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'MY LOVE!" 
 
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 THE PICCADILLY NOVELS, 
 
 JDoptilai- £?tou'c<> b» tfjc ucSt £UttIjor<3. 
 
 By Mrs. Alex 
 
 Maid. Wife, or Widow ? 
 
 ander. 
 
 Ready -Money Mortiboy. By Walter 
 
 Besant and James Rice. 
 MyLittleGirl. ByW. Besant and J. Rice. 
 
 The Case of Mi - . Lncraft. By Walter 
 
 1 lesant and lames Rice. 
 This Son of Vulcan. By Walter Besant 
 
 and James Rice. 
 With Harp and Crown. By Walter 
 
 Besant and James Rice. 
 The Golden Butterfly. By Walter Besant 
 
 and James Rice. 
 By Ceiia's Arbour. By Walter Besant 
 
 and James Rice. 
 The Monks of Thelema. By Walter 
 
 Besant and James Rice. 
 'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay. By Walter 
 
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 Seamy Side. By W. Besant and J. Rice. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. By Walter 
 
 Besant and James Rice. 
 The Chaplain of the Fleet. By Walter 
 
 Besant and James Rice. 
 A Child Of Nature. By Robert Buchanan. 
 Antonina. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Basil. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Hide and Seek. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Dead Secret. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Queen of Hearts. By Wilkie Collins. 
 My Miscellanies. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Woman in White. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Moonstone. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Man and Wife. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Poor Miss Finch. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Miss or Mrs. ? By Wilkie Collins. 
 The New Magdalen. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Frozen Deep. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Law and the Lady. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Two Destinies. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Haunted Hotel. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Fallen Leaves. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. By Wilkie Collins. 
 The Black Rooe. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Deceivers Ever. By .Mrs. H. L. Cameron. 
 Juliet's Guardian. By Mrs. H. Lovett 
 
 Cameron. 
 Felicia. By M. Betham-Edwards. 
 Archie Lovell. By Mrs. Annie Edwardes. 
 Olympia. By R. E. Francillon. 
 Queen Cophetua. By R. E. Francillon. 
 The Capel Girls. By Edward Garrett. 
 Robin Gray. By Charles Gibbon. 
 For Lack Of Gold. By Charles Gibbon. 
 In Love and War. By Charles Gibbon. 
 What will the WorldSay ? By Charles 
 
 Gibbon. 
 For the King. By Charles Gibbon. 
 In Honour Bound. By Charles Gibbon. 
 Queen of the Meadow. By Charles Gibbon. 
 In Pastures Green. By Charles Gibbon. 
 
 Ellice Quentin. By Julian Hawthorne. 
 Sebastian Strome. By Julian Hawthorne. 
 Thornicroft's Model. By Mrs. Hunt. 
 The Leaden Casket. By Mrs. Hunt. 
 Fated to be Free. By Jean Ingelow. 
 Confidence. By Henry James, jun. 
 Queen of Connaught. By Harriett Jay. 
 The Dark CoUeen. By Harriett Jay." 
 Number Seventeen. By Henry Kingsley. 
 Oakshott Castle. By Henry Kingsley. 
 World Well Lost. By E. Lynn Linton. 
 The Atonement of Ls am Dundas. By I'.. 
 
 Lynn Linton. 
 Patricia Kemball. By E. Lynn Linton 
 Under Which Lord ? By E. L\ nn Linton. 
 With a Silken Thread. By E. L. I 
 Rebel of the Family. By E. Lynn Linton. 
 ' My Love !' By E. Lynn Linton. 
 The Waterdale Neighbours. By Justin 
 
 McCarthy. 
 My Enemy's Daughter. By J. McCarthy. 
 Linley Rochford. By Justin McCarthy. 
 A Fair Saxon. By Justin McCarthy. 
 Dear Lady Disdain. By Justin McCarthy 
 Miss Misanthrope. By Justin McCarthy. 
 Donna Quixote. By Justin McCarthy. 
 Quaker Cousins. By Mrs. Macdonell. 
 Lost Rose. By Katharine S. Macquoid. 
 The Evil Eye. ByKatharine S. Macquciu. 
 Open! Sesame! " By Florence Marryat. 
 Written in Fire. By Florence Marryat. 
 Touch and Go. By Jean Middlemass. 
 A Life's Atonement. By D. C. Murray. 
 Whiteladies. By Mrs. Oliphant. 
 Lost Sir Massing'berd. By James Payn. 
 The Best of Husbands. By James Payn. 
 Fallen Fortunes. By James Payn. 
 Halves. By James Payn. 
 Walter's Word. By James Payn. 
 What He Cost Her. By James Payn. 
 Less Black than We're Painted. By 
 
 James Payn. 
 By Proxy. By James Payn. 
 Under One Roof. By James Payn. 
 High Spirits. By James Payn. 
 A Confidential Agent. By James Payn. 
 Carlyon's Year. By James Payn. 
 From Exile. By James Payn. 
 Her Mother's Darling. By Mrs. J. II. 
 
 Riddell. 
 Bound to the Wheel. By John Saunders. 
 Guy Waterman. By John Saunders. 
 One Against the World. By John 
 
 Saunders. 
 The Lion in the Path. By John Saunders. 
 The Two Dreamers. By John Saunders. 
 The Violin-player. By Bertha Thomas. 
 Proud Maisie. By Bertha Thomas. 
 Cressida. By Bertha Thomas. 
 What She Came Through. By Sarah 
 
 Tytlc 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thomas Way WeLiveNow. By Anthony Trollop-. 
 
 Hardy. American Senator. By Anthony Troll 1. e. 
 
 Garth. By Julian Hawthorne. I Diamond Cut Diamond. ByT. A. Troliope. 
 
 CHATTO AND WIND US, PICCADILLY, IF. 
 
MY LOVE!" 
 
 i;y 
 
 E. LYNN LINTON 
 
 .ACTHOR OF 'TATRICIA KEMBALL," "THE ATONEjrENT OP LEAM DVKDAS, 
 "iTSDEB WB 'THE P.EEEL OF THE FAMILY," ETC. 
 
 A SEW EDIIIi'X 
 
 % a n b o n 
 
 -CHATTO & WIXDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 L882 
 
 ■ translation 
 

 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE MORNING. 
 
 It was a foolish thing to do ; but when was happy youth 
 aught but foolish ? And he was so happy ! so happy. ! He 
 could not find fitting vent for his joy, nor adequate expression 
 by which to inform the world at large how great was his 
 divine delight. Waking up to consciousness in the dawn of 
 that sweet spring morning — full of blessed certainty and still 
 more blessed anticipation — seeing neither rock nor shallow 
 ahead and sure that no storm could come to wreck his well- 
 freighted bark — young as the year, bright as the sky, hopeful 
 us the day, he looked out on the fair English landscape of 
 fruitful farm and sleeping village, of fragrant meadow and 
 leafy wood ; and for want of some one to whom he could say 
 how good and beautiful she was, and how his happiness 
 seemed to fill earth and sky with radiance, he took off his 
 diamond ring — her gift — and scrawled over the pane of the 
 railway carriage : " My Love ! my Love !" 
 
 What a boyish thing to do ! But it relieved his mind 
 somehow, and stood as the testimony of her worth and his 
 passion, like the verses hung by Orlando on the trees, the 
 name carved by Corydon on the bark. " My Love ! my 
 Love !" Ah, what a sweet Love she was ! Never since the 
 world began — never since Eve bent over her sleeping lord to 
 awaken him to life and happiness with a kiss — had there been 
 Buck a perfect woman as this ! How true and faithful she 
 was ! — how loving and how pure ! And how sure his happi- 
 ness in this coming summer when he was to be made her 
 husband as he was now her betrothed ! How he loved her ! — 
 and how she loved him ! 
 
 GOO 
 
2 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 It was not vanity to say this ; it was only trust in his word, 
 confidence in her assurance. 
 
 " My Love ! my Love !" 
 
 What man on all the earth had. such a Love as he, Cyril 
 Ponsonby, in Stella Bransconibe ! — the sweetest name and. 
 the sweetest girl to be found within the four seas. No king 
 on his throne was so proud as this embryo civil servant who 
 had passed his examination creditably and was now waiting 
 for his Indian appointment ; no miser counting his golden 
 gains in his secret chamber was so rich as this only son of a 
 ruined house, this young soldier of fortune whose inherited 
 income was just one hundred and fifty pounds a year ; — with 
 potentialities of a noble sort in his youth, his strength and 
 his brains — but for all tbat, potentialities as yet in the bud if 
 not in the clouds. He whose future was all to make would 
 not have changed places with the most successful man alive ; 
 and the grandest glory of the historic past faded before the 
 glowing splendour of his present. He felt in himself some- 
 thing that was almost beyond the ordinary circumstance of a 
 man — as if neither death nor evil fortune could touch him — 
 as if he had conquered fate, distanced sorrow, and was now 
 standing with the gods on the sublime heights of infinite 
 bliss : — all because he loved sweet Stella Branscombe and she 
 loved him. 
 
 " My Love ! my Love ! God bless her ! and G-od make me 
 worthy of her !" he said to himself, while his frank blue eyes 
 grew dark and tender and his handsome face was touched 
 with something more than even the deep love of a happy boy. 
 
 And with this prayer, which seemed to carry both his love 
 and his joy to heaven there to be strengthened and purified, 
 the train ground slowly up to Highwood Station and Cyril 
 leaped lightly out. It was past five o'clock : — about four 
 hours to wait before a visit to Rose Hill, where the Brans- 
 combes lived, was possible even for an engaged man to make. 
 But to one impatient and in love, it is better to travel all 
 night and wait those four hours on the right side of the line, 
 than to go to bed like an ordinary mortal and come down by 
 the morning mail — better a thousand times to lose a night's 
 rest and undergo unnecessary fatigue than to forego two 
 hours of love and gain six of repose ! 
 
 Long before the house servants of Bose Hill had begun to 
 6tir, Cyril and the gai - dener were having an improving talk 
 as to the prospects of the fruit crop and the general behaviour 
 
TN THE MORNING. 3 
 
 vf the vegetables. Bruce, the big watch-dog, loosed for his 
 
 morning run, was licking the young lover's hands and trying 
 hard to take in his face as well. Jim, the groom, was telling 
 him all about the pony and her foal, the now cob and the 
 iew mare, and how he did not quite like the set of his ears 
 nor the way in which she carried her head ; but when the 
 first clatter of opening shutters began at th I he young 
 
 fellow, half ashamed of his impatience, went off to the summer- 
 house at the end of the lime-tree walk, whence he could see 
 the upperwindows and where he should hear the gong sound 
 for breakfast. And then, sure of his welcome, he would be 
 free to walk in on the family just as they had seated them- 
 selves at the table. Besides its convenience of position, this 
 little summer-house was a sacred place to him; for it was 
 here that he had told Stella he loved her and had asked her 
 to be his wife, and it was here that she had said she loved 
 him and would marry him if papa and mamma approved. 
 
 How long it was before he heard the blessed boom of that 
 old bit of Chinese handicraft ! Surely time never went so 
 slowly as it was 2:oingnow! Leadenfooted, do you say: — 
 i >ai - alyzed and with no more feet than a snail ! — that was what 
 he seemed to Cyril counting the minutes as they dropped 
 heavily into the great sea of eternity and making them all 
 the slower by his own eager heat. 
 
 At last the appointed moment came. Mr. and Mrs. Brans- 
 eombe were in the dining-room ; Stella was running down the 
 -rairs ; the omelette and the kidneys, the tea and the coffee, 
 the toast and the marmalade, were fitly disposed in proper 
 form on the cloth; the solemn butler sounded the gong and 
 told the neighbourhood within earshot that Mr. and Mrs. 
 Liranscombe were served; and then Cyril started up from his 
 seat in the summer-house and walked swiftly up the lim - 
 avenue, timing his entrance just as the first cup of coffee was 
 handed to Mr. Branscombe and the business of the day had 
 nn. 
 
 The young fellow was evidently a favourite in the family 
 and one to whom a special lemrth of rope was allowed. Not 
 only was Stella radiant with glad surprise at his comii 
 long before he was expected — not only was gentle Mrs. Brans- 
 combe as frank and affectionate in her welcome as if I 
 been really the son he already called himself — but Mr. Brans- 
 sombe, whose humour was the true weather-gauge ;;i Rose 
 Hill, smiled as complacently at the rest and did not look 
 
4 "MY LOVE r 
 
 displeased at this interruption to his breakfast. Wherefore 
 Jones, the butler, who, as a rule, resented domestic derange- 
 ments and surprises as in some sense personal affronts, but 
 ■who followed his master's line to a hair, smiled too as he 
 ushered in Mr. Ponsonby and scanned each face of the family 
 while seeming to see and notice nothing. 
 
 " Sit down, boy, sit down ! What will you take ? Jones, 
 a plate for Mr. Ponsonby," said Mr. Branscombe, as he gave 
 Cyril two long, white, scented fingers, his manner deprecating 
 unnecessary fuss. 
 
 On the hint of that manner both Mrs. Branscombe and 
 Stella acted ; each doing her best to look and speak as if it 
 were the most natural thing in the world that Cyril should 
 walk in from London to breakfast, when he was not expected 
 before twelve at the earliest ; and as if a girl's love and a 
 mother's sympathy desired no warmer expression than a man's 
 half-indifferent welcome and more than tepid acquiescence in 
 things as they stood. 
 
 On that hint too Cyril acted, with more instinctive than 
 conscious perception of its importance. He sat down quietly 
 enough at the other side of the table, facing Stella ; for the 
 present quite content with the joy of looking at her dear, dear 
 face, meeting her glad, sweet eyes which seemed to say all 
 that he most longed to hear, and listening to the sound of her 
 voice which was like the most melodious music to his ears. 
 
 How beautiful she was ! He had not seen her for a whole 
 month ; and in that month she had gained a world of addi- 
 tional loveliness and had put on a thousand new charms. 
 Her rich brown hair had even more red gold in its tint, more 
 wave and ripple and straying rebellious little curls and 
 feathery fringes in its lines ; her large blue eyes, as deeply 
 blue as sapphires and as soft as summer skies, were yet more 
 beautiful in form, more eloquent in expression — and surely 
 that fringe of curling lashes was even longer than before and 
 made them yet softer and more starry ! Her complexion, so 
 pure and clear, with that creamy softness in the shadows and 
 that faint flush on her cheeks which made it so like a sweet 
 wild-rose, was almost purer and clearer — as if happiness had 
 improved her health as well as gladdened her heart ; and her 
 supple figure looked yet more graceful in the light-brown 
 dress which clothed her like wax without a suggestion of 
 millinery artifice. Her voice, that index of the nature, was 
 fuller and sweeter and more musical than he had ever heard 
 
7.V THE MORNING. 5 
 
 it — with always that faint echo of possible sadness in its 
 music which showed that she had it in her to be a saint, a 
 martyr, or a heroine, according to the run of circumstances 
 and the ordering of life. Or, haply, she might be onlv a 
 tender and loving woman whose pure history and blameless 
 bearing would work like a charm in her own immediate "world, 
 giving a standard of excellency by which to live and a measure 
 of beauty that would be like inspiration to the rest. And 
 Cyril meant that this should be her life. By God's help he 
 would keep her as she was — pure and meek — from now to the 
 day of her death ; and make her happier than any woman had 
 ever been made in this sad world before ! 
 
 She was peerless ; she was supreme. No other girl in 
 England was equal to her, personally or morally, thought 
 Cyril — his eyes fixed on her with as much worship as love, as 
 much reverence as passion. All the same, between whiles he 
 eat his toast and drank his coffee and made an heroic break- 
 fast after the manner of healthy, hungry, happy youth, glad 
 to live and rejoicing in his bodily well-being and his love 
 alike. 
 
 And what a perfect mother for such a daughter Mrs. 
 Branscombe was ! How sweet and gentle, how calm and self- 
 restrained ! She seemed never to think of herself, but to live 
 only for others ; to care only to do her duty ; to make those 
 around her happy ; to be just and merciful for her child ; self- 
 sacrificing in her home; attractive in the highest sense and 
 '.n every direction. Her life was the very poetry of womanly 
 tenderness ; but it was a pity that her health was so delicate. 
 She had never been a robust woman and had always been one 
 of that sensitive kind with whom the steel outwears the 
 scabbard. Of late she had begun to look startlingly frail, 
 though she did not complain, and Mr. Branscombe was too 
 much absorbed in his own occupations, while Stella was too 
 young to see all the length of the way that she had gone. 
 Besides, daily familiarity with gradual change blinds the eyes 
 which have not been opened by fear; but Cyril, pre-occupied 
 though he was, was shocked by the increased pallor, the 
 greater attenuation of that dear mother whose life was so 
 infinitely beautiful and so infinitely precious ! 
 
 Nevertheless she made no complaint; she never did; and 
 when he anxiously asked how she was ? and was she quite 
 well ? — she smiled and answered quiet ly : 
 
 " Yes, dear, quite well, thank you. A little good for nothing 
 
6 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 at times. But the spring has been trying ; and I always suffer 
 in the east winds." 
 
 " I do not think you have suffered much this year, Matilda," 
 said Mr. Branscombe with what in a less lovely man would 
 have been a slight amount of peevisli displeasure in his voicv. 
 " You have had nothing compared to my neuralgia." 
 
 "No, dear, indeed I have not," she answered with a 
 sympathetic air. " You have been very bad at times, poor 
 darling." 
 
 " At times ? Always !" he said, almost as if she had fluni; 
 a small affront iuto his fine face. " I give you my word, 
 Cyril, I have not had one day this year free from the most 
 atrocious pain. No man but myself would have borne what 
 I have borne and not have lost both heart and patience." 
 
 " Poor papa !" said Stella, full of pity. 
 
 " My poor Frederick !" repeated Mrs. Branscombe, her 
 voice and eyes also full of pity. 
 
 " I am very soi'ry to hear it, sir," said Cyril, as his con- 
 tribution to the litany of condolence and compassion. 
 
 And yet how well and handsome and perfectly preserved 
 and superbly got-up altogether this martyr to physical pain 
 and mental depression was ! Sixty last birthday — and no 
 one would have given him more than thirty^ five. How 
 strange that his constant suffering had told so little on him ! 
 
 " This is the kind of thing that tests the value of a man," 
 said Mr. Branscombe, helping himself to a second plateful of 
 omelette. " Pain, sleeplessness, nervous exhaustion, com- 
 plete prostration, total loss of appetite — and yet the spirit 
 rising superior to all these miserable infirmities of the flesh — 
 the blood, of the gentleman asserting itself in trials which 
 would have made the cart-horse dike boor lie down and 
 howl ! I have never lost a day's work through it all, have 
 I, Matilda?" 
 
 " No," said Mre. Branscombe ; "you have not, dear." 
 
 " I have gone on just as if I had been in rude health," he 
 continued. "I have written and painted and composed 
 without intermission. I have composed two-thirds of my 
 operetta and I have written four thousand lines of my grand 
 epic with not one single erasure — is there, Matilda?" 
 
 " No, dear, not one," said Mrs. Branscombe. 
 
 " No turning back and going over the ground again and 
 again, like a stammering child learning to spell," he went 
 on to say, tossing his handsome head and curling his thin 
 
/.Y TEE MOUSING. 7 
 
 lips in disdain for the poor literary clods who laboured where 
 he enjoyed, plodded where be skimmed, corrected and 
 re-wrote, reconsidered and erased, where he swept the air 
 
 with one beat of his strong wing and completed in a day 
 what others would have taken ten to create and another ten 
 to perfect. " All right oft', my boy — currente calarao, at one 
 dash ! That is the way to work ! — and that makes all the 
 difference between mediocre talent and the higher reach of 
 genius — between earth-born industry and the heavenly power 
 of the divine afflatus. I will read it to you after breakfast, 
 and play you some of the choicest morceaux in my operetta," 
 he continued with a smile. He meant the offer for grace ; 
 and he expected it to be taken as he meant. 
 
 "That will be a great treat, I assure you," said Mrs. 
 Branscombe, also smiling as she turned to Cyril ; " but," to 
 her husband, " suppose you keep it, dear, till after dinner ? 
 It will be so delightful then ! — and Cyril may want to be out 
 — or doing something else in the morning." 
 
 " Cyril has nothing surely of such importance on hand that 
 he cannot hear my poem and operetta ;" said Mr. Branscombe 
 testily. 
 
 " No, sir. I assure you I shall be delighted to hear them. 
 Thank you, dear Mrs. Branscombe, but of course I shall be 
 charmed," said Cyril hastily. 
 
 Instinctively he desired to keep well with Stella's father ; 
 and Stella's father was decidedly touchy about his work; 
 and very easily offended by the appearance of neglect. 
 Though Cyril loved Mrs. Branscombe the better of the two, 
 mid have had no hesitation in declining any offer that 
 Bhe might have made if not congenial to his humour; but 
 Mr. Branscombe was different ; and neither his son-in-law 
 elect nor any one else dared to say " No" when he said 
 ' Yes." In his heart, however, the lad wished the grand 
 • pie and the best morceaux at the deuce, and his elegant 
 father-in-law with them. He had not seen Stella for a 
 wh<>le month ; this was his first visit after his engagement 
 and that successful examination on which the material security 
 of his love rested; he had travelled all night and had been 
 mooning about the place for hours at the risk of making 
 If ridiculous to the men, simply to get three hours' 
 extra happiness thrown in; and now it was coolly proposed 
 that he should take the cream of the morning, and devote, 
 heaven knows how much time, to listen to an epic written 
 
8 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 without corrections— hundreds of lines at a sitting — and to 
 the airs of an operetta dashed off without forethought and 
 only by the grace of inspiration ! 
 
 Fate, however, was kind and spared him. After breakfast 
 the divine afflatus came on Mr. Branscombe with such power 
 that he was forced to defer his recitations until the evening, 
 as his wife had suggested. He must seize the inspired 
 moment, he said, before the spiritual fire had burned down 
 to the slag of everyday common-place. It would be a sin to 
 the world — to the present and future alike — were he to let 
 humanity lose what he had it in his power to bestow. 
 Utterances such as his were not too frequent ; and they were 
 too valuable to be neglected. And to this Cyril naturally 
 said "Yes, certainly," with fervour; and Stella and her 
 mother said "Yes," too, with more simplicity of sincerity; 
 and then the two lovers wandered away together, while 
 Mrs. Branscombe went to her daily office of transcribing in a 
 clear hand her husband's entangled hieroglyphics; — till 
 forced to leave her work and take refuge in her own room, 
 whei'e only her maid knew the fatal secret of her life. 
 
 And now Cyril's turn had really come, and he was alone 
 and undisturbed in the heaven of his love. He improved the 
 occasion and took advantage of his freedom to tell Stella for the 
 hundredth time how beautiful she was and hoAV intensely 
 he adored her ; how divine a thing life was to him at this 
 moment ; and how he thought her condescension in loving 
 him at all — he so far beneath her as he was in goodness and 
 greatness of all kinds — the most wonderful part of the whole 
 matter ! He said a great deal more ; but this was the theme 
 round which all the rest was merely a succession of variously- 
 phrased envelopes — ever the same thing under different 
 verbal dresses. He loved her; she was something better 
 than humanity ; and his gratitude far equalled his glory in 
 her love. 
 
 Ah ! how sweet it was to say all this out on the lawn 
 beneath the grand old spreading cedar ! There they sat with 
 instinctive modesty full in view of the house, but as much 
 alone as if they had been indeed those primal two in Eden, 
 taking with tremulous feet the first delicate and delicious 
 steps along the enchanted pathway of love — that enchanted 
 pathway which their posterity have trodden in the same way 
 ever since. The bh*ds were singing in the bushes, full- 
 throated, rich, beseeching — here the chant of the conqueror, 
 
IN THE MORN ISC. 9 
 
 there the song of the wooer ; the flowers were blooming in 
 the garden, and bees and butterflies and flies with gauzy 
 wings, "laden with light and colour," rifled the cups and 
 poised above the petals ; from every leaf and blade of 
 — from every tender twig flushed with sap, like bloodthat 
 blushes — from every opening bud still sheathed like dreaming 
 youth in its soft sweet rase of innocence — from the moss 
 about the tree-roots and from the resinous bark about the 
 stems — poured out the subtle scents of spring, calling up the 
 vague hopes, the unspoken desires, the tender, dumb, self- 
 unrevealed wishes of youth and the unfulfilled. The blue 
 sky, flecked with cloudlets which but gave added beaut v to 
 its serenity and presaged no disaster, shone through "the 
 black boughs of the great tree beneath which the lovers sat 
 and the water-fall at the back of the house added its endless 
 music to the great diapason of nature which filled the air 
 with the large glad symphony of life. It was in the spi-ing- 
 time of the year and the springtime of their love. The dav 
 was yet the morning and they were in the morning of their 
 lives. No sorrow had touched them, no clouds loomed dark 
 and threatening in their sky. Sunshine and music, perfume 
 and love, were about them like a golden haze, seen through 
 which everything was transformed to supernatural beauty, 
 where was not one sordid spot for pain to strike or sorrow to 
 root. It was the heaven on earth of the poet and the 
 dreamer — that heaven which we all enter when we love and 
 are beloved — when we trust and are assured. It was the 
 glad dawning of that future day when they should live in 
 unending glory, fed on divine manna and free from the 
 pains and penalties which beset ordinary humanity — it was 
 the rosy-fingered dawn, heralding the great God" of Life 
 raid Joy ! 
 
 All this they felt as they sat beneath the horizontal branches 
 of the great black spreading cedar-tree, while they spoke of 
 their love and discussed their future ; he, counting the days, 
 and going into the arithmetic of the hours which lay bet 
 now and that blessed twenty-fifth of August when they were 
 to be married ; she, smiling when he laughed, glad when he 
 exulted, hopeful because he was confident — always t be woman's 
 faithful following on the man's advancing feet — always her 
 tender echo to his foregoing word. 
 
 How delightful it was to have him there ! How happy she 
 was ! — and how delicious it was to be able to say to him that 
 
10 "MY LOVE r 
 
 she was so happy, and to answer : " Yes, I do," when he 
 asked her at least twenty times that morning : " Did she- 
 love him? Was she sure? — did she love him quite as much 
 as he loved her ? But no ! That was impossible ! No one 
 who ever lived on the face of this earth — no one — no one — 
 ever did or could love as much as he, Cyril Ponsonby, loved 
 her. Stella Branscombe ! It was impossible. Human nature 
 could not go beyond itself!" 
 
 And he believed what he said ; and she believed it because 
 he said it. 
 
 Just then they heard the sound of a hard, dry, rasping 
 cough. It was Mrs. Branscombe, in her own room with Jane 
 Durnsford, her maid. 
 
 " Poor mamma !" said Stella. " She has such a bad cough ! 
 It has clung to her all the winter and will not' go." 
 
 " She is looking very pale and thin. I do not think she 
 can be well," said Cyril. 
 
 " She says she is," Stella answered a little anxiously. " She 
 never confesses to more than feeling rather languid." 
 
 " She is so unselfish !" said Cyril. " As unselfish as you, 
 Stella — my own beautiful Stella, my Star, my Love !" 
 
 And with this they wandered off again on that enchanted 
 pathway traversing Eden ; and even Stella forgot that her 
 mother had a cough and looked pale and white, while listening 
 to the rhapsodies of her lover. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LITTLE RIFT. 
 
 The first thing that would strike any one admitted into 
 the Branscombe household was its air of exquisite refinement 
 and poetic serenity ; the next would be the consciousness of 
 some want somewhere — a very vague and indefinite kind of 
 consciousness, and a want not to be found like cobwebs for 
 the looking, but there all the same ; — something in the 
 atmosphere that would jar on the more sensitive and yet the 
 inost observant could not say what it was nor where it lay. 
 
 Cyril, too young and strong and far too much in love to 
 be either sensitive or observant outside that love, had never 
 troubled himself about things which he could neither touch 
 nor demonstrate ; and vague consciousness was a state of 
 
THE LITTLE RIFT. II 
 
 mind by no means natural to him. He saw all things with 
 
 healthy positiveness, or he did not see them at all ; and he 
 had as little to Jo with shadowy suspicions as with gl 
 To his way of thinking Mr. Branscombe was all that an 
 English gentleman of more mind than muscle, and of poetic 
 feeling in excess of practicality, ought to be ; ami .Mrs. Brans- 
 combe was the very ideal of a perfect wife, mother and 
 gentlewoman. The two together were absolutely perfect; 
 and what Stella was to him we know. That vague sense of 
 want, that fine thread of something not quite real, that faint 
 echo of hollowness beneath the golden sands discovered by 
 others did not exist for him ; and he accepted the appearance 
 of things with boyish good faith, wishing neither to lift up 
 transforming veils nor to scratch off polished surfaces. 
 
 And indeed by the look of things, what a perfect household 
 it was ! — and how invidious as well as needless it was to 
 imagine Haws where none were visible, or that the circle was 
 not true when no one could find the exact point where the 
 hue ran flat! Moreover, with whom did the fault lie ? — if 
 indeed fault there were at all ; which Cyril would have pas- 
 sionately denied had he been cpuestioned. Most certainly not 
 with Mrs. Branscombe, all but perfect as she was. With 
 Stella? Ask if the moon gives darkness instead of light, if 
 the sun breeds fog and miasmatic vapours! No, certainly 
 not with Stella ; and if not with these two, then undoubtedly 
 not with Mr. Branscombe. 
 
 The kind of man of whom the women of his family are at 
 once so proud and so much afraid — to whom thev give ui 
 their lives and think themselves happy as well as honourei I 
 in the sacrifice — whose will is as a Divine command and 
 whose opinions on all matters carry with them the authority 
 of righteousness and the weight of perfected knowledge — to 
 serve whom is to carry incense to the altar, and to fail whom 
 is t.. be guilty of irreligion; — Mr. Branscombe was the high 
 priest of his household; a kind of domestic Apollo, repre- 
 senting the last word of refinement and the supreme r 
 of culture. He was eminently a Superior Person who had to 
 be petted and taken can.' of, Battered, earessed, given way to, 
 ami surrounded by the adulation of love at once subnii 
 and protecting. He was never to he crossed in his mo 
 nor interrupted, nor told unpleasant news, nor consulted u 
 cases of difficulty, nor made free of any form of truth which 
 would be likely to jar on a nature so finely organized and 
 
12 "MY LOVET 
 
 full of exquisite susceptibilities as his. He was to be obeyed 
 at a bint ; bis desires were to be divined and fulfilled without 
 the trouble of interpretation ; and his comfort was to be 
 attended to witbout hitch or worry. And then he was to be 
 allowed to think that he drove the whole team and was 
 eminently master in his own house. And when, as he often 
 did, he complained of the distressing amount that he bad to 
 do and the weight of responsibility laid on his shoulders, his 
 wife did not laugh nor bis daughter remonstrate in favour of 
 the mother who pulled the labouring oar while he flourished 
 the flag — the one accepting for love and deliberate decision 
 what the other received in faith. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe was still an exceedingly handsome man, 
 as he had ever been. When he was in the Guards, and 
 before he married, he was known as Handsome Fred Brans- 
 combe by his friends — Finery Fred by his enemies ; and the 
 conscious airs and little affectations of a beauty-man still 
 clung to him. He spent a good deal of his time in devising 
 becoming studio dresses for himself, chiefly of velvet, with 
 appropriate collars, bands and " birette ;" his still luxuriant 
 locks were marvellously black and his elegant moustache and 
 beard — cut Vandyke-fashion — had defied the silver fingers of 
 time with as much extraordinary pertinacity as had his curling 
 raven tresses. His hands were lonii, poetic, white and well 
 preserved ; and his rather rodent-like teeth, as well as his 
 waist and feet, were marvels of care and get-up. 
 
 Besides his beauty which he still cherished ; his toilette to 
 which he sacrificed as much time and thought as if he had 
 been a pretty woman on the wane ; his reputation as a lady- 
 killer, which he never forgot, he was, as he had always been, 
 a kind of dandy in art — playing a little on the piano, painting 
 not a little in oils, writing poetiy of an ambitious kind as 
 well as vers de sodete for ladies' albums, setting charades and 
 one-act plays for drawing-room entertainments, and the 
 like. Rather late in life, namely at forty years of age, he 
 had married sweet-faced Matilda Jerningham — " that good 
 Matilda," as he used to call her; with a certain lofty com- 
 passion for her intellectual inferiority whicn meant confession 
 of his magnanimity in overlooking her deficiencies for the 
 sake of her excellencies. And soon after his marriage he 
 left the army and took up his abode at Rose Hill, near High- 
 wood. Here he turned to Art, as he called his play, and 
 i'ounded his title to distinction on his dandyism of pursuit as 
 
THE LITTLE RIFT. 13 
 
 well as of person. He undertook as many things as if he 
 had been the Admirable Criehton himself." Without more 
 than the merest smattering of musical knowledge, ignorant 
 of the first principles of thorough-bass and the law of harmonv, 
 he composed rondos and sonatas, motifs and nocturnes — and 
 of late he had begun an opera, score and libretto both, which 
 he called his Magnum Opus. He did not know an Alex- 
 andrian from an hexameter, nor an iambic from a trochee 
 but he dashed off odes and sonatas by the dozen and latelv 
 he had plunged into an epic with an airy grace which poets 
 of long practice in the art of rhyme and rhythm might have 
 envied. And though he could not draw a round thing to 
 look solid, nor an upright thing in stable equilibrium, h* 
 painted pictures of all genres, and attacked a portrait as con- 
 fidently as a landscape, a cattle-piece, the heroic imaginative- 
 ness of high art or the accurate delineations of still life. His 
 pictures were magnificently framed and hung in the various 
 dwelling-rooms according to what he called the harmonv of 
 associated ideas. They made professional artists turn hot 
 and cold by turns when invited to discuss them on their 
 merits; while even the technically ignorant, who had eyes 
 and no knowledge, laughed in their sleeves at the anatomy of 
 the living things and the drawing of the inanimate. 
 
 All the same his wife praised and encouraged him ; and 
 no one knew whether she believed in him sincerely or onlv 
 flattered him because of the sweet policy of love. And natu- 
 rally Stella followed her mother's lead.' Born and educated 
 in the worship of her father as a Superior Person, she wenl 
 on worshipping him and believing in him now, just as she 
 used when a child; holding him, as she had been taught to 
 hold him, as the one transcendent man of all creation, the 
 no plus ultra of English gentlehood and cultured civilization. 
 He was to her the impersonation of Matthew Arnold's 
 w sweetness and light ;" and when she thought of the illus- 
 trious dead each seemed to her in some sort a phase of dear 
 papa — that microscopic and oecumenical -cuius who containe I 
 all forms of beauty and goodness within himself and radiated 
 on every side, where others shine only on one. 
 
 He, on his part, received all this Loving adulation as a king 
 might receive the tribute of his vassals. Their worship of 
 the highest in him honoured these women who paid it even 
 more than it honoured him to whom it, was paid. It was the 
 recognition of superiority, he said ; and their power of recog- 
 
14 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 nition proved their own worth. The clod does not worship 
 the glow-worm, but man adores the sun. It was his due and 
 their duty ; and the two principles were as harmonious as a 
 musical chord. He was fond of both wife and daughter, and 
 rested on the one far more than the other knew. That good 
 -Matilda of his was everything to him — eyes and hands and 
 feet and brains — mother, wife, lover, audience and applause, 
 all in one. She followed his humours, bent herself to his 
 shape, interpreted his wishes and guided while she obeyed. 
 She guarded him from every unpleasant accident of domestic 
 life, yet gave in to his fancy of holding himself as the pivot 
 round which the whole thing revolved. She loved him ; or 
 rather she had loved him when she had married him full of 
 enthusiasm for his genius, of admiration for his beauty, of 
 gratitude for his love, of a girl's romantic belief in his infinite 
 superiority. Whether she woke from her dream and found 
 something in the weary life of reality which she had not sus- 
 pected in the ideality of love, or whether she went on in her 
 happy blindness, she never told. All that the world, Stella 
 and her handsome husband himself saw, was a devotion that 
 had no limits, an expressed admiration that was without stint, 
 and a supple self-effacement that made some women angry, 
 others jealous and a few contemptuous of her slavishness. 
 
 They had been married two years before the birth of their 
 child came as an interruption — or addition — to their happi- 
 ness. It was an even chance which it would be. Happily it 
 was the latter. Mr. Branscombe was rejoiced to be a father. 
 It completed the circle, he said ; and he talked hazily about 
 Plato's triangle and the divinity of childhood. It gave him 
 occasion for a picture of his Household Star — the baby in its 
 nightgown — for a canzonet and a birthday ode, a lullaby and 
 a nocturne ; and he glorified himself in that pink little bundle 
 sucking its fist in the cradle upstairs as if he were Jove and 
 this the infant Minerva, or as if he were the first man to 
 whom had been born a child. He gave the name — Stella. 
 She was the Star of the House and the word went well in 
 poetry. He had hesitated long between May and Iris — the 
 one for her month, the other a messenger from heaven ; he 
 had tried Violet and -Rose, Daisy and Eglantine ; he had 
 thought of Mary for sweetness, of Margaret for dignity ; and 
 he had gone through all the heroines of fiction and history. 
 But none composed so well as Stella ; and the Star therefore 
 she remained. 
 
THE LITTLE RIFT 15 
 
 He could scarcely have found a name more appropriate* 
 As time went on and her character developed, the t, r irl proved 
 more and note her right to be named as something bright 
 
 and pnre and high and heavenly. She had not a fault ; or ii 
 any at all it was that she had none. She was ahno^ 
 LTood, too self-sacrificing, too high-minded. She wanted the 
 relieving shadows of a silly weakness here, a wilful naughti- 
 
 there. She was just a little angel, said all her n 
 .•.II her teachers ; and gave no trouble to any one. Yet she was 
 sickly. She had sound nerves, a full chest, a healthy 
 she could ride without fear, play lawn-ten :. 
 perfection, and row as if she had been born with an o 
 each hand. She was without morbid fancies or unwholesome 
 superstitions and was just a loving, devoted, conscientious 
 and unselfish little girl, with the possibilities in her of martyr- 
 dom should the occasion occur. She would have loved her 
 heathen lover better than her life, but she would have pre- 
 1, to his love with apostacy, death and bearing faithful 
 witness to the truth. She was a girl whom the most im- 
 passioned man could have loved wholly, without understanding 
 more than her sweetness, seeing more than her beauty ; and 
 she was one whom a sage would have honoured and a priest 
 would have dedicated. 
 
 Such as she was, she was Cyril Ponsonby's Adored ; and he 
 was never weary of congratulating himself on his marvellous 
 good fortune, nor quite able to understand why she should 
 honoured him — she who might have married a duke had 
 she liked — and he, whu was comparatively a mere nobody, 
 with only one hundred and fifty pounds a year of private 
 fortune and nothing more certain than brains, energy, youth 
 and the future for the rest ! 
 
 Though by no means a brilliant marriage in a worldly 
 sense, this union of their only daughter with young Cyril 
 Ponsonby had met with no opposition from the parents. It 
 was suitable in point of age and birth and they could afford a 
 dowry which would ensure the barring out of that cruel wolf 
 whose black muzzle so often thrusts itself within the house 
 when the door has but slender golden fastenings. The lad was 
 well-built, healthy, generous, strong, and handsome in a fine, 
 manly way — more suggestive of field-sports than lady-killing. 
 The two young creatures loved each other; what more was 
 wanted than what they had? He was not rich certainly, but 
 bis family was good and his name was without stain; and 
 
1G "MY LOVEt" 
 
 with liis prospects and her dowry there was no cause for fear. 
 It would be a sorrow to part with Stella, of course ; but girls 
 are made to be married and taken out of the home ; and they, 
 the parents, always had each other. 
 
 " While you live, my good Matilda, I shall never want a 
 companion," said Mr. Branscombe, when the thing was 
 talked of between them. 
 
 " No ; while I live you will always have some one to attend 
 on you and take care of you," she answered tenderly. 
 
 But nothing was said of her, the mother, nor where she was 
 to look for consolation. In her love and her duties, of course, 
 Mr. Branscombe would have said, had he been asked. What 
 was the final cause of that good Matilda's existence but to 
 give without question of receiving ? What is the glory of 
 woman but to love, to bless and to bestow ? Had he not said 
 so in that sonnet which he had addressed to " My Wife r" — 
 that sonnet wherein he had compared her to Ceres ; to Juno ; 
 to Saint Barbara with all the little children gathered round 
 her feet beneath her cloak ; to the moth, which lays its eggs and 
 dies ; to the grass which feeds the lambs ; to the oak which 
 man immortalizes in a temple, a mansion, a ship ; to the coal 
 which is burned for the benefit of a hero or a poet. That 
 good Matilda was born to set forth the beauty of self-efface- 
 ment and the holiness of self-sacrifice ; and he was not the 
 one to interfere with natural arrangements and throw the 
 machinery of Providence out of gear by ministering to that 
 which had been predestined to minister to him. 
 
 And she, whatever she might feel, said nothing by way of 
 regret — not even to Stella herself — but rather did her best 
 to hasten on the marriage as much as it was seemly to 
 do ; she and faithful Jane Durnsford, her maid, alone know- 
 ing why. 
 
 So there the whole thing stood on velvet, as sporting men 
 say. There was not a hitch, not a cross, not a cloud ; and 
 the lute of life and love gave forth its fullest and most melo- 
 dious music. 
 
 It was now May, and in August the two were to be 
 married. Three months which love ran into days as they 
 passed and longing lengthened into years as they were 
 looked at — three months of blissful anticipation, of joyous 
 realities — and then the fulfilment of their dearest dreams. 
 
 Meanwhile, the young lovers sat on the lawn beneath the 
 spreading cedar- t'-ee, while Mrs. Branscombe and her maid 
 
1I1E LITTLE RIFT. 17 
 
 discussed the secret that was between them, and Mr. Brans- 
 combe, in his study below, dashed off at white-heat verses 
 which would not scan, rhymes which were not harmonic, and 
 thoughts which were so much intellectual chaff without a 
 grain of wheat to give sustenance or support. But he was 
 satisfied with his work, dear man ! — and presentlv, getting 
 impatient by her absence, he called that good Matilda to 
 listen to what he had done, and be, as so often before, his 
 audience and his applause. 
 
 When dinner was over and the family had assembled in 
 the drawing-room, then the famous epic was produced and 
 read to its author's running commentary of interpolation — 
 his designation of the fine image here, the sonorous music 
 there — the cadence of this line, the ingenious rhyme of that. 
 
 "Then black-browed night arose, 
 With her veil of stars and snows." 
 
 u That is fine, Matilda, is it not ? You see the image, Cyril ? 
 The stars spangling the veil of night — that veil the snow-topped 
 mountains. Perhaps it will not bear the coarse touch of 
 prose," said Mr. Branscombe with a little hesitation; but in 
 poetry, which is so much more vague and suggestive, it 
 comes grandly." 
 
 " Yes, dear," said Mrs. Branscombe. 
 
 " I think it lovely, papa," said Stella, whose faculty did not 
 lie in criticism. 
 
 " It is a very fine image, sir," said Cyril, who had not 
 heard very clearly. 
 
 And when Mr. Branscombe had thus gathered in his little 
 harvest, he smiled, raised the delicate white hand which had 
 been drooping gracefully from the wrist over the arm of his 
 chair, ran his fingers through his curled and scented hair, 
 smoothed with the tips of his fingers his irreproachable shirt- 
 front, and then went on with his reading as lief ore. 
 
 Suddenly Mrs. Branscombe gave a deep sigh and turned 
 deadly pale. A shudder ran over her ; her hands dropped 
 nervelessly in her lap ; her eyes closed ; her breath cam- in 
 short gasps ; and she fell backward in her chair in a strange 
 and sudden faint. 
 
 All was tumult and confusion, tears, distress and terror ; 
 but when Jane Durnsford came on the summons, she seemed 
 strangely collected and as if she had gone through the whole 
 thing before. She knew exactly what to do : and she did it ; 
 
 c 
 
18 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 and when Mr. Branscombe, whose helpless distress was 
 almost as pitiable as his wife's condition, said half peevishly: 
 " Have you ever seen your mistress like this before, Durns- 
 ford ?" she answered with a sudden flash in her eyes which 
 no one could exactly read : " Yes, sir, many times. It has 
 only been a wonder to me that nobody but myself knew." 
 
 " Send for the doctor at once ! — send for Dr. Quigley, in- 
 stantly !" cried Mr.Branscombe in extreme agitation. "Do you 
 mean to say, Durnsford, that your mistress is chronically out 
 of health, and I do not know it? "Where are those men? 
 Send for Quigley ! Cyril, my boy, do you go for him ! 
 Heavens! that I should have been deceived to this frightful 
 extent!" 
 
 " It is of no use sending for Dr. Quigley, sir," said Jane 
 Durnsford. " I know what to do as well as he can tell me. 
 Indeed, he did tell me." 
 
 " Oh, Durnsford, has mamma consulted Dr. Quigley, and 
 we never knew!" said Stella, who was kneeling by her 
 mother's side chafing her hands. 
 
 " Yes, miss," answered the maid. 
 
 " But what is it ? What is it ?" repeated Mr. Branscombe. 
 
 " Heart, sir. She has what the doctor calls aneurism of 
 the heart, and may die at any moment. But she has not 
 gone this time, poor dear!" added Jane, as a slight sigh 
 stirred the lips of the fainting Avoman and a tinge of colour 
 stole back into her waxen face. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 
 
 No ; she had not gone this time ; and on her recovery, that 
 good Matilda — who was so much better than her husband 
 knew — made light of her attack ; said it was nothing, and 
 that they were not to be alarmed. She half rebuked Jane 
 Durnsford for her imprudent admission ; but she was forced 
 to confess that the doctor had certainly told her something 
 was a little wrong with her heart, and that she might die 
 suddenly if she over-excited herself, lifted a heavy weight, 
 ran upstairs, got into a violent rage, or did any other childish 
 folly not very likely to be done by a sedate woman of her age, 
 she added, with one of her sweet smiles which were more 
 
ANTICIPATE 19 
 
 pathetic than tears. They wore not to fret or worry about 
 her, she said. Creaking wheels last a long while, and she 
 should live to look after them all and see that they got into 
 no mischief for many years to come ! They were to f 
 this little alarm, and not allow it to sadden them. 
 
 And with this she drew Stella to her bosom and gave her 
 hand to Cyril. 
 
 "If I only inighl Bee you both happy!" she said tenderly. 
 " I wish that August was nearer !" she added with a smile 
 checked by a sigh. 
 
 "My poor wife!" said Mr. Branscombe. "I must read 
 you no more of my poetry. It evidently stirs you too much. 
 If I had known of your Btate I would have spared you the 
 excitement — delightful as it is to me as an artist to see how 
 you are moved." 
 
 •• I can always hear your work, dear," answered Mrs. 
 Branscombe quietly. " I should be sorry to lose the pleasure 
 of knowing what you do." 
 
 • Yea : it would be a privation for you, my poor dear ; but 
 if it is bad for vou r — I must take care of vou and not do you 
 harm !" 
 
 In this Mr. Branscombe was, for the moment, both con- 
 siderate and sincere. He did really think it was a dangerous 
 experiment for this poor, weak heart to have to listen to his 
 halting rhymes aud foggy metaphors ; and it was therefore a 
 sacrifice of self to conscience, of vanity to tenderness, when he 
 said that he would give up his recitations because the mental 
 emotions which they excited were hurtful to the health of his 
 Matilda. But Mrs. Branscombe, for all that she accepted 
 her husband's words as they were meant for the moment, 
 knew only too well the truth of things ; and, meeting bravely 
 what she knew would overtake her, she shook her head in 
 pleasant deprecation as she answered: — 
 
 • Always well enough to hear you, dear." 
 
 ••Ah!" he said smiling; -'you are only a child after all, 
 Matilda! Sweets — sweets — though they hurt you. Well, I 
 must menacrer for you, and not let you be excited beyond 
 what you can bear." 
 
 And with this the matter dropped and the death, which had 
 been so fatally near, faded into the background as a grim 
 sentinel ever standing b itween the chamber and the sun, but 
 not obtrusive nor making his presence distinctly felt. 
 
 The secret, hitherto kept with such care between the mis- 
 
20 -MY LOVE!" 
 
 tress and the maid, gradually leaked out ; and soon the 
 rumour crept through the neighbourhood that Mrs. Brans- 
 combe, of Rose Hill, was seriously ill and that her days were 
 numbered. Exaggerations were added, as of course ; and 
 she was credited with all the diseases possible between 
 epilepsy and consumption. But the main fact was unfortu- 
 nately true, and the world gradually came to the knowledge 
 of that which had looked it in the face unrecognised so 
 long. 
 
 " Poor, dear, sweet Sirs. Branscombe ! How sorry I am ! 
 But if I were Stella I would throw aside everything else and 
 marry out of hand at once," said Mrs. Latrobe, the handsome, 
 fair-haired widow who had been obliged to return with her 
 child to her old home, the Laurels, where she lived under 
 the heavy-handed tutelage of her mother, Mrs. Morshead — 
 " that terrible old woman" as she was generally called ; and 
 with reason. 
 
 " I have not the smallest doubt but that you would, 
 Augusta," said her mother sourly, in reply. " Between self- 
 willed indulgence and duty there is very little question which 
 you would choose." 
 
 This was a hit at that unfortunate past when Augusta 
 had carried her point of marrying Professor Latrobe — a man 
 much older than herself, who could make no settlements and 
 whom she did not specially love, but whom, in default of a 
 better chance, she accepted and went away with, simply to 
 escape from her mother's intolerable tyranny. Now that he 
 had died and left her penniless, she thought herself bound by 
 duty to return to the old bondage ; and for the sake of her 
 Little son and his inheritance, she went back to the misery of 
 her past, rendered harder to bear because of her temporary 
 escape into peace, freedom and affection. 
 
 It was a horrible life. Mrs. Morshead treated her daughter 
 as something between a servant and a child, and made her 
 daily bread very bitter to her. No one but Augusta could 
 have borne it; but then Augusta Latrobe had that rare 
 quality in woman, absolute self-control and reasonableness. 
 "What she thought it wise to do, that she did in spite of 
 everything, disinclination and pain included ; and when it 
 was necessary to submit to unpleasantnesses — well ! — she sub- 
 mitted cheerfully and made the best of them. 
 
 "But, mother, she has a duty to Cyril Ponsonby too," 
 Augusta said briskly ; for with all her tact and sweetness of 
 
ANTICIPATIONS. 21 
 
 temper she held her own against her mother on occasions. 
 She was not rolled quite flat, though she was made verj 
 smooth. " If that poor dear Mrs. Branscombe dies and 
 Mr. Branscombe does not want Stella to marry and leave 
 him — he is quite capable of it — what is Cyril to do? Give 
 up his wife and happiness for that selfish old fellow?" 
 
 "What else should he do? What else can Stella do but 
 stay with her father?" retorted Mrs. Morshead. "What has 
 become of all the filial duty and obedience of your modern 
 daughters, I wonder ? What ought a good girl to do but 
 stay with her widowed father or mother? After all the 
 trouble and anxiety that you have caused us from the hour of 
 your birth up to the very last day of our lives, it is not much 
 to ask that you should attend to us when we get old." 
 
 " In that case the world would come off but oddly," said 
 Augusta. " Would you let only those girls marry where 
 there are many in the family, and always keep one as a kind 
 of nestregg at home ? Would you never let only daughters 
 marry?" 
 
 " I would at least have them marry men who could maintain 
 them like ladies while they lived ; and leave them a few 
 pounds to keep them out of beggary when they died," said 
 Mrs. Morshead fiercely. " I would not have them first dis- 
 obey a mother and nearly break her heart by their unduti- 
 fulnesSj and then come back on her with a family, as the only 
 refuge against the workhouse. And none but such a foolish, 
 weak, old creature as I am would put up with it, so I tell 
 you!" 
 
 " Now, mamma, don't be cross ! You know you are much 
 happier with me and Tony than you would be without us, 
 and you only like to grumble. But I will not let you scold, 
 It is bad for you, and you do not mean it." 
 
 As she said this Augusta rose from her place, giving her 
 mother a nice little tap on her heavy old shoulders as she 
 passed her, and went out of the room just a shade hastily. 
 She was good-tempered and she was reasonable, but she had 
 nerves and red blood like any other person ; and she did not 
 care that her patience should be over heavily taxed. 
 
 Others beside Augusta Latrobe said they wished that Stella 
 Branscombe would get married now, at once ; for every one 
 seemed to feel that danger threatened her happiness should 
 her mother die before that happiness had been secured. But 
 though Mrs. Branscombe seriously proposed the shortening 
 
22 "JTF LOVE!" 
 
 of the interval, and urged the hastening of the marriage by 
 at least six weeks — and though, naturally enough, Cyril was 
 ready and Stella was not reluctant — yet Mr. Branscornbe 
 would not hear of it. He had not written his Epitkalamiuin ; 
 his grand Wedding March, to be played iu the church during 
 the service, which was to be choral, was not composed ; and 
 he was too much occupied with his epic to attend to either 
 just yet. And with these important objections he overruled 
 every suggestion offered, and opposed an immovable oppo- 
 sition to his wife's pi'ayer. And when a mau talks of his 
 work as superior to human happiness, not much good is to be 
 done, if he has the reins in his own hands and can drive the 
 chariot of life at his pleasure. 
 
