
 
 " Going to do about what 1 " answered the other. 
 
 " About the Featherstones, of course." 
 
 " Why, what in the world can I do, should I do, but go on 
 loving her, and see all I can of her '^. " 
 
 " Well, and what will the end bei'' 
 
 " I know not ! " 
 
268 HER PRICE, 
 
 " Now, look here," said Orloff, kindly, laying his hand oil the 
 young man's shoulder, " it is an old saying, that only Death 
 can take from a man his pride of soul. If it goes no farther, 
 what do you get but feverish unrest ? Supposing it were to go 
 farther, I know you well enough to know the hell of remorse 
 in which you would be plunged. You have not the kind of 
 spirit which can carry such an enterprise through without losing 
 more than you gain. Then will you, with the bluest of blood 
 in your veins, suffer yourself to be moved by a woman who 
 would defame that blood, who would make the man who was 
 your serf your equal ? " 
 
 " What you say is true," responded Serge, " but you don't 
 know how completely she has fascinated me. I burn with 
 longing to be with her. She is my one thought by day, and 
 when I sleep my one dream is of her. I hate myself for loving 
 her, but all the same I do love her, and there is no way out of it." 
 
 " Only Death can take from a man his pride of soul," again 
 quoted the other. Then he said : 
 
 " Serge, we are old friends, are we not ? " 
 
 "Yes," groaned Serge. "Heaven knows we are. What 
 should I have been without you ? " 
 
 " That," answered Orloff, " is beside the question " — indeed 
 he was too proud a man to have striven to profit by any benefit 
 he might have conferred, and he resumed : 
 
 "Without you — without a constant companion-— I should 
 have been dull and lonely ; but as friends, as father and son, 
 we are in a way answerable to each other. By this bond, I 
 conjure you, man, to make one last effort, and free yourself. 
 Is there no pleasure in fighting, no fierce delight in bracing 
 one's self for the contest, no glory in grappling with the foe, in 
 vanquishing him, and setting your heel upon his prostrate neck? 
 For God's sake be a man, and not a love-sick boy. Say that 
 you will make yourself a free man, and you will be free. Come, 
 drink to your freedom — " and he filled a glass with fine Bur- 
 gundy. Serge drained it feverishly, and then springing up, 
 grasped his friend's hand, and said : 
 
 " Friend, father, I will do it ! I will be free. I will shiver 
 this temptation as I shiver this glass," and he dashed the glass 
 to pieces against the hearth. 
 
 " That is well," cried Orloff, wringing his hand warmly. " I 
 knew it must be so in the end. I wish we could leave town at 
 
HER PRICE. 269 
 
 once ; but, as you know, we cannot for a month to come. You 
 must refuse to go to any place where you are hkely to meet her 
 for the next month. Drink ; be as wild as you like, only keep 
 out of this hell-set snare ! " 
 
 " Have no fear," answered Serge, " I will not turn back." 
 There is always a certain amount of excitement attendant 
 on the adoption of any new course of life, which, if the course 
 be one to which we are disinclined, seems to inform us with a 
 strength which is often misleading. I once heard a swell doctor 
 remark (I use " swell " in the sense of his being a big man), 
 that nothing so stimulated a man as to deprive him of all 
 stimulants. The remark stayed with me. 
 
 When Serge arose late the next morning, it was with the 
 sense of having come to close quarters with his foe. His action 
 was not to act. That was all. He had never overdrunk him- 
 self, but he had a good head, and took pleasure in the stimu- 
 lating qualities of wines and spirits. Yet now, when it seemed 
 to him that he most needed comfort of some kind or another, he 
 forbore from drinking at all, for a great fear was upon him that 
 if he now turned in that direction for comfort he should soon 
 be ruined, body and soul. The temptation to drink himself 
 into a state of temporary forgetfulness had an awful fascination 
 for him. Therefore, it must be resisted to the death. Through 
 the long hot June day he lay listlessly on the sofa, forgetting 
 even to smoke, and saying to himself over and over : 
 " Only Death can take from a man his pride of soul." 
 In the afternoon, Orloff, who had been to a fashionable 
 breakfast, returned and compelled Serge to rouse himself, and 
 the two drove to Richmond, dined well at the Star and Garter, 
 and pretended to forget that they were due that day at the 
 Featherstones. 
 
 The next day Serge wrote a brief note, saying he was so 
 much occupied that he was afraid he should have to discontinue 
 their arrangement for his coming on Tuesday afternoons, which 
 had been to him so charming. Pressure of work combined 
 with the hot weather had rather knocked him up, so that just 
 now he was not going out at all. He didn't know when he should 
 see her agam, perhaps never (he could not forbear that little 
 touch of sentiment), but he wanted her to think of him as 
 always her friend. 
 
 Serge Zenbrowsky. 
 
270 HER PRICE, 
 
 As soon as he had posted this letter the unhappy man began 
 to wonder if he should have any answer to it. However, he 
 was not kept long in suspense. The return post brought him 
 a note in Mrs. Featherstone's small and exquisite handwriting. 
 It was a charmingly expressed note. 
 
 She was very, very sorry to hear that their so pleasant 
 meetings were to be discontinued. She had heard much of 
 Russian pride, and hoped she had in no way sinned against 
 etiquette. She hoped he was not really ill, hoped he would not 
 work too hard, hoped he might be able to reconsider his 
 decision. What did he mean by saying they might never meet 
 again ? He was not going back to Russia yet ! And she 
 thought they were real true friends. Some things which she 
 had said to him about equal rights for all people, she prayed 
 him not to forget ; and she was, as ever, his friend, 
 
 ZULEIKA. 
 
 When Serge had read the letter through, he tore it in pieces 
 and cast the pieces into the fireplace. This was like striking 
 his passion a blow on the head. For the moment he felt proud 
 of himself. Where a love is sinful or unreturned, a savage 
 delight can be afforded by destroying some gift or letter from 
 the beloved one. But the reaction speedily follows — great 
 heart-sickness for the carefully traced characters, much longing 
 for the sheet over which she has leaned, which has been 
 thought of by her, which has felt the touch of her sanctifying 
 hand, the warmth of her breath. 
 
 "Yes," exclaimed Zenbrovvsky, aloud, "I shall get over this!" 
 " Of course you will," said Orloff, who had just entered the 
 room, "or you would not be the man I have taken you for. 
 Last night I was at Vera Lapinski's, and they were asking after 
 you, and there I met a girl worth fifty of your Mrs. Featherstone 
 in looks, and, while I have disliked the woman, I said from the 
 first that I thought her pretty. Vera Lapinski is at home on 
 Thursdays. To-night is Thursday — so come." 
 
 "All right," responded Serge, "do with me as you will." 
 Vera Lapinski was a Russian lady of strong conservative 
 predilections, and all Russians of her party in London held her 
 in great respect. At her Thursday evenings you met chiefly 
 Russians ; sometimes there would be a very thin sprinkling of 
 Enghsh and Americans. Vera lived in the pleasant suburb of 
 
MER PRICE. 271 
 
 St. John's Wood, and through the warm weather very enjoyable 
 were these Thursday evenings, for the house boasted a really 
 good garden, on which the drawing-room opened, and the 
 guests, most of whom smoked, and many of whom were 
 women, moved between the garden and the house, as the fancy 
 took them. There were not many people in Vera's room when 
 the two friends made their appearance on this particular evening. 
 
 Vera chided Serge for not having been before, and while they 
 were yet talking and he protesting, Orloff came up and said : 
 
 " I want to present you to Nadeschda Sablina, her of whom 
 I spoke to you." 
 
 The next moment he found himself face to face with an 
 extremely beautiful Russian girl. She was dazzlingly fair. To 
 look at her was like looking at light. Her manner was bright 
 and vivacious. 
 
 "Do you like London ? " she asked, in a clear ringing voice. 
 
 " Yes," replied Serge, " I love London more than is good for 
 me." 
 
 "How can that be?" 
 
 " Because it would be better for me to leave it." 
 
 " Why have you not been to Vera's before } Not to have 
 been here is a kind of treason to your country." 
 
 " Lately I have been nowhere." 
 
 " But till lately ? " 
 
 " Till lately I have been visiting only English houses." 
 
 " You have lost your susceptible heart to some fair English- 
 woman, then. But come into the garden and tell me all about 
 it." 
 
 "And pray what makes you think that I have a susceptible 
 heart ? " he asked, following her through the open French 
 window into the clear, potent moonlight which made the garden, 
 with its green recesses, look quite wonderful and mysterious. 
 
 " Oh," she answered, with a gay laugh, " I have 'heard all 
 about you — like yourself, I have friends in St. Petersburg." 
 
 " They are wrong," he replied ; " I never really loved till I 
 loved this EngUshwoman. English I say, but she is partly 
 foreign." 
 
 " I was right, then ; and you have lost your heart again. Oh, 
 faithless, faithless ! " 
 
 "Yes," answered Zenbrowsky, "faithless to loves that were 
 no loves." 
 
272 HER PRICE, 
 
 " And this," quoth she, " will pass and be accounted no love 
 like the other." 
 
 *^ It may," he replied. *' I wish you may be right. Will you 
 light me a cigarette ? " and she did so. 
 
 *' Isn't it nice out here ? " she asked; "but tell me more about 
 your charmer." 
 
 *' Don't," he answered, almost violently ; " I could forget her 
 just now, for a little, if you would let me." 
 
 *^ By all means. We will talk about something else, then. 
 But first fetch me some fruit, please." 
 
 He did as she bade him, and they passed some time together, 
 her talk running on like the flow of a bright shallow brooklet. 
 People who passed in and out said that a most decided flirtation 
 was being carried on between Nadeschda and Serge. Was it a 
 flirtation ? Well, perhaps it was. Since he could not have the 
 excitement of seeing Mrs. Featherstone, he now craved for any 
 that might be thrown in his way, so he asked if he might call, 
 and he hinted very plainly that she might perhaps save him ; 
 and she laughed, and said she did not think he had very much 
 from which to be saved. At length her mother called from the 
 house, so the talk came to a sudden end. 
 
 "Well," asked Orloff of Serge, as they walked away together, 
 " is she not charming ? " 
 
 ** Some people might think so ; I don't think so." 
 
 " I am not of that opinion," replied the other. " It is easy 
 to see when a man is taken. Naturally, you do not like to own 
 so quickly that the other love was not genuine — but see a little 
 more of her. She is about the most dangerous woman I ever met." 
 
 Now, this last declaration was a good deal more than he 
 really felt ; but he knew human nature well enough to see that 
 the most likely way to make a man in love with a woman is to 
 persuade him that he cannot escape being so, the woman being 
 one who would turn the head of any man. 
 
 For the next fortnight a brisk fire of letters was kept up 
 between Serge and Nadeschda, and they met frequently at 
 Vera Lapinski's and other houses, all of the same coterie. 
 There was no doubt that for the moment she diverted him. 
 He began to think she was falHng in love with him, in very 
 earnest, and that flattered his vanity. And she may have said 
 to herself, what in Russian would have been equivalent to our 
 *' Many a heart is caught in the rebound." 
 
iikk PRICE. 2^3 
 
 tt was the last of Vera's Thursdays, and the first Thursday in 
 July — so near the end of the season. The rooms were not well 
 filled. Nadeschda was to be late as she was to go to another 
 party first. Certainly the evening was uninteresting without 
 her. She would surely come soon, now. Yes ; there was the 
 hall-bell. 
 
 " There is Nadeschda," exclaimed Vera. *' She had to be a 
 little late to-night." 
 
 The door opened, and there entered a fat, good-natured- 
 looking Englishwoman, and with her the proudly-beautiful Mrs. 
 Featherstone. So great was the shock to Serge that he 
 staggered in his walk. The room swam round with him. For 
 a moment he thought he must fall, but with a great effort he 
 controlled himself. He failed to answer questions spoken in his 
 very ear. He saw the fat lady present Zuleika to Vera, whose 
 acquaintance Mrs. Featherstone had so long wanted to make. 
 Mrs. Featherstone had such a keen interest in all that concerned 
 Russia. Vera assented graciously, and Zuleika came on to 
 where Serge was standing, his eyes devouring her face and the 
 superb figure, from which grace seemed to exhale, as perfume 
 from a rose. 
 
 "Good-evening," she said, in her beautifully-modulated voice, 
 which had among its various charms such a rapturous surprise 
 of gentleness. 
 
 " Good-evening," he returned, taking her hand, and thrilling 
 to do so. 
 
 After a little music and conversation, she asked, quietly : 
 
 *' Will you take me into the garden ? It is so hot here. 
 Besides, I've always heard so much about Vera's garden." 
 
 *' Let us go," he rejoined, his heart beating stormily. 
 
 " Why have you not been to see me ? " she asked, as they 
 Walked down a sequestered path, her dress whispering as she 
 moved. Her tone was a little lower even than usual. 
 
 ** Did I not write you why ? " he answered, making a 
 desperate attempt at courage. 
 
 " I know ; but those were not your real reasons. Confess," 
 she added, after a pause, in a tone of infinite and beseeching 
 sweetness. " Let us sit here " — and they sat down very near 
 each other, on a garden seat. 
 
 " I confess," he replied, '^ they were not my real reasons. 
 Some day, perhaps, I may tell you what the real reasons were." 
 
 19 
 
274 ^^^^ PRICE, 
 
 Did his hand first touch hers ? or did her fingers of their 
 own accord slide into his ? Who shall say ? For a minute they 
 sat thus— then she drew her hand away, and said slowly, in a 
 voice of strenuous sweetness : 
 
 *' Are you coming to see me again ? " 
 
 " I am coming to-morrow," with a wild, exultant laugh ; 
 *♦ may I ? " 
 
 *' Yes." 
 
 They rose and continued their walk, but they were both silent. 
 After a little while Zuleika suggested that they should join the 
 others, lest their absence should attract attention . 
 
 The first person to meet Serge's eye on their return to the 
 room was Nadeschda. After finding Mrs. Featherstone a seat, 
 and seeing that she was likely to be well provided for, he crossed 
 over to Nadeschda, whose beauty seemed to him wholly eclipsed 
 by that of Mrs. Featherstone. 
 
 "Who was that woman you brought in with you just now from 
 the garden ? " 
 
 She looked flushed, and was fanning herself. 
 
 "That is the beautiful Mrs. Featherstone. Have you never 
 heard of her?" 
 
 '' Never. Are you coming to-morrow to play lawn-tennis with 
 me?" 
 
 Much to the young lady's surprise, he excused himself, and as 
 soon as he could do so with courtesy, left her to join one of a 
 group clustered about Mrs. Featherstone. She certainly was the 
 excitement of the evening, but all too soon the fat lady broke 
 through the circle, saying their carriage was waiting. Serge 
 saw the ladies to the carriage. As he handed Zuleika in, she 
 said, simply and gravely to him : 
 
 " To-morrow at four, then ? " 
 
 " To-morrow at four," he echoed, and in "another moment the 
 carriage lights were out of sight. He stood for a few minutes 
 like one in a trance. The events of the evening seemed to him 
 so wonderful and unexpected. How could he endure to stop 
 and talk to Nadeschda ? He hastened up the sweet-smelling 
 strips of garden which lay in front of the house, regained the 
 room, took leave of his hostess, said a few hurried words to 
 Nadeschda, and, like a prisoner freed, dashed into the open air. 
 
 He had gone but a short distance, when he caught the fragrance 
 of an unusually good cigar, heard a step behind him — well known 
 
TIER PRICF, 275 
 
 —quick and light, then his name was pronounced, and Ivan 
 Orloff came up with him. He had been so occupied with the 
 wonder and mercy of seeing Mrs. Featherstone, that he had 
 forgotten, for the moment, the fact of his friend's existence. 
 
 ^' You left suddenly, my friend," began Orloff, ^Svhlit, and not 
 smoking ! you must be preoccupied indeed." 
 
 " I have reason to be preoccupied," answered the other, in a 
 voice which was at once far-off and triumphant. 
 
 "Well," replied Orloff, "the memory of unattainable women 
 is rather cold food, I should think, for a heart as hungry for ex- 
 citement as, I know, yours is." 
 
 Serge turned round and faced his friend, who perceived on 
 his countenance a look not good to see — a look of furious, mad 
 determination, the look of a dangerous man at bay, the look of 
 a man who would go through hell to possess himself of the 
 object of his passion. As I have said, there was no vestige of 
 the coward in Orloff, and he regarded his young friend with the 
 utmost scnig-frold^ but with the look of one who is mildly in- 
 terested. Serge's lips moved once or twice before he could 
 speak, then his words came distinctly, and in his voice was a 
 white heat of passion : 
 
 ^ "Orloff, I owe you a debt of gratitude for your protection of 
 me when I was a boy. For the rest, I have worked hardly and 
 faithfully ; and because of one generous act done, I will not give 
 myself to you, body and soul. Whatever happens between me 
 and the woman I love — whichever way it is — it is not likely that 
 you will know. Being a free man, not, thank God, a down- 
 trodden, degraded, wronged, helpless serf, who should have 
 equal right with us, I am bound by no law to tell you anything 
 of what my intentions in this matter are. But because you have 
 befriended me, I will not conceal my actions from you. I am 
 going to see Mrs. Featherstone, whatever comes of it. I will 
 see this matter out to the end. Do you understand me ?'' 
 
 " I understand you perfectly," Orloff replied, with absolute 
 composure. There were reasons besides a real affection for 
 Serge which made him reluctant to come to an open quarrel. 
 Moreover, he believed strongly in his own personal influence 
 attaining in the end the ascendancy over any nature on which 
 he might will to exercise it. So he went on gravely, but less 
 severely than Serge had expected : 
 
 " You are quite correct when you say I have no right to con- 
 
276 IJER PRICE, 
 
 trol your actions. 1 have none. As one who is interested in 
 you I shall not even try at the present moment to stimulate you 
 to be your highest self. For you are more drunk with passion 
 than ever man was with wine. I believe that this fit will pass, 
 and that you will come back to your old high ideas, your old grand 
 beliefs ; and that you will on that glorious day of self-restoration 
 shrink from yourself of to-night as I should shrink from you if 
 I believed this self to be really you." 
 
 " It is myself in bitter earnest," said the other in a gloomy 
 but somewhat modified tone. 
 
 " I have good hope for you yet," said Orloff ; adding in his 
 low, musical voice, " Death only can take from a man his pride 
 of soul." 
 
 " Passion will do it, too," said Serge. The rest of the walk 
 home was a silent one. The crisis had been reached, and each 
 had resolved on his own course of action. 
 
 Orloff's action for the present consisted in waiting. 
 
 At the hour of this conversation, Ralph Featherstone sat in 
 his study, immersed in work, a perplexed, worried look upon his 
 face. He was surrounded with a litter of papers, to which he 
 constantly referred. Occasionally he took up his pen and wrote, 
 and then would pause, buried in thought. As the clock struck 
 one the door opened softly. He looked up well pleased to see 
 it was his wife, who came over and stood beside him. She 
 placed one hand on his shoulder, while the other passed over 
 his hair. 
 
 '* I am glad to see you, my darling," he said, as she leaned 
 down and kissed him. *' Did you meet the Russian ?'' 
 
 ** I did." 
 
 *' And is the feud made up .^ '^ 
 
 ** It is — if feud it ever was ; but I think our first impressioii 
 was correct — that Orloff thought we were tampering with his 
 beloved secretary. He could not long remain in ignorance of 
 the kind of people we were." 
 
 *' Well," remarked Ralph, with a smile, " now that we have 
 Zenbrowsky back, I hope that we shall be able to tamper with 
 him to some purpose. A rebel, made so by conversion, is always 
 more ardent than one who has not undergone this process. I 
 wish, in the same way, we could tamper with Orloff ; but that? 
 I fear, is past ^N^nyoiir skill." 
 
 ** I fear so, too. What is past yduts tiiay Well b^ past mine.'' 
 
HER PRICE. 277 
 
 *' You are a beaut'ful and charming woman, and that is half 
 the battle. Would we could have got hold of Orlofif, for he just 
 now means the real curse under which his country groans. I 
 tell you, things cannot last long like this, and though I hate 
 bloodshed as much as any man, I find a bitter comfort on looking 
 forward to the time when the voices of the stricken and down- 
 trodden nations shall be heard all over the v/orld, and the cry 
 shall be war, vengeance, and death to the tyrants who have so 
 long ruled over us. I fear the sins of tyrants can only be ex- 
 piated by blood. Yet it is this that I labour to prevent." 
 
 **You labour vainly," was her answer. "Of what church 
 was it written in the Book of Revelations, ' I know thy works 
 that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or 
 hot'?" 
 
 " I am sorry you should add to my other troubles, dear, by mis- 
 understanding me," he answered, gently, but withal wearily. 
 
 " Forgive me," she said, kissing him again ; '' I only meant 
 that I thought you were too humane. How did the meeting go 
 off; and do you think we shall get a Liberal Ministry ?" 
 
 " I hope so ; but the Conservatives are strong. We shall 
 have a hand-to-hand fight of it when the time comes. See, 
 while you have been away, I have written these six addresses 
 to be delivered in different parts of the country. Then this 
 pamphlet which I have finished, called * What the Conservatives 
 Want,' I think will spike some of their guns." 
 
 " Surely it will," answered Mrs. Featherstone, her eyes 
 brightening ; *' but work no more now." 
 
 " No ; I will work no more now. Tell me about the evening 
 ^how you liked it, and who was there." 
 
 The next afternoon, just as the clock struck four, Serge pre- 
 sented himself at the Featherstones' street-door. Outside, the 
 streets were full of dust and glare, but on entering the house 
 you found yourself in a heaven of shade. The green blinds to 
 all the windows were lowered, while great vases of flowers stood 
 in the hall at not infrequent intervals. As he passed up the 
 stairs, the sound of Mrs. Featherstone's voice came to meet 
 him. She was singing her favourite song — 
 
 ' ' Bid me to live, and I will live 
 Thy Protestant to be ; 
 Or bid me love, and I will give 
 A loving heart to thee," 
 
278 HER PRICE, 
 
 " You were singing that song the first afternoon I came to 
 see you," he said, when they were both seated upon a low 
 couch. 
 
 *' Was I ? What a memory you must have." 
 
 " Only for some things." 
 
 '' Thanks ; I am glad my singing pleases you." 
 
 " There is nothing about you," he answered, with suppressed 
 passion, *' which does not charm me." 
 
 " Let us read something," she said ; and, rising, she fetched 
 a book. They read in low tones, sitting very close together, so 
 as to be able to look at the book at the same time. 
 
 Outside, the burning summer day went by, and people at- 
 tended, as well as they could, to their various occupations, 
 whether of business or pleasure. But these two thought not of 
 them. The little air that came in at the open window was 
 ardent with the sun, whose light came only faintly through the 
 green blinds ; the room was fragrant with flowers, and there was 
 something drowsy in the sound of the flies as they buzzed in 
 and out. At length Mrs. Featherstone laid down the book and 
 said : 
 
 •' How quiet it is ?" 
 
 "Almost as quiet," said Serge, "as it is hot." 
 
 " I don't think we will read any more to-day," she said, lan- 
 guidly ; " my head aches." 
 
 " Then I should do better to go." 
 
 " Why go .? " 
 
 " Because I shall tire you if I stay." 
 
 " Not at all. After you have been away so long I like — " 
 Then, after a pause, " I hke to have you here. But I must 
 not keep you against your will, after having made you come." 
 
 *' Don't speak like that,'^ he burst out, " when just to sit in 
 the same room and look at you, though you should not speak a 
 word, would be more happiness than I or any other man can 
 deserve." 
 
 " Don't be foolish," she said, almost pitifully, as if she were 
 grieved, but in too much pain to protest. Then she took his 
 hand and leaned her head into it, saying it was so cool, and her 
 forehead burned so. 
 
 " Does the coolness of it really soothe the pain 1 " he asked* 
 
 "Yes," she repHed, but very sadly, and then there was silence 
 between them. 
 
HER PRICE, 279 
 
 Serge's blood had become electric. There were sparks of fire 
 in his eyes — a mighty struggle was going on within him. Mrs. 
 Featherstone was sitting with her forehead bowed in his hand — 
 her delicate white dress, from which a subtle fragrance escaped, 
 touched him. He could not see her eyes, but he saw the won- 
 derful dark abundant hair. His lips were very near it. They 
 yearned with a great yearning to touch it — but dare they ? 
 Should he lose her friendship thereby ? He laid his disengaged 
 hand on the soft folds— she did not withdraw. Then his lips 
 approached nearer — at last they imprinted a kiss on the superb 
 dark masses. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mrs. Featherstone started away as if she had been stung, 
 and seated herself in a remote corner of the room. Serge now 
 bit his lips with anger. What a fool he had been ! He got up, 
 and coming to where she was sitting, he knelt down before her, 
 and said : 
 
 " I was a fool — nay, worse. Can you ever forgive me 1 " 
 
 She was leaning back in her chair, breathing quickly — her 
 hands clasped loosely in her lap. 
 
 *' Zuleika," he cried, " speak to me ; for the love of God ! 
 Are you ill, or are you too offended to speak to me ?'' 
 
 And he caught her hands, which were cold now, and held 
 them. 
 
 At length she spoke ; her voice was low and uncertain, but it 
 had in it an almost overpowering sweetness. 
 
 ^'I am surprised — dazed," she said. He let go her hands and 
 began walking up and down. Then he sat down on the couch, 
 where but a few minutes ago they had sat together. For some 
 time there was no sound but the buzzing of the flies in and 
 out. He waited breathlessly, as souls may wait at the day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 The light of the room, subdued though it was, seemed to vex 
 him, and he plunged his face into his hands. Suddenly there 
 was a slight stir, as of a woman's dress moving, then two cool. 
 
2So UER PRICE^ 
 
 soft hands took hold of his and drew them from his eyes. She 
 was kneeling there by him as he had knelt by her. 
 
 " Don't be vexed with me/' she said, holding one of his hands 
 in hers. 
 
 '^ It is I who have vexed you," he replied. 
 
 " We are neither of us vexed with the other, now," she 
 answered, and her tones were low and thrilling — subtle as a 
 caress. She looked into his with those wonderful eyes of hers 
 — those eyes which seemed to draw his whole soul out to her, 
 while the touch of her hand flooded all his veins with passion. 
 With a great effort— for the better part of the man was rousing 
 within him, and doing battle with his temptation — he turned his 
 eyes away. Then the sweet magnetic voice, which seemed to 
 have come nearer, said : 
 
 " Will you not even look at me ? " 
 
 He turned his eyes ; their faces were very close together. 
 Neither of them spoke ; but the same thought must have been 
 in both hearts. Can the needle help turning to the North Pole.'^ 
 or rivers help flowing to the sea ? Their lips yearned, but kept 
 aloof. Then they drew closer together till they almost touched. 
 Then they clove together, in one long, ardent, strenuous kiss. 
 
 " Your place should be my place," said Serge, as he raised 
 Mrs. Featherstone from the ground, his whole blood in tumult. 
 She took the seat, and he knelt by her, holding her hands and 
 at times covering them with kisses. 
 
 How the time had flown ! The clock on the mantelpiece 
 struck six. They started. 
 
 '^ You must go at once," said Zuleika, '' as I shall only have 
 time to dress for dinner. We are dining out to-night. I wish 
 we were not, my head pains me so." 
 
 " We could not read much to-day," said Serge ; " can we 
 resume to-morrow ?" 
 
 *' Yes," she answered, very gently, and again their lips came 
 together. 
 
 Serge Zenbrowsky passed from the rose-scented room and 
 hastened down the stairs. In the hall he met Featherstone, 
 who shook him warmly by the hand and expressed his great 
 pleasure at seeing him once again. 
 
 *' I was just on the point of giving you up as an inexplicable 
 mystery," he said, in his frank, genial voice, "when my wife had 
 the good fortune to run up against you. Horribly sorry I can' 
 
HER PRICE. 281 
 
 ask you to stay to dinner, but we dine out. Have an iced 
 brandy and soda before you go out into the heat. What, you 
 won't ? Well, a wilful man must have his own way, I suppose. 
 Good-bye till the next time, and mind that is to be soon." 
 
 *^ Surely, surely," said Serge, who was extremely ill at ease. 
 He was relieved to find himself in the open air. He walked 
 without knowing whither he went. He was conscious of things 
 about him, but conscious as one may be in a trance. He saw 
 the shops, the moving multitudes, the whirhng vehicles, but as 
 through a veil of fire ; and as through a veil of sound he heard 
 the turmoil of the streets — the tramp of feet, the thunder of 
 wheels, the cry of flower-girls at street corners. 
 
 "Now, then, roses — beautiful moss-roses, only two a penny!" 
 
 He walked along like one possessed, seeming to feel Zuleika's 
 lips still on his, the blood in his veins coming and going 
 violently. What wonderful thing was this which had come to 
 pass and changed all life for him ? Zuleika had suffered him 
 to kiss her— nay, had returned his kiss, and that not coldly. 
 What did it mean ? Could she love him ? Did she love him t 
 And what would the end of it be .^ He was too drunken with 
 the strong, potent draught of joy he had drained to go deeply 
 into any of these questions. He whispered to himself : 
 
 " To-morrow will come, and then, oh my queen, my one 
 adorable woman, I shall see you again. Oh, sweet, sweet, 
 sweet lips ! " 
 
 A thousand times that evening he enacted over to himself the 
 scene of the afternoon, lingering lovingly on every least detail. 
 The sun had set and the clear dusk fallen, when a sudden faint- 
 ness reminded him that he had not dined. He went into a 
 brightly lighted restaurant and ordered some dinner with a 
 bottle of champagne to accompany it. 
 
 ** Bring the champagne at once," he cried, and it being 
 brought he drank off a couple of glasses feverishly. After 
 dinner, being altogether too restless to sit still, he resumed his 
 walk about the streets, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It 
 was past one in the morning, when having through absent- 
 mindedness missed his way many a time, he found himself 
 within his hotel. He went straight to his room, undressed and 
 flung himself on his bed, yet not to sleep, but to dream with 
 open eyes of Zuleika. 
 
 In a couple of hours light was visible. Then he threw open 
 
282 HER PRICE, 
 
 the window and let in a little shiver of cool air. How still it 
 was, though at this early hour there were rumours of awakening 
 life. What would this day bring forth for him, he wondered. 
 He watched the shimmer on the sky strengthen until it became 
 perfect, unmistakable, absolute light. How gradually and how 
 wonderfully it expanded. The east was suffused with a rosy 
 flush, from which the sun broke suddenly — a pure gold flower 
 of flame. 
 
 At breakfast he and Orlofif met. Orloff's manner was not 
 unfriendly, but they did not talk much. Orloff observed to 
 himself a certain wild look about his friend, and that he took 
 little breakfast, but he said nothing, and divided his attention 
 between his morning's letters and the newspaper, only saying 
 once, as he glanced up : 
 
 " You make a mistake not to eat. One needs to, especially 
 this weather, to keep up one's strength." 
 
 " Thanks, thanks," responded Serge, " I'm all right. Eat or 
 not, hot or cold weather, I am always well." 
 
 He rose, and going to the piano played some Russian airs 
 with intense emotion. They were the airs of passionate love- 
 songs. It was early yet, and he knew not how to pass the time 
 until the longed-for hour of meeting should come. It would be 
 of no interest to follow his movements until four o'clock, when 
 he found himself again ascending the stairs of the Feather- 
 stones' house. 
 
 Mrs. Featherstone received him, as usual, in her own especial 
 sitting-room. She wore a dress which looked soft as a summer 
 cloud. 
 
 *' Another torrid day," she said, when the door was closed; 
 " hotter, I think, than yesterday." 
 
 Serge assented, and then coming over to where she was sit- 
 ting, he took her hand and raised it to his lips. 
 
 " We must read," she said, in her low, too quiet voice. " I 
 have a fancy to read you again from the book I read you the 
 first afternoon you came to study with me — * Swinburne's Songs 
 before Sunrise.' Get it for me from the book-shelf, please." 
 
 He brought it to her, and again she read those words of fiery 
 denunciation and of love not less fervid. 
 
 " Well," she said, having finished, " do you find the poem as 
 horrible as you did .^ " 
 
 " No," he cried, impetuously, " you have bewitched me. Your 
 
HER PRICE, 283 
 
 thoughts shciU be my thoughts. Henceforth you shall be my 
 rehgion." 
 
 " That is good," she said, and gave him her hand, and leaned 
 so close to him that her soft hair touched his face. He kissed 
 her, and under the pressure of his lips she thrilled to her finger- 
 tips. He threw his arm round her. For a moment she seemed 
 to yield ; then she shuddered, and drew herself away, saying : 
 
 " Serge, we must not. It is wrong — hateful ! What must you 
 not think of me ? " 
 
 " I know," he answered, throwing himself before her. " I 
 know that I adore you — that my whole life is now centred in 
 you. I have not closed my eyes all night for thinking of you. 
 When I am with you I am in heaven ; when I am away from 
 you I am in hell ! " 
 
 She leaned forward and smoothed his hair, saying : 
 
 " You have pretty hair. I like the warm gold lights that come 
 and go in it." 
 
 ** Zuleika," he said, almost fiercely, " you owe me something." 
 
 *' Have I given you nothing } " she asked, a shade of reproach 
 in her tone. 
 
 *^ Yes," he replied, '• my heart knows you have ; but I strove 
 to fly from you, and you have brought me back. I was frightened 
 of you, of myself, and of what I felt for you, but with Ivan 
 Orloff's help I resisted your spell. After seeing you again at 
 Vera Lapinski's — after we had touched hands in the garden, I 
 made four English lines of poetry." 
 
 " Tell them to me," she said, an accent of sweet sovereignty in 
 her voice. 
 
 And he recited, his voice cjuivering just a little : 
 
 " Because I am so very near your feet, 
 O love, forbear ! 
 One look more tender or one word more sweet. 
 And I am there ! " 
 
 ** Was it not lawful of me to bring back my best friend ? '" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Did you go to the house for that purpose only ? " 
 
 "Yes. What other interest could / have in visiting such a 
 
 house 2i^ that? I heard you were avoiding all your London 
 
 friends, but were to be met with there, where you had fallen in 
 
 love with a beautiful young Russian lady, and 1 resolved that 
 
284 HER PRICE> 
 
 despite this most beautiful young Russian lady, I would not be 
 wholly forsaken. Did you go to see her last evening ? " 
 
 " She is no more to me than the commonest woman in the 
 street." 
 
 " But, surely, you flirted with her ? " 
 
 " I did, I confess it," he answered ; " I did whatever I could 
 to divert my mind from my grief." 
 
 " I don't think your feelings are very deep," she remarked, 
 coldly, taking her hand out of his ; " I don't think a real grief 
 would think diversion /<?>yi'/<^/^." 
 
 " I," he rejoined, "found it to be impossible, but I struggled." 
 
 "And failed?" 
 
 " Yes, failed horribly." 
 
 He strove to kiss her, but she averted her face and said 
 " NoP 
 
 At that moment the door-handle turned. Serge rose instantly, 
 and Mr. Featherstone walked in. 
 
 " I hope I am not breaking in upon your reading," he said, 
 when he had shaken hands with Zenbrowsky, " but I wanted a 
 word with you, my dear, about those last papers from the 
 society. I believe you have them ? " 
 
 Yes, Mrs. Featherstone had them ; and having produced 
 them she sank gracefully into a chair and said, as she waved her 
 fan softly to and fro : 
 
 ** Ralph, I am proud to say we have made yet another con- 
 vert to the one great cause." 
 
 " His name.^" asked Featherstone. 
 
 *' His name,'' said Zuleika, " is Serge Accolaivitch Zenbrow- 
 sky ! " 
 
 *' We m.ay indeed congratulate ourselves and our friends. 
 And you, my dear fellow, you will not repent having chosen to 
 take the right path ; and when the whirlwind comes, as come it 
 will, you will not be among those that it destroys." 
 
 He had been speaking with his arm on the young man's 
 shoulder. Now he shook him warmly by both hands, saying, 
 as he did so, " Brother ! " 
 
 " Yes," answered Serge, not daring to look in the direction of 
 Zuleika, '' brothers in the noble cause of liberty ! Down with 
 tyrants ! " 
 
 *' And with all the friends of tyrants," said Mrs. Featherstone, 
 speaking very slowly. 
 
HER PRICE, ' . 285 
 
 ** Well,'^ said Featherstone, " I have an engagement now and 
 must hurry away to it, but we shall meet again at dinner. 
 You'll stop and dine with as, of course, if you have nothing 
 better to do ? " 
 
 Serge, however, excused himself; he had no wish to partake 
 of this man's hospitality. 
 
 *' Why won't you dine with us ?'' she asked, aS soon as the 
 door had closed upon her husband. *' It is unkind of you not to.'' 
 
 *' Do you think it would be very possible .''" he answered. 
 
 " I don't know ; I should think so," was her reply. " I don*t 
 know. Have w^e done more harm than to be a little foolish .^ '* 
 
 ** And I," answered Serge, with a sudden outburst of passionate 
 energy — " I, to whom it means everything — for to you it is but play 
 - — well, I will be foolish no more. So may God help me ! What 
 is it that we say in Russia ? * Death only can take from a man 
 his pride of soul.' I love you, and while we are in the same 
 town I suppose I shall see you ; but I will not, as you phrase it, 
 be foolish. I have some strength of moral nature left yet." 
 
 *' Yes," she said, " it is better so ; " and her voice was like 
 beautiful, broken music. She sat quite still, her eyes bent upon 
 the ground. 
 
 *' I am sorry you will not stay for dinner," she went on. '* Mr. 
 Featherstone is going to Liverpool to-morrow for a week, and 
 when he comes back we shall be going out of town for some 
 months, so that this will be your only opportunity for a long 
 time to come of having any talk with him." 
 
 Serge said he was sorry, too, but the thing was impossible. 
 He caught her hands, which drew him toward her. 
 
 '' Good-bye," he said. 
 
 *' Good-bye," she answered, though the tone in which the word 
 Was uttered made it an invitation to stay. But he disregarded 
 it, and withholding his lips from hers with a supreme effort, and 
 letting go her hands, he went from the room and from the house. 
 Ivan Orlofif had known his friend well when he had said to him 
 that he was not the man to carry such an affair out to its ulti- 
 mate issues without losing more, by way of remorse, than he 
 Could hope to gain. Orloff noticed the haggard eyes of his 
 secretary, but said nothing. He was biding his time. 
 
 For the next two days, when Serge could have seen all he 
 \vished of Zuleika, her husband being absent, he kept himself 
 feven from the directio7i of the Featherstones' house ; but 
 
286 HER PRICK. 
 
 the strain was tremendous, and to ease it be drank heavily. On 
 the third day he could stand it no longer ; and long before the 
 hour had come for conventional calls, he found himself once 
 more in Mrs. Featherstone's boudoir. The servant brought 
 word that she would be with him in a few minutes. The happy 
 room seemed, like his heart, permeated with the memory of her 
 presence. The impress of her individuality was on all things 
 there. He was lost in such reflections when the door opened 
 and she came in. • 
 
 " Good-morning," she said ; ^' I thought you had forgotten 
 me, and how lonely I should be." 
 
 " No," he replied, bitterly ; " I don't forget so easily — more's 
 the pily !" 
 
 " You look ill, she said. "Tell me what has been the matter." 
 
 " The matter is that I have been drinking too much, making^ 
 a beast of myself, because I said I would not come to see you, 
 and 1 had to borrow strength from alcohol to carry out this 
 resolution for two days only. What do you think of me ? " 
 
 " Why, I think you were foohsh not to come to me, if you 
 wanted to do so so very much that to keep away made you drink 
 more than you should have done." 
 
 ^' I think I was," he returned ; " but if you had seen my 
 struggles to be strong you would have been sorry for me." 
 
 " I am sorry for both of us," she answered. 
 
 " What have you to be sorry for ? " he asked. " It is nothing 
 to you. It is death to me." 
 
 '' Serge," she said, with a flash of genuine pride, " you insult 
 one. What do you take me for t Do you think I would let any 
 man hold my hand, or kiss my lips, as I have let you do, except 
 for one thing, which, shameful as it is to confess, is still less 
 shameful than the lack of all womanly modesty which your 
 words would impute to me. It is my calamity to love you." 
 
 "Ah, forgive me," cried the distracted man. " I meant only 
 that your love could not be like mine, because I love you so wildly." 
 
 He came near, and tried to draw her to him, but she put him 
 away, saying : 
 
 " No — you said you would be foolish no more. You will be 
 sorry afterward. Be content to see me as my other friends do. 
 Shall we read now ? " 
 
 Like a madman he turned from her, and sprang toward the 
 door. He was in one of those moods that will not brook a 
 
HER PRICE, 287 
 
 moment's trifling, but before his hand fell on the handle he 
 heard the low command of recall : 
 
 '' Come here ! " 
 
 She was standing in the centre of the room, tall and beautiful, 
 with her arms reached out to him. In another moment they were 
 locked in a close embrace. Their lips sealed fast upon each other. 
 
 " My darling-, my darling," she moaned between her kisses, 
 "how have I borne these days without you?" 
 
 " They have been days of torment to me," he replied. 
 
 Serge stayed that day to lunch, and drove afterward with Mrs. 
 Featherstone in the park, where, owing to the lateness of the 
 season, only a few vehicles were observable. But one man saw 
 them, himself unseen, and that man was Orloff. 
 
 Returning from the drive. Serge did not part company with 
 Mrs. Featherstone, but stayed to dinner, and they were happy, 
 with a feverish reckless happiness. 
 
 Zuleika had never looked more lovely. Her dinner dress left 
 bare to the elbows her splendid arms. A diamond cross shone 
 against her glorious throat. In her dark hair she had a blood- 
 red rose. 
 
 After dinner, and when they had had coffee, he asked her to 
 sing to him ; and going to the piano she sang : 
 
 *' Bid me to live, and I will live, 
 Tliy Protestant to be ; 
 Or bid me love, and I will give 
 A loving heart to thee." 
 
 *'Why do you always sing that song.^" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," she answered. '' I suppose partly 
 because I like it, and partly because it might be useful some day." 
 
 " How could it be useful, except in the way of enjoyment ? " 
 he said, with a laugh. 
 
 " Well, I hardly know myself, but it might be. I might be a 
 second Pippa, you know : the girl in one of Browning's poems. 
 She is heard to sing when other people's lives are just reaching 
 their most critical situations, and the sound of her voice changes 
 them all. But she was a good girl, this little Pippa, so her in- 
 fluence was good. 
 
 ' God's in His heaven, 
 All's right with the world.* 
 
 I wonder what my hifluence would be ? " 
 
288 HER PRICE. 
 
 " To madden,'' was his prompt response. 
 
 " Do you think so ? " she said, softly. " I wonder how mad 
 I could make you ? But it is late for you to be here when I am 
 all alone. You must go." 
 
 He took her hand and kissed it — then the fair strong arm, 
 and then the perfect mouth. He whispered something in her 
 ear, to which she answered : 
 
 " I love you. All the same there is a price to pay, and the 
 price is not gold." 
 
 "Whatever the price be," he cried, I will pay it." 
 
 " Will you ? " she said. *^ Well, to-morrow we shall see. 
 Now kiss me once more and go." 
 
 So it was thus that they parted. 
 
 Neither of them slept much that night. Indeed, Serge could 
 not do anything but pace up and down his room. As it would 
 not be well for him to spend so much time at Mrs. Feather- 
 stone's house, in her husband's absence, it was agreed that they 
 should meet at ten o'clock in Kensington Gardens, at which 
 place Serge arrived some time in advance of that hour. At 
 length the figure he knew so well came in sight. 
 
 " You look tired, my darling," he said, as he drew her hand 
 within his arm, and they walked away together. 
 
 " Yes, " she answered, *' I am tired. Yesterday was a happy 
 day, but hardly a restful one, was it ? " 
 
 " No, Heaven knows it was not P^ he cried, very genuinely. 
 
 "I have a carriage waiting," she said. "Where shall we 
 drive to ?" 
 
 After a little debate they decided to drive to Epping Forest, 
 where they could walk/or sit undisturbed in the densest part of 
 the wood. As they drove along Serge asked : 
 
 " What is it I must do for you .^ " 
 
 " I will tell you this evening," she said, "and not before.'* 
 
 " You will keep me all that time in the agony of suspense .^ '^ 
 
 " Suspense ! " she echoed. " How can it be suspense if you 
 still think, as you did last night, that no price would be too 
 great to pay ? Were those words only meant to sound well '^, I 
 had believed them." 
 
 " They were but the strictest truth," he cried, " and I say 
 them again — feeling them even more intensely than I did then." 
 
 The weather was still brilliant, but, arrived at Epping Forest, 
 they had small difficulty in procuring all the shade they desired ; 
 
HER PRICE. 289 
 
 and there, under the vast elms and beeches, Serge lay at the 
 feet of his queen and worshipped her, holding her hands, gaz- 
 ing up into her eyes, while she would lean low to kiss his face 
 or to let her cool fingers meet about his throat. 
 
 They returned to London rather sooner than they had an- 
 ticipated, for, as the sunlight faded, the small wind which had 
 been playing among the tree-boughs dropped dead, and awful 
 silence and dread expectancy reigned over everything. One 
 could not quite tell when it would break, but it was evident that 
 a storm was gathering. 
 
 So Serge and Zuleika hastened back to town. Shortly before 
 reaching her own house she alighted and dismissed the carriage. 
 
 '* Farewell for a little while," she said. 
 
 He held long and lovingly the exquisitely gloved hand and 
 relinquished it with a sigh, saying, as he did so : 
 
 " And you think it better for me not to come till just dinner 
 time ? " 
 
 " I am sure it is." 
 
 " Well, my lady, I do yOur will in all things. Two weary 
 hours ! They will seem an age»" 
 
 " Write me a little more poetry. t)o you remember 
 
 * Because I ^m so very near your feet, 
 
 O love, forbear ; 
 One look more tender or one word more sweety 
 And I am there 1 ' 
 
 Now, keep m^ standing no longer. This close Weather tiiakes 
 hie feel faint." 
 
 Serge walked about the deserted park for an hour. Then ttfe 
 went to his hotel and dressed for dinner. Having accomplished 
 this, he walked to Mrs. Featherstone's with a quickfy beating 
 heart, asking himself again and again what she could want of 
 him. Certainly nothing that he would withhold. For th6 
 moment he seemed to have stupified his conscience. He was- 
 travelling, indeed, through a land of desperately sweet and 
 dangerous romance. After all, romance does exist outside? 
 the covers of the "Arabian Nights.^' 
 
 The atmospherical effect of the evening was to soften all th^ 
 outlines of the metropolis, and to give it a strange dreamlike' 
 appearance. There was that intense stillness in the air through 
 which the least sound is audible arid s^eriis tO acquire a sp^ciaT*^ 
 
 20 
 
290 HER PRICE, 
 
 significance. The postman's knock, heeded at no other time 
 by the passer-by, seems to him, in breaking such stillness, like 
 the shock of doom. From your drawing-room you can almost 
 overhear the conversation oT the people who pass under your 
 windows, while those passing can hear, perchance, the notes of 
 a piano almost as distinctly as if they were in the room. 
 
 Entering the drawing-room Serge started, as Zuleika came 
 forward to meet him. For, magnificent as her beauty always 
 was, it had never appeared till now to such superb advantage. 
 The dress she had put on was of some diaphanous material, and 
 fitted her figure to perfection, revealing all its wonderful and 
 gracious outlines. On her wrists were large broad bands of 
 gold clasped with rubies. A red rose again glowed in her 
 bosom, and one shone in the folds of her dark hair. 
 
 "Well," she said, marking the thrill of unspoken admiration 
 in his look, '• does my dress become me ? " 
 
 " I never saw you look so beautiful before, and that I can 
 tell you is saying a great deal. It is small wonder that I should 
 love you as I do." And he drew her close to him, his eyes 
 feeding greedily on her face. 
 
 " Do you know," he said, "it seems to me now that I never 
 really lived till I loved you ? I had dream-loves, I had dream- 
 friends, always excepting Orloff ; he was, from the first, a real 
 and very important factor in my life. I have told you how 
 much I owe to him." 
 
 " Yes," replied Mrs. Featherstone, *' you have told me." 
 
 And they went down to dinner. Oddly enough Mrs. Feather- 
 stone was more of an epicure than her husband, for v»^hom the 
 plainest fair served. She delighted in all manner of daintily 
 made dishes. But for this there would have been no expensive 
 French cook in the Featherstone establishment, for the master 
 of the house, though wealthy, held that the individual had no 
 right to spend unduly upon himself while there were so many 
 starving thousands in the world. But to his wife he could deny 
 nothing, and for his extravagance in her behalf he tried to make 
 up by practising, as regarded himself, the most rigid economy. 
 Mrs. Featherstone was one of those women who could pas- 
 sionately resent any act of oppression, but she failed to realize, 
 as her husband did, what an immense amount of the world's 
 misery might be lessened if the rich would only combine to 
 forego a few of their luxuries. 
 
HER PRICE. 291 
 
 Good to see was the dining-table, with its soft damask, its 
 profusion of glass and silver, its noble epergne in the centre, 
 filled with the choicest flowers. 
 
 " Why, you have prepared us quite a banquet,'^ observed 
 Serge, as dish after dish of the most tempting description was 
 handed round ; " and your wines are simply perfection — but 
 you do no justice to either, yourself.'^ 
 
 " No, I have not much appetite ; I am always painfully 
 affected when there is thunder in the air." 
 
 " Which there certainly is to-night," he said, tossing off a 
 glass of champagne, " though I fancy the storm won't burst till 
 later ; " but at that moment a brilliant flash of lightning made 
 them both start. It was followed, at a long interval, by a low 
 growl of thunder. 
 
 At length the repast terminated. 
 
 *' I shall not be long after you." he said, as he held the door 
 open for her to pass out. 
 
 "Don't," she answered, "for I shall be lonely." 
 
 Serge went back to the table, and gazed at the chair she had 
 ^o recently occupied, as if he saw her beauty still gracing it. He 
 filled himself a glass of the splendid claret, and began drinking 
 it slowly, like a man "on whom good wine is not thrown away. 
 He had already taken as much as he should have done, but in 
 those two days when, having resolved not to go to see her, he 
 had called alcohol to his aid, he seemed to have contracted the 
 pernicious habit of having recourse to stimulants. Love, how- 
 ever, was a greater temptation than wine, and he lingered but 
 a brief space. Yet those were blissful and strange moments 
 when he sat there in the softly-lighted dining-room, heart and 
 blood aglow with love and wine. He was in just that stage of 
 excitement from wine when everything — either joy or pain — is 
 felt most intensely. The mystery which was about to be solved, 
 of what great service it lay in his power to render the object of 
 his adoration, had an infinite fascination for him, and lent 
 glamour to the occasion. From the drawing-room, Mrs. 
 Featherstone sang : 
 
 " Bid me to live, and I will live, 
 Thy Protestant to be : 
 Or bid me love, and I will give 
 A loving heart to thee." 
 
 This finished, she broke into the mad, thrilling notes of the 
 
2g± MeR price. 
 
 *' Marseillaise." So wholly lost was she in this, so carried away 
 and possessed by the stormy spirit of it, that she did not know 
 of a presence in the room till he joined with her in singing the 
 chorus. 
 
 " It stirs my blood," she said. *' I think if I could always 
 hear that just at the right moment, I should be enabled to do 
 just what I wanted to." 
 
 She had left the piano and had seated herself near the 
 window^ 
 
 " If you are seeking air, sweetheart,'' said Serge, '^I am afraid 
 you will not find it," and he cast himself at her feet, leaning his 
 arms upon her lap. And now, you know, you have something 
 to tell me." 
 
 " Yes, I have promised to tell you to-night, and so I will, but 
 not just yet." 
 
 She took both his hands and pressed them lovingly against her 
 fair neck, and said, in a voice which passion seemed to have 
 rendered slumbrous : 
 
 " Are you as much in love with me as you were yesterday ? 
 Say only what is true." 
 
 " More, more, more ! Every minute I pass with you I am 
 more beside myself with love for you. What I have to do for 
 you you may count upon having done swiftly." 
 
 Then he raised himself to kiss those sweet and subtle lips. 
 
 "No other woman could be as beautiful as you are/' he 
 said. 
 
 *' But," she answered, " many women are better to see. My 
 great friend was " — and here her voice quivered a little — " was 
 incomparably more beautiful. Hers was a sad fate, as was her 
 father's." 
 
 " Ah, let's have nothing sad to-night," he said, leaning his 
 face upon her hand. 
 
 " We must, my darling," she answered, ''for those I speak of 
 concern us closely. Their fate is inseparable from what you 
 have to do for me." 
 
 " Well, tell me, then," he answered, feverishly ; '' this utifest 
 is driving me mad." 
 
 " My great girl friend," began Zuleikaj *' was a young Russian 
 lady of the name of Ellen Vikentiorna. I loved well her father, 
 a guileless, gray-headed old courtier, devoted to the person of 
 the Czar. He had one mortal enemy lii Paul Ostrinski, a man 
 
HER PRICE. - 293 
 
 who had been a suitor for his daughter'? hand. As his persis- 
 tent advances were objectionable to both father and child, the 
 father, Nicolas Rudinseff, dismissed him one day violently, and 
 ever after had denied him admission. 
 
 '' Ostrinski conceived and carried out his scheme of venge- 
 ance, to which he confessed on his death-bed. He contrived 
 to obtain possession of some revolutionary documents. These 
 he managed to secrete in one of Rudinseff 's private receptacles 
 for papers, with this," and Mrs. Featherstone took from the table 
 a small sheathed dagger, on the hilt of which two Russian let- 
 ters were engraved. 
 
 *' These letters stand for Revolutionary Committee," she 
 added. '' How this came into my possession does not matter. 
 It would be a long story to tell. Ostrinski's next step was to 
 give information to the police, as to what they would discover 
 in the house. One night, when it was occupied only by the 
 servants, a search was made ; the papers and weapon were 
 discovered, and on Rudinseff 's return to his house he was 
 arrested. He was tried for Nihilism, but feeling at Court was 
 in his favour. He was known to have been so long devoted to 
 the Czar, that somehow or other he would have been cleared 
 but for one man — " she paused and then said, " Orloff, whose 
 influence was then rapidly making itself felt. Though then but 
 a young man, he maintained that clemency in the face of such 
 evidence would be a bribe to any member of the household who 
 should become disaffected. In the end he prevailed and Rudin- 
 seff was condemned to death. He took his sentence calmly 
 enough, only saying, *The Czar will be sorry for this, some 
 day.' But his child, who was in court, was frenzied with grief 
 She denounced the Czar as a tyrant and invoked curses on him 
 and his. She was at once taken into custody. Still, on the 
 whole, she would have been leniently dealt with but for Orloff, 
 who declared it necessary that she should be made an example 
 of. The devilish knout was used, and that not sparingly. Of 
 the shame and torture of it she died, the day after they had 
 murdered her father." 
 
 " It is horrible," cried Serge. " Orloff has much to answer 
 for — but how does this affect us ? " 
 
 ^' I will tell you," she answered, leaning her face close to his, 
 *' the daughter was my sister." 
 
 *' You ^re Russian," he cried, starting. 
 
294 HER PRICE. 
 
 *•' Yes— your countrywoman. Have I not kept the secret 
 well ? My sister was many years older than I. My mother fled 
 with me to England, where we had relations. I was not con- 
 sidered a stupid child. I studied hard, and soon acquired a 
 good knowledge of English. When I was about sixteen I met 
 Mr. Featherstone at a democratic society, of which I was a 
 zealous member. I told him my story, and we became fast 
 friends. At the end of two years we married. We thought it 
 best that my Russian birth should be kept in the background." 
 
 "But tell me," he cried, 'Svhat am I to do? In what way 
 can I help you ? " 
 
 " Kiss me first," she said. He did so, and that kiss, sweeter 
 than any they had yet interchanged, stormed all his veins with 
 violent delight. He strained her to him, saying : 
 
 " Oh, my heaven of love, my queen, my wonder among 
 women ! — ah, what, what is there that I would not do for you .^ 
 Now tell me." 
 
 Then she said, almost in a whisper, while her eyes shone : 
 
 " You must stop this loathsome life, that it may do no more 
 evil. You must avenge my murdered father and sister. Use 
 this dagger, and suspicion will never fall upon you.'^ 
 
 Mechanically he seized the dagger, and then sprang up with 
 a sharp cry of horror. 
 
 " No !" he hissed between his set teeth. "This I will not 
 do. Go elsewhere to find your paid assassins. I am not one. 
 Murder my protector ! the man to whom I owe everything ; the 
 man who was to me as a father ! Oh, Orloff, you were right, you 
 were right ! Among what people have I fallen ? But, oh, witness, 
 heaven, that when this woman revealed her true self to me I 
 cast her from me as if she had been a snake — yes, I would 
 have trodden her under my feet ! It was for this foul end 
 that she spoke so softly, kissed so sweetly — that through 
 passion she might degrade me to the rank of a hired assassin, 
 and she — this woman — her fair base self to be the price ! It 
 is too horrible for man to endure the thought of ! " 
 
 During this outburst Mrs. Featherstone had sat perfectly 
 still, her hands locked tight in one another. 
 
 " Have you ceased vituperating "me ? " she inquired, when he 
 paused, shaken to his heart's centre, all the blood drained from 
 his face. 
 
 " In words, yes," he answered, "but in my thoughts, never. 
 
HER PRICE, '^ 295 
 
 Now vvc part, and I trust that by the grace of God we may 
 never meet again." 
 
 " I have a presentiment that it will be otherwise," she said. 
 *^ I wish to tell you one thing, which is that my husband is 
 in the most absolute ignorance of what you have been pleased 
 to term my * baseness.^ His regard for you and interest in you 
 were perfectly genuine." 
 
 " I would I had never met you," he groaned, restlessly 
 moving the dagger to and fro in its sheath. 
 
 '' Its blade is as keen as hate," she observed. He moved 
 to the door. He struggled to leave the room without again 
 looking in her direction, but it was in vain. He was con- 
 strained to turn and look once again at her superb beauty. 
 Her wonderful eyes were regarding him with a slow, compelling 
 gaze. He strove to meet that look with one of proud defiance. 
 For a minute or two there was between them a battle of looks 
 — before hers his faltered, and finally became abashed. By 
 the force of her irresistible magnetism she drew him to herself. 
 In spite of his will he walked to where she was sitting. Then 
 he said : 
 
 *' You are very wicked, but you are very beautiful." 
 
 She raised her face. He caught her to him and kissed her, 
 again and again, desperately. Then he threw her from him saying : 
 
 '' For the last time, for the last time ! " 
 
 He went quickly to the door. Before he had reached it a 
 light hand fell upon his shoulder, the perfume of a rose was 
 near him, and a voice whispered in his ear : 
 
 " Remember ! " 
 
 **Do you think," he returned, " that I am likely to forget ? " 
 
 As Serge quitted the Featherstones' house, the storm which 
 had been so long gathering burst in its uttermost fury. An 
 immense crash of thunder seemed to shake the world to its 
 foundations. A blaze of lightning, which for a moment seemed 
 to sear the eyeballs, suggested to one the fiery sword which 
 guarded once the gates of Paradise. Then the rain came down 
 with what seemed a shout of exultation. There was a uni- 
 versal shutting up of windows, and sound of hurrying feet, and 
 a frequent demand for four-wheelers. But wholly indifferent 
 to fire, water or thunder, Serge Zenbrowsky walked on his 
 way, realizing only that this woman whom he had so madly 
 idolized had sought to bribe him to commit a murder. 
 
296 HER PRICE, 
 
 Orloff was sitting writing important state letters of advice 
 when Serge walked in out of the storm. 'A decanter of 
 brandy stood on the table. He filled a glass and drained it, 
 and then stood regarding his friend, who in his turn regarded 
 him intently. 
 
 " What's the matter? " he asked, and not unkindly ; " you 
 look half like a ghost and half like a madman." 
 
 " Orloff," said the other, " I have come back to you. You 
 were right in all you said ! " 
 
 Orloff rose, and taking the other by the hand, said : 
 
 " I knew it must be so in the end. I have been waiting for 
 this. As I cannot leave town just now, I have this day taken 
 a pleasant house at Richmond, where I hope to pass much 
 time. The change for you will be better than no change at 
 all." 
 
 "Yes, much better," assented the wretched man, who turned 
 and went straight to his own room, but not to sleep. 
 • The day which followed was like many another day suc- 
 ceeding a thunderstorm — gray and windy, and inclined to rain. 
 A terrible and depressing sense of reaction is produced by a 
 day so uninteresting occurring after an event so vital as a 
 thunderstorm. Even a day of unmitigated rain is less common- 
 place than this sort of gray, bleak, uncomfortable day, un- 
 fortunately met with so often in our English summers — a day 
 when one is chill without a fire, and too warm with one — a day 
 to depress even a cheerful man. 
 
 Zenbrowsky and Orloff remained indoors till late in the 
 afternoon engaged in preparing and copying certain papers. 
 At five o'clock they left town and dined at Orlof^'s villa at 
 Richmond. It was not the right kind of evening on which to 
 have tried such an experiment for just appreciation. The 
 house, before everything else, demanded fine weather. It was 
 emphatically a summer retreat. It stood at the end of a long 
 garden well lined with trees, through which the wind this 
 night made the most melancholy sound. The dining-room 
 opened on the garden by a French window. It was a pretty 
 room, fantastically but coldly furnished. The establishment 
 boasted a good cook, so that ^he dinner in itself was fairly 
 successful, but those who partook of it were in no condition to 
 appreciate even the best viands. Serge tried to provoke some 
 sort of life into himself by drinking freely of the good wine, 
 
HER PRICE, 297 
 
 with the result of becoming for a short time feverishly excitable, 
 after which he collapsed, and throwing himself on the sofa was 
 soon sound asleep and breathing heavily. 
 
 ** Poor boy, poor boy," mused the statesman, regarding the 
 young man's flushed cheeks ; " too much wine ! I must send 
 him off as soon as I can." He went on with the letters he was 
 writing ; and as the night wore on and Serge showed no signs 
 of awakening, Orloff cast a rug over him, and went to his own 
 sleeping apartment. When Serge awoke at last it was with 
 throbbing temples, and the strange sense of being in an 
 unfamiliar room. 
 
 The chill light of dawn was creeping in at the window ; a 
 cock crew violently, and was answered faintly by a friend, either 
 too sleepy or at too great a distance to make much effect with 
 his return salutation. 
 
 Zenbrowsky had been dreamingvaguely of Mrs. Featherstone, 
 and as he lay there he was possessed by a distracting sense of 
 her personal presence. The dagger which she had put into his 
 hands remained in the breast-pocket of his coat. It had a 
 curious fascination for him, as being something that her hand 
 had touched, for the potency of her charm was still upon him, 
 though mentally he recoiled from her in horror. 
 
 He laid the dagger lightly upon his throat, with the fancy 
 that it was her hand. Then he said, pressing his fingers upon 
 his burning forehead : " * Death only can take from a man his 
 pride of soul.' Last night is not the first time, lately, that I 
 have taken too much wine ; surely I am not going to let myself 
 fall into this snare ! " 
 
 He looked in a kind of dazed, hopeless manner about the 
 room, threw his arms above his head, rose, and, opening the 
 window, passed out into the garden. The damp, cool air upon 
 his face was grateful to him. Through the strengthening light 
 a few birds were beginning to sing dubiously. He regarded with 
 aching eyes the wet trees and bushes and the forlorn garden- 
 paths. He drew out his cigar-case and began to smoke and to 
 think of Mrs. Featherstone — only ten miles away, yet whom he 
 should never see again. Oh, but her lips had been sweet to 
 kiss ! 
 
 As the morning grew, it improved, and when all the birds 
 were well awake and up to their day's work, fair, settled summer 
 weather seemed to have commenced again. 
 
298 HER PRICE. 
 
 Serge went indoors, took a cold-bath, but appeared at break- 
 fast hollow-cheeked and haggard-eyed. Through the day 
 Orloff kept him actively employed. After dinner the two 
 friends went for a walk up the hill so famous in song. This hill 
 is a great rendezvous for sweethearts of the shopocracy. As 
 these walked together or lingered on benches set by the way, 
 they seemed to Serge like soul-friends — for were they not in the 
 mystic land of love and romance ? Orloff told his best stories, 
 of which he had quite a store. Serge laughed when the stories 
 were of a humorous kind, but his laughter was too faint or too 
 violent to be genuine. The excessive laughter with which a 
 man occasionally receives your good story is sometimes a sign 
 of inattention. At length Serge broke out with : 
 
 " It's no good pretending ; I can't for one moment get away 
 from the thought of het ! I know not whether I most hate or 
 most love her. All I know is that I can think of nothing else, 
 and that to think of her is such torture that I drink more than I 
 should just to escape from it." 
 
 '* It is difficult for me to spare you just now," replied Orloff, 
 "but I see you require change. You shall start for France 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Zenbrowsky accepted the proposition gladly. But when the 
 morning came he could not tear himself away from the country 
 in which all the interest of his life was centred, so he assured 
 Orloff that he was strong enough not to have recourse to flight, 
 and should be wretched, travelling by himself. He would wait 
 till Orloff could leave London with him. Orloff had his doubts 
 about his friend's strength, but he said nothing, and they fixed 
 their departure for the first week in August. 
 
 Only those who have loved, where they most hated to do so, 
 can form any proximate idea of what Serge underwent during 
 those remaining weeks of July. He had two enemies to 
 fight — his passion for Mrs. Featherstone, and his growing 
 temptation to drink that he might forget her. Between the two 
 he w^is storm-torn frightfully, in body and soul. He was sick, 
 almost unto death, for the woman from whom he had flown ; he 
 was parched for the touch of her, the sound of her, the sight of 
 her ; with desire but once again to clasp her hand, but once 
 again to feel her lips cling close to his. He would say to 
 himself, it was true that she would have made an assassin of 
 him, but had not her family suffered outrage at Orloff's hands '^. 
 
HER PNICE, 299 
 
 If 3he demanded much from him, was she not going to give 
 much ? At the thought, he broke out into grim huighter. 
 
 "What amuses you so?" inquired Orloff, looking up from 
 what he was writing. Dinner was conchided, and the candles 
 lighted, for the days were shortening perceptibly. 
 
 ''You wouldn't appreciate the joke," replied Serge, pouring 
 out some brandy. 
 
 " Not as well as you appreciate strong liquors, eh t " said 
 Orloff, resuming his writing. 
 
 The night was warm and still, lit by a large, solemn-looking 
 moon. The window of the room stood wide open, and in the 
 garden could be heard the silvery cheeping of crickets. 
 
 " Oh, my God," groaned Serge to himself, '' if only once 
 again I could see her, or hear the sound of her voice !" 
 
 Hark, hark ! Full and sweet and low, and fraught with 
 unimaginable significance, up the garden-path, in the well-known 
 and beloved voice, floated these words : 
 
 " Bid me to live and I will live, 
 Thy Protestant to be ; 
 Or bid me love and I will give 
 A loving heart to thee." 
 
 Serge started as if a ghost had spoken to him, but instantly 
 controlled himself. 
 
 "That woman must be singing just outside our garden, I 
 should think," remarked Orloff, who was no musician. " She 
 seems to have a fine voice. Well, I shall write no more 
 to-night ; I think what I have written will help to rivet the 
 chains on the dogs who would be our masters, unless we took 
 them with a strong hand ; still, at the best one is crippled, in 
 these days of social reforms, such as your sweet friends, the 
 Featherstones, further." 
 
 Hark, hark ! the song is dying away slowly in the distance. 
 
 " She has learned, then," said Serge to himself, " where I 
 have retired. She has followed me. Did she assume, in spite 
 of all that I have said, that the compact is still binding? Is she 
 still ready to fulfil her share of it ? " 
 
 The thought maddened him. 
 
 '' How," he asked himself, " if she should be right after all, 
 and Orloff's influence a curse to his country ? Was personal 
 friendship sufficient cause for withholding his hand? Then, 
 
300 HER PRICE, 
 
 again, suppose there was no country in the question ; she had 
 been cruelly wronged by Orloff. Was not his first duty to her 
 ' — his supreme lady?" 
 
 With such-like arguments he played, as sick men play with 
 strange fancies. 
 
 The next night at the same hour, that is to say, between ten 
 and eleven, the wonderful voice was heard again. Serge sprang 
 up with a convulsive cry. Then he darted from the room and 
 went to the back of the house. When he returned to the 
 dining-room the voice was silent. 
 
 *' If you can spare me," he said to Orloff, " I will go to 
 London to-morrow for a day or two." 
 
 " To fall into old temptations ? " 
 
 *' No, that I give you my word," adding to himself, '^ rather 
 to fly from them." 
 
 ** Yes, I can spare you, if you will wait till the last train. By 
 that time I shall have some important papers ready which I 
 shall like you to leave with your own hand at the Russian 
 embassy. I hope that, in a week's time, we shall be free to go 
 where we like." 
 
 " God grant it may be so !" said Serge, devoutly. " If not out 
 of this hell soon, I shall die or go mad !" 
 
 Orloff smiled cynically, as he remarked : 
 
 " Oh, you can stand more than you think— as I have known 
 serfs to stand the knout. Men don't so easily lose their heads 
 or their lives." 
 
 ^' But you don't know all," growled the other man, incensed at 
 what he considered Orloffs levity. 
 
 " Possibly not," returned Orloff; "but human nature can bear 
 a good deal, I know." 
 
 The next day was a busy one for Zenbrowsky. He spent it 
 entirely in copying and writing at Orloffs dictation. At dinner 
 he refreshed himself liberally with wine, and afterward lingered, 
 talking in a wild, excited strain, which after all made Orloff 
 half fear for his reason. At length, seeing that it wanted but a 
 few minutes to train time, he rang the bell and directed one of 
 the servants to bring down his light hand-portmanteau. He 
 then took a hasty leave of Ivan Orloff, and strode away through 
 the warm night air. As he was making his way to the station 
 a sudden fit of dizziness seized him, and he leaned for support 
 against ^ wall. The unpleasant sensation did not last long, bqt 
 
^ER PRICE, 501 
 
 it left hiitl weak, and in a profuse perspiration. He could walk 
 but slowly, and reaching the station found he had missed his 
 last train. There was nothing for him then but to return. 
 Could he have secured a carriage at that time of night to drive 
 so far, what a wearisome affair it would have been ; and, though 
 the thought was one which made him tremble, still it was sweet 
 — he might again hear that voice I 
 
 When he returned to the house he found Orloflf sitting where 
 he had left him, leaning back in his chair wearily, his eyes half 
 closed. Serge related his misadventure, but received little 
 sympathy from Orloff, who observed : 
 
 " It's the wine that's doing it, or rather the brandy. If you 
 are too great a coward to face life like a man, you'll be dead of 
 it soon. It has been for some time on my mind to speak, and 
 now I have spoken." 
 
 " And you can go to the devil for your pains," replied Serge, 
 drinking off a glass of brandy. 
 
 " I wouldn't be abusive," answered Orloff, languidly ; "there's 
 too much difference in our ages for that, and then you might 
 make me forget myself." 
 
 Zenbrowsky bit his lips and glared, but said nothing, and 
 Orloff lapsed into his former condition of half slumber. Serge 
 sat lost in his own reflections. He was desperate with desire 
 for one woman. Hark, hark ! it is her voice again ; the voice 
 with its subtle, potent, all-thrilling magic, more desperately 
 sweet, more enthralling than ever : 
 
 " Bid me to live, and I will live, 
 Thy Protestant to be ; 
 Or bid me love and I will give 
 A loving heart to thee. 
 
 A heart as soft, a heart as kind, 
 
 A heart as sound and free, 
 As in the whole world thou can'st find, 
 
 That heart I'll give to thee. 
 
 Bid that heart stay, and it shall stay 
 
 To honour thy decree ; 
 Or bid it languish quite away 
 
 And 't shall do so for thee. 
 
 Bid me to weep, and I will weep 
 
 While I have eyes to see, 
 And having none, yet I will keep 
 
 A heart to weep for thee. 
 
302 HER PRICE. 
 
 Bid me despair, and I'll despair 
 Under that cypress tree ; 
 
 Or bid me die, and I will dare 
 E'en death to die for thee. 
 
 Tlioii art my life, my love, my heart, 
 
 The very eyes of me, 
 And has command of every part 
 
 To live and die for thee ! " 
 
 As she sangj a vision of her as he had last seen her, in all her 
 glory of beauty, seemed to rise before him. Oh, to clasp her 
 close in his arms, to call her his, his very own, to banquet full 
 of love ! 
 
 And what stood between him and this paradise of passion ? 
 What but the life of the man who had just insulted him ; the 
 man, too, at whose instigation her father and sister had fallen ? 
 Should the chance go ? A movement of his hand, and she 
 would be his, and a curse to his country set aside. He set his 
 teeth together and for a minute fought hard with himself. 
 Then he drew his dagger from his coat-pocket, and sprang 
 like a wild animal upon his victim, pressed one hand over 
 Orloff's mouth, and drove the dagger into his heart, not once, 
 but thrice. Then he cast it on the floor, and passed rapidly 
 and noiselessly down the garden. The night was dark, so that 
 his advancing figure was not seen by a woman who was leaning 
 against the garden gate, singing. Suddenly the gate opened 
 from within, and a hand fell on hers, while a voice said in a 
 hoarse whisper, which had something terrible in it : 
 
 " Kiss me. It's done. He will wrong no one any more 
 now ! " 
 
 ^'Is it indeed so?" she said, triumphantly ; "you could not 
 hide from me for long.'' 
 
 " And now,'' he said, when he had kissed her hungrily, '* I 
 have paid the price. When shall we meet in London 1 " 
 
 *' Come to me to-morrow afternoon, in town," was her low 
 reply, as freeing herself from him she vanished in the dark 
 night. Serge stood for a moment as if uncertain what to do. 
 He turned as if to re-enter the house, and then walked away in 
 the direction of London. 
 
 When Featherstone returned from Liverpool, it was to find 
 his wife so out of health that, at her request, he postponed till 
 
IIER PRICE, 303 
 
 she should be stronger their hoHday trip on the Continent, and 
 took for her, again at her request, charming apartments at 
 Richmond for the month of July. He suggested sea-air or the 
 life-giving hills around Dorking, but nothing would satisfy Mrs. 
 Featherstone but Richmond. So thither she went. Feather- 
 stone dividing his time between that place and London, for he 
 was one of those men who, if near the scene of action, must be 
 taking part in it. On the morning following the events just 
 chronicled, Mrs. Featherstone travelled up to London by an 
 early train ; reaching her house she went straight to her bed- 
 room, and changed her simple traveling dress for one of rare 
 costliness and beauty. Then she rang the bell and inquired if 
 Mr. Featherstone were at home. 
 
 Yes ; Mr. Featherstone was at home, and in his study. 
 Thither, then, went Zuleika. So engrossed was her husband in 
 what he was writing that he did not hear the door open. He 
 started to see his wife standing beside him, sumptuously attired, 
 with a look upon her face which he could not interpret. 
 
 " Yes," she said, in answer to an exclamation of surprise on 
 his part, '' I came up by an early train, because I had news to 
 give you — great news ! Do I look well ? " 
 
 ^'You are beautiful at all times," he answered, "but what is 
 your news ? " 
 
 Then she came very close to him, and fixing her eyes on his, 
 said : 
 
 *' He is dead — my foe and Russia's ! That which I have 
 sought to accomplish I have brought about." 
 
 He sprang up and caught her hand, saying : 
 
 '^ What do you mean 1 Speak ! Are you mad ? What has 
 happened ? " 
 
 " No," she answered, proudly, " I am not mad. He has 
 fallen, not by my hand, but by the hand of Zenbrowsky. I first 
 stole his heart, and made him think I would be his when he 
 had done this deed by which my murdered sister and father 
 are avenged. This afternoon he will come to claim me, and I 
 shall meet him in your presence, and never set eyes on him again." 
 
 She had spoken rapidly, and with desperate excitement, as if 
 indeed her fulfilled vengeance had affected her brain. 
 
 Featherstone stood before her, his face white as a statue's, 
 and as hard, and when he spoke there was something marble- 
 hard in the tone of his voice : 
 
304 HEk PRICE. 
 
 ^' I know not which to shrink from more, you Or the actual 
 assassin. Of the two, I suppose you are the more deeply 
 stained." 
 
 Then he burst out with a violent transition of manner, speak 
 ing with fearful concentration : '' Leave me, woman ! Your 
 presence pollutes the air — I cannot breathe with you. Take off 
 those clothes— for shame ! Put on sackcloth, and scourge your- 
 self, but leave me, leave me ! Oh, that my eyes need never 
 again look upon you — you whom I have so loved." 
 
 A low cry broke from her as she turned and left the room. 
 She had fancied that though her husband might have thought 
 her over-zealous, on the whole he would have triumphed in her 
 triumph. 
 
 Featherstone paced up and down his study distractedly, not 
 heeding how the hours went by, saying to himself again and 
 again that it could not be, and then realizing that it was. 
 
 It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when a figure he 
 knew passed the window and ascended the steps of the house. 
 Featherstone heard the door open and let in Zenbrowsky, but he 
 still paced up and down his room in silence. What was it to 
 him what the assassin might have to say to the woman who 
 shared his guilt ? 
 
 Fast, indeed, did Serge's heart beat as he ascended the stairs. 
 He opened the door and entered the little room he knew so 
 well. The room lay in loving shadow. The blinds were lowered 
 to keep out the light of the July sun, but the penetrative heat of 
 it was not to be so resisted. The pretty Dresden clock on the 
 mantelpiece ticked gently ; flies buzzed in and out. The heavy, 
 concentrated, slumbrous rest of a summer afternoon weighed 
 upon everything. Mrs. Featherstone had yielded to it. She 
 lay there on the sofa, her face turned from him, one arm hanging 
 down indolently. The lace sleeves of her dress were full, 
 disclosing a portion of the fair arm. He caught the shimmer 
 of her dress, saw the abundant dark hair, so warm-looking 
 against the red velvet pillow on which her head was resting. 
 She was his, and he contemplated the outlines of her beauty 
 with a rapture not unmixed with awe. 
 
 Approaching the couch on which she was reclining, he knelt 
 down by it, and raising her hand pressed it to his lips. How 
 softly cool it was even in the fervid heat ! Then he whispered 
 her name gently. She moved not. Well, he would wake her" 
 
HER PRICE. 305 
 
 with a kiss ! How deeply asleep she was, he thought, as he 
 turned her reluctant face to him, his eyes glowing with love's 
 fire. They encountered hers, unconjecturing, inscrutable, more 
 ironical in their horrible indifference to human joy or sorrow 
 than any conscious look of scorn could have made them. A 
 cry of horror and agony broke from his lips. On the ground, 
 emptied of its contents, lay a phial of that poison of which 
 ladies so well know the external use — but her eyes, if they had 
 needed it, it would brighten never more. 
 
 Yes, he was too late. Go to, now, oh, lover, and wail for the 
 lips which shall kiss you never more, for the fingers that shall 
 wed no more with yours ! That miracle of beauty and fragrance 
 which set your pulses throbbing and made your heart beat 
 faster, which filled you with desire at once so exquisite and 
 poignant, had been given away most wholly to that grim love 
 from whom there is no parting for evermore. 
 
 Featherstone was still pacing up and down, when a wild 
 distraught face flashed beside him, and a voice hissed in his 
 ear : 
 
 " Go to her ; she is dead ! " 
 
 That evening Serge Zenbrowsky surrendered himself for the 
 murder of Ivan Orloft"; on this charge he was duly tried, found 
 guilty, and hanged. 
 
 NihiHsts revere his memory as do Roman Catholics that of 
 their saints — not so we, who know the nature of his martyrdom. 
 
 21 
 
SIR CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET, 
 
 :o: 
 
 Sir Charles Godfrey, baronet, lay sick at his house in Park 
 Lane. This all people knew ; that is to say, all people who 
 concerned themselves with the London season and read their 
 Morning Post with proper attention. From his youth up Sir 
 Charles had been a bit wild. There wxre plenty of stories 
 about mad, merry times in town and country when he was a 
 handsome young fellow, with black curling hair thick on the 
 head that for a long time now had worn a wig — an imperturbable 
 wig, which by reason of the hot weather and his present illness 
 was just now put aside, so that at last he looked an old man. 
 
 But wheit a young fellow he had been once ! He. had sowed 
 his wild oats by acres, but he had been very careful of his dogs 
 and horses, and very tender to women. No woman reasonably 
 young and tolerably good-looking ever had occasion to accuse 
 him of hardness. With much light loving, with hunting and 
 pigeon-shooting and good dinners, Sir Charles beguiled the best 
 years of life. But at sixty or thereabout the inevitable reckoning 
 came ; for all of a sudden he fell flat on life, or, to speak more 
 correctly, life fell flat on him. 'jThere was an appalling cessation 
 of all desires, an awful slackness of intention. Well, at pas.t 
 sixty one can't keep the ball of pleasure going as one did at 
 thirty, or even at forty. He had loved widely if not deeply. 
 He had seen every place considered worth seeing, drunken every 
 epicurean wine, eaten every epicurean dish. • ^' All was done 
 that man could do," and, so far as present pleasure went, all had 
 
Sl/a CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET, 307 
 
 been done in vain. At sixty, hereditary gout took up its abode 
 with him, exacting merciless reckoning for all the past good 
 dinners. 
 
 What was to be done? *' Marry and settle down" suggest 
 Wisdom and Experience at my elbow ; and this was precisely 
 what Sir Charles did. He bought for his wife as fresh and 
 pretty a girl of twenty as you could find anywhere. She, poor 
 child ! was only too delighted to be sold, for she came of a very 
 impoverished old family, and she lived shut up in a great, 
 gloomy country-house twenty miles away from any large town 
 — lived there with her father and mother, who were engaged in 
 a desperate lifelong struggle to make both ends meet, yet always 
 left them the fatal half-inch apart. One after another the family 
 had parted with its pleasant things, and the young lady's own 
 little pony phaeton had just gone to the hammer when Sir 
 Charles made his appearance on the scene. 
 
 He regarded the daughter of his old friend with the eye of a 
 connoisseur — found her pretty, nice, altogether desirable in all 
 ways. In a week or two he proposed for her hand and was 
 accepted, and shortly afterward they were married. 
 
 Then peace and plenty replaced struggle and want in the 
 bride's family, and she considered herself a fortunate woman ; 
 and with good reason. Had she not a stately country-house, 
 with all its well-bred luxuries, and a town-residence, charmingly 
 appointed, where she might take her fill of the delights of the 
 London season ? Nor was Sir Charles a bad husband, as 
 husbands and buyers go. Certainly, he might easily have been 
 worse. He was still nice-looking — a handsome old gentleman 
 — and his manner was kind and courtly. True, he got to be 
 somewhat of a bore when, about a month after marriage, he 
 really fell in love with his wife and became excessively demon- 
 strative. However, the bride was philosophical. She bore 
 with his spooning as gracefully as she had borne with his gout. 
 She met alike his affection and his irritability with the greatest 
 sweetness of temper. She was certainly a model wife : would 
 that all elderly husbands could find such a treasure ! Sir 
 Charles, poor soul ! vain by nature, and more vain by reason 
 of a long course of successful lady-killing, easily persuaded 
 himself that he was beloved, and hugged the dear faith to his 
 heart. ^ . 
 
 Thus things went on pleasantly enough till his serious illness 
 
3o8 SIR CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET. 
 
 (with which the Morning Post daily concerned itself) took Sir 
 Charles resolutely by the shoulders and put him to bed. What 
 was it ? A combination of gout, low fever, and what besides 
 not even the doctor, who came daily and shook his head a 
 guinea's worth, could precisely tell. But he always said his 
 patient would be better soon, and that was a comfort. 
 
 It was sad for Lady Godfrey that this illness should have 
 come just in the midst of the London season. But she bore 
 this misfortune with her usual sweet patience. Certainly, she 
 was a most admirable woman. Day after day went by, and she 
 saw absolutely no one except the doctor and two young men 
 familiarly known as Ned Lewson and Bob Butler — two devoted 
 friends of her husband, for Sir Charles was popular alike with 
 young and old. Easily persuaded in most things. Sir Charles 
 had sworn a big oath when his illness first seized him that 
 whether he lived or died no hired nurse should cross his 
 threshold. Of course his wife, with her fragile constitution, 
 was unequal to the arduous task of taking care of him ; so these 
 two young men, quietly foregoing all the pleasures of the season, 
 took up their abode under his roof and devoted themselves to 
 him entirely. The first of the two to propose this step had been 
 Lewson. His offer took every one by surprise, for he was 
 universally regarded as a pleasure-seeking, selfish sort of fellow. 
 He was big, heavy, handsome, with more muscle than brains. 
 He had a pleasant voice, with a slight military drawl. His 
 fair, clearly-cut face was adorned by long conventional 
 moustaches. 
 
 Butler was comparatively insignificant-looking. He had a 
 thin figure and a pale face, with the suggestion of a sneer about 
 the close lips. Lewson had long ago nicknamed him " Meph," 
 as a convenient abridgment of Mephistopheles. 
 
 Straw had been spread thickly before the pleasantest house in 
 Park Lane, and horses and carriages passed softly as a proeesi- 
 sion m a dream. But from the near distance, like the murmur 
 of some ever-flowing sea, could be heard the ceaseless ebb and 
 flow of busy, surging life— that Hfe in which Sir Charles had 
 already scarcely more part than if he were dead. It was. 
 brilliant May weather. People rode and drove in the Park ; 
 went to flower-shows and kettledrums ; dined and danced y 
 made love, intrigued, did all manner of things, good and bad ; 
 and all the time Sir Charles lay there parching through the hot 
 
^/^ CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET. 30^ 
 
 days, and there was no fun for his patient, pretty httle wife. 
 But what a model wife she was, to be sure ! 
 
 Every morning she came regularly to his room, examined the 
 medicine-bottles, sipped at the barley-water to see if it was 
 properly made, patted the pillows, caressed the poor hot old face 
 on them with her cool, delicate little hands, asked if there was 
 anything else she could do, hoped he would be well soon, and 
 then, her duty sweetly done, went back to her own especial 
 sitting-room and beguiled the time by the wholesale perusal of 
 three-volume novels. The epochs of the day were luncheon 
 and dinner, for at those times she saw Lewson or Butler — 
 generally Lewson, for Butler was a professed woman-hater, and 
 seldom came out of the sick room. But, after all, those were 
 sad meals. My lady sat pale and drooping in Sir Charles's 
 place, and Lewson sat close by, and they sighed over soup and 
 ate sweetbreads dejectedly. Then coffee would be served in 
 Lady Godfrey's boudoir— quite an ideal room, by the way. It 
 was simply and daintily furnished, with a soft rose-bloom 
 pervading all the appointments, and very little light. The 
 window was always open, and from the balcony came in 
 plenteously the scent of summer flowers. In this pleasant room 
 the after-dinner conversations would run something in this wise : 
 
 " Do you sit up to-night ? " 
 
 " ^es : I shall relieve Butler at eleven." 
 
 ** You are my husband's favourite, I think." 
 
 '* Yes : without vanity, I do believe that is true." 
 
 *' Poor Sir Charles ! . Heaven send he may soon get better!" 
 
 " Ah, yes indeed : I hope so." 
 
 " Light your cigar : you know I like it." 
 
 " Thanks— I will." 
 
 Then a long silence — conversation is so difficult when the mind 
 is preoccupied. 
 
 Downstairs Sir Charles lay alternately groaning and growling, 
 for what man is patient under pressure of ceaseless physical pain? 
 Butler looked on with his cynical smile, and said to himself, "Sett- 
 ling day ! " There were long arrears of good living and women's 
 smiles and idle follies to be paid for in those dark days. At times 
 poor Sir Charles would cry out in a voice that seemed to have 
 been thinned and attenuated by pain, hke his face, " I wish I 
 were out of it, Butler — dead and done with it all. But there's 
 my poor wife. Poor Emma ! Who would comfort her ? " 
 
310 S7I^ CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET. 
 
 " That would be easy enough," thought Butler — '^ send her to 
 the seaside or the Continent in good company." But he did 
 not speak his thought. Instead, he answered in the most sympa- 
 thetic tone he could command, ^' Who, indeed, poor thing ? " 
 and then added, more cheerfully, " But you aren't going to 
 die yet, you know, by many a long year." 
 
 " Ah, you really think so 1 " Sir Charles would say, something 
 comforted for the moment ; for he wanted to live, though some- 
 times he thought — when the gout wrenched and tortured him, 
 and the cruel fever consumed him with thirst and parched his 
 skin till it was like dried hay— that he wanted nothing but to be 
 done with pain. What he really wanted was to get well. He was 
 rich, and he was intensely in love with his wife. Life had indeed 
 lost its zest for him before he married her, but she had brought 
 back to him warmth and hope and desire. These were rea- 
 sons why he loved life : there was one, equally strong, why 
 he dreaded death. He had been brought up with strictly 
 orthodox views in regard to a future life. During his gay years 
 he seemed to have escaped from them, but they had come back 
 now, and quietly insinuated themselves again into the very tex- 
 ture of his mind, or perhaps they had always lurked there. 
 
 He had, indeed, not stolen nor done murder nor borne false 
 witness, but there were other commandments of which he could 
 not affirm that he had kept them from his youth up. He had 
 been always looking forward, no doubt, in some vague way to a 
 time of repentance. He had not thought about it consciously, 
 but he had had a shadowy expectation ofsome future time when 
 he would take stock of his transgressions, and say a few prayers 
 and set his house in order before going on his travels into an 
 unknown world. And now he was in too much pain for the 
 proper performance of these last arrangements, and he had a 
 torturing doubt ,as to the nature of his reception in the next 
 world. About dying itself, too, there was something horribly 
 uncomfortable. After a life of social pleasures he shrank from 
 the awful unsociability of death. Its darkness and its mystery 
 troubled him. He had always had a horror of deathbed scenes, 
 and he shuddered at the thought of the worm for neighbour to 
 his dehcate and well-cared-for flesh. 
 
 Lewson was absolutely invaluable as a nurse : he brought 
 cheerfulness into the sick room. He was also an indispensable 
 comfort and support to Lady Godfrey. On leaving Sir Charles's 
 
SIR CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET, 311 
 
 room, when he had been watching there all night, he would go 
 straight to my lady's little sitting-room to give her the latest 
 tidings ; and so anxious was she to hear them, poor dear ! that 
 she used to be up at least two hours before her customary time. 
 Those must have been strange mornings when they sat alone 
 together — she fresh from sleep and blooming from her bath, he 
 with the moil and wear of night-watching upon him. They 
 talked little at these times, and that little was chiefly of Sir 
 Charles. ^, 
 
 One morning Lewson said, " I sha'n't see so much of you 
 when Sir Charles gets well, shall I ? " 
 
 *' I suppose not," she answered, fidgeting with her watch- 
 chain. 
 
 There had been a thunderstorm in the night, from which the 
 air had gathered strength and keenness. 
 
 " You are cold," Lewson said, seeing that she shivered ; and 
 rising he closed the window. "Why, your hands are like ice," 
 he went on, taking them in his as he spoke — "poor, pretty, cold 
 hands ! " 
 
 She did not take them away. They were cold, and his were 
 warm and comforting. She looked up in his face with her child- 
 like, beseeching eyes. 
 
 " Do you know," he asked, after a few moments of dangerous 
 silence, "tliat it is just a year to-day since I saw you first? It 
 was at Lady Osborne's. You wore a pale-green dress and 
 pearls." 
 
 " Why, what a memory you must have ! " she cried. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, quietly, " I have — for some things." 
 
 Before he could say any more she interposed with, *' You 
 really think Sir Charles suffered less through the night ? " 
 
 " I am sure of it." 
 
 " And you do think he will get better ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " Thanks. You are so much more reassuring than Mr. - 
 Butler." 
 
 Dear reader — I mean dear masculine reader — if your friend 
 lay sick, and it was part of your duty to try to comfort and sup- 
 port his afflicted wife, and if, moreover, she were both young 
 and pretty, and you and she were left alone together for hours at a 
 time, would you, or would you not, now and then take possession 
 of her hands ? Of course you would — sympathy would demand 
 
2t2 S/J^ CHARLES GODFREY, BAkONET. 
 
 as much. And having thus captured them, would you kiss them 
 from time to time ? Ah, yes — I thought you would say yes — 
 and you would find it most natural to lavish little endearments 
 upon them. And you, dear madam, if you were that afflicted wife, 
 and had for your support and comforter a man young and hand- 
 some, over six feet in height, and broad-chested in proportion, 
 would you, or would you not, when he took your hand, press his 
 in grateful acknowledgment, or lean your cheek against it for a 
 moment .^ For the sweet sake of womanly gratitude I think you 
 would. 
 
 Sir Charles had brightened for a day or two, but just at the 
 end of May he grew much worse. The doctor came twice, and 
 sometimes three times, a day, and shook his head more than 
 ever. Lady Godfrey looked half dead with suspense, and Lew- 
 son had grown very solemn at last. 
 
 One afternoon, when the air was strangely sultry and all out- 
 side Nature seemed waiting for something, my lady sat alone in 
 her sitting-room. She was lost in thought, when Lewson came 
 in, looking very pale. 
 
 " The doctor has just been," he said ; and his voice was a trifle 
 husky. " I bring you bad news — Sir Charles himself asked me 
 to break it to you : there is no more hope." 
 
 There was a visible change in my lady's face, but she con- 
 trolled herself in a moment, though she was white as death. 
 " Doctors are mistaken sometimes," she said, slowly. 
 
 *^ Yes," he replied, '^ but I fancy this is not a mistake." 
 
 He was standing a long way from her. In this hour, when 
 she needed comfort most, he did not take her hands, and there 
 was none of the caressing tenderness to which she had grown 
 accustomed in his voice. 
 
 " I must go now," he said. " Butler is lying down. It is his 
 turn to watch to-night." 
 
 So he left her, and she, poor little woman ! sat and cried softly 
 to herself. And Sir Charles meanwhile set himself seriously to 
 the momentous business of dying, and got on very expeditiously 
 with his repentance. He called to mind the publican of the 
 Scriptures, who said only, " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " 
 This Sir Charles said over many times and fervently, and then 
 his tortured mjndgrew a little easier as Death drew nigh. 
 
 About eleven o'clock that night Butler awoke and relieved 
 Lewson, who went straight to Lady Godfrey's room. 
 
S/J^ CHARLES GODPkRVs BARONET. 313 
 
 She looked up and smiled faintly. " I'm glad you have come,'' 
 she said. ** I couldn't go to bed, and I have grown so dreadfully 
 nervous sitting here alone. But I mustn't keep you up : that 
 would be too selfish, for you look more dead than alive. You 
 must get some rest." 
 
 " I would rather stay with you," he answered. 
 
 " Well, then, do stay a little while, please." 
 
 So they sat on together, one hour, two hours, and all the time 
 they scarcely spoke. About one o'clock, when everything was 
 awfully quiet, and the rumbling of some far-off carriage now and 
 then seemed like the ghost of a sound, they were startled by a 
 sharp tap on the door, and Butler came in. He glanced from 
 one to the other, and then, curling his lip a little more than 
 usual, he said, " I am very sorry to interrupt you, but I thought 
 it might interest you both to know that Sir Charles is dying." 
 
 Lady Godfrey rose, and blushed from the tips of her pretty 
 little ears to the topmost plait of her soft hair : Lewson blushed 
 too. They could hardly have looked more conscious. 
 
 "Oh, don't cry," said Butler, observing that my lady was 
 feeling for her handkerchief. " Let me assure you that the 
 greatest grief is always tearless. We had best make haste : 
 there is no time to be lost." 
 
 So they proceeded in solemn procession to Sir Charles's 
 room. 
 
 Sir Charles was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows. The 
 room was brilliantly lighted. Lady Godfrey went over to the 
 bed and said, " Charles, do you know me 1 " 
 
 He was breathing with great difficulty, but a smile crossed his 
 face which was good to see, since all that was best in the man's 
 nature came out in it. " Yes," he gasped — "yes, my poor faith- 
 ful, loving wife ! " 
 
 She kissed the damp forehead and put her hand into one of 
 his, too feeble now to close on it. His other hand was pulling 
 at the counterpane. Poor wasted hands, done at length with 
 all love's pressures ! Late as it was, even then fashionable 
 London was full of life. Dancers were circling to mad, be- 
 witching waltz-music. Men and women made engagements for 
 the morrow and planned fresh pleasures, thinking as little of the 
 hour of their death as of that of their birth. 
 
 The summer night was passing with its riot of mirth and of 
 roses, and Sir Charles, who had been foremost once in every 
 
314 ^/^ CHARLES GODFREY, BARONET. 
 
 scheme of pleasure, was passing with it — transacting that grim 
 hist business which, shrink from it how we may, we must all 
 transact some day. My lady stood on one side of the bed, 
 looking tearful and agitated ; Lewson stood just opposite her, 
 serious as a judge, forgetting somehow even to twirl his mous- 
 taches ; Butler stood at the bed's foot with an air of quiet 
 expectation. 
 
 At length Sir Charles addressed himself again to his wife. 
 " My darling," he said, faintly, " I am dying. If I could but 
 have lived, how happy I meant to make you ! And now" — he 
 paused for breath, and then resumed — *' now you will be all alone. 
 Dear, you are young : you mustn't be too sorry for me — sorry 
 for too long." 
 
 She pressed his hand for sole answer. Then for several 
 minutes the silence would have been complete but for the loud, 
 persistent ticking of Sir Charles's watch, which sounded on with 
 a sort of don't-care tone, as if to say, " Men may die, but I must 
 keep time." 
 
 Though Lewson had forgotten to twirl his moustaches, he had 
 not forgotten to look at Lady Godfrey, or, rather, he had for- 
 gotten not to look at her. Did he sympathize with her so deeply.^ 
 or did that face, with its wistful, childlike gaze, draw him as by 
 a spell ? Raising her eyes suddenly, she met his. This meeting, 
 significant look which crossed the bed was quicker than light, 
 but Sir Charles intercepted it. An awful comprehension dawned 
 on his face. He had been about to die, carrying with him one 
 sweet delusion. He knew well enough that he would have few 
 mourners — that his death would leave little void in the world. 
 But he thought that all was not gone from him, since even at the 
 last he had had power to win and keep his wife's love. He be- 
 lieved that he should carry it down with him into the darkness. 
 He fancied her in her widow's weeds, pale with many tears, 
 bent by heavy sorrow. Would it not warm his heart even in the 
 grave to know that she came there to weep ? But now — he had 
 seen that look. 
 
 Lady Godfrey saw the awful, unnatural intelligence in his 
 eyes, and shivered. Lewson stood thunderstruck. The sneer 
 round Butler's lips grew a shade more decided than usual, and 
 he looked interested. 
 
 Then Sir Charles, glancing from one to another, laughed, 
 but his laughter flowed scantily, like a thin, winter stream, and 
 
SIR CHARLES GODFREY, BAR0NE7\ 315 
 
 was choked among gasps and inarticulate words. At last, with 
 one supreme effort of will, he spoke clearly : *' I see it all now, 
 all — funeral and wedding-cards all in one. Yet I would have 
 sworn you loved mc. What a fool I have been ! poor fool ! poor 
 fool ! " 
 
 ^' Don't, oh, for mercy's sake, don't ! " cried Lady Godfrey 
 kissing him, with a desperate attempt to play through her role 
 of loving wife creditably to the end. He bore her kiss — he had 
 always been gentle to women — but he was not one whit deceived. 
 Fate accorded him no such mercy. He lay there with his strange 
 gaze fixed on something very far off— his lost youth perhaps — • 
 and he kept saying over to himself, at first with awful emphasis, 
 and then at last drawlingly and feebly, as if the words had lost 
 their meaning, " Poor fool ! poor fool ! " 
 
 Then suddenly, just as they thought he was dead, he cried out, 
 fixing his eyes on Butler, " Let them wait a year." And then 
 he tried to laugh, but it was a faint yet horrible laugh, which 
 froze upon his stiffening lips. In that last ghastly effort his soul 
 had passed. 
 
 " I believe Sir Charles is really dead now," said Butler, quietly. 
 " He never kept people waiting longer than he could help." 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 :o:- 
 
 FoR' a lady who is about to pass, as a holiday with her lover, 
 the twenty-fifth anniversary of her birthday, it cannot be said 
 that Rose Bellward looked the incarnation of earthly happiness. 
 She sat alone and expectant in the drawing-room of Grove 
 Lodge — a small house in a new district of London, occupied 
 by Mrs. Bellward and her two daughters, Rose and Clara. The 
 Bellwards were not rich ; and the house had that speckless 
 appearance which is only observable when the services of the 
 one professional domestic have been eked out by the combined 
 forces of all the feminine inmates. 
 
 As I have said. Rose sat in the little drawing-room with its 
 well-worn rep furniture, its centre-table, with a photograph 
 album and a few gift books, in which somebody's selection from 
 Enghsh Christian poetry was conspicuous. On a side-table 
 was a stuffed bird under a glass case. In the window 
 between the stiffly-starched lace-curtains, a live bird swung 
 triumphant in a brightly-gilded cage, untouched by any 
 sympathetic instinct to tell him that just under hiln, in a vault 
 of glass, a brother with moveless wings and songless throat was 
 preserved perpetually in state. Likely enough the dead bird 
 had once upon a time made merry in the cage where now the 
 live bird lived. Just so had he shrilled out his song in the warm 
 spring sunshine ; just so had he prodigally dashed afar rape 
 seed and canary in search of the dearly-loved and baneful 
 hemp ! Just so in the pauses of song had he communed with 
 
A THOUSAND FOUNDS. 317 
 
 himself in low notes which could mean nothing else but serene 
 self-laudation. ^' Yes, dear, you have done well indeed," they 
 seemed to say. ''Will Beauty try it again?" which Beauty, 
 after a little demur, would proceed to do. So had he hopped 
 from perch to perch ; so had he revelled in the swing depending 
 from, the roof of his house, and known — had he known — the 
 terrible episode of green, glaring eyes, as the cage swayed dread- 
 fully in the clutch of the clinging claws, and fluttered feathers 
 flew this way and that. Had he, too, heard the rush to the 
 rescue and the wail of the defeated enemy .^ he, too, by night, 
 with head tucked safely under his wing, dreamt of those dread- 
 ful eyes of green flame, and, dreaming, sounded a strange 
 unbirdlike note, making any one who might be in the ;;oom 
 wonder what could be the matter with Beauty ? 
 
 As it is with birds so it is with men ! We chirrup and we 
 sing, we swell our feathers with pride or flutter them with fear ; 
 then we pass, and others succeed to our positions, and as after 
 death we are not available for stuffing and putting under glass 
 cases by way of reminder, we are very soon out of sight, and 
 very soon out of mind, to those who have loved us best. Some- 
 thing in this strain ran Miss Bellward's thoughts as she listened 
 to the canary's song. You see she could remember Beauty the 
 First, upon whose glass vault Beauty the Second was now 
 raining his seed and splashing his water. Still she was not 
 being sentimental over a dead bird. 
 
 Ofwhat/jshe thinking, then, this 25th of May, while men 
 pass the window with their flower-laden barrows, shouting as 
 they go, with that pecuHar intonation only adopted by their 
 class : ^' Fine flow-ers ! All a blowin' and a growin' ! " And 
 Beauty's cage as it swings in the light flashes with almost 
 dazzling brilliance. Is she thinking of a 25th of May, six years 
 ago, when she had waited — not in this room, but in a room 
 overlooking the British Channel — for some one to come, some one 
 whose step made her eyes shine and her heart beat — some one 
 on whose grave the grass has now been growing greenly for 
 four years ? Fools are we who try to keep anniversaries with 
 the living ! They are meant for the dead alone ! 
 
 I do not mean for a moment to imply that Rose was giving 
 her right hand to a living lover while her left retained that of a 
 dead one. Her young romantic love had been genuine, and 
 genuine had been her grief when death frustrated her hope, 
 
3i8 A THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 and a fever, brief but virulent, stopped for ever the gentle and 
 chivalrous heart which had beat with such loyal love for her. 
 But as the flowers grew on her lover's grave, so, though not 
 perhaps with quite so quick a growth, hope grew again in her 
 heart, and when, four years after her lover's death, Reginald 
 Longhurst, a struggling young artist, with a manly figure, clear- 
 cut, handsome face and splendid dark, passionate eyes, lai'd his 
 heart at her feet, she was nothing loath to take it into her 
 keeping. Still, when the anniversary of her birthday came 
 around, she could not help thinking of a certain grave within 
 sight and sound of the sea. Yet her look then was not the look 
 of one who is entertaining ghosts, saying : " Yes, I remember 
 what you said that day, what I wore, what kind of a day it was — 
 indeed, I remember it all ! all ! though the ghastly smile about 
 your faded lips would seem to say I have forgotten !" 
 
 Beside Miss Bellward on the table lay a superb bouquet and 
 a beautiful and costly fan. Looking at these, her deep violet 
 eyes grew grave and earnest, with the look of one preparing 
 to meet some crisis. 
 
 She was worth looking at, was Rose Bellward, with her rare, 
 violet eyes, her pale, proud face, her lips at once sensitive and 
 resolute. The dress she wore, though simple in texture, fitted 
 so as to show to advantage her beautifully moulded figure. 
 Round her head, which inclined to be massive, her abundant 
 brown hair, with gold lights glittering in it, was coiled fold on 
 fold. She was evidently deep in thought, regarding the flowers 
 and the fan with wistful eyes, when a quick, impetuous applica- 
 tion of the knocker to the street door made her start. Forestall- 
 ing the servant, she hastened into the hall and opened the door 
 herself. The next moment she was caught close in strong arms ; 
 the door closed, and lips met lips. 
 
 " May all good things be with you on this day, my darling ! " 
 said the man. His voice was pleasant till heard under the in- 
 fluence of a great excitement, when it became shrill. Reginald 
 Longhurst would have been a perfectly handsome man but for 
 a painfully weak, receding chin.] 
 
 There they stood in the hall, she with her hand in his, her 
 head resting against his shoulder, while his lips caressed the soft, 
 shining folds of her hair. Then, " Come, dear," he said, and 
 with something almost like a shadow of reluctance she let her- 
 self be drawn into the parlour. He placed in her hand a modest 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS, 319 
 
 bouquet of flowers, saying they were not worthy of the occasion, 
 but the best he could manage. She raised them to her Hps, 
 praising their sweetness. As they entered the room the scent 
 of other and rarer flowers penetrated their senses. 
 
 Reginald stood arrested, his eyes fixed on the bouquet. An 
 instant change passed over his face, which, but a moment ago, 
 had looked radiant. Now it looked like a sea, in nautical 
 language, "in dirty weather." 
 
 "A birthday gift } " he asked, in a hard, constrained voice. 
 
 " Yes, dear, of course. Now, mind, you are to be good to- 
 day ! " 
 
 ^* Whose gift ? " he demanded, in the same hard tone of 
 voice. 
 
 " My cousin Will's." 
 
 " Then you have no need of mine ! " He took them from 
 her hand, and with no consideration for Mrs. Bellward's faded 
 but still much respected Brussels carpet, he set them beneath 
 his heel, while his brows really did contract and his face grew 
 darker and darker. 
 
 " I am sorry you should be so petulant," she said, drawing 
 back, while a smile, in which scorn and pity were blended, 
 grew round the corners of her mouth. 
 
 *^ And the Hm?" he asked, catching sight of it, and speaking 
 with a rising inflection of tone ; " is that also a gift from the 
 same liberal hand ? " 
 
 "It is." 
 
 Then with a sudden impulse she went to his side, and putting 
 her arms about his neck, said : 
 
 "Dear, don't be cross! How can you misjudge me so? 
 Surely, it is natural that my own cousin, who as a boy was my 
 playmate, should pay me some attention on my birthday ? " 
 
 But the demon of a naturally violent temper, aggravated by 
 insane jealousy, was roused in the man, and he thrust her from 
 him almost roughly. She drew back to the other side of the 
 room ; there was a dangerous light in her eyes, a dangerous 
 red spot on either cheek. In the window the unregarding bird 
 shrilled on, then ceased, and Reginald spoke : 
 
 " Will you fling those flowers out of the window, send that 
 man back his gift, and swear to see him never more ? Will you 
 do this?" 
 
 " No, I will not do it," and her voice was firm. 
 
320 A THOUSAND FOUNDS. 
 
 '•'' You will not do that to please me ? " 
 
 *' I will not do that to please you. I will be your wife ; I will 
 not be your slave ! " 
 
 The man answered, swept away in a storm of rage : " Then, 
 by Heaven, we part now and for ever ! I thought love might 
 have tamed the flirt in you, but I see my love is powerless to do 
 that ! Marry you ! and have my life rendered a hell by that 
 long, lank, sentimental, brainless fool ! I've seen how he would 
 look at you with those sawney, school-girl eyes of his when he 
 thought mine away ! " 
 
 Here she interrupted him. 
 
 ** Please vent your stream of abuse elsewhere ! A'ou are 
 growing offensive to me." 
 
 "Then that is because you love him ! I've seen how things 
 have been going ! Had you respected either of us " 
 
 There she interrupted him again. 
 
 " Wait ! I must speak here ! I know I should have said 
 before what I am going to say now," she went on, her 
 voice softening as she continued. " Our engagement, Regi- 
 nald, has not been a happy one, though there have been 
 hours in it which I shall always love to remember. There 
 has hardly been a man to whom I have spoken of whom 
 you have not been jealous, till the feeling has culminated 
 in this insane idea about my cousin. You say I am a flirt, 
 and that you had hoped your love might tame me t I 
 am no flirt, but I hoped — and now I see how vainly — that 
 tenderness and forbearance might cure you of your jealousy. 
 The last time there was a painful scene between us because 
 of it you were penitent, and swore it should not happen again. 
 I thought you meant your words — and see what has come of 
 them ! Another woman might have concealed both these gifts ; 
 but I could not respect a man from whom I had to conceal 
 things to win his favour ; and I will marry no man whom I 
 cannot respect. You have said more than once before that it 
 was better we should part, and when you pleaded for forgive- 
 ness I forgave you ; but the words you have said to-day I take 
 as final. Don't think that I misjudge you ! I believe in spite 
 of your words that you love me still ! and, dear," here her voice 
 faltered, " indeed I love you ! I shall love no one else ! But, 
 as I have said, I can consent to be tio man's slave. You would 
 be always suspecting evil where none existed, and the frequent 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS, 321 
 
 repetition of such scenes as we have had to-day would in time 
 wear out the strongest love ; and love worn out might even turn 
 to hate ! There are qualities in you, attractions about you, in- 
 finitely dear to my heart. I shall pray for your success. There 
 are plenty of women meeker, less sensitive than myself, whom 
 you might make happy, and who in their turn would make you 
 happier than ever I could have done ! It is better to be lonely 
 apart than desperately miserable together. Remember, it was 
 you who said that we should part — but do not let us part in 
 bitterness ! " 
 
 She moved towards him, but he turned from her, saying 
 bitterly : 
 
 " You could bear with my moods well enough till this rich 
 fool of a cousin came back from his travels ! " 
 "That is unworthy of you,'' she said. 
 But he went on \ 
 
 " If you mari*y him, may you be as miserable as I would have 
 made you happy ! " 
 
 There was a pause. Beauty in his cage ransacked his seed 
 tin for hemp. Reginald gazed at the woman he loved with hot, 
 bewildered eyes ; then he said, brokenly : 
 ^' Good-bye — and good-bye for ever ! " 
 " And no more ? " she asked, her voice trembling. 
 '•'No more ! " he answered, tearing his eyes away from hef 
 and moving to the door. He opened- it, and then turning back 
 quickly, dashed something violently on the table. The next- 
 moment, not only the room door but the street door closed upon 
 him. He was gone indeed. 
 
 Miss Bellward opened the small case he had flung with such 
 violence upon the table, and saw there, reposing on a bed of 
 white satin, a cross to wear at the neck — a cross of roses carved 
 in ivory. About it was a strip of paper on which was written 
 " Roses to the Rose ! " She knew that he was skilful in carving, 
 and that this gift had been the loving labour of his hands, taken 
 out of time that he could ill afford to spare ! and as she gazed 
 the hot tears crowded into her eyes, and her life to come looked 
 gray and empty as a winter sea, without sail upon it or gull 
 above it. The bird's song seemed to lacerate her brain ; and 
 she did what every woman in trouble does — she went to her 
 bedroom, cast herself upon her bed, and cried as if her heart 
 would break, 
 
 2% 
 
322 yl THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 It is a curious habit that women have, of taking their troubles 
 at once to bed. It seems to be their one and only resource. A 
 woman takes her trouble lying, while a man, if he can, always 
 takes it walking. But take it how we may, that is a bitter hour 
 when we seem to be closing, to open it never again, the thrilling 
 book of romance — for, after all, youth means only the power to 
 enjoy romantically. 
 
 " That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close ! " 
 Reginald strode away through the glorious May sunshine. It 
 is what may be called the trivialities of grief which makes the 
 pathos of it. The heart of the trouble is tragic, and tragedy is 
 never pathetic. 
 
 As Reginald was storming on through the London streets, 
 toward the quarter of the town in which he had his rooms, he 
 was encountered by a Bohemian acquaintance, pipe in mouth — 
 a clever fellow, destined one day to make his mark, though now 
 clad in clothes decidedly the worse for wear. He gripped Regi- 
 nald by the hand, and thus accosted him : 
 
 " Heart alive, man ! What a swell you are ! Off on a 
 spree ? " 
 
 *' Yes," replied Reginald, "and only just in time to catch 
 the train ! " and he hurried on, in no mood for talk. 
 
 *' When I'm going spreeing," meditated the other, " I hope I 
 shall look more like it ! " 
 
 It was true that, for him, Longhurst was quite a swell. For the 
 occasion which was to have been so festive, the old rusty velvet 
 shooting jacket was replaced by a carefully-brushed, tightly- fitting 
 frock coat. The disreputable and comfortable wide-awake had 
 given place to the uncomfortable but respectable chimney-pot. 
 The truest humour has just a suspicion of pathos, the truest 
 pathos has just a suspicion of humour in it ; and there was 
 something, surely, very sad and just a little funny in the idea of 
 a man putting on his most respectable clothes to receive such 
 a blow as this man had — though in a way it was one which he 
 himself had seemed to court. 
 
 Arrived at his quarters, he assumed his old work-a-day coat ; 
 and turning to his pipe, as a true smoker in his trouble always 
 should, he began to smoke and to walk up and down. 
 
 He had lost her ! lost her through his own violent jealousy ! 
 
 and the thought wrung his heart so that he groaned and swore. 
 
 As the day wore on Reginald tried to work ; but it was no 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS, 323 
 
 good ; he even forgot what the thing was he meant to do. In 
 those days hfe was a hard fight with Longhurst ; he did the 
 illustrating for some of the cheap papers ; also he did the re- 
 viewing for some of the weeklies, and by these means just 
 managed to get along in the present, and hoped for better 
 things in the future. The apartment which served him for 
 study, studio, and bedroom was a veritable workshop, and 
 lacked both grace and comfort. This room was in a tall, 
 shabby house standing in a shabby street. Feet tramped up 
 and down stairs ; bells rang ; somewhere a baby squalled pro- 
 longedly and painfully ; all these things he noticed, and they all 
 seemed to him fraught with a special significance. A length he 
 took up his hat and set his face westward. After walking some 
 distance he stopped before a handsome house, the door of which 
 was opened by a stately footman, of whom Reginald inquired if 
 Mr. Fullerton were within. 
 
 " Mr. Fullerton was at home,'^ the man replied ; " but he was 
 at work in the studio." 
 
 "All right," rejoined Reginald ; " he'll see me. I know. Just 
 tell him that Mr. Longhurst wishes to see him." 
 
 The man disappeared, and swiftly returning, led the way to 
 FuUcrton's studio. No mere workshop this ! The walls of it 
 were hung with costliest tapestries, the floor strewn with Per- 
 sian rugs. In different corners stood wonderful antique vases 
 from some of which great lilies bloomed. The room was per- 
 vaded with the scents of latakia and coffee ; and moving softly 
 to and fro in this artistic paradise, was the spirit of the place, 
 Edward Fullerton, very dear to the heart of aesthetic London. 
 He was tall and slight, with long fair hair, and a dreamy, 
 far-away look in the large brown eyes ; yet he was known 
 to be a sharp hand at a bargain. Between these two men, 
 who were close friends, there could hardly have been a 
 greater contrast — the one every inch of him the practical 
 workman, the other every inch the useless aesthetic. Still 
 they liked each other. Fullerton's luxury interested Long- 
 hurst, whose strong manliness in turn stimulated the other. 
 
 "What's the matter?" asked Fullerton, in the softest of 
 voices, when the door had closed. " You look even wilder than 
 usual ! Besides, I thought you were going to take a holiday 
 with your young woman, as you call her ? " 
 
 " I have no young woman," replied the other, lighting a cigar. 
 
324 A THOUSAND POt/ATD^. 
 
 "Broken off? " asked Fullerton, with genuine sympathy. 
 
 "Yes, that's it. We quarrelled about something, and I told 
 her to go." Then, after a pause, and something like a gulp, 
 " she went ; that's all." 
 
 There was silence for some time. Then Fullerton said, lay- 
 ing his hand on the other's shoulder : 
 
 " You must live for art ? " 
 
 In reply to which Reginald d d art, and got up, saying, 
 
 " Well, I'll be off now ! I thought I'd just look in to let you 
 have the news. I'm not company yet for any man. Good-bye. 
 Look you up soon again," and with a pressure of hands they 
 parted. 
 
 Getting in everybody's way, Reginald wandered aimlessly 
 about the London streets. When it was evening a sudden 
 faintness reminded him that he had eaten nothing all day long, 
 so he went into the bar parlours of a tavern he knew, and had 
 himself served with bread and cheese and beer. This simple 
 meal over, he filled his pipe and called for whisky and water ; 
 and there he sat smoking, and again and yet again having his 
 glass replenished. No romance to be got out of such a lover as 
 this, is there ? None at all ; he is as unromantic as the pipe in 
 his mouth, as the glass of spirits at his elbow ; as unromantic 
 as any of the horsey gentlemen who share the room with him, 
 and who look sometimes, without being noticed by him, at the 
 man sitting there with the dark scowling brows, smoking hard 
 and drinking steadily without the process seeming in any way 
 to lessen his gloom. 
 
 The floor of the parlour was strewn with fine shavings, and 
 henceforth their smell will always recall to him the desolation 
 of that night. From out the clouds of tobacco raised from 
 many pipes, her fair face seemed to float and look at him ; and 
 he heard again her voice, so appallingly quiet, passing sentence 
 after his mad outbreak of jealous rage. At the same time his 
 ear registered all the sounds going on around him, the ham- 
 mering of glasses on the table by customers desiring to have 
 them refilled — the frequent demands at the bar for "fours of 
 Scotch whisky," " goes of gin," and such like, and the eternal 
 query of, ''Well, old man, what shall it be ?" Then the tavern 
 boasted a club, and it happened to be club-night, and from an 
 adjoining room came many a shout and many a music-hall 
 ditty, the chorus being given with true British spirit ; and all 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS. 325 
 
 these tilings, and all the hot reek of the place, became fused 
 with his despair. A romantic lover ? Not he ! He should be 
 down by the dark water's edge meditating his final plunge, 
 instead of boozing here at the " Gray Horse " like a veritable 
 toper. But he will not booze all night. At length he settles his 
 account, pulls his hat down over his eyes, and goes out. 
 
 He was one of those stoutly-built, strong-headed men who 
 can imbibe largely without showing any ill effects. He walked 
 erectly and steadily back to his room, entered it, threw himself 
 heavily on the bed and turned to the wall with a sigh of infinite 
 weariness. In a few minutes the sound of heavy breathing 
 that filled the room showed the whisky had done its work. The 
 man had drunk that he might sleep, and he slept. 
 
 And how fared the day with Rose ? Well, she cried herself 
 into a desperately bad headache, for which she drank copiously 
 of strong tea. Very early in the evening she undressed and 
 went to bed, and being unhappy and wakeful, took a novel to 
 read herself sleepy. That was the woman^s way of getting 
 sleep, as Reginald's had been the man's. She will never forget 
 that evening. For ever the novel she read then will be associated 
 with her trouble. Roses stood on her dressing table. She will 
 " never again be friends with roses ! " 
 
 The feet of the passers-by, as from her bed she could hear 
 them, seemed to be treading into her brain. At length the 
 book grew indistinct to her sight, she blew out the candle, and 
 slept. 
 
 The next morning Reginald awoke weary ; his head throbbed, 
 and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He took a bath 
 and put on fresh clothes. His work awaited him and he began 
 upon it. So he made up his mind to face the life which lay 
 before him. The next day he commenced painting his first 
 large oil-picture. The weeks went by, and brought one specially 
 hot July day — one of those real sweltering days on which 
 London is absolutely unbearable, one of those days in which 
 the sun seems to have burnt up the very sources of the winds, a 
 day to make all the London odours painfully manifest. 
 
 Reginald Longhurst was working away in his shirtsleeves, a 
 pipe in his mouth and a jug of beer by his side, thinking that if 
 any money were his he would fly from London, and somewhere 
 within sight and sound of the sea, would rest his weary brain 
 find his yet wearier heart — when the studio bell rang sharply j 
 
326 A THOUSAND POUNDS, 
 
 he opened the door and admitted Edward Fullerton and a Httle 
 sharp-nosed man, introduced by Fullerton as — 
 
 "My friend, Harry Jones, who loves art and whatever is 
 distinctly precious ! " 
 
 Longhurst did the honours of the studio as well as the hot 
 weather would allow. Mr. Jones asked the price of a small 
 drawing. With not the least expectation of selling it, and 
 hardly knowing what he was saying, Reginald put a price upon it 
 which was far in excess of its value. He was, therefore, quite 
 thunderstruck by Mr. Harry Jones making himself the possessor 
 of the picture. 
 
 " I like your touch, Mr. Longhurst," said that gentleman, 
 " and I like your choice of subject. I hope we may have many 
 more transactions of this kind. I'll look in again some day 
 this week if I may. Just now I'm rather pressed for time. 
 Good morning, and many thanks." 
 
 So saying he withdrew himself, and Longhurst drained off 
 his beer, washed his hands, assumed his coat and took the train 
 some miles out into the country. Getting back late to town he 
 dined well for a man whose dinner was often no more than 
 bread and cheese. Besides tasting good food he had tasted 
 pure air, and he had heard the nightingales. Fortune in one 
 way, at least, seemed to be turning her wheel in his direction. 
 Two or three days afterwards he had another visit from Mr. 
 Jones, who bought Avith a most lavish hand, and talked of a 
 commission for the great picture. Now a more prudent man 
 would have harboured his resources ; but Reginald had only 
 one idea, which was to go to Italy ; so that autumn, being now 
 rich to the amount of ;£6oo, he started for Florence, taking his 
 big picture with him. He returned in March, having all but 
 completed it ; also, he brought with him many small paintings 
 and drawings, which found an eager purchaser in the highly 
 appreciative Mr. Harry Jones. 
 
 " Well," said Reginald, when he had displayed his picture 
 to his friend Fullerton, *'what say you? You are my first 
 critic." 
 
 *' Really.?" 
 
 "Really." 
 
 " Well, I like it very much. I book it for a success ! " 
 
 Reginald's pale face flushed with pleasure, for Fullerton was 
 known to be a first-rate judge of pictures. 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS. 327 
 
 " I hope Jones will bid for it," went on Reginald, looking at 
 the picture lovingly. " It's something wonderful, the way in 
 which he buys up all I do ! But what the devil, Fullerton, 
 are you smiling at so? Because you think he gets a lot of 
 trash ? " 
 
 " Well, he certainly does get some amount of it." 
 
 " But that was not the point ? " 
 
 '' No." 
 
 *' Well, then, what was it?" and Longhurst flushed ahiiost 
 painfully, as is the wont of sensitive people when they fancy 
 they have somehow made themselves ridiculous. 
 
 " Our friend," rejoined Fullerton, ^' knows no more about it 
 than a cat." 
 
 *' But all the same he buys ! " 
 
 '' No, he does not." 
 
 " Once again, what do you mean ? I didn't know you went 
 in for mysteries." 
 
 " I go in for no mysteries. I repeat, that he does not buy 
 the paintings ! He is but acting for some one else who is the 
 real purchaser. Is there anything mysterious in that ? " 
 
 " Do you know who the person is ? " 
 
 "I do ; and though I was enjoined to secrecy, as was my 
 informant, I half think that you ought to know, as to know it 
 might change your life happily. The purchaser, then, is no 
 other than Miss Rose Bellward." 
 
 " Impossible ! " answered Reginald. " Miss Bellward is not 
 rich." 
 
 " Was not ! " rejoined Fullerton, *' but is. Unexpected fortune 
 left her — or something of that kind — didn't pay much attention, 
 but heard the facts. Really, old boy, she must be very fond of 
 you still." 
 
 '' Wait a minute," said Longhurst ; and for many minutes 
 there was silence between them. Reginald's face had grown 
 white as death and his lips quivered. When he spoke, his voice 
 sounded hard and strange. He began : 
 
 " Fullerton, we have been friends for some time now ? " 
 
 *' Surely." 
 
 " And I have never yet asked a favour of you, though I have 
 been a very poor man and you a very rich man. Will you give 
 me ;^i,ooo? I don't say le?td, because I don't believe I should 
 ever be able to pay it back ! " 
 
328 A THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 ''Are you prepared to do something for it?" replied the 
 aesthetic. " For cash down, as they say ? " 
 
 *' I would give you my soul ! " 
 
 *' Yes, but I don't at all want your soul — besides I'm not 
 sure that you have one ! and if you had, I find one quite 
 
 enough. But I have a proposal to make " he lit a cigarette 
 
 and looked hard at his friend, who cried, impulsively : 
 
 " I accept before hearing it ! " 
 
 " No, that won't do. We may be aesthetic, but we must also 
 be business-like." 
 
 The proposal was then formally declared, and formally 
 accepted. When Fullerton took leave of his friend, he left in 
 his possession a draft for ^i,ooo, which Longhurst lost no time 
 in converting into Bank of England notes. 
 
 The stormy March twilight was closing in. Miss Bellward 
 sat alone in the drawing-room, listening to the wind as it 
 thundered about the house, and gazing into the fire with her 
 large, sad-looking eyes. Suddenly, at the sound of a firm, 
 impetuous knock at the street door, the colour rushed into her 
 face, and her heart beat so violently that it seemed as if you 
 could hear it. No, she had not been mistaken as to the knock. 
 In a moment more the door opened, and the servant announced, 
 '' Mr. Longhurst." 
 
 The door closed again, and they stood facing one another. 
 There was something in his look, just visible in the twilight, at 
 which she flinched, and she began timidly for one who was not 
 lacking in courage : 
 
 " You have come to " 
 
 " To pay you ! " he hissed between his teeth, coming close to 
 her, and fairly striking her hand with the roll of notes he held, 
 in his exultant, triumphant rage. 
 
 " Reginald ! " she said, pleadingly, but he went on, every 
 word coming with calm, concentrated bitterness : 
 
 *' After the way in which we parted how dare you to put this 
 humiliation upon me ? Did you think I should not come to 
 hear of it ? Do you think that in my grave I could have rested 
 with one farthing left unpaid ? I say again, how dared you do 
 it ? How dared you give what I would rather die than accept 
 from the woman who chose to shatter my life, forsooth, because 
 of a few impatient words ? But, pardon me, I came not to talk 
 with you, but to pay you I " 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS. 329 
 
 And crowding the notes into her hand and fastening her 
 fingers tightly upon them, he left her without another word, 
 while she with a low moan sank down like one stricken. 
 
 But after that interview the heart in Reginald seemed to fail 
 him for everything. Did he give the finishing touches to his 
 picture ? Who shall say ? Anyhow his name was not among 
 the artists exhibiting at the academy. But Edward Fullerton's 
 was, and he rushed into fame suddenly. His picture, which 
 was called "The Shadow of Death," represented a girl and a 
 man on the point of parting. The man, evidently a rejected 
 lover, was kneeling, and raising to the girl eyes full of passionate 
 pleading, while she half turned her face away, as if to conceal 
 the look of weariness upon it. Towering close behind them, 
 unseen by either of them, yet overshadowing them, was the 
 awful figure of Death, with a grim, fateful smile which seemed 
 to say : " What matters it ? In such a little while, for you who 
 love and for her who loves not, it shall all be as one ! You are 
 broken-hearted and she is weary, and you see not that / am 
 close at hand." 
 
 In this case, success in art meant success in love ; for all who 
 knew her at all said that the girl of Fullerton's choice would never 
 have married him unless he had done something to distinguish 
 himself. They said that he knew it, too, and that the know- 
 ledge had stimulated him into doing that noble work ! So the 
 aesthetic circles gushed over Fullerton and his bride, and made 
 quite a pretty little romance out of them. 
 
 Longhurst took to painting again, and had a picture well 
 hung in one of the galleries. "A good picture enough in itself," 
 said the critic's, " but so dreadfully under the influence of Full- 
 erton ! Fullerton's touch— Fullerton's choice of subject — Full- 
 erton's very method of colour — in fact, everything but Fullerton's 
 genius ! " 
 
 Finding it vain to compete with his successful rival, Reginald 
 devoted himself almost entirely to journalism. But in the 
 small, still hours — still, except for the wandering cats, an oc- 
 casional hansom, or the shriek of some woman drunken or ill- 
 used, or it might be both — he managed to write a novel. 
 
 To his surprise it was accepted ! nay, more, he could see that 
 the publishers were pleased with what they had got, and evi- 
 dently hoped good things from it. But a man does not burn the 
 candle at both ends^ as Reginald had done, without paying for 
 
3no A THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 it heavily. He corrected the L'lst revises in bed, the hand in 
 which he held the pen burning like a live coal, his resolute eyes 
 combating the type that they might decipher the text. But at 
 last the work was done, and while for once a burst of applause 
 greeted the first important effort of a new writer, the new writer 
 himself lay stricken on his bed, in all the horrors of brain fever 
 — from which, however, he awoke one day to life and conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 A man was standing by the bedside, in whose features 
 Reginald slowly recognized that handsome cousin, William Ash, 
 of whom he had once been so insanely jealous. The young man 
 explained, as soon as Reginald could hear and understand him, 
 that he had then the distinction of being Rose Bellward's 
 brother-in-law, having married Clara. 
 
 " Clara, you know, was always very fond of you," he said, 
 "and when we heard, through a mutual friend, how ill you were, 
 we took a room in the house to look after you ; that is all." 
 
 " I thank you from the bottom of my heart," said the sick 
 man ; and then Clara, who had been out, came in, and laughed 
 a good deal and cried a little, and let fall something about Rose 
 being so glad to learn that he was better, and at the mention of 
 that name, Reginald looked ashamed and turned his face 
 away. 
 
 It was then pleasant May weather, and in a week^s time the 
 invalid was strong enough to be removed to the Ashes' pleasant 
 house at Kensington, with an old-fashioned, high-walled garden 
 at the back, lined with pear trees, where you could sit and 
 dream that you were miles away from the largest city in the 
 world, and where Reginald did sit, feeling not unpleasantly 
 weak, but unpleasantly abashed for some things in his past life. 
 And there Clara and her husband read to him the wonderful 
 critiques on his novel, and there he read a whole heap of letters 
 from editors and publishers alike beseeching the favour of his 
 pen. Fame was his already, and fortune lay before him. 
 
 One day, a May day, and a warm day, too, he was sitting by 
 himself on the garden seat, when some one came out of the 
 house towards him. There was no mistaking the undulating 
 grace of that walk ! 
 
 " Good morning," she said, in the low voice which had in it 
 a note of very special and pleading music. " You are getting 
 stronger now every day, are you not ? No, don't try to rise — 
 
A THOUSAND POUNDS, 331 
 
 I am going to sit down beside you. Do you know what day it 
 is ? " 
 
 " No, I lose count of days in this pleasant langour of con- 
 valescence." 
 
 " It is the 25th of May— my birthday." 
 
 "Is it, indeed, the 25th? Then I wish you all happiness — if 
 I still may do so ? '^ and his hand reached out and faltered on 
 hers. She did not try to draw her's away, aud there was silence 
 between them. His eyes yearned into hers, which filled and 
 shone with quivering tears. 
 
 "Don't mind me," she murmered, "but I cannot help think- 
 ing of old days to-day." 
 
 *^ Rose," he said, taking her hand now in both of his, "Rose, 
 is it for ever impossible that we should go back to old days — 
 only with a man deeply ashamed and penitent for things done 
 in the past ? " 
 
 " Dear," she replied, coming close to him — while his arm 
 went round her and folded her to his side — " it is better far to 
 be unhappy sometimes, and happy sometimes, together, than 
 for ever lonely apart ! " 
 
 " But, darling," he said, " I am a different man now ! I 
 have learned my lesson — I have seen what life meant without 
 you, and I will not make you unhappy ! I have longed to im- 
 plore your forgiveness ; but I could not when I heard you were 
 rich ! Your wealth angered me ; and you behaved like an angel 
 and I like a fiend ! " 
 - She was silent. 
 
 " Oh, Rose — Rose ! " he asked, passionately, " do you really 
 still love me } " 
 
 " Yes, my dear," came her low answer, " I love you very, 
 very dearly ! " And then, because he was still weak, and his 
 great thankfulness had somewhat shaken him, he half reclined 
 on the seat, leaning his head against her bosom, while her hands 
 played in his hair — which trouble of mind and illness of body 
 had done much to thin. It is a good day for them both — so let 
 us leave them to enjoy it, as lovers should, by themselves. 
 
 It was about a fortnight after that happy day when Reginald, 
 being much stronger, drove with Rose to her mother's house, 
 which was but a short way from the Ashes. He was to try and 
 walk back. 
 
 " I am rather pleased with the drawing-room," said Rose, as 
 
332 A THOUSAND POUNDS, 
 
 she led the way into a lofty, spacious, artistically furnished 
 room ; but a large picture hanging on the wall caused Reginald 
 to start. 
 
 ^' Do you like my purchase V^ she asked, observing him. 
 
 " Whose is it ? '^ he asked, somewhat dazedly. 
 
 " Whose ? " she answered. " And you don't know your own 
 work ?" 
 
 " No," he replied, decidedly, while a sudden light seemed to 
 rush in upon his brain. " It is not mine ! It is Fullerton's, of 
 course — Fullerton's great picture, ' The Shadow of Death.' 
 I saw it while it was in process of painting — but how came you 
 to possess it? '^ 
 
 " It was bought for a large sum by an English gentleman, 
 who took it with him to his house in Italy, where he passed most 
 of his time. I became acquainted with him when I went there 
 last winter. He died suddenly ; his property was sold by 
 auction ; I bid for this picture, and I had to bid high, but I was 
 resolved to have it, because I knew, in spite of the name marked 
 in the corner being * Edward Fullerton,' that — unaccountable 
 as it might seem — some fraud had been practised, and that the 
 picture was not his, but yours." 
 
 " No fraud has been practised ! What should make you think 
 the picture not his ? " 
 
 " See, Reginald," she said, " the girl's face is my face, as you 
 have shown it to me many times in sketches you have made of 
 it. She wears the dress which was your favourite dress of mine. 
 Round her neck she wears the very necklace which has been in 
 our family for generations, which the most experienced jewellers 
 have said it would be impossible to imitate ! Besides, do I not 
 know the attraction which Death, as a presence waiting in the 
 background, has always had for you ! And you ask how I know 
 it to be yours ? " 
 
 " In justice to Fullerton," he rejoined, "read this ! " selecting 
 a letter from his pocket-book. She took it from him, and read 
 in a hand which was certainly not Reginald's : 
 
 " Park Lane, March 5. 
 
 **My Dear Longhurst— Your praise of my just completed 
 
 picture, 'The Shadow of Death,' was so unstinted and generous 
 
 that I fear I did not seem to appreciate it to-day as I should 
 
 have done, though indeed I did, I flatter myself the subject i§ 
 
A THOUSAND FOUNDS. 333 
 
 Something iii your way. I did work very hard to get into the 
 girl's face just that look of weariness which I am sure a girl 
 feels when listening to the ravings of a man for whom she cares 
 nothing. The necklace is, as you remarked, very rare. The 
 man who sold it to me said he believed there were only two more 
 like it in the world, so I counted myself fortunate in having 
 secured a treasure. Hoping the world may endorse your gen- 
 erous verdict, 
 
 ^' I remain, 
 
 " Most sincerely and gratefully yours, 
 
 *' E. FULLERTON.'* 
 
 " So you will not trust me ! " Rose said, with a proud, hurt 
 look, as she gave the letter back. 
 
 " I am going to trust you most absolutely in everything ! If 
 now I ask you to trust me in one thing will you not do it ? " 
 
 In his tenderness her pride melted as snow melts in the sun- 
 shine. She flung her arms around his neck, saying she could do 
 anything he asked her. So the sunlight dissipated all clouds, 
 though to Rose the picture still remained a mystery. 
 
 They had been married about three months, and one evening 
 were alone in the drawing-room after dinner, when the servant 
 handed in the card of Mr. Fullerton, and was at once followed 
 by that gentleman in person. 
 
 He had not long lost his wife, who had ailed, report said, most 
 unaccountably, ever since her marriage, and had died of a 
 painful and lingering illness. In consequence of having lost 
 the woman he had really loved, the man's face looked worn and 
 weary, as if he slept little, but had a more earnest look than 
 it had ever worn before. After a few words upon the weather, 
 or what not, he informed them that he had joined the Roman 
 Catholic Church, and designed eventually to become a priest. 
 
 " I have come to speak about that picture," he went on, 
 looking first at it and then at Reginald, " and what I now say I 
 wish the world to know. That, my confessor tells me, is my 
 duty, and that I myself feel it to be. I may be a superstitious 
 man, but it seemed to me an ominous sign that my dear wife's 
 health should begin to fail in the first week of our marriage." 
 
 Reginald replied gravely : 
 
 *' Do as you think right. The matter is one out of which I 
 myself do not come with clean hands»" 
 
334 ^ THOUSAND POUNDS. 
 
 " My confession is briefly this," said Fullerton, addressing 
 himself to Mrs. Longhurst. " This picture, in which you must 
 see, now, your own face, which has won fame for its creator, is 
 not the work of my hand, but of your husband's. Just when 
 the picture was finished he asked me for a thousand pounds." 
 Rose shuddered, and her husband looked uncomfortable. Full- 
 erton continued : 
 
 " I knew the picture had been shown to no one but myself. 
 I knew it could not fail to be a brilliant success. I believed 
 that as a successful man I could win the hand of the girl I longed 
 for. The talk had come to be whether I was merely a pretender, 
 or really a man of genius. The temptation was too strong for 
 me. I paid the ^i,ooo on the condition the picture should pass 
 as mine. To guard against any discovery in the future I gave 
 your husband a letter from myself, which he should be bound to 
 show in case of the question ever arising. I knew I could 
 depend on his honour to do this. I doubly armed myself by 
 having from him a letter supposed to be in answer to mine, 
 recapitulating his admiration of the picture and enumerating 
 some of its most salient features. While she lived I do not 
 think I coicld have borne the disgrace of an exposure — for her 
 sake ! But she is dead, and God has pardoned me.", 
 
 *' And man, too," said Rose Longhurst, in her gentlest tone. 
 ** But I knew the picture was Reginald's from the first moment 
 I saw it." 
 
AN ESTHETIC FLIRT. 
 
 -:o:- 
 
 Periiaps because he was called Paul Clarkson, which, we 
 must own, is a very romantic name, or perhaps because his 
 family loved old china, or perhaps because he had five sisters 
 and no brothers ; from one of these causes, or from quite a 
 different cause — what matters it, since the fact remains the 
 same ? — Mr. Paul Clarkson was without doubt an aesthetic flirt. 
 How much of a flirt he was, perhaps he himself hardly realized, 
 it all came so natural to him. He was a handsome fellow, 
 young Paul. He had a tall, well-made figure, a pale but very 
 expressive face, and a good deal of warm brown hair. No 
 woman with such eyes could have kept from flirting ; so let us 
 not be too hard upon this man, especially as for some time he 
 did no one any harm. He wrote poems, which his fair friends 
 greatly admired. Ye gods, what sad poems they were ! In 
 them Mr. Clarkson flirted with Death just as he flirted with 
 women. He sat at her feet, and called her pretty names. If 
 his stern mistress had turned round sharply, and made him 
 take her for better or worse, I hardly imagine he would have 
 been a very willing bridegroom ; but as the grim lady just then 
 seemed to want none of him — as lungs, liver, and heart were all 
 they should be — this verse-flirting with Death was all very 
 nice. 
 
 Mr. Paul was apparently very much distressed at having to 
 live. He wanted no good dinners, not he ; he wanted no books 
 —of course not ; he wanted no club ; he wanted no pretty 
 
33^ AN ESTHETIC FLIRT. 
 
 women to flirt with. What in the world did he want, then ? 
 He wanted to be absorbed in the spirit of things ; he desired to 
 grow part of the infinite ; he yearned to be mingled with the 
 heaven's blue, or to be a rose-leaf, or a cloud, or a sunbeam, or 
 a weed ; in short, anything but what he was. A very sad man 
 was Mr. Paul Clarkson. Being so sad, was it not natural that 
 he should turn for sympathy to the softer sex ? One friend could 
 not have satisfied his great nature ; his comforters were many. 
 Let us see now who they were. 
 
 To begin with, there was Miss Blandon, very strong on the 
 question of women's rights — a clever, handsome, if somewhat 
 masculine-looking woman, of whom men mostly stood in awe. 
 Clarkson found out a tender place in her heart, and walked into 
 it. I think she thought for quite a long time that he was going 
 to ask her to be his wife. 
 
 Then there was the beautiful Miss Sandford, with the pale 
 face, and the large, lovely, sad-looking eyes ; was she not beauty 
 itself, and, as such, should she not be worshipped ? 
 
 Then there was Mrs. Clifford — quite young, and very nice to 
 look at, too ; and she wrote poems almost as sad as Mr. Clark- 
 son's own. Her marriage had been a great mistake. She was 
 thrown wholly away on the commonplace Clifford ; so she 
 resigned herself to the writing of melancholy verse. O, bards, 
 bards, what would you be without your griefs ! Even as children 
 are who have no pretty playthings. 
 
 Mr. Clarkson's grief was that he had once been engaged to a 
 girl of whom he was really getting rather tired, when, in the 
 most unexpected manner, she got tired of Kim, and threw him 
 over, and endowed him with a wrong. Mr. Clarkson felt very 
 badly, or said he did. It is quite impossible to say what he did 
 not get out of that grief of his. Of course its prime use was as 
 a seasoning to his poems. Then it was a great help in those 
 nice flirtations I have spoken of. A man with blighted affections 
 may go much further in flirting than a man who is heart-whole. 
 The dear creature comes naturally for consolation. 
 
 Did Clarkson make the best of his opportunity. I think he 
 did. He wrote, I don't know how many poems to his faithless 
 lady ; these poems he recited to other fair ladies ; he plunged 
 into all sorts of dissipations, not because he was naturally ad- 
 dicted to such things, but because he was so extremely unhappy. 
 He was a very desperate man, and cynical ; why, he believed 
 
AN ESTHETIC FLIRT, 337. 
 
 in nothing, always excepting friendship, between men and 
 women. 
 
 I have mentioned three of his friends ; let me not forget Miss 
 Kinlake, who played so beautifully, and, besides, composed such 
 wonderful music. 
 
 The amount of friendship with women, and the amount of 
 good wines Mr. Clarkson's grief required to console it, were 
 most surprising ; but we all know how bad is an affair of the 
 heart. 
 
 It chanced one night that Mr. Clarkson met at a reception 
 Miss Hilda Ford. She was not a girl. She was about thirty ; 
 she was very pretty, and not at all aesthetic. She had a good 
 intellect, though, and loved poetry genuinely. Her voice was 
 unusually low and sweet ; it had a strange, thrilling music in it. 
 She lived with her mother in the country, but they made 
 frequent visits to London. 
 
 Now when Clarkson saw her he fell in love at first sight. He 
 loved everything about her — her full, beautiful figure, her 
 sensitive face, with the deep, dark blue eyes, the red, passionate 
 mouth, the long, slender hands, the way she carried herself He 
 was quite bowled down. His love-grief — that had seen so much 
 service, had beeen paraded, O, in how many poems, had been 
 talked over, sighed over, laughed over, with what awful laughter 
 — was put away ! Mr. Clarkson no longer wished to die ; he 
 wished to marry Miss Ford. 
 
 He loved his dear friends ; but there had been till now no one 
 that he had quite wanted to marry. Truth to say, he was rather 
 hoping that some one in whom he could take a very decided 
 interest would turn up, when, lo ! she appeared upon the scene. 
 I think a man should respect a really useful grief more than 
 Clarkson did. He thrust it away without a tear — what do I 
 say t — without even a farewell sonnet. Heart and soul he went 
 in for his new love. O, bards, bards, are ye not an ungrateful 
 lot? 
 
 Paul Clarkson, then, loved Hilda Ford ; and what is very 
 much to the point is, that the kind feeling he entertained for her 
 she entertained for him. So, why not say at once that he pro- 
 posed, and was accepted ? 
 
 " Hilda," he cried, looking into her eyes passionately, *' tell 
 me how much you love me ? " 
 
 ** She pressed his hands, and said, " I love you with my 
 
 23 
 
338 AN JESTFIETIC FLIRT, 
 
 whole heart. Your love is the crown and glory of my life ; it is 
 my supreme rapture and my supreme rest." 
 
 And then, perhaps because her face flushed so, she leaned it 
 on his shoulder, while he kissed her thick gold hair. 
 
 All this was very nice, and just as it should be ; but troubles 
 came. As it happened, most unfortunately, Miss Ford had a 
 jealous temperament, and she got to find out about Paul's 
 flirtations, to which she very much objected. Of course nothing 
 would have been easier than for Paul to have given up such 
 flirtations, to which I think Miss Ford was quite right in 
 excepting. Only that was just what he did not do. Easy, I 
 said ; no, far more difficult than we dream of. 
 
 To be in love, and to play at being in love, are two very 
 different things, and, in their own way, they are both pleasant 
 enough. Playing at being in love is a very fascinating game, 
 and, like most games, it takes at least two players. This game 
 Miss Ford liked not : a fact which he could not tell to these 
 dear co-players. 
 
 " When our engagement is made public," he said to himself, 
 " I will knock all these aftairs on the head." 
 
 So he very wrongly — wishing at the same time to have and 
 eat his pie — told his beloved that he would forswear the close 
 friendships that so much troubled her ; and all the while he 
 privately indulged in them. She found him out once. He 
 rushed down to her house in the country, where, as can be easily 
 imagined, a scene took place. 
 
 It was the beautiful Miss Sandford that Hilda specially 
 objected to. He promised faithfully that he would see her no 
 more ; but the old habit was so strong that, as soon as he 
 returned to London, he went back to his Platonic worship of 
 her. He kept, however, his proceedings very dark indeed, I can 
 tell you, but, as we all know, murder will out. 
 
 As ill or good luck would have it, an intimate friend of Miss 
 Sandford went to visit some friends who were neighbours of the 
 Fords. To the pleasure of all parties concerned, it turned out 
 that Mr. Clarkson was a mutual friend. Then came the question 
 from our friend's friend. 
 
 " Was Mr. Clarkson going to marry Miss Sandford '^, " 
 
 Every one knew what a flirt he was ; still, his attentions in 
 that quarter were extremely marked. 
 
 " Perhaps so," said Hilda, quietly. 
 
AN jESTHETIC flirt, 339 
 
 She wrote a few words to Paul that night, asking him to come 
 down and see her. 
 
 Jam was nice when we were young ; but was it nice to be 
 detected in the act of prigging it ? When we thought every one 
 was far away, to hear a door-handle turn sharply, and be faced 
 by a father, a mother, or an old servant sure to tell? It was 
 with feelings similar to those then experienced that Paul read 
 Hilda's letter. It contained only a few words, asking him to 
 come down, but he had instantly a sense of something being 
 wrong ; he suspected the truth, that his sin had found him out. 
 
 The Fords lived in a remote country village. It was a hot 
 June evening when he found himself walking up the long garden 
 that surrounded their house. 
 
 Mrs. Ford greeted him very warmly. 
 
 " I'll go and send Hilda to you," she said, in her kind, cheer- 
 ful voice. 
 
 She left the room, and a few minutes after Miss Ford came 
 in. He heard her dress whispering as she walked. 
 
 " Good-evening," she said. " It was kind of you to come 
 when I asked you." 
 
 She sat down in a low chair, her hands clasped loosely in 
 each other. 
 
 " But I shall not," she resumed, " have to tax you again in 
 this way." 
 
 " Have I done anything to displease you ? " he answered, 
 turning very pale. " Tell me at once, and let me have it 
 over." 
 
 "What I have to say is," she rejoined, "that everything 
 between us must be over, now and for ever. If it is hard for 
 you, it is harder for me ; you meant my all of life." 
 
 " Some one has been teUing lies about me," he burst out. 
 
 *' It is you who have not told the truth," she said, with 
 perfect quietude. 
 
 He turned on her desperately, seeing that she knew every- 
 thing. 
 
 " Hilda," he cried, '* I have acted meanly to you ; but this 
 shall never happen in the future." 
 
 " For us two together," she answered, " there will be no 
 future." 
 
 " You can't mean that ! " 
 
 *^ What else should I mean ? I love you, Paul, but I should 
 
340 AM ESTHETIC FLIRT, 
 
 never trust my happiness in the hands of a man who could 
 deceive me twice. I forgive you, love you, but I trust you no 
 more." 
 
 Outside the birds sang on through the still evening ; the air 
 of the room was heavy with the scent of roses. 
 
 " You must take back these words," he said ; " you don't 
 begin to know how I love you." 
 
 ** Perhaps not," she answered ; " but I mean what I have 
 said." 
 
 " Hilda, till I met you it seems to me that I really never 
 hved ; you must show me some pity." 
 
 He threw himself on his knees before her, caught her hands, 
 and kissed them. 
 
 " Vain, vain," she cried. " It is done, and it cannot be 
 undone." 
 
 " Do you really mean what you say?" he asked, his voice 
 trembling. The man was in earnest at last, 
 
 " Yes," she answered, sadly and unwaveringly, " I mean it 
 most absolutely." 
 
 " Then I must abide by your decision," he said, rising, a cer^ 
 tain pride in his voice. " Good-bye, then." 
 
 He had got as far as the door when she called him back. 
 *' Don't be too angry with me," she said, laying her hands in 
 his; ^'kiss me." 
 
 He did kiss her, long and very passionately ; then he left the 
 room, left the house, left the village, and reached London by a. 
 late train, bringing a real grief in his sham grief's stead. Re- 
 solved on doing something desperate, he cast himself at the 
 feet of the beautiful Miss Sandford ; but, to his surprise, she did 
 not appreciate her happiness. 
 
 " I never believed all the fine things you said," she remarked, 
 " I knew you to be a flirt ; but you amused me, and for that I 
 am grateful." 
 
 He went away very considerably humbled. The real grief, 
 unlike the sham one, was totally useless. It inspired no poem ; 
 it stimulated to no pleasant flirtations ; it lay at Mr. Clarkson's 
 heart a great, heavy, unremovable weight. Like a wounded 
 animal, he shunned his fellows. He thought grimly to himself 
 as he roamed about the London streets, now grown to him so 
 dreary, that at last he knew what the real thing was. 
 
 In the course of a month or two there came to him a desire 
 
AN ^ESTHETIC FLIRT. 341 
 
 in some way to do something which might at least lighten the 
 gloom that wrapped him round. *' I've spoilt my own life," he 
 mused ; " still, it might turn to some good account for others ; 
 I have money, and great sympathy with the people, and they 
 need both. To spend my life helping them is what Hilda 
 would approve of, if she knew it, and that is what I will do." 
 
 The very next day he carried out his good resolution ; for he 
 was perfectly in earnest. Still, the man had been so in the 
 habit of posing that he could not help at first surveying himself 
 with a little melancholy satisfaction as the people's helper, given 
 to them by a great sorrow. When he got really into his work, 
 however, he ceased this sort of exhibition upon the stage of life, 
 with himself as spectator. Things seemed to him too serious 
 to incline him to strike an attitude before them. For the first 
 time he forgot himself, in view of other people's calamities. 
 Truly his labours were not light ; and he felt no disposition to 
 toy with his work as once he had toyed with love. Daily he 
 risked his life, sometimes from interfering to protect some 
 woman from the drunken violence of her master, sometimes 
 through long night-watches beside a wretch ill of some frightful 
 contagious disorder. He held not his own life dear unto him, 
 and perhaps it was for that reason that he came alive out of 
 every peril. Often, before the world was well awake, he would 
 return home from a night passed beside the dying, only to 
 snatch a little sleep and go forth again to his self-imposed 
 tasks. He saw sights and heard sounds before which a less 
 determined spirit would have quailed ; but his strong purpose 
 upheld him. 
 
 Among his many friends at the East-end was a family of the 
 name of White. Mrs. White was a widow. She let cheap 
 lodgings. Her eldest child, Sara, added to their small income 
 by playing humble parts at East-end theatres. She was a good 
 girl, this Sara, with laughing blue eyes, a prettily-shaped, sensi- 
 tive face, and a great deal of fair hair. 
 
 Mrs. White would exclaim : 
 
 *' It's not, sir, because some folks never look where they are 
 going and drag their skirts through every puddle they can, that 
 others can't walk in clean places." 
 
 Clarkson became very fond of Sara — not at all in a senti- 
 mental way ; he had quite done with that. He regarded her 
 more as a father might regard a pet child. She believed in 
 
342 AN AESTHETIC FLIRT. 
 
 him, too ; and that was nice. Often, on fine Sundays, would he 
 come and take her off to Richmond or Kew, or somewhere 
 where she could gather wild flowers, in the season of them. To 
 see her pleasure always pleased him. 
 
 Mrs. White herself was not at all an ill-meaning woman. She 
 was shockingly untidy, though, in her appearance ; and she had 
 a temper of her own. 
 
 One gray October Sunday afternoon Mr. Clarkson found 
 himself, after a two months' absence on his summer holiday, 
 again near Mrs. White's house. 
 
 It was a depressing day, and at its most depressed time — 
 between three and four o'clock. As he walked down the dingy 
 streets, with the dirty houses on either side of him — houses that 
 had a look of grim content about them, as if they had now 
 grown proud of their dirt, and would not, if they could, be dif- 
 ferent — I say, as he walked along, smoking a very good cigar, 
 he heard the melancholy cry of " Water-cresses ; fine water- 
 cresses ! " 
 
 In front of him, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, a man 
 was forcing a reluctant donkey drawing a barrow, the contents 
 of which the driver roared out, from time to time, in a voice 
 suggesting that he would speedily do violence to the passers-by 
 if they did not purchase his nuts and apples. " Tang, tang " 
 kept on all the time from what, to judge by the sound, must 
 have been a very cracked church-bell. 
 
 Mrs. White resided at No. 19, Upper Poplar-row. I wonder 
 if, at any time, any poplar had grown there or there- 
 abouts ? 
 
 Nineteen was the dingiest house in the row ; it certainly was, 
 thought Clarkson, as he once more came in sight of it. The 
 bell-handle was off ; the knocker had long parted from the door. 
 Clarkson applied his walking-stick. Mrs. White's voice could 
 be heard within. 
 
 " Go downstairs, do. Bob, you bad boy ; you're enough to 
 kill me, that you are ! Take that now, and be off ! " 
 
 And very evidently Mrs. White's hand came in contact with 
 her offspring's face. Then followed a howl — perhaps, under the 
 circumstances, not wholly unjustified — a sound of feet hastily 
 retreating to lower regions ; then the door opened and dis- 
 closed Mrs. White. It cannot be said that her face was clean. 
 Her dress was in holes ; it was fastened at the throat by a 
 
AN MSTHETIC FLIRT, 343 
 
 tawdry brooch. Once, however, she must have been quite a 
 pretty woman. 
 
 " La, sir, is it you ? Pm glad to see you back. Such worries 
 as IVe had — these people in the first floor not paying their rent, 
 ril tell you what that man is, sir. He's a nasty, low, good-for- 
 nothing, rum-drinking fellow. And as for beer, he was at home 
 one day, and it was nothing but send, send that young Bob to 
 the King's Head round the corner for pints of half-and-half, till 
 the child got that tipsy with the sips he took going, that 1 
 assure you I put him to bed in a really disgraceful condition. 
 As for his wife, she's no better than he is. She's the kind of 
 woman that I wouldn't trust for five minutes with sixpence of 
 my money — no, nor a penny, neither ! ^' 
 
 With this, Mrs. White, who had spoken at a breath, paused. 
 What she had said had been delivered in the passage, probably 
 for the benefit of her first-floor lodgers. 
 
 ^'Novv, sir, come down. You aren't too proud, I know, to come 
 into my kitchen. It's not tidy. I thought I should get to clean- 
 ing it yesterday, but no ; and my children worrit me so. It's 
 my impression, sir, that they would like to see their mother dead 
 and in her coffin ! young Bob would, I know ! ^' 
 
 His mother always called him young Bob ; though the truth 
 is, that he was a singularly old-looking child for his age, with a 
 very crafty expression. They were, by this time, in the kitchen, 
 which certainly was, as the landlady had described it, in no nice 
 state. She cleared a chair for her visitor, then, rushing to the 
 window, addressed a boy smaller than Bob, who was examining 
 with grave interest the contents of the dust-hole. 
 
 ^' Well, my son, you are a nice clean little boy, aren't you ? 
 Upon my word, you are. I wouldn't leave off", if I were you. 
 Look long enough, and you'll be sure to find something — a 
 roast shoulder of mutton, with baked potatoes under it, perhaps. 
 Or, I shouldn't at all wonder, a fine turkey and a plum- 
 pudding." 
 
 Then, finding her withering irony produced no effect on Master 
 Tommy, who continued just as gravely, and just as silently, his 
 careful inspection of the dust-heap, the enraged mother darted 
 from the room and swooped down upon him with a very heavy 
 hand, and an impressive admonition. 
 
 " There ! take that for being a bad, dirty little boy, and for 
 not doing what you're told ; and look you, my young gentle- 
 
344 ^-^^ ESTHETIC FLIRT. 
 
 man, every time I find you out here playing with dirt, Til serve 
 you just the same." 
 
 At this alarming prospect of ennui on the one hand and of 
 punishment on the other, the hero of the dust- heap roared 
 louder than ever. 
 
 *' I see, my dear Mrs. White, that you are a good deal 
 troubled," said Clarkson, when the sound of grief had somewhat 
 subsided ; '* but now let us leave the culprits, and tell me how 
 is Sara?" 
 
 ^' That's just the worst part of it, sir. Sally's down with some- 
 thing dreadfully bad ; the doctor says it's consumption, but I 
 don't believe in what doctors say." 
 
 " Tell me all about it at once," said Clarkson, who was most 
 genuinely pained. 
 
 " Well, sir," began Mrs. White — " well, you hadn't been gone 
 above a week when it seemed to me that she was getting a bit 
 lazy and off her food ; but I didn't think much of that, girls often 
 are that way. Perhaps she may have eaten less than I noticed. 
 Lord, when you're as worrited as I am, you can't be counting 
 how many mouthfuls of food a child takes to-day, and how 
 many to-morrow ; there's no fear of my boys not doing their 
 share. We got some very cold weather just at the end of July ; 
 and one night, when she was playing at the Crown Theatre, it 
 came down one of those nasty cold rains. She was much later 
 than usual coming home that night ! perhaps I wasn't in the 
 best of tempers, for young Bob had been more troublesome 
 even than he is generally. It was just one when she walked in, 
 the rain streaming down from her. * I couldn't get a 'bus,' 
 she says ; " that's what makes me so late. It's so cold and 
 wet, mother, I thought you might have had a bit of fire.' ' Fires 
 in July ! ' I said. ' We can afford that, can't we ? Perhaps you 
 expected a cold fowl and a bottle of port wine ? Eat your bread 
 and cheese and drink your beer, do,' I says, ' and get to bed ; 
 that's the best place for you.' She took a little bread and beer, 
 but I saw she couldn't stomach the cheese ; then she began 
 shivering and crying, and saying she was so cold. Well, I got 
 her to bed, but she coughed through the night. In the morning 
 she felt very hot, and didn't seem to know what she was saying ; 
 so I sent for the doctor — not that I, in most cases, hold with 
 doctors. He said that she had taken a bad feverish cold, and 
 that it had gone to her lungs. However, she seemed to get 
 
AN" Esthetic i^Likf. 345 
 
 over the worst of it ; only she don't get her strength up, and 
 sometimes she has bad fits of coughing* The doctor says he 
 can't do anything more. I say it's a good thing we don't 
 depend on doctors ; it's nature that will bring her round. You 
 see she eats hardly anything — not even that nice fried fish, 
 which I get from King's opposite, where you can always count 
 on getting it sweet, and just done to a turn." 
 
 " We must see what can be done, Mrs. White ; I suppose I 
 may see her ? " 
 
 *' Yes ; and it's my belief it will do her good. She has often 
 wondered when you would come back. I'll just go and tell 
 her that you're here." And away went Mrs. White. 
 
 AsClarkson sat therein the dreary room, littered with unwashed 
 things, he thought very sadly of the sick girl upstairs. He was 
 in deep reflection when Mrs. White returned and showed him 
 up to Sara's room. It was a very small room half way up 
 the stairs ; it had no fireplace ; there was just space for the bed 
 to stand between the door and the window. It looked a hard, 
 uncomfortable bed on which the sick girl lay. One hand, which 
 had grown painfully thin, rested on the threadbare coverlet. 
 Her long golden hair brushed out looked like sunlight on the 
 pillow. 
 
 *' Well, Sara, my child," began Clarkson, ''you haven't much 
 room for receiving visitors here, have you t It isn't the room I 
 should desire for an evening party." 
 
 " No," she answered, with a faint, sweet smile ; " and I wish 
 the bed wouldn't shake so every time the street-door closes." 
 
 Here Mrs. White put in with : 
 
 " Now don't you mind that. She's got a fancy into her head 
 that when the bed shakes a little bit it does her harm ; just as 
 if it could ! " 
 
 " I am so glad you have come," Sara went on, in a tone of 
 voice that sounded hollow and already far away. " It has been 
 so dull. I've been very ill ; I can't eat anything now, and I'm 
 not strong enough to get up ; but I suppose I shall some time 
 get stronger, and then I shall be all right." 
 
 " And hungrier than ever." 
 
 " Oh, yes, hungrier than ever, because I sha'n't have eaten for 
 so long, you know. Please tell me where you have been, and all 
 about it. Have you been far ? " 
 
 He sat down in a very rickety chair, and told her as amusingly 
 
346 AM MSTHETIC FURT. 
 
 as he could, though heavy at heart, all that he thought would 
 interest her. When he had rattled away for half an hour she 
 was quite in spirits. She must have Mrs. White produce 
 the new dress that she had bought before her illness out of 
 some extra money she had made. He admired hat and dress 
 to the full. 
 
 ** I must wear them the first Sunday you take me out again, 
 mustn't I .-^^ she said, as simply as a child, and her eyes bright- 
 ened. " I got something for them all ; '^ then, rather shyly, 
 *'and I got you a cigar-case if you don't mind." Here she pro- 
 duced her offering. He took it from her hand, admiring it, and 
 thanking her. 
 
 " I filled it with cigars. Bob got them. They cost threepence 
 each ; is that too little to pay ? They were the best I could get 
 here." 
 
 " Little ! Why, it's ever so much too much, you dear child. 
 Why, you can get a cigar for a penny." 
 
 " Yes, but not such as you like to smoke." 
 
 He laughed, and said that she oughtn't to spoil him. Then 
 she made him try one, saying it would be like old times ; add- 
 ing very piteously, "If you don't smoke, you will never like to 
 come and see me again." 
 
 " Smoke or not smoke," he answered, gaily, " I am coming 
 every day till I see you really better ; and to-morrow, as I don't 
 think much of your present doctor, I shall send down a man in 
 whom I have confidence. Now I must be off; I shall come 
 round early to-morrow ; " and kindly pressing her hand, he was 
 gone. 
 
 The next day Sara received all the comforts that an invalid 
 could desire, and early appeared upon the scene the noted and 
 kindly Dr. Forman. 
 
 " Well," asked Clarkson, as the physician came down from 
 the sick room, ** what do you say '^. " 
 
 " Say, my dear sir ? — alas, I have nothing to say that you 
 would Hke to hear. All we can do is to make the end as gentle 
 as possible, and I don't think that it can be far off." 
 
 " Thank you," said Clarkson, " for coming so far ; " and there 
 were tears in his eyes. 
 
 He went to break the sad news to Mrs. White, who, poor 
 woman, quite broke down, though, through her tears and sobs, 
 she again and again protested her utter disbelief in all doctors. 
 
AN ESTHETIC FLIRT. 347 
 
 While she was trying to calm herself, Clarkson went to sit with 
 Sara. 
 
 " What did the doctor say about me ? " she asked. 
 
 "He said you were ill." 
 
 " Did he say I was going to die soon ? I want the truth 
 please ; let me have it." 
 
 There was something swelling in Clarkson's throat. He strove 
 to speak, but vainly. 
 
 " Please tell me,'' she entreated ; " I want to know at once 
 which way it is." 
 
 Then Clarkson just managed to articulate, taking her hand in 
 his : 
 
 " Dear, he does think that you are in great danger." 
 
 '' Thank you ; that means that I am going to die." 
 
 Then she was silent ; but her eyes had in them a strange look, 
 as if they were trying to picture the land whither she was going. 
 At last she said, with a pressure of his hand : 
 
 " I don't mind much. I almost think it is better as it is. You 
 have been always so good to me. I know you didn't mean me 
 to care too much for you, and I myself didn't seem to know how 
 it was going till you went away this summer ; and then I knew 
 — when I found everything so hateful just because there was 
 no chance of seeing you— I knew then that I loved you too 
 much." 
 
 " Sara," he said, much moved, ** I never thought of that as 
 possible ; 3^ou will believe that, at least." 
 
 And indeed he spoke truly. No shade of anything warmer 
 than friendship had ever stained the purity of his kind feeling 
 for the poor, pretty child. With the passion of love he believed 
 himself done for ever ; and it never so much as crossed his 
 mind that he could inspire it in another, least of all in such an 
 one as Sara — so young, so out of the pale of all the thoughts 
 and associations of his life. That she could feel toward him 
 other than as a sister toward an elder brother had never crossed 
 his mind. Nor had even Mrs. White, a far-seeing woman in 
 her way, foreseen he slightest possibility of danger to her daugh- 
 ter's peace of mind. She was only glad that Sara should have 
 so kind a friend. "A true gentleman," she used to sa>% " and 
 just as much to be trusted as a Bank of England note." " How 
 bhnd he had been ! " he thought, as he waited for Sara's 
 answer. 
 
348 AN ^STtiEflC PLIRT. 
 
 *^ Yes," she said, after a little silence, " I do know that you 
 iiever thought of it.^' 
 
 She spoke very gently and very sadly, and tears were darken- 
 ing her eyes — the eyes that had once been like streams the wind 
 and sunlight surprised together. 
 
 He put his arm round her, and very tenderly kissed her lips, 
 that even then, with death waiting so near at hand, thrilled 
 under that first pressure of his. 
 
 " Heaven bless you, Sara ! as my child I have loved you." 
 
 Then they sat for some time without speaking, and all the 
 things incident to the daily life of a house like No. 19, Upper 
 Poplar-row went on. The lodgers at Mrs. White's did not 
 trouble themselves because poor, pretty, good httle Sara lay 
 there dying. They scrubbed out their rooms ; they called 
 messages to each other from floor to floor ; the pot-boy from 
 the King's Head tramped up the stairs to Mrs. Smith, who 
 occupied the third floor front, and announced his long-desired 
 presence by a great bang at the door, and by a shrill cry of 
 " Cans ! " 
 
 Presently Mrs. White came in, and made, poor soul, a despe- 
 rate attempt to seem gay. 
 
 *' Have you told Mr. Clarkson about your grand visitor that 
 came this morning ? " she asked. 
 
 " No," answered Sara ; "you tell." 
 
 Then Mrs. White unfolded how a fine lady, who busied her- 
 self a good deal with East-end folk, had heard of Sara, and 
 come to see what she could do. 
 
 *' She wished to send a doctor of her own, but was told how a 
 kind friend had already sent us one. She stayed some time 
 chatting, and said she should come again," continued Mrs. White. 
 " She seemed to take to my young lady ; but then most people do." 
 
 Again Mrs. White had to disappear to prepare something for 
 the invalid. It was then about two o'clock of a bright, rather 
 warm October afternoon. A bell was heard ; that noise, one 
 of the very dismallest, poor school-board children know, for it 
 summons them back to their lessons. 
 
 *' Shall you care to keep your cigar-case } " asked poor Sara. 
 
 " I shall always keep it and prize it dearly." 
 
 "Then don't tell your wife, or she might make you put it 
 away ; some women are so very jealous. I want you to use it ; 
 it is nice enough to use, isn't it ? " 
 
AN ESTHETIC FLIRT. 349 
 
 " I shall use it always." 
 
 " I am glad of that." And after a pause she said, " Say 
 good-bye to me now, while we are alone, then go as soon as 
 mother comes back." 
 
 He understood. He kissed her, and laid her head upon his 
 shoulder, and called her many a dear and tender name. " Good- 
 bye, Sara," he said, as they heard Mrs. White making her slow 
 way up. 
 
 " Good-bye," she answered, almost passionately. " You will 
 never know how I love you ; it is much better for me to go, 
 much better." Then once more, and for the last time, their 
 lips met. Weak with that strain of love, she fell back quite 
 exhausted, only able to whisper '^ Go ! " nothing after that. 
 
 He did as she wished, feeling almost sure that he should see 
 her no more ; and he was right. That very night the sweet, 
 pure spirit passed away, to make its unknown journey all alone. 
 Poor child, young as she was, she had known one of life's greatest 
 experiences — that of loving where there was no hope of love 
 being returned. 
 
 When Clarkson the next morning saw the blinds down in 
 Sara's room, he was not surprised. He had brought with him, 
 on the chance that she might still be able to enjoy them, some 
 beautiful flowers. The door of the house stood open, so he 
 walked straight in and up to Sara's room. As he entered he 
 saw that some one, who was kneeling by the bed, rose hastily ; 
 then he saw that it was Hilda Ford. 
 
 They took hands silently ; he went over to the bed, and 
 placed the flowers on the girl's bosom. Then, leaning down, he 
 kissed, very reverently, the cold lips that this time did not thrill 
 under his ; he looked long and lovingly on her face, which wore 
 a look of unearthly rest ; then he rose and turned to the door. 
 
 " Do you know where Sara's mother is ? " he asked. 
 
 " Seeing after her other children. They have to be seen to. 
 I have promised Mrs. White that I would do some errands for 
 her in the neighbourhood." 
 
 " Are you going now ? " 
 
 " At once." 
 
 " May I walk with you ? " 
 
 " I should only be too glad if you would." 
 
 "Thank you, then I will." 
 
 So together they left the house of death, and walked out into 
 
350 AN JESTHETIC FLIRT, 
 
 the bright October morning. After they had walked on a httle 
 way in silence, his first question came : 
 
 '^Was it you that called at the Whites yesterday?" 
 
 "Yes ; and even in the short time I saw her, I grew quite 
 fond of Sara.- Poor child ! she is at rest now. I have heard 
 a great deal about you from them. You seem to have been 
 their good angel ; nor are they all whom you have befriended 
 about here. Before yesterday I heard of you from more than 
 one household ; you have been doing good work.'^ 
 
 *' Thank you," he said, simply, hardly able to realize that he 
 was with the one woman he had ever really loved. The minutes 
 were passing. Soon she and he would part to meet no more. 
 She was a little paler than usual, but lovelier than ever. He 
 would have liked there and then to have gone down on his 
 knees before her. 
 
 O bards, bards ! ye who prate of the romance of lovers in 
 gardens, lovers in woods, and where not besides, so long as it 
 is a place where romantically-inclined persons would like to be, 
 why not at once own the truth that there is often as much 
 sentiment connected with places of the most unromantic kind t 
 
 Write, O poet novelist : 
 
 " The scent of lilies growing in a high-walled garden ; the 
 nightingale's passionate strain ; all the charm and music of a 
 summer night — will these not always bring to his mind, if he 
 could ever for one moment forget it, that face of hers as he saw 
 it in the full moonlight, and recall the low music of her 
 voice ?" 
 
 Write, O prose-teller of facts : 
 
 " The sound of jingling tram-bells ; London Bridge with 
 great ships visible therefrom ; open stalls, with men calling out 
 their wares ; the smell issuing from overflowing gin-palaces — 
 these, though he is perfectly familiar with them, will for all time 
 be to Paul Clarkson associated with the woman he loved." 
 
 He was so silent that at last she said to him : 
 
 " Why don't you talk to me ? " 
 
 '* Because I'm thinking of you so much. To see you again 
 is like great Hght falling on eyes but just opened. I am dazzled 
 by you." 
 
 She did not answer, but walked on in a very business-like 
 manner. 
 
 Presently she said : 
 
AN ESTHETIC FLIRT, 351 
 
 " Sara was very fond of you ; do you think she was too fond 
 of you ? " 
 
 " I am afraid she was getting to care for me at the end. I 
 never meant her to ; but I suppose you won't believe that?" 
 
 ^' Yes, I will. I don't think you did flirt with Sara, poor 
 child." 
 
 At length the commissions were all of them executed, and 
 they returned to Upper Poplar-row. What a strange day it 
 was for Paul and Hilda ! Mrs. White was too much upset to 
 see after anything ; and, as she was a woman who quarrelled 
 with her neighbours right and left, there was no one to whom 
 she could turn but the friends who were with her, poor dear ! 
 She sat in her dirty kitchen and sobbed ; while Hilda, with the 
 sleeves of her dress rolled up, displaying her large, lovely arms, 
 washed up accumulated cups and plates. Paul looked after the 
 fire and kept Bob in order. At length Mrs. White grew quieter, 
 and by evening they came to the conclusion that she might be 
 left. 
 
 " Good-bye, and bless you both,*' she said. '^ No one had ever 
 a word to say against my Sally ; well, she's out of the bother of 
 this bad world. I don't see what's the good of being in it ; 
 slave, slave, day and night, and then, some day, like an engine 
 driven hard, the boiler bursts ; but what's the good of talk } I 
 say, if there's any power looking after the world, it doesn't 
 trouble itself much about us that's in it." 
 
 So they left her and stood out in the cold, clear night. 
 
 '' Now } " said Paul. 
 
 And she answered, *^ Yes." 
 
 *' What are you going to do now ? " 
 
 "The most natural thing I can do — take a hansom to our 
 apartments in Westminster ; and you .^ " 
 
 " 1 ? " he answered, somewhat bitterly, " I } Oh, I feel in a 
 mood of exploring London by night. I might come in for an 
 adventure. Perhaps you will see in the morning papers, * Mur- 
 der in the East-end.' " 
 
 " I think," she replied, quietly, ** you had best see me home." 
 
 " That of course I should like to do ; but I feared my pre- 
 sence would only be an offence to you." 
 
 " No ; you were mistaken." 
 
 So a hansom was called, in which they rattled away. How 
 pretty the lamps on London Bridge looked, shining in the 
 
352 AN yESTHET2C FLIRT. 
 
 water, as our two passed over it ! " How very fast he is driv- 
 ing ! " she said. " We shall ^et there quite soon, at this rate, 
 sha'n't we ? " 
 
 '^ Yes," he answered, absently ; he was thinking of something 
 he wanted to say to her, and wondering, as we have all won- 
 dered in similar positions, whether he should say it or not. 
 
 " What are you thinking of," she inquired, ^' that you say 
 nothing ? " 
 
 " I was thinking of the past." 
 
 " I want us to forget that. I want us to be friends." 
 
 " Hilda, that could never, never be." 
 
 " And why not ? " in her lowest and most subtly sweet tones. 
 
 *^ Because I love you too desperately to make it possible." 
 
 "Do you still love me, Paul ? " 
 
 " Love you ? My God, I should think I did. Have I not 
 shaped my life as I thought you would have me } To see you 
 once again has been my prayer ; yet what will it do for me but 
 make me more in love with you than ever ? I had a dream of 
 you some nights ago. I thought I lay dying, and you came in, 
 and leaned down over me, and kissed me, and I put my arms 
 round you. Oh, the heaven of that dream ! Hilda, I am a 
 changed man. Is your love utterly dead } Would it ever be 
 possible for you to trust me again ? " 
 
 She drew quite close to him, put her hand in his, and rested 
 her cheek upon it as she said, " What do' you think, dear.f^" 
 
 " Hi, there, cabby, down with the glasses." 
 
 What cabby himself has shut down, shall we seek to raise ? 
 
HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 :o:- 
 
 " You or I?'"' Mr. Middleton had written so far on his new- 
 story, which was to appear simultaneously in England and 
 America, when he threw down his pen, and, flinging up his 
 arms, leaned back in his chair and sighed wearily. 
 
 He had been writing late ; glancing at the clock, he saw that 
 it was 4 a.m. In the house everything was very still, but out- 
 side there was a hurrying March wind, which drove rain up 
 vehemently against the window-panes. 
 
 God help an unhappy man at all times, but most of all when, 
 conscious of his own pain, he knows that all those round him 
 are havened in sleep. At such hours there can come no help 
 or hope from outside ; whatever his ghosts may be, they have 
 him at their mercy then. He said to himself : " I am not the 
 unhappiest man in the world, but, heaven help me, I am the 
 weariest ! " 
 
 And this was quite true ; there was upon him an unutterable 
 sickness of life ; he was tired of men, tired of women, tired of 
 books, tired of the loud life of cities, tired of the country's peace ; 
 he was too tired even to combine the different stimulants with 
 which he had for some time striven to rouse his jaded nature. 
 Now so great was his apathy that he did not seek to make an 
 effort, though it might have been an injurious one. In these 
 days he even forgot to smoke. 
 
 This death in life, this horrible darkness in which his soul 
 could distinguish nothing, was all brought about by the mistake 
 
 24 
 
354 HEAVY STAKES, 
 
 of his life. He had quarrelled with the one woman he ever 
 loved, ever could love. He had said to her once ; 
 
 " You are a flirt ! " 
 
 " Yes," she answered, with provoking quietude, turning her 
 engagement-ring round upon her finger. 
 
 He looked at her for a moment or two in silence, and then 
 said, passionately : 
 
 " By heaven, no flirt shall ever be wife of mine." 
 
 She was a proud woman ; she turned very white, and then 
 said calmly, in a tone of frozen sweetness : 
 
 *' I can bear you dismissal, I think, and live ; remember you 
 have made your choice." 
 
 " I know I have," he rejoined, fiercely ; " and I will stand by 
 it!" 
 
 They parted ; that evening he went abroad, and remained 
 absent from England several years. When he returned he 
 could discover no trace of Grace Townsend, the girl he had 
 loved, did love, must always love. 
 
 *' Fool, fool ! " he had cried aloud, in the extreme bitterness 
 of his spirit — '* fool, not to know that she was in all the world 
 the one only woman for me ; because my wretched man's will, 
 forsooth, clashed with hers, I let her and heaven go out of my 
 life. I should have said my life is in your hands, do with me as 
 you will, I am yours — brain, heart, soul and body. It was fate," 
 he went on, '' not of my own free will could I have been such a 
 madman ! " 
 
 Presently he took his candle and went wearily to bed. The 
 streets were full of life before he fell asleep. Then he dreamed 
 that he was walking down a street, which was like, but which 
 was not^ a London street. From a passer-by he asked the name 
 of it, and was informed that it was Wall Street. " Then I am 
 in New York," he said, not at all wondering how he had reached 
 that American capital. The man who had given him the infor- 
 mation, then, and as it seemed most causelessly, assumed a 
 threatening attitude. Middleton was placing himself on the 
 defensive, for *it appeared that blows were inevitable, when 
 he awoke and said to himself : " The dream is fate : I will go 
 to America." 
 
 He was a man naturally prompt in action, so that very day 
 he booked his passage on board the City of Chester, which 
 jailed on the following Thursday, it being then Saturday. He 
 
HE A VY STAKES. , 355 
 
 hoped but little from the change — indeed he and hope had some 
 time since parted company ; still it would be a change, and 
 that alone was something ! But Mr. Middleton was not 
 to sail on the City of Chester; she was to leave Liverpool at 
 four o'clock in the afternoon, and the nine o'clock express which 
 was to convey him with others to the north, met with an acci- 
 dent. The line was consequently blocked for several hours, 
 and those persons desirous of sailing in the City of Chester were 
 deposited in Liverpool just four hours after she had departed 
 from that place. 
 
 Mr. Middleton did not love Liverpool more than most people 
 do ; so, as he had to wait a week somewhere till there should 
 be another Inman ship sailing, and had nothing to draw him 
 back to London, he decided on passing the v/eek at Chester, 
 and before ten that night found himself installed at the Grosve- 
 nor Hotel in that place. 
 
 It was a very tranquil March day when he awoke — such a 
 day as we do get sometimes in March, when she has got over 
 the first violence of her stormy youth, and is tending April- 
 wards in very earnest. The placid sunshine was pouring in at 
 his bedroom window. 
 
 He rose late ; reluctant, as men in his condition are, to face 
 the uneventful day. 
 
 He took his breakfast in the coffee-room, which looked large 
 and deserted. Then, because he might as well do one thing as 
 another, he went to make a tour of inspection. 
 
 He visited the cathedral, where he lingered, listening to the 
 organ music. Next he roamed through the streets — noted a 
 house which proudly boasted itself as being the only one spared 
 by the plague. Then he went for a walk on the walls of the 
 city, round which there had once rung such a clamour of fight- 
 ing men, but which now seemed sleeping in the placid March 
 sunlight. By turns he remembered and forgot that he was 
 going to leave England in a week's time. He was wondering 
 how much longer he could manage to toil through his so empty 
 days, and saying over to himself, mechanically as it wxre : 
 
 " Only my love's away, 
 I'd as lief that the blue were gray," 
 
 When suddenly he almost fell to the ground, for he saw her 
 coming towards him. The swift, gliding movement she had in 
 
356 HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 walking was hers alone— hers alone, too, the proud carriage of 
 the head. In another moment they stood face to face. The 
 graciously curved mouth, with the red, pliable lips ; the quiet, 
 gray eyes ; the white, wide forehead, on which the soft yellow 
 hair was worn low. He strove to speak and failed ; she, with 
 greater self-control, in a very clear, musical voice, in a tone of 
 slightly high pitch, the result of nervous excitement, said : 
 
 " Why, Mr. Middleton ! who in the world would have thought 
 of seeing you here ? " 
 
 ^' Why not?" he rejoined. "Why should I not come to 
 Chester as well as you ? Can you give me any good reason 
 why I should not ? I confess I cannot see the cause of your 
 surprise." 
 
 He had spoken so rapidly as to be scarcely intelligible. He 
 had tried, with these words, to cover his emotion. 
 
 " It would have been a surprise to see you anywhere," she 
 answered. " I somehow fancied you could not be in England." 
 
 Their conversation had been overheard by a young man with 
 a very do-nothing look, who was lounging about with a cigar in 
 his mouth, and who had no idea from the commonplace words 
 that in one of those two persons' lives a crisis had been 
 reached. 
 
 For a moment they were silent ; then Middleton asked : 
 
 " Where are you going ? " 
 
 " To the town to do some shopping." 
 
 " I will walk with you, if I may." 
 
 " Thank you, I should like it." 
 
 So they walked swiftly away together. 
 
 " Do you live in Chester } " he asked. 
 
 She hesitated a moment, and then replied, looking on the 
 ground : 
 
 " My husband resembles Mr. Gladstone in two things — his 
 politics are liberal and he has a house near Chester, that is to 
 say, about two miles out." 
 
 " I have often wondered whether you were married," he said, 
 unable as yet to realize anything but that she was there. 
 
 " I have been married three years. Mr. Barrett, my husband, 
 has permanent business in Chester. I like the neighbourhood ; 
 so, you see, it is quite as well as it is." 
 
 " Yes, quite as well," he echoed. 
 
 They walked on for many minutes in silence. Suddenly Mrs. 
 
HEA VY STAKES. 357 
 
 Barrett came to a stand, and, looking around her perplexedly, 
 said : 
 
 " I thought I knew this old town, but I have come precisely 
 in the opposite direction to that I wished to take. If you don't 
 mind, we will try the right way now." 
 
 " Fm very gladly at your service, Mrs. Barrett," he answered. 
 
 Something like this things went on for the next half-hour : 
 
 She — "What a wonderful day for March, is it not ?" 
 
 He — " We get such days in March much more often than is 
 commonly supposed." 
 
 She — "You always did make a specialty of defending the 
 English climate. If you do not mind, we will stop at this 
 library. I have some scolding to do. I cannot get from them 
 the books I want." 
 
 Scolding administered and walk resumed. 
 
 /T^— "Are you well? '^ 
 
 She — " Yes ; I am well now. I was ill for a year before my 
 marriage." 
 
 He — " I am sorry — very, very sorry ! " 
 
 She — " Thanks. I am all right now." 
 
 Here a diversion, caused by a visit to a grocer's. Walk 
 resumed. 
 
 She—^^ You are working ? " 
 
 He — " Yes, yes ; laboriously." 
 
 She—^^ Why do you say that ? " 
 
 //<?—" Because it is so, because I have not one throb of 
 interest in my so painfully manufactured creations for which the 
 world is good enough to applaud me. Had I not achieved 
 unusual success by my first book, people would never have 
 stood the stuff I give them now. Yet it costs me infinite labour 
 to produce it. I detest life as a sick man does food, and what 
 Cometh after it I know not." 
 
 She — " I am sorry you are so tired all the time. I, too, have 
 my very weary days." 
 
 She said these words in a very gentle tone, as if speaking 
 more to herself than to him. 
 
 When the shopping had been completed she said : 
 
 "My pony-carriage is to meet me in the High Street at three. 
 Will you not drive back with me ? Mr. Barrett is at home 
 to-day, and will be so pleased to meet you. He would not agree 
 with you in the estimate you have formed of your later work." 
 
3S8 HE A VY STA KES, 
 
 "Thank you," he repHed, uttering the words slowly and 
 emphatically. 
 
 As the chimes of the cathedral pealed the hour of three 
 through the soft air, a charming little pony-phaeton rattled 
 down the High Street. A few minutes after a woman with a 
 singularly graceful figure, with a tall, slight man by her side, 
 might have been seen in possession of it. 
 
 The grays were swift goers, so that in what seemed quite a 
 short time they had reached ^' The Shrubbery," as Mr. Barrett 
 termed his house. 
 
 The day had changed very suddenly, the wind having shifted 
 and risen, bringing into the sky a look of hard, windy light. 
 
 "Just to look at such a sky would make one feel cold, would 
 it not ? " said Middleton, as they drove up to the door. 
 
 " Yes ; if I see a sky like that in a picture I always shiver, 
 if it is well done." 
 
 They went straight to the library, where Middleton was 
 introduced to Mr. Barrett as an old friend of his wife's — with 
 whose name he was very familiar. Mrs. Barrett had not thought 
 it necessary to inform her husband of the circumstances of her 
 former engagement, saying to him, when he pleaded for her 
 hand, " I cannot give you what I could have given you once, 
 but I am lonely, and I am fond of you. If you can be content 
 with what I have left to give, then it is yours to claim." 
 
 He had, however, heard all about her engagement to 
 Middleton ; but as she, presuming him to be ignorant, had not 
 chosen to enlighten him, he let his supposed ignorance remain 
 undisproved. He was, as Middleton now saw, about the average 
 height, with a well-made figure and a handsome, resolute, 
 intellectual face. There was, nevertheless, a rather sneering 
 expression about the corners of the mouth, and a look of 
 hardness in the somewhat cold blue eyes, though they could be 
 tender enough when used in love-passages. On the whole, his 
 voice was a pleasant one, though under the influence of excite- 
 ment it was apt to become almost shrill. Middleton accepted 
 the invitation to stay to dinner, till which time he chatted with 
 Mr. Barrett, inspected his books, which the latter was very glad 
 to show off, having in his collection some really valuable 
 specimens of old editions. 
 
 After dinner his host asked Middleton if he played billiards. 
 Hearing that he did, they went to the billiard-room, where Mrs. 
 
HEAVY STAKES. , 359 
 
 Barrett, who much hkcd to see the game played, watched their 
 prowess. As it happened, they were well matched against each 
 other, both being fine players. 
 
 It was past ten when Middleton took leave. The sky was 
 brilliant with moonlight, and as he came out into the night, he 
 could hear the wind hurrying through the leafless trees which 
 bordered the road he had to take. 
 
 After the first shock of meeting his old love, Grace, he had 
 felt little if anything. He had seemed dead to all emotion but 
 that of profound weariness so long. Yet he knew — and it was 
 strange to know — a great change was going on within him, to 
 realize that he was about to feel, to know that light was breaking 
 in, though it might be light to blind him. 
 
 Reaching his hotel, instead of going straight to bed, as a man 
 wearied out in soul and body, he sat down by the fire in his 
 sitting-room. Then, remembering that he had not smoked once 
 all day, he filled and lit his pipe, and as the soft curling cloud 
 of smoke went floating away, he seemed to see again the fair 
 face and graceful figure which had so often lightened through 
 his dreams, and to hear again the clear, rapid voice. To 
 himself he said, and half aloud : 
 
 " To think that she is really within two miles of me — that I 
 have seen her, heard her, felt her hands in mine ! Can it by 
 any possibihty be true ? " 
 
 When at length he really did go to bed, and after some time 
 fell asleep, it was to dream of the events of the day. When he 
 awoke in the morning it was with such a feeling as a man 
 recovered from blindness might experience at awaking to light. 
 There was something to live for in the day. He was conscious 
 of a mental thirst, which only the presence of one woman could 
 allay. He had resigned every idea of going to America ; so he 
 returned his ticket to the Inman line offices, saying circum- 
 stances had compelled him to change his plans. 
 
 Thinking it too early to call at The Shrubbery, he took a long 
 walk out beyond it. 
 
 It was about three o'clock when he was shown into Mrs. 
 Barrett's drawing-room. She was sitting in a low chair, drawn 
 close to the fire, which was burning cheerfully in a large, 
 old-fashioned fireplace. In her hand — and what a small, pretty 
 hand it was ! — she held Middleton's last book. Her warm, 
 claret-coloured dress, which was of a rich, heavy material, fitted 
 
36o HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 closely, and set off to perfection the soft outlines of her figure. 
 A simple gold locket flashed at her large, lovely throat. There 
 was a look of eager interest in her eyes. Altogether, Middleton 
 thought he had never seen her look so lovely before. In the 
 matter of beauty, the woman of twenty-eight had quite eclipsed 
 the girl of nineteen. 
 
 "Did you expect me earlier?" he began, taking a seat by 
 the fire. 
 
 " I did not expect you at all," she answered, a slight quiver in 
 her voice. 
 
 " Did you not ? " he replied ; ^' that surprises me." 
 
 Then he went on, speaking with that slowness and emphasis 
 which had something half-boyish in it, and which had been a 
 great charm to her in the old days. 
 
 " When I c^me here it was with the intention of going to 
 America ; indeed my passage was taken in the City of Chester. 
 An accident delayed me till she had sailed. She will return to 
 Liverpool and depart — but still without me''' 
 
 He paused and looked at her. 
 
 " What has made you change your plans .^" she asked, looking 
 down ; but he caught her face with his warm brown eyes, and 
 hold it till a burning blush overspread it. " I think you acted 
 foolishly," she said. 
 
 *' Do you ?" he rejoined. '' It seems to me that I did well." 
 
 Then he leaned back in his chair and thirstily drank in her 
 beauty. 
 
 *' Well," she asked at last, being defenceless against his eyes, 
 " am I greatly changed ? " 
 
 " Developed rather than changed ; you are more beautiful than 
 you were as a girl." 
 
 " Time has not cured you, then, of your old trick of flatter- 
 ing." 
 
 "You thought me sincere once." 
 
 " Yes, once upon a time, as children say." 
 
 "Don't you feel that we blundered .^ " he said, after a brief 
 silence. 
 
 " If you don't mind," she answered, speaking in a very low 
 tone, "we will say nothing about that," and her face was very 
 white. 
 
 " I shall do your will in all things," he answered. " I hope 
 it cannot harm you to see me." 
 
J^EAVY STAINES. 361 
 
 Then they were silent, knowing what was between them. 
 
 Presently they got talking of books and of people they had 
 known, and the afternoon passed rapidly. When Mn Barrett 
 returned it was to find them in the midst of a very animated 
 conversation. 
 
 '^ No, no — a thousand times no I " Grace was saying. " If he 
 knew before marriage that he had ceased to love her, he would 
 have been doing her the cruellest wrong he could do to marry 
 her, even if the shock had killed her. Death would have been 
 far preferable ! " 
 
 '' You see, said Middleton, shaking hands with Barrett, " I 
 have availed myself of an old friend's privilege to call again. 
 Mrs. Barrett and I have many things to speak of. When you 
 came in we were discussing the plot of my new novel. The 
 point of contention between us is this — The hero is to get sick 
 to death of the girl he is engaged to marry, but feeling himself 
 in honour bound to her, he turns away from the girl he has fallen 
 in love with and marries the first girl. I say he was right, and 
 Mrs. Barrett says he was wrong; now let us have your 
 opinion." 
 
 Mr. Barrett, standing by the fireplace, reflected for a moment, 
 and then said : 
 
 " I agree with my wife, though probably not upon the same 
 grounds. I am a fatalist, and as such think he ought to have let 
 things take their course. It was fate which threw the second 
 girl across his path. He had no right to struggle against fate. 
 It was requisite for him to yield to the force of circumstances." 
 
 " My man," said Middleton, " was not a fatalist." 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Barrett, her eyes flashing, " he was only a 
 coward, who, having failed towards the girl, was not man enough 
 to tell her so ! It was not pity for her, but for himself, that 
 kept him silent. He could not bear to face the disgrace of infi- 
 delity ! " 
 
 "You always were hard upon my men," he answered, smiling, 
 after which he again accepted Barrett's invitation to dinner. 
 
 "You must tell me," he said, very quietly, to Barrett, "if I 
 intrude. The truth is, I am rather a friendless man." 
 
 The other replied that he should be always pleased to see 
 him. 
 
 In the evening, when they were in the drawing-room^ Middle- 
 ton asked Grace if she would not sing. 
 
362 HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 " You had a fine voice in the old days," he said. " Do you 
 remember the duets we used to sing together ? " 
 
 " What shall I sing now ?" she asked. 
 
 *' * When first I saw your face,' " he replied, promptly. ** Do 
 you remember under what conditions I last heard you sing it ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think so. It was at the Bensons'. You were very 
 cross that night." 
 
 It was on the day after that night that the fatal quarrel had 
 taken place. 
 
 " You always did take my character away," he said, laughing, 
 " and you are just the same now. I am glad the years have not 
 changed you." 
 
 As he turned over the music for her, and breathed the scent 
 of some violets that she wore in her bosom, her clear, expres- 
 sive voice singing the song he had heard her sing so many 
 times before, brought all the past back upon him — the house in 
 Kensington where Grace Townsend had lived with her aunt ; 
 the prettily-furnished drawing-room, always pervaded at that 
 time by the perfume of mignonette — for the month when he had 
 asked Grace to become his wife was May. It was November 
 when the quarrel that we wot of came to pass, but he had some- 
 how associated the scents and sights of the spring with the one 
 love-romance of his life. As she sang, he saw again, through 
 an open window, the garden with its one big May-tree in the 
 centre — the sweet-smelling, though dusty-looking, pink May- 
 tree. Once more, in the gentle May weather, between the sun- 
 set and the moonrise, they are together by that window, he 
 lying at her feet in the low light, rather conjecturing than abso- 
 lutely realizing how fair she is, while the words they uttered 
 came back to him. 
 
 " Grace, what would my life have been if I had not met 
 you ? " 
 
 " You would have loved some one else, you foolish boy." 
 
 ** That I might have done, but not as I love you." 
 
 *' I should like to think that," in her sweet, low voice. 
 
 "Then you may ; I tell you it fills me with terror to think I 
 might have missed you — that the transcendent bliss of calling 
 you my wife might not have been mine. Kiss me, my heart's 
 heart, and tell me if you are happy — if you love me as much as 
 you did yesterday." 
 
 In his retrospect she clasps her arms about his neck, bows 
 
HEAVY STAKES. 363 
 
 down her face to him, and lays her full, soft lips on his in a long, 
 electric kiss. Then she says, still leaning above him : 
 
 " What do you think ? " 
 
 " That you have answered me divinely, my poet, for a poet 
 in love you are." 
 
 By the warmth of her cheeks, he knew the red love-light must 
 be flushing them. 
 
 Oh, long, lingering hand pressures, words steeped in love, 
 soft looks of love," and ardent kisses, hopes and heart throbs ! 
 are ye not remembered well to-night ! Too well, it may be. 
 
 The song ceased, and they forgot not to took at one another 
 — their lips said nothing, their eyes said too much. 
 
 *' This song seems to have had a strangely overpowering 
 effect," remarked Mr. Barrett, who was standing with his back 
 to the fire. 
 
 " You are right, my dear sir," replied Middleton, at last 
 looking away from Grace, '^ it has had a most overpowering 
 effect." 
 
 " Yes," put in Grace, " it seemed to make a dead time live 
 again." 
 
 Then Barrett challenged Middleton to a game of billiards, 
 and the challenge was gladly accepted, Mrs. Barrett, as usual, 
 watching the play with interest. It was a hotly contested game, 
 but at length Mr. Barrett won it. 
 
 As Middleton walked home that night, he seemed to hear, 
 all the way, the roll and click of the billiard-balls. When he 
 fell asleep, it was to dream of playing a great billiard match. 
 His opponent was dressed in black. The table on which they 
 played was black — so were the cues. All the while they were 
 playing he seemed to hear Grace singing — 
 
 " Since first I saw your face, I resolved 
 To honour and renown you." 
 
 Then, with a fatally bad stroke on his part the dream ended, 
 and he awoke to find that day had already dawned. 
 
 By a little after eleven o'clock he was once more on his way 
 to The Shrubbery. As he walked along through the keen 
 March air, he was haunted by the recollection of his last night's 
 dream. What a grim game of billiards that had been ! Sud- 
 denly he came face to face with Mr. Barrett. They shook 
 hands, and Middleton said, in clear, measured tones : 
 
364 HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 " Coming again, as you see — to entreat yOur wife's pity. 1 
 believe I am the most dreadfully lazy, good-for-nothing kind of 
 man in all England." 
 
 *' You seem able to dispose of your time as you like," 
 answered the other." 
 
 " I am haunted by a dream I had last night. I have a strange 
 kind of belief in dreams. I dreamed I was playing biUiards 
 with a fellow, dressed all in black. It was a black game, alto- 
 gether. The table was black, so were the cues, everything was 
 black, except a blood-red spot on the table, and the balls, and 
 they only seemed to make the black blacker. Well, I must not 
 keep you from business by prattling of my dreams." 
 
 So they went their several ways, and the memory of Middle- 
 ton's dream abided with Mr. Barrett all that day — ay, and for 
 many days to come. Mrs. Barrett was sitting at the piano 
 
 singing— 
 
 " When first I saw your face, I resolved 
 To honour and renown you." 
 
 when Middleton was announced. 
 
 " Good morning," he said, as naturally as though they had 
 been staying in the same house. *' I hope you slept well ! I 
 had a most horrible dream, which I could not help imparting 
 to Mr. Barrett, whom I met on the way." 
 
 " Did he ask if you were coming here ? " 
 
 " He did not, but I generously informed him of the fact." 
 
 "Are you mad ? " 
 
 " Not now. I was once, when I let you go out of my life ; 
 and, for the matter of that, you were mad when you let yourself 
 go. We were both mad together. Not in vain has Fate thrown 
 you once more in my way." 
 
 ** Don't," she cried, with a sharp ring of pain in her voice. 
 *♦ That we did wrong once is no reason why we should do worse 
 wrong now." 
 
 " Do you think we could do worse wrong than to be false to 
 ourselves 1 " he asked. " That was the sin of our lives. I seek 
 to do you no harm, only as long as I can I will see you." 
 
 " And Walter? '^ she put in. 
 
 " He can do as he likes. If he wishes for it he can have the 
 whole truth. I should enjoy telling him that you never had 
 really loved him — that I, and I alone, have been the love of 
 your life. Answer me, as you value your soul — is this not true?" 
 
HEAVY STAKES. 365 
 
 Middleton took both her hands, and his eyes burned with tears. 
 
 " You have no right to ask me such questions," she pro- 
 tested. " It was of your free will that you lost me. I tell you, 
 often when I wake up in the dark, dead night, I can hear you 
 say again, just as bitterly as you said it that day : * Yes. I 
 know I have made my choice, and I mean to stand by it ! ' " 
 
 " You must answer me," he said, not noticing her words, and 
 speaking with an enforced calmness. " You are in love with 
 me still, as I am with you." 
 
 '' I love my husband," she answered. 
 
 " I know that," he replied, " but you are ifi love with ;;/^, 
 Grace. Oh, my life's one love, be pitiful. You must let me 
 kiss you once as of old ! *' 
 
 He caught her to him, and with a sob, half of pleasure and 
 half of pain, she flung her arms about his neck, and once more 
 their lips met. It was all very wrong, of course. Still, things 
 even worse do occasionally come to pass, both in life and fiction. 
 
 For an hour or two they almost seemed to dream themselves 
 back into the past. With nightfall, however, and Barrett's 
 return, they awoke from their dream to realize the gulf that lay 
 between them — a gulf she had no idea of crossing and he none 
 of tempting her to cross. 
 
 Barrett would have been an obtuse man, indeed, had he failed 
 to notice the nervous gaiety of his wife's manner. If he thought 
 anything he kept his thoughts to himself 
 
 As for Middleton, the man must have been mad. He did 
 not even strive thinly to disguise his admiration of Grace, but 
 would sit silent for half an hour at a time gazing upon her. A 
 fortnight went by in feverish and dangerous happiness. In the 
 violence of the reaction from apathy to excitement, it seemed 
 to Middleton that he had never before lived at such high 
 pressure. Perhaps he never had, but it could not last for ever. 
 
 On resigning the idea of going to America, he had written 
 to have all his letters forwarded to him at Chester. He found 
 on his breakfast-table one morning a letter in a very familiar 
 handwriting. It was from the one intimate friend he possessed. 
 He broke the seal and read : 
 
 *' Dear Old Man, — I am desperately ill. It came on sud- 
 denly, but seems a big affair. Indeed, I can see that the doctor 
 thinks I shall be beaten this time. You will get this on the ist 
 
366 HEAVY STAKES, 
 
 of April, but it is not fool's play. Come and see me if you can. 
 Nothing would do me so much good. Yours, as ever, 
 
 ^' R. Bowles." 
 
 The letter was very characteristic of poor Bowles, half poet 
 and half cynic ; clever with his pen, and not quite at sea with 
 a gun. Middleton had a real affection for the man, and he felt 
 that he must go to him. He must go, too, without taking leave 
 of Grace, as she was that day to go on a visit to some friends 
 who lived several miles off. She would soon be on her way to 
 them, but there would yet be time for a telegram to catch her. 
 He was, as we have seen, a prompt man. There was a train 
 in half an hour's time. This he determined to catch, first, 
 however, sending this telegram : 
 
 ** Called up to London to see a friend who is dangerously ill. 
 Shall return as soon as possible. Will write." 
 
 Now as ill luck, or good luck — whichever you like — would 
 have it, this telegram fell into the hands of Mr. Barrett. His 
 wife had driven away just half an hour before it was handed in. 
 He himself had been delayed in going to business. Of course, 
 he opened the telegram and read it. He locks it carefully away, 
 and telling the servants they need say nothing about it, walked 
 into Chester, All the rest of that day he was a rather pre- 
 occupied man. He ate his dinner alone ; the room seemed 
 strange without his wife and his wife's friend. He sat after 
 dinner smoking intently as a man does who is trying to solve 
 some difficult problem. About nine o'clock Mrs. Barrett 
 returned. He started as he heard the wheels of the carriage 
 grate upon the gravel. She came in looking very pretty ; a 
 delicate rose colour on her cheeks, an expectant look in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " It has been such a beautiful evening," she began. *' I quite 
 enjoyed the drive home — but I don't see Mr. Middleton's familiar 
 face." 
 
 He noted the change which came over her own. 
 
 " Mr. Middleton, knowing that you would be absent, evidently 
 did not think me alone worth a visit." 
 
 " You are mistaken ; he told me he was coming." 
 
 " Then I own to being wrong." 
 
HEAVY STAKES, 367 
 
 She sat down on the arm of her husband's chair and began 
 playing with his hair. 
 
 " Grace," he said, suddenly, " are you quite sure you love 
 me?" 
 
 " Sure ? Of course, I am sure ; but is it not rather late in the 
 day to ask such a question, my dear ? " 
 
 " No," was his short, decided answer. Getting up, he moved 
 to the door, but turning back, said : " I should think Mr. Mid- 
 dleton must be ill, as you have not heard from him." 
 
 " Oh, I don't think so," she returned, with well-affected care- 
 lessness. ^'Perhaps he has made some new friends, or is 
 beginning to think that he has given us too much of his 
 society." 
 
 "You do not think, then, that there is any necessity for my 
 looking him up to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Oh, most decidedly not," she replied, over vehemently, "he 
 has behaved very rudely." 
 
 And there the matter dropped. 
 
 The next day was a hard day for Grace. She sat in her 
 drawing-room trying to read, but unable to fix her attention, or 
 wandered aimlessly about the house, listening for the loud 
 familiar ring of the house-bell, which came not. She wished 
 now very much that she had let her husband call to inquire 
 about Middleton. She fretted herself ill, and looked white and 
 jaded when Barrett returned to dinner. 
 
 " You look ill, Grace," he said, at once noting her with quick 
 eyes. 
 
 " No ! I am not ill ; I have a headache ; that is all. Have 
 you had a busy day ? " 
 
 *' Yes, a very busy one." 
 
 Following the French fashion, Mrs. Barrett took early break- 
 fast in her bedroom. The morning letters were all placed be- 
 fore Mr. Barrett. On this morning, the 3rd of April, there was 
 only one for his wife. It bore the London post-mark. He 
 knew the handwriting well— as Middleton had asked him to 
 read a chapter of his new novel, about which he wanted advice 
 on a point of business. 
 
 Let us concede at once that a husband has no 'right to open 
 his wife's letters, but let us add that under the circumstances 
 Mr. Barrett thought he was quite justified in doing so, and did 
 so accordingly. The letter which he read ran as follows : 
 
368 HEA VY STAKES, 
 
 *' April 2nd. 
 " Dear Grace, — I am writing to you with the shadow of my 
 friend's rapidly approaching death falhng upon me. It is 
 strange to stand thus as I do between love and death — the 
 bliss of your love and the sorrow of knowing that he must lay 
 down his life before he is weary of it, as so many of us are who 
 have yet to go on living, perhaps nearly as weary as I was be- 
 fore I met you again. How weary I was you will never know 
 — no one will ever know — because there are no words which 
 can express it. Yes, though we can never be man and wife, it 
 is a bliss to me to know that I have your love ; that, though 
 you may love that other man, you are in love with me — mine by 
 right of soul, if by no other right. Swinburne makes Mary 
 Beaton say, at the end of Bothwell : * But I will never leave 
 you till you die.' So say I — unless I should die first, as I hope 
 it will be, as I think it will be. God knows I thought I had no 
 hope of ever meeting you again, but I think now that deep, un- 
 derlying all, there must have been a hope, and that that hope 
 kept me from ending my days. I hope you are missing me 
 horribly. I want you to find comfort in two things only — hear- 
 ing from me and writing to me. I shall write to you daily. 
 Often I close my eyes that a vision of you may float before my 
 soul. 1 seem to hear your low, eager voice, and to feel once 
 more the blessing of your hand on mine. It is now about mid- 
 day ; poor Bowles is sleeping feverishly : from time to time he 
 moans and mutters of a very worthless girl who treated him 
 shamefully. It is a day of bright sunshine, which does not pene- 
 trate into this darkened room. Poor Bowles ! He is a hand- 
 some fellow, but so changed from what he was when I saw him 
 last. How I do long to see you ! There is something awful in 
 this quiet waiting for death ! He seems so close at hand, yet 
 his foot delays to cross the threshold. If I were to die sud- 
 denly, I am glad to think that your life would never again be 
 the same as it would have been if I had not recrossed your path, 
 if I had not done the right thing — renounced all my plans — 
 that we might be as much in each other's lives as possible. 
 You realize now that I was made for you, as you for me. I see 
 poor Bowles is waking up, so I must end at once. Good-bye, 
 my heart's one treasure ! 
 
 " Yours, through life and through death, most absolutely, 
 
 "JOHN.'=* 
 
//^^ yy STAKES, 369 
 
 A look of intense hatred, which he quickly repressed, passed 
 over Mr. Barrett's face as he locked the letter away. 
 
 Just then a servant came from Grace to say that if Mr. Bar- 
 rett did not mind stopping at the Grosvenor Hotel and asking 
 if Mr. Middleton were well, it would be kind, as she really was 
 beginning to think, from his silence, he must be ill. 
 
 Mr. Barrett replied that he would do as she wished, and left 
 the house. It was an exquisite April morning ; besides the 
 bright sunlight there was a laughing light of green leaves, 
 through which the soft stress of the wind made a sound like that 
 of running water; but the birds, especially one thrush, seemed 
 to enjoy the day a great deal more than did poor Mr. Barrett. 
 He did not look a happy man, or a strong man, as he walked 
 into Chester. He went to Middleton's hotel, and asked if they 
 had any news of him. They had not. They expected him back 
 in a few days. 
 
 "Will you kindly see, then," said Barrett, "that he has 
 this note at once on his return. It is on a matter of great 
 importance." 
 
 There was a strangely perplexed look upon his face. As he 
 was about to leave the hotel he heard the roll of billiard balls, 
 and with the sound, flashed as it were before his sight, the black 
 game of billiards which Middleton had dreamed of playing. 
 Remember, the man was a fatalist. 
 
 "Well," said Grace, coming that evening into her husband's 
 library — a thing very rare with her — " well, what news have you 
 of our friend ? Is he ill 1 " 
 
 " Not that I know of. He left for London two days ago." 
 
 " Left for London ! and without letting us know ! " exclaimed 
 Mrs. Barrett, with undisguised astonishment. 
 
 " Do you think," inquired her husband, calmly, " that he is 
 bound to inform you of every movement he makes } I thought 
 that was scarcely required, unless of lovers." 
 
 " He is my dearest friend," she began, but did not get on 
 very well. There was something in her throat that made it 
 difficult to speak. 
 
 " He was your lover," remarked Barrett, letting his eyes do 
 their full work upon her face ; hers, however, did not fail under 
 his, as she answered with quiet dignity : 
 
 " You are correct — he was my lover, and a man worthy to be 
 loved." 
 
 25 
 
370 HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 " It was because of him that you could only give me half a 
 heart." 
 
 '' Yes, because of him," she said, speaking gently, as if she 
 were sorry for the pain she had to give. 
 
 *^ Grace," he said, and his voice was broken, "come to me, 
 my darling. I have striv^en, have I not, to make you happy ?" 
 
 Then he threw his arms round her ; he felt on his face her 
 kisses and her tears. 
 
 The days went by, and regularly every morning came Mid- 
 dleton's letter to Grace, and as regularly Mr. Barrett locked the 
 letter away unopened. He was naturally an honourable man ; 
 he might have read letter after letter for the purpose of discover- 
 ing just how things stood between his wife and Middleton ; but, 
 his mind being completely satisfied on this point, he did by 
 Middleton as he would have been done by. He was waiting. 
 
 How seemed these days to Grace 1 At first they seemed to 
 tell upon her heavily. She went about white and hollow-eyed. 
 Do you think Barrett noticed the change 1 The absent man 
 had a strange magnetic power over her, but when he had been 
 gone a week the power he had exercised over her began to fail. 
 She grew less restless— indeed she began to feel as if a weight 
 had been lifted from her soul. She became more like herself 
 of old days ; but there was still a great difference from that old 
 self. There was often a look of strange longing in her eyes, 
 and she would start whenever the house-bell sounded, and then 
 colour all over neck and face to know she had started. I think 
 we can imagine something of what Middleton felt at not hearing 
 from her. I wonder what he said in those letters, of which we 
 shall never know the contents. 
 
 One day, near the end of April, Bowles turned his face to the 
 wall, and spoke never more. Death's awful silence filled the 
 room, yet, even at that moment, as Middleton leaned down and 
 closed the eyes of his friend, the thought of Grace was not 
 absent from him. He waited in London till the funeral was 
 over, meaning to leave that night. Unexpected business, how- 
 ever, detained him until the following day, when he left by a train 
 which brought him into Chester about five in the evening. I 
 suppose most of us know the pleasure of arriving at some place 
 where we shall find the one person who has drawn us hither. A 
 great sense of elation took hold of Middleton as he stepped out 
 on the platform. He felt as if he must come upon Grace 
 
HEA VV STAKES, 371 
 
 instantly. His heart beat very fast as he walked to his hotel, 
 and he had a strange sense of something impending. As 
 soon as he reached the Grosvenor, he was handed a note. He 
 read thus : 
 
 " Dear Mr. MlDDLETON,--There is something of great m- 
 portance about which I desire to speak to you. If you reach 
 Chester at any time before six, please come at once to my office. 
 If after six, then please come to The Shrubbery. I remain, yours 
 very truly, WALTER BARRETT." 
 
 Hastily disposing of a biscuit and a glass of brandy-and- 
 water, Middleton at once proceeded to the office of Barrett, 
 whom he found looking over some papers. 
 
 " Oh, good evening ; you have returned, have you ? " said he, 
 as he gave Middleton a cold, firm hand. "Your friend is 
 dead?" 
 
 " Four days ago,'' answered Middleton. He did not say, 
 *' How did you know my friend was ill 1 " The whole mystery 
 of Grace's silence was now, as by a flash of lightning, laid bare. 
 The blood burned in his face at the discovery that his letters 
 had fallen into Barrett's hands. They had compromised the 
 woman that he loved — what curse could be heavier than this ? 
 
 " Pray be seated," said Mr. Barrett, quite coldly, " if you do 
 not mind waiting a few minutes, I have one or two things to 
 settle here, and we might then walk back together. Of course, 
 you will dine with us this evening ? " 
 
 *' Thank you," replied Middleton. " I will do so gladly." 
 
 For some time there was no sound but the rustling of docu- 
 ments, as Barrett turned them over. " What does this man 
 mean ? " thought Middleton, as he sat silent, the bright sun 
 flooding the office. At length Mr. Barrett struck a gong that 
 stood on the table before him, and, giving his clerk, who ap- 
 peared in answer to the summons, directions as to what to do 
 with his papers, placed himself at Middleton's disposal. 
 
 As they went out into the street Middleton remarked on the 
 beauty of the evening. Barrett responded, lighting a cigar and 
 offering his case to Middleton, Then the two walked away at 
 a quick pace. 
 
 The late afternoon was wild and cold and sweet. Throughout 
 the day heavy thundershowers had prevailed, but now the high 
 
^2 HE A VY STAKES. 
 
 easterly wind had swept every vestage of cloud out of the sky, 
 in which the sun shone intensely golden. How madly the green 
 eaves seemed to dance ; how, still wet from recent showers, 
 they shone in the sunlight ! The songs of birds seemed blown 
 about by the wind ; besides the scents of flowers and wet earth, 
 there was on the air that nameless fragrance which so frequently 
 accompanies a high wind. Ah, me ! from what gardens, from 
 what fields that we know not of, may not these high winds have 
 strength to bear it ? 
 
 They were well clear of the town, when Barrett began with : 
 
 " You do not seem surprised that I should know of your 
 friend's illness ? " 
 
 *' I should be glad to know how you came to hear of it," 
 answered Middleton. 
 
 To which rejoined Barrett : 
 
 " I shall be glad to tell you. Your telegram, meant for my 
 wife, fell into my hands. Seeing that your admiration for her 
 had undergone some trials since the time when you were engaged 
 to each other " 
 
 ** Did she tell you we were once engaged ? " 
 
 ^' She did not. But though I said nothing to her, I knew it 
 before I married her. Well, naturally wishing to know how 
 affairs stood, I considered myself justified in— opening and 
 keeping back your telegrams and letters. Now, Mr. Middleton, 
 I wish to make no sensational scene," and here the speaker 
 raised his voice a little, as was customary with him when 
 speaking under great excitement. " If we were Frenchmen, we 
 should settle this matter by swords or pistols. If I were like 
 most Englishmen, I should do my best to give you such a horse- 
 whipping as should leave you marked for life. However, I am 
 not a Frenchman, neither am I a representative EngHshman. 
 Before everything else, I am a fatalist. I will grant to you that 
 you have a certain kind of right in my wife ; you loved her first, 
 you have been faithful to her ; you love her still." 
 
 *^ Heaven knows I do ! " 
 
 " But what interests me most are not your feelings, but hers. 
 You see I am frank with you. At this moment I believe you 
 hold her heart, but I believe if she never saw you again, 
 never heard from you or of you, if even your very name were 
 blotted out, that I could regain her love. Of course, I could 
 deny you the house ; but tliis is a half-way measure, about which 
 
HEAVY STAKES, 373 
 
 I do not care. Besides I know, as a man of the world, that I 
 could not insure your never meeting. I have a proposal to make, 
 to which I think, from what I know of you, that you will accede. 
 I think I can trust your word, if you feel that you can trust 
 mine." 
 
 '' Surely," returned Middleton, and Barrett continued : 
 
 " Do you remember telling me of a dream you had of playing 
 a game of billiards, where everything was black, except the 
 balls and the blood-red spot on the table ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I remember it well. The dream made a great im- 
 pression on me." 
 
 " So it did on me, as a fatalist. I must believe that you did 
 not dream that strange dream for nothing. Does the dream 
 suggest nothing to you ? " 
 
 "It does — death. Now I take your meaning. I accept your 
 proposal. Either you or I shall hold this woman's heart abso- 
 lutely. You may trust my word. If I lose, my name will be 
 blotted out indeed. Shall it be to-night .^" 
 
 "Yes — why not?" returned Barrett. " If I lose, you will 
 never let her know our compact ? " 
 
 "That I swear !" 
 
 '* I only opened one of your letters," said Barrett. " They 
 are all locked up. I will tell you where. You will not tell her 
 that you wrote, and whoever survives will destroy the 
 letters." 
 
 To this Middleton at once assented. The sun was setting as 
 they entered the grounds of The Shrubbery. As they approached 
 the house they could hear, mixing with the sound of the wind 
 in the trees, and wildly and fitfully sweet, the sound of a woman's 
 voice, singing : 
 
 " Since first I saw your face, 
 
 I resolved to honour and renown you ; 
 If now I be despised I wish 
 My heart had never known you." 
 
 The two men stopped for a moment listening. Then they 
 went forward. When Grace saw who it was that entered with 
 her husband, she coloured to the roots of her hair, and said, as 
 she gave him her hand : 
 
 " Why, what a stranger you are, Mr. Middleton. What have 
 you been doing ? " 
 
374 HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 " Nursing a sick friend," he replied, " who is now where he 
 will need no more nursing." 
 
 He sat down and fixed his eyes upon her hungrily. Under 
 their compelHng magnetism she felt hers drawn to regard him. 
 
 " You look as if you had been worried — watching late, and 
 getting little sleep." 
 
 '* Yes, but I shall have time enough now for sleeping," he said. 
 It was pleasant to be thus pitied by her. Just then Barrett was 
 called from the room, and they were alone together. 
 
 " Why did you not write .^" she asked, feverishly. " Oh, what 
 I have suffered." 
 
 " Grace," he whispered, coming close to her, " ask mc no 
 questions. I love you more than ever. Have faith !" 
 
 " Our love is sin," she answered ; "why don't you help me to 
 be strong?" 
 
 " Because I love you too madly for that, Grace. Kiss me — 
 who knows 1 It may be for the last time." 
 
 ''What do you mean? " she asked, nervously. 
 
 "Nothing, nothing !" Then he caught her to him, and held 
 her lips with a long, slow kiss. 
 
 When Barrett re-entered the room his wife was sitting by the 
 fireside in her favourite low chair. Middleton was leaning 
 against the mantelpiece, and saying : 
 
 " Yes, I fear these violent winds will make sad havoc among 
 the tender young flowers." 
 
 Dinner that evening was not a cheerful meal. Conversation 
 flickered and went out. The three persons concerned in it were 
 glad when it came to an end. As Grace had no objection to 
 the smell of a cigar, when Barrett challenged Middleton to a 
 game of billiards, they all three proceeded at once to the 
 billiard-room. 
 
 " Did you ever hear," said Middleton to Grace, " of the two 
 men who fought a duel with billiard-balls? It was on some 
 question of the wife's honour. I suppose they wanted to be 
 original in their choice of weapons, so they stood — one at the 
 foot, and one at the head, of the table. It was a very complete 
 duel. As the second cried, ' Now,' both men raised their arms. 
 The balls flew through the air ; before they clattered on the 
 floor there was a dull sound : both men had aimed well — both 
 fell dead. You can imagine what it would be to have this ball strike 
 you full in the forehead," and he pressed the ball into her hand 
 
HE A VY STAKES. 375 
 
 She shuddered and said : 
 
 " What a horrible story ! " 
 
 The game was then fixed for a hundred up, and the play 
 commenced, Barrett leading off. For some time the scoring 
 was slow. Barrett, however, had put together his first twenty 
 before Middleton had marked half that number. It seemed, so 
 far, less the aim of each man to score than to leave nothing on 
 the board for his opponent. 
 
 " What a tedious game," said Grace, who had assumed the 
 duty of marker. '' You are neither of you at your best." 
 
 Both Middleton and Barrett were courteous men, but neither 
 replied to the lady's remark. 
 
 Leisurely Middleton crept up, and when Barrett's thirty was 
 announced he was but two behind him. 
 
 " You both seem to be terribly in earnest," laughed Grace ; 
 *' perhaps if you were less so, you would do better." 
 
 Barrett's look justified his wife's comment. Securing a fine 
 position, he got far away from his antagonist, while at each 
 stroke his face assumed an expression of compressed energy, 
 which would be poorly described by the word elation. 
 
 *' One would think you were playing for really heavy stakes !" 
 cried Grace, as she noted the fixed look and rigid posture of 
 Middleton while her husband scored. 
 
 At length Middleton's turn came. The caution, almost 
 timidity, which he had at first shown, was now exchanged for a 
 prompt boldness, which, for a time, realized all that he attempted. 
 When he again made way for Barrett his score was seventy-five 
 to the seventy-three of the latter. 
 
 Barrett replied but faintly. In three or four minutes the 
 chance fell again to his adversary. 
 
 Barrett chalked his cue. Suddenly he walked to the stand as 
 if to replace it. 
 
 '* No," he said, returning to the table. " I will abide by my 
 choice." 
 
 To the last the man was a fatalist. 
 
 ''Now, Mr. Middleton," cried Grace, with elation, " a little 
 more of your former prowess, and the game is yours." 
 
 But, perhaps, because success had produced over-audacity, 
 he was this time less successful, adding only some half-dozen to 
 his score. 
 
 Barrett, now uniting wariness to brilliancy of touch, played a 
 
376 HEAVY STAKES. 
 
 game not more remarkable for the results which it achieved 
 than for the perils which it avoided. As the velocity of 
 the earth's movement is rest, so the very intensity of his 
 feelings showed "itself in the dead calm of his expression. 
 His face was a mask — his movements seemed those of an 
 automaton. 
 
 " Ninety-seven !" exclaimed Grace. " Mr. Middleton, it is 
 all over !" 
 
 Was it this very prediction of triumph that broke the spell of 
 resistless, relentless success 1 Barrett's next stroke was 
 tremulous. The cannon he played for was all but made. 
 Slowly his ball quivered towards that of Middleton's. Would 
 it touch ? No — yes — no ! It retreated as if it had been con- 
 scious of his defeat — and stood still. 
 
 " There is yet a forlorn hope," said Grace. 
 
 Middleton turned to her without speaking, but with a look 
 and a slight wave of his hand which at once imposed upon the 
 hitherto volatile Grace a silence almost of awe. Such was the 
 deliberation of his play that the number he had yet to make 
 occupied a third of the time of the entire game ; but every well- 
 considered ball, ^N^xy finesse of grouping, told. He crept out, 
 rather than ran out, a winner. 
 
 *' That scores game to Mr. Middleton," said Grace, almost in 
 a whisper. By some strange infection the event had grown 
 solemn to her. 
 
 " It was a well-contested game," remarked Barrett, as he laid 
 his cue aside. " Come, Middleton, let us spill a brandy-and-soda 
 in the smoking-room over this success of yours." 
 
 Thither the two men then adjourned. The feelings of 
 Middleton may be easily imagined ; a wild delight, to think 
 that some day, after all, he should call this woman whom he 
 loved so passionately his own — his wife — conflicted with 
 horror to think that, in a sense, he was her husband's murderer. 
 As they stood by themselves in the smoking-room, an impulse 
 seized him, and he said : 
 
 " Barrett, if you will consider this off, I won't say no." 
 
 Nothing could have better disposed of sentiment than Mr. 
 Barrett's way of answering. He rolled up and lit a cigarette, 
 and then said, somewhat scornfully : 
 
 *^ If you please, we will have no sickly sentimentality brought 
 into the situation, You did your best to kill me, as I did my 
 
HEAVY STAKES. 377 
 
 best to kill you. Had you lost, I can tell you I should have felt 
 no compunctions." 
 
 Middleton made no answer. He found it difficult to speak. 
 The blood was rushing tumultuously through his veins. Sparks 
 of fire were in his eyes. Was she calling to him, in that she 
 sang, from the drawing-room : 
 
 "Since first I saw your face, 
 
 I resolved to honour and renown you ; 
 If now I be despised I wish 
 My heart had never known you." 
 
 Why was she always singing the song so intimately associated 
 with their love ? Now the room whirls round with him. There 
 is a sound in his ears as of the rushing of many waters. What 
 sudden pain is this, as of a pin-prick in the centre of his heart ? 
 
 " Lost !" he gasped, and fell forward ; the carpet blushed 
 with blood. The excitement of his success had over-strained 
 his diseased heart. He was dead. As he had said himself, that 
 very day, he has now, indeed, '^ plenty of time for sleeping." 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 ■:o: 
 
 The London season was dying, and dying hard, in broiling, 
 dusty July weather, when Mr. Walter Davenport walked into 
 Charing Cross Station, purchased a ticket, and took his seat 
 in the four o'clock train for St. Danes. 
 
 Davenport came of a good family, and but for an elder 
 brother would have been Sir Walter Davenport. He had 
 passed the last three months reading for the bar and doing the 
 London season, and with the two-fold strain he was quite 
 wearied out. Yet he had enjoyed it, as only young men do 
 enjoy such things. There had been staircase flirtations in 
 Belgravia, and Bohemian champagne suppers with fair act- 
 resses, and there had been jolly bachelor parties, and there had 
 been headaches as well, and sometimes a parched throat, and 
 bores who would button-hole him when he would fain have been 
 talking to fair women. Still, I repeat, on the whole he had 
 enjoyed it well. Let him, for the joy of such things perisheth 
 soon. 
 
 He was a handsome young fellow, and looked handsomer 
 when feeling less weary. He had bright, dark eyes, thick curl- 
 ing hair, and an animated face, marred by a rather weak chin. 
 His long, graceful hand indicated the pure old blood that ran 
 through his veins. 
 
 He was on his way to visit the mother of the girl that, before 
 long, he was to make Mrs. Davenport. Staircase flirtations, as 
 I have said, had been his through the late months ; eyes, 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 379 
 
 dazzlingly beautiful, had interchanged significant looks with his ; 
 but never for one moment had his heart been diverted from the 
 girl of his choice, and now, as the train rushed on its way with 
 him, and passed fields already yellow with corn, his heart gave 
 thanks to know that every minute was bringing him nearer to 
 the one person in whom he found unfailing rest and refresh- 
 ment. He craved for her just then as men on desert islands 
 can crave for water, or people blistered by sunlight for shade. 
 It was good to be going to her ; good to think that in a short 
 while dove-coloured eyes would be looking into his ; that a 
 little lily-white hand would be enfolded in his own, and that a 
 low, restful voice — a voice which seemed designed by nature to 
 make glad wounded hearts— would be giving him welcome. 
 He had written to her many and many a time, but written 
 words can never take the place of words spoken. He thought, 
 as the train rushed on, how much they would have to chatter 
 about. 
 
 At length St. Danes was reached. He had not sent word of 
 his coming, wishing to take his sweetheart by surprise, so that 
 there was no one at the station to meet him. 
 
 He gave directions to have his portmanteau sent on to The 
 Cedars, where Ursula March lived with her mother, he himself 
 walking. St. Danes is one of the oldest towns in England. 
 Once it had known the sea, and the wild sea nights, and had 
 felt all through it the shock and shiver of great waves. Its 
 oysters were famous in the old Roman days. It was one of the 
 Cinque Ports hymned by Longfellow, but the sea wearied of it 
 and left it, and now, in its crazy and fatuous old age, it broods 
 on what it Avas when the sea loved it. Its streets, with the grass 
 springing up in places, and its crumbling walls, where ivy and 
 lichen cling, seem to be musing on old-world days — so old that 
 they seem to belong to another world. 
 
 Though it was only seven o'clock when Davenport walked 
 through its streets, most of the shops were shut, and the keepers 
 thereof, who lounged in the doorways, gazed at him with a sort 
 of dazed look. He wondered if people really lived there or only 
 vegetated — v/as it possible that men and women loved there, 
 were happy or unhappy, as the case might be } Even the dogs 
 and cats in the streets had an aged and toothless look. Where 
 were the gay young bucks of London dogs, and those combed 
 and pampered darlings that ride in carriages with fair women — 
 
38o MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY, 
 
 and women very often not fair, too ? And the sleek young 
 London pussies, where were they? Alas, they knew nothing of 
 St. Danes. 
 
 Davenport walked on quickly, and was soon on a broad road 
 which ran between gold corn-fields. In St. Danes itself things 
 had seemed more than three-quarters dead, but here the sunset 
 air seemed absolutely to pulsate with the songs of larks ; or 
 they were like unseen springs of delicate music divinely inter- 
 secting the gold and blue of the sunset sky. There was no 
 wind, and no sound save that of their singing. Davenport drew 
 a long breath of satisfaction, as people do when, after London 
 smoke, they inhale pure air. 
 
 In half an hour he was passing through a meek-looking 
 village. It was Friday night, and in the village church the 
 modest village choir was practicing. He lingered for a moment 
 or two in the churchyard where 
 
 ' ' The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. " 
 
 He lingered listening to the words, and the really pretty air 
 to which they were set blending with the evening : 
 
 "Jerusalem the golden, 
 
 With milk and honey blest, 
 Beneath thy contemplation 
 
 Sink heart and voice opprest. 
 I know not, oh, I know not. 
 
 What joys await us there ; 
 What radiancy of glory, 
 
 What bhss beyond compare." 
 
 Henceforth words and air were for ever to be associated in 
 his memory with that evening walk. The hymn ceased, and he 
 pressed on. In a few minutes more he was pausing outside the 
 high gray wall of a garden, over which the trees thrust their 
 branches, in which the birds were busy saying *' good-night.'' 
 Then from behind that wall there came on the air a sound 
 almost as sweet. It was only a girl's laughter, but there was an 
 unusually wild sweetness in it, albeit it was not loud, and it had 
 a penetrative quality in it, penetrating as is the odour of a 
 flower. It seemed full of joy till it was dying away, and then it 
 seemed to fall in a suppressed sob. 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 381 
 
 Davenport walked on to the gate and rang the bell, his ring 
 being responded to by the barking of many dogs. Then the 
 gate was opened and he walked in. It was a delightful old 
 English garden in which he found himself— a garden lined with 
 wise-looking trees, which seemed well content with their home; 
 a garden aglow with flowers as fragrant to smell as they were 
 fair to see. In the centre was a wide, well-kept lawn, and on 
 the lawn, making a very pretty picture, were two girls. One 
 was sitting in a low garden chair ; she was slight, but well 
 formed — the face calm and beautiful, with sweet, serious lips, 
 and calm, dove-like eyes. She was dressed in white, that 
 shimmered in the evening glow. This was Ursula March, 
 Davenport's wife to be. The other, who was standing as if she 
 had just risen, was her friend. Rose Beresford. She was tall — 
 almost too tall but for the wonderful grace that carried off her 
 height. She had lustrous black hair, which seemed to rebel 
 against restraint. The eyes were large and dark, and they 
 could be in their expression restful almost to slumbrousness or 
 passionately scornful. The beautiful eager face was clearly 
 pale, the full red lips making by contrast a superb piece of 
 warm colouring. Her wonderfully moulded figure looked as lithe 
 as a willow. As he gazed at her that first evening, she seemed 
 to him to be like some beautiful dark human lily. 
 
 When Ursula saw who it was coming up the garden, she also 
 sprang to her feet, and uttered moreover a low cry of delight. 
 
 " Surprised ? " he asked, in that tone of utter indifference 
 generally assumed by an English lover when addressing the 
 lady of his heart in the presence of a third person. 
 
 " Yes— ever so much surprised. I did not look for you for 
 days yet." Then remembering herself, " How stupid I am. 
 You haven't been introduced to Rose yet. Miss Beresford, 
 Mr. Davenport." 
 
 " I think I have heard of you from this young lady," said 
 Rose, touching the cheek of the girl, whose head did not come 
 higher than her shoulder. 
 
 Miss Beresford's dress was of some heavy and rich material. 
 It was made with loose, wide sleeves, which'partly revealed the 
 exquisite shape and fairness of her arms. A massive pearl 
 locket, which seemed to suit her well, hung at her neck. 
 
 '^ Confess now," she went on, " that your name is Walter." 
 
 ** I would conceal the fact if I could," he went on, with mock 
 
382 MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 gravity, ^' but, alas, I cannot. I think, you know, it should be 
 considered a criminal offence to call a boy Walter." 
 
 So for a little while they chattered lightly. Then Davenport 
 went to the room which was always kept ready for him to 
 change his dusty clothes, and when he had done this he had not 
 passed far down the thickly carpeted passage leading to the 
 stair-head when he discerned a slight figure by an open window, 
 gazing down intently into the garden, now gray and indistinct 
 in the falling twilight. Of course it was quite chance her being 
 there just then ; she couldn't foresee that somebody would have 
 to pass that way and would be arrested by so slight a figure 
 against the soft dusk, and that some one's arm should go about 
 her waist, and a hand fall over her shoulder and rest just 
 underneath her chin. But this was just what did happen. 
 
 " Well, sweetheart," said Walter, and there was no indiffer- 
 ence in his voice now, " are you really a little pleased that I have 
 come before you expected me } " 
 
 " No, not at all glad — very sorry." 
 
 " No, dear, speak seriously," in rather a protesting tone. 
 "Are you a little bit glad to see me 1 " 
 
 *' Yes," in a passionate whisper of delight. 
 
 "Very glad?" 
 
 " More than ever glad." 
 
 " That is well then. Is any one in the garden now ? " 
 
 " No, Rose is talking to mamma." 
 
 " Well then let us go and walk there. I wish you hadn't a 
 visitor ; I sha'n't see you alone now ever, shall I 1 " 
 
 " Yes, certainly, if you care to." 
 
 " Care to ! you ^now how much I care to. But tell me who 
 she is, and how long she means to stay, and everything about 
 her." 
 
 " You seem very much interested," — in tones used by women 
 who are perfectly sure of their lovers and husbands when they 
 play at being jealous. 
 
 " I am very much disappointed at finding some one here, 
 who must greatly spoil the time we have together. No — you 
 shouldn't have arranged it so, Ursula. It wasn't fair to me. 
 Upon my soul it wasn't— and I think if you cared for me at all 
 as I cared for you, you would not have had it so.'^ 
 
 " But, my dear boy," answered Ursula, her sweet voice just a 
 little raised, and pressing both hands upon his arm (they were 
 
MISS BERESI^ORD'S MVSTERV, 383 
 
 walking about the garden then), '' I had nothing to say to it. I 
 could not help it. Listen, and I will tell you all about it, that 
 is if you are good, and if you are bad you shall be told nothing." 
 
 It was not much that Ursula had to tell. She and Rose had 
 been school friends. Rose was an orphan, and on being twenty- 
 one had gone to live in a remote part of the country, with a lady 
 so old that she seemed more dead than alive. Mrs. March, 
 who thought that Rose must lead a lonely life, had made her 
 promise that if ever she felt dull she would make The Cedars 
 her home. Rose accepted gladly, saying that she should take 
 Mrs. March at her word. This she had done. A week ago 
 the post had brought a letter from her, saying she should be 
 with them that very evening. 
 
 '* If you are too full of visitors to have me," the letter went 
 on to say, " why, it can't be helped. There are plenty of nice 
 old inns at St. Danes, where it would be rather fun to put 
 up ; but unless I do things suddenly I never do them at all, 
 and I do want, nay 7teed^ to see you and Ursula." 
 
 " So she came. Now be quiet— could I help it ?" 
 
 ^* Well, no ; I suppose really you could not. But how do you 
 like her — what do you make of her ? " 
 
 " I don't know. There is something in her which at once 
 attracts and repels me. She seems at once tender and cruel — ■ 
 overflowing and reserved. I wonder how you will like her." 
 
 " I expect neither to like nor dishke her. That is my attitude 
 toward most people, I think. But tell me if you have missed 
 me, and why you did not write me longer letters ? " 
 
 So in the young, tender moonlight, with his arm about her 
 shoulder, his hand clasping hers, they went to and fro and talked, 
 much I suppose as lovers always have talked since the world 
 first was and will talk till the world is not. Ah, friends, be 
 happy while youth lasts, for it is a frail flower, and every 
 moment the bloom is fading. When it has all faded quite, to 
 return no more for ever, what shall some of us do then with the 
 bloomless, scentless, unlovely stalk of life remaining ? 
 
 Presently Mrs. March, who deemed that the lovers had had 
 quite long enough talk, appeared with Rose, and made some 
 platitudinous remark upon the beauty of the night. 
 
 " And it has been so hot all day," said Rose. Her voice had 
 the same sweetly penetrative quality that belonged to her laugh. 
 It was a voice through which you could often hear the pulsations 
 
3S4 ^IISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 of a minor chord. It was a voice that haunted you as certaiil 
 music does, music whereof the sense is with you though you 
 cannot perfectly recall the melody. 
 
 '* How glad all things are at night," she went on. " I think 
 the flowers must be so happy when the sun hands them over to 
 the moonlight and the dew. I wonder what they dream of 
 through the long, still hours." 
 
 " Butterflies and bees," put in Walter, lighting a cigar, per- 
 mission having been duly granted. 
 
 *' I should think it more likely," answered Rose, " that they 
 dream of thunder-storms and bleak days when the wind cuts 
 them to the heart." 
 
 " And why," questioned Davenport, " should they not dream 
 of pleasant things instead? " 
 
 " Because it is more like life to dream of what terrifies us — 
 just as people who have fear of death are always dreaming of 
 it." 
 
 " But you see," responded Walter, " these flowers are dear 
 little innocent things that have done no harm in their lives. 
 Rose has not betrayed rose, nor has lily fought with lily, so 
 their dreams are not remorseful as ours are so often ; neither do 
 they speculate on the end of things, so their dreams are unin- 
 vaded by any thought of death." 
 
 " Indeed ! You seem to know all about them. Perhaps in 
 some former life you were a flower ! " 
 
 *' No," he laughed, ''only a weed — a worthless weed." 
 
 "A stinging one ?" 
 
 ** I most sincerely hope so. I would rather have stung than 
 done nothing. It is something in this world to be dreaded." 
 
 So between grave and gay the talk went on till the ladies re- 
 tiring left Walter to smoke a pipe in the garden. He fell asleep 
 that night trying to recall Miss Beresford's voice. 
 
 " Well," Ursula asked him the next morning, " how do you 
 like her .>" 
 
 *' Better than I thought to do. She interests me." 
 
 Now what the acute reader has divined would happen did 
 happen. From being rather interested in Rose Beresford, Mr. 
 Davenport became desperately interested, and then, being a 
 sincere man more or less, he owned to himself that she had 
 swept him away. He was in the rapids, and he knew it. Per- 
 chance it might never have been if Ursula, who was always 
 
MISS BRRESFORD'S MYSTERY. 385 
 
 delicate, had not been attacked with a feverish cold, which 
 kept her to her room for many days. Rose would at first gladly 
 have devoted all her time to her friend, but this Ursula would 
 not hear of, saying it would be so dull for Walter. So, poor 
 child, her own unselfish nature and delicate health militated 
 against her, and while not absolutely in pain, but very weary, 
 she sat up in bed propped by pillows, or, wrapped in her pretty 
 dressing-gown, lay on the couch in her bedroom, looking fair 
 and frail as any flower, she read, trying to interest herself in 
 what she read, but not succeeding very well, for her faithful 
 thoughts went ever following her lover. They followed him 
 through the hot, still days, or through days when the month 
 seemed panic-stricken, as if it knew it must die, and melancholy 
 winds went moaning under gray skies, and the rose-leaves 
 showered down as if, indeed, very autumn had come before 
 its time. In the meanwhile two persons were going through 
 dreadful sufferings, alternated with transports of joy almost as 
 dreadful. 
 
 Mrs. March was a chronic invalid, so that Rose and Walter 
 were often alone together. In the house, in the garden, in 
 walks, in drives. Very soon he felt how desperately fasci- 
 nating she was to him. Her beauty stormed him. The worship 
 of it came to be almost a religion with him. Then she had 
 strange, swift ways of passing from grave subjects to light ones, 
 which he thought charming. She was a fearless horse-woman, 
 too, and looked splendid in the saddle. 
 
 One day— before they realized just how they stood to each 
 other — when she had been talking bitterly, he said : 
 
 *' The world is tragic for most of us, I know, but surely-— 
 surely not for you. You are young — you are ten times more 
 beautiful than any woman I have ever seen, or ever shall see. 
 You have intellect with which to enjoy the higher blessings of 
 life, and money to procure you its creature comforts, which, I 
 grant you, are in their way quite as necessary to anything like 
 perfect enjoyment." 
 
 They were alone together in Miss March's pretty little pony 
 carriage. Rose was driving. 
 
 " You do not know of what you are talking," she answered. 
 " You talk cruelly because you talk ignorantly.'* 
 
 " I am not ignorant of your beauty nor of your charni)" he 
 answered. 
 
 ^6 
 
386 M/SS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 " Don't," she returned, in a whisper of fear that thrilled through 
 and awed him. " Suppose," she went on, *' I were to tell you 
 that I am the most unhappy woman in the world ? " 
 
 " I am afraid I should say that you know very little about 
 the world. Surely it must make you happy to be so beautiful. 
 Just to look at you is a rapture. Do you know how I thank 
 God for having made anything so beautiful ? Tell me — tell me 
 — do you know ? " 
 
 *' I don't know that I am so glad you think me so beautiful," 
 she said, and her tone of voice forewarned of tears as the south 
 wind forewarns of rain. '' Men have called me beautiful before, 
 and I have been their curse." 
 
 " Because you could not love them— but you shall love me, 
 because I love you." 
 
 " Don't ! " she cried, in a tone of command, and she struck 
 sharply the ponies, who, unused to the whip, reared and dashed 
 forward. 
 
 *' Ursula would never forgive you," remarked Davenport. 
 '* She never touches them except to caress them." 
 
 " They have a different mistress for the present," she replied, 
 and again she struck them, and yet again. *' See, I am as Fate 
 driving them as it has driven me." The beautiful arm was 
 raised to strike again, when Davenport, interceding, took her 
 wrist in his hand and held it back. 
 
 " No," he said, dexterously dispossessing her other hand of 
 the reins. " I will drive now." 
 
 She made no resistance ; indeed, she looked rather ashamed. 
 
 "Do you hate me?" she asked, in clear, unfaltering tones, 
 " and think me a fiend ? " 
 
 " Hate you } " he groaned. " No, Rose, I do not hate you, 
 nor do I think you are a fiend ; but I should not mind if you 
 were. I think only of how beautiful you are." 
 
 The twilight was drawing on — a still, ominous twilight, amber- 
 flushed. Not a soul in sight, not a sound but the forlorn tink- 
 ling of sheep-bells. On one side of them broad fields stretched 
 away, on the other side of them was a small wood. 
 
 Davenport drew up the ponies by the roadside to rest them, 
 and threw the reins upon their necks. How still everything 
 was. As he drew very close to Rose their eyes met in a long, 
 passionate gaze — their hands met and closed — and then with a 
 quick rush of blood and a low cry, their lips came together and 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 387 
 
 clung desperately. Then they started apart, knowing just what 
 it all meant. The drive home was a silent one. They both 
 passed the night feeling how criminal it seemed to have sat with 
 Ursula, trying to cheer her up, when they knew the guilty secret 
 there was between them. 
 
 The next day they tried to avoid each other, but not for long. 
 ' " Rose," he said at length, '' I can bear this no longer. If 
 you are not mine I shall go mad." 
 
 " Oh, why, why did we ever meet ? " she moaned, wringing 
 her hands. 
 
 " Why ? " he answered, *' because we were made for one 
 another." 
 
 *' But you are bound to Ursula." 
 
 *' Whom I will never wrong by marrying while I feel to 
 another woman as I feel to you." 
 
 " But if Ursula freed you," she answered, hope and terror 
 blending in her voice, " you might not choose to marry me. 
 Other men have been in love with me, and have heard what 
 you must now hear, before taking the step you talk of taking. 
 You may choose to cast me from you too." 
 
 " Nothing could come, or shall come between us, I tell you. 
 You have bewitched me, you have made me faithless to the 
 woman I loved, whom I thought I would rather die than pain, 
 yet whose heart I shall now go near to break. You have made 
 me false to all the most cherished traditions of my life, and you 
 talk as if anything could come between us." 
 
 He had spoken rapidly, his eyes aglow with passion. They 
 
 had gone for a country ramble, and had paused to rest on the 
 
 root of a fallen tree. It was a bright, soft, breezy afternoon — 
 
 " with a veiled mystery of sunlight over everything — while birds 
 
 sang dubiously. 
 
 " You do love me a great deal, don't you ? " she said, her 
 voice seeming to vibrate with her love, while her passionate 
 dark eyes seemed to draw his whole soul out to her. She laid 
 her hands in his, and said quickly under her breath : 
 " Kiss me." 
 
 Then when their lips had parted, she began speaking with 
 restrained excitement. 
 
 " Strange as it seems, on him— him who marries me, as much 
 as I may love him — I must impose conditions. First, that I 
 may be allowed to settle always where we shall live. Secondly, 
 
388 M7SS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 that I may be free to absent myself for as long a period as I 
 may think good. Thirdly, that I shall be asked no questions. 
 Fourthly, that 1 shall not be followed, and that my movements 
 shall be in no way investigated. These are the conditions." 
 She paused, and looking up, saw that his face was pale. 
 
 " Rose," he said, and his voice was grave, " your conditions 
 are harder than I thought they would be, but, feeling as I do 
 for you, I have no choice. I accept your terms." 
 
 " How noble you are," she said, drawing a sigh of infinite 
 relief. 
 
 " No, Rose ; there is nothing noble in me at all. Whatever 
 you say, I pray you do not say that. You have created a some- 
 thing in me of which I am almost frightened. If need were, I 
 would barter my soul for you." 
 
 *^ Would you 1 " she said, laughing the wild, sweet, penetra- 
 tive laugh he had heard that July night come from behind the 
 gray old garden wall. 
 
 " Is it matter for mirth ? " he asked, half in wonder. 
 
 " Yes, I think so. It is good to be loved like that, but I am 
 worth no living creature's soul," she said, and then, bending 
 down, put her fair, strong arms around his neck and drew him 
 forward till his cheek rested against her perfect bosom. Then, 
 in tones wonderful for sweet seductiveness, she asked him if he 
 knew how well she loved him, while he answered : • 
 
 " Oh, my queen ; you are worth all the souls of all the 
 world ! " 
 
 Mr. Davenport was right. Feeling as he did for Rose Beres- 
 ford, he had no right to marry Ursula March. It is cheap 
 cynosism, indeed, that declares the men and women of the nine- 
 teenth century incapable of love, or strong passion. There may 
 not be as much exalted love as in the fabled age of gold, when 
 the women were faultlessly faithful, and the men as pure as they. 
 The fires of modern creeds and modern greed may have de- 
 stroyed in many hearts the power of love ; still, friends, there is 
 a good salvage left — quite enough to do some good and a great 
 deal of harm. 
 
 That evening Ursula was sitting in her charming special sit- 
 ing-room. It was filled by the soft, gray twilight, and the sweet 
 presence of her, when Davenport entered. 
 
 " I am so glad to see you," she said, hungrily, in her low, 
 earnest voice, reaching out her hands and laying them in his. 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY, 389 
 
 The evening was wonderfully still. There was no sound save 
 that of an occasional owl, who thought it was time to rouse and 
 be after mice. 
 
 "How are you to-night?" he asked, a trouble in his voice 
 which her quick ear at once detected. 
 
 *' I } Oh, I am getting much better, quite strong. But some- 
 thing is troubling you. I can see it in your face. I can hear it 
 in your voice. I want to know what it is." She would have 
 drawn him to her, but he let her hands go, and stood back, 
 saying : 
 
 " Yes, Ursula, you must know. It is right that you should 
 know ; though to know will pain you for a little while." 
 
 "Yes," she replied, in a hushed tone of voice. " I am listen- 
 ing. Go on, if you please." 
 
 " Oh, Ursula, how can I ? How can I let you see how un- 
 worthy I have all along been of your love, and now you are my 
 saint — my spirit's ideal " 
 
 Here she interrupted him, and said in tones intense, but 
 calm : 
 
 *' But not the v/oman you would wish to make your wife ? " 
 
 *' Ursula, God forgive me, it is so. I cannot explain it — even 
 to myself; but she has bewitched me. Sleeping and waking, 
 my thoughts are with her, and I am in fever till she is mine." 
 
 " You mean Rose .'^" she said, with dreadful certainty in her 
 voice. 
 
 " Who else but Rose could I mean ? " 
 
 " I forgive you," she said, " indeed, I have nothing /^forgive. 
 If you had married me, loving another woman, that I would 
 never have forgiven as long as we two lived. Still, I entreat 
 you, not for my sake, but for yours, to conquer this feeling. 
 Travel ; fall in love elsewhere ; marry whom you will, but do 
 not, I beseech you, marry Rose Beresford. She will make you 
 wretched. She has told me of the men she has enslaved, but 
 who, when it came to the point, would not marry her, because 
 of the conditions she wished to impose upon them. But 
 you, I know, are reckless where you love. Oh, before it is 
 too late, before you are irretrievably lost, be strong, and break 
 through this fascination." 
 
 She looked so dreadfully distressed, as she sat there with her 
 hands clasped closely in one another^ that his heart bled for 
 her as he answered ; 
 
390 MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 " Dear, upon this matter it is vain to talk to me. My mind 
 is made up. I have accepted the conditions, hard as they are. 
 Whether or not I shall be happy with this strange girl I cannot 
 tell, but I know I could not endure life without her." 
 
 Then he blessed Ursula for her nobility, and left her alone in 
 the twilight. Now that he had told her a great weight seemed 
 lifted off his heart, and she sat there in the summer still- 
 ness thinking of all that had been between herself and he-r lover. 
 Weep, poor gray eyes, for the heart which is yours no longer. 
 Weep fast-falling, bitter tears for the memory of passionate 
 love-words, of hand-pressures, tender kisses, and what not. She 
 locked the door of her sitting-room, and then, opening a cedar 
 box, began to examine its contents — mostly faded flowers and 
 letters — the reading of which had made heart and pulse beat 
 faster. She read some of them over, and felt sure that at one 
 time he must have loved her very dearly. Once she had held 
 him, and there was such sweetness in the thought as comes 
 from the scent of dried flowers. So to bed, poor sweetheart, 
 and, like a child, cry yourself to sleep. 
 
 When Ursula was crying over her old love-letters. Rose and 
 Walter were walking about the garden, and she was saying : 
 
 " Did Ursula say she hated me ? But of course she must do 
 so." 
 
 " Ursula,'^ he answered, " is too noble to hate any one." 
 ''Is she?" she replied, indifferently, and then clung to him 
 and asked him again and again if he was sure that he loved her 
 as much as he had done the day before. 
 
 Rose wished to leave The Cedars, but Ursula would not hear 
 of her doing so, and after some time made her mother see how 
 much better it would be that the marriage should take place 
 from there. The wedding-day was fixed for early October, the 
 newly married pair arranging to go afterwards for a month to 
 the sea-coast. 
 
 Those were of course hard days for Ursula to live through, 
 but her brave spirit kept her up, and though she suffered she 
 shed no more tears after that first outburst. 
 
 The house. chosen by Rose as the one they would occupy was 
 situated in one of London's most remote suburbs, so remote as 
 to be virtually in the country. The house, which boasted an 
 ample garden, stood on a high hill in a somewhat isolated posi- 
 tion. It was known as The Priory. 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 391 
 
 So the days went over and brought the day which was to make 
 these two man and wife. The marriage was solemnized in the 
 little village church. No one but the Marches were present. 
 When it was over the little party returned to The Cedars, where 
 refreshments were served, after which the bride and bridegroom 
 proceeded on their way. 
 
 It was a gray, featureless afternoon when Ursula shut to the 
 door of her little sitting-room, to realize that the curtain had 
 fallen for ever upon the romance of her life. In the presence 
 of the lovers she had striven hard to maintain her cheerfulness, 
 but now the strain was over, and the reaction was terrible. Poor 
 little woman, she did not cry, but she lay there on her couch 
 gazing at the trees as they stood outlined against the pale gray 
 sky, cowering in the coldness of her life, from which the heart 
 and light of love had gone for ever. Her hands were cold — cold 
 as her heart, it seemed to her. 
 
 And Mrs. March, thinking much of her child, sat alone in 
 the big drawing-room, and there, all to herself, wept for her 
 daughter, who did not weep. 
 
 Poor Ursula, how full the place was of him ! It was in this 
 very room that he had told her of his love. Oh, shrine of love, 
 on which love's fire burns no longer ! After a time she arose 
 and went into the garden where they had so often walked to- 
 gether. The gardener was there, sweeping away the fallen 
 leaves. Ah, if we could only so sweep away our fallen 
 leaves ! 
 
 " Dear," said her mother's kind voice, as Ursula entered the 
 drawing-room, " don't you think a change would be pleasant? " 
 
 Ursula longed for nothing so much, and she answered at 
 once : 
 
 " Yes, mother, I should like it, if you are strong enough for 
 travelling." 
 
 Mrs. March was sure that she was quite strong enough to 
 travel by slow stages, so it was arranged that mother and 
 daughter should pass the remainder of that autumn and the 
 whole of the winter in Italy. It is a good thing that heartaches 
 are not infectious, or to some of us travelling for pleasure might 
 prove a doubtful kind of amusement. Fancy your young, strong- 
 limbed, whole-hearted Oxonian falling* asleep happily at Venice, 
 his mind full of sightseeing and memories of the past, awakening 
 in the morning with a dreadful apathy upon him, alarming in- 
 
392 MISS BERESfORD'S MYSTERY, 
 
 difference to Venice and everything else. But let us be thankful 
 that such things cannot be. 
 
 In November the Davenports came to reside at The Priory, 
 and Rose had to run the gauntlet of her husband's friends, most 
 of whom knew that he had been engaged to a girl named Ursula 
 March, and that he had forsaken her for her friend, and as he 
 had been supposed not to be anything of a gay Lothario, but 
 quite a steady young man, a good deal of interest was felt in 
 the woman who had made him to swerve aside. So a house- 
 warming, dinners and parties were given, to which his friends 
 flocked most eagerly, and Rose shone as a hostess. Her utter- 
 ance was rapid and her talk brilliant. She put her guests at 
 once at their ease, and yet when they discussed her among 
 themselves they owned to a something about her which they 
 could not quite like — a something which, in some inexplicable 
 way, repelled them. She had fine eyes, certainly, but the light 
 in them was almost too intense. They thought — that is most 
 of them thought — that she was just the kind of girl to try and 
 take another girl's lover away from her. Well, as Walter had 
 let himself be taken, they hoped she would make him happy, 
 that was all. 
 
 And was he happy ? Surely, yes. Sweet and potent was this 
 wine of life that he quaffed. Existence seemed to him like a 
 wonderful fairy-story. The Priory was no common suburban 
 house which had been advertised in the papers as : 
 
 "This most desirable residence, standing on gravel soil, in a 
 most healthy locality. Trains to and from the city every quarter 
 of an hour," 
 
 No, it was an enchanted castle, and she was the queen of it. 
 
 He was passionately fond of music. Rose had a beautiful, 
 rich, thrilling voice, and often in the fire-lighted dusk he would 
 have her sing to him, her voice seeming to come and go, to rise 
 and fall, like the wind. It had in it a sweetness that was almost 
 poignant. She sang German songs in which his soul delighted. 
 She could interpret Wagner's music, while, on the other hand, 
 she could sing an English or Scotch ballad with exquisite 
 expression. Oh, those were happy hours, yet they were too 
 happy, because they made the hours when he had to be away 
 from her (and such hours had to be) too great a contrast. 
 
MISS BERESFO/WS MYSTERY. 393 
 
 " Oh, Rose, come here," he said one December afternoon 
 shortly before Christmas. She had been singing to him in the 
 dusk. The curtains had not been drawn. The season was in- 
 tensely cold, and white wings of snow could be seen drifting 
 down. She had ceased singing, but made no answer. 
 
 '' Rose, sweetheart," he said — still no answer. Then he heard 
 her rise, and the door close after her. What did it mean } Had 
 he done anything to offend her ? 
 
 He rose and went at once to their bedroom. As he approached 
 it he heard a sound of an uncontrollable weeping. Entering, he 
 saw his wife lying on the bed, her face pressed into the pillows, 
 her body, as it were, broken up with sobs. 
 
 '' Rose," he cried, raising her in his arms, and trying to turn 
 her face to him. " Rose, my love, what is it, tell me ! Oh, tell 
 me what it is or you will break my heart." 
 
 But with a strength of which he had not thought her capable 
 she wrenched herself from him, and again burying her face in 
 the pillows, sobbed more bitterly than ever. Almost beside him- 
 self, he entreated her to speak to him. At length she raised her- 
 self and said, her words seeming almost to choke her : 
 
 '^ If you love me you will leave me. I shall be better soon." 
 
 He saw he could do nothing but humour her, so he left her, 
 remaining, however, in the dressing-room which adjoined, and 
 the hours went by, the bright, bitter, snow-winged hours, and 
 the dressing-bell sounded through the house, and when Rose's 
 maid tapped at the door with hot water, Walter took it from her, 
 saying that her mistress was not very well, and would not need 
 her services — indeed, might not be well enough to come down 
 to dinner. 
 
 Then he sat down by the fire and listened to that dreadful 
 and prolonged sobbing — and the pitiless winter moon glared in 
 upon him. The dinner-bell sounded, and James, the butler, 
 took up his place behind his master's chair, and the clock struck 
 the dinner-hour, and the quarter past, but no master came. 
 Then a servant went, and, tapping at the dressing-room door, 
 informed him that dinner had been served more than a quarter 
 of an hour. He replied that it could be removed, as he did not 
 know when he should dine. Then he resumed his seat by the 
 fire, and in the moonlight still heard that wild sobbing which so 
 tortured him. At length it subsided — then at intervals it ceased. 
 At last it ceased altogether. He sat 5tUl, dreading its recurrence, 
 
394 MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 but no, for an hour there had been perfect silence. He opened 
 the door and went in softly. His wife lay on the bed, with her 
 face turned to him. The beautiful eyes were closed. The red lips 
 were parted. Her regular breathing was just audible. She was 
 sleeping in the pure, deep way that children do. The pillow on 
 which her cheek lay was drenched with her tears. He looked 
 at her with hungry love, kissed her hand lightly, and then with- 
 drew — but only to the next room— still flooded with the pitiless 
 winter moonshine. 
 
 Many hours after, a slight noise in the next room told him 
 that his wife had awakened. He hastened to her. 
 
 "Walter," said the low voice as he came in, " is that you V 
 
 "Yes, dear," he answered. "You have been ill or unhappy, 
 but you have slept. You are better now." 
 
 " Much better. Did I frighten you V 
 
 " Dreadfully." 
 
 "Why, it was nothing but one of those fits of hysteria to 
 which some women are liable. You should not have been 
 frightened, my poor dear. But you did well to leave me to 
 myself." 
 
 " Rose," he said, "tell me one thing. Were you crying be- 
 cause I do not make you happy ? " 
 
 " Come here," she said. 
 
 He leaned down, while she, reaching up, flung her arms round 
 his neck, and after a long kiss, said : 
 
 " Now, are you answered ? " 
 
 Yes, he was answered. He could not doubt that she loved 
 him, and that he made her happy. 
 
 The next day Mrs. Davenport appeared to be in her usual 
 high spirits. Still, through all her mirth, it seemed to Walter 
 that he detected a note of minor music. 
 
 The day following was Christmas Eve. Davenport went to 
 town early, to transact some business with his wine merchant. 
 Christmas was to be celebrated the next day by a large dinner- 
 party at The Priory. All day a cold, bitter, shrill wind blew, 
 and the snow fell fast, being blown into drifts by the roadside. 
 Such a day had not been known in London for long years and 
 years. The snow made its way into the strongest houses. 
 Progress was difficult and slow, and the trains that did run went 
 only at a snail's pace, so that it was nearly eight in the evening 
 when Davenport, a veritable snow-man, found himself in his 
 
MISS BEKESFORD'S MYSTERY. 395 
 
 own house. Knowing his ring, Rose generally came into the 
 hall to welcome her husband back, and to-night, of all nights, 
 when she might not unnaturally be supposed to be somewhat 
 anxious about him, he was surprised not to see her. 
 
 "Mrs. Davenport is in the drawing-room, I suppose?" he 
 said to the servant who was helping to divest him of his coat. 
 
 "I don't think Mrs. Davenport has returned yet, sir," replied 
 the man. 
 
 "What ! " ejaculated Davenport, hardly able to speak from 
 horror. " You don't mean to say that your mistress is out a 
 night like this ? " 
 
 Just then his wife's maid appeared on the scene, and handed 
 him a letter with which her mistress had charged her. 
 
 He went into the dining-room, tore open the letter, and 
 read : 
 
 " My Dearest,— You will think I am your curse, but you 
 remember the conditions on v/hich you married me. I can 
 help neither of us. Believe me, and remember what you vowed. 
 As soon as I can I will come back to you, but I cannot — cannot 
 — cannot say when that will be. 
 
 " Your wife, " Rose." 
 
 With a low cry he sank into a chair. Then he rang for his 
 wife's maid, and questioned her. The girl said she had done 
 all she could to dissuade her mistress from going out on such a 
 dreadful day, but she only replied that she must go to a friend's. 
 The girl asked her which carriage she would use, but Mrs. 
 Davenport had replied that she was going on foot. She could 
 not tell how long she should be absent. She took a fair- sized 
 bag with her. The girl had asked if some one should not carry 
 it for her, but she said " No " very decidedly, and went, and 
 that was the last the servant had seen of her. 
 
 Davenport dismissed the girl, and walked to and fro, half-mad 
 with grief. So absorbed had he been in his fresh happiness, 
 that he had almost forgotten the fatal conditions of his marriage. 
 
 Now he remembered them — the solemn vows he had taken, 
 that if ever she left him he would make no inquiries after her, 
 would neither follow her himself nor cause her to be followed. 
 But abroad by herself, and on a night like this ! Good God ! 
 what did it mean? She might be dead or lost. Ah, when 
 
396 MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 would she come back, if ever ! Then an awful thought flashed 
 across him. Could it be that she was in the power of some 
 man who could draw her to him when he pleased ? Bitter as 
 the night was, the thought set all his blood on fire. Well, it 
 was too late. He must play the part of a strong man, and face 
 the situation. For his own sake as well as hers, he must meet 
 his guests of the next day, and lie to them, saying that his wife 
 had been summoned to a dear friend who was dangerously ill. 
 Did ever man before, I wonder, pass such a frightful Christmas 
 Day. 
 
 Fancy a man in that position having to play the part of a 
 cheerful and genial host, proposing healths, pulling crackers 
 with the women of the party, and making lively complimentary 
 remarks on the mottoes and headgear contained therein. And 
 later on, only the men left, animating the smoking-room, where 
 he had to tell and Hsten to racy stories. Yet all these things 
 Walter Davenport accomplished. He thought the last man 
 never would leave, and he felt more than once he must go mad. 
 At length the man, pulling himself together, announced his 
 intention of toddhng toward London. Walter raised no oppo- 
 sition, for he felt he was at the end of his resources. He closed 
 the door on his guest, and returned to the smoking-room for the 
 purpose of extinguishing the lights there, when all of a sudden 
 the room whirled round with him. For a moment there was a 
 blood-red light before his eyes, and then he fell heavily to the 
 ground, striking his head sharply against the brass fender. 
 The strain had been too much for him ; he had fainted. Half 
 an hour afterward he had recovered consciousness. There was 
 a dreadful pain in his head, and blood was trickling from his 
 forehead. 
 
 " I must have dropped down in a faint," he said to himself as 
 he rose, feeling strangely weak. " I am glad I was not found 
 like this by the servants ! They would certainly have said it 
 was intoxication." 
 
 He went to his room and bathed the wound, which, however, 
 left a long scar right across his forehead. He went to bed in 
 the first gray light of the wintry dawn, but worn out as he was, 
 in heart, brain and body, he could not sleep, kept awake by two 
 thoughts — Where was Rose ? What could have been her 
 reason for leaving him ? When, some hours later, he came 
 downstairs to make a pretence of breakfast, th^ servants s^id 
 
AmS BERESFORD'S MVSTERY. 397 
 
 among themselves that he looked more like a ghost than a 
 living man, and they did but speak the truth. 
 
 Weeks ago he had accepted a dinner invitation for that day, 
 and ill as he was he forced himself to keep the engagement. 
 All the friends he met at the dinner said how ill he looked, and 
 when he left, shortly after it was concluded, his host felt that he 
 could offer no friendly opposition. They all agreed that he 
 looked more than physically ill. Some one suggested that he 
 was fretting for his wife. 
 
 That night sleep visited him not again, and the stress of 
 continuous thought of ever asking himself those two questions : 
 " Where was his wife ? " and " Why had she left him ? " almost 
 drove him wild. The next day he armed himself with chloral, 
 and through this potent drug obtained a few hours' sleep. 
 
 His friends really had a kind of notion that he was pining for 
 his wife, as indeed he was, but not because of her absence, 
 though that would, of course, have grieved him, but because of 
 the dreadful mystery surrounding that absence. Well, his 
 friends, thinking he must be lonely, came much to see him, and 
 as the days grew into weeks, and Mrs. Davenport returned not, 
 and her husband grew more and more haggard-looking, for- 
 getting to shave and letting his hair grow long, hardly eating 
 anything, living chiefly on brandy and chloral, these friends 
 talked among themselves, and said they were sure if she knew 
 of his state she would return. He had acquired a hollow, 
 hacking cough, which he had no strength to throw off. They 
 thought, and with reason, that his condition was alarming. All 
 their entreaties to see a doctor he positively refused — then they 
 began to speculate about Mrs. Davenport. This newly-made 
 wife, who proved such a much more devoted friend than wife. 
 Surely the friend she had gone to nurse on Christmas Day had 
 died by this time, or else was out of danger. Then they began 
 to wonder if there could have been a quarrel. 
 
 The middle of January came, but she did not return. He 
 had a kind of presentiment that she would come in at twilight, 
 and always at that time he would sit by himself in the drawing- 
 room where she had sung to him. The winter twilight came, 
 but she came not, nor any word. Could she not in some way 
 have communicated with him? Surely, surely she might have 
 done so, he thought in the bitterness of his great despair. And 
 January passed and February came, a sweet, compassionate. 
 
398 AfISS BEI^ESFORD'S MYSTERY. 
 
 f^cbruaiy, with soft blue skies, bland sunshine, and mild airs, 
 and twittering of birds, and things growing green before their 
 time. These things came, but she came not, and day by day 
 Walter's strength seemed to ooze from him. 
 
 One P^ebruary twilight he was sitting as usual alone, when 
 there came a ring to the house-door which made his pulses 
 throb violently and his heart almost to stand still. She had 
 come back, his wife 1 She would be able now to explain. The 
 door was thrown open and the footman announced Mrs. and 
 Miss March. The blood which had rushed to his face now as 
 suddenly left it. The candles were lighted. 
 
 "We called specially to see Rose, Mr. Davenport," Mrs. 
 March began in her pleasant voice, " but hearing she was from 
 home, we thought we would pay yotc a visit. We are just 
 passing through London on our way to The Cedars. We have 
 been in Italy since the middle of October. We did mean to 
 stay much longer, but we got homesick sooner than we thought. 
 And now what about Rose, and how long have you been a 
 bachelor ? I can't say that bachelorhood seems to agree with 
 you. Seriously, Walter, you look very ill." 
 
 " Really," he answered, " I am a little pulled down ; it is 
 nothing. Let us talk of something else." 
 
 He would have waved the subject off, but Ursula put in : 
 
 '' You are ill, and you know you are." 
 
 " I see," he said, " it is no good trying to deceive your 
 women's eyes. I am not just now, for the time being, as strong 
 as I used to be, but I shall be better soon." 
 
 Mrs. March asked if Rose had been apprised of his condition, 
 and he said no. Then Ursula asked, fixing her earnest gray 
 eyes upon his face : 
 
 " Don't you think she otfj^hi to be told ? " 
 
 He answered, almost sharply : 
 
 *' No, I do not. I only can act in this matter for good or ill." 
 
 And then, as if wishing to apologize for his abruptness, he 
 added, in much gentler tones : *' I know all the same how good 
 it is of you both to take such a friendly interest in me." 
 
 His visitors did not stay long, and they went away both 
 troubled on his account — one very much troubled, indeed. 
 
 " Ah, me," she sighed to herself, " I had a presentiment that 
 she would not make him happy." 
 
 At the foot of the hill on which The Priory stood lay a large 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 399 
 
 common, extending many miles. The winds, as they swept 
 over it, had in them something of the freshness of the sea. 
 This night Walter was restless instead of apathetic, which was 
 his more usual condition. He left the house, and descending 
 the hill struck out across the common. The high west wind 
 came rushing past him. Above him the white moon sped on, 
 occasionally veiled by soft, fleecy clouds, but soon sailing free 
 again. The wind was life-giving, but it brought no fresh life to 
 the weary man who breasted it. He walked on, not because 
 he had any pleasure in doing so, but because he was urged by 
 a dreadful fiend that would not let him rest in one place. 
 
 Suddenly a wild, piercing cry — hke that of an animal run to 
 earth, only much more dreadful — sent a horror through his 
 blood, and made him recoil. As he did so, something darted 
 at him, and gripped his throat. He wrenched them away, and 
 held them with a grasp of iron. 
 
 " Let me go ! let me go ! " shrieked the woman whose hands 
 he was holding by force. 
 
 Oh, what horror was here ! Distorted as the voice was by 
 terror and suffering, he knew it for his wife's. He knew that it 
 was she before the moonlight, which had been veiled for a few 
 minutes, poured full upon her face — dreadfully changed from 
 the face he had known. The eyes protruded unnaturally from 
 the head, and had in them a terror which it was pitiful to 
 behold. 
 
 "Rose," he cried, " speak to me. Tell me what this 
 means?" 
 
 But she only struggled desperately to free herself. Seeing 
 that she was powerless to do so, she bent down and made her 
 teeth meet in his hand. At the same moment a man's voice 
 cried, evidently to a companion : 
 
 " Here she is. I knew she couldn't have gone far. I hope 
 she hasn't badly frightened you, sir. I see she has bitten your 
 hand badly." 
 
 The two men had now got hold of the unfortunate woman, 
 and held her captive between them. 
 
 *' It's seldom she has such a bout of it as this, or that it lasts 
 so long." 
 
 " She must have got away while the reading was going on," 
 remarked the other man. 
 
 " Yes, that's about it," returned the other. Then, addressing 
 
400 MISS BERESFORD'^S MYSTERY. 
 
 himself to Walter, he observed : " Quiet as a lamb now, you 
 see. Lord, she knows us. I wish you a good night, sir." 
 
 *' Stay," said Davenport, rousing himself. " You mean that 
 this poor thing is mad ? " 
 
 " We could hardly mean anything else, sir," replied both men 
 together, with something of contempt in their tone. "An 
 escaped patient from Dr. Cross's asylum, the other side of the 
 common." 
 
 " I will walk back with you," said Walter, *' as I must see 
 Dr. Cross to-night." 
 
 Arrived at the asylum, Walter obtained from Dr. Cross the 
 interview he desired. 
 
 The doctor said, concerning the patient about whom Walter 
 questioned him, that she had been known to him for some years 
 as Rose Beresford. She was liable to temporary fits of insanity, 
 preceded by violent sobbing fits some two or three days before. 
 While in these fits of insanity it was necessary that she should 
 be placed under restraint. During her mother's lifetime a 
 private keeper had been sent for when one of these fits was 
 known to be approaching, but after her mother's death she 
 became so sensitive of any one knowing of her affliction that 
 she preferred to come to him of her own will and be put under 
 restraint till the fit had passed. These fits of insanity generally 
 occurred about once a year. Nor was hers at all an exceptional 
 case. 
 
 " This attack," said the Doctor, "has been an unusually long 
 and severe one. Indeed, as you can judge for yourself, it is not 
 over yet. She ought to live a life free from any excitement, 
 either pleasant or otherwise. 
 
 *' She was married last October," said poor Davenport. 
 
 " Married ! " echoed the Doctor. *' Then, of course, that 
 accounts for the unusual length and severity of the attack. Ah, 
 what a dreadful thing ! " 
 
 " She is my wife," said Walter. 
 
 " And she never told you anything of all this ? " 
 
 " Upon my honour, not a word." 
 
 He then explained to the Doctor the circumstances Under 
 which he had married Rose Beresford, and how, since his 
 marriage, he had suffered. 
 
 He was destined never again to be recognized by the woman 
 who had desperately but vainly striven against her fate, and who 
 
MISS BERESFORD'S MYSTERY. 401 
 
 would guiltily, as I think, have brought children into the world 
 to suffer, perhaps more fearfully even, that curse which had so 
 darkened her own life. She succumbed to an illness contracted 
 that night when she made her brief escape. 
 
 Davenport took his trouble to Ursula, and came out of his 
 wild fever-fit, which might not have lasted even had his wife 
 lived — came back a wearied wanderer, back to the pure, serene, 
 restful nature of his first true love. And when, two years after 
 the death of Rose, he asked Ursula if she could forgive the 
 past and accept a heart which was now wholly hers, and be at 
 once the glory and the blessing of his life, a warmer light than 
 ever came into her clear eyes, and a soft rose colour stole into 
 her cheeks. Her voice was low, and it trembled a little as she 
 answered : 
 
 *' Are you sure that you'll know your own mind this time ?" 
 
 " Ursula," he said, and their eyes met. 
 
 27 
 
A LETTER TO EVA 
 
 -:o: 
 
 Now that you have left my Hfe as one leaves a house in a stange 
 land to which there shall be no return ; now that I move on 
 alone in the darkness, the coldness and desolation of my days, 
 only one thing holds any hope of comfort for me, and that is to 
 live over in my memory the only happy days of my life. I think 
 of them ; I dream of them ; and now I have bethought myself 
 to write out a connected account of them, and address it to you, 
 just as if you would one day read it : 
 
 Yesterday I walked up to the house where I first met you, on 
 the first of July, five years ago. I saw that the house was to 
 let ; and I got permission to go over it. As I stood in the large 
 empty drawing-rooms, the place was changed for me, as by 
 magic. It was again richly furnished — again brilliant with light, 
 thronged with people. I heard again a clamour of voices, as 
 when I stood that night in the doorway. A hand fell on my 
 arm, and my hostess said : 
 
 " Mr. Archer, I want at once to introduce you to a most 
 charming woman, a great admirer of your novels. She has had 
 a romantic story of her own." 
 
 So saying, she piloted me across the crowded rooms, and we 
 stood before you. 
 
 *^ Miss Linton, here is Mr. Archer, I told you I would bring 
 him." 
 
 " I have very often wished to have the pleasure of meeting 
 you,'' you said, turning to me, and frankly putting out your hand. 
 
A LETTER TO EVA. 403 
 
 Those were the first words you spoke to me. For the first 
 time I heard my ideal voice— the low, subtle, thrilling, sympa- 
 thetic voice, with a note in it of tender, pleading music, unlike 
 any other voice that I have ever heard. Did I take in all its 
 beauty that night ? Hardly, I think, yet I felt it keenly, and from 
 the first you charmed me. 
 
 Oh, fair, gracious face, lit by the fair gracious soul ! Oh, per- 
 fect, passionate mouth, such as the old Greeks loved — formed 
 for kisses and music ! Oh, beautiful, deep, changeful eyes, and 
 white, thoughtful brows, with their crown of soft brown hair — 
 in how short a time they began to come to me in my dreams at 
 night ! You know, too, that I thought you had the queenliest 
 figure that ever woman had. No woman ever held herself so 
 proudly or so graciously. There was something in the touch of 
 your white, smooth, small, but withal strong hand, that seemed 
 to speak to me. You wore that night a soft, luminous dress ; 
 you had a red rose in your bosom, and a red rose in your hair. 
 I sat down by you and we began to talk. Our talk was about 
 novels, poetry, English and American, and of the places we had 
 visited. When you rose to leave, I went with you to your car- 
 riage, and you asked me to come to see you. I had been longing 
 for you to do this. Looking back, now, I see that, though I did 
 not realize it then, I must have been in love with you that 
 night. 
 
 I went back to the house after you left, but remained only a 
 few minutes. It seemed so worse than uninteresting when you 
 were gone. All night I lay awake thinking of you, recalling 
 your voice, longing to hear it again. 
 
 I turned away yesterday, sadly as one leaves a friend, from 
 that house over whose floors your feet had passed, that had been 
 swept. by the hem of your dress, and where I had first seen you. 
 I came back into the heart of London, and walked for some 
 time to and fro in front of that other house you had till so re- 
 cently occupied, over the threshold of which I had passed so 
 many times. As I walked up and down in the raw air of the 
 November night, hearing the discontented wind sweeping along 
 the leaves that had fallen from the trees in the London square, 
 the pain and loneliness of my life seemed more than I could 
 endure. A boy with a basket stopped in front of the house and 
 rang the servants' bell ; a light appeared for a moment at one of 
 the upper windows and then vanished. I should have liked to 
 
404 A LETTER 7^0 EVA, 
 
 kneel down and kiss the dear stone steps which yoifr beloved 
 feet had crossed so many times. 
 
 Slowly I turned back then to my chambers to think of you, 
 then finally to find some rest from thought by means of kindly 
 chloral. It will kill me in the end, perhaps, but what 
 matter. 
 
 That night I had such a wonderful dream of you. I thought 
 I was walking in a strange, lonely, sunset country, something 
 like country I have seen, but unmistakably dream-country. No 
 one was in sight, but from the tranquil field, and from the pa- 
 tient hill, I heard a sound of many divine voices singing, and I 
 knew they were singing of you, and my heart leaped and thrilled 
 in me, and the song told that you were coming ; and just for 
 great delight to think that I should see you again, the tears 
 burst forth and I wept like a child. Then all in a minute you 
 stood before me, your face more beautiful than ever, in the sun- 
 set light of that fair dream-country. It seemed to me that you 
 were the queen of it, and when you saw my tears, thinking them 
 tears of sorrow, you threw both your beautiful arms around my 
 neck, and I laid your subtle lips to mine. I felt your clinging 
 close to me. I thought I should have fainted from the joy of 
 it ; instead, I awoke — oh, the bitter awakening that it was ! 
 
 The day I next saw you after the first meeting was the 5th of 
 July, the day on which you told me I might call. It was a bril- 
 liantly fine day, too intense for most people, but not so for me. 
 Besides, your drawing-room, with its tempered sweetness, its 
 flowers, its delicate tints, was a heaven of shade. Not as I saw 
 you on one day only do you appear to me in memory, but as I 
 have seen you on many days. Still, visions of you, as I saw you 
 on certain special days, beset me specially, and very often I see 
 you as I saw you that day. Your soft dress was veined with 
 blue ; you looked a divine blending of heaven and earth — you 
 might have been a saint to die for ; you were a woman to live 
 for. I remember the tone of voice in which you said, " I am 
 very glad to see you." Just as if really you were a little glad. 
 Then, of course, we fell to talking of what a hot day it was, and 
 from that of people who like compromises with nature as with 
 all things. I said I was always in extremes ; but, all the same, 
 a great believer in compromise ; and you laughed, a little, a 
 half- perplexed laugh, and said that you believed only in things 
 that were absolute. You seemed to, d,^'a^w i?ie on to talk of my- 
 
A LETTER TO EVA, 405 
 
 self, which, as I told you at the time, is not a favoufite subject 
 with me. Before I left you, you knew, I think, the lonely, re- 
 served man I was— made cruelly lonely by a nature utterly 
 insufficient for itself, yet not finding in any companionship that 
 for which it sought, for which it still craved ceaselessly. 
 
 When I rose to leave you I saw tender sympathy for me in 
 your then grey and so compassionate eyes, heard sympathy in 
 the tones of your voice, felt sympathy in the touch of your fair, 
 firm hand. I went to the club that night, but did not hear what 
 any one said, so lost was I in trying to recall the way in which 
 you spoke. I fell asleep and awoke early, my heart flooded with 
 the thought of you. This interest which I had in you — I, who 
 until then, had been interested in no one — seemed to remake 
 life ; for when I looked back on the internal loneliness of the 
 days before I knew you, I wondered how I ever could have 
 borne them. 
 
 That day I made some pretext on which to write to you. 
 Two days after I called upon you, in the evening, as you had 
 told me I might. It was a hot, windless evening, with a storm 
 brooding. You received me very kindly, and we sat for a happy 
 hour in the twilight. Presently you said : 
 
 *' Is there no chance of cure for your loneliness ? " and I an- 
 swered : '^ A week ago I should have said no such chance could 
 be. Now I say there is ; it rests with you." 
 
 "With me?" 
 
 " Yes, with you ; will you be my friend ? Will you let me be 
 yours ? " 
 
 " I think /need a friend as much as you do," you answered, 
 with a little sigh. Then, with one of those dear impulses, which 
 were so adorable in you, you put out both hands, and I took 
 them, and held them in mine for a minute. 
 
 When did the feeling first burn home to me that what I felt 
 for you was love — love in the sense of being in love — not the 
 friendship I had imagined ? I could not keep away from you ; 
 could not keep from writing to you. In one letter, I remember, 
 I asked you to explain me to myself. Here I have your answer 
 — the handwriting is faded with time, that beautiful handwriting, 
 which, like everything about you, had on it the impress of your 
 own gracious individuality. Oh, dear letter, once warm from 
 your own hand ; a letter in which I almost seem to hear you 
 speak. You say : 
 
4o6 A LETTER TO EVA, 
 
 " Dear Friend,— Your letter, half-sad, half-glad, came to 
 me this morning with many others. I turned at once to yours. 
 You ask me to explain yourself to yourself — to tell you why it is 
 that while you are glad in my friendship — gladder, you are good 
 enough to say, than of anything else in your life — you are yet 
 so restless at times, even so despairing. 
 
 *' As a rule, no woman is more stupid at explanations than am 
 I ; but I think this is a problem that I can solve. By your own 
 account, when you met me you were a lonely, reserved, self- 
 contained man, never having known a real friendship. You say 
 that your friendship with me made you, for the first time in 
 your life, live. I have made a new world for you, you tell me— 
 given a meaning to the summer it has never had before. 
 
 " My friend, a sudden friendship stimulated you thus ; but you 
 see now, don't you, that it is not by any means all you thought 
 it would be? Hence your restlessness ; hence your despair; 
 but I, your new friend, am hopeful for you. Your power to feel 
 so much shows me a capability of feeling still more. It has 
 been my good fortune in life, when I never thought to be of any 
 more good at all, to rouse you from lethargy, to plant in you 
 some knowledge of what life may be made. Am I a little sorry 
 to think that another friend must complete what I have only 
 begun '^ Perhaps I am — I know I am — selfish. I suppose I 
 should have liked this friendship, which came to you so unex- 
 pectedly, to have been the completest of your life ; but I will 
 try to be glad of what is best for you. 
 
 " Will you come to-morrow, and talk over with me the plot of 
 your new novel ? I want this, your next book, to be very much 
 alive. I half feel as if the sun of our friendship were setting. 
 Come to-morrow, and tell me that it is not quite sundown yet — 
 it often turns so very chilly in the twilight. 
 
 " Your friend, 
 
 The next day I reproached you with your letter, which all the 
 same, had been so dear to me, as evidence that you did value 
 my friendship. Your face brightened when I told you that never 
 another such friendship could come to me. 
 
 *' I am glad that, at least, you think so now," you said, in a 
 tone that was as sweet almost and as subtle as a caress. I 
 passed the evening with you. You did not know then, my 
 
A LETTER TO EVA. 407 
 
 Eva, how I longed to kneel down by you — to kiss your lips, 
 your hands, your dress, the heavy gold locket hanging at 
 your white, wonderful throat. And I had to sit at a little dis- 
 tance from you, and dared not even reach out and take your 
 hand. You were gay the early part of that evening. Talking 
 of an acquaintance of ours, supposed by most women to be very 
 dangerous to men's peace of mind, you said : 
 
 " She is a bright, noisy little brooklet of a woman — pretty to 
 look at, but too shallow to drown in." 
 
 Do you, at this date, remember describing to me a sunset you 
 had seen once on the coast of France — a wonderful opal sunset, 
 in whose strange light shore and sea seemed translated ? 
 
 '^ It was a sunset that hushed you/' you said. *' It seemed 
 like the glorified ghost of a sunset." 
 
 I have seen in your eyes, my love, when talking of anything 
 that greatly moved you, a look of passionate inspiration, as if 
 they saw deep into the mystery of things. In your voice, too, at 
 such times, was a rapture I knew well, which corresponded to 
 that look which I have seen in no eyes but yours, as I have 
 heard that subtle, thrilling tone only in your voice. 
 
 As the evening wore on you fell sad ; thus, sometimes, after 
 a day of brilliant sunshine and perfect stillness, just at sunset a 
 sad little wind begins to moan among the trees, and the sky 
 grows gray and hopeless. So seemed to me the change in you ; 
 nor was it the first time I had noted this sudden transition. Do 
 you remember my asking you why you were so sad ? You 
 answered : 
 
 *' How do you know I am sad? Have I said so ? '* 
 
 Then I did take your hand, and I said : " Eva, could we be 
 the friends we are, and I not know, without your telling me, 
 when you are sad ? Will you not tell me what makes you so ? " 
 Oh, my God, how I longed then to draw you close to my heart, 
 and kiss all shadow of trouble from your face ; to banish all 
 trouble from your heart ! 
 
 " What are you thinking of } " I asked. 
 
 You answered, looking down, " Of something that is over. I 
 will try not to be sad when you are here. Indeed, I ought not, 
 remembering how cold and lonely I should be now without 
 your friendship." 
 
 Soon afler it was time for me to go, but all that night I could 
 not sleep, so haunted was I by your sad yearning, pleading, 
 
403 A LETTER TO EVA. 
 
 almost hopeless eyes ; by your low voice, which had in it that 
 pathetic elemental music, that soft, rainy trouble, which we hear 
 in the summer wind that comes before the rain. 
 
 " What is her trouble ? " I pondered as I lay awake that night, 
 and owned at last to myself that I loved you madly— that if 
 by dying for you I could make you happy, I would so gladly 
 die. 
 
 You may remember my calling on you the next afternoon. 
 You were going for a walk, and you let me go with you. Your 
 very sad mood of the past night seemed to have passed away. 
 You were gay — gay in your own bright way. 
 
 Oh, love of my life, who shall say what it was that most of all 
 in you enthralled me— the wonderful voice, changing with every 
 emotion as the beautiful eyes changed, or the delicate imagina- 
 tion, that divine sense of ideality which contrasted with your 
 strength of will, your power to conceive rapidly and execute 
 surely, and made you not only a beauty and a refuge in the 
 world, but a positive good ? or was it for that exquisite, unnam- 
 able fragrance of womanhood which escaped from you — the 
 rose-scent from a rose? or was it for your moods of sweet 
 waywardness, like the shadows of April trees shaking in the 
 sunny, windy course of a rapid brooklet? or was it for your 
 sadness, which sounded in me unknown depths of pity ? Oh, 
 my poet ! oh, my busy, kindly worker ! I loved each separate 
 charm of yours ten hundred times more than the most passionate 
 lover ever loved the whole united force of his mistress' attrac- 
 tions. You were, even in those days, what you are now, what 
 you must always remain to me — my beautiful wonder of women. 
 It was the fifteenth of August when I left England for 
 Rocherville, on the coast of Normandy, where you were to follow 
 in a few days, with a party of friends. You thought it best that 
 I should go first, and I obeyed you. We passed the evening of 
 the fourteenth together. I wonder if you remember it at all ? 
 You were sad and said you should miss me. I asked you to 
 write to me, and you smiled as if pleased, and answered, '* I 
 don't think the sun of our friendship has begun to set as yet." 
 
 I remember how a street piano played under your window. 
 It was playing the " Carnival de Venice." Whenever I hear 
 that tune now it brings back to me your drawing-room in the 
 twilight ; yourself lying on the sofa — for you were tired that 
 night — while I sat close by, worshipping you, yet not daring to 
 
A LETTER TO EVA. 409 
 
 tell you of the great love which was making me afraid of 
 myself. 
 
 Do you remember telling me to talk, and calling me stupid ? 
 You did not know then that I could not talk because I was so 
 full of grief at parting from you, even for a few days. Oh, did 
 not the shadow of that parting forecast this greater shadow, 
 which is even as the shadow of death } 
 
 Shall I ever forget the twentieth of August ? I did not expect 
 you until the twenty-sixth. I had been roving all day about the 
 shore, thinking of you and longing for you, when, coming back, 
 about nine o'clock, passing the window of the hotel, I saw you 
 sitting there, your dear eyes bent down, the lamplight shining 
 on your warm brown hair. I entered without your having seen 
 me, and in another moment we stood face to face. 
 
 " I have been wondering where we should meet," — those were 
 your first words. " You are surprised to see me before my 
 time. It was the sudden arrangements of my friends. They 
 found they could leave London earlier than they had hoped." 
 
 *' Heaven bless your friends !" I said, as I pressed your hand 
 close in mine. 
 
 Then we joined your party, and sat all together on the beach. 
 Oh, the joy of that night — the supreme comfort of knowing you 
 were with me. Unseen by the others, you let your hand rest in 
 mine. All that night I could not sleep for thinking of you. To 
 the immaculate moonlight and the everlasting sea I told my 
 love. Whichever way I looked I seemed to see you before me, 
 as I had seen you so unexpectedly in the salon of the hotel, the 
 lamplight falling on your soft brown hair, the face bent down, 
 the dear eyes never meeting mine. 
 
 How I must always love Rocherville for the sake of the days 
 that followed ? For a week you seemed lest sad ; but after that 
 the old pensive moods came back very frequently, until there 
 arrived that never-to-be-forgotten seventh of September. 
 
 It was a bright, gusty day, and we were walking along the 
 high road when heavy raindrops began to come down, so we 
 took shelter under some trees. The ground was carpeted with 
 leaves, and on them we sat down. I came nearer to you than 
 I had ever dared to do before. Then my love could no longer 
 be kept under. I flung my arms about you, and you did not 
 move from me. My lips clung to your neck ; just then we heard 
 voices of people we knew approaching, and, rising, we were on 
 
4IO A LETTER TO EVA. 
 
 the instant once more only friends. I did not see you alone 
 again until evening ; we had been visiting your friends, the 
 Stones, you may remember, and it was my good fortune to see 
 you back to your hotel. Do you, I wonder, remember the 
 brilliant moonlight of that night, and the high west wind bring- 
 ing to us, as we walked, the sound and the smell of the sea ? We 
 walked on until we came to the beach, and there we sat down 
 together. Then, for the first time, I kissed your lips and felt 
 your kiss answering mine ; then I lay with my head in your lap, 
 while you leaned above me and your fingers played in my hair. 
 The white waves, exulting in their strength, shimmering in the 
 pure, potent moonlight, filling the spacious night with their own 
 wild, matchless music, will be for ever associated in my mind 
 with the memory of that night. 
 
 The next day I called to see you at your hotel — a wild, windy 
 day it was, with occasional bursts of rain ! A bitter day for me, 
 my love, that dead day was. 
 
 I found you restless and sad, pacing up and down the room. 
 When I went to kiss you, you drew back, and I hear again the 
 tone, half of pity and half of terror, in which you said, as you 
 shrank from me : '^No, you must not ; I have wronged you enough 
 already. You must hear me ! " Then you sat down, clasped 
 your cold hands closely together, and told me about yourself 
 and Frank Leinster. Then I heard that the man you loved, 
 whose wife you had promised to be, had, without one word of 
 explanation, left you ; that he had last been seen on his way 
 to France, in the companionship of a woman about whom 
 report did not speak too favourably ; that notwithstanding this, 
 you had for five years cherished the belief that he would, in the 
 end, return to you, as the only woman he could ever really love, 
 as he was the one man that you could ever really love. All this 
 you told me ; and told me how, the day before, you had been for 
 a few hours betrayed into thinking that you would give up all 
 hope of a future with him and draw from my love what happiness 
 you could ; but that, alas, this could not be ! " Some day,'* 
 you said, " I feel certain he will return ; for were we not made 
 for one another ? And then, dear, if you were my husband, 
 what could we do ? Would you not even suffer more than we 1 
 Can you forgive mc for having given you false hopes ? " 
 
 Did I not forgive you, Eva ? You let me kneel beside you 
 and kiss your hands. Then, just as a child might, you leaned 
 
A LETTER TO EVA. 411 
 
 your head on my shoulder and the tears came ; and so lull of 
 pity was I then, my darling, I hardly felt my own suffering. I 
 realized how terrible must have been those long years of vain 
 waiting ; how day after day hope would rise, only to fall stricken 
 at night, when no word came from him ; and still, after all, hope 
 was not dead. Then I asked you to let me be your friend, one 
 always longing to do your will ; and if, I said, '* in the course of 
 many years he should not have come, or you should hear of his 
 marriage, then perhaps you will be mine, though you can never 
 love me as you loved him." 
 
 You answered, with a faint smile through your tears : " What ! 
 do you think you shall love me like this when I am old, as I 
 should be then ? I am not a young woman, even now." 
 
 " To me," I cried, '' you must always be the same. You will 
 let me be your friend, then ? " I pleaded. And you answered, 
 earnestly pressing my hands : 
 
 " Yes, my very, very dearest friend in all the world." 
 
 At the end of September you left Normandy, and shortly after 
 I followed. I came back to town to find vast masses of work 
 awaiting me. I wrote hard through the gray, hopeless days ; 
 then how good it was to come to you in the evening ! What 
 rest, what joy I found in you, my pure of heart ! Of course, 
 seeing us so much together people began to talk, to wonder why 
 we did not marry ; but we cared little what they said. You 
 were the whole world to me, and you felt me nearer to you than 
 any but that one. 
 
 As I write to you, here in my dreary room, this gloomy 
 November night, I have your picture before me and a packet of 
 your letters. As I turn them over, what a fragrance seems to 
 escape from them ! Here is one dated the sixth of December. 
 You write : 
 
 " Dearest Friend, — I have to pass this evening with an old 
 school friend. I shall greatly miss seeing you. Moreover, I 
 am very sad to-day. God bless you, my friend, for all your 
 tenderness to me and patience with me ; but, dear, I want to 
 write to you what I can better write than say. It is that I feel 
 I am doing you a wrong in letting you devote yourself to me as 
 you do. I feel still that he will come back to me ; but, if he 
 does not, could I, even after many years, marry any one else ? 
 I am shadowing your life with the sorrow of mine. I am sad. 
 
412 J LETTER TO EVA. 
 
 This cruel waiting has worn my health away. You think me 
 pretty now — in a httle while you will not think me so. You must 
 try to see less of me — must try to take interest in some woman 
 happier and younger than I am. I shall be lonely when I see 
 you less often ; but I shall know that it is best for you. As tired 
 children long to go to bed and sleep, so it seems to me that I 
 long to be out of the pain of living. I think sometimes that will 
 be before very long. 
 
 " Because you are not coming to me this evening, do not pass 
 the time in working. You looked ill yesterday. We shall miss 
 each other I know, but I know, too, that it is for the best." 
 
 Did you not know, my love, that I would not, could not, keep 
 away from you ? Do you remember how sometimes we would 
 sit together quite silently through the long winter twilights, 
 seeing visions in the fire 1 I can hear your voice come softly 
 through the twilight, " Are you tired, dear 1 " Tired ! was I ever 
 tired in your presence ? 
 
 To me that winter passed like a troubled yet happy dream. 
 To love you had been the supreme revelation of my life. I had 
 before been, as it were, my own prison-house. It was you who 
 broke down the bars — you who led me out into God's light — you 
 who made me know the divine possibilities of life. Had I not 
 reason to worship you, my heart's queen ? 
 
 Do you remember that April day when we took our first 
 spring drive together? You were gay that day, my poor 
 darling — in one of your glad, childlike moods. To me you 
 would always remain young. It was the day that we went over 
 Hampton Court together. A few days ago I went there by 
 myself. Along the paths I seemed to see flutter again the hem 
 of your dress. In the palace I seemed to have a vision 
 of you standing before a favourite picture. I got strangely 
 in people's way, I know, being blind to all but that vision 
 of you. 
 
 When the third year of our friendship had passed, and still he 
 came not, stronger than you knew grew in me the divine hope 
 of making you my wife. Yet I reproached myself for being 
 glad, knowing how you pined for him — for that other man. 
 Did I think that my love might, in the end, come to make you 
 love me more ? Perhaps I did. You never, I think, really 
 understood just how well I loved you. Yet that I loved you 
 
A LETTER TO EVA, 413 
 
 well, you did certainly know. Sometimes you would say, so 
 piteously, with that sad look in your eyes : 
 
 " No one, I think, will ever be as good to me as you are. It 
 is not often that a man loves a woman as you love me." 
 
 Ah 1 but when before had there been such a woman to 
 love? 
 
 You can hardly forget the first of May, 1871. I had sat up 
 all the past night working, and came to you to be rested and 
 refreshed. I was strangely alive, as people often are for a 
 while, when they have been sitting up through the night. 
 What a spring day that was — a haze of heat hung in the wind- 
 less air ! It was a day when sounds could be heard with won- 
 derful distinctness. Long after he had passed the house we 
 could hear a man, with a barrow, crying, " Fine flowers, fine 
 flowers — all a-blowing, all a-growing ! " and you said the sound 
 lingered in the air as if it had not strength enough wholly to 
 pass away. Your rooms that day were fragrant with blossoms. 
 You wore a soft, blue, clinging dress, such as I loved. 
 
 Do you remember how, before I could prevent, you came and 
 knelt down by me, and said, laying your dear, cool hands on 
 mine : " I have been thinking of many things. I am not happy 
 as things are. Dear, if I give you all that I can — all that has 
 been saved out of my existence — do you still care to make me 
 your wife ? " 
 
 You know what answer I made — with what rapture I folded 
 you to my heart, to be at last my very own. How happy I 
 meant to make you ! Ah, that was my life's crowning day ! 
 
 We arranged the marriage for early in October. Yet, my 
 love, I knew even in those days that though you took the 
 shelter of my love, and longed to make me happy, you still 
 remembered that other man. Often I saw that your gaiety was 
 forced ; I saw, as it were, the tears quivering behind the smile. 
 When we were silent there would come into your eyes a strange, 
 far-away look, and at such times I knew that your thoughts 
 were with him. Was I pained ? Was I not proud to be any- 
 thing to you? Had you loved me as I loved you I could not 
 have suffered for you. I did not hint to you that I knew how 
 often your heart was far away from me, and you were grateful, 
 I know, for my silence. As the days went on your health 
 failed more and more. It was the last day of July that you 
 went, for change of air, to visit a relative at Dover. Dover is 
 
414 ^ LETTER TO EVA. 
 
 dear to me, for your sake, ever since, yet sad withal now as a 
 graveyard, where the heart's beloved are buried. 
 
 Were you wasting away ? Were you going to die ? The 
 cold drops stood on my forehead at the thought. I remember 
 how, one day when I had gone out, thinking to take a long walk 
 to induce sleep at night, these fears so possessed me that I 
 turned straight back, and, entering the room where you were, 
 found you lying on the sofa, and crying softly to yourself; only 
 because you were weak, you said, drawing my face down to 
 yours — your dear face, wet with tears. It was that day that I 
 persuaded you to go to Dover, where I soon followed you, 
 arranging to go up to town once a fortnight for consultation with 
 my publishers regarding some works then in progress. What 
 strange, sweet, sad months were those of August and Septem- 
 ber. We were to be married the second of October. The sea 
 air seemed not to do you the good it ought. Should I lose you 
 before you had ever been really mine ? I suppose it was good 
 for me that I had to work. I used to hurry through the morn- 
 ings feverishly, and then go to you. How sweet you always 
 were — sad as death, I used to think sometimes, but sweet as 
 the after-peace of heaven ! One day I could bear it no longer. 
 I knelt down beside you, and I cried out : 
 
 ^' Eva, is my love killing you ? For God's sake, tell me the 
 truth." 
 
 Oh, how sad your voice was when you answered me ! and 
 it seemed to come like a whisper from some far place beyond 
 my reach. You said : 
 
 " No, dear, no ! It will save me if anything can." And then 
 you said, over again, still more faintly, ^'' if anything can ^^ and 
 you put out your hands to me, and I saw how the bracelets fell 
 back from the little, wasted, blue-veined wrists, and realized 
 more than ever what a mere shadow of your former self you 
 were. But I thought no more of giving you up. You had said 
 that my love could save you if anything could, and I clung to 
 that. Of what use was I in the world but to save you — to help 
 you — even if to do so had been to break my own heart ? I 
 looked forward with a feverish, unreasonable hope to our mar- 
 riage. I thought, vainly perhaps, and foolishly, that when I 
 could take you into a new life, and amidst new scenes fill up 
 your time with new interests, you would forget at last— j^//, 
 with your passionate, faithful heart ! 
 
A LETTER TO EVA, 415 
 
 I remember — God pity me, how well I remember ! — the 
 thirtieth day of that September ! I spent the whole day with 
 you. I was going to London early the next morning, to make 
 the last arrangements for our marriage, then so nigh. I gave 
 myself, that day, a long holiday with you. I thought you 
 seemed a little better. I read to you in the morning, while you 
 lay upon the sofa, some poems that we both loved. '' The 
 Haystack in the Floods " was among them, and your eyes 
 kindled at that with something of their old fire. In the after- 
 noon I drove you myself for miles along the sea, and we listened 
 to it, throbbing its heart out against the shore, as you said. 
 Then, when the tide began to ebb, and a low wind, sad with 
 prophecy, arose, I took you home. 
 
 That night when I bade you good-bye I held you close in 
 my arms — I, your lover, so soon to be your husband. I kissed 
 your dear, consenting lips ; but all the time the far-away look 
 never left your eyes, and a pang pierced me, for I felt that some 
 presence I could not see came between you and my kisses. 
 And yet what a good night that was, if I had only known ! 
 
 The next morning I went up to town ; and, first of all, I went 
 to leave some copy at my publishers. There quite a packet of 
 letters wa%Jianded to me, and the first one I looked at gave me 
 a sensation something as if I had seen a ghost. It was the 
 very peculiar, unforgetable handwriting of a man who had been 
 my closest friend at Oxford, yet of whom I had lost sight utterly, 
 since, a year or two after our university days were over, he had 
 gone to America for his health. I do not believe much in pre- 
 sentiments, but there was something in the very touch of that 
 letter which gave me a cold chill. I opened it, and this was 
 what I read : 
 
 " My Dear Archer : I have long lost you from sight, 
 though not from memory ; but I will not stop to fill up the gaps 
 now, except so far as is necessary to what I have to say. I 
 pretty well recovered my health in America, studied medicine, 
 and have got on well. Last spring I found myself getting run 
 down again, and I put my practice in the hands of a friend, and 
 came abroad for the summer. I have spent the last two months 
 in Paris, and here I have formed an intimacy with a French 
 physician, who asked me, three days ago, to go with him to the 
 hospital to see a very interesting patient, a countryman of my 
 
4i6 A LETTER TO EVA. 
 
 own, just released from long incarceration in a French prison. 
 I went with a languid sort of interest, and found — is not truth 
 always stranger than fiction ? — Frank Leinster, a friend of long 
 ago, of whom, however, you will never have heard me speak, as 
 we met first on the steamer that carried me to America, whither 
 he was bound for a pleasure trip. I was very ill during the 
 voyage, and he nursed me like a brother, and with that our 
 intimacy began. When he returned to England we corresponded 
 for a time, but a little more than eight years ago sudden silence 
 on his part fell between us, and I have never heard of him since 
 till I found him, three days ago, lying more dead than alive on 
 a pallet in a French hospital. Since then I have learned his 
 story. 
 
 " He was always a half-mad Republican in theory, and at one 
 time he got himself naturalized as a French citizen, and joined 
 a secret communistic or socialistic association, binding himself 
 by all sorts of oaths to obey, on the instant, the orders of his 
 superiors. At the time of his mysterious disappearance he was 
 suddenly summoned to Paris. He went in company with a 
 Madame Vautrin, a fellow-conspirator, summoned at the same 
 time with himself. No sooner had he reached Paris than he 
 was betrayed by a spy who had been set to watch his move- 
 ments, and thrown into prison. He was only released six days 
 ago. 
 
 " Figure to yourself what those eight years would have been 
 to any man. They were something worse to him. He was en- 
 gaged to a woman whom he adored. Her name was Eva 
 Linton. When he started at an hour's notice for France he 
 meant to write to her the moment of his arrival, but he was 
 arrested before he had even reached his hotel. For eight years 
 she has had every reason to believe him faithless. She is mar- 
 ried, very likely — or dead, perhaps — who knows } But he 
 judges her by himself, and clings to some wild hope that she 
 has trusted in him through all, and waited for him. * They 
 seem to think Pm booked for death,' he said, when he told me 
 the story, * but, Grey, you must find her first.' 
 
 " He told me that she was living, when he left England, with 
 an aunt at lo, York Road, South Kensington. I at once tele- 
 graphed, and found that neither Miss Linton nor her aunt had 
 been heard of there for more than five years. I can see that to 
 find her is the one hope for saving my friend's life. His anxiety 
 
A LETTER TO EVA. 417 
 
 about her is consuming him, as the swift flame burns the oil in 
 a lamp. I am not willing to leave him. I will only do so as a 
 last resort. In this extremity I bethink myself of you. I know 
 your old passion for ferreting out mysteries — I used to tell you 
 you ought to be a police detective. I fancy it was this turn of 
 mind that made you a novelist. You know London, and the 
 ways of London. I can reach you, no doubt, through your 
 publishers. My appeal to you is a forlorn hope ; but I know 
 you will spare no pains to help me, were it only for the old 
 time's sake. 
 
 *' Yours faithfully, 
 
 "John Grey." 
 
 I suppose men do not usually faint or cry out when the ninth 
 wave strikes them ; at any rate, I did not. I read this letter 
 through as quietly as if it had been on some ordinary matter of 
 business. Then I folded it deliberately and put it into my 
 pocket, and spoke a few civil words to the man who had handed 
 it to me, and went out into the street. There was no more to 
 be done about my marriage. Not for one moment did I doubt 
 what that, letter meant in my life ; and in the midst of my 
 keenest anguish I thanked God that it had not come too late. 
 I wandered about the streets, I know not how long ; but I took 
 the afternoon train to Dover, by which I reached there a little 
 before seven o'clock. How it rained all the way down ! When 
 we stopped the howling wind drove the rain in volleys against 
 the carriage. All the way I was trying to realize what life would 
 be, now I had lost you. 
 
 I shall never forget shivering through the streets that first of 
 October to your friend's house at the East Cliff. When at 
 length I came level with the sea, and heard its dull, heavy 
 waves, dark as night, breaking on the beach, it seemed to me 
 that sea was not more dreary than my life, without you, must 
 henceforth be. Then bitter remorse of heart took hold on 
 me that I could be so unhappy when I had the supreme blessed- 
 ness of bringing back to your life that light and joy which you 
 had thought lost for ever. 
 
 You knew my knock at the hall- door, and came to open it 
 yourself. 
 
 '' My poor wet darling," you said ; "what a night it is !" 
 Then you put both ^rms round my neck and raised your lips to 
 
 28 
 
4i8 A LETTER TO EVA, 
 
 be kissed, and drew me into the dining-room, where all things 
 looked so warm and bright. I thought that dinner would never 
 come to an end ; but it was over at last, and then we went 
 together into the little sitting-room at the end of the drawing- 
 room, which had come to be regarded as your own, and seemed 
 pervaded by the sweetness and potency of your presence. 
 
 Oh, my love, how well I remember everything about that 
 evening ! You wore a dress of silk and velvet that made a soft 
 swish upon the floor as you walked. You had pearls in your 
 ears, and your pearl locket was hanging at your throat. You 
 had never looked loveher or seemed so at rest since I had 
 known you. 
 
 Outside we heard the falling of the rain, the bitter complain- 
 ing of the wind, and through all the troubled voice of the sea. 
 I remember just how you turned shivering to the fire, and how, 
 kneeling down by it, you leaned your cheek against my hand. 
 Dear, I cannot help lingering over that night. If only you had 
 been in one of your sad moods, that might have given me 
 strength ; but no, you seemed at rest, and of your own accord 
 began talking about our marriage. 
 
 " I am going to try and be just the best wife that ever was," 
 you said, half playfully, yet earnestly meaning what you said . 
 You went on : "How happy it will be when we are together all 
 the time. I never seem other than alone now when we are 
 parted. I am quite lost without my dear." 
 
 " Bless you ! " I said, under my breath, and then you leaned 
 your dear head on my shoulder. 
 
 God knows I take no credit to myself for wjiat I did that 
 night — I could have done nothing else ; but oh, my love, my 
 love, your divine tenderness made it all the harder, for I began 
 to believe that I could have made you happy at the last, even 
 I ; and it hurt — God knows how it hurt — to think I must put 
 you out of my life just when you were beginning to be so fond 
 of me, and go on my dark way alone. You remember question- 
 ing me why I was so silent ? — " Did I love you less ?" — " Was 
 I afraid of to-morrow ? " — " Should you read to me ? " And 
 then the warmth of the fire and the silence within soothed you 
 and being very weak withal, you fell asleep there, with your 
 head upon my shoulder, just as confidingly as if you had been 
 already my wife. 
 
 I had made up my mind to tell you all at half-past nine, and 
 
A LETTER TO EVA. 419 
 
 just before the half-hour struck you awoke with a start, opened 
 wide your eyes, and said tenderly, as you fixed them on me : 
 
 " I am so very glad to have you back, my dear. I dreamed 
 that you had not returned, and I was most unhappy, and began 
 to think something dreadful must have happened. And I 
 thought what it would be if I should never see you again. I 
 shall not let you go again without me." 
 
 Oh, my love, when I remember that I do think I might have 
 made you happy in the end, but who knows ? I said to you 
 these words in answer : 
 
 " Eva, my darling, I shall go away from you. You will never 
 see me again ; but you will ;/^/ miss me.'' 
 
 Can I ever forget the tone of voice in which you said, lifting 
 your head from my shoulder, and with a light I had never seen 
 there before blazing in your eyes, while the blood came and 
 went in your cheeks : 
 
 " You have news for me ? Quick ! What is it } " 
 
 For answer I put John Grey's letter in your hand. When 
 you had read it through I think you forgot my presence for a 
 moment. There was a wonderful light of rapture on your face, 
 and you said, in a voice as low as a prayer, " Faithful and true 
 through all, faithful and true ! " 
 
 Then I saw a cloud pass over your f^ace and the light fail in 
 your eyes, and I knew that you were thinking of me and of 
 your promise to me, and I made haste to tell you that you were 
 free, quite free — that I knew all must be over between us now ; 
 and you were by no means to be unhappy for me, because your 
 good and your joy must be mine. And then, one dear last time, 
 you clung to me and wept — a great flood of healthful, saving 
 tears — for sudden joy is as dangerous as sudden grief. 
 
 I offered, I remember, to take you to Paris the next day — the 
 day that was to have been our wedding-day ; but you spared 
 me that. You told me your cousin would take you, and I was 
 thankful. When it was time to go, you told me how good I had 
 been to you, and once more you gave me your lips to kiss. 
 
 I walked about long that night in the wind and the rain ; and 
 when I went home and slept at last, I dreamed of you, and that 
 to-morrow was our wedding-day, and we were never more to be 
 parted. Then I Avoke again to the whole bitter truth, and I 
 heard the clamorous wind and the cry of the empty, hungry 
 sea ; and the rain fell upon the roof as if it were falling upon a 
 
420 A LETTER TO EVA, 
 
 grave, and I knew that my life was dead, but that its ghost 
 would haunt me until I, too, who have outlived my life, shall 
 cease to be. 
 
 [The writer of the foregoing letter has now been four years 
 dead. I, his friend, have printed it, using other names than the 
 real ones, but making no other change. Its publication will 
 harm no one ; and if some time it should meet her eye, it will 
 not be amiss that she should know how well he loved her who 
 loved in vain.] 
 
HIS TRUST. 
 
 :o:- 
 
 When Mr. Tom Rainger, who described himself as a travelling 
 photographic artist, was not on the road, he lived absolutely 
 alone, in an humble cottage on a wide patch of land, adjoining 
 Thornton Common, a high, wide stretch of grassy ground, and 
 a place much resorted to in the summer. 
 
 The village of Thornton, from which the common took its 
 name, was seven miles from the nearest country town. It was 
 a meek little village with an old-fashioned parsonage, an unpre- 
 tending church, a school-house, a forge, and a public-house 
 called the Three Jolly Boys. 
 
 To return to Mr. Rainger — when he was not at home he 
 lived on wheels; that is to say, he journeyed round the country 
 in a kind of cart-house. He travelled mostly in the winter, 
 finding through the warm weather no stint of people in Thorn- 
 ton willing to pay from a sixpence to a shiUing to see their 
 faces reproduced by the artist's glass. Besides being an artist, 
 our friend was a musician. He really played the violin skil- 
 fully, and between fiddling and photographing he got on quite 
 well. 
 
 At the time of which I am writing he was a middle-aged man, 
 strongly built, and rather short of stature. His weather-face 
 had on it a look of weariness, and also of resolution. Other 
 things than the sun and the wind had had their will with that 
 face. A life's tragedy had scarred it deeper than ever the ele- 
 ments could. His scant hair was iron gray. Tom Rainger was 
 
422 HIS TRUST, 
 
 not popular in the village. He would sit for hours at the Three 
 Jolly Boys, smoking and speaking to no man. When he did 
 talk there was something overbearing and aggressive in his 
 manner. He never went to church, but he might often be seen 
 coming out of the churchyard, where, under grass and flowers, 
 lay what had once been " the desire of his eyes" — his friend, his 
 companion, his good angel, his wife. 
 
 ^' It was the loss of her," said the landlady of the Three Jolly 
 Boys, " that turned him sour, as thunder turns milk sour." 
 
 After five years of happiness, her fresh gay voice, the blue 
 light of her eyes, and the light gold of her hair, and all the dear 
 caressing ways, she had gone out of his life and left him, as we 
 have seen, a soured man. 
 
 One midsummer's eve, a time to become memorable hence- 
 forth in Mr. Rainger's life, that gentleman sat in the bar-parlour 
 of the Three Jolly Boys. It was a club night, and having for 
 the benefit of the Jolly Boys performed twice on his violin, he 
 put the instrument away, and shouldering his case, and with 
 his pipe set fast between his teeth, passed from the mixed fumes 
 of tobacco and spirits into the clear, moonlit night. The Jolly 
 Boys were hard at it when he left them, but the sound of their 
 jollity was soon behind him ; the common was about a mile 
 from the village. 
 
 It was a warm, luminous night. Every leaf and every twig 
 of every tree was distinctly visible, such a power of moonlight 
 was on everything. A note faltered through the warm, com- 
 passionate stillness. Then from a clump of trees a nightingale 
 began singing. 
 
 There were hot tears in Rainger's eyes as he walked along. 
 It seemed to him as if the moonlight, the warm air, the singing 
 bird, had some message from his dead wife — a message which 
 he could not interpret. Ah, with what a passion of worship he 
 thought of her ! 
 
 When he reached the cottage, instead of entering it, he passed 
 on to the common, where moonlight and unbroken stillness 
 reigned. Standing there, it came to him to take out his violin 
 and to begin playing with all ihe expression of which he was 
 capable, and he had no small measure, ^'The Last Rose of 
 Summer." It was one of the airs his wife liked best to hear 
 him play. Under his hand, which then seemed to acquire the 
 very master's touch, the music rose, and quivered and floated 
 
HIS TRUST, 423 
 
 far away. He wondered if beyond the moonlight she heard it. 
 All his heart was intent on this, when he heard a sound which 
 made him start. It was the sound of feet hurrying as if one 
 were running a race for life. In another second or two, with a 
 low cry, something caught his hand and dropped at his feet ; 
 then a girl's voice said, in a whisper of terror : 
 
 " Save me ! hide me ! they will find me if you don't ! They 
 are following me, I know ! " 
 
 Rainger raised the girl, and, acting on impulse, led her to his 
 cottage. As they walked along, she said : 
 
 " As I was running I heard you calling me. That was you, 
 wasn't it?" ? 
 
 " It was my music you heard," he answered. 
 
 ^' Your music ?" she repeated, simply. " I don't know what 
 that is." 
 
 Just then they reached the humble cottage, with its whole- 
 some garden of sweet-smelling flowers. Rainger struck a light, 
 then he turned and looked at his companion. He started back 
 with an involuntary cry ; for, in the girl fronting him, he seemed 
 to see his wife again — the same shape of face, the same light 
 of gold hair, the same soft, blue eyes, only in these there was 
 a strange-pleading, questioning look — a look which seemed to 
 say ; '' Where am I ? Oh, save me ! '^ 
 
 He came near, and his hand fell on her shoulder. He started 
 again, for the shoulder he touched felt warm and wet. He 
 looked down and saw that blood was soaking through her thin 
 dress. 
 
 '^ They beat me so,*' she said, '* that I ran away to-night." 
 
 " Who beat you ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don't know ; but they did beat me, and made the blood 
 come." 
 
 Then the whole truth flashed upon Rainger. About five miles 
 off was an asylum, and the girl to whom he was talking was an 
 escaped patient. 
 
 ''You won't let them take me from you, will you ?" said the 
 poor thing, grasping his hand with painful earnestness. 
 
 Again his wife seemed to be looking at him out of those eyes. 
 His wife's voice seemed to whisper through the room: "You 
 must keep her, and be a father to her, for my sake." 
 
 " What is your name ? " he asked. 
 
 "Kate." 
 
424 ///^ TRUST. 
 
 " I wiW never let them take you from me, Kate ; but you must 
 always do what I tell you ; if you don't they will find you and 
 take you away. 
 
 " And beat me again ? " 
 
 " Yes, worse than ever." 
 
 Then he looked at the poor mangled body and dressed the 
 wounds. I am writing of a time, happily past now, when the 
 unfortunate inmates of lunatic asylums underwent horrors which 
 it now sickens one to think of. 
 
 He made Kate lie down upon his bed, and then casting him- 
 self on the floor, fell into a broken, uneasy sleep. Finally, when 
 the dawn had well come, and birds were talkative, he rose and 
 went to look at his charge ; she was sleeping as peacefully as 
 a child, one hand half hidden in her long gold hair. 
 
 Mr. Rainger felt that something very precious and very beau- 
 tiful had come to him, but what was he to do with it 1 For- 
 tunately there was one person in the village who loved and 
 trusted him, and whom he in return also loved and trusted. 
 This person was not beautiful to look at, and also she was old. 
 Her name was Martha. He resolved to take her into his con- 
 fidence. She had nursed his wife through her long and fatal 
 illness, and had been his friend ever since. Unwilling himself 
 to leave the house, as soon as it was light he sent one of the 
 boys of the village to Martha, asking her to come to him at 
 once. She complied with his request, and while Kate continued 
 to sleep, Rainger and Mrs. Wakefield talked of what was to be 
 done. One thing was clear, that, if possible, Kate's presence 
 in the cottage must be kept a secret. Mrs. Wakefield would 
 send in some fresh clothes for the poor girl, and when night 
 came Rainger would take those which she now wore, and which 
 seemed to him a badge of the asylum, and bury them in some 
 wonderful caves close at hand, holding in their depths miles 
 of night and of darkness. When Kate awoke, Martha went 
 to her, washed and dressed her, and shuddered over her poor, 
 wounded body. When she was dressed she was brought to 
 see Rainger. She bade him good-morning, and put up her 
 face to be kissed. 
 
 As a rule Rainger prepared his own breakfast ; to-day Mrs. 
 Wakefield saved him that trouble. Kate's was taken to her in 
 an inner room, lest any of the neighbours should catch sight of 
 her in their passing by. 
 
ms TRUST. 425 
 
 It was little work that Rainger got through that day, So occu- 
 pied was he in studying his charge. Mrs. Wakefield had lent 
 her a picture-book, which seemed to delight her. Once in the 
 course of that day, when she was alone with Mrs. Wakefield, 
 she said, fixing her eyes intently on that good woman, and 
 speaking in a tone which, in its intensity, corresponded to the 
 look in her eyes : " Where's Tom ? " 
 
 She had heard Mrs. Wakefield call him by his Christian 
 name. 
 
 *' Do you want Tom, my pretty," answered the widow. 
 
 ** Yes, I want Tom," replied the girl, dreamily. Then she 
 fell to looking at her hands, as if they had suddenly grown 
 strange to her. 
 
 Mrs. Wakefield went for Rainger, who was not far off. The 
 girl threw her arms about his neck, buried her face on his 
 shoulder and sobbed and laughed by turns. Then she asked 
 for the music, so he got his violin and played to her. As he 
 played, it seemed as if her poor spirit, wandering in lands lit by 
 dubious lights, echoing with unjoyful laughter and sad singing, 
 haunted by shapes terrible and indescribable, was striving 
 desperately and vainly to grope its way back to the land of 
 reason and- reality. What could there be to apprehend in her ? 
 She seemed strangely gentle. Her voice was very low, and had 
 in it a subtle inner music which went right to the hearer's 
 heart. 
 
 I cannot set forth in words the passion of tenderness with 
 which Rainger thought of his new charge. When he was on the 
 common he left her locked up in the house with doll or picture- 
 book. So passed a couple of months. 
 
 One cold, wet, windy August night, a night when nature 
 seemed shudderingly to realize the impending desolation of the 
 end, Rainger lay asleep in the room adjoining the one occupied 
 by Kate. He was a sound sleeper. Suddenly, however, he 
 was awakened by some one shaking him violently. He started 
 up to see Kate standing by his side. She carried a light in her 
 hand, and her gold hair was all unbound. There was a look 
 in her keen eyes that he had not seen there before — a look of 
 protest and infinite horror ; the look of an animal about to 
 undergo some torture from which it knows there is no escape. 
 
 " What are you doing, Kate 1 " he asked ; " has anything 
 frightened you 1 " 
 
426 ms TRUST. 
 
 She placed the' light on the table and her fingers began work- 
 ing in one another. Then she said, in a tone of voice scarcely 
 louder than a whisper : 
 
 " I am going to scream." 
 
 She had scarcely uttered the words when she flung back her 
 head and stretched out her hands, while from her lips there 
 broke a shriek so terrible, so unearthly, as to make the blood 
 of any one who heard it turn cold. It was a cry which seemed 
 to rend the senses of hearing. It was so wild, so unlike any- 
 thing ever heard before, that it suggested some new agony of 
 body and soul — a fresh discovery in the realms of torture. 
 
 Fortunately there was no cottage within a mile of Rainger's. 
 He came near her, but she sprang at him like a wild thing, her 
 eyes flashing, her lips drawn back and showing her gleaming 
 teeth. At length breath failing, she fell to the ground, where 
 she lay cowering as if she expected every moment to feel the 
 stroke of a rod. It was clear that she was liable to these terrible 
 and dangerous outbreaks of insanity. Before morning she was 
 taken with another wild fit of screaming, after which she grew 
 strangely quiet, and then fell asleep. 
 
 When she awoke she was again the gentle, trusting, childlike 
 Kate. 
 
 " What if such a fit should take her in the daytime ?" thought 
 Rainger, and he shuddered. 
 
 Every day she seemed to cling more and more to her pro- 
 tector, whom only she and the old woman loved. 
 
 Often, for long hours together, he would hold her slight form 
 clasped against his heart, as if she had been his child, her 
 bright head leaning upon his shoulder. He told her fairy tales 
 and simple rhymes, of which she liked the sound ; but most of 
 all she delighted in hearing him play. He was seen less and 
 less at the Three Jolly Boys, and became still more unpopular. 
 Then people grew curious to know how and where lie spent his 
 evenings. 
 
 One evening a man stole to his cottage door. It was closed, 
 but the man thought he could hear Rainger talking to himself; 
 he was telling Kate a story. 
 
 P^or four months the patient search had been made for the 
 escaped mad girl, but with no good result. It often happens 
 that when we have searched long and diligently for some 
 object, and have at last given it up as lost for ever, we 
 
MIS TRUST, 427 
 
 come upon it by accident when there is no thought of it in our 
 minds. 
 
 So chanced it with Dr. Prince, a shrewd, hard, implacable- 
 looking man. He had quite given up the hope of finding his 
 escaped patient, when fate led him to the very place where she 
 was. The doctor, who enjoyed bodily exercise, was returning 
 on foot one evening to the asylum. His way lay over the 
 common. He had counted on a moonlight walk, but instead of 
 moonlight, a fog fell over everything — a fog, too, that wetted one 
 like rain. Doctor Prince was perplexed to know what course 
 he should take, when to the left of him he spied a gleam of light, 
 which proceeded from Rainger's cottage. The doctor gave 
 thanks for it, and pushing open the gate, stood in the little 
 garden, which, because of the season, smelt then only of decay. 
 *'A pest on these November fogs," thought the doctor, before 
 rapping at the door. Then he stood there arrested by what he 
 heard from within, though what he heard was simply a man's 
 voice saying : 
 
 ^' Well, when the good fairy saw how sad little Alice was, 
 with no books, no pretty pictures, no nice dresses, and no 
 dolls " 
 
 Then a* girl's voice, questioningly : *' Didn't she have any 
 dolls } " 
 
 Then the man again : " No; no dolls at all, not one.'' 
 
 Then the girl : " Did she have any music?" 
 
 " No ; no music, either." 
 
 ^' Then she must have been a very sad little girl ! " 
 
 " So she was ; but let me tell you what the good fairy 
 did." 
 
 " It must be she ! " ejaculated Doctor Prince. " I should 
 know that voice anywhere. Run to earth at last, my dear." 
 
 Without more delay he knocked on the cottage door. The 
 man left off talking, and said "Hush !" in a low tone of voice ; 
 then feet moved across the floor and a door shut. Then the 
 door that led from the garden into the sitting-room was 
 opened by Rainger. 
 
 " I have lost my way most hopelessly in this horrible fog," 
 began the doctor ; "and, catching sight of your friendly light, 
 I thought you might be able to oblige me with the loan of a 
 lantern." 
 
 The unsuspecting photographer replied that he should be 
 
428 HIS TRUST. 
 
 happy to supply the desired object ; and, while he was getting 
 it ready, the doctor came in, sat down and made himself at 
 home. There was something in him that Rainger mistrusted 
 and disliked. 
 
 " You live here alone ? " questioned the new-comer. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " I say, you live here alone." 
 
 " Yes, I live here alone." 
 
 " I thought when I came to the door I heard voices." 
 
 Mr. Rainger stopped in preparing the lantern, raised his eyes, 
 fixed them on the stranger's face, and said, insolently it must be 
 owned : 
 
 *' Perhaps you did and perhaps you didn't. What business is 
 it of yours whether I speak the truth or not 1 " 
 
 "As it happens," answered the doctor, "it is my very special 
 business. I believe — nay, am almost certain — that you have 
 concealed in this house a dangerous and escaped lunatic, for 
 whom the closest search has been made." 
 
 "That's nonsense ! " returned the other, brusquely, busying 
 himself with the lantern. "There is no escaped lunatic here." 
 
 ' I am sorry to doubt your word," replied the doctor, " but, 
 
 really " and as quick as lighning he darted to the door of 
 
 the adjoining room and opened it. At the same time a 
 shape sprang from it, rushed past him, and, falling at Rainger's 
 feet, implored him wildly to take care of her and not to give 
 her up. 
 
 Doctor Prince looked on with a satisfied smile — he had re- 
 captured his victim. 
 
 " It's too late to remove the patient to-night," he said. " I 
 will send for her in the morning. I assure you, my friend, she 
 will be well punished for this." And his cruel eyes gleamed. 
 
 "I'll keep her against the whole gang of you," answered 
 Rainger, sullenly. " Have no fear, my darling ; they shall not 
 touch you." 
 
 " She will be removed as early as possible in the course of 
 to-morrow,'' said Dr. Prince, quietly. " I shall pass to-night 
 at Thornton ; " and taking up the lantern, he walked out into 
 the night. 
 
 Rainger closed the door after him and locked it. Then he 
 sat down and considered what he could do, and Kate crouched 
 beside him, crying from time to time, "Oh, Tom, save me 1 " 
 
HIS TRUST. 429 
 
 " Yes, my love, yes," he answered, " I will save you still ; " 
 but he asked himself, " How ? ", 
 
 At onetime he thought of getting out his wandering house and 
 driving her away in it ; but what good would that be ? They 
 would be followed and soon found. What was there to be 
 done ? He had always prided himself on being a man of re- 
 source, yet now he seemed resourceless. Presently he got up 
 and went into the garden. A strong, keen wind had sprung up, 
 and had wholly scattered the fog. The cold air was radiant 
 with moonlight. 
 
 He walked up and down sorely distracted as to what he 
 should do. Suddenly he stopped in his walk and exclaimed, 
 " Yes, better even that than to give her up to them." He took 
 another turn to and fro ; then he went on. Kate was sitting 
 just where he had left her, her face buried in her hands. 
 
 " Kate," he said, " I can save you if you will do just what I 
 tell you." 
 
 " I will be good," she answered. 
 
 Shortly after this a man, powerfully built, though somewhat 
 low in stature, and a shghtly made girl might have been seen 
 walking together in the direction of the noted Thornton caves, 
 in which once Druid priests had performed their dread sacri- 
 ficial rites. The girl carried a violin case, the man carried a 
 lantern and a spade. The two soon reached the mouth of the 
 caves. 
 
 "Where are we going .^^ " asked Kate. 
 
 "In here, dear," he answered. 
 
 She sprang back, saying, " It looks so dark in there, I'm 
 frightened." 
 
 " It won't be dark with this," he said, turning up his lantern 
 to the full. "In here you are safe. Here they will never find 
 you." 
 
 " Are you quite sure they won't find me ? " 
 
 " Quite sure ; bend your head very low. There, that's it ; 
 you can stand up now." 
 
 They were in the everlasting night and winter of the Thorn- 
 ton caves. Indeed in that mighty darkness the rays of the 
 lantern seemed just a faint protest of light. 
 
 The ground was thickly covered with sand, which rendered 
 their steps noiseless. In parts this sand collected in drifts, 
 forming regular hills. 
 
430 HIS TRUST. 
 
 *' I am frightened," she said, beginning to cry, " I want the 
 music." 
 
 Giving her the lantern to carry, he took the vioHn from its 
 case and began playing, and so he drew her on as Orpheus 
 drew his Euridice. The caves are cold and the caves are dark. 
 They stretch for miles, and wind as snakes wind. 
 
 At length they reach a remote part. Rainger leaves off play- 
 ing, and restores the violin to its case. 
 
 "Kate, my own darling," he says, drawing her close to him, 
 " I love you, as I should have loved her child and mine." 
 
 " What are you crying for ? " she asks, putting her hands to 
 his eyes, from which, indeed, the tears are falling fast. "I'll 
 be good ; don't cry, Tom," and she lays her face caressingly 
 against his. 
 
 He draws one arm away and feels for something in his coat 
 — a flash, a sharp report, a whizz of something through the air, 
 a puff of smoke, a cry, a thud on the sand — then absolute silence. 
 
 Rainger stood for several minutes without moving ; then he 
 took the lantern from the ledge of rock where he had placed it, 
 and, kneeling down by the fallen form, looked closely at the 
 face, and felt pulse and heart. Yes, she was past all earthly 
 detection, all earthly dread. He replaced the heavy old- 
 fashioned pistol in his coat, and using the spade he had brought 
 with him, dug under a projecting slab of rock a rough grave, 
 wherein he reverently laid the fair body. 
 
 *' God bless you," he said, as he turned away from her he had 
 loved so well. He was at home in these caves, as very few 
 people were, so that he had no trouble in retracing his way to 
 the entrance. Oh ! the deserted little cottage to which he re- 
 turned ! Kate's empty bed ; Kate's empty chair ! Still he said 
 to himself that it had been the only way. He had loved her too 
 well to let her live for suffering worse than many deaths could be. 
 
 The next day, with a force of keepers, Doctor Prince pre- 
 sented himself at Rainger's cottage. 
 
 " I have come to remove my patient," he said. 
 
 To which answered Rainger, " She has removed herself ; the 
 bird has flown out of the cage. Look long enough and perhaps 
 you will find her." 
 
 It was a strange case ; but, after all, what evidence could be 
 alleged against Rainger, unpopular as the man was 't I, how- 
 ever, think that his trust was zvell kept. 
 
LILIAN. 
 
 :o:- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Sometimes I cannot realize that she is lost to me for ever, so 
 strong a sense have I of her personal presence. Often in gray 
 autumn tv\jHght, when all is quiet, and damp mists come 
 floating up from the near-lying river, she seems to come into the 
 room, and to take her accustomed seat in the low chair we 
 called hers, and which still stands in its old place by the fire. 
 Again I seem to see the fire-light playing on her red-gold hair 
 and on the folds of her dress. Or in the daytime, when the 
 winds are loud, I see the hem of her gray dress fluttering 
 away through the trees. On returning to the house I open 
 the door of her own particular sitting-room ; all there is 
 just as she left it, and she — is she not lying on the couch, shaken 
 with the cruel anguish of those last days ? Or in the warm June 
 nights I hear her full sweet voice singing round the garden. 
 
 " Are you going to bed ? Do you know how late it is ? " I ask. 
 
 ^' Yes, dear, going in a moment. Only one more song and 
 then good-night, you dear nightingales." 
 
 But she will never again come in and kiss me. The nightin- 
 gales sing now, but wake no answer save in fancy. 
 
 Oh, my Lilie, my bird, my more than child, the beauty and 
 the comfort of my life, surely in some new fair world I shall find 
 you again, shall have you with me through infinite years ! 
 
 She came to me when my brief summer of romance was over ; 
 
432 LILIAN. 
 
 with the beauty of her own she clothed my life anew, my life 
 which now is so bare and unlovely ; but what am I doing 
 talking this way about myself? Only, dear Lord, give back to 
 me my darling some time. Let me believe that we are not 
 parted for ever. 
 
 Kate Winslow was my most intimate girl friend. There were 
 many reasons to draw us together. I was an orphan, and lived 
 in the charge of an aunt. Kate had no mother, and her father 
 was a wanderer upon the earth. His story was a romantic one. 
 When he was a young man, seeing life in Paris, he fell in love with 
 a danseuse, who, moreover, sang. What ultimately would have 
 been her fate had she gone on singing and dancing and making 
 eyes at an admiring audience, it is impossible to say. At that 
 time she was new to her life, and as pure as a woman could be. 
 She danced and sang young Winslow's heart away. Altogether 
 the Winslows were a strange family ; the present Winslow's 
 great-grandfather had died by his own hand, and his son had 
 ended his days in a madhouse. 
 
 Whatever Arthur Winslow resolved to do, he did quickly, so 
 he married out-of-hand his fascinating danseuse. Fortunately 
 she was unencumbered by relatives, and the old man in whose 
 charge she had been left was glad to have her off his hands. 
 So for a couple of years they wandered about with their 
 marriage still undeclared. At the end of this time old Mr. 
 Winslow died, and his son, who inherited a pleasant little 
 fortune, came back to England, and no longer made a secret of 
 his marriage. 
 
 Now when his relatives knew what were his wife's antecedents 
 they with common consent cut both him and her — a proceeding 
 which did not in the very least trouble Mr. Winslow. But 
 when, five years after marriage, his wife died, that did trouble 
 him. Poor, pretty dancing feet, poor, sweet, red, singing mouth, 
 done for ever with all steps and songs. Kate was then four years 
 old. He left her in the care of a most respectable maiden 
 lady, and he himself travelled. 
 
 When his daughter was ten the lady with whom she lived 
 received instructions to send her to a thoroughly good boarding 
 school. It was at this school that I first met Kate Winslow. I 
 was her senior by five years. Even at that early age she was 
 the light and animation of the school. As I write I seem to see 
 once again the tall, slight figure, the bright changeful face, the 
 
abundant brown hair, the clear blue eyes full of mischief and 
 mirth. Once again from the past rings out the fresh buoyant 
 voice, the long quivering laugh. She was by far the cleverest of us. 
 We became very great friends. When Kate was thirteen, and 
 I was about leaving school, Mr. Winslow arrived in England. 
 He took a pleasant little house in Kensington, with a large 
 garden running all round. Ah ! how many a summer evening 
 have Kate and I passed in that garden. In the midst of it stood 
 a great pink May-tree, and now the smell of May always brings 
 back to me that one friend of my youth. 
 
 There was something I liked about Kate's father, though I 
 could never quite understand him. Sometimes he would seem 
 hard and cynical, but in a cold, half- humorous manner, at other 
 times he would read or recite poetry to us, he would come and go 
 unexpectedly, he composed a kind of melancholy music, which 
 had a certain charm of its own. Besides this, he painted 
 pictures, which were perfectly in harmony with his music. He 
 was fond of having artists and musicians at his house. 
 
 When she was eighteen, I saw that my Kate was an incor- 
 rigible flirt. I don't think I altogether approved of it. I certainly 
 loved her none the less for it. 
 
 My aunt's health failing, she was ordered to spend at least 
 half the year out of England. This was a great blow to Kate 
 and me, as it separated us so much. However, we wrote to each 
 other daily. I soon saw, from her letters, that a certain Mr. 
 Bedford was paying her great attention. 
 
 " He is an artist," she wrote to me, ** only twenty, and with 
 not even a beard." Still I saw she liked him, and the news of 
 their engagement did not surprise me. That year my aunt was 
 taken so ill in France as to be unable to travel, and Kate and I 
 were parted for twelve months. Her letters came to me — very 
 brief and at irregular intervals — and after the first two or three 
 months, they contained no mention of Mr. Bedford. 
 
 I shall never forget one certain spring day. My aunt was 
 seriously worse. I was watching by her bed, as she slept a 
 feverish and uneasy sleep, when a long-expected letter fron> 
 Kate was brought to me. With a sense of misgiving of some- 
 thing being wrong, I opened it and read : 
 
 "My own darling Marion— 
 
 ^' I can no longer put off confession, though I know you will 
 
 29 
 
434 LILIAN, 
 
 be horrified at me. Whatever I say, I can't, even to myself, 
 make it sound well, for really I know he did, poor fellow, care no 
 end about me. I think too I may have been cruel in the matter. 
 I am afraid I am cruel with respect to men. Well then, instead 
 of telling him straight out, as I ought to have done, that I had 
 transferred my youthful affections to Colonel Hale (a very 
 different sort of man, I can tell you), I let him come just the 
 same, and find out the agreeable fact for himself. I know it was 
 wicked of me, but his looks, when he would find John here two 
 or three times a week, used nearly to kill me with laughing in 
 the night when I woke up and thought of them. At length, my 
 dear, we came to the point. I thought there would have been 
 a scene, but fortunately no ; he began very gravely. He thought 
 he had seen a change in me. W^ho was this colonel that I saw 
 so much of.'' Then I told him everything. I can tell you, my 
 dear, he looked badly. He went quite white. I could not think 
 which he looked the more like doing, cursing or crying. You 
 used to say I should have made a good actress, and I am inclined 
 to agree with you. So, though I felt a wicked smile of satis- 
 faction to see what power I had coming round my mouth, I 
 sternly repressed it, and made myself look as solemn as seven 
 judges. Even you must own that women are curious, and I did 
 want so to know just how he felt, so I said to him, in the most 
 compassionate little voice : * Do you love me so very much, 
 Robert ? Don't you think you will get over it very quickly when 
 you don't see me any more. I hope you will.' I got up from 
 where I was sitting and put my hands in his. * How is it you 
 love me, my poor boy ? ' I said. This seemed to be more than 
 he could bear, and he answered in a hoarse whisper and crushing 
 my hands in his : 
 
 *' ' I love you so much that I wish the whole race of woman 
 might feel for ever what I feel.' Then he caught me in his arms 
 and would, I thought, have killed me with kissing. Then he 
 almost threw me from him, and before I could say another word 
 he was gone. Now my confession is made. I am to be married 
 the first of September. I do hope you will be back in time for 
 it. I know when you see John you will lose your heart to him. 
 He is only thirty ; is not that young for a colonel 1 He is six 
 feet three, with the most magnificent shoulders I have ever seen. 
 His manners are adorable, being a perfect blending of strength 
 and tenderness. Of course I have told him all about you, as I 
 
LILIAN. ^ 435 
 
 did the other poor fellow who has quite vanished from the scene. 
 Of course you will scold me, but I pray you, my darling, not to 
 be more angry with me than you can help. I was always a good 
 child to you, wasn't I ? How I do want to see you and introduce 
 you to John. 
 
 ^* Ah ! there he is, so I must bring this letter to a hasty con- 
 clusion. However little you approve of me, you will always be 
 loved the same by yours, Kate." 
 
 I confess the letter did shock me. I had been prepared for 
 any account of flirting on Kate's part, but that anything like this 
 would happen I never dreamed. My heart ached for the poor 
 young fellow she had treated so cruelly, and by the next post 1 
 sent her a piece of my mind. 
 
 She received it with her customary sweetness. 
 
 By August my aunt was well enough to come to England, so 
 that I was enabled to be present at my friend's wedding. 
 Certainly her husband quite bore out the praise she had bestowed 
 on him. Her marriage seemed to be the signal for troubles to 
 begin. Before the honeymoon was over my aunt died, and I 
 was alone in the world, and one dull November morning Mr. 
 Winslow was found dead in his bed from the effects of an over- 
 dose of laudanum. He left a brief note for his daughter, in which 
 he told her that he could no longer bear the agony of remem- 
 bering his wife, and knowing he should never see her again. 
 
 It was an awful blow to Kate, for she loved her father dearly. 
 I was glad that at that time, notwithstanding she had a husband, 
 she still seemed to find comfort in my friendship. 
 
 Before the new year, the colonel was ordered to India, where 
 as usual some skirmishing was going on. He did not expect to 
 be away more than.a year, and would not hear of his wife going 
 with him, for there was another life now dear to them both, of 
 which she had to be careful. She bore up as well as she could 
 without her husband. Nothing would suit her but for me to go 
 and stay with her, and glad enough I was to go, for I loved her 
 dearly. With what interest we used to read the colonel's letters I 
 So the months wore on and brought one awful June day. It 
 was in the afternoon ; Kate had been for a short walk ; I was 
 sitting reading. When she returned she was trembling so and 
 looked so pale that I cried in horror, " What in the world has 
 happened ? " 
 
436 LILIAN, 
 
 " There has been an engagement," she repHed. " A hundred 
 English killed — ninety men and ten officers. The papers publish 
 a list. I could not find a paper. You must go and get 
 one." 
 
 I bade her not to be downhearted, and went with all the haste 
 I might on my expedition. I had to go very far before I could get 
 a paper. At last I got one. I unfolded it with feverish excite- 
 ment, and among those who had fallen, the first name that I saw, 
 as it was the highest in rank, was that of Colonel John Hale. I 
 turned sick and almost fainted. I took the first cab I saw and 
 drove back. It was twilight when I reached home. She was 
 walking up and down the drawing-room when I came in. 
 
 *' Well ? " she cried sharply, turning round. There was no 
 need of words, my face was answer enough. " It is so, then," 
 she said ; " I knew it. Oh my God, my God, have mercy upon 
 me ! " — and she fell senseless into my arms. 
 
 What followed needs to be only very briefly related. The 
 shock to mind and body resulted, as I had feared, in a case of 
 premature birth. However, this baby lived to grow my Lilian. 
 Of he-r mother's recovery the doctors entertained but small 
 hope. She made her will, appointing me sole guardian and 
 trustee. " I should like you to call her Lilian," she said, " I 
 always thought it such a pretty name. Isn't it ? "" 
 
 On the first of September — having been married precisely 
 one year — she died. There was a dignity in her dying which I 
 had not seen in her life, dear as she was to me. 
 
 I took the little Lilian to love and cherish for my dear dead 
 friend's sake. It was in the first year of Lilian's life that my 
 own romance w^as begun and played out. It did not take very 
 long to play, but when the curtain fell, I knew that it would rise 
 never more. From the glory and shadow — from all the wonders 
 of love — love of man for woman — love of woman for man — I 
 turned to find what comfort I might, in pink, shell-like, baby 
 hands — in the little flowerlike as yet unuseful feet — in the face 
 which, even in babyhood, had such a striking likeness to the 
 face of my first friend. I would often at night delay going to 
 bed, so absorbed would I be in contemplating the little sleeping 
 face of my treasure, and wondering what sort of future would 
 be in store for my friend's child, and I took a vow to do all that 
 I could to make her life all that her mother would have had it 
 to be. Oh my baby that I have so often sung to sleep in my 
 
LILIAN. 437 
 
 arms ! No other baby hands shall I warm in my bosom — no 
 other heads shall lie there- — no other childish kisses seek rny 
 mouth. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 To-day it seems to me such a little while ago that Lilian was 
 eight years old. I can see her so plainly, as she used to look 
 in her Sunday frock, out of which gleamed the snow-white, 
 snow- soft shoulders, with their blue ribbon knots, her wonderful 
 bright hair flowing down her back. 
 
 Surely there never had been a dearer little girl than this Lilie 
 of mine, with her complexion dazzlingly fair, her large deep blue 
 eyes — later they turned gray — her brilliant hair. She was 
 literally like sunlight in the house. There was never a child 
 more full of gaiety, but she had strange, sweet, restful moods. 
 SometinijQs when I would be doing nothing — ^just sitting by the 
 fire — the door would open and shut gently, and she would come 
 in and stand quite still beside me, then I would lift her to my 
 knee, and the small arms would twine closely round my neck, 
 and the bright head bury itself in my shoulder. 
 
 So often we would sit for hours— only little kisses from time 
 to time and little pressures of the arms about my neck showing 
 me that she was not asleep, but deeply and happily at rest. 
 Now my heart and my arms are alike empty. 
 
 On my darling's childhood I will not let myself dwell. When 
 she was twelve, I placed her at the school where her mother and 
 myself had been before her. 
 
 "How I hate to go away from you," she said, when it came to 
 be our last night together. "But oh, sha'n't I look forward to 
 the holidays ! " 
 
 The next day we went to London, and having left her at the 
 school, I returned to our house in Rockshire, this house in 
 which, to-day, I sit alone and weep bitter tears for her as I wept 
 for her that day, seven years ago. 
 
 At length came the Christmas holidays, and I made the little 
 house bright for my darling's return. I invited my neighbours 
 
438 LILIAiV, 
 
 and their yoiin;^ people : my Lilie moved among them like a 
 queen. All manner of games were set on foot, but charades 
 were the great thing. Exiled from my own especial sitting-room, 
 because it made such a splendid green-room, I could hear merry 
 tones and bursts of laughter from the young actors and 
 actresses. 
 
 ^^ Noj Jio,'^ Lilie would protest — she had been by common 
 consent appointed stage manageress— " you must not talk in 
 that voice, it doesn't sound a bit like a housemaid ; and you 
 don't leave olT your h's ; you don't hold your broom either in a 
 professional manner. Have you never seen a room swept ? 
 You sweep as if you were afraid of hurting the broom or the 
 carpet — I'm sure 1 don't know which. This is the way they 
 sweep." And from the shouts of laughter following, I knew^ how 
 spiritedly she was enacting the part. The only fault which I 
 could see in Lilian was intolerance of stupid people. Whatever 
 she did, she did well, and did it too with all her might. 
 
 Well, the weeks grew into months, and the months into years, 
 and when Lilie was seventeen the education she had acquired 
 was so good that I thought she might leave school. Then 
 followed three happy years. Lilian had no desire to hurry into 
 the whirl of a London season. She loved nature as very few 
 people do. She loved the flowers in the garden — especially the 
 wild-growing things — with a very passion of tenderness. " Oh 
 you dear^ dear thing!" she would cry as she knelt down to smell 
 or pluck them. Great flaming marigolds excited her as music 
 excites some people. Different moods of nature seemed to affect 
 her strangely. In summer twilights, large and august, she would 
 sit moveless and wordless, her hands locked tight in one 
 another, so still she sat, that it almost seemed as if she were 
 listening to beauty. 
 
 Autumn twilights made her miserable, ^' If I am by myself 
 in them," she said, " I am as frightened as children are when 
 they wake up in the dark alone. It seems to me I smell death 
 in them. Can't you tell me why I feel so ? " 
 
 Brilliant moonlight would drive her almost wild with pleasure. 
 I was in the habit of going early to bed, but long after I had 
 been in bed I could hear her voice from the summer garden 
 singing against the nightingales till I hardly knew which notes 
 were the sweeter. 
 
 One brilliant June evening I was sitting by myself letter- 
 
LILIAN, 439 
 
 writing, when a card bearing the name ''Edgar Lawson" was 
 handed to me. I was quite unfamiliar with the name. 
 
 I went at once to the drawing-room. I saw at a first glance 
 that my visitor was not, as I had imagined he would turn out to 
 be, one of those persons who are for ever wandering about the 
 country with charity lists in their pockets. Now I saw before 
 me a man probably a little over forty, who was evidently well 
 acquainted with the ways of the world. He was a tall, slightly 
 built man, with a handsome, clear-cut face — he had fine eyes as 
 I came to see afterwards. 
 
 *'I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Harper?" he began. 
 I replied that was my name. 
 
 ''The intimate friend of Mrs. Hale, wife of Colonel Hale, 
 who was shot in India just nineteen years ago to-day?" he went 
 on. 
 
 " Yes, I was the same." 
 
 " I was a great friend of poor Hale's," rejoined the stranger ; 
 " I was with him at the time of his death. He told me that had 
 he lived longer he should probably soon have heard of the birth 
 of his child. He conjured me whenever I returned to England 
 to seek out his wife, and to give to her and to that child his 
 parting blessing. If by any sad chance his wife should be dead 
 before I reached home, he referred me to her most intimate 
 friend. Miss Harper, of Hampton Hall, Rockshire, who would 
 doubtless apprise me of all that related to his child. But I was 
 not destined to return to England for years. In Calcutta I found 
 sufficient encouragement in my career of artist to induce me to 
 stay there ; gradually ties of friendship and interest rendered 
 my return still more and more difficult ; and in fine it is not till 
 now, when the morning of life is past with me, that I have been 
 able once more to see my own country, and to execute my 
 friend's commission." 
 
 I briefly told him of Mrs. Hale's death. 
 
 " There is a child? " he resumed. 
 
 " There is," I answered ; " Miss Hale has been passing the 
 day with some neighbours, but I expect her in very shortly. 
 Won't you wait till she returns ? " 
 
 Mr. Lawson said he would wait gladly, and asked me if I 
 would not show him around the garden, what he had seen of it 
 from the window having roused his admiration. 
 
 *' Love me, love my dog," with me was translated, " Love me, 
 
440 LILIAN. 
 
 love my garden." So we wandered round the garden for about 
 half an hour. He made himself very agreeable, passing lightly 
 from one subject to another. The sun was setting golden, in a 
 blue and cloudless sky, when Lilian flashed suddenly upon us. 
 She was dressed in white, with red roses in her hair and 
 bosom. 
 
 *• Isn't it a splendid evening ? " she began, but stopped short 
 as she caught sight of the stranger. I introduced them, and 
 then Mr. Lawson, very delicately as I thought, touched upon 
 the subject of her father, and explained the cause of his visit. 
 
 " I'm down here," he added, after a pause, *' with a friend of 
 mine — a rather clever artist of the name of Bedford. Some of 
 his sketches are really excellent ; he has just done the * Village 
 Blacksmith and forge,' " 
 
 I could not help wondering if by any strange chance this 
 should be the same Bedford that Lilian's mother certainly had 
 treated so cruelly. 
 
 " How interesting ! " cried Lil. " I don't know what I would 
 not give to see the sketch of the smith himself; I love him. 
 I'm afraid your friend won't make him nearly handsome enough. 
 Please ask him to." 
 
 " I will," he replied, with a smile. " In the meanwhile, since 
 you care so much about seeing the sketch, I am sure Bedford 
 will only be too delighted for you and Miss Harper to see it, so 
 if I may, I'll borrow it and bring it up." Then turning to me : 
 " I should really be glad to know what you think of his work. 
 Some of his heads are good, I think. May I bring a specimen?" 
 
 " Of course," I said, " I should be only too delighted," and it 
 ended in my asking him to lunch for that day week. 
 
 " Quite an adventure, is it not .^" cried Lil, when our visitor 
 had gone. Then, very emphatically, " He is the very handsomest 
 man I ever saw." 
 
 *' I don't think," I answered, *^ you would say that if you had 
 seen more men. Wait, child, till you have gone through your 
 first season." 
 
 "Well, at least," she said, "I don't desire to see a handsomer. 
 His eyes seem to look through you." 
 
 " His eyes," I answered, " are doubtless his strong point." 
 
 At Lilian's earnest request, I asked the people of the rectory 
 to meet our new acquaintance — my child ^nd tjie rector's 
 daughter were close friends, 
 
LILIAN'. 441 
 
 At length the time for our modest little entertainment came. 
 It was a brilliant June day ; we were sitting on the lawn waiting 
 the last arrival. '' Oh, do tell us what he is like ! " cried Helen. 
 She was a rather romantic young person. 
 
 *' Let me see," rejoined Lilie. " Well, to begin with, he's tall 
 and slight, but there's no suggestion of weakness about him, 
 indeed, you feel sure he is very strong. He has rather a cold 
 face. His eyes are wonderful. I know now what people mean 
 when they talk about speaking eyes —no least little movement 
 you make seems to escape them. I defy any one to forget such 
 eyes." 
 
 " How delicious— how delicious !'^ cried Helen, in a transport, 
 clasping her hands. 
 
 ^'Doesn't it make him sound quite interesting, in the language 
 of lady novelists ? " answered Lilian, and she burst out singing 
 one of the old English ballads. 
 
 It was brought, however, to an abrupt conclusion by the 
 appearance on the scene of Mr. Lawson. 
 
 *' Won't you finish your song ?" he asked. '* You don't know 
 how cool and charming your voices sounded through the trees.'' 
 
 " I'll finish it with pleasure," she returned, smihng. 
 
 In the whole of her nature there was not one grain of 
 affectation. 
 
 " Thank you very much," he said, when the song was over. 
 
 Then the luncheon bell sounded, and we went in. 
 
 Through the meal Mr. Lawson kept us all entertained. He 
 had travelled far, and had plenty of good stories, which he told 
 with admirable effect. Lunch over, he produced his friend's 
 sketches, over which we all bent with interest. We felt, as all 
 people who live in the country do, a sense of proprietorship in 
 the lions of our neighbourhood, and were accordingly very 
 anxious that they should receive full justice from the hand of 
 the artist. On the whole we were satisfied ; but I was most 
 interested when he turned to ask me aside my opinion of his 
 friend's power in drawing heads. At the second one he showed 
 me I could not help starting, for there looked out at me the eyes 
 of my dead friend. This Bedford was the same then. 
 
 " How like Miss Hale," he observed, looking intently at the 
 drawing. 
 
 " That is hardly surprising," I replied, " seeing that this is a 
 drawing of her mother's head." 
 
442 LILIAN. 
 
 " That is very interesting," said Mr. Lawson. " May I tell 
 Bedford?" 
 
 " Most certainly you may ; moreover, I feel as if we ought 
 to know each other. Pray ask him if he will not call some day 
 with you." 
 
 " I am sure he will be only too delighted," returned Mr. 
 Lawson — he was putting the drawings away as he spoke. 
 
 We spent the rest of the afternoon very pleasantly lounging 
 upon the lawn. The conversation, led that way by Mr. Lawson, 
 and eagerly responded to by Lilian, ran on poetry. 
 
 After Helen saying that she thought Mrs. Hemans sweet, and 
 the rector asserting on his part that no poet had come to take 
 Cowper's place, they left the field, and gossiped with me of 
 indifferent things, while the other two went on talking and 
 quoting against each other. 
 
 About five, the rector and his wife and daughter left, and Mr. 
 Lawson soon followed. 
 
 " ril bring you round that Persian poem, if I may, then, for 
 it really is one of the grandest things that have ever been 
 written," he said, as he shook hands with Lilian. 
 
 It seemed to me that he looked at her with evident admira- 
 tion, and what wonder if he did ? Was she not good to look at t 
 Tall and graceful, with a pale, serene face lit by large, changeful 
 gray eyes, whose light seemed, somehow, to me like the altar 
 flame. The white, spacious forehead was crowned by its red- 
 gold hair. There was a great difference between her and her 
 mother, and yet how strong a likeness ! 
 
 ^' He is charming, isn't he ? " she said, when we were again 
 alone together. 
 
 " Yes, dear, very agreeable," I replied. I could give no 
 reason for it to myself, but I did not want her to care too 
 much about him. 
 
 *' You don't know how wonderfully he talks about poetry," 
 she went on. " I have learned more from an hour's talk with 
 him than I should have done from pages of written criticism. 
 Didn't you notice what a strange, sudden way he has of smiling?" 
 
 I laughed, and answered that I had not paid so much atten- 
 tion to him as she had. 
 
 The next day I had to go to our nearest post-town on busi- 
 ness. Lilian drove well, and liked driving, but that day nothing 
 would induce her to accompany me. It was hot, she said, and 
 
LILIAN'. 443 
 
 the sun would give her a headache, besides this she was in the 
 third vohniie of a most exciting novel. 
 
 " I will have everything ready for you so nicely when you 
 return, dear," she said, in her pretty coaxing way. "You won't 
 be back to lunch ? Well, then I'll see that you have the finest 
 strawberries and freshest cream for tea ; you shall find it all 
 spread under our favourite tree. Now, don't you see hov/ 
 much better it is that I should stay at home and play house- 
 keeper 1 " 
 
 Then, at this moment the ponies being brought round, she 
 ran to pat their necks — to tell them to behave themselves, and 
 not to be too unhappy because she wasn't going to drive them. 
 Then wdth a parting kiss to me, and a parting injunction to her 
 ponies to behave like the angels they were, she ran into the 
 house, singing as she went. She sang just as naturally as birds 
 sing. Oh ! subtle sw^eet voice, \vhich I hear now only in the 
 Land of sleep, or fancy sometimes that I catch a strain of its old 
 sw^eetness borne on the melancholy outcry of an autumn wind 
 in the dark boughs of the fir trees ! 
 
 I had a tiring day at , having much to do there, and it 
 
 was late ui the afternoon when I reached home. As I came 
 up the garden I heard a sound of voices. Mr. Lawson was 
 lying on the lawn. Lilian was sitting close by, in a low garden 
 chair, and looked very beautiful, flushed, and animated. I saw 
 then, in a moment, and wondered at my own stupidity in not 
 having seen before, her reason for wishing to remain at home. 
 Had not Mr. Lawson the day before asked permission to bring 
 a certain Persian poem, and was there not, to say the least of 
 it, a strong chance that he would avail himself of the permis- 
 sion granted at the earliest date he could ? Nor did it escape 
 me that she had put on one of her prettiest gowns. 
 
 " I am afraid. Miss Harper," he said, rising as soon as he 
 saw me, " I am afraid you must have had a very tiring drive 
 in this great heat. . . Let me see, how many miles is it 1 " 
 
 " Six,'' I replied. 
 
 "Is it, indeed.-^ It was even farther than I thought. Miss 
 Hale has been so good as to let me make n)yself at home under 
 the shade of your glorious trees. In this poem I have brought, 
 there is a verse which is capable of two interpretations. I have 
 my interpretation and Miss Hale has hers ; but which is right 
 or wrong, we are going to leave to your decision." 
 
444 LILIAN. 
 
 I refused to be umpire till 1 had had my well-earned tea. Of 
 course I could not do otherwise than ask Mr. Lawson to stay 
 to tea, and to my great disappointment he accepted the invita- 
 tion gladly, but I was disposed to be cross. I was tired, and 
 perhaps too was a little old-maidish, but I had looked forward 
 to being very quiet when I reached home, chatting or being 
 silent just as I liked. Now I had to arrange my hair, to change 
 my gown for a better looking one than that which I had put on 
 to confront the dust of the roads. I had to put on also my 
 company manner. Lil often used to joke me about this com- 
 pany manner of mine. Perhaps she was right. I think I was 
 naturally formal, owing to a cold, very reserved temperament. 
 I never could get quickly intimate with people, and this was, 
 I suppose, the reason why I made so few friends, and why my 
 Lilie came to be so wholly the light and comfort and interest of 
 my life. 
 
 Shortly after tea was over, Mr. Lawson took his leave, reluct- 
 antly as I thought. 
 
 " Lilian,^' I said, ^^ did Mr. Lawson tell you he should call 
 here to-day?'' 
 
 '' No." 
 
 *' But you thought it very likely he would call 1 " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 ** And that was why you stopped at home ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Lil," I went on, " you are getting too much interested in 
 this man." 
 
 " Am I ? " she answered, throwing her arms round my neck, 
 and burying her face in my bosom, to hide the blushes with 
 which I knew it was all aglow. 
 
 " Take care, my dear," I said ; remember that we know 
 nothing of him " — to which she answered, looking up and with 
 some pride in her tone : " We know he is a gentleman. What 
 more need we to know ?" Then she left me. 
 
 As fate willed it, through that month of June, my child. was to 
 see a good deal of Mr. Lawson, for the rector had taken a pro- 
 found liking for him. That he went so often to the rectory was 
 probably owing to the fact that he was pretty sure to find Lilian 
 there. I could see now that he hardly tried to disguise his 
 admiration of her. It became the subject of talk. 
 
 He informed rne that his friend Bedford had been much 
 
LIUaM. 445 
 
 pleased by my invitation, and hoped some day to be allowed to 
 present himself, but just then he had been called back to London 
 on most pressing business. I wished pressing business would 
 call Bedford's friend back, also. I thought that he and Lilian 
 were just interested in each other for the time, and that, when 
 they were parted, all must naturally end. He must have been 
 at least twice her age, and had his years been nearer hers, there 
 was something about him which made me feel he was not in all 
 ways the kind of man I wanted for my Lilie ; yet it was hard 
 to describe what it was in him that I did not like. Perhaps it 
 was because it seemed to me that at times he would talk in a 
 perfectly heartless vein, while at others he would be almost sen- 
 timental. Lil evidently thought this contrast fascinating, but, 
 for me, I confess, it repelled me. 
 
 It was the last day of June : evening had fallen, and I sat by 
 myself in my sitting-room, whose French windows, standing 
 wide open, led out upon the lawn. Through the dusk a night- 
 ingale was beginning to sing, the peace of heaven seemed to 
 rest upon the earth. I was in one of those rare moods of mind 
 when sadness is almost sweet, when nothing stands out sharply 
 defined. The night made me think of other far-off nights, just 
 like this, wh«n Lil's mother and I had sat together in the garden 
 running round the Kensington house, and where, waxing very 
 sentimental in the moonlight, we had planned out our futures, 
 always in some way to be connected, and described what 
 manner of man we would be graciously pleased to take for a 
 husband. 
 
 And now the moon was shining on Kate's grave ! Then 
 I wondered about young Bedford, whom she had treated so 
 badly, wondered if he had quite forgotten her, or if he still cared 
 anything about her memory. 
 
 Lil had gone to play the harmonium in the church. There 
 was no service, she had only gone to practice. She was later 
 in coming home than she had said she should be, but this did 
 not surprise me, because the rector often looked in, and took 
 her home for an hour or two, and then walked back with her. 
 Still, as the time went on, I wished she would come, for it was 
 later than was usual with her, even on such occasions, and I 
 knew the rectory people to be early in their habits. I was 
 growing very uneasy, when I heard the garden gate open and 
 shut, and the light step of my darling coming up the path. 
 
446 LILIAN, 
 
 "111 the moonlight only," she cried, ''how nice!" Then 
 she came to the sofa where I was lying, and knelt down 
 beside me. 
 
 " I was getting dreadfully anxious about you," I began. 
 
 *• Were you ?" she answered, in what seemed to me a strangely 
 irrelevant tone of voi.ce, as if she had found in my words an 
 almost incredible sweetness. 
 
 " You don't seem in the least sorry," I said. 
 
 "Yes, I am," she answered, with a start. 
 
 " You've been to the rectory, I suppose," I went on. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Where have you been all this time, then ? " 
 
 " Part of the time in church, and part walking about." 
 
 Was it purposely that she leaned her cheek against my hand, 
 that I might feel how warm it was ? 
 
 " Who were you with ?" I asked. 
 
 " W^ith Mr. Lawson," in a very low tone of voice. 
 
 " Lilian," I cried, '• something has happened." 
 
 '' Yes," she said, in a voice that seemed possessed and hal- 
 lowed by a great joy. " The divinest and sweetest thing which 
 could happen to me in all the world has happened. He loves 
 me — he loves me. Hush ! " seeing that I was about to speak, 
 "let me tell you about it first. I was sitting in the church. 
 The moon had just risen, and I was playing from memory, 
 when I heard a footfall close by me. I knew quite well whom 
 I should see when I raised my eyes. ' Please play that last 
 piece over again,' he said, ' I have been listening outside for 
 more than an hour. It was some time before I could make 
 up my mind to enter — it is so long since I have been in a 
 church, but you drew me, and here I am.' I said : ' I wish you 
 would come to church sometimes.' He replied, ' Do you ? Then 
 I will ; don't you know I want to do in all things that which 
 you wish ? Now play me my music' And I played. 
 
 " When I said it was time for me to close the church, and 
 leave the key at the sexton's, he said he would walk with me 
 there. Then he said, ' Let us walk a little this way. I have 
 something that I want to tell you,' and then" — here the sweet 
 voice faltered, but resumed — " then he told me how he loved 
 me ; how, to make me his wife, there was nothing he would not 
 do, nothing he would not give up." 
 
 " And you," I asked, " what did you say ? " 
 
LILIAN, 447 
 
 " What coidd I say? " she answered, "but tell him the truth ; 
 how with all my heart and soul I loved him — how the thought 
 that he loved me flooded my life with heaven. He is coming 
 to see you to-morrow, early. Dear, you don't know how I love 
 him. I am possessed by a great unutterable peace. Then, at 
 times, the. thought comes sharply home to me that it is no 
 dream, and that he does love me. It stings me with a rapture 
 so keen that it is almost like exquisite pain, and I have to dig 
 my nails into my hands, and bite my lips to keep myself from 
 crying out in my bliss, as people cry out in their agony." 
 
 We neither of us, I think, got much sleep that night. Indeed, 
 dawn was clearly visible before we made a move in the direc- 
 tion of bed. 
 
 I was sorry that she should have cared so much about a man 
 whom I could not like better ; but, since she did so, since he 
 seemed to love her in a way so pure and ardent — if other things 
 proved satisfactory — no personal prejudices of mine should 
 stand in the way of their happiness. 
 
 The next morning, at a very early hour, I had an interview 
 with Mr. Lawson. Of course we were quite to ourselves. I 
 fancy, on the whole, he hardly liked me any better than I liked 
 him. 
 
 "Well," I began, "my ward has told me of the very flattering 
 feelings you entertain for her." 
 
 " Don't let us waste time in pretty speeches," he put in. 
 " This is how the case stands, Miss Harper. I " — here he 
 hesitated a moment, and then went on — " I love your ward. 
 She honours me by returning the feeling I have for her. Under 
 these circumstances, you naturally want to know something 
 more about me than you do. My father, General Lawson, now 
 in Bombay, will, in such an event, promptly answer any letter 
 you may care to address to him. I have been called to the bar, 
 but do not practice my profession. I dabble a little in painting. 
 Occasionally I write rhymes. With the settlement my father 
 will make, I shall, I hope, be able to keep my wife as becomes 
 her station in life and mine. If you wish to know my views 
 about a future life, I am not so confident of it as you are, still, I 
 trust for the best. Up to the present time, I have led neither 
 a worse nor a better life than is led by men who don't consider 
 the mortification of the body as the first and necessary step 
 toward a fairly worthy life. For the rest, our family lawyer, 
 
^48 LILIAN. 
 
 Stockvvell, of Chancery Lane, will furnish you with all the infor- 
 mation you can desire. He is at present out of England, but 
 will be back by the middle of next month. Now, Miss Harper, 
 while these things are pending, may I consider myself as your 
 ward's accepted suitor ? " 
 
 He had spoken, as it were, in a breath. Then he paused and 
 looked me full in the face. 
 
 " She seems to care very much for you," I said. " You have 
 been frank with me, I think ; I will write to your father, if you 
 please. In the meantime I am prepared to raise no objection." 
 
 "Thank you," he said; "then we may consider the inter- 
 view over, I suppose ? " 
 
 *' Certainly, I have nothing more to say. I think you are 
 pretty sure to find Lilian on the lawn." 
 
 " I shall find her somewhere, I have no doubt," he rejoined. 
 " Good morning ! " and with his most courteous bow he went, 
 and I sat there in the beautiful summer weather and cried 
 myself blind. 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 Was my darling as happy in this engagement as she had 
 expected to be — as I had hoped she would be ? It would have 
 been hard to say. Sometimes I would see in her eyes a clear 
 intense light of joy ; at other times she seemed feverishly 
 anxious, as if she feared she might lose what she held so dear, 
 and once when she and Lawson had been together, I saw she 
 had been crying. Coming upon them one day, quite unex- 
 pectedly, when they were sitting on the lawn, I heard him say : 
 
 " No, Lil, what I say is the truth ; you don't love me." 
 
 " I don't love you ? " she replied ; " if I don't, then, I never 
 heard of a woman who did love." 
 
 I was passing on, when he called to me. 
 
 " Please stay, Miss Harper, if you don't mind. Miss Lilian 
 says she loves me, and I say she doesn't. Do let us have your 
 opinion." 
 
 *' Really," I answered, not well pleased^ smoothing my child's 
 
LILIAN. 449 
 
 hair as I spoke. " I think there can be only one opinion upon 
 that subject." 
 
 "Very good," he repHed, " now let me tell you a pretty httle 
 fable. Once upon a time there lived a certain little boy. He 
 lived in a small country village, alone with his father and 
 mother. Truth to say, he was a grave, and not at all a brilliant 
 child. His parents were poor people. They spent their time 
 in drinking and beating their son. At length it occurred to the 
 father that if they beat him all the time, he would get so hard 
 as not to mind it. So the boy was left comparatively in peace. 
 He spent his hours of freedom in wandering round the village. 
 He was an unhappy boy, as you may imagine. He had in him 
 a poet's soul. He took a great delight in beauty, and there was 
 not such a thing as a pretty girl in the whole village. Well, a 
 good fairy, seeing this, took pity on him, and made one of the 
 very ugliest little girls you ever heard of look like an angel of 
 beauty in his eyes. She had hardly any flesh on her bones. 
 Her face was as yellow as butter. Two of her front teeth were 
 gone. Her eyes were small and dim, and there were always 
 red circles round them, and one had a cast in it. Her hair was 
 long and coarse, and of a nondescript colour. A few people in 
 the village said that she did wash her face once a week, but 
 the rest asked for a sign, and would not believe. The boy 
 worshipped. Will you tell me what he worshipped ? " 
 
 Mr. Lawson ceased, and looked round with a well satisfied 
 expression of countenance. 
 
 "To all practical purposes," said Lilian, "he loved the girl. 
 Your fairy, I suppose, is intended to symbolize that spirit of 
 idealism by whose spell those we love seem nobler and more 
 attractive than in reality they are. Our power to idealize, born 
 with love, may strengthen it. Then its work is done. If we 
 have once really loved we may be disillusionized, yet go on 
 loving all the same.'^ 
 
 I said, jestingly — 
 
 " I ask not, 1 kiloW Hot, if guilts in thy heart, 
 I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art." 
 
 To which Mr. Lawson replied, with a long laugh. There Was 
 something in his laugh that I could not like. 
 
 " I knew an old lady once who, on hearing a young girl quote 
 those linesj burst out, raising eyes and hands to heaven — * Why, 
 
 30 
 
450 LILIAN, 
 
 he might have been a pickpocket ! ' " Then he went on, with a 
 grim smile : "And there are worse things in the world than 
 pickpockets, let alone murderers. There are pickers of hearts, 
 and these are more dangerous than pickers of pockets — women, 
 Miss Harper, who play with men's hearts as cats play with mice." 
 
 He fixed his eyes full on my face, then looked at Lilian, and 
 said to me : 
 
 " She's like that drawing of her mother, isn't she ? " 
 
 " I never knew you had one," said Lilian. 
 
 " Yes," he replied. '* I borrowed it from a man who knew 
 her once. I borrowed it that you might see it." Here he 
 drew out the head and put it in her hands. 
 
 *' She must have been very beautiful," was Lil's first remark. 
 
 "Was she, Miss Harper?" he asked, looking at me. "You 
 can tell us better than any one." 
 
 *' Certainly," I replied, " she was a beautiful girl." 
 
 "So I should think," he remarked, " and fascinating, too. 
 She had sweet, bright, unexpected ways with her, which you 
 remembered when she had gone, and for which you loved her. 
 She could be very scornful. With those she loved she got 
 easily angry, being, jealous and sensitive. You could not tell 
 which was the more captivating, her anger or her repentance. 
 She could bring you to her feet by a simple gesture. When 
 you took her hand it seemed to cling always in yours. So was 
 she, according to Bedford's account." 
 
 He had been lying on the lawn smoking. Now he got up 
 and threw his cigar away, and stood looking at us both in 
 silence. 
 
 " She must have been charming," said Lil. 
 
 " One man thought so," he replied. " Good evening, I'm off 
 now." 
 
 " You're not going so early, are you ? " she asked, her voice 
 quivering with a dreadful apprehension that he was. 
 
 "Yes, I am," he answered gaily, " *for men must work, and 
 women must weep.' " 
 
 " But I'm not going to weep, and you're not going to work," 
 she broke out. " I won't be left at this hour ; you can't have 
 any important work to do down here." 
 
 " I must go," he answered, as I thought sharply and shortly. 
 
 " Oh, very well, then," she said, with sweet, sudden dignity, 
 " good evening." 
 
IJLTAN\ 451 
 
 I was curious to see bow this little scene would end. He 
 took her outstretched hand, smiled, and turned away. There 
 was an awful silence, neither she nor I spoke. I saw her breath 
 was coming and going quickly. All colour had left her face. 
 In her eyes was visible an agony of suspense. Five long 
 minutes we kept silent. At the end of that time, Lawson, who 
 I suppose had not got farther than the gate, returned, and 
 threw himself down once more in his own place. I saw how 
 she strove, but vainly, to keep the colour from mantling in her 
 face, and the light of joy from surprising her eyes, but her voice 
 was perfectly calm, as she said ; 
 
 *^So, after all, you have concluded to give up work ? '' 
 
 " Come and sing me a song," said he, suddenly. " Your 
 mother used to sing \vell, Bedford says. Do you sing any of 
 her songs ? " 
 
 Here I put in : " Only one." 
 
 *' And what may that be ? " he asked. 
 
 *' Green Sleeves," I said. 
 
 ** Green Sleeves let it be, then," he cried. 
 
 Lilian began to sing, he joining in the chorus with feverish 
 animation : 
 
 " Green sleeves was all my joy ; 
 Green sleeves was my delight ; 
 Green sleeves was my heart of gold, 
 And who but my Lady Green Sleeves? " 
 
 I left them, and an hour or two afterward, just in the quiet 
 moon-rise — herself as quiet as moonlight — came Lilian, and 
 stood beside me. 
 
 " He is gone 1 " I asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 *' Have you had a happy evening, my dear ?" 
 
 *' So happy," she answered, in a low, rapturous tone. 
 
 " He does not always make you happy," I said. 
 
 '' No, not always ; but, if I could, there is not one way in 
 which I would have him different." 
 
 " We must have the rectory people here to-morrow," I said ; 
 and we must, my dear, call on those new people." 
 
 But she made no answer. I saw that she did not hear me. 
 She was smiling all to herself, recalling some speech or look of 
 his. One day he said to her in my presence ; 
 
452 LiLIAiV. 
 
 " Suppose, Lil, you were to find me out a retired burglar, or 
 an escaped convict. What would you think of me then, eh ? '^ 
 
 "I should think," she answered, gravely, *'just the same as I 
 do now, that I love you. But, please, don't talk any more like 
 
 that. Now, I have to drive to . Who wants to come with 
 
 me ? " 
 
 " Oh, I do, of course," he returned, " may I ? '' 
 
 '' Yes, you may, if you'll be very good, and not want to drive 
 more than a third of the way." 
 
 " I promise," he said, laughing, " whatever I may want, ?tot 
 to drive more than a third of the way." 
 
 That day she was in one of her brightest moods. The July 
 days went by. Such brilliant summer weather had not been 
 known for many years. The want of rain, however, began to 
 look serious. One night — it was the last in July — Mr. Lawson 
 stayed particularly late. When my darling came to wish me 
 good-night it seemed to me that she was disturbed. "Is any- 
 thing the matter?" I asked. 
 
 " No, no," she rephed, a little doubtfully ; " he was just a 
 little strange to-night ; that is all. Talked as he does some- 
 times, in a way that I never can understand." 
 
 She was just leaving the room, when she turned round sud- 
 denly and said : 
 
 " Do you love your child ? " 
 
 " What do you think .^ " I answered, putting my arms round 
 her, and drawing her very close to me. 
 
 " I think you do." 
 
 I sat up late that night, thinking of long past days. In long 
 spells of hot weather there comes one crowning day of heat, 
 when the sun burns yet more intensely; when the sky is more 
 intolerably blue than ever ; when no least breath of wind stirs 
 anywhere. Such a day was it which opened that August. 
 Great heats, like great frosts, make a silence. Birds were sick 
 with heat in the shade. The only sound audible was that pro- 
 duced by the garden-roller, passing from time to time across 
 the garden walks. We had just finished breakfast when a hand- 
 delivered letter was brought in for LiHan. Her face fell woe- 
 fully, as she said : 
 
 " It's from Edgar. Of course that means he isn't coming 
 to-day." 
 
 " Do you expect him to come always every day .^ " I asked. 
 
LILIAN. 453 
 
 " I'm afraid," she said, smiling rather faintly, " that I do." 
 
 I turned to finish my own letters, and she opened hers. 
 
 " Can't you and Lilian,^' wrote an old friend of mine, "join 
 us in Switzerland? Till you have seen the Alps you can form 
 no idea how beautiful they are." 
 
 I had read so far, when a cry, not loud but like nothing I had 
 ever heard or imagined for anguish, made me drop my letter 
 and lift my eyes in horror. Lilian was leaning back in her 
 chair ; her face was white as death. The look on it was like 
 the cry that had broken from her lips. The letter was crushed 
 in her hands. 
 
 " My darling ! " I cried, springing up and going to her, " you 
 are ill! Lil ! Lil ! " 
 
 She moved her lips as if to speak, but could not ; yet she did 
 not faint. At length she managed to say in a whisper : 
 
 " Read it." 
 
 Sick at the thought of what I might have to read, I took the 
 letter, and this was what I read : 
 
 " When you receive this letter I shall be some way from you, 
 and I trust, by the grace of God, that we shall meet no more. 
 Nineteen years ago your mother was engaged to a man named 
 Bedford. How that man loved her no one will ever know. 
 Without iiote of warning she cast him off for a richer man. 
 Not only this, but she did not tell him his fate — only let him 
 find it out by degrees. Such exquisite delight did she antici- 
 pate from his suffering that she would not have it come too soon. 
 When he knew his fate, he knew too that his life was blasted. 
 He left England and roved about the world for nineteen years. 
 Coming back, Fate led him to this place, that through him the 
 daughter should expiate the sin of the mother. I am that man. 
 If you suffer to-day, I pray that she may know it. The pain 
 will not go very deep with you. You will cry to-day, and to- 
 morrow, perhaps ; but the day after you will laugh. Now, 
 good-bye, for ever. 
 
 "Malcolm Bedford." 
 
 "Is it true?" she asked. 
 
 " It is too true," I answered, as well as I could, for my great 
 indignation seemed choking me. I turned sick with loathing. 
 She had risen and stood with her eyes fixed on me. I was 
 trying to speak, when she put up her hand, and said ; 
 
454 LILIAN, 
 
 '^ Don't. How he must have suffered ! " 
 
 I longed to cast my arms round her, but dared not. She 
 stood there looking strange and awful in her quiet. Then she 
 left the room. I can hear again the door shut behind her as on 
 that silent summer morning. I knew she wished to be alone, 
 so I did not follow her. 
 
 I sat there not oblivious, but morbidly conscious of everything 
 about me. Bees were buzzing near the window ; the gardener 
 was still working his roller quite unconcernedly ; and as on the 
 eye of a murdered person is stamped the image of a murderer 
 — the last thing seen before death — so in my brain kept ringing 
 the last words my eyes had rested on before I heard Lilian's 
 cry and looked up. '' How beautiful the Alps are ! How 
 beautiful the Alps are ! " The silences and the sounds of sum- 
 mer always now bring back to me that terrible morning. How 
 long I sat there I don't know. Then I began to wonder what 
 would happen next. Something must happen. Where was 
 Lilian ? Surely now the time had come when I might go to 
 her, so I rose. The house was flooded with summer. It 
 seemed that flame, not air, came in at the open windows. At 
 the door of Lilian's sitting-room I listened. All there was still. 
 I opened the door softly and looked in. No, she was not there, 
 nor was she in her bed-room, where I went next. Equally 
 vain was my search for her in the garden. Her ponies were 
 not out ; no, to be sure of being quite alone, she had gone wander- 
 ing far away. There were'some woods two or three miles off. She 
 loved them, I knew ; perhaps to these then, as to a refuge, she 
 had gone. I could not bear to think of her being out in this 
 burning summer weather, but she had wished to escape from 
 the house, from me, and the wish of her grief I was bound to 
 respect. I went back to my sitting-room and gave myself up 
 to hours of awful waiting. It seemed to me strange that the 
 servants should go about their work just the same as usual. At 
 the accustomed hour the luncheon bell sounded. I got up and 
 went to the dining-room. The parlour-maid wished to know if 
 she should not tell Miss Lilian. 
 
 " I don't think Miss Lilian will be in to lunch," I said. 
 
 I swallowed a few mouthfuls and left the room. When would 
 
 Lilian come ? God pity us who have to wait and agonize. The 
 
 heavy, burning afternoon wore itself away. I went often to 
 
 Lilian's room to see if she had not returned, but every time I 
 
LILIAN, , 455 
 
 went I was disappointed. At five o'clock came the usual cup 
 of afternoon tea. 
 
 '^ Miss Lilian has not returned yet, I suppose ? '' I said, hardly 
 daring to venture the question. 
 
 '' Not yet." 
 
 The answer was what I had expected, yet my heart sank 
 within me. Awful and dark fears beset me. It seemed to me 
 that there was no trouble I could not bear if only she were with 
 me again. All her sweet ways came back to me till I felt the 
 tears crowding to my eyes. What should I do if night fell and 
 still she had not come? It began to seem to me as if it were 
 impossible for her to return. I knew this to be morbid, and 
 strove to reason it down. I was too restless to keep quiet any 
 longer, so I went into the garden. A great change had taken 
 place in the weather ; the sun's light was no longer visible in 
 the sky, save where, in the extreme west, one lurid patch shone 
 out like the flame of a bale-fire, and this was soon hidden by 
 the great masses of cloud that were spreading all over the 
 heavens. 
 
 *' We shall have a storm soon, I judge, ma'am/' said the 
 gardener to me, as I passed. 
 
 '' Don'H you think it may pass over?'' I asked. 
 
 " Not a bit of it, ma'am, and the more we have of it the 
 better." 
 
 In an adjoining field sheep were bleating loudly and all to- 
 gether, as is their wont when rain is imminent. Even at that 
 moment came a low rumbling of thunder ; or, rather, it was 
 more like an immense prolonged shudder of the air. 
 
 I went to the house. It seemed as if the earth were in a 
 state of awful expectation. Then came another peal of thunder, 
 louder, as if giving the countersign to that which had preceded 
 it. Then, for a moment, it seemed to me that I heard the earth 
 and heavens gasp. Then from the immense, black, impene- 
 trable vault of heaven the rain burst in a deluge, and sang and 
 shouted as it came. The thunder followed, crash upon crash, 
 as if God, at length provoked out of God-like patience, had 
 taken His mace in hand, and had smitten again and again, 
 with the strength of His terrible right arm, the old wrong-doing 
 world, that quailed, being stricken to its centre. Then sud- 
 denly a cold wind sprang up, and came rushing through the 
 trees. In a few minutes it had grown to be a hurricane, driving 
 
456 LILIAN. 
 
 the mad rain before it — the rain through which the lightning 
 flashed. How the rain hissed against the hard, cracking earth ! 
 What a strange odour rose from it hke steam ? There was an 
 instant closing of all doors and windows. Already in rooms 
 surprised by the rain, pools of water were standing. My sitting- 
 room, in which I was, stood at the back of the house. I walked 
 up and down, half frantic to think of Lilian out in this storm — 
 and where ? I summoned one of the servants and ordered a 
 fire to be lighted in her room. Then I resumed my walk, shud- 
 dering at every fresh flash of lightning and at every fresh burst 
 of thunder. Slowly, however, the thunder and the lightning 
 ceased, but the wind raved round the house, and the rain kept 
 on pouring steadily. I was thinking I could not bear the sus- 
 pense, when sharp and suddenly the house-bell rang. 
 
 " Thank God ! " broke from my lips. I rushed into the hall, 
 flung open the door, and clasped my darling in my arms. I 
 drew her into my room — the extreme tension had been too 
 much for me, and, as I clasped and kissed her, I burst into 
 tears. " Oh, my dear," I cried, " I thought you were lost, or 
 that something dreadful had happened to you," and then I 
 laughed for joy to have her back. 
 
 *' I'm not lost, you see," she said, quietly, "only so tired, so 
 tired. I think I must sleep, don't you ? " 
 
 The rain was streaming from her clothes ; they clung close 
 and heavily round her limbs and figure — the rain poured too 
 from her loosened hair. 
 
 " You must go to bed at once," I said.' 
 
 *' Yes," she answered, *' I am quite ready." 
 
 As I undressed her, she said no word, only from time to time 
 she shivered. 
 
 " You are cold .^" I asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered, " very cold." 
 
 As soon as she was in bed, I brought her a glass of hot wine 
 and water and a biscuit. 
 
 " This is only the first course," I said, with what I felt was a 
 ghastly attempt at a joke. " More substantial things are to follow." 
 
 She drank the wine, and swallowed a few mouthfuls of bis- 
 cuit ; but when I brought her a small piece of chicken, and told 
 her she must try and eat it, she burst out crying, and said : 
 
 " I can't — it would choke me. Won't you let me be in 
 peace ? I pray you to be ^ood to me, now," 
 
LILIAN. 457 
 
 I could do nothing but sit down by the fire and wait. I de- 
 termined not to leave her. Before long she fell into a broken, 
 feverish, uneasy sleep. 
 
 " Come here," she called to me, suddenly waking up, "Don't 
 let him go. He won't go, if you ask him not to. You will ask 
 him, won't you? " 
 
 '•' Yes, dear, of course," I answered, seeing that she was 
 delirious. Then she began crying, and tossing from side to 
 side. 
 
 **Are you in pain, my darling.^" I asked. 
 
 '* No, only so tired," she answered ; "he makes me go on 
 walking all the time. He won't let me sit down for a moment." 
 
 Then for a while she grew quieter and closed her eyes ; but 
 before long they opened again, and fixing them full on my face, 
 she asked, with that supernatural earnestness characteristic of 
 persons in delirium : 
 
 " Where have you taken my rose-tree ? My beautiful red 
 rose-tree." 
 
 " Dear," I said, " no one has touched it. You'll find it quite 
 safe in its old place.". 
 
 " I don't think so," she replied. " I think the wind has it. 
 Oh ! why won't he let me sit down ? " and she began crying 
 again. Ah ! me ! that was a fearful night ; but in the cold, 
 wet, windy dawning she fell into what seemed an almost quiet 
 sleep. 
 
 At a very early hour I sent for the doctor. By the time he 
 came, she was awake again. She was feverish, but no longer 
 delirious, though she had a sharp pain in her side, which would 
 not let her draw her breath in peace. Did we know what that 
 meant 1 — that even then the deadly work was begun 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 All through that terrible August I had to watch the inroads 
 made on my darling by the most pitiless of all diseases. We 
 saw consumption making its fatal way, and could not avert it. 
 There was only one least little chance, said the doctor, and 
 
458 LILIAN, 
 
 that was to build up her strength that she might, before the 
 winter, be enabled to travel to the south of Prance. 
 
 " And is this all the hope you can give me ?" I said. 
 
 " I wish I could give you more," he replied, gravely. 
 
 Lilian was not kept in bed, as we judged it was better for 
 her to have the open air, so a sofa was placed for her on the 
 lawn, where for hours together she would lie silent ; or, if 
 feeling even weaker than usual, she would lie on the couch in 
 her sitting-room, at the open window of which the bright glowing 
 summer weather would stream in. 
 
 One day, when I was unnaturally gay, in my attempt to hide 
 from her the awful grief that was ever uppermost in my heart, 
 she said, faintly, but sweetly : 
 
 " Dear, why will you try and play a part ? I know that I am 
 dying, just as well as you and the doctor know it. I knew a 
 girl that died of consumption. We won't talk about it, if it 
 pains you," she added, seeing 1 could no longer keep the tears 
 out of my eyes. 
 
 The summer wore away and brought September. Lilian 
 remained just about the same. To-day she would be too weary 
 to leave her bed ; the next day she would seem a little better 
 again, and able to lie upon the lawn. One unusually warm 
 September evening, I was with my darling in her sitting-room. 
 We had been on the lawn all through the afternoon, but at the 
 first suggestion of evening I brought her in. There was a com- 
 fortable ground-floor room that used to be called her library, 
 and I had had this converted into a bedroom for her. She was 
 leaning back in her chair, propped up by pillows. 
 
 I was standing by the window, looking out into the wonder- 
 fully peaceful sunset. I thought she was too exhausted to 
 speak. Suddenly she called me, but in a voice sounding so 
 faint and far away that it seemed like the phantom of a sound. 
 In an instant 1 was by her on my knees. 
 
 *^ Do you want anything, my darling? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 Then she asked, as I put my arms round her, just as she had 
 asked that night before the blow of which she was then dying 
 had been dealt her : 
 
 *' Dear — do you love your child ? " 
 
 *' Yes," I cried ; " more than ever a mother loved her 
 dearest." 
 
LILIAN, 459 
 
 " Will you do something for me ? " was her next question. 
 She was leanin^j her cheek against my hand — that was one of 
 the sweet caressing ways she had. 
 
 " There is nothing I would not do for you, my darling," I 
 answered. 
 
 " Nothing ? " she cried, almost eagerly. " Remember, you've 
 said that." 
 
 " Always providing," I answered, " what you want is not bad 
 for you." 
 
 ^' It would be good for me," was her reply. 
 
 Then, for some minutes, she was silent, looking out into the 
 clear gold sunset, with those beautiful, fathomless eyes of hers. 
 I kissed again and again her long, lily-white hand, the fingers 
 of which had grown so slim that she had had to put aside the 
 pretty opal ring she used to wear. It had belonged to her 
 mother, and its changeful brightness always delighted her eye. 
 Ah, not in vain, from my dead friend's mother to her, and from 
 her to this my child, had the beautiful, baneful opal been 
 handed down. 
 
 At length Lilian broke silence, and said in a passionate 
 whisper, trying to press my hands — hers were so weak that 
 they could only indicate a pressure : 
 
 "I warfct^//;^. That is what I want — I want you to bring 
 him to me." 
 
 "Lilian!" I cried, springing up; "you can't mean this? — 
 you wouldn't ask me to do that ? If I were to see that man 
 again, I believe I should somehow kill him." 
 
 I turned away, and went to stand by the window. How 
 could I look again upon the murderer of my child ? Presently 
 I turned and came to her. Her hands were clasped loosely 
 in each other, and upon them the large tears were falling fast. 
 
 " You mustn't cry," I said, " it's so bad for you." 
 
 "I can't help it," she answered, simply. "I'm not strong 
 enough to keep from crying all the time." 
 
 " Lil," I cried, desperately, " it shall be all as you wish — I 
 will bring him to you." 
 
 At these words her tears ceased almost instantly, and she 
 looked up with something like a smile in my face, and said : 
 
 " Thank you, dear — and when will you go? " 
 
 " We'll talk about that," I answered, " when you're in bed. 
 " It's high time for you to go now." 
 
46o LILIAN, 
 
 As I had resolved to carry out her wish, I determined to 
 start as soon as possible. Fortunately, our housekeeper was a 
 woman in whose care I could safely leave my treasure. 
 
 How to find the man was the point which at once occurred 
 to Lil and me. We knew some people in London of the nam.e 
 of Brooks. Mr. Brooks was an artist. It was possible that from 
 him I might obtain the information I desired. 'Anyhow, to go 
 to him was the first thing to be done, 
 
 ** Doesn't the night seem long?" said Lilian. " It seems as 
 if it never would go,'' 
 
 I knew why she was so impatient for the night to pass. That 
 she should still love this man, was an excruciating pain to 
 me. 
 
 The part of Rockshire in which we lived was not a long 
 journey from London, and by twelve o'clock the next day I 
 found myself on the platform of Charing Cross Station. Mr, 
 Brooks lived in Fitzroy Square. I called a cab and drove 
 straight to his house. I was relieved to find only himself at 
 home, his family not having returned from the seaside. All I 
 told him was that it was a matter of the utmost importance, that 
 I should have Mr. Bedford's address at once. Mr. Brooks did 
 not know the address, but he thought he knew a man who did 
 — the fear was lest he should have left town, as he had talked 
 of doing. He would go at once, he said, and see. 
 
 Shall I ever forget that terrible hour of suspense, when I sat 
 and waited in the large sombre studio 1 It was pervaded by 
 a subtle odour of paint, and now paint always smells to 
 me of suspense. In a recess of the room was a cage con- 
 taining doves, which from time to time gave forth their 
 peculiar, soft, shuddering, melancholy music. With the sensi- 
 tiveness of one too keenly ahve, I sat and listened to the 
 passing to and fro of the vehicles. A man passed with a 
 barrow of autumn flowers, calling out, ^' Fine flowers ! fine 
 flowers ! all a-blowing, all a-growing." Drawn by an irre- 
 sistible fascination, my eyes kept themselves fixed on a lay 
 figure. It had, thrown round it, an old-fashioned cloak of a 
 very faded red. I had only known this room as crowded with 
 people and loud with voices, so that it seemed to me quite 
 strange to be in it alone. I began thinking how different was 
 the life of this artist from the one I led, and I thought of my 
 own sweet-snaelling Rockshire garden, at that moment brimmed 
 
LILIAN. 461 
 
 With pure air, and with the ardent sunlight, which my child 
 was doubtless watching from her window. 
 
 At length I heard a quick-going hansom pull up sharply in 
 front of the house. In another minute the heavy street-door 
 opened and closed, and I heard a quick step coming up the 
 stone stairs. Then Mr. Brooks came into the room. 
 
 " I am glad to tell you," he said, kindly, " that I have pro- 
 cured the address you wish. I see. Miss Harper, that you are 
 in a hurry, so I will not try to detain you. Some other time 
 I shall hope for the pleasure of a chat. By the by, I kept 
 my hansom, thinking it might be of use to you." 
 
 I thanked him as best I could for all his kindness. He 
 closed the doors of the hansom, telling the driver where to 
 drive. ** It's only a few streets oft," he said, and then we 
 rattled away. 
 
 In a few minutes I reached my destination, a tall, ill-cared- 
 for looking house, in a dull dingy street. 
 
 " Is Mr. Bedford in ? " I asked of the poor little drab who 
 opened the door to me. 
 
 " First floor. You can go and see,'^ was the answer I re- 
 ceived. 
 
 The house seemed filled with the combined odours of washing 
 and tobacco. As I went up the stairs, I heard men's voices 
 and laughter from what I should judge to have been the second 
 or third floor. My heart failed me as I knocked at Bedford's 
 door. 
 
 *' Come in," called out a voice that I knew for his. He was 
 standing with his back to the door, and called out, as I came 
 in, without turning round : 
 
 *' Why the deuce didn't you come before ? " Receiving no 
 answer, he did turn his head, and that very sharply too. See- 
 ing whom it was, he looked remarkably confused, and made a 
 hasty apology. 
 
 "I thought it could have been no one but a model," he said, 
 " who should have been here two hours ago. Pray take a 
 seat," and he cleared a chair for me as he spoke. " I'm highly 
 flattered at a visit from you," he went on, "but I am afraid 
 I have hardly anything worth showing just now." 
 
 *' Can you imagine," I said, with difficulty controlling myself 
 so as to speak calmly — "can you imagine that after what has 
 happened I should come to see your pictures? Can you 
 
462 * LTUAN. 
 
 think that of m}^ own will I would hav^e set eyes on you 
 again ? '^ 
 
 " As a piece of autobiography," he remarked, with a sneer, 
 " what you suggest is very interesting, but still more interesting 
 would it be to me to know to what I can owe the pleasure of 
 this visit — as you did not come of your own will. I am at a 
 loss to see what force would have compelled you agamst it ! " 
 
 *^ The force of death close at hand," I answered — *' no othe?' 
 force could have brought me here. Oh, when I think that I 
 have to ask something of you, the words seem as if they would 
 choke me. How can I speak them ?" 
 
 " I am more puzzled than ever," he observed. *^ What can 
 death have to say to your visit ? I am neither a doctor nor a 
 parson, and those I believe are the important actors in death- 
 bed scenes." 
 
 " Please," I said, " have the taste, if you have not the feeling, 
 to refrain from sneers." 
 
 After a pause I went on : 
 
 " My child is dying — dyhtg^ do you hear me } And you, 
 Malcolm Bedford, are as clearly the cause of her death, as if 
 with your hand you had stabbed her. Then you would have 
 been hung for it — nor shall you now go quite unpunished, for 
 I will have the truth of this known about you everywhere, and 
 men shall shrink from you, as they would from a leper." 
 
 " Enough of that," he said, with a wave of his hand— his 
 voice was changed ; " now, if you please, we will proceed with 
 this lie, for if you say she is dying it ts a lie." 
 
 Then, as briefly as 1 could, I told my story. When I had 
 finished, I looked at him. He was leaning with his hands on 
 the back of a chair, and his face was very pale. 
 
 '^ How does one feel," I asked, " knowing oneself a murderer ? 
 Don't you think the ghost of my darling \vill haunt you all 
 through your life 1 " 
 
 He stepped up to me and caught hold of my hand, while his 
 eyes flashed full in mine. 
 
 '* I tell you," he said, the words coming painfully, *' believe 
 it or not, as you like, I love her more than even you dream of 
 loving her. How her mother treated me — how that woman 
 wrecked my life— I believe you know. Well, returning from 
 abroad, Fate, as I thought, brought me to your village. I 
 heard of you— of her. A desire to see if she were like her 
 
. LILIAN. 463 
 
 mother overcame me, and, as you know, I called at 3^our house. 
 She was too like. In a moment it came to me that Fate had 
 led me here to avenge my murdered youth on the daughter of 
 the woman who had slain it. I strove to hate, but I loved ; 
 yet I would not give up my purpose. And this is the end of 
 it — my God I" and he groaned aloud. '^ Have you no least 
 little pity for me t " he asked. 
 
 " No," I replied, ice-cold, '^ none : rather I hope you may 
 drink to the lees this cup which you yourself have prepared. 
 Now there is nothing more to say." 
 
 " Nothing," he rejoined. " I must make some arrangements 
 here, but I will come by the first train possible. Oh, one thing 
 more, tell her all that I have told you." 
 
 We did not go through the form of shaking hands. In 
 another moment I was on my way to the station, where I was 
 fortunate enough just to catch a departing train. By six o'clock 
 I was once more at home. 
 
 " Why, dear, how ill you look," was the first thing Lilian said. 
 Indeed, I was just on the point of fainting, for I had eaten 
 nothing since eight o'clock ; but before I took any refreshment, 
 I made her understand that my expedition had resulted in what 
 she wished. Afterward I told her all that Mr. Bedford had told 
 me. When she had heard it, she looked almost happy, and then 
 said with a-long-drawn sigh : 
 
 *' Ah, me ! how happy we might have been ! " 
 
 It was all in vain that I tried to persuade her to let me put 
 her to bed. At about ten or a little after, the dogs began bark- 
 ing, and then the house-bell sounded. She raised herself on 
 her couch, her cheeks flushed, a warm light shone in her eyes. 
 There was a quick rap at the door. 
 
 " Come in," she cried, before I could answer. The door 
 opened, and Bedford walked in. He went straight to her. 
 Something like a low cry broke from them both. I saw her 
 arms fall round his neck as he dropped beside her on his knees ; 
 I saw his face bowed on hers ; I heard her murmur passionately, 
 " Oh, you have come — you have come ! my darling — my darling ! 
 And you love me ?" I could bear no more. I left them and 
 went to my own room, and there in the bitter comfort of the 
 darkness I sobbed as if indeed my heart would break. 
 
 An hour afterward when I went downstairs, I found them just 
 in the same position. 
 
464 LILIAN, 
 
 " Lil, dear,'* I said, " it is time for'you to go to bed.'^ 
 
 *' Yes," she answered, tranquilly, " I am quite ready." 
 
 So, saying I would be back in five minutes, I left the rooni. 
 However, I let a quarter of an hour pass before returning. 
 
 " Good-night, my very own," I heard him whisper, passionately. 
 Then he held her lips with a great, long last kiss, rose and left 
 the room. 
 
 I asked her if she was ready. 
 
 "Yes," she said ; "but let me have a few minutes to rest in. 
 No one in church rises from his knees the very moment the 
 prayer is over." I pretended to busy myself with doing some 
 things about the room, but I saw on her face a look of ineffable 
 peace, an exultation of rapture far beyond reach of words to ex- 
 press. She drew her breath as people who love music do when 
 the last crowning harmony has been struck, and the silence 
 which follows is a consecration, and a respite from things 
 almost intolerably sweet. 
 
 Presently she said of her own accord, " Now I am ready." 
 When she was in bed, she said, as I leaned over to kiss her ; 
 
 " Such a happy hour, dear. I never guessed he loved me as 
 he does." 
 
 Thoroughly worn out by my tiring day, I sank toward morn- 
 ing into a profound sleep. It seemed to me I had hardly closed 
 my eyes when I was awakened by the sound of a little hand-bell 
 which always stood by Lil's bed in case of her wanting anything 
 when I was asleep, for I was always near, a bed having been 
 made for me in her room. 
 
 " YeSj dear," I said, sitting up, ''what is it?" 
 
 "It's eight o'clock," she said; "won't you get me up? I 
 thought you never would wake. I've heard Malcolm in the 
 garden for over an hour talking to the dogs." 
 
 " But," I said, "you don't generally get up till past noon." 
 
 "And is this ^ ge?ierally ^ ? ^^ she answered, half pleadingly; 
 " don't you think we want to be with each other the little time 
 we have to be together ? " 
 
 I got up at once and began to dress. She watched my move- 
 ments with evident impatience. Once she said with a sigh, 
 " I think you never were so long before." 
 
 Her own toilet was much more elaborate than I had been in 
 the habit of allowing, or she of desiring. At last her hair was 
 arranged to her content, and she bade me place a red rose in it. 
 
LILIAN. 465 
 
 I made her take a little bread and cream, settled her on her 
 couch, and then went in search of Mr. Bedford, whom I found 
 in the garden. He thanked me, and went straight to the house. 
 Surely I was glad for any happiness that came to lighten those 
 last days of my darling's life ; yet was it not just a little hard 
 to think that in the end it was not me to whom she turned — 
 who had loved her so — but to hun whose hand was taking her 
 from me ? 
 
 Of course I had to be in and out of the room all day, for I 
 would trust to no one else my charge of her. They were always 
 close together. Once I found her in a violent paroxysm of 
 coughing, which left her in a state of dangerous exhaustion. 
 
 *' I am afraid she has been talking too much," I said ; " per- 
 haps it would be as well if you left her now for a little 
 time." 
 
 He rose to go, but she made a movement with her hand, and 
 whispered, " No, stay, don't go — " He kneeled down again by 
 her, and round his neck fell her tired arms. There was no 
 sound in the room but that of her quick, uneasy breathing. She 
 grew better as she had done many a time before. 
 
 "I'm quite right now," she said. " If I want anything Mal- 
 colm will tell you. I know you want to be seeing after house- 
 hold things. Stroke my ponies for me." 
 
 So I went, and ah ! with what a heavy heart ! 
 
 At length the day wore away, and when night came, I had 
 again my child to myself. The pleasure and excitement of 
 being in the presence of the man she loved, and ought to have 
 hated, had on her the effect of a temporary stimulant, to such 
 an extent that, supported by Bedford, she was able to take a 
 short turn in the garden, and one day even got as far as the 
 stables. 
 
 " I never thought I should see you again, my dears, in your 
 own house," she said, kissing the necks of her ponies. 
 
 She became quite gay, and took more nourishment than she 
 had done for a long time. 
 
 " I shall give her back to you, and then take her from you as 
 my wife," Bedford said to me one day when we were alone 
 together. 
 
 " No," I said, "this improvement will last, you will see, but 
 a very short time." 
 
 My words were cruelly verified. That very night she became 
 
 31 
 
466 LILIAN, 
 
 dreadfully feverish and delirious, in consequence of which she 
 was too exhausted in the morning to rise. 
 
 " Malcolm," she said, " is he up ? " 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 " Bring him, then ; it is so long since I have seen him." 
 
 Of course I did as she wished. 
 
 That day was one of the last in September. The sky was 
 cloudless, and the sun, oh how warm ! Through the day Lilian 
 dozed from time to time, great blue-bottle flies buzzed in and 
 out, or struck against the ceiling. 
 
 Bedford sat by the bedside, she had dropped one hand in his. 
 
 He fput his other over it to keep the flies from vexing it. 
 Sometimes she would open her eyes and moan, but as if she 
 hardly knew for what. At other times she would smile to see 
 that he was still beside her. Once I heard her whisper to 
 him : 
 
 *' Dear, don't you want to go and smoke t '^ 
 
 " I want nothing," he answered, " but to be with you.*' 
 
 She smiled for reply ; she was too weak to speak again then. 
 
 So that autumn day wore away, and we two, who watched in 
 the sick room, scarce dared to draw our breath lest we should 
 wake her from the light slumbers into which she fell ; but we 
 knew that she was going from us — that the end must be very 
 near. After sunset she seemed to grow a little more awake, 
 and took a few mouthfuls of jelly. Then again she lapsed into 
 a state of half-unconsciousness. It was getting on for midnight. 
 Malcolm Bedford had gone into the sitting-room which adjoined. 
 I knew he had gone there to hide from me the extreme agony 
 that was rending every nerve of him. My darling awoke ; her 
 breathing became painfully difficult. I went to her. She put 
 her arms round my neck and said : 
 
 ** Good-bye ; I love you ; you have been so good to me. 
 Don't be too unhappy. Kiss me." 
 
 I kissed her, and cried : 
 
 " Oh, how can I live without you ? " 
 
 " Malcolm," she said, " where is he ? " 
 
 I called him. In another moment he was by the bed. 
 
 " Lilian, my love," I heard him say. 
 
 " You mustn't fret," she said. 
 
 She was propped up by pillows, but she moved so that he 
 might put his arm round her. For a moment there was com- 
 
LILIAN, 467 
 
 plete and awful silence. Then I heard her speak, and at the 
 last almost distinctly. 
 
 " Good-bye, my love ; perhaps some day together, forever 
 together.'* 
 
 Her head dropped forward on his shoulder, from which she 
 would raise it never more. Into the wind, which was beginning 
 to rise and moan round the house, had gone the emancipated 
 soul — gone wither ? Some four or five hours afterwards I found 
 Bedford walking up and down the garden-path in front of the 
 house. The morning was wet and chill. 
 
 " Can I go to her ? " he asked, in a hollow voice. 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 We walked back to the house together, and there I left him 
 alone with his beautiful, cold dead. When two hours passed 
 and he did not return, I went gently to the door of the room. 
 From within I heard such a bitter sound of weeping that my 
 heart was moved to him. I went in very quietly. He was 
 kneehng by the bed, his face bowed on her breast, his frame 
 shaken by sobs. 
 
 " Don't be too hopeless," I said, taking his hand and kneeling 
 down by him. 
 
 He gave me a look which I shall never forget ; so there, in 
 the darkened room, we knelt hand in hand. 
 
 On the evening of the day of the funeral, Bedford came to me 
 and said, his manner calm and grave : 
 
 " When she left us I wished to follow her. It seemed to me 
 that I could not bear to live and remember ; but it came to me 
 that to do so was my punishment, and that I would bear it. I 
 am going to give up painting. I have some money. I think I 
 know something of the poor of the world. Anyhow, I have 
 some new ideas concerning them. For her sake I am going to 
 try and make the best use of what remains of my life. May I 
 sometimes come and see you ? " 
 
 "Do,'' I said, "and may you prosper in your good 
 work." 
 
 Before leaving Rockshire he bought ground for a grave ad- 
 joining hers. 
 
 " If I die suddenly," he said, " directions as to where I wish 
 to be buried will be found in my possession. If I think I see 
 death coming, then I can myself give them, and I should come 
 here to die." 
 
468 LILIAN, 
 
 One night, two years after this, he came to see me. He was 
 shivering, though the night was warm, and looked ill. 
 
 " I know," he said, quite quietly, " that I have taken my death. 
 I wonder it hasn't happened to me before, I have been so much 
 in the midst of fever and pestilence. I have come down here 
 that I may not only be buried near her, but die where she 
 died.". 
 
 He had long ago taken a small house near mine, and to that 
 dwelling he now betook himself. As he wished it, so was it to 
 him. He died in the place where she had died, and was buried 
 by her side. As I stand by those two graves, I wonder if the 
 last words of my darling have come true, and they are indeed 
 together forever. 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 
 
 :o:- 
 
 Agatha Stotford was unfortunate. She lived in the midst 
 of an artistic and literary circle, without being herself either 
 artistic or literary. Her father was a painter of eminence, her 
 brother a poet, while her sister composed music which was 
 supposed by the knowing to be not far removed from that of 
 Wagner — Wagner being the music god of the particularly 
 sesthetic circle in which Miss Stotford revolved. Moreover, all 
 the women of her acquaintance were remarkable for something. 
 One was distinguished for her subtle interpretation of music ; 
 another for her pictures ; a third had tried her hand, not un- 
 successfully, at sculpture ; another still was noted for her con- 
 versation ; and yet another for her novels; and perhaps the 
 most successful of all for her great beauty. 
 
 So far, Agatha had been without a specialty. She was not a 
 fool. She could tell a good picture from a bad one. Given a 
 clue, she could discover beauties in a poem ; but she had no scrap 
 of original genius. Her father had spared no pains in teaching 
 her to draw, but, after laborious efforts, the highest result was 
 a pitiful little water-colour sketch of a forlorn cow, drinking at 
 a village duck-pond. , She made her tilt at poetry, also, and 
 addressed some lines to her canary, which began : 
 
 •' Thou pretty warbler, singing all the day, 
 
 Thy song doth melt a cloud from off my breast ; 
 It seems to drive each evil thought away, 
 And bringeth to my weary spirit rest." 
 
470 MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 
 
 But she stopped there, and accomplished no more, in either 
 of these directions, though no doubt she has preserved both 
 poem and picture to this day as unappreciated achievments in 
 art and literature. 
 
 She was certainly nice-looking, with a good, shapely figure, a 
 fresh complexion, clear blue eyes, and bright, golden hair. But 
 the men who frequented Mr. Stotford's studio wanted some- 
 thing more than prettiness to atone for the lack of intellectual 
 power. Had she been as beautiful as her tall friend, Mrs. 
 Liddell, the woman with the slightly hollow cheeks, and the 
 wonderful eyes which seemed to have half solved the mystery 
 of death, they could have overlooked her want of other gifts. 
 But as it was, she was treated more like a kitten than anything 
 else, and against this Miss Stotford s spirit chafed and rebelled. 
 
 She finally formed a resolve to produce an effect of her own, 
 or die in the attempt. After much thought, she determined to 
 be " noble " — specially and distinctively " noble." She would 
 do some " grand thing " — not, be it understood, for nobility's 
 sake, but for the sheer longing to produce an effect. Some 
 large, picturesque crime would probably have suited her quite 
 as well ; but since she had not the courage for vice, she re- 
 solved upon virtue — or, rather, I should say, upon nobility, for 
 the small sweet trifles of self-sacrifice and devotion that belong 
 to every day carry with them no special distinction. 
 
 Now, let it be known that, among the habitues oi Mr. Stot- 
 ford's studio, was George Singleton, a young hump-backed 
 art-student, who worked terribly hard, so his most intimate 
 friends said, to preserve the life about which he cared so little, 
 since he felt, with a morbid bitterness, his physical deformity. 
 Hitherto, Agatha had scarcely ever thought of wasting words 
 upon him, but now there came to her a grand resolve. She 
 would make Singleton fall in love with her, and she would marry 
 him. Her father had a kind heart, and was not very worldly : 
 she made sure, therefore, that his consent could be gained. 
 People should see what a power of noble devotion she had, if 
 she had nothing else. Already she seemed to hear a chorus of 
 wonder and admiration ; then would come remonstrances, which 
 she pictured herself as smiling down. Yes, all the circle which 
 had taken so little account of her should admire her noble self- 
 sacrifice, and see in her a heroine. 
 
 The thought first came to her as she was lying awake one 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 471 
 
 night, and when she appeared at breakfast next morning, there 
 was a warmer glow on her cheek and a brighter light in her 
 eyes than her family had beheld in them before. 
 
 When she next saw George Singleton, it was on a Wednesday 
 afternoon, the day set apart weekly by Mr. and Mrs. Stotford 
 for receiving their friends. Agatha had often wondered why 
 Singleton came at all, for he said little, and seemed shy and ill 
 at ease. This day, hovvevever, she determined, if possible, to 
 make him talk. It chanced that he had been absent for several 
 weeks, and that fact was an opening. 
 
 " What a stranger you've been," she said, as he came where 
 she was sitting. 
 
 " It's kind of you to notice it." 
 
 " Is. it work that has kept you away } '^ 
 
 ^' No. I've been staying with a man in the country." 
 
 «' Did you like that ? " 
 
 *' Not much. I think there is hardly anything I do like." 
 
 " That must make you feel very lonely," she said, with a little 
 shiver of sympathy, and such tenderness in her eyes. 
 
 He took the vacant chair beside her, and said : 
 
 " It is the loneliness of death to see your life stretching out 
 before you like a plain, without tree or flower, without even a 
 hillock in sight, to break the dead monotony." 
 
 "But your work?" she suggested, looking at him as no 
 woman had ever looked at him before. " Surely, you care a 
 little about that ?" 
 
 *' Perhaps I might, if any one else were interested in it." 
 
 ** Oh, but many people must be. I, for one, should like so 
 much to hear all about it." 
 
 *' Would you, really ?" he asked, his face brightening. 
 
 ** Yes, of course I should. Is that so difficult to understand ?" 
 
 " It seems so to me." 
 
 There was a pause. Then she said, oh so gently : 
 
 *' Will you really tell me about what you do ?" 
 
 " Need you ask me twice ? " 
 
 Were this anything more than a short study, I could dwell at 
 length, and with some pleasure in their skilfulness, upon the 
 various wiles with which Singleton was beguiled — the sighs, the 
 little bursts of enthusiasm, looks full of subtle sympathy, tones 
 as subtle as looks, low under-tones meant to reach his ear only. 
 
472 MJSS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 
 
 Indeed, she gave herself much more trouble than was necessary^ 
 for Singleton was very easily conquered. But, as we all know, 
 it is one thing to get the horse to the well, and another to 
 make him drink ; so it was one thing to get Singleton in love, 
 and another to draw from him any declaration of his passion. 
 
 " Surely," thought Agatha, recalling his looks of adoration 
 and the eager way he listened when she spoke, as if fearful of 
 losing a single intonation of her voice — " surely he must love 
 me." 
 
 Still, when they were alone together, which they frequently 
 were, he never said nor did any of those things which unmis- 
 takably proclaim the lover. As a rule, men are not very grateful 
 for the friendship of the women they love ; but Singleton had so 
 schooled himself not to expect even so much as friendship from 
 a woman, that he was really thankful for Agatha's, and did 
 battle with himself to keep down the greater hunger in his 
 heart. 
 
 One twilight they were sitting together by the open French 
 window. 
 
 " How sweet it was of you," said Singleton, " to come and see 
 me in my den, to-day." 
 
 " It was a pleasure and a privilege." 
 
 *' You've made me in love with the room," he went on, 
 ** and I used to hate it so." 
 
 " Then I wish I had come before." 
 
 " I wish you had. Do you know how you have blessed my 
 life ? " 
 
 " I should like to do so much, much more," she said, with 
 that simple, direct earnestness which Singleton always found so 
 irresistibly captivating. Then, quite involuntarily, as it were, 
 her hand rested on his. Of course she would have drawn it 
 away in a moment, but he pressed it between both of his and 
 held it. Then, as his blood kindled, he went through moments 
 of the most exquisite agony. He saw, as in a vision, what life 
 might have meant for him had he been formed like other 
 happier men. The peace and passion of love, the glory of 
 unmeasured light, the depth of unfathomable shade, the close 
 intimate companionship, the stimulus to work and the crown of 
 work — he realized them all. Just then his fate pressed heavily 
 upon him. The sound of Agatha's voice roused him from the 
 anguish of self-pity which had almost broken him down. Had 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 473 
 
 it been light enough for her to see him, she would have known 
 that his face was fairly blanched with pain. 
 
 " George," she said, speaking in her lowest, and most ear- 
 nest tones, " will you tell me something? " 
 
 " Whatever you may choose to ask." 
 
 " The whole truth ? " 
 
 " The most absolute truth.^' 
 
 " Then I want to know just how much you care about me.'* 
 
 His heart began to beat violently. There were sparks of fire 
 in his eyes. It would be a consolation to tell her just once how 
 he loved her ; yet he felt that she must be grieved by his dis- 
 closure. He was silent. Outside, one bird twittered persis- 
 tently. 
 
 "Please, won't you tell me?" the girl's low voice entreated. 
 
 Still no answer. 
 
 " Is it that you are afraid to tell me how little you care for 
 me, lest I should be grieved ? " 
 
 " My God, Agatha," he cried, kneeling down beside her, and 
 kissing her hands and the rings on her fingers with passionate 
 adoration, I love you as the martyrs of old loved religion, when 
 they went singing to their deaths. I could die for you like that. 
 I love you with all the strength of a heart that has never known 
 love before. If I had been like other men, I would never have 
 rested till I had won you. But, Agatha, my darling, my saint, 
 since I can never be more to you than a friend, I will be that. 
 To do you service shall be the one purpose of my life. I know 
 you did not mean to make me love you, but it was my doom." 
 
 He had spoken in a headlong impulse of passion. He 
 paused now, and there was a moment's silence, through which, 
 presently, her clear voice fell. 
 
 " Why, how mistaken you would have been not to tell me," 
 she said, " I had a right to know, for I love you." 
 
 " Yes, as my friend." 
 
 " No, not in that way, but as a woman loves the man whose 
 wife she would gladly be." 
 
 " Agatha, do you know what you are saying ? " he cried. 
 "It is not possible you could mean this." 
 
 ** Can you think I should say it without meaning it?" 
 
 " You are mistaking pity for love." 
 
 " No ; I have said that I love you, and now you must decide 
 for yourself whether you believe it or not." 
 
474 ^^^^^ STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 
 
 And I am bound in justice to say that if ever Agatha Stotford 
 came near loving any one, it was in that moment. The fervour 
 of his speech had moved her ; and then she was grateful to him 
 for gratifying her heart's desire, and affording her the oppor- 
 tunity to make an effect. 
 
 " I must believe you," he said, as one half dazed ; ^' but oh, 
 my love, how can it be ? " 
 
 They sat together through the failing twilight, and on in the 
 fragrant night. They were both almost silent. Singleton was 
 trying to count over and realize his untold bliss. Agatha was 
 wondering v>'hat would be the most striking form in which to 
 make a general disclosure. 
 
 Singleton was anxious to go to Mr. Stotford at once, 
 but Agatha begged him to leave that to her. And that night, 
 after her lover was gone, when the hall door had been barred 
 against all visitors, and Mr. Stotford was sipping his nocturnal 
 brandy and water, and smoking a massive meerschaum which 
 always made its appearance at that hour, Agatha came behind 
 his chair, and rested her hand on his shoulder, while she said : 
 
 " Papa, dear, I want something from you." 
 
 " My dear, I'm not surprised to hear that. How many new 
 dresses is it this time ?" 
 
 " It's not dresses. What I want is your consent to my en- 
 gagement." 
 
 *^ Your engagement to be married ? " 
 
 *' What other engagement could I possibly mean ? " 
 
 "What ! You mean to say," cried Mr. Stotford, fairly as- 
 tonished now, and regarding the smoke from his pipe as if he 
 had some slight hope of finding therein a solution of his 
 difficulty — " you mean to say that some fellow is in love with 
 you, and you are in love with him ? " 
 
 ** Yes, that is what I mean." 
 
 '^Well, it can't be Edmunds; and it can hardly be young 
 Claymore ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Then who is it .?" 
 
 " It is Mr. Singleton." 
 
 " What I That poor, hump-backed young fellow ? " 
 
 " It is George Singleton." 
 
 " My dear child," said Mr. Stotford, gravely, " this is indeed 
 a more serious matter than I conceived." 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 475 
 
 But it would be unnecessary to repeat all the father's argu- 
 ments on this occasion. 
 
 ^* Well, my dear, I won't oppose you. I have seen so much 
 trouble in the world from interference that if you can really 
 love this poor fellow I won't stand between him and his chance 
 of happiness." 
 
 "Thank you, dear, thank you," Agatha said, warmly, and then 
 she kissed her father. 
 
 Just then Mrs. Stotford and her other daughter, Addie, came 
 in and Mr. Stotford told the family news. The mother, good 
 soul, had always felt certain that her Agatha would somehow 
 distinguish herself, and now the hour had come. Both she and 
 Adelaide were^enthusiastic and tender-hearted, and they both 
 wept ; and somehow Agatha, who was not at all of a melting 
 mood, felt quite out of place and embarrassed with her own dry 
 eyes. 
 
 When her brother Ernest, the poet, came in, he too heard the 
 news, took his sister in his arms and kissed her, saying, very 
 earnestly : 
 
 " God be praised that there is one woman left who knows 
 how to love." 
 
 Ernest was at that time about five and twenty, and rather cynical 
 concerning women, because the beautiful Mrs. Liddle obstinately 
 persisted in preferring her own husband to himself, sonnets 
 included. 
 
 The next day, the news spread like wildfire. Mrs. Liddle 
 drove out to see if it were true ; and, when she heard that it 
 was, embraced Agatha, and murmered something about Aurora 
 Leigh. Of course, there were not wanting those who felt bound 
 to remonstrate, and asked Agatha very emphatically if she knew 
 what she was doing. When she assured them that she did, 
 they shook their heads solemnly, and expressed their hopes 
 that her nobility would be rewarded. 
 
 On the whole, Agatha was not at all disappointed. She had 
 produced quite as startling an effect as she had anticipated. 
 Men who had never noticed her before began to come around 
 her. She went among them by the name of St. Agatha. 
 Painters idealized her prettiness into beauty, and painted her 
 with a halo around her head. 
 
 Agatha hked being seen out with her lover. It was a per- 
 petual advertisement to the world of her nobility. 
 
476 Af/SS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 
 
 But, alas that wonders live but nine days ! Our elopements, 
 our marriages, our sudden deaths — who can pause for long dis- 
 cussion of them ? We all know how charming is the existence 
 of convalescence ; but as soon as we get a good appetite for our 
 dinners, we are rubbed off the sick list. Our irritability, which 
 was so lately hailed with joy as a sign of our recovery, is set 
 down now as genuine ill-temper, and is considered all the more 
 ungrateful in one whom illness had so long made a candidate 
 for household forbearance. There is no pedestal on which we 
 are allowed to stand for long, unless we are made of stone. Like 
 the rest. Miss Stotford had to come down from hers. It was a 
 depressing day for her when she found that people had 
 quietly accepted the fact of her engagement, and had ceased to 
 praise or pity her for it. Even Singleton himself had ceased to 
 question the reality of his own happiness, and was actually 
 beginning to make plans for the future, and growing eager to 
 have the marriage-day fixed. 
 
 " Surely, there is plenty of time for that," she said. "We 
 can settle about it in October, when I come back from Switzer- 
 land." 
 
 It was just at the end of August when Mr. Stotford took his 
 family abroad for their summer holiday. George could not 
 leave London just then, but he said to his betrothed : 
 
 " Don't mind for me, darhng. The memory of your love will 
 keep me happy, and I know you want a change ; you have been 
 looking quite pale lately. And then you will write to me." 
 
 Perhaps Agatha would hardly have allowed to herself how 
 glad she was to get away ; but to a perfectly cold nature like 
 hers, persistent "spooning" was a heavy price to pay, even for 
 the pleasure of having produced a great effect. 
 
 In Switzerland, the Stotfords made the acquaintance of a 
 family by the name of Gardiner. Agatha and Miss Maude 
 Gardiner struck up an intimate friendship, after the manner of 
 young ladies. The elder members of the two families found 
 little in common, for the Gardiners, though people of good 
 social position, were not over-weighted with brains ; but Maude 
 suited Agatha, and Maude's brother, Reginald, was a fine, 
 handsome young fellow. Very pleasant were the mountaineer- 
 ing expeditions the three made together, and three more in- 
 trepid spirits could hardly have been found. 
 
 Of course, she at once told Maude all the particulars of her 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 477 
 
 engagement, and Maude was enchanted. She had never heard 
 of anything so beautiful. 
 
 " You are going to build up his ruined life," she cried. 
 
 *' I hope so, dear." 
 
 " And you must let me see him as soon as we get back to 
 London." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; we must all be the best of friends.'' 
 
 One morning, as they were leaving the hotel for a day's 
 ramble, Agatha remarked that she hoped she should find a letter 
 on her return. 
 
 " Do you mean the letter ? " Maude asked. 
 
 " Yes, Miss Inquisitive. It should have come yesterday." 
 
 "Ah? Then let me suggest a telegram," put in Reginald, 
 who had joined them in time to overhear the last remarks. 
 " You don't look pale over your disappointment, though." 
 
 Agatha blushed becomingly, and they set out. 
 
 They returned at dinner-time, in excellent spirits, and Agatha 
 hurried to her room to dress for table d^hote. They were very 
 merry at dinner, and all the evening through, as they sat in the 
 lighted garden listening to the band. 
 
 When Reginald said good-night to Agatha, he asked, with a 
 slight but expressive smile : 
 
 *' Did your letter bring you good news, Miss Stotford ? " 
 
 Agatha blushed now in good earnest. Every one knew the 
 English mail came in at five o'clock ; and she had forgotten to 
 ask for her letter. 
 
 '^ It's only a straw," thought Reginald, as he went toward the 
 billiard-room ; " but it's certainly a straw." 
 
 It was a cold day toward the end of October, when the 
 Stotfords and the Gardiners returned together to London. 
 Maude had not long to wait for her introduction to George 
 Singleton, for he was on the platform, ready to greet his 
 betrothed. 
 
 " Is it not noble of Agatha?" asked Miss Gardiner of her 
 brother, when they had parted from the Stotfords. 
 
 " The fellow has been rather hard hit by fate ; but he has his 
 compensation, certainly," Reginald answered, with a frown on 
 his face, as he turned away from his family to go to dinner at 
 his club. 
 
 Of course, Singleton dined that evening with the Stotfords ; 
 and when he and Agatha were alone together in her little 
 
478 MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 
 
 sitting-room, he was very affectionate, — " oh, more affectionate 
 than ever," — as Agatha thought, ruefully. He had brought with 
 him a small manuscript book, in which he had carefully set 
 down all the details of his days, interspersed here and there 
 with a lover's ravings. 
 
 " I thought it might interest you," he said. 
 
 " Oh, yes, thank you," she answered ; " so it does, very much," 
 and she turned over some of the pages. 
 
 When he took his leave, she suggested that he was forgetting 
 his book. 
 
 " Then, you don't care to keep it ? " 
 
 There was a wistfulness in his question which her ear failed 
 to detect. 
 
 " No, thanks ; I think I've seen in. it now all you have been 
 doing. Monday seems very much like Tuesday, and Thursday 
 repeats Wednesday. You have been very good." 
 
 Singleton sat long by his fire that night. He took the diary 
 out rather tenderly from his pocket, and looked at the fly-leaf, 
 on which was written : '' A record of what I do, kept by me for 
 my dear in her absence." Then suddenly he thrust it into the 
 fire, and called himself an unworthy fool. Why should she 
 understand his sentimentality ? Her love showed itself in grand 
 actions, — had she not chosen him ? And he went to bed, a good 
 deal ashamed of his diary episode. 
 
 The marriage- day was at last fixed for early in January. From 
 the first, I have been frank with you about Agatha. I have not 
 at any time striven to enlist your affection for her, nor will I 
 even make any further claim for her on your respect. I must 
 frankly own that the nearer her marriage-day came, the more 
 she shrank from the prospect of it. As Singleton's wife she 
 could not hope even to make the sensation she had created as 
 his betrothed. The pleasure of producing her effect had been 
 great, but she had obtained it on credit. She had enjoyed it to 
 the full ; and now the time for paying the price was drawing 
 nigh. What wonder if she rebelled ! At times she almost 
 thought of throwing herself upon Singleton's generosity, which 
 she well knew would not fail her, and begging to be set free 
 from fulfilling her obligation. But what of all her admiring 
 friends ? How could she bear to step down from the pedestal 
 of saint, whereon their homage had placed her, and become the 
 commonest of all common things,— a woman who found herself 
 
MISS STOTFOK/ys SPECIALTY. 479 
 
 utterly unequal to the sacrifice she had undertaken to make ? 
 No ; this humiliation was more than she could endure. But 
 surely every woman before being bound for life to one man, has 
 her right to her meed of homage from others — in a word, to 
 have her fling. And if Singleton would but be jealous, — if he 
 would quarrel with her on this account, — why, then surely the 
 fault would not be hers. Maude was her most intimate friend, 
 and she could not see much of Maude without seeing a good 
 deal of Reginald, too. Besides, she liked Reginald, and her 
 friendship with him as well as with his sister was a fact to which 
 George must speedily make up his mind. So one night she 
 said to him : 
 
 " Oh, I sha'n't see you to-morrow evening — Maude is coming." 
 
 " May I not look in after she goes ?'' 
 
 " Oh, you may come in, if you like, but you would not see me 
 alone because Reginald is coming for her, and they'll be sure 
 to stay late." 
 
 " The next evening, then ? " 
 
 " Oh, I am going there." 
 
 " Then I may call for you, may I not ? " 
 
 " Yes, but not before eleven, please. We are going to the 
 theatre." 
 
 " Well, dear, I hope you'll enjoy yourself. You'll find me 
 very punctual at eleven.'^ 
 
 If it had been difficult to draw a declaration of love from 
 Singleton, it was yet more impossible to elicit from him any 
 expression of jealousy. His attention and devotion remained 
 undiminished, and he preserved the utmost serenity of temper 
 under circumstances which might easily have ruffled the 
 sweetest nature. Only Agatha noticed one change, and that 
 was that he talked less about their future than he had done at 
 first. For this she could not help being grateful to him. The 
 day for their marriage, however, was drawing near, and work 
 on the trousseau had begun. 
 
 The night before Christmas Eve, they were alone together in 
 Agatha's sitting-room. A wild north-east wind was sweeping 
 around the house and wailing through the leafless trees. Now 
 and then the sleet was driven up vehemently against the 
 window. 
 
 " I think I never shall be warm again," said Agatha. 
 
 She was sitting in a low easy-chair, drawn close to the fire, her 
 
48o MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 
 
 feet resting on the fender, her head lying back on a velvet 
 cushion, her small white hands sparkling with rings clasped on 
 her lap. She looked the very embodiment of indolence and 
 comfort. 
 
 Singleton made no answer. He was standing with his arms 
 resting on the mantel-piece. 
 
 " Why don't you speak } " she asked, with some asperity in 
 her tone. 
 
 " I didn't hear what you were saying." 
 
 " You never do," she rejoined, promptly, " when I speak 
 about any suffering of mine." 
 
 " Are you suffering, dear ? " he asked, looking up. 
 
 " Yes, of course I am. You know how this weather makes 
 me feel." 
 
 The clock struck half-past ten — the hour when Singleton 
 always took his leave. 
 
 " Agatha," he said, a little nervously, " I want to ask some- 
 thing of you." 
 
 " Do you } " she replied, wearily ; ^' well, what is it ? " 
 
 '' I want to stay with you to-night until eleven." 
 
 *' Oh, not to-night," she said, perhaps with more protestation 
 in her voice than she was even aware of " My head aches, and 
 I want to go to bed, and see if I can't get warm there." 
 
 ^' Only this once, dear," he entreated. 
 
 She made no reply. 
 
 " Forgive me, Agatha ; I was a selfish brute. You aren't 
 too angry to say good-night, are you ? " 
 
 She could not fail to see the effort he made to hide the quiver 
 of pain in his voice, and glancing up she saw in his eyes such a 
 look of pleading, that even her not very susceptible heart was 
 touched. 
 
 " There, there, you needn't go," she said. *' I spoke to you 
 more crossly than I should have done. Half an hour longer 
 won't kill me ; and if you will be vexed with me I can't help 
 it." 
 
 " Vexed with you ? " he said, kneeling down beside her. 
 *' How do you think that could ever be.'^ " 
 
 Then he put his arms around her, and drew her head on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 For the next half-hour there was complete silence between 
 them. Inside, the fire flickered, and held low converse with 
 
MISS STOTPORD'S SPECIALTY. 481 
 
 itself ; and outside, the insatiable wind wailed on. When the 
 clock struck eleven, he arose, and Agatha arose too. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, " for letting me stay. I know you 
 won't be sorry for it, hereafter." And as he stood there, holding 
 both her hands in his, she saw again in his eyes that strange, 
 pleading look. 
 
 " Aren't you happy } " she asked. " You seem as sober as a 
 judge." 
 
 ^' Could a man who believed in your love be other than happy ? '^ 
 
 At the door, he turned back, drew her close to his heart once 
 more, and kissed her again, long and lovingly. Then he went. 
 
 '^ Gone at last," she thought, with a sigh of relief, as she heard 
 the hall-door close behind him. Then she went straight to bed. 
 
 Miss Stotford was not an early riser. Before meeting the 
 outside distractions of the day, she perused the first delivery of 
 letters over morning coffee in her own room. This morning's 
 mail brought her many seasonable cards, but, oddly enough, 
 only one letter. She was familiar with the delicate, almost 
 feminine handwriting — it was from Singleton. Shortly after their 
 engagement he had been much addicted to the habit of posting 
 her a letter before going to bed, but latterly he seemed to have 
 broken himself of the practice. Indifferently at first, yet with 
 ever-increasing interest, she read : 
 
 " Harley Street, 24 December, i a.m. 
 " My Darling,— I wish this letter to be as little of a shock 
 to you as possible. On the 24th of May last, seven months ago 
 to-day, you told me that you loved me. That you were sincere 
 then in thinking so, that you even try to think so now, I do not 
 for a moment doubt. Indeed, I believed in your love most 
 implicitly till your return from Switzerland. Then a doubt of it 
 grew into my mind. I watched you carefully, and watched my 
 own heart carefully, too." [*'Now for the jealousy," thought 
 Agatha, as she settled herself more comfortably for a further 
 perusal.] " I know something of the human heart, and I know 
 how a woman appears when she is really in love with a man. 
 At length my doubts grew into an unalterable conviction that if 
 you had ever loved me — if, indeed, you had not from the first, 
 out of the very nobility of your nature, mistaken pity for love— 
 the feeling, unconsciously, perhaps, to yourself, was dying out. 
 Only great love on your part could ever have rendered possible 
 
 32 
 
482 MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 
 
 the life you would have led as the wife of a man so unfortunate 
 as I am. But I do not offer to free you " [Agatha's heart dropped 
 a little], '* for I know your exquisite sensitiveness would suffer 
 from a mistaken sense that you had failed toward me. I know 
 you would repudiate all I could say ; for in your noble desire 
 to build up a ruined life, you would, for once, be capable of 
 deception. But, Agatha, my love, what would it be to me to see 
 you slowly fading before my eyes ? Yet I am a weak man, and if 
 you held the cup to my thirsty lips, could I help drinking } No, 
 I do not offer you your freedom : I give it to you— my Christmas 
 gift. When you read this letter I shall be so far away from you 
 that no pain and no joy can follow me. 
 
 " Had I never known your love, I could have had keen 
 pleasure in your friendship ; but after knowing your love, your 
 friendship would be an intolerable torment. Life holds nothing 
 more for me ; but my death will be painless. I shall die happy, 
 for I shall conjure up from the past, to take with me out of the 
 world, a vision of that dear May evening. Do you remember, I 
 wonder, how I came in, and found you in the twilight 1 You 
 were lying on the sofa, and I took a low chair and sat close by 
 you — the chair which stood between the windows. You had a 
 gray silk dress on, and a red rose in your hair that I thieved 
 before I went away. I shall hear again the tenderness of your 
 voice, as you told me that you loved me. I shall feel again— 
 ah, no, I shall not feel that — my blood thrill under your touch, 
 under the first confident answering pressure of your lips. Never 
 to feel that again ! — this it is which unmans me and makes me 
 weak. Last night, in that extra half-hour which you granted 
 me, my heart kept crying out to me : ' Here is Agatha, Agatha, 
 to see, to touch, to kiss, — and in a few hours she will be just as 
 far off as the first day of creation ! ' Oh, my love, never to see 
 you again ! 
 
 " Later. 
 
 " Dear, I am quite calm, now. In a very little while I shall 
 long for nothing any more. I want you to know how in these 
 last moments my whole heart goes out in blessing to you. But 
 for you, perhaps, I should have lived out a long and painful life, 
 productive of no joy to myself or others. I have neither father 
 nor mother — no one to sadden by my loss. I should never have 
 done anything really good in art, — Mr. Stotford will tell you so, 
 —so I am small loss there. You gave me three months of divine 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY. 4% 
 
 happiness, and I shall now turn to the thought of that time as a 
 bridegroom turns to his bride. Good-bye, my darling, and may 
 some power ever bless and guide you. 
 
 *'G. S." 
 
 Many times the letter had fallen from Agatha's fingers while 
 she read. Now she held it crushed in her hand. Did Singleton 
 mean all he had said ? Could this thing really be ? Was her 
 lover no longer in this world, and if so, was she not, in a way, 
 guilty of his death ? Her blood turned to ice and her teeth 
 chattered. Then, v/ith a sudden impulse, she rose and dressed* 
 She half thought she might do something, Yet what could she 
 do ? Only one thing she knew. She must appear ignorant of 
 what this letter had revealed to her. 
 
 When she went to the breakfast-table, there was no gainsaying 
 the fact that she was ill, for her face was as white as death. 
 She tried in vain to eat. 
 
 " No, I can't take anything," she said at last. " I will go to 
 my own room, and try to get warm there." 
 
 Mrs. Stotford and Adelaide followed her, with the kindest 
 intentions. 
 
 " I hope, dear," said Mrs* Stotford, in her cheerful voice — 
 more cheerful than usual, by virtue of the season — " I hope yoU 
 made George promise to be with us early to-niorrow." 
 
 Poor Agatha ! What exquisite agonies of remorse she 
 experienced as she remembered that she had promised to go to 
 church with the Gardiners, and then to lunch with them. 
 
 " I don't think he'll come before dinner," she answered, faintly. 
 
 " I do think George is an angel," said Miss Adelaide, emphati- 
 cally, " to be so sweet over your friendship with the Gardiners. 
 I know if I were a man I shouldn't like it." 
 
 " Please don't talk," entreated Agatha, '' I know it's all 
 kindness, but I would rather be let alone. My head is bursting." 
 
 '' Well, come away, Addie," said Mrs. Stotford. " We have 
 enough to do with putting up the holly and mistletoe. You can't 
 trust matters like that to servants. Of course, it's not their 
 fault that they can't do it artistically. Perhaps when Agatha'5 
 a little warmer she'll lie down on the sofa and get a sleep. That 
 will be the best thing for her. She just has a bad, feverish cold, 
 as any one could see." 
 
 So they left her, and she crouched before the fire, shivering 
 and shaking as with ague. 
 
4^4 '^^^^ stOTPOrd's specialty. 
 
 Surely, he might yet have repented of his rash resolve. Still, 
 if he had, would he not have sent her word ? The silence was 
 ominous. All the time she kept asking herself how far she, 
 Agatha, was responsible if he had done this thing. If he must 
 go away, why not have gone to Australia, where he need never 
 have seen her again ? Of course, it was not in her to understand 
 how the thought of love won and lost can turn life into a present 
 hell. At the sound of every footfall, she started as if a ghostly 
 hand had been laid on her shoulder. At the postman's sharp 
 knock her heart leaped in her, and then stood still. 
 
 About four o'clock came Reginald and Maude Gardiner to 
 see her. 
 
 " We heard from Mrs. Stotford," said Maude," that you were 
 ill ; but you look frightfully, child ; what's the matter?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing much," moaned Agatha. "I shall be better 
 soon." 
 
 " This hand is cold," said Reginald. " Let me see if the other 
 one is equally ill»behaved." 
 
 " Don't," she said, almost fiercely, drawingher hand abruptly 
 away. 
 
 "Are you cross with me?" asked Reginald, in his sweetest 
 tone of voice. 
 
 *^ I am ill Don't you see I am ? -' 
 
 " Low-spirited," observed Maude. 
 
 " Precisely so," replied Reginald. "Perhaps it would cheer 
 you to hear the contents of the evening paper." 
 
 Then, taking a Standard ixovi\\\\s pocket, he began reading. 
 
 " ' The latest telegrams from the seat of war.' Ah ! it 
 appears we have done wonders. Actually, five hundred soldiers 
 of the English army encountered and defeated two hundred 
 natives, with considerable slaughter. ' Christmas in the East 
 End.' How I do hate all this cant about the season ! * Alarming 
 Fire in the City.' * Those Cabmen again.' 'Police Reports. 
 Anything there you'd like ? ' A Strange Breach-of-Promise 
 Case.' ' Great Wrecks off Dover.' I should think so, with such 
 a devil of a wind as we've been having. ' The Suicide in Harley- 
 street.' " 
 
 "Ah ! what's that?" asked Maude. " I'm always interested 
 in suicides." 
 
 " Morbid propensity, child/^ in Reginald's tone of brotherly 
 superiority. 
 
MISS STOTFORiys SPEC/A LTW 485 
 
 Agatha's heart leaped in her with an inaudible cry. 
 
 " We must have light on the subject," said Rpgipal^, stivri^^g 
 the fire into a bright blaze. 
 
 " Really, Reginald, you should npt jest on such a subject," 
 remonstrated Maude. 
 
 " Jest ? I'm sober as a judge at a coroner's inquest. Listen i 
 
 " * Mr. Jno, Harrison, surgeon in Harley-street, was sunir 
 moned this morning, about ten a.m., to No. 26, where he 
 found ' " 
 
 And suddenly Reginald stopped. 
 
 *' Why don't you go on.^ " inquired Maude. 
 
 He turned the paper toward her, pointing to the paragraph, 
 
 " Oh, great heaven ! It can't be. Oh, Agatha, darling ! '' 
 
 And she flung her arms round Agatha's neck. But Agatha 
 seized the paper, which Reginald feigned to detain from her, 
 flashed her eyes down the column, and saw what she knew she 
 would see. Singleton's name. 
 
 " Hush ! Hush ! ^' said Reginald to Maude, who, with 
 difficulty, stifled her sobs. Then the three sat for a minute ox 
 two in awful silence. 
 
 Then Agatha rose, stood erect for a moment, as if she were 
 about to walk out of the room, and then suddenly, with a wild 
 cry of horror, fell forward in a deathly swoon. She would have 
 dropped to the ground, but Reginald caught her in his arms. 
 
 ^' How she did love that poor fellow ! " he thought, while 
 Maude ran in haste to fmd Mrs. Stotford. 
 
 Of course, Agatha was at once put to bed, and the family 
 physician was sent for. When he heard all the circumstances of 
 the case, saw Agatha's unnaturally bright eyes, felt her quick 
 pulse, and listened to her incoherent wanderings, he could not 
 disguise from the family his apprehensions of brain fever. 
 
 " It was a critical case," he said ; " but if she could get a 
 night's sleep, the danger might be averted." 
 
 About the small hours, Agatha's wanderings ceased, and a 
 heavy sleep fell upon her and saved her. 
 
 It was three o'clock on Christmas-day when she awoke. The 
 bells were ringing for afternoon service. At first she thought 
 it must be Sunday morning, and that she had slept late. Then 
 she began to wonder at hpr str'^inge feeling, as if she had been 
 
486 MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 
 
 bruised all over, and the sense of blended weakness and clear- 
 ness in her head. Then very gradually, yes, and very gently, 
 too, she remembered all the events of the preceding day, and 
 accepted them as one too weak to feel surprise. There were 
 two great facts — Singleton was dead, and she was free. 
 
 At the expiration of a week, Agatha once more appeared in 
 her little sitting-room. The friends who saw her said that a 
 saintly resignation had beautified her face. The truth was, she 
 had settled with her own conscience very satisfactorily, and 
 decided that she was in no remotest way chargeable with 
 Singleton's death. She had certainly flirted no more during 
 her engagement than many other women do, and it was Single- 
 ton's own fault if he had deceived her by keeping from her what 
 he really felt, and so prevented her from behaving differently. 
 No, it was his own morbid sensitiveness that had driven him to 
 his own rash act. 
 
 In her heavy mourning, and with her face so pale — for she 
 really had been ill — she looked far more interesting than of old. 
 Only four men were privileged to come and see her, and they 
 only as ministering angels. There was William Poynter, a 
 captivating young tenor, for music soothed her ; then, by way of 
 gentle stimulant, Mr. John Barker, poet and critic, came to read 
 and explain difficult passages in Browning. Then, as her 
 religious opinions had got somewhat out of order — she was the 
 only one in that set who had any, and was inclined to make a 
 point of them — the handsome young High-church clergyman, Mr. 
 Augustus St. Clair, came in to overhaul the spiritual machinery. 
 And lastly, and by right of the family friendship, most fre- 
 quently, came Reginald to divert her by planning an Italian 
 tour for the autumn. 
 
 But, after all, decorous flirtations in recently assumed crape 
 are but tame. Sighs and looks of gratitude must take the 
 place of laughter and repartee. Agatha grew tired of long- 
 continued endeavours not to look quite so resigned as she 
 felt. The tenor's music palled on her ; she got sleepy over 
 *' Balaustion's Adventure ; " she regained her usual tranquil 
 satisfaction with the state of her religious views and functions. 
 She dismissed all her ministering angels, except Reginald, with 
 whom she felt more at ease than with the others. 
 
 When the summer came, she was glad to escape from 
 Lopdon, 3ca-side and hill-side brought her their balm. She 
 
MISS STOTFORD'S SPECIALTY, 487 
 
 concluded that even without a specialty life might be a very good 
 thing. She returned to town bright and beaming. I do not 
 think that Singleton's ghost haunted her, even on the day before 
 Christmas. 
 
 The next summer, she fulfilled her natural calling by marry- 
 ing. The bridegroom, however, was not Reginald. He pro- 
 posed, indeed, but she took three months to consider. During 
 that period of probation, she met the son of a very rich picture- 
 dealer. As was natural for a painter, Mr. Stotford furthered 
 this alliance ; and the young man, if not quite so handsome as 
 Reginald, was very much richer. Like a dutiful girl, she obliged 
 her father, as he had before obliged her. Reginald, I must 
 confess, found speedy consolation. It is not the handsome 
 Reginalds of the world who die for love. 
 
 The reputation for nobility which had been purchased by 
 her engagement to Singleton never quite forsook Agatha. 
 
 ^^Ah," said her romantic friends, "her life was really over 
 when that poor fellow died. She married just to please her 
 father." 
 
 Of course, there were not wanting unfeeling people to make 
 irreverent remarks ; but of such persons we have nothing to 
 say. She lived as tranquilly as such women do. If she had no 
 vivid joy in her days, she had no keen pains. As time wore on, 
 sometimes, in the dead watches of the night, or in the glare of 
 a crowded theatre, she would suddenly be confronted with the 
 past from which she had escaped, and meet the look of sad, 
 beseeching eyes — eyes sad, but never reproachful. At such 
 moments she would feel suddenly faint, and grow dizzy ; but 
 the evil moments passed, and save in these rare visions, she 
 was never disturbed by the memory of her first engagement, 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 
 
 ^o:- 
 
 WiLLlAM BRYANSTONE was going to be married, and those 
 friends of his who knew him best said, ^' God help Mrs. Bryan- 
 stone." They said this not because Bryanstone was a poor man, 
 for he was quite a rich one ; nor because he was out of health, 
 or yet ill-favoured as to personal appearance. They expended 
 their pity upon his wife in advance simply because he was a 
 poet, and was cursed by what people sometimes call the artistic 
 temperament ; that is to say, a temperament nervous and 
 excitable in the extreme. 
 
 William Bryanstone was a poet, but, alas ! not a successful 
 one. He said himself, that it was his misfortune to belong to 
 this Blue China period, on the lyrics and love sonnets of which 
 he looked down with lofty scorn. His own soaring ambition led 
 him Milton -ward. He let the small game of his confrhres alone, 
 therefore, and poured out his mighty soul in stupendous epics, 
 and dull, unwieldy poems, which he called dramatic ; and the 
 critics went to sleep over them and woke up at the end to abuse 
 them. He was between thirty and forty when the last of these 
 lofty flights which he was to write before his betrothal fell into 
 the hands of these his enemies, and they abused it worse than 
 ever, for they were out of patience with him ; and Bryanstone's 
 often wounded heart grew sick, and his temper suffered in 
 consequence. 
 
 He bored most people, this man whose conversation turned 
 chiefly on himself, and who spoke always of himself and Milton, 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE, 489 
 
 as if they had been fellow-workers in the same great cause, and 
 of not very unequal merit. 
 
 '*Yes," he would say, languidly, as if the commonplaces and 
 conventionalities of life had exhausted him — "yes, the work that 
 Milton commenced I will carry on, as well as I am able. In 
 these days of sham passion and sham sentiment, across this 
 jingling of lute-strings, shall sound my trumpet-note of the 
 heroic. The task is a hard one, but the spirit of Milton, and 
 may it not be of Homer also ? I will call to my aid, and before 
 I go hence I may have made men a little in love with the larger 
 life/' 
 
 To do him justice, he laboured diligently in the good cause, 
 but he worked to no purpose. Men hearkened not to his Epics 
 of Heroes, nor were they at all more attentive when he published 
 his grand dramatic poem, entitled " The Abnegator ; " still he 
 worked on, disheartened indeed, but never hopeless. Of his 
 work it must be said that it was by no means without merit. 
 Many a good line, many an original fancy, might have been culled 
 from it ; but he was ruined by his ambition. He was for ever 
 striving to reach impossible heights, and naturally he got many 
 a tumble. However, if the London journals either ignored or 
 scofted at his frequent volumes, the provincial papers regarded 
 him as a star of no small magnitude ; and his fame penetrated 
 even to the quiet village of Litchvale — at least to a certain Miss 
 Ethel Johnstone, the daughter of the village doctor. She read 
 all local journals she could get hold of, and through them became 
 in time quite familiar with the name of Bryanstone. The papers 
 quoted from him, not infrequently, and she diligently pasted these 
 quotations into her scrap-book. They had a lofty sound which 
 pleased her. She was contented to admire without understand- 
 ing them. Why not ? Are not many of the admirers of 
 Browning thus content to worship an unknown and uncompre- 
 hended god ? 
 
 Ethel Johnstone was, after all, rather an uncommon young 
 woman to find in a small country village. Her mother had died 
 when she was quite a little girl. She had no brothers or sisters, 
 and rather shrank from the companionship of other children, 
 and in the hours when she should have been healthily romping 
 she would sit, if it was winter, curled up by the fire ; if it was 
 summer, out in the garden, reading, always reading. She was 
 not, however, one of those remarkable little girls who delight in 
 
490 BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 
 
 books of history and travel. She hated school, and everything 
 savouring thereof. What she hked was, first of all, stories, and 
 then, oddly enough, poetry, and her father, knowing her tastes, 
 gave her for her birthday present, when she was fourteen, a 
 small but fairly well selected collection of poets. 
 
 As a rule there is something of jarring and tumult about the 
 development of a human spirit. Childhood is shaken by fits of 
 mirth and passions of unreasoning sorrow, both alike brief of 
 duration. Girlhood has its uncertainties, its unreasonable 
 despondence, its too eager hope ; and womanhood, like man- 
 hood, imposes upon the human soul the terrible responsibilities 
 of life. For most of us there is little peace from the cradle to 
 the grave, but Ethel Johnstone seemed to mature placidly and 
 silently. From a rosy-cheeked, large-eyed, yet grave little girl, 
 she grew into a rosy-cheeked, large-eyed, quiet young lady, 
 hardly pretty, but delightfully wholesome and healthy-looking. 
 If her face was not too full, and her mouth too large, her brown 
 eyes were good, and so was her figure, though the latter was, for 
 some tastes, a trifle too ample. 
 
 As I have said, she matured silently. She had no child friends 
 nor had her girlhood known any of those romantic intimacies 
 which so often exist between girls, before the rightful lover 
 appears on the scene. 
 
 Sitting by the fire in winter, or among the rose and currant 
 bushes of Rose Cottage in the summer, reading, mending, 
 shelling peas — Heaven knows what — she dreamed, she too, her 
 own unspoken dreams. In her favourite novels the girls who 
 lived in the country always somehow got up to London, and 
 then what exciting things befell them ! So should she, surely, 
 get up to London, and then hey, presto ! would not her turn for 
 exciting things come ? 
 
 She was about twenty when the Vicar's son asked her to marry 
 him, but that would have been quite too tame a conclusion to 
 her dreams, and she said "no," out of hand. And then six more 
 years of dreaming went on, varied by occasional visits to rela- 
 tions in London — disappointing visits, since nothing more 
 exciting happened in them than going to the play, or an 
 occasional drive in Hyde Park. Perhaps in her twenty-sixth 
 year she b^gan to regret that she had dismissed the Vicar's son 
 — but she did not say so. She was as quiet and uncommunica- 
 tive as ever, managed the affairs of the household most compe- 
 
BR VANS TONE AND WIFE. 49i 
 
 tently, and waited for that surprise of fate which had been so 
 long delayed, but which came to her at last. 
 
 It was the i6th of June, and the roses were in blossom, and 
 birds and bees were making love to them. She gathered a great 
 bowlful and put them on the dinner-table, and was half surprised 
 that her father did not notice them when he sat down to dinner. 
 Dr. Johnstone had a pompous manner, and it seemed more 
 pompous than ever this particular day. Soon Ethel discovered 
 the reason. A gentleman from London had been among his 
 patients that afternoon — a gentleman who had set out on a 
 walking tour, but had unfortunately sprained his wrist just as he 
 reached Litchvale, and had concluded to stop there a few days 
 and be treated by Dr. Johnstone, of whose skill he had heard 
 from the landlord of the village inn. And this patient, the 
 doctor announced, with an air of importance, was none other 
 than the distinguished poet, Mr. Bryanstone. 
 
 ^' Oh father," cried the girl, " are you quite sure it is the 
 same ? " 
 
 "Quite sure, for I asked him. And I told him if he would 
 dine here to-morrow I would introduce him to a great admirer 
 of his, in the person of my daughter. And he really seemed 
 very pleased," added the doctor, in the tone of one well satisfied 
 with his performance. 
 
 " And you think he'll come ? " 
 
 ''No doubt of it. He promised to come without fail. Indeed, 
 he seemed quite flattered by the attention." 
 
 And, sure enough, the next evening Mr. Bryanstone did 
 present himself, and Ethel saw him in the flesh. She was 
 not disappointed. As to the flesh, there was a good deal of it 
 for a poet ; and there was a certain solidity of face, which 
 befitted, perhaps, the quality of his aspirations and his work. 
 But to Ethel's eyes he looked like a descended god. His voice 
 was cultured and gentlemanly, if his tones were a thought too 
 measured ; and Ethel felt that she could have listened to him 
 for ever with ever-fresh delight. 
 
 After dinner Dr. Johnstone was summoned to a patient, and 
 then Ethel breathlessly asked the poet if she might tell him how 
 dearly she loved all of his poetry that she had seen. The 
 subject proved eminently congenial to them both — so they 
 pursued it at some length. When they ceased to speak of the 
 man's poetry^ it was only to take up the yet more interesting 
 
492 BRYANSrONE AND WIFE. 
 
 subject of the man himself, and this topic proved quite as 
 congenial to them both as the other had done. The upshot of 
 the conversation was that when Bryanstone walked away, 
 through the rose-scented summer night, Ethel had to own to 
 herself that, for the first time in her life, she was distractedly in 
 love ; and Bryanstone, on his side, confessed to his own soul 
 that she pleased him — she was a most appreciative person. 
 
 Two days after he called to be appreciated and sympathized 
 with once more. He could absorb any amount of appreciation 
 and sympathy. He took it in as sand sucks in water. 
 
 His wrist got better and he talked of returning to London. 
 He kept on talking of this as the days went by, but somehow 
 the end of July saw him still in Litchvale. In June he said the 
 nightingales kept him, and he would go when the very last one 
 had ceased to sing. In July the nightingales had left, but 
 Bryanstone had not left ; and Ethel began to wonder if it could 
 be anything but herself that held him in that dull little village. 
 Surely her time had come at last ! Her fate had found her out, 
 and it was as romantic as anything she had ever read in a book 
 — nature had a new meaning for her. The sun and moon shone 
 with a divine inner light. 
 
 Bryanstone, meanwhile, was deliberately asking himself 
 whether he should propose to her or not. He recognized in her 
 what he called worth ; and certainly she was thoroughly appre- 
 ciative of him. On the other hand, she could hardly be called 
 pretty, and he knew that he was not one whit in love with her. 
 But then he never had been in love in his life. He had often 
 wondered over this fact, and had ended by persuading himself 
 that his ideal was too high to be realized. It had never occurred 
 to him to suspect that he was too self-absorbed, too much in love 
 with William Bryanstone to have any heart to give any one else. 
 Should he marry her, or should he not .'^ Over and over he 
 balanced the pros and cons. On the one hand, he would have 
 to renounce a certain amount of freedom ; but on the other, how 
 pleasant it would be to have unfailing sympathy and appreciation 
 always at hand. His friends had their own interests, and did 
 not sympathize enough, but here was one who would not fail him. 
 No fear of wearying //^r with his longest epics, his most imposing 
 dramatic poems. He could not make her happier than to read 
 to her. Yes, on the whole, he thought the ayes had it. 
 
 So it came to pass, on a languid afternoon at the very end of 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE, 493 
 
 July, the words were spoken which made Ethel Johnstone think 
 herself the happiest woman in the w^orld. 
 
 In November Ethel went up to London. The marriage was 
 to come off on Christmas Eve, and the prospective bride, under 
 the guidance of a sister of her father, was making her purchases 
 for the great event. The short, yellow November days were 
 devoted to shopping and the trying on of dresses. Ethel 
 became, for her, quite buoyant, so full of hope and joy was she. 
 
 Bryanstone passed his days in a very different manner. They 
 were occupied in correcting the proofs of his new volume, "The 
 Damnation of a Soul," and in working away at the already begun 
 and still longer poem that was to follow it ; for no sooner did 
 Bryanstone give one volume to the press than he plunged, heart 
 and soul, into another one. He did not in the least repent his 
 engagement, but neither was he jubilant over it. No dreamer 
 he of love-sick dreams. He looked forward to the honeymoon 
 as a great but necessary bore, for which he consoled himself by 
 the thought of the subsequent domestic fireside in the house he 
 had chosen — a house wnth a westerly outlook on a rather quiet 
 road, where he thought by the aid of double windows he might 
 shut out the noise sufficiently to do his great work. 
 
 He usually dined with Ethel and her aunt, and, when the 
 dinner things had been taken away, then came his golden hour. 
 Then unfolded he his manuscript and read. To read the elder 
 Miss Johnstone to sleep did not take long, but he made no lover- 
 like use of her evident slumber. Ethel wondered sometimes 
 that he never laid down the manuscript to kiss her and say such 
 things as lovers said in the novels she had read ; but she 
 reflected that her destiny was glorious among women. Those 
 other lovers had not been poets like her hero ; and when he 
 would pause to say, " Yoic are my critic and my judge, and I 
 cannot be contented till I have had your verdict upon my work/' 
 her heart would glow with pride and satisfaction. 
 
 At length the great day came. Bryanstone locked up his 
 MSS. as one resigned to his fate. Little as he really knew of 
 the state called being in love, he yet foresaw that while away 
 on his honeymoon something other than writing epics \vould 
 be expected of him. He mentally shuddered at the amount of 
 sight-seeing that lay before him ; but he concealed his fore- 
 bodings, and did his very best to look festive on the auspicious 
 occasion of his marriage. 
 
494 BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 
 
 After the wedding there was the usual breakfast, with the 
 usual speeches, and when it was over the happy pair started 
 off for the Continent. In their carriage, on their way to the 
 station, Bryanstone took his bride's hand in his, and said : 
 
 *' So, my dear, you are at last a poet's wife." 
 
 And she answered, " Yes, dear, yours always and for always," 
 with a look of devotion in her eyes worthy of a better — 
 Bryanstone. 
 
 As such things go, the honeymoon journey was quite a 
 success, and the pair returned to London in a state of mutual 
 satisfaction. Then a change came to Ethel ; she no longer 
 had that all-day-long companionship with her husband which 
 had been so delightful. All the earlier part of the day he was 
 busy with his pen ; and in the afternoons he was wont to go 
 for a long, solitary walk. When she proposed to accompany 
 him, she was told that he found solitude after his morning's 
 work absolutely essential ; but they would pass the evening 
 together. Once she ventured on a timid little remonstrance, 
 and then Bryanstone lost his temper, and said he had been a 
 fool to think any woman cotcld understand a poet's needs, but 
 he should know better in future, and look for no comprehension. 
 Then, indeed, Ethel took alarm lest she should prove herself 
 unworthy of her high calling. 
 
 When the great man returned from his walk he found her 
 dressed to look her prettiest. Her manner was most loving, her 
 face smiling, and the dinner good. He noted all these facts 
 with satisfaction, and generously consented to be reconciled. 
 
 Ethel was one of those women with whom love is a religion 
 rather than a pastime — that is to say, she loved more with her 
 soul than with her senses. She was a poet's wife— //^r poet's ! 
 She gloried in this thought. Some day, when the world recog- 
 nized his greatness, it would know her also, as the lady of his 
 choice. She bore with solitude patiently ; smiled at little gusts 
 of temper ; and, when " The Damnation of a Soul '' was most 
 completely damned by a merciless press, she remained faithful 
 and unchanged in her admiration. Even when that awful 
 weekly, calling itself The Balance^ said, cruelly : 
 
 " Why Mr. Bryanstone should write verse is of course 
 nobody's business but his own. We should think he might 
 find more amusement in lawn tennis, but he knows best. Why 
 he should publish what he writes is a still greater mystery, 
 
BR VANS TONE AND WIFE. 495 
 
 since it can hardly be a pleasure to him to be compelled to 
 see himself as the reviewers see him," and then went on for 
 a column farther in a similarly cheerful strain ; yet her faith 
 did not fail her. 
 
 " Read that,^^ cried Bryanstone, flinging the paper on the 
 table before her, and she did read it, and, having read, she 
 came over to him, and said : 
 
 "Darling, what does it matter? It is only a question of 
 time. Whether it is one year, or two, or more, before they 
 know you for the poet you are, it must come in time. / can 
 wait — can't you 1 " 
 
 This was just what she ought to have said. Bryanstone felt 
 that she came up to the point required of a poet's wife, and 
 answered, quite emotionally for him : 
 
 " Yes, dear, I can wait. We may have to wait longer than 
 you think, but with you beside me I can wait." 
 
 All the same, waiting was hard. Women know what it is to 
 wait for love that comes not ; and their lonely hearts ache, as 
 they see other women praised, courted, married, while they are 
 neglected. Even so do some men ache for fame, and Bryan- 
 stone was among them. Books of verse he fully believed far 
 less worthy than his were praised, but not one word of praise 
 or recognition as a poet from any London journal ever came 
 his way. The literary circles he frequented were only neighbour 
 to the rose — men and women who knew some one distinguished, 
 perhaps, and promised introductions that never came ; and even 
 among this set Bryanstone found scanty appreciation. He tried 
 to think he did not care — that it was all because his work was 
 above their heads. He comforted himself with legends of un- 
 appreciated great men, and reassured his wife that he could 
 bide his time. All the same, the cup was bitter, and he who 
 drank thereof was not altogether a pleasant person to live 
 with ; and those friends who had said, when they heard of his 
 marriage, " God help Mrs. Bryanstone ! " had known what they 
 were talking about. 
 
 Ethel proved herself a very remarkable woman. Did her 
 husband ever think how much he gave her to bear .^ Probably 
 not, for he was eaten up by self-love ; and yet, in his own 
 selfish way he grew very fond of her — as the cat is fond of the 
 warm corner by the fire. If he went out without her she must 
 sit up for him, no matter how late the hour at which he returned, 
 
496 BRYANSTOl^E AND WIFE. 
 
 that he might have her to talk over the evening with. When 
 he wrote, he wanted her, not in the room, but within easy call, 
 that he might summon her to give her opinion at every pro- 
 gressive stage of his work. He was cold and affectionate by 
 turns, and expected her to be contented and in harmony with 
 either mood ; and so she always was, or at least she successfully 
 pretended to be. 
 
 She was a wonderful woman, certainly ; but then she gloried 
 in her misery, and consoled all her sorrows by thinking what 
 men would say of her and of her poet when they should both 
 be dead. Her health, however, began to fail. Her long spells 
 of confinement to the house were alternated with walks of a 
 length far beyond her strength, whenever her husband took a 
 freak to desire her company. The premature birth and death 
 of their first child left her a confirmed invalid. Of course 
 Bryanstone was very sorry for this, he found it so desperately 
 inconvenient. She had to go early to bed ; nor could she even 
 bear to be read to for very long at a time. Thus he came to 
 pass more of his leisure in the society of other people. She 
 saw this change, but she made no comment on it. Sometimes 
 she was more glad of rest than she could be of anything else in 
 the world. She was sure he loved her — but he was a poet, and 
 poets, she had been told, were not as other men. She must not 
 grudge him the larger life he needed. He had his art to love, 
 besides his love for her ; and she must be content that he 
 should do what was best for that. Thus she reasoned it all out 
 in her lonely hours ; and when he came home welcomed him 
 with her unfailing gentleness. 
 
 It came to pass that one afternoon Bryanstone went alone 
 to a reception where he thought it well to appear, though he 
 honestly expected to be very much bored. And there, wonder- 
 ful to relate, he was for the first time taken out of himself. He, 
 William Bryanstone, fell in love. It was an American girl from 
 New York, a certain Blanche Vandervoort, who wrought in him 
 this sudden and amazing change. She was the first American 
 he had ever met ; and perhaps her novelty had something to 
 say to her charm for him. At any rate, he went down before 
 her, at once and hopelessly. Her bright eyes, her soft colour, 
 her perfect figure, her exquisite toilet, her voice, with its slight 
 suggestion of sing-song — each was a separate charm. 
 
 " I hear that you are a poet ? '' she said, when they were 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE, 497 
 
 introduced. " I like to meet poets, but I might as well tell 
 you that I never understand poetry. I do know what some of 
 Longfellow means, but that is all I can make out." 
 
 " You shall understand other poetry than Longfellow's," 
 Bryanstone said, determinedly. 
 
 "And how shall I ? Who'll make me ?" 
 
 " I'll make you." 
 
 "Oh, I shall be much obliged. I'm afraid you can't, don't 
 you know ? but, // you can, I should like it. Are you sure you 
 won't fail ? " 
 
 " Quite sure. Why you arc poetry." 
 
 " I don't rhyme," she said, softly. Was she making a pun, 
 or gently laughing at him ? At any rate, whatever she was 
 doing she was adorable. Then some one separated them, and 
 Bryanstone did not have an opportunity to speak to Miss 
 Vandervoort again until just as she was leaving. She shook 
 hands with him, and then turned back to say, with her pretty 
 American accent : 
 
 "Remember, Mr. Bryanstone, you have promised to make 
 me understand some poetry beside Longfellow's. I am at home 
 every Wednesday afternoon, from four to seven," and she put 
 a card into his hand. " Will you come some W^ednesday, and 
 commence my poetical education ?" 
 
 " That I will, most surely." 
 
 Then they parted, and Mr. Bryanstone walked away to dine 
 at his club, the happiest man in London. The man who has 
 lived to middle age without ever falling in love is perhaps a 
 man to be pitied ; and yet is not the long-deferred passion all 
 the more intoxicating when it does come at last ? 
 
 " Yes," said Bryanstone, confidentially to himself, as he walked 
 along ; *' I am hit, and there is no mistake." 
 
 And in very truth, hit he was, and hard hit at that. Here 
 was a woman the very tones of whose voice moved him as no 
 caress from any other woman had ever done. He recalled 
 every shade of expression on her lovely face, every detail of 
 her dress. The touch of her hand lingered on his palm, and 
 thrilled him still. It was not in the man's nature at this crisis 
 to think very much about poor Mrs. Bryanstone. It was all he 
 could do to think of himself — of this wonderful, new emotion, 
 which had revealed him to himself, and of her who had caused 
 it. How was he to live until the next Wednesday ? 
 
 33 
 
49^ BKYANSTONE AND J FIFE. 
 
 He went home at last. His wife had not yet gone to bed. 
 She was not changed. She was just as barren of anything hke 
 fascination as she had ever been. It seemed to him there was 
 an air of untidiness about her, poor tired woman, and he 
 thought he had never noticed quite how shockingly her gowns 
 fitted before. 
 
 She welcomed him tenderly, and thereat his conscience gave 
 him one little twinge, but he remembered that he had made he?' 
 happy, though she had failed to make him so ; and he kissed 
 her wan, uplifted face with quite a glow of virtuous satisfaction. 
 But he left her immediately, bidding her go to bed, for a mood 
 of work was upon him. 
 
 When he had told Miss Vandervoort that he would teach 
 her to understand some poet beside Longfellow, he had thought, 
 of course, of himself. She might not rise to the heights of his 
 most important work, but for her sake he would descend from 
 those heights. He had scorned to write simple love-lyrics, 
 hitherto ; but for her sweet sake to these would he devote 
 himself, and he was sure he could beat his rivals on their own 
 lines, now that to him, in his turn, had come the inspiration of 
 a genuine passion. He would read her these poems without 
 letting her know that they were his ; and when she had suffi- 
 ciently admired them she should find out that not only was he 
 their author, but that she was their inspiration. 
 
 To work with this end in view was easy ; so it came to pass 
 that when he presented himself in Miss Vandervoort's drawing- 
 room on Wednesday, he had already quite a goodly amount of 
 verse with which to regale her. When he saw that she really 
 liked it, which indeed she did, for it was simple, eloquent, and 
 impassioned, he told her that it was all hers — she had inspired 
 it — he had written it for her. She blushed very prettily, and 
 said : 
 
 *' Is that really true, Mr. Bryanstone ? No one ever wrote 
 ?ne any poetry before. Don't you know you'll make me proud ? '' 
 
 "It is you who make me proud by caring for my rhymes. 
 Ah, if you knew how inadequate they seem when I look at 
 you ! " 
 
 Let lis look at her, also, this girl who had touched Bryan- 
 stone's long slumbering heart. She was rather pretty, perhaps, 
 than beautiful ; but she was very pretty. She was rather tall, 
 light, certainly, but with an exquisitely-moulded figure. Her 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 499 
 
 clearly-cut face was healthfully pale, her mouth small and red, 
 her hair soft and abundant, sunny brown, with just a glint of 
 gold in it. Her eyes were blue, large, serene, beautiful in shape 
 as in colour, with black lashes ; real Irish eyes, bequeathed her 
 by some remote ancestor. They were smiling eyes, with no 
 particular depth of expression, but who asks for expression in 
 such eyes as those ? Her voice was low, and the soft sing-song 
 of her American accent had an especial charm for Bryanstone's 
 unaccustomed ears ; but she had little to say for herself. 
 
 Bryanstone could not have told what in her charmed him so 
 profoundly ; but charmed he was ; and it never occurred to him for 
 one moment to resist the spell. Ah, those were good days for him. 
 He believed himself terribly in love, and, for him, so he was ; 
 though his feeling would not have seemed over deep, measured 
 by the standard of other men. He gushed love-lyrics from 
 morning until night whenever he was out of his charmer's sight ; 
 and he was desperately happy except when he was in his wife's 
 presence. At such times a kind of dull remorse gnawed at 
 him, and this made him moody and ill-tempered, and poor Mrs. 
 Bryanstone thought it was because, by reason of her illness, 
 she could not devote herself to him quite as fully as she had 
 formerly done. So she bore with his moods like an angel, and 
 her forbearance begot yet more remorse, and he was glad to 
 get away from her, and forget his slight compunctions of 
 conscience in the delicious employment of writing verses to 
 Blanche Vandervoort. 
 
 As for that blue-€yed young lady, she never dreamed that the 
 man was married, though certainly she had not the faintest idea 
 of marrying him herself. Hitherto, she had had plenty of 
 admirers, rich men in her own country ; a handsome guards- 
 man or two since she came to England, and one solemn 
 member of Parliament. But Bryanstone was the -first poet 
 she had brought down, and to be the object of his rhymes and 
 his rhapsodies was dainty food for her vanity, of which she had 
 plenty. She was one of those women who delight in mild 
 excitements, and, safe in their own coldness, enjoy playing with 
 fire. 
 
 So, in Bryanstone's case, she allowed herself various harmless 
 little unconventionalities. She drove with him in the park, she 
 rambled in Kensington Gardens, she went to the opera, and he 
 recited poems to her between the acts, and in her secret soul 
 
5oo BRYANSTONR AND WIFE, 
 
 she was bored alike by the poetry and the music. In con- 
 versation he contrived not to bore her, usually, for he talked to 
 her chiefly about herself, and that was a subject in which she 
 was unfailingly interested. Sometimes, however, he began to 
 talk about himself, as a separate individual dissociated from 
 her, and that wearied her frightfully. However, she never bore 
 it long. She would bring him up short, in the midst of some 
 thrilling account of the birth-throes in his soul of one of his 
 great epics, by asking him how he liked her dress, and did he 
 think blue or rose-colour suited her best. 
 
 Much as he adored her, he began to feel that she could not 
 comprehend the poet-nature, and that, in that one sole respect, 
 his poor wife at home was undoubtedly her superior. Many a 
 man, so situated, would have grown to dislike his wife. Not so 
 Bryanstone. He was quite willing to admit all Ethel's good 
 points, yet in those days he certainly wished very little of her 
 society. One night after he had returned from Miss Vander- 
 voort's his wife said to him : 
 
 " Dear, I think you must be writing a great poem, you look 
 so happy." 
 
 " No," he said, exultingly, ^' I am livino' one." 
 
 He was thinking of the other woman ; but poor Ethel took 
 the words to herself, and went over to him and kissed him with 
 such loving trust that he groaned in spirit, and feeling once more 
 the sting of his remorse, hurried out of the house, saying he 
 needed a longer walk. 
 
 One day Bryanstone came to Miss Vandervoort with a radiant 
 face. 
 
 '* My new book is in press," he said. " It will be quite 
 different to anything I have ever before done. It will contain 
 only the sonnets and lyrics that you have inspired, and I shall 
 not even publish under my own name. My former volumes 
 have been so different that the reviewers would not do me justice 
 if they saw I had betaken myself to this so unaccustomed vein. 
 We'll see what they say of some one who will seem to them 
 quite a new man." 
 
 " Oh, that will be lovely," Miss Vandervoort cried, with 
 unusual enthusiasm. " And will you dedicate it to me ? " 
 
 " That I will," he said, earnestly, *' even as I dedicate my life 
 to you." 
 
 The summer separated Bryanstone for a time from his heart's 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 501 
 
 delight. She went with some friends to Switzerland. He took 
 his wife — who needed sea air — to Whitby. In the autumn, 
 when people were coming back to town, a volume of love poems 
 appeared with a new name on the title-page, and a dedication 
 to Blanche Vandervoort. And then Bryanstone tasted the sweets 
 of an altogether new experience. The book was a triumphant 
 success. Even The Balance failed to sneer, and said of the new 
 volume : *' It is long since we have seen such genuine and 
 beautiful expressions of lyric love. If these poems are less 
 fanciful than Herrick, less passionate than Burns, they have a 
 simplicity which the former lacked, and a delicacy sometimes 
 foreign to the latter. That a new and highly gifted poet is in 
 our midst is not to be doubted." 
 
 Many other reviews were scarcely less enthusiastic. To 
 Bryanstone's own great surprise, he was in a sense famous, yet 
 he could not openly wear his laurels. His secret must, at all 
 cost, be kept from his wife, whose health was at that time even 
 more delicate than usual. This sudden fame for his disguised 
 self was very curious to him. It was strange to be asked if he 
 had read his own book, and to hear all sorts of comments upon 
 it. These comments were usually favourable. Only one bold 
 man said : " Love-lyrics, are they ? Pah, the writer has no 
 blood in him. He does not know what love is. A very pretty 
 poet, though." 
 
 Of course. Miss Vandervoort was immensely pleased at the 
 success of the volume, and with her pleasure and the world's 
 applause Bryanstone's cup seemed overflowing. Only it was 
 curious, the persistent longing he had, deep down, that his wife 
 should know of his success — that she, who had believed in him 
 so long and so faithfully during his adversity, should be witness 
 to his triumph. That this could not be was the one bitter drop 
 in his full cup. But, on the whole, he was happier than he had 
 ever dreamed of being before. Even at home his face beamed, 
 and Ethel was glad at heart, taking his good cheer in token that 
 he did not repent his choice of her, even now, when through 
 lack of strength she was in some wise failing him. 
 
 But, alas for Bryanstone ! In the very midst of his rejoicing 
 trouble was brewing for him. It is an old story that women 
 cannot keep secrets, and Miss Vandervoort proved no exception 
 to the rule. In the strictest confidence she confided to a married 
 lady, one of her friends, that the real author of that lovely book 
 
502 BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 
 
 of poems dedicated to her was Mr. William Bryanstone. Now 
 it happened that this very lady knew Bryanstone, and, moreover, 
 was one of the few who knew that he was married — a fact of 
 which many of his acquaintances were unaware, as Mrs. Bryan- 
 stone was so seldom seen with him in public — and her existence 
 was a fact to which her poet-husband did not consider it neces- 
 sary to call special attention. Mrs. York, however, chanced to 
 know, and knowing, her ire was roused against this married 
 man who could write love songs to another than his wife. 
 " Traitor " and " villain " were her mildest names for him. 
 
 Miss Vandervoort was less violent in her anger against him ; 
 but very angry she was, all the same. It was true that she had 
 trifled with him in her lazy way, and that she had never for one 
 instant contemplated the idea of marrying him, but it was also 
 true, as she said to herself, that he would have made her love 
 him, if he could ; and she felt herself extremely ill-used. It was 
 to be owned that she had broken her promise of secrecy ; but 
 that went for nothing with her in summing up the affair. She 
 had found him out — and she would tell him so, and send him 
 away with the scorn his deception merited. Of course she 
 meant his deception toward herself. I am sorry to confess that 
 his deception toward his wife did not trouble her one whit. 
 But she was very capable of resenting her own wrongs. 
 
 Bryanstone found her at home the next day. She was ex- 
 quisitely attired, as usual. She was one of those fair women 
 who can wear white ; and she had on a heavy, softly-faUing 
 white gown, with a bunch of crimson flowers in her belt. She 
 sat in a low chair before the bright fire, but she rose and shook 
 hands with Bryanstone, and then sat down again, the subtle 
 perfume she loved to use escaping from the folds of her dress. 
 They were silent a moment after they had both sat down, and 
 she held her painted fan between her face and the fire, and 
 looked at Bryanstone with her blue, Irish eyes. A moment 
 more and he would have been at her feet — but something in 
 her glance — or was it a little curl of scorn about her mouth } — 
 restrained him. 
 
 "I've something to say to you," she said, moving her fan 
 slowly to and fro. "Do you know Mrs. York — Mrs. Reginald 
 York, don't you know ? " 
 
 " Yes, a little. What of her .^ -^ 
 
 " Well, only that I told her you wrote the book, and she says 
 
BKVANS7VNE AND IVIFE. 503 
 
 that you have been married all this time. I shouldn't like to 
 be hard on you — but I just think you misunderstood the kind 
 of woman I am. I don^t have married men make love to me, 
 don't you know i^ — not as a riclc.^' 
 
 Bryanstone felt his breath choke him. He could not speak 
 just at first. He looked at her. Yes, she was pretty, as she 
 sat there, leaving her words to quiver in his heart like arrows, 
 and swayed her painted fan softly, keeping it always between 
 her fair face and the fire. And then his wrath began to kindle. 
 
 " Pretty, yes," he said to himself, " but shallow, unimaginative, 
 selfish, languid — ah, what was it in her that got into the heads 
 of men like wine ? Yes, it had been his head ! Where %vas 
 his heart } At home with Ethel, or asleep still — who knew ? " 
 He breathed more freely now. He looked steadily into the blue 
 eyes that mocked him. 
 
 " There was such a thing. Miss Vandervoort," he said, '^ as 
 a promise that you gave me. You pledged yourself to keep my 
 secret, and you have betrayed me. Why, I loved you — do you 
 understand, I loved you — and for that love I risked all my life. 
 I put all I was at your feet." 
 
 "Yes," she said, quietly, *^all but your right name and your 
 place in the world. I zvas flattered, don't you know ? I don't 
 mind owning it. I didn't care much about you — it isn't easy 
 for me to care much about people — but I was flattered. And 
 then to think I mustn't even tell who wrote the book ! And as 
 for faith — why, if I had loved you, as you wanted me to, what 
 could you have do7ie f You couldn't have married two wives, 
 don't you know ? It's hard on poets ; but you couldn't, really. 
 And I don't think j^?/ can say much about broken faith, for you 
 must have promised something to Mrs. Bryanstone — now didn't 
 you ? " 
 
 Bryanstone looked at her still— this only woman with whom 
 he had ever been in love. Her mild anger had lent to her pretty 
 face new charms. A mocking light shone from her blue eyes, 
 and on her cheek an unusual colour flamed. And this was the 
 end. He dared not so much as touch her hand to say good-bye- 
 His dream had come to its death. He made an exit worthy of 
 himself, however. The special copy of his book that he had 
 had bound for her lay on the table, and he took it with scornful, 
 passionate grasp and put it in the very midst of the hot, glowing 
 coal fire. And then, as if in an evil dream, he heard her say — 
 
504 BRYANSrONE AND WIFE, 
 
 " Ugh ! burnt leather does smell so, don't you know ?" 
 
 And then he had shut the door between them for ever ; and 
 he was out in the street, and the gas-lights winked at him 
 through the fog, and the cold assailed him, but could not chill 
 him more, for his heart was colder still. 
 
 He walked rapidly home through the unfriendly November 
 dusk. The square where his house stood seemed pervaded by 
 a malignant east wind, in which the gaunt tree-boughs shuddered 
 and complained. East wind and an ended love ! Bryanstone 
 shivered as he let himself in at his own door. He found his 
 wife reclining on the drawing-room sofa as usual. He was 
 prepared to be more than usually tender to her. He was just 
 the kind of man to console himself for the cold elsewhere at the 
 fireside of peaceful domesticity. In fact, peace was precisely 
 what he wanted to-night. Was there an east wind blowing 
 indoors also ? 
 
 " You are home earlier than usual," said his wife. 
 
 The words were simple, yet at the sound of them an awful 
 misgiving struck to his heart. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " it was too cold for a long walk." And then 
 he added, for somehow he had desperate fear of a pause in the 
 conversation, "Are you feeling very ill to-night, dear?" 
 
 ^'Rather — yes,'' and then she said hurriedly ," William, 1 
 have had a letter to-day which I cannot make out at all. Will 
 you read it ? " 
 
 And with the words she put a letter into his hands, of which 
 he knew the purport terribly well before he had read a word. 
 It said : 
 
 "Dear. Madam, — Though I have never seen you, I am 
 acquainted with Mr. Bryanstone, and toward you I feel the duty 
 that one woman owes to another. I think it is right that I 
 should tell you that your husband has been figuring in society 
 as an unmarried man ; that as such he has been making love 
 to a young lady of my acquaintance, and that to her he has 
 dedicated a volume of love-poems, which, however, he did not 
 pubhsh under his own name. In telling you this I am but doing 
 as I would be done by. I enclose my card, and should you wish 
 other proof than my word, I can give it to you. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " Elizabeth York," 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE, 505; 
 
 Bryanstone read the letter through and crushed it angrily vcu 
 his hand. 
 
 " It is a lie, is it not ? " Ethel asked, with a little quiver of 
 hope in her voice. 
 
 A man stronger than he, and more a man of the world, might 
 have answered " Yes " — might have persuaded her that the letter 
 was a vile slander, and carried it all off with a high hand. Not 
 so Bryanstone. His one refuge seemed to him to be in humble 
 confession. He was very pale when he knelt by Ethel's sofa^ 
 and said, sadly and penitently enough : 
 
 " Dear, you must try to forgive me. Your illness has left me 
 a good deal to myself; and I did drift into a flirtation with the 
 girl of whom Mrs. York speaks. It was wrong, I know. It 
 may be that poets are more easily tempted than other men ;; 
 but it's all over now ; and surely, darling, you who are so good 
 will forgive me, won't you ? '^ 
 
 *' I don't know ; I suppose so," she answered, in a dazed way,, 
 as if she hardly knew what she was saying. " I feel strangel>^ 
 to-night. I don't think I could talk about it.'^ 
 
 Yet in a few moments she resumed the subject of her owni 
 accord. 
 
 " You did write the book, then ? Was it that volume of love- 
 poems I have seen on your table ? " 
 
 Bryanstone bowed his head in assent. 
 
 *' And it was a success. I've read the reviews of it, and beert 
 angry in my own heart that the reviewers never treated jj/^;/ like 
 that. Ah, / shared your failures, and she — she shared your 
 success ! She had a right to it, though ; since she could inspire 
 it, and I never could. But it hurts — it Jmrts^^^ and he saw her 
 clinch her hands hard, like one in extreme pain. 
 
 " Ethel," he cried, " I was mad, mad." Yet even to him, and 
 at that time, his words seemed like mockery ; for he knew that 
 he had not been mad at all, but more in earnest than ever in 
 his life before. He drew near to her, and would have taken 
 her in his arms, but by some supreme effort she thrust him from 
 her, and rose, and stood before him looking into his eyes, while 
 her own glowed with unaccustomed fire. 
 
 " No, you were not mad," she said. " You were in love, and 
 it was that other woman who moved you. I have seen things 
 in you which I thought were strange — things which might have 
 made some women die of mortification— but I, I said to myself 
 
 34 
 
5o6 BRYANSTONE AND WIPE. 
 
 that poets were not as other men, and she who would be a poet's 
 wife must pay the price of it ! She must share him with his 
 art. But now I see that you, poet though you are, ca7i love as 
 other men love ; and that you have never loved your wife. 
 God help me, I believe I hate you both, you and her." 
 
 And then she went out swiftly ; and in a moment he heard 
 her shut and lock her bedroom door, and he knew that she was 
 locking him out of her heart as well. 
 
 With a more real pain than ever he had known before he 
 went again into the sullen November night, and walked long 
 about the windy, wintry streets. He had never dreamed until 
 then how fond he really was of the wife he had neglected. 
 The tears coursed down his face as he recalled all her patience, 
 all her unfailing faith, all her sweet ministrations. He had 
 wandered for some hours about the streets when a sudden fear 
 smote him. What if she had resolved to bear her unhappiness 
 no longer ? What if she were to flee from him to death 1 He 
 walked homeward as if he were walking for his life, and the 
 gas-lights winked at him more knowingly than ever as he went. 
 Everything seemed changed and unreal to him, but he hurried 
 on. 
 
 He found his wife's door unfastened now, and he went in. 
 No, thank God, she had not put an end to herself; but her 
 nightly feverishness had greatly increased. She put out her 
 hand to him as he drew near the bedside. 
 
 " It is you who must forgive me now," she said. " I was 
 wrong to say I hated you. I do?i't hate you. Yozi could not 
 help it. The failure was all in me. I was not the woman to 
 find my way to a poet's heart through his imagination, and she 
 was. That is all. And you meant to be kind to me in keeping 
 it from me. I see it all rightly now.'' 
 
 Oh, how her gentleness shamed him — how it stung him as 
 no reproaches could have done ! He sank on his knees beside 
 her. 
 
 " Ethel, darling," he said, and his voice trembled, " for God's 
 sake do not speak like that ! " 
 
 '' No, dear ; not if it grieves you. Only, when I am not here 
 you must not think that you do me any wrong, when the time 
 comes to marry her. I have loved you, and I have had my 
 day." 
 
 ** Ethel," he said, "you shall Jiot die. My care shall save 
 
BRYANSTONE AND WIFE. 507 
 
 you. But if you went from me no other woman should ever be 
 my wife. I told you that other dream — madness, fancy, what 
 you will — was all over. Don't you believe me, dear ? " 
 
 And it is possible that his words comforted her, even then. 
 She was a woman, and she loved him. 
 
 Why should we linger over her life's decline ? She did not 
 linger on her way to death. There came a day when, seeing 
 that she breathed with much difficulty, her husband lifted her 
 in his arms, and so upheld she whispered faintly, " Good-bye," 
 and then a great shudder ran through her body, and Bryanstone 
 knew that he was alone. He had never been thus alone before, 
 for that egotistic self, deluded by vain dreams with which he 
 had lived before he knew Ethel, was dead with her. 
 
 He had not killed his wife, perhaps ; but undoubtedly he had 
 hastened the end. And now what was left ? He had had his 
 little excitement — his dream of being in love, where love was 
 forbidden fruit. He had worn by stealth his ill-gotten bay- 
 wreath. Already the love-dream was over, and the withering 
 bay- wreath pricked his forehead. For the first time he found 
 no consolation in his muse. His desolation was too real to be 
 turned into a sonnet. He was worse company than ever. Let 
 us not stay with him. His punishment had overtaken him. 
 The one creature who had believed in him utterly, sympathized 
 with him unfailingly, loved him tirelessly, was dust and ashes, 
 and on his life's hearthstone the fire was dead. 
 
 UNVVIN BROTHER?, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTII AND LONDON*. 
 
-for a song's sake 
 
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