VOL. I.
 
 LONDON 
 
 PBINTED BY BPOTTISWOOD B AND CO. 
 BITW-STRBBT SQtTAHB
 
 LATE LAUKELS. 
 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'WHEAT AND TARES. 1 
 
 ' Satis magnum alter alter! theatrum sumus.' 
 
 ' Chaqn'nn tonrne en realites, 
 
 Antant qu'il peut, sea propres songes; 
 L'homme est de glace aox vfiritfe, 
 II est rte feu pour lea mensonges.' 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN. 
 1864.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FORESHADOWING . . . . . . . .1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 LA BELLE DEDAIGNEUSE ....... 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 DEFEAT 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 PLUCKED 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE FATTED CALF . . 81 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 HELEN Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE FIHST PARALLEL OPENED 125 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 FUKENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT . .146 
 
 2207018
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH BITHBE 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A MATCH l79 
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 . 237 
 
 NELLY is CONFIDENTIAL 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FOB BBTTBE FOE WOBSE . 
 
 . 266
 
 LATE LAUKELS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FORESHADOWING. 
 
 - an English home ; grey twilight poured 
 
 On dewy pastures, dewy trees, 
 Softer than sleep : all things in order stored, 
 A haunt of ancient peace. 
 
 UNDERWOOD MANOR-HOUSE was regarded, not 
 without reason, by the young people of the 
 neighbourhood, in the light of a realised para- 
 dise. Boys liked it because ponies abounded in 
 the paddocks, pointers and terriers about the 
 yards and lodges, and all sorts of good things 
 upon the garden walls. Girls liked it for its 
 rambling passages, the mysterious splendour of 
 its rooms, its quaint pictures, its cabinets of pic- 
 turesque curiosities, the peacocks which strutted 
 on the terrace, and the conservatory, where Mrs. 
 Evelyn and an old Scotch gardener contrived 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 between them to make summer seem eternal. 
 Boys and girls alike instinctively appreciated the 
 hearty welcome, and the effortless .hospitality, 
 which awaited them on the part of the squire 
 and his lady. Many a little creature, secure of 
 sympathy and consolation, intrusted her first 
 trouble to Mrs. Evelyn's ear, or committed some 
 too audacious request to her advocacy and pro- 
 tection. Many were the fortunate lads who 
 imperilled their own existence by futile attempts 
 upon that of the Underwood rabbits; who in- 
 vaded the stables, disturbed the pheasants, deci- 
 mated the peaches, and, in fact, did all those 
 pleasant things which gild the fancy of imagina- 
 tive youth, but are for the most part objected to 
 by country gentlemen, and the subordinate army 
 of country gentlemen's officials. The Under- 
 wood grooms and keepers, however; were infected 
 by their master's benevolence, and regarded all 
 juvenile delinquencies indulgently, as a venial 
 and interesting characteristic of the time of life. 
 Old Marston, the absolute despot of the woods, 
 all whose ideas seemed concentrated in a malig- 
 nant detestation of hawks and weasels, had yet a 
 tender side for aspiring sportsmen, and had sub- 
 mitted more than once with laudable resignation
 
 FORESHADOWING. 3 
 
 to being ' peppered ' by beginners, whose zeal 
 got the better of their prudence. 'I be glad 
 you're come, Jim,' he once observed to one of 
 the beaters, who joined him at the corner of the 
 plantation 'Master Charles have been pouring 
 it into me most awful.' A special providence, 
 however, preserved him and his leathern gaiters 
 from annihilation, and Marston survived to reap 
 a golden harvest, from a list of crack shots who 
 had received their initiatory instructions at his 
 hands. Thus, between master and servants, Un- 
 derwood was a cheerful place ; yet its cheerful- 
 ness resulted more from determined good-nature 
 than from the absence of materials for melan- 
 choly. A sort of fatality had seemed of late 
 years to hang over the Manor-house ; the gene- 
 ration of Evelyns, which would naturally have 
 been just now at its prime, was already extinct, 
 and a party of grandchildren supplied the place 
 and enjoyed the privileges of the missing sons 
 and daughters. Time after time had the Squire 
 entered the little Underwood chancel, as chief 
 mourner for children, whose vital energies had 
 seemed to fail them just when strength should 
 have ' been greatest, and the prospect of danger 
 the most remote. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 One daughter, whose memory seemed now to 
 her parents an almost unearthly dream of tender 
 loveliness, had scarcely left the schoolroom, when 
 she sank into a decline. Charles, the eldest son, 
 frightened, while still in his honeymoon, by some 
 unaccountable symptom of increasing feebleness, 
 had carried off his bride to Italy, and endea- 
 voured, under a sunny sky, to stave off the fate 
 which he felt creeping pitilessly upon him. He 
 soon knew it to be in vain, and turned home- 
 ward to die. For a while his widow lingered on 
 at Underwood, the scene of her first love and 
 her great trouble. Every one in the house, from 
 highest to lowest, had a tender greeting for her 
 little son, the inheritor of his father's name, tone, 
 and manner ; of the faultless temper which, Mrs. 
 Evelyn declared, was the characteristic failing of 
 all the males of the family ; and of the good 
 looks, which her nervous judgment construed into 
 a warning of constitutional delicacy. 
 
 For a while the strangeness of her position, 
 the poignancy of her grief, and the satisfaction 
 of seeing her child duly installed as future pos- 
 sessor of Underwood, had reconciled young Mrs. 
 Evelyn to the company of old people and chil- 
 dren, and to the sober enjoyments of a country
 
 FORESHADOWING. 5 
 
 house. Her own tastes, however, had been com- 
 pletely continentalised ; and as her sense of loss 
 grew less acute, the monotony of existence be- 
 came less tolerable, and her own health afforded 
 an excellent pretext for a return to those pleasant 
 continental cities where her principal acquaint- 
 ance had been formed, and her most congenial 
 enjoyments were to be found. The young Charles 
 fell easily into his father's place; became the 
 chief interest of his grandparents, and startled 
 them every now and then by some striking- 
 similarity in taste or gesture to what they re- 
 membered of their own son's childhood. His com- 
 panions were two cousins, Margaret and Elinor 
 St. Aubyn, the orphan children of the second 
 of the Evelyn daughters. Margaret Evelyn had 
 married a neighbouring clergyman, and had died 
 shortly after the youngest child's birth. At Mr. 
 St. Aubyn's death, a year later, both little girls 
 were brought to their grandfather's house^ were 
 established in the schoolroom, where Charles was 
 already somewhat refractorily submitting to the 
 first rudiments of Latin grammar ; and soon 
 seemed, like him, with the readiness of child- 
 hood, to forget, amid new interests, pleasures,
 
 6 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 and occupations, the home they had lost, and the 
 misfortune which had befallen them. 
 
 Margaret, however, by no means in reality 
 shared the indifference of her sister and her 
 cousin. Her mother's death had sunk deep into 
 her heart, and sjie still remembered with agonising 
 distinctness the misery which it had cost her. 
 Sh,e was endowed with a precocity for suffering, 
 which her childlike playfulness, reserved lan- 
 guage, and simple demeanour, prevented those 
 around her from suspecting. She had seen too 
 far into her sorrow, gauged it too thoroughly, and 
 drunk too deeply of the bitter cup, to be content 
 with the commonplace consolations which might 
 have seemed naturally befitting to her age, or to 
 be speedily aroused from the half-lethargy of 
 grief into which her loss had benumbed her. She 
 recalled the darkened room, the wan, scarcely 
 distinguishable form, the wasted, feeble hand 
 that was laid tremulously in her own, the longing 
 eye, full of unspoken tenderness, the failing voice, 
 that half prophecy, half injunction bade her 
 supply alike to husband and child the void which, 
 a few hours later, death was to make in the house- 
 hold. The charge, dimly understood at the time, 
 had taken possession of her mind, had more and
 
 FORESHADOWING. 7 
 
 more absorbed her thoughts, and had gradually 
 become the ruling principle of her life. While 
 her father lived, she had watched him with an 
 eager fidelity, had tempted him from the solitude 
 of his regret, and cheered him with abortive 
 efforts at companionship, which would have been 
 amusing, but that they were completely pathetic. 
 At her father's death, the removal of one half of 
 her responsibility made her but more keenly sen- 
 sitive as to the other; and the superfluous de- 
 votion which most children throw away on pets 
 or playthings, was concentrated, in Margaret's 
 case, on a little, wayward, petulant, capricious 
 beauty, who soon awoke to the privileges of her 
 position, and realised the agreeable fact that at 
 least one person in the house considered her hap- 
 piness the chief end of existence. 
 
 Protection, however, is no step to complete 
 intimacy ; and Margaret's zealous guardianship 
 placed her on an eminence above her sister, far 
 greater than the few years which divided them 
 would ordinarily have explained. It did more, 
 for it effectually marred the enjoyment which 
 her sister's society would otherwise have afforded 
 her. Saint as she already was, she was still a 
 child, and childhood has its prerogatives, which,
 
 8 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 despite everything, it clings to tenaciously, and 
 resigns at last not without regret, weariness, and 
 compunction. Margaret at times, in her morbid 
 nervousness lest harm should befall her sister, 
 felt that a heavy burden weighed upon her 
 spirits, and betrayed the fact by the buoyant 
 cheerfulness into which her cousin's company at 
 once aroused her. For Charles's indiscretions she 
 felt no responsibility, and she regarded them 
 accordingly with an agreeable mixture of terror, 
 wonderment, and delight. There was a sort of 
 fascination in seeing him break down the pale 
 she so religiously respected, and trifle with what 
 were to her inviolable mandates. Charles was a 
 sufficiently naughty lad, availed himself to the 
 full of the privileges of his position, and was 
 troubled with no compunctious visitings as to the 
 amount of inconvenience or annoyance entailed 
 upon any portion of the household by his mis- 
 deeds. The Squire had once or twice been roused 
 to actual wrath ; Mrs. Evelyn tried, and tried in 
 vain, to impress him with the sinfulness of little 
 sins; and the housekeeper, fairly at the end of 
 her endurance, looked upon him as a vessel of 
 wrath, providentially designed for the disturbance 
 of the Manor-house, the destruction of puddings
 
 FORESHADOWING. 9 
 
 and preserves, and the complete embitterment of 
 her closing years. All, however, confessed se- 
 cretly that his heart was good, his truthfulness 
 unimpeachable, and his delinquencies such as the 
 future lord of Underwood had almost a right to 
 indulge in. Margaret regarded him with an 
 affectionate awe ; she bit her lips, and opened 
 her great brown eyes, and trembled with excite- 
 ment, while Charles scaled the dizzy heights of 
 towering elm-trees, set gunpowder volcanoes in a 
 blaze of smoky glory, or brought a wild cortege 
 of tandemmed donkeys to what Americans would 
 call ' an everlasting smash,' in the haha of the 
 park. 
 
 It was for these children that the festivity with 
 which my story opens was designed. It was mid- 
 summer, and the Sandyford meadows were trim 
 and glittering, still fresh from the scythe. The 
 last cartload of hay had been safely housed with- 
 out a drop of rain, and the Squire's overflowing 
 satisfaction imperatively demanded an outburst. 
 His youngest grandchild's birthday was an excel- 
 lent pretext for some such unceremonious hospi- 
 talities as best accorded with Mr. Evelyn's present 
 hilarity, the resources of his establishment, and 
 the taste of the neighbourhood. Accordingly, in
 
 10 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 the shade of one of the great lime-trees, which 
 stretched from the drawing-room windows down 
 to the river's side, a banquet had been prepared, 
 and a great many eager guests were assembled. 
 Mrs. Evelyn, already enjoying the privileges of 
 an invalid, was ensconced in an easy chair, so 
 placed as to command full sight of all that was 
 going on, without exposing her too much to the 
 tumult of the occasion. The Squire, who for 
 forty years had been an assiduous lover, and 
 whose old age had lost none of the chivalry of 
 youth, found his way often enough to her side, 
 and, resting awhile from his duties as a host, 
 joined with her in quiet contemplation of the 
 scene. With how pleasant a melancholy would 
 their thoughts at such times wander back to the 
 long period happily passed together, its bright- 
 ness already tinged with the first gathering shade 
 that told of approaching night ! How long ago it 
 seemed, and yet how near, that old, dearly be- 
 loved, half misty world, rich with remembered 
 joys, griefs, anxieties, the common burden of 
 both the pleasant days of early married life 
 the calmer happiness of middle age the dreadful 
 hours of sickening hope or passionate sorrow all 
 now mellowed by distance, and borrowing a new
 
 FORESHADOWING. 11 
 
 and tenderer grace from the feeling, stronger day 
 by day, that it was not for ever, and that the end 
 was at hand ! What a vista of pleasant gatherings 
 under these trees, where a new generation of 
 children were already at play ! Where was the 
 old world, to which they belonged ? How natural 
 that Mrs. Evelyn, as she sat with her husband's 
 hand in hers, should find her eyes dim with tears, 
 and from time to time a louder shout or merrier 
 burst of laughter than usual should recall her 
 from a reverie, in which past and present were 
 strangely and sadly mixed together, and of which 
 he alone would have been capable of appreciating 
 the whole interest and pathos ! 
 
 A goodly crowd was collected on the lawn. For 
 an hour past juvenile contingents from all the 
 neighbouring houses had been dropping in, and 
 by this time the assembly presented a really im- 
 posing appearance. Charles, in the full splendour 
 of a public-schoolboy's first holidays, acted as his 
 grandfather's aide-de-camp, and with officious en- 
 thusiasm devoted himself to the general enter- 
 tainment. 
 
 Nelly, in whose honour the festival was given, 
 wore her mock dignity with an easy grace, and 
 evinced a ready aptitude for the arts of queen-
 
 12 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ship. Her sudden changes of expression, and an 
 occasional imperiousness of manner, would have 
 told a careful observer that her reign, if good- 
 natured and generous, would be liable to capri- 
 cious fits, despotic impulses, and gusts of passion. 
 Nature had gifted her, however, with a persuasive 
 prettiness of manner. Already her grandfather 
 pronounced her an adept in the arts of enlight- 
 ened tyranny, and, appreciating both her pleasant 
 and her haughty moods, and setting a high price 
 on domestic peace and quiet, extended to her an 
 indulgence that was not without its tinge of 
 cowardice. 
 
 The feast had scarcely begun when there came 
 a clatter up the approach, next the muffled sound 
 of wheels and hoofs upon the grass ; a carriage, 
 somewhat over-splendidly appointed, drove ra- 
 pidly along the avenue ; a fine pair of greys were 
 brought to a reluctant halt beneath the lime- 
 trees ; a glittering, powdered footman sprang to 
 the ground ; and in another instant the Squire, 
 cut short in the distribution of a gigantic syllabub, 
 hurried to help the new-comers to the ground, car- 
 ried off Mrs. Vivien to a place of honour by his 
 wife, put her husband in command of an end of 
 the table, and found a place for her daughter
 
 FORESHADOWING. 13 
 
 among the banqueters nearest himself. The 
 Viviens had lately become owners of Clyffe, a 
 handsome place some dozen miles away. As yet, 
 they were not much known, nor altogether liked. 
 They were wealthy, and made no secret of the 
 fact ; and the county in general resented an os- 
 tentatious splendour which it was easy to construe 
 into an affront to the existing order of things. 
 Mrs. Vivien's smart barouche quite eclipsed the 
 ponderously-magnificent vehicles in which, for a 
 generation past, the neighbouring magnates had 
 exchanged visits of state, and the dog-carts and 
 pony-carriages in which people made their way 
 to one another on less ceremonious occasions. 
 Mrs. Vivien, it was generally admitted, was fine 
 to vulgarity. Her house was an upholsterer's 
 palace, her jewels too profuse, her little girl was 
 over-dressed, her liveries were gaudy, and the 
 powdered heads and silk stockings of her servants 
 were the objects of general contempt and indig- 
 nation. 
 
 The surrounding landowners, each the un- 
 doubted lord of his own little principality, and 
 guarding his prerogative with a jealous care, 
 watched with a half-pitying contempt the efforts 
 of a nouveau riche to outshine them, and greeted
 
 14 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Major Vivien at the magistrate's meetings with 
 the chilling politeness due to an ' outsider.' The 
 Major, however, had a longer purse, sharper wits, 
 and more knowledge of the world, than them- 
 selves ; and an emissary from the Carlton had 
 put his merits so forcibly before the little knot 
 of freemen who directed the politics of the 
 borough, that Major Vivien, along with another 
 Tory, had won his way to a seat in St. Stephen's, 
 and had already begun to enjoy the increased 
 dignity which such a political eminence could 
 not fail to confer. Mrs. Vivien, though she re- 
 solved to shine, and succeeded in doing so, had 
 little mortifications to undergo, which were none 
 the less galling because they had to be entirely 
 concealed. Heavyshire, as a county, unanimously 
 resolved that her finery should seem misplaced 
 and unappreciated. Nobody made the least effort 
 to live up to her scale : the wife of the lord- 
 lieutenant, in the shabbiest possible attire, drove 
 two scrubby little Shetland ponies over to Clyffe, 
 resolutely refused to be betrayed iuto London 
 gossip, and evidently felt that she was being ex- 
 cessively condescending when she applauded the 
 drawing-room cornices, and asked how much the 
 carpet cost a yard.
 
 FORESHADOWING. 15 
 
 Lady Dangerfield, whose husband was the 
 Major's colleague, after ignoring her existence 
 for six months, came at last, with a thousand 
 pretty speeches, nattered her too grossly for 
 belief, and concluded, with a great deal of trans- 
 parent politeness, by a request that Mrs. Vivien 
 should take her place as patroness of a Decayed 
 Washerwomen's Institution, of which her lady- 
 ship made no secret that she was "heartily sick. 
 
 Mrs. Vivien felt provoked, in spite of herself, 
 when, at the best places in the country, she found 
 the mistress of the house going with gruel and 
 flannel to a poor woman's cottage ; the gentlemen 
 at cricket on the lawn, with an eleven eked out 
 with garden-boys and grooms; and the young 
 ladies either ' scoring ' for their brothers, or busy, 
 in garden-gloves and brown-holland pinafores, 
 among their roses and geraniums. Nowhere had 
 Mrs. Vivien been less successful than at Under- 
 wood ; and, though the Squire's sincerity was 
 generally unimpeachable, we may suspect that 
 her arrival at the present moment was thoroughly 
 inopportune, and the welcome she received all 
 the more studiedly courteous for being con- 
 sciously hypocritical. 
 
 Charles, less discriminating and more impres-
 
 16 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 sible than his grandfather, was thoroughly pleased 
 at the arrival; and the young lady, who was 
 handed over to his charge, had every qualification 
 for exciting a tumult in a schoolboy's heart. 
 Florence Vivien had her mother's character 
 written in her face, and something more. Her 
 beauty would have been more agreeable, but for 
 the assured confidence of her manner, and for the 
 flowers and lace with which the skilful fingers of 
 a French maid had somewhat too generously em- 
 bellished her. She was strikingly graceful; but 
 it was a grace which never forgot itself, and in 
 which the dancing-master's services were unduly 
 discernible. She had lived for years abroad, and 
 always with grown-up people ; accordingly, she 
 was neither English nor childlike ; and the 
 Heavy shire ladies were probably in the right 
 when they pronounced her vain and forward, 
 intriguante, dressed not wisely, but too well, and, 
 worst of all, a precocious flirt. 
 
 Charles proud of his position as quasi-host, 
 and cured by a single quarter at Eton of any 
 indifference to the opposite sex devoted himself 
 zealously to his companion, was delighted to find 
 that so ethereal a being could devour strawberries 
 and cream, became talkative, confidential, affec-
 
 FORESHADOWING. 17 
 
 tionate, and, before the repast was concluded, had 
 agreed upon an interchange of Christian names, 
 and boldly proffered his claim for the dance that 
 was to follow. 
 
 * You can dance ? ' Florence inquired, already 
 sagaciously distrustful of an incapable partner. 
 
 Charles's education was happily sufficiently 
 complete to justify an affirmative reply, and to 
 secure him the wished-for boon. With the joy- 
 fulness of a first success, he led away his prospec- 
 tive partner to the garden, and proceeded to fill 
 up the interval, which was to elapse before the 
 dance began, with some of those sage remarks 
 which older people than he have been known, 
 under similar circumstances, to indulge in. 
 
 Florence was content with the size, comeliness, 
 and dignity, of her admirer ; and listened gra- 
 ciously as he became more and more loquacious. 
 Presently they came to the flower-beds, now all 
 ablaze with Mrs. Evelyn's favourite roses. 
 
 f Oh I ' cried the siren, already an adept in the 
 conduct of a flirtation, ' how beautiful how very, 
 very beautiful ! ' 
 
 Her victim caught greedily at the bait, chose 
 a pretty cluster of buds, and encountered but the 
 
 VOL. i. c
 
 18 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 faintest possible opposition, and soon found that 
 his hopes were more than satisfied. 
 
 Florence affixed them skilfully to her dress ; 
 and Charles thought that never surely yet was 
 neck so tastefully adorned. 
 
 ' Is it not lovely ?' she asked. 
 
 * Indeed, it is,' he said, fervently ; but whether 
 the flower or its wearer was in reality the object of 
 the panegyric, must be left for ever to conjecture. 
 
 Presently the music began : four fiddlers, trans- 
 lated from the music-loft of Underwood Church, 
 forgot, for the occasion, the habitual solemnity of 
 their tones, and dashed heroically into a country 
 dance. The Squire opened the ball in state with 
 Mrs. Vivien, and set an example of alacrity which 
 all were prompt to imitate. Then followed a 
 valse, and the fiddlers surpassed themselves. 
 Florence and her cavalier, with the inexperienced 
 impetuosity of youth, soon danced themselves 
 breathless, and were happily resuscitating them- 
 selves for the next dance, when Margaret came 
 up, and reminded her cousin that he had been 
 faithless to the heroine of the occasion. The 
 valse had been promised to Nelly, and the homage 
 she had received as queen of the feast made her 
 proportionately aggrieved at the desertion. It 

 
 FORESHADOWING. 19 
 
 was in vain that Charles pleaded her diminutive 
 size, his duty to their guests, his engagement to 
 another partner, the abundance of little boys 
 with whom Nelly might solace herself. Margaret 
 was firm, Charles's conscience tender; and, at 
 last, duty carried the day. Florence resigned 
 him with a petulant indifference, nor did the 
 promise of a speedy return seem to go far towards 
 allaying her irritation. With an angry gesture 
 she swept out her dress, flashed Margaret an 
 angry glance from her grey, cruel eyes, and 
 stalked away, like a ruffled bird, to conceal her 
 resentment as best she might. Presently Charles 
 hurried back, and found that his successor was 
 already selected. Florence, the stormy look still 
 lingering in her eyes, was helping an inexpe- 
 rienced performer through a very rudimentary 
 polka, and seemed quite disinclined for recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 4 Je te rends ta rose,' she cried ; bringing her 
 partner to a halt beside her, and handing him the 
 flower, with a little disdainful courtesy. 
 
 ' What,' cried the other, you won't have it ? 
 why not ? ' 
 
 ' Because,' said Florence, demurely, ' I love 
 constancy, and you are a monster.' 
 
 C 2
 
 20 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' A monster ? ' asked Margaret, who was stand- 
 ing by them, and was already woman enough to 
 long to battle for anyone whom she loved ; 
 ' Charles a monster ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' Florence answered, warming rapidly 
 into the quarrel. ' And why, pray, did you want 
 him to leave me ? ' 
 
 Margaret, for the first time in her life the sub- 
 ject of an angry speech, looked up in surprise at 
 her companion's eager tones, and at the com- 
 motion in which her spirits seemed to be. 
 
 * I wanted him,' she said, * to keep his word ; 
 dance with him now as long as you please.' 
 
 By this time Florence was again in the midst 
 of the dancers, as radiant as ever ; but she trea- 
 sured up the fancied injury in her heart, gave it 
 a niche in her memory, and paid it back, years 
 after, with all the accumulated interest of a long- 
 concealed dislike. 
 
 The dancers wearied ; the fiddlers their stock 
 of secular music at an end showed symptoms of 
 collapsing into hymns; and some one called out 
 for a change of entertaiment. 
 
 ' A race for little girls,' cried the Squire, 
 ' round the holly-tree at the bottom of the lawn. 
 Everyone must have a colour.'
 
 FORESHADOWING. 21 
 
 ' And I,' cried Florence, looking down at her 
 dress, * will be white.' 
 
 * And red,' petitioned Charles, offering her the 
 rejected rose again. 
 
 Florence was in no unrelenting mood : she 
 reinstated the rose in her bosom, banished her 
 admirer's despondency by a pretty smile, and 
 stood eagerly watching for the signal to be off. 
 
 A dozen started : but a few yards sufficed to 
 show between whom the race would lie. One 
 after another of the runners fell panting towards 
 the rear : and before half the race was done, 
 Florence and Margaret had the field between 
 them. Both were resolved to win, both heard 
 the applause that greeted them at the starting- 
 place : neck and neck, they strained towards the 
 holly bush, which was the turning-point of the 
 course. It was a thick, wide-spreading, veteran 
 tree ; and whoever got safely round it first might 
 look upon victory as achieved. For a few seconds 
 the two were lost to sight : there was a moment's 
 confusion in passing; Margaret, for an instant, 
 was off her balance, at her rival's mercy. A tiny 
 push, dexterously given, threw her prostrate on 
 the grass, and decided the fortunes of the day. 
 In another minute, Florence flew in at the head
 
 22 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 of the runners, her golden hair streaming wildly 
 behind her an airy goddess in a cloud of muslin 
 breathless, flushed, excited, but more beautiful 
 than ever ; and Charles, too much captivated to 
 take notice of his cousin's predicament, banished 
 the last thought of hesitation, and plunged head- 
 long into the delicious delirium of a first love.
 
 23 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LA BELLE D DAIGNEUSE. 
 
 ' Yes ' I answered you last night, 
 
 ' No' this morning, sir, I say ; 
 Colours viewed by candle-light 
 
 Will not look the same by day. 
 
 IMAGINE ten years to have past away, and Florence 
 to have reached the zenith of her beauty and the 
 full scope of a vigorous intellect. She was twenty ; 
 but she was old of her age ; and at a time when 
 many young ladies are still immersed in the dia- 
 tonic scales and the use of the globes, she had 
 already seen much of the world, had formed a 
 theory of success, and was thoroughly versed in the 
 arts of fascination. 
 
 Her school-room career had come to an early 
 and disastrous close. It had been a state of 
 almost chronic rebellion. One luckless instructress 
 after another had endeavoured to tame her into 
 submission, had exhausted all resources of art,
 
 24 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 skill, and patience, and bad abandoned the task as 
 hopelessly impracticable. Insurrections had been 
 so frequent, peace so difficult to maintain, that it 
 was a relief when the incapable dynasty came to 
 an end. Florence always contrived to make her- 
 self out to be the injured party, and whenever she 
 had been more than usually naughty, would come 
 to her father, with tears in her eyes, to take the 
 initiative in complaint. But the concurrent testi- 
 mony of a number of dethroned sovereigns pro- 
 nounced her volatile, distracted, incapable of 
 self-control, greedy in pursuit of pleasure, but 
 wearying of it almost as soon as tasted; on the 
 whole, clever, but completely ungovernable. 
 
 * I don't like history,' she would say, with a 
 pout, whose comical beauty Major Vivien never 
 could resist ; ' dates fly in at one ear and out at 
 the other, geography gives me the headache, rule 
 of three doth puzzle me, and practice especially 
 the practice of duetts with Madlle. Lafitte doth 
 drive me mad.' 
 
 'On the other hand,' her father would say, 
 * you dote upon fine clothes ; you are perfectly 
 happy if you have got a man to manage ; you are 
 already a first-rate coquette, and you do precisely 
 what you please with me.'
 
 LA BELLE DEDAIGXEUSE. 25 
 
 * Don't laugh at me, pray,' Florence replied, 
 with the air of a martyr; 'you do not know what 
 Mademoiselle makes me undergo.' 
 
 ' I am sure,' her father answered sententiously, 
 'you have a most agreeable and improving com- 
 panion.' 
 
 'I only wish,' said Florence, vehemently, 'that 
 you had to go for walks with her.' 
 
 The Major was obliged to admit the cogency of 
 the argument, and Mademoiselle Lafitte shared 
 the fate of her predecessors. Florence remained 
 mistress of the field, and plunged with eager 
 exultation into the enjoyment of her new-found 
 independence. Then came a London season, and 
 she liked it better even than she had hoped ; her 
 mother's tastes and her own coincided so far that 
 each loved pleasure dearly, each knew how to turn 
 her beauty to the best account, each found the ex- 
 citement of society irresistibly delightful. There, 
 however, the resemblance ceased. Florence's cha- 
 racter contained an element of nobility which 
 made her an enigma to her parents, and disap- 
 pointed all Mrs. Vivien's hopes and calculations 
 for her advancement. Everything conspired to 
 spoil her ; yet the promptings of a higher nature, 
 never entirely silenced, from time to time asserted
 
 26 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 their claim to authority, and though falling short 
 of excellence, saved her, in despite of herself and 
 her circumstances, from complete degradation. 
 She was vain ; and from her childhood up, her 
 mother's devotion to the mirror had encouraged 
 her to place dress among the first of feminine 
 obligations. She was frivolous, and her life was 
 perforce a round of trifles. She loved power, and 
 all around her were adepts in chicanery; homage, 
 and flatterers were only too abundant ; amuse- 
 ment and her parents made it the great end of 
 existence. But the world in which they moved 
 contentedly inspired her with dissatisfaction, weari- 
 ness, and contempt. She felt it to be mean, and, 
 though unconscious of a better, refused it any but 
 a careless, occasional, and half-indignant homage. 
 Her mother's enslavement stirred her to abso- 
 lute rebellion; success was worth something, she 
 thought, but not the price that people paid; 
 fashion had its laws, but it was a petty despotism 
 after all. Florence accordingly failed for want, 
 not of materials for success, but of thoroughness 
 of purpose. One day she courted applause, and 
 forfeited it the next by some rash speech or word ; 
 she longed for friends, but frightened them from 
 her by outbursts of sarcasm, or cooled them by a
 
 LA BELLE DEDAIGNEUSE. 27 
 
 negligent mood. Sometimes she dazzled, some- 
 times she shocked ; now she bent herself to fasci- 
 nate, now defied all customary rule, and startled 
 the tame world around by some gratuitous outrage. 
 Men hovered round her, wondered, admired, and 
 sometimes in a credulous moment, putting their 
 fortunes to the test, found Florence's heart com- 
 pletely unapproachable, and retired in wrath, 
 humiliation, and discomfiture. 
 
 Two seasons passed away, and Florence was 
 still unmarried. Her mother teased by vagaries 
 which she could not understand, and by the loss 
 of opportunities which might not recur made no 
 secret of her displeasure, and upbraided her with 
 her husbandless condition, as the natural result of 
 her indiscreet behaviour. Florence indeed did 
 her best to exhaust the patience of the vigilant 
 chaperone who was bent on disposing of her ad- 
 vantageously. A momentary freak undid the work 
 of months of maternal anxiety, and tumbled the 
 painfully-built edifice in ruins to the ground. For 
 half a summer she chased a little lordling with 
 creditable assiduity ; and, just when the game was 
 in her hand, and her mother thought the victory 
 won, threw it wantonly away, and scared off the 
 astonished millionaire by an outburst of ridicule 
 and dislike.
 
 28 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Mrs. Vivien was speechless with wrath, and 
 even the Major protested at such a wanton waste 
 of worldly advantages.' 
 
 * Prospective marquesses,' he cried, * are not to 
 be picked up in the streets, I can tell you ; and 
 even one of your rude speeches, Florence, is a 
 little dear at fifty thousand a year.' 
 
 * Yes,' put in Mrs Vivien, f and the Scamperly 
 diamonds are beyond all belief.' 
 
 * Diamond me no diamonds!' cried Florence, 
 refractory as ever. * I have not the least aspira- 
 tion for martyrdom, though I suffer in a coronet, 
 and have half the duchesses in London to sympa- 
 thise with my sufferings.' 
 
 * Martyrdom,' cried her father; * fiddlestick! 
 Lord Scamperly is as good as the rest.' 
 
 c Thank you,' cried his daughter ; ' I am not 
 fond of fops ; and besides, he scarcely reaches up 
 to my shoulder.' 
 
 'You are resolved to break our hearts,' said 
 Mrs. Vivien, disconsolately. 
 
 ' I have not the least intention,' Florence said, 
 resolutely, ' of letting you break mine.' 
 
 Then the discussion ended ; but Major Vivien 
 had a glimmering conviction of his daughter's 
 superiority to himself and her mother, and was
 
 LA BELLE D^DAIGNEUSE. 29 
 
 thoroughly frightened whenever she chose to put 
 their proceedings in a ridiculous light. Florence's 
 shortcomings, however, gave plenty of openings 
 .for retaliation ; and her father with whom Pope 
 was the first of philosophers used to declaim 
 about the triviality of the feminine character, and 
 to quote couplets triumphantly at her, whenever 
 some unusually feminine characteristic made itself 
 apparent. 
 
 ' " No thought advances," ' he would cry, * " but 
 her eddying brain whisks it about, and down it 
 goes again " there is your portrait, my dear Flo- 
 rence, to the life.' 
 
 * Those were the horrid women of George the 
 Second's time ; and neither you, papa, nor Mr. 
 Pope, know anything about us.' 
 
 ' You, at any rate, are inexplicable, I admit,' 
 said her father, as he moved away from the break- 
 fast-table,where the discussion had been conducted, 
 and settled himself, newspaper in hand, in a bay- 
 window, commanding a full view of the glittering 
 garden beds and the park beyond, hazy already in 
 the glaring August sunlight. * How beautiful the 
 country is ! ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Florence, in a despondent tone, 'how 
 beautiful and how very, very dull ! '
 
 30 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Her father threw himself back in his chair with 
 a gesture of impatience, and burst into a con- 
 temptuous laugh. * Pope again!' he cried. '"0 
 odious, odious trees ! " Of course, having led 
 something like a rational existence for nearly a 
 fortnight, you are ennuyee to death; I hoped, 
 I confess, that you were too heartily sick of town 
 to be so soon disenchanted.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Florence, resolutely, ( it is dull, you 
 must confess ; and, though we were all tired, one 
 can get rested of anything in a fortnight.' 
 
 '(rod made the country, my dear,' observed 
 Mrs. Vivien, who, when she deserted the congenial 
 level of drawing-room tactics, plunged at once 
 into a region of the most unquestionable plati- 
 tude. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Florence ; ' but who made the 
 country dinners, and the Heavyshire archery 
 meetings, and the county balls, mamma, and the 
 militia officers, and everything else that is distract- 
 ing ? Suppose I have a bow and arrow like the 
 rest- and enlist a string of rural admirers to pick 
 up my random shots ? ' 
 
 1 Heaven forbid ! ' groaned her father, whose 
 recollections of a dinner party eight miles off the 
 night before forbade him, in his heart of hearts,
 
 LA BELLE DEDAIGNEUSE. 31 
 
 to believe Florence altogether in the wrong. 
 ' When you are in the country, for goodness' sake 
 be a little countrified ; cease awhile from flirting to 
 be wise ; forget that there are any men in the 
 world beside the footmen, the parish parson, and 
 myself. Visit in the cottages, teach in the school, 
 amuse yourself in the garden. Last week I paid 
 fifty guineas to your drawing- master ; why should 
 you not sketch the trees in the park? there is 
 plenty of variety, I am sure.' 
 
 'An enchanting programme,' cried Florence, 
 with an air of half-amused resentment. ' Let me 
 see trees, cottages, school-children, and a plot 
 in the garden ! Merci, man cher papa I if that is 
 what the country means, I am for the town, who- 
 ever made it.' 
 
 ' We shall have a houseful next week,' observed 
 her mother, latently sympathising with any com- 
 plaint of ennui. ( Mr. Erie is coming, and I hope 
 he will amuse us.' 
 
 * I hope he will,' Florence said, fervently. 
 ' Meantime, I must take my choice from papa's 
 list of dissipations.' 
 
 Florence's endurance, however, was not long 
 put to the test : her mother had not promised in 
 vain. September was at hand, and Clyffe began
 
 32 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 to fill with guests. Major Vivien was a languid 
 politician, and endeavoured by hospitalities in the 
 country to atone for his senatorial shortcomings in 
 town. There were supporters who had earned a 
 little politeness, and Mrs. Vivien knew well the 
 exact value of a prompt invitation; there were 
 county magnates, with whom it was a point of 
 conscience to exchange hospitalities ; there were 
 neighbours, quite disposed to take offence, whose 
 resentment would be fanned into a blaze by an 
 undue postponement ; lastly, there were a number 
 of stray bachelors, with the summer upon their 
 hands, to get through at their leisure, who had 
 walked the Clyffe turnip fields before, and were 
 now anxious for a second opportunity of perdricide. 
 Mrs. Vivien found her list of visitors swelling 
 rapidly to an inconvenient length; Florence re- 
 covered her animation ; and the Major protested 
 that it was merely London over again, without the 
 chance moments of peace and quiet which London 
 life affords, and that he heartily wished himself 
 safe back in Pall Mall. 
 
 First came a flight of provincials : Sir Agricola 
 and Lady Dangerfield, and two young ladies, 
 were among the earliest arrivals, and, as Florence 
 told her father, had a very pleasant rural effect
 
 LA. BELLE DEDAIGNEUSE. 33 
 
 about the house. Next followed the colonel of 
 the regiment quartered at Sandyford, with a 
 female train of dependents ; next an idle barrister, 
 who had defended the Major in his last election 
 committee. Two days later Captain Bibo and 
 Lord Scamperly, who generally travelled in com- 
 pany, posted across from the Duke of Pondercast's, 
 and brought an agreeable aroma of political and 
 fashionable gossip, which Sir Agricola and his 
 daughters seemed equally to appreciate. Captain 
 Bibo was a sturdy bachelor, who campaigned very 
 jovially through life, was a formidable judge of 
 claret, a first-rate shot, had an excellent digestion, 
 and no conscience whatever worth mentioning. 
 Scamperly was a naughty boy, who, ever since 
 his dismissal from Eton, had been perfecting him- 
 self in all sorts of objectionable accomplishments. 
 He was pale and thin, and wore a blase air ; and 
 prudent chaperons warned their charges against 
 him, as a very dangerous young man. He had, 
 however, his intervals of virtue, and knew how 
 to make himself agreeable in a country house. 
 Some people thought him good-looking, and 
 Scamperly certainly spared no pains towards be- 
 coming so. Joubert, his faithful ministrant, 
 used to send him down in the morning, beauti- 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 fully arranged, curled, and scented, and hung 
 about with pretty gimcraks, his little soft fingers 
 glistening with precious stones and quaint devices, 
 the rare result of many a Bond Street artificer. 
 The Miss Dangerfields looked, hesitated, looked 
 again, and felt their peace of mind irretrievably 
 destroyed. That evening they severally confided 
 their sentiments to their mamma, showed her 
 each a lacerated heart, and resolved heroically to 
 disbelieve that anyone so agreeable could be as 
 completely unprincipled as people said. 
 
 Major Vivien, who at heart disliked a rural 
 life as much as his daughter, piqued himself upon 
 the art of reducing its disagreeableness to a 
 minimum. He was not, perhaps, so confirmed a 
 Cockney as the roue duke, who could think of no 
 worse execration for the dog who bit him, than 
 * I wish you was married and went to live in the 
 country ; ' but he regarded provincial no less than 
 matrimonial existence as a necessary evil, which 
 a sensible man should mitigate as best he could. 
 His house lacked no comfort that the most ex- 
 acting of visitors could wish for : his stables were 
 well supplied; riding-horses and pony-carriages 
 were at everybody's command ; Grobemouche, the 
 French chef, would have betrayed an anchorite
 
 LA BELLE D^DAIGNEUSB. 35 
 
 into greediness ; and the cellars contained trea- 
 sures of which even Bibo was compelled to speak 
 with affectionate admiration. Day by day the 
 party grew; night by night a larger tableful of 
 guests sat down to appreciate the triumphs of 
 M. Grobemouche's cuisine; and yet the Major 
 felt that matters were going heavily. The Miss 
 Dangerfields had sung through their list of duets, 
 and were beginning, he could see, to tire Lord 
 Scamperly with too assiduous attention. Sir 
 Agricola had demonstrated to each new succession 
 of listeners the inevitable catastrophe of a perfi- 
 dious administration ; Bibo's stories were running 
 short ; Mrs. Vivien showed symptoms of breaking 
 down, and Florence was already in despair, when, 
 to the great relief of everybody, it was announced 
 that Mr. Slap had a couple of days to spare, and 
 had graciously consented to spend them at Clyffe. 
 The Major gave a great sigh of relief, and felt 
 that his responsibilities as a host were at an end. 
 He had a house full of people on his hands, but 
 the new comer would, he knew, be a guarantee 
 of satisfactory entertainment. 
 
 Mr. Slap was a Commissioner of Pumps and 
 Fountains, and a great man in his department. 
 Not half-a-pint of water went astray in the 
 
 D 2
 
 36 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 metropolis, but Slap's eagle eye marked the de- 
 linquency, punished the offender, or discerned 
 a cure. In Parliament he made a neat speech 
 twice a session, was never at a loss for a telling 
 answer to all inquiries, and irrigated the House, 
 80 to speak, with a copious oratory, which seemed 
 as much at his command, and in as little danger 
 of running short, as one of his own waterworks. 
 
 Mr. Slap's senatorial efforts, however, were 
 nothing to his social and literary successes. From 
 April to August he ate more good dinners, and 
 said more good things, than any man of the day. 
 Any stray witticism in search of a decent paren- 
 tage, was affiliated unhesitatingly upon Slap, and 
 helped to advance his reputation as a wag to the 
 foremost rank. Great men the very greatest 
 men asked him to their tables, laughed at his 
 puns, quailed before the lash of his satire. Fine 
 ladies condescended to gossip with him, and en- 
 j oyed the luxury of vicarious malevolence. No one, 
 it was admitted, was more brilliant, penetrating, 
 merciless, than Slap ; and Major Vivien thanked 
 his stars when, on coming down to dinner the 
 next night, he found him already dressed and in 
 solitary occupancy of the drawing-room. Slap, 
 like an old -campaigner, proceeded to make him-
 
 LA BELLE DEDAIGNEUSE. 37 
 
 self thoroughly master of the situation, found out 
 who were staying in the house, what time the 
 letters went to the post, how far it was to Ponder- 
 east Castle, which of the ministers were shooting 
 there, and what was Sir Agricola's last theme for 
 declamation. Presently the ladies began to as- 
 semble, the hungry sportsmen descended to reap 
 the advantage of their morning's walk ; dinner was 
 announced. Florence was assigned to Mr. Slap ; 
 and the Miss Dangerfields, their thoughts for 
 once abstracted from the object of so many days' 
 pursuit, learned with mingled admiration and 
 surprise how it was that a real London lion ate, 
 drank, and roared. 
 
 The day following, however, even Mr. Slap's 
 arrival was thrown into the shade by that of Erie. 
 He entered the house with the air of a man who 
 was too confident of pleasing to be anxious about 
 his reception, and who was too self-reliant to care 
 for flattery. He was cleverer by far than the 
 people amongst whom he lived, and his superiority 
 betrayed itself by a sarcasm, which was all the 
 more effective for being perfectly well-bred. A 
 long minority had made him j ust wealthy enough 
 to be idle, and the independence of his youth had 
 trained him into a sort of social gipsy. An old
 
 38 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 uncle, whose fortune he was one day to inherit, 
 had discharged the duties of guardianship by 
 keeping him over-supplied with pocket-money, 
 and by securing for him the run of half-a-dozen 
 Belgravian drawing-rooms, where good looks, 
 audacity, lively talk, and satisfactory prospects, 
 won him an easy success. Everything, so his 
 wiser friends consolingly informed him, had gone 
 so well with him, that only a disaster could rescue 
 him from becoming completely contemptible. 
 Erie himself was obliged to acknowledge that the 
 stream of his life had run with uninteresting 
 smoothness, and that he sometimes felt bored 
 with invariable good fortune. At school, he had 
 enjoyed the reputation, precious above everything 
 in a school-boy's eyes, of being able to do anything 
 if he chose, but of preferring occasional brilliancy 
 to the steady lustre which necessitates the drud- 
 gery of continued application. At college he was 
 the oracle of a little clique, who repeated his bons 
 mots, admired his cynicism, and paid him the 
 flattery of assiduous imitation. He sagaciously 
 declined to enter the lists where eccentric book- 
 worms and hard-headed north-countrymen rode, 
 strong in the might of conscious preparedness, 
 equipped with a formidable panoply of well-fitting
 
 LA. BELLE DE'DAIGNEUSE. 39 
 
 facts and figures ; but he won some eclat by a 
 neat essay on mediaeval art, and established his 
 reputation by a prize poem, in which his admirers 
 hailed the coming laureate of his age, which his 
 enemies pronounced pretty rather than forcible, 
 and which he himself was the first to sneer at, as 
 achieving the appropriate mediocrity of a school 
 exercise. In London, he found that the sort of 
 abilities he possessed were precisely the most 
 available for the purposes towards which his 
 friends' habits and his own ambition combined to 
 lead him. He devoted himself, with more dili- 
 gence than he had ever yet displayed, to being a 
 fine gentleman ; and easy manners, a ready tact, 
 good taste, and an aptitude for gossip, smoothed 
 his way to triumphs, towards which less fortunate 
 aspirants struggled patiently, but in vain. Gra- 
 dually, and in despite of himself, he grew into a 
 polite impostor; nobody threatened him with 
 detection ; the imitation of 4 thoroughness ' was 
 more than good enough for an indulgent coterie, 
 and it was on the verdict of a coterie that success 
 seemed at present to depend. He was politician 
 enough to refute a knot of dilettanti statesmen, 
 who settled the affairs of the nation (the wrong 
 way, for the most part) in a bay window in
 
 40 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 St. James's Street ; artist enough to lay down the 
 law to young ladies about the Eoyal Academy ; 
 theologian enough to convince their mammas of 
 his orthodoxy ; sportsman enough to waste a little 
 fortune on thorough-breds that disgraced them- 
 selves at Epsom, yachts which brought up the 
 rear of the Cowes' regattas, and hunters which 
 gave him many an undeserved fall at Leamington 
 and Market Harborough. Living for little but 
 young ladies' society, he yet remained a resolute 
 bachelor. Many a fair aspirant, as she watched 
 his tender smile, and looked into his sad, dark 
 eyes, believed that she saw there the secret that 
 she longed to read, and that the prize was really 
 hers. Next night the perfidious lips were whis- 
 pering some sentimental confidence into another's 
 ear, and the eyes, roaming about the room in 
 search of some other beauty, scarcely granted 
 more than a polite recognition. Experienced 
 campaigners gave him up as a desperate case, and 
 the old Lady Perspicax, who always saw every- 
 thing, and had no daughters to dispose of, told 
 him he was a good-for-nothing young man, and in 
 honour of his impregnability, gave him the sur- 
 name of Gibraltar. 
 
 Florence and he had met two summers before
 
 LA BELLE DEDAIGNEUSE. 41 
 
 in London, had frequented the same houses, 
 danced at the same balls, and ascertained that 
 they liked one another well enough to make the 
 prospect of meeting agreeable. Florence thought 
 him far better company than Mr. Slap, and Erie 
 returned the compliment by speedily displaying 
 an undisguised preference for her society to that of 
 anybody else in the house. Ranging for amuse- 
 ment, he examined his new domain, reassured 
 himself of Sir Agricola's stupidity, sipped a few 
 drops of Mrs. Vivien's stream of gossip, asked Slap 
 for his last ban mot, hovered awhile round the 
 prettiest Miss Dangerfield, and settled down upon 
 Florence as his serious occupation. 
 
 An easy country house, lovely autumn weather, 
 an experienced love-maker, a beautiful and impres- 
 sible woman, mutual inclination, favourable oppor- 
 tunity what need to tell the result ? Erie found 
 the shady walks and pleasant garden seats at 
 Clyffe far more to his taste than the crowded 
 staircases and stifling drawing-rooms from which 
 he had just escaped ; and Florence, flattered by 
 his homage, and for once thoroughly interested in 
 her companion, startled him by a brilliancy and 
 thoughtfulness of which their London intercourse 
 had given him no suspicion.
 
 42 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 He soon ascertained that he preferred riding 
 with her to trudging about the stubbles; and 
 Scamperly, who had been his fag at Eton, and 
 ever since completely intimate, declared, over 
 their pipes at night, that, disagreeable as Erie 
 often was, he had never known him in so obstinately 
 unsociable and cynical a mood as his present. 
 All such protestations are generally thrown away ; 
 and the next morning Erie, who had hitherto put 
 all the shooters to the blush, declared that he was 
 too lame to go out, defended himself with languid 
 deprecation against the charge of idleness, and 
 confessed at last to being tired of partridges. 
 Florence, who was on the other side of the table, 
 flashed him a glance of intelligence across it, and 
 interpreted without difficulty the almost imper- 
 ceptible smile that assured her of his real inten- 
 tion. 
 
 Before a fortnight was over the inevitable 
 catastrophe was evident to every good judge in 
 the house. 
 
 f Well,' exclaimed Captain Bibo, as he and Lord 
 Scamperly were settling comfortably down to a 
 morning game of billiards, ' I am glad of it. Erie 
 has had a long run of luck ; he is over head and 
 ears in conceit and insolence he thinks every
 
 LA BELLE DlSDAIGNEUSE. 43 
 
 woman he looks at is ready to jump down his 
 throat, if he will only open his mouth ; and 
 that's twenty-two to love, Scampy ; and a bad 
 stroke even for you.' 
 
 * And what ? ' said his companion, gracefully 
 poising himself on the tips of a little pair of glit- 
 tering shoes, in the vain attempt to reach an 
 awkwardly-placed ball ; * what is up now, Bibo, 
 that makes you so savage ? ' 
 
 4 Savage ! ' laughed Bibo, contemptuously, as 
 he stopped short in the midst of an attempt to 
 resuscitate a half-extinct cigar. * On the con- 
 trary never more pleased in my life. Don't you 
 see, Scampy but of course you're too young and 
 foolish to see anything but anybody with half 
 an eye might have known that there will be a 
 row here before the end of the week.' 
 
 * A row ? ' cried Scamperly, who, in the inno- 
 cence of his heart, treated the other's superior 
 sagacity with the profoundest reverence ; f and 
 Erie in it ? that beats me, I confess.' 
 
 s He is going to burn his fingers ' 
 With that confounded Florence ! ' cried Scam- 
 perly, astonished, as the whole truth flashed upon 
 him. * By George ! I hope he will, and burn 
 'em thoroughly, and like it as much as I did.'
 
 44 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Scamperly's wounded pride and sensitive feel- 
 ings were still bleeding from the wounds which 
 Florence's caprice had inflicted ; and better people 
 than himself, with the recollections of Erie's sar- 
 castic speeches fresh in their memory, might have 
 found it difficult not to rejoice in his overthrow. 
 But the prestige of success is as hard to lose as 
 win, and Scamperly was still incredulous as to the 
 possibility of defeat. 
 
 ( Erie is a sharp fellow,' he said, humbly ; ' books, 
 music, conversation he's good at them all, hang 
 him ! Look at you and me, BijDO ; what chance 
 have we ? rank is all very well money's a good 
 card looks go for something ; but with the clever 
 women, it's cleverness that does it.' 
 
 ' It's not cleverness with her,' said Bibo, sen- 
 tentiously, as he screwed his ball neatly into the 
 middle pocket; 'it's temper you are well out of 
 her, my boy.' 
 
 * I wonder if she will have him ? ' said the 
 other. 
 
 'Have him?' cried Bibo, with the greatest 
 scorn ; ' not she ! she loves her liberty too well.' 
 
 As they were talking, Erie sauntered into the 
 room, in an unusually cheerful, impertinent, and 
 provoking mood; he rallied Scamperly on a
 
 LA BELLE D^DAIGNEUSE. 45 
 
 stupid speech he had made the night before at 
 dinner; put Bibo into a passion by offering to 
 give him fifteen, and play him for a sovereign, 
 and quite unconsciously prepared the way for an 
 outburst of the latent hostility with which both 
 players regarded him. 
 
 ' I shall be happy to play you,' said Bibo, red- 
 dening with offended dignity, * on any terms you 
 please ; and, if you like, we will have the match 
 after luncheon.' 
 
 ' Not I,' cried Erie ; ' I am going to ride.' 
 
 His companions exchanged looks; and Erie, 
 with the sensitiveness of a guilty conscience, saw 
 that there was some secret between them. 
 
 'Oh!' said Bibo, with the air of a man to 
 whom an entirely satisfactory explanation has 
 been given ; while Scamperly re-echoed the ex- 
 clamation, with the most impertinent emphasis, 
 from the other side of the table. 
 
 e You seem to have a joke,' Erie said, stiffly ; 
 ' pray do not keep it to yourselves. Scamperly, 
 have you been saying something funny ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said his lordship ; ' I have been wishing 
 you good luck on a journey where better men 
 have failed before you. Bibo, there, thinks you 
 will come to grief.'
 
 46 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 'No, indeed !' cried Bibo, from the other end 
 of the table. ' Bon voyage to you, with all my 
 heart ! ' 
 
 * I declare,' said Erie, more than ever provoked, 
 'I am completely mystified. What on earth is 
 the riddle all about ? ' 
 
 'Hum! ha!' cried Scamperly, in the most 
 teasing tone ; ' what is it all about, Bibo ? ' 
 
 ' Come,' said Bibo ; ' why in the world be so 
 confoundedly mysterious? My dear fellow, we 
 have all of us been made fools of in our time, 
 and, though wide awake for your time of life, you 
 are still young at the trade, you know.' 
 
 ' Upon my soul ! ' cried Erie, in a passion, ' you 
 are talking Greek to me ; pray be explicit.' 
 
 ' Well, then,' replied Bibo, ' we are glad to see 
 that you have found a woman at last who can 
 urn you round her little finger.' 
 
 ' And who will turn you off,' cried Scamperly, 
 ' when she has had her fun, as she did me bad 
 luck to her ! ' 
 
 Erie, in the heyday of vanity and self-satisfac- 
 tion, was quite taken aback by so unexpected an 
 attack, and afraid to answer angrily for fear of 
 seeming too much in earnest. 
 
 Bibo saw that he faltered in his reply. ' Look
 
 LA BELLE DE > DAIGNEUSE. 47 
 
 here ! ' he cried, f you offered me a bet just now ; 
 here is one for you a hundred pounds to ten 
 that Miss Vivien has rejected you, within a month 
 from now.' 
 
 * Done ! ' cried Erie, almost before he knew 
 what he was about; for a moment's hesitation 
 would have betrayed a seriousness of purpose 
 which he had hardly recognised to himself, and 
 which he was anxious above everything to hide 
 from the rest. Did he intend to propose, and 
 would Florence refuse him, if he did? both un- 
 certainties, and, while uncertain, fair topics for a 
 wager ; so levity whispered in his ear ; but a 
 graver voice told him that he had done a foolish 
 act, and that neither pique nor vanity, nor the 
 affectation of heartlessness, nor endangered pres- 
 tige, should have betrayed him into a joke, 
 natural enough to an old roue like Bibo, but 
 unforgivable in a woman's eyes, and dangerously 
 capable of a profane interpretation. 
 
 Erie was, however, enjoying himself far too 
 much, and had, moreover, too hearty a contempt 
 for Eibo, to be deterred by anything that had taken 
 place from following wherever his inclination led 
 him. While Florence listened with a pleased 
 attention, while each day heightened the enjoy-
 
 48 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ment of intercourse with her, he could afford to 
 neglect alike the sneers, wishes, and prophecies of 
 the rest of the party. So followed all the acci- 
 dents and gradations through which flirtation 
 passes into love long confidential talks, which the 
 presence of a third party seemed instantly to check; 
 new discovered coincidences of taste and judgment; 
 bickerings, which were only the pretext for a 
 closer intimacy ; a growing shade of gravity cast 
 on the usual merriment of both ; interchanged 
 looks, which told a world of secrets ; accidental 
 separations from the rest of the party ; meetings, 
 too fortunate to be altogether the fruit of chance ; 
 a half-avowed tenderness on Erie's part ; a secret 
 acknowledgment on Florence's ; earnest protesta- 
 tions on the one side, feeble opposition on the 
 other-at last, before either knew what was hap- 
 pening, a long, earnest, passionate kiss, and the 
 next morning a formal proposal. 
 
 Between the two latter events, however, a third 
 was interposed, which effectually spoilt the natural 
 evolution of the case, and diverted two careers 
 into an entirely new direction. 
 
 A secret escaped, and the discovery resulted in 
 the first signal humiliation that Erie had ever yet 
 received.
 
 LA. BELLE DEDAKJNEUSE. 49 
 
 Scamperly, who had, after all, some conscience, 
 and would rather have cut his fingers off than have 
 broken any rule of honour, was the innocent cause 
 of the disaster. 
 
 One evening, when the audacity with which 
 Erie conducted his campaign had heen the theme 
 of conversation, Scamperly, in a moment of 
 weakness, confided to the younger Miss Danger- 
 field the story of the bet. Miss Dangerfield, 
 fortunate in the possession of an undeniable piece 
 of gossip, passed it on to her mamma ; and Lady 
 Dangerfield, with the good-natured alacrity proper 
 to the retailers of disagreeable intelligence, lost 
 no time in disburdening herself to Mrs. Vivien. 
 Mrs. Vivien treated the matter with affected 
 indifference, thanked her dear friend cordially 
 for her invaluable frankness, but writhed secretly 
 under the indignity which her daughter's indis- 
 cretion had rendered possible, and acknowledged 
 to herself the gravity of the crisis, and the 
 necessity for decisive action. She summoned 
 Florence to her room. 
 
 Florence, guessing that she was to be lectured, 
 came with an air of quiet, stubborn resignation, 
 which her mother knew, bespoke the most hope- 
 lessly impracticable of all her moods. 
 
 TOL. I. E
 
 50 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' Florence,' she said, * I have something disa- 
 greeable to tell you; you rode with Mr. Erie 
 the other afternoon, did you not ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' Florence admitted; 'he is the only 
 man of them all that has a word to say for him- 
 self.' 
 
 'And you stayed with him to-night, singing, 
 after everyone else had left the pianoforte ? ' 
 
 ' True,' said her daughter, impenitent as ever ; 
 ' the others went away to play at cards ; he and 
 I are the only people in the house who dislike 
 whist, and love music.' 
 
 'And yesterday you met him by accident in 
 the garden ? ' 
 
 'Not by accident,' said Florence, with pro- 
 voking candour. ' We agreed to go, because the 
 Miss Dangerfields were fatiguing us.' 
 
 Thus far the battle raged, and neither party had 
 chosen to use their most effective weapon. Florence 
 was strong in the consciousness that Erie was as 
 good as engaged to her, but she was too proud 
 to reveal it ; her mother had Lady Dangerfield's 
 disclosure in reserve, and, like a skilful strategist 
 with a piece of artillery, brought it forthwith into 
 action at the point where the day was going 
 most against her.
 
 LA BELLE D^DAIGNEUSE. 51 
 
 'You know, of course,' she said, coolly, 'the 
 price you pay, and make me pay, for such 
 escapades ? ' 
 
 'No,' said Florence, with aroused inquisitive- 
 ness ; ' what is it ? ' 
 
 * People have ears, you know, and eyes.' 
 
 'Yes,' continued the other belligerent, 'and 
 tongues all three dangerous things.' 
 
 ' Dangerous indeed ! ' said Mrs. Vivien, ad- 
 vancing composedly to the point at which she 
 knew that victory awaited her. ' You know how 
 good-naturedly people will use all three. Already, 
 I have good reason to know, your follies are the 
 plaything of half the gossips in the county ; every- 
 body has a story to tell of you.' 
 
 'Apres?' asked Florence, doggedly, for her 
 mother was rapidly putting her into a passion. 
 ' Suppose that Miss Danger-field has said something 
 sarcastic about me, or Lord Scamperly has pro- 
 nounced me a flirt ; what then ? ' 
 
 'It is something worse than that,' said her 
 mother, drawing the cruel blade, and pressing it 
 remorselessly to what she knew was the tenderest 
 spot in her antagonist's nature her fear of 
 ridicule 'how do you like the idea of all the 
 fops in the house, Mr. Erie among the rest, 
 
 E 2
 
 52 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 making a joke of your good nature ? don't you 
 know how men talk ? Well, here is a specimen, 
 which will make you know the world. Mr. Erie 
 has made a bet with Captain Bibo, that he will 
 propose to you in a fortnight, and that you shall 
 accept him. Lord Scamperly told Lady Danger- 
 field, and offered to give her three to one against 
 you. They are all of course very much amused 
 and interested ; everybody watches the perfor- 
 mance, and everybody expects that Mr. Erie 
 will win. And now, dear, good night, and 
 pleasant dreams ! '
 
 53 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DEFEAT. 
 
 saying that she choked, 
 
 And sharply turned about to hide her face, 
 Moved to her chamber, and there flung herself 
 Down on the great king's couch, and -writhed upon it, 
 And clench'd her fingers, till they bit the palm, 
 And shriek'd out ' traitor' to the unhearing wall ; 
 Then flash'd into wild tears, and rose again, 
 And mov'd about the palace, proud and pale. 
 
 FLORENCE felt the colour desert her cheek, and 
 with difficulty suppressed the groan of horror 
 and suspense which her mother's revelation called, 
 almost before she was aware, to her lips. Her 
 pride just enabled her, however, to maintain a 
 decent passivity of manner, and to effect a retreat 
 without allowing her mother to see the full amount 
 of the discomfiture which she had inflicted. 
 
 * Good night, mamma,' she said, coldly, ( if that 
 is all you have to tell me, ' and so escaped, her 
 brain on fire and her heart icy cold, to the solitude
 
 54 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 of her room, there to give free vent to her pas- 
 sionate disappointment, to probe the cruel wound, 
 and to meditate a dire revenge. For once she 
 had been betrayed into a tender mood, had for- 
 gotten the maxims of a heartless philosophy, and 
 had begun to believe that love need not be, after 
 all, either the pretext of hypocrites, the folly of 
 school-girls, or a polite synonym for the meanest 
 sort of bargain and sale. There had seemed a 
 sort of tenderness in Erie's behaviour, an evident 
 sincerity, nay, sometimes a passionate transport, 
 which it was more than perfidy to have assumed. 
 Men, Florence firmly believed, were for the most 
 part route, nor would ordinary cold-blooded sel- 
 fishness have shocked or surprised her. But here 
 was an elaborate wickedness, an impudent hardi- 
 hood, an unmanly cruelty, that more than justified 
 the verdict of her most sceptical mood. Erie 
 stood well in the world, was laughed at by his 
 compeers for his exceptional innocence, was, with- 
 out a doubt, the best man of the Clyffe party ; 
 and was not he worse than a villain ? Were these 
 the creatures, she asked herself, to whom people 
 talked gravely about virtue, honour, propriety 
 whose taste and opinions were so worth respecting, 
 whose very prejudices it was wrong to shock ?
 
 DEFEAT. 55 
 
 was this the prudish world, whose solemn decencies 
 and obvious shams were to be regarded as des- 
 potic laws? Fortunately, though she had been 
 so near defeat, the day was not yet lost, and a 
 fitting vengeance might yet be exacted from the 
 wretch who had designed her humiliation. 
 Through the long night she tossed in passing fits 
 of feverish excitement, wild vexation, vehement 
 design : step by step, her fittest course to victory 
 was tracked and settled: point by point the 
 manoeuvres of the next day's battle were resolved, 
 and towards morning Florence, exhausted by the 
 struggles through which she had passed, and 
 calm, because armed with a settled purpose, fell 
 into profound sleep, and appeared at breakfast, 
 radiant, smiling, full of mirth, beautifully dressed, 
 eager for amusement, and more than ever gracious 
 towards the man who already looked upon her as 
 his, and appreciated her splendour with all the 
 keenness of prospective possession. 
 
 Erie, who supposed the victory already won, 
 and had been for the last twelve hours enjoying 
 himself extremely in the contemplation of his 
 good fortune from various points of view, felt his 
 last misgiving dispelled by Florence's evident 
 acquiescence, invited her from the breakfast room
 
 56 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 to the terrace, and from the terrace to the garden ; 
 and proceeded, with the assurance of one whose 
 success is no longer matter for anxiety, to trans- 
 late into definite language the confession and re- 
 quest which had been only vaguely hinted at the 
 night before. Florence opened the way for him to 
 begin, sat listening with a faint smile playing on 
 her lips while he spoke, helped him considerately 
 whenever he showed symptoms of distress, smoothed 
 the course of his oration over an occasional im- 
 pediment, and at its end gave a polite, good- 
 humoured, but emphatic * No.' 
 
 Erie was fairly staggered by the unexpected 
 rebuff. 
 
 ' Are you really serious ? ' he said. 
 
 ' I assure you,' said Florence, looking thoroughly 
 amused, *I was never more completely in earnest 
 in my life. Do not give me the distress of re- 
 peating my decision.' 
 
 Hot tears of anger and disappointment sprang 
 to Erie's eyes; his voice, in spite of every effort, 
 was thick and tremulous; the vanity which the 
 conquest would have so pleasantly flattered, the 
 love which it would have indulged, had both alike 
 received a terrible stab. It had been great fun to 
 see Florence make fools of other men, but Erie
 
 DEFEAT. 57 
 
 had no relish for the experiment when tried on 
 himself. Florence, too, despite her protestations 
 of seriousness, had evidently a comic view of the 
 matter in her mind, and Erie shrunk in horror 
 from the agony of being ridiculous. 
 
 * And so you were only amusing yourself,' he 
 said bitterly, ' and leading me a wild-goose chase 
 to get rid of a tedious fortnight : is everything, 
 then, a joke to you ? How right men are to say 
 that you are heartless ! ' 
 
 * Do they say so ?' asked Florence, with the most 
 provoking indifference. * Terrible accusation ! ' 
 
 ' I say so,' cried Erie, in a passion : ' I know it 
 to my cost I shall feel it all my life. Was I 
 vain, was I wrong to hope? Look back, Miss 
 Vivien, to all that has gone on between us for 
 these weeks past; what meant every look, act, 
 speech of yours and mine, but the one thing 
 which you now tell me is impossible ? what meant 
 those pleasant rides, those long conversations, in 
 which I, at least, was not playing the hypocrite ? 
 that evident preference you showed me ? the con- 
 fidences which you encouraged ? ay, and what 
 meant the kiss that only yesterday sealed, as I 
 hoped, the pledge of something better than a 
 passing whim ? '
 
 58 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 'It meant,' cried Florence, reddening at the 
 thought of her indiscretion, and turning deadly 
 white again with excitement; 'it meant that I 
 was so rash as to do a very foolish thing, and that 
 you are mean enough to remind me of it now. I 
 wish you joy of a valuable secret; boast of it to 
 your companions.' 
 
 * Do not insult me, at any rate,' said Erie, with 
 dignity ; * I am not so mean as that. You know 
 that the secret is safe ; I prize it too dearly as a 
 recollection to part with it lightly.' 
 
 * I, too, have a secret,' said Florence, eagerly ; 
 ' or what was one till yesterday. Do you wish for 
 the key to my refusal ? here it is : you began to 
 make love to me for your amusement, and I re- 
 solved you should continue it for mine. I know 
 of your wager, and I intend you to lose it. Oh, 
 Mr. Erie, heartless am I? and is everything a 
 joke to me? and is it you who ask it you who 
 think us all the proper playthings for men like 
 Lord Scamperly, or Captain Bibo you who bet 
 about us, as if we were horses or yachts you who 
 make a joke of everything sacred in life sacred, 
 do I say? how can such a man know what "sacred" 
 means?' 
 
 ' Forgive me,' cried Erie, 'I could explain it all.'
 
 DEFEAT. 59 
 
 ' Pray, spare yourself the trouble,' said Florence ; 
 * the story has explained itself, and has left no room 
 for apology. Forgive you ? never, never ! But I 
 do not hate you, as I should have done if I had 
 discovered the trick too late. What, you fancy 
 you love me?' 
 
 ' Fancy ! ' exclaimed Erie. ( Oh ! how little you 
 know of the feeling.' 
 
 ' Excuse me,' said his companion, ' but I believe 
 I do know a good deal of it, more, at any rate, 
 than yourself. It is ardent at this moment I 
 can imagine, all the more ardent for being baffled ; 
 but I know that you could afford to bet about it a 
 fortnight ago, and that you would be weary of it 
 in a year. I am flattered by your proposal, but 
 you must excuse me for declining to stake my 
 happiness on anything so uncertain.' 
 
 ' I am perfectly certain,' said Erie, resolutely, 
 'that no one will ever love you more sincerely 
 than myself.' 
 
 * Possibly,' replied Florence ; * and in that case, 
 I shall take good care not to give anyone the 
 chance of making me completely miserable. But 
 you are wrong indeed, Mr. Erie ; I have gauged 
 your character, and looked into my own heart. 
 Believe me, we are neither of us lovers, or likely
 
 60 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 to become so. In the first place, you are far too 
 much in love with yourself to have any to throw 
 away on other people ; and in the next place ' 
 
 'Yes,' inquired Erie, 'in the next place?' 
 
 * In the next place,' Florence said, ' we are far 
 too much alike to become affectionate. Our cha- 
 racters are the same, and that is why I disapprove 
 of you. I like myself far too little to wish to be 
 repeated in my husband.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Erie, insensibly catching something 
 of his companion's bantering mood, 'if you are 
 resolved not to have me, the reason is a handsome 
 one at any rate ; but the pill is a bitter one, even 
 when gilt with such a compliment as that.' 
 
 ' Indeed,' exclaimed Florence, vehemently, * you 
 do not know how little of a compliment I intended; 
 I could scarcely have paid you a worse one. But 
 you must not be affronted.' 
 
 'I am past being affronted at anything,' said 
 Erie, with mock resignation. ' Our quarrels always 
 begin with you.' 
 
 ' Well, then, we will be friends,' said Florence, 
 ' or rather we must be friends, for fortune seems 
 to throw us together, and our tastes are identical. 
 Do you agree?' She gave him her hand fair, 
 glittering, finely chiselled, a very type of profuse
 
 DEFEAT. 61 
 
 beauty and Erie made one more desperate at- 
 tempt for the prize which was slipping from his 
 clutch. 
 
 ' Friendly for the present,' he said. * Some day, 
 perhaps, you will change your mind.' 
 
 4 Never ! ' said his companion, fixedly ; and Erie 
 saw that it was in vain to hope. 
 
 They had reached a garden gate; Florence 
 passed through it to go to the house. Erie con- 
 tinued his walk alone, irritated, humbled, sad, 
 but, on the whole, less broken-hearted than he felt 
 he ought to be under the circumstances. He 
 fanned his disappointment, but was surprised to 
 find how feeble was the blaze produced. He in- 
 voked despair, but life looked provokingly cheer- 
 ful. Miss Vivien, so an inward voice told him, 
 had not been altogether in the wrong ; the expe- 
 riment would have been a bold one, and might 
 well have failed. He looked at the precipice from 
 which she had turned him, and shuddered at his 
 recent temerity. She was lovely indeed never 
 more so than this morning witty, high-spirited, 
 a capital companion, no doubt; but Erie acknow- 
 ledged that there was a 'but,' and consoled himself 
 with the reflection that her very excellences might 
 have unfitted her for a wife. It was provoking to
 
 62 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 have given her the chance of adding him to the 
 vulgar list of rejected aspirants. The only thing 
 was to brave it out ; nobody in the house should, 
 he resolved, see in his demeanour a touch of 
 mortification. 
 
 * If of herself she will not love,' he hummed to 
 himself 
 
 ' Nothing will make her, 
 The Devil take her.' 
 
 With which impolite and unloverlike ejaculation 
 he tossed away the flower which his companion 
 had dropped in her excitement, lit a cigar, found 
 out Captain Bibo, laughingly confessed his reverse, 
 paid him his ten pounds, and agreed with him in 
 pronouncing Florence a worthy representative of 
 a sex whose caprices were unintelligible, whose 
 vanity was unbounded, and whose conquest, by 
 fair means or foul, was the lawful prerogative of 
 the other half of creation.
 
 63 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 PLUCKED ! 
 
 They lost their weeks, they vext the souls of deans, 
 They rode, they betted, made a hundred friends, 
 And caught the blossom of the flying terms. 
 
 WHILE Florence was learning the world and adding 
 to her list of conquests, Margaret was passing 
 quietly through a far less eventful existence. The 
 Manor had come to have more than ever about it 
 the air of a household whose young times are over. 
 Enjoyment still was there ; but it was enjoyment 
 from which melancholy was not remote, and whose 
 temperature hardly ever rose as high as mirth. 
 Once again the Underwood Church had been hung 
 with black, and once more Mr. Evelyn had entered 
 it as chief mourner, to see another inmate added 
 to the many of his family who already lay there. 
 Opening from the windows of a morning room, and 
 built upon the sunniest side of the house, stretched 
 a long conservatory the latest of the Squire's
 
 64 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 architectural projects contrived especially for 
 old Mrs. Evelyn's winter walk. But she no longer 
 needs it. Her garden-chair stands unused and 
 dusty in the corner, and her husband, who for 
 years past had loved to walk beside it, now trudges 
 up and down alone, his step a little faltering, and 
 his hair snowy white a weather-beaten, resolute, 
 cheerful old gentleman, not without his burthen 
 of sad recollections, but bearing his sorrows bravely, 
 and if somewhat less boisterous decidedly some- 
 thing tenderer and more considerate than of old. 
 Since her grandmother's death, Margaret had 
 become his constant companion, managed his house, 
 pleased him by a hundred gentle acts, tempted 
 him by a watchful readiness into greater depend- 
 ence upon her advice, and made herself daily more 
 essential to his comfort. His years began to tell. 
 Already he had had an attack of gout; had turned 
 his two oldest hunters out to grass and sold the 
 rest ; preferred a quiet stroll with Margaret to 
 country meetings, quarter sessions, or agricultural 
 dinners; gave up with a dignified alacrity each 
 pleasure or occupation for which his lessening 
 strength unfitted him, and was quoted in the 
 country, with perfect justice, as exhibiting the 
 ideal of a green old age. Nelly, far too much
 
 PLUCKED. 65 
 
 spoilt to be capable of serious effort, and too com- 
 pletely mistress of her grandfather's heart to admit 
 of the scolding which he sometimes knew that she 
 deserved, had been at last sent off to school, and 
 was being there tamed into something like dili- 
 gence and order. Charles had for years past 
 spent most of his holidays at Underwood. His 
 mother, never cured of continental tastes, had 
 gone once more to live abroad, had formed the 
 acquaintance of a certain M. de Vernet, and had 
 one day introduced him to her son as his step- 
 father. But the young Englishman could never 
 bring himself to regard his new relation with 
 becoming respect; and there seemed no possible 
 reason for urging him into unwelcome contact 
 with one whose religion, tastes, and politics were 
 as his mother confessed to herself by no means 
 advisable models for the future heir of Underwood. 
 His grandfather's house was always open to him ; 
 and a schoolboy naturally found the horses, dogs, 
 and guns, the country life, the zealous servants 
 to say nothing of his cousin's society a great deal 
 more to his taste than the dull routine of foreign 
 life promenades, concerts, casinos, visitors whom 
 he knew nothing about, plays that he could 
 scarcely understand, and diners a la carte, whose 
 YOI* i. F
 
 66 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 attractions he was incapable of appreciating. He 
 had lived with his cousin as with a sister ; and the 
 reflection that any other relationship was possible 
 had never as yet presented itself, either to his mind 
 or to hers. No sister ever performed her duties 
 with a more zealous tenderness. When he came 
 back from Eton in a scrape, Margaret appeased 
 the Squire's wrath, put the offender's repentance 
 into the most available shape, and succeeded in 
 bringing about confession on the one side, and 
 forgiveness on the other. When he wrote har- 
 rowing descriptions of his small allowance, of M. 
 de Vernet's parsimonious ideas, of his mother's 
 waning interest in his fortunes, Margaret used, in 
 generous indignation, to convince her grandfather 
 of the necessity of keeping boys well supplied, and 
 sometimes sent off a surreptitious sovereign of her 
 own, by way of meeting some exceptional emer- 
 gency. The two cousins grew extremely confi- 
 dential ; and Charles, who was a sentimental lad, 
 laid open his heart to a congenial companion, 
 and intrusted all his most cherished secrets to her 
 keeping. Year by year their intimacy became 
 more complete, and their companionship, if some- 
 times more constrained, decidedly more pleasur- 
 able than before. Nelly's difference of age
 
 PLUCKED. 67 
 
 seemed greater than it was, and effectually ex- 
 cluded her from the friendship of the other two. 
 They looked upon her as a child, petted and 
 humoured her, anticipated and indulged her ca- 
 prices, but discussed her character between them- 
 selves, and never admitted her to an equality ; 
 nor did she ever interest herself in their com- 
 munications, or seem to wish to overstep the 
 barrier which the circumstances of the case had 
 raised up between them. 
 
 The Squire, who was a great believer in early 
 marriages, and who thought both his grand- 
 children, far too good for anybody but one 
 another, regarded their deepening friendship 
 with undisguised satisfaction, and looked upon 
 them as already impliedly betrothed. Neither 
 of the parties concerned, however, entertained 
 any such view of the matter. They sincerely 
 liked one another ; but in Margaret's mind at 
 least the liking had assumed no definite shape, 
 and in Charles's none but the most hazy outline. 
 Margaret was little accustomed to speculate 
 about herself, and scarcely knew her own feelings 
 with any precision. Charles loved his cousin, but 
 feeling himself still a boy, and being of the sort 
 of temperament that is ingenious in suggesting 
 
 F 2
 
 68 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 objections to immediate action, gladly allowed 
 his youth to interpose a long chapter of life 
 between his present love and his future wife. 
 College was not yet over ; and college done, he 
 was, it had been settled, to go into the army. 
 At any rate, he was to see the world ; and his 
 sentiment was not profound enough to blind him 
 to the advantages of an unfettered existence. He 
 had seldom been in London, and had a vague idea 
 of the pleasures which society might have in store 
 for him. He pictured to himself, in a dreamy 
 way, all sorts of possible enjoyment the adven- 
 tures of travel, the excitement of a campaign, 
 the salons of foreign cities, the friendship of 
 beautiful women, the companionship of amusing 
 friends and in none of these day-dreams had 
 Margaret a place. It was natural to wish for a 
 little adventure, to adorn the Great Unknown 
 with some attractive colouring. He would have 
 been grieved to the heart to see anyone else love 
 Margaret as a wife, but he had for the present no 
 desire to have her for his own. 
 
 The appearance of the two betrayed the growth 
 of their different characters, and the sort of career 
 to which either was probably destined. Charles's 
 languid air and undecided mouth bespoke the
 
 PLUCKED. 69 
 
 intermittent impulsiveness of a sentimentalist, 
 who had made but little effort towards self- 
 discipline ; a more careful scrutiny might have 
 revealed the selfishness which an habitual yielding 
 to moods engenders, and the blindness to other 
 persons' feelings which is the common defect of 
 unimaginative natures. But his eyes were full of 
 tenderness and goodhumour, his smile was frank 
 and cordial, his brow was chiselled with a delicate 
 softness, and a light down, which had never known 
 the razor, crept in faint outline about his mouth 
 and neck, and added at once to the comeliness of 
 his appearance and to the indistinctness of the 
 impression which it left upon the beholder. 
 
 Margaret, on the contrary, stamped her like- 
 ness in clear outline upon the recollection of all 
 who saw her. Nature here had suffered no waste 
 of material. She was slight in form, but its 
 perfect symmetry gave beauty, vigour, and dignity 
 to her movements. Her clear brown eyes lit up 
 with a sudden fire, or dilated with wonder, or 
 melted with infinite tenderness, and in every case 
 alike were full of meaning. Light hair, delicate 
 rather than abundant, encircled her forehead with 
 a sort of halo, such so ran Charles's dream in his 
 imaginative moments as hangs above the heads
 
 70 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 of saints and martyrs. Her taper neck was set on 
 in an attitude of resolution that gave a character 
 to her whole appearance, and announced her, in 
 language too clear to be mistaken, as of heroic 
 mould, born to do or to suffer, the chosen vessel 
 of a heavenly gift, or the instrument of some 
 lofty purpose. Charles might well grow senti- 
 mental, as the holidays closed, and the time for 
 parting came close at band. Every change dis- 
 tressed him, and this one most of all ; for days 
 before the cloud hung over him, and the thought 
 that was pressing on his mind would betray itself 
 by an unusual zeal, a readier chivalry, and a 
 rather more outspoken tenderness than could well 
 find a place in the intercourse of every day. 
 ' Come,' he would say, * for one more walk with 
 me through the evergreens, you best, and kindest, 
 and prettiest of cousins. How many of the poor 
 fellows whom I shall meet to-morrow will be 
 leaving as pleasant a home, as dear a companion ?' 
 Margaret would indulge in a little private cry 
 at his departure ; and would try in vain to make 
 herself believe that the Manor was as agreeable 
 an abode, or the Squire as good a companion, or 
 the garden as pretty, or the sun as bright, or life 
 in general as well worth the having, as when
 
 PLUCKED. 7 1 
 
 shared with the friend whose image was already 
 stamped deep upon her heart. 
 
 Two winters after the events recorded in the 
 last chapter, Charles found himself unexpectedly 
 at home, and at home under circumstances as little 
 pleasant as expected. 
 
 This was how it happened. Charles's college, 
 St. Faith's, had been for some time falling into 
 worse and worse disorder. A crisis was felt to be 
 impending ; good judges of academical atmosphere 
 had long predicted a storm. For weeks past the 
 Dean's face had been growing longer and darker ; 
 morning chapel had been attended by lessening 
 numbers ; discipline had been everywhere infringed ; 
 men had * knocked in ' at the most unconscionable 
 hours ; no serious outrage had been committed, but 
 a host of petty misdemeanours were gradually fill- 
 ing the cup of official wrath to the point at which 
 an overflow was inevitable. The Dons held a 
 council, acknowledged the emergency, and resolved 
 upon a coup d'etat at the first favourable oppor- 
 tunity. Still the evil grew. One night a chorus 
 of hilarious youths surrounded the President's 
 windows, and greeted that functionary, who divided 
 his nights between archaeological research and the 
 perusal of the College Statutes, with a performance
 
 72 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 of * Mynheer van Dunk,' a great deal more noisy 
 than melodious. On another occasion an early 
 fall of snow threw a great deal of compulsory 
 leisure upon the hunting men's hands, and afforded 
 a grateful opportunity of blockading all the pas- 
 sages in St. Faith's, and confining the Dons to 
 their own quarters for half a day. The interests 
 of * sound learning ' went, of course, to the wall ; 
 the little groups who assembled for college lectures 
 bore no proportion to the red-coated crowds who 
 flocked out on hunting mornings, or the boisterous 
 assemblies, where the accidents of the day were 
 discussed far into the night, over flowing rivers of 
 milk-punch or mulled claret. Charles had two 
 good hunters, and worked them with the unscru- 
 pulous vehemence of twenty. Everybody admitted 
 that the pace was too good to last ; and so it was. 
 Some weeks before the Christmas vacation the 
 crash came. 
 
 To begin with, there was a public examination, 
 and awful rumours prevailed as to the manner in 
 which the St. Faith's men had acquitted them- 
 selves in that formidable ordeal. Day after day, 
 as each new paper was disposed of, the victims 
 compared notes of their experience, were thunder- 
 struck to find how much they did not know, and
 
 PLUCKED. 73 
 
 tried in vain to support one another's flagging 
 courage. At last, impudence itself refused to 
 take a hopeful view of the position, and intrepidity 
 lapsed quickly into despair. Some of the least 
 resolute ' scratched,' preferring a decent retreat 
 to the disaster, which was now all but inevitable. 
 The St. Faith's tutors gathered in silent indigna- 
 tion to the battle-field, where their ill-trained 
 combatants were daily succumbing with disgrace- 
 ful readiness before the onslaught of three ruth- 
 less examiners. The President himself sat by, 
 pale with horror at the bathos of ignorance, into 
 which the plummet was lowered, and lowered 
 again, and still without the discovery of any solid 
 bottom. Pity, wrath, contempt, vengeance, swept 
 by turns across the usually placid lineaments of 
 his face, and portended an awful doom to such of 
 the defaulters as fell within the scope of his out- 
 raged authority. At last, when Evelyn was called 
 upon, and extemporized a wild translation of a 
 chorus in the Agamemnon, the President could 
 endure it no longer, and with an audible ejacula- 
 tion of ' Eheu ! ' swept in silence and anger from 
 the scene of action. Blacker and blacker still the 
 storm was gathering around, and next day the 
 thunder-cloud burst. Neither the discomfiture of
 
 74 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 the * Schools,' nor the prospect of humiliation 
 could keep the hunting men from the field. There 
 had been a favourite meet, a noisy breakfast, a 
 general desertion of lectures ; a first-rate run had 
 thrown everybody into the highest spirits ; a hos- 
 pitable farmer had extemporised a luncheon ; 
 luncheon had presently grown into something 
 more. Charles had been spinning home as fast 
 as a galloping hack could carry him, and had just 
 landed himself at the college gates, with scratched 
 face, a battered hat, and mud-encrusted boots and 
 coat, when the porter came up and handed him a 
 mandate, which had been sent by the Dean to 
 await his return: 'Mr. Evelyn is desired to 
 present himself forthwith at the Dean's rooms.' 
 ' Hoho ! ' cried Charles, ' " forthwith " is the word, 
 is it ? and Mr. Evelyn is desired by Jove, I'll 
 obey for once ! Here take my whip, and give 
 me one of those gowns.' A pile of those un- 
 graceful vestments were lying in the porter's 
 lodge. Charles thrust one over his pink coat, 
 and went with a cheerful audacity across the 
 quadrangle to the Dean's. In another moment 
 he stood before his superior : the two combatants 
 took a look at each other, and each saw what 
 disposed him more than ever for a fight. The
 
 PLUCKED. 75 
 
 Tutor hated horses and ' horsey ' people, thought 
 a scarlet man only less atrocious than the scarlet 
 woman of theology, and regarded top-boots as the 
 very insignia of rebellion. He saw, moreover, 
 that the truant was dropping mud as he came, 
 and was running his spurs into the Turkey 
 carpet. Charles, on the other hand, thought 
 that the Dean had never looked so dyspeptic, so 
 unmanly, or so uncomfortable before : the air of 
 the room was close and heavy, and implied an un- 
 wholesome antipathy to open windows ; the Dean's 
 wan cheek and rounded shoulders told of the mid- 
 night oil and a too assiduous devotion to the early 
 Fathers; the table was ornamented with green 
 baize and all wore the air of a place at which 
 intellectual, rather than material pleasures were 
 wont to be enjoyed. An angular saint, an unin- 
 teresting Madonna, and a serious portrait of the 
 founder of the college, adorned the walls, and 
 added to the austere solemnity of an apartment 
 already sufficiently uninviting. 
 
 Charles was more excited than he was aware ; 
 and the idea of the Dean's punctilious observance 
 of College regulations, and of the deep reverence 
 with which he regarded them, fretted him into an 
 impertinent humour. Accordingly, the battle
 
 76 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 began: the Dean put down the volume of St. 
 Cyprian upon which he had been spending the 
 afternoon, put up his eye-glass to enable him to 
 duly appreciate the whole horror of the spectacle, 
 carefully scanned the intruder from head to foot, 
 assumed a look of indignant amazement, and at 
 last gasped out, * Mr. Evelyn ! ' Charles was not 
 in the least inclined to feel modest, and bore the 
 scrutiny with perfect composure. His silence 
 obliged the other to continue : * What can you 
 mean, sir,' he said, * by appearing by presuming 
 to appear before me in a costume of which the 
 least that can be said is that it is indelicate, 
 absolutely indelicate, sir ? ' 
 
 Charles made no effort to conceal his smile. 
 'Indelicate, sir ? ' he replied, in affected ignorance 
 of the other's meaning. 
 
 * A most improper dress, sir,' said the Dean ; 
 ' the most improper in the world for you just now; 
 you know, of course, why you are summoned. 
 Allow me to ask, Where have you been ? ' 
 
 A mischievous sprite was hovering at Charles's 
 ear, and prompted a reply which, though entirely 
 veracious, was not calculated to appease the Tutor's 
 wrath. 
 
 * In and out of Waterperry Brook,' he said, look-
 
 PLUCKED. 77 
 
 ing down at his splashed garments and the deep 
 purple of his skirts. * I was desired to come to 
 you forthwith, or I should have changed my 
 clothes.' 
 
 The Dean's indignation was no longer to be re- 
 strained or dissembled. He got up from his chair, 
 laid his hand on the closed volume of St. Cyprian, 
 gathered himself together for an oratorical effort, 
 and proceeded to pour out the vials of his wrath. 
 
 t This is an outrage,' he said, ' a deliberate out- 
 rage. Mr. Evelyn, a Common-room will be held 
 upon you to-morrow, and I give you no en- 
 couragement to be hopeful about its results. 
 You will be dealt with as you deserve, unspar- 
 ingly. Your career has been a dark one; you 
 have disgraced the college and yourself in the 
 schools. The President very nearly had a fit 
 after hearing your disgraceful performance in the 
 Agamemnon. You have resolutely turned your 
 back upon my Critical Exegesis ; you have been 
 correspondingly neglectful of my lecture on the 
 Heresies of the first two centuries ; and you have 
 not been to morning chapel since since ' (the 
 Dean ran his finger up the damning column of 
 non-attendance, and turned round to confront his 
 victim with the newly-discovered iniquity)-
 
 78 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 'since I declare, only twice the whole term. 
 It is monstrous, sir, and a common-room can 
 alone meet your case. Meantime you will con- 
 sider yourself confined within the college walls.' 
 
 ' I have not dined,' said Charles, doggedly ; * I 
 can get nothing from the Buttery, and provisions 
 are not allowed to be brought into college.' 
 
 1 That,' said the Dean, ' is a matter upon which 
 I have no desire to enter. Good evening, sir.' 
 
 ' Do you mean that I am to go without dining, 
 after hunting all day ? ' cried Charles, in a 
 passion. 
 
 'I mean nothing but what I say,' answered 
 the Dean, with provoking composure. * Good 
 evening, sir.' 
 
 The last ' good evening ' had much more of 
 command than of friendship in its tones. Charles 
 stalked out of the room, strode across the quad- 
 rangle, threw down the offending robe in the 
 porter's lodge, and in half an hour was re-enact- 
 ing the scene for the benefit of a very convivial 
 assembly at ' The Mitre.' 
 
 'Here,' shouted some one, 'bring some more 
 champagne. Gentlemen, a toast ! " The Dean of 
 St. Faith's ! and the first two centuries ! " ' ' The 
 Dean of St. Faith's,' shouted another reveller;
 
 PLUCKED. 79 
 
 ' dirt, piety, and asceticism ! ' ' With all the 
 honours,' cried a third; and thereupon, with 
 great clashing of glasses, spilling of wine, and 
 hammering of the table, began a time-honoured 
 chorus : 
 
 Let wine and friendship grace the board, 
 Let Bacchus' bounteous gifts be poured, 
 And he who doth their charms deny, 
 Down among the dead men, Let Him Lie ! 
 
 The ascending vehemence of the song had 
 reached its climax, the crash of voices was roaring 
 
 its loudest, the feast was at its effervescent point, 
 
 I 
 
 and the Dean of St. Faith's name upon twenty 
 noisy lips, when the door opened, a polite young 
 man, whose velvet trappings announced his dig- 
 nity, stepped quietly from the passage; a back- 
 ground of sturdy ' lictors ' cut off all hopes of 
 flight or resistance ; a solemn pause checked the 
 banqueters in mid career ; and the proctor's re- 
 quest was heard without the least interruption. 
 e Gentlemen,' he said, * I will trouble you for your 
 names and colleges.' 
 
 A few days afterwards Charles set off for his 
 home, and several other young gentlemen set off 
 for theirs, exiled by the gentle severity of Alma 
 Mater from the scene of their temptations and
 
 80 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 their fall ; and enjoined by many lugubrious ad- 
 visers to make the most of their compulsory 
 retirement, in the repentance for past short- 
 comings and the formation of good resolves.
 
 81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 
 
 En amour les resolutions heroi'ques sont toujours celles qu'on 
 adopte, parcequ'elles sont impossibles a tenir. On les prend, et 
 Ton satisfait a sa conscience ; on les abandonne, et Ton contente 
 sa faiblesse ; on se persuade que Ton a cede a la force des choses. 
 
 ME. EVELYN was excessively annoyed, and re- 
 solved to show it. An indignity seemed to have 
 been offered to the whole family when its repre- 
 sentative had been subjected to so public a dis- 
 grace. The Squire's views on the subject were 
 indistinct, and the indistinctness added to his 
 distress. He endured his humiliation with stoical 
 dignity, but still with secret pangs. He felt sure 
 that the butler, standing solemnly behind him, 
 knew all about it, and had discussed his young 
 master's predicament in the house-keeper's room : 
 he felt abashed before the parson of the parish, 
 whose son had gone up as a Bible Clerk, and had 
 just come out with flying honours: the little 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 children, who gave him smiling courtesies in the 
 road; the ploughboys, who scraped a bashful 
 obeisance ; the groom, who came to know about 
 putting Charles's third hunter into training; the 
 keeper, who would allow no pheasant to be touched 
 in Charles's favourite fir-wood before the Christmas 
 holidays all alarmed the Squire's suspicions, lest 
 the awful intelligence should have come to their 
 ears, and their alacrity be only the result of re- 
 spectful commiseration. He suffered, and he 
 began to feel resentful towards the cause of his 
 sufferings. When Charles arrived, his grand- 
 father received him with a ceremonious urbanity, 
 which was something very different from the hearty, 
 unstudied welcome of old times. Charles had come 
 home thoroughly vexed with his proceedings, and 
 prepared to lapse at once into amicable penitence ; 
 but the Squire's frigid politeness threw him upon 
 his defence, and galled him into secret rebellion. 
 Mr. Evelyn had resolved to show his displeasure, 
 but had never realised how difficult a business it 
 would prove. The very difficulty, however, made 
 him more annoyed with Charles, and more than 
 ever resolved against succumbing. He entrenched 
 himself in an ostentatious but chilling hospitality, 
 made no allusion to Oxford, and ignored com-
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 83 
 
 pletely the circumstances of the prodigal's return. 
 Charles, on his part, secretly fired up at an 
 unlooked-for severity, steeled his heart against 
 the implied reproach, grew more and more stub- 
 bornly deferential, and made his grandfather's 
 existence a burthen to him. The longer such a 
 state of things is maintained, the less tolerable 
 does it become. Two days passed wearily away, 
 and Charles began to think that rustication was, 
 after all, a severer penalty than it was the fashion 
 to consider it. As the excitement of his arrival 
 wore off, and the topics of indifferent conversation 
 came to an end, the freezing embarrassment in- 
 creased. Mr. Evelyn was in despair, and secretly 
 resolved that Charles qught to go forthwith and 
 visit his mother at Wies-Baden. That evening, 
 fortunately, Mr. Blake, the Underwood clergy- 
 man, came to dinner, and prevented the discom- 
 fort of a tete-a-tete. Even here, however, the 
 unfortunate Oxford escapade followed its weary 
 victims relentlessly, and uneasy consciences kept 
 a sad watch behind affected mirth. Mr. Blake 
 was something of a pedant, and lost no opportu- 
 nity of airing a little stock of learning, for which, 
 it must be confessed, he found but rare opportu- 
 nities at the Manor/ House. The arrival of the 
 
 c 2
 
 84 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 eldest son of the family from Oxford seemed an 
 occasion deserving of a more than ordinary dis- 
 play ; and, as if under the impression that Oxonians 
 were in the habit of addressing one another in the 
 dead languages, the worthy divine thought fit to 
 season his remarks to Charles with an appropriate 
 admixture of classical quotation. It pleased his 
 vanity to show his patron and his patron's heir 
 that a country parson might stand on a vantage- 
 ground to both in academical accomplishments. 
 Years before he had tutorised Charles's father at 
 St. Faith's, and he was now genuinely inquisitive 
 to hear about his old college. In vain the Squire, 
 increasingly nervous at every fresh inquiry, en- 
 deavoured to give the conversation another bent : 
 in vain he asked after the sick people, the newly- 
 arrived babies, the chancel improvements all 
 generally the most seductive themes to his clerical 
 tormentor, Mr. Blake, serenely unconscious of 
 the annoyance he was causing, stuck constantly 
 to his subject, and gradually worked his way 
 towards the dreaded discovery. * Ah,' he said to 
 Charles, ' it is we remote clergy who learn to 
 value our Oxford days : one lays in a store to last 
 one through a tedious lifetime. What pleasant 
 days they were ! what excellent companionship !
 
 THE FATTED CALF.' 85 
 
 what noctes coenaeque deum ! Look what litera- 
 ture does for a man ! but store his mind with 
 that, and he can defy solitude, hard work, un- 
 congenial tasks it is his friend, his faithful 
 companion pernoctat nobiscum, peregrinatur, 
 rusticatur ' 
 
 A bomb-shell alighting on the dining-table 
 could scarcely have produced a more electrical 
 effect than did this awful word. The Squire 
 gave a groan in spite of himself, and so nearly 
 upset the claret-jug in his confusion, that the 
 parson's oration come to a premature close. 
 Margaret came mercifully to the rescue, and 
 banished St. Faith's from the conversation for the 
 rest of dinner time. Afterwards they played at 
 whist; but the Squire was testy and negligent, 
 trumped his partner's good cards, made a palpable 
 revoke, and evidently had his head full of some- 
 thing else, and that something of a disquieting 
 and provoking nature. Charles was to hunt the 
 next day ; and Mr. Evelyn looked forward with 
 a sense of relief to the prospect of his departure, 
 and to the opportunity which it would afford him 
 of indulging in low spirits without fear of inter- 
 ruption. Both of the belligerents were suffering 
 in the encounter, and both confided their troubles
 
 86 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 to Margaret. She, meantime, had seen that 
 matters were not righting themselves, and watched 
 the right moment for successful intervention. 
 She took Charles off into her room, cured him, 
 by her cheerful gentleness, of his sulky mood, 
 made him wheel round the sofa and make up the 
 fire, and in ten minutes had heard all the history 
 of the disaster. 
 
 * After all, then,' she said, with an air of the 
 greatest relief, * there is not anything so very dis- 
 graceful, or so very wrong ? ' 
 
 How pleasantly an argument goes on when 
 both parties are longing for the same conclusion. 
 Charles burst out laughing. * Disgraceful ! ' he 
 cried ; * why, Margaret, it is a statistical fact that 
 two-thirds of all the men who go in for examina- 
 tions get plucked before they have done.' 
 
 ' And get rusticated ? ' inquired Margaret, in- 
 nocently. 
 
 The rustication was a mistake ; Charles was 
 obliged to acknowledge ' a stupid mistake ; ' and 
 then he told her of his interview with the Dean, 
 and of the hunting dinner at the ' Mitre,' and of 
 the untimely arrival of the authorities. He was 
 just in the middle of the Dean's toast when there 
 came a knock at the door, and in walked the
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 87 
 
 Squire, very much disconcerted to find his 
 place on Margaret's sofa forestalled, and the 
 sympathy he was so much in need of bestowed 
 on another. Charles, of course, stopped short in 
 his narrative, and Margaret, with great pre- 
 sence of mind, took advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 ' Grandpapa,' she said, as she gave him his 
 favourite chair, ' here is Charlie wanting to make 
 his confession to you ; and I don't think it is a 
 very dreadful one. Tell him about it, Charlie ; 
 it was all those stupid proctors' fault for coming 
 in at the wrong moment.' 
 
 ' It was the divinity that floored me, sir,' said 
 Charles, making his way with creditable sagacity 
 to the most defensible portion of his case. * I had 
 done pretty well all through, and my tutor told 
 me I should have got a second ; but they got me 
 upon the Gnostics.' 
 
 ' The who ? ' asked the Squire, who was not at 
 all learned in Church history, and knew little 
 about heretics, except what he heard occasionally 
 on Sunday mornings. 
 
 * G-nostics, sir,' said Charles ; who, since his 
 defeat, had been getting up the tenets of that 
 sect, and was only too happy to turn his knowledge
 
 88 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 to account : ' they lived in the second century, and 
 they believed in Eons.' 
 
 ' Yes, of course,' said the Squire, who began to 
 feel out of his depth. * You ought to have known 
 it. I have not the least doubt that Margaret 
 could have told you all about them.' 
 
 ' Indeed,' said Margaret, ' I could do no such 
 thing, and I don't wonder a bit at Charlie's not 
 knowing. But tell grandpapa about the Dean 
 the way he wished you " good evening." ' 
 
 Charles plucked up heart, gave his story as 
 well as he could, put the college authorities in as 
 absurd a light as possible, and in the end made 
 his peace with his grandfather. All three felt 
 their hearts lightened by the reconciliation, and 
 both the men secretly blessed Margaret for the 
 part she played as peacemaker between them. 
 The Squire found it easy to forgive. He still 
 remembered the time when a day's hunting 
 appeared the first of all earthly considerations, 
 and could not but take the part of his own flesh 
 and blood against what was, after all, a piece of 
 pedantic despotism. The tutor had been wrong, 
 no doubt, and from this it was easy to pass to the 
 welcome conviction that Charles had been right. 
 Meanwhile the stream of pleasant familiar talk,
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 89 
 
 which for days past had seemed almost dry, began 
 to flow again; and Charles, delighted to throw 
 off the icy reserve in which he had been locked, 
 became more than ever cheerful, gracious, and 
 affectionate. 
 
 ' Well,' said the Squire, as he rose at last to go 
 away, ' we must not starve you, at any rate, when 
 you come home from hunting to-morrow. By 
 the way, Charlie, you are going to ride the little 
 chestnut, but you must be content not to press 
 her, please; for, you remember, they did not 
 expect you in the stables for a month to 
 come.' 
 
 * I will take care, sir,' said Charles, with a 
 blush ; ' I dare say we shall be only cantering 
 from one wood to another.' 
 
 f That will be just the thing for her,' said the 
 Squire. * And now, Margaret, you had better 
 break up your court, and send us both away to 
 bed.' 
 
 Charles lingered behind and bade his cousin a 
 tender good-night. ' You are my good genius,' 
 he said, taking her hand kindly. * How pleasant 
 to be in trouble, and to be rescued by you ! What 
 strange spell is it that you charm us with ? Come 
 now, you are a magician, are you not ?'
 
 90 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 'To be sure,' said Margaret; 'this is my cell, 
 and here I ply my trade of sorceress. Escape, 
 rash mortal, while you may; before I blow out 
 the candles and leave you alone in the dark with 
 my hobgoblins. Listen, there is twelve o'clock. 
 Good-night, Charlie.' 
 
 Margaret was already in the passage, and 
 leading the way. An impulse, sudden and irre- 
 sistible as lightning, flashed into her companion's 
 mind. ' She is beautiful,' said a stirring voice 
 within ; ' she is nobly good ; her elevation lifts 
 you above yourself; her purity refines you; her 
 wisdom strengthens your flagging will; dare to 
 try to win her try and succeed try now.' Was 
 some demon of cowardice lurking by Charles's 
 side, paralysing his will and unnerving his hand 
 as he essayed to act. All his life, so something 
 told him, was centred in a moment's crisis. How 
 should he acquit himself? His heart throbbed 
 violently, and the word seemed half trembling 
 upon his lips. ' Spread your sail,' said the inward 
 counsellor, ' while the wind favours ; the prize is 
 great ; only be a man and dare to grasp it.' 
 
 It is perilous, they say, to resist inspiration. 
 Charles listened, hesitated, longed to obey, once 
 again faltered, and once again the warning voice
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 91 
 
 spoke, this time in terms of vehement, contemp- 
 tuous upbraiding. * Faint heart,' it said, ' waverer, 
 poltroon, act now or never act again ! awake from 
 your idle dream of love, or sleep on for a dis- 
 graced and miserable lifetime ; rise, or be for ever 
 fallen ; dare, or reap a coward's rneed ! The 
 golden fruit hangs close within your reach ; pluck 
 it, pluck it while you can ! ' 
 
 He had only a few seconds as he followed her 
 to make up his mind. A dozen yards more and 
 their paths would diverge to different parts of the 
 house. But no; once again fortune favoured him. 
 Margaret recollected a note that she had left 
 unwritten, turned suddenly short, met her cousin 
 face to face, told him with a laugh of her mistake, 
 and went back to her sitting-room. 'Follow,' 
 cried the voice, louder now, more vehement, more 
 reproachful, less mistakeable than ever : ' Coward 
 that you are to doubt: if for failure, what risk 
 better worth the running? If for success, how 
 almost divine a prize ! Still doubting ? Weak, 
 indolent, spiritless wretch ! act act ! clutch your 
 good fortune while you may. Have you a spark 
 of manhood, a drop of hero's blood in your veins, 
 a touch of greatness ? Away with unmanly timi- 
 dity. Now is the crowning moment. There lies
 
 92 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 your promised land, dreamed of, longed for, well- 
 beloved ; enter and possess it, or be eternally 
 outcast.' 
 
 Charles stood for an instant irresolute, the toy 
 of conflicting waves of passions that tossed him 
 hither and thither. At last his weaker nature 
 triumphed. ' I will ask her to-morrow,' he said, 
 and turned away, his nerves overstrung and his 
 pulse still fluttering wildly, to his bedroom, un- 
 comfortably conscious though he strove against 
 it that he had failed; that he had been tried and 
 found wanting, that an encounter had been de- 
 clined ; a fair chance thrown away ; that the trea- 
 sure he feebly longed for was less than ever his. 
 ' To-morrow,' he thought ; but when do the to- 
 morrows of dreamers ever come ? When does the 
 flagging interest, once indulged with a needless 
 delay, again wax vigorous enough for the prompt 
 deed, the perilous venture, the life and death 
 struggle? When does the prosperous wave of 
 fortune's tide, once allowed to pass, again run in 
 our favour ? Charles's conscience smote him ruth- 
 lessly, and banished each plausible excuse. At 
 last he slept, and visionary shapes moved sadly 
 about him, pointing a finger of scorn, urging him, 
 with despairing vehemence, to act, or hissing out
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 93 
 
 *Fool! idler! coward!' as they turned away and 
 left him to his fate. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Squire and Margaret had gone 
 to bed with lighter hearts than for days past ; and 
 the next morning the good effects of peace were 
 discernible in the unusual cheerfulness that reigned 
 at breakfast. Mr. Evelyn was in the highest 
 spirits, insisted upon driving his grandson to the 
 meet, and discussed the county gossip, the horses 
 which they passed on the road, and the probabili- 
 ties of the day's sport, with infectious animation. 
 Charles banished all thoughts of self-reproach, 
 and threw himself eagerly into the spirit of the 
 occasion. 
 
 * Here are the Clyffe people,' said the Squire, as 
 they turned a corner on the road, and Florence 
 appeared at the head of a little cavalcade, dividing 
 her attention between a fidgety horse and a train 
 of talkative admirers. * That is Florence Vivien 
 in front! she is the best rider and the fastest 
 talker, and to some people's taste the hand- 
 somest young lady in the county ; and they say 
 she makes a goose of every man who comes near 
 her : so be warned in time.' 
 
 * Never fear,' said Charles, with a laugh, secretly 
 vowing that that should be his last day of bachelor-
 
 94 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 hood ; * she seems too well supplied to need addi- 
 tional worshippers.' 
 
 ' Margaret does not like her in the least,' said 
 the Squire; 'we have merely exchanged visits 
 since they came back from Italy, where, 
 among other fine arts, she acquired that of 
 flirtation.' 
 
 Presently Charles got his horse, and joining the 
 Clyffe party, found himself in the midst of friends. 
 Anstruther, an old Etonian, now in the Guards, 
 and the freshest of Florence's conquests, was ever 
 by her side ; and near them followed Erie, whose 
 acquaintance Charles had made at All Souls, where 
 both had been frequent guests. ' Evelyn ! ' they 
 both cried out, as they recognised him. Charles 
 was forthwith introduced to Florence, and soon 
 found himself, like everyone else, entirely at his 
 ease. Florence's court had at any rate the recom- 
 mendation that it was always lively. ' Charlie 
 Evelyn,' said Erie ; ' and on a pretty, plump little 
 thoroughbred, who is quite certain to give him a 
 roll before the day is over. Count Malagrida,' he 
 said, turning round to a handsome-looking man 
 who rode behind him, * you were asking me about 
 Oxford yesterday; here is Mr. Evelyn, who will 
 give you all the latest news: make the most of
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 95 
 
 your time, for you will not see much of one 
 another, I guess, when the run begins.' 
 
 Count Malagrida, distinguished as the possessor 
 of a black silky moustache, a pair of gloomy lan- 
 guid eyes, a large fortune, and an extremely bad 
 reputation, had formed the Viviens' acquaintance 
 two winters before at Rome, had improved it 
 assiduously during the previous season, professed 
 himself a great admirer of Florence, and had now 
 taken Clyffe in the course of a hunting tour. He 
 was quite at home in English society, talked the 
 language admirably, affected English tastes, rode 
 the best horses that were to be had for love or 
 money, and was acknowledged, even by the Heavy- 
 shire connoisseurs, to ride them well well, that 
 is, for an Italian. 
 
 He now greeted Charles with a pleasant frank- 
 ness, asked him about the woods they were about 
 to draw, and declared himself in love with the 
 Heavyshire country. Charles, in the grasp of a 
 composed and penetrating nature, was too much 
 fascinated to observe his cold sardonic lips, the 
 gloom which settled on his features as his artificial 
 smile died away, or the wrath which flashed omi- 
 nously from his eye, when for an instant his horse 
 turned restive. A judge of physiognomy, however
 
 96 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 would have read * villain' plainly written in every 
 lineament of his face. 
 
 Charles was less pleased with Erie's appearance. 
 He had not certainly improved since the old col- 
 lege days. The lines of his face, somewhat too 
 finely cut for a man in the first instance, had 
 become almost feminine in their delicacy, and gave 
 him the aspect of an invalid. His attitudes and 
 movements bespoke the languor of indifference, 
 and his indifference was especially ostentatious, 
 Charles thought, in his behaviour to Miss Vivien. 
 His adventure with Florence two years ago had 
 not, one might fancy, tended to improve his cha- 
 racter. She had accused him of levity, and it was 
 easy enough to deserve the accusation ; for once 
 he had felt fond of a woman, and she had rejected 
 him in the manner least agreeable to his vanity ; 
 she had criticised his character, and pronounced 
 him unfit. He had attempted sentiment, and 
 found his attempt, not indeed scorned, but ac- 
 cepted with a good-natured, condescending scep- 
 ticism. Henceforward, in matters of sentiment, 
 he became more than ever of a sceptic himself. 
 His rejection was known to all, and he found his 
 best course was not to attempt concealment, but 
 to laugh at it and himself. It was a boyish indis-
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 97 
 
 % 
 
 cretion, with which he could afford to be thoroughly 
 amused. Constantly meeting Florence, never hav- 
 ing become estranged, getting to know her better 
 and approve her less, a strange sort of intimacy 
 had grown up between them. They openly pro- 
 fessed, and to a certain degree felt, a mutual dislike, 
 but found each other very good company. Every- 
 body knew that they were people who had thought 
 of love, and having abandoned the idea, could 
 speak of it without reserve. Either alluded to 
 the breach with perfect unconcern ; and both said 
 things about it and themselves which shocked 
 quiet people, and convinced the world that the 
 one was palpably hard-hearted and the other the 
 reverse of modest. 
 
 Presently the others moved away, and Erie and 
 Evelyn found themselves riding on either side of 
 Florence. 
 
 ' The last time we met,' Florence said, ' I think 
 you proposed to me, and gave me a rose, and swore 
 eternal fidelity.' 
 
 Charles blushed, looked extremely bashful, and 
 said, as gallantry bid him, that he remembered 
 perfectly. 
 
 Erie turned up his eyes, and gave a little mock 
 sigh, inaudible to all but Florence. 'Us n'en, 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 mourraient pas tous, mais tous etaient frappes,' he 
 said. * What a list of conquests since then ! And 
 how many years ago, Miss Vivien, was that ? ' 
 
 * A hundred and fifty,' answered Florence ; 
 * when Mr. Evelyn and I were young and inno- 
 cent, and such wicked people as you were never 
 dreamt of.' 
 
 Presently there came a great tootooing from a 
 distant horn, wild screams from the corner of the 
 wood, ploughboys gesticulating in the horizon, a 
 sudden movement among the crowd of horses, a 
 mad jumping in and out of the covert on the part 
 of excited whips, a general rush for the only gate 
 out of the field and Major Vivien threw down 
 his cigar, put his horse into a sharp gallop, and 
 called out to the group of talkers that the fox had 
 gone away. Erie, who was a keen sportsman, and 
 did not like Florence near well enough to care 
 about opening gates for her, made instantly for a 
 formidable stile, and got off with the huntsman 
 and those fortunate two or three who always hap- 
 pen to be on the right side of the wood. Charles 
 looked ruefully at his horse's streaming coat, and 
 already panting sides. Anstruther rode by Flo- 
 rence's side, admiring her horsemanship, leading 
 at the doubtful jumps, and wishing devoutly that
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 99 
 
 he could get a fall in her service. A burst of ten 
 minutes shook off the loose array of spectators and 
 idlers, who had gathered round the meet, and 
 already foreshadowed the several fortunes of the 
 day. Florence, who always rode as if for her life, 
 was galloping rather wildly over the crest of a 
 smooth upland meadow, her gentleman in due 
 attendance, and her groom three-quarters of a 
 field behind. Maj or Vivien had pushed his horse 
 down into a lane which he knew must be crossed, 
 and was trotting leisurely on, while the fox was 
 being hurried through a gorse on the hill-side. 
 Erie and a handful of hard riders were following 
 close alongside of the hounds, and were congratu- 
 lating themselves upon being in for a good run. 
 Charles, enveloped in a cloud of steam and foam, 
 and oblivious of his grandfather's injunctions, was 
 getting the last half mile out of his labouring 
 chestnut, and was sorrowfully meditating a prema- 
 ture return. His reflections were suddenly cut 
 short by Florence flying past him, her horse's head 
 high in the air, and her own attention apparently 
 devoted to the fast-vanishing pack. A thin, strag- 
 gling, unsuspicious-looking fence separated them 
 from the adjoining field, and Florence, her blood 
 by this time at boiling-point, went at it as hard as 
 
 H 2
 
 100 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ever she could. Two strides off, her horse half 
 swerved away ; her ready hand pulled him straight, 
 a lash from her whip sent him rushing wildly at 
 the opposing barrier : a strong limp bough caught 
 Ms legs as he flew across, and in another instant 
 both he and his mistress were rolled over into a 
 nice, soft ploughed field beyond. Charles con- 
 centrated the chestnut's remaining energies into a 
 single effort, and was soon at the fallen Amazon's 
 side. Anstruther galloped back in great alarm, 
 and was on his legs in an instant. Florence sprang 
 up unassisted, and as quickly subsided, turning 
 deadly pale. 
 
 ' It is nothing, I assure you,' she said, ruling 
 her face to a smile, which scarcely disguised her 
 pain ' pray, both of you go on this minute.' 
 
 * My horse's lungs make it impossible for me 
 to obey,' said Charles. * I am already at a dead 
 stand-still ; besides, I am afraid you are hurt.' 
 
 * Well,' said Florence, * Mr. Anstruther, at any 
 rate, I insist 
 
 'And I obey orders,' said Anstruther, who, 
 though a lady's man, was beginning to feel ner- 
 vous about the hunt, * and I leave you in safe 
 hands.' 
 
 So saying, he jumped on his horse, and was pre-
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 101 
 
 sently out of sight. Florence, sitting in the mud, 
 looked as queen-like as possible, and invested her 
 predicament with a grace and dignity of its own. 
 
 ' How extremely embarrassing ! ' she said, with 
 a laugh ; ' but, Mr. Evelyn, pray take iny groom's 
 horse, and go on ; yours will do perfectly well for 
 him to follow me home. 
 
 Charles, looking at the fallen goddess, very much 
 preferred the idea of a tete-a-tete with her to the 
 faint chance of catching the hounds, and resolutely 
 refused the offer. 
 
 'Indeed,' he said, 'you must let me see you 
 safe to Clyffe. Shall we send for a- carriage ? ' 
 For Florence seemed still immovable. 
 
 'Not for the world,' she cried; 'my mother 
 would be frightened out of her wits ; and besides, 
 it is nothing. If you would help me up, I think 
 that I could manage now.' 
 
 Florence was soon safe on her horse again : it 
 cost her some pain, as Charles could see ; but she 
 disavowed it bravely, laughed about her own bad 
 riding, and, as the two rode quietly homewards, 
 the conversation naturally took a confidential 
 turn. Florence could be extremely agreeable, and 
 just now she was quite inclined to please. She 
 was gratified at having caught a new admirer ;
 
 102 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Anstruther was so innocently dull, Erie was too 
 familiar to be amusing, Malagrida was unassailable, 
 Charles looked bright and susceptible and enter- 
 taining, and Florence carried him off joyfully, as 
 an energetic spider does some little fly, for the 
 purposes of home consumption. She flattered him 
 by her inquisitiveness, heard about school and 
 college, found out a number of common acquain- 
 tances, gave him the cleverest accounts of their 
 foreign expeditions, and presently began to talk to 
 him about his cousins. 
 
 * I have seen Miss St. Aubyn only once,' she 
 said 'at the County ball we have always 
 missed each other when we went to call. I sup- 
 pose she is at the Manor ? ' 
 
 * Oh, yes,' said Charles ; ' and Nelly is to come 
 to-night. You must remember her, a little child ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Florence, ' a very pretty little child, 
 with soft brown hair, and the most capital eyes. 
 And has she turned out a beauty? ' 
 
 ' I have not seen her for three years,' said her 
 companion. She had to be sent to school, and I 
 was away in her holidays; Margaret, however, 
 considers her loveliness itself.' 
 
 ' I must come and judge for myself as soon as 
 possible,' said Florence, inwardly making up her
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 103 
 
 mind to like Nelly a great deal better than her 
 sister. 
 
 At the Clyffe Lodge they met Mrs. Vivien, and 
 Florence explained away her accident, introduced 
 Charles to her mother, and all three went in to 
 lunch. There were plenty of non-hunters in the 
 house. Florence's fall aroused the greatest in- 
 terest, conversation flowed pleasantly along, and 
 presently the Major, who did not care about an 
 afternoon's run, came in. By six o'clock most of 
 the party were reassembled and chatting round the 
 drawing-room fire. Charles found himself pressed 
 to stay ; Miss Vivien, in particular, would not hear 
 of his departure. 
 
 * Think of your poor horse, no doubt just begin- 
 ning to recover ! Papa, Mr. Evelyn jumped after 
 me, and saved my life. I hope you appreciate 
 the heroism. Mr. Anstruther, on the contrary, 
 galloped away, and left me to my fate.' 
 
 ' You told me to do so,' cried Anstruther, blush- 
 ing at so sudden an attack. 
 
 ' We do not always choose to be obeyed,' said 
 Erie. 'How unfortunate that I was six fields 
 away, and had no opportunity of interpreting 
 your wishes ! ' 
 
 * But in your case,' said Florence, with a laugh,
 
 104 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' I should have wished to be obeyed ; you are the 
 last person in the world to see one in misfortune. 
 Mr. Anstruther, I know, would have sympathised; 
 you would have been hypocritically polite.' 
 
 ' Hypocrisy, you know,' said Erie, * is a tribute 
 to virtue, and politeness is at any rate better than 
 nothing. Anstruther deserved to tumble into the 
 brook, as he did, for deserting you in distress.' 
 
 'I was not the least in distress I was very 
 comfortable in the mud; and Mr. Evelyn and I 
 had a great deal to tell one another about.' 
 
 ' I congratulate both sincerely,' said Erie, with 
 a somewhat disrespectful laugh. * Thirteen miles 
 I think you had to ride ; I should have been at 
 my wits' end for something to say before we were 
 half way home.' 
 
 ' And so should I,' cried Florence. * How 
 lucky that you always lose sight of me on hunting 
 mornings ! ' 
 
 Dinner was announced; Florence went off at 
 once with Charles, and Anstruther turned in 
 desolation of spirit to find a companion among 
 the less distinguished young ladies. The party 
 was large, talkative, and amusing. Charles was 
 dazzled, excited, above all extremely entertained. 
 The conversation, though evidently unstudied,
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 105 
 
 seemed to him brisk and witty. Florence made 
 herself the centre of a hot fire of repartee, and 
 received every onslaught with the cheerful daring 
 of experienced success : as Erie and her father 
 were within reach, she was in no danger of un- 
 welcome tranquillity. 
 
 'Well, Erie,' asked the Major presently from 
 his end of the table, * and how did you like your 
 new purchase? he is handsome enough, at any 
 rate.' 
 
 'Do you mean Runnymeade?' asked Erie. 
 'He is delightful, I assure you, when one has 
 once become friends with him, and will soon be 
 careful enough to carry a bishop.' 
 
 ' He is very unfortunate, then,' said Anstruther, 
 ' for he is always in trouble. I should like to 
 know how many mistakes he made to-day? Pray, 
 what is his history?' 
 
 ' I bought him of Lord Almersfield,' said Erie, 
 ' for five-and-twenty pounds. He gave him six 
 falls in a single morning ; and Lady Almersfield 
 never left off crying till he was safe in my 
 possession.' 
 
 ' Safe is hardly the word for him wherever he 
 is,' said Anstruther. ' However, you get amuse- 
 ment out of him, and a new sensation, I suppose ?
 
 106 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' Yes,' said the Major. * Erie thinks the chief 
 recommendation in a hunter is to be as little like 
 a hunter as possible do you not, Erie ? ' 
 
 4 Ah ! ' said Florence, ' like Baron Immanuel, 
 the half-converted Jew, who chose his child's 
 godfather, parcequ'il etait le moins Chretien 
 possible.'' 
 
 'What excellent things the Jews say,' said 
 Erie, who had all the indisposition of an in- 
 dolent man to become the topic of conversation. 
 ' Did you hear of Benassa's retort to a set of 
 greedy shareholders, who were squabbling with 
 the most piggish greediness over the terms of his 
 loan. " R va nous avaler tons" cried one of the 
 directors. " Pardon, messieurs," said the old 
 Hebrew, " ma religion me le defend." ' 
 
 ' What a delightful old man ! ' cried Florence ; 
 ' and are all Jews as witty as that, Mr. Erie? In 
 "Coningsby," you know, they are proved to be 
 everything else ! but I do not recollect that this 
 was touched on.' 
 
 ' Coningsby himself has said a few rather good 
 things in his time.' 
 
 ' Pray,' asked the Major, ' have you heard my 
 story of a Jew with a bad conscience ? ' 
 
 ' I never heard of a Jew with anything else,'
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 107 
 
 Erie said. 'Anstruther and I, when in our 
 extravagant young days, found it out to our 
 cost.' 
 
 'Well,' said the Major, 'my Jew was a re- 
 ligious Jew, but had a weakness for roast pig, 
 and loved to retire into the country to regale 
 himself occasionally on the forbidden delicacy. 
 Once, in the middle of one of his illicit re- 
 pasts, there came on a thunder-storm. Every 
 flash of lightning seemed a special judgment 
 on his crime. The thunder went on; the 
 flashes were awful ; the little pig succulent ; the 
 Jew fumed, trembled, and ate. At last a louder 
 clap than ever made him too frightened to con- 
 tinue. " What a fush ! " he exclaimed, as he 
 resigned his knife and fork in indignation, " what 
 a fush about a little piesh of pork ! " 
 
 'Poor Jew!' cried Florence; 'it was really 
 hard ; but a thunder-storm always frightens one 
 out of one's wits, even though one is doing no- 
 thing wrong. That horrid old Lady Whigton, 
 you know, like a mean wretch as she was, used to 
 make her maid dress up in her clothes, in hopes 
 she might get struck instead of herself.' 
 
 * Ha ! ' said the Count, ' I honour her ladyship 
 for that a good piece of racy, downright selfish-
 
 108 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ness, such as we all feel, if we dared but show it. 
 For my part, if I had the least idea that any 
 particular flash was intending to honour me with 
 a visit, I should step into my man Giacomo's 
 livery without a moment's hesitation. But what 
 a blessing to have an easy conscience ! ' 
 
 The Count swept a smile of happy innocence 
 round the table, and appeared to be mentally 
 taking his stand, wrapped in his own integrity, 
 amidst a crashing universe. 
 
 ' We all feel it,' said Erie, with a laugh. * No- 
 thing but a conviction of one's essential excellence 
 carries one through the fatigues of existence. 
 Look at Major Vivien in the House, for instance 
 who could face Parliament without a spotless 
 soul?' 
 
 'It is no joke, I can tell you,' exclaimed the 
 Major, * legislating for a thankless world two hours 
 after it has gone to bed. If Virtue can befriend 
 us, I am sure we need her help.' 
 
 * We are all on the right side here, I believe,' 
 said Malagrida, looking round. ' Well, now, I 
 make a confession ' 
 
 * Stop ! ' cried the Major, pointing to Florence. 
 * Your neighbour there is a traitress in the camp, 
 and pretty nearly a radical.'
 
 THE FATTED CALF. 109 
 
 * A traitress ! ' cried Malagrida,in assumed alarm, 
 ' a radical ! a monster ! ' 
 
 f Yes,' said Florence, ' I confess I like a win- 
 ning cause. I am quite tired of minorities. Just 
 look at your last^asco.' 
 
 'They are badly generalled,' said Malagrida; 
 ' it is all Coningsby's fault, you know.' 
 
 *No, no! ' cried Florence; 'that is always the 
 complaint of bad soldiers. Coningsby is their 
 greatest card, after all, only they play him so 
 dreadfully.' 
 
 ' Or rather,' suggested Erie, ' how dreadfully 
 he uses them. A whole day of ruses, a night 
 attack, a hopeless battle, and a long march home 
 through the mud.' 
 
 ' With the loss of bag, baggage, and artillery,' 
 added the Major, who was still smarting with the 
 recollection of a compulsory Methodist Eate-in-aid 
 Bill. 'All our great principles are gone to the 
 dogs.' 
 
 'You cannot go skirmishing,' said the Count, 
 ' except in light attire. Believe me, you look 
 extremely well without your principles, and will 
 no doubt get accustomed to it by degrees.' 
 
 ' Oh, yes ! ' said Erie ; ' they will get to like it 
 like Coningsby himself: in one's old age one
 
 110 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 likes variety, and he has taken a fancy to forlorn 
 hopes.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the Major; 'like the general whom 
 Napoleon cashiered because, as he said, he had a 
 perfect mania for scientific disasters.' 
 
 'Never mind, papa,' cried Florence, con- 
 solingly: 'in politics, like war, 
 
 no feat 
 
 Is nobler than a brave retreat.' 
 
 ' Suppose, then,' said Mrs. Vivien, who had 
 been trying to catch her daughter's eye, ' that we 
 proceed to effect one ? ' And thereupon the 
 gentlemen were left to their claret.
 
 Ill 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 HELEN. 
 
 The petitionary grace 
 
 Of sweet seventeen. 
 
 THE chestnut, who had had a good rest, and been 
 hospitably cared for in the Clyffe stables, seemed 
 quite to have recovered from his morning's trial, 
 and started off in the highest spirits. As he can- 
 tered gaily homewards Charles set himself to think 
 over his morning's adventure and his new acquaint- 
 ance. His reflections were not altogether agree- 
 able. The society which he had left was a keener 
 atmosphere than that to which he was going, and 
 he had liked to breathe it. He was roused into a 
 bolder and more ambitious than his ordinary mood, 
 and he felt overstrung for his Underwood home, 
 its quiet enjoyment, its unambitious mirth, its 
 simple and unconscious kindness. He had left 
 behind him a set of people brilliant, ready, well 
 accustomed to the latest phases of life, deeply
 
 112 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 versed in its ways, biases with its pleasures, fami- 
 liar with its crimes. He had heard books, men, 
 politics touched upon with an experienced daring, 
 an off-hand half contempt, and, at the same time, 
 an amusing cleverness that completely dazzled 
 him. 'Was everyone in the great world,' he 
 thought to himself, ' as sharp as they ? and if so, 
 how tame a place the Manor must be thought ! ' 
 He fretted at the idea of the Squire's kindly gar- 
 rulousness, the little country chit-chat he loved, 
 and the village matters which he thought quite 
 worth hearing about and discussing. How the 
 young chestnut had jumped ; how the hounds 
 were looking ; whether James, the new whip, was 
 as quick as William, his predecessor ; where the 
 fox had broken, and where it had gone, and why 
 it did not go somewhere else ; and whether the 
 huntsman thought it was the same fox that had 
 given them such a good run from the same wood 
 a month before all these questions Charles knew 
 that his grandfather would, in due course of time, 
 propound, and would consider them the natural 
 and appropriate topics of the evening. They 
 were not, he bitterly felt, worth so much atten- 
 tion : there were bigger matters in the world, and 
 keener interests, and of these he seemed just to
 
 HELEN. 113 
 
 have had a taste enough to disincline him for his 
 old pursuits. Margaret, too, it must be confessed, 
 paled by the side of Florence's more striking 
 beauty. Her simplicity of character contrasted 
 with the other's confident shrewdness : her modesty 
 was pretty indeed ; but Florence's daring air, and 
 high-spirited gestures, were far more impressive : 
 her effortless flow of gentleness and good-humour, 
 after Florence's impetuous fascinations, seemed 
 like the pools of some half-stagnant stream loiter- 
 ing by the side of a noisy, brisk mountain torrent. 
 'We don't set up for wits at Underwood,' the 
 Squire had often said with cheerful contentment. 
 Charles in his heart acknowledged and resented 
 the confession, and for the first time in his life 
 felt half ashamed of his home. Florence was 
 glittering before his mind's eye, and made every- 
 thing else look meagre and colourless. Presently, 
 as he rode along a bridle path, he came upon a 
 flight of hurdles, and when the chestnut half 
 offered to refuse, Charles, delighted to vent his 
 ill-humour, clapped his spurs to his sides, and rode 
 him at it so fiercely that the young horse was soon 
 as hot as ever, and revenged himself for so unpro- 
 voked an assault by being as disagreeable as pos- 
 sible all the way home. There was a chorus of 
 VOL. i. I 

 
 114 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 indignation in the Underwood stables, when he 
 was led in, still in a quiver of excitement, to be 
 cooled and cleaned ; and the coachman, who looked 
 in to superintend the process, gave a condemnatory 
 groan at the creature's condition, and agreed with 
 his subordinates that the way in which the Oxford 
 gentlemen used their horses was a downright 
 scandal to a Christian stable. The poor chestnut, 
 being of limited intelligence, probably never came 
 to understand that Charles's ill-usage fell only 
 accidentally upon himself, and was the mere casual 
 expression of a general discontent. 
 
 Margaret met her cousin in the corridor, and 
 greeted him with a good-humour that he felt was 
 undeserved. The Manor, Charles found, was in 
 confusion with the prospect of a late arrival. No 
 thoughts of bed could of course be entertained till 
 the great event of the evening was disposed of. 
 The Squire meanwhile was busy with a letter in 
 the library, and the two cousins went together to 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 *I am so glad you are come,' Margaret said, 
 presently : * the carriage is gone for Nelly, and she 
 will be here in half an hour. I should have been 
 so sorry for you to have missed her.' 
 
 One of the most degrading things about an ill-
 
 HELEN. 115 
 
 temper is its caprice : it flares out at this or that 
 without rhyme or reason, and sometimes the most 
 harmless causes provoke the worst explosions. 
 Charles was far from having expended his anger 
 on his horse, and proceeded to let it off at his 
 cousin. He had been by no means fond of Nelly. 
 When he last saw her she was in that unpleasing 
 iDterval, between childhood and youth, that seems 
 to lack most of the charms of both. He fancied 
 her nighty, vain, and trivial : he remembered that 
 she was apt to be passionate, and to take offence : 
 he pictured her to himself as awkward and embar- 
 rassed, with very untidy clothes, and a constant 
 supply of needless blushes. Margaret's enthusi- 
 astic affection seemed extremely provoking. To 
 have the arrival of a schoolgirl made the occasion 
 of a scene, and himself obliged to play a part 
 in it, was just the sort of petty idea against 
 which, just now, his whole nature was in re- 
 bellion. 
 
 * You know,' said Margaret^ * yqji must be de- 
 lighted to see her.' 
 
 ' Delighted ! ' said Charles, with a dash of con- 
 tempt in his tone : * of course youth, beauty, 
 innocence, the interest of an expanding mind, an 
 accurate knowledge of geography, the multiplica- 
 i 2
 
 116 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 tion table up to 24 times 24, and a long duet 
 every evening delightful ! ' 
 
 ' Come, come, Charlie,' cried Margaret, growing 
 quite red at so unusual a piece of rudeness ; ' don't 
 be cross : what has gone wrong with you to-day?' 
 
 ' My horse has for one thing,' said the other, 
 pretending not to know that he was sulky, ' or, 
 rather, he would not go at all. However, I ought 
 not to complain, for he secured me a tete-a-tete all 
 the way back to Clyffe with Miss Vivien, and they 
 are all coming over here to lunch to-morrow.' 
 
 * With Miss Vivien ? ' cried Margaret : 'then it is 
 she who has sent you home so cross: no wonder !' 
 
 * I know you don't like her,' said Charles : ' it is 
 a mistake, I assure you. But, seriously, I cannot 
 see why I am to be in raptures at a schoolgirl's 
 return.' 
 
 *A schoolgirl!' cried Margaret, indignantly; 
 but then came a sound of wheels in the avenue, a 
 ring at the bell, and Margaret ran off. to welcome 
 the new comer. Charles followed at leisure, and 
 was just in time to see a very pretty creature 
 jump out of the carriage, and rush, with an excla- 
 mation of delight, into Margaret's arms. Then 
 came a great embarrassment ; for Charles and 
 Nelly had always been accustomed to kiss each
 
 HELEN. 117 
 
 other, and Nelly had never reflected on the method 
 which would best, at present, reconcile the claims 
 of propriety and affection. She took her cousin's 
 hand, grew very red, hung back an instant, and 
 finished by presenting him with a crimson cheek, 
 on which Charles, as in duty bound, impressed a 
 reverent token of devotion. Altogether she lost 
 her presence of mind ; but she lost it in the most 
 becoming manner, and looked so bewitchingly 
 modest, that Charles would have been a perfect 
 monster not to repent instantaneously of his surli- 
 ness. Her appearance was a wonderful improve- 
 ment upon his recollections ; her schoolgirl awk- 
 wardness had given place to a striking beauty of 
 form and movement ; her very embarrassment 
 wore a graceful air ; her high colour had softened 
 down to a warm, delicate tint; and her dress, 
 which looked beautifully new and fresh, was in 
 good taste, and showed her off to advantage. 
 
 ' Welcome to Underwood ! ' he cried ; and Mar- 
 garet looked on, delighted at the good impression 
 she was evidently making. Then the Squire came 
 out ; the same kisses, without the same embarrass- 
 ment, were interchanged, Mr. Evelyn declared 
 her grown, praised his granddaughter's blooming 
 cheeks, and Margaret presently carried her off for
 
 118 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 a few more confidential endearments than had as 
 yet been possible. 
 
 ' How big he has grown ! ' Nelly cried, as soon 
 as they found themselves alone : * what a tall man, 
 dearest Meg ; and quite a thick moustache ! ' 
 
 ' To be sure,' said Margaret, * we are all getting 
 on in life : don't you see what an old woman I 
 am becoming ? ' 
 
 ' You look prettier every time I come home,' 
 said the other, taking her hand affectionately; 
 ' and what dear soft eyes you have, and how glad 
 I am to be home again ! ' 
 
 While the young ladies were being sentimental 
 upstairs, the Squire was getting the news of the 
 day out of Charles, who soon became talkative 
 in spite of his bad resolution. 
 
 * And so you crossed the Cappenden Brook ? ' 
 he said ; ' it is pretty big now : a nasty place 
 rotten banks, and a bad landing: did anyone 
 get in ? ' 
 
 1 1 did not get as far,' said Charles ; * Miss 
 Vivien had a fall, and I went back with her ; and, 
 grandfather, I thought you would like me to ask 
 them to lunch.' 
 
 * Of course,' said the Squire ; ' and when are 
 they coming? Did you like the Clyffe party,
 
 HELEN. 119 
 
 Charles ? a little fast, are they not? Mrs. Vivien 
 is a great deal too much of a fine lady for me.' 
 
 4 They are very amusing,' said Charles, ' and 
 know all about everything. That Italian is a 
 curious fellow, grandfather ; there's some mystery 
 about him ; they say he is a Carbonaro, or a 
 government spy, and afraid to go home, because 
 he has killed some one. He told us all sorts of 
 queer doings about the Eomish priests, policemen, 
 and society. What do you think ? the Duke of 
 Baveno was coming home one night ' 
 
 * Hush ! ' said the Squire, who had a morbid 
 horror of anything like a scandal. *I think I 
 hear your cousins on the stairs.' 
 
 Charlie checked himself in time to change the 
 conversation before the door opened ; but he re- 
 flected that Miss Vivien had heard the story in 
 the afternoon without the least displeasure. 
 
 Meanwhile Nelly was established upstairs, en- 
 joying the first pleasant taste of home life, and 
 busy with the cares of a needlessly sedulous 
 toilette. Box after box was opened, ransacked, 
 and deserted in the search for some essential 
 ornament. It was late, indeed, and there were 
 but three people to see, but not too late to hesitate 
 as to the fitting shade of colour, the prettiest
 
 120 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 riband, the appropriate dress; nor were three 
 pairs of eyes, two of them belonging to men, too 
 few to raise a little flutter of excitement and 
 apprehension. Besides, Charles's appearance gave 
 a new, strange, powerful interest to the occasion. 
 Men, so Nelly's instructresses and her French 
 school life had taught her, were creatures of a 
 far-off world, to be seen, talked of, perhaps even 
 thought about, but scarcely to be spoken to or 
 handled ; they passed in the street, but they were 
 hardly more than phantoms. The sudden prox- 
 imity was novel, alarming on the whole agree- 
 able. Nelly had no dream of love, except as a 
 vague, awful, mysterious possibility. She and 
 her companions, indeed, cherished a sort of wild 
 admiration for a picturesque Pole who came twice 
 a-week to give them music lessons, and who was 
 conventionally regarded as the type of human 
 excellence; but the Pole had impressed himself 
 but in the most hazy outline on her heart, and 
 was already fast fading from her recollection. To 
 have a real live, fresh young man calmly walk up 
 to her and embrace her, to have him take her 
 hand in his, to hear him talk, to be about to spend 
 an evening in his society, was something more 
 than she could as yet confront with quiet nerves.
 
 HELEN. 121 
 
 Vanity made her shy, nervousness put her into a 
 bustle. Margaret came at last to fetch her, and 
 was for hurrying the preparations. 
 
 * I must not look quite a fright, must I ? ' she 
 said, petitioning for another five minutes; 'to- 
 morrow, dear Meg, I must show you my new 
 dresses: the last fortnight, you know, I have 
 opened no book but " Le Follet," and spent half 
 my life at the dressmaker's, and I have got two 
 bonnets which which but you shall see to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 ' They are pretty, I hope ? ' asked her sister. 
 
 t Pretty ! ' exclaimed Nelly, in a fervent tone, 
 which implied that no human expression could 
 do the least justice to her feelings ; ' my dearest 
 Meg, wait ! ' 
 
 And so the two went downstairs and found the 
 Squire and Charles waiting for them. Nelly need 
 have been under no alarm as to the impression 
 created by her arrival. Charles had already been 
 loud in her praises. No ray of light darting upon 
 a sombre scene, ever effected a quicker change 
 than did the new-comer amid her more staid 
 relations. She was no sooner at her ease than 
 she began to be playful and to infect the rest 
 with playfulness. She darted about the room
 
 122 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 with a pleased, inquisitive air, discerning this or 
 that little change, and demanding a history from 
 each. She took her grandfather his cup, as in 
 old times, and smoothed his forehead caressingly, 
 as when she was a child on his knee. She was 
 easily persuaded into being talkative about her 
 journey, and described each little adventure with 
 a sort of graphic importance, whose very childish- 
 ness made it entertaining. 
 
 Nelly, on her part, was curious to hear Charles's 
 account of his reception at Clyffe, and of the 
 party there assembled. * Miss Vivien was talking 
 about you,' Charles said to her ; * shall I tell you 
 what she said ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Nelly, her eyes lighting up with im- 
 patience ; ' tell me : what was it ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Charles, laughing ; ' they are all 
 coming over to-morrow to pay their respects to 
 you ; they shall speak for themselves.' 
 
 Nelly clapped her hands with excitement. ' Who 
 are coming ? ' she asked eagerly. 
 
 ' Several London dandies,' answered her cousin, 
 ' and Erie, who is a philosopher and a friend of 
 mine, and Count Malagrida, an Italian brigand in 
 plain clothes.' 
 
 ' A brigand ! ' cried Nelly, ' delightful ! ' men-
 
 HELEN. 123 
 
 tally forecasting the precise dress in which so mis- 
 cellaneous an assortment of visitors would be 
 most properly received. ' What is he like, Mar- 
 garet ? ' 
 
 4 Black, fierce, beautiful, of course,' said Mar- 
 garet, * with a belt full of pistols and a cave full 
 of diamonds and captured ladies. But let us go 
 upstairs before we frighten ourselves with talking 
 of him.' 
 
 Altogether the first evening was a success. 
 Nelly was not slow in appreciating her reception, 
 and departed to her room full of glee. 
 
 Margaret, relieved of all anxiety on her behalf, 
 carried her off at last in triumph, and could not 
 resist coming down again to hear in actual words 
 the verdict which Charles's manner had already 
 impliedly pronounced. 
 
 * Well ? ' she said, and her cousin knew well 
 enough how to interpret the inquiry. 
 
 * Well, Margaret,' he said, * she is bewitchingly 
 pretty, beautifully dressed, and ten times more a 
 baby than ever.' 
 
 ' She is an angel, sir,' said Margaret. ' Find a 
 fault in her if you dare ! ' 
 
 She paused a moment at the door, as if to see 
 if her challenge were accepted generosity, can-
 
 124 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 dour, nobleness written in fair characters in her 
 face, her mock-defiant attitude full of infectious 
 daring, her eye radiant with spirit, yet full of 
 pathos. 'Follow her,' cried the warning voice 
 once again, and Charles took half a step in obe- 
 dience to the summons. ' Stop ! ' whispered a 
 craven scruple ; ' be sure that she loves you 
 beware of too much haste ; the moment is unpro- 
 pitious, the hour is late ; you have had more 
 than half a quarrel to-night, it will be better 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 While he was yet hesitating, the sound of voices 
 outside told him that the opportunity was past. 
 
 ' To-morrow, you know,' the Squire was saying 
 
 to Margaret, ' we shall be busy with the Viviens.' 
 
 Margaret gave a half-comic sigh of weariness : 
 
 * Nelly's first afternoon ! ' she cried ; ' how I wish 
 
 Clyffe was ten miles farther off ! ' 
 
 'Not so I,' Charles thought to himself; and 
 that night he was once more, in dreamland, gal- 
 loping in the hunting-field ; Florence Vivien was 
 at his side, and Nelly, like some pretty sprite of 
 mischief, hovered nimbly about him; Margaret 
 stood beckoning him towards her, and ' Follow ! 
 follow ! ' seemed to ring through the air, as if a 
 hundred voices urged him to his fate.
 
 125 
 
 CHAPTEB VII. 
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 
 
 Catherine. Of all thy suitors, here I charge thee, tell 
 Whom thou lovest best : see thou dissemble not. 
 
 Bianca. Believe me, sister, of all the men alive 
 I never yet beheld that special face 
 Which I could fancy more than any other. 
 
 THE Manor was scarcely a show place, and yet 
 there was quite enough that was pretty and curious 
 about it to make it a worthy object of an after- 
 noon's expedition. The Clyffe party took up the 
 scheme with zeal ; Florence organised a cavalcade 
 of riders, but was herself obliged to go, much 
 against her will, with the lazy people who pre- 
 ferred a comfortable carriage for a ten miles' 
 journey. Erie, who was indolence itself, acquiesced 
 cheerfully enough in Mrs. Vivien's proposal that 
 he should accompany them. Anstruther in vain 
 petitioned for a seat, but was sent off to show the 
 riders the way and to make himself agreeable : 
 the fourth place was assigned to Malagrida.
 
 126 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Florence was in high spirits, and infected her 
 companions with a talkative mood ; Erie for once 
 was prepared to be disputatious. 
 
 * You will see two of our Heavyshire beauties,' 
 she said to the Count ; * pray be prepared to go 
 into raptures.' 
 
 * Yes,' said Mrs. Vivien, * and I admire the Squire 
 as much as his granddaughters ; he realises all 
 one's conceptions of a pleasant old age.' 
 
 ' If old age can be pleasant,' said Florence. 
 
 * Not pleasant ! ' cried Erie ; * no people, I assure 
 you, enjoy themselves half so much. It has its 
 proper enjoyments for one thing, a triumphant 
 consciousness of having survived other people.' 
 
 ' And of having nearly done with a troublesome 
 business,' put in the Count. 
 
 ' Love, honour, and troops of friends,' suggested 
 Mrs. Vivien ; * does not Macbeth say that ? ' 
 
 * Troops of friends,' said Florence, bitterly; 
 ' that must be a strange sensation ; do you know 
 it, Count Malagrida ? ' 
 
 ' To be sure,' said the Count, pleasantly. * Friends 
 are of three sorts : those from whom you expect 
 something; those who expect something from you; 
 and those whom you are watching for the purposes 
 of retaliation.'
 
 THE FIEST PAEALLEL OPENED. 127 
 
 'Let me get out of the carriage,' said Mrs. 
 Vivien, with a groan. 
 
 'The two last classes,' continued the Count, 
 unruffled, ' are what old age abounds in ; what is 
 expected of you is to die ; and as to vindictive- 
 ness, just look at people's wills ! ' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Erie, ' that explains what one sees 
 in the "Times" " Friends will please accept this 
 intimation." ' 
 
 'Well!' said Florence, 'my complaint against 
 old age is, that it is like the rest of life so aim- 
 less : from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then 
 from hour to hour you know the rest.' 
 
 'Oh, yes!' cried Erie, 'and thereby hangs a 
 tale much too grave a one to talk about.' 
 
 'You seem resolved,' Mrs. Vivien said, com- 
 plainingly, ' to have a most disagreeable conversa- 
 tion ; I heartily wish you were all riding.' 
 
 'Well,' said Florence, who enjoyed the vein 
 upon which they had lighted, ' one age is much 
 the same as another, after all. I declare I see 
 nothing in the world to live for. Why should one 
 exist?' 
 
 ' The beautiful and the good,' said Malagrida, 
 with an air of sincerity, ' are ends in themselves. 
 Miss Vivien's raison d'etre is Miss Vivien.'
 
 128 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' Thank you very much,' said Florence, with a 
 laugh, * for being so polite. I congratulate you 
 upon your discrimination. Who knows but some 
 day I may retreat from a frivolous world, turn 
 d&uote, become a Mother Superior, and per- 
 haps be known to future ages as St. Florence 
 of of ' 
 
 ' Of Mayfair,' cried Erie, scoffingly, ' by all 
 means ; only there your worship will have begun 
 before canonisation ; let us say, rather, of Clyffe, 
 where you will have had the advantage of my 
 society in becoming ethereal : by the way, is 
 ethereal the word ? ' 
 
 * No,' Florence answered, laughing, ' I am not 
 proposing to become a sprite ; but you are a 
 heathen, you know, and naturally choose a Pagan 
 idea.' 
 
 'Do I ? ' answered the other ; ' well, in revenge 
 for that I will challenge half of Malagrida's enco- 
 mium: seriously, I acquit you of all extraordinary 
 goodness.' 
 
 ' And why, pray?' asked Florence, with a pleased 
 curiosity ; ' why am I not to be good ? ' 
 
 ' First,' said Erie, * you know you trifled with 
 my feelings when I was a little boy young, foolish, 
 and enthusiastic.'
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 129 
 
 * Dreadful offence,' laughed Florence ; ' and 
 what next ? ' 
 
 * Next,' said Erie, * you despair of life, as you 
 say, and are entirely objectless: that, you know, is . 
 in itself an offence of the very first order.' 
 
 4 Heaven forbid ! ' cried Florence. ' Count Mala- 
 grida, what is your object in life, and how often in 
 the twenty-four hours are you enthusiastic?' 
 
 'My object,' said the Count, 'is to win your 
 approval; and I am enthusiastic as often as I 
 think that I have a chance of succeeding.' 
 
 ' How much more agreeable Italians are than 
 these Englishmen ! ' said Florence. ' Count Mala- 
 grida, I invite you to come for a drive in my 
 pony-carriage to-morrow.' 
 
 'Delightful!' cried the Count, 'and we will 
 explore the philosophy of friendship without the 
 interposition of a mere novice like Erie.' 
 
 ' Let us begin at once,' said Florence : ' what 
 shall we make the first principle?' 
 
 ' Hope nothing, trust no one, and be sure that 
 the oldest acquaintance will treat one the 
 worst.' 
 
 'Obviously,' said Erie, who had no notion of 
 being left behind, 'because they know one the 
 best, and see how much there is to dislike.' 
 VOL. i. K
 
 130 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 f Which accounts for the vehement way in which 
 relations hate each other,' said the Count. 
 
 'This is really horrible,' cried Mrs. Vivien 
 ' spare the family, at any rate ; consider my feel- 
 ings as a mother ! ' 
 
 4 A mother ! ' exclaimed Malagrida, tenderly ; 
 ' pretty word ! excellent artistic subject ! as wit- 
 ness half the churches in Italy. Yes, I have seen 
 peasant-girls hanging over their babies by the 
 roadside, who really touched me : but forgive me, 
 Mrs. Vivien, what is the mother as we see her in 
 London ? a shrewd old woman of the world, with 
 two or three equally shrewd young women of the 
 world in charge, ready to dispose of them to the 
 highest bidder I ' 
 
 ' Monstrous ! ' cried Mrs. Vivien ; ' common 
 prudence is the first duty of affection.' 
 
 ' My view of the use of relations,' said Erie, ' is 
 to give a poignancy to unkindness ; for a really 
 chilling effect, commend me to one's own flesh and 
 blood in an uncongenial mood.' 
 
 By this time they were in the Underwood 
 avenue, and Florence for the next hour submitted 
 very graciously to being entertained. She had 
 armed herself with a gold-headed cane and hob- 
 bled about, with a half-majestic grace of move-
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 131 
 
 ment, which contrasted excellently with the comical 
 light in which she placed her misfortune. 
 
 The Squire helped her carefully from room to 
 room, and gave her a little lecture on careless 
 horsemanship. 'None of you young ladies/ he 
 said, ' ever take the slightest care of your necks.' 
 
 ' Indeed I beg your pardon, Mr. Evelyn,' cried 
 Florence ; ' I am a most discreet rider, and I dis- 
 like tumbling off far too much to do it ofbener 
 than I am obliged. It is very disagreeable, you 
 know; one gets dirtied and shaken, and looks very 
 undignified, and tears one's habit, and loses the 
 rest of the day's amusement. If I were always as 
 fortunate as yesterday in my companion the case 
 might be different.' 
 
 ' Charles,' said Erie, f Miss Vivien is paying 
 you an elaborate compliment ; I hope you're 
 attending.' 
 
 Charles, though in another group of talkers, 
 was attending with all his heart, and heard no- 
 thing but the pleasant sounds of Florence's talk, 
 gay, rapid, high-spirited. Never had she been in 
 a more brilliant mood than to-day, never more 
 prepared to please, never more mistress of herself. 
 The reception accorded her by the two sisters 
 exactly justified her expectations. Margaret, 
 
 X 2
 
 132 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 struggle as she would, felt shy, uninterested, 
 almost depressed ; her attempts at cordiality fell 
 miserably flat ; her politeness grew ceremonious ; 
 some subtle antipathy of nature seemed to warn 
 , them apart ; each secretly, under pleasant smiles 
 and kindly speeches, knew the other for a foe. 
 Nelly, on the contrary, began with fright, went 
 on with wonder, and ended in gratitude and ad- 
 miration. Florence was at once seized with a 
 violent liking for her, and once and again deserting 
 the rest, fixed a pair of kindly, searching eyes 
 upon her, that spoke flatteringly of interest, sym- 
 pathy, and approval. 
 
 'Take me, please, to see the picture-gallery,' 
 she said; 'you have a beautiful Sir Joshua 
 Eeynolds, have you not? There, you shall give 
 me your arm, and I shall get on capitally ; and 
 tell me, dear, about your school at St. Grermains.' 
 
 So Nelly, half alarmed at the dignity of her 
 task, led her companion through the gallery, 
 chattered guilelessly on, forgot her timidity, and 
 told the chief pictures' history, relearnt only that 
 morning, as best she could. 
 
 * Ah ! but,' said Florence, as they turned to go, 
 4 1 like the living Underwood pictures the best ; 
 those are what we came to see, you know.'
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 133 
 
 e Do you think Margaret pretty ? ' asked her 
 companion, blushing scarlet in her embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 ' Yes,' Florence said, laughing ' I admire her 
 and somebody else very much indeed. Come 
 here and let me introduce you to Count Ma- 
 lagrida.' 
 
 ' Oh no, please ! ' Nelly said, with a half-im- 
 ploring air ; and while she yet stood in a pretty 
 attitude of indecision, with the blush still warm 
 on her cheek, and her Paris dress looking as fresh 
 and beautiful as in a picture-book, the Count 
 himself came up and glided gracefully into the 
 conversation. 
 
 *A little gem,' he thought to himself, as he 
 scanned the figure before him from head to foot. 
 
 ' The brigand,' thought Nelly, remembering 
 her sister's description; 'and oh how I wish 
 Margaret was here ! ' 
 
 Presently Margaret proposed to go to the 
 garden, and Florence acceded at once, and told 
 Erie to come with them ; in passing out the 
 three found themselves alone in the conser- 
 vatory. 
 
 ' Here,' cried Erie, as he came upon the un- 
 used garden-chair, ' is a fortunate discovery; I will
 
 134 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 wheel you in this, Miss Vivien, and spare you the 
 labours of your crutch.' 
 
 'Excellent!' cried Florence; 'please to wipe 
 the dust off and I will get in at once.' 
 
 To Margaret's eye the chair seemed almost 
 sacred; so it did, she well knew, to her grand- 
 father; there it had stood for years past, religiously 
 protected from interference, the last symbol of 
 Mrs. Evelyn's outdoor life associated, in the 
 minds of both, with the last pathetic period of 
 decline, when death now almost in sight every 
 hour has a history and a value of its own, and the 
 mind, pitched above its ordinary strain, endows 
 common acts and words with a pleasant, mournful, 
 half-religious significance. To this, for weeks 
 before Mrs. Evelyn's death, her husband had 
 helped her, day by day more in need of his help, 
 till at last strength and energy failed. From 
 this she had given orders for the garden, whose 
 execution she could never see, and had looked 
 for the last time upon her well-loved flowers. 
 Beside this some of the gravest, saddest, yet 
 most delightful hours of Margaret's existence had 
 been passed. It seemed to her almost desecration 
 for any one else to use it; most of all, that 
 Florence should use it as a jest. Her grand-
 
 THE FIRST PAKALLEL OPENED. 135 
 
 father was close behind, and she could gauge by 
 her own feelings the sort of shock which the sight 
 of an unaccustomed familiarity would give him. 
 On this day, moreover, she guarded his sensitive- 
 ness with especial care ; for, since he had become 
 a widower, hospitalities at the Manor House had 
 been rare, and were generally the signal for a 
 mood of more than usual melancholy. She re- 
 solved to speak; but trivial as the matter was, 
 it cost her an unexpected effort; the very fact 
 that it did so convinced her of its necessity. 
 
 'We had better not take the chair,' she said, 
 * if you can manage without it. It belonged to 
 some one who is dead, and my grandfather would 
 scarcely like it used in fun.' 
 
 Florence, one foot already upon it, turned 
 round in surprise, and with difficulty repressed 
 the angry sneer that trembled on her lips. Could 
 anything be more utterly insignificant ? yet what 
 trifle is too small to fan the flame of dislike? 
 There seemed something ignominious in dis- 
 mounting at another person's injunction, and 
 though it only seemed, Florence felt a pang 
 shoot through her heart, and did not care to 
 explain it away. Was it rude that Margaret 
 should speak as she had, or fanciful, or unfortu-
 
 136 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 nate ? She knew not ; what she did know, was 
 that an unreasoning animosity grew hot within 
 her, and that, before she could define the injury, 
 she longed for revenge. 
 
 Malagrida, following with Nelly, appeared to 
 have forgotten his cynical mood, and with a 
 tenderness, half paternal, half chivalrous, was 
 tempting her from reserve into a child-like gar- 
 rulity. 
 
 Still in the prime of life, and still from head 
 to foot in the very highest possible preservation, 
 the Count loved sometimes to speak of himself as 
 a man whose young days were over, and who took 
 a merely speculative interest in the pleasures, 
 anxieties, and passions of a world from which he was 
 already half estranged. He liked to be regarded 
 in the light of an interesting, picturesque, majestic 
 wreck, and he added very materially to the effect 
 of his grace and his wit by hinting at a period 
 when both shone even brighter than at present. 
 It is possible, moreover, that having enlisted early 
 in the service of a certain unmentionable po- 
 tentate, and obeyed him unremittingly ever since, 
 he may have felt at times depressed by the 
 monotony of the employment, and, like Alexander 
 sighing over the limits of a conquered world,
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 137 
 
 have longed for the luxury of an unimagined 
 crime, or for an eleventh commandment upon 
 which to whet his flagging appetite. Be that as 
 it may, he had at times a touch of melancholy in 
 his demeanour; and Nelly presently regarded 
 him with a kind of pitying awe, and acquiesced 
 submissively in the patronising tone of familiarity 
 which he adopted towards her. 
 
 Meanwhile Florence and her companion had 
 relapsed into the strain which had so horrified 
 Mrs. Vivien on the morning's drive; and Mar- 
 garet's presence added a fresh piquancy to the 
 highly-flavoured dish that suited the appetites of 
 both so well. 
 
 ' Yes,' Florence was saying, 'if I had to 
 manage mankind, Talleyrand's injunction to his 
 people should be the general law: "Surtout, 
 messieurs, pas de zele ; " enthusiasm is no doubt 
 the bane of existence.' 
 
 'No,' said Margaret, who had warmed with 
 the controversy ; ' it is the only thing that makes 
 mankind worth the trouble of managing. Who 
 would be queen of a world of triflers? ' 
 
 ' Both Mr. Erie and myself would be delighted 
 to be your subjects,' said the Count, who at this 
 moment came up, rather tired of Nelly's confi-
 
 138 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 dences. ' But I am in arms against Miss Vivien : 
 the enthusiasm of the mass is the only thing that 
 makes it manageable at all. The mob that is, 
 ninety-nine hundredths of the species to which 
 we have the honour of belonging have to be 
 guarded against and kept down just like the other 
 wild beasts and domestic animals.' 
 
 ' Stop ! ' cried Margaret ; ' a great deal more 
 than a nineteenth of the world is civilised.' 
 
 ' Civilised ! ' exclaimed the Count, in astonish- 
 ment ; ' excuse me, indeed the fraction is too 
 high. Just go into any crowd a ball, a church, 
 a promenade you find yourself surrounded by 
 sleek gentlemen, interesting mothers of families, 
 young men and maidens, nice little children 
 and so forth all look tame, peaceable, and in 
 order. Well, you know, as a fact, they are all 
 savages they bite, and growl, and snap, and 
 would hurt you if they could ; and though they 
 are taught to simper, and smile, and make 
 courtesies, and kneel at the proper places in 
 the service, they are in reality wild, one's natu- 
 ral enemies. Watch, feed, caress them as you 
 will, the first moment they dare, you will get 
 a bite.' 
 
 ' Now that you suggest it,' said Margaret, with
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 139 
 
 a laugh, ' I begin to feel a little disposed to bite 
 myself pray take care ! ' 
 
 * No, no,' cried Erie ; ' all of us are in the 
 civilised minority : we look as like the savages 
 as we can for the purpose of managing them.' 
 
 * Yes,' added the Count ; * some one says, very 
 wisely, that one cannot master the bad passions 
 of the race except by sharing in the good that 
 is, of course, by seeming to share in those which 
 it is the fashion to consider good.' 
 
 Margaret was amused ; nor did it ever occur to 
 her that any of those who joined in the conversa- 
 tion were serious. ' I object,' she said, * altogether 
 to your version of the maxim. There are such 
 things, Count Malagrida, as good and bad, are 
 there not ? ' 
 
 ' Granted,' said the Count, politely, just as he 
 would have acquiesced in two and two making 
 five, had Margaret asked him. 
 
 * And true and false ? ' 
 
 * I do not know about that,' put in Erie. 
 'Some philosopher or other said that the only 
 reason that the axioms of geometry were univer- 
 sally admitted was, that no one had any interest 
 in denying them.' 
 
 'Miss St. Aubyn is right,' said the Count.
 
 140 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 * One admits some of the favourite prejudices of 
 mankind as a common standing-ground for de- 
 monstrating one's own superiority they are the 
 counters with which your game is to be played. 
 Suppose we say that truth is anything to which 
 you can get a sufficient number of respectable 
 people to adhere.' 
 
 * And in support of which there is sufficient 
 amount of capital invested,' cried Erie. * You 
 know what the conservative Frenchman said to 
 some pretty scheme of improvement : " Oui, et 
 mes gages, qui est-ce qui les paierait ? " 
 
 ' The world is moved by people who do not 
 care about their wages,' said Margaret ; and there- 
 upon Florence, who was beginning to get tired of 
 the conversation, resolved to break it off. 
 
 * Both of you dreary people,' she said to the two 
 men, as the Count moved forward with Margaret, 
 'are no doubt terribly right; one's drum is 
 hollow, and one's doll stuffed with straw, and the 
 world a moral wilderness.' 
 
 * Tour doll,' said Erie, turning to Nelly, ' has 
 had no such dreadful discoveries made about it, I 
 hope ? ' 
 
 * I have not had a doll for a great while,' she 
 said, with a rather doubtful laugh, and feeling
 
 THE FIRST PARALLEL OPENED. 141 
 
 very modest at the thought of the advanced period 
 at which she had indulged in so juvenile a re- 
 creation. * My last one was all wax.' 
 
 * Happy, happy being ! ' cried Erie, with a sigh 
 in which Nelly in vain tried to find any mockery. 
 
 * All wax ! a thought to drive wicked old people, 
 like Miss Vivien and myself, half crazy with 
 jealousy ! ' 
 
 *I do not in the least understand you,' said 
 Nelly, with a puzzled, half-frightened look which 
 became her extremely ; ' but I don't think that 
 Miss Vivien looks either old or wicked.' 
 
 1 That is right,' cried Florence ; ' at last I am 
 appreciated ; we will be friends, and I will begin 
 by calling you Nelly ; and now if only Mr. Erie 
 would go away, we might exchange all sorts of 
 pretty sentiments, and be delightfully confidential 
 in this pleasant wood.' 
 
 * How idyllic a scene ! ' said Erie, as he turned 
 away. ' Miss St. Aubyn, I leave you in danger- 
 ous hands ; and if you cherish any pretty illusions, 
 take care ! ' 
 
 * Tell me what he means,' said Nelly, taking 
 her companion's arm, as if half for protection. 
 
 * Are you really dangerous ? ' 
 
 ' Not in the least,' answered Florence, with a
 
 142 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 laugh. 'It is quite natural for you to dislike 
 Mr. Erie.' 
 
 * I did not say that,' said Nelly, blushing to 
 find her thoughts read, almost before she herself, 
 had known them. 
 
 ' You said it with your eyes,' said the other ; 
 ' a very easy language to read, you know, if one 
 only learns it.' 
 
 * Is it ? ' said Nelly ; ' and what else have you 
 read to-day ? ' 
 
 'Shall I tell you?' said Florence. 'Well, 
 since we are to be confidential and great friends, 
 I will. It concerns yourself. Now begin to blush 
 as much as you please. Yours are not the only 
 eyes I can read.' 
 
 ' Are they not ? ' asked Nelly, frightened out of 
 her wits at what might be coming. 
 
 ' A very handsome pair of soft blue eyes, that 
 grow wonderfully eloquent every time they fall in 
 a certain direction.' 
 
 ' And what do they say ? ' said the other. 
 
 ' Little hypocrite ! ' cried Florence ; c you cannot 
 guess in the least, I suppose ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot,' said Nelly, ' and I declare I do not 
 know whose eyes you mean.' 
 
 ' Le beau cousin,' answered Florence. ' And,
 
 THE FIKST PAKALLEL OPENED. 143 
 
 you dear little piece of innocence, what do you 
 think of him ? You love him, don't you ? ' 
 
 1 Yes,' said Nelly, with simplicity ' of course, 
 I always have at least ' 
 
 * At least what ? ' 
 
 'Since we were very little, and he used to 
 break my playthings, and be a horrible tease. 
 We three are like brothers and sisters, you 
 know.' 
 
 * Are you ? ' said Florence ; 'but I mean some- 
 thing else than that. What a pretty cheek you 
 have, dear and how I like to make it blush ! ' 
 
 ' I am telling you the truth,' said Nelly. ' I 
 have never thought of him but in one way. He 
 is much greater friends with Margaret than with 
 me.' 
 
 Florence tapped her hand with a gentle mbck- 
 ery, and burst out into the most incredulous of 
 laughs. 
 
 ' You are .both of you extremely in love with 
 one another,' she said ; ' and if it is news to you, 
 it would not, I am sure, be so to your cousin.' 
 
 ' You think not ? ' said Nelly, wonderingly. f I 
 am sure I knew nothing about it.' 
 
 ' You must not think me very impertinent,' 
 said Florence. ' You know I am a privileged old
 
 144 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 maid ; besides I am very much in love with you 
 myself.' 
 
 Florence could fascinate when she chose, and 
 Nelly felt herself under the spell. Afterwards 
 she searched her heart ; and being quite distrust- 
 ful of herself, and deeply impressed with Florence's 
 penetration, resolved that upon both points she 
 must be right. Florence had spilt the drop of 
 gall, and the innocence of a young life was already 
 half destroyed.
 
 145 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 
 
 c'est la Sir&ne 
 
 Goettant sa proie au bord des eaux ; 
 Malheur a celui qu'elle entraine 
 Jusqu'a sa couche de roseaux ! 
 
 IF the afternoon's events had disturbed Nelly, they 
 had not been without their effect upon the Clyffe 
 party. Florence descried an arena of amusement 
 very welcome to her present wearisome inactivity. 
 She had confirmed her prejudice against one 
 sister, and had taken a great liking to the other ; 
 Margaret she felt was her match, and, with a 
 courageous pugnacity, she half wished for a battle 
 with so worthy an antagonist. Dignity, simplicity, 
 and a delicate insight were matched against a 
 practised wit, familiarity with the world, and 
 perfect self-reliance. The battle was likely to be 
 well contested, and Florence felt a not altogether 
 unpleasant anxiety as to its result Even in good 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 looks she mistrusted her superiority ; for though 
 she had often enough tested the efficacy of her 
 own, there was something in Margaret's bearing 
 that was strangely impressive. Her beauty was 
 of an order, quiet, pure, and, so far from dazzling, 
 that the eye seemed only gradually educated to 
 appreciate its worth. The admiration which it 
 excited, if less readily expressed, would probably, 
 Florence felt, be something more profound and 
 earnest than the easily-turned compliments of 
 which she reaped so plentiful a crop. Moreover, 
 the calm, serious, studied kindness of manner with 
 which Margaret treated her, seemed to imply a 
 lurking sentiment of pity, or scorn, or disapproval 
 all three intolerably distasteful to Florence's 
 vanity. She tried, in her turn, to feel contemp- 
 tuous, but tried in vain : Margaret inspired her 
 with an uneasiness which was not to be ignored. 
 Failing indifference, Florence resolved upon war, 
 and each new circumstance added vehemence to 
 her resolution. Eadical as her father painted her, 
 there was a touch of the mischief-maker in her 
 composition which inclined her to disarrange any 
 constituted authority. Her love of disturbance in 
 the abstract was now quickened by zeal against an 
 individual. Margaret, she could see, was the pre-
 
 FUEENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 147 
 
 siding spirit at the Manor ; it was a little empire, 
 yet enough to grudge to an enemy. She ruled 
 the Squire, her sister, her cousin, without an effort, 
 unconsciously on her part and theirs, but with all 
 the more completeness. She should do so, Florence 
 resolved, no longer. Nelly, she chose to believe, 
 was oppressed, and with Nelly she resolved forth- 
 with to side. Charles seemed like a puppet in her 
 hands, the prize of the encounter, to be assigned 
 to this side or that, as the fortunes of the day 
 should turn. It would be a pleasant triumph to 
 win him for the weaker antagonist ; it would be 
 pleasant to humble that calm, indifferent, majestic 
 nature ; it would be pleasant to contrive, and see 
 one's contrivances effectual; above everything, 
 pleasant to have a little admiring, grateful de- 
 pendent, moving obedient at beck and call, and 
 accepting joyously the results of one's superior 
 prowess. So ran Florence's dream, half-meddle- 
 some, half-resentful, short-sighted, selfish, super- 
 ficial, and fatally perilous to the happiness of those 
 whose fortunes fell within its scope. 
 
 That evening they discussed their new acquain- 
 tance at Clyffe. Erie's high spirits of the after- 
 noon had been succeeded by a quiet mood ; 
 he was sitting silent on a distant sofa, when 
 
 L 2
 
 148 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Florence came up and rallied him on his stu- 
 pidity. 
 
 * Forgive me,' he said, as he got up, yielding her 
 his place, and presently subsiding into an arm- 
 chair at her side. ' I have been indulging in a 
 reverie. My old friend Charlie Evelyn seems to 
 me one of the luckiest young fellows in England.' 
 
 ' Luckiest ? ' cried Florence, inquisitive to know 
 upon what her companion's thoughts were running 
 * for having that dear old Squire as his grand- 
 father, or for being heir of Underwood, or for his 
 silly blue eyes, or for what, I wonder ? ' 
 
 * For charming companionship,' said the other. 
 ' Miss St. Aubyn is distinctly adorable.' 
 
 * Adorable ? ' said Florence, quickly, surprised 
 at her companion's unusual enthusiasm. ' Please 
 to translate that into prose.' 
 
 'It means,' said Erie, 'that she is beautiful, 
 refined, unconscious, and of a goodness that makes 
 one blush for one's existence.' 
 
 4 Makes you blush for your existence, I suppose 
 you mean,' said Florence. ' I can quite imagine 
 it. However, the greatest saints like being adored, 
 and I advise you to ride over to-morrow, and 
 make her an offer.' 
 
 'I should be sorry to pay her so poor a com-
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 149 
 
 pliment,' said Erie. * Besides, my performances 
 in that line are things of the romantic land of 
 long ago. I assure you I take a merely artistic 
 view of her perfections.' 
 
 * Well,' Florence said, e jealous as of course I am, 
 and blind in consequence, I agree in your verdict. 
 Miss St. Aubyn is grave, beautiful, and a good sub- 
 ject for a Madonna. I can scarcely help worship 
 ping her myself.' 
 
 Erie was delighted to have found a weapon with 
 which he could annoy Florence, as he perceived 
 he did. He had admired Margaret, and he now 
 began to value his admiration as a useful weapon 
 of attack. 
 
 * Yes,' he said ; ' you might easily say your 
 prayers before a worse shrine. I fancy her some 
 forgotten Madonna Raphael's gentlest, most un- 
 earthly masterpiece.' 
 
 Florence looked by no means impressed. c Let 
 us ask Captain Anstruther,' she said, as the young 
 soldier came up. ' Captain Anstruther, here is 
 Mr. Erie in a very despondent and senti- 
 mental mood, and becoming quite dangerously 
 poetical. Come, please, and cheer him up, 
 and give us your opinion of the Underwood 
 beauties.'
 
 150 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' L'Allegra and Penserosa? ' cried Anstruther. 
 ' I am for 1'Allegra.' 
 
 'You forget,' said Erie, 'that Anstruther is only 
 a little boy, and, I dare say, has play-drum at 
 home to match the young lady's wax-doll ; indeed, 
 being in the Guards is only playing at soldiers, 
 after all, is it not, Anstruther ? ' 
 
 * Well,' said Anstruther, 'I am 1'Allegra's knight, 
 and pin her badge to my sleeve. Penserosa is too 
 lofty/ 
 
 * Yes,' cried Florence 
 
 ' She is all fault who hath no fault at all ; 
 For who loves me must have a touch of earth.' 
 
 ' So say not I,' cried Erie, delighted to find how 
 much interest Florence took in his latest mood. 
 ' A good thing cannot possibly be too good.' 
 
 * Did you ever hear anything like it ? ' said 
 Florence, appealing to her other companion ; ' our 
 poor friend is evidently struck at last.' 
 
 ' It is a melancholy sight,' said Anstruther, 'and 
 a just retribution ! ' 
 
 ' Neither of you,' said Erie, ' have the least 
 chance of laughing me out of my convictions. 
 You gave me some Tennyson just now, now listen 
 to Mrs. Browning :
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 151 
 
 ' her face is lily-clear, 
 
 Lily-shaped, and dropped in duty, 
 To the law of its own beauty. 
 
 Oval cheeks, encoloured faintly, 
 Which a trail of golden hair 
 Keeps from fading off to air : 
 
 And a forehead fair and saintly, 
 Which two blue eyes undershine, 
 Like meek prayers before a shrine.' 
 
 ' Meek prayers before a shrine ! ' repeated Flo- 
 rence, in a tone of amused and wondering incredu- 
 lity. ' Well, Mr. Erie, marvels will never cease. 
 I suppose.' 
 
 1 A beautiful description,' continued Erie, un- 
 disturbed, ' and taken, I feel convinced, from the 
 young lady in question. All I know is, that if I 
 were a lucky young fellow, like Anstruther there, 
 with youth, beauty, virtue, and a competence, I 
 should lay them all at her feet, without a moment's 
 hesitation.' 
 
 ' All four ? ' said Florence, with a touch of con- 
 tempt ; ' that would indeed be generous. Well, 
 you will not have to wait long to do homage, for 
 they are to stay here next week.' 
 
 ' Then,' said Erie, 4 1 shall certainly ask Mrs. 
 Vivien to let me lengthen my visit.' 
 
 ' And so shall I,' cried Anstruther. ' L' Allegra 
 quite haunts me ! '
 
 152 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' I hope you will be charitable enough to ask 
 Charlie, too,' said Erie. ' If appearances may be 
 trusted, he is pretty much of the same opinion as 
 myself.' 
 
 f We have asked the whole party,' said Florence, 
 ' adored and adorers alike. Meanwhile, pray come 
 and console yourself with some Beethoven.' 
 
 Erie's admiration for Margaret put the finish- 
 ing touch to the animosity with w T hich Florence 
 regarded her. His enthusiasm was evidently 
 affected, and yet it had sincerity enough about it to 
 be intensely annoying. For years she had been 
 accustomed to regard him in the light of a re- 
 jected suitor her own, if she chose to have him. 
 Another attachment startled her, as almost a 
 desertion. Their intimacy, though by no means 
 affectionate, was thorough, real, and of long enough 
 standing to clash with the idea of a new alliance. 
 If Erie decried the sex, at any rate he paid her 
 the compliment of decrying it to her, and she 
 could ill brook that his confidences should be 
 whispered in another's ear. That Margaret should 
 usurp her prescriptive right that hers should be 
 the hand to administer a blow so damaging to 
 prestige, so humiliating to vanity, was a contin- 
 gency which, however remote its probability, it
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 153 
 
 was torture even to think of. Florence felt the 
 hot blood flash into her cheeks at the mere idea 
 of so cruel a defeat, and eager fancy crowded her 
 mind at once with a hundred remorseless schemes 
 of self-defence and retribution. What would not 
 be lawful in such a warfare? what vengeance 
 could possibly atone for so deadly an affront ? 
 
 A few days later the Underwood party arrived, 
 and Florence found herself forthwith committed 
 to the campaign, whose outline she had already 
 dimly forecast. Erie and Anstruther both stayed 
 on, as they had threatened, and neither seemed in 
 the least danger of repenting their decision. 
 Nelly arrived in a flutter of excitement, delighted 
 with an opportunity of displaying her Paris trea- 
 sures, and presented a combination of coquetry 
 and bashful ness which even Malagrida acknow- 
 ledged was delightful. To Erie she seemed a 
 baby, and a baby not of the most interesting 
 description. He saw that she was the creature of 
 foibles, and it amused him to play with them. 
 He vied with the Count in paying her elaborate 
 compliments; he asked her opinion with a flat- 
 tering gravity; and talked to her about her 
 wax-doll with an interest that fairly passed 
 her comprehension. Florence saw that she was
 
 154 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 frightened^ and enjoyed the process of mysti- 
 fying her. 
 
 ' Tell me about Mr. Erie,' she said, one day. 
 
 ' Oh,' said Florence, * you must be courageous, 
 and he will do you no harm. He is very alarm- 
 ing, of course, but I keep him in great order.' 
 
 * What is he ? ' asked Nelly. 
 
 ' What ? ' cried Florence ; ' well, I will tell you ; ' 
 and she pretended to look round the room, came 
 close up to her companion, and whispered into 
 her ear the close of Auber's pretty song ' "Dia- 
 volo, Diavolo, Diavolo ! "- 
 
 * What do you mean ? ' said Nelly, thoroughly 
 puzzled. 
 
 * I am quite in earnest,' said the other. ' Se- 
 riously, he is a fop, a cynic, a hardened flirt, and, 
 in short, Mephistopheles.' 
 
 ' Mephistopheles ? ' said Nelly, in a tone of awe. 
 
 f Yes,' said her companion, * and gobbles up a 
 nice little innocent like you, whenever he can 
 catch one. So, beware ! ' 
 
 * Well,' said Nelly, tossing her head with the 
 most becomingly childish pout ; * he is a great 
 deal too patronising ; he talks to me as if I still 
 wore pinafores, and he were a hundred and fifty. 
 
 ' Of course,' cried Florence, ' and so he is, and
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 155 
 
 a great deal more too. You forget who I told 
 you he was ; but I will take care of you.' 
 
 Nelly speedily accepted the proffered intimacy ; 
 Florence constantly befriended her; showed a 
 kind watchfulness for her enjoyment; petted her 
 into being outspoken, and, one by one, by a gentle 
 extortion, dragged the little innocent secrets of 
 her heart her baby loves, her vague ambition, 
 her tiny coquetries, her shallow, half-grown sen- 
 timent from their hiding-place. 
 
 ' Do you know,' said Florence, caressingly, l you 
 have quite bewitched me ? What is your spell, I 
 wonder ? ' 
 
 ' You like me ? ' said Nelly, delighted, and yet 
 half-alarmed at her audacity ; * well, so do I you. 
 Do you think me very bold ? ' 
 
 f I think you a dear little frightened goose, 
 and I shall have a new baby-house to keep 
 you in. I want pets, you know ; you see I can 
 get no one to marry me, and I never had a 
 sister.' 
 
 ' Ah,' said Nelly, * that must be terrible. Mar- 
 garet is my other self.' 
 
 ' And you have no corner in your heart for me, 
 then?' asked Florence, f or for that naughty 
 cousin of yours ? '
 
 156 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' I thought,' said Nelly, ( you had forgotten all 
 about that. I am sure I had.' 
 
 She knew, as she spoke, that she was telling 
 a monstrous fib, and her glowing cheeks saved 
 Florence the trouble of refutation. 
 
 There were some points, however, on which 
 Nelly did not choose to be explicit with anyone 
 but her sister. 
 
 ' I like them all, dear Meg,' she said, in a pri- 
 vate conference before her bedroom fire, all but ' 
 
 * But who ? ' inquired her sister. 
 
 * Mr. Erie.' And here she gave a shudder, more 
 expressive than words. 
 
 ' Dear me ! ' said Margaret, * I had not made up 
 my mind ; I think he is by no means the worst of 
 the party.' 
 
 * Don't you ? ' said Nelly. ' I cannot bear 
 him. What do you think, Meg is he laugh- 
 ing at me ? Does he mean to mock me ? how 
 could he know about my doll ? I see him 
 laugh secretly when he speaks to me, and I 
 blush the moment he looks at me. How I wish 
 he was gone ! ' 
 
 ' I would not trouble my head about him,' said 
 Margaret. * He is only a fine gentleman, brought 
 here to make the parties amusing ; but he is not
 
 FTTRENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 157 
 
 near so patronising as that tiresome Sir Agricola, 
 
 nor as insipid as the young officer, Captain , 
 
 who was it ? ' 
 
 4 Anstruther,' said Nelly. f Oh, but, do you 
 know, he is charming, I assure you.' 
 
 4 1 like the other best,' said Margaret. ' How 
 good his stories were! But Charlie is far the 
 nicest of them all, is he not ? ' 
 
 Both sisters kept clear of Florence, for about 
 her they knew instinctively that they should 
 disagree. Already a subtle something had crept 
 between their loves. 
 
 Charles, on his arrival, had been surprised to 
 find Erie still among the Clyffe guests. 
 
 * I thought,' he said, ' he was to be at Lord 
 Almerfield's for the battue to-day ? ' 
 
 ' So he was,' said Florence ; * but he changed 
 his mind.' 
 
 4 He found himself too well amused ? ' suggested 
 the other. 
 
 * No,' said Florence ; ' it was out of no compli- 
 ment to us, as he took care to inform us. It was 
 not till he heard you were coming that he re- 
 solved to stay.' 
 
 * I thought he was so fond of shooting ? ' 
 
 4 Ah,' said Florence, f but pheasants are not the
 
 158 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 only things that people like to kill. And now I 
 shall tell you no more.' 
 
 Charles was occasionally obtuse, and his thoughts 
 always centred on himself. 
 
 ' What in the world,' he wondered, * can Erie 
 want with me ? ' 
 
 Erie made it very speedily evident that he 
 wanted nothing, and before many days Charles 
 began to perceive his mistake. 
 
 ' What sort of sportsman do you think he is ? ' 
 Florence asked him, one evening, when Erie had 
 persuaded Margaret to sing him some favourite 
 air, and was tempting her, by a sudden display of 
 musical enthusiasm, to linger at the piano 
 * What sort of sportsman do you think he is, Mr. 
 Evelyn ? And what much better shooting there 
 is in our drawing-room than in Lord Almerfield's 
 coverts, is there not ? ' 
 
 Charles, by this time, understood perfectly, and 
 was by no means delighted with the discovery. 
 Though courage and opportunity to speak had 
 failed him, his cousin must, he thought, have 
 gathered some intimation of his secret attachment. 
 If so, what a woman's caprice was this for an- 
 other's homage ; if not, how strange a blindness 
 to his own ; in either case, how good a right for
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 159 
 
 him to feel aggrieved. Florence watched and 
 enjoyed his distress and abetted his secret indig- 
 nation. It suited her mood that Margaret should 
 be seen engaged in an ordinary flirtation. She 
 disliked her so thoroughly that it cost her no 
 effort, and but little hypocrisy, to represent all 
 that she did in a disagreeable light. 
 
 Her feeling, as she indulged it, and nursed it, and 
 toiled for it, grew strangely vehement. The enemy 
 whom she was attacking seemed to be more than 
 her match. Other young ladies were afraid of her, 
 eclipsed by her cleverness, and were ready to con- 
 ciliate by flattery or submission. Margaret, on the 
 contrary, was perfectly unawed, and held her own, 
 with an unconscious dignity that was especially 
 provoking. Florence laboured and contrived and 
 dazzled, and at last scarcely won what the other 
 obtained without an effort. Erie, though half in 
 play, admired her, Florence could not help seeing, 
 with an enthusiasm that she did not remember 
 him to have exhibited towards herself. When she 
 sat down to sing, her ear told her that there was 
 a touch of genius in the strain, and a fascination 
 about it, that her own more elaborate perform- 
 ance was quite without. Once when she had been 
 looking at Margaret for a few moments, and turned
 
 160 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 round suddenly to the mirror, she was quite star- 
 tled to see how haggard and anxious she looked 
 by the other's simple and effortless beauty. She 
 was handsome; yes, indeed, how many people 
 had told her so ; but she was too good a judge 
 not to know that the other's very unconsciousness 
 was a charm far more irresistible than the cle- 
 verest finesse, the most brilliant talk, or highest 
 result of art. Her soul grew black within her : 
 the last scruple died away, and she resolved on 
 victory at any price. 
 
 To such a mood "opportunities are seldom want- 
 ing. Charles was impressed with her superior 
 sagacity, and listened, at first with patience and 
 then greedily, to the poisonous hints that she 
 whispered at his ear. She spoke with an osten- 
 tatious deference that Charles felt was only in 
 mockery of his own opinion, and by degrees he 
 grew ashamed of his simplicity. 
 
 'What!' she would say, 'Margaret like balls?' 
 
 1 Why not?' asked Charles. 
 
 ' Well,' said Florence, ' I fancied you were all 
 too angelic at Underwood for anything so com- 
 monplace.' 
 
 By degrees he caught from her something of a 
 sneering mood. She pursed up her lips and looked
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 161 
 
 demure when Margaret spoke, and let Charles 
 thoroughly understand that she disbelieved her 
 sanctity. Sometimes the attack was openly con- 
 ducted. 
 
 ' I am horribly malicious, you know, and like to 
 lower every one I can ; but tell me, is your cousin 
 the paragon of innocence she looks ? ' 
 
 For the first time in his life it occurred to 
 Charles to doubt it. ' How penetrating women 
 are ! ' he thought ; ' and how blindly we worship 
 at the altars where we are first taught to kneel ! ' 
 
 A few more hints, a few more days convinced 
 him that Margaret was, at any rate, unsaintly 
 enough to be laying siege to Erie. Florence, while 
 she let him know that she too observed it, explained 
 it pleasantly away. * Mr, Erie, you know, is irre- 
 sistible. I have been telling your cousin he is 
 Mephistopheles ; and, by the way, Mr. Evelyn, did 
 you ever read " Faust ? " : 
 
 < Yes,' said Charles ; but why?' 
 
 * The heroine ought to interest you ; but, seri- 
 ously, I do not think you need be alarmed on 
 revient toujours you know.' 
 
 1 1 declare I do not know in the least what you 
 mean,' Charles said, growing red as her meaning 
 broke upon him. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 LATE LAUEELS. 
 
 ' On revient toujoursj said Florence, unmoved 
 ( be that your consolation.' 
 
 Charles began to comprehend that Margaret 
 was not above the conquests of her sex. She had 
 been in possession of his heart, she was now laying 
 siege to Erie's, and, comforting reflection ! she 
 might some day come back to him. Pride caught 
 fire at the suggestion, and every affectionate act 
 or word of Margaret's, for the future, was poisoned 
 to his taste. 
 
 They who wish to go wrong may be sure of 
 Fortune's assistance; and one unlucky chance 
 after another strengthened Charles's conviction, 
 and inflamed his angry mood. 
 
 One fine afternoon there was to be an excursion 
 to a neighbour on whom all were anxious to call. 
 The carriage, which had to go a few miles round, 
 was to start. first: the rest of the party, Margaret 
 and her grandfather and Florence, were to ride 
 half an hour afterwards. Nelly had already taken 
 her seat beside Mrs. Vivien, and Erie was just 
 proposing to join them, when Margaret came 
 running downstairs. 'Mr. Erie,' she said, 'can 
 you give my grandfather those extracts from Lord 
 Ascot's speech that you promised him for this 
 evening's post?'
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSTT. 163 
 
 'My goodness! I had absolutely forgotten,' 
 cried Erie; 'but I will do it forthwith. Here, 
 Charles, if Mrs. Vivien will accept such a bad sub- 
 stitute, will you take my place in the carriage ? 
 and I will follow you in half an hour with the 
 rest of the party.' 
 
 Erie went away to fulfill his promise, and Nelly 
 drew a long breath of relief at the unexpected 
 deliverance. Charles, as he got into the carriage, 
 looked up at Florence, and read in her eyes a 
 smile, a wicked smile ; for it said, as plainly as 
 words could have spoken, ' See how her purpose 
 is effected she wanted Erie. She has gratified 
 her want by a sly trick.' Charles would have 
 denied and resented the words, but the smile was 
 incapable of refutation, and it sank into his heart. 
 Did Margaret, the pure, the guileless did she, 
 like a common mortal, love, and scheme, and 
 envy, and play her little ruses, a calm, smiling 
 hypocrite and how profound the hypocrisy a 
 horrid thought. Charles did not quite admit it, 
 but he did not drive it away, and it lurked, a 
 subtle poison festering about his heart, a vile sus- 
 picion. Margaret looked so good, so absolutely 
 innocent, that it seemed absolutely shocking to 
 think of her as the victim of an ordinary Caprice, 
 H 2
 
 164 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 and as using a vulgar stratagem. To be jealous 
 of her sister, to indulge her jealousy by a false 
 pretence, to trade on her affection for her grand- 
 father ! the very thought was profanation ; but it 
 lingered in Charles's mind, and while its venom 
 was distilling, his evil genius spread yet another 
 snare for his unwary feet. 
 
 Both Margaret and Florence were artists, and 
 Margaret's portfolio especially gave ample evi- 
 dence of her summer diligence. Florence, for 
 once in a placable mood, was exploring its trea- 
 sures, and came at last upon a little sketch of the 
 Underwood lawn, with a piece of a gable of the 
 house, and a few yards of hop-wreathed verandah. 
 ' I am going to carry this off, if I may,' she had 
 said. ' What a nice corner you have chosen, and 
 how sunny you have made it all look ! ' 
 
 'Do take it,' Margaret answered, glad of an 
 opportunity of outwardly belying the dislike 
 which she was conscious of harbouring against her 
 companion. * But it is not half finished : let me 
 fill in the foreground for you.' 
 
 'No, no,' cried Florence; 'sit just where you 
 are, and I will put you in myself ; sitting there in 
 the shade of the lime-tree, your figure will recall 
 the whole scene to me more than anything.'
 
 FUKENS QUID FEMENA POSSIT. 165 
 
 Florence was excellent at portraiture, and now 
 the whim seized her to be elaborately exact, and 
 to put forth all the- skill at her command. The 
 smallness of the scale made the task a hard 
 one, and would have justified any imperfection ; 
 but she resolved that, her part of the picture 
 should not be the worst : a quick eye for out- 
 line, used often for the purposes of caricature, 
 enabled her speedily to catch the striking 
 points of the desired form. In a few strokes 
 she gave the small, finely-shaped head, the 
 delicate neck, the easy attitude, natural, dig- 
 nified, and, as she joyously declared, unmis- 
 takeable. 
 
 * There ! ' she said ; ' so much for the drapery. 
 Now let me try the face : turn a little away, please, 
 and show me the profile.' 
 
 Margaret, pleased to humour her, sat patiently 
 on, as again and again Florence, more intent than 
 ever on success, paused to consider the precise 
 effect of some new tint, to fix the rightful inci- 
 dence of a shade, or to retouch some line which 
 failed to satisfy her eye. At last the task was 
 done. Margaret confessed, and was delighted 
 with, the resemblance ; and Florence, already half 
 wearying with a too-sustained effort, transferred
 
 166 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 the sketch without another thought to the depth 
 of her portfolio. 
 
 * What do you think of that ?' she said to Erie 
 a day or two afterwards, as he leant over the table 
 where she was busy with her paint-box. ' That is 
 something you have not seen yet Underwood in 
 its summer attire. Is it not a pretty sketch ? ' 
 
 'Very nice indeed,' said Erie, 'but not at all 
 in your style. Whose pretty handiwork is it, I 
 wonder ? ' 
 
 * I wonder ! ' said Florence, with an air of 
 mystery : ' the figure, however, is mine. You 
 recognise it, of course ? ' 
 
 ' I really had not observed,' answered the other. 
 ' Oh, yes, now I do. Well, that is very cleverly 
 managed, indeed.' 
 
 * And exactly like ? ' said Florence. 
 
 ' No,' said Erie, with a laugh : ' there is a grace 
 about Miss St. Aubyn which defies caricature.' 
 
 'Caricature!' cried Florence, in indignation. 
 ' I assure you I took the greatest pains with it.' 
 - e Well,' said Erie, with a petitionary air, ' * I am 
 going to pay you the sincerest of all compliments. 
 Be good-natured, and give it to me.' 
 
 ' Give it you ! ' said Florence. ' How have you 
 courage to ask it ? Impossible ! '
 
 FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT. 167 
 
 ' Then I won't come to your theatricals,' said 
 Erie, with a laugh. 
 
 ' That is a cogent argument, indeed,' replied his 
 companion ; ' for I look to you entirely to arrange 
 them : but you will not be so mean as to make 
 terms.' 
 
 ' Will I not ?' said Erie : ' and mean, indeed ! 
 Why should I come and be your stage-manager, 
 and drill the Miss Dangerfields, and have inter- 
 views with all sorts of horrid people, and take a 
 world of trouble, and all for nothing?' 
 
 ' I believe you will do it out of kindness to us,' 
 said Florence. 
 
 e Interesting credulity ! ' exclaimed the other : 
 'you take a most nattering view of my good- 
 nature ; but no, nothing but the picture will buy 
 me.' 
 
 ' How conceited you are ! ' said Florence. 
 
 ' Yes,' answered Erie : ' that is one of the reasons 
 of my good acting. I shall be a great loss.' 
 
 ( I cannot afford to lose you,' said Florence, 
 with a sigh. * Well, I consent ; but I think you 
 very shabby.' 
 
 ' Only give me the picture,' replied Erie. 
 
 And Florence thereupon reluctantly resigned 
 her treasure.
 
 168 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' But,' she said, 'you must promise me faithfully 
 to tell no one how you came by it.' 
 . * Conquerors,' said her companion, 'can afford 
 to be generous. I promise as you wish.'
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHEK. 
 
 Love has daily perils, such 
 
 As none foresee and none control ; 
 And hearts are strung, so that one touch, 
 
 Careless or rough, may mar the whole. 
 
 A FRENCH lady, well skilled in the philosophy of 
 the affections and the management of mankind, 
 has thrown out an ingenious hint as to the danger 
 of being too confidential. 
 
 ' Malheur,' she says, ' a Pimprudente qui demande 
 a celui qu'elle aime le secret de ses chagrins! 
 Malheur a la femme qui permet a 1'homme qu'elle 
 aime de lui Conner ces tourments-la. Elle perd 
 des ce moment la faculte de 1'en distraire, et il la 
 quittera pour aller les oublier aupres de celle qui 
 les ignore.' 
 
 It was for some such reason as this, probably, 
 that Florence found her empire over Erie depart- 
 ing from her. She knew his least agreeable mood
 
 170 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 too well for him to be able to forget it in her 
 presence. He was tired of the monotonous 
 sarcasm to which her society condemned him, and 
 of the sceptical indifference on which both met as 
 common standing-ground. It was a view of life, 
 true, possibly, but dull ; and it was annoying to 
 be forbidden to escape from it. Margaret pos- 
 sessed the rare merit of being absolutely a stranger 
 to every idea of the kind; and, moving in an 
 atmosphere of high spirits, interest, and enthu- 
 siasm, which it was a luxury to breathe, she 
 attracted him by a pleasant opposition, far more 
 piquant than the other's tedious acquiescence. 
 Partly to annoy Florence, partly to amuse himself, 
 Erie set himself studiously to be agreeable ; and 
 Margaret's conversation with her sister seemed to 
 imply that he had not been entirely unsuccessful. 
 He said things, indeed, that sounded heartless 
 and wicked; yet they left her with but a faint 
 impression of either cruelty or vice. His sardonic 
 paradoxes seemed palpably unreal, and they were 
 amusingly expressed. He criticised her songs 
 with a feeling admiration ; and spoke so ardently 
 about his favourite airs, that it seemed impossible 
 that he should be altogether bad. His conversa- 
 tion aroused an agreeable inquisitiveness and a
 
 HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHER. 171 
 
 conscious power. His very remoteness from her 
 put her at her ease; and she accepted his polite- 
 ness with the unruffled calmness of complete 
 indifference. That so great a man could really 
 admire her, or that she, under any possible cir- 
 cumstances, could come to do more than tolerate 
 him, it may be safely affirmed, never for a moment 
 crossed her mind. 
 
 Such a relationship, however, admits easily of 
 misinterpretation ; and Florence, whose vanity it 
 so sorely pricked, found no difficulty in using it 
 to humble Margaret in her cousin's eyes. With 
 him she had already become thoroughly intimate ; 
 and Charles, delighted at talking confidentially 
 for the first time in his life with a woman older 
 than himself, allowed her readily enough to touch 
 on delicate topics. She assured herself of her 
 standing-ground as she went, and at last made no 
 secret of what she considered his position. He 
 might, so her hints suggested to him, marry 
 whichever of his cousins he chose, and Margaret, 
 when her flirtation with Erie was disposed of, 
 would probably wish that the choice should fall 
 on her. 
 
 * Ah ! ' he said to her one day, at Underwood, 
 4 this is the scene of our juvenile romance. I
 
 172 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 remember standing under this tree, and your 
 giving me back my flower, and calling me a 
 monster.' 
 
 ' Did I ?' said Florence ; 'well, Mr. Evelyn, that 
 did my penetration great credit, because I think 
 you are a monster of a very dangerous descrip- 
 tion.' 
 
 ' Pray explain,' said Charles. 
 
 ' No,' said Florence ; * I like to be enigmatical, 
 so I will tell you a story. The last time I went 
 to the Zoological G-ardens, I saw a serpent fed ; 
 two little rabbits, a tender morsel each, were 
 skipping about its den, and the old wretch, with 
 a murderous eye on either victim, could not make 
 up its mind which first to devour.' 
 
 ' I am more in the dark than ever,' said Charles ; 
 
 * which am I, the rabbits or the serpent ? ' 
 
 'Don't interrupt the story,' cried Florence. 
 
 * Both victims were fascinated ; and at last the 
 big one was in such a hurry to be eaten, that it 
 drove the little one into a corner, and came and 
 jumped down the serpent's throat, and got gobbled 
 up in a moment. Was not that interesting? ' 
 
 1 1 am uncommonly stupid, I suppose,' said 
 Charles ; ' but what, pray, is the moral of the 
 story?'
 
 HOW HAPPT COULD I BE WITH EITHER. 173 
 
 ' The moral,' said Florence, privately thinking 
 that Charles's opinion of himself was rather near 
 the truth : ' Take care that no rabbits jump down 
 your throat.' 
 
 Charles, when he came to know what she meant, 
 felt a little gratified at the discovery of so agree- 
 able a position: it nattered his vanity, and it 
 occurred to him that he might do well to exercise 
 his privilege. Of another's feelings in the matter 
 it did not occur to him at that moment to take a 
 thought. If fortune threw two such pieces of 
 prey in his way, and social law forbade him to 
 take more than one, who could be aggrieved at 
 his enjoyment of his right? Of promises un- 
 spoken, yet truly made ; of a relation too subtle 
 and delicate for even thought to put into an explicit 
 shape, yet none the less real ; of a faithlessness, 
 which no one could bring against him, except the 
 silent voice of his own heart, he was too full of 
 enjoyment just then to think. Nor indeed was his 
 intercourse with Margaret as pleasant as of old. 
 He was throwing himself eagerly into Florence's 
 mood, and Margaret constantly found herself out 
 of tune with him. There was a delicacy about 
 her, which he regarded as prudish ; a simplicity 
 which seemed tame, a pure-mindedness that
 
 174 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Florence taught him to admire as pretty, but to 
 regard as weak. The Squire, who was old- 
 fashioned in his notions, and the victim of a 
 morbid modesty, had the strictest idea of what sort 
 of things should be discussed before young ladies, 
 and used to grow extremely embarrassed when 
 Florence occasionally gave evidence of a less precise 
 regime. That there was such a thing as sin in the 
 world ; that some young men had to be described 
 vaguely as s wild ; ' that there were some things 
 and people which could not be described at all, 
 was quite as much experience as he thought essen- 
 tial or desirable for his granddaughters, or as he 
 cared to realise for himself. Florence had seen 
 the world, and had heard it, all her life, frankly 
 discussed ; she had been quite familiar with young 
 men who were wild, and she knew what wildness 
 meant ; she could joke with them about it, and 
 affected no innocent ignoring of what went on 
 before her eyes. Young men were generally 
 profligate ; and it was only another form of 
 Eastern exclusiveness that tried to shut out the 
 fact from the other half of the species. 
 
 The Squire more than once broke off the con- 
 versation with an awkward abruptness that be- 
 trayed his discomfort, and devoutly wished him-
 
 HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHER. 175 
 
 self well rid of her society. Charles, on the other 
 hand, felt there was something real, courageous, 
 and natural about her. The Squire and his 
 cousins lived in a little fool's paradise ; but the 
 real men and women who made the world, who 
 fairly lived out their lives, who ran through the 
 real course of human passion and feeling, talked 
 in a different manner from these pretty proprieties. 
 Florence struck the bolder note, and drowned her 
 rival's gentle strain in a rude discord. 
 
 To such a frame of mind grievances are never 
 wanting. Each new accident is swept into the 
 current, and lends it a new force. Charles easily 
 persuaded himself that he was the injured party. 
 Erie sent him one day to a drawer, in search of 
 a cigar, and there, stowed away with other 
 treasures, Charles came upon the picture of his 
 home. 
 
 ' Halloa ! ' he cried, * you have got the Manor 
 House here.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Erie. 
 
 * And my cousin ? ' 
 
 ' Which enhances its value enormously,' replied 
 the other, completely unabashed. 
 
 * How did you get it ? ' 
 
 * Juvenum confidentissime,' cried Erie, with a
 
 176 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 laugh ; ( what a catechism you are giving me ! 
 Take your cigar, and be thankful.' 
 ' But, seriously, how did you get it ? ' 
 
 * Well,' said Erie, * if you must know, I earned 
 it. Will that do ? ' 
 
 * Perfectly,' said Charles, with fury and mis- 
 giving in his heart. ' Where can I find a light ? ' 
 But it was not the pipe of peace that he smoked, 
 as he sat gloomily puffing the azure wreaths into 
 the air, and, now that .the prize seemed no longer 
 attainable, cursing the nimble hand which had 
 snatched it from him. 
 
 Mischance, however, had not yet exhausted her 
 resources; and once again Charles blundered to 
 his doom. 
 
 One day at luncheon, when he was out shooting, 
 the conversation had turned on young men's pro- 
 ceedings, and Florence took the line of abusing 
 their sex at the expense of her own. 
 
 ' The mother of mankind,' suggested Erie, ' is 
 accountable for all subsequent troubles, and her 
 half of creation very properly has the lion's share.' 
 
 * Not at all,' said Florence ; ' we are angels, but 
 for the infection of your society. When men 
 are eliminated, we shall become angelic again, 
 you'll see.'
 
 HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHER. 177 
 
 ' I shan't be there to see,' said Erie ; * but I 
 suppose I must believe without seeing.' 
 
 ' Just look at the difference of boys and girls,' 
 continued Florence. 'Only think of boys at 
 school, horrid little inky, mischievous, cruel imps, 
 with' not a redeeming point about them ; then at 
 college they are ten times worse do the most 
 atrocious things spend quantities of money in 
 the most foolish ways, dress themselves like sense- 
 less fops as they are, break 'every rule of propriety 
 and common sense, and at last get sent home to 
 be redeemed and civilised by our society.' 
 
 ' Bravo ! ' said Erie ; ' I see you know all about 
 it. You must have been at college yourself, Miss 
 Vivien.' 
 
 Florence turned round, and saw Margaret 
 blushing scarlet ; she caught her eye, and the 
 blush came deeper and deeper. Did Florence 
 know, or was it a random shot? If the first, 
 how insolently rude ; if the second, how cruelly 
 well the cap fitted; either alternative, how dis- 
 agreeable ! And so Margaret looked guilty sat 
 there, less and less able to speak, or to do any- 
 thing in her discomfort, and Florence knew that 
 she had hit upon a secret. 
 
 When she saw Charles afterwards, she touched 
 
 VOL. i. N
 
 178 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 upon the point in play. ' Wicked, wicked young 
 man,' she cried; 'how is the process of reforma- 
 tion going on ? Nay, do not look innocent, I 
 know all about you. I hope you will improve.' 
 
 ' About my rustication ? ' said Charles, plung- 
 ing at once into the confession which he thought 
 it in vain to refuse ' and, pray, who was good- 
 natured enough to let that pretty secret out ? ' 
 
 *A little bird,' cried Florence. 'No, not a 
 little one ; but a bird with golden hair, and 
 solemn eyes, and a tell-tale pair of cheeks that 
 make deceit impossible.' 
 
 * Margaret ? ' asked Charles. 
 
 ' I shall tell you no more,' said his companion. 
 
 ' Did you tell Miss Vivien of my rustication ? ' 
 Charles said to his cousin afterwards. 
 
 'No,' said Margaret, looking at him with frank 
 eyes, which, to anybody but a simpleton, would 
 have carried conviction. 
 
 ' Did nobody tell her at luncheon ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 Charles said not another word; he thought 
 another, and it was ' False.'
 
 179 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 A MATCH. 
 
 Voyez-yous, ma chere, au siecle ou nous sommes, 
 
 La plupart des homines 
 
 Sont tres-inconstants ; 
 Sur deux amoureux pleins d'un zele extreme 
 
 La moitie" vous aime 
 
 Pour passer le temps. 
 
 THE theatricals for which Erie's services had been 
 so dearly purchased, came week by week to occupy 
 a more prominent place among the Christmas 
 festivities of the county. Florence's spirit and 
 ability precluded any likelihood of an indifferent 
 performance. Mrs. Vivien was certain to spare 
 no expense in securing the due splendour of the 
 entertainment. The Major contented himself with 
 stipulating that, if the house was to be turned 
 topsy-turvy, and the long library given over to 
 carpentering and fiddlers, the sacrifice should be 
 at any rate in a worthy cause, and that Shakspeare 
 should receive the chief honours of the occasion. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 'By all means,' said Florence, 'provided we 
 have something amusing to follow. Mr. Slap is 
 to contrive an afterpiece for us, and we shall have 
 a capital corps. I have secured Count Malagrida, 
 who, I am certain, must be an admirable trage- 
 dian; and Captain Anstruther and Lord Scam- 
 perly will do well enough for inferior parts. 
 Now, if kind Fortune would but send us some 
 actresses ! ' 
 
 Florence had her wish : not even the coyness of 
 Heavyshire reserve was proof against so alluring a 
 temptation. Everybody, after a period of well- 
 bred reluctance, ascertained that everybody else 
 was going, and resolved that abstinence would be 
 useless singularity. Even Lady Dangerfield suc- 
 cumbed to her daughters' solicitations, and felt 
 that to throw away a chance of Lord Scamperly 
 would be almost flying in the face of a providen- 
 tial arrangement. Margaret, when it was proposed 
 to her to take an active part in the proceedings, 
 protested her incompetence too vehemently for 
 disbelief. Nor was Florence at all seriously in 
 need of her assistance; but to her next request 
 she would take no refusal. She had judged 
 rightly, that, could but the proper part for her be 
 found, Nelly's pretty, frightened air, and half-
 
 A MATCH. 181 
 
 coquettish manner, would be certain to captivate 
 the least indulgent audience; and she rejoiced, 
 too, that Nelly should make her first appearance 
 in society under her especial protection. The 
 young lady herself was ardent in her entreaties, 
 coaxed Margaret into abetting her design, and 
 teased the Squire at last into giving a rather 
 doubtful assent. Charles, as a matter of course, 
 was to make himself useful should his services be 
 required. 
 
 Thereupon Florence and Erie formed themselves 
 into a committee of management, and protesting 
 in vain against the Major's restriction began to 
 ransack their Shakspeares for the discovery of 
 something within the range of ordinary abilities. 
 
 * We two,' said Florence, 'shall have to bear the 
 burthen of the day, remember. I presume you 
 know both our characters well enough to choose 
 something appropriate.' 
 
 ' Of course,' said Erie, ' we must have nothing 
 heroic or sentimental ; the histrionic powers of 
 both of us would break down short of that. 
 " Hamlet " is too trite " Antony and Cleopatra " 
 too affectionate. Suppose we let Malagrida take 
 Richard the Third?' 
 
 4 1 should have to be the Queen, and I have no
 
 182 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 notion of being a scold,' Florence answered, laugh- 
 ing. * Think, again : what a pretty Miranda our 
 little Underwood prize might be made into.' 
 
 * No, no ! ' cried her companion, * "The Tempest" 
 is a stroke beyond us, there are all sorts of mytho- 
 logical impossibilities at the end; not but that 
 Scamperly might do Caliban to advantage. But 
 stop, I have an idea at last; you shall be Beatrice, 
 the very role of all others for which Nature 
 intended you.' 
 
 'And you Benedick,' cried Florence; 'but it 
 would need cleverer tricks, I assure you, than any 
 in "Much Ado about Nothing" to cheat me out 
 of my quarrelsome mood. However, I shall enjoy 
 putting you down thoroughly in public.' 
 
 ' I suppose we must have a drawing-room edi- 
 tion of it,' said Erie ; ' I will tone it down to the 
 proper key for amateur performers.' 
 
 ' Very well, Benedick,' cried Florence, ' pray set 
 to work at once. To-morrow, be prepared to find 
 me scorn itself.' 
 
 The next morning, accordingly, Erie produced 
 his cast of characters: and his companion con- 
 fessed to having already spent two hours in realis- 
 ing the tones and gestures of an unassailable 
 Beauty.
 
 A MATCH. 183 
 
 Presently the Underwood contingent arrived 
 Nelly, in a quiver of excitement, and burning to 
 know what conclusion had been arrived at. 
 
 'The play, the performers, and the parts are 
 decided,' said Florence, gaily ; * and, little Nelly, 
 Mr. Erie has been choosing an extremely pretty 
 one for you.' 
 
 'I hope it is nothing difficult,' said Nelly; 'how 
 do you know that I can act at all ? ' 
 
 4 You will scarcely have to act,' Florence said 
 kindly. ' We are going to have some scenes from 
 " Much Ado about Nothing," and you are to be 
 Hero. You have only to look, just what you 
 are a dear, good, little innocent first, prettily 
 reproachful, and next, forgiving and affectionate. 
 You know the story, of course. There is your 
 cousin for Claudio, who is deeply in love; Mr. 
 Erie as Benedick, and I as Beatrice, who are not 
 at all in love ; and there is Leonato a stupid 
 part which papa is to have ; and Don John, the 
 wicked marplot, which we have assigned to Count 
 Malagrida, who is very wicked, you know, and 
 will play it to perfection ; and then, as he has got 
 such a good voice, we are going to make him sing 
 the song, 
 
 Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more; 
 Men were deceivers ever
 
 184 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 a sentiment which will come from him with great 
 propriety.' 
 
 A few objections were speedily overruled. Nelly 
 was carried off to undergo a course of theatrical 
 tuition, and to be made more than ever the crea- 
 ture of Florence. Margaret, when her sister told 
 her of the arrangement, thought neither the play 
 nor the characters in perfect taste. The part that 
 each had to personate seemed almost too near 
 reality. It was an objection, however, which it 
 might only do harm to emphasise by dwelling 
 upon. Other people, and those the most imme- 
 diately concerned, saw no objection ; the Squire 
 said not a word, and Margaret buried fears, 
 scruples, and aversions alike, and resolved upon 
 cheerful acquiescence in a scheme which appeared 
 to give her sister such unbounded satisfaction. It 
 was a disappointment, however, that the pleasant 
 dream of home life, which for years past had 
 formed her ideal of happiness the companionship 
 for which she had waited with such loving eager- 
 ness the keen enjoyment of her sister's society, 
 should, at the very first moments of its realisation, 
 be broken in upon so effectually by invaders so 
 little congenial or sympathetic. Could she ex- 
 pect was it reasonable to hope that Nelly would
 
 A MATCH. 185 
 
 be restored to her as simple, as innocent, as re- 
 fined, as easy to please, as ready to love, as before 
 her intimacy with her new friend ? Who but an 
 enemy could have so inopportunely come between 
 them ? Clyffe so Margaret, with a half-dreary 
 laugh, admitted to herself had become the very 
 bugbear of her existence; and Florence was in 
 course of promotion from the footing of vague 
 dislike to that of acknowledged hostility and 
 suspicion. 
 
 Margaret's alarms would certainly not have 
 diminished could she have known the interior of 
 the enemy's camp, and the real tone of the life to 
 which the two cousins were now to be familiarly 
 introduced. Eehearsals, of course, were to be 
 gone through, and each rehearsal necessitated an 
 increased intimacy, gave Florence a more com- 
 plete insight into the character of both, and a 
 more thorough hold upon her protegee. Nelly's 
 admiration was the more intense, because she only 
 half understood a great deal of what she heard 
 and saw. The rapid stream of brilliant talk swept 
 noisily past her, impressed her with an increased 
 thankfulness to her protectress and a deeper sense 
 of her complete incapacity to take care of herself. 
 What if Mr. Slap, who had arrived from town,
 
 186 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 crisp with good stories, and flashing with repartee, 
 should open his batteries upon her, and send some 
 terrible bon mot to explode, shell-like, in her 
 neighbourhood? What if Erie should, in some 
 moment of unusual energy, pass from languid 
 politeness into the satire for which the world in 
 general gave him credit? What if Malagrida, 
 with his black, mysterious eyes, and imperturbable 
 suavity, should some day proceed to amuse him- 
 self at her expense, and annihilate her with a 
 polished sneer ? Florence, she was comforted to 
 know, would instantly rush to arms in her defence, 
 and would drive off the assailants from a forbidden 
 topic of entertainment with the sharp missiles of 
 her own unflagging wit. How not to love so 
 gracious, so benevolent, so capable a defender? 
 How not to reward her with the confidence of 
 gratitude? What strange prejudice was it that 
 blinded Margaret to the perfections of so good a 
 friend ? 
 
 Nor was Florence's kindness in the least hypo- 
 critical : she was delighted with her latest play- 
 thing. Nelly's dependence went to her heart: 
 she loved her, too, for the success which, it soon 
 became evident, her presence assured to the thea- 
 tricals. Her gracefulness, her becoming timidity,
 
 A MATCH. 187 
 
 her transparent innocence, her unconscious refine- 
 ment, all made her Hero a little triumph. 
 
 ' My only anxiety,' said Florence, with a kind 
 laugh, ' is, lest you should have left off those 
 pretty blushes before the real performance comes. 
 If you grow too courageous, my dear, I shall 
 frighten you on purpose for the edification of the 
 beholders.' 
 
 ' I shall be quite frightened enough,' Nelly said, 
 taking her patroness's arm affectionately ; ' I de- 
 clare I hardly know what I am doing when I begin 
 to speak.' 
 
 'Don't you?' cried Florence; 'well, you are 
 making me and everybody else fall excessively in 
 love with you. I beg you to know that the Count, 
 who is a first-rate judge, considers himself among 
 your most devoted admirers.' 
 
 By this time, Nelly's head, not very strong at 
 the best, was beginning to be in a whirl. King 
 Cophetua, in his royal condescension, could not 
 have surprised the Beggar Maid with a more 
 unexpected homage. Florence made no secret, 
 however, that she thoroughly sympathised with 
 Malagrida's approval, and encouraged her in the 
 lawful airs and graces of an acknowledged beauty. 
 Nelly on her part, awoke to the delights of
 
 188 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 adoration, and thrilled with the consciousness 
 of approaching queenship. Captain Anstruther, 
 Malagrida, her cousin oh, how bright a place 
 the world seemed ! how pleasant society ! how 
 alarming, and yet how irresistibly attractive, the 
 courtesies of the lords of creation ! 
 
 Towards Charles, Florence's charity was far less 
 unalloyed. Despite a pleasant good-nature, his 
 malleability of temper excited her contempt. She 
 smiled as she saw how he took his tone of thought 
 from her chance expressions, and formed his tastes 
 and sentiments upon the model she gave him. 
 Erie liked his old friend, but soon let Florence 
 perceive that he shared her opinion of his cha- 
 racter. She, on her part, found him so easy of 
 management, that the task of managing him lost 
 half its attractiveness. *Le beau plaisir,' she 
 would say, ' de chasser un animal domestique. I 
 declare I could drive him with a bit of red cloth.' 
 
 ' The fiend,' cried Erie, ' might return might 
 he not? 
 
 to vasty Tartar back 
 And swear I never won a soul 
 So easy as this Englishman's.' 
 
 ' Fortunately,' said Florence, ' there are no 
 fiends at Clyffe, or we do not know what might 
 happen.' And yet, had she enquired of her con-
 
 A MATCH. 189 
 
 science, she might have learnt that it was no 
 heavenly or beneficent counsellor that was driving 
 him from his original scheme of life, and bending 
 his infirm will to a lower, easier, less courage- 
 tasking design. 
 
 Presently they joined the rest of the party. 
 
 'Pray,' asked Erie, 'has Sir Agricola been 
 brought to terms yet ? Am I to have the honour 
 of initiating the Miss Dangerfields into the mys- 
 teries of our theatre ? ' 
 
 ' You are,' said Florence, triumphantly ; ' and 
 a pretty battle I had to fight before Lady Danger- 
 field's conscientious difficulties could be disposed 
 of. I was obliged to fire Lord Scamperly at her 
 head, or I should have lost the day.' 
 
 Mrs. Vivien owed her ladyship a grudge for a 
 long list of these covert indignities, which femi- 
 nine antagonists know so well how to inflict. 
 
 ' Lady Dangerfield's difficulties ! ' she cried, 
 with a compassionating air. * Those poor girls 
 are really most distressingly placed. Between 
 piety and intrigue their mother gives them no 
 peace.' 
 
 ' Piety ! ' cried the Major, who for once entirely 
 agreed with his wife. f Whenever there is a vul- 
 gar, worldly old woman, full of all the naughty
 
 190 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 things to which her age and sex entitle her, she 
 always tops them up with theology, and becomes 
 entirely unendurable.' 
 
 ' It is an outrage upon heaven,' said Malagrida, 
 * for such people to suppose that they could ever 
 get there. Scandal, bigotry, malevolence what 
 ingredients, even for a Protestant saint ! ' 
 
 4 Their devotion,' said Erie, * is nothing but an 
 unhallowed greediness after the good things of 
 another life. Some people, you know, want to 
 have everything ; and a dexterous London mother 
 contrives, of course, to have an invitation to the 
 best and largest party ever given.' 
 
 ' Lady Dangerfield has made you all quite pro- 
 fane,' said Mrs. Vivien; 'we must forgive her 
 conscience this time at any rate, as Florence has 
 stretched it over the theatricals.' 
 
 ' Over Lord Scamperly, you mean,' said her 
 daughter. 
 
 * But the result is, that we have got our two 
 waiting-women ; the Miss Dangerfields will act.' 
 
 'And I shall have to teach them,' said Erie, 
 with a sigh. ' Ah, Miss St. Aubyn, if your sister 
 would only help us ! ' 
 
 ' One genius in the family is enough,' said 
 Malagrida, hanging over the young lady with a
 
 A MATCH. 191 
 
 paternally tender air ; * we are too thankful for 
 Hero to wish for anything more.' 
 
 Nelly looked up with a smile of childish delight, 
 and thought how beautiful, mysterious, and 
 terrible a personage her new admirer looked. The 
 Polish music-master's eyes had been strange and 
 sad, Charles's were a lovely blue, but the Count's ! 
 they were unfathomable, fiery, searching; and 
 Nelly felt trembling that they looked through and 
 through her. 
 
 ' The hawk and the dove ! ' said Erie to An- 
 struther, as they walked away. It makes me sick 
 to see Malagrida affectionate to that poor little 
 girl. If Fortune honoured me with a young and 
 pretty wife, he is one of the last people whose 
 acquaintance I should choose to cultivate.' 
 
 e Hawks and doves ! ' cried Anstruther, whose 
 tender heart was already in a glow of enthusiasm ; 
 * angels and devils, you mean. Come now, Erie, 
 confess you do enjoy teaching her her part, 
 don't you ? ' 
 
 ' She is not so stupid as the Miss Dangerfields, 
 I admit,' Erie said, complacently ; ( but it is a 
 great deal of trouble.' 
 
 ' Trouble ! ' cried the other, indignantly, ' and 
 stupid indeed ! but you are really ice.'
 
 192 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 'Yes,' said Erie, 'the very clearest, coldest, 
 hardest Wenham Lake. Don't you envy my 
 frigidity?' 
 
 ' It is inhuman,' said the other ; ' but I do not 
 believe a word of it ; but it is the other sister you 
 admire, I know.' 
 
 ' The other is the beauty, of course,' said Erie ; 
 * and has the most wit.' 
 
 ' Well ! ' cried his companion, as if the force of 
 astonishment could carry him no further. * Talk 
 about infatuation ! ' 
 
 ' On the contrary,' said Erie, composedly, ' the 
 calm verdict of an uninterested spectator.' 
 
 * My dear fellow,' cried the soldier, ' you are an 
 old fool.' 
 
 * And you,' rejoined Erie, ' a young one.' 
 There the conversation stopped ; but Anstruther 
 
 resolved that his friend's blindness admitted of 
 only one explanation he had fallen in love. 
 
 Before long a new excitement diverted half the 
 attention hitherto concentrated on the theatricals. 
 Erie had brought some horses in his train, and 
 amongst others, the much-maligned Eunnymeade, 
 by this time a favourite hunter. One afternoon, 
 as they were riding home, discussing the fortunes 
 of the day and the achievements of various mem-
 
 A MATCH. 193 
 
 bers of the Heavyshire Hunt, Charles, who had 
 had the luck to be prominent throughout the run, 
 began to grow vehement in championship of the 
 chestnut, whose failure earlier in the season had 
 procured him the honour of Florence's acquain- 
 tance. Erie was pleased to be sarcastic, and to 
 deride the other's eulogium. 
 
 ' Why, Evelyn,' he cried, ' confess now, did not 
 you wait for me to knock the top off that post and 
 rails, and make you a hole in the bullfinch, just 
 before we killed? Even an old screw, you see, 
 like this, may put some people to the blush.' 
 
 Eunnymeade was jogging along almost ex- 
 hausted with the morning's exploits. All day he 
 had been unusually vicious and troublesome, and 
 the signs of the conflict were discernible on his 
 tawny sides. The bullfinch had embraced him 
 lovingly in his passage through it, and he had 
 contrived to give his master and himself a roll 
 into a wide and miry ditch. Altogether, he looked 
 extremely unprepossessing, and Charles's spirits 
 rose at the comparison. 
 
 ' Upon my word,' he said, 'such an old, wicked, 
 battered piece of obstinacy ' 
 
 'There are different objects for horses, you 
 know,' Erie said. ' I keep mine all for going. If 
 
 VOL. i. o
 
 194 LA.TE LAUKELS. 
 
 I wanted a pretty hack to canter after young ladies 
 and pick up dismounted Amazons, I should make 
 a bid for the chestnut ' 
 
 * Come, Erie,' said the other, in a passion, * I 
 tell you what; we will ride them both over a 
 couple of miles of fair country, and see which is 
 the better horse of the two. Runnymeade 
 indeed ! ' 
 
 ' Agreed ! ' said Erie. ' I shall put him into 
 training forthwith, and you will see us do wonders. 
 Do you know he once ran for the Derby ? in 
 honour of which I shall back him for twenty 
 pounds.' 
 
 ' I only hope he will be in one of his pretty 
 tempers,' said Charles, 'and give you another 
 such " brook scene " as we had this morning.' 
 
 The Squire protested against so unworthy an 
 employment of a good hunter, but convinced at 
 last by Charles's predictions of victory, warmed 
 heartily into the idea; and Margaret, soon be- 
 coming an enthusiastic partisan, made daring 
 wagers with all her friends on the chestnut's 
 success. 
 
 ' You would like to ride him yourself, would you 
 not, Margaret ? ' said the Squire, as they halted 
 their ponies, and watched Charles giving his horse
 
 A MATCH. 195 
 
 a morning gallop round the confines of the park, 
 as he came across the valley and swept at last 
 over the flight of hurdles 'to where they were 
 standing. 
 
 ' I shall be broken-hearted if Charles does not 
 win,' she said ; ' but of course he will. Mr. Erie's 
 horse, grandfather, is a perfect fright.' 
 
 Margaret's zeal touched her cousin, and was 
 the signal for a tacit reconciliation. He had left 
 Nelly the day before at Clyffe, and in her absence 
 the two relapsed, almost unconsciously, into their 
 former communicativeness, intimacy, and affection. 
 Charles forgot the interval of estrangement, the 
 suspicions which, though not quite harboured, had 
 not been quite expelled, the doubts which he had 
 left unanswered, the moods in which Margaret's 
 very excellences were a source of irritation. His 
 old fondness came upon him with the pathos of 
 remembered neglect. Margaret's high spirits 
 were something pleasanter than the hard, bright 
 merriment of the Vivien party. His grandfather 
 seemed so much more thorough a gentleman than 
 the Major. The illusion of novelty, the piquancy of 
 contrast, had died away, and even Clyffe, he found, 
 could be sometimes monotonous and unattractive. 
 Florence, the last time he had been there, had 
 o 2
 
 196 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 shocked him by some piece of cynicism a shade 
 coarser than usual. Nelly was deep in a rather 
 foolish flirtation with a train of admirers. The 
 clever people were occasionally snappish, morose, 
 or too indolent to be agreeable. Erie had more 
 than once turned the laugh against him, and the 
 Clyffe laughs were by no means charitable. Mr. 
 Slap, when quite at ease, fell below the Slap-ian 
 standard, and was simply dull. The absence of 
 sentiment made everything depend on fun, and 
 when the fun collapsed, the house was dreariness 
 itself. On the whole, though the tinsel was well 
 laid on, Charles's instinct began to teach him that 
 it was not gold. One or two pleasant evenings at 
 Underwood completed his conversion. What was 
 it, he began to wonder, that, when all things 
 favoured his proposal, had forced him to hesitate ? 
 Why was it that the boon for which he had longed 
 so eagerly was still unasked ? Nelly had charmed 
 him, but the fascination died away as he left her 
 presence. Margaret's features haunted him in 
 his dreams. With the one he grew fond, but 
 never intimate; the other seemed to read his 
 thoughts. Nelly amused his fancy, her sister 
 mastered his heart. 
 
 Margaret was woman enough to feel a little
 
 A MATCH. 197 
 
 triumph at his return. Florence had done her 
 worst, she felt assured, and done it in vain. The 
 Clyffe armoury had been exhausted against him, 
 and still her cousin was the same. How the 
 world brightened around her at the thought ! 
 
 4 You will be spoilt for a quiet life, I am afraid,' 
 the Squire said, as, the night before the race, 
 Charles was recounting the splendour of the Clyffe 
 preparations. ' What can we think of to amuse 
 you ? You will find us sadly dull.' 
 
 * Never ! ' said Charles, vehemently, and looking 
 at his cousin. ' Do I look tired of my home ? 
 I never felt less like it, I assure you. You should 
 have seen how indignant the Dangerfields were 
 with me for coming ! ' 
 
 ' Well,' said the Squire, as he settled himself at 
 a distant table with a book, * take care, I advise 
 you : private theatricals are dangerous things.' 
 
 Charles lowered his voice for his cousin's ear 
 alone. 
 
 'My dangers,' he said, 'lie nearer home.' 
 
 A simple phrase enough, but speaker and hearer 
 alike knew its meaning. Margaret felt a load 
 suddenly lifted from her heart. Coldness and 
 uncertainty on his part, secret grief and disquie- 
 tude on hers, were now about to end. Not till the
 
 198 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 relief was promised did she Imow how keen the 
 pain, how heavy the burthen which, unavowed 
 even to herself, she had been of late enduring. 
 What a treasure of devotion, stored up in innocent 
 fidelity, a single word or look may awaken into 
 consciousness and life ! 
 
 The Squire read on, Margaret began to play, 
 and Charles, pleased to have said so much, and yet 
 half frightened at his own temerity, sat dreamingly 
 beating time to the music, and pondering over 
 his latest move. He had said but a few words, 
 and those conveniently indistinct. The compli- 
 ment, such as it was, would have applied to the 
 one sister as well as the other ; yet conscience told 
 him that enough had been done. He felt that Mar- 
 garet, if uninformed before, now knew his heart, 
 and that, should his present mood prove transient, 
 he was still pledged to it ; if ever the chain which 
 his own hand had just fitted to his neck should 
 come to gall him, he had no more the right to 
 throw it off. The very suspicion of such a possi- 
 bility was alarming ; and Charles, like a coward as 
 he was, felt even now the hesitation which is the 
 first step to repentance. 
 
 The next morning the three drove together to 
 the meadows where the race was to take place.
 
 A MATCH. 199 
 
 ' Upon my word,' said the Squire, as Charles 
 made his appearance, glittering in pink and 
 white, * you look quite the reverse of respectable. 
 Pray wrap yourself up in your great coat, and let 
 no one see what freaks I am abetting ; and I 
 really think there has been a frost the poor 
 chestnut's legs ! ' 
 
 * The poor riders' necks ! ' cried Charles with a 
 laugh ; ' but no, grandfather, the ground will be 
 beautiful by twelve o'clock.' 
 
 And so it proved. Before noon there was a 
 goodly crowd collected at the scene of action. 
 The day was bright, soft, and cloudless. An- 
 struther and the Count had been busy all the 
 morning in deciding upon the course, and were 
 still marching about the fields, followed by a 
 train of men with flags and hatchets. A ditch 
 had been dammed up into a very respectable 
 brook, quite enough, as Erie's friends cheerfully 
 observed, to insure anyone who chose a thorough 
 ducking. The Clyffe party naturally assembled 
 in force; most of the neighbouring houses con- 
 tributed spectators ; the gallant H. H. was duly 
 represented. A dozen carriages were drawn up 
 on a knoll favourable for commanding a view of 
 the race. The two principal performers, carefully
 
 200 
 
 enveloped from chilly air, were being paraded 
 about by their grooms. Eunnymeade, evidently 
 conscious that something unusual was expected of 
 him, was already doing his best to disturb the 
 harmony of the day, and filled his supporters with 
 the blackest misgivings. Warned by his reverted 
 eye and ready heels, the inquisitive crowd fol- 
 lowed him at a respectful distance, and exchanged 
 in safety such unflattering pleasantries as his past 
 exploits and personal appearance suggested. On 
 the whole, though Erie's prowess was acknow- 
 ledged, the popular opinion was that he must 
 come to grief, and would certainly win no laurels 
 from the present encounter. 
 
 Presently Florence with the Major and Nelly 
 rode up. Nelly carried off her grandfather to see 
 the course, and Florence, weary with her ride, 
 accepted the vacant seat beside Margaret. Erie 
 was not long in making his appearance. 
 
 ' I am afraid, Miss St. Aubyn,' he said, 'that I 
 have no good wishes from you; of course the 
 Underwood interest carries all before it ; but let 
 me show you where we are to go. You see the 
 tent there on the hill ; well, that is the starting- 
 place ; we come down the valley, across that fence 
 where the flag is, and then in the next field is the
 
 A MATCH. 201 
 
 brook where my enemies predict my falL By 
 sitting here, you see, you will have an excellent 
 view of my discomfiture, and your cousin will 
 probably gallop past you without the trouble of 
 my company.' 
 
 'That will be very uninteresting,' said Mar- 
 garet. *I beg you will show fight all through, 
 and only be beaten in the last field.' 
 
 f I shall do my best to obey you, you may be 
 sure,' said Erie ; ' and now we must all have 
 some gambling. I will be courageous, Miss St. 
 Aubyn, and bet you anything you like to nothing 
 in support of my much-decried steed : I see you 
 are despising him already, like the rest of the 
 world.' 
 
 Erie stood by her side of the carriage, and 
 seemed almost to forget the presence of her com- 
 panion. Florence had never felt his partiality 
 with such unpleasing distinctness. It was bad 
 enough to be neglected, but to be neglected 
 openly was more than she could bear.' 
 
 ' Stop, Mr. Erie,' she cried, ' and arrange my 
 bets for me.' But Eunnymeade was already 
 stripped, and no more time was to be lost. Even 
 as she spoke, her old admirer had turned and gone 
 without a word. Next, Charles rode up, in full-
 
 202 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 blown colours, followed by a little crowd of admirers. 
 Florence felt impatiently that it was not for her 
 sake that he came. 
 
 * Your blessing on your knight,' he cried, mov- 
 ing towards his cousin's side. 
 
 ' And my knight's horse,' said Margaret, stretch- 
 ing from the carriage to pat the chestnut's glit- 
 tering neck. 'Ride, Charley, for the glory of 
 Underwood. I have staked a fortune on your 
 victory.' 
 
 ' Never fear ! ' cried her cousin ; and then he 
 stooped down and whispered something in her 
 ear, which Florence would have given worlds to 
 catch, but which she was evidently not intended 
 to overhear. Her rival, she felt, was having all 
 the honours of the day to herself. She smiled 
 but a dark cloud lowered on her brow, and 
 darker thoughts still tossed and swelled angrily 
 in her troubled mind. 
 
 A few moments more, and a shout from the 
 crowd, and a sudden dispersion of the group that 
 had gathered at the starting-place, showed that 
 the race had begun. Both followed it without 
 difficulty; and Florence, absorbed, forgot for a 
 moment her rankling animosity in the excitement 
 of an evenly-balanced contest.
 
 A MATCH. 203 
 
 Neck to neck the two horses came sweeping 
 along the valley's side ; almost abreast they flew 
 across the second fence ; stride by stride they 
 crossed the wide meadow and neared the critical 
 obstacle of the race. At this point the posture 
 of affairs began to change. Erie, with a view 
 to bettering his chance of getting quietly across, 
 took care to be ten yards behind as they ap- 
 proached the brook. That over or into this 
 his horse should go, he had quite made up his 
 mind, and Runnymeade apparently had become 
 aware of the necessity, for he had put down his 
 head, was shaking it impatiently at Erie's firm 
 holding, and was going as though life and death 
 depended upon his being across the water as soon 
 as his rival. Now the chestnut, though a pretty 
 hunter, was young, inexperienced, and appre- 
 hensive ; and though he performed gallantly in 
 the hunting-field, amid a crowd of horses, and 
 with the crash of hounds, his courage misgave 
 him as he found himself spinning along without 
 assignable motive the foremost, if not alone 
 at the cold, bright, clearly-marked piece of water, 
 which the Clyffe hedgers and ditchers had been 
 so busy for days past in helping to its present 
 growth. Each stride, as he approached it, gave
 
 204 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 evidence of faltering nerves and increased inde- 
 cision. Charles, his blood now at boiling heat 
 with the prospect of victory, and in no hesitating 
 mood, plied his spurs vehemently, held his 
 horse's head relentlessly straight, and before the 
 chestnut's mind was half made up, he found 
 himself already half-way across. His last spring, 
 however, had a dash of reluctance in it, and 
 served but to land half his body on the opposite 
 bank. ' An awful sound of water in his ears,' a 
 sudden descent into the mud, a frantic struggle, 
 a lurch to one side, and crash came Kunny- 
 meade from behind, with all the accumulated 
 impetus of half a mile's racing gallop : over 
 rolled the chestnut, down went Charles : Kunny- 
 meade in an instant was standing on his nose 
 with the tail to the sky ; Erie was spinning into 
 a chaos in which conflicting legs, heads, saddles, 
 were confusedly jumbled in disagreeable prox- 
 imity to his own skull. Florence sprang to her 
 feet the better to observe the catastrophe : and 
 Margaret, sitting speechless and rigid, and clutch- 
 ing unconsciously at her companion's hand, for 
 an instant drew her attention to herself. Florence 
 read in her scared looks the agony of a sudden 
 terror.
 
 A MATCH. 205 
 
 'No one is killed,' she said, with a touch of 
 scorn : and turning her glass once more toward 
 the central figures of the scene. 
 
 But Margaret had no eyes or thoughts for any 
 but a single point of the proceedings. She could 
 distinctly follow each new phase. Erie was the 
 first upon his legs, and hurried to his fallen 
 comrade's assistance. Kunnymeade, with per- 
 verse incongruity, had set himself composedly 
 to graze, and was watching with stormy, vigilant 
 eye, the crowd of small boys who rashly tried to 
 catch him. The chestnut was slowly collecting 
 his scattered faculties, and wondering what in 
 the world had befallen him. Meantime a little 
 cluster had gathered round Charles, who lay flat 
 out on his back, picturesque, mud -bespattered, 
 and inanimate. 
 
 Margaret sat in silent horror. What did not 
 depend for her on the revelations of the next few 
 minutes ! How tragical a catastrophe had per- 
 haps already befallen her ! Charles killed ! Her 
 heart died down within her at the possibility. 
 What would the world be without him ! Her 
 anxiety was shortlived, for her cousin presently 
 sat up, and in a quarter of an hour was perfectly 
 restored. For the sake of the spectators, and to
 
 206 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 prove that no narm was done, they resolved to 
 continue the race. Margaret bit her lip, and 
 strove in vain to conceal her distress at the 
 resolution. Presently both horses were for half 
 a field out of sight 
 
 4 Why,' said Florence, turning round for the 
 first time ; ' how white you look ! Ah ! here is 
 Mr. Erie again.' 
 
 But Margaret's nerve was gone ; each new jump, 
 waited for before with pleasurable excitement, 
 cost her an agony of expectation. She clenched 
 her hand, resolved at any price on self-command ; 
 but it was almost too much to bear. Once and 
 again, with no ostensible reason, she hid her face 
 in her hands, and burst into half hysterical tears. 
 
 <Ah,' cried Florence, sitting down in the 
 carriage with an air of triumph, as a shout from 
 the crowd proclaimed the conclusion of the race ; 
 ' Runnymeade is the conqueror, and I have won 
 let me see but, my dear Miss St. Aubyn, you 
 must be surely ill.' 
 
 * Not at all,' said her companion, the tears again 
 rushing to her eyes ; ' but it gave me a fright 
 it is ridiculous, I know. I shall be better pre- 
 sently.' 
 
 'Well,' said Florence, this time with undisguised
 
 A MATCH. 207 
 
 contemptuousness in her tone ; ' pray do not cry, 
 at any rate, there are no bones broken. I cannot 
 fancy being so frightened at a fall.' 
 
 Margaret was hardly mistress of herself, nor in 
 a mood to weigh ber words. 
 
 ' Cannot you ? ' she said. * Then you never had 
 any one you loved in danger.' 
 
 * No,' rejoined the other ; * not any one I loved ; 
 I sympathise with you, I am sure.' There was 
 that in the emphasis of the sentence that recalled 
 Margaret to herself at once ; she looked sharply 
 up, for the tone of Florence told her that war was 
 meant. The insinuation scarcely admitted of a 
 reply : nor, if it had, did Margaret feel capable of 
 attempting it. Florence had meant the sugges- 
 tion as a simple rudeness. Fortune had turned 
 it into something more. She saw by the other's 
 expression of mute perplexity and endurance that 
 she was helpless, and that her random shot had 
 pierced her antagonist's armour at a vulnerable 
 point. ' So,' she said to herself afterwards, as 
 she rode silently home, ' so she really loves him.'
 
 208 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 Who is so gross 
 
 That cannot see this palpable device ? 
 
 THAT night there was to be a rehearsal at Clyffe : 
 Margaret drove back alone with her grandfather, 
 and Charles's visits to his home for the next few 
 days were too hurried and business-like for con- 
 fidential intercourse. His hesitating will wel- 
 comed any decent pretext for delay, and it seemed 
 only reasonable, now the Vivien's party would so 
 soon break up, to delay the great step of his life 
 to a time of quiet, leisure, and thoughtfulness. 
 Perhaps the consciousness of his own treacherous 
 vacillation the possibility, dimly foreseen, and 
 only for an instant entertained, of a breach of 
 faith, the uneasy foreboding of a struggle between 
 honour and inclination reconciled him to such 
 brief and scanty communications as the circum- 
 stances rendered excusable, but which would have
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 209 
 
 seemed mere tantalising drops to the thirsty lips 
 of a hearty lover. Perhaps, too, Margaret's em- 
 barrassment betrayed itself in an unaccustomed 
 reserve. Florence had almost openly taxed her 
 with being in love with her cousin, and she had 
 begun to know for the first time that she really 
 was. The knowledge, while Charles's wishes re- 
 mained in ambiguity, was extremely distressing. 
 How far, she asked herself, had her manner be- 
 trayed her thoughts ? How most effectually, for 
 the future, could she conceal what was destined 
 perhaps to be for ever a secret ? Had she read 
 her cousin's looks, words, tones aright? or was 
 the happiness she already felt her own, a foolish 
 dream ? Suppose suppose but her whole nature 
 shrank back at the imagined catastrophe. To the 
 last we are incredulous of misfortune. Upon the 
 whole, however, Margaret confessed to herself that 
 she was miserable. 
 
 Loud were the outcries at Clyffe, vehement 
 the indignation, when Erie, only three days before 
 the final performance, suddenly declared that he 
 must go to town. Florence had for days past 
 watched his flagging zeal, and denounced his de- 
 parture as a mere idle manoeuvre. "Was it that 
 the Miss Dangerfields were slow to learn and 
 
 VOL. i. P
 
 210 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 prompt to forget, and insisted, despite all instruc- 
 tion, on a rendering of their parts altogether 
 peculiar to themselves? Was it that Slap had 
 exhausted all his stock of stories, and gave himself 
 airs about his afterpiece ? Was it a growing dis- 
 like of Florence and her relatives that suggested 
 ever, with increasing cogency, the delights of an 
 interval of independence? 
 
 ' Business,' said Erie, shutting up his letter at 
 breakfast, and looking as serious as possible 
 ' business of the most imperative kind. A single 
 afternoon will do. I will be back to-morrow.' 
 
 'It is too unkind,' said Florence, despairing. 
 
 * Nobody but you, Mr. Erie, could have hit upon 
 such a provoking expedient. Come back early, 
 pray : I shall want you for a hundred things.' 
 
 ' Can you get up by eleven ? ' said the Major. 
 ' If so, you can be at Sandy ford by two, and we 
 will send to meet you.' 
 
 Erie, however, preferred to trouble no one. 
 
 * I shall leave my horse at the station,' he said, 
 ' and ride back again to-morrow. You may expect 
 me by three ; and I expect you all to be diligent 
 in my absence. When the Underwood people 
 come, pray put them through their parts. Evelyn 
 is certain to break down.'
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 211 
 
 ' How vain he is ! ' cried Florence, still in a pet. 
 'Indeed, Mr. Erie, we shall do extremely well 
 without you.' 
 
 The performers promised to make the best of 
 their time, and Erie rode away in secret triumph. 
 
 Now the road to the station ran across Under- 
 wood Common, and by the gates of the Manor : 
 and Erie, as he passed, looking up the avenue, 
 caught sight of the house and a sunny garden 
 path, and the Squire and Margaret marching up 
 and down in confidential talk, and was seized with 
 a sudden fancy to bring his London expedition 
 there and then to an immediate close. Mr. 
 Evelyn and he were the best of friends, Margaret 
 looked extremely picturesque, and the excuse of 
 bringing tidings from Clyffe would satisfactorily 
 explain an unexpected calL He half checked his 
 horse ; but prudence and propriety for once car- 
 ried the day. No other train would take him in 
 reasonable time to town; he was already full late ; 
 he dare not reappear at Clyffe with his journey 
 unfulfilled, and so acknowledge its needlessness. 
 Forbidden fruits, however, are sweet, and the 
 consciousness that one may not taste sometimes 
 is the first incentive to desire. Erie, though he 
 had never thought of it before, now resented the 
 
 P 2
 
 212 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 circumstances and the people that forbade the 
 indulgence of a whim. Clyffe, as he thought it 
 over, seemed more wearisome than ever ; Florence 
 was really insufferable; the acting, after weeks of 
 trouble, atrocious even for amateurs ; Slap's pro- 
 logue, a mere piece of buffoonery : in a few days 
 half a county would be witnessing his disgrace as 
 a manager. In what weak moment had he been 
 tricked into so much unprofitable toil? How 
 provoking that it should now defraud him of 
 what would have been a real enjoyment ! 
 
 The next day, as he passed on his journey 
 back to Clyffe, fortune spared him the necessity 
 of choice; for the Squire and Margaret were 
 half way down the avenue on their way to 
 the village, and escape, even had he wished it, 
 was out of the question. Never, however, was 
 a more willing prisoner caught. Erie soon let 
 his horse be sent to the stables, came in to 
 luncheon, and, with a half malevolent satisfaction 
 at the inconvenience his delay would occasion, 
 calmly banished the theatricals from his thoughts. 
 Charles and Nelly, so Margaret told him, had 
 just started ; she and her grandfather were to 
 follow the next evening. The Squire was in- 
 clined to be talkative, and Erie set assiduously
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 213 
 
 about making himself agreeable. Margaret, 
 watching her grandfather's mood, welcomed the 
 arrival of an opportune companion ; conversation 
 flowed pleasantly on; Erie launched heroically 
 into old-fashioned politics, quoted Mr. Pitt's 
 speeches and Lady Mary Wortley Montague's 
 letters, and listened with resigned good-nature 
 while the Squire described some famous debates 
 in which he had participated when he sat for the 
 county. At last they agreed to go out to the 
 woods, where cutting was in progress. 
 
 ' I am very sorry that anyone should see how 
 ruthless you can be,' said Margaret. f Mr. Erie, my 
 grandfather, you must know, has a mania for de- 
 structiveness, and cuts down all my favourite trees.' 
 
 * Nonsense, Margaret,' said her grandfather. 
 ' Was it not Selwyn, Mr. Erie, who called trees 
 mere excrescences, that grow out of the earth to 
 pay people's debts with ? ' 
 
 * A most lovely pine,' cried Margaret, undis- 
 turbed ; ' the chief feature in the view, and the 
 greatest possible protection in windy weather.' 
 
 ' We must have air,' said the Squire, who had 
 been reading the Eeport of the Ladies' Sanitary 
 Committee, and lived in chronic terror of suffo- 
 cation.
 
 214 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' I appeal to Mr. Erie's taste,' said Margaret ; 
 and so all three went out to the doomed 
 tree. 
 
 Erie thought gleefully of the rehearsal that was 
 going on without him, and congratulated himself 
 on his escape. Dim visions of the Miss Danger- 
 fields flitted before his mind's eye. The society 
 in which he found himself was a new sensation. 
 He saw plainly that it never entered Margaret's 
 head to care in the least about him, and he 
 liked her for it. She wanted her grandfather to 
 be amused, and so she liked Erie to stay, just as 
 she would have ordered Punch round to the 
 windows if that had been the Squire's fancy. 
 Erie contrasted her with the tribe of self-seeking, 
 ambitious pleasure-hunters to whom he was going 
 Florence's intrigue, the Major's epicurean in- 
 difference, Mrs. Vivien's laborious worldliness, 
 Scamperly leering like a little Satyr, Malagrida's 
 smooth manners and black heart and rode away 
 at last, in a serious, regretful mood, as if quitting 
 Paradise and bound for Pandemonium. 
 
 He was received at Clyffe with a volley ot 
 interrogations. Florence upbraided him with his 
 faithlessness. * Of course,' some one suggested, 
 ' he was too late for the morning train.' ' Or,'
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 215 
 
 said another, 'is there the usual break-down at 
 the Sandyford Junction ? ' 
 
 Erie said, negligently, 'No' that he had been 
 kept 
 
 f I dare say,' put in Florence, turning with a 
 laugh to Nelly; 'he called at Underwood to pay 
 his respects to you, and found you fled.' 
 
 ' Excellent excuse,' cried Erie ; ' I wish I had 
 thought of it.' 
 
 ' No ? ' said Nelly. e Were you there, Mr. Erie ? ' 
 
 'You hear what Miss Vivien says,' answered 
 the other. f She is never wrong, you know.' 
 
 There was not the least suggestion of truthful- 
 ness in his manner, and no one thought of it 
 again till the evening. The weather was cold, 
 and the long corridor unwarmed. Florence 
 wanted to go and see if some carpentering in the 
 theatre was being properly done. 
 
 ' Pray, wrap yourselves up,' Mrs. Vivien said, 
 with a shudder ; ' the corridor is full of draughts.' 
 
 'We shall not care,' said Nelly, much too 
 excited to think about cold or heat. 
 
 e Let me,' said Malagrida to Nelly, ' wrap you 
 up in this cloak. One always catches cold when 
 one is tired, and you have been so hard at work.' 
 
 'No,' said Nelly, with a pretty petulance,
 
 216 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 1 take it to Miss Dangerfield : she has been of the 
 greatest use to us all day.' 
 
 ' We must take care of the Beautiful,' said the 
 Count, gallantly, * and the Useful will take care 
 of itself. The remark is Grothe's, but I am quite 
 of the same opinion.' 
 
 Erie went and brought her a Scotch plaid. 
 
 ' Now,' he said, ' I am going to insist on your 
 wearing this. You forget that you are the 
 heroine of to-morrow night, and meanwhile ex- 
 tremely valuable. Besides, do you know, I was es- 
 pecially charged this morning to take care of you.' 
 
 4 Were you ? ' said Nelly, surprised. ' Who 
 charged you ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Florence, turning from where she 
 stood in front, and fixing her eyes on Charles, 
 to see that the answer made a due impression. 
 
 ' Miss St. Aubyn,' said Erie. ' You will submit 
 to me now, I hope.' 
 
 * Then you were at Underwood ? ' 
 
 * Of course,' said Erie, with a laugh. ' I have 
 been telling you so all day.' 
 
 Florence watched the paleness that crept over 
 Charles's cheek, and felt triumphantly that defeat 
 was not even now absolutely impossible. 
 
 Mr. Evelyn and Margaret did not arrive till
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 217 
 
 late next day. The house was crowded with guests, 
 and from top to bottom was in a whirl of ex- 
 citement. Florence seemed the animating spirit 
 of the whole, but overwrought, confident, and 
 unfeminine more than ever, Margaret resolved 
 to herself, a distasteful companion. The con- 
 versation seemed harsh, noisy, and out of tune 
 with the quiet courtesy to which her grand- 
 father's house accustomed her. Mr. Slap was 
 assigned to her at dinner, and found her, she was 
 conscious, extremely unentertaining. She tried 
 in vain to feel interested in the London gossip, 
 beyond which it compromised his dignity to stir. 
 It was a relief when the moment for departure 
 arrived. Later on in the evening some of the 
 gentlemen established themselves at whist, and 
 Florence became the centre of a party of listeners 
 gathered about the pianoforte. 
 
 ' You know,' she said to one of the new comers, 
 1 we are not to be exclusively classical to-morrow. 
 Having done justice to Shakspeare in the early 
 part of the entertainment, we devote the rest of 
 the evening to something original. Everybody 
 admits that in " Old Lovers and New " Mr. Slap 
 has quite outdone himself. I have a nice part, 
 middle-aged, respectable, but sentimental; Count
 
 218 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Malagrida is to look as nearly virtuous as he con- 
 veniently can ; and we are to be a steady-going old 
 couple, holding our own, in the way of romance, 
 against the young people. It was so kind of you 
 not to object to being respectable, Count Mala- 
 grida.' 
 
 ' If you consent to be middle-aged,' said the 
 Count, c why should I ? For such old people, I 
 must say Mr. Slap has given us a great deal of 
 flirtation.' 
 
 6 Yes,' said Florence ; ' I am to bring him 
 flowers on his birthday, and we are both to 
 behave as absurdly as if we were little cooing 
 turtle-doves of eighteen and twenty-two, instead 
 of' 
 
 4 Spare us the contrast,' said the Count, depre- 
 catingly. ' My song about the flowers is, I assure 
 you, quite pathetic.' 
 
 ' Let us rehearse it at once,' said Florence, 
 sitting down at the piano ; and so the Count, 
 who had a beautiful, tremulous, feeling voice, 
 began to sing : 
 
 AIH Cinquante Ans. 
 
 A bouquet for my birthday ? No 
 
 Birthdays, alas ! by each I'm told 
 How years steal on how fast I grow 
 
 Much more than half a century old.
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 219 
 
 What wrinkles come, what whitening hairs ! 
 
 What aches ! how vainly does one strive 
 To banish by one's youthful airs 
 
 The thought that one is fifty-five ! 
 
 Our pleasures fail our bones grow brittle : 
 
 Each passing season adds a fetter 
 But hark, a knock! 'Tis Doctor Little 
 
 To see if my lumbago's better. 
 The doctor ! once I should have said 
 
 There's Lilian, maddest girl alive, 
 With some sweet nonsense in her head 
 
 But now, you see, I'm fifty-five. 
 
 A knock a guest I can't deny 
 
 I'm with you, sir, in half a minute ; 
 Light, Air, and pleasant World, good-bye ! 
 
 Good-bye, the joys I've tasted in it ! 
 'Tis Death, who standing at the gate, 
 
 Provoked to find me still survive, 
 Declares that he'll no longer wait 
 
 For an old boy of fifty-five ! 
 
 But no dear, constant friend 'tis you ; 
 
 Still mine, as when we roamed together, 
 And vowed, yet children, to be true 
 
 In altered times and stormy weather. 
 Still travel with me to the last, 
 
 Still smile though Fortune's worst arrive, 
 And, for the sake of all the past, 
 
 Still love me though I'm fifty-five. 
 
 The Count's soft tenor died pathetically away, 
 and a buzz of admiration broke out as the closing 
 notes expired in a shake. 
 
 * Excellent ! ' said Florence, triumphantly.
 
 220 LATE LATJBELS. 
 
 * Count Malagrida, you are a treasure ; and 
 though " you're fifty-five," are worth all the 
 young men put together, I assure you.' 
 
 ' You are very encouraging,' said the Count, 
 gratefully : * not that I suppose any of one's 
 friends will really stick by one as long as that ; 
 but a life is such an atrocious piece of business, 
 that one must needs idealise it a little.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Erie, who had by no means re- 
 covered his good spirits, and was quite prepared 
 to grumble at anything ; * why does one endure it 
 at all?' 
 
 ' Why ? ' cried Malagrida, ' cowardice, idleness, 
 and superstition the three keys to all terrestrial 
 enigmas.' 
 
 'No,' said Slap: 'a sense of justice. Suicide 
 is a mean advantage upon one's neighbours, just 
 . like slipping away from a dull party on a false 
 excuse. It is only by everybody staying and 
 making the best of it that one gets through 
 it at all' 
 
 ' Who was it,' asked Florence, ' that compared 
 life to a house on fire with a sentinel posted at 
 the door ? One would escape if one dared, but 
 one cannot face the sentinel, and dares not jump 
 out of tke window.'
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 221 
 
 e And yet,' said Erie, ' escape is an easy affair 
 after all. There was some strong-minded young 
 lady, you may remember, who said she was at a 
 loss to conceive why moralists laid so much stress 
 on teaching people how to die, for that all her 
 friends seem to succeed admirably well the first 
 time they tried.' 
 
 'What is that about a house on fire?' asked 
 Anstruther of Florence. ' Why, Miss Vivien, was 
 I not reading to you only yesterday that life is a 
 progress the march of a great general here a 
 battle, there a disaster, but still on.' 
 
 'A professional simile,' cried Malagrida, 'hot 
 from the Horse Gruards. Progress, indeed ! call 
 it a march home from Moscow one long 
 disaster.' 
 
 ' Progress ! ' said Slap, with the greatest disdain ; 
 ' and Fate, I suppose like an unpitying police- . 
 man, continually telling the human species to 
 move on ' 
 
 * And play its barrel-organ in the next street,' 
 suggested Florence, laughing. ' Well, when one 
 thinks of it, what a big place the world is ! ' 
 
 6 Yes,' said Erie ; ' and if we are to be pro- 
 found, what a number of people in it ever so 
 many millions, you know, dying and being born
 
 222 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 every minute ! Each generation but a ripple on 
 the ocean.' 
 
 ' Nonsense,' cried Florence. * I never believe 
 anything that disturbs my complacency with 
 my species and myself. Man is the centre of 
 the universe.' 
 
 * And Miss Vivien the centre of humanity,' said 
 Malagrida. 
 
 ' What do you think of us ? ' Erie asked, 
 dropping out of the conversation, and speaking 
 for Margaret's ear alone. ' It is a cheerful philo- 
 sophy, is it not ? ' 
 
 * It is an ice-palace,' said Margaret ' glittering, 
 but cold to live in.' 
 
 ( And in reality only mud and water,' answered 
 her companion. ' Discontent raised to the dig- 
 nity of a science; but that way of talking is 
 infectious.' 
 
 'Pray do not infect me,' cried Margaret. *I 
 prefer to think life interesting.' 
 
 ' In fact,' said Erie, * you believe in " the best 
 of all possible worlds." ' 
 
 ' I believe,' answered the other, ' in its being a 
 better world than one fancies when one is vexed 
 or tired.' 
 
 Charles, with furtive glance and lowering brow,
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 223 
 
 watched the dialogue without catching its import, 
 and threw the reins on the neck of a suspicious 
 mood. Erie was summoned to the whist-table, 
 and Florence, interested in the conversation, and 
 in far too high spirits for weariness, kept the 
 group of talkers hi full activity. To Margaret it 
 seemed as though the party would never break 
 up. Minute by minute she began to shrink more 
 from her companions. The utter uncongeniality 
 of the ruling spirits of the house affected her with a 
 strange and miserable sense of isolation. The words 
 fell from their lips hard, merciless, bright, and cold: 
 and they struck a chill to her heart. Even her 
 kinsfolk seemed under the spell, and half alien- 
 ated. Nelly sat wrapped in a childish wonderment. 
 Charles caught the fashionable tone of the moment, 
 and contributed his icicle to the general glitter. 
 He was no longer the simple, frank, tender friend 
 with whom she had been so confidential but a 
 week before. Was it that the fascination was 
 strong, she asked herself, or was his nature so 
 strangely unresisting that a few days' fresh com- 
 panionship should be able thus to work a change ? 
 Was this the character to which, more than to 
 any other in the world, she would fain have 
 looked for strength, guidance, and reliability?
 
 224 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Was this the man whom Florence knew she 
 loved ? 
 
 With doubts like these gathering over her mind, 
 the banter of some, the gossip of others, the cyni- 
 cism of all became almost unendurable. Her 
 very brain seemed racked with weariness. The 
 longing for escape into solitude grew strong upon 
 her. Self-restraint became increasingly difficult : 
 to join naturally in the conversation less and less 
 possible. Still it went on, and at last she could 
 bear it no longer. One or two of the party had 
 already departed, and watching a favourable 
 moment when the general attention was fixed on 
 Malagrida, she whispered to Florence that she 
 should slip away. 
 
 ' Pray do not,' said the other : * it will be the 
 signal for a general desertion.' 
 
 Margaret pleaded a headache, and passed from 
 the room unobserved. Florence, in another in- 
 stant, was once more deep in the controversy. 
 
 Delighted to have escaped, with a joyful sense 
 of relief thrilling through her, Margaret hurried 
 across the hall, and was turning already toward 
 the staircase, when the flood of clear, still light 
 that streamed through the glass doors, and lit up 
 half the wall, caused her to linger for an instant
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 225 
 
 to admire the silent splendour of the glistening 
 scene outside. The moon was at the full, and the 
 sky but for here and there a block of slowly- 
 travelling cloud intensely bright. Wind there 
 was none, and the almost motionless air had just 
 a tinge of frostiness that whitened all the land- 
 scape, and intensified the lustre overhead. Down 
 in the valley, and like a little lake, a film of 
 vapour marked the river's course. Far across, in 
 some remote farm-house, a sleepless dog was 
 baying at the moon. Each sound fell sharp and 
 distinct upon the ear. Margaret stood entranced 
 with pleasure. It seemed to her that she had 
 never known the full loveliness of night till now. 
 What more efficacious remedy for such perturbed 
 spirits as hers than Nature here proffered to her 
 thirsty lips? Strength, confidence, and equa- 
 nimity once again took possession of her mind. 
 As she stood and gazed, the drawing-room door 
 opened, and a gush of noisy conversation fell 
 rudely upon her ear. Florence's laugh, high, 
 scornful, pitiless ; Mr. Slap exploding into a noisy 
 joke; Major Vivien's half-jovial tones each she 
 fancied distinguishable all equally unattractive. 
 Compared with these how perfectly exquisite the 
 peace, the silence, the tranquillity of the scene 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 outside. But next came approaching steps and 
 merry wishings of good-night in the doorway. 
 
 'Pray,' some one was saying, 'are you one of 
 the victims to-morrow ? ' 
 
 * Do you mean as listener or a performer ? ' 
 Florence asked from inside the room. 
 
 4 Quevedo,' said Slap, ' said that the punish- 
 ment of fiddlers in hell was to sit and listen while 
 the other fiddlers played. I confess if one must 
 make a choice, I would rather fiddle than hear.' 
 
 Margaret knew that the speakers were ap- 
 proaching her, and in an other instant escape 
 would be impossible. She felt as if she dare not 
 confront them. Already the staircase was cut off, 
 for she must cross their path to gain it. Flight 
 was, however, still within her reach. She 
 snatched a shawl from the table, tried the handle 
 of the door, found that it was still unfastened, and 
 in another instant was in the open air, beyond the 
 pillars of the porch, and in safety. 
 
 The night was exhilarating, the consciousness 
 of having eluded the enemy stirred the spirit of 
 adventure, and Margaret's spirit rose within her. 
 She drew a long draught of the clear, frosty air, 
 and it seemed like inspiring nectar. The terrace, 
 completely sheltered, and safe from all invasion,
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 227 
 
 seemed tempting for a moonlight walk. Several 
 guests had yet to go, whose carriages would not be 
 ordered till the whist was over. She ran no risk 
 of being shut out. The delicious chill brought 
 her hot brow an almost instant relief. Return 
 would be safer ten minutes hence than now. 
 Margaret resolved to go. She wandered on, and 
 soon reached the terrace end. A broad flight of 
 steps led downward to the gardens, wrapped in a 
 mysterious haze. Beyond stretched the firwooda 
 pitch black, except where silvered by the rime. 
 A towering mass of ivied wall threw a deep sha- 
 dow upon her path. A cloud cjept slowly across 
 the moon, and blotted out half the landscape's 
 glory. The river poured on, and raged about the 
 lasher and beneath the garden bridge with a sullen 
 moan. Margaret felt a melancholy gather at her 
 soul : her courage died down as an inward voice 
 the sudden birth, perhaps, of overwrought frame 
 or troubled nerves whispered of impending catas- 
 trophe, and filled her with a causeless awe. She 
 turned to go, but was conscious, as she turned, 
 that she was no longer alone. Some one was ap- 
 proaching from the house. A dark form and the 
 tiny spark of a cigai were alone discernible in the 
 deceptive glimmer. The new comer, whoever it 
 
 Q2
 
 228 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 was, unconscious of Margaret's neighbourhood, 
 strode carelessly half-way down the walk, turned 
 abruptly off at a side gate, and was lost to view. 
 Margaret, in a flutter of spirits that seemed to her 
 strangely childish, and sad at heart she knew not 
 why regained the house. 
 
 Meanwhile, Florence, still loath to depart, stood 
 behind her father and watched the play. 
 
 'But where is Mr. Erie ?' she cried. *I thought 
 you carried him off to play.' 
 
 * So we did,' said Scamperly, but he was too 
 sleepy for anything, and I believe pretty nearly 
 ruined Sir Agricgla ; at his last revoke we sent 
 him away to enjoy himself philosophically with a 
 pipe in the garden.' 
 
 ' You have all a good right to be tired,' cried 
 the Major. ' If Erie had known his trade as 
 manager he would have sent you all upstairs two 
 hours before this.' 
 
 Thereupon the ladies departed: and Nelly, 
 escorted by Florence to her bedroom, was aston- 
 ished to find that her sister had not yet appeared. 
 While they were still wondering, Margaret hurried 
 in breathless from the keen air out of doors. 
 
 * I have been upon the terrace,' she said ; 'look, 
 Nelly, what a lovely night it is.'
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 229 
 
 Nelly and Florence both looked, and they were 
 yet standing at the window, when they heard a 
 garden-gate slam, a footstep on the crisp gravel, 
 that came nearer and nearer out of the gloom. 
 At last a form emerged into the light. Florence 
 laid her finger on her lips, and whispered- ' Mr. 
 Erie ! ' 
 
 And so it was. 
 
 The next morning Erie and Evelyn were stand- 
 ing before the breakfast-room fire. 
 
 * I hope,' Florence said, as she came in, c that 
 you enjoyed your moonlight walk last night.' 
 
 ' Beyond everything,' said Erie, calmly. 4 The 
 night was perfect.' 
 
 * But,' said Florence, * you must have wanted a 
 companion.' 
 
 f I had one,' said the other ; * the best in the 
 world a cigar.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Florence, mysteriously, ' a cigar ! ' 
 And afterwards Charles asked her what she meant; 
 nor had he to press long for an explanation. 
 
 ' Is not that very romantic ? ' she asked, as her 
 story came to its close. 
 
 ' Very romantic indeed,' replied Charles. And 
 the tone of his laugh sad, angry, revengeful 
 assured her that at last her work was done. The
 
 230 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 victory so long watched and struggled for was 
 hers. 
 
 Erie's inopportune departure had inflicted no 
 real injury upon the play. Actors and actresses 
 alike were perfect with their parts. Everything 
 had been beautifully arranged. Lord Scamperly, 
 as Dogberry, discovered a vein of low comic talent 
 which took his best friends by surprise. Slap 
 made a most sententious Verges, and Anstruther's 
 disguise as the Friar was so complete, that it was 
 not till he took his wig and beard off that Nelly 
 was convinced of his identity. The library was 
 turned into a green-room ; and a party of fiddlers, 
 stowed away in an alcove, whiled away the half- 
 hour during which a crowded audience was duly 
 marshalled into place. At last every seat was 
 full ; a knock was heard from behind the scenes, 
 the band stopped in mid career, the curtain rose, 
 and Beatrice glowing, beautiful, and untamed, 
 her hair swept proudly back, and her tall neck 
 rising majestically out of a monster ruff, her 
 mother's diamonds glittering in dazzling profusion 
 about her, and rouge and powder adding lustre to 
 the whole rustled in a fine brocade across the 
 stage. 
 
 There was a murmur of admiration, a hush of
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 231 
 
 suspense, and even the severest critics admitted 
 that her appearance, though unclassical, was 
 effective. Already she had had a little triumph 
 among her fellow-performers. * I stoop to conquer,' 
 she had said, giving a tip of her finger to Charles, 
 whose looks assured her that her mirror had told 
 her nothing but the truth. 
 
 'Not to conquer wie, thank goodness,' Erie 
 thought to himself, as turning away he looked 
 through the curtain's peep-hole and watched Mar- 
 garet and the Squire taking their place among the 
 spectators. Meantime Florence, conscious of love- 
 liness, and assured of her own triumph, was really 
 good-natured about her companions' success, and 
 cheered Nelly, already faltering and apprehensive, 
 with kind looks and speeches. 
 
 4 Frightened ? ' she said. ( You dear little pet, 
 there will be plenty of Claudios, I can tell you, 
 before the evening is over ; it makes me cry to see 
 you act ; think of me and be brave.' 
 
 The first dialogue convinced everybody that two 
 performers at least had chosen their parts saga- 
 ciously. 
 
 ' What, my dear Lady Disdain,' cried Benedick, 
 * are you still living ? ' 
 
 ' Is it possible,' Beatrice answers, ' that Disdain
 
 232 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 should die while she hath such meet food to feed 
 on as Signer Benedick ? Courtesy itself must 
 convert into disdain if you come into her pre- 
 sence.' 
 
 Florence tossed her head, gave her fan the 
 most contemptuous flutter, and the audience 
 burst out laughing at her companion's discom- 
 fiture. Erie, however, who had arrayed himself 
 with foppish splendour in satin and velvet, and 
 wore his sword with perfect grace, was not in the 
 least disposed to be abashed. 
 
 ' Then/ he answered gaily, ' is Courtesy a turn- 
 coat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, 
 only you excepted, and I would I could find it in 
 my head I have not a hard heart, for truly I love 
 none.' 
 
 * A dear happiness to women,' rejoined the lady; 
 * they would else have been troubled with a perni- 
 cious suitor. I thank Grod and my cold blood I 
 am of your humour for that. I had rather hear 
 my dog bark than hear a man swear he loves 
 me.' 
 
 ' God keep your ladyship in that mind ! ' said 
 Erie, ' so some gentleman or other shall scape a 
 predestinate scratched face.' 
 
 Here came another burst of applause, and pre-
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 233 
 
 sently Margaret started as her cousin appeared 
 and acquitted himself feelingly of Cl audio's amo- 
 rous confession 
 
 my lord, 
 
 When you went onward on this ended action, 
 I looked upon her with a soldier's eye, 
 That liked, but had a rougher task in hand 
 Than to drive liking to the name of love. 
 But now I am returned, and that war thoughts 
 Have left their places vacant, in their rooms 
 Come thronging soft and delicate desires 
 All prompting me how fair young Hero is. 
 
 Fair indeed ! When the third act arrived, and 
 Nelly, in the simplest white and with no orna- 
 ment but the colour that now died her cheeks, 
 now left them ashy white, got tremulously through 
 her pretty lines, the enthusiasm of the audience 
 reached its highest point. 
 
 Sir Agricola grinned across the room at Lady 
 Dangerfield, as, hardly conscious of its appro- 
 priateness, Hero described her friend 
 
 God of love ! I know he doth deserve 
 As much as may be yielded to a man ; 
 But nature never framed a woman's heart 
 Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice. 
 Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, 
 Misprizing what they look on, and her wit 
 Values itself so highly, that to her 
 All matters else seem weak. She cannot love, 
 Nor take no shape nor project of affection, 
 She is so self-endeared.
 
 234 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 4 La plus belle des parures,' says the French 
 proverb, ' c'est 1'espoir d'etre aimee.' Was it this 
 that made Nelly's eye sparkle and her cheek glow 
 with a prettier flush than usual, and that tinged 
 her manner with the most becoming excitement ? 
 Malagrida, at any rate, let a burst of admiration 
 break from his lips, and being professedly a 
 patron of youth, beauty, and innocence, declared 
 himself completely overcome. 
 
 Pocket-handkerchiefs were in sudden request, 
 and the Squire felt his breath coming short and 
 hard, when the marriage scene brought affairs to a 
 crisis, and Nelly, with her hair dishevelled, and 
 her bridal wreath torn off, lay fair, innocent and 
 lifeless across the stage. It was now that Ans- 
 truther, in a brown frieze coat, sandals, and a 
 pilgrim's crook, at once relieved his feelings as a 
 man, and established his reputation as an actor. 
 6 1 have marked,' he cried 
 
 A thousand blushing apparitions start 
 Into her face : a thousand innocent shames 
 In angel whiteness bear away those blushes ; 
 And in her eye there hath appear'd a fire 
 To burn the error that these princes hold 
 Against her maiden truth. 
 
 ' And all,' whispered Mrs. Vivien, * because the
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 235 
 
 poor child's maid carried on a flirtation from her 
 window.' 
 
 * The moral of it,' said Sir Agricola, * should be 
 " No followers allowed," a doctrine I insist upon 
 with all my people.' 
 
 'At any rate,' suggested his neighbour, 'not 
 above the area railings.' And then the curtain 
 fell. 
 
 The scenes were being altered for the after- 
 piece. The actors had gone away to relapse into 
 conventional attire ; and Nelly, first down of any 
 one, found herself for a minute in the library 
 alone. She was yet thinking over her part, when 
 Charles came in with a courageous, half-em- 
 barrassed air, took her hand with a respectful 
 tenderness, yet as its rightful owner, whispered 
 something into her ear which made her eye 
 glisten and an exclamation of surprise start to her 
 lips and was prepared, apparently, to refute all 
 expostulation with the oldest, pleasantest, and 
 least answerable argument which logicians have 
 hitherto introduced to the notice of mankind. 
 
 'I must quote Beatrice's last speech to you,' 
 he said ; ' " Peace, I will stop your mouth, with 
 a " ' 
 
 At this moment the door opened: Florence
 
 236 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 and Malagrida bustled in, engrossed in the final 
 arrangements for the farce. Florence perceived 
 in an instant what was happening, and pretend- 
 ing, with great presence of mind, to have seen 
 nothing, made an excuse to withdraw her com- 
 panion from the door. 
 
 Malagrida looked blankly at her for an explana- 
 tion. ' Dear me,' he cried, * what in the world is 
 the matter ? ' 
 
 * Nothing,' Florence answered; 'only a new 
 scene extemporised in " Much ado about 
 Nothing.'"
 
 237 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 
 
 The door was shut I looked between 
 
 Its iron bars, and saw it lie, 
 
 My garden, mine, beneath the sky, 
 Pied with all flowers bedewed and green. 
 
 From bough to bough the song-birds crossed, 
 From flower to flower the moths and bees, 
 With all its nests and stately trees 
 
 It had been mine and it was lost. 
 
 THERE are people who maintain that the drive 
 home from a party is not the worst thing about it. 
 If the entertainment has been a bad one, there is 
 the agreeable sensation of relief, and of a duty 
 done; if things have gone well, our spirits are 
 pleasantly wrought up ; even timid natures have 
 caught a dash of courage : persons to whom a few 
 hours ago it was an effort to talk have been con- 
 fronted, and are formidable no longer; there is 
 the dull soothing rumble of the wheels, good 
 enough excuse for silence, and so provocative of
 
 238 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 conversation; there is the certainty, so welcome 
 to bodily fatigue, of an interval of rest, darkness, 
 and comfort before a new exertion. Those to 
 whom society is an ordeal look back upon finished 
 tortures; those to whom it is a triumph, upon 
 achieved success: wits chuckle over their jokes, 
 flatterers call to mind their compliments, and 
 young ladies, it may be believed, re-enact their 
 flirtations. Nelly, at any rate, had her thoughts 
 full of hers. 
 
 Charles was still a guest at Clyffe, and her 
 serenity was somewhat disturbed by the reflection 
 that upon her must devolve the momentous task 
 of acquainting Margaret and her grandfather 
 with the great event of the evening. Cowardice 
 naturally suggested that such revelations must be 
 made to a single listener, and that consequently 
 nothing could be done till they were safe at 
 home. Presently, however, the Squire, suddenly 
 lapsing from the briskness of the first two miles, 
 grew suspiciously taciturn, and before long, the 
 sounds which emerged from his corner of the 
 carriage made it abundantly manifest that, as far 
 as he was concerned, the sisters might enjoy a 
 tete-a-tete. 
 
 'Well, little Hero,' Margaret said kindly,
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 239 
 
 'have you had as pleasant an evening as you 
 hoped ? ' 
 
 * Pleasanter, a hundred times ! ' said the other, 
 becoming extremely frightened, and feeling that 
 her only chance was to make her confession 
 forthwith. t Dear Meg, what do you think has 
 happened ? ' 
 
 'Perhaps,' said her sister, with a laugh, 'the 
 beautiful Brigand has made you a proposal.' 
 
 * No,' said Nelly, taking her sister's hand con- 
 fidingly; 'but some one else has. You must 
 guess again. But I cannot wait to tell you ; it 
 was Charles.' 
 
 ' Charles ! ' cried Margaret, snatching away her 
 hand before she knew what she did, and shrink- 
 ing back in the depths of the carriage. 
 
 ' You are surprised,' said the other ; ' well, do 
 you know, so was I ; it startled me so at first. 
 One is always wrong about these things, but I 
 used to fancy that he was in love with you. 
 Florence always told me that it was not so. But 
 tell me, dear, what do you think?' 
 
 ' Florence told you ? ' said her sister, as a flood 
 of suspicion against her old antagonist swept 
 irresistibly across her mind, and added a new 
 element to the horror of disappointment, sur-
 
 240 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 prise, and humiliation that already reigned 
 there. 
 
 ' She told me that we were both in love,' said 
 Nelly, simply, ' almost the first time she saw us.' 
 
 ' But are you in love ? ' asked the other, crush- 
 ing down the cruel impatience of the enquiry into 
 a tone of forced composure. 
 
 For an instant her fate seemed even now in 
 suspense ; even now the doom, though half pro- 
 nounced, might somehow be averted. Nelly 
 hesitated in reply 
 
 ' Am I in love ? ' she said, with a little childish 
 laugh ; ' well, Margaret, I can hardly tell. You 
 know we always liked him, did we not? ' 
 
 * Liked him ! ' cried her sister ; * and you can 
 hardly tell ! why, Nelly, does your heart tell you 
 nothing more than that ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Nelly, thoughtfully, as if feel- 
 ing her own moral pulse, and counting the 
 beats. * I suppose I am in love ; don't you think 
 lam?' 
 
 Margaret held back the vehement 'No,' that 
 was rushing to her lips, and her companion prattled 
 cheerfully on. 
 
 * If I am not I mean to be so very soon,' she 
 said ; * he is much handsomer than Captain
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 241 
 
 Anstruther, at any rate ; and he is very much in 
 love with me, which is the chief point, is it not ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' answered Margaret, tortured almost 
 beyond endurance, and feeling that it needed but 
 a few more such sentences for the pent-up storm 
 of misery to burst in a torrent of tears ; ( if he is 
 thoroughly in love, it will all be well.' 
 
 i He is thoroughly in love,' Kelly said, as if 
 resenting the possible disparagement of her con- 
 quest. ' And you are pleased, dear Meg, I hope, 
 are you not ? ' 
 
 Margaret leant forward and pressed a pair of 
 bloodless lips to her sister's cheek. ' My darling 
 little Nell,' was all that she could trust herself to 
 say ; and even then, before the first violent heart- 
 beating of a sudden shock was over, the scheme 
 of self-sacrifice was framed, the burthen which 
 dignity alike and unselfishness imposed, resolutely 
 taken up, and Nelly's happiness substituted, with 
 a pious heroism, for her own. 
 
 f How cold you are ! ' Nelly said, putting her 
 sister's shawl about her ; and then both by com- 
 mon consent relapsed into silence. 
 
 Fortunately there were six miles yet to drive, 
 and Nelly, having disburthened herself of her 
 secret, happy with her own thoughts and all the 
 
 VOL. i. n
 
 242 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 new world that had suddenly opened upon her, 
 was quite prepared not to be loquacious. Life, 
 always smiling enough, seemed suddenly trans- 
 formed for her into a more than Paradise ; ima- 
 gination crowded her path with half-described 
 enjoyments; and a flood of happiness bore her 
 unresistingly along, she knew and she cared not 
 whither. The evening had been full of excitement, 
 flattery, triumph. The applause of the theatre 
 was still ringing in her ears : the Count's autho- 
 ritative ( bravissima,' Anstruther's complimentary 
 protestations, Florence's encouragements ; at last, 
 Charles's tender words. The party had ended 
 with a dance, and a roomful of admirers had been 
 intriguing for the honour of her hand. A party 
 of Guardsmen tall, terrifying, ambrosial had 
 come across from the Duke of Pondercast's, and 
 petitioned with the most abject entreaty for a 
 valse apiece. Slap for an instant forgot to be 
 sarcastic, and assured her she was a second Peg 
 Woffington. The Major, defiant of impending 
 rheumatism, insisted upon escorting her to her 
 carriage, and wrapped her cloak about her with 
 an air of quite paternal affection. These were 
 but the froth and sugar-plums upon the trifle of 
 existence, and at the bottom was something solid,
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 243 
 
 tangible, and sweeter than all a husband. What 
 could people mean who said that happiness was 
 not for man, and earth seldom the residence of 
 any but a transient bliss ? 
 
 And yet close beside her sat Margaret, with 
 death at her heart, gradually taking in the full 
 tragical force of the news just imparted to her. 
 In the silence and darkness she confronted her 
 misfortune, and hopelessly acknowledged that it 
 was overwhelming. She seemed to herself numbed 
 and paralysed by the blow; courage, resolution, 
 even piety, died down within her. Grief, she 
 began to feel, may be strained till it borders on 
 ferocity. For the first time in her life her love to 
 Nelly wavered, dwindled, flickered, as if for sudden 
 extinction. It was impossible to forgive even the 
 unconscious instrument of such a disaster ; and 
 suggested vindictiveness was it unconscious? 
 Had not some little miserable coquetry, some 
 wretched school-girl ambition, some foolish 
 caprice of sentiment, some lesson too well learnt 
 from her cruel instructress, led her by a pleasant 
 path to the -ruin of her sister's happiness ? She 
 was the disciple, might not she also be the 
 colleague of Florence ; and was not Florence, 
 Margaret bitterly asked herself, a foe ? It was
 
 244 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 for this, then, that she had, ever since she could re- 
 member, given the patient thought, the watchful 
 devotion, the passionate attachment, which from 
 the cradle upwards Nelly had had concentrated 
 upon herself; for this that she pressed for her re- 
 turn, waited for it, oh how eagerly ! taken the new 
 comer to her heart of hearts, believed and made 
 others believe her to be perfection ; and this was 
 the end to see her, in a negligent, half-play- 
 ful mood, scarce certain of her own inclination, 
 content, but not more than content, with her good 
 fortune, come and lay her hand smilingly, as sole 
 proprietress, upon what was for Margaret the one 
 treasure of the world, the single possibility of 
 happiness, the only escape from despair; this, 
 then, Was the end, the crowning result. It was all 
 over ; all the high hopes, the vague longing, the 
 nervous dread of calamity, the uneasy conscious- 
 ness of a neighbouring enemy. It was all over ; 
 and Margaret had lost. 
 
 They got home too soon for all. The Squire 
 woke up with a start in the middle of his nap, as 
 the carriage stopped at the Park gates; Nelly 
 was recalled to earth from an agreeable course 
 of airy castle-building; Margaret, her thoughts 
 still in tter confusion, had to rouse herself for
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 245 
 
 the first painful apprenticeship in the difficult 
 art of concealment for the laborious assumption 
 of a composure which was no longer her own. 
 
 'Why, Margaret,' cried her grandfather, in 
 dismay, as they came into the hall, and the light 
 revealed the paleness of her cheek, ' how tired 
 you look, my child! And there is Nelly, who 
 has been acting and dancing, and doing enough 
 to exhaust you both, and now she looks as fresh 
 as a lark. To bed with you both, and let me hear 
 nothing of either of you, pray, for twelve hours 
 at least. Why, you are as white as a sheet!' 
 
 Margaret, kissing her grandfather, said, Yes, 
 that she was tired, and forthwith disappeared. 
 Nelly lingered behind, followed the Squire into 
 the drawing-room, and with a great deal of un- 
 necessary trepidation, informed him of her cousin's 
 proposal. 
 
 Mr. Evelyn was fairly astonished, and showed 
 an unexpected reluctance to acquiesce in the 
 scheme. 
 
 'Married!' he cried; 'why, my dear child, I 
 was resolving only to-day, to send you back to 
 school for another year at least. You are for 
 ever breaking down in your duets, you know; 
 and only the last time you wrote to me you
 
 246 LATE LAUKELS. 
 
 spelt " your affectionate grandchild " with a 
 single /.' .. 
 
 * And I am your affectionate grandchild,' said 
 Nelly, putting her arms round his neck with a 
 caressing air, whose efficacy in obtaining her 
 petition she had often ere now ascertained. 
 
 ' You are a little goose,' cried the Squire, 
 conscious that a superior tactician was leading 
 him from the real point of attack ; ' and mar- 
 riages between first cousins are the worst things 
 imaginable.' 
 
 Even as he spoke his conscience rebuked him 
 for the insincerity of the objection; there were 
 some first cousins, it suggested, whose alliance 
 would have raised no such scruples in his mind. 
 
 'Not the very worst,' replied Nelly, saga- 
 ciously ; ' for instance, one of the girls from St. 
 Germains ran away with M. Troistemps, our 
 dancing-master, and was never heard of for a 
 fortnight only think ! ' 
 
 Her grandfather had a lurking distrust of all 
 French institutions, and mentally acknowledged 
 that an early marriage was not without its 
 advantages. A Frenchman and a dancing- 
 master ! Good heavens ! what perils to throw 
 wantonly in an innocent young creature's path !
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 247 
 
 * I am sure,' he said, * you have much too 
 high principle for anything of the sort ?' 
 
 'I am very steady indeed,' cried his com- 
 panion, trying to look demure ; * that is why I 
 want to be married.' 
 
 * But,' persisted her grandfather, ' are you sure 
 you know your own minds ? ' 
 
 ' I am sure that I know mine,' said the young 
 lady, by this time convinced of the necessity of 
 a decided tone ' quite sure; I love him with all 
 my heart.' 
 
 * I see no help for it then,' said the Squire, 
 half abstractedly. 
 
 ' Help for it ! ' cried the other indignantly ; 
 'one would think that it was something wicked 
 that we wanted to da.' 
 
 Her grandfather in his heart suspected that 
 on one side at least it was; but he made no 
 reply. 
 
 * Good night, little wife,' he said ; ' and pray, 
 whoever you marry, keep a little affection for 
 your old grandfather.' 
 
 ' To be sure,' cried Nelly, fondly, ' with as 
 many fs in it as you please.' And then she left 
 him to his meditations. 
 
 These were by no means of the pleasantest
 
 248 LATE LATJKELS. 
 
 description. An elderly man hates having his 
 plans upset; a tender-hearted man shrinks from 
 the idea of pain. Both of these annoyances 
 seemed to be coming upon him. For years past 
 he had watched the close friendship between 
 Margaret and her cousin; and, bitterly disap- 
 pointed himself, he reckoned that she could 
 scarcely be less so. For years he had been 
 arranging for his grandchildren, and never 
 once had such a conjuncture as the present 
 suggested itself to his thoughts as a possibility. 
 In a hundred pleasant schemes Charles and 
 Margaret formed the central group, and a new 
 and unexpected disposition of events gave him 
 a shock. 
 
 The more he thought of it, the more disturbed 
 the Squire grew. He rang the bell for some cold 
 water, poked and repoked the fire with uncon- 
 scious vehemence, and walked about the draw- 
 ing-room in a fever. He liked Margaret by far 
 the better of the two, and the other plan would 
 have secured having her always about him. 
 Nelly was a decided trouble in her home, a 
 pretty trouble, but still burthensome ; pleasant 
 for a variety, but intolerable in any permanent 
 arrangement. She was excitable, moody, un-
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 249 
 
 certain in spirits. Her sister's equable good 
 temper spread an atmosphere of serenity around 
 her: the Squire felt that half the cheerfulness 
 of life would be wanting in her absence. Then 
 what would become of the village ? Nelly dis- 
 played the most complete inaptitude for poor 
 people's concerns. Even Margaret could not 
 help laughing at her egregiously bad attempts at 
 keeping order in the Sunday-school, when from 
 time to time, with tears in her eyes, and a little 
 troop of rebels behind, she appealed to have her 
 tottering authority enforced, or some incor- 
 rigible offender summarily disposed of. Her 
 sister, on the other hand, reigned, a gentle 
 despot, in half the cottages in Sandyford; and 
 every new joy, or sorrow, or anxiety soon found 
 its way to her for sympathy, counsel, or en- 
 couragement. Her departure would, the Squire 
 admitted, be hardly less than a catastrophe. 
 Then as a companion there was a delicate tact 
 about her that the other wanted ; it might be 
 childishness, but children can be refined, and 
 Nelly was, her grandfather knew, fashioned of a 
 coarser clay; the touch of something spiritual, 
 that raised Margaret above the earth, and in- 
 vested the common details of her life with a
 
 250 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 half-angelic purity and loftiness the magna- 
 nimity, the courage, the cheerfulness that made 
 intercourse with her delightful, were altogether 
 wanting to her sister. Nelly's prettiness was 
 captivating ; her very want of soul had a sort of 
 charm ; her bahy petulance amused. It was 
 pleasant to have her, like a little half-tamed 
 animal, running wild about the house ; but as 
 Charles's wife as the proprietress of Underwood 
 as Mrs. Evelyn's successor as his own neces- 
 sary companion and instead of Margaret ! The 
 Squire drank off two large tumblers of water, 
 paced himself into a fever of excitement, and 
 went to bed at last in a passion. 
 
 'The boy is a fool,' he said to himself, as he 
 lit a candle for his departure <a fool; and I 
 only hope he has not been a knave into the 
 bargain.' 
 
 Had he been knave as well? Two people 
 besides the Squire were at the very moment 
 searching their own hearts for a reply to the 
 same question, and pleading eagerly this way or 
 that before the secret tribunal where conscience 
 arraigns the undetected crime. Had he been 
 base? Charles was fighting his scruples, quali- 
 fying unwelcome recollections, ignoring (as it is so
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 251 
 
 easy to do when one is judge and prisoner at once) 
 the damning facts of the case ; building up his 
 suspicions and complaints into a compact edifice 
 of grievance. Again and again he pronounced 
 himself innocent ; yet the acquittal gave him less 
 satisfaction than he hoped. He proved to him- 
 self conclusively that Margaret was in the wrong 
 that it was she who had been guilty of deser- 
 tion that, if eyes and ears were to be believed, 
 she had a secret understanding with Erie that 
 she had shown herself capable of contrivance, 
 intrigue, perhaps even untruth and having 
 proved it, he knew at once that not one word of 
 it did he really believe. 
 
 The verdict was too monstrously absurd even 
 for the readiest faith, and the consciousness of its 
 absurdity, banish it as he would from his thoughts, 
 forced itself disagreeably upon him ; and yet it 
 was upon this alone that he could take his stand, 
 and make an attempt at self-defence. What 
 other apology his heart smote him as he asked 
 himself what other apology could the most 
 charitable ingenuity devise ? He must he would 
 he did believe it ; and yet with how uneasy and 
 nagging a belief! He was free to choose, and 
 who should blame him for not choosing a woman
 
 252 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 who evidently had a more than liking for 
 another ? He pictured Nelly to himself, smiling, 
 playful, lovely and tried to make her brightness 
 blot out all the rest of the picture. He tried in 
 vain ; another figure stood there, reproachful, 
 suffering, indignant with the lawful scorn and 
 displeasure of a slighted love ; Nelly's merry 
 laugh rang in his ears yet as he listened he 
 seemed to catch the sound of something like a 
 groan. 
 
 Margaret meanwhile stood before the idol 
 where she had worshipped so long in secret ; she 
 was to do so no longer, yet she strove to believe 
 it not a false one. She traced back the thread of 
 their friendship through years of growing in- 
 timacy; at each new stage she found that love 
 had been deeper, stronger, more distinct ; she 
 watched it growing through the gradations of 
 unconscious liking, acknowledged congeniality, 
 the tenderness of confidence, at last an absorbing 
 passion. She recalled each variable ebb of hope 
 or sickening fear the words, looks, tones, upon 
 which for weeks past her very existence had 
 seemed to hang, and which seemed to assure her 
 of her cousin's heart. Could she have been mis- 
 taken ? Was it the rash interpretation of a too
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 253 
 
 confident eagerness ? Was it the credulity of 
 eyes blind to everything but what they long to 
 see? Could Charles's act be interpreted in any 
 sense but one ? Could she have been rash, 
 foolish, infatuated ? What should be the verdict 
 on him? A crowd of recollections treasured 
 only too sacredly, forbade an instant's hesitation 
 nocking to the bar of Conscience, each with its 
 particular chain of reasoning, all coincided in a 
 single mournful cry of Guilty ! Guilty ! 
 
 But the guilt was not his alone ; an instinct, 
 undefined but perfectly clear, pointed to Florence, 
 and said that the work was hers. Margaret was 
 unable to detect the working of the scheme, but 
 she felt no doubt as to the final result. Here 
 and there she caught a clue ; for a few instants 
 the enemy was apparent then all was obscurity 
 again. Charles's variable moods his unexplained 
 change from tenderness to resentment the 
 sudden decisiveness, so foreign to his halting 
 temperament, and the strange rapidity of his last 
 resolution all was mysterious ; but every mystery 
 has a key, and casting about for the key which 
 should unlock her own, Margaret decided un- 
 hesitatingly that Florence's was the hand that 
 held it. There was something of comfort in the
 
 254 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 thought; it was better to think of Charles as 
 a victim than as wholly mean, fickle, or un- 
 generous. 
 
 For the present her course was clear, and 
 Margaret steeled herself for the task. No human 
 eye least of all her cousin's or her sister's 
 must read the secret of her disappointment. If 
 Charles was consciously a wrong-doer, no re- 
 proach, except from his own heart, should ever 
 reach him, nor indeed would be needful. As for 
 Nelly, Margaret had been all her life planning 
 for her, watching her happiness, protecting her 
 from the possibility of trouble ; and the conceal- 
 ment which circumstances now entailed seemed 
 only the natural crowning act of self-sacrifice. 
 She, at any rate so Margaret's calmer and more 
 generous thoughts assured her was free from 
 all blame, and had the right to the fullest possible 
 enjoyment of her position. To secure her this 
 was now to be her sister's care a weary, difficult 
 task, that cowardice would have despaired of, and 
 all but the highest sort of magnanimity declined ; 
 Margaret, however, accepted it without a doubt. 
 
 The announcement, it may be imagined, caused 
 a commotion at Clyffe. Before long Florence 
 came with her mother to offer congratulations.
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 255 
 
 There was a light in her eye of triumph, merri- 
 ment, half-insolent exultation, which Margaret 
 was at no loss to interpret, and which confirmed 
 her suspicions. She shrank before it as from a 
 cruel stab silent, patient, self-controlled, but in 
 an agony. Florence, incapable of profound or 
 tender emotion, and not in the least in love 
 herself, saw nothing but the natural annoyance 
 at a somewhat humiliating reverse ; nor when she 
 thought of Erie, and the indignity of her own 
 desertion, was she at all disposed to be con- 
 siderate. Why, indeed, she asked herself, should 
 Nelly have been disappointed any more than her 
 sister? Yet there was something in Margaret's 
 looks that touched her with remorse in spite of 
 herself. She had plotted for this, and now that 
 the plot had answered she began to think that she 
 had been unscrupulous. Conquerors, it is said, 
 regard their battle-fields with anything but 
 satisfaction - 
 
 Such things, you know, must be 
 After a famous victory. 
 
 And yet the .sight of one's achievement, and the 
 price it cost, has something awkward in it. 
 Florence silenced her repentant mood by de- 
 termining at any rate to be very kind to Nelly.
 
 256 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 ' I expect to be asked to the wedding,' she said 
 caressingly, c as a reward for my good prophecy. 
 You did not know how to fall in love, dear, 
 did you, till I told you how to set about it ? ' 
 
 'Indeed,' Nelly said, tossing her head very 
 becomingly ; ' I knew very well. It is too bad 
 for everybody to think me a baby.' 
 
 Malagrida overheard, and burst out laughing 
 
 ' I do not think you the least like a baby,' he 
 cried. ' In return, please to let me come with Miss 
 Vivien to the ceremony. Marriages, provided they 
 be other people's, are always so interesting.' 
 
 4 Miss St. Aubyn means to let us all come,' 
 cried Anstruther, who had been feeling extremely 
 sentimental ever since Charles's good fortune be- 
 came known, and made no secret of his broken- 
 hearted condition. 
 
 ' All except Mr. Erie,' said Florence, ' unless 
 he is brighter than to-day. Come, Mr. Erie, 
 have you no pretty speeches for the interesting 
 debutante who did your instructions so much 
 credit?' 
 
 Erie was in the chilliest, politest, and most 
 transparently sarcastic mood. 
 
 ' A pretty speech ? ' he cried and Nelly fancied 
 that she could see the sneer playing about his
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 257 
 
 lips 'of course I have. Do you think me a 
 monster of ingratitude, when Miss St. Aubyn has 
 established my reputation as a manager ? Lady 
 Dangerfield has already asked me to contrive a 
 play for her, and, I suppose, to find her two fresh 
 Claudios for the young ladies.' 
 
 ' He is insufferable ! ' exclaimed Florence. 
 * Come, Nelly, into the next room, and leave him 
 to. mock by himself.' 
 
 ' Miss St. Aubyn knows me too well,' Erie 
 said, as they turned to go, * to suspect me of any 
 thing of the kind. Charles, my dear fellow, 
 kneel down and receive my benediction. Youth, 
 innocence, constancy ' 
 
 ' Don't be a fool, Erie,' said Charles, blushing 
 red in spite of himself, for the other's manner 
 was undeniably contemptuous. 
 
 ' Not be a fool ? ' asked Erie, looking straight 
 at him, with the most provoking smile. f And 
 is that really your advice ? Well, I will try to 
 obey you. And when, oh most fortunate of 
 youths, are you to be ? ' 
 
 s Executed ? ' put in Malagrida ' so young a 
 victim, so guileless, so inexperienced upon my 
 soul, it is pitiable ! ' 
 
 Charles thought that every one was being 
 VOL. i. s
 
 258 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 extremely rude. Malagrida's pleasantries were 
 disgusting. Married men, the Count gave him 
 to understand, were the natural enemies of the 
 species, and lawful prey. He talked about Nelly 
 as though she were a choice sweetmeat for which 
 his mouth was watering, which Charles was just 
 about to devour. He laughed at the pretty child- 
 like simplicity of an early match so safe, so 
 proper, so interesting. 
 
 * Morbleu ! ' he cried, patting Charles on the 
 back 
 
 Morbleu ! qui n'aurait de 1' humour, 
 
 En pensant que madame 
 De monsieur fera le bonheur, 
 
 Bien qu'elle soit sa femme ? 
 Jours de paix, et nuits d' amour, 
 Le diable y perdra son tour! 
 
 *I would back the devil's chance,' muttered 
 Anstruther, * if Malagrida had a hand in the 
 matter.' 
 
 Meanwhile Charles resented the familiarity of 
 the Italian's tone, and the implied scoff at what 
 dignity, no less than virtue, bade him regard as 
 above everything sacred. Nor did his intercourse 
 with Margaret tend in any degree to console him 
 for the discomfort which he elsewhere expe- 
 rienced. He hoped to reassure himself with her
 
 KELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 259 
 
 that all was right, and to have his conscience set 
 at ease. He found himself beset with graver 
 misgivings than ever. If she was hurt, she 
 gave no sign of pain ; but she discouraged bis 
 attempts to be confidential. Something in her 
 look and manner cut short his sentiment; af- 
 fectionate speeches, long meditated, carefully 
 introduced, died away on his lips. Was it his 
 guilty fancy, the knowledge that he was despic- 
 able, or some subtle sympathy of insight that 
 showed him a shade of contempt in Margaret's 
 calm, studiously kind manner? Did he imagine 
 it, or was it that she had thoroughly faced her 
 position, confessed her disappointment, acknow- 
 ledged the levity of his character, and with 
 a resolute will already half dethroned him from 
 her heart? Indecision is the offence in the code 
 of sentiment which a woman finds it hardest to 
 understand, and can least of all forgive. 
 
 Erie's were the only eyes for which Margaret's 
 carefully-worn disguise was unavailing ; nor 
 would even his keen-sightedness have sufficed, 
 but that Charles's manner supplied the missing 
 links, and enabled him to conjecture with safety 
 where Margaret's conduct baffled his observation. 
 He used his knowledge with delicacy, tenderness, 
 
 8 2
 
 260 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 respect. The result was that Margaret, she little 
 guessed why, found his society less distasteful 
 than any of his companions. He set himself to 
 please her as he had never yet tried he watched 
 her taste he studied the effect of every word 
 uttered in her presence he interested himself 
 in learning her moods. A practised tact warned 
 him against attempting just now the slightest 
 advance towards intimacy. Margaret would have 
 said that they knew as little as ever of one an- 
 other, and cared still less. Erie, on the contrary, 
 was trying every step of ground, convinced him- 
 self of the refinement, strength, nobility of her 
 character, and began, though without the least 
 definite idea of future measures, to thank the 
 good fortune, caprice, or contrivance, which had 
 saved so many excellent gifts from being wasted 
 in the unworthy keeping of a thankless recipient. 
 He did not, however, choose any longer to 
 appear in her society as a disciple of Malagrida's 
 scepticism : the world, he began to feel, < was not 
 so bitter, but a smile can make it sweet.' Bad 
 men, who have nothing to hope, are natural 
 proclaimers of the guilt and the hopelessness of 
 existence. The sneers which amused Florence 
 seemed almost profanity, judged by the standard
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 261 
 
 to which he knew Margaret would apply them. 
 He mentally pronounced Slap ill bred, for trans- 
 porting the Clyffe atmosphere into a half-saintly 
 presence. He bore with the most stoical in- 
 difference the raillery with which all tried to 
 stir him into a more entertaining mood. Even 
 Scamperly's impertinence was tried in vain. 
 Erie appeared simply a shade wearier than 
 usual. 
 
 * Hang him ! ' his lordship said, still smarting 
 with the merited castigation of some rash at- 
 tempt, ' he has taken to preaching, and is ten 
 times worse company than ever.' 
 
 'My young friend,' cried Malagrida, 'the 
 moral tone of society must be kept up. What, 
 if it comes to that, is the use of such a personage 
 as yourself to mankind ? ' 
 
 ' What does the footman in " Figaro " say ?' cried 
 Slap. ' Vous vous etes donne la peine de naitre. 
 Many thanks to you, I am sure, on behalf of the 
 species ; but as to moral tone, why, Scampy, I 
 don't suppose you know a right thing from a 
 wrong one when you see it do you think he does, 
 Miss Vivien ? ' 
 
 ' I know that everything you do is wrong, and 
 that everything that Miss Vivien does is right.'
 
 262 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 said Scamperly. * So, Mr. Slap, that is " one " 
 for you ; and now perhaps you will leave me and 
 my morals alone.' 
 
 1 Le droit d'etre Scamperly, dont les Scam- 
 perly jouissent,' cried Erie. ' Do not invade his 
 traditional privilege of unsaintliness.' 
 
 'Pray, no more quarrelling,' cried Florence, 
 who thought that the men were getting danger- 
 ously cross. ' Here, fortunately, is the Squire, so 
 we must all behave properly.' 
 
 The weeks passed away ; familiarity had robbed 
 Nelly's situation of its principal terrors, and, as 
 every new phase in turn succeeded, she poured her 
 confidences with increasing outspokenness into her 
 sister's ear. On one of these occasions half the 
 mask from behind which the enemy's batteries 
 had played upon her was suddenly swept away. 
 Nelly had been especially affectionate, and had 
 warmed into a somewhat tenderer train of senti- 
 ment than usual. Presently she grew embar- 
 rassed and nervous, and evidently had something 
 on her mind. 
 
 'You will be always the same to me, dear 
 Meg?' 
 
 * I hope so,' said Margaret, at a loss to know 
 what was coming.
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL 263 
 
 c And you must forgive him, and be as we all 
 were in old times.' 
 
 'Forgive him?' cried Margaret, startled, and 
 turning red. ( For what ? ' 
 
 * That is what he would like to know,' said 
 Nelly, embarrassed. 'You are vexed at some- 
 thing, are you not? For weeks past you have 
 been so cold to him.' 
 
 ' Cold ? ' said Margaret, scarcely knowing what 
 she said. ' It must have been his own thoughts, 
 I am sure.' 
 
 'No, no,' said Nelly, apologising for her be- 
 trothed ; ' other people noticed it. ' What do 
 you think Florence Vivien said to him when she 
 saw you and Mr. Erie together ? these were the 
 words: "On revient toujours." You see what^ 
 she meant.' 
 
 ' What did she mean ? ' cried Margaret, spring- 
 ing up, for a moment off her guard, as the truth 
 flashed upon her. ' Mischief to me they meant, I 
 know but how ? ' 
 
 ' She meant, dear,' said Nelly, innocently, 
 ' that you were so dazzled with Mr. Erie, that 
 you had forgotten old friends, and did not care 
 much about Charley. But, dear Margaret ' 
 
 Nelly stopped short, her courage fairly failing 
 
 '
 
 264 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 at the very point of the enquiry she longed to 
 make. 
 
 ' You do like him, don't you? Florence Vivien 
 says that Mr. Erie has never been in love till 
 now, and that we shall have both weddings to- 
 gether.' 
 
 4 My dear little Nell,' said Margaret, fairly 
 vexed out of her usual passivity of manner, * you, 
 and Charley, and Miss Vivien, and every one 
 else, are altogether dreaming. Mr. Erie is less 
 than nothing to me, and I to him. What can 
 have put such a wild notion into your head?' 
 
 'Florence put it,' replied Nelly, with sim- 
 plicity ; ' and I confess I thought she was right.' 
 
 ' You never made a greater mistake in your 
 life,' said her sister. 
 
 'But then,' said Nelly, anxious to make the 
 best of her cause, 'you should not have told 
 Florence about the rustication. It was hardly 
 kind, to a person who laughs at everything. 
 Charles was sadly vexed.' 
 
 ' I never told her,' said Margaret. 
 
 * No ? ' asked Nelly, surprised. ' Then there 
 must have been some mistake.' 
 
 ' Indeed there must,' said Margaret, firmly * a 
 mistake or '
 
 NELLY IS CONFIDENTIAL. 265 
 
 ' Or what ? ' asked her companion. 
 
 ' We will hope it was a mistake,' said Margaret. 
 
 Then the conversation dropped, and the subject 
 vanished from Nelly's thoughts. Margaret knew 
 that she had come upon another of her enemy's 
 snares.
 
 266 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 
 
 Deja le sort a souffle^ dans les voiles, 
 
 Deja 1'espoir prepare ses agres, 
 Et nous promet, a 1' eclat des etoiles, 
 
 Une mer calme et des vents doux et frais : 
 Fuyez, fuyez, oiseaux d'un noir presage, 
 
 Cette nacelle appartient aux amours : 
 Nous qui voyons commencer le voyage, 
 
 Par nos chansons gayons en le cours. 
 
 MARRIAGE that pretty invention, as the French 
 epigram has it, for interesting us in the future as 
 in the present was not likely to leave a young 
 lady like Nelly with much leisure on her hands. 
 With hopes, pleasures, anxieties, she was perfectly 
 absorbed. The neighbourhood was excited at the 
 prospect of a wedding, and Nelly found herself 
 the centre of a flattering inquisitiveness. People 
 treated her with a newly-found respect which 
 was delicious. There was something: in the
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 267 
 
 servants' demeanour which assured her of in- 
 creased importance. A great many of her ac- 
 quaintance would, she knew, have been delighted 
 to occupy her place. The Miss Dangerfields 
 wished her joy with an emphasis ostentatiously 
 unselfish; but they would, either of them, she 
 knew, have taken Charles if they had the chance, 
 and been thankful. Their mamma muttered some 
 gloomy criticisms on the inexpediency of cousins 
 marrying, that were, in reality, only the mea- 
 sure of her vindictiveness at so provoking a 
 disappointment. Everybody conspired to do 
 homage to the coming queen ; and Nelly, though 
 she did her best to be modest, struggled in vain 
 against a natural elation. The prospects of 
 orders to give, servants and tradesmen to rule, 
 parties over which to preside, the splendour and 
 dignity of married life ; bonnets as many and as 
 fine as she pleased ; gloves and lace handkerchiefs 
 beyond the narrow limits of a schoolgirl's allow- 
 ance ; carriages and horses, and footmen, and a 
 house, and finally, a husband of her own 
 always handsome, good natured, and politely 
 tender what prospect could be more enchant- 
 ing? Ten times a day she flung herself into 
 Margaret's arms, and declared, in an ecstasy of
 
 268 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 satisfaction that her happiness was almost too 
 much to bear. 
 
 Margaret, after making all allowance for the 
 impetuosity of a first attachment, decided that 
 her sister had not the least notion what she was 
 about, and would have been far more profitably 
 employed with her lesson books and exercises, 
 which had now been discarded for a more exciting 
 phase of life. Nelly showered kisses upon her in 
 unmeaning profusion ; some of them, Margaret 
 felt, were really meant for Charles ; some for the 
 house, the servants, the bonnets, the gloves; 
 some as a mere outflow for high spirits ; only the 
 tiniest residuum for the person upon whose cheek 
 they were impressed. 
 
 Such felicity was not, however, to flow on 
 unbroken to its close. A dark day was in store 
 for the lovers ; and the Squire, somewhat fatigued 
 by several weeks of sentiment, showed himself 
 ruthlessly decided in refusing its postponement. 
 Charles, it was decided, should go back to Oxford 
 for his degree, and was meanwhile to set dili- 
 gently to work to provide against a repetition of 
 his recent disaster. A tutor was found, the 
 books packed up, the last adieu exchanged ; and 
 Xelly retired to her bedroom, sat at the window,
 
 FOE BETTER FOR WORSE. 269 
 
 wildly waving her pocket handkerchief till the 
 carriage was out of sight, and proceeded, despite 
 the consolation of her maid, to cry herself almost 
 into hysterics. An hour later she was too miser- 
 able to appear in public for lunch ; but she 
 devoured the contents of a well-supplied tray 
 with apparent satisfaction ; and as she sent down 
 for a second help of roast mutton, the Squire was 
 no doubt right in relieving himself of all anxiety 
 as to the physical results of her distress, and in 
 agreeing with Mrs. Crewe's panegyrist, that ' men- 
 tal emotions increase the appetite,' and that 
 'sorrow is beyond all question the best specific 
 for digestion.' 
 
 While the tiny current of domestic interest was 
 thus flowing gently on at Underwood, the great 
 ocean of politics was raging tempestuously at 
 Westminster. During the recess there had been 
 symptoms of a coming storm. Mr. Slap had 
 been sent for by telegraph to town, and it was 
 known that matters were not at all as they should 
 be at the Pumps and Fountains. Public opinion, 
 it was felt, was gathering strongly against the 
 Metropolitan Waterworks. There was a horrible 
 caricature in ' Punch,' in which Slap figured with 
 a champagne bottle under his arm, astride of a
 
 270 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 large fire-engine, and darting unwelcome cascades 
 in all sorts of inappropriate directions. Some 
 marble ducks that he destined for the banks of 
 the Serpentine, were damned by the -general 
 taste almost before they had left the artist's 
 studio. He had hoped to gratify the mob by a 
 fountain in the Strand, and two nymphs with 
 vases were already in preparation. A noble lord 
 called a meeting at Exeter Hall, and denounced 
 the scheme as pagan and indelicate. Some 
 anonymous satirist inveighed against Slap's 
 joviality, idleness, and indifference to everything 
 but good dinners and fine ladies. ' Ah,' wrote the 
 poet, 
 
 ' If to dine all night and joke all day 
 Would mend my pumps, or make my fountains play.' 
 
 At last, one fatal day, the fountains did not 
 play, and everybody felt that Slap was doomed. 
 Trafalgar-square stood silent and melancholy ; 
 the Cupid by Park-lane refused to squirt; the 
 operations of the Benevolent Cup-of-cold-water 
 Association were brought to a sudden stand-still ; 
 the streets were a Sahara of dustiness ; nobody 
 for six hours could wash or drink. London, in a 
 rage of dirt and thirst, sent up a hoarse 
 roar of indignation, and clapped its hands,
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 271 
 
 by this time extremely black, in demand of 
 a victim. The Premier saw that if the ship 
 was to weather the storm, it could only be by 
 throwing somebody overboard, and gave Slap a 
 hint to the effect that his retirement would 
 be graceful and well-timed. 
 
 'If I had served my God' Slap protested 
 ruefully that night at his club ' with half the 
 zeal that I have served the Whigs, I should not 
 be in the confounded plight I am ; discarded, sir, 
 deserted by a pack of cowards ; deserted, by Jove ! 
 with a shameless ingratitude that makes one sick 
 to think of.' 
 
 'Never mind,' cried Scamperly, with a pro- 
 voking air of pity; 'they are a traitorous lot. 
 1 wonder who is to have the Pumps and 
 Fountains ? ' 
 
 ' Piffington,' said somebody, looking up from 
 that evening's ' Globe.' ' His address to his con- 
 stituents is out already.' 
 
 ' Piffington ! ' cried Slap, in a tone of wrath, 
 vengeance, and humiliation, that argued ill for 
 the tranquillity of his successor ' Piffing- 
 ton!' 
 
 ' Yes,' said his informant. ' He has been doing 
 very well at the Dockyards. His reply about
 
 272 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 pickled cucumbers, the last navy supply night, 
 was first-rate.' 
 
 ' Deuced clever fellow,' observed his neighbour. 
 
 ' Clever ! ' cried Slap, by this time in a rage, 
 and bursting into the most contemptuous laugh. 
 * I wish the Ministry joy of him. I wish the 
 House joy, and the Pumps and Fountains; 
 the merest drudge, sir, that ever came out of a 
 clerk's office, or tied up a bundle of rubbish, 
 with red tape. Ministers are waterlogged as it 
 is : with Piffington on board, I'll back them 
 to sink at once, and, by Jove ! I hope they will.' 
 
 ' Coriolanus will join the Volsci, you will see,' 
 a bystander said, as the ex-official walked away. 
 ' Before the Session is over Slap will be in 
 Opposition.' 
 
 The House met, Mr. Piffington came down 
 
 t 
 
 with a new despatch-box, and a heap of beauti- 
 fully-arranged papers, and gave the most un- 
 answerable replies to all objections. Slap, with a 
 truculent air of defiance, and strong in the 
 consciousness of slighted worth, took up his 
 position below the gangway, and endured, with 
 what stoicism he might, the slights of enemies, 
 the apologies of his recent companions, and the 
 sympathies of officious friends. The First Lord
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 273 
 
 looked at him, and shuddered as he looked ; for 
 that sarcastic mouth, eager and fiery eye, and 
 energetic frame, bespoke no contemptible an- 
 tagonist, and an antagonist Slap would, expe- 
 rience warned him, only too certainly become. 
 Meanwhile the fallen statesman 'judicious drank, 
 and greatly daring dined,' haunted ministerial 
 staircases, laughed, listened, and talked, as if all 
 were still peace, and no dark scheme of retalia- 
 tion were revolving in his breast. Ministers 
 thought that they were well out of a scrape ; the 
 public were content ; the Pumps and Fountains 
 worked with admirable regularity. Piffington 
 spoke better night by night, and Slap was con- 
 sidered to have shown an almost mean resigna- 
 tion in submitting so tranquilly to the ignomi- 
 nious position of scapegoat of the party. 
 
 Alas for human short-sightedness ! A month 
 had hardly passed, when Slap began to show 
 symptoms of restlessness ; an awful rumour 
 spread through the ministerial ranks that their 
 abandoned friend had a subject in hand. The 
 Government shook in their shoes when he looked 
 their way. Piffington, in the middle of one of 
 his most flowing periods, began to boggle and 
 hesitate, for he knew that Slap's cold cruel eye 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 was upon him, and thai? sooner or later the doom 
 would fall. In vain the Duchess of Pondercast 
 asked him and Mrs. Slap, with the most flatter- 
 ing regularity, to her repasts ; in vain the 
 Colonial Secretary implored him to accept a 
 Chief Commissionership in the Archipelago ; in 
 vain the evening papers suggested that if Mr. 
 Slap, with all his abilities, did not mind what he 
 was about, he would embroil himself still more 
 completely with his employers, and damn his 
 chance of advancement in infinitum. Threats, 
 dinners, blandishments, were alike ineffectual 
 against the robur et ces triplex of Slap's outraged 
 feelings. At last he rose, and with him the 
 spirits of the Opposition. First came some 
 insignificant enquiries, mere feelers as to the 
 spirit in which his grand assault would be 
 received. 
 
 'Did his right honourable friend know,' he 
 casually asked one night, * why the two nymphs 
 had not been put up in the Strand, and could 
 anybody say where they were ? ' 
 
 Mr. Piffington had not the least idea, but 
 promised to enquire. Next day he had to 
 announce, amid the ironical cheers of the Op- 
 position, that they had been wrapped up in brown
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 275 
 
 paper, and stowed away in the lumber-room at 
 the Pumps and Fountains, and that orders had 
 been given to have them forthwith prepared for 
 public use. 
 
 'What,' enquired some dissatisfied economist, 
 who was always moving heaven and earth to cut 
 the estimates down by half a crown, 'what did 
 " prepared for public use " mean, and was the 
 process an expensive one ? ' And then Piffington, 
 who was a modest man, began to blush worse 
 than ever, and had to explain that, in deference 
 to a generally expressed wish, the classical des- 
 habille of the statues was to be supplemented 
 by some adventitious drapery, and that the 
 nymphs, when they did appear, would be arrayed 
 in togas. 
 
 4 In plaster of Paris togas ! ' Slap exclaimed, 
 and then the House knew that the orator had hit 
 upon a congenial theme, and that they were to be 
 regaled for half an hour at least, at Piffington's 
 expense. Loud and frequent rose the laughs ; 
 bolder and racier grew the triumphant speaker's 
 facetiaB ; darker, and graver, and longer, the face 
 of the agonised Piffington. 
 
 The news that Slap was on his legs spread 
 through the House, and was telegraphed to the 
 
 T 2
 
 276 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 clubs; and the smoking-room was deserted, and 
 the galleries began to fill. The wretched official 
 knew that all London was laughing at his dis- 
 comfiture; not one of his colleagues would stir 
 to his relief; the First Lord, who could have put 
 down Slap if he had chosen, sat in silent amuse- 
 ment, chuckled from time to time at the best hits, 
 and looked cheerfully at his subordinate to see 
 how he liked it. Nobody cared in the least 
 about the nymphs, everybody was glad of a 
 laugh, the Opposition were delighted to see 
 Ministers assailed; and Slap went to bed that 
 night sated with pleasurable revenge, and with 
 the joyful consciousness that he had made Piffing- 
 ton and Piffington's employers look extremely 
 foolish. 
 
 At the next Cabinet Council Slap's dismissal 
 was discussed, and more than one noble lord 
 began to think that they had been mistaken. 
 Before long the full gravity of the mistake made 
 itself apparent. Slap had not been working 
 at statistics, diving into blue-books, making un- 
 explained visits into unknown localities, having 
 appointments with the strangest and most un- 
 attractive people in short, leading the life of a 
 slave for nothing. All this had been the mere
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 277 
 
 loading of his blunderbuss; and just as the 
 season reached its height, he brought it leisurely 
 to the aim, and fired it off with the utmost com- 
 posure in the face of Her Majesty's advisers. 
 The Duke of Pondercast gave a groan of horror 
 when he read one morning that Slap had given 
 notice to move for a select committee upon the 
 Royal Boilers. It was to be a great speech, 
 every one knew, and long, and circumstantial, 
 and brilliant, and telling, and everything else 
 disagreeable that Slap could make it. Every- 
 body who knew anything wrong about the Royal 
 Boilers, came and poured it into Slap's ear, and 
 received a hearty welcome. Everybody who had a 
 grievance (and there were few people who had not 
 a grievance in some way or other connected with 
 the Royal Boilers) knew that the hour of doom 
 had struck, and that the whole system of State- 
 boiling was likely to receive its coup de grace 
 forthwith. Upon no subject was there deeper 
 prejudice or more complete variety of opinion 
 upon no subject was the public more sensitive, 
 or the Government full of more reasonable ap- 
 prehensions. Whigs and Tories bandied it about 
 among themselves, both parties too much afraid 
 either to meddle with it or to leave it alone. A
 
 278 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 succession of peace-loving ministers had spent 
 their lives in ingenious experiments to shirk its 
 settlement from their own shoulders to those of 
 their successors. The Duke of Pondercast was 
 haunted by it in his dreams. ' Apres nous,' he 
 used to exclaim, * the Koyal Boilers ! ' But the 
 evil day came quicker than he thought, and his 
 Grace was doomed to be still alive and flourishing 
 on the night when Slap brought on his motion. 
 There was the greatest interest in the House: 
 the Speaker's gallery was besieged the ladies 
 fluttered anxiously from behind their grille 
 deputation after deputation from various State- 
 boiling Departments arrived in town, and 
 thronged the ministers' door with entreaties, 
 promises, and encouragement. There were other 
 deputations from desperate people, who wanted 
 to do away with State-boiling altogether, and 
 demonstrated with horrible distinctness that the 
 Royal Boilers were a monstrous sham. Then 
 there were meddlesome, suggestive people, 'the 
 tinkerers,' as their enemies called them, who 
 said that the Boilers would do well enough, if 
 they were relined and copper-bottomed ; and 
 obstinate Conservatives, who maintained that 
 the Boilers were a triumph of statesmanship,
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 279 
 
 and were working, and always would work, to 
 perfection. Lastly, there was a nervous class, 
 which thought that interference with the Boilers 
 was only a first step toward the destruction of the 
 empire ; and frightened spinsters, in a paroxysm 
 of trepidation, rallied their adherents with a no 
 less terrifying cry than 'The British tea-kettle in 
 danger ! ' 
 
 Into this troubled sea Slap calmly steered his 
 course, and obliged his treacherous friends to 
 follow. No wonder that the Duke had a sudden 
 attack of gout no wonder that all Slap's friends 
 wrote to expostulate and to implore him even 
 now to withdraw no wonder that two extraor- 
 dinary Cabinet Councils were convened, and that 
 from the First Lord downwards, every servant 
 of the Crown heartily wished Slap back at the 
 Pumps and Fountains, or inside one of the Royal 
 Furnaces, or in any other hot disagreeable 
 place. Nothing could be too bad for a man 
 who refused to leave the State Boilers to them- 
 selves. 
 
 The inferior business of the evening was dis- 
 posed of, and Mr. Slap, with a formidable array 
 of notes in his hand, arose for the fulfilment of 
 his long-talked-of enterprise the Achilles of the
 
 280 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 British Senate, whose bitter wrath friends and 
 foes alike were now to feel. 
 
 'See,' said an Opposition onlooker, as Slap 
 cleared his throat, and swept his eye in triumph 
 across the Ministerial benches 
 
 Glittering he stands before th' assembled host, 
 Pale Troy beholds, and seems already lost. 
 
 The First Lord, at any-rate, settled himself 
 firmly in his seat, pulled his hat over his brow, 
 and resolved, with a smothered anathema at Slap, 
 that it was all up with the State Boilers. 
 
 The orator first laid a tremendous substratum 
 of fact, and every fact told with cruel effect upon 
 the doomed institution. He gave instances of 
 
 Boilers with large holes in them, and Boilers with 
 
 . 
 the wrong sorts of pistons, and Boilers whose 
 
 constant explosions were the terror of the neigh- 
 bourhood, and Boilers that worked the wrong 
 way, and Boilers that would not work at all, and 
 infirm Boilers, and extravagant Boilers, and super- 
 fluo\is Boilers ; and then he asked with the air of 
 a man sure of his position, Did his right honour- 
 able friends, in face of such figures as these, 
 intend to refuse him a committee ? The Govern- 
 ment certainly did intend, and not a man of them 
 looked in the least convinced ; but insubordinate
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 281 
 
 murmurs were heard around, and the applause at 
 each new fact grew louder and more assured. 
 But when Slap, gathering strength as he went, 
 passed on to the comic part of the performance 
 when he dragged a host of laughable abuses to 
 the light, each in all the nakedness of unexpected 
 exposure, and showed that, take them from what 
 point of view you would, the Boilers were simply 
 a mass of absurdities then it was that cheers 
 became no longer perilous, and secret sympathy 
 discarded all restraint : even the First Lord was 
 heard to chuckle; and Mr. Multiple, the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, who owed the department 
 a private grudge for the half million it had added 
 that session to his estimates, threw aside the veil 
 of decent reticence, and burst into an approving 
 laugh. 
 
 Slap had been at the trouble of mastering the 
 biographies of some of the principal Boilers from 
 cradle to grave, and very foolish he contrived to 
 make them look. In the first place, he said, 
 there were several which refused, on the ground 
 he supposed of being State engines, to use the 
 water ordinarily supplied for such purposes, 
 but ejected it with every symptom of con- 
 temptuous disgust. Several thousands a year, he
 
 282 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 pointed out, were spent in providing an accept- 
 able fluid. Kings of Persia used to have their 
 water from the Euphrates ; but, after all, water 
 was water; and caprices like this, though excus- 
 able in an Eastern despot, were unknown in any 
 branch of the mechanical world except the Royal 
 Boilers. Then did the house know what repairing 
 these precious machines cost a year ? It was 
 something beyond belief. Here was an item: 
 eighteen thousand pounds for wash-leather used, 
 Mr. Slap supposed, for polishing. A Royal Boiler 
 must of course be exceptionally bright; and he 
 only wished they would infect Royal Boiler 
 officials ! Fifty thousand pounds for sponges and 
 oil; one hundred tons of copper-headed nails, 
 enough for the coffins of the whole department ; 
 rag, lint, and diachylon plaster for the people 
 whom the engines burst against and killed or 
 was it for the decrepit engines? a couple of 
 thousand : Grease and Mr. Slap delivered this 
 word with all the dignified emphasis of Lord 
 Chatham's celebrated exclamation, * Sugar 1 ' - 
 Grease, sir, seventeen hundred pounds twelve and 
 twopence ! Was ever such a potent of insatia- 
 bility ! oil, wash-leather, nails, rags goodness 
 knows how many other hundred good things
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 283 
 
 beside thrown into the greedy jaws of a single 
 incapable department, and still the Royal Boilers 
 clamouring, like Oliver Twist at his second help 
 of rice-pudding, for more. How was the House 
 to face the country how was any honourable 
 member to confront his supporters (and, observed 
 Slap, pleasantly, that wholesome meeting could 
 not much longer be deferred) how was his right 
 honourable friend the member for Flatborough 
 (Mr. Piffington, in spite of himself, gave a 
 wriggle in his seat) to venture into that en- 
 lightened constituency, and to pretend, while 
 such extravagances as these passed unchallenged, 
 to be struggling for economical retrenchment ? 
 For one, he, Mr. Slap, dare not, could not, and, as 
 a man of honour, would not do it ; and therefore 
 it was, he solemnly assured the House, that 
 oppressed by the consciousness of incompetence, 
 but driven forward by an irresistible sense of 
 public duty therefore it was that he had most 
 reluctlantly how reluctantly he left his right 
 honourable friends to imagine been induced to 
 bring forward his motion for enquiry. 
 
 The House seemed incredulous and impatient, 
 for Slap's serious passages were considered slow, 
 and people who had come to be amused had no
 
 284 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 notion of being preached at. The orator ac- 
 cordingly took a new direction. After all, he 
 said, the great question was, What did they boil ? 
 With all the nails, and wash-leather, and diachy- 
 lon, what was the result ? Infinitesimal, Mr. Slap 
 assured the House a quantity small by degrees 
 and beautifully less session by session, and hurry- 
 ing by rapid gradations to its vanishing point. 
 The Royal Boilers were unpopular. Slap him- 
 self had presented twenty-two petitions against 
 them and why ? Because they were an outrage 
 upon common sense. In one place actually there 
 was nothing done, except that the little boys got 
 their potatoes cooked at the country's expense ; in 
 another the Boiler's chimney had been very 
 properly indicted as a nuisance; in a third was 
 an engine which, not content with the ordinary 
 diet of nails, oil, wash-leather, had torn off a 
 man's arm, scalded a baby, crushed two lads to a 
 jelly, and then, in a fit of remorse or despair, 
 wound up its career by bursting to pieces, and 
 blowing in all the windows within a quarter of a 
 mile of its abode. Did the House wish this homi- 
 cidal Boiler to be retained in the public employ, 
 permitted to infringe the sixth commandment 
 at discretion, and stimulated by official supplies
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 285 
 
 of nails, oil, and wash-leather for fresh exertions 
 in its career of destructiveness ? Then Mr. Slap 
 passed on to the staff, which in the State Boiler 
 Department was a notoriously healthy specimen of 
 the finest jobbing period of our history. If there 
 was an old woman in the three kingdoms, he, 
 or rather she or, to avoid unpleasantness, 
 suppose he said it was sure to be found in the 
 precincts of the Boilers. These worthy old 
 beings seemed mightily outraged at his figures ; 
 but the fault was not Slap's, but the multiplica- 
 tion table's. They reminded him of the gentleman 
 in Pope, no doubt himself a Royal Boiler official, 
 in tearful protestations 
 
 The laws of arithmetic were inflexible, and the 
 Royal Boiler accounts were, Mr. Slap declared, 
 little short of scandalous. And who could wonder? 
 The chief functionaries of the department, who 
 knew what a smell the Boilers made, how little 
 work they did, how likely they were to burst, took 
 good care to come near them as little as possible. 
 The Head Inspectorship, worth 1,500Z., was a sim- 
 ple sinecure; and as the excellent gentleman who 
 held it, had never left his bed, Mr. Slap believed,
 
 286 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 since steam was introduced, it was just as well that 
 it was. Then there were Deputy Inspectors, and 
 assistant secretaries, and several offices of clerks, 
 and boards of examiners, and checks, and counter- 
 checks, and all the apparatus of a busy branch of 
 the executive, and all, Mr. Slap solemnly declared, 
 as far as he could make out, doing precisely nil. 
 He proved that everybody connected with the 
 office was also connected with the Head Inspector. 
 The secretaries were sons, sons-in-law, and cousins ; 
 the porters were his retired footmen; the head 
 clerk was a bankrupt relation a bankrupt rela- 
 tion, Slap repeated solemnly * and though I would 
 not breathe a word against that gentleman's re- 
 spectability, still where national nails, oil, wash- 
 leather, &c., on this enormous scale are concerned, 
 the confidence of the public ought to be encou- 
 raged. The clerk of the Royal Boilers, like the 
 wife of Caesar, ought to be above suspicion.' 
 
 Now the State Boiler Office was extremely well 
 connected. The head clerk's wife gave excellent 
 balls, and this part of Slap's speech was by no means 
 a success. There were coughs and question, e ohs,' 
 and other unequivocal symptoms of displeasure. 
 Directly he sat down the First Lord, who for the 
 last half-hour had seemed asleep, sprang up, and
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 287 
 
 soon convinced the House that he had never been 
 wider awake in his life. He began by rebutting 
 the cruel, the scandalously unjust rumour as to 
 the head clerk's bankruptcy. His honourable 
 friend, he said, looking fiercely at Slap, had been 
 entirely misinformed. The gentleman who had 
 for years past discharged the office of head clerk 
 with a fidelity, zeal, and perseverance which might 
 advantageously be imitated in every branch of the 
 service that gentleman had never been a bank- 
 rupt, had never been in business, was the possessor 
 of a large private income, and on every ground alike 
 entitled to the confidence of his employers. Then 
 the Head Inspectorship, so far from being a sine- 
 cure, required a very special combination of quali- 
 fications, and the present occupier of the post was 
 undeniably the fittest man for it in the kingdom. 
 For a few months he had been confined to the 
 house ; but his labours were unremitting, and his 
 instructions if the honourable member had taken 
 the trouble to read them perfect models of ad- 
 ministrative sagacity. The honourable member, 
 he said, had come to a great question in a spirit of 
 promiscuous mischief-making, like the Irishman 
 who went into Donnybrook fair with his shillelagh, 
 trusting in God that he should hit the right man:
 
 288 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 the honourable member was resolved to hit some 
 one, and apparently did not care much whom ; 
 but he should not, in common prudence, have hit 
 himself. And then the Minister good-naturedly 
 pointed out that the accounts of which Slap com- 
 plained had been transferred to the Eoyal Boiler 
 Office from the Pumps and Fountains, and had in 
 reality been drawn up under what ought to have 
 been his own supervision. Next, as to the work 
 done, there was really an extraordinary misappre- 
 hension. The amount of public boiling was enor- 
 mous. The figures did not appear in the columns 
 on which the honourable mover's calculations were 
 based, because, for convenience-sake, they were 
 entered under another heading ; but that the 
 Boilers worked well that they worked economi- 
 cally that State-boiling in general was a great 
 national blessing that to grant a committee at 
 that period of the session would be only to rekindle 
 a hundred expiring animosities that if the State 
 Boilers went, a great deal more would soon follow 
 in their train that honourable gentlemen oppo- 
 site had better mind what they were about, before 
 they committed themselves to a revolutionary pro- 
 ject all these, and a great many other wholesome 
 political doctrines, the Minister enunciated, and
 
 FOE BETTER FOR WORSE. 289 
 
 the House of Commons received, and Slap felt a 
 horrible consciousness that he was a ruined man. 
 
 Then the leader of the Opposition got up, and 
 implied that, though Slap had made out his case 
 so far as the irregularities of the Government 
 were concerned, and though the Head Inspector, 
 like other recent appointments, was all that his 
 worst enemies could paint him, and though the 
 reforms instituted by his colleagues when in office 
 had been wantonly, negligently, criminally set 
 aside, yet that such was Conservative chivalry 
 such the awe felt on that side of the House for the 
 sacred fabric of the Constitution such his desire 
 to meet his honourable friends opposite in a spirit 
 of frankness, loyalty, and consideration, that he 
 intended to take a neutral course, and that though 
 he could not vote against the motion, he strongly 
 urged Slap to withdraw it. This heroic forbear- 
 ance, however, did not preclude him from being 
 extremely sarcastic at the expense both of his 
 present antagonist and his destined ally. He drew 
 a graphic picture of Slap as the conquered Bull in 
 the ' Georgies,' driven by the victorious Piffington 
 from the hereditary stalls, nursing his anger, and 
 preparing in solitary meditation the vengeance due 
 to his rejected love 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 Victus abit longeque ignotis exulat oris, 
 Malta gemens ignomiuiam, plagasque superbi 
 Victoris, turn quoe amisit inultus amores. 
 
 He congratulated him on the sudden sharp- 
 sightedness of non-official life, the mere first-fruits 
 of that enlarged political vision which would, he 
 assured Slap, be the inevitable result of a trans- 
 ferred allegiance. Then he gave an account of 
 the mingled alarm and amusement produced in 
 his own rural neighbourhood by the recent erec- 
 tion of a State Boiler, and compared it to the 
 Trojan horse being dragged into the city 'scandit 
 fatalis machina muros, Fceta armis, pueri circum 
 innuptseque puellae' all the little ragamuffins of 
 the country in a frenzy of excitement, peering into 
 the mysterious contrivance; all the old women 
 frightened into fits by its whistle ; the parson of 
 the parish protesting against State-boiling upon 
 Sundays; the Squire in horror at an influx of 
 Kadical stokers; the farm-boys seduced from bird- 
 scaring, and labourers' wages going up twopence 
 a week. On the whole, however, the Opposition 
 was unfavourable to the enquiry; and Mr. Slap, 
 consoling himself with a solemn protest that he 
 would bring it on early next session, consented 
 to let his motion drop. In the following week
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 291 
 
 * Punch ' had a big picture with Slap and his 
 confederates as the witches in 'Macbeth,' and a 
 State Boiler in due process of magical fermenta- 
 tion : 
 
 1st Witch. 
 
 Bound about the cauldron go, 
 
 In the nice statistics throw. 
 
 2nd Witch. 
 
 Facts that Slap's inventive brain 
 Conjures from the vasty main ; 
 Figures, ranged with neatest skill ; 
 Puns enough to make you ill. 
 
 3rd Witch. 
 
 Air of candour artificial, 
 Liver of an ex-official ; 
 Tooth of malice, envy's eye, 
 Half a frightened Ministry. 
 
 1st Witch. 
 
 Lips inured to loyal phrase, 
 Fingers itching for a place. 
 
 2nd Witch. 
 
 Innuendoes, gossip, sneers, 
 Lively Opposition cheers. 
 
 3rd Witch. 
 
 Hints of scandal understood 
 Now the charm is firm and good. 
 
 All. 
 
 Double, double, vain the trouble 
 Of the great State Boiler bubble ! 
 
 With a copy of this 'Punch' in his pocket, 
 Mr. Slap, who liked a joke, even at his own 
 u 2
 
 292 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 expense better than none, and was rather flattered 
 than otherwise by the caricature of himself, took 
 his place for Sandyford next day, resolved upon 
 enjoying a well-earned holiday at Clyffe, and ac- 
 cepting the general invitation for which as a 
 sharer in the Christmas theatricals he had come 
 in to be present at the ceremonial of Charles's 
 wedding. He and Malagrida went down together, 
 and were in the middle of a hot political discussion 
 when the train drew up at Sandyford, and they 
 found the Clyffe break awaiting their arrival. 
 Both gentlemen piqued themselves on their taste, 
 and came provided with handsome offerings for 
 the bride. Malagrida especially had sent to Rome 
 for an antique necklace, the quaint massive cost- 
 liness of which would have done credit to a royal 
 collection. Nelly's heart throbbed as she opened 
 the casket ; she fled with the treasure to her bed- 
 room, and Margaret found her, rapt in delight, 
 before a mirror. Half flushed with satisfaction, 
 half blushing to be detected, she started in con- 
 fusion as her sister's voice recalled her to herself. 
 To Margaret it seemed as though the picture of 
 childish loveliness could hardly be surpassed : the 
 eye beaming with satisfaction; the glowing cheek; 
 the pretty gesture of surprise; the natural guile-
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 293 
 
 less vanity ; the playfulness of a half-frightened, 
 gentle, tender creature, compounded of sunshine, 
 and smiles, and laughter exempt from the com- 
 mon burthen of her kind a stranger to serious 
 emotion, or the possibility of a gloomy mood. 
 What wonder that wherever she went people 
 began to pet her ? How natural that Charles in 
 this sunshiny presence should forget a less spirit- 
 stirring sentiment a less light-hearted companion. 
 the scarcely-hinted vows of a soberer passion, 
 and yield himself to the infection of merriment 
 with a joyful recklessness: how natural and, 
 added a sterner voice, to which Margaret, even 
 in her secret thoughts, did not choose to give a 
 hearing how base ! 
 
 Charles meanwhile was in full enjoyment of a 
 smooth and unlaborious courtship. Conscience, 
 which a hundred times had shouted ' Traitor ! ' in 
 his ear, whispered now but in intermittent and 
 enfeebled tones. The idea of desertion, at first 
 terribly oppressive, had been gradually banished 
 from his thoughts, and seemed day by day more 
 entirely incredible. Margaret's demeanour 
 frank, business-like, active suggested no suspi- 
 cion of distress. She was busy about her sister's 
 plans, held cabinet councils with dressmakers and
 
 294 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 confectioners, discussed with her grandfather the 
 list of relations to be invited, the procession to 
 church, and the details of the wedding breakfast ; 
 and went with the utmost contentment to town 
 for long days of shopping, which Nelly's exacting 
 taste and numberless caprices would have made a 
 martyrdom to all but the most forbearing com- 
 panion. Nobody could possibly look less love-lorn 
 or sentimental; and Charles, reassured by her 
 appearance, banished the last lingering misgiving, 
 and threw himself without compunction into the 
 privileged enjoyments of a man who was at once 
 young, rich, prosperous, a welcome lover and an 
 acknowledged heir. He lifted the cup to his lips 
 sweet, sparkling, rose-crowned drank, and 
 drank again, and set it down at last, startled to 
 find himself less pleasure-intoxicated than he had 
 hoped. The society of his future wife cost him 
 no effort, and it yielded him enjoyment, but not 
 so intense, so poignant, so soul-stirring a sensa- 
 tion as lovers are traditionally supposed to feel, 
 and as Charles's boy-dreams had pictured for him- 
 self. Was it then an overdrawn style, a mere 
 poetical exaggeration, the conventional extrava- 
 gance of novelists and poets, that shaped those 
 high-flown phrases of passion stronger than death
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 295 
 
 itself, of devotion for which the common round 
 of life scarcely gave scope enough of souls so 
 firmly linked, so interpenetrated with mutual 
 love, so nicely adjusted in every fibre of their 
 being, that henceforth to divide was to annihilate, 
 and two existences seemed, in more than a meta- 
 phorical sense, to be merged in one ? He read 
 over his old favourite love-songs, and found them 
 insupportably hyperbolical 
 
 A. sea moindres discours suspendre tout son etre, 
 
 Emu d'un doux espoir, 
 Et mourir tout le jour, helas, a se promettre 
 
 Un sourire le soir 
 
 Prettily sentimental, Charles thought to himself, 
 but morbid surely ; well enough from a theatrical 
 Frenchman to his mistress ; but simply foolish in 
 the mouth of a sober English husband. Nelly's 
 smiles were to be had morning, noon, and night, 
 and had not, thank goodness, to be paid for in 
 sighs. As for hanging on her lips in fond ex- 
 pectancy to catch the precious accents as they fell, 
 Charles burst out laughing at the idea. They 
 were dear little lips, cherry bright, and made for 
 kissing ; but they talked the most dreadful rub- 
 bish, pouted whenever their proprietress had not 
 exactly what she wished, and were quite un- 
 deserving of any rapturous enthusiasm. One
 
 296 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 evening the pretty lips were employed in singing ; 
 and an air, at which for several mornings she had 
 been hard at work, for the first time produced. 
 Nelly sang it cheerfully through, bending every 
 faculty, it seemed, to avoid an ever-impending 
 break-down. 
 
 Ask me no more ; thy fate and mine are sealed ; 
 I strove against the stream, and all in vain : 
 Let the great river take me to the main ; 
 No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield 
 Ask me no more. 
 
 t There ! ' Nelly said, jumping up with glee 
 from her accomplished task, ( ask me no more ! 
 And why do you smile, Margaret ? "Was it not 
 all right ? ' 
 
 * All quite right,' her sister said, laughing ; ' but 
 what made you choose such a sentimental song as 
 that ? ' 
 
 * Oh,' Nelly said, gravely, * I like the senti- 
 mental ones, because of the slow time ; the fast 
 accompaniments distract me.' 
 
 Thereupon Charles burst out laughing too, and 
 somehow Nelly felt that her new song had not 
 been as successful as it deserved. And then the 
 young lovers went away into the library for a 
 tete-a-tete, and Charles made Nelly go and fetch 
 a new bonnet, with pink roses, which had arrived
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 297 
 
 that day, which Nelly was very glad to do ; and 
 they discussed the precise tinge of the pink, and 
 the position of the roses, and Charles grew so im- 
 pertinent that Nelly crumpled up the silver paper 
 from the bonnet-box into a large ball, and threw 
 it at him ; and then, peace having been pro- 
 claimed, and solemnised with a kiss, they passed 
 on to furniture, and the rent of a house in 
 Chester Square, and how much a good cook ought 
 to have for wages, and whether they would go to 
 a great many balls their first summer in London, 
 and so came back at last into the drawing-room 
 thoroughly satisfied with existence and themselves 
 Charles with the conviction that an hour's love- 
 making was no bad expedient for whiling away an 
 idle evening; and Nelly, with the pink bonnet 
 still fluttering before her mind's eye, to be haunted 
 by visions of a matrimonial Elysium, in which 
 the deliciousness of a trousseau was the upper- 
 most idea, and her future lord and master held 
 only a subordinate place, or sometimes even, could 
 Nelly but have known it, scarcely found a place 
 at all. 
 
 To Margaret, as the time for parting drew on, 
 the prospect seemed to darken day by day. The 
 crisis of her misfortune was at hand. She had
 
 298 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 thought of it so often, dwelt upon it, prepared 
 herself for the effort, fancied that she had gauged 
 its terrors, and yet it was terrible. How would 
 life look without her old companions? How 
 would the Manor-house seem when the bustle was 
 over, and the lovers gone, and the quiet routine 
 of weeks and months, each just like the last, 
 begun again, and she and her gran4father once 
 more left alone? Blank, cold, wearisome. Her 
 heart died down within her at the sense of tedium 
 which she fancied creeping slowly but irresistibly 
 upon her hour by hour, blotting out an enjoy- 
 ment, dulling a faculty, robbing existence of a 
 charm. Eeason depicted her cousin's character 
 weak, shallow, variable; but sentiment is emi- 
 nently unreasonable. Each day's fresh experience 
 gave her new insight into an unsuspected levity, 
 an infirm will, the selfishness of a feeble nature ; 
 he was just the man, she resolved, from whom any 
 one, who depended on him for stedfastness, would 
 reap certain disappointment ; he would certainly 
 have made her wretched ; he would be certain to 
 behave ill he had behaved ill; and yet she 
 loved him. 
 
 At the thought of separation, the old feelings 
 overrode the new the pleasant old days before
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 299 
 
 love was conscious of itself, or any feeling recog- 
 nised but simple enjoyment and affection. It is 
 easy to analyse our friends, write them down 
 wanting, condemn them in our heart's tribunal, 
 and register their disloyalty ; but when they come 
 to leave us ; when the time for reconciliation is 
 over ; when, quarrelling or loving, we are to see 
 them no mQre does not Eeason give her verdict 
 with a faltering voice, and Remorse banish every 
 thought except that they are our friends, and 
 that, be their faithlessness what it may, it is agony 
 to part ? Margaret found herself struggling with 
 all her might against unhappiness, but her forces 
 were giving way inch by inch, and already waver- 
 ing for disastrous defeat. She could think of her 
 cousin now only as the tender friend, the pleasant 
 companion of other days, the sharer of common 
 recollections, interests, and pleasures ; and already 
 it was half a crime to think of him as anything 
 but as another's husband. Which would be worse, 
 she wondered, the present sharp poignant pang, 
 with the necessity for immediate action, or the 
 dull aching void which must presently succeed 
 the burthen of a whole disappointed lifetime ? 
 
 At length the eventful morning arrived, and 
 Nelly the agonising anxieties of her toilet safely
 
 300 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 undergone in a bewilderment of nervousness, 
 excitement, and delight ; smiles, and blushes, and 
 tears following each other in picturesque alterna- 
 tion, like passing clouds across her face was 
 carried off to church, a pretty victim, white- 
 crowned, glittering, lace-enshrouded from the too 
 curious gaze, and there offered up on the shrine 
 of that matrimonial Moloch to whom year by 
 year so many tender damsels fall a prey. No- 
 thing, Malagrida declared, could be more perfect 
 than her dress, her demeanour, or the pretty tre- 
 mulous accents in which she made the responses 
 which raised her to the dignity of wife. When 
 they got home, he greeted her with a chivalrous 
 respectful tenderness that Nelly thought extremely 
 flattering, but which, had she known it, contrasted 
 strangely enough with the contemptuous terms in 
 which he and Slap had been all the morning de- 
 nouncing woman as a sex, and matrimony as an 
 institution. 
 
 ' Trop ou trop peu,' he said, * should be the 
 motto of the whole affair passion, satiety, 
 hatred ; show me the man who has travelled the 
 road, and has not stopped at one stage or the 
 other.' 
 
 * Why omit the golden mean?' objected Slap,
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 301 
 
 as he thought of the elderly lady who presided 
 over his London establishment ; * the safest rela- 
 tionship is a calm and virtuous indifference ; but 
 you Italians are so incorrigibly passionate.' 
 
 * And you English,' the Count retorted, ' so in- 
 corrigibly virtuous, and love so to talk of it. What 
 think you of Chamfort's alternative, * II faut 
 choisir d'aimer les femmes ou de les connaitre : il 
 n'y a pas de milieu ? ' 
 
 And then the bride approached, and Malagrida 
 prepared his most paternal smile, and was de- 
 lighted when he heard that they might perhaps 
 meet in their travels. 
 
 e You go to Italy? ' he cried ; 'wise choice in^ 
 deed art, scenery, antiquities, all in perfection ; 
 religion thoroughly picturesque, society dull, but 
 enjoyable. But remember, I entreat you, my 
 villa at Sorrento, the prettiest position in Christ- 
 endom. Where, I should like to know, can love- 
 making be achieved, if not in the Bay of Naples ? ' 
 
 An hour later the crowd of guests were gathered 
 round the Manor-house porch, waiting to give the 
 due God-speed! to the life-long journey just 
 about to begin. As the day went on Nelly had 
 become increasingly frightened, and needed all 
 the consolations her friends could offer. It
 
 302 LATE LAURELS. 
 
 occurred to her, almost for the first time, how sad 
 it was to be leaving her home, her grandfather, the 
 sister on whom, ever since she cduld remember, 
 she had relied for sympathy and support. She 
 was vexed, too, at her travelling-dress, which 
 arrived at the very last moment, and was trimmed 
 exactly in the way she most disliked. 
 
 'Did it not,' she asked Margaret, anxiously, 
 * make her look a perfect fright ? How provoking 
 it was that people would be always so unpunctual 1 ' 
 
 ' Come, come, little fright,' Margaret said, laugh- 
 ing, 'you ought to be off in twenty minutes. 
 Charley will think it pretty enough, you may be 
 sure.' 
 
 Thereupon ensued a general hurry and con- 
 fusion which reduced Nelly's already fluttering 
 wits to simple chaos : a sudden fit of distress at 
 departure, anxiety about her boxes, admonitions 
 to her maid, leave-takings of her sister, a grave 
 'benediction from the Squire kisses, and tears, 
 and solemn words that seemed to fall faintly on 
 her ear ; and then all her outward passage thronged 
 with kindly forms, dimly seen through her tears, 
 the familiar faces dear from childhood upwards, 
 pleasant friends and faithful servants, and the old 
 nurse, delighted with her darling's prosperity
 
 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. 303 
 
 all eyes bent upon her with tenderness, interest, 
 and hearty good wishes, and loving hands stretched 
 eagerly to grasp her own ; and then a crowd of 
 hurrahing boys and men a whirr of wheels a 
 crash of church-bells,, and once more the last 
 unheard ' Grood-bye ! ' and then all was over, and 
 she was alone with her husband ; and Charles, as 
 the carriage turned, looked back on his home, and 
 saw Margaret standing at the door, looking after 
 them with wistful, solemn, melancholy eyes, which 
 not all the excitement of the occasion enabled him 
 to forget, and which cast a little shade of dissatis- 
 faction over the first journey of his honeymoon. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON 
 
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