 It was in vain that Mrs. Branscornbe tried all her old arts, 
 hitherto so successful ; in vain that she sought to guide him 
 in the right way by tender flatteries, subtle suggestions. He 
 yielded to none of them ; and even showed signs of seeing 
 through the veil which until now had been so impenetrable. 
 To paint him to himself as grand, magnanimous, semi-divine, 
 should he do this thing or that which it was his manifest 
 duty to do, though generally efficacious enough as a rule, 
 failed now. His pride was bound up with the production of 
 this Epithalamium which was to be printed in silver letters 
 on white vellum, tied up with silver cord, and distributed to 
 all the guests. His heart was set on hearing his grand 
 Wedding March played by a good organist — whom he would 
 have down from London ; and if the assembled hearers should 
 not have the good taste to tell him that he had equalled 
 Mendelssohn, and perhaps surpassed him, his own knowledge 
 would supply their deficiency, and he would pity their igno- 
 rance, not suspect his own shortcomings. It was too much 
 to expect that he would give up all this intellectual splendour, 
 all this artistic triumph, merely to satisfy the whim of his 
 good Matilda and allow the two troublesome young creatures 
 to be married sooner than was arranged. The twenty-fifth of 
 August had been fixed as the auspicious day ; and the twenty- 
 fifth of August it should be ; and his dear wife only lost her 
 time in trying to bend his will. He was resolute, determined, 
 positive. He owed it to himself, his genius, his fame and his 
 child's glory to be firm in this matter ; and what he owed to 
 himself he generally paid in full. No niore need be said — 
 no, not though she besought with insistence and strange 
 agitation — tears in her eves and her voice broken as one 
 
ANTICIPATIONS. 23 
 
 earnestly pleading for a grace that carried with it more than 
 appeared in the words. 
 
 It was bad for her to excite herself, her husband reminded 
 her with exasperating placidity — that placidity which means 
 the very beatitude of obstinacy. She must be wiser than 
 this; she must indeed! This was more like an hysterical 
 schoolgirl than his good Matilda who was generally so reason- 
 able and easy to manage ! And to break herself against the 
 rock of his will, for a whini, was perfectly impracticable and 
 impossible. How absurd! The idea was inadmissible ; and 
 she need not give herself any trouble about the matter. His 
 mind was made up, and he could not possibly change it to 
 entertain her proposition. 
 
 " My Epithalamium — my Wedding March — surely Matilda, 
 vou, who respect my genius, cannot advise me to abandon 
 these two great w r orks — these immortal monuments to our 
 (laughter's name!" 
 
 " I should be very, very sorry, as you know, dear," was her 
 answer ; " but they could come after, all the same, could they 
 not?" 
 
 " And lose their point, their life, their meaning, their raison 
 d'etre? My good Matilda! how easy it is to see that you 
 know nothing of the sacred fire, the divine afflatus! Ask a 
 poet to forego the theme of his inspiration — ask a musician 
 to allow those harmonious chords vibrating in his brain, to 
 be for ever mute in the strings — and you ask him for what is 
 dearer to him than life. Between the unnecessary hastening 
 of this marriage by six weeks, and the perfection of any two 
 ideas, there can be no kind of hesitation ; and I must say I 
 am a little pained as well as surprised by your proposing 
 what is practically artistic suicide !" 
 
 "But cannot you do them now, dear?" she asked. "You 
 would have nearly six weeks from now if you would consent 
 to the marriage at the beginning of July." 
 
 "How can I leave my epic to break new ground? My 
 good Matilda, what an "irrational scheme ! The inspiration 
 1 hat is in me now might never return if once checked. Genius 
 is not like a loaf of bread, my poor wife. You cannot cut 
 your slice then lay it aside fur to-day to find it serviceable m 
 the cupboard when you want it to-morrow. You must catch 
 the divine fire as it flows, or rather I shouM say as it burns. 
 If I were to give up my epic it would remain - frag- 
 
 ment — a colossal fragment trulv, but one that would till the 
 
24 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 world with a sense of loss — that would be a sin against 
 humanity at large, in that it had never been finished and 
 perfected." 
 
 " Is it really impossible ?" she asked again. " With your 
 facility could you not force yourself to return to the old 
 strain ?" 
 
 " No," he answered shortly. " What you are pleased to 
 call my facility is in point of fact only the rush and swirl and 
 outpour of genius. I could not force myself to that which 
 comes unbidden like the winds of the morning, the zephyr of 
 the evening. And," he added peevishly, dropping his grand 
 manner for colloquial terseness : " I shall not try ; — so now 
 you know." 
 
 With this the conversation ended. There was no good in 
 wounding her husband's vanity without result; and Mrs. 
 Branscombe had always known when the next would be just 
 the step too far, and how to hark back gracefully over a shaky 
 bit of ground already traversed. Had not her whole life been 
 passed in the exercise of this delicate discrimination ? — this 
 tact that was almost like second-sight ? — in removing sticks 
 and straws out of his way, so that he should have smooth 
 walking no matter whose feet were torn? — in making him 
 happy and contented through his vanity, rather than suffering 
 that vanity to lead him into follies abroad because wounded 
 and neglected at home? It was only one among thousands 
 of the examples with which her days were filled ; yet this was 
 the hardest of all. She would have given all that she pos- 
 sessed in life to have hastened this marriage and to have 
 known that Stella's happiness was secure. But she was 
 powerless when it came to a real collision of wills between 
 nerself and her husband. When he ruled a negative her 
 desire was nowhere ; and what she could not win by manage- 
 ment she could not obtain by force of decision. 
 
 " Your father will not consent, my darling," she said to her 
 daughter when she came back from her sleeveless errand. 
 " He has set his heart on his poem and the Wedding March ; 
 and it would pain him so much if he did not have tbem ready 
 for the day ! He says he cannot possibly do them before the 
 twenty-fifth of August ; and you know how much he holds by 
 his work. We cannot say anything when he puts forth this 
 plea." 
 
 Mrs. Branscombe said all this quite quietly and naturally ; 
 but she did not look at her daughter while she spoke. She 
 
ANTICIPATIONS. 25 
 
 found it difficult to uphold the claims of a bit of wordy jingle 
 and ungrammatical music before those of human life and 
 happiness. 
 
 " Dear papa ! how good and kind he is to take so much 
 trouble," said Stella simply. " I am so grateful to him, and 
 I am sure they will be grand ; but I wish that he could have 
 got them done earlier. Not that I care about marrying sooner 
 for myself, darling, but you seem to wish it so much, and so 
 does poor Cyril ; but, after all, perhaps papa knows best." 
 
 " He generally does," said Mrs. Branscoinbe. 
 
 She had brought up her daughter in this faith and she 
 upheld it even at this moment. 
 
 " And then, if you are not so well as you ought to be, I do 
 not care to leave you a minute sooner than I must," con- 
 tinued Stella lovingly, putting her arms round her mother's 
 neck. " It will be bad enough when it comes, though I do 
 love Cyril so deaidy — oh ! you know that ! But if I could 
 have married and settled here in High wood, quite close to 
 you so that I could have seen you every day and all day 
 long, how nice that would have been! How I wish I could, 
 mother!" 
 
 "So do I, my darling," answered her mother. "But it ij 
 the law of life. We mothers have to give up our children — 
 our sons to the world and our daughters to husbands. It 
 cannot be helped ! It is the price that we pay for the glory 
 and delight of maternity." 
 
 " It is a dreadful pity, all the same," said Stella. 
 
 " Will you say that to Cyril, my pretty ?" asked her mother 
 playfully. " Or is it only to please the old mother r" 
 
 The girl laughed her denial, and kissed her mother's beating 
 throat. How it beat ! How hard and heavy and full and 
 cpuick were those hammer-like throbs ! Was this part of the 
 terrible presage ? She did not say what she thought, but she 
 clang to her mother very tenderly as she answered : 
 
 '•I love Cyril better than my life, mother; but he knows 
 how much I love you and papa too ; and he is such a dear, 
 good boy ! — he is not jealous." 
 
 "Who is not jealous?" asked Cyril, coming through the 
 open window from the lawn. 
 
 ,; You," said Stella, smiling all over her face as if a sunbeam 
 had crossed it. 
 
 "I have no cause," he answered. "If I had, I do not Bay 
 what I would be. I do not think I should be generous 
 
£6 a MY LOVE!" 
 
 enough to divide your affections, even if you wished it. But 
 I cauuot imagine that. What made you say that I was not 
 jealous?" 
 
 There was just a dash of uneasiness in his voice ; something 
 that was not quite like Cyril's usual richness and roundness 
 of confidence in himself and fortune. 
 
 " Jealous of papa and mamma," said Stella, again kissing 
 her mother. 
 
 He drew a deeper breath. 
 
 "Oh! that's it, is it? Well, no, I am not likely to be 
 jealous of them. That would be absurd and bad form too!" 
 
 " You have no reason to be," said Mrs. Branscombe quietly. 
 " The child loves you as much as the most exacting lover in 
 the world need desire. Never forget that, Cyril ! She loves 
 you with her whole heart and soul." 
 
 The mother spoke tremulously ; and as she spoke the tears 
 came for the second time to-day into her mild, patient eyes. 
 
 "Dearest mother! My own dear, darling mother!" said 
 Stella fondly. 
 
 " She does not love me less for loving you so much," said 
 Cyril also fondly ; but why this sudden sadness ? this under- 
 current of pain ? this strange sense of shadow in the cloudless 
 sky ? Ah ! he forgot that she, this dear mother, was ill. It 
 was her failing health that had touched her nerves and made 
 her so much more sensitive than she used to be. "And 
 whatever happens," he continued, meaning Stella's marriage 
 and consequent departure from home ; " she will always love 
 you just as much as she does now. One love does not drive 
 out another, and her heart is large enough to hold the two." 
 
 " You answer for me very confidently," said Stella forcing a 
 laugh ; and the mother also forced a laugh in concert, so that 
 the sudden shadow passed and the under-current of pain was 
 lost in the ripple of the smiling surface. And then Cyril and 
 Stella went out into the garden, where they spent nine-tenths 
 of their time, and once more found Paradise and security 
 beneath the spreading branches of the old cedar on the lawn. 
 
 " If only Fred would have consented!" replied Mrs. Brans- 
 combe, looking after them sadly. " If I could but see her 
 safe, and feel sure that she would not have to live as I have 
 lived ! Oh, that God would give me strength to carry me 
 over these coming weeks, so that I may live till I have seen 
 her safe !" 
 
 Would she ? When Colonel Moneypenny asked Dr. Quigley 
 
ANTICIPATIONS. 27 
 
 as they came out of church the Sunday after the rumour of 
 her malady crept about : " How he really thought Mrs. Brans- 
 combe was?" and "Was it true that she was in a very bad 
 way, and might reckon up the weeks she had to live on her 
 ringers r" the doctor — who liked her and knew of her more 
 than any one did in Highwood — looked more than profes- 
 sionally grave as he answered: "It is impossible to limit the 
 recuperative power of nature; but if she does not get better 
 soon we may prepare for her being much worse." And this 
 from a man as cautious and cheery as Dr. Quigley was almost 
 as bad as a sentence of death. 
 
 It was indeed doubtful if she would last over these three 
 intervening months. That aneurism was certainly not 
 decreasing, it was scarcely stationary; and she had a cough, 
 which was about the worst thing she could have in her 
 
 it circumstances. It shook her to pieces, as Jane 
 Durnsford said, and made her often feel as if this were 
 indeed death. She was also evidently anxious about some- 
 thing, though no one could imagine what it was. There was 
 nothing new in her life, save this marriage which she had 
 sanctioned and desired with all her heart. So why should 
 she be anxious ? they asked oiie of another ; and no one knew 
 what to answer. No one knew the secret of her thoughts ; 
 not even Jane Durnsford, who had known that other secret 
 so long. But every one felt that something was underneath 
 the smooth appearance of things, and that sweet, patient, 
 gentle Mrs. Branscombe — that good Matilda — had some 
 kind of unspoken trouble which did not tend to make her 
 
 it precarious state of health more reassuring. 
 The first fear passed, things gradually slipped back into 
 their old groove. All was just as it had ever been; save that 
 Stella hung about her mother more tenderly than before — 
 anticipated her wishes with more of the prescience of love — 
 and, for all that she was in one sense absorbed by Cyril, 
 seemed to live more and more in her mother's life ; that Cyril 
 was even more contented, more gentle, more loving, and i 
 considerate than he had ever been — and he had al 
 " such a dear boy to me," as she used to say ; and that 
 Mr. Branscoml te prefaced his perpetual requirements with : " If 
 you feel well enough, my good Matilda ;" — " If it will not tire 
 you too much, my poor wife" — will you come into my elegant 
 studio and give me your time, your mental energies, your 
 attention, your very life's blood, by listening to the p 
 
28 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 trash that ever dribbled from a human brain, with the under- 
 standing that you are to applaud and find it all excellent and 
 without fault ? 
 
 The weight was laid on her as heavily as before ; and what 
 a terrible weight it was ! Who that has not known can esti- 
 mate the pain of this awakening from the loveliest dream of 
 romance that ever gilded maiden fancy into the most meagre 
 prose of reality by which wifely knowledge was disenchanted ? 
 — finding the man whom she had believed to be a genius 
 nothing but a wind-bag ; finding the nature which she had 
 believed to be chivalrous and exalted, selfish, vain and mean ; 
 finding the man to be simply a mask ; yet forced to Live as if 
 she still believed in the depth of shallowness so sorrowfully 
 gauged ; forced to pretend that she found his verses poetry, 
 his music melody, his paintings art ; forced to give her life in 
 transcribing, and her strength in praising, things which were 
 not worth the paper on which they were written ! And she, 
 naturally the soul of truth, to live with the oppressive know- 
 ledge of her own life-long deception and his substantial 
 worthlessness, yet to be unable to tell the terrible secret to 
 living being — to be almost afraid and ashamed to confess it 
 to herself! 
 
 No wonder that her nerves and heart had given way under 
 the strain ; that nature had avenged herself on the strength 
 by which she had been coerced ! 
 
 This, then, was why Mrs. Branscombe yearned so ardently 
 to live till she had seen Stella safely married. She knew 
 what her own existence had been as the moral sacrifice, the 
 intellectual victim, of her husband ; and she feared that he 
 would take her child as he had taken her, and make a second 
 sacrifice when the first was exhausted. Should she, the 
 mother, die before her daughter was safe under the protection 
 of Cyril, she feared that the marriage would be broken off in 
 order that Stella might be kept at home to be the com- 
 panion of her father. Unable to rise to the dignity of 
 unselfishness, or to bear the ennui of his loss and loneliness, 
 he would take the girl's happiness as the cushion for his own, 
 and break her heart and Cyril's that he might have some one 
 to whom to read his epic and play over his latest nocturme. 
 And then Stella would find out the true nature of this 
 idolized father of hers, whom now she believed flawless and 
 touched with a spiritual grace beyond that of the common race 
 of men. 
 
FULFILMENT. 23 
 
 All this was just what no one in the whole world suspected. 
 The Brauscombe marriage had always passed for one of the 
 happiest which the mind of man could conceive or the heart 
 of woman desire. Tastes, souls, characters, were all twins 
 one with the other, according to the general belief of society ; 
 and had any one at Highwood been told that Mrs. Brans- 
 combe was literally dying of her husband's artistic elegance — 
 dying of his odes and his canzonets, his operettas and his 
 pictures — it would have been as if he had witnessed an ugly 
 miracle whereby beauty had suddenly become foulness and 
 truth had crumbled down into falsehood. 
 
 But it would not have been believed. Mrs. Branscombe 
 had kept the secret too well to give the smallest loophole of 
 suspicion, save to Dr. Quigley — not even to poor Durnsford. 
 She had married with the fullest faith in love and sentiment, 
 and with the principle superadded of the strictest wifely 
 duty. The wifely duty included in her mind absolute self- 
 surrender and devotion. The wife of a criminal should stand 
 by him in the dock ; the wife of a sham should hide her 
 knowledge of the mask and maintain the integrity of the 
 thing represented only, not existing. Life-long deception for 
 the maintenance of a husband's undeserved repute was a 
 sorrow truly, but no sin — a strain, but no crime. A woman's 
 conscience knew no higher virtue than conjugal devotion ; and 
 a mother's duty was involved in bandaging her children's eyes 
 and bringing them up in blind worship of their paternal wind- 
 bag. On this principle she had acted, in this practice lived; 
 but the terrible tension told on her at last, and Dr. Quigley 
 said to himself: " The wonder is, not that there is aneurism 
 of the heart, but that it did not develop earlier and that it 
 has lasted so loner!" 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FULFILMENT. 
 
 Stella had two especial friends at Highwood, Augusta 
 Latrobe aud Hortensia Lyon. They were friends fulfilling 
 very different functions and of a very unequal calibre one 
 from the other. Mrs. Latrobe, though still young, had 
 leaped the gulf which separates maidenhood from wonianh> n -d, 
 and was therefore the denizen of an unknown country and so 
 
30 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 far somewhat of a stranger to her former playfellows ; while 
 Hortcnsia was a girl like Stella herself and stood on the same 
 plane and platform. 
 
 For all that, Augusta was perhaps really the favourite ; and 
 Stella usually gave good heed to what the bright-tempered, 
 fair-haired, reasonable widow said to hei\ She felt that 
 Augusta spoke from a broader view of things, a wider horizon 
 and a clearer knowledge of life. Had she not been married 
 for six years, living out of Highwood and in the heart of 
 London society ? Of course, then, she knew life better than 
 a country girl who had never left home possibly could; and,, 
 as was said, for the most part Stella gave heed to her and 
 respected her understanding. 
 
 But not this time ! How indeed could she ? When 
 Augusta came up to Eose Hill and gravely proposed to the 
 girl that she should marry Cyril Ponsonby — secretly, if need 
 be, but at once — it nearly brought about a quarrel between 
 the two, so great was the girl's horror and surprise at a 
 proposition which seemed to her the very acme of indelicacy. 
 
 " Why should I marry, secretly and at once, when I am so 
 soon to be Cyril's wife in the face of the world and without 
 deceit ?" she asked indignantly. 
 
 " There are many things which women can advise girls to 
 do yet not be able to give all the reasons,'' was Augusta's 
 tranquil answer. " If you were wise you would take my 
 advice and act on it." 
 
 " But, Augusta, what would my father and mother say to 
 such an extraordinary thing?" said Stella, opening her 
 beautiful eyes to the widest. " What would Cyril himself 
 think of it ! He would be as shocked as I myself." 
 
 " Time would show," answered Augusta sententiously. 
 " My advice is good, and I know what I am saying." 
 
 " You are generally not so mysterious," said Stella, trying 
 to laugh the whole thing into vapour. 
 
 "You need not treat it lightly," returned her friend, 
 gravely. "Iain mysterious if you like to say so ; but I am 
 awfully in earnest." 
 
 " Then give me some reason — tell me why," was Stella's 
 rejoinder. 
 
 " Shall I ? Are you sensible enough to hear the truth ?" 
 
 " I think so," she said. " I care more for the truth, 
 however unpleasant, than for pretty pretences." 
 
 "Well, then, listen. Suppose your mother dies. You 
 
FULFILMENT. 3i 
 
 know she is in bad health, and may; so why do you shrink 
 and say ' Oh. Augusta !' as if I had said something monstrous 
 and impossible? Well, suppose she dies, then your marriage 
 will be delayed, heaven knows how long; and you never know 
 what may happen when once these things are put off." 
 
 " It would be such a sorrow," said Stella, her eyes full of 
 tears, " that I could easily give up my own happiness for a 
 little while. I do not think I should care much for myself 
 at all if I lost her." 
 
 " And Cyril ?" 
 
 " Cyril would feel with me, I am sure of that." 
 
 "And go to India without you?" 
 
 " If necessary, yes ; but it would not be necessary. I 
 could be married quietly, without parade or fuss, even if 
 such a dreadful tiling had happened. But I cannot bear to 
 discuss the probability, Augusta. It is too dreadful." 
 
 " And if your father objected to the marriage V* continued 
 Augusta, not heeding Stella's disclaimer. 
 
 ' r He would not." 
 
 " In that case the argument goes for nothing ; but if he 
 did, would you give up Cyril?" 
 
 " Augusta, how cruel you are to-day ! Hovr do I know 
 what I would do?" said Stella, a certain look of terror 
 breaking through the mournfulness on her face. 
 
 M Oh, I see ! you would give up Cyril," said Sirs. Latrobe 
 tranquilly. 
 
 " If papa wanted me to stay with him for a little while to 
 comfort him, it would be my duty, even if I had to put off 
 my marriage far a few months." 
 
 "And if he wanted you to break off altogether? Are you 
 prepared to make that sacrifice too, Stella ?" 
 
 " He would not ask me," she answered. 
 
 Mrs. Latrobe gave an odd kind of smile. 
 
 " You are just like all the rest," she said ; " afraid of being 
 pinned to a point. Well ! remember that I counsel you to 
 marry now, at once, without fuss and even secretly, if need be." 
 
 " And make my happiness out of my mother's chance of 
 dying ? Augusta ! how dare you advise such a thing ? It 
 seems to me almost like murder — like killing her for my own 
 advantage." 
 
 Augusta Latrobe slightly shrugged her shoulders. Tiny 
 were broad, finely-modelled, and as white and smooth as ivory 
 beneath her dress. 
 
32 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " My dear," she said, " I have as much sentiment as anv 
 one need have, but I have flung overboard all superfluity. I 
 find life a tight pattern at the best ; and I think the wisest 
 thing we can do is to make ourselves as comfortable as 
 possible. Analyze what I have said, and what harm is there 
 in it ? Onlv a very necessary precaution against possible 
 disappointment, like settlements against your husband's 
 possible ill-conduct in money when you marry. You believe 
 in Cyril ; but you will have settlements all the same as if you 
 had not a particle of trust in him. You put your happiness 
 into his hands, but you protect yourself by all the power of 
 the law against his dishonour. So you believe in your 
 father's unselfishness and your mother's immortality, but I 
 for one think you would be wise to secure yourself against a 
 possible disappointment in the one and sorrow from the 
 other." 
 
 " You and I see things differently," said Stella. " I could 
 not act in this way. It would be too cold-blooded !" 
 
 "Yes, that is just it. It would be rational; and reason 
 always is cold-blooded," said Augusta. 
 
 " We need not be all reason — we must have a little senti- 
 ment — a little feeling," Stella returned. 
 
 " Ah, my dear ! a very little is enough, I assure you. 
 Reason carries the heaviest metal and goes the farthest, 
 believe me. If you had the brains I always thought you had 
 you would let me persuade you ; and you would be Cyril 
 Ponsonby's wife before the week was out." 
 
 " Now, do not let us talk of it any more," said Stella 
 hastily. " I ought to be very angry with you, but I know 
 that you mean well and have spoken for my good, and I 
 cannot be vexed. But, indeed, dear Augusta, I am pained. 
 I did not think you would have said all this." 
 
 " You are a good little goose," said Augusta kindly. " I 
 have said my say ; discharged my conscience ; so now we will 
 let the matter drop. You value sentiment you see, and I go 
 in for common sense. We will see which wins in the end. 
 Now, take me into your conservatory like a love. I hear you 
 have the most magnificent lapageria in all High wood, and 
 my mother said I was to be sure and see it and ask your 
 gardener how he has managed to cultivate such a beauty." 
 
 " You may ask, but he will not tell," said Stella, as lightly 
 as she could speak. " Mason has his secrets of cultivation 
 which he tells no one, not even us." 
 
FULFILMENT. 33 
 
 •• What is his price r" said Augusta with unmoved placi- 
 dity. " Every one has his or her price." 
 
 ''Augusta, what an awful principle !" cried Stella. 
 
 " Truth always is awful, dear, to those who have not learned 
 her lessons by heart. Then it becomes common-place and 
 ceases to terrify," said Augusta ; and with this the two went 
 out into the garden on their way to the greenhouse, and 
 Stella wondered if she should ever again love her friend as 
 liiiich as she once did, or forget the painful impression made 
 on her by to-day's talk. 
 
 And as they went into the greenhouse they fell upon Cyril 
 in the full freedom of prospective sonship, smoking his cigar 
 among the flowers — tobacco being good against the green fly 
 r.nd the red spider. 
 
 While looking at the flowers, Augusta managed to get a 
 few paces apart with Cyril. Really she scarcely knew whv 
 she took all this trouble about these young people and their 
 concerns ! What could it matter to her whether they 
 married now or not ? Only she was good-natured, and did 
 not like to think that they would be made miserable. Still, 
 half despising herself and half deprecating her own solicitude, 
 she did what she could ; so, bending over a fine petunia which 
 she affected to praise and did not see, she said in a low voice 
 to Stella's lover : 
 
 " Mr. Ponsonby. why don't you give up all the finery of 
 your wedding, and. get it over at once while Mrs. Branscombe 
 is alive and well enough to go to it ? Take my advice and 
 marry the first day you can." 
 
 And before Cyril could answer, or had recovered from his 
 astonishment, she had joined Stella over the lapageria, and 
 was lost in amazement at the size of the flowers and the 
 brilliancy of their colouring. 
 
 But Cyril mentally said to himself : " What a thorough 
 woman that is ! What a good-hearted darling !" and felt a 
 strange impulse of friendship to her as the one woman who 
 had interested herself in his love and Stella's. 
 
 Once again the family was assembled in the drawing-rooin 
 after dinner as before, to listen to more lines added to that 
 interminable epic which grew and grew like a mushroom in 
 the night, or like that fish in the Arabian tales which 
 threatened to fill the world with its appalling immensitv. 
 The sacred fire burnt with terrible fervour at this moment 
 and the divine afflatus was breathed out in a surprisingly 
 
34 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 shrill and prolonged note. And yet, the other side of 
 contempt being pity, it was almost pathetic to see the intense 
 satisfaction felt by the author of this hopeless stuff, and how 
 sincerely assured he was both of his own genius and tho 
 world's illimitable gain in his works. 
 
 They were now sitting in the half-circle of established 
 custom. Mr. Branscombe was at the outer edge in the 
 stately, carved armchair which combined ease with dignity 
 and had the air of a drawing-room throne. His right hand 
 fell over the lion's head that formed the finish of the arm ; 
 his left held the precious manuscript. His scented locks, 
 black and glossy with crafty pomades warranted not to dye, 
 only to preserve, were artfully disposed in well-arranged 
 layers to bide the tell-tale thinning tracts ; his pointed beard 
 and well-arranged moustache were treated with the same care 
 as his hair ; his evening dress was of faultless elegance, save 
 perhaps for more jewellery than was permissible by the 
 strictest canons of taste, but the gold of his heavy florid 
 chain combined well with that narrow line of purple-blue 
 beneath his waistcoat which suggested a riband of merit 
 modestly hidden ; his handsome face, with its thin, high, 
 razor-edged nose, loosely curved mobile lips, fine eyes and 
 clear transparent skin, was as sensitive as it was conscious ; 
 he looked the ideal of a former Beauty -man turned poet and 
 artist in his latter maturity — Adonis aging into a gentleman- 
 like Jupiter — Alcibiades developing into Plato. 
 
 His wife sat next him, in a smaller, less stately, less throne- 
 like chair. His sense of fitness was so keen that he would 
 have thought it a want of delicacy on her part, a something 
 that savoured of strong-mindedness and conjugal rebellion, 
 had she taken for her seat a chair resembling his. She might 
 be queen where he was king, but she was queen in a minor 
 degi*ee, standing always on the step below his throne. 
 
 Cyril and Stella sat on the sofa, half facing these two, 
 leaving room for a Florentine marble table by Mr. Brans- 
 combe's side, where he could place his sheets as he finished 
 them, or refresh himself with eau sucree a fleur d'orange — a 
 beverage which greatly pleased him, and which he recom- 
 mended to all his friends as a discovery made by himself alone. 
 
 So the time passed. At every four or five lines Mr. Brans- 
 combe interrupted his reading, which was of the sonorous 
 and artificial kind, that he might appeal to his good Matilda 
 for praise and confirmation. 
 
FULFILMENT. 35 
 
 "That is a fine example of alliteration, is it not, Matilda ?" 
 said, as be broke off in the midd!. sentence to call 
 
 attention to the epithet, " leafy-fingered Flora, flooding fields 
 with summer sowing." '" I flatter myself this has the true 
 Shakespearian ring," he said again by way of commentary, 
 when he had half sung, half chanted, these lines : 
 
 "Can honour dwell in thick-skinned caitifl' breasts ? 
 Or pure refinement where gross usage reigns ?" 
 
 " Has Keats ever produced an image more purely Greek 
 and sensuous than this?" was his next interruption when 
 he came to a Hymn of Maidens, sung in strophe and anti- 
 strophe to celebrate the victory of their fellow-countrymen — 
 which victory he described as the dashing of young eagles 
 against the storm-clouds in a murky sky, while the maids 
 themselves were white doves fluttering in the sunshine. How 
 the dashing of young eagles against the storm-clouds could 
 do any good by way of dispersion he omitted to state. Such 
 poetry as his does not concern itself with the facts of natural 
 history ; and versified meteorology is notoriously free from 
 fetters. 
 
 It was these interruptions and perpetual appeals to atten- 
 tion — these incessant bids for admiration — which made the 
 torture of these readings to Mrs. Branscombe. Had her 
 husband been content to read on and on, as some men do, 
 needing no more than the mere appearance of attention, with 
 sometimes a word of praise judiciously interjected when a 
 pause naturally came and it was only common politeness to 
 fill it, she could have borne it bravely. She could have 
 thought out her own thoughts, and been no more disturbed 
 by the monotony of her husband's voice than by the sough of 
 the wind among the trees or the falling of the cascade behind 
 the house. But this perpetual demand, this ceaseless strain, 
 made the whole thing a fatiguing exercise, and one which 
 exhausted her even more than bodily exertion. And it was 
 one which habit and custom, instead of softening, rendered 
 only the more difficult. 
 
 Cyril and Stella were not thus appealed to, and therefore 
 had nothing to bear. They made the dumb audience of whose 
 sympathies the poet was sure ; but that good Matilda was 
 the chorus whose voice must be heard and whose minor action 
 must run along the line taken by the actors. Those two silly 
 young people might listen or not, as they choose, for all the 
 
36 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 attention paid to them by Mr. Branscombe. So long as they 
 behaved themselves with outward decorum, did not giggle 
 nor whisper nor shuffle with their feet nor make any kind of 
 stir or noise, they might talk together by eyes and little 
 gestures, by happy smiles and mutual understanding, all in 
 \h.e foolish way of lovers, and earn no rebuke for unbecoming 
 .onduct. Ami as they did thus occupy themselves each 
 /vould have been hard put to it to say distinctly what all this 
 monotonous recitation was about ; though Stella thought 
 that papa looked very elegant and handsome and superior — 
 that his white hands were as beautiful as a woman's — that 
 ais face was the most graceful and gentlemanlike imaginable — 
 -and that the whole thing, from the well-arranged curl on his 
 forehead to the small, slim foot in blue silk socks and patent- 
 leather shoes with broad ribbon bows, resting in a picturesque 
 attitude on the crimson velvet footstool, was of the highest 
 vrder of art that could be seen. 
 
 Perhaps Cyril would have preferred a general conversa- 
 tion ; or better still, that happy garden where he found his 
 own Paradise and made his Love's ; and Stella would have 
 followed his lead had he been able to give it. But of course 
 vhis was all naughtiness, and had to be suppressed even from 
 each other. It was her father who was boring him and to 
 whom she herself was giving only a fragmentary attention — 
 listening with her ears but not with her heart ; and her father 
 was almost as sacred to Cyril as to Stella herself. 
 
 The three listeners were wonderfully epiiet ; and by a strange 
 chance Mr. Branscombe had forgotten to interrupt himself or 
 stir up them for the last run of twenty minutes. The evening 
 was sweet and still ; the light was gradually waning. Booming 
 beetles and ghostly miller-moths flew past the open window 
 across the fragrant lawn ; bats darted in slender lines of 
 sudden darkness against the sky ; the owls began to hoot in 
 the woods ; the last notes of the birds came in fitful signals 
 sleepily from among the trees ; a nightingale was giving out 
 his song ; the stars were just beginning to shine in the 
 darkening blue where the crescent moon showed her silver 
 streak ; and the voice reciting that interminable epic became 
 more and more monotonous in its artificial strain, more and 
 more conducive to slumber, like the rustling of the wind in a 
 corn-field, or the falling plash of water ; when suddenly 
 Mr. Branscombe interrupted himself with a short, sharp 
 jerk. 
 
UNDER THE LASH. 37 
 
 '•Why, Matilda, I do believe you are asleep!" be. 
 angrily, in a shrill, high-pitched voice. 
 
 "No, dear! no, I am not!" she answered, starting and 
 raising herself. "No, I am not," she said again, v.-ith a 
 strange expression of terror and disturbance on her face. 
 
 She sat up in her chair and looked round the room r.s if 
 she saw nothing of what she looked at but did see more than 
 was there. With both hands she pushed the hair off her 
 face in a bewildered way; gave a deep sigh and shuddered as 
 she had shuddered once before. Then she flung up her arms 
 with a piercing shriek and fell back in her chair — dead ! The 
 aneurism had done its work, and that sudden, sharp awaken- 
 ing from her drowsy slumber had been the last strain which 
 the dilated vessel would bear. She was dead. Her husband's 
 poetry had at last killed her. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 UNDER THE LASH. 
 
 " What a pity ! What a thousand pities !" said Augusta 
 Latrobe with cumulative sympathy when she heard the sad 
 news, and how sweet, kind, patient Mrs. Branscombe had 
 died as she had lived, without giving trouble to any one ; 
 with no parade of circumstance ; quietly effacing herself to 
 the last. " How I wish she had lived a little longer !" 
 
 '• What is the use of wishing in that childish way r" replied 
 Mrs. Morshead severely. "She went when she was called. 
 That was enough for her ; and ought to be enough for you 
 and all of us." 
 
 " But if that call had only been put off for a little while !" 
 said the graceless widow quite seriously. " If that pour dear 
 Stella could have been married before it came [" 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course Stella's marriage is what runs in your 
 head !" returned the mother with fierce sarcasm. " That is 
 all you think of — all that any of you modern young v 
 think of! Poor dear Mrs. Branscombe might have liv 
 died so far as she herself was concerned, and neither you, nor 
 any one of your kind, would have cared. So Long as that 
 young minx had !_ r "t her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Branscombe 
 both might have died twenty times over, and not one oi 
 would have thought twice of them, poor dear souls !" 
 
38 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " I don't think that," said Augusta tranquilly. " But as 
 things are it only makes two sorrows instead of one. If 
 Stella bad been safely married it would have been so mucb 
 out of the fire. And it does no one any good that she and 
 Cyril Ponsonby should be unhappy." 
 
 " And you would have them married and that poor dear 
 ivoman not cold in her grave yet?" said Mrs. Morshead. 
 " Upon my word, Augusta, you are a nice kind of daughter, 
 I must say ! A mother is nothing to you, it seems — only a 
 money-box that you can put your hand into when you want 
 anything from her, and care no more about when you have 
 done ! As for thinking that you owe any duty to a parent — 
 that you should be loving, obedient, respectful — oh, no ! we 
 are far too liberal for such old-fashioned notions nowadays ! 
 It is as much as we poor old people can expect if you young 
 ones allow that we have the right to live at all. Why don't 
 you get us all out of the way so that you can do what you 
 like with what we leave ?" 
 
 " To be sorry for Mrs. Branscombe's death does not look 
 as if I did not care for mothers in general," said Augusta. 
 
 "Yes, but why are you sorry? For Stella's sake, not her 
 own," retorted Mrs. Morshead. 
 
 " No, for her own," insisted Augusta. " I was very fond 
 of Mrs. Branscombe — she was so gentle and sweet-tempered ; 
 and she was always very, very good to me, so I ought to have 
 been fond of her — and I was." 
 
 " Perhaps her temper was not tried as some persons' is," 
 said Mrs. Morshead grimly. " And remember, Augusta, it 
 is not so difficult to be good-tempered with people when you 
 do not see too much of them ;" she added significantly. " The 
 test is when you live with them, and learn all their disagree- 
 able ways, and see their selfishness and heartlessness. Let 
 Mrs. Branscombe have been tried as some people are, and I 
 dare say she would have been no better than her neighbours." 
 
 " I think she was better than most," returned her daughter. 
 " Every one knows what an amiable darling she was. She 
 was a perfect angel !" 
 
 " You are always in extremes, Augusta. How I wish you 
 would learn to be more moderate and sensible ! But you 
 always were one of the most exaggerating children possible ; 
 and I see no improvement in you — no sign that you are getting 
 rid of your silly habit, which is nothing better than telling 
 stories when you come to think of it." 
 
UNDER THE LASH. ZO 
 
 Mrs. Morshead Bpoke angrily, aud in her anger lei some 
 stitches drop in her knitting, which did not tend to improve 
 her temper. 
 
 - It is a bad habit," said Angaria, who seldom eared to 
 defend herself ; " but one very difficult to overcome," smiling. 
 '• Bi^r words come so natural to one." 
 
 " Naturally ! A woman of your age. with a son to educate, 
 excusing yourself like a silly girl, because it is ' natural,' " 
 growled Mrs. Morshead. ''You ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself, Augusta. I am sure it makes me quite miserable 
 when I think of that poor dear child, and how he is ruined 
 bv the way in which he is being brought up." 
 
 " " I hope not quite ruined, mamma," said Augusta cheer- 
 fully. " I do my best for him ; and on the whole he is a 
 very good little man." 
 
 ''He is a troublesome little monkey, that is what he is," 
 ;aid Mrs. Morshead crossly. " A good little man, indeed ! — 
 .1 tiresome little toad you mean ; — always in some mischief or 
 other ! I met him yesterday in the garden with a beautiful 
 large geranium in his hand. And now, Augusta, you will 
 please to understand — I will not have that boy pick my 
 flowers. Once for all — and I will not give you a second 
 warning — if ever I find him with another garden flower, he 
 shall not go near the beds again. He shall not break and 
 destroy everything as he does, as if he were lord and master 
 forsooth. Not in my lifetime, Augusta! When I am dead 
 and gone you can do what you like — dance on my grave if 
 vou like — as I dare say you will. I don't expect much else 
 from you. But while I am alive I am mistress ; and I will 
 not be trampled under foot by an undutiful girl and her 
 noisy, impudent, troublesome little boy ! I have seen too 
 much of that kind of thing in others to submit to it myself. 
 So I tell you in time." 
 
 " I am sorry if Tony picked the flowers," said Augusta. 
 " He has strict orders not to do so, and I have never known 
 him disobey." 
 
 " Then how did he get that geranium yesterday I should 
 like to know':" said Mrs. Morshead sharply. " Did it pick 
 : and put itself into his hand? I suppose that is what 
 will be saying next." 
 
 " He told me he found it lying on the Long Walk. Perhaps 
 dropped it when he was bringing in the flowers for the 
 table," said Augusta. 
 
40 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 "He told a falsehood," returned Mrs. Morshead sharply. 
 " Page never lets the flowers fall. And now he shall be 
 planished for two faults instead of one." 
 
 Augusta said no more. She never encouraged a discussion 
 of any kind on her little son, whom she kept out of her 
 grandmother's sight as much as possible. It was the only 
 thing to do ; though for doing it .she was of course blamed 
 by her mother, as she would have been had she done the 
 contrary. The terrible old woman had been a harsh mother 
 even to her own child; to her grandchild she was simply 
 cruel ; though the little fellow was as good as the traditional 
 gold of the nursery simile. Yet had he been a boy-angel 
 come down from heaven she would have fallen foul of him 
 for some fault evolved out of her own hard temper and spirit 
 of opposition. It was for nothing wrong or even wilful that 
 she rated him as she did. If quiet, she said it made her 
 nervous to see a little fellow like that so unnaturally still, and 
 she was sure he had water on the brain and was growing 
 idiotic — or that he was sulky and deserved a whipping to get 
 the black dog off his back. If lively and a little restless, 
 after the manner of his age, she sent him out of the room 
 with a rebuke for making too much noise — perhaps the verbal 
 rebuke was translated into manual action, which effectually 
 damped his childish gaiety and changed his merry laugh to 
 bitter sobs. It was impossible for him to do right ; for his 
 very existence was the offence. Was he not the son of that 
 disgraceful Professor Latrobe ? — that penniless physicist who 
 had married Augusta Morshead without making a settlement 
 and had died without leaving her an income ! And when 
 Mrs. Morshead thought of this she wondered at her own 
 goodness in receiving back to The Laurels at all her undutiful 
 daughter and this living witness of her fault. 
 
 This marriage with a poor man who had been unable to 
 provide for her, was the gigantic grievance of a life that had 
 been one long chord of grievances — variation succeeding to 
 variation, but the main theme — the wickedness of the world, 
 and the ill conduct of all and sundry to herself — ever the 
 same. Had Professor Latrobe been alive and wealthy 
 Mrs. Morshead would have found some other peg on which 
 to hang the pall of her dissatisfaction ; as he was dead, and 
 as he had died poor, she was spared the trouble of going 
 farther ; and the widow and the child had the benefit of her 
 bitterness and complainings. 
 
UJSDEK THE LA SI I. 4L 
 
 "And I will not have him brought up in these extravagant 
 habits of yours," continued Mrs. Morshead, after a pause. 
 " Considering that you have not a penny of your own, Augusta, 
 and have to come to me for everything you want, I must say 
 vou are dreadfully extravagant, and might be more considerate. 
 You never think of what things cost, and just squander away 
 the money as if it were so much water or sand." 
 
 " I am very sorry, mamma, but I really did think I had 
 been careful," said Augusta, who was, in truth, a marvel of 
 economical resource and thriftiness. 
 
 " Careful ! and there is that boy of yours in his best clothes 
 to-day gone olf to play with that little Turk, Nora Penne- 
 father ! You call that being careful, do you? I do not. A 
 pretty mess he will be in when he comes back from that house, 
 the most untidy, disorderly place in all Highwood ! How you 
 can let him associate with that horrid little girl I cannot think !" 
 
 " Why you see, mamma, Nora is the only child of Tony's 
 age in the place ; and it is good for him to have a playmate 
 sometimes," said Augusta. 
 
 "Not such a forward little hussy as that !" retorted Mrs. 
 Mi 'rshead. " Better be a nice well-conducted little fellow 
 without playmates than go rampaging and racketing about 
 with Nora Penuefather. The state he will be in when he 
 comes home — all covered, with jam or torn to tatters. I 
 know ! Where is the money to come from to support all this 
 recklessness? It will end in my having to give up this place ; 
 I foresee that ; and you might as well dig my grave at once 
 as ask me to give up The Laurels ! But I have not Fortu- 
 natus's purse, and I cannot do everything." 
 
 " His everyday clothes are really too shabby to be worn 
 outside the garden," said Augusta. " I have mended and 
 patched till I can mend and patch no more ; and your grand- 
 son should be decent for your sake, you see," she added with 
 a pretty smile and playful half-caressing accent. 
 
 " My grandson, indeed ! A pretty grandson you have 
 given — a beggar's child," grumbled the old woman. 
 
 "And now that we are talking of Tony's wardrobe, shall I 
 go to Graham's and order a new suit for him?" continued 
 Augusta, speaking as if she bad not heard her mother's last 
 words, speaking indeed as if it were quite easy to ask for 
 what she wanted, and just as certain that she would g 
 when she asked for it. "He really is getting too disreput- 
 able !" she went on to say, her manner tranquil, however 
 
42 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 perturbed might be her feeling; "and as his best suit is not 
 over-fresh as it is, it will soon be worn out if he takes it into 
 daily use, as he must very soon. Children knock their 
 clothes out so frightfully !" 
 
 "Then he should be taught not to 'knock them out so 
 frightfully,' " said Mrs. Morshead in reply. " That is just 
 where I blame you, Augusta. You never teach him anything, 
 never check, nor contradict, nor correct him from one day's 
 end to the other. You let him do just as he likes — scamper 
 all over the house, helter-skelter like a wild colt — run wild 
 about the place — pull the flowers — tear his clothes — tell 
 falsehoods — do just as he likes, as if he were a savage. And 
 I have to bear the brunt and pay for all his mischief. And 
 yet I am not allowed a voice in the matter. My goodness ! 
 you should have seen the way in which we were brought up ! 
 As if we dared to have disputed our mother's will, as you and 
 that boy of yours dispute mine !" 
 
 "Dear mamma — I only wish to please you," said Augusta 
 sweetly. 
 
 " Please me !" she grumbled. " It is an odd way you take, 
 Augusta. For my part I do not know what the world is 
 coming to. You young people and your children are just ap- 
 palling. That is what you are." 
 
 " I am sorry you think I am doing badly by my child and 
 you," said Augusta, a slight twitch about her lips though her 
 voice was quite smooth and gentle. " But we have not settled 
 about the clothes yet. Shall I order him a new suit at 
 Graham's ?" 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Morshead sharply. " I will see to it my- 
 self. You are not to be trusted with anything, Augusta. 
 Make out your list and let me look over it. If I do not keep 
 an eye on you, goodness knows what folly you may not 
 commit. I might as well have two children to look after," 
 she added, twitching the knitted woollen shawl over her 
 shoulders with an impatient pull. " I have everything to do ; 
 and you might be such a help to me if you would !" 
 
 " I would help you, mamma, gladly, if you would let me," 
 said her daughter. 
 
 " Vex me by your incapacity and ruin me by your extrava- 
 gance, you mean," was the ungracious response. " I wish I 
 could trust to you; but how can I — such a light-minded 
 feather-head as you are ? Tell me what you want for that 
 boy of yours, if indeed you know vourself what it is. Oh !" 
 
UNDER THE LASH. 43 
 
 as her daughter brought out a written list from her work- 
 basket ; " you have got it all cut and dried have you ? Upon 
 my word, Augusta, you have coolness enough for a dozen ! 
 That I will say of you. However, give it to me and let me 
 see what you have had the conscience to put down." 
 
 Augusta rose from her place and came over to her mother, 
 with the Hst of poor Tony's necessaries in her hand. The 
 Terrible old woman took the paper, readjusted her spectn* •!<_•> 
 and read it, sotto voce, to herself. It was a very modest 
 list — the least that could possibly be done with ; but Mrs. 
 Morshead read each insignificant item as if it were a question 
 of nuggets and white elephants. 
 
 Her daughter continued her work of embroidering a silk 
 jacket with bugles as quietly as if her heart had not sunk 
 and her courage had not died. Of all the pains included in 
 her dependent position, this of asking her mother for clothes 
 for her child was perhaps the worst to bear. 
 
 At last Mrs. Morshead, looking over her spectacles and 
 holding out the paper diagonally, came to the point. 
 
 " How can you be so absurd, Augusta, as to make out such 
 a ridiculous list as that?" she said, crossly. " Do you want 
 the poor child to look like the beggar he is '? Not while I 
 have a sixpence to spend on his comfort and respectability ! 
 A black and white check for his best ! It is an insult to me 
 to propose such a thing. He shall have a velvet ; and the 
 black and white may do for every day. I cannot have him 
 go about the world in the disgraceful state you think good 
 _h for him. He is my grandson ; and if you do not care 
 for his appearance, I do." 
 
 "You are very good, mamma," said Augusta affectionately. 
 " I am sure I am most grateful to you." 
 
 "Good? Of cours.' I am good! Whoever thought I was 
 snapped the mother. M A great deal too good to you, 
 such a tiresome, undutiful girl as you are ; and so I tell you. 
 But I will not have you say that I do not do my duty by youi 
 poor little boy. Poor fellow ! He has only me to look to : 
 and he shall not be a would' be quite wilting 
 
 to neglect him, if I did not look after him." 
 
 Augusta made no answer. With the sweetest manner and 
 the most unruffled sweetness of temper, she had a won i 
 way of sticking to her point and dropping all side is 
 She had a her main purpose of the moment, and 
 
 secured a new supply of clothes for her son; and whether her 
 
44 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 mother took the tone of the child's protector against her 
 neglect, or whether she had, which was just as likely, given 
 her a severe scolding for extravagance, it was much the same 
 to Augusta. The grant of the new supply was the bread; 
 the manner in which it was made was the bitter sauce where- 
 with that bread had to be eaten. Still, the former was the 
 essential fact, the latter only an adventitious circumstance ; 
 and while grateful for the one she must pass over the other as 
 unimportant. Yet, oh ! how ardently she wished that she could 
 find her bread in any other cornfield than this thorny one of 
 home ! — that she could ensure her son's fortune by any other 
 course than this of submission to her mother's tyranny and 
 contempt ! But until some other haven of refuge presented 
 itself — would it ever ? — she was bound to this, stony, inhospit- 
 able, grudging, as it was. And her only wisdom was to 
 make the best of that which she could not mend and must 
 perforce endure. 
 
 The conversation went no further on uncomfortable ways 
 for the present ; for soon after Mrs. Morshead had flung her 
 last poisoned little shaft the servant announced " Mr. Kemp," 
 and not even the terrible old woman was quite equal to the 
 task of scolding her daughter as her greeting to a visitor. 
 She contented herself therefore with an angry kind of grunt, 
 as a tall, grave, quiet-mannered but pleasant-looking man 
 came into the room and strode across the floor with the 
 bearing of a soldier and the look of a king. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LIGHT AND SHADOW. 
 
 Looking first at Augusta with a slight smile of pleasure 
 round his mouth and a certain gladness in his eyes, Sandro 
 Kemp, the artist, formally greeted Mrs. Morshead before he 
 spoke to her daughter, as it was but good breeding to do. 
 But he greeted her as one to whom she was no bugbear, 
 terrible as she might be to others ; one who neither courted 
 nor feared her, and who knew how to hold his own without 
 interfering with her rights or suffering her to go beyond her 
 own lawful boundaries and into his domain. The very core 
 of Sandro Kemp's character was that grave and manly kind 
 of dignity which neither takes liberties nor allows them — that 
 
LIGHT AND SHADOW. 4; 
 
 proud humility coupled with self-respect which makes a man 
 acknowledge the shortcomings of his position in the world 
 while conscious of his own intrinsic worth — that large kind 
 of disdain for, vet submission to, social barriers and conven- 
 tional hindrances which marks one who understands the 
 higher laws of life but who will not impose his own convic- 
 tions on another — that steadfastness to his own side and 
 toleration for the side opposed to him, which proclaim the 
 true liberal and the man with an educated conscience. Even 
 his enemies — and he had enemies like others — were forced to 
 admit that he was neither intolerant nor selfish ; though 
 such as Mrs. Morshead said that was only because he was 
 latitudinarian for the one pai*t and wanted to make friends 
 with the Mammon of Unrighteousness for the other. For all 
 that, when they took it in hand to circulate stories to his dis- 
 credit, they had first to invent them. 
 
 There were not wanting some in Highwood with this 
 faculty for creating fancy biographies ; and Sandro had his 
 full share of their unrooted flowers of imagination. He was 
 unmarried, handsome, poor, a favourite with women, and 
 of that plastic profession which gives a gentleman no standing- 
 of itself but is honourable or mean according to proficiency and 
 emolument. Hence he was a fair target for the spears of the 
 idle and the jealous ; and among those who liked him least, 
 and who were most anxious to find the weak places in his 
 armour wherein to thrust their lance-heads, was the terriblo- 
 old woman who held sway at The Laurels. 
 
 Sandro Kemp was indeed no favourite with Mrs. Morshead. 
 He was only an architect ; only an artist ; a man who gave 
 lessons when he could find pupils ; who drew pictures for his 
 amusement aud designed houses for his daily bread ; and 
 Mrs. Morshead was always Avanting to know what kind of 
 profession that was for a man who called himself a gentle- 
 man r And he was poor. He lived in lodgings because he 
 not able to afford a house ; and he was unmarried 
 because he was not able to afford a wife, unless he could find 
 one with money enough who would be silly enough to stoop 
 to his condition. He paid his way honestly and punctually — 
 so much must be admitted ; " but what a way it was !" Mrs. 
 Morshead used to say with disdain when she discussed Mr. 
 Kemp's personal history, as she was prone to do — no one 
 knew exactly why, for it was one which gave her no pleasure 
 to contemplate. Especially was she prone to discuss him 
 
46 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 with Augusta, and always with strange acrimony, as if seek- 
 ing to indemnify herself for the restraint put on her by the 
 irresistible dignity of his presence. 
 
 " Sandy Kemp," as she was fond of calling him, in derision 
 for the somewhat affected name w r hich had been imposed on 
 him by a dilettante godfather, who coated the pill with a 
 golden promise that he did not keep — " Sandy Kemp" might 
 have committed some crime in the dark days of his obscure 
 past for the doubt rising into certainty which she expressed 
 of his character, and the dislike for his person which she 
 always hinted had its full justification if only she might 
 tell all she knew. " Sandy Kemp" was bold, and knew 
 neither his place nor his betters, and some day she would tell 
 him so. He should remember who he was, and how his 
 position was one strictly of sufferance — architects and artists 
 and queer people of that kind, not being gentlefolks like those 
 who owned houses and lands and whose forefathers were lying 
 decently in the churchyard, with mural tablets on the church 
 walls to commemorate their names, dates and ages. And 
 therefore, if " Sandy Kemp" had the good fortune to be taken 
 notice of by those who were gentlefolks, he ought to remem- 
 ber that it was only out of benevolence, not because of his 
 own merits. " Sandy Kemp"' was first a Radical and pro- 
 bably a Freethinker, then a declared Communist and a 
 professed Atheist, according to the ascending scale of her 
 displeasure. And " Sandy Kemp" did not know his own 
 mother tongue ; for in a speech made at the school feast he 
 said that he was " averse from" something or other ; and who 
 that understands the English language says " averse from," 
 Mrs. Morshead would like to know ? — an ignorant fellow like 
 this setting himself up to speak and teach ! It was enough 
 to make the dead turn in their graves ! 
 
 Though she tried hard, Mrs. Morshead could never induce 
 Augusta to take up the cudgels in the artist's defence. Poor 
 Augusta had enough to do with her own affairs and Tony's. 
 She did not want more on her hands than she had already. 
 When her mother was more than usually rabid concerning this 
 one of her many betes noires, she would try to turn the con- 
 versation into some other channel ; which always had the 
 effect of making Mrs. Morshead more angry than before, and 
 of concentrating her bitterness on herself. Still she carefully 
 refrained from defending any one whom her mother chose to 
 attack — Sandro Kemp or any other. And the sense of 
 
LIGHT AND SHADOW. 47 
 
 drawing blank given by her imperturbable quietness ma>l' 
 the terrible old woman more terrible still for want of attri- 
 tion and a safety-valve. Just as the dentition of certain 
 animals requires something which they can tear and gnaw. s< > 
 did Mrs. Morshead's temper demand some one with whom 
 she could quarrel. If Augusta would have gratified her in 
 this, and would every now and then have had a wordy 
 wrangle, perhaps things would have been better in the end, 
 and she would have gained by the process. The air would 
 have been cleared ; the old woman would have got rid of 
 her chronic ill-temper in fierce epithets and unjust accusa- 
 tions ; she would have gratified her vanity by her cleverness in 
 vituperation; and then the inevitable reaction would have set 
 in and things would have gone better — until the next accumula- 
 tion of moral thunder-clouds was dispersed by an explosion. 
 This possibility never entered into the calculations of that 
 sweet-tempered, self-restrained and reasonable creature, her 
 daughter. It seemed to Augusta the best policy to make 
 herself round because her mother was angular, and to oppose 
 smoothness to her spiky irritability so that both should not 
 move on the same hard lines together, but that one might 
 slip while the other struck. Acting on these principles she 
 carefully abstained from taking up the glove so continually 
 thrown down on Mr. Kemp's account ; letting everything 
 ^ass as blandly as if venomous insinuations were friendly 
 praises and bitter accusations kindly confessions of interest 
 and respect — which had the effect of making Mrs. Morshead 
 btill more inimical to the artist, and of late more disagreeable 
 to, and somewhat suspicious of, her daughter. So that now 
 when Sandro came into the room, and greeted her with the 
 conventional : " How do you do, Mrs. Morshead ?" she gave 
 a curious kind of grunt rather than an answer, as she offered 
 him two hard, inhospitable fingers, which she twitched out 
 of his with an impatient jerk almost before he had taken 
 them. But Sandro only thought within himself: "This 
 terrible old creature is in worse form than usual to-day," 
 looking anxiously to Augusta to see if any signs of trouble 
 were visible on that fair, smooth, placid face. There were 
 none. The young widow had learned not only to control 
 herself but also her muscles ; and she could make her face, 
 when she chose, no more expressive than so much sweet and 
 mindless wax-work. And this was what she made it now in 
 answer to the artist's eyes. 
 
43 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " I suppose you Lave heard the painful news ?" said Sandro, 
 aftei' he bad been seated for a short time and had discussed 
 the weather and the prospects of the harvest, foreign politics 
 and home legislation, the bills which had to be passed and 
 those which had been abandoned, — for Mrs. Morsbead was a 
 politician inter alia, and liked to air ber theories. Those 
 theories were always diametrically opposed to Mr. Kemp's 
 ideas ; of that he was very certain, whatever he might say. 
 The terrible old woman would not have agreed with him had 
 he echoed her own sentiments ; and she set her heel on every 
 independent assertion as if it had been a personal affront 
 intended for her and to be resented accordingly. 
 
 "You mean Mrs. Branscombe?" she answered. "Yes, of 
 course, we have heard it. There are always plenty of ravens 
 in the world to come about you with their croakings and 
 dead worms and things. No fear of not hearing of one's 
 friends' death and ruin ! What I should like to see would 
 be a little more alacrity in letting me hear good news !" 
 
 She said this with a manner that seemed to accuse Sandro 
 Kemp of Mrs. Branscombe's death ; at the same time in- 
 sinuating that he had no end of good things under his cloak, 
 ■which he refrained from bringing out because of the inbred 
 j)erversity and wickedness of his nature. 
 
 Augusta's delicate cheeks became a trifle deeper in tint. 
 
 " That poor Stella, how sbe will feel it !" she said hurriedly. 
 
 " They ought to have been prepared ; it was their own 
 fault if they were not," returned her mother grimly. " They 
 knew that she had heart disease, and might be taken at any 
 moment." 
 
 " But no one is prepared for the sudden death of one 
 loved," said Sandro gently. " Love refuses to be influenced 
 by any mere fact of mental knowledge." 
 
 " Oh, I am not clever enough for metaphysics," said Mrs. 
 Morsbead with a sneer. " I only know that we die when 
 our hour has come, and that we ought to be prepared. All 
 this extravagant grief is just rebellion against God's good- 
 ness ; and no sentimentality can make anything else of it." 
 
 " I was not aware that there was any extravagant grief at 
 Rose Hill," said Sandro quietly. "And do you call the 
 recognition of the emotions sentimentality, Mrs. Morsbead? 
 "We cannot speak of humanity without taking them into 
 account." 
 
 " I call everything sentimentality that sets itself against 
 
LIGHT AM) SHADOW. 4 > 
 
 honest common sense," said Mrs. Morshead ; " and everything 1 
 Atheism that questions the plain will of God," she added 
 lignificantly. 
 
 " That may be, but no one was advocating either the one 
 or the other," said Sandro. '• We were only talking of the 
 shock that Mrs. Branscombe's sudden death must have been 
 to them all at Eose Hill ; and especially to poor Miss Braas- 
 combe who loved her mother so dearly." 
 
 " As to that I dare say she will manage to get over her 
 shock in a very short time," said Mrs. Morshead with a vicious 
 glance at Augusta. " Girls do not care, nowadays, so much 
 for their mothers as to break their hearts when they go. A 
 good riddance some would say — some not a hundred miles 
 from here !" 
 
 "Would they? I do not know these young ladies," 
 answered Sandro. " And at all events Miss Branscombe is 
 not one of them." 
 
 " Miss Branscombe is no better than other modern young 
 misses. She has her lover; and what do you think she 
 cares for a mother dead or alive in comparison with that?" 
 said Mrs. Morshead. " Mothers are only made for their 
 children's convenience, according to the horrible doctrines of 
 the present day. Children owe nothing to their parents — no 
 love, no duty, no obedience — nothing ! They live just for 
 themselves and their own pleasures ; for nothing else in the 
 world ; and that is modern daughterliness ! I wonder it does 
 not bring down a judgment from heaven, I declare I do !'' 
 
 "Are we quite so bad as this, mamma? I don't think 
 you really believe it !" said Augusta lightly, trying to give a 
 brighter tone to the conversation. 
 
 Mrs. Morshead looked up from under her heavy frowning 
 brows. 
 
 " I do not think you need ask," she said with sullen 
 emphasis. 
 
 " No," said Sandro Kemp with perfect gravity and sweet- 
 ness ; " indeed Mrs. Latrobe need not. Every one knows her 
 marvellous amiability and how superior she is both as a 
 daughter and a mother. She is the bright example of the 
 whole neighbourhood — a standard for all others to live by 
 and come up to if they can." 
 
 " I wish them joy." said Mrs. Morshead, twitching her 
 shawl, while Augusta laughed in her bright careless way ; 
 but those two pink spots on her cheeks burned somewhat 
 
 E 
 
50 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 uncomfortably. " It is as well to have a standard, certainly/ 
 she continued lifting her lip, and showing her two eye-teeth 
 as a dog shows his iiings when he snarls. 
 
 " They could not have a better," said Sandro, something 
 burning on his cheeks too and passing, despite himself, into 
 his eyes. 
 
 " When and where did yoii take your lessons in flattery, 
 Mr. Kemp ?" asked Mrs. Morshead, with a quick, suspicious 
 glance from the artist's somewhat too eloquent face to her 
 daughter's — serene, impassive, unmoved, save for that slightly- 
 heightened colour. " Have you been to Ireland, may I ask ?" 
 
 " And kissed the blarney stone ?" he added with a smile. 
 " No ; nor have I had any lessons that I can remember. 
 Perhaps, though, my mother gave them to me, when she 
 used to tell me to look for the good in life rather than the 
 bad, and never to be afraid of recognising beauty and virtue 
 when I saw them." 
 
 " To my way of thinking, truth stands first of all things,'' 
 said Mrs , Morshead. "Beauty and virtue are all very well 
 when you find them ; but I should like to know where you do." 
 
 " Often," said Sandro emphatically ; " far more often than 
 not ; so that my principle of admiring what is lovely is iden- 
 tical with yours of confessing the truth before all things." 
 
 " The two are identical in Stella Branscombe ; and so they 
 were in poor dear Mrs. Branscombe," said Augusta. 
 
 How much she longed to change this second current of 
 talk ! Yet into whatever channel she might divert it, there 
 was always the same danger of collision and disagreement. 
 
 " Mrs. Branscombe could not have been a very nice woman 
 in reality to have ever married that contemptible old 
 fribble," said Mrs. Morshead. " Of all the men I have ever 
 known I think he is the most contemptible ; and I have 
 known some that came very near him." Here she looked at 
 Sandro. " Still, he is about the worst, take him for all 
 in all." 
 
 "Yours is a wide net, Mrs. Morshead," said Sandro. "At 
 least, Mr. Branscombe does no one any harm ; and if he has 
 aspirations and ideas beyond his power of adequate expression, 
 it is his misfortune rather than his fault." 
 
 " It is only his vanity that makes him attempt more than 
 he can do," said Mrs. Morshead. " I am sure those ridiculous 
 bits of poetry, that he prints in gold on glazed cards and 
 sends about to all the neighbourhood make one ill to read 
 
LIGHT AND SHADOW. 51 
 
 them, such horrid stuff as they are! I am a plaiu woman 
 Mr. Kemp, and speak plain English — which every one 
 not do." 
 
 ■ Vanity, or the need of occupation ? Vanity, or the honest 
 belief that he has done well, and that he gives his neighbours 
 pleasure in reading and hearing what he has done? We 
 must have some interest in life ; and it is better to have one 
 of a harmless kind, even though the execution be weak, than 
 to spend one's time in idleness and gossip," said the artist. 
 
 " He has his home and his family, his estate and all the 
 parish business that he ought to do, and does not. If he 
 chose, he might have interest and occupation enough without 
 writing bad poetry and painting worse pictures/' snapped 
 Mrs. Morshead. 
 
 " He would still have some unoccupied time on his hands," 
 said the artist. " We men cannot employ our spare hours in 
 doing the dainty stitchwork which comes so naturally to you 
 ladies." 
 
 He looked at Augusta's length of silk with its traceries of 
 bugles and beads. 
 
 " Then let him do some good with his time," said Mrs. 
 Morshead. " We have poverty and ignorance enough among 
 us— let him help these and leave his silly trash that he calls 
 art alone ! Art, indeed ! Art is a bad business for a man 
 when it is his profession and he has to get his bread by it ; 
 but when it does not do even this it is worse than child's 
 play." 
 
 " Talking of art, Mrs. Latrobe, have you read the review 
 of the Academy in the last week's Satoeriteg ? — it is the best 
 that I have seen for a long time. I should like to know who 
 wrote it. Whoever did, knew what he was about." 
 
 As he said this Sandro turned to Augusta with an 
 imprudent sigh of relief. The sour temper and jangling 
 idictiousness of her mother had never tried him bo 
 much as they did to-day, and he had never pitied that sweet, 
 fair woman so much as now when he thought of her hourly 
 .subjection to this hard domestic martyrdom. 
 
 "Are you praised in it, Mr. Kemp?" asked Mrs. Morshead 
 with an unpleasant laugh. 
 
 "Yes, I have read it," answered Augusta hastily, her 
 words breaking through her mother's. "It seemed wonder- 
 fully well done; very just so far as I could make out, and 
 v. rv appreciative." 
 
£2 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Oh, these things are all managed behind backs !" inter- 
 rupted Mrs. Morshead. " Caw me, caw thee ; that is the rule. 
 That review was bought and paid for by every man who was 
 praised in it. I would stake my life on it !" 
 
 " And I would stake mine that you are wrong," said the 
 artist a little warmly. " Do you allow no honesty in the 
 world, Mrs. Morshead?" 
 
 " As much as I can see through a microscope — no more," 
 was the bitter reply. 
 
 "Ah, well, I do not agree with you," he said. "I believe 
 in men and women as the best things we know, and I should 
 be sorry to hold the pessimist doctrines which are so fashion- 
 able just now." 
 
 " And what may you please to mean by your ' pessimist 
 doctrines ?' " asked Mrs. Morshead, throwing a satirical 
 emphasis on the words. " I am a plain, old-fashioned 
 woman and have not learnt your modern jargon." 
 
 " Do you remember an old paper in the Spectator or the 
 Toiler, I forget which ?" said Sandro ; " a paper where a 
 parallel description is given of two women, Arachne, and 
 Melissa ? Arachne is the pessimist there ; and pessimism 
 means simply a belief in the sinfulness and wretchedness of 
 humanity rather than in its goodness and aspiration ; a delight 
 in finding out the blemishes everywhere rather than in dwell- 
 ing on the beauties ; making ourselves unhappy in the shadow 
 but not rejoicing in the sunlight ; seeing the evil all around 
 and denying the good. That is pessimism ; and that is the 
 fashionable philosophy of our day. To me it is morbid, sickly, 
 untrue, and infinitely disastrous to the character of those who 
 hold it and to the truth of things as they are." 
 
 " It is certainly a very suicidal kind of doctrine," said 
 Augusta, as her contribution of rose-leaves. " It is so far 
 more pleasant, as well as more charitable, to think well and 
 not ill of people." 
 
 Just for one instant she lifted her eyes to the artist's face 
 and looked at him as if in self-forgetfulness, her eyes full of 
 sweetness and admiration. Then she let them fall on her 
 work ; and again that faint colour, which was her most 
 marked sign of feeling, stole over her face and neck like the 
 reflection of a rosy cloud on the snow. 
 
 He also changed colour as he looked at her with as much 
 inquiry as earnestness. His eyes seemed to ask hers what 
 was true, and what was only the appearance of things ? Then 
 
LIGHT AND SHADOW. 53 
 
 he passed his hand over his beard, according to a way he 
 had, and checked a sigh as a man turning from a lovely- 
 picture which he could not hope to possess — from the vision 
 of some sweet peaceful valley which he must not enter — 
 turning back to the bare prose of his naked home, to the 
 barren desolation of his toilsome way. 
 
 " Fools' paradises !" sneered Mrs. Morshead. " Believe in 
 men and women when the best friend you have will buy and 
 sell you for sixpence, and your very children are not to be 
 trusted? — Rubbish, Mr. Kemp! and you know that you are 
 talking rubbish ! I prefer the truth." 
 
 " The whole contention is in what is the truth," said 
 Sandro, passing over the accusation as if he had not heard it. 
 " No one wants to hug himself in pleasant falsehoods ; but 
 we must never forget that there is just as much chance of 
 untruth in disbelief as in credulity. The two things are the 
 mere doubles of each other." 
 
 "And I say they are not," said Mrs. Morshead angrily. 
 " And at my time of life I ought to know " 
 
 '• Well ! we shall never agree in our ideas of humanity and 
 goodness," said Sandro rising to take leave. " We must be 
 content to differ." 
 
 " I don't call having my own opinion on things differing 
 from yours," said Mrs. Morshead rudely. " To differ there 
 must be some kind of equality, and I don't see much equality 
 between you and me, Mi*. Kemp." 
 
 " No r" he said smiling. " Does not my man's wider 
 experience in life make up, somewhat, for the greater length 
 of yours :" 
 
 '• Your man's wider experience as you call it may not 
 perhaps have taught you the same things as mine has taught 
 me," said Mrs. Morshead drily. "And I am not used to be 
 compared to a young man like yourself, Mr. Kemp, young 
 enough to be my son and without a stake in the country as 
 we old proprietors have. When you compare yourself next 
 time let* it be with your equals !" 
 
 " I meant no offence to you, Mrs. Morshead," said the 
 artist quietly. 
 
 " Then you should look before you leap, and think before 
 you speak," she answered sharply ; " and remember next time 
 to whom you speak when you address a lady of my age and 
 station !" " A most disagreeable pragmatical forward fellow," 
 she said angrily to her daughter when Sandro had gone ; 
 
54 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " and I wish to goodness he would not come here as he does. 
 What does he want I wonder ? The spoons ? or is he wanting 
 to borrow money of me ? I hate bis coming as he does with 
 his long words and pedantic way of talking — argue, argue, 
 argue, till one is almost dazed and stupefied. One cannot say 
 a thing but he takes it up and makes some long nonsense 
 about it. He is just the most unpleasant and conceited man 
 in the place. His very name is enough to set one against 
 him. Sandro Kemp ! Why not honest Sandy at once ? The 
 affectation of that Italian is revolting." 
 
 " But that is not his fault exactly," said Augusta, when 
 her mother stopped and looked to her for an answer. " He 
 was christened Sandro, you know ; he did not give himself 
 the name." 
 
 " Then he ought to change it," snapped Mrs. Morshead, all 
 alive with indignation. " And listen to me, Augusta, I am 
 not going to have you defend that impudent fellow. A young 
 woman like you ought to be more modest than this. What 
 business is it of yours whether he was christened Sandro or 
 not ? Such forwardness ! What next I wonder ?" 
 ■ As Augusta did not say what was to tread on the heels of 
 her present iniquity, the conversation dropped, and for half 
 an hour the peace of silence reigned between them. 
 
 Meanwhile, Sandro Kemp, walking back to his lodgings, 
 asked himself again and again this one ever recurring and 
 unanswerable question : " Did she mean it ? did she mean 
 it?" 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 IMPOSSIBILITIES. 
 
 It was the day after poor Mrs. Branscombe's funeral. The 
 ceremonial had been of that gloomy magnificence which is 
 supposed to relieve the hearts and assuage the sorrow of the 
 bereaved and to show pi-oper respect to the unconscious dead. 
 No expense had been spared to make the whole thing a local 
 fete draped in black and silver ; and Mr. Branscombe's mani- 
 festations of mourning had all been as perfectly ordered and 
 as artistically arranged as Avere the decorations of his house 
 and the appointments of his studio. 
 
 The neighbours far and wide had been invited t« join their 
 tepid tears and transitory sorrow with the sacred grief of the 
 
iSIBIHTIES. 
 
 lesolate widower and bis motherless girl — to make-1 e 
 that the death of sweet and placid Mrs. Branscombe 
 true tragedy in their lives, for which they put on spiritual 
 mourning as well as the hatbands and scarves proper for the 
 occasion. But it gratified Mr. Branscombe to see this large 
 array of friendly mourners ; and it gratified him still more to 
 be able to pose before them as the heart-broken but still 
 dignified and gentlemanlike victim of fate and sorrow. He 
 translated into his voice and bearing on this day of woe, the 
 old spirit of the aforetime Finery Fred, the lady-killer who 
 used to study before his glass the looks and postures which 
 be thought would be most convincing, and who trained his 
 voice to the passionate accents and deep pathetic tones by 
 which he hoped to carry the last lingering strongholds of 
 doubt and fear ; — of Finery Fred, the Beauty-man of his 
 regiment, who went in for the leadership in taste and elegance 
 and the " right thing to do," and whose highest ambition was 
 to be a superior kind of M. C, and regimental Lord 
 Chamberlain. 
 
 Sad as this occasion was, it was nevertheless one which 
 •ailed forth all his power. Wherefore he organized for his 
 good Matilda the details of a funeral fit for a royal Princess, 
 and laid in their quiet churchyard with overwhelming pomp 
 the dead body of one who had lived but for her home and 
 family and whose whole existence had been passed in modesty 
 and self-effacement. And the neighbours came as they were 
 bidden : and many of them laughed at the widower with his 
 artistic despair, and said " What a mountebank that fellow 
 tad would anythir tch him truth or simplicity !" 
 
 Still, the more intimate friends were really sorry for the 
 loss of this gentle life from among them. There were some 
 to whom she had been as an enduring exhortation to gentle- 
 ness and love ; and some to whom she had been as a faint and 
 precious perfume, reminding them of the best days of their 
 innocent youth and of spiritual graces perhaps long forg 
 and laid aside. An 1 to others she had been of more active 
 help by her few words of wise counsel, by the crystal purity 
 of her thoughts, and by that ready sympathy with their diffi- 
 culties, either of mind or cii . which i- | > rha] 
 greatest help of all b haying the most soothing influ. 
 
 Among those who mourned her with the sens' of per 
 loss, Augusta Latrobe was foremost and the mo- 
 She had lost not only a wise and real friend in Mrs. Brans* 
 
56 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 combe, but her only confidante. To her alone had she ever 
 dared to open her heart, to reveal her sorrows, to show the 
 weight of the cross Avhich she earned. By her death the 
 young widow was made friendless, in the vital sense of friend- 
 ship ; and henceforth she must be sufficient for herself. It 
 was a terrible loss for her ; and to-day, when the air was stiller 
 than usual after the sombre excitement of yesterday, she felt 
 the blauk that had come into her life more painfully than she 
 had yet realized. 
 
 It was long since she had mourned as she was mourning 
 now as she walked by the river-side — her little son now run- 
 ning before her, now loitering behind — her little son who 
 made up the sole sunshine of her life, her only store of happi- 
 ness and love ! The song of the birds, the sound of the 
 rushing waters, the sweet scents of meadow and copse and 
 hedgerow which came round her like a cloud as she strolled 
 onwards, scarce seeing where she went — the life and gaiety, 
 the good health and beauty of her boy — all this was only 
 dimly perceptible to her mind : while the loneliness of her 
 life, the hard hand of her mother, the dreary necessities of 
 her position, the crushing tyranny of the home in which she 
 must perforce take shelter, the loss of her best and dearest 
 friend, her only counsellor and confidante, were the prominent 
 feelings of the moment and the terrible facts of her real 
 existence. 
 
 " If only I could do something that would give me a home 
 of my own and not hurt my boy's future !" she thought for 
 the hundredth time since her husband's death. " If only 
 poor Antonio had lived until the boy had grown up !" she 
 thought again. 
 
 It was characteristic of Augusta that she made her son's 
 welfare of more importance than her own loss in the death of 
 her husband ; with whom, however, she had lived in profound 
 peace and concord — of itself happiness enough after the per- 
 petual jangle of her mother's house. And indeed though 
 she had not loved her shy, reserved, queer-mannered and odd- 
 looking Professor as she knew that she could love had she 
 the fitting chance, she had respected him very thoroughly 
 and never let him feel that want of which she herself was 
 conscious. Her sweetness and suavity had done all that love 
 could have done, and had made him even happier than more 
 passionate demonstrations would have made him. She was 
 just the kind of wife that he wanted ; and his marriage ful- 
 
IMPOSSIBILITIES. 57 
 
 filled its intention with the most perfect smoothness. Anion-- 
 all her memories no shadow of remorse ever intruded 
 ghastly presence. She could not reproach herself with unduti- 
 fulness or cruelty, with neglect of her husband's wishes or 
 indifference to his happiness, nor feel aught but that she had 
 made his last years blessed beyond any he had lived before. 
 It had been a very pleasant, mild and rational kind of friend- 
 ship. He had loved her more than he knew how to show or 
 had had time to fathom ; and she had not loved him at all. 
 But she had made him happy all the same ; which was th ■ 
 one thing needful. 
 
 Still, her heart was virgin and she had all the shy desires 
 and timid dreams of one whose wealth of love has not yet 
 been given. Only those who are conscious of their power of 
 loving are conscious of the void ; and she knew but too well 
 what she had missed and what she had never felt. If it were 
 possible ! If she could ! She knew what would make her 
 life one long summer's day of blessedness : — a grave but kind 
 and gentle man, strong, just, resolute, tender; a man who 
 understood life and could see all round a subject ; who was 
 observant for the one part and thoughtful for the other ; who 
 would love her, but not blindly, so that he should help her to 
 be her best self and would not, for the weakness which belongs 
 to some men's love, foster her follies ; a man who would be 
 her superior and yet her lover, her king and yet her knight. 
 
 And thinking all this, letting her thoughts drift idly on 
 the rainbow spanning the sky of hope, she came full on 
 Sandro Kemp, leaning against the bole of an elm-tree, making 
 a study of the rocks which just at this part broke the swift 
 current of the river into a dozen small cascades. 
 
 Both started — Sandro so visibly that the thing confessed 
 itself, but Augusta with a recovery so quick, so facile, as to 
 her first confusion before it was seen. Th:s sudden 
 translation of her dreams into a personality shocked rather 
 than confused her. And if her cheeks had that delicate pink 
 rhi<li which became her so well — the day was warm; the 
 wood in which they f »und themselves was a little stifling 
 despite the fresher breeze brought by the river ; she had been 
 running with her child ; and she was naturally startled by 
 coming on Mr. Kemp so suddenly — he standing there like 
 the statue in Don Giovanni, she said with her frank laugh 
 that Beemed to clear the air and make wholesome sun 
 round her as she stood. 
 
58 '-MY LOVE!" 
 
 Yet Sandra would have been more content if she had not 
 laughed in that clear, light, bright way ; if she had blushed 
 more and stood Avith more consciousness of embarrassment 
 and strain ; if she bad been less like her usual wise and self- 
 controlled self and more like the normal shy and maybe silly 
 school girl. 
 
 Having stumbled on him in this way, it was the most 
 natural thing in the world that the widow should stay and 
 look at the artist's work ; and, having looked at it and praised 
 the force here, the tenderness and subtlety there, it was also 
 the most natural thing in the world that she should turn 
 over with him the pages of his sketch-book and hear the 
 history of this crocket and that finial — where he found this 
 quaiut fifteenth-century gable, and where this thirteenth- 
 century, massive, square and nameless tower. These things 
 came into his professional work ; while sketching rocks was 
 only his pastime to betaken up between whiles, when business 
 was slack, as alas ! it generally was. 
 
 He had good hopes now, however, of making his name and 
 showing what he could do, he said. Had he put his meaning 
 into the ordinary words of the unsuccessful, he would have 
 said — of turning the corner which he had been so long in 
 rounding. And when he told her of this hope of permanent 
 fame, he showed her a rough sketch of his design for a stately 
 palace about to be built not far from Highwood by a million- 
 aire from Cottonopolis. He had sent in his design with other 
 competitors and hoped he should be the winner. If he were, 
 the corner would indeed be turned and the smooth, straight 
 road of fortune, fame and success fully entered on ! 
 
 " Oh ! you must get it !" said Augusta quite simply, but 
 warmly too — perhaps warmly because simply. " This is so 
 fine that I am sure you cannot be distanced by any other 
 competitor. What a grand design it is ! I have never seen 
 anything more perfect, more beautiful !" 
 
 " And I have never received more precious praise," said 
 the artist in a slightly tremulous voice, looking right into her 
 eyes. 
 
 Augusta's face, which had been sincere, animated and sym- 
 pathetic, took on itself that mask of mindless ainiable wax 
 which she could assume whenever she pleased. 
 
 " I am glad if my praise pleases you," she said ; " but," 
 laughing, "you must remember that I am quite ignorant of 
 art and that I may admire what is really all wrong." 
 
IMPOSSIBILITIES. 59 
 
 " If you admire at all, that is enough for me," said Sandro 
 with dangerous fervour. 
 
 Augusta raised her eves. She did not lool: straight into 
 her companion's face, but just a little below his mouth. 
 
 " Surely not." she said quite gravely. '-Tour object is to 
 succeed with the authorities, not to be praised by private 
 friends." 
 
 " By some, not all. The commendation of some would be 
 all-suificient for me." 
 
 ' : I should prefer the fame and the money for my own part," 
 she answered with an exasperating, prosaic, unsympathetic 
 hardness, as unlike her warmer self as night is unlike the day. 
 
 Sandro looked at her half-puzzled, half-pained. 
 
 "The day is warm," he then said; "and this place is so 
 lovely! "Will you not sit here for a little while? We can 
 watch your boy that he does not get into mischief ; and see ! 
 this fallen tree makes an admirable seat." 
 
 The widow hesitated for just half a moment, then a certain 
 resolute look stole like a film of ice over her soft eyes ; her 
 mouth grew hard and her lips were drawn together ; her 
 graceful, supple figure seemed to stiffen, and she looked like 
 one who has suddenly taken a difficult resolve and who means 
 to keep it. 
 
 '• Yes," she said ; " I will sit down for a little while. Tou 
 can play about, Tony," she called out to the child; "but do 
 not go too near the water." 
 
 " Oh, that is fun !" said the boy, as he scampered off — 
 rejoicing in his freedom and forgetting the sorrowful lessons 
 of his life at home and the sour hard visage of the grand- 
 mother who always rated and never caressed, always blamed 
 and never praised. 
 
 " He is a noble-looking boy," said Sandro. " You may be 
 congratulate.] on having such a son." 
 
 Like many of his tribe he was passionately fond of chil- 
 dren, and, like Robert Southey, thought no home perfect that 
 had not a kitten and a " child rising two" among its inn 
 
 " He is a dear little man," answered Tony's mother fondly ; 
 " and he gives very little trouble. He is high-spirited and all 
 that, but he is so affectionate that I can guide him by a word. 
 He rebels against scolding, and injustice makes him naughty ; 
 but he 3 ; ;• to kindness and fair dealing." 
 
 "Love is the best trainer for a child, jusi as affection is 
 his best conscience," said Sandro. " "Weakness, vacillation, 
 
CO "MY LOVE!" 
 
 want of fixed principles of action and all forms of injustice 
 spoil children as rust spoils steel ; but healthy love — never \ 
 Love spoils no one," he added, again looking at his companion 
 with meaning. 
 
 " No, it does not," she answered, as tranquilly as if she 
 had been talking of the weather or the state of the roads. 
 Then, seeing that he seemed to Avait for something more 
 explicit than this cut and dried assent, she added : " But it 
 is just the thing Ave have to learn to live without. We cannot 
 all be loved." 
 
 " Why not ?" he asked eagerly. " Surely there is no one 
 in the world who might not be loved if he — or she — Avould 
 accept what was offered. You yourself " 
 
 " Oh ! I am out of the question altogether/' she interrupted, 
 laughing lightly. " I have my mother to attend to and my 
 darling boy to live for. When I said that Ave had to do with- 
 out love, I meant many of us, not myself. I have all I can 
 have — or care for." 
 
 " All you care for ? Do you never think of making a new 
 home for yourself — building up the shattered temple of your 
 life?" 
 
 " With new decorations ?" she answered brusquely. 
 " Never !" 
 
 Sandro turned pale and looked again at the boy. 
 
 "Yet he would be better for a man's care," he said very 
 gently. 
 
 She sighed softly, and the ice that had come into her eyes 
 seemed suddenly to melt into something that looked like 
 tears. 
 
 " Yes. I grant that," she ansAvered in a low voice. " But I 
 must do the best I can for him by myself. It Avould be 
 impossible for me to marry again unless " 
 
 ^he stopped. 
 
 " Unless Avhat ?" he asked, bending down his head as if to 
 hear her answer more distinctly, and again looking full and 
 fixedly into her face. He shifted his hand uneasily, and she 
 knew that he checked the impulse to take hers. 
 
 '• Well ! unless I married one so rich as to ensure my boy's 
 future should my mother disinherit him and me — as she 
 would Avere I to marry again." 
 
 Augusta Latrobe spoke with the greatest apparent ease 
 and frankness. The pink flush had fixed itself into burning 
 red on her cheeks ; her eyes AA-ere hard ; her lips curiously 
 
IMPOSSIBILITIES. r,i 
 
 dry. But save these small indications of strain, her air and 
 voice and manner and expression were all as careless and 
 undisturbed as even Mrs. Morshead could have desired. 
 
 " You see I am a very mercenary commonplace kind of 
 person," she went on to say, not looking at Sandro but 
 gazing straight before her across the river in the most un- 
 troubled and the frankest way imaginable. And vet — the 
 ilower held in her hand wavered so much that she laid it 
 on her lap, and the beating of her heart was so quick and 
 strong it shook the fringe of her cape as if the wind had 
 blown it. "And, being commonplace, I do not deceive 
 myself ; and I never allow myself to dream," she continued 
 in a matter-of-fact manner that cut into Sandro's very soul. 
 Yet why should it ? "I have to stay with my mother for 
 the sake of my boy — stay with her, as I am now, for as long 
 as she lives. Or, if I leave her, I must have my child's 
 fortune assured. I could not wreck his future for my own 
 present happiness. I must not. So you see I have no 
 temptation to marry again ; which simplifies my life so far." 
 
 Sandro did not speak. That something which comes into 
 the throats of men and strangles their words had come into 
 his, and he had to wait until he had mastered himself and 
 his voice. He wondered why she had said this to him. Had 
 she seen ? and did she wish to warn him in time so as to 
 spare him the humiliation of a refusal ? Or was it just the 
 natural outcome of her candour and simplicity ? And was 
 her quietness real or assumed? — the expression of serene 
 indifference or the effort made by pride and will over a 
 woman's weakness and a woman's desire? He had thought — 
 well ! no matter what ! Her words were plain and to the 
 point, and thoughts and dreams go for nothing in the face of 
 a direction so distinct. He must accept things as they were. 
 An image might be broken but the shrine remained inl 
 and none could prevent his carrying his worship in secret 
 where he might not make his devotions in public. 
 
 "And you never feel the want of a friend?" he asked 
 a long silence, during which she still looked across the river 
 at the landscape beyond, her lips set into that hard 
 smile which expresses anything rather than joy or pleasure. 
 
 He did not look at her when he spoke, and his void 
 low, rough and husky. 
 
 The smile passed from her lips and she ceased to gaz 
 that rich pasture-land before her. 
 
62 "MY LOVE r 
 
 " A friend? yes, indeed ; I do feel the want of a friend," she 
 said quickly. " Heaven only knows how much ! how much, 
 indeed, now that the only friend I had, sweet Mrs. Branscombe, 
 is gone ! But that, too, is not in my possibilities," she added, 
 as if taking herself again in hand. " You see my mother is 
 old and difficult, and she would not allow me to have a close 
 friendship with any one, man or woman. I have to walk 
 warily to keep even so much liberty as I have now." 
 
 " But you said just now that Mrs. Branscombe was your 
 friend," he returned jealously. 
 
 " One more intimats than frequent," she answered. " I 
 did not see her often ; but when I did she was everything to 
 me." 
 
 " And you cannot replace her ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Yet others would be to you all that she was," he said. 
 
 " It cannot be. My mother would not allow it," she 
 answered. 
 
 " What a life ! What a life !" he said indignantly. 
 
 " It cannot be helped," she answered. " It is for my boy." 
 
 " And I can be of no good to you ?" he asked with a sudden 
 outburst of feeling. " Can I bring you no happiness ? Can- 
 not I lighten your burden by ever so little ? You might do 
 so much for me — you do already — can I do anything for 
 you?" 
 
 "You are always good to me— always," she answered. 
 " But you can be of no vital use to me, nor can I be of real 
 good to you," she added with meaning. 
 
 " Not as a simple friend?" he asked. 
 
 " No, not even as simple friend," she replied. " There is 
 no use in denying what all the world knows already that my 
 mother has an uncertain temper, and that it is rather hard 
 to live with her. Nothing but the most complete self-control, 
 as well as the most careful attention to her wishes and avoid- 
 ance of all that she dislikes, would help me through at all ; 
 and nothing but the knowledge that it is for my boy's future 
 would make me endure it. So far I will speak frankly. But 
 j. am simply on sufferance ; and I have no more power at home 
 than if I were a paid companion — and indeed not quite so 
 much, for then at least I should have the power of leaving. 
 I dare not ask any one to come and see me — not you, nor 
 Stella Branscombe, nor old Colonel Moneypenny" — "I am 
 glad she calls him old," thought Sandrc — " nor Hortensia 
 
IMPOSSlBlLfflES. C3 
 
 Lyon ; in fact no one. I am of course always glad to see J — 
 or Stella, or any one," she added hurriedly, as a check <>n the 
 sudden brightness that flashed into his lace ; " but I should 
 not be glad to see any of you often, for that would make inv 
 life more uncomfortable than it is already and would react 
 in greater harshness on my boy. So that you see," she said, 
 and now she looked at him frankly ; " I am just as unal>].> to 
 have a friend who would be of real use to me — a, friend in 
 any true intimacy — whether man or woman, as to have a 
 husband." 
 
 •• But this miserable existence — this awful slavery — who 
 but you could bear it!" he cried. " Tou can, because you 
 are an angel — the one perfect woman of creation !" 
 
 " Because I am a cold-blooded calculator," she answered 
 lightly ; " and pride myself on my common sense and reason- 
 ableness. Thei - e is only one of two things to be done in life, 
 Mr. Kemp," she added, turning to him with a strange air of con- 
 fidence — had he been vain he would have given it a warmer 
 name ; " Break or Bear. "What we cannot bear with patience 
 let us break with resolution ; but when we cannot do this and 
 must endure, what folly to make things worse by fretting and 
 repining! Six years acco I broke my bonds, as you know; 
 but I had to come back to them again, and under harder 
 terms. Now I cannot break them again, save under con- 
 ditions which do not present themselves ; so I have made up 
 my mind to bear them, if they last my whole lifetime. There 
 is nothing else to be done; don'1 yon see that?" 
 
 " I see that you are the noblest woman living," he answered 
 in a suffocated voice ; "and that poverty is a greater curse 
 than I have ever felt it before. If it had not been for that 
 miserable old godfather of mine I should have been rich, like 
 my brothers — given a profession that would have ensured me 
 an income, and left equal with the rest by my father's will. 
 My whole life has been sacrifioed to a lying promise — a delusive 
 hope ! And now for the first time I know its full bitterness — 
 the real meaning ef the curse !" 
 
 "Let that pass," she answered quickly. "You cannot 
 alter your position any more than I can alter mine; and you 
 too must bear with the dignity of patience what hurts and 
 galls you in your life — as also must I. We are friends hi 
 though we cannot say so to the world. Besides, why should 
 we?" she said, taking back her light and careless manner. 
 "There is no such solemn compact in two people iiking 
 
C4 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 to talk to eacli other when they chance to meet, and on the 
 whole feeling more esteem and sympathy for each other than 
 not. This is the sum total of our friendship — not a very 
 formidable affair when we think of it !" 
 
 " More than this," he pleaded. 
 
 " No more. This is all," she returned. 
 
 " You can give me no more than this ? You would give as 
 much to a mere acquaintance." 
 
 " I can have only mere acquaintances," she answered. 
 " I have told you that my mother will not allow me to have 
 more." 
 
 " Not even a friend, such as I would be — humble, sincere, 
 devoted, asking only the privilege of serving you and of 
 being sometimes useful, and always faithful ?" 
 
 He spoke as if his very life depended on her answer. With 
 the natural contradiction of human nature, the clearer her 
 path, the firmer her decision, the more reluctant he was to 
 follow the one or accept the other. 
 
 Again the widow looked across the brawling river to the 
 green and quiet pastures beyond. Her soft face took a half 
 dreaming, half yearning, look, and her grey eyes were dark 
 and tender. Then with an effort she seemed to come back to 
 herself, to reality, to resolution, to strength. 
 
 " Impossible !" she said firmly. " Such a friendship would 
 be my ideal of life, my all of happiness ; but it is utterly and 
 entirely impossible ! Never let us speak of it again. It 
 would be cruel on your part and weak on mine. We know 
 where we stand ; and anything else, as I have said, is impos- 
 sible." Rising, she called out to the child: "Come, my 
 Tony, we must be going home, my little man. It is your tea- 
 time." 
 
 "And is this the last time I shall ever see you alone?" 
 asked Sandro feverishly. 
 
 " That depends on accident," she answered with well- 
 feigned tranquillity. " We do not often stumble over each 
 ether like this — do we ?" 
 
 " If I knew your habits — when and where it was most 
 likely to meet you !" he returned. 
 
 She looked at him a little reproachfully. 
 
 "To be soon the talk of Highwood?" she said. "No. 
 When things have to be done, the only rational way is to do 
 them thoroughly. I have given myself to my child and I 
 must think only of what is best for him. To have it said that 
 
IMPOSSIBILITIES. 05 
 
 his mother was a flirting widow who walked abroad with 
 gentlemen, would never do ! And you would be sorry to be 
 the cause of this.'' 
 
 "Unless " he began. 
 
 She stopped him with her eyes, they were so calm and clear 
 and icy. 
 
 '• There can be no unless," she said quietly. " I have my 
 duty marked out for me, and my path is too clearly traced to 
 miss, except by wilful wrong-doing. I have to live for my 
 fo y ; to do what is best for his future and to forego all that 
 might be pleasant to me if it should be hurtful to him. 
 Do you not see this? Yes. I know that you do So 
 good-bye." 
 
 She held out her hand. To judge by her manner only, 
 this interview had told him nothing, and these last words had 
 cost her no effort. 
 
 " Good-bye," said Sandro, not so steadily as she had spoken. 
 Then he added impulsively: '-Let me give you this sketch. 
 It will be a little memento of our talk to-day; and this talk 
 has fixed the boundaries of my life." 
 
 "Yes ; give it me," she answered. 
 
 As she spoke she drew her veil over her face and turned 
 away her head. When she turned back again the gauze was; 
 wet, but she said in a light, hard, mocking tone : 
 
 " A study of rocks suits me exactly ! You know the con- 
 tempt I have for softness and sentimentality and how I prize 
 strength and self-control ! Good-bye !" 
 
 Once more their hands met but not their eyes. The widow 
 was looking at her boy, that set smile again on her lips ; and 
 Sandro, looking at her almost as one looks at a dear face dead, 
 felt as if she had suddenly left his world and had gone to 
 some other sphere where he could not follow her and might 
 not reclaim her to his own. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said mournfully; " and God bles you. If 
 ever you want me you know where I stand, and how much 
 you can rely on me !" 
 
 "Come, my little man!" said the widow iu a strained 
 unnatural voice. "Wish Mr. Kemp good-bye, and come 
 home to tea." 
 
 "Ask Mr. Kemp to come too," said the child. 
 
 She laughed in a harsh odd way. 
 
 '• That would never do !" she said. " Good-night !" she 
 added as she hurried away before the artist could speak. 
 
(50 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 When well out of sight she suddenly stopped and kneeling 
 4>n the ground took the child in her arms, kissing him with 
 feverish fervour. 
 
 " Tell me that you love me, Tony !" she said, holding him 
 to her. 
 
 " I love you," repeated the boy, patting her face. " Dear, 
 sweet, pretty mamma, I love you so much — but, oh, 
 mamma, pretty mamma, you are crying! What are you 
 crying for ? Has Mr. Kemp hurt you ? Let me go back and 
 beat him." 
 
 " No," she said, mastering herself with an effort ; " Mr. 
 Kemp has not hurt me and I am not crying now, Tony. 
 See ! I am quite well again, and nothing is the matter," she 
 added, laughing spasmodically. " And now let us run a race, 
 and see who will get to that gate the first !" 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HIS BETTER CHANCES. 
 
 Meanwhile Sandro Kemp went back to his old attitude 
 and occupation — leaning against the bole of the elm-tree 
 while sketching the rocks, covered above watermark with 
 flowers and tender seedlings, by which the calmer sweep of 
 the river was broken into those thousand tossed and troublous 
 cascades. It was an emblem of his life, he said to himself; 
 and he did well to fix the lines which should remind him of 
 his broken hopes, his tranquillity and peace destroyed for 
 ever; all because of that sweet, fair woman whom he loved 
 so well, and, as she had made him understand, so hopelessly. 
 
 He knew now his fate ; unless, indeed, a greater share of 
 success should come to him than he dared to hope. Yet if 
 his wildest dreams should indeed be realized ! — if that palace 
 for the cotton-lord should be given him ? — and that other 
 great chance, that grand cathedral for which he was now 
 planning and studying and striving? Well ! he should then 
 be famous, and on the high-road to wealth as the result. 
 But would it not still be wealth of that uncertain kind which 
 depends on the life of the bread-winner? And would 
 Augusta change the certainty of her inheritance for the mere 
 chances of one man's life ? 
 
 Were she alone in the world, and had she not already made 
 
///> BETTER CHANCES. C7 
 
 trial of tlie same kind of thing — then he might hope and 
 believe; but with her little son, and after what she had said, 
 it seemed, indeed, impossible ! If her husband, the Professor, 
 had lived long enough to perfect his great work, he too would 
 have been w althy and world-renowned; but he died before 
 he had proved his theory, before he had consolidated his fame 
 and by that consolidation turned it into enduring cash ; and 
 who could tell but that the same fate should not overtake 
 himself? Still, he would not be craven although he was 
 hopeless. He would work as steadily for her friendly appro- 
 el and for his own self-respect as if he might still have 
 hoped for her love and its rich reward. The sunshine had 
 gone out of his life, but he would not whimper because it was 
 prematurely night. 
 
 All the same, he felt as if he had suddenly lost his way 
 somehow; as if his life had fallen asunder and he had to 
 reconstruct it out of the fragments ; as if something had died 
 and some one had left him ; and as if the spur which had 
 pricked forward his ambition had become blunt and useless. 
 
 He made his sketch however, with the conscientious care 
 characteristic of all his work — yet how sombre in tone and 
 low in key, how mournful in spirit that pictured story of the 
 rocks! — and then he put up his materials and went slowly 
 back to the little cottage where he had made his home. 
 
 It was only a six-roomed cottage, but it was one of the 
 prettiest little places in the neighbourhood. Set on a slight 
 eminence, it commanded a view of the whole rich valley, with 
 the winding river that ran so rapidly to the sea — that sea 
 itself ruling the horizon with a narrow line of shining silver — 
 while to the back the wild and pieturesque fell-country wag 
 rounded off as by a frame by the blue heights of the distant 
 mountains. The small town of BKghwood lay clustered in 
 the hollow; and the houses of the gentry, each standing in it i 
 islet of green, whether of park, uf garden, or of leafy wood, 
 broke up the monotony of the pasture-lands which were the 
 chief wealth of the vale. The garden of this little cottag — 
 IVniaeres, as it was called — was famous for 9, its 
 
 <arnations, its pansies, and its early fruit and vegetables. 
 Ijoth Sandro and his landlord — James Prinsep, the school- 
 master — spent a great deal of their spare time in this little 
 plot of ground ; and the result was more than satisfactory. 
 Fernacres was ahead of even the grandest places Id the valley; 
 and the finest flowers grown in the open air, as well as the 
 
68 "MY LOVE r* 
 
 first dish of peas, of strawberries, and of new potatoes, were 
 sure to come from this sunny little slope. 
 
 Mrs. Prinsep had been a lady's maid at Eose Hill — Jane 
 Durnsford's predecessor ; and she had added to a naturally 
 gentle and refined nature the lessons in grace and moral 
 culture given her by contact with Mrs. Branscombe. She 
 was one of the true ladies of womanhood ; and lady enough 
 not to be ashamed of domestic work. Hence she kept the 
 place in the most exquisite cleanliness and order ; she cooked 
 to perfection ; and she made her lodger as happy as any poor 
 bachelor whose thoughts are running on the unattainable, 
 can be. It was altogether the most modest kind of home 
 that could be imagined for a man in the prime of life ; but it 
 suited Sandro Kemp when he first entered on it ; and he had 
 gone on with it longer than he originally intended because of 
 those grey eyes and fair hair, that soft face, sweet voice and 
 strange combination of gentleness and will which sometimes 
 he was able to see, either at The Laurels, or elsewhere. 
 
 As he came home now from his sketching expedition by 
 the river, Mrs. Prinsep, watching for him from the window 
 of her own little parlour — that which corresponded to his, on 
 the other side of the door — noticed how pale he looked and 
 how heavily he walked. 
 
 " He studies too much," said the kindly woman with a 
 sigh. 
 
 Those boards aud queer implements — T squares, compasses 
 and the like — those flimsy sheets of yellowish and transparent 
 paper, with their black and red lines, their squares and hiero- 
 glyphics — those wonderful pictures of houses and churches 
 and nondescript buildings, with scales of measurement and 
 more hieroglyphics underneath were sore trials to her patience 
 as a housekeeper and to her sympathies as a woman. She 
 longed to dust that writing-table agaiust the window where 
 Sandro kept this professional litter; but this was the one 
 sacred space which no profane hand must invade ; and the 
 poor woman was forced to let alone all those smeared little 
 saucers of red and black and blue — all those messed plates 
 and dust-covered sheets of paper and parchment ; — contenting 
 herself with supplying clean tumblers of fresh water and 
 sometimes going the length of dusting about the free corners. 
 
 If this were a trial to her housewifely pride of order her 
 lodger's habits and hours touched her womanly sympathies 
 quite as much. Over and over again, hours and hours after 
 
HIS BEJTER CBANCES. €1 
 
 she and her husband had gone to bed, she had heard Sandro's 
 footfall on the stairs, and had struck a light to see the hour. 
 Two, three, and even past three it had been — and he hard at 
 ■work all that time with his houses and churches ! No wonder 
 that he looked pale at times ; or that at times he was so silent 
 and sad she had half a mind to ask him what ailed him. He 
 was just killing himself with overwork ; and apparently to not 
 much good. He was as poor now as he was when he first 
 came there. Though he paid her punctually and did not owe 
 a penny in the town, her fine woman's wit told her that he 
 had not sixpence to spare from the bare necessaries of life ; 
 and to toil as he did, early and late, for no good, was what 
 she could scarcely call good sense : — though it was Mr. Kemp 
 who did it ; and, save her own James, Mr. Kemp was to her 
 mind the best man that ever lived and the most of a gentle- 
 man. Mr. Branscombe was as fine as if he were a prince ; and 
 their dear good rector, in whose house she had also lived — her 
 first place as nurse-girl — was the best clergyman that could 
 be ; but Mr. Kemp had something in him better than either. 
 She did not know what it was exactly, she only felt it ; and 
 as he had no mother to see to his things, and no sister to live 
 with him as his companion, Mrs. Prinsep thought herself con- 
 secrated to the task of taking care of him. And she fulfilled 
 her self-imposed mission as few would have done. 
 
 " I am afraid your dinner will be a little spoilt, Mr Kemp," 
 she said, coming to meet him in the narrow slip that stood 
 for a hall. 
 
 " I know that I am late," he answered with a pleasant 
 smile ; " so I cannot blame you, Mrs, Prinsep." 
 
 " And there is a letter for you from Kose Hill," continued 
 the schoolmaster's wife. " Mr. Branscombe's own man 
 brought it and seemed put out that you were not at home. 
 He said he was told to bring back an answer." 
 
 "Where is the letter?" asked Sandro not very eagerly. 
 
 He had liked Mrs. Branscombe sincerely and he admired 
 and liked Stella ; but Mr. Branscombe was as antipathetic to 
 him as the traditional oil to vinegar ; and though he 
 defended him when Mrs. Morshead had fallen foul of him, 
 chiefly because of his innate dislike to censure and harsh 
 criticism, yet he took care to keep out of his way as much as 
 he could, and to make his intercourse with Kose Hill one of 
 the rare events of his life. It was a surprise to him then that 
 Mr. Branscombe should have written to him ; and he won- 
 
70 "MT LOVE.*' 
 
 dercd what he could possibly have to say. Nevertheless he 
 ■was not specially eager to know ; and even when Mrs. Prinsep 
 handed him the letter he laid it aside unopened until ho 
 should have finished his dinner. But before he had got half- 
 way through his cold beef and salad, the little gate of the 
 garden swung open and the Rose Hill livery of black and 
 silver came up the narrow walk in earnest of the dilettante's 
 impatience. 
 
 " Mr. Branscombe has sent for an answer, sir, to his letter," 
 said Mrs. Prinsep, coming into the room. 
 
 " By George ! I had forgotten all about it and have not 
 opened it yet," said the artist, tearing at the envelope — which 
 was black-bordered to such a depth as to leave scarcely room 
 for the address. He found inside the sketch of a monument 
 in vile perspective and worse taste ; with a letter from 
 Mr. Branscombe, begging him to undertake this small com- 
 mission, and put into workable form the crude ideas hastily 
 jotted down on the enclosure. If Mr. Kemp would do- 
 Mr. Brauscombe the favour of coming to see him at Rose 
 Hill, say, this evening — or to-morrow morning, if that would 
 suit him better — they might be able to confer together on 
 the mournful subject of this communication and perhaps come 
 to an understanding more quickly than they could do by 
 letter. 
 
 To which Mr. Sandro Kemp returned for answer a short 
 note, written in the third person as Mr. Branscombe's had 
 been, saying that he would do himself the pleasure of waiting 
 on him this evening 
 
 " I will not give him my best working-hours in the morn- 
 ing," he said to himself; "and I am too much out of trim 
 to-night to do any good at home ; else that Cathedral ought 
 not to stand even for this. Still it will be pleasant to design 
 something good and beautiful for the dear woman. And 
 Augusta Latrobe will see it." 
 
 After which he continued his dinner, the vision of a simple, 
 touching and well-composed monument gradually clearing 
 itself in his mind, in direct opposition to the florid and mere- 
 tricious composition, all of cherubs' heads and angels with 
 trumps and inverted torches, of broken columns wreathed 
 with flowers and crowns and crosses at the base, which repre- 
 sented Mr. Branscombe's idea of a fitting memorial to his 
 good Matilda so " sorrowfully departed this life." 
 
 "We shall disagree, of course," said the artist again to- 
 
HIS BETTER CHANi 71 
 
 himself. "But unless he will give me carte blanche I will 
 not undertake the thing at all. I will not put my brains 
 into Buch stuff as this, to make it in any way workable 1" 
 
 bo added, with a second contemptuous glance at tbe sketch 
 enclosed. " Not a line right ; not an idea that Las not been 
 worked to death : and tbe wbole thing just one heterogeneous 
 jumble of horrors!" 
 
 As be said this, aloud this time, tbe garden-gate swung 
 back for tbe second time and the postman came to the door. 
 They bad a double post at Highwood, and the evening letters 
 were often the most important of tbe day. Mrs. Prinsep 
 brought in two. One was large and official, the other was in 
 an unknown band ; but the post-mark was tbe London S.W., 
 where his eldest brother lived. 
 
 He opened the first, knowing that in it was contained his 
 fate so far as the cotton-lord's palace was concerned. For a 
 moment be held his breath, and Mrs. Prinsep, taking away 
 tbe dinner-things, could not help noticing that he turned 
 deadly pale. Then the colour came back in a flood on his 
 face, and his brightest smile flashed over it like sunlight, 
 as he lifted up his eyes to Mrs. Prinsep watching him so 
 tenderly, and for need of some one to share his gladness 
 called out : " Well, Mrs. Prinsep, you are to keep me for a 
 little while longer yet! I have that house at Hillside to 
 build!" 
 
 " I am glad of that, sir," she answered smiling. " I should 
 be sorry to lose you now that you have been with us so long. 
 And it is a good thing for you too, is it not, sir ?" 
 
 "Yes ;" he said with a happy, boyish laugh. "It is a very 
 -•ood thing, Mrs. Prinsep. I shall have to give you that silk 
 gown I promised you. What did we say it was to be — blue 
 or green?" 
 
 " No, no, Mr. Kemp ! You are to do nothing of the kind," 
 she said, also laughing for sympathy. She checked herself 
 in an instant. Her dear former mistress — her ever good and 
 rous friend — had been buried only yesterday ; and this 
 Was not the time for what her Scotch aunt would have called 
 "daffing." 
 
 '•And I shall not wear colours for a year to come," she 
 added gravely. " Mrs. Branscombe was one of my greatest 
 losses." 
 
 "Then it shall be black silk," said Sandro, also gravely ; 
 "and you are a good, true-hearted, affectionate creature." 
 
72 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 After this he opened his second letter, and found it to be 
 from his brother's housekeeper — the three Kemp men were 
 unmarried — saying that her master was ill but that he was 
 not to be alarmed ; not much was the matter, and if he got 
 worse she would let Mr. Sandro know. He had had an 
 accident in the park ; had been thrown from his horse which 
 had rolled on him and hurt his chest ; but though he could 
 not write, because his arm was powerless, and though he was 
 in bed, there was not much amiss ; and Mr. Sandro should 
 hear regularly and need not be uneasy. 
 
 " Poor old fellow !" said Sandro, as he read the letter. " 1 
 hope he is not much hurt. I wish he had not said so 
 pointedly that I need not bother. I should have so much 
 liked to have seen him. It would not have cost much to 
 have run up to town. But he always means what he says, 
 and I should only annoy him if I went." 
 
 And with this he crushed the letter into his pocket and, 
 taking his hat, set out for Eose Hill and the inevitable fight 
 over Mr. Branscombe's " crude ideas." 
 
 In this fight Sandro came off victorious. To be sure, he 
 had to be very careful, very cautious, very gentle in his work 
 of demolition ; and, while holding fast by the matter of his 
 design, to be wary in his method. For it was a rather hard 
 task, all things considered, to have to tell a wealthy man, 
 intensely vain of his own artistic skill, that his work was all 
 wrong from first to last — the design bad, the drawing worse, 
 the thing inadmissible and impracticable — and yet not 
 affront susceptibilities which were wounded as easily as a 
 mimosa-plant is made to droop. But Sandro did it. He 
 had that rare mixture of gentleness and frankness which can 
 speak unwelcome truths without offending those who have to 
 hear them ; and as Mr. Branscombe had sense enough to 
 understand what was good when he saw it, and as Sandro's 
 hasty sketch made in the studio while the two were con- 
 ferring, had in it the manifest germ of a grand idea and 
 a great success, he allowed himself to be over-persuaded, 
 and to leave the thing in the more competent hands of the 
 professional artist. 
 
 But he indemnified himself for his displacement by saying 
 to Stella and Cyril, when he showed them Sandro's rapid 
 sketch : 
 
 " We worked out this between us. Mr. Kemp confessed 
 that my original idea was the grander and more luxuriant 
 
HER LATHER. 73 
 
 conception, but there were certain technical difficulties in the 
 working which made it scarcely feasible. This he considered 
 to be more practicable ; and I own I like my second idea 
 almost as well as my first." 
 
 " I like it better, sir," said Cyril. 
 
 " So do I, papa," said Stella — the poor innocents ! 
 
 On which Mr. Branscombe answered a little peevishly : 
 
 " I cannot say much fur your taste, my dear Stella — as for 
 you, Cyril, I know that you have no more artistry in you 
 than a log. The original idea was infinitely the better of the 
 two, and, as I explained to you, was abandoned solely because 
 of certain technical difficulties in the working out." 
 
 "Whatever you do, papa, is beautiful," said Stella, going 
 up to him and kissing him. " How I wish that mamma, 
 could have seen it !" she added naively, tears coming into her 
 • yes at the mention of her mother's name. 
 
 " She will ; and she will know that she is honoured," said 
 Mr. Branscombe pompously. 
 
 The phrase jarred on Cyril strangely and involuntarily he 
 'uttered an exclamation which meant a disclaimer both of the 
 sentiment and the manner of uttering it. 
 
 " What an odd thing to say!" he thought. " That father- 
 in-law of mine has certainly some queer comers in his mind. 
 He is as unlike my Stella and her beloved mother as if he 
 were of another race ; and I am glad that my Stella is more 
 her mother's child than his." 
 
 On his side, Mr. Branscombe, who had heard that " Oh !" 
 thought — for so elegant a man a little savagely : " You have 
 wry nearly come to the end of your tether, young man; and 
 this inconvenient farce has to be hissed off the boards!" 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HEE FATHER. 
 
 It had to be done. Therefore, argued Mr. Branscoinl>e, 
 it were well that it should be done at once and while his 
 daughter's heart was more plastic even than usual through 
 U'rief at her muther's death — that death which was just a 
 week old to-day, closed by the gorgeous funeral which had 
 given the neighbourhood its solemn fete the day before 
 yesterday. 
 
74 " MY LOVE r 
 
 The moment was favourable and the hour had come- 
 Cyril bad ridden over to the county town on a planned errand, 
 simulating- " business at the bank" for Mr. Branscombe. Thus 
 he was safely disposed of for the afternoon. His absence 
 would enable his prospective father-in-law to lay down the 
 lines of the future without fear of interruption ; and Mr. 
 Branscombe knew that Stella would keep to those lines when 
 he had once made it clear to her that they repiesented his 
 will. He counted on her filial fidelity, cost what it might, 
 and that she would make her action coincident with his 
 desire, subservient to his advantage, even at her own loss 
 and martyrdom. Among the multiform chances of life his 
 daughter's rebellion to his command, or indifference to his 
 wishes, was the last which the mind of Mr. Branscombe could 
 entertain. 
 
 He foresaw that Cyril would be more difficult to manage ; 
 but, with Stella on his side, the young fellow's force of 
 resistance would be reduced to a minimum. If a farce has 
 to be hissed off the boards, he thought, looking at himself in 
 the glass and sadly noting the crow's feet about his eyes, of 
 what good the actors' refusal to budge ? They must go ; 
 the public will not hear them. 
 
 " And in this matter I am the public," said Mr. Brans- 
 combe aloud ; •' and this undesirable engagement is the farce 
 ihat has to be hissed off the stage of my life. Stella is too 
 useful to me now to be parted with ; and India is an 
 unhealthy climate. I am doing my duty to her as well as to 
 myself ; and in time she will recognize this and thank me." 
 
 On which he lowered the blind so as to make a mournful 
 and subdued light in the room ; put himself into a becoming 
 attitude of grief and dejection ; rang the bell with plaintive 
 softness ; and, when the man came asked him epiite deferen- 
 tially to desire Miss Branscombe to come to him for a 
 moment if she had the time to spare. It was all the " busi- 
 ness" of the actor at the side-scenes, preparing himself for 
 his entrance. 
 
 "Ah! my good child! my dear Stella!" he said with a 
 caressing accent and affectionate gesture, as the girl came 
 into the room at his summons, her face pale for her sad 
 thoughts on this, the first terrible week-day commemoration 
 of her mother's death — her slender figure looking almost 
 shrunken in her plain, unornamented black — her whole air 
 one of unutterable sorrow and the evidence of loss. 
 
HER FATHER. T r, 
 
 She went up to him and put her anus round bis neck, as 
 she laid her cheek tenderly on his forehead. 
 
 "Dear darling papa!" she said with fervour; l.ut her 
 tears fell over his upturned face as she spoke, and Mr. Brans- 
 combe thought fcu himself — " Her state of nnnd is perfect 
 1 have already conquered all the difficulties. " 
 
 ■ Take a chair, my love, and come and sit near ine," he 
 said, pressing her hand in recognition of her caress. " I 
 much to say to you." 
 
 She looked at him with somewhat of a startled look. What 
 could he have to say to hei, prefaced in this strangely solemn 
 manner ? 
 
 ■• Nothing to which you will not agree," he said reassur- 
 ingly, answering her startled look. 
 
 " No, I am sure of that," returned Stella fondly — more 
 fondly even than usual, her father representing to her now 
 not only himself but also her beloved mother. 
 
 Indeed, who would not agree with tbat adored being, so 
 good and noble and gifted and superior altogether as he was ? 
 Certainly not Stella his idolizing daughter brought up in 
 the faith of his perfectness as she had been, and a firm 
 believer in the quasi divinity to which her life had been 
 subordinate and her mother's sacrificed. 
 
 ■• We have been terribly and rudely shaken, my child," 
 : Mr. Branscombe, looking up to the ceiling. '' "We 
 have sustained a loss to which, my Stella, words can give 
 neither expression nor dimension." 
 
 " Indeed, yes," said Stella simply, her tears still falling 
 softly down her face. " Life will never be the same now 
 without poor mamma. We have lost the best part of it." 
 
 •• I have lost more than the best part of mine," said her 
 r mournfully. " I have lost all that soothed my sorrows 
 and mad.- my many Bufferings endurable; and now I have 
 only my little daughter left tome — the Star of my H 
 my Stella." 
 
 "Dearesl papa!" said the girl, looking at him fondly, 
 wondering in her own mind what were those - rrows, 
 sufferings, to which he s.. darkly alluded. '"I cannot supply 
 mamma's place with you," she went on 1 iking with 
 
 extreme tenderness ; "'but you know how much I lo\ 
 Do you n 
 
 ••I hope it. I believe it. Were it not . I have 
 
 nothing more for which to live — for you and I, my Si 
 
76 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 stand now alone in this cold, cruel world. Hand in hand we 
 stand together — we two alone — the desolate widower, the 
 motherless daughter." 
 
 " And Cyril with us, papa," said Stella. 
 
 " Cyril ? Aye, Cyril ! But Cyril is not of our blood, my 
 little girl. Cyril has not lost what we have lost," said her 
 father with a certain fine disdain that seemed to mean in- 
 tensity of love for the poor, dear dead wife and mother rather 
 than anv want of faith in, or appreciation of, the boy himself. 
 " Cyril is a Ponsonby, not a Branscombe," he continued. 
 " We two Branscombes stand alone, as I have said ; and we 
 must comfort one another." 
 
 "Yes, papa, indeed I will do all I can to comfort you," 
 ^aid Stella, taking his tone and wide of his meaning. 
 
 " I knew that ! I knew that, my good child," he answered, 
 as one allowing himself to be soothed by loving assurance. 
 " The spirit of your sainted mother lives in you. I knew 
 that I could count on my child." 
 
 " So you can on Cyril, quite as much as on me," said 
 Stella, faithful to her two vital affections, and still blind as 
 to her father's real meaning. 
 
 " Cyril is eliminated from our great affliction, my dear," 
 was his grave reply. " We must do without Cyril in our 
 mutual sorrowful consolations." 
 
 " We cannot do without Cyril, papa," said Stella. 
 
 Her father might as well have said that she and Cyril were 
 to do without him. 
 
 " I think we shall have to learn that difficult lesson," was 
 nis reply, made quite quietly — without any accent of sarcasm, 
 any show of aggressiveness — as if he were saying the most 
 ordinary thing in the world and not what to Stella sounded 
 the most extraordinary, the most impossible. " I think we 
 shall have to do without Cyril, both you and I," he repeated 
 with elegant persistence. 
 
 " How can we ?" said Stella wonderingly. " He belongs to 
 us now. He is one of us." 
 
 " Not quite one of us just yet," her father answered dryly. 
 " Unless, indeed, you have been married, my dear, unknown 
 to me" 
 
 " Papa, what a dreadful thing to say !" interrupted Stella, 
 profoundly shocked. 
 
 " As such an hypothesis is inadmissible," he continued 
 quietly ; " you cannot prove in any way that Cyril is one of 
 
HER FATHER. 77 
 
 us, or that he belongs to us. A mere fiance is not one of the 
 family in esse, he is only a potential member, a circumstance 
 in posse, and can still be relegated to that open space which 
 lies beyond the house door. Is it not so r" 
 
 " I do not quite understand what you mean, darling," said 
 Stella softly. 
 
 '• No? Yet I think I speak plainly, my love. Have you 
 never heard of an engagement between two young people 
 being broken off, my innocent little girl ? Are ail betrothals 
 necessarily consolidated by a marriage ?" 
 
 " Papa, what do you mean ?" cried Stella, looking at him 
 with as much wonder as dismay. " You cannot mean that I 
 am to give up Cyril ? — that I am not to marry him ? Oh, 
 dear, dear, papa ! — good, noble-hearted, beloved papa, sav 
 that I am mistaken, and that you do not mean this ! I cannot 
 believe it ! Say that I am mistaken !" 
 
 She rose from her chair, her face wild with terror, her 
 hands clasped nervously before her, her usually ^melodious 
 voice now sharpened by fear and flung up into almost a 
 scream of pain. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe shuddered and covered his face with his 
 hands. 
 
 " Oh, my head ! my head !" he cried in a voice of suffering. 
 " My child, how can you be so cruel as to ask me to bear all 
 the torture of this loud excitement, this undisciplined passion f 
 My nerves cannot endure it ! Is it not enough that I have 
 lost the tenderest wife that ever breathed — the most beloved 
 partner of my bosom, and cherished companion in my studio-, 
 and pursuits, — but must you, my daughter, turn the knife in 
 my wound and agonize me afresh by this terrible display of 
 uncontrolled excitement! I, who love all that is gentle and 
 low-voiced and subdued in a woman, to have a daughter who 
 raves like a maniac — and she the daughter of the gentlesl 
 soul that ever breathed, the most precious saint that ever 
 lived on earth in human form ! Monstrous, oh monstrous ! 
 most monstrous and unnatural !" he said in the voice in which 
 he was wont to recite his metrical version of Shakespere's 
 Kin<? Lear. 
 
 " Forgive me, dear papa," said Stella, down at his feet ; 
 " I did not mean to hurt you. You know that I would not 
 give you a moment's pain if I could help it. I did not mean 
 to be passionate or wild, but Cyril — my own Cyril — I cannot 
 give up Cyril ! How wicked I am to pain you, darling papa — 
 
78 "Ml LOVEV 
 
 but my poor Cyril ! Oh, beloved papa, what can I do for 
 you — and. iny own Cyril too !" 
 
 It was pitiable to see the way in which the poor loyal heart 
 was torn and racked between these two great loves — how the 
 faithful soul was tossed between these two great central 
 fears, that of paining her father by disobedience, and that of 
 breaking Cyril's heart by giving him up as her lover. Turn 
 which way "she would she saw only anguish and dismay and 
 disloyalty to one or the other of the two who were as dear to 
 her as life itself. And it had come on her so suddenly ! It 
 had been the thunderbolt out of a clear sky, falling without 
 warning cloud or dim foretelling gloom. Her mother's awful 
 death itself had not been more appalling, more unexpected, 
 than this strange announcement of her father's that she must 
 give up her lover. Not half an hour ago and she felt that 
 her love at least was as safe and solid as the very earth itself; 
 and now had come the earthquake and ruin and desolation 
 everywhere ! 
 
 "Then vou do not love me, Stella? Ah, well, I must 
 inure myself to woe !" 
 
 Mr. Branscombe sighed deeply, leaning his glossy well- 
 brushed head with pensive grace on his white and scented 
 hand. 
 
 "Yes, papa, I do ! I do ! Tou know that I do!" she 
 answered, kneeling down by him as she used to kneel by her 
 mother. " But I love Cvril too. Whv may I not keep you 
 Doth ?" 
 
 " Impossible, Stella ! Impossible, my child ! No man can 
 r.erve two masters, and you must make your choice between 
 us. You cannot have both father and lover — at least not. 
 now and in their entirety." 
 
 He spoke in a slow, deep measured voice — still the voice 
 in which he was wont to repeat his poetry and which to 
 Stella expressed the ideal of pathos, truth and earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 " Say exactly what you mean and wish, papa," she cried, 
 the look of pain on her face deepening into one of absolute 
 terror. It was almost as if this beloved father, representative 
 of all human nobleness as he was, had suddenly become 
 transformed and had taken on himself something strange 
 and dreadful — as if the guardian angel in whose care she had 
 trusted — the god whose grace she had prayed to win and 
 thought to have found — had turned from her with an angry 
 
11 Eli FATHER. 70 
 
 countenance, and had become her cruel enemy and her im- 
 placable judge. 
 
 "I mean, my dear, that you must postpone your marriage 
 with this young man; at least for the immediate pr< 
 said Mr. Branscombe, softening his voice but thinking it as 
 well to go straight to the point and spare further agonies of 
 doubt. 
 
 "Not marry him in August !" asked Stella. "Cyril -will 
 wait," she added. "There is no need to marry till he has 
 red bis appointment and just before he sails. I am sure 
 he will wait," she said, speaking as if a load had been taken 
 from her. and as she Bpoke, laying her hand in her father's 
 with a fond, almost protecting gesture. 
 
 " And you would break my heart in September say, if you 
 refrain from doing so in August ?" he answered reproachfully. 
 " You would leave me, Stella, in my terrible loneliness while 
 yon made your own happiness with another? — and leave me 
 with such unnecessary haste," he added in a low voice. " I 
 shall soon die !" he sighed, laying his hand on his heart. 
 " My 'lavs are numbered. Would you advance by so much 
 the "fatal hour? — you, my daughter, my Stella !" 
 
 " Papa ! you are not ill, are you ? I did not know that you 
 were ill " cried Stella, kissing his hands as this new fear over- 
 whelmed her with fresh agony. 
 
 "Cyril is young," continued Mr. Branscombe, not heeding 
 the interruption or the caresses, and only careful to work the 
 profitable vein on which he had struck. "You will not have 
 ■" wait. My days, my Stella, will not be many, for my 
 is broken and my health destroyed for ever. I ask you 
 only to stay with me — your only parent now! — for a few 
 months, or even weeks it may be, remaining to me; — not to 
 I- ore me to be attended by hirelings in my last hours; — to 
 stay with me, my child, and close my eyes when I shall depart 
 to her whom we both lore and who has already gone. I 
 should like to have your sweet face about my dying pillow — 
 the last thing on which my failing sight should rest ! I 
 should like to go straight from my own dear child on earth 
 to the sainted spirit of her mother in heaven — from my 
 earthly Stella to my soul's best purified star!" 
 
 He said all this with mournful eyes delicately wet and 
 again raised devoutly to the ceiling of the room. His air of 
 poetic resignation and elegant despair would have been trans- 
 parent enough to all but a child who had been born and 
 
8(1 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 brought tip in the faith of filial worship and the belief in 
 paternal perfection. But it told with Stella as he meant it to 
 tell. Her critical faculty had never dared to plumb nor 
 measure her father's sincerity. 
 
 "Papa! papa! do not talk like this!" she cried, weeping 
 passionately. " It breaks my heart to hear you." 
 
 " Mine is broken already," said Mr. Branscombe with that 
 pathetic patience, that quiet resignation to despair and pen- 
 sive allusion to unknown burdens which touches the sym- 
 pathies of the young more deeply that anything in the world 
 beside. 
 
 " No, no, papa ! You have years of life and beautiful work 
 before you. Years, years," she said, clinging to him. 
 
 " Oh, my sweet, fond, trustful child, how youth and love 
 deceive themselves !" he answered, stroking her hair with tender 
 love — the melancholy caress of illimitable sorrow. " A very 
 few months will see the light of this world quenched for me and 
 my eyes opened to the glories above. See ! I ask so little 
 from you, my Stella !" he went on to say in a pleading voice 
 that was to his daughter as if a king had knelt at the feet of 
 a beggar. " For what do I sue ? Only that you should hold 
 my hand during that fateful passage of my soul — only that 
 you should sit by my bedside while I pass away — receive my 
 last sigh, and close my eyes when I am gone ! Is this so much 
 to demand from out the rich treasure of a daughter's love ? — - 
 so much to take from a long life of happiness as a tribute to a 
 father's worth ? In a very short time I shall be in the grave 
 and you will be free to marry your young husband. I shall 
 be out of your path and you will have no obstruction to your 
 wishes. It will not last long, my Stella — not long ! not long ! 
 The year of your mourning for your beloved mother will not 
 have passed before I, your father, am laid by her side. And 
 during that year of mourning would you invest yourself in 
 all your bridal array and forget her who gave you life in the 
 mad pleasure of the world, the giddy round of bridal festivi- 
 ties ? I cannot think so meanly of mv Stella — of her mother's 
 child !" 
 
 " Papa ! all that you say seems so sad, and so beautiful 
 while you speak — but Cyril ! poor poor Cyril !" said Stella, 
 weeping afresh. 
 
 " Choose then as your heart dictates," said Mr. Branscombe 
 very tenderly and in the manner of one who suddenly aban- 
 dons all argument, all persuasion. " I would put no force on 
 
HER FATHER. i± 
 
 vou. If I do not win the little sacrifice I have demanded 
 "from the plenitude of your love and with the approbation of 
 vour conscience, I do not want it from any other niotiv. . 
 Marry then, my Stella, and be happy. I will do my best 
 without you — do my best to find my comfort in the knowledge 
 of vour voung joy, and to bear with the dignity of a man and 
 the resignation of a Christian the disappointment of my hopes, 
 the wreck of my love and the few days of sorrow still left to 
 me. But, oh God !" he cried with a burst of anguish ; " that 
 it should have come to this ! that my child, my own beloved 
 and idolized child — my Star, my little Stella — should desert 
 me for a stranger and make her happiness out of my despair !" 
 
 He turned away, then suddenly crossed his arms on the 
 table, laid his head on them as if bowed down with anguish, 
 and burst into a passionate flood of tears. 
 
 " Papa ! darling dearest beloved papa — do not cry ! do not 
 be so unhappy !" said Stella, trying to force his face from his 
 arms ; but the paternal spine was strong and she could not 
 stir it. " Papa, you are breaking my heart !" she continued. 
 " Look up, dearest papa ! do look at me ! Oh, I cannot bear 
 this !" she said as his tears and convulsive sobs grew heavier 
 and more agonized. " I would rather die than see you like 
 this. Papa ! dear papa, I will not leave you ! Look up, and 
 do not break my heart in this dreadful way ! I cannot bear 
 it ! Papa, hear me — I will not marry to leave you alone !" 
 
 The die was cast ; her promise registered ; her father had 
 won the game. 
 
 " God bless you, my beloved child!" he sobbed, as he lifted 
 up his face and took the girl to his heart. " Now I know my 
 daughter once more — the Star of my Home — my one sole 
 treasure left !" 
 
 " Only be happy, darling papa, and I shall not mind for 
 anything/' cried Stella, strung for the moment by the exalta- 
 tion of her martyrdom to the poetry and nobleness of sacrifice. 
 Then the smoke of the incense cleared and the flame died 
 down as she remembered all that this martyrdom included. 
 " My poor Cyril ! I have broken your heart!" she sobbed. 
 
 Crashed down by her pain she sank at her father's well- 
 shod, dainty feet, as a devotee might have sunk before the 
 altar of Moloch when the decree of passing one beloved 
 through the fire had gone forth. 
 
 ■' My love," said her father, raising her and kissing her 
 forehead with paternal solemnity; "you have been Cyril's 
 
 o 
 
Kg "MY LOVE!" 
 
 ;;ood angel in that you have given him an opportunity for 
 the exei*cise of spiritual grace, for which he ought to bless 
 and thank you on his knees. It is not every day that such 
 grand moments come into our lives. Our best benefactor is 
 he who allows us occasion for the cultivation of our highest 
 nature and our noblest self." 
 
 And Stella, in her innocence, did not turn the mirror round, 
 nor ask herself why, if it were such a boon that Cyril should 
 have this occasion of spiritual grace through the gift of 
 sorrow — this opportunity of virtue and the cultivation of his 
 highest self by the way of sacrifice — it had not been as 
 valuable for her father? Surely — if she had dared to reflect 
 and been able to see — it would have been more in accordance 
 with his professed system of self-culture, had he appropriated 
 to himself this opportunity of ethical improvement instead of 
 giving it to another who would not value it. A young fellow 
 like Cyril, content to live on that unidealized moral plane 
 where to speak the truth and have no fear of man, to be 
 brave and loyal, cheerful and generous, sincere in soul and 
 pure in heart, considerate of others and self-respectful for 
 himself, made about the sum of his private decalogue, was 
 not likely to be grateful for this kind of supersensual martyr- 
 dom, nor indeed very likely to profit by it. Many a man's 
 morality has been wrecked before now by such a trial as this ; 
 and Cyril had yet to prove the quality of his, and show by 
 experience whether it Avould bear the strain put on it by Mr. 
 Branscombe, or break down under it with hopeless ruin and 
 collapse. 
 
 But the poor girl thought none of these things. She was 
 not near the region of clear-sighted understanding where her 
 father was concerned. And by her blindness her pain was 
 lessened by at least one pang in that she did not suspect the 
 hollowness of all these high sounding principles for which 
 she suffered — in that she had not dared to imagine that her 
 god was only a mountebank playing a part on a gilded stage 
 — or that the dazzling veil of her prophet hid deformity not 
 superhuman radiance and beauty. Her father was still to 
 her the Supreme ; and in obeying him she was emphatically 
 obeying the higher law and doing her noblest duty. 
 
 All the same her heart was sore for her young lover and 
 for herself, and the anguish of her martyrdom was hard to 
 bear. 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 83 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 
 
 Naturally it was more difficult to convince Cyril than it 
 had been to persuade Stella, that this remuneration of the 
 lover in favour of the father -was righteous, just and holy. 
 And the young fellow had to run the gauntlet of many well- 
 delivered blows because he could not see, and would not 
 acknowledge, that father's superior claims. He had to submit 
 to the accusations of selfishness and egoism — according to the 
 invariable rule of the selfish and egoistic — of inability to rise 
 to the sublime height of Duty, that stern Voice of God which 
 we ought all to obey like little children at the mother's knee 
 — of moral coarseness— and finally of greed ; Stella's portion, 
 coming to her through her mother, being of manifest import- 
 ance to a man whose sole actual inheritance that he cculcl 
 touch and handle was just one hundred and fifty pounds a year. 
 
 And when Mr. Branscombe blew this poisoned little needle 
 from between his fine, thin, mobile lips he did more execution 
 with it than with any other he had used ; as indeed he had 
 foreseen ; and by making Cyril furiously angry he put him in 
 the wrong, and forced him to apologize. 
 
 On his part Mr. Branscombe was as cool as an ice-cave in 
 
 a glacier. All these hard things were said with the epiietest 
 
 and most gentlemanlike air of philosophic impartiality 
 
 possible to be imagined. Not a trace of passion on his side 
 
 reduced the question to one of individual antagonism or 
 
 ted the lofty standard of abstract morality by which he 
 
 Hired the right and wrong of the proposition. His accu- 
 
 ob were all based on fact not feeling, and were capable 
 
 of mathematical demonstration; and when he said things 
 
 which were as hard as iron and as sharp as steel, his voice 
 
 - bo calm, bis intonation so melodious, his manner so re- 
 fined, that Cyril was often more bewildered than indignant. 
 
 Mure than once he asked himself with boyish doubt of his 
 own heart, had Mr. Branscombe really the nobler insight, and 
 was he himself just a headstrong youth, governed solely bj 
 selfish passion and incapable of a higher morality? Yet be 
 could not quite come to this view of himself, try as hard as be 
 would to be honest and candid, and for all that he was to some 
 degree infected by the family cult paid to the family Apollo. 
 
84 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 He could not quite confess that lie was so muck of a low- 
 minded ruffian as Mr. Brauscombe made out — always by 
 logical deduction from general principles, and when the sense 
 of a wordy periphrase had to be crystallized into an adjective 
 and a noun — because he wanted to marry Stella, according to 
 their engagement, even though this marriage should take her 
 from her father. It was the law of life, he argued. Birds leave 
 their nests and sons their mothers ; daughters make new homes 
 for themselves with other sons taken from other mothers ; and 
 so the thing goes on all the world over. "What then was there 
 specially shameful and ignoble in this very natural desire of his 
 to make Stella his wife according to her promise ? Grant that 
 it did include her elegant father's domestic loneliness — that 
 it necessitated a housekeeper and perhaps an amanuensis — 
 some one must suffer ; and Cyril, strong in youth and love 
 and all the hope of his great joy, did not see why that some 
 one should be himself. No, doing his best to be candid, he 
 could not see it — though certainly not for want of Mr. Brans- 
 combe's strenuous and unabashed efforts to enlighten him. 
 
 Meanwhile between the two poor Stella was morally in the 
 position of those savage brides who, carried off with violence 
 by their husbands and defended with brutality by their kins- 
 men, run great risk of being torn to pieces between those who 
 try to take and those who will not let go. It was a terrible 
 position for her in truth ! — and her heart was nearly broken 
 in her endeavour to reconcile these two irreconcilable affec- 
 tions, to obey these two opposing duties. 
 
 When Cyril, with all a young lover's passionate despair, 
 besought her to keep her engagement and marry him as she 
 had promised ; when he urged on her his love, his sorrow, 
 his ruined life, the sacredness of her vows, the destruction of 
 his whole future if she fell away from him, and clinched all by 
 appeals to her dead mother's memory and reminders of how 
 she had always countenanced and upheld this love — the poor 
 girl felt that this was indeed her duty, this her truest religion, 
 and that nothing ought to stand between her and his rescue 
 from destruction. "When her father in his measured, mourn- 
 ful voice spoke in poetic language of his broken heart, his 
 speedy death of which he was sorrowfully certain ; and yet 
 why should it be sorrowful ? — would it not be his release, and 
 her recovery of freedom ? — when he reminded her that the 
 sacrifice which he asked of her was only for so short a time ; 
 when he compressed the whole thing into an antithesis — so 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 85 
 
 little to lose and so much to give ; when he, too, spoke of her 
 mother up there in heaven, she whose whole life had been one 
 of love and duty and devotion to him, and whose example 
 should be her guide — then her heart turned to him, to this 
 poor papa who was so good, so beautiful, so superior, such a 
 genius ; and she felt that Cyril must be patient and consent to 
 wait cheerfully, as she had promised. It was only right and 
 just. They were young and poor papa was not. They owed 
 more to him than to each other ; and they could be true and 
 faithful and loving even though they were not to be married 
 ] ust vet. It was their duty. Sacrifice is nobler than self-seeking. 
 They must forego their happiness now that they might take 
 it with a clearer conscience when the time for it should come 
 naturally and without wrong-doing. 
 
 Slowly the oscillating balance of her mind inclined more 
 and more this way. Her promise, always insisted on by her 
 father, had already been given as we know. Gradually it 
 became clear as daylight to her that this was the right thing 
 to do — the thing which the higher law commanded and which 
 her mother would have approved. She forgot that mother's- 
 anxiety that the marriage should take place even before the 
 day originally fixed on. She had not understood the true 
 significance of her desire then, and she saw it no more clearly 
 now. She only remembered the one great lesson of her life, 
 and by this she sought to shape her own. And as she grew 
 more convinced of the righteousness of her renunciation she 
 found that strength which comes from distinctness of belief, 
 and was able to stand with less turmoil of soul by her 
 desolating decision. 
 
 It made no difference to her when Augusta Latrobe, at 
 Cyril's prayer, came to Eose Hill to urge his claims and 
 advise her to marry despite her father's words and her own 
 promise. Poor Cyril ! it was once more, as so often before, 
 the straw caught at by the drowming man. He remembered 
 .Mrs. Latrobe's kind manner and odd advice in the con- 
 servatory, before the awful catastrophe of Mrs. Branscoinbe's 
 death had thrown all into such dire confusion, and he went 
 to The Laurels as almost the last chance left him. Fortu- 
 nately for him, he met her just as she was leaving the house 
 with "her boy, for their afternoon's walk. For Mrs. Morshead, 
 though rich, would not allow her daughter to have either a 
 maid for herself or a nurse for the boy. Mothers who had 
 children should look after them themselves, she used to say 
 
86 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 sourlv ; and women who chose to go and marry men without 
 sixpence could not expect maids and things when they came 
 back as paupers with families to their old homes. 
 
 By meeting her thus alone, Cyril was able to open his heart 
 and ask the fair widow's assistance in the forlorn hope he was 
 leading against Mr. Branscombe, without let or hindrance or 
 spiteful remark from the terrible old woman who was thus 
 kept happily out of the matter. 
 
 " I knew'it," said Augusta. " I was sure that this would 
 come. I told you as much in the conservatory that day when 
 I advised you to marry — at least this was what I meant. Do 
 you remember?" 
 
 " Yes ; but I did not understand then what you did mean ; 
 and Stella would not have consented to marry me secretly, 
 even if I had asked her," said Cyril. 
 
 " No ; I know that she would not ; for I said much the 
 same to her as I did to you. She saw no rocks ahead, poor 
 dear ! and was half inclined to quarrel with me for my wicked- 
 ness — only that she is too good to quarrel with any one. I 
 am sorry for you both, Mr. Ponsonby — for you, because the 
 happiness of your youth is destroyed, and for her, because 
 she is sacrificing both you and herself to such a mere bit of 
 humbug as Mr. Branscombe. It is the true given for the 
 untrue." 
 
 " Oh !" said Cyril, still under the influence of that family 
 worship. 
 
 " Surely you do not mean to say that you believe in 
 Mr. Branscombe?" said Augusta, suddenly stopping and 
 facing the young fellow, her clear grey eyes looking into his 
 with as much amusement as surprise. " The most transparent 
 old humbug in the place! — the merest fop and twaddler 
 flattered into thinking himself a genius ! Why, Mr, Ponson- 
 by, you surely do not believe in him ?" she said again. 
 
 " TJp to now I have," he answered. 
 
 " And now he shows himself in his true colours as utterly 
 selfish and unfeeling," said Augusta. " But he has done 
 nothing which I, who know him, should not have expected of 
 him." 
 
 " He is certainly acting selfishly and cruelly just now," 
 said Cyril. " It is all a puzzle to me." 
 
 " To me none, for he is doing only as he has done all his 
 life," answered the widow. Then she added in a voice of 
 inquiry : " I have often wondered what darling Mrs. Brans- 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. -7 
 
 eombe did really think ! She was a woman of far too much 
 good sense to "be taken in by him I am sure ; but how 
 beautifully she behaved! She was never heard to say a word 
 nor seen to look as if she saw through him, as she must have 
 done. I used to think there are more martyrs in life than 
 have gone to the stake when she showed his hideous daubs 
 and played his atrocious music as sweetly as if it had all 
 l>een true art instead of the awful stuff it is. What an angel 
 she was! — -but what a thousand pities that she ever married 
 that wretched creature ! He was no more worthy of her than 
 if he had been a Cherokee Indian ; and not so much ; for a 
 Cherokee Indian would have been at least a man, and 
 -Jr. Branscombe is not." 
 
 And by the time that Augusta had delivered herself of this 
 last astounding philippic, which made Cyril hot all over, they 
 had eume to Eose Hill and her mission of wise counsel began. 
 
 She could do nothing. Stella wept as a loving girl na- 
 turally would when discussing such a tremendous matter as 
 this sacrifice was to her ; hut she said that she had thought 
 it all out and had come to this decision as the best if not the 
 happiest thing to do. She had prayed for guidance and she 
 had received the assurance of this direction. It was a terrible 
 trial for them all ; but it was right ; and her conscience upheld 
 her in her sorrow. 
 
 " My dear, nothing in the world is so fallacious as con- 
 science," said that graceless widow whose rule of right was 
 common sense. " Keason the thing out fairly and you will 
 find that common sense is dead against you. Sentiment — 
 and false s.-ntinient too — is all that you have on your side. 
 You bar.' Lei your mind get heated and excited so that you 
 do not see things as they are. Believe me, you are a 
 foolishly and wrongly. Remember, you owe something to 
 Cyril as well as to your father ; and you made your first 
 promise to him." 
 
 ''But it is better for Cyril to suffer than to do wrong," 
 said Stella. "He is unhappy now, poor darling, bul 1 am 
 sure that in his heart he feels I am right. ll<- knows that I 
 d<> not I., v.- him less because I feel it to be my duty to keep 
 with poor papa for a few months or years — while he wants 
 me and cannot do without me." 
 
 "You will repent it," said Augusta. "And I tell you 
 d that you are acting not only foolishly bui wrongly — 
 lata always do." 
 
88 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 "My conscience tells me I am right," said Stella with 
 mournful constancy ; and the widow, who was sacrificing her 
 own life's happiness to her idea of duty, knew that it was 
 useless to say more. 
 
 It was not by nor for herself that Stella had judged. It 
 was the voice of that Divine guidance which she had prayed 
 for that spoke in her; and she would be doubly criminal 
 were she to be false to its teaching. She loved Cyril better 
 than her life ; but not better than God ; and love was less 
 than the Divine Will. And by the decree of this Divine Will 
 she owed her first duty to her father. If he forbade the 
 marriage to take place yet awhile, and wanted her to live 
 with him for another year or so, she must obey him. She 
 would be sinful else. 
 
 One other person agreed with her ; and only one. This 
 was Hortensia Lyon — next to Augusta her greatest friend ; 
 perhaps now, when Augusta had gone over so boldly to 
 Mammon and self-seeking, she ought to call her quite her 
 greatest and dearest and nearest ! Hortensia — a pretty, large- 
 eyed, delicately-featured little creature with a Puritan air 
 and a Quaker-like head, slender as a willow-wand, dreamy, 
 unpractical and interpenetrated with moral heroism and the 
 spirit of self-sacrifice — Hortensia upheld her, and said that 
 she was doing grandly, nobly, virtuously. And when we are 
 inclined to one way more than to another, a child's applause 
 will uphold us where the condemnation of a sage will scarcely 
 shake. 
 
 Stella was greatly cheered by what Hortensia said. The 
 two together carried the day against Augusta's tinkling 
 cymbal of worldly wisdom ; and finally the question was 
 settled. Duty triumphed over love ; the way of sacrifice was 
 entered on rather than that of happiness ; her father's need 
 was more powerful than her lover's loss ; and the desolation 
 of the former was more pitiful than the despair of the latter. 
 Stella turned her face from the pleasant garden where life 
 was to have been one long summer's day of love and joy, and 
 accepted the stony path of virtue and renunciation. The scale 
 of duty settled down firmly and the balance no longer oscil- 
 lated. She said, " No, we must wait," for the last time ; and 
 then the curtain fell on Cyril's departure from Highwood, 
 still engaged but with his marriage indefinitely postponed. 
 At any rate it was postponed until the not far-distant 
 time when Mr. Branscombe should die of his broken heart 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. 89 
 
 and secret malady; as he faithfully promised that he 
 would. 
 
 So now there were three broken hearts instead of one. 
 And of these three, Stella was upheld by the consciousness ot 
 well doing — Mr. Branscombe had the tremendous strength 
 given by that kind of egoism which justifies itself through 
 belief in its own superiority to all the surrounding world — 
 while Cyril, who had neither the consciousness of well doing 
 Qor the strength of egoism to support him, was the victim of 
 both and undeniably the one most to be pitied of the three. 
 
 But he neither cut his throat nor had brain-fever, as per- 
 haps he should had he been the ideal lover of woman's 
 favourite fancy. He went back to London quietly and like a 
 gentleman ; not taking the world into his confidence by any 
 eccentric demonstrations of grief on the platform, yet, all the 
 same, feeling more desolate, more shipwrecked than he once 
 believed he ever could have felt, come what might into his 
 life. 
 
 Meanwhile, Stella, listening to her father's poetry and 
 playing over his music at Eose Hill, furtively wiped away the 
 tears that would fall, try as she might to strangle them in her 
 throat before they mounted to her eyes. As Cyril did not 
 see those tears he could scarcely give her credit for them ; 
 and more than once he surprised in himself a certain strain of 
 bitterness when he thought of her choice, and how she had 
 thrown him over for the father whose immense superiority he 
 was beginning to question. But whenever he came face to 
 face with that strain he checked it as if it had been a mortal 
 sin. Whatever else he lost he would not lose his faith in her, 
 he used to say to himself; " the noblest girl in the world," as 
 Hortensia Lyon had called her when finally the coup de grace 
 had been given to love and all love's sweet fond weakness, and 
 the cross of duty, self-sacrifice and daily martyrdom had been 
 preferred instead. Yes ; she was the noblest-minded girl in 
 the world and the dearest, thought poor Cyril with faithful 
 constancy and loving reverence ; and whatever happened he 
 would keep this faith as a precious and inalienable amulet. 
 
 Alike in the loftiness of their principles, especially so tar 
 as these affected Cyril, nothing could be more unlike in 
 character than these two friends, Stella Branscombe ;ui«.l 
 Hortensia Lyon. Stella^was as we have seen, pre-eminently a 
 good girl, conscientious, honourable, dutiful, unselfish; bat 
 she was also pre-eminently natural and human. She liked 
 
'JO "MY LOVE!" 
 
 fun as well as the Miss Pennefathers, say, though her fun 
 was somewhat different from theirs ; she had a merry smile 
 and a merry laugh when she did smile and laugh — which 
 she had not done of late; she was by no means indifferent 
 to dress, but thought the choice of a colour, the cut of a 
 sleeve, matters demanding careful consideration ; she honoured 
 principles, but she was sweetly weak to persons ; in a word 
 she was feminine aud concrete, where Hortensia was spiritual 
 and abstract — or rather, it should be said, where Hortensia 
 tried to make herself believe that she was spiritual and 
 abstract. 
 
 Hortensia was one of whom those who loved her said she 
 was too good for this world, and those who did not said she 
 gave herself airs, and thought herself better than anybody 
 else. Mr. Branscombe once wrote an Ode in her honour, 
 wherein he compared her to a lily, a daisy, a dove and a fawn ; 
 and Mrs. Morshead used to call her " that affected little jade," 
 and express her longing to improve her manners and ways by 
 giving her a good shaking. She was not always quite the 
 same person, having already had various ideals in her mind 
 to which she morally dressed. At present her pose was that 
 of Evangeline and other Puritan maidens of whom the ideal 
 went to the extreme of self-suppression ; a standard of life so 
 lofty as to be practically unattainable ; passionless purity ; 
 maidenly reserve ; womanly and ennobling influences. She 
 was just at the age when girls put out their sensibilities like 
 feelers, trying for their proper pabulum, their appointed path. 
 She talked a great deal of every woman having her assigned 
 mission ; and her soul's pain at this moment was, that she 
 had not found hers. She sometimes said that she would 
 make herself a hospital-nurse, and sometimes that she would 
 go to Girton and take honours in classics and mathematics. 
 Sometimes she was all for taking up a neglected district in 
 London, which she would cleanse and purify and make into a 
 little oasis of virtue and modesty by the simple force of her 
 presence, the power of her exhortations. Then she thought 
 she would write a book — only she did not quite know on what 
 subject, nor how to begin, nor was she always sure of her 
 spelling, while her syntax was decidedly shaky. At another 
 time she talked of going into a school where she should teach 
 girls younger than herself such problems of life and morals as 
 she herself had mastered. Preaching to navvies was a pros- 
 pect that at one time allured her ; keeping a night-school for 
 
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL, 1 
 
 ploughboys was another; e;,,ing out to India am the Zenana 
 Mission was one dream oi hex idle hours; studying medicine 
 was another. It was the seething time of her mental life and 
 she was always in a state of unrest ; but she was sincere if 
 
 rather silly ; and she had not yet tried falling in love. In- 
 deed, sh proclaimed herself one of nature's vestals, inasmuch 
 as sh'/ thought love a very dreadful matter, and girls who 
 liked men very reprehensible and extraordinary. She could 
 not understand how any nice girl could possibly liko one man 
 better than all women ; and even her old bosom-friend, Stella 
 Branscombe, had dropped down man; degrees when first her 
 engagement to Cyril Ponsonby had been made known. By 
 her renunciation she had risen even higher than she stood 
 before ; and Hortensia welcomed her back to continued celibacy 
 as a kind of strayed lamb restored to the fold of maidenly 
 right-mindedness. For all this she was not consciously 
 d ; she was only seeking and dissatisfied. 
 
 Her present attitude was, as has been said, that of intense 
 quietness of life and moral self-restraint ; and her main mis- 
 sion was to influence her cousin Randolph Mackenzie to take 
 orders. " Woman's rightful work was just this kind of thing," 
 she said. It was influence, not authority ; passivity, not 
 action ; and to make a splendid fellow of six-feet two content 
 himself with a country curacy, where he would have perhaps 
 three huudred bucolic souls of all ages to look after, was the 
 latest object of her ambition. 
 
 It was through this cousin, Randolph Mackenzie, that Cvril 
 !' - nby had known Highwood and Stella Branscombe. 
 The two young men, the Orestes and Pylades of their set, were 
 East friends and sworn chums. They had come down to this 
 pretty place on the outskirts of the mountain district fox the 
 Long of «»ne year and the Short of another, by which all the 
 mischief had been done and the present sorrow brought 
 . Pot if Randolph Mackenzie had not thought his 
 cousin Hortensia an interesting little thing, with all her odd 
 fancies and demurcness.he would not have. spent his vacations 
 at Highwood and then Cyril would not have known Stella 
 Branscombe ; he would not have fallen in love with her. d >r 
 would she with him ; he would not have gained her parents' con- 
 sent to a marriage which had more prosp lidity than 
 present brilliancy ; he would not have been thrown overboard 
 l.v Mr. Branscombe when thai good Matilda died and thepoel 
 and artist wanted to keep Sella to himself; and be would not 
 
02 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 therefore have been knocking about London at this moment 
 with the sad patience of a man whose life has lost its meaning 
 but to whom no violence nor raving can bring relief ; he would 
 not have thought his youth, his strength, his manhood, his 
 health, his ambition of no present avail, and only of future 
 blessing when fate should have comfortably disposed of 
 Mr. Frederick Branscombe and have thus made Stella free. 
 
 Meanwhile Hortensia bade her friend be of good cheer. 
 She had done what was right, and the right knows no recoil 
 of sorrow — she had sacrificed herself for her father ; and what 
 could she have done better than this ? 
 
 " She could have married in spite of her father, and that- 
 would have been better," said Augusta Latrobe, when Hor- 
 tensia pronounced her lofty theorem. " She owed it to her- 
 self and Cyril Ponsonby ; and in my opinion she has been 
 very silly, very weak and absurdly sentimental." 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Latrobe ! I wonder how you can say such 
 things!" said Hortensia with not very flattering surprise. 
 " I think she has been sublime !" 
 
 " Very likely you do," answered Augusta coolly. " That 
 does not prove her wise because you are foolish. You are 
 just a couple of sentimental school-girls together ; and one 
 makes the other more ridiculous than she need be. Self- 
 sacrifice is all very well up to a certain point, but beyond that 
 it is wrong. And Stella's was beyond that point." 
 " For her father !" repeated Hortensia. 
 "For a selfish old fop!" said Augusta. "Father or not, 
 he is nothing but that — a very selfish, vain old man !" 
 " Oh !" said Hortensia again. 
 
 Since that Ode written in her honour she too had accepted 
 the family myth and joined in the family worship. " How 
 can you speak of such a man as Mr. Branscombe in this way ? 
 He is a genius — a real divinely-inspired genius." 
 
 " He has had wit enough to persuade you and others that 
 he is," said Augusta ; " which is the cleverest thing about 
 him that I know. As for real talent he has no more than 
 that dragon-fly— and not so much — for the dragon-fly knows 
 what he can do and what he cannot, and what he does he does 
 well ; which you cannot say of Mr. Branscombe. If you must 
 have' a hero, Hortensia, take a real one and not such a sham 
 
 as this !" 
 
 But Hortensia's pretty Puritanical little face gave no sign ol 
 yielding to what, after all, was less argument than assertion. 
 
FRIENDS TN COUNCIL. 03 
 
 On the contrary, a faint, self-satisfied smile stole over it, as 
 .she said to herself: " Augusta is jealous of me and Mr. Brans- 
 combe. I remember, now, how vexed she was when he wrote 
 that lovely Ode to me, and she does not like him because he 
 does not like her. He called her the other day a chrysalis 
 not yet expanded ; but he said that I was a Psyche and. had 
 trained my wings. I know him better than she does ; and I 
 know how beautiful his nature is and what a splendid in- 
 tellect he has ; and nothing that she can say will change my 
 opinion." Aloud she said firmly : " Stella has done quit-.' 
 right to give up her marriage that she might stay with her 
 father. Such a father is not an every-day possession." 
 
 And with this she sighed and wished that her father had 
 been as refined and lovely as Mr. Branscornbe. But for her 
 sins he was only an unaesthetic kind of Philistine, who laughed 
 at the vagaries of his little maid, as he called her ; gave her 
 free leave to talk according to her mood, but took care that 
 she did nothing compromising or overt ; chaffed her when she 
 was at her sublimest, and sometimes, but rarely, reasoned 
 with her gravely when she had gone farther than usual over 
 the borders of good sense and right reason — a good-tempered, 
 domestic, utterly unrumantic being, who liked his cigars and 
 took kindly to his claret and who thought the world would 
 be the best place imaginable but for those uncomfortable 
 • ■nthusiasts who are bent on making it better. 
 
 " If only people would let things alone !" he used to .say, 
 holding his glass between him and the light ; " if only his 
 little maid would be content with her lot as Providence had 
 marked it out for her, and not bother herself about things 
 wbirh were no concerns of hers and for which nature had not 
 fitted her! She had everything in life to make- her happy, 
 and what the dickens was it to her what others had or had 
 not, were or were not ! We were sent here to do our duty 
 like rational beings — not to go tramping over the world tilting 
 at windmills like so many Don Quixotes ; and we were meant 
 to enjoy ourselves — not to live always in the blues and as if 
 we were going to our execution! So he would his litt!-' maid 
 should go and sing ' I'm afloat !' and leave all these doleful 
 dumps for the maniacs who liked them !" 
 
 By which it may be seen what an unsesthetic and semi- 
 reprobate Mr. Lyon was ; and why Hortensia sighed when 
 she contrasted Stella's ele< r ant father with her own. 
 
9-1 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HIS FAITHFUL CHUM. 
 
 It was a fine rich luscious clay Avhen everything tempted 
 even the most indolent or the most industrious to leave the 
 four narrow walls of home for the fresh air and freedom of 
 nature. But at four o'clock Mr. Branscombe was still in his 
 studio, as he had been all the morning. And Stella was 
 with him, as she also had been all the morning — indeed as 
 she always was in these sad later days ! She had glided into 
 her mother's place about her father as naturally as she had 
 inhei'ited her jewels, or taken over the housekeeping, and 
 was now as firmly established in it as if there had never been 
 what Mr. Branscombe used to call a solution of continuity at 
 all. She was his audience and his torchbearer, his secretary 
 and amanuensis, just as that good Matilda had been ; and 
 she did almost as well. She copied out his poetry and made 
 his manuscript music intelligible ; she learnt his songs and 
 played his symphonies ; she accepted his own interpretation 
 of his mixed metaphors and confused phrases, and believed 
 him when he said that this thought was grand and that idea 
 fine ; she believed in him, ministered to him, thought that 
 she understood him and was very sure that she loved 
 him. And because she believed in him and loved him she 
 flattered him to the top of his bent, under the idea that she 
 was simply paying him proper respect and offering him the 
 homage so entirely his due. 
 
 And she used to tell herself twenty times a day that her 
 life was blessed and her labours gracious privileges, and that 
 to be of use to her beloved and gifted father was the noblest 
 destiny she could fulfil. Nevertheless, her young heart was 
 often weary ; do what she would the tears would rise from 
 her choking throat to her eyes ; she was getting very pale and 
 thin and careworn altogether ; and something of her mother's 
 look of patient and concealed pain was creeping into her face, 
 like the gx - ey shadows among the roses. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe's artistic activity had not been inter- 
 rupted by his wife's death. When the details of the funeral 
 had been arranged, a becoming studio dress of dark grey 
 velvet, with a crape band round the arm, devised, and the 
 Monument thought out, as he said, then he went back to his 
 
HIS FAITHFUL CHUM. 
 
 art. which was like nothing so mu<-h as the unconscious 
 brut i. 'ii of somnambulism. To be sure his Epic was laid 
 aside. It would be a mutilated monument to her meumrv. 
 he .-aid; all the more impressive in its unfinished state than 
 if he had perfected it to the end. In the incompleteness of 
 this u-raud work would be seen the depth and tragic intensity 
 of his love and its great loss; and he would found his claim 
 to immortality more on this colossal fragment than on any of 
 his finished pieces. The grandest works of art are Gtaeefc 
 - and Michael Angelo's unfinished statues, he said. 
 His Epic should rank with them ; and he was not ashamed of 
 the parallel. 
 
 For the rest he spent his time in writing " Odes to 
 rv." '"Threnodies," '• Sonnets to My Lost Love," "To 
 Matilda in Heaven," and the like; and in composing funeral 
 ■arches and dirges, which Stella had to learn by heart and 
 play in the twilight. Also he began a picture like to nothing 
 in hettren or earth; but it stood in Ids imagination as a 
 striking likeness of his good Matilda going up to heaven in 
 a cloud of glory, attended bj angels and cherubs' heads. It 
 was a cross between an Assumption and St. Catherine ; but 
 he honestlv believed it to be original and all his own ; 
 and he was perhaps more content with this last effort of his 
 genius than with anything that he had ever done. 
 
 If only he had been content to maunder about these queer 
 artistic fields by himself — if only he would have planted and 
 reared and harvested without claiming the companionship 
 and assistance of another, he might have amused hi', 
 th.-u a- be would, and have bees no burden to man or woman. 
 But he would not labour alone — for he called it labom-, and 
 believed it to be as he called it. He was like cue of those 
 children who cannot play by themselves, but must have some 
 one to sit by and watch them — to be their chorus, or at l as; 
 their andience. So with Mr. Branscombe; — he must have an 
 artistic henchman ; and .Stella was consecrated by nature and 
 convenience to that post. As we have seen, she thought that 
 she prized her privileges and was glad of her power to make 
 poor papa's days less sad. But how unhappy her own were ! 
 She suffered fr<>m such a strange sense of oppression, of 
 tedium, of fatigue, of monotony, of mental starvation too, 
 for which she could in no wise account. She supposed it 
 was all because dear, dear mamma had died and poor darliiii,' 
 Cyril had gone away so miserable and unsatisfied. It could 
 
96 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 be nothing more ; but how beautiful it was out of doors to- 
 day S How much she would like to be in the garden ! Papa's 
 rtudio was always rather close and stifling — the window being 
 generally shut even on a summer's day like this, and the 
 smell of the paint strong. If he would but come out for a 
 little while with her ? — It would do him good ; and the day 
 was so lovely. 
 
 Yet how could she ask him when he had told her that the 
 Ode which she was transcribing must be done by five o'clock, 
 and it was now four and she had not nearly finished ? She 
 had been writing ever since ten o'clock this morning, and 
 she had been unpardonably slow. No ; she must not look at 
 the sunshine on the grass, at the flowers in the beds, at the 
 blue sky above. She must not imagine the fresh scents nor 
 the singing of the birds ; she must finish this bit of work for 
 dear papa, and please him by doing it well. And yet how 
 unsteady her hand was to-day ! — and those wretched tears ! — 
 They blurred her vision so that she could not see what she 
 was doing ; and if they fell on the paper they spoilt every- 
 thing. But she could not keep them out of her eyes ; and 
 when papa called her in his self* absorbed, preoccupied way; 
 " My good Matilda," as he so often did, she' felt as if she 
 shoidd die. But she must get on with this Ode, one of the 
 many already composed in honour of her sweet mother's 
 memory, and stifle her yearnings, her sorrow and her weari- 
 ness as she best could. 
 
 Not many people came now to Rose Hill. All the visits 
 of condolence had been paid and things had gone back into 
 their usual groove. Stella and Mr. Branscombe were so con- 
 stantly denied that the neighbours gave up making useless 
 calls which only annoyed them, knowing as they did that this 
 perpetual invisibility, this constant " not at home," was a 
 fiction, not a fact. And though all knew that the order was 
 general not individual, each took it as a personal affront and 
 resented it accordingly. 
 
 One visitor, however, was never shut out ; and to whomsoever 
 else father and daughter were denied, for Hortensia Lyon they 
 had always a welcome. She was Mr. Branscombe's priine 
 favourite, and he never thought the time lost that was given 
 to her. When therefore, the servant came in to-day, and said 
 that Miss Lyon was in the drawing-room, Mr. Branscombe, 
 so far from objecting to this interruption, looked back from 
 his easel with a smile, telling Stella that she might leave her 
 
HIS FAITHFUL CHUM. O 1 
 
 transcription till to-morrow, and that she was to keep he 
 little friend for a few minutes till he should have finished 
 this piece of angelic drapery, when he himself would come 
 to them. 
 
 "Hortensia Lyon is not like other girls, vain, shallow, 
 frivolous, ignorant," he said. " She has a heart and a mind, 
 and goes far deeper in thought than many a woman of twice 
 her age. I consider her a rare and precious possession here 
 in our little sanrtuary of poetry and art." 
 
 " She is a dear girl ; and she values you too, papa. She 
 will he so glad to see you. I know she thinks it an honour — 
 as she ought." 
 
 Stella spoke warmly and quickly, with a sudden feeling of 
 relief and pleasure, only to be accounted for on the ground of 
 her immense love for Hortensia Lyon. It was as if the 
 gloom which pervaded this hot stifling room like a bodilv 
 presence had been suddenly removed; and she felt almos* 
 like the Stella of former days as she shut the study-door 
 behind her, and breathed the fresher air of the hall and 
 passages. 
 
 When she went into the drawing-room she found not only 
 Hortensia, but Hortensia's cousin as well — that tall, broad, 
 big-limbed Eandolph Mackenzie whom the little player at 
 Providence and Puritanism wanted to transform into a meek 
 country curate devoted to lawn-tennis and Mothers' meetings, 
 and whom nature had designed for a pioneer of civilization and 
 the ruler of rough men whose strength he would direct and 
 make subservient to good ends. But natural designation 
 had not much influence over Hortensia, and playing a' 
 Providence had. 
 
 There had always been a very friendly feeling between 
 Stella and Eandolph. As the chum of her beloved — as the 
 beloved of his chum — they met on the common ground of 
 interest and sympathy ; and each loved the other because 
 both loved Cyril Ponsonby. At this moment then, when all 
 her love had turned to sorrow, this visit was doublv delightful 
 to the poor girl ; and only to Cyril himself would she have 
 shown more joy and welcome than she did to Eandolph. 
 
 " When did you come?" she asked with a fluttered look. 
 
 It was almost as if Cyril himself was standing like a spirit 
 behind that huge broad" back. 
 
 " Last night. So you see I have not been long before 
 coming to see you," he answered. 
 
 u 
 
98 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " No, indeed, you have not. And it was very kind of you," 
 ehe said. 
 
 With a strange impulse she bent forward and offered him 
 her band again, her beautiful blue eyes filling with tears as 
 she looked into his face with such a sudden effluence of love 
 on her own, it made him almost start. 
 
 " I assure you, Stella, I have had no peace till I brought 
 him here," said Hortensia, with her delicate, half-checked 
 smile — smiling being a frivolity rather below her present, 
 standard of moral excellence and not to be indulged in need- 
 lessly. " I tell him he is sadly undisciplined, and needs far 
 more self-control than he has," she added, looking at her 
 massive cousin with the slender woman's amiable sense of 
 spiritual superiority over a muscular mountain of human flesh. 
 
 She meant to imply that he was lost as he was, but worth 
 the trouble of saviug ; only, he must let himself be saved by 
 obedience to her. 
 
 " I do not pretend to be as good as you, Hortensia," he 
 answered with frank good-nature. 
 
 This pretty little girl's quaint scoldings were as pleasant 
 to him as if they had been caresses, and hurt him no more 
 than a little child hurts a Newfoundland dog. 
 
 •' You ought to try, Randolph !" said Hortensia, lofty and 
 uncompromising. " You should not suffer yourself to be so 
 impetuous as you are — so impatient and undisciplined. Wo 
 do so much more by meekness and self-control." 
 
 " Yes, I know all that," he answered. " But what is a 
 poor lough fellow to do, Hortensia, when he is bom so ? I 
 cannot make myself as sweet and gentle as you and Miss 
 Branscombe. And I should not be what I am if I were what 
 you are," he added with undeniable logic. 
 
 "Not rough, but undisciplined." she repeated. "And 
 want of discipline is to the character what roughness is to the 
 actions. It is all the difference between one man and 
 another." 
 
 " A very deep and lovely thought," said Mr. Branscombe, 
 coining into the room. " Just such a thought as I should 
 have expected to hear from the pearl of Highwood — the 
 modern Evangeline !" 
 
 " How kind you are, dear Mr. Branscombe !" said Hor- 
 tensia Lyon, looking as fluttered as Stella had looked. But the 
 one had been the agitation of love, the other the gratification 
 of pleased vamtv. 
 
HIS FAITHFUL CHUM. 09 
 
 "And what may you have been doing with yon: 
 Mr. Mackenzie ':" asked Mr. Branscombe of Cyril's chosen 
 
 friend. 
 
 He spoke with an indescribable air of half-offensive patron- 
 age. To him Cyril and Randolph and the whole tribe of 
 • Leal, athletic and unsesthetic young men were little better 
 than machines with independent volitions — brutes with the 
 and a glimmering of reason. For all the finer 
 purposes of human life — for all that was, as he used to say, 
 gracious, supreme, lovely, and of precious delightfulness to 
 man, — these muscular Leaders of uncultured men, these huge- 
 timbed pioneers of civilization were nowhere ; and he valued 
 them no more than if they had been so many elephants in 
 broadcloth, or rhinoceroses speaking English. They were 
 the blind Cyclopes where he was the elegant and astute 
 Ulysses ; — they were the lumbering Titans, and he was the 
 winged Mercury, the divine Apollo, the commanding Jupiter, 
 supreme above them all. 
 
 "Not very much, sir," answered Randolph. "I have 
 taken my B.A. degree, and I am waiting to see what will 
 turn up. If Cyril Ponsonby goes to India I should like to 
 go there too. You know lie is like my brother, and I feel 
 rather blank without him." 
 
 " Orestes and Py lades ? Jonathan and David, hey?" re- 
 turned Mr. Branscombe with a polite sneer. "You have 
 warranty, you see, for your extreme friendship together." 
 
 " Yes," said Randolph simply. " But neither Pylades nor 
 David was half as good a fellow as Cyril Ponsonby. He is 
 out and out the finest fellow I ever came across ; and I have 
 known a few men in my time." 
 
 " He is rather an uncultivated young man," objected Mr. 
 Branscombe, always maintaining his lofty attitude of Jovian 
 supremacy. " He does not understand the subtle harmonies, 
 the finer symphonies of art and life as a really cultured person 
 should. He is a breezy-tempered, good-natured person, I 
 admit ; but he is not one of whom I could make a companion. 
 He has not the mental insight of your charming cousin here," 
 turning to Hort.nsia whose hand he took with paternal fami- 
 liarity and fondness. 
 
 " They are so different, sir, you cannot compare them!" 
 said Randolph, a little put to it to maintain his loyalty to 
 each intact. 
 
 Hortensia was of course unrivalled in the world of women 
 
100 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 — Stella Branscombe was the only girl who came near her ; 
 but Cyril was unrivalled too, and* must not be degraded that 
 even Hortensia might be exalted. 
 
 "No, you are right, Mr. Randolph; we cannot compare 
 them," said Mr. Branscombe. "A barn-owl and a bird of 
 Paradise— a Suffolk punch and a gazelle-like Arab— no, there 
 is, as vou say, no comparison." 
 
 "Oh, papa!" said Stella, "Poor Cyril! he is not to be 
 compared either to an owl or a cart-horse !" 
 
 If Randolph had been hard put to it to keep his loyalty to 
 his two dear friends intact under the trial ordained by Mr. 
 Branscombe, so was poor Stella. She loved Cyril and she 
 loved her father; she honoured both impartially, and she 
 believed as much in the one as in the other. It was a dread- 
 ful thing to her to hear her father, who was as her king and 
 conscience, speak slightingly of her lover, who was her ideal 
 of young manhood. She could not be angry with papa 
 whatever he might do. That would be impiety ; and Stella 
 was not impious. But neither could she hear poor darling 
 Cyril spoken of with disdain, nor compared to an ugly barn- 
 owl and a coarse cart-horse without making her protest in 
 defence. 
 
 " My dear, you speak with the fond imagination of a 
 romantic and love-sick girl," said Mr. Branscombe calmly. 
 " I, who have my reason undisturbed, and who know men 
 and manners, am better able than you to catalogue that young 
 man. I grant him all the virtues of the natural man — all the 
 uncouth virtues as I may say ; but of the finer perceptions 
 which come from culture, he has not a trace ; and in 
 asserting that he has you but betray your own lack. Let 
 us pass to another subject. This does not interest nor 
 amuse me." 
 
 "How is your great picture getting on, Mr. Branscombe?" 
 asked Hortensia with kindly haste. 
 
 She was as distressed as Randolph by this sudden onslaught 
 which both knew cut poor Stella to the heart. 
 
 " Come and see," he answered, rising and offering her his 
 ami. " When you have given me the benefit of your fresh 
 young criticism I shall be more satisfied with my work. We 
 shall return immediately, my Stella. Do not give yourself 
 the trouble of following us. I do not think Mr. Randolph 
 Mackenzie will care for what he may find in my poor studio," 
 he added with a disagreeable smile. 
 
HIS FAITHFUL CHUM. 101 
 
 " Yes, indeed, sir, I do," said Randolph, heroically 
 fibbing. 
 
 But though he rose from his seat, prepared to go with his 
 cousin and her flatterer, Stella did not move. Something 
 stronger than even her desire to please her father held her 
 back. She must have a word alone with Randolph. She 
 must speak of Cyril without restraint or unfriendly wit- 
 nesses. 
 
 " When, where, did you see him last ?" she asked hur- 
 riedly, so soon as the door was shut. " How was he ? How 
 did he look? What did he say ? Poor Cyril ! Poor darling 
 Cyril ! Oh Randolph ! I sometimes feel as if I should like 
 to die — as if I could not live and know my poor darling Cyril 
 to be so unhappy — and through me — for all that it was my 
 duty !" 
 
 " Don't cry, Miss Stella, please don't," said Cyril's ehura 
 affectionately and with genuine distress, not knowing what 
 to do for the best and as much afraid of his own sympathetic 
 impulses as he was sorry for her grief. <; He was verv down, 
 poor old man, and feels his disappointment terribly," he went 
 <>n to say frankly, not being good at quick subterfuge. " He 
 sent all sorts of messages to you ; said I was to give you his 
 love and that you were never to doubt him, never to forget 
 him, nor think that he would forget you ; that you were to 
 believe in him whatever you might hear, for that he would be 
 true and faithful to the last and would wait for your promise 
 *o the end of his life. Only you were not to give him up. 
 You were to be firm to him as he would be to you, and hold 
 yourself always engaged though you were separated." 
 
 ' ; So I will," said Stella. " Nothing should make me give 
 him up. The engagement is not broken, only postponed ; 
 and unless he wants to break it off I will not." 
 
 "No; I am sure you will not," said Randolph, warmly. 
 " But tell me, Miss Stella, why has Mr. Branscombe I 
 such a dislike to him ? Did Cyril offend him in any way ? I 
 know he would not have done so intentionally, and if he did, 
 it was quite by accident and mistake. I was never m ire taken 
 aback in my life when he let fly like that !" 
 
 " Nor was I," said Stella, turning pale. " I cannot under- 
 stand him! Papa is so wise and good and just and noble, I 
 cannot make it out. Cyril perhaps vexed him because he 
 ■would not at the very first consent to postpone our mar; 
 but papa said nothing so bitter then as he did to-day — at 
 
102 "MY LOVE:" 
 
 least not to me. Cyril told me that he had been rather hard 
 on him when they were alone." 
 
 " Yes, he told me too, that Mr. Branscombe had been 
 uncommonly rough on him," said Randolph in his more 
 familiar vernacular. " But you do not mind, do you, Miss 
 Stella? and you will not be influenced?" 
 
 " No," said Stella firmly ; " not even papa could turn me 
 against Cyril." 
 
 "That is right! That is just what I expected!" said 
 Cyril's chum with almost passionate warmth. " I think my 
 cousin one of the dearest and best girls in the world, but I 
 think you are even better. I never pitied Cyril so much as 
 now, when I see more clearly than I ever did what he has 
 lost. If I had a saint I would make you that saint, Miss 
 Stella. They gave you the right name — Stella, the ' Star !' " 
 
 He said all this with a rush of excitement and passionate 
 enthusiasm which would have drawn on him the rebuke of 
 his self-controlled little cousin, had she heard it. But some- 
 thing seemed to carry him away in spite of himself. He had 
 always admired Stella Branscombe, had always loved her as 
 his sister for Cyril's sake ; but he had never known half her 
 goodness, half her beauty, until to-day. And he had never, 
 as he said, pitied Cyril so much as now, nor felt that strange 
 flood of something which was like envy without its bitterness 
 and with only its yearning desire for a like portion to be 
 meted out to himself. 
 
 " We will always be kind to him, you an 1 1 ?" he said, still 
 as strongly moved as before. " II the whole world deserts 
 him we will be faithful, you and I?" he repeated. 
 
 " Yes," she said, giving him her hand. 
 
 He raised it to his lips, moved to strange reverence and 
 poetry of mood. 
 
 " Beautiful Stella !" he said in an under voice. " Cyril's 
 Star — and mine !" 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THOSE MISS PENNEFATHEES. 
 
 In almost every country society is a family the girls of 
 which go by the name of "those" — " those Miss Browns," or 
 " that Miss Smith" — girls who are credited with all the faults 
 and follies accidental to a misguided youth and more than 
 ordinarily peccant humanity — girls who may be thankful if 
 
THOSE MISS PENNEFATHERS. 103 
 
 they escape without graver scandals sticking like unclean 
 burrs to their names, and who may think themselves fortu- 
 nate if thev find one person in the place who will stand bj 
 them heartily and courageously. 
 
 Now the two Misses Pennefather were the "those" of 
 Hi-jdiwood ; and it must he confessed that they did some- 
 thing to earn their title. Georgie and Pattie Pennefather, 
 ' . as the irreverent were wont to call them, Gip and Pip, 
 the standing target for all the poisoned arrows of ill— 
 it ure stored up in the society hereabouts. And a society 
 whereof old Mrs. Morshead was an eminent and influential 
 m saber, was pretty certain to have a respectable store of 
 these same poisoned arrows, and to be just as certain to use 
 them freely. 
 
 Mrs. Morshead, never weary of "flinging her five fingers 
 in the face" of the human family in general, flung them with 
 special disdain and abhorrence in the faces of " those Miss 
 Pennefathers." They represented to her the whole circle of 
 nineteenth-century iniquity, from tight dresses and high heels 
 to Professional Beauties and the thronged lobbies of the 
 Divorce Court ; and it was only paying proper homage to 
 good manners to deny that they had any at all. " Those 
 Miss Pennefathers" carried on their nicely-shaped little 
 backs wallets filled with every fault and impropriety short of 
 glaring vice, that English girls of good family could have, 
 while denied the possession of any pretty little fringe or 
 plume of virtue to soften the ugliness of these sinful packets. 
 They were fast, bold, loud, vulgar, idle and objectionable 
 young hussies all round; and as for their good looks, of 
 which they were so absurdly vain and which silly people 
 so much fuss about, Mrs. Morshead protested she did 
 ■e them; and thought tip ote family downright ; 
 and those two horrid girls the plainest of the lot. They were 
 at the bottom of all the mischief of the place ; and if the 
 | did its duty by itself, they would be cut, as they deserved. 
 
 Their dress was positively improper; and their mam. rs w re 
 like those of two barmaids or cigar-girls, rather than of 
 young ladies whose mother was an Honourable. When some 
 <■ bolder or more generous than the n i her 
 
 I'ing condemnations, and pointed out a few forg 
 graces — as, that they were very good-natured and never .-aid 
 unkind things of their neighbours ; or, very charitable, and 
 ditl a great many kind deeds to the poor; that they were 
 
104 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 really not so wild and extravagant as they seemed to be, but 
 had the art of making a little go a great way, and a big show 
 out of small material — she used to quite lose herself in her 
 wrath, and declare that at her age she ought to know one 
 thing from another, and be allowed to express her opinion 
 without fear of contradiction from her juniors. She knew 
 what she was talking about when she said those Miss Penne- 
 fathers were a disgrace to the place ; and that if it were not 
 for the father and mother — who however did not deserve so 
 much consideration — she for one would never suffer them 
 inside her house again. But then she had always been too 
 considerate for others, she would go on to say in perfect 
 sincerity and faithfully believing in her own words ; and much 
 thanks she had got for it from any one ! Certainly she had 
 got none from those Pennefather people, who had not once 
 sent to ask after her when she had lost her favourite Skye, 
 her beloved and precious little Joe. Those Miss Pennefathers, 
 in a word — those laughing, gay, and careless twins — were 
 about the bitterest of the many bitter drops in the cross old 
 woman's jaundiced cup of life, and stood at the highest point 
 in her cruel scale of condemnation. 
 
 She did not really love any human being — her daughter and 
 her bonny little grandson not excepted — but even she drew 
 distinctions and disliked some more than others. Between 
 Hortensia Lyon and those Miss Pennefathers; while she 
 ridiculed the former for her puritanical affections, she vilified 
 the latter for their want of all the decencies of life and habits ; 
 or between Stella Branscombe and these two hussies, 
 this Gip and Pip whom all the young men called by their 
 names like their sisters, though no one, she used to add with 
 a sneer, ever thought of marrying them— though Stella was 
 really sickening, with her dear papa here and her dear papa 
 there, dear papa's poems and dear papa's paintings, the 
 beautiful oratorio that dear papa has just composed, and the 
 dear little song that dear papa wrote out last night, still, 
 said Mrs. Morshead, her excess of admiration,_ silly and 
 exaggerated as it was, was not so bad as their want of 
 respect. Mater and the Governor— Mater so awfully jolly in 
 a house and the Governor the dearest old boy in the world — 
 where did they expect to go to when they could say such 
 things as these ! It would be impiety to doubt what would 
 be their end. 
 
 "Ah!" said Mrs. Morshead, shaking her high-capped old 
 
THOSE MISS PENNEFATBERS. 105 
 
 head viciously ; " let me have the management of those 
 Miss Pennefathers for six months! I would Mater them, I 
 an toll you! If I had not taught them propriety by then, I 
 would — I don't know what I would not do! — eat my own 
 fingers — I declare I would ! And this is the kind of thing 
 that you approve of, Augusta," she added angrily. " And if 
 I did not keep you in hand, and make you respectful in spite 
 of yourself, you would Mater me, I suppose ? Not while I 
 am alive ! Not if I had to die for it !" 
 
 " You and I are different from the Pennefather girls and 
 their mother," said Augusta qtiietly. " I do not approve of 
 their manners, as you know ; but," she added a little impru- 
 dently, " I cannot help seeing that they are very good- 
 hearted, good-tempered things, and always ready to do any 
 one a kindness." 
 
 " Charity begins at home," snapped Mrs. Morshead. " I 
 have no opinion of your very kind people who make all the 
 world their bosom friends, and run about with baskets and all 
 that, when they ought to be sitting quietly at home, darning 
 their stockings and looking after the maids. It is onlv 
 another form of idleness and want of domestic duty ; and I 
 would not give sixpence for the kindness and good-hearted- 
 ness of these two young minxes — these precious friends of 
 yours ! Give me something more sterling ; something that 
 makes home home ! Ah ! my pretty boy !" she suddenly 
 added in a caressing tone, as a huge Persian cat slowly raised 
 himself from a purple velvet cushion where he had been 
 sleeping by the side of her chair, and lightly leapt into her 
 Lap. "My precious Shah! my beauty! my dear old boy!" 
 she continued, stroking him fondly. " You at least love your 
 mistress and do not tell lies, or do wickedness. If all" the 
 world was like you, my pretty ! But he must not eat the 
 birds — the pretty little birds ! No ! no ! he must not do 
 *hat, old dear! And Augusta!" to her daughter, sharply ; 
 • if that Tony of yours drags this cat about as he does, I will 
 slap his hands the next time I see him. So mind, I give you 
 warning. I shall have the creature strangled some day, if I 
 don't take care ! Do you hear me, Augusta ?" 
 
 '•Yes, mamma, I will tell Tony to be more careful," her 
 daughter answered in her calm, smooth way; while the old 
 woman grumbled out : " Yes, you had better !" and then fell 
 to kissing and caressing her cat once more. 
 
 We all have our soft points, and this was Mrs. Mors- 
 
106 "MY i.ovr.r 
 
 head's : —She loved animals — this love culminating in a 
 species of idolatry for her Persian cat. Animals were to het 
 what friends and lovers are to others ; and to them she gave 
 all the love and respect which she denied to her own kind. 
 Men and women were vile ; children were simply imps in 
 embryo ; society was a mass of iniquity from end to end ; 
 human motives were all corrupt ; but cats and dogs and cows 
 and horses were heirs of all the virtues and those who ill- 
 treated dumb creatures were infinitely more criminal than 
 those who oppressed and half-murdered their own brethren. 
 But her love for animals was eminently false and unwhole- 
 some. It was not the overflow of that large and compre- 
 hensive sympathy which, having first done its normal work, 
 finds new channels of benevolence. It was simply a substitute 
 for human kindness and took to itself what was due to man. 
 Thus, she gave nothing to schools, hospitals, or asylums, but 
 she subscribed largely to the Society for the Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Animals, to the Home for Lost Dogs, and she was 
 one of the most generous benefactors, as well as one of the 
 most active propagandists, for the Anti-vivisection Society, 
 which, perhaps, she held as the most important of all. 
 Against the physiologists indeed, she was specially irate, and 
 would rather, she said, have the whole human race decimated 
 by disease than insure the health and well-being of the 
 world by the sacrifice of a rabbit or a guinea-pig. 3Ien had 
 not made such a good thing of life, according to her, that 
 thev should be perpetuated by vicarious suffering. Let them 
 perish from off the face of the earth, but let the dear dumb 
 brutes remain untroubled and undisturbed. All the same 
 she eat her beef and mutton, her lamb and veal and chicken 
 with a clear conscience ; and when Sandro Kemp once urged 
 this flesh-eating against her theories, as a proof of the 
 universal law of transmutation for the one part, and of the 
 need of human supremacy for the other, she told him he was 
 impious and desired him to change the conversation. 
 
 If only she had given her own kind a little of the compas- 
 sion that she lavished on those dear dumb brutes! But 
 she tyrannized over her daughter ; treated her little grandson 
 with fatal harshness ; made her service one of pain and fear 
 to her domestics ; and took away the fine flavour of repute 
 from two young girls whose only sin was in their heedless- 
 ness, their beauty and their youth. This was not cruelty 
 according to her ; but to hurt any creature with four legs 
 
THOSE MISS PENNEFATHEi 107 
 
 was a crime which a Christian legislature should make 
 punishable as a felony. 
 
 If Mrs. Morshead disliked u those Miss Pennefathers." the 
 twins shrank with us much antipathy from her. For all their 
 careless and unthinking natures, for all their buoyancy and 
 elasticity of spirit, there was something in the old woman's 
 persistent sourness and opposition which oppressed them as 
 nothing else did. They liked Augusta — indeed no one <ould 
 fail to like her, even-tempered and reasonable as she was ; 
 and they pitied her and little Tony more than they pitied 
 the poorest person in the parish; but old Mrs. Morshead 
 was a horror, and more than they could stand, save under 
 the strongest compulsion of social necessity. When they 
 paid her th-' visits demanded by duty and politeness, they 
 paid them as seldom and made them as short as they could, 
 while doing their best to avoid pitfalls and stumbling blocks 
 of offence. This was the hardest part of the business. Walk- 
 ing blindfold among burning ploughshares was nothing to it, 
 and skating on thin ice was comparatively safe going. With 
 Mrs. Morshead the burning ploughshares were as thick as 
 pebbles on the seashore and the ice was never more than a 
 mere film which gave way as soon as touched. Hence their 
 visits were both brief and rare ; and as Mrs. Morshead in 
 common with all tyrants, liked to be able to bully ad libitum, 
 but to be made as much of as if she were the sweetest creature 
 alive, she resented as a personal insult the slackness of inter- 
 course which was the order between The Laurels and Sher- 
 rardine, where the Pennefathers lived. 
 
 In truth, she resented everything whatever about the 
 Pennefathers, whether affecting herself or no. All th. 
 cumstances of the family made one huge conglomera 
 annoyances, one great bete noire against which she v- 
 
 a a.nl and ineffectual war. The very name was an offence. 
 Pennefather! What a mouthful it was, and how absurd 
 altogether! Pennefather here and Moneypenny then — one 
 would think that Highwood had been originally peopled by 
 coiners, she said, putting her old prunella-slippered feel on 
 all the rules of philology. And the affectation of their calling 
 their place Smerrardine, because Mrs. Pennefather's father had 
 lived at Sherrards, the family place, for the few years of his 
 Viscountship ! — As if anyone cared to know thai they bad a 
 Viscount in the family — tacking themselves on like that to the 
 aristocracy simply because that silly woman was an Honour- 
 
108 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 able ! They were substantially only simple commoners like 
 any one else, and not so good as some others. For, if report 
 said true, they had enough to do to make both ends meet in 
 their noisy, riotous, untidy household. And if those Miss 
 Pennefathers kept at home a little more than they did, and 
 thought more of their duties and less of their dress, it would 
 be far better for them and every one connected with them. 
 And if they paid their bills more punctually and gave fewer 
 dances and garden-parties, and all that nonsense, it would 
 be more to their credit. And so she, Mrs. Morshead, would 
 tell them some day. If Mr. and Mrs. Pennefather did not 
 know how to guide their own children aright, it was the duty 
 of a Christian matron of her age and experience — the oldest 
 inhabitant of the parish and perhaps if all people had their 
 due the most respectable — it was her duty to give them a 
 little friendly advice and tell them what the world said of 
 them. 
 
 She was full of this resolution when the door-bell rang and 
 "the servant ushered in the Misses Pennefathers, as he might 
 have ushered in two young lion-cubs fresh from the jungle. 
 
 Crisp, curly, jet-black hair, surmounted by audacious white- 
 beaver hats turned up short on one side and flapping low 
 down on the other ; four roving, bright and dark-brown eyes 
 set under brows as straight as if they had been ruled by a 
 line and as black as if they had been drawn in ink ; two 
 pretty little Roxalana noses ; wide, smiling, almost scarlet 
 lips, showing a full set of small square teeth when they 
 laughed — and they were always laughing ; cheeks dotted with 
 dimples and as bright as damask roses in the sun ; stature 
 just five feet three, exact measurement, not a millimetre more 
 or less in either ; trim, well-busked figures, draped in showy 
 garments tied tightly back to the full display of all the 
 gracious curves and generous outlines, the modelling and 
 shaping of ai't and nature combined ; loud voices as clear as 
 silver bells ; frank manners knowing no fear and seeking no 
 favour ; an atmosphere of unchecked gaiety, of abounding 
 vitality, of girlish devil-may-carishness, of the very insolence 
 • of youthful happiness; this was the best description that 
 could be given of the two Misses Pennefathers, that Gip and 
 Pip whom all men loved and no one wished to marry, and 
 who were to Mrs. Morshead the very head and ears of her 
 biggest bete noire. 
 
 Poor, laughing, heedless Gip and Pip ! The day had come 
 
THOSE MISS PEhNEFATHERS. 109 
 
 when their trimestral visit to that sour old Mrs. Morshead 
 had to be paid; and they paid it for duty's Bake and 
 Augusta's. But it was a corvee, a fighting with wild beast- 
 ly no means agreeable to coutemplate, and one where they 
 knew they should come off the worst. 
 
 In they came with that general look of flush and hum 
 and taking life and circumstances by storm which was 
 characteristic of them. Exactly alike in dress and person 
 they were to Mrs. Morshead a reduplication of offence. She 
 never knew which from which ; nor did any one, indeed; so 
 that it was impossible to take refuge from one with the other, 
 or to change the venue and mitigate the nuisance. There 
 they both were, one just bke the other; their bright eyea 
 roving round the room in the purposeless way of bright eyes 
 conscious of their beauty, their voices clanging with loud 
 but not unmelodious force, and their whole manner and 
 appearance curiously suggestive of audacity, defiance and 
 good-temper. 
 
 '• How do you do, Mrs. Morshead :" both said in a breath 
 " What a lovely day, isn't it ? How do you do, Augusta 
 dear ? Isn't it splendid weather ?" 
 
 "I never remember such splendid weather, do your" Gip 
 went on to say, in her loud, clear voice that reminded you of 
 a cascade, it was so hurried, impetuous, and continuous. 
 " And they say it's going to last for ever so long ; that's 
 awfully jolly news, isn't it? And so we are going to give a 
 picnic on the strength of it ; and you will come to it, of 
 course, Augusta? All our friends are coming, and some 
 from London, too. The Cowley boys will be here, and our 
 own boys are at home now — Jemmy came last night" — Jemmy 
 was a young sub-lieutenant in the navy, waiting for his 
 ship — " and Colonel Moneypenny, nice old boy, says that he 
 will come too and bring the champagne ; and Sandro Kemp 
 is to put us all into a picture — and Sandro is a great admirer 
 of yours, Augusta, and is always talking about you; so is 
 I ael Moneypenny, too — so you will have two strings to 
 your bow if you come ; and, as times go, that is a very fair 
 allowance for one woman and more than any one else will 
 have!" 
 
 Here Gip laughed like a musical peal of thunder, and Pip 
 laughed too, for company. Mrs. Biorshead shot out hei 
 under-lip and put up her hands to her head. 
 
 " Good gracious !" Bhe said crossly. 
 
110 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " What is the matter with you, Mrs. Morshead ?" asked 
 Pip sympathetically. " Have you a headache? I'm awfully 
 sorry,' I'm sure ! Headaches must be such awfully disgusting 
 things- I never had one in my life, except when I fell from 
 the apple-tree and pitched right on the back of my poor little 
 nut. And then it ached like fury. I thought it was all 
 over with me, and I was never so frightened in my life. It 
 was sickening. But it taught me to be careful howl trusted 
 to those horrid old rotten branches again. The apples were 
 prime, for all that, and worth a spill that didn't quite do 
 for one." 
 
 " Perhaps, Miss Pennefather, you will be good enough to 
 translate what you have said into English," said Mrs. Mors- 
 head, when Pattie stopped to take breath. "I am not of 
 the new school, I am thankful to say, and I do not under- 
 stand slang." 
 
 "Oh, I am sure, I am awfully sorry if I slung you any 
 slang," said Pip penitentially. " You see we are so used to 
 it from the boys when they come home that it slips out when 
 one doesn't mean it. But, indeed, every one talks slang 
 nowadays ; you can't get on without. A girl looks such a 
 stick when she does not talk like the rest ; and I hate sticky 
 girls. Neither George nor I are sticks ; and we don't patronize 
 the breed at home." 
 
 And at this she laughed in her turn, and Gip joined in 
 without knowing why ; and again Mrs. Morshead put up her 
 hands to her ears and shot out her under-lip. 
 
 " Upon my word, Miss Pennefather, you and your sister 
 are the two very noisiest young ladies of my acquaintance," 
 she said angrily. 
 
 Pip laughed and Gip laughed. 
 
 " Well, I grant you, Mrs. Morshead, we are not of the 
 mealy-mouthed mum kind," said the former, whose turn it 
 was this time to undertake the terrible old woman. It had 
 been her sister's in their last visit. 
 
 "You might be more like ladies and yet not mum or 
 mealy-mouthed, as you elegantly express it," said Mrs. Mors- 
 head. " You are like two — I don't know what, in a room." 
 
 " Oh, we are nothing !" cried Pip audaciously. " You 
 should hear the boys, how they sing out all over the place ! 
 They make such a row that sometimes you can hardly hear 
 yourself speak. Even Mater, who is the dearest old iady in 
 the world, can't always stand it, and is obliged to tell them to 
 
THOSE MISS PENNEFATBERS. Ill 
 
 shut uj>. And when Jenm 
 
 the stramosh that goes on from morning to night! But Jem 
 
 is awfully good fun and spins the jolliesl varus! He is a 
 
 dear old man. and looks awfully handsome in his uniform, 
 with all it ■ 
 
 •• No; I cannot and will not bear it !" cried Mrs. Morshead, 
 • 1 to that point oi disgust which lies beyond endurance. 
 " Miss Pennefather, your language is simply disgraceful ; 
 and if vour own parents allow you to use words which are 
 never heard in any lady's drawing-room, I do not. In my 
 house, you will pleas.- to remember, that you are talking 
 lady and you will behave like ladies — if you can." 
 
 " I am awfully sorry — " began Pip. 
 
 -X.'. you are not awfully sorry — not awfully anything,*' 
 interrupted Mrs. Morshead. "I am very glad if you 
 ashamed of yourself, be souse then perhaps you may improve ; 
 bnt there is no improvement possible while you use that nio-t 
 : ible and foolish expression." 
 
 Pip Looked at her sister and made a slight grimace ; her 
 Looked at her and repeated the sign. 
 
 "I think it's time to go, Patrick." said Gip as a diversion. 
 " "We have no end of things to do, you know. So you'll 
 be sure to come next Wednesday':" she added, turning to 
 Augusta. -'At Closings Bridge, remember; two o'clock 
 -harp; and if possible to bring a basket of gooseberries, do. 
 You have awfully fine ones I know ; and fruit is always good 
 in a picnic." 
 
 'Whut are you saying? What are you asking:" said 
 Mrs. Morshead savagely. 
 
 •• We are giving a picnic, and we want Augusta," said Gip 
 boldly. 
 
 '• Iffy daughter cannot go," said Mrs. Morshead ; and as 
 she spoke she planted her heavy old feet firmly on the foot- 
 stool. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Morshead!" cried both the sisters together. 
 " It will not l.e half the fun without Augusta." 
 
 •• Mrs. Lotrobe has her duties at heme," said the terrible 
 old woman, fixing her eyes with a stony stare on her daughter. 
 
 The delicate pink flush came up on the com< ly cheeks, but 
 Augusta's voice and manner were as smooth and soft and 
 unruffled as they always were. 
 
 "Do you want me at home, mamma?" she asked with 
 perfect serenity. 
 
112 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Do I want you at home ? What an absurd question !"' 
 said Mrs. Morshead. " I do not want you at home, if you 
 mean that, for you are not of much use to me at any time ; 
 but I should like to know what is to become of that boy of 
 yours if you go out for the whole day like this ? Do you 
 expect me to be his nurse ? And you know that I strongly 
 object to his being in the kitchen with the servants." 
 
 " Oh, Tony comes too ! He is such a jolly little chap, and 
 we are all so fond of him," said Gip. " Certainly, you must 
 bring the old man!" she added to Augusta. "That need 
 not keep you ; so now of course you will come ?" 
 
 " If you really do not want me at home, mamma, it would 
 be pleasant for the child and would keep him out of your 
 way," said Augusta, to whom the prospect of a day's freedom 
 from her mother was a boon too great to be refused if in any- 
 way possible to be accepted. 
 
 "Anything for pleasure and gadding about," said Mrs. 
 Morshead. " At your age, Augusta — a widow as you are, 
 with a dear little boy to educate and look after — I wonder at 
 you for your greediness after amusement ! It is not decent. 
 When a woman has been married and left a widow as you 
 have been — and under all the peculiar circumstances of the 
 case " — s he added with cruel significance, " I think she ought 
 to content herself with home and home duties, and leave all 
 this idleness to young ladies like the Miss Pennefathers for 
 instance — young ladies who have nothing to think of, and no 
 heads for anything but pleasure if they had." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Morshead, a little fun is good for every one," 
 said Pattie. " And Augusta is so nice in a thing of this kind." 
 
 " Of course I would not go if you did not wish it, mamma," 
 said Augusta cheerfully. " But if you do not want me for 
 anything, indeed I should like it. You are going to Green- 
 hill Falls, you say?" turning to Gip. " It is years and years 
 since I was there. I should like it so much if I can be 
 spared." 
 
 " As for sparing you, I can spare you well enough," 
 answered Mrs. Morshead ; " for you do not make yourself so 
 very useful, Augusta, that you cannot be spared, if that is 
 what you mean. What I object to is the principle. A woman 
 of your age, and after what should have been such a sobering 
 experience, flying over the country with a parcel of giddy 
 o-igglers just as if you were a girl yourself — it is not becoming 
 and not decent, as I said." 
 
THOSE MISS PENXEFATHERS. 113 
 
 "Just this once, Mrs. Morshead!" pleaded Gip. 
 " sin- will help to keep all of us voung ones in order," 
 added Pip. 
 
 " It would be very nice to see the dear old Falls again," 
 said Augusta. " I remember so well the first time I went 
 with you. mamma. I was just my little Tony's age, and I 
 remember how you took me in your arms and carried me 
 over the wet places in the field." 
 
 "Ah!" sighed Mrs. Morshead, shaking her head; "there 
 are not many such mothers as I was to you, Augusta. And 
 finely you have repaid me ! But I have never been hard to 
 you, bad a daughter as you have been to me. If you want 
 to go and take the child with you I am sure I do not wish to 
 stand in your way. I do not like all this gadding about, as 
 you know, but I do not care for mere lip-service, mere 
 grudging obedience. Go if you like. I do not mind being 
 left alone all the day with no one to speak to. I am used to 
 my loneliness. Oh, yes, certainly; go and enjoy yourself. 
 Do not mind me. I am an old woman of no good to any 
 one — only fit to be dead and buried." 
 
 "Not quite that, mamma," said Augusta; "but if you 
 really do not care" — turning to Gip she added ; " I will be at 
 Crossing's Bridge next Wednesday, at ten o'clock punctuallv ; 
 and I dare say mamma will let me bring a basket of goose- 
 berries with us." 
 
 " Shall I order Page to give you all the peaches and grapes 
 in the hothouse?" asked Mrs. Morshead sarcastically. 
 
 " Oh, thanks. Mrs. Morshead !" answered Pip with exas- 
 perating gratitude. "That would be good gear! How 
 awfully jolly ! You are really quite too awfully good !" 
 
 " Well, as I am not quite a fool I do not think I will empty 
 my hothouse for your picnic," said Mrs. Morshead, still 
 .satirically. 
 
 On which the two girls laughed, as at a good joke, and 
 then took their leave, Gip saying in a whisper to Augusta : 
 
 " And mind you make yourself awfully killing, for I want 
 you to look your very best. We are not going to have a 
 single stick among us, and we are going in for a pocketful of 
 fan all round. It is jolly that you are coming," she added 
 affectionately. " We were in an awful fright that vou wouldn't 
 be let." 
 
 "Well!" said Gip to Pip, as soon as they had got 
 outside the door; " of all the awful toads that ever lived that 
 
HI, "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Mrs. Morshead is the worst ! How I pity that poor, dear 
 Augusta, and what an angel she is !" 
 
 "If I had such a scarecrow for my mother, I would give 
 her pepper, and make it hot," answered reckless Pip. " Ugh ! 
 Tt gives the back shivers !" she added, shuddering. " I declare 
 I feel as if I was all over nasty creechers-crawl-up-yer." 
 
 " She is a horror," returned Gip. " How I wish that stupid 
 old Moneypenny would make up his mind and marry poor 
 Augusta out of hand. It would be only charity to save her 
 from such an old Turk as that mother of hers. Poor Augusta ! 
 What a life she must lead !" 
 
 " I wouldn't be her for five thousand a year," said Pip 
 energetically. "I would rather sweep a crossing or break 
 stones on the road !" 
 
 " I should prefer the crossing," said Gip with a reflective 
 air. " It's good gear to sweep a crossing in a club-street; 
 and one would get one's self up to look awfully killing in a 
 Dolly Varden." 
 
 " And perhaps catch a lord," said low-minded Pip. 
 
 "That would be jolly," returned her sister. " What would 
 you be married in, Patrick ':" 
 
 " Cream-satin," said Pip with commendable promptitude. 
 
 "What would you, George?" 
 
 " Cream-satin, too," was the answer. 
 
 And then they both went off into a discussion on those 
 extremely problematical bridal dresses of theirs, and those 
 wedding tours which at present were all about the grounds of 
 Spanish Castles ; and agreed, as they always did, down to the 
 last square inch of " kilting," and the remotest little fact of 
 their journey. 
 
 They had never quarrelled since they were born ; and in 
 the family they were known by the name of the Doves, when 
 not the Inseparables or the Siamese, Castor and Pollux femi- 
 nina, or the Cherrybles — which last word had the advantage 
 of uniting two ideas in one skin, according to the phraseology 
 of sub-lieutenant Jemmy, whose brilliant idea it was. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE FAMILY AT SHEKRAKDINE. 
 
 It was the loudest, noisiest, best tempered, most unscholarly 
 and most generous family in the county. There was not a 
 
THE FAMILY AT SBERRARDINE. ltf 
 
 potential genius nor a present student among them, but there 
 
 was not a toward nor a "crab," as they called the cross- 
 ramed when speaking among themselves — not one who 
 would have t. i:d ;t lie to have saved his lii'e, nor who would 
 forfeited his honour to have redeemed his fortune. 
 There were six of them for the first and most important 
 batch— the twins leading off the family ball, as they used to 
 »y, followed in less than a year by Jemmy, the sub-lieutenant, 
 with three other boys all treading on each other's heels as 
 closely as might be. Then came a gap of ten years, when 
 the circle was finally closed by the advent of a pretty little 
 girl as the general plaything and universal delight. " Thus 
 the family proper — Nora not counting : being a kind of offset 
 and common property — had the appearance of being all of 
 one age. For Jack, the youngest, was as tall and almost as 
 strong at seventeen as was Jemmy at twenty ; and among the 
 four there was not half an inch of difference in height nor 
 two pounds to spare in weight. The whole six were fashioned 
 after the same pattern — the boys being just as dark-haired, 
 as bright-eyed, as loud-voiced and as socially audacious as 
 the Doves: and, to a stranger, it was the oddest as well as 
 the most bewildering thing in the world to see them all 
 nbled together. It was impossible to tell which was 
 which, until you had learned the minor signs. Even in the 
 family itself mistakes in voices and backs were continually 
 being made ; and as for Georgie and Pattie, no one knew one 
 from the other without her distinctive brooch. It was one 
 of the favourite amusements of these two curly-headed young 
 amps to play practical jokes on the household by reason of 
 their strange resemblance; and good-humoured rows were 
 always going on because Jemmy said it was Gip who had 
 picked that ripe peach which he had been watching, and Jack 
 :;\vore that it was Pip, and neither of the accused would tell 
 which it was. When they changed or took off their sign- 
 boards, as their silver name-brooehes were generally call --d, 
 not the mother herself knew them apart. And if Bhe did not 
 who else could ? As for the boys, they borrowed each other's 
 names and wore each other's clothes with perfect impartiality ; 
 and thus the Pennefather family had a queer shifting phan- 
 tasmagoric kind of personality which made each membfl 
 responsible for the follies committed by the whole together. 
 to the destruction of all identity and the accumulation ot 
 individual blame. 
 
116 "MY LOVE P 
 
 It might have been supposed that the father and mother 
 would have done something to keep all these turbulent ele- 
 ments in some kind of order ; but Mr. Pennefather was still 
 only a great boy himself, and Mrs. Pennefather was o\\o of 
 those good-tempered, careless kind of women who never 
 look beyond the day, and who only desire to see people 
 happy about them. Her motherhood was comprised in two 
 things only — to keep her children in good health and to let 
 them be happy in their own way. She would have been very 
 glad if they could have sucked in learning with their oranges, 
 but she objected to their being forced to learn against their 
 will ; and she would rather they were well-grown, vigorous, 
 light-hearted dunces than leaders of the world's best thoughts 
 by the sacrifice of the sunshine and laughter of their youth. 
 She had married when only just seventeen ; so that both she 
 and her husband were even now in the very zenith of their 
 own lives and far more the play-fellows than the guides or 
 rulers of their children. Add to which, the consciousness of 
 her aristocratic lineage, wdiich lifted them above the level of 
 the village-herd and absolved them from the obligation of 
 class conformity and spiritless respect for other people's 
 prejudices, and just so much income as gave them all they 
 wanted — with a scramble — and their wildness, their audacity, 
 their ingrained Bohemianism can be accounted for ; if to some 
 the explanation carried with it no justification ; — as especially 
 did it not to Mrs. Morshead and that other member of her 
 social bete noire, Mr. Branscombe. 
 
 To Mr. Branscombe indeed, this noisy, unscholarly and 
 unaesthetic family was intensely antipathetic ; and he and 
 Mrs. Morshead drove their little chariots of condemnation 
 side by side over the Pennefather course ; though even here 
 they did not agree, save in their joint end of vilifying these 
 social abominations. 
 
 To express his feelings, as well as to relieve his mind, the 
 elegant Mr. Branscombe once drew a caricature which repre- 
 sented all the Pennefathers as rather curious-looking savages 
 shooting arrows at an Apollo, crowned with bay and holding 
 his lyre in his hand. The figure which did duty for the 
 great god of light and poetry had as much of his own like- 
 ness as he could manage to give it ; and the drawing was 
 after his special manner — proudly independent of anatomy, 
 proportion and perspective. The arrows were going all ways 
 but the right, and would have hit the moon sooner than the 
 
THE FAMILY AT SHERRARDINE. 117 
 
 god; and the eight savages were very little above the 
 artistic ability of the ploughboy's chalk-drawing on the barn 
 door. But Mr. Branscouibe saw in it his intention rather 
 than the execution, and, under solemn promise of secrecy 
 from each in turn, handed it about among the neighbours. 
 And all save Mrs. Morshead basely laughed and hypocritically 
 pronounced it clever and wonderfully amusing. But the 
 terrible old woman, who also scorned a lie, when she gave it 
 back said to Mr. Branscombe : 
 
 '• Well! all I can say is, this is not my idea of drawing; 
 and those things are no more like the Pennefathers than they 
 are like me. They are not human beings at all ; you might 
 as well call them tadpoles at once." 
 
 '•Ah. mv dear lady," said Mr. Branscombe with sublime 
 tranquillity ; u it takes an education to understand true art. 
 Only artists can appreciate artists." 
 
 To which Mrs. Morshead snapped for answer : 
 
 " I know a good thing when I see it, as well as any one 
 else. But I don't call that good. I call it a horrid daub." 
 
 Mr. Branscombe never forgave that criticism, nor since 
 then had he set foot in Mrs. Morshead's house ; and he vowed 
 he never would. 
 
 It mattered little to the Pennefathers whether Mr. Brans- 
 combe caricatured them or no. The whole family held him 
 in the supremest contempt, as a poor creature not worth 
 powder and shot and to be passed over with the contempt 
 which great dogs feel for little ones. They laughed at his 
 sesthetics, his foppery and his vanity ; and he ridiculed the 
 want in them of all that they despised in him, and added 
 to it contempt for the manliness or vigour on which they 
 most prided themselves. They thought him a jackass, and 
 he thought them earthworms ; they would not have given 
 sixpence for all his art in a lump, and he would not have 
 given a penny for all their stamina and tone. 
 
 So the little quarrel ran along the highway of life between 
 Sherrardine and Rose Hill ; but when poor Mrs. Branscombe 
 died, it was Mr. Pennefather who wrote the most feeling 
 note; it was Mrs. Pennefather who gave Stella the most 
 sympathetic kiss on that first visit of condolence ; and it was 
 the six savages who, on the day of the funeral, felt the most 
 dismal and sorrowful of all at Highwood, save Au-. r u<t.i 
 Latrobe and Mrs. Prinsep. Blunt brains for the finer work 
 of intelligence — these they undoubtedly had ; but the 
 
113 "Ml LOVE!" 
 
 creatures Lad good hearts ; and if logarithms were as a 
 sealed book to them, human kindness was their daily primer. 
 Kesentinent and constancy of ill-feeling were as little in their 
 way as the higher branches of mathematics or the Hegelian 
 philosophy. When the grave closed over the dead it closed 
 also over the last shred of " misunderstanding ;" and even Mr. 
 Branscombe, Avko had all the tenacity of estrangement proper 
 to a vain man, was forced to accept the olive-branch and bury 
 the hatchet. This came all the more easy to him inasmuch 
 as he received their frank surrender, not as sympathy with 
 his sorrow, but as homage to his personality ; and to pay 
 homage to Mr. Branscombe was to possess yourself of that 
 sentiment which did service with him for friendship. 
 
 The one blot in the picnic that was to come off was the 
 fact that Stella Branscombe would not be there. 
 
 " I suppose it is impossible," said Jemmy with a sliehtly 
 sombre air. 
 
 The Doves always accused Master Jemmy of being " hard 
 hit in that quarter." 
 
 " Oh, well !" said Grip opening her eyes ; " I don't think it 
 would quite do to go to a picnic when one's mother has not 
 been dead six weeks. What a muff you are, Jem, to talk 
 such rubbish!" 
 
 " I don't see what harm it would do," said Jemmy. " It 
 must be awfully slow for the poor girl to be shut up all the 
 day long with only old Branscombe. I dare say he reads his 
 poetry to her and plays on the piano as he used in poor Mrs. 
 Branscombe' s time. How sick I should be! I'd rather be 
 mast-headed than listen to one of old Branscombe's yarns !" 
 
 " So would I," said Gip. 
 
 " How could you be mast-headed, Gip, when you are only 
 a girl ?" asked Jemmy gravely ; for though given to practical 
 jokes, the family, as a family, was profoundly literal. 
 
 " No, I don't suppose I could be. My petticoats would 
 come in the way," said Gip ; and then they both laughed 
 as at a good joke, the point of which was intelligible only to 
 themselves. 
 
 " It must be awfully jolly to be a sailor and a boy," said 
 Gip after they had finished their laugh and come back to 
 such common sense as they possessed. 
 
 " It's not all honey, I can tell you !" said Jemmy. " One 
 gets pepper pretty often ; and then it's stinging hot and no 
 mistake !" 
 
THE FAMILY AT 3HERRARDINE. no 
 
 "Then you shouldn't do anything to get pepper," said 
 Oip sagely. u Yon could keep out of it if you liked." 
 
 "Ok. it's all very well to say that, Gip !" said Jemmy from 
 the height of his superior wisdom. " But no fellow can keep 
 out of it ; and I do believe those fellows give it to us t 
 their hands in and just for the fun of the thing. "Why the 
 very blue-j »ywe often get jawed at when we don't 
 
 deserve it ; and so we do ; and it's a shame. But it's jolly 
 fun all the same," added the good-tempered young fellow 
 laughing again ; " and I dare say the youngsters are too cocky 
 and want it taken out of them." 
 
 u I think you are improved, Jem." said Gip critically. 
 
 " Think so ?" he answered. " If I'm not I ought to be, for 
 I've been jawed at often enough !" 
 
 "I dare say it did you good," said Gip, still critical. 
 
 "What did him good:" asked Mr. Pennefather coming 
 into the room. 
 
 "Being jawed at," continued Gip, with no more conscious- 
 ness of vulgarity than she had of crime. 
 
 "Ah! you youngsters want the dust taken out of your 
 jackets," said the lather of the flock, neglecting his duty of 
 rebuke mainly because he did not see it. 
 
 •■ Well, Pater, you didn't like it when you were a youngster 
 yourself." said Jemmy. "And I don't suppose any one 
 ever did." 
 
 " I don't suppose they did, Jem; but it has to be done all 
 the same," answered his father laughing. 
 
 And then all three laughed, as Jem and Gip had laughed 
 before; the moving cause, which would have been invisible 
 to every one else, somehow clear as daylight to them. And 
 at the s<>und of that well-known peal Pip, who was never far 
 from her companion D >ve, came jumping through the open 
 window, loudly demanding what the fun was all about and 
 what was up F 
 
 And when her sister answered: "Pater says we youngsters 
 to be jawed at for our good," Pip joined in the fun, and 
 they went through a second edition with as much hearty 
 ley had crone through the first. 
 
 Undoubtedly they were the mosl mindless and unpoetdc set 
 
 of intellectual savages to be found within the t -and 
 
 Mr. Branscombe's refined contempt was so far just i 
 
 yet, might there not b • something better even than art and 
 
 I philosophy? — Something that atoned for those 
 
120 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 unidealizing brains, that childish laughter, those com- 
 paratively low aims of life ? — Something that redeemed this 
 endless rollick from absolute folly, because showing that it 
 was not heartlessness if it was unquestionably mental 
 vacuity ? 
 
 To be happy in themselves, inoffensive to others, to abjure 
 all active ill-nature and to do such good as they could in 
 charity to the poor, made about the sum of their philosophy. 
 No pessimist could have ever taught them the value of dis- 
 content, the good of doubt and disbelief of mankind at large, 
 or the virtue of turning outwards all the seamy sides of every 
 person and every thing. No political economist could have 
 convinced them of the sin of almsgiving or the evil of going 
 beyond the market-price in wages or gratuities. They were 
 utterly and entirely dense on both these points ; and it was 
 fighting with bags of wool to demonstrate to them the 
 enormity of charity or the check given to the progress of 
 humanity and the improvement of things by the sin of 
 cheerfulness and contentment. 
 
 Even now, when the last explosion of laughter because 
 Pater had said jawing was a good thing for the young, had 
 ceased, a characteristic piece of their general iniquity was 
 perpetrated. Old Betty Bailey came whining up to the front 
 door with her usual story of hunger and distress ; and would 
 the kind gentleman give her sixpence ? for indeed she was 
 but badly off, and ailing. And Mr. Pennefather, instead of 
 sending her about her business and threatening her with the 
 constable and the lock-up and the dread Bench on the Satur- 
 day, to teach her how to beg the next time, ordered the old 
 sinner into the kitchen, where a glass of good beer, a loaf of 
 bread and a screw of tea were given her, though every one 
 knew that she made up, from one thing and another, nigh on 
 four shillings a week ; and it is possible to live on sixpence 
 a day. On the basis of that sixpence a day Betty Bailey was 
 rich ; and if she would but have abjured tea and tobacco she 
 would soon have been a capitalist. Instead of which, with 
 her wealth of four shillings a week and potential saving of 
 two in the month, she came begging and crying to Sherrar- 
 dine ; and Mr. Pennefather gave her doles just as if she had 
 been poor enough to need them ! 
 
 It was pauperizing the neighbourhood, of course, to go on 
 like this ; but the master of Sherrardine could not be made 
 to see the thing in the right light or be brought to confess 
 
THE FAMILY AT SHERRARDINE. 12: 
 
 that he was wrong. Lectured and argued with by travelling 
 economists he stuck to his point with the tenacity of a 
 woman, and held on to his peg when the ground had I 
 cut to ribbons beneath his feet. He had only one argument 
 and he used it with exasperating consistency, even when he 
 had been proved guilty of an offence to the community at 
 large. 
 
 '• The poor creatures are very badly off," he used to say. 
 "I cannot sit in my own comfortable home with a good 
 fire and a good dinner and not feel for their wretchedness. 
 And if I feel for them I must help them; and political 
 economy may go to the deuce." 
 
 He was a dense, woolly-headed unscientific son of Adam, 
 granted ; but there were men in the world perhaps a little 
 worse than he — men to whom he could have given weight, 
 yet ridden far past on the road which we generally call the 
 road to Heaven ; and, all things considered, society would 
 not have made a bad bargain of it had it exchanged a few win 
 prim-set virtues for some of his soft and generous faults. 
 
 They were all in the same way — all generous, open- 
 handed, good-natured people who made war only against 
 peevishness and churlishness in all their forms, and who 
 thought life eminently worth living for all who did then- 
 duty and let unpleasant things slide. 
 
 After old Betty Bailey had been disposed of and the girls 
 had told their experience at The Laurels — how cross Mrs. 
 Morshead was and how sweet and placid Augusta ; after thev 
 had reckoned up for the twentieth time the names and 
 numbers of their expected guests at the picnic, and who was 
 to bring what, they walked off to the billiard-room ; Pater 
 taking Pip and Jemmy joining with Gip. The girls were as 
 fond of sport and games as their brothers and knew all the 
 tricks with rod and gun and cue, with pistol, cards and dice, 
 just as if they too had been born with the privilege of wearing 
 knicker-bockers and into the inheritance of beards. Th- 
 knew a few things more for which the world did not give 
 them the credit they deserved ; as, for instance, how to 
 embroider workhouse sheeting into extraordinarily showy 
 dresses looking as if they had cost, as they would have said. 
 a pot of money, but of which the mercantile value was only 
 a few shillings. They could trim their hats so as to fill the 
 souls of their companions with envious admiration, but th> 
 material was Uttle better than rags and snippets ; and th' 
 
!I22 "MY LOVEP* 
 
 could make their own gowns with the help of fashion- books 
 and here and there a pattern which they bought or borrowed, 
 and which, being audacious and extreme, they always exag- 
 gerated beyond the line allowed by others. They wei-e 
 thoroughly handy girls, albeit of the tom-boy and audacious 
 kind ; though it must be confessed their work would not 
 bear looking into and told best at a distance. But they kept 
 all this industry, for which no one gave them credit, for the 
 long winter evenings when the boys were away and no out- 
 of-door amusements were to be had. In the summer they 
 would have thought it a kind of high treason against the 
 meaning of their existence had they pored over needlework 
 instead of spreading themselves abroad in the garden and 
 woods ; and to " amuse the boys, poor old chaps," when they 
 came home for their holidays from school, where they 
 practised every virtue but that of sticking to their lessons, 
 was the first duty in the Pennefather catalogue. Still, the 
 Doves had the germs of domesticity in them ; and, provided 
 all the windows might be open night and day — in snow-time 
 as in sunshine — provided they might jump into ice-cold water 
 every morning and take a twelve mile walk, or its equivalent, 
 every day — they would make good wives and managers 
 enough. At all events, their homes would never be wanting 
 in pleasantness nor amiability. 
 
 As soon as they got into the billiard-room, the mother 
 and the other boys joined them ; for they were always together 
 when in the house ; and the game went on with spirit. The 
 four were fairly matched, and each made as good play as the 
 other ; and when any one made a miss or a fluke the whole 
 family gave tongue at once and the uproar was simply 
 deafening. Jack and Bob bet on Pip and Pater, Mater and 
 Dick on Gip and Jem ; and the interest was at its height, when 
 the sound of wheels on the gravel, a loud ring at the bell and 
 a sudden scuffling of feet and chorus of voices in the hall 
 brought things to a stand-still. A moment after two well 
 set-up young fellows came striding into the room, followed 
 by the servants all in grins, and half a dozen dogs leaping up 
 and barking a welcome. 
 
 Down went the cues and all abroad were scattered the 
 balls. Bets, spots, places and play were forgotten, as the 
 whole Pennefather family converged to one point, and 
 "Well, Val! Well, Mil*!" was shouted by the eight in 
 concert. 
 
THE FAMILY AT SHERRARDINE. 123 
 
 "Awfully glad to see you. boys," was Mr. Pennefather's 
 me : •" but yon have stolen •.-_ march on us. "We didn't 
 expect you till half-past six." 
 
 •• We took the expn sa and got out at Lingston," said one 
 of the young men ; " and then drove over in a trap. It was 
 better than knocking about that smoky old Manchester." 
 
 " So it was !" they all said together ; and then they all 
 laughed — as only the Pennefathers knew how. 
 
 " Early or late, you are always welcome !" said Mrs. Peime- 
 father prettily; and the boys and u'irls endorsed her state- 
 ment with a volley of: " Oh, it's 'awfully jolly to have you 
 sooner than we expected ;" and ; " It was awful good fun 
 that you thought of coming that way !" 
 
 To which the young men replied in the same strain: 
 •• Yes. it was awful srood fun ; and the drive was quite too 
 jolly !" 
 
 After this they all streamed out into the drawing-room, 
 where they had afternoon tea and an " awfully jolly pile" of 
 muffins, and were as happy as youth, good health and 
 unbridled spirits could make them. 
 
 The two young fellows, who had come over in a dogcart 
 from Lingston at the cost of another five-and-twenty shillings 
 rather than knock about Manchester for a couple of hours, 
 were of much the same kind and class as the Pennefathers 
 themselves. Known individually at Sherrardine as Val and 
 Mil — together as the Cowley boys — the world in general 
 recognized them as Mr. Valentine and Mr. Milford Cowley, 
 the only sons of Mr. and Mrs. Cowley, of Greyhurst Manor, 
 Warwickshire. It recognized one of them too, as heir to a 
 fine property and winked its wicked eyes when it discussed 
 their intimacy with the Pennefathers. ** Birds of a feather." 
 it said — Mrs. Morshead, its spokeswoman ; " but it was very 
 convenient for genteel paupers like the Pennefathers to have 
 about them birds with golden feathers like the young Mr. 
 Cowleys , and no doubt those Miss Pennefathers would do 
 their best to catch them. But if old Mr. and Mrs. Cowley 
 did their duty they would put an end to the whole thing and 
 take their sons out of danger. The Cowley boys, indeed ! — 
 Cowley foois if they did not see the schemes that were on 
 foot, and victims if they gave in to them !" 
 
 This was Mrs. Morshead's verdict, representing the suspi- 
 cious and censorious; but to no one at Sherrardine had the 
 chance of Val or Mil falling seriously in lore with Gip oi 
 
12 * "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Pip ever presented itself as yet — and if the thing had been 
 suggested to them they would have extinguished it by peals 
 of interminable lauarhter. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE EEWAKD OP SACRIFICE. 
 
 Naturally, the picnic to be given next Wednesday by the 
 Pennefathers was the great theme of present conversation at 
 Highwood. It was to be a very grand affair, as the neigh- 
 bourhood counted grandeur ; and curiosity was on tip-toe, 
 together with hope and anticipation. 
 
 Miss Dawson, the milliner, was in high glee at the whole 
 affair. She was making a supremely good thing out of it, 
 for all the young ladies had something new for the occasion, 
 and trade, which was generally so slack at the little town, 
 was stirred up into a very consolatory spasm of briskness and 
 vitality. 
 
 Every one in the place was asked, as well as a fair sprink- 
 ling of those not immediately bound up with the fortunes of 
 Highwood. And among the rest Hortensia Lyon, with her 
 parents and Randolph Mackenzie, was invited ; and no doubt 
 was felt by the Pennefathers as to the glad acceptance of the 
 four. But Hortensia, the pretty Puritan, was in the age 
 when works of supererogation and acts of quite unnecessary 
 self-sacrifice are more delightful than any other pleasures. 
 Yearning for distinction, if not publicly in the eyes of men 
 yet privately and to herself, she could not take things easily 
 nor let herself go with the crowd. She must stand apart, 
 and take up a moral pose that should single her out from the 
 rest. She must sacrifice what would seem to be her natural 
 inclination for the greater gain of her conscience ; as now, in 
 this matter of the picnic to Greenhill Falls. 
 
 When the note of invitation, written in Gip's big round 
 sprawling hand, was brought to the family at Derwent Lodge > 
 and Mr. Lyon, looking up from the chess-table where he was 
 playing a bad game against his wife's worse, said kindly. 
 " Good news for you, little maid !" and Mrs. Lyon, with 
 motherly solicitude, added : " And you shall have that pretty 
 new costume which Miss Dawson says she has just got from 
 Paris — I dare say it only came from London — but it is the 
 
THE REWARD OF SACRIFICE. 123 
 
 very tiling for a picnic," — Hortonsia answered with i 
 primness: "No; I shall not go. When Stella Branscombe 
 is in such sorrow I do not think the Pennefathers should have 
 given a picnic at all ; and certainly I do not think that I 
 ought to i^o to it." 
 
 " Ob, Hortensia, I say !" remonstrated Eandolph. 
 
 "Stuff!" said Mr. Lyon good-humouredlv. 
 
 "My dear!" said the mother; "you cannot refuse the 
 invitation. It will look so odd if vou, one of the youno 
 people of the place, refuse. You must go, Hortensia." 
 
 " No, mother ; my conscience would not let me," said 
 Hortensia gravely. 
 
 " Stuff !" again repeated Mr. Lyon ; " stuff and nonsense, 
 -hild. Are you going to make yourself talked about all over 
 the place ?" 
 
 " I do not care for that if I am conscious that I am doing 
 my duty," said Hortensia. 
 
 " All right as a matter of sentiment, I admit, but the ap- 
 plication does not fit," returned her father. "There is no 
 dereliction of duty in going to a friendly picnic because poor 
 Mrs. Branscombe died six weeks ago. You cannot live by 
 the side of any grave, my child ; not even by the side of vour 
 
 mother's, when that sad time comes " — "Thank you, 
 
 William!" said Mrs. Lyon with a displeased smile : — "Still 
 less are you able to indulge in this kind of enduring melan- 
 choly for one who was only the mother of your friend." 
 
 "While Stella is unhappy I will not go to balls and 
 things!" said Hortensia, raising her pretty eyes with a sor- 
 rowful look. 
 
 " But Hortensia, I say !" remonstrated Randolph for the 
 second time. 
 
 To his good, uncritical and believing soul, the self-sacrifice 
 of his little cousin was heroic, saintly, divine ; yet for all that 
 his own grosser humanity was too strong to make that act of 
 renunciation acceptable. He loved her for her sweet and 
 noble intention ; but he wanted it to stop there and not go on 
 into deed. 
 
 "Oh, it is only one of her fads! The child will nev 
 such a fool. She will think better of it when the time comes," 
 said Mr. Lyon, turning back to his game. " Check, my 
 dear. No, don't do that. If you cover with your bishop I 
 shall simply take him and you will be no better off than 
 before. And — no, you cannot do that either. I have told 
 
126 U MY LOVE!" 
 
 you twenty times, Cara, that you caunot castle out of check- 
 You cannot get out of it ; you are done for — check ; check ; 
 check and mate. And now, my little maid, come here to me 
 and let us make an end of this last bit of silliness." 
 
 " It is not silliness, father," said Hortensia gravely. " I 
 am quite in earnest." 
 
 " And you do not see that you are casting a slur on others 
 by your romantic self-sacrifice ? You very good people never 
 see that, it seems to me." 
 
 " I am casting no slur on any one, father." 
 
 " No ? If it is right for you to abstain because Mrs. 
 Branscombe died six weeks ago, then it is wrong for others 
 to enjoy." 
 
 " It is right for me because I am Stella's spiritual friend," 
 said Hortensia, drawing her lips together. 
 
 " And your cousin, who is here only for a short time ?" her 
 father asked, with a merry glance at Randolph. 
 
 " Randolph will not mind," said Hortensia. 
 
 " Oh, but I do," said Randolph with energy. " I mind 
 very much indeed, Hortensia. It will be awfully slow without 
 you or Stella Branscombe ; and if you don't go I am sure I 
 don't care to either." 
 
 "And what will people say if two old folks like your 
 mother and me go to a thing of this kind, when our child, 
 for whose sake only all these frivolous amusements should be 
 undertaken, stays at home ? Yet, it will be a pleasant day, 
 and the outing will do your mother good ; and I shall not be 
 sorry to go to Greenhill Falls once more. It is two years now 
 since I was there. Besides, I like to see young people happy. 
 But what will people say if we go and you do not, eh ?" 
 
 "It does not much signify what they say," returned Hor- 
 tensia, always in her character of the faithful witness. " If 
 you do not dislike going, and do not think it wrong — " She 
 let her sentence finish itself in silence. 
 
 " But if I insist ?" her father asked, with very make- 
 believe sternness and very transparent severity. 
 
 She put her hand in his. 
 
 "You will not," she said with pretty solemnity. 
 
 " But I do, Hortensia ; I do indeed," interposed her 
 mother hastily. " I think it is all simply preposterous, and 
 I insist on your going." 
 
 " No, mother, you will not force me to do what I think 
 wrong," said Hortensia. 
 
THE REWARD OF SACRIFICE. 135 
 
 "What exaggerated ideas you have, Hortensia!" Bald hex 
 mother a little hastily. "We shall be having you find out 
 that it is wrong to laugh next. It is absurd altogether." 
 
 Of her own tree will Mrs. Lyon would uot have " pla; 
 her daughter as did her husband. Had she had the sole 
 management of this exaltc'e little head her rule would have 
 been more defined and her line considerably shorter. 
 
 •• We cannot help that, Cara," said Mr. Lyon hastily to 
 his wife, speaking with something like displeasure. " She 
 mu?t think as she likes ; of course we have only to take care 
 that she does not go too far in what she does." 
 
 It wus a pity, certainly, but he always took his daughter's 
 part against her mother. He never scolded her on his own 
 side, even when he finally forbade any overt act of folly ; and 
 nothing annoved him so much as his wife's interference and 
 rebukes. The fact was, he allowed no one but himself to 
 resist his little maid ; and had Hortensia been sly, which she 
 was not, she would have always managed so that her mother 
 should have opposed her, sure that then her father would 
 have consented. 
 
 Mrs. Lyon sighed impatiently. 
 
 •'You spoil her!" she said. 
 
 After which she took up her knitting and kept an osten- 
 tatious and affronted sib 
 
 '• I should be sorry to make you unhappy, my little maid, 
 but I should be sorry to put a slight on the kind-hearted 
 Pennefathers, too," continued Mr. Lyon, satisfied now thai 
 he had the field to himself. 
 
 " It will not offend them because I do not go. I am 
 nobody. What matter can it make to any one whether 1 go 
 or stav awav ?" said Hortensia with recalcitant humility. 
 
 "It matters to us and your cousin," answered her fath r. 
 
 "If Randolph is going to take Orders, as I hope he will. 
 he might be better employed than spending a whole day in 
 idle gaiety. He ought to begin now to give up the world." 
 
 She spoke with the prettiest little air of puritanical prim- 
 ness conceivable; but it was a provoking little air, too. 
 once more roused, her mother out of her safe entrenchment. 
 
 "You take too much on yourself, Hortensia," she said 
 hastily and with undeniable good sense. "At your age it is 
 very unbecoming to take this tone of setting all the world to 
 rights and being better than your neighbours. I am sick of 
 all this folly; and I must insist on it that you come to your 
 
128 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 senses and accept this invitation like any other rational 
 person." 
 
 " No, no, Cara, we can scarcely do that," said Mr. Lyon. 
 " The little maid must not be forced to do what she really 
 thinks wrong. You see it is not anything very outrageous — 
 not like making herself a Zenana missionary, or a hospital 
 nurse, as was the craze a while ago — eh, lassie? But we 
 cannot compel her against her conscience. We can only 
 persuade. You take her in hand, Randolph, and talk to her," 
 he continued, turning to his nephew for whom he had so much 
 affection as would willingly have made him his son. " Perhaps 
 she will be guided by you. Young people at your age often 
 understand each other better than we old ones can." 
 
 " I am sure I shall not be guided by Randolph if I am not 
 by you and mother!" said Hortcnsia, with a refreshingly 
 natural outburst of girlish scorn. " Randolph is not likely 
 to influence me," she added, meaning that she had the loftier 
 views and the wider intelligence, and that it was she who 
 took his mind in tow not he who could steer hers. 
 
 " Well ! see what you can do, Ran," said Mr. Lyon in the 
 tone of one who is tired of a discussion ; and the rest, taking 
 the hint, dropped the subject. 
 
 But Hortensia was left so far mistress of the situation in 
 that she had not been dislodged from her position, and still 
 kept her resolve to sacrifice the day's pleasure to friendship 
 and to stand out from the common herd, as the one devoted 
 and unselfish soul among the crowd of self-seekers — the one 
 faithful Abra who could mourn with the mourners and sit in 
 the darkness with those whose sun had gone out, not only 
 dance with those who piped and laugh with those who were 
 glad. 
 
 Meanwhile nothing more was said at Berwent Lodge about 
 the picnic, or who would or would not go. The invitation 
 was accepted in general form ; and Mr. Lyon believed in his 
 power to make his little maid do as she ought when the day 
 really came. But the mother, who knew the signs of the times 
 better than he, enlightened as she was by the mysterious 
 sympathies of sex, saw only too clearly that their tute montee 
 enthusiast had determined to go her own way, and that 
 nothing was farther from her thoughts than compliance with 
 her parents' wish to make one of the guests at the Penne- 
 fathers' picnic. 
 
 "It is all William's fault," said Mrs. Lyon to herself 
 
THE REWARD OF SACRIFICE. 12. 
 
 " He lias spoiled the child so terribly there is no doing any- 
 thing with her now. He will never let me interfere, and she 
 can twist him round her little finger. If he would have given 
 me my proper authority over her, things would have been 
 very different " 
 
 And perhaps the poor dear woman was right ; for without 
 question Mr. Lyon had spoiled his little maid, though he did 
 prevent her from doing anything irremediably absurd. 
 
 Sure enough when the day did come — and it was such a 
 glorious day ! — there was Hortensia in her black gown made 
 with the ostentatious simplicity, the evident intention of 
 mourning, which she had affected ever since Mrs. Brans- 
 combe's death. The delicate curves of her prim little mouth 
 were drawn into so many straight lines ; her sleek hair was 
 taken off her face and bound round her head as smooth and 
 tight as if it had been so much spun-silk wound by a machine 
 round a wooden ball ; her whole manner was instinct with 
 that curious spirit of silent Puritanism which made her the 
 voiceless preacher of Vanity and the nothingness of human 
 - are. 
 
 " We shall have a beautiful day," observed Mr. Lyon, by 
 way of opening the crusade. 
 
 '• Beautiful !" echoed his wife, looking straight down her 
 nose. 
 
 It was very naughty of her ; she felt that it was ; but 
 really she was glad that William should be made to feel how 
 foolish he was in spoiling the child as he did, and how 
 much wiser it would be to give her, the mother, proper 
 authority ! 
 
 "How are we going?" asked Mr. Lyon, as if he had no 
 doubts and no misgivings. "You and I in the victoria, 
 Cara ; and the two young ones in the dogcart ? You do not 
 like the dogcart, I know." 
 
 " I am not going, father," said Hortensia simply. 
 
 She was not in the least degree excited. Was she not 
 testifying? 
 
 " Oh, stuff — yes, you are !" he answered, still cheerful and 
 positive. " Why, I thought we had done with all that non- 
 sense, my little maid ! Is it to come over again ?" 
 
 " I cannot go, father — I would so much rather not!" 
 repeated, tears comiug into her eyes; for she was really in 
 earnest, thoush she was silly and over-conscious. "I nave 
 promised Stella to spend the day with her. She will feel so 
 
130 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 lonely, poor girl, to know that we are all enjoying ourselves, 
 and she left out." 
 
 The blood came into Mr. Lyon's face in a flood, as it did 
 when he was seriously annoyed. He loved his little maid- 
 no father better ; but he liked to have his own way too ; he 
 set store by his parental authority; and he had promised 
 himself that he would make her yield in this matter. 
 
 " I think you would scarcely like to disobey me, Hortensia, 
 if you knew how much you pained me," he said very gravely. 
 
 " I am so sorry, father," she answered : " but indeed it is 
 against my conscience !" 
 
 "Tour conscience should lead you to obey your father, 
 Hortensia," said Mrs. Lyon unwisely. 
 
 " Now, Cara, leave her to me !" returned the father sharply. 
 " She and I understand each other." 
 
 B\it if they did there was no outward and visible sign 
 thereof, save such as could be found in Hortensia's red eyes 
 and her father's artificial contentment when, after half an 
 hour's private consultation in the study, both came back into 
 the drawing-room with the air of people who have had a real 
 quarrel and made only a half patched-up peace. However 
 that might be, Mr. Lyon, heroically taking the burden on 
 himself, announced that, as his little maid had such a strong 
 objection, he would not force her to go; and while he spoke, 
 Hortensia stood by with the oppressed kind of self-gratulation 
 of a victor whose victory has cost her dear — but who after all 
 is victor. 
 
 " You really do spoil her too much !" said Mrs. Lyon, with 
 natural displeasure. " It is not kind to her, William, to give 
 her her own way in this manner. She should be made to 
 obey." 
 
 " You know nothing about the matter, Cai'a," answered 
 her husband irritably. " If I say that her reasons have con- 
 vinced me that ought to be enough for you." 
 
 " She makes a downright slave of you," returned Hortensia's 
 mother, even more irritably than the father had spoken. 
 " And every year things get worse." 
 
 "I am master in my own house," said her husband with a 
 peremptory air. " And it is time that we were starting." 
 
 All this time poor Eandolph had not spoken a word, but 
 he was in misery all the same. He would have given half 
 his fortune to have escaped this picnic from which all the 
 sweetness and sunshine had gone. How far pleasanter it 
 
THE REWARD OF SACRIF1 131 
 
 would have been to have gone with Hortensia to Rose Hill 
 where he too might have hoped to cheer Stella Branscoml • — 
 Cyril Ponsonby's Star and his ! But he knew that his best 
 breeding and his highest duty lay in simply accepting the 
 dry husks of what might have been such a rich least of enjoy- 
 ment ; so, with a very sad face and very reproachful eyes, he 
 mounted the cob that had been assigned to him, while 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lyon went on in the victoria, and wrangled all 
 the way. They were a wry affectionate couple as times go 
 in this naughty world ; but "they were terribly put out t<-- 
 the i me by Hortensia's obstinacy and the other by her victory — 
 and they revenged on each other the annoyance for which she 
 uas to blame. 
 
 So this was where the little Puritan's exaggerated sense of 
 right had led them all — to the ill-humour and discomfort of 
 her father and mother ; to the disappointment and gloomy 
 boredom of poor unoffending Randolph Mackenzie ; and to 
 the temporary annoyance of half a dozen other people, and 
 especially of the kind-hearted Pennefathers themselves, who 
 •■ wanted the thing to go." 
 
 She gratified herself however, though she pained so many ; 
 and when she found herself at Stella's — thanked, praised, 
 condoled with for her sacrifice and caressed with loving grati- 
 tude by her friend — she thought that she had the fairest 
 slice of the day's great cake. Her slice was even larger 
 when Mr. Branscombe sent for her to go into his studio, 
 where he sat in his elegant grey velvet costume, with the 
 band of white crape round his arm to mark his mourning for 
 a saint. 
 
 "This is just such a thing as I should have expected from 
 you!" he said, holding Hortensia's hand in his long, white, 
 scented fingers : " the delicate act of a faithful soul perfumed 
 with angelic sweetness." 
 
 Hortensia blushed and looked delightfully pretty. The 
 praises of her own conscience were pleasant, but Mr. Brans- 
 combe's were intoxicating. There was a fine nebulous sug- 
 gestiveness about them inexpressibly fascinating; and she 
 was not of the age to criticise or to detect the difference 
 between words without meaning and full of lofty sound, and 
 those which had a definite idea and an intelligible thought. 
 
 Mr Branscombe was her present ideal. He represented to 
 her all that was most pure and poetic in man. She believed 
 in his genius, in his loftiness of mind, in the touching 
 
132 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 sincerity of his love, in the noble simplicity of his life — 
 devoted as it was to Art, Poetry, to Music — to all which 
 makes humanity beautiful, noble and refined. And again 
 she found herself wishing that her dear father was as delicate 
 and aesthetic as Stella Branscovnbe's ! If only he had been, 
 what a proud and happy daughter she would have been ! 
 But she noticed that Stella looked pale and weary, and that 
 she said almost eagerly: "It is such a beautiful day, papa, 
 may I not take Hortensia into the garden ?" 
 
 "And leave the Threnody unfinished? — that beautiful 
 Threnody on your dear mother ? It is not half copied yet, I 
 see," was the reply made with gentle reproach. 
 
 The girl sighed. 
 
 " I am not writing very well, to-day," she answered. " I 
 have rather a headache ; perhaps a little fresh air will do me 
 good." 
 
 " Let us all go," said Mr. Branscombe, with a touching 
 kind of dignity in his self- surrender. " My good little friend 
 must not be saddened by too close contact with our grief. 
 The fresh free sky for the fresh free heart — flowers for the 
 young spirit — and the gay lilt of the glad birds for the gentle 
 soul whose world is music. Yes, let us all go !" 
 
 "What a splendid man your father is!" whispered 
 Hortensia with enthusiasm ; and Stella lifting up her soft- 
 eyes full of love, answered : 
 
 " Yes, indeed, he is — splendid !" And yet she was sorry 
 that he flattered her friend so very much ! It was scarcely 
 good for her ! 
 
 " What happiness it must be for you to live with him in 
 such an atmosphere of mind and beauty," continued Hortensia, 
 her eyes glistening and her cheeks flushing. " All day long 
 music and poetry — all day long, these deep thoughts and noble 
 words — and you privileged to help in the work of such grand 
 genius — you the first to read and hear! Oh, Stella, what 
 a life ! — how I envy you, my darling ! how I wish it was 
 mine !" 
 
 " It is indeed beautiful, and I am very much to be envied. 
 There are few fathers like mine," answered Stella. 
 
 She spoke with perfect sincerity ; and yet again she won- 
 dered, as she spoke, why she felt so tired of her enviable 
 position and still more enviable work ; and why she wisjied 
 that she might be sometimes alone, when the privilege of her 
 father's superior companionship was so great. She knev; 
 
THE TRYST AT CROSSING'S BRIDGE. 133 
 
 that his art was supreme and of the purest quality ; bul 
 was conscious of a very strong and very reprehensible yearn- 
 ing to be able tc read something beside his poetry, to play 
 more than his music, to look at other than his pictures. And 
 oh ! if he would but turn to indifferent themes and leave her 
 dear mother's dead memory in sacred silence! If he would 
 but leave off writing Threnodies and Odes, dirges and funeral 
 nocturnes which, he said, it broke his heart to write and which 
 she knew it broke hers to hear ! There was something in 
 this incessant commemoration that jarred on her, she did not 
 know why ; but with all her admiration for his genius it 
 -eemed a desecration rather than, as he said, the consecration 
 of that blessed memory through the homage of his love and 
 the glory of his genius. 
 
 All this however she kept to herself, and the day of the 
 picnic was passed at Rose Hill in perfect peace and outward 
 satisfaction; Mr. Branscombe alternately repeating his own 
 poetry and weaving glittering webs of praise for Hortensia 
 Lyon — Hortensia in the seventh heaven of gratified vanity 
 and genuine enthusiasm — and Stella feeling as if her guard 
 had been relieved, and that she was free to wander off into 
 an independent dream-land of her own, wherein she might 
 meet her own true love, and forget, nil the distance that lav 
 between them and the sorrow that ho.d overshadowed them. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE TRYST AT CROSSING'S BRIDGE. 
 
 The Pennefathers were people who were notoriously lucky 
 in all their undertakings, and who»n Providence manifestly 
 favoured. They invariably brought their undertakings to a 
 successful issue, and when they gave picnics and garden- 
 parties the very elements themselves conspired to make them 
 go well. The national superstition about Queen's weather 
 was transferred at Highwood to the family at Sherrardine ; 
 and halcyon days were certain when they launched their 
 pleasure-boats. Of course it was just their luck to have such 
 a glorious day as was this special Wednesday, when all the 
 country-side, and some more into the bargain, were gathered 
 at the trysting place, en route for Greenhill Falls. 
 
 " Fine dav as usual !" shouted one. 
 
134 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Penni 'father weather!" said another. 
 
 "By G-eorge! I wish I had your luck," said Colonel 
 Moneypenny, who was a pessimist in philosophy and believed 
 in his own persecution by fate. 
 
 " When I want to succeed in anything I will get the Miss 
 Pennefathers to take a chance," said Dr. Quigiey, who had 
 come to see the cohort set out, but whose professional duties 
 prevented his joining in the fun. 
 
 He was a pleasant, well-liked and likely man of about 
 forty ; but though he paid compliments to every unmarried 
 woman in the place and flirted in a mild way indiscriminately 
 with all alike, no one had yet found the spell which should 
 compel him to lay aside his bachelorhood — no one had yet 
 dipped the net which should land him high and dry on the 
 safe shores of matrimony. His freedom was the standing 
 puzzle of the place and almost as many explanations were 
 given of it as there are circumstances in human life ; one bold 
 guesser even suggesting a wife and family in the background, 
 while another sketched out certain poor and disreputable 
 relations who had to be kept out of his income if he did not 
 wish to see them in the dock as thieves or in the Union as 
 paupers. 
 
 Be that as it might, the cheery, likely and well-liked 
 bachelor doctor went on his own way, equally ready with a 
 joke or a piece of gratuitous advice, half an hour's flirtation 
 with a pretty girl or a night's watching over a sick boy ; 
 knowing all the family secrets for ten miles round and telling 
 none of his own ; more than once helping on a marriage that 
 hung fire but keeping well out of the range for his own part ; 
 loving his profession but always talking of retiring ; consti- 
 tutionally fond of pleasure and given to all sorts of manly 
 exercises, but never allowing his personal desires to stand 
 between himself and the most irksome of his duties. He was 
 a fine fellow all round ; and, not even excepting Mr. Penne- 
 father and Mr. Lyon, both of whom were general favourites 
 in the place, he was, without doubt, the most popular man in 
 Highwood 
 
 As he stood now by the side of Colonel Moneypenny, with 
 Sandro Kemp a little in advance, he made by no means the 
 least noteworthy of a rather remarkable triad. All three men 
 were tall ; but, while Dr. Quigiey was hard and muscular, 
 like a man accustomed to an open air life, Sandro was softer 
 in fibre though as powerful in build, and the Colonel was 
 
THE TRYST AT CBOSSING'S DIUDGE. 13: 
 
 spare, wiry and without an ounce of superfluous flesh on hie 
 whole body. In face the doctor was grave, smiling, cheerful, 
 with quick observant eyes and the look of one whose every 
 is sharpened by incessant use ; Sandro Kemp was grave, 
 tender, reflective, seeing only certain things and seeing those 
 only for certain purposes ; while the Colonel had the harassed 
 and discontented expression of a disappointed man too proud 
 to complain but too sensitive not to resent. 
 
 His grievance was that he had been ill-treated at the Horse 
 Guards, and that his services had been passed over without 
 the recognition which they deserved. Hence his very natural 
 belief that England and the service were going at a hand- 
 gallop to the deuce, and that nothing would save the nation 
 but a strong reaction in favour of men of family, and the 
 mob, with the plutocracy, sent to the rear. Sandro Kemp, 
 for his part, thought that national salvation was to be found 
 only in the possibility of every peasant's son rising to be 
 Prime Minister if he had it in him ; and Dr. Quigley had his 
 panacea in medical supervision and scientific autocracy, by 
 which no sickly man or woman should be allowed to marry ; 
 no unhealthy profession should be allowed to continue ; and 
 national rewards should be given to those who should lighten 
 human labour and minimize the chances of danger by inven- 
 tions and machinery. Of the three the doctor was the most 
 practical, the artist the most poetical, and the soldier the best 
 bred. But it must be confessed, his was good breeding with 
 a rent in the purple ; being of the kind which respects condi- 
 tion more than persons, and does not think courtesy the right 
 of the inferior, though it may be given at times by the grace 
 of the superior. Hence he always held his head a little high 
 when he was talking to Dr. Quigley or Sandro Kemp — the 
 one a country practitioner for all that he w:.s an M.D., and 
 the other an impecunious artist for all that he might hav< 
 genius and was of good family, not ranking in his mind as 
 • lemen equal with himself. 
 
 While they were standing there discussing the weather- 
 chances of the day, Augusta Latrobe came up, holding her 
 little son by the hand. How pretty she looked in her Boft 
 black dress, from which that generous powdering of jel beads, 
 wherever they could be put, took all expression of sadness! 
 In no wise coquettish, she was yet a woman with a wholesome 
 •t for her own charms and the determination to make 
 best of herself, according to her age, should she live to be 
 
136 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 a hundred. She was never dressed too youthfully nor dressed 
 too much ; but she was never other than well and becomingly 
 attired — her gowns fitting to perfection — her hats and bonnets 
 suiting her as if the fashion had been expressly made for her 
 — her boots and gloves and all accessories without a flaw that 
 even the most critical could discover. 
 
 In the midst of the light colours which flooded the " field" 
 to-day, her graceful figure, all black and sparkle, looked by 
 far the most elegant and distinguished. And though most of 
 the girls were many years younger — in the first blush of their 
 spring-time, while she was in the rich summer of thirty-two 
 — still she was as beautiful as the prettiest of them all, and 
 perhaps with a deeper meaning in hex charm. 
 
 As soon as she came up she was surrounded by the Penne- 
 fathers, with whom she was an especial favourite. 
 
 "How jolly of you to come in such good time!" cried 
 Georgie; "and how quite too awfully nice you look!" she 
 added ; for though the main happiness of the Doves lay in 
 fun and dress combined, they were neither jealous of the 
 success of others nor niggardly in thoir praises. 
 
 " I am sure you look very nice too," said Augusta, smiling. 
 " What pretty dresses you have !" 
 
 "Think so? — so do I. Miss Dawson made them, for we 
 had not time ; but we designed then: ; and I think they have 
 come out pretty well on the whole. Do you like our hats ? 
 We got the idea out of the fashion-book, but we had them 
 made miles larger, not to be just hke other people, you know. 
 And, don't you see ? — I've got pink in mine and Patrick 
 has blue ; but I'll let you into the secret — we are going to 
 change them and our brooches after dinner, and Ave shall 
 have such fun ! Mind you don't let it out ! No one knows 
 but you and us two — even the boys and Mater don't. It will 
 be good gear, I can tell you !" 
 
 " That is a new phrase, Georgie," said Augusta, laughing. 
 " Everything is good gear, now." 
 
 "That's Jemmy's word," she answered. "You know one 
 can't help catching the boys' slang. They never talk any- 
 thing else. But you won't tell, will you?" 
 
 "No! no! cei'tainly not!" she answered; and as at this 
 moment the Lyons drove up with Randolph Mackenzie, the 
 noisy, good-hearted givers of the feast surged up to them, 
 and Augusta was left standing near the three men, and 
 nearest to Sandro. 
 
THE TRYST AT CROSSING'S BRIDGE. 1G7 
 
 It was no one's business to watch either Sandro or the 
 ■Colonel ; but Dr. Quigley made it his. Something iu the 
 face of each struck those quick observant eyes of his, and he 
 looked from under the brim of his broad-leafed hat. lirst at 
 one and then the other, and from them to the tranquil, grace- 
 ful, comely widow. 
 
 A certain subdued eagerness, a certain half-beseeching, 
 half-tremulous admiration shone like the sorrowful litjht of a 
 strong man's tears in Sandro's earnest eyes. The blood left 
 his cheeks and his lips were pressed together as if the sight 
 of this woman brought him joy and pain together — the joy 
 that he must not express, the pain that he could not conceal. 
 The Colonel's thin, keen, furrowed face flushed like a girl's ; 
 yet his manner was stiff and dry, and he spoke almost as if 
 he were displeased and scarcely on friendly ternis with the 
 widow of the Professor. He had had this manner ever since 
 the day when Augusta Morshead had announced the fact of 
 her intended marriage with Professor Latrobe ; and her 
 widowhood had not changed him. Before that day he had 
 been the girl's most devoted cavalier; so much so indeed, 
 that people had talked and speculated, as people will in 
 country places where their neighbours' affairs are the most 
 interesting things they have to discuss ; but no one said any- 
 thing now — though more than one had wondered " whether 
 it would ever be on again with Colonel Moneypenny" when 
 Augusta Latrobe came back, a penniless widow, with a child 
 dependent on the questionable bounty of her hard-handed 
 and bad-tempered old mother. 
 
 That speculation lasted only a very short time ; and no 
 one, save Dr. Quigley, saw that the Colonel cared more for 
 Augusta Latrobe than he did for those Miss Pennefathers, 
 whom he always called " Objectionable," or for Hortensia 
 Lyon, whom he laughed at as a Precieuse Ridicule. 
 
 The pretty 'widow herself showed nothing. Certainly the 
 faintest and most delicate pink tinge came over her whole 
 face, like the far-off reflection of the Alpine after-glow as she 
 turned to greet them all ; and her eyes had a curious look of 
 forced composure as they rested on each by turn, when she 
 gave her hand and returned the conventional greetings proper 
 to the occasion. But even Dr. Quigley's perceptions were at 
 fault as to what that evanescent little flush might mean — 
 and whether it meant anything at all or not ; and if it did, 
 for whom ? and why ? The widow was too well-inured to 
 
138 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 self-suppression at that ungenial home where thorns and 
 pitfalls abounded, to betray more of herself than she cared to 
 show abroad ; and among the many attractions of her cha- 
 racter was this strange union of perfect sincerity with absolute 
 self-control and as absolute reticence on all that she did not 
 choose to make manifest. She once said to Dr. Quigley — 
 who, by the way, pot more out of her than any one else was 
 able to do — that she never remembered to have betrayed by 
 mere weakness and impulsiveness what she afterwards 
 regretted to have told. If she told anything in confidence 
 it was with the deliberate intention of bestowing that confi- 
 dence ; but she never let things slip from inability to hold 
 them fast. And he believed her ; as he was in the right 
 to do. 
 
 Here again she held her own and baffled the friendly 
 explorer who would have penetrated into the interior of her 
 mind. Her manner to Sandro Kemp was exactly the same 
 as her manner to Colonel Moneypenny ; and when his own 
 turn came, she gave him her hand and looked up into his 
 face with her calm, clear untroubled eyes exactly as she had 
 looked into the faces of the others ; and the doctor saw no 
 more for his part than the artist and the soldier had seen for 
 theirs. She was sweet, smiling, cordial, gracious ; but with 
 no special meaning or application. She gave no one an inch 
 more of velvet than she gave to another ; and she was velvet- 
 soft to every one alike. Still, there was something under it 
 all ; and that something — what was it ? 
 
 By this time all had assembled ; and now came the first 
 act of the real drama — the order of their going and who 
 should take whom — whereof this gathering at Crossing's 
 Bridge was only the prologue. The Pennefathers were not 
 people who patronized family exclusiveness on days of 
 pleasure. To a husband any woman but his own wife ; to a 
 sister any man but her own brother. The cards had to be 
 shuffled and fresh combinations made ; and even staid old 
 married folks, like Mr. and Mrs. Lyon, had to be dealt to 
 other partners, with whom at least they could not spar and 
 wrangle because a mother's influence had broken to pieces 
 under a father's authority, and a father's authority had gone 
 down before a daughter's desire. 
 
 The arrangements were not very difficult to make. G-eorgie 
 and Pattie reserved for themselves, as a matter of course, 
 Valentine and Milford Cowley ; for which they got not a little 
 
THE TRYS1 AT CROSSING'S BRIDGE. 189 
 
 obloquy from those mothers and daughters who thought that 
 the givers of a feast should be content with th^ crumbe, and 
 that the sons of a wealthy landowner were dainties 1<> be 
 bestowed on the guests and not kept for the hosts. The four 
 Pennefather boys, with Randolph Mackenzie and the other 
 young men, were dispersed among the young ladies who were 
 still on their promotion and unattached ; but Freddy Grant 
 and Louie Sturt, who were engaged, were sent off by them- 
 selves in a unity of bliss multiplied by two. Such of the 
 elderly married folk as could not be paired with their kind 
 were planted out where their chaperonage would be least 
 obs tructi ve; and then came the question of pretty Mrs. 
 Latrobe and her escort, and who should have the honour of 
 her safe guidance. 
 
 " You must go in our pony carriage with Colonel Money- 
 penny or Mr. Kemp," said Georgie and Pattie, the two 
 speaking like one. 
 
 They were good-natured creatures, always ready to promote 
 " cases," and to provide sheaths for " spoons" if hands were 
 but kept off their own store. They were besides, honestly 
 desirous to see Augusta well-married for the second time, and 
 taken out of the cruel keeping of her mother. 
 
 '• Which will you have?" they asked with generous intent. 
 
 As they wanted neither the artist nor the Colonel for their 
 own share, they were quite willing that the widow should 
 have her choice. 
 
 Sandro came forward with that hurried action which means 
 desire, and the eager face which is substantially a prayer. 
 
 " I can drive Mrs. Latrobe," he said quietly as to tone and 
 inflection ; but his eyes were too earnest to be in harmony 
 with his voice, and his hand visibly trembled as he thrust it 
 into the bosom of his coat. 
 
 For a moment Colonel Moneypenny did not speak. Then 
 he made a formal bow. 
 
 "If Mrs. Latrobe will trust herself to me, I shall be happy 
 to be her escort," he said stiffly. 
 
 He could do no less than accept the challenge flung down 
 by the twins; but he said no more than was absolutely 
 necessary. Nevertheless, his pale, thin face flushed, as i: 
 flushed before ; and it seemed as if his heated blood would 
 give him some difficulty to damp down. 
 
 Augusta looked smiling from one to the other ; but over 
 the heads of both, not frankly into their eyes. SI 
 
140 "MY LOVE r 
 
 to accept the little comedy as it was presented to the public, 
 and to enjoy the small tournament that had been arranged 
 for her honour — she, set in the place of the Queen of Beauty 
 whose office "was to declare the victor and bestow on him her 
 favour. 
 
 Slowly she brought her eyes down from the angle at which 
 they were fixed, to a level with the men's faces. She looked 
 full at Sandro ; not with defiance, nor yet with coldness, only 
 •clearly, calmly, with odd resoluteness and decision behind 
 which could be read a certain tender regret. Then she 
 glanced hurriedly at Colonel Moneypenny, glancing askance, 
 not looking straight into his face as she looked into 
 Sandro's. 
 
 " If Colonel Moneypenny will drive me ?" she said in a 
 clear voice and with a smooth smile. 
 
 Sandro turned away with undisguised disappointment. 
 The Colonel's eyes flashed as if that troublesome fire were 
 getting ahead of wisdom and making itself too evident for 
 peace. But he did not speak. He only bowed again in his 
 stiff, disagreeable, half-offended way, as he offered the widow 
 his hand to assist her into the carriage, and noticed how 
 pretty her feet were and how perfectly appointed she was 
 altogether. Then he took his place by her side with the air 
 of a man perfectly indifferent to his position and finding in 
 it neither pleasure nor pain. 
 
 " I must take my child," said Augusta as the Colonel 
 gathered up the reins and took the whip from the groom 
 who had been holding the pony's head. 
 
 " Oh no !" said Ceorgie and Pattie. " The two young ones 
 are going together with Mater and nurse Mary." 
 
 " Oh no, indeed, you cannot have Tony ! And I'm sure 
 Colonel Moneypenny don't want him!" said G-ip with a little 
 Jaugh. 
 
 " I would rather take him," said Augusta earnestly. 
 
 "Drive on, Colonel," shouted Pip who was anxious to be 
 off. " Mater and Mary have undertaken the nursery. We 
 can't change things now. Good-bye ; and take care of Frisky 
 down hill. He has an ugly trick of falling over his own 
 toes !" 
 
 "Are we to go without your son?" asked the Colonel 
 stiffly. 
 
 Augusta looked disturbed. 
 
 " I would much rather have had him with us," she said. 
 
THE TRYST AT CROSSING'S BRIDGE. Hi 
 
 "Shall I insist on his being brought?" he asked again, 
 always glacial and angular. 
 
 "Bv no means," said the two Doves authoritatively. 
 '• Drive on, do ! You are keeping us all back." 
 
 The Colonel still held the whip pointed and the reins loose. 
 He looked at the widow, as if for her final decision. 
 
 " Perhaps I had better not disturb the arrangements," 
 she said with evident reluctance; and the Colonel, giving the 
 signal, went off at a fast trot, finding it a little difficult to 
 keep up his air of glacial and offended dignity and not to say- 
 frankly : " I am glad that I am to have you all to myself !" 
 
 But Colonel Moneypenny was nothing if not conscious of 
 what was due to himself; and it was due to himself, accord- 
 ing to his own ideas of things, that he should make Augusta 
 Latrobe practically petition to be reinstated in his good 
 graces — practically confess that she had done very wrong in 
 marrying Professor Latrobe, and not waiting humbly in faith 
 and patience for the hour when he himself should have asked 
 her to be his wife. And to do this he must keep her at the 
 arm's length where he had held her ever since the day of her 
 engagement, and not let her think that she had only to smile 
 to bring him to her feet again. Wherefore the drive, which 
 cost poor Sandro Kemp so much pain, was the dullest, driest 
 and most uninteresting of all in the day, so far as words and 
 looks were concerned. Secretly, in his heart, the Colonel was 
 profoundly content in spite of his angular outside ; whil< • 
 Augusta more than once thought : "Would it do? ShouM 
 I gain, both for myself and the child? or should I only 
 exchange tyrannies and get no good from either?" 
 
 Meanwhile poor Sandro did his best to blow his little bub- 
 bles in that part of this frothy sea of so-called pleasure where 
 he found himself; but taking a turn at the crank or a walk on 
 the treadmill would have been almost as amusing as laughing 
 at jokes which had no point, and flirting with girls for whom 
 he had no inclination. The sun had gone out of the sky fo] 
 him; and he thought that picnics and all kinds of open-air 
 amusements were simply inventions of the Evil One — the mosl 
 stupid, insane, disappointing, inartistic things that could pos- 
 sibly be devised for the tomient of humanity. He was angr 
 with fate, Augusta Latrobe, the Pennefathers, the sunshine, 
 and Colonel Moneypenny — all in about equal proportion. 
 And yet, why should he make himself uncomfortable because 
 the Colonel was driving Mrs. Latrobe in the pony carriage, 
 
142 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 and he was with Jack Pennefather and the two pretty Miss 
 Rayners in a phaeton ? What was Mrs. Latrobe to him ? 
 What could she be indeed ? She was perfectly right not to 
 give him false hopes, and she had full liberty to encourage 
 any one else. He could not marry ; and the Colonel was a 
 wealthy man and could. " Yes ; she was perfectly right 
 and he was a fool to care about the matter. And those two- 
 pretty cousins — the Misses Rayner from London — were 
 really remarkably picturesque-looking girls, and their heads 
 would come in splendidly for the sketch which he had pro- 
 mised to do of the whole group. 
 
 Nevertheless, for all their prettiness, he found the drive to 
 Greenhill Falls the longest, flattest and dullest that he had ever 
 taken ; and not even his artist's eyes could see the full beauty 
 of the points by which they skirted, for that tugging at his 
 heart-strings — that sense of emptiness and dreariness — which 
 made the whole earth barren outside the limits of one sweet 
 and gracious presence. 
 
 " It is madness !" he said to himself; " it is slavery un- 
 worthy of a rational man !" 
 
 All the same, he hugged his chains and cherished his delu- 
 sions, and made such spasmodic attempts at bubble-blowing 
 that the two girls saw through the effort and resented his pre- 
 occupation as an aifront to their charms. 
 
 " The most stupid man I ever saw !" said each when the 
 drive came to an end ; while Jack Pennefather added as his 
 contribution : 
 
 " Old Kernp was never much of a good thing ; but to-day 
 he was duller than old boots and as heavy on hand as so 
 much lead. He wasn't worth his salt or the horseflesh it 
 cost to tool him over, and I should have liked to have dropped 
 him over the side. We should have been far jollier without 
 him." 
 
 So they would — poor, sad-hearted and uncomfortable 
 •Sandro, for whom the sun had gone out of the sky and the 
 earth had suddenly become barren because Augusta Latrobe 
 was sitting by the side of Colonel Moneypenny in the pony 
 carriage, and he was half a mile in the rear with the two 
 Misses Rayner from London and that idiotic young Jack 
 Pennefather. 
 
THE POCKETFUL OF FUN, 143 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE POCKETFUL OF FUN. 
 
 Whether long or short to the minds of the wayfarers the 
 
 drive nhill Falls came at last to an end. There were 
 
 ii" adventures by the way and not tbe faintest approach to 
 
 an accident. Frisky stumbled once in going down-hill, 
 
 ling to his habit; but the Colonel pulled him up in 
 
 . aid gave him a Bavage cut with his whip which was less 
 
 for the beast's correction than the man's ill-humour. The 
 
 children were good and neither wanted to commit suicide by 
 
 climbing about the seats, nor demanded impossibilities in 
 
 the way of food and amusement. One by one the carriages 
 
 drove up to the camping-ground; and the inmates were 
 
 ■ I as vociferously as if they had not been seen for a 
 
 twelvemonth, and had come safely over the pass of the Tcte 
 
 Noire at least. To see all those bright faces, to hear all 
 
 those pleasant voices, one would have thought that no sorrow 
 
 existed on the earth to sadden the sons and daughters of 
 
 men, and that the days of that long looked-for Utopia had at 
 
 ft in. 
 
 What a noisy, joyous little company they made ! and what 
 fun it all was ! While the cloth was being laid that fun was 
 at its height. The unpacking of the baskets was a succession 
 of surprises, each more delightful than the other. The 
 shouts of admiration for the Colonel's generous supply of 
 champagne, and for Augusta Latrobe's gooseberries and hot- 
 house grapes; for the terrible old woman was either too 
 human at bottom, or too proud to let her daughter go empty- 
 handed to the feast ; the enthusiasm excited by the Misses 
 Uavner's superb pate de foie gras, sent as their contribution 
 by the parents Kayner in London; the laughter raised by 
 the multiplicity of screws of salt and cones of sugar ; the 
 prospective enjoyment contained in the quarters of lamb and 
 sirloins of beef, the chicken and veal-pies, the salads with 
 lobster and the salads without — in the bottles of custard, of 
 cream, of milk, of lemonade — in the tarts and cheesecakes, the 
 jellies and bii: plum-cakes; the delightful occupation of 
 gathering sticks and boiling the water in a kettle that would 
 not hang over a fire that would not burn ; the mess made in 
 breaking the eggs for an omelette, and the queer compound 
 
144 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 which went under that name when all was done ; the fights 
 with earwigs and " harvest-men," wasps and beetles which 
 went on without intermission ; and then the uncomfortable 
 seats found on tree-roots and jutting stones, with ants crawl- 
 ing up from the ground and green caterpillars dropping 
 down from the trees ; oh, the fun of it all ! What was there 
 to compare with a picnic? thought all the young people in a 
 body; and what plague, equal in horror, had ever been 
 invented by madmen for the torture of innocent human 
 beings ? thought the Colonel, who hated to be disturbed in his 
 habits and who was not specially affected towards the Penne- 
 fathers. But he was in for it now and had to make the best 
 of it, pretending the enjoyment, which he was far from find- 
 ing, in eating his own dinner by snatches while he supplied 
 the ladies without delay and disputed with creeping things 
 the best morsels on his plate. 
 
 Gip and Pip were completely in their element, and outdid 
 themselves in noise, good-nature and slang. The boys were 
 ubiquitous ; and it seemed to each guest as if he or she were 
 asked four times over by the same person whether he or she 
 would not have more of this or some of that ? — going through 
 all the dishes on the cloth. Val and Mil Cowley kept close 
 to the skirts of Gip and Pip, and behaved rather shabbily to 
 every one else ; but though the twins flirted generously with 
 them they flirted generously with every other man about the 
 place, and. no one could complain that he was left out in the 
 cold: Sandro Kemp, partly prudent, partly heart-sore, kept 
 rigorously away from Augusta Latrobe for the first half-hour 
 of the time ; but after then his prudence came to an end, his 
 heart-strings tugged too hard, and, almost without knowing 
 how, he found himself by the fair widow's side, looking into 
 her face for some sign of love with eyes which betrayed 
 his own. 
 
 But when Augusta had made up her mind and marked out 
 her course she kept to it ; and not the keenest observer — not 
 even Dr. Quigley had he been there — could have detected the 
 faintest, most shadowy sign of that which poor Sandro was 
 yearning, longing, hoping to see. Yet, that she should speak 
 to any other man than himself with frankness and gracious 
 sweetness annoyed the susceptibilities of the peppery- 
 tempered Colonel. During that tcte-a-tete drive to the 
 Falls he had thawed to an immense extent internally, though 
 externally his manners had remained just as glacial as ever ; 
 
THE POCKETFUL OF FUN. 3 J5 
 
 but he knew in his own breast that the old cbarm had b< 
 to work again, and that Augusta Latrobe was almost as 
 beautiful to him, aud almost as desirable, as Augusta Mors- 
 head had been. He intended however to prove her thoroughlv 
 before committdng himself irrevocably. That is, he intended 
 
 peal the mistake of the past by which he had lost her 
 once already. If. during this period of proof, he saw any 
 symptoms of leaning to this side or that — any signs of possible 
 favouring one or another — he would banish her from his 
 thoughts, leave her to her fate, and close for ever against her 
 that golden door through which, if she were wise and good, 
 she might pass into the happiness of his home, the sufficiency 
 of his fortune, and the honour lying in the name and state of 
 Mrs. Colonel Moneypenny. 
 
 He had no suspicion of any one. Since her widowhood 
 and return to the old home Mrs. Latrobe had lived with such 
 supreme discretion that she had escaped even the microscopic 
 research and the megaphonic talk of a small country place 
 like Highwood ; and no one had coupled her name with that 
 of any desirable bachelor here or elsewhere. Sharpened as 
 his eyes were by suspicion and distrust, watching keenly and 
 eagerly as he did, he yet could not see anything in her manner 
 to Sandro Kemp which should cause him a moment's uneasi- 
 ness. Certainly, he did not like that fellow's following her 
 up as he did, as he had not liked the choice and juxtaposition 
 of the start ; and for a word or look the jealousy, inseparable 
 from that damped-down fire in his heart, would have blazed 
 out heaven-high. But Sandro's back was turned to him at 
 this moment, and the widow's calm face and cpiiet air betrayed 
 nothing. So the rupture which was threatened for just one 
 brief instant was happily got over, and the Colonel signified 
 his silent forgiveness of a problematical sin by going up to 
 the two as they sat a few feet apart under the trees, and 
 making the third in their conversation. 
 
 "When the dinner was quite over and the servants' turn 
 had come, the company all paired off and strolled away to 
 the ostensible object of "the day — the Falls, which were about 
 a mile distant. Gip, with the keen " flair" of her kind, saw 
 
 things stood with poor Sandro Kemp; and, sympa- 
 thetically inclined to give all "cases" a helping hand when 
 she could, she determined to put a Bpoke in that old Colonel's 
 
 !, as she irreverently phrased it, and to give poor old 
 Kemp a chance. Just as they were all gathering themselves 
 
146 »MY-LOVBr 
 
 into little knots, or segregating themselves into pairs, she. 
 standing -with Val Cowley and Jessie Eayner — of whom, by 
 the way, she wanted to get rid on her own account — called 
 to Colonel Moneypenny just as he had ranged himself on 
 Augusta's right hand, Sandra Kemp being on her left. 
 
 "Oh, Colonel Moneypesmy !" she said; "do come here and 
 tell us the name of this awfully funny little flower ! I know 
 that you are a tremendously good botanist, and Jessie 
 Kavia'i- is wild about botany. Do come, please ; we are so 
 awfully anxious to know." 
 
 " I assure you, Miss Pennefather, I know very little indeed 
 about flowers," said the Colonel crossly, and not quitting his 
 post. " Mr. Kemp is a far better botanist than I. Ask 
 him." 
 
 " My knowledge is exceedingly superficial. I am afraid I 
 should be of no use to any one," said Sandro quickly. " I 
 yield the palm to you willingly," he added, turning to the 
 Colonel with a smile. 
 
 " It would be absurd in me to pretend to know anything 
 about it," said the Colonel angrily. 
 
 Surely never were two men in greater haste to proclaim 
 their ignorance of a science wherein both were notoriously 
 proficient ! 
 
 Gip laughed till the echoes rang with her voice. 
 
 "How awfully funny!" she said, looking at the Colonel 
 through and through. " Only last week you told me that 
 you had made a collection of all the flowers to be found 
 about Highwood, and that you found there were some awful 
 lot — I forget now how many — a thousand or a million, or 
 something. Come along and don't be ill-natured !" she added 
 familiarly. " What a character the Highwoodites will get if 
 you won't do a little kindness like this ! What will Jessie 
 Eayner say of you, I wonder r" 
 
 " Oh, don't bring me in, Georgie !" said Miss Eayner 
 hastily. She too had seen a little into the meaning of 
 things ; and for a pretty girl from London, fashionably 
 dressed by Madame Elise and used to homage, it was too 
 humiliating to be twice slighted on the same day and to have 
 two men preferring a woman ever so much older than, and 
 not so pretty as, herself. " I should be very sorry if either 
 Colonel Moneypenny or Mr. Kemp gave himself any trouble 
 on my account," she added stiffly. " I can find out the flower 
 by myself." 
 
THE POCKETFUL OF FUN. 1 ;7 
 
 " If I can be of any use to you I am sure I shall be most 
 happy," .said the Colonel, stung into gallantry, aad going up 
 to those two tiresome girls behind whom Valentine Cowley 
 was standing, waiting for his turn and sure of Georgie'e 
 tart. 
 
 "Shall we go on?" asked Sandro of Augusta, his heart 
 heating fast ami his voice a trifle husky and unsteady. 
 
 For just one short moment the widow hesitated, thinking 
 rapidly; — what was the wisest thing to do? Should she 
 escape from the danger of that uninterrupted companion.-hip 
 by j lining the group of unwilling botanists ? or should she 
 trust to herself and go with Sandro alone? To do this would 
 anger the Colonel, but to go up to him and wait for him 
 would have the look of running after him — would be compro- 
 mising herself both openly to the others and privately to 
 himself. 
 
 She knew that she could, if she would, win that trick in 
 the great game of matrimony. It was not for nothing that 
 she held her passions, her weaknesses, her desires so well in 
 hand to give the lead to her reason and perceptions* She 
 saw through the glacial surface down to the smothered fire 
 beneath, and knew that it depended only on herself which 
 should gain on the other. But she had not finally deter- 
 mined. Life at her mother's home was emphatically torture ; 
 would it be much better at the Colonel's? No; she had 
 certainly not finally determined; and in view of all that was 
 an 1 might be — of her own indecision in some things if reso- 
 lute determination in others — she quietly accepted Sandro's 
 proposition and said: 
 
 •• Y< s. let us go on. They will soon overtake us." 
 
 " I hope not," said the artist. 
 
 And Augusta wisely did not hear. 
 
 She was right, however. In a very short time, and before 
 Sandro could tell her about the good things which had come 
 to him, the Colonel and pretty Jessie Bayner joined them as 
 they were crossing the meadow — all four walking abreast — 
 Sandro Kemp and Miss Rayner on the outside, by which the 
 Colonel was next to Augusta in the middle. This arrange- 
 ment answered very well so long as they could walk in open 
 order over the lately mown grass ; but when they came to 
 the narrow pathway through the boggy waste, where only 
 cme could go at a time and where the ladies had to be helped 
 over the stones and what the Pennefathers called the squashy 
 
148 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 places, then the efforts which each made to out-manoeuvre the 
 other were marvels of generalship. 
 
 The victory rested with the artist and the Colonel was 
 out-generalled. It was Sandro who helped the pretty widow 
 over all the bad bits ; — Sandro who held her hand when she 
 crossed the rude stepping-stones or jumped the narrow brook ; 
 — Sandro who took her as his own care by right of assign- 
 ment and appropriation, while the Colonel was left to fatigue- 
 duty and Jessie Rayner. It was a voiceless, weaponless duel, 
 but it was a duel all the same ; and from that day Sandro 
 Kemp might count as one of the facts of his life, the deep 
 and passionate enmity of Colonel Grey Moneypenny. 
 
 This was the only hitch in the day's enjoyment, and when 
 they all gathered in a body at the foot of the hills, the noise 
 and fun and laughter broke out afresh, all the more sweeping 
 and intense because of the interval of comparative repose 
 gained through the scattering of the elements. 
 
 Gip and Pip changed their hats and their name-brooches, 
 and no one knew one from the other. Val Cowley, who had 
 been making confidences to Grip, repeated his lesson to Pip, 
 to that naughty hussy's supreme satisfaction ; and Mil, who 
 had just told Pip that he thought her the j oiliest girl in the 
 world, said the same thing to Gip and entreated her to give 
 him back the phrase with interest. Mr. Lyon continued with 
 one sister the conversation he had begun with the other j 
 Jessie Rayner complained to Pattie of the false position in 
 which she had placed her by forcing her on Colonel Money- 
 penny ; the boys themselves were taken in ; the father and 
 mother were puzzled ; only Augusta, who was in the secret, 
 and little Nora, who had landmarks of her own, saw through 
 the joke and wondered in what the fun consisted. That there 
 was some tremendous joke in the mystification was evident, 
 but to no one but themselves and the boys, when they were 
 told, was it in any way intelligible. They however, laughed 
 as if they would never leave off ; and when they were told the 
 Cowley boys laughed too, but not quite so heai'tily as the 
 Pennefathers. 
 
 The only one of the young men who was not thoroughly 
 amused was Randolph Mackenzie, though he had sense 
 enough not to betray his dulness. The general gaiety was so 
 far infectious in that he found himself compelled to laugh 
 when others laughed ; to flirt with Gip and Pip when flirting 
 was evidently expected of him; to make his towering 
 
Till: POCKETFUL OF FUN. 149 
 
 height of six feet two, with bulk in proportion, as ubiquitous 
 as if be had been a smaller man ; and to do all that was ex- 
 • I of a good-looking young fellow in an assembly where, 
 as the Doves bad said, there was not a stick of a girl nor a 
 crab of a man, and where, if the fun was of the most innocent 
 and harmless kind possible, it was also of the noisiest and 
 most rollicking. 
 
 But in spite of that superficial infection, his honest heart 
 turned ever back to his little cousin who had sacrificed her- 
 self so nobly to his idea of duty — -but what a will that quiet 
 little creature had ! — and to that dear beautiful noble-hearted 
 Stella — Cyril's Star ; and because Cyril's then his as well — 
 wh.> had given up her love for her duty, and who was so sad 
 and pale, so patient and unhappy ! What odd things women 
 are! he thought as he stood a little apart from the rest 
 looking at the tumbling waters and seeing nothing of those 
 falling sheets of foam, those rising veils of spray. They had 
 a moral code among themselves which man did not share nor 
 yet understand. It was doubtless far higher and purer than 
 what he had on his own side, but it was incomprehensible all 
 the same. 
 
 Randolph Mackenzie was one of those young men to whom 
 a good girl is a thing to be wondered at, a little feared and 
 very much respected. She was something precious and mys- 
 terious; something removed from the full comprehension of 
 men because standing on an infinitely higher platform. Her 
 very ignorance of the evils into the knowledge of which even 
 little lads at school are initiated, gave him a curious sense of 
 awe. "When with such girls as his cousin and Stella Brans- 
 combe, he felt as if standing in some holy place, in the pre- 
 sence of some sacred shrine where no sinful thing might be. 
 It was as if he had to put off part of himself when with them ; 
 to be pure and humble, reverent and careful, as they also were 
 pure and noble. It was a great mystery, this virtuous and 
 
 innocent girlh 1! — and while he thought this the loud 
 
 laughter of wild Georgie Pennefather rang in his ear as she 
 clambered up the rock in front of him and shrieked out to 
 Milford Cowley : " Where's Georgie, Mil ? I wish you would 
 fetch her and Val; or stay— do you go, Randolph. Tell 
 George and Val we want them up here." 
 
 The final act of the merry drama was set when Sandro 
 Kemp was reminded of his promise to " make a picture" of 
 the party. Naturally each girl wanted to be the most con- 
 
150 "MY LOVEr 
 
 spicuous of the group, and all lamented that Sandro was not 
 a photographer, when it would have heen so much easier to 
 have posed and the result would have been so much more 
 like. Sandro, however, put Augusta as the " point de mire." 
 He said he wanted her black dress in the composition ; — and 
 when an artist says that he wants something for his picture 
 it is useless to discuss or dissent. He placed them all just as 
 he would have them ; and resisted the temptation to carica- 
 ture Colonel Moneypenny. This was his day's sacrifice to a 
 higher principle — the suppression of self by the generosity of 
 pride. 
 
 But the Colonel, annoyed on all sides as he had been, re- 
 sented the picture-making as if it had been an intentional 
 personal affront. It was the last drop in the cup— the last 
 straw of the pack. He was horribly ill-tempered all the way 
 home, and Frisky had a bad time of it. He was not certain 
 whether he ought or ought not to be jealous of Sandro 
 Kemp — a man whom he called that " artist fellow," and held 
 as neither his equal nor yet a real gentleman. If he ought, 
 then all was over between him and the fair- faced widow ; if 
 he had no cause, why then he might see about it. 
 
 He was full of these dumb weighings and balancings, full 
 too of pinpricks and uncomfortable places ; and he made the 
 drive as he was himself. He relented however, just as he 
 neared the gate of The Laurels, that formidable home where, 
 if he did not know all, he guessed something of what the 
 poor dependent daughter suffered. When he parted from 
 her at her own door, he pi'essed her hand a little more ten- 
 derly than he had intended, and looked into her face with a 
 decided softening of his own. Pinched and furrowed that 
 keen and haughty face always must be ; but it could be as 
 gentle as it was sometimes haughty, as soft as it was some- 
 times stern. It was gentle and soft enough now, as he looked 
 right into Augusta's eyes while he held her hand warmly 
 clasped and said below his breath : " God bless you." 
 
 Then the door opened and shut, and the young widow 
 passed from the love and gaiety and pleasantness of the outer 
 world into the darkness of the prison called by courtesy her 
 home — that home where she was Cinderella among the ashes 
 whom the fairy godmother had forgotten. 
 
 She had one joy however, in her happy little son, who, 
 having preceded her by half an hour or so, came running into 
 her arms as she crossed the hall, saying : 
 
ROCKS AHEAD. IS] 
 
 " Oh. mamma, what a jolly day it has been!" 
 
 This was the latesl addition made to his vocabulary. It 
 was a present bestow -d on him by little Nora, and the earnest 
 of future chidings and more than one slapped little hand as a 
 reminder that "jolly" was a word not to be used at The 
 Laurels, and that as often as he used it his grandmamma 
 would '" spat" him. 
 
 Hortensia was at home when her parents and Randolph 
 arrived. She had had a day after her own heart, and received 
 them all with the sweet s< trenity of one whose conscience is 
 clear and who lias done the right thing. They had sacrificed 
 i! in the person of the Pennefathers, and she had carried 
 incense to the altar in the person of Mr. Branscombe. She 
 would not reproach them; only, she did feel very much their 
 moral superior as she met them at the door and asked them 
 if they had enjoyed themselves? remarked that it had been 
 a verv tine day : and said she was so glad to see them safe 
 again at home ! 
 
 She kissed her father and mother and smiled quietly at her 
 cousin ; helped her father to take off his stone-coloured alpaca 
 dust-coat ; asked her mother if she should carry her bonnet 
 upstairs and bring down her cap, to save her the fatigue of 
 mounting those low, broad steps '? — and stood on a pinnacle 
 of righteousness and in the consciousness of victory all round. 
 She had been the sweet and spiritual Mary— now she was 
 the quiet, homestaying, helpful, able Martha ; and they were 
 pleasure-seekers of a rowdy and objectionable kind. And she 
 meant that they should take the lesson to heart and see 
 things as she saw them. 
 
 Then the night stole on and the day came to an end for 
 all alike; and of the Pennefathers' famous picnic nothing was 
 left but empty bottles and fragments of food, torn gloves, 
 soiled gowns, a few dreams and some regrets. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ROCKS AHEAD. 
 
 The morning after the picnic Randolph Mackenzie was 
 mooning about the garden at Derwent Lodge, by no means 
 in a joyous frame of mind. Something about thai noisy 
 rollicking yesterday had left a bitter taste in his month ; and 
 he was conscious of a feeling of disappointment and dis- 
 
132 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 satisfaction for which he could find neither a name nor the 
 cause. 
 
 For one thing indeed, he was sorry that his little cousin 
 had not gone with them. That little cousin of his was won- 
 derfully good, and he cordially acknowledged how superior 
 she was to the ordinary run of girls. Compare her with any 
 of those at the picnic yesterday — why, she stood a head and 
 shoulders above them all in moral measurement ! She was 
 almost too good indeed ; and Eandolph caught himself out 
 in the vileness of wishing that she was just a trifle less 
 superior — that she could sometimes come down from her 
 pure altitudes and condescend to the natural weaknesses o-f 
 an every-day, but all the same an amiable, humanity — so 
 much weakness for instance, as should include her father and 
 mother, his good uncle and aunt. Her evident moral supe- 
 riority over them, when they came home last night, had 
 undeniably rubbed him the wrong way. He had felt it at 
 the time and he felt it now just as keenly as then. He 
 did not mind for himself. Hortensia was right to feel that 
 she was a bright and shining light where he was not as mudi 
 as a candlestick. But he did not like to see her so conscious 
 of having taken higher rank in the hierarchy of virtue than 
 that to which her good parents had attained. It savoured 
 too much of spiritual pride for his taste ; he being one who 
 would have prayed with the publican rather than have jus- 
 tified himself with the Pharisee. And it seemed to him that 
 what uncle William and aunt Cara thought innocent, Hor- 
 tensia might accept as allowable. And on the whole — though 
 it was very sweet of her to sacrifice her natural inclination for 
 pleasure to friendship and Stella Branscombe — still, it would 
 have been more graceful and more dutiful had she given way 
 to her parents and done as they wished. 
 
 Then there was that beautiful Stella herself; she too, was 
 a difficult bit to rightly adjust in his moral mosaic. He had 
 received this morning a letter from Cyril which had stirred 
 up in his heart thr> natural sympathy of youth for youth, of 
 man for man, and had filled him with pity for his friend, 
 indignation against fate and doubt and perplexity all round. 
 Sending all sorts of fervid, half-mad messages to his Love — 
 for all that they daily exchanged long letters full of hope or 
 fear, of love or assurance, as they were shaken by each passing 
 mood — like that catching of the straw by the drowning man, 
 poor Cyril seemed to have some kind of vague hope that the 
 
ROCKS AHEAD. 153 
 
 presence in Highwood of his Mend, bis chum, his faithful 
 lee, would work a miracle in his favour. It was a link, 
 at .til events, if a slender one ; and the poor fellow was in that 
 state of despairing trouble when even the weakest ti<' is better 
 that none at ail. But it laid a heavy weight on Eandolph's 
 heart ; for the good, honest, stupid fellow well knew that he 
 could do nothing. Stella, like Hortensia, had sublime reasons 
 and far-reaching arguments for doing as it seemed to him 
 less humanly than magnificently ; and he could neither under- 
 stand the one nor refute the other. The very difficulty which 
 was annoying him at this moment in the adjustment of his 
 moral mosaic was just the true answer to this cpaestion: — 
 Was SteDa right to postpone her marriage in this indefinite 
 way. and to give Cyril so much pain and disappointment 
 simply that she might stay and keep house for her father, 
 anil copy out his manuscript poetry and music ? She was 
 noble, pure, high-minded — all that and more ; but, like Hor- 
 tensia, might she not carry her virtue a trifle too far. and by 
 becoming too angelic cease to be sufficiently human ? " Ex- 
 celsior" is a brave motto ; but one might do better for tme's 
 self and for others than to be found by dogs frozen to death 
 in a snow-drift ! 
 
 It was a hard moral problem, and one that he could not 
 solve, try as he would. It was a kind of cleft-stick in which 
 he found himself — a spiritual " pons asinorum," where virtues 
 were the angles and motives the straight lines — a true ethical 
 dilemma, with friendship on the one horn and principle on the 
 other — and he was in the blundering perplexity characteristic 
 of men with small reasoning powers, wholesome instincts and 
 strong affections, when those whom they love go over their 
 heads in morality and do as it seems to them wrong from 
 the basis of an over lofty right. 
 
 He stood by the netting of the tennis-ground, apparently 
 studying the size of the meshes and trying the strength of 
 the stays, while in reality fretting himself into a mental fever 
 because two pretty girls were so distractdngly c r ood and over- 
 whelmingly high-minded. Presently Hortensia came out to 
 join him. In the programme of her duties as it was to steady 
 her cousin's fluid inclinations and induce him to take Orders, 
 she was ever on the watch for favourable moments ; and here 
 was one eminently favourable. To make- this stalwart, natural 
 pioneer of practical civilization into a meek country curate, 
 absorbed in old women and young ladies — in the just distri- 
 
154 "MY LOVEt" 
 
 bution of flannel petticoats and the nice observance of eccle- 
 siastical drill — seemed to her a work of spiritual charity 
 ■worthy of all effort, and where success would be its own 
 reward. As for such a thing as natural fitness for the 
 work of the sinful world, or natural unfitness for the 
 sublimer reaches of spiritual life, Hortensia was far too 
 zealous to allow the force of this kind of chilly, soul-destroy- 
 ing reasoning. " You ought," with her, was the sei'pent 
 which swallowed up all those weak, protesting little snakes 
 of " cannot," and " would rather not ;" and specially did she 
 despise her cousin's little snake of natural disinclination — as 
 indeed, to tell the truth, in her own heart she despised all 
 that was characteristic of him throughout. 
 
 When therefore, she saw him standing idly by the netting 
 studying the meshes of that frivolous bit of reticulation, the 
 pretty Puritan laid aside her morning task of making rough 
 little shirts for the Mother's Bag, and turned to her more 
 congenial employment of exhorting and proselytizing. 
 
 But Randolph would not give her missionary efforts a 
 chance to-day. He was too much absorbed in the affairs of 
 others to have any interest in himself. Cyril and Stella, and 
 Hortensia herself, were far before his own future profession ; 
 but as he was not quite up to the work of attacking his little 
 cousin offhand, he fell back on Stella, and through her on Cyril. 
 
 " How was Stella Branscombe yesterday ?" he asked quickly, 
 eagerly, so soon as her cousin joined him. 
 
 Good manners obliged her to answer him. 
 
 "Stella? she was quite well," she said a little pettishly ; 
 though had the girl been ill Hortensia w r ould not have seen 
 it, swept away as she had been in the frothy flood of Mr. 
 Branscombe's sonorous nonsense. And, indeed, for the 
 matter of that Stella was not well; and day by day got 
 steadily lower in tone and more depressed in mind. 
 
 " Was she in good spirits?" he asked again. 
 
 "Randolph! how could she be in good spirits when her 
 mother has been dead only so short a time !" was Hortensia's 
 grave rebuke. 
 
 " No ; of course not ; not really jolly ; but there are degrees, 
 you know," said Randolph, sensibly if clumsily. " Did she 
 speak of Cyril? Did she seem to regret him in any way?" 
 he then asked in the same headlong way as before, uncon- 
 sciously blocking up the avenue against his cousin's prosely- 
 tizing intentions. 
 
ROCKS Ml EM'. 155 
 
 "Certainly not," said Hortensia, pinching her lips. "She 
 is too much devoted to her father to think of any one 
 else." 
 
 " Her love for her father has nothing to do with her love 
 for Cyril," said Kandulph. " Surely it is a girl's duty to love 
 the fellow to whom she is engaged !" 
 
 " But she owes her first duty to her father," said Hortensia. 
 
 •And such a father !" she added with enthusiasm. "Stella 
 
 is blessed and honoured in giving her life to such a man as 
 
 that ! She will never have such glorious happiness as she 
 
 has ii" 
 
 " Oh, I say, come now !'* ejaculated Randolph. His cousin's 
 ardour disconcerted him. "You go too far, Hortensia. 
 3Ir. Branseombe is not all that by a long way ! I confers he 
 is much too fine for me. I cannot digest such a lot of cream 
 and sugar. It is all too hot-pressed and superfine all round," 
 be added, with a generous confusion of similes. 
 
 " It pains me to see you incapable of appreciating such a 
 pure and delicate genius as Mr. Branscombe's !" said Hortensia 
 with severity. 
 
 "At least I appreciate you and Stella Branseombe," was 
 the answer made with affectionate gallantry. 
 
 But the prim little face did not relax. If she had to con- 
 vine Randolph of his present state of moral blindness and 
 spiritual abasement, and convert him to higher things, Hor- 
 tensia felt that she must not humour his weakness nor submit 
 to his follies. And compliments are follies — unless rendered 
 sublime utterances by such poetic genius as that possessed by 
 Mr. Branseombe. 
 
 " Stella is very good in her way," she answered gravely ; 
 "as for me, of course, I am nothing! — but though Stella is 
 very nice and dear, she is not equal to her father. She is of 
 silver if you like, but Mr. Branseombe is gold, pure gold !" 
 
 She raised her eyes as she said this, and looked, up into 
 the sky as if worshipping the clouds overhead. 
 
 Frederic!: Branseombe, handsome, old, showy, well-] 're- 
 served, full of frothy sentiment and of superficial talent, 
 talking rubbish in hazy language and b stage voice, uttering 
 platitudes as if they were divine truths newly revealed, i 
 ing homage for his own part but paying back to his young 
 Be almost as much as he exacted — Frederick Brans- 
 s, whose poetry and art had killed his wife and threat- 
 ened to do the same by his daughter — wast!:' present ^cd 
 
156 "MY LOVEr 
 
 of Hortensia Lyon's devotion, the hero of her waking dreams 
 and the idol of her imagination. 
 
 She was not what is meant by being in love with him ; but 
 she loved him. She never thought of him as a man by whose 
 side she might one day stand in the equality of mutual love. 
 He was only her ideal realized — the God-like poet at whose 
 feet she knelt and whose favour was her highest honour. 
 Had she been older things would have been different ; but 
 with such a girl as she was, her passionate enthusiasm was 
 without the consciousness of sell or the foreshadowing of 
 danger. So far indeed from carrying with it any sentiment 
 of peril, it seemed to her the pre-eminent glory of her life ; 
 and the proudest confession of her own worthiness was in the 
 knowledge that she could understand and fitly reverence 
 such surpassing worth as Mr. Branscombe's. In short she 
 was in the romantic and devotional stage of her mental 
 existence when she must have her fetish. She might have 
 gone in for Ritualism or Methodism — she might have devoted 
 herself to painting ivy-leaves and apple-blossoms, or to the 
 interpretation of Wagner and the violin — she might have 
 written a novel, a tragedy, or Sonnets to Despair, to the 
 Moon, to Death and to Disappointment — she might have 
 given her heart, to her cousin Randolph Mackenzie as the 
 apotheosis of the commonplace, or have dreamed out a hero 
 for herself after the pattern of Byron's Corsair or Trelawney's 
 Younger Son — she might have studied anatomy by the plates - 
 in her father's Encyclopedia — have made her favourite saint 
 of Victoria Woodhull and her heroine of Vera Sassulitch — 
 but she did none of these things. She simply put Stella's 
 father, that elegant and superb Mr. Branscombe, on a pedestal 
 in the sanctuary of her imagination and gave herself up to 
 his worship as the highest to which she could attain. 
 
 Her cousin followed her eyes as they looked up into the 
 sky, their gaze so full of enthusiastic devotion. 
 
 " No, Hortensia, he is not all that," he said again with 
 sturdy honesty. " And between the two which is best — 
 Mr. Branscombe, who has forced his daughter to make such 
 a tremendous sacrifice, just to keep him company, or Stella, 
 who had given up her lover for her father ? You cannot 
 make two words as to which is the most noble and unselfish ! 
 My only doubt is that Stella has gone over the line and done 
 more than she need, or even ought." 
 
 "I do not compare them," answered Hortensia coldly.. 
 
ROCKS AHEAD. 157 
 
 • Mr. Branscombe has only demanded what is due to him as 
 a father ; and Stella has only done her duty as a daughter." 
 
 " And Cyril Ponsonby ?" asked the fidus Achates reproach- 
 fully. " It seems to me that Cyril comes badly off among 
 you all ! No one thinks of him ; and yet he has Stella's 
 promise, and the engagement was sanctioned by both the 
 lather and mother before poor Mrs. Branscombe died." 
 
 " That makes all the difference," said Hortensia in her 
 turn reproachfully. "Would you have such a man as 
 Mr. Branscombe left quite alone, with no one to look after 
 his comforts, no one to be his companion, no one to love him. 
 i a- rare for him ? Eandolph ! I am shocked ! If one has to 
 suffer, of course it ought to be Cyril. In the first place he is 
 younger, and can bear it better ; and in the next place he is 
 not half so splendid as Mr. Branscombe, and it does not 
 signify whether he is happy or not. Certainly Stella should 
 have given up Cyril for her father ! She has done only her 
 plain duty." 
 
 " I do not think so," said Randolph. " I think that .having 
 given her pi*omise, she ought to have stuck to Cyril." 
 
 " I shall not talk to you any more," said Hortensia with 
 dignity. " You are hopeless !" 
 
 She turned away with an offended air. Had he not scoffed 
 at her god ? — extinguished the fragrant incense burning before 
 his shrine ? — swept off the flowers with which she had gar- 
 landed the sacred image ? He was then rightly ostracized 
 and excommunicated, at least for the moment ; as a faithful 
 worshipper she would hold no friendly terms with him till 
 her wrath had cooled. 
 
 " Now you are angry with me, Hortensia !" said her cousin, 
 following at her heels and speaking with humility and sorrow, 
 but not with the true penitence of one who acknowledges his 
 wrong and goes back on his words. 
 
 " No, I am not angry, I am only hurt and disappointed," 
 she answered stifflv. "I had hoped better things of you, 
 Eandolph." 
 
 "Better things than what?" he asked boyishly. "What 
 have I said or done that is so bad as all that? I only take 
 Cyril's part ; which is but natural when you come to think 
 of it." 
 
 "That does not makr it right," said Hortensia. "To be 
 natural is not always to be n<>ble." 
 
 " I am sorry to have vexed you," he returned ; " but I am 
 
158 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Cyril's friend, as you know ; and if I do not stick to him, 
 who ought?" 
 
 " You should prefer the truth even to friendship," was her 
 lofty reply. 
 
 " I don't see any falsehood in what I have said," he 
 answered hastily. 
 
 He was only a dense, good-hearted athlete, and not well 
 up in moral philosophy of a refined kind. 
 
 She raised her small round shoulders with an impatient 
 gesture. 
 
 " I did not say you told stories," she said contemptuously. 
 " Truth does not mean only that. How can you be so home, 
 Randolph ?" 
 
 " Oh, now you are going too far ahead of me," he said with 
 frank bewilderment. " I do not follow you, Hortensia." 
 
 " I do not suppose you do," she answered, her foot on the 
 dooi*-step. " Mr. Branscombe would have understood me," 
 she added, flinging her Parthian shaft as she took her way 
 to her own room upstairs, where Randolph could not follow 
 her. 
 
 So the bitter taste in his mouth was more bitter still, and 
 the uneasiness that oppressed him was made still more 
 onerous by this jarring conversation where eve^y note had 
 been discordant, and where his cousin's curious depreciation 
 of himself had been in exact ratio with her exaggerated 
 admiration of Mr. Branscombe. It was all very odd and 
 very hard, he thought with a heavy sigh. Everything seemed 
 to have got out of gear somehow, and he did not see how 
 matters were to be put right — in chief part because he did 
 not understand the secret springs by which they had gone 
 wrong. 
 
 And what could he do for Cyril ? The poor old fellow 
 seemed to rely on him so much, and he had no more power 
 than a cat to change the cross-current of events. He could 
 not even see Stella, for he had no excuse to give for a second 
 call so soon after the first ; and since her mother's death she 
 had never been outside the Lodge gates, save when she and 
 her father went in the close carriage to return the formal 
 visits of condolence and to church. And they did not even 
 go to church every Sunday ; and when they did they went in 
 long before the service began, and stayed until every one had 
 left, and the old sexton was beginning to lock up. So how 
 could he see her ? And yet how much he should like to talk 
 
ROCKS AHEAD. 159 
 
 to her of Cyril and to do what he could to press the poor old 
 fellow's claims. If only he could find an excuse for railing 
 at Kose Hill ! — if only he had a woman's fertile brain so that 
 he eould invent something out of nothing and give reasons 
 where none existed '. 
 
 And thinking all this, his desire grew too strong for fear 
 or prudence; and he resolved to brave all the consequences, 
 to break the ice of wisdom and propriety, and to call boldlv 
 at the house. 
 
 " What can that young man want ?" asked Mr. Branscombe 
 with marked displeasure when the servant brought in the 
 news that Mr. Eandolph Mackenzie was in the drawing-room. 
 " I do not approve of these frequent visits from young men. 
 In your position, my Stella, deprived of maternal care and 
 guidance as you are, you cannot be too careful." 
 
 " He did not ask specially for me, dear papa," said Stella. 
 •• Most likely he asked for you." 
 
 But her heart beat fast, and she felt so far untrue in that 
 she was very sure that Kandolph had come to see her, because 
 he was Cyril's friend and she was Cyril's lover. 
 
 " Oh ! I have no time to bestow on a brainless young oaf 
 like that," said Mr. Branscombe with impatient contempt. 
 " If he has to be admitted at all you must do the honours. 
 It is impossible for me to bring myself to his low level ! Tell 
 him I am engaged. It would be better indeed to tell him 
 that we are both engaged and cannot receive him." 
 
 "Perhaps I had better see him for just a moment," said 
 Stella, who had risen and made a few steps awav from the 
 table. 
 
 Her face was pale and eager. She pushed back her hair 
 from her forehead — her poor mother's frequent gesture — 
 and looked almost hysterically anxious and excited. 
 
 " He may have brought a message from Hortensia," she 
 then added with unconscious and instinctive hypocrisy. It 
 was the first thing that came into her mind, and she did not 
 wait to ask herself whether she really believed her own 
 suggestion or not — nor why she had put forward the pretty 
 little Puritan as the most likely solvent of her father's 
 will. 
 
 " Ah ? So ? In that case then go," said Mr. Branscombe 
 graciously; "but do not be long, my child. Your tune is 
 too precious to be spent on such as Mr. Randolph Mackenzie," 
 with a slight sneer — "employed too profitably here in this 
 
160 "MY LOVE. f 
 
 little Temple of Sweetness and Light to be dissipated in the 
 nothings of his crass conversation !" 
 
 " I will he hack directly, papa," said Stella ; and her 
 father looked after her with genuine surprise at the strange 
 quickness with which she made her exit — he could almost 
 have called it her escape. It was scarcely like Stella — his 
 Stella — to vanish in that abrupt way, as if leaving him were 
 a pleasure and a relief. 
 
 " Youth is a great mistake," said the gentleman poet to 
 himself. " The freshness of its skin and the beauty of its 
 emotions are more than balanced by its frivolities and 
 sefishness. The restless inability of this child of mine 
 to sit still for half an hour together — the indifference 
 which I am beginning to suspect she feels for my work in 
 comparison with any mindless little diversion, such even as 
 this young man's unintellectual conversation — both perplex 
 and annoy me. Ah ! my good Matilda was better broken-in 
 than this ! — and that precious pearl of maidenhood, that 
 receptive, appreciative, loving little Hortensia would have 
 been infinitely more sympathetic than I find my own child !" 
 
 Mr. Branscombe sighed as he thought this — sighed over 
 the want of heart-whole devotion which, though not distinctly 
 manifested, he was beginning to suspect in Stella, the 
 daughter whose highest interests he thought he had con- 
 sulted by taking her away from her lover and binding close 
 to his own side. 
 
 Meanwhile the two young people had clasped hands in the 
 drawing-room ; and Randolph had opened at once on the real 
 purport of his visit. 
 
 " I have had a letter from Cyril, to-day," he said abruptly. 
 
 She flushed, smiled, looked anxious, pleased, excited, 
 earnest. Then the tears rushed into her eyes as she asked 
 in a low voice : 
 
 " Yes ? and what does he say ?" 
 
 " Oh, he is so unhappy !" Randolph answered. " And you 
 cannot wonder at it," he added. "It is rough on the poor 
 old fellow ; and the wonder is how he gets along at all." 
 
 " What can I do ?" cried Stella in despair. " I cannot leave 
 papa. He is so helpless alone, and has become so dependent 
 on me since poor mamma went — I must not leave him." 
 
 " But are you never going to marry Cyril ?" asked Cyril's 
 friend, opening his large blue eyes. 
 
 " Yes, yes ! some day," she answered hurriedly. 
 
HOCKS AHEAD, 1GI 
 
 "Some Jay? — that is rather vague. Some day: — but 
 when ':" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I do not know," she said hopelessly. 
 
 " He will go to India, and then he will not be back in 
 England for years and years," said Randolph. 
 
 The tears came again into her eyes. He felt like an exe- 
 cntioner and a brute for giving her so much distress. He 
 would like to have sworn at himself, given himself a knock 
 or a cut somewhere for self-rev. sng e at his brutality; but he 
 was the agent of another ; he was not quite responsible ; and 
 he must do his duty by Cyril though he did make Stella 
 suffer. 
 
 "If I left papa and harm came of it I should feel his 
 murderer," she said. "And he is so sensitive and easily 
 wounded ! I should never know a day's peace if I left 
 him."' 
 
 "And poor Cyril? You do not think of him?" said 
 Eandolph. 
 
 " He knows that I love him better than my life — better 
 than anything in the world but my duty. I tell him so in 
 every letter I write," she said, clasping her white hands 
 nervously in each other. " Cyril knows that I do love him ! 
 Tell him" so — tell him that you know that I do !" she added, 
 looking up into Randolph's face as if he held the destinies of 
 the world in his hands, because he had been made the clumsy, 
 broad-shouldered Mercury for the occasion, trusted with the 
 precious burden of Cyril's love for her and now having to 
 carry back the weight of hers to him. 
 
 " I will," said Eandolph in a low voice. 
 
 How strange it was to him to be thus trusted by her — 
 made her confidant and messenger — and yet how delighful ! 
 He had never in his life felt so honoured as now when Stella 
 Branscombe looked up into his face and sent her love by him 
 to Cyril Ponsonby ! What a divine creature she was ! — how 
 sweet and gracious, how noble and beautiful, how perfect all 
 through — mind and person, character and face alike ! Poor 
 Cyril ! — no, not poor Cyril — enviable, blessed rather to be the 
 beloved of such a radiant Star as this ! 
 
 •■ I he coming down soon?" then asked Eandolph after a 
 pause. " He seems to speak of it in his letter to me." 
 
 •• I tell him he had better not," answered Stella with a 
 hopeless look and accent. 
 
162 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Surely yes ! You will not let him go to India and not 
 see you before he goes ?" ashed Randolph hastily. 
 
 " I want to see him, oh, more than I can say !" sho 
 answered; "but papa was against it when I spoke to him 
 the other day, and said that Cyril must wait. He could not 
 bear to see him just yet ; and I could understand that. Poor 
 papa I" 
 
 " Oh, that was the reason, then, of this letter to me to-day. 
 Now I can understand it," said Randolph a little bitterly. 
 " 'Pon my soul, it is rough on him," he added. 
 
 " But if papa objects I cannot help myself," said Stella. 
 
 " You owe something to Cyril — surely you owe something 
 to a fellow now you are engaged to him !" pleaded Randolph. 
 
 " I know I do ; but if papa will not let him come, what can 
 I possibly do?" pleaded in her turn Stella. 
 
 " Stick up for your rights," said Cyril's friend. 
 
 Again she shook her head. 
 
 "It would be impossible against papa's wish and com- 
 mand," she answered. " Girls are not like boys — we must 
 obey our parents ; you need not always, if you do not like." 
 
 But Randolph would not allow that. 
 
 " Girls have as much right to stick up as men," he said ; 
 " and you should not be forced into what you think wrong or 
 do not like." 
 
 The conversation turning always round this central point, 
 lasted longer time than Stella knew or had intended. She 
 woke to the fact of the hour with a kind of guilty start ; sent 
 Randolph away hurriedly ; and went back to her father in his 
 studio, having only made her eyes red, her head ache, her 
 heart more sore than it had been already ; and having come 
 no nearer than before to a satisfactory solution of her life's 
 great problem — how to content both Cyril and her father, and 
 how to make each happy at the same time. 
 
 "What a terribly long time you have been!" said Mr. 
 Branscombe peevishly, as she entered. " And my work, 
 neglected all these hours — stopping for want of you !" 
 
 " I am so sorry, dear papa. I do not know how the time 
 went so fast !" she said ingenuously. 
 
 "And what message did he bring from your little friend, 
 Hortensia ?" asked that young maiden's elderly idol, stopping 
 in his work of stippling up a piece of painting supposed to re- 
 present Mr. Lyon's pretty and somewhat wrong-headed little 
 daughter. 
 
ROCKS AHEAD 163 
 
 Stella Btarted. It was not often that she felt the guilty 
 thing, Belf-convicted, she felt now; but truth to say she bad 
 forgotten Hortensia as if she had never existed, and during 
 the whole of that long hour's interview her name had not once 
 been mentioned. 
 
 "He .lid not bring me any," she answered, lowering her 
 
 " Then I may venture to ask of what you have been talking 
 — you and this brainless young man, for a good hour by the 
 clock r" asked her father satirically. 
 
 " Cyril," answered Stella simply. 
 
 " My dear," said Mr. Branscombe, turning round from his 
 easel and speaking angrily ; " that Cyril Ponsonby of yours is 
 becoming a confounded nuisance, and you will have" to give 
 him his conge if he intrudes himself thus in all our sacred 
 moments." 
 
 " Papa !" she said, looking at him with a white and fright- 
 ened face. 
 
 "If he does not know how to respect your present painful 
 position — if he fails to understand your duties — he must be 
 made," continued Mr. Branscombe, still irate. 
 
 " What has he done ? Oh, papa ! do not speak like that ! 
 Cyril has done nothing to vex you. He has been dutiful and 
 patient," said Stella with a sob. 
 
 "Be calm, Stella — be calm and reasonable," returned her 
 father. '• It argues a lower mental development than I care 
 to see in my child that she should have given her fancy — I 
 can scarcely call it by the sacred name of love — to one so 
 utterly destitute of the higher culture as this young Cyril 
 Ponsonby. And do not cry. Tears spoil a woman's face, 
 and yours in especial. You have not the complexion that 
 supports tears. B< rides they are barbarous expressions of 
 feeling, of which the truly civilized ought to be ashamed. Do 
 your duty; trust in Providence; and come to your father's 
 arms!" he added, laying down his palette and brush and 
 opening his arms with half majestic, half paternal tend.-. 
 
 "Papa! dear, dear papa! Do not break my heart '." 
 Stella, burying her face in his bosom and disregarding his 
 injunction by weeping passionately. 
 
 •• .M\ child! do not yon break mine!" he answered gravely, 
 with a tremor in his voice that was one of his most effective 
 bits of histrionic furniture. 
 
 And between these two terrible fires of love and du1 — 
 
164 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 these two irreconcilable attachments, each of which was as 
 dear to her as her very life — the poor girl stood as the victim 
 of fate — the Andromeda of sacrifice whom no Persius could 
 deliver. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 BY THE IiOGIC OF APPEARANCES. 
 
 A commission from Mr. Branscombe was no sinecure. 
 Like all well-born amateurs he despised " professionals," 
 while profiting by their technical ability, and maintained 
 that the general refinement belonging to a cultivated gentle- 
 man gave more real insight than the mere mechanical ability 
 of man who had learned only that one thing. He was an 
 admirer of what Americans call an all-round man ; and he 
 was himself, to his own mind, emphatically that man. Con- 
 sequently, thinking that he knew better in all things — save 
 how to manipulate the materials — than the artist whom he 
 had employed, and though the work was already in the 
 stone-cutter's hands, he worried Sandro Kemp over this 
 monument to his good Matilda, as Mrs. Prinsep's unfortunate 
 lodger had never been worried before ; sending for him at all 
 unearthly and inconvenient times to come up to Eose Hill 
 that this point might be considered, that new idea ventilated, 
 such and such an alteration made and such and such an im- 
 provement added. 
 
 " Sandro Kemp is all very well as a skilled artizan," he 
 said to Stella with his finest air ; " but he is only a poor 
 creature when you come to creative imagination. He wants 
 the application of the divine fire to be made anything of. It 
 is singular how difficult it is to find a man with any real 
 genius," he added. " How soulless and dead all these pro- 
 fessional fellows are! Compared to men of real artistic 
 feeling, of real esthetic refinement, they are merely hodmen 
 of a superior kind — bricklayers and carpenters who have 
 learned the use of their tools and can turn out work more or 
 less mechanically correct. But when you come to genius, 
 then," said Mr. Branscombe, lightly laying his white fingers 
 on his somewhat narrow and certainly shallow breast, " you 
 must have the gentleman, not the professional !" 
 
 And Stella believed her dear papa implicitly. Neverthe- 
 less, hearing as she did all that went on, she could not quite 
 shut her ears or blind her eyes to the fact that after all it 
 
BY THE LOGIC OF APPEARANCES. 155 
 
 was really Sandro who bad the better taste and the superior 
 judgment — Sandro who negatived and Sandro who proposed 
 — and that her beloved and elegant lather's ideas were gently 
 but inexorably set aside and shown to be impossible, imprac- 
 ticable and inadmissible. She was half inclined to quarrel 
 with the artist for his tenacity and presumption ; only that 
 she could not deny what was so patent — the better treatment 
 
 i her dear mother's monument in his hands. 
 And thus again, between the living and the dead, was in her 
 mind the same kind of distracted loyalty as that which existed 
 between her father and her lover; and she found the full, 
 free devotion to that sublime parental Apollo hedged round 
 with strange difficulties and wicked little thorns of mental 
 opposition! But the habits of a life are hard to change and 
 the religion of youth clings close. The worship of her father, 
 inculcated from her earliest days, was as the marrow of her 
 bones, the very blood of her heart ; and it would take more 
 than the evidence of false artistic taste to warp her loving 
 •nature from its early loyalty or substitute for her present 
 fond belief the colder judgment of criticism and doubt. 
 
 One day however, when Sandro had been up to Rose Hill 
 as usual, and had also as usual been obliged to prove the in- 
 fallible amateur all wrong and grossly ignorant of the first 
 principles of that art whereof he professed to be a master, he 
 met Stella's eyes fixed on him with a strange expression of 
 mingled surprise and fear. It was one of those looks which 
 reveal more than the person is conscious of feeling; like the 
 first automatic movements of a sleeper beginning to awake. 
 It was the flash of a moment — the first stirring of the sleep- 
 ing perception ; but Sandro, who could read the human face 
 as other men read books — save when his eyes were blinded 
 by his heart — understood the significance and foreshadowing 
 of that strange expression and thought to himself that he 
 must be more careful, more discreet for the future, and manage 
 somehow to unite with greater delicacy his own self-respect 
 n artist with kindly regard for her filial superstition. 
 
 Which was about the most difficult thing in the world when 
 ing with Mr. Branscombe on any matter whatever in the 
 -■■nee of his daughter. 
 Sandro saw too, how ill and changed she was ; and this was 
 
 another inducement to him to be tender of that maddening 
 
 old humbug, as he mentally called the Finery Fred of forty 
 re ago, for her poor dear sake if in no wise for his own. 
 
166 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 That look of latent terror at what was before her to dis- 
 cover and the signs of her failing health still haunting him, 
 Sandro, coming along the road, saw at a little distance 
 Augusta Latrobe walking in her quiet leisurely way, taking 
 her boy for his afternoon run. The two had not met since 
 the famous picnic, now some weeks old ; and Sandro fancied 
 that he had been nursing his jealousy and disappointment 
 into a very good beginning of indifference, and that really 
 the fair-faced widow was no more to him than any other 
 pretty woman who looked well in a picture, and was pleasant 
 to talk to because soft in voice and reasonable in thought. 
 He scarcely expected his heart to beat as it did when he 
 turned the corner and saw her handsome figure coming to 
 meet him with that undulating grace for which she was 
 famous. He was vexed that his blood should dash through 
 his veins at this headlong speed — for which however the 
 weather alone was answerable. It happened to be a chilly 
 and unpleasant day, but our variable old atmosjVhere is the 
 general scapegoat all round, and blow hot blow cold is ever 
 in fault. 
 
 As soon as Augusta saw who it was in the light brown suit 
 that was striding between the hedgerows, she drew her veil 
 over her face ; and, Sandro being in that state compared to 
 which the porcupine is ideal smoothness, winced at the action. 
 It never entered into his head, which the wound in his heart 
 made abnormally dense, that it was to put up a screen against 
 self-betrayal. It was a screen sure enough, but against him 
 not herself. And it checked the impulse which else he 
 might have had, to tell her all about himself and his two 
 grand commissions and how at last the door seemed opening 
 which was to lead him into the great temple of fame and the 
 treasure-house of wealth. No ; she cared nothing for him, 
 he thought bitterly. Why should he oppress her with his 
 confidence, and claim for his good fortune that sympathy 
 which she had evidently denied to his bad ? No ; let himself 
 and all that made his life — all the facts of his career and all 
 the feelings of his soul — be obliterated. He was nothing to 
 her. Why then waste his strength in trying to waken the 
 dead ? — to make the deaf hear and the dumb speak ? 
 
 If he had put his sensations into words, this would have 
 been the form they would have taken, as he rapidly narrowed 
 the distance which lay between him and Augusta, till he 
 came close to her and could see her sweet face even through 
 
BY THE LOGIC OF APPEARAND i 1G7 
 
 that insulting screen of gauze. For half an instant In 
 intended only to bow and pass on. It would be more dig- 
 nified and more manly. But something stronger than big 
 pride held his feet, and he stopped almost against his will, 
 and held out his hand. 
 
 The boy ran up to him full of a child's caressing pleasure 
 when he hails one who is always kind and pleasant and is 
 therefore beloved ; one associated in his little mind with now 
 a t"p and now a ball, sometimes a picture and once a grand 
 treat which he should never forget — a whole boxful of choco- 
 lates ! The widow's colour mounted to her cheeks in that 
 pretty pale pink blush which was so becoming, yet which 
 betrayed bo little conscious confusion; and then the two 
 clasped hands, and Sandro's good imitation of indifference fell 
 to pieces like a broken marionette. 
 
 He loved her. Yes ; he loved her. His love was hopeless 
 and not returned ; that he knew now if once he had thought 
 somewhat differently ; still, he loved her, and he should love 
 her for the whole of his life. But what hope was there for 
 him in that quiet manner, that calm voice, those clear and 
 steadfast eyes whieh neither wavered nor fell, neither darkened 
 nor softened? — eyes which looked at him as steadily as a child's, 
 and yet not quite full into his. His indifference was only 
 feigned, — but hers—hers was real. 
 
 Flung off from his own concerns Sandro, half in earnest 
 about Stella, half to make some kind of relation, howevei 
 shadowy, with Augusta, told her how ill the girl was looking 
 and asked her boldly to go to Itose Hill and see her. She 
 would be sure to do the poor thing good, he added with 
 more meaning in his words than he cared to show. If she 
 would talk to her and be kind and sympathetic, she could do 
 ■ much Lrood! 
 
 This function of talking to people and doing them good 
 of Augusta Latrobe's offices, assigned to her by 
 universal belief and consent. She was a woman in whose 
 Scent influence every one who knew her had unbounded 
 confidence. She was assumed to have an almost magnetic 
 power over the minds of others ; and " Get Mrs. Latrobe to 
 talk to her" or "him" was a formula in common use at 
 Highwood when there was a recalcitrant or a hot-headed 
 member of the community whom others wished to bring into 
 the way of reason and conformity. So now Sandro said to 
 her, according to the popular temper and belief: "I have 
 
168 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 just come from Rose Hill, where I wish you would go and 
 talk to poor Miss Branscombe!" 
 
 " You are often at Rose Hill now," said Augusta, letting 
 the request lie while she took up only the statement. 
 
 " Yes ; that eternal monument will never be at an end 
 until it is finally put up ; and perhaps not then," he answered. 
 
 " I heard you had undertaken poor darling Mrs. Brans- 
 combe's monument," she returned. 
 
 ""Wno told you?" he asked smiling. 
 
 " Colonel Moneypenny," she answered, with admirable self- 
 possession and blameless cruelty. 
 
 " I do not know that it was any business of his," said 
 Sandro cpuickly, his eyes very dark and his face very pale. 
 
 " In a small place like this everything is every one's busi- 
 ness," she answered. " At all events every one knows that 
 you have this monument to do." 
 
 " I wanted to tell you myself," he said, forgetting the 
 resolution of his offended dignity. 
 
 •'That I might congratulate or condole?" she answered 
 lightly. " I am glad that you have an opportunity of showing 
 us what you can do ; but I should think to work with or for 
 Mr. Branscombe would take all the gilt off the ginger-bread — 
 if it were an inch thick !" 
 
 " Yes it does," he answered ; " and the pleasure is dearly 
 bought. But I want to speak to you of poor Miss Brans- 
 combe. I wish you would go up and see her," he repeated. 
 
 "Why?" she returned, looking up with a half-sad, half- 
 amused smile. 
 
 " Because if you would talk to her you would do her good," 
 he said. 
 
 The smile brightened into a laugh. 
 
 " Every one comes to me to talk to people," she said. 
 " What do you want me to say ?" 
 
 " I do not know," he answered simply. " If I did perhaps 
 I should have said it myself. But she is looking distressingly 
 ill, and she is manifestly out of spirits altogether. I think 
 her father keeps her too close and that she wants more change, 
 more companionship, more fresh air — in short, rousing out of 
 herself, poor thing." 
 
 " That is a case for Dr. Quigley, not for me," said Augusta, 
 as the doctor's high gig and fast trotter rounded the corner 
 and came at a swift pace towards them. 
 
 " Confound the fellow !" muttered Sandro, who wished the 
 
BY THE LOGIC OF APPEARANCES. ir,o 
 
 doctor and his machine at the hottom of the Red Sea ; but 
 he put on the hypocritical smile of conventional welcome, and 
 said nothing about the fate of Pharaoh and his hosts, as he 
 gave the doctor " Good-day." 
 
 " Dr. Quigley, Mr. Kemp has something to say to you," 
 said Augusta quite gravely, as the doctor stopped his horse 
 and looked at the two. keenly, searchingly, as he had looked 
 at them on the day of the picnic when they were all assembled 
 at Crossing's Bridge. 
 
 " Say ? what ?" he asked. 
 
 " Only that I think Miss Branscombe is looking ill, and 
 that her father keeps her too much shut/up in. that stifling 
 room he calls his studio," said Sandro Kemp, he too speaking 
 with the most praiseworthy gravity, and as if Stella's health 
 were really the only thing that lay between the widow and 
 himself — the only chord that vibrated in unison. 
 
 " And I am to interfere ?" asked Dr. Quigley. 
 
 " Yes," both answered together. 
 
 " My dear people," he returned with energy ; " are you 
 living in Arcadia? The man who would not take care of his 
 wife with heart-disease is not likely to look after his daughter 
 without. The only chance is that Stella Branscombe should 
 understand her true position and her father's illimitable sel- 
 fishness — and then break her heart at the discovery. If ever 
 she comes to know what he is, and takes action on her know- 
 ledge, she will die under the self-reproach of a parricide. 
 When the conscience is included in upholding a sham, and 
 sacrificing the truth for a living lie has all the force and 
 meaning of virtue, you cannot do anything. Stella Brans- 
 combe is a martyr to filial love, and her father is a parental 
 sham ; but she must fight it out by herself." 
 
 " But it is pitiable to see her !" said Sandro warmly. 
 
 " Things might be worse if she were enlightened," said the 
 
 doctor. " I question if she would live through the discovery. 
 
 Take my advice, both of you ; — do not mix yourself up in 
 
 this matter. No outsider interfering, even with the best 
 
 res, in family matters, does good or escapes personal 
 
 damage. Why burn your fingers when there are no chestnuts 
 
 iek out for yourself or for others ? I will keep an eye on 
 
 the poor young lady, and put in my word when I see her 
 
 really in danger; but until then remonstrance would only 
 
 irritate Mr. Branscombe and make matters worse. Good 
 
 : take care of yourselves," he added significantly as he 
 
170 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 drove off; leaving a certain uneasy doubt in Augusta's mind 
 as to what was really meant by talcing care of themselves. 
 But she supposed it was only because of her desire to " talk 
 to" Stella Branscombe. It could not be anything else. 
 
 " I think Br. Quigley is right," she said with false equa- 
 nimity, as he drove away. "I do not mind speaking to 
 Stella, or to any one, if I think I can be of use ; and I am no 
 more afraid of Mr. Branscombe, for all his fine airs and 
 superiority, than I am of one of those sheep in the field. 
 But I do not think I can do any good. Stella has taken 
 her part ; and, as Dr. Quigley says, she must fight it out by 
 herself." 
 
 " I should have been glad if you had followed my sugges- 
 tion," said the artist with a sore manner. 
 
 She looked him full in the face. 
 
 " Are you too, one of the men who would rather be per- 
 sonally pleased by obedience than know that opposition had 
 been the more reasonable action?" she asked gravely. "I 
 had thought not. If you are one of those people I would 
 rather not be enlightened." 
 
 " You are the one perfect woman in the world !" he said 
 warmly. 
 
 She laughed and turned away, looking at her boy. 
 
 "No," she answered after a short pause; "I am only 
 reasonable." 
 
 Nevertheless she determined in her own mind that she 
 would go and see Stella Branscombe to-morrow ; only what 
 good she was to do when she had gone, was of all epiestions 
 the most unanswerable. 
 
 She held out her hand in sign of leave-taking. He took it 
 and kept it. 
 
 " I know you will be glad to hear that I have received my 
 order," he then said gazing into her face. " I am to have 
 Mr. Woodley's mansion, and I have finished my designs for 
 the Lingstone Cathedral. I think they come well enough to 
 bear competition ; and I am not afraid of the future." 
 
 " I am very glad," she answered, imprudently letting her 
 hand lie in his for congratulation. 
 
 It was a most unpardonable piece of folly in so reasonable 
 a woman ; but human nature is weak and foolish even at the 
 best, and has a trick of leaving the little postern gate open 
 after it has carefully shut close the great main entrance. For 
 not only did that soft submission to the more impulsive 
 
I V THE LOGIC OF APPEARANCES. 171 
 
 action of the artist rouse thoughts ami awaken hopes which 
 had better dormant, but it put the pretty widow into 
 
 a false pi sition with others as well, and gave a handle fo] 
 thoughtlessness, if not ill-nature, to turn the grindstone 
 against her. 
 
 To Grip and Pip. corning streaming along the road, the 
 sight of those two standing there, hand in hand, looking into 
 each other's eyes, was too sweet a nut to be left uncracked. 
 The dis< overy of "spoons" was a true godsend to them, and 
 they were sure to make the world a generous present of all 
 they lighted on in the way of erotic treasures. As destitute 
 of delicacy as of spite, they never thought they could do 
 harm by their oecumenical confidence. If they had they 
 would have shut those wide-open mouths of theirs, and kept 
 the Beeret religiously. But as they did not mind how much 
 they themselves were chaffed they supposed every one else 
 must be as thick-skinned and insensitive ; and thus, the sus- 
 picion of the Doves that anything was on hand, came to be a 
 kind of nightmare to hesitating, shy, undeclared, or as in this 
 case unwilling, lovers. Nevertheless, the thing had come; 
 and Gip and Pip, the most good-natured, inconsiderate, and 
 innocent mischief-makers in Highwood, had found the penni- 
 less widow and impecunious artist standing in the high-road 
 hand in hand, and looking — "Oh!" said Gip; "looking 
 spoons as big as tureens at each other !" 
 
 And let old Mrs. Morshead but once get hold of that idea, 
 and then where would be poor Augusta's peace of mind and 
 security of tenure ! The widow was equal to the occasion, 
 however, as she generally was ; and as, the twins came up 
 she repeated in a clear, ringing voice : 
 
 "I am indeed glad, Mr. Kemp, and congratulate you !" 
 
 "On what ?" shouted the Doves, full of wicked laught-r 
 and radiant detection. 
 
 "Ah, what !'' said Mrs. Latrobe, also laughing in the most 
 natural way in the world. " You must ask Mr. Kemp himself. 
 He has just done me the honour to make me his confidante 
 on a most important matter; but I must not pass it on. If 
 he likes to include you, well and good; but you see I am 
 bound to secrecy !" 
 
 '• What is it, Mr. Kemp r" asked Gip and Pip together. 
 " Axe you going to be married? Aiv you ? If you are, oh ! 
 do tell us who it is. Any one here r It must be some 
 one here! Who is it, Augusta? I am sure you know!'' 
 
1?2 "AfY LOVE!" 
 
 with more wickedness of laughter, more radiance of detec- 
 tion. 
 
 "Well, no, I can answer so much," said Augusta, her 
 gaiety of humour still matching theirs. " It is not to any 
 one here. But I must leave you to find it all out by your- 
 selves. Good-bye, girls. Good-bye, Mr. Kemp, and be quite 
 sure I will never tell !" 
 
 On which she went off still laughing, leaving Sandro Kemp 
 struck dumb with amazement. His man's slower brain had 
 not discerned the danger which had been palpable at the first 
 flash to her ; and, not understanding the peril, he did not 
 understand the way of escape. He was bewildered. All this 
 laughter and phantasmagoric mystery made him feel as if 
 suddenly surrounded by a crowd of mocking elves who took 
 his senses clean away and made the things which had hitherto 
 been clear and solid appear vague and visionary. What did 
 it all mean ? Why did they all laugh ? and at what were 
 they all hinting ? Married ? Confidence ? Secrets ? It was 
 a puzzle from first to last, and he could see nothing better 
 for it than to follow blindly the bewildering lead that had 
 been given him, and shake his head knowingly as he laughed 
 without sense or meaning, and answered in the air : 
 
 " Ah, what ? Wait till I tell you ! I will some day." 
 
 On which he dashed off on his way, as if escaping from 
 pursuers ; and Gip and Pip ran after Augusta and besieged 
 her with questions for a full half-hour by the church clock. 
 But they got nothing out of her save vague suggestions 
 which only served to make their mad guesses surer. Either 
 it was an engagement to some one not at Highwood, of which 
 the secret had been confided to Augusta, or — was it, could it 
 be, Augusta herself? For what else could they make of that 
 attitude, those looks on the broad highway, and the " spoons 
 as bi» as tureens" exchanged between the two ? 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 THE CKITIC OF PUKE REASON. 
 
 Our true masters are our servants. From the dark back- 
 ground of the kitchen they rule the house, dictate our actions 
 and set the lines of our public repute ; we, all the while, 
 thinking that we rule them while they govern us. And the 
 Rose Hill servants were no exception to the rule. Jones had 
 
THE CRITIC OF PURE REASON. 173 
 
 given it as his opinion that Miss Stella was kept far too close 
 by her pa' ; and the servants' hall had agreed with him that 
 it wuuld be good for her to see more company and be 
 brightened up a bit. Wherefore, in spite of the standing 
 order that M Mr. and Miss Branscombe were not at home" 
 when intrusive visitors chose to call, the day after this odd 
 misleading interview on the high-road, he let in Augusta 
 Latrobe, and took the chance of a wigging from his old 
 master, as he said, for the sake of doing a good turn by bis 
 youni: mistress. 
 
 ''Mrs. Latrobe? I cannot see her! Tell her I am in- 
 disposed — engaged — out — anything you like ; but I cannot 
 see her !" said Mr. Branscombe peevishly. " How often must 
 I repeat it, Jones, I am not at home to any one excepting on 
 business, or where I myself give leave ?" 
 
 " Mrs. Latrobe seemed very earnest, sir, to see Miss Brans- 
 combe," said the man with respectful pertinacity. " She 
 would not take a refusal." 
 
 " Then she should have been made," said Mr. Branscombe 
 crossly ; but Stella, with something of her mother's weary 
 look added to her own more excited nervousness, said 
 quickly : 
 
 '"Poor Augusta! I should like to see her, dear papa, if 
 you do not mind. I have not seen her for such a long time 
 now ; and she was such a favourite with poor mamma!" 
 
 " Your dear mother made a great many undesirable 
 favourites," said Mr. Branscombe significantly. " However, 
 if you wish it, I will spare you for a little while ; and — stay, 
 I myself will go with you," he added with an indescribable 
 air of condescension. "As you say, Mrs. Latrobe was a 
 favourite with your poor mother, and I shall pay respect to 
 her memory by conquering my own dislike and receiving her 
 friend with courtesy and distinction. Jones, tell Mrs. Latrobe 
 that Miss Branscombe and I will join her immediately." 
 
 What a wicked girl she was growing ! thought Stella to 
 l£ Why did she feel that strange sense of check and 
 dullness when her dear father said that he also would see 
 Mr.-. Latrobe? Why should she not be as glad now as she 
 would have been in former days? Poor papa! He had 
 doomed himself as well as her to this close, shut-up, solitary 
 and eminently mournful life. It was as good, then, for him 
 as for her, to have a break ; and she was abominably wicked 
 to wish that he had kept away. Nevertheless she did, with 
 
174 -MY LOVE!" 
 
 a distinct if momentary consciousness that overwhelmed her 
 first with disappointment and then with a feeling of sin and 
 shame. She went up to her father and took his arm with a 
 gesture that looked like spontaneity of love ; in fact, it was 
 unspoken contrition. 
 
 " Dear papa !" she said fondly. 
 
 " There, there, that will do, Stella !" he answered im- 
 patiently. She disturbed his thoughts and broke through the 
 rhythm of his movements ; and Mr. Branscombe liked to 
 have his love, like everything else, served up at the very 
 right moment and in just the manner and amount congenial 
 to him at the time. " You must not allow your affection, my 
 dear, to become exigeante and ennuyante!" he said ; " or to 
 tread on the limits of graver subjects." 
 
 To which she answered humbly : " No, papa ;" but she felt 
 wounded now as well as wicked and repentant. 
 
 " It will gratify her if I give her an early copy of this," 
 then said Mr. Branscombe. taking one from a pile of quarto- 
 sized black-bordered and hot-pressed cards which had come 
 in from the printers' this morning. 
 
 It was his Threnody, printed in silver lettering, to be 
 distributed among his friends. Photographs of himself and 
 his good Matilda headed the double columns into which the 
 poem was divided ; and in the middle, above the title, was a 
 confused jumble of mortuary symbols printed in flat deep black. 
 The contrast of black and white gave the card a curiously 
 piebald appearance ; but Mr. Branscombe thought the mixture 
 effective, and the sentiment which united saintly beatitude 
 with earthly mourning one of supreme poetic excellence. 
 
 This was the pleasure, the dissipation and the vanity of 
 his later years. His old place as Beauty-man and Finery 
 Fred — his old character of lady-killer — had dropped from 
 him by the force of circumstances, but not his ambition to be 
 Somebody in his society. He had elected to be that Some- 
 body in the field of aesthetics where no one in Highwood 
 could touch him — not even, in his own estimation, Sandro 
 Kemp, the professional artist. And the excpiisite delight to 
 him of printing in a luxurious form his poetry and his music, 
 and then distributing copies to all in the place, was almost 
 as great as had been formerly that of picking up another and 
 yet another little heart found fluttering at his feet, and 
 adding one more to the secret list — he had it yet — of 
 confessed victims to his irresistible charms. 
 
THE CRITIC OF PURE REA 175 
 
 " She will be flattered and gratified/' lie repeated, carefully 
 choosing a copy where his own photograph pleased kirn; and 
 Stella answered in all good faith : " Yes." And yet — why 
 did she sigh as she spoke? 
 
 As the two came into the drawing-room together, Augusta 
 felt exactly the .same sense of disappointment and ckill tkat 
 Stella had felt before ker; witkout adding to it tke poor 
 girl's skanie for sin. 
 
 "What a dreadful creature ke is!" ske thought, as tke 
 scent- - ' tried, melanckoly and elegant widower came 
 
 slowly forward, evidencing tke grace of refined gentlekood 
 and tke force of grief in equal proportions. 
 
 " What an affected old korror !" ske thought again, smiling 
 with tke forced hypocrisy of society as ske returned tke greet- 
 ing wkick ke made witk stately courtesy. 
 
 He was not wkat ke would have called " fond of" Augusta 
 Latrobe. Her critical judgment and unentkusiastic reason- 
 ableness annoyed him; but even when I. was tot fond of 
 people ke was never less tkan elegant. He liked to feel sure 
 tkat wken they went away, tkougk they migkt say ke kad 
 been distant, tkey must confess ke kad been superior. 
 
 " Here is a little tiling I tkrew off tke otker day," ke said, 
 handing ker tke card. " I kave brought you the first copy, 
 Mrs. Latrobe, knowing tke reverent affection that you kad for 
 my poor wife and ker kindly interest in you. Tke sacredness 
 of tke subject and tke tenderness of tke feeling witk wkick it 
 lias been composed will condone its shortcomings," he added 
 with mock humility; shortcomings in his work being like tke 
 squaring of tke circle or tke discovery of perpetual motion. 
 
 Augusta received tke card with tranquil politeness, but 
 
 witkout warmth or enthusiasm. Ske did not, as he hoped 
 
 sh ■ would, run over tke poetry witk tkat greedy kind of kaste 
 
 wkick predestiues admiration, nor did ske even look at kis 
 
 graph. Ske turned to tkat of Mrs. Branseombe, and 
 
 stole between ker eyelids as ske looked. 
 
 " Tkank you, Mr. Branseombe," ske said gently. " How 
 '.'.'■■:■■ her! Sweet darling! kow like it is!" 
 
 And tins was ker sole word of commendation to tke poet. 
 
 When h" had shown the proofs to Hu-tensia she had wept 
 over his noble lines; and especially had that touching couplet 
 which led off the rest — 
 
 : it, calling softly from the tomb 
 Where death lms laid thee iu Cimmerian gloom — 
 
176 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 seemed to lier the soul of all that was majestic, eloquent and 
 tender. But Mrs. Latrobe, scarcely glancing at the silvered 
 page, said nothiDg more than : " Thank you," and concen- 
 trated her attention on her dead friend's photograph which 
 evidently interested her infinitely more than did his living 
 lines. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe could not choose but mark the difference- 
 between these first two recipients of his poem. How much 
 the balance of good taste, good feeling, appreciation and 
 poetic insight went to the side of his pretty little Puritan 
 devotee ! — and how strongly confirmed was his own impression 
 that his c^ood Matilda had had the habit of making very 
 undesirable favourites indeed ! 
 
 But it was not in flesh and blood — at least not in Mr. Brans- 
 combe's flesh and blood — to remain content with such short 
 measure. For what reward did he work, live laborious days 
 and sleepless nights, he said, but for the praise of his fellow- 
 men ? He was not ashamed to confess his ambition. That 
 last infirmity of noble minds was no spot on the face of his 
 spiritual sun. For if he had the one he surely had the other. 
 His ambition pre-supposed his nobility, and he was quite 
 content to confess the one if credited with the other. He was 
 intensely disgusted with Mrs. Latrobe. Her want of appre- 
 ciation was a mark of intellectual crassitude, which by rights 
 should have debarred her for the future from the privilege 
 of his society. He would have refused to continue an ac- 
 quaintance with one who had eaten pease with his knife; 
 and surely this was even worse taste and the mark of a still 
 lower condition ! Nevertheless, he could not be at ease until 
 he had forced from her politeness that acknowledgment of his 
 genius which she would not give by the generosity of her 
 judgment. Going over to her as she sat on the ottoman, 
 holding the card in her hand and still lovingly examining the 
 sweet face of her dead friend, he sat down in the division next 
 to hers. Leaning over her shoulder with a confidential as 
 well as patronizing air, he said : 
 
 "Allow me to read to you my little tribute to her dear 
 memory, Mrs. Latrobe. An author • knows his work better 
 than any one else ; and the first rendering of a poem sets the 
 measure and gives the sense in perpetuity. The poet alone 
 can render his lines in that perfection which ensures complete 
 understanding. Allow me." 
 
 He took the card from her hand and placed himself in his 
 
THE CRITIC OF PURE REASON. 177 
 
 lie attitude — his hands well displayed, his head well up, 
 
 his small feet, which the large bow in his shoes made still 
 more delicate, in a graceful position, the fingers of his left 
 hand laid lightly on his chest. And ■when he had arranged 
 his person according to rule, he opened the wearisome fusil- 
 lade of his recitation, and mouthed through his Threnody 
 in the manner of a fifth-rate actor playing Hamlet in a 
 barn. 
 
 When he had finished, he sighed deeply and handed back 
 the card. Augusta took it with a faint inclination of her 
 head and a wholly unintelligible murmur that might mean 
 anything or nothing. 
 
 '• How do you think they go ?" asked Mr. Branscombe after 
 a moment's pause. " Well r" 
 
 " Very smoothly," answered Augusta. 
 
 She could say so much in truth ; for, in reading, all the 
 redundant feet were cleverly jumped over and all the gaps 
 were as cleverly filled in by newly-created syllables, so that 
 the measure flowed with tolerable ease and the actual dislo- 
 cations were not noticeable. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe smiled. 
 
 ''I am glad you like it," he said. " I own I do also. I 
 consider it the most satisfactory thing I have ever done ; 
 and an author is the best judge of his own work. I think 
 these lines are fine," he continued, pointing out a passage ; 
 " and these again," indicating another. " This image is bold, 
 is it not?" he next asked, repeating a phrase which contained 
 two false quantities and nineteen words of absolute nonsense ; 
 " and this metaphor reads well?" he said again, half chanting 
 a certain couplet, then pausing for her reply. 
 
 But now, when Augusta came full front with a fact which 
 she had either to praise or to blame, she could not do such 
 violence to her critical judgment as to endorse it. Had 
 Mr. Branscombe been content with generalities she would 
 have followed his lead and would have slid lightly over the 
 d mgerons places ; but when he asked her direct approbation 
 passage which said how the laughing hour that struck 
 at this sweet spirit's birth had now run down and lost 
 in the great sea of eternity, she took her stand and entered 
 Lemurrer. 
 
 "I think it wants a little clearness," she answered. 
 
 " So ? and where ? The Hours which dance around Aurora's 
 car — the home domestic clock — the sands of time — the <■ 
 
178 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 of life — these are the ideas contained in the image," he 
 returned. 
 
 " Yes, but the classic Hour did not strike, and a clock does 
 not run down into the sea," she said quite gravely. 
 
 " There would be no poetry at all, my dear Mrs. Latrobe, 
 if we poets Avere confined by the dull cords of prosaic fact," 
 he said, amiably condescending to her ignorance and what he 
 mentally called her earth- worminess. "All true poetry encloses 
 as much as it embodies. You must read between the lines 
 and find for yourself the statue within the marble. The value 
 of the image is its comprehensiveness, its subtlety of sugges- 
 tiveness, its combination of ideas, the facetted quality of 
 its reflectivity. Guido's Aurora and the grave diction of 
 modern ethics — where could you meet with a more prolific 
 combination, a more precious embalmment of diversified 
 thought r" 
 
 " I dare say not," said Augusta the earthworm ; " still I 
 think it wants a little clearing and bringing out." 
 
 " Now that I have explained it ?" he asked. 
 
 " I see your meaning of course," she answered reluctantly. 
 
 Even this admission tried her. 
 
 "And, seeing, you justify?" 
 
 She laughed. " I am so stupid in things of this kind !" 
 she said. " My opinion is worthless." 
 
 " No, pardon me, lady, not in the least so," he returned. 
 " Moliere's servant-maid stands as a sign to all of us, creative 
 geniuses. What we write Ave naturally wish to be understood 
 by the Avorld at large, else Ave labour in vain. HereAvith I 
 except, of course, that audience, fit though feAV, Avhich is the 
 consecrated interpreter of our esoteric meaning. But the 
 verdict of that intelligence which represents the majority is 
 useful to us as a guide and gauge. I am therefore glad to hear 
 your objections. They represent to us the non-conducting 
 power of the larger half of the brain-world, and by them I 
 can feel the pulse of the general intellect more clearly." 
 
 " I am your foolometerr" She laughed again, her bright 
 eyes twinkling. 
 
 He bent his handsome head with elaborate grace. 
 
 " I did not say so," he returned gravely. 
 
 During all this time Stella had not spoken. She was 
 sitting on the other side of Augusta Latrobe, looking alter- 
 nately at her father and his critic, but taking no part in the 
 discussion. She greatly Avondered at Augusta's boldness, 
 
THE CRITIC OF PURE REASON. 
 
 and ardently wished that she would close her mouth. or open 
 it only to praise and speak poor dear papa fair. And she 
 ardently wished too, that she could get a word alone with her 
 mother's favourite, her own dear friend albeit an earth-worm 
 on the lower levels ; though what she had to say in confidence 
 that her father might not hear, she would have been hard put 
 to it to tell. Floating thoughts of her mother, of Cyril, of 
 breathing, of some change of subject, came and went 
 like shadows through her mind; but if it was not to be, it 
 was not, she said to herself with a sigh. Yet how much she 
 should have enjoyed a long, sweet, quiet talk on everything, 
 or on nothing, with the sense of mental freedom and personal 
 sympathy in her kind companion! 
 
 Taking advantage of this slight change of front from his 
 work to herself, Augusta turned rather abruptly to Stella. 
 Like even - one else she saw how changed the poor girl was. 
 No longer the serenely bright, untroubled Star of olden days, 
 she was now careworn and anxious, with the watchful eyes of 
 a person either too heavily taxed or ever in fear ; and her 
 face had a fevered look that made her beauty melancholy to 
 contemplate because so dangerously .brightened by inward 
 excitement. 
 
 '•Are you well, dear Stellar" asked the widow abruptly, 
 laying her hand on hers and feeling the fever through her 
 gloves. 
 
 <; I 'i Oh, yes, quite !" said Stella with that hysterical little 
 laugh which so pitifully belies itself. 
 
 "You do not look so; and how hot your hand is!" said 
 Augusta. " What have you been doing all the day ':"' 
 
 " I have been with papa in the studio," answered the girl. 
 
 "Not out, this lovely day ':'' 
 
 Stella glanced at her father. 
 
 •■ No, not yet," she answered. 
 
 •• What have you been doing, dearie, that has kept you so 
 busy':'' asked Augusta, still inquisitorial. 
 
 "I have been copying music," said Stella. 
 
 She did not add, as she might : "And I have been called 
 off this, the ostensible work of the day, at least once in every 
 ten mmutea, to examine the new touches on this square inch 
 of painting, to hear the sonorous consonance of these two 
 jingling rhymes, to give my criticism which means praise 
 here, to add my opinion which means concurrence there. I 
 not been left even to my dull mechanical occupation in 
 
180 '■ MY LOVE!" 
 
 peace ; but I have been mentally tormented as much as 
 absorbed — absorbed as so much food, so much electricity is 
 absorbed by something which can do no good, however much 
 it may be bolstered up, and which simply beggars and ex. 
 hausts that by which it is supplied." 
 
 This was the real reason why " work" for Mr. Branscombe 
 was so profoundly destructive to his associate. It was this 
 perpetual drain, this incessant going out, coupled with unrest, 
 which had killed that good Matilda and which was now wast- 
 ing and fevering Stella. 
 
 " But copying music from morning till night will kill you, 
 child !" said the widow with friendly haste. " You ought to 
 change your occupation more than that. Have you read your 
 week's books yet ?" 
 
 This meant the books of the Beading Society to which all 
 Highwood belonged. 
 " No," said Stella. 
 
 " You naughty girl ! and they were so interesting ! I hope 
 that you have copied that pretty crewel pattern in the Lady's 
 Newspaper? we are all doing it," said the widow. 
 " No ; I have not had time," answered Stella. 
 " Stella ! you idle child ! What have you been doing ?" 
 " Working for papa," said Stella. 
 
 The widow gave a little impatient movement with her 
 pretty shoulders, 
 
 ".Well, but working for papa cannot mean everything and 
 all day long," she said, laughing to hide her vexation. " I 
 see what it is, I shall have to come and look after you ! I 
 cannot ' have you grow idle. And one thing certainly that 
 you ought to do is to go and take a nice long walk. It is a 
 sin to stay in the house such a day as this. Come with Tony 
 and me. The little scamp jumped into a puddle and made 
 himself too disreputable for your drawing-room, so I left him 
 at the Lodge. But come with us, like a dear. It will do you 
 good." 
 
 " I do not know that papa can spare me," said Stella in a 
 hesitating way, the colour coming into her face. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe was still sitting in his bardic attitude, 
 chasing a poetic image l'ound about the corners of the ceiling, 
 and as if absorbed in thought. He started at this last men- 
 tion of his name, and brought his eyes down from the ceiling 
 to his daughter. 
 
 " Yes, my dear ? You spoke ? Pardon me, I did not hear 
 
THE CRFTIC OF PURE REASON. 131 
 
 what you said ;" be exclaimed as if newly awakened and a 
 little confused, but always courteous and graceful. 
 
 " I want Stella to go out for a walk — to come witb me and 
 Tony," Augusta answered instead of tbe girl. " Sbe is look- 
 ing so pale, and as if sbe wanted a little cbange and fresh air. 
 Tou can spare her, cannot you, Mr. Branscombe ? Sbe is afraid 
 tbat you cannot, poor dear !" 
 
 " I can spare ber, of course ! My desire could not pos- 
 sibly stand in tbe way of hers," said Mr. Branscombe witb 
 fine paternal cbivalrousness of feeling. " It is not a question 
 of myself, but of ber own feelings. In her deep mourning 
 would she care to be seen outside the sacred precincts of home?" 
 
 " If you think it unbecoming, papa, of course not," said 
 Stella. 
 
 "Tour own heart must decide that question, my love," he 
 answered. " Observance is valueless when not spontaneously 
 offered. Enforced tribute is dross." 
 
 "But, Mr. Branscombe, a little walk can do no harm!'" 
 said Augusta, rather too warmly for prudence. " If you do 
 not like Stella to be seen on the roads we will go by the 
 fields where we shall not meet a creature. She really ought 
 to go out ! Even a drive in a close carriage would be better 
 than nothing; but a good brisk walk would be the best 
 of all." 
 
 " If you have tbe heart to go witb Mrs. Latrobe and take a 
 good, brisk, happy walk, go by all means, my love," said her 
 father, answering Augusta through Stella. " Your dear 
 mother's sainted spirit looking down on you will forgive the 
 perhaps natural exuberance of youth — its pexdiaps natural 
 demand for recreation, even at tbe most solemn seasons." 
 
 "But, Mr. Branscombe," again remonstrated Augusta; 
 " a little walk in the fields — that is not like pleasure taken in 
 the world and society." 
 
 " I say so ! Stella can go if she will. I give her the IV 
 exercise of ber own judgment," repeated Mr. Branscombe. 
 "Aa I say, I want no tribute rendered to tbe memory of my 
 lost dear one tbat does not come from the pure well of love 
 undented. Go, my Stella — forget your grief, your mourning, 
 your mother and me. in a brisk and happy walk with Mrs. 
 Latrobe. I do not wish to deprive vou of vour pleasure, my 
 love." 
 
 " No, dear papa, I will not go," said Stella. " Perhaps, as 
 you say, it would be unbecoming." 
 
182 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " And the consequence of all this exaggeration will be that 
 you will get ill, Stella darling, and then you will have made 
 had worse," said Augusta hastily. " All this kind of thing is 
 really not reasonable !" 
 
 " ' The Critic of Pure Reason,' " said Mr. Branscomhe, with 
 a polite sneer. " Neither poetry of idea nor pathos of feeling 
 — only the crystalline clearness of cold, icy reason !" 
 
 " Just so," said Mrs. Latrobe with an exasperating smile. 
 "You could not have paid me a higher compliment, Mr. 
 Branscombe. So let reason be your guide, dearest Stella, 
 and come out with me for a breath of fresh air." 
 
 " No," said Stella, whose wish had now died clown ; " I see 
 that papa is right. I will not go to-day, thank you — some 
 day, but not just yet." 
 
 " My good child ! guided with the finest silken thread ! all 
 heart and conscience !" cried Mr. Branscombe fondly. 
 
 And Stella, still under the spell of her early training and 
 the glamour of her filial superstition, was satisfied and 
 soothed ; better pleased to have won her father's approbation 
 than to have had that little break in the melancholy mono- 
 tony of her life. And yet — how beautiful it was out of 
 doors ! — and how delicious a swift walk in the fields with that 
 pleasant-tempered Augusta Latrobe would have been ! 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THIN ICE. 
 
 Suddenly the fount ran dry. The seed-time was over and 
 that of the harvest had set in. That harvest was the praise 
 of the public, such as it was at Highwood, when the poems 
 were printed ready for distribution — the music composed 
 ready for recitation — the pictures framed and varnished, and 
 cards of invitation sent out in teivesty of the artist's " private 
 view." Then Mr. Branscombe was in the seventh heaven of 
 delight. That last infirmity of his nobleness was fulfilled 
 and he was the veritable Apollo of his own Parnassus. For 
 the present therefore, what it pleased him to call his work 
 was done, and it was time that fruit should follow upon 
 labour. 
 
 But because he had made their yet young mourning a 
 reason why Stella had been kept so close to work in copying 
 
THIN ICE. 183 
 
 and recopying liis productions that she had not been allowed 
 even a walk in the lonely Lines or quiet fields, it was necessary 
 for him to find a reason now why he should break so suddenly 
 through the seclusion which had been due to his vanity and 
 ascribed to his sorrow. And he found it in his daughter's 
 pallor and -Mrs. Latrobe's suggestion. 
 
 •• You are looking a little pale, my child," he said the day 
 alter Augusta's visit, speaking as if this were his own dis- 
 covery, and speaking with his best air of fatherly tenderness. 
 *' I must not have you fail, my love ! We must break through 
 ur sa 1 seclusion and go out into the world a little more than 
 we have done of late. It will be a trial to me, but it is my 
 duty to you." 
 
 "I should be sorry if you did anything painful to yourself 
 for my sake, dearest papa," said Stella gently. 
 
 He sighed. 
 
 " You are all that is left to me ; I must take care of you," 
 he said. " I must be father and mother both to my House- 
 hold Star !" 
 
 "Dear papa! how good you are!" said Stella, looking at 
 him with grateful eyes. 
 
 " Yes ; 1 am a good father to you and I was a good hus- 
 band to your dear mother. The artist has not killed the 
 man in me!" he answered, honestly believing what he said ; 
 for his vanity was so great, his sellishness so blindly sincere, 
 that he did faithfully hold himself to be the sublime and all 
 but perfect creature for which he posed. And when he had 
 sacrificed his good Matilda, and was now sacrificing his 
 daughter, to this vanity, this selfishness, he was to his own 
 mind doing only what was right and holy. Taking the help 
 of the lower creature in the production of such works as his 
 made their glory as well as his own. They aided where he 
 created, and they were honoured by their association with his 
 genius. So much must be said for him. False as he was all 
 through — mere mask, wind-bag, simulacrum as he was — he 
 was unconsciously false. He lived in a world of his own 
 where he was what he assumed to be. It would have taken 
 a miracle to have convinced him that he was less than a 
 
 is and lower than a hero. This world scarcely 
 enough credit to the transforming power of vanity — to the 
 cerity of a man's own self-deception ; but Mr. Bransc imbe was 
 really and truly in a self-evolved golden cloud through which 
 •thine as it was and himself the most transformed 
 
184 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 of all. Had he been self-condemned through consciousness 
 he could not have imposed even on Stella as he did. It was 
 the very sincerity of his vanity which gave it vitality and im- 
 pressiveness and which hid his own humbug from others as 
 well as from himself. 
 
 " And as you are so pale and wan, my love," he went on to 
 say affectionately ; " I Avill take you for an airing and carry 
 you among your friends. So, go and make yourself ready. 
 I have ordered the carriage for three e'clock. We will make 
 a little round, and I will take our friends these cards. They 
 will appreciate the attention." 
 
 " Very well, papa," said Stella, without a sign or smile of 
 pleasure. 
 
 She dare not say so, but how much better she would have 
 liked a walk across the fields, and those cards not distributed 
 nor those visits paid ! She scarcely knew herself in those 
 latter days, nor understood why she shrank with such sensi- 
 tive shame from the artistic publicity which was her father's 
 glory and until now had been her own proud delight. What 
 made her dread where formerly she had rejoiced? — dislike 
 what she had loved ? She could not shake off the feeling of 
 desecration to her mother's memory in all these poeins and 
 pictures, these nocturnes and the like, which were sent about 
 among the neighbours like bellman's verses. Yet how could 
 papa's beautiful work desecrate that dear memory? And 
 would papa do anything whatever that was not inspired by 
 the most sublime and delicate feeling ? — papa, who paid such 
 enthusiastic respect to that beloved memory as even to object 
 to her having fresh air and exercise ? It was impossible ; 
 and Stella knew that it was impossible. 
 
 Nevertheless, she wished that he had not taken those 
 silver-printed cards to distribute ; and that they had simply 
 gone only for a walk together. 
 
 As it was impossible for her to say all this, and as she had 
 not even thought it out clearly to herself, she did as she was 
 bidden, and put on her hat and cape. Then they got into 
 the little brougham where Mr. Branscombe had placed a pile 
 of cards already enclosed in envelopes and directed. Before 
 they set off he drew up both windows save for the space of 
 an inch on his own side. Sitting so much in his close hot 
 studio had spoiled his taste for fresh air, and he dreaded 
 cold almost as much as if he had been a dormouse. Sher- 
 rardine was the first place to which they went. It was the 
 
WIN ICE. 185 
 
 farthest off, and Mr. Branscombe took it first, meaning to 
 work round by Mrs. Morshead — from whom the interdict 
 had been | taken since poor Mrs. Branscombe's death 
 
 — and then on to Derwent Lodge. The first two stood in 
 the social column of disagreeable necessity ; the last in that 
 of unmixed pleasure. The gentle worship of pretty Hortensia 
 Lyon was Finery Fred's present portion of delight in life. 
 Twenty years ago it would have been receiving back in 
 earnest the love made in jest ; now he found it in mock genius 
 and sincere praise, which did quite as well and was slightly 
 less dangerous. 
 
 All the Pennefathers were at home in the garden ; so were 
 all the dogs ; so were the two Cowley boys. The noise and 
 racket going on when the close-shut black-painted brougham, 
 with its mourning liveries and its coal-black horse, drove up 
 was something deafening. Every one was shouting at the 
 top of his or her voice ; and all were shouting at once. Some 
 of the dogs were barking in concert ; others were bounding 
 about the lawn and crashing through the bushes in sympathy 
 and participation. Here was the click of a croquet-ball 
 against the mallet ; there the ping of a rifle fired at a mark. 
 It was Babel and Bedlam ; and Mr. Branscombe covered his 
 ears with his gloved hand as he slightly groaned and 
 shuddered. 
 
 " Barbarians and savages !" he muttered, then composed his 
 handsome face to a melancholy .smile as one who would not 
 sadden youthful mirth by the intrusion of his own sorrow, 
 ho could not quite forget the painful fact that his heart 
 was bleeding and that the merriment of ordinary men was 
 not for him. 
 
 And with this melancholy smile, lingering like the touch 
 of pale sunlight on his face, he went slowly towards that 
 noisy, laughing, uproarious group gathered on the lawn. 
 
 "Glad to see you, Mr. Jhanscombe," cried Mr. Penne- 
 father, coming forward in his frank, hearty way. "Ah, 
 Stella! — it is good to see yuu again." 
 
 "Dear Stella, this is nice!" said Mrs. Pennefather, k iss- 
 ing her. 
 
 They were people who called all the young and even 
 middle-aged of their acquaintance by their Christian names. 
 Well for dignity if they did not hit on ;i diminutive or 
 some queer nickname which might or might nut be pleasant 
 to the wearer ! 
 
186 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Mrs. Penncfather, almost as young-looking as her daughters' 
 
 "was one of the standing wonders of maternity in the county. 
 Forty years of age and the mother of seven children, she had 
 the step and figure of a girl and a face to correspond. She 
 wore neither stays nor cap, nor any sign of matronhood 
 whatsoever save the wedding-ring which marked her state. 
 Her tennis-costume was as short and youthful as Gip's and 
 Pip's ; her feet were as small and dainty ; and she herself 
 was as light and lissom. It was not from her however, 
 that the children had inherited their beauty and strongly- 
 marked family likeness ; hut from the father. She herself 
 was fair; and. only little Nora, the youngest, carried her 
 impress. The rest were all " father's children," as has been 
 said ; inheriting from Mr. Pennefather their dark eyes and 
 curly, jet black hair, their vivid colour and bright, brisk, 
 noisy ways ; while from both parents, in equal proportions, 
 came the good digestion, good temper, cleanly living and 
 kindness of heart which made youth perennial in the Penne- 
 father household. They were people who would never grow 
 old in one sense, because they would never grow indolent, 
 self-indulgent, sour-tempered nor envious. 
 
 The girls, Grip and Pip, dashed forward too ; kissing Stella 
 as soon as their mother had done with her, and greeting her 
 as if she had been their dearest friend. They had this hos- 
 pitable way to callers ; seeming to wish to make their guests 
 free of all that Sherrardine contained, themselves included. 
 
 "How are you, dear Stella?" they shouted in their boat- 
 swains' voices. " So glad to see you ! So jolly of you to 
 
 come 
 
 " We thought you were never coming out of your shell 
 again, you jolly little snail!" continued Gip, while Pip stood 
 by and emphasized her sister's words, by running bursts of 
 laughter. " It is ages — heaps of ages since Ave saw you ! 
 And how white you are ! What have you been doing with 
 yourself? You look as if you wanted bucketfuls of water 
 and oceans of fresh air!" 
 
 " Do I ?" said Stella, rubbing her cheeks with a quivering 
 little smile that was only the other side of tears. 
 
 " Do you ? why of course you do ! Mater, did you ever 
 see such a poor limp rag, such a ghost as Stella Branscombe 
 looks ?" shouted Gip ; while Jemmy, who was suspected of 
 being hard hit in this direction, took quite a sentimental 
 expression on his bronzed face as he said; 
 
THIS ICE. 1S7 
 
 " Yes, Miss Stella, you look as if you had been shut up in 
 the dark for a twelvemonth. You ought to get out more, I 
 am sore. A ^ood loug jolly cruise -would do vou no end of 
 I !" 
 
 '• Well, now we've u"t you here, we won't let you go in a 
 hurry," said Gip and Pip together. " So come and sit down 
 under the verandah and we'll have a jolly little talk together. 
 Have y< >u heard the news ? Mr. Branscombe, have you 
 heard the news':" shouted Pip, raising her voice. 
 
 "No," returned Mr. Branscombe stiffly. 
 
 These Miss Peunefathers were really extremely rude and 
 objectionable young women, without manners, reverence, re- 
 [ng! Though glad to show them the last fine 
 product of his genius and not too dainty to garner the coarse 
 harvest of their praise, still, he was out of place and ill at 
 ease in this succursale of Bedlam, and he wished his visit 
 well over. 
 
 •■ No ! You have not heard that Sandro Kemp is going to 
 be married ? Isn't' that fun ?" shouted Gip. 
 
 '•Is it r" replied Mr. Branscombe with cold disdain. "I 
 confess I am unable to see either the interest or the fun of 
 the announcement." 
 
 "Oh, I say!" cried Gip and Pip. "It is awful fun, 
 Mr. Branscombe. Quite too good a joke." 
 
 As ill-luck would have it, at that moment Colonel Money- 
 penny appeared on the lawn. 
 
 •• Isn't it fun, Colonel Moneypenny r" cried the twins in a 
 breath. 
 
 ■ What?*' he asked. 
 
 "Old Sandro Kemp's marriage," they answered. 
 
 The Colonel's keen, irritable face flushed from brow to 
 chin. 
 
 •• Fun that he has found any one simple enough to take 
 him r" he answered with contempt. '' I hardly think it will 
 pi'ove fun for the' woman, whoever she mav be. Who is 
 8 he?" 
 
 He spoke in an odd voice and with a strained manner, 
 p evishly kicking on.' of the bulls which lay at }i\- . 
 
 "Well, we did think it was your old flame, Augusta 
 
 )*' said Gip — dense, pachydermatous, insensitive Gip, 
 
 wh<» would not have harmed a fly had she known what she 
 
 boul and who was now doing a friend whom she liked 
 
 as much damage as it was possible for inconstderateness and 
 
1SS "MY LOVE !» 
 
 chattel to do. " But she swears it isn't, so we don't know 
 what to think. We caught them on the road however, 
 playing at spoons if ever any one did. But Augusta said no, 
 it wasn't spoons at all, and that old Kemp had only been 
 telling her a secret ; and Augusta don't tell lies. Still, it all 
 looked queer ; and who else can it be ? It can't be any one 
 else, and the old fellow doesn't often go away. Colonel, who 
 can it be?" 
 
 " How the deuce should I know ? Do you think I am in 
 the confidence of a fellow like that artist Kemp, or care a 
 button whom he marries?" cried Colonel Moneypenny 
 savagely. As Gip said afterwards : " The old bear snapped 
 her nose off; and all for what, she should like to know?" 
 ■" Mr. Kemp's affairs do not interest me," he added stiffly, 
 recovering his dignity if not his temper. 
 
 " Nor me," said Mr. Branscombe, also stiffly. 
 "Oh, they do us !" shouted the Pennefathers — about five 
 or six of them in a body. " Old Kemp is a jolly old boy when 
 he is in good form ; but he was as sour as vinegar and cross 
 as two sticks at our picnic. We thought at the time it was 
 because you had taken off Augusta ; but now we think it 
 could not have been that. Perhaps his lady-love had not 
 written to him, or perhaps after all it is Augusta !" said Gip — 
 this last in a meditative voice. 
 
 " Oh, Stella !" said Pip, taking up the lost thread, " I wish 
 you could have been at our picnic. It was such awful fun — 
 it was just awfully jolly all through ! George and I changed 
 hats and brooche's, and even the Cowley boys did not find us 
 out. It was such fun. And people came to me for Gip, 
 and went to Gip for me, and made no end of mulls and 
 mistakes." 
 
 And here they all laughed in chorus at the exquisite 
 humour of the remembrance. 
 
 When the last echoes of their mirth had died away, Gip, 
 who had a talent for blunders of this kind, said so that 
 Mr. Branscombe could hear : 
 
 " Stella, they say that you are not going to be married just 
 yet ? Is it true ? Poor Cyril ! What a sell for him ! I 
 say, what a shame !" 
 
 Stella looked with a scared face to her elegant father who 
 had turned his to this unintentional mischief-maker — the 
 very majesty of indignation impressed on every feature. 
 " We have our private reasons, Miss Pennefather," he said 
 
777/iV ICEi 1S9 
 
 bitterly; " reasons which perhaps you will he good enough 
 to believe if you do not understand." 
 
 " Oh, reasons are rubbish !" said that impudent little 
 minx, tossing her curly head. " It is a horrid sell and a 
 shame for poor old Cyril all the same ; and I was in hopes it 
 was not true. But now you say it is, I am ten times more 
 sorry. What with Sandro Kemp marrying, and not Au- 
 gusta, after all his spooning her so long, and poor old Cyril 
 Ponsonby not marrying at all, people are very queer!" 
 
 " You are skating on thin ice, Grip," said Jemmy in what 
 he thought was a low and diplomatic voice. It was heard all 
 over the lawn. • 
 
 "Thin ice? no!" said Gip in return, and in perfect good 
 faith. " Why thin ice, Jem ?" 
 
 " I tell you you are," replied her brother ; and Valentine 
 Cowley, who had been watching the whole scene and taking 
 it all in, said quietly to back up Jem : 
 
 " Shut up, Gip, while you can." 
 
 Stella saw by her father's face that he too, like Valentine, 
 had been watching and taking it in. She turned pale and 
 looked still more frightened than before. 
 
 " Oh, I see," said Gip, in answer to that involuntary tell- 
 tale face. " Poor Stella ! what a shame !" 
 
 " No," said Stella heroically ; " papa knows best." 
 
 " Well, I don't know about that," said Gip quite seriously. 
 " I think if the Governor or Mater put their fingers in my 
 pie I should yell out and tell them to mind their own busi- 
 ness. But they wouldn't ; they have too much sense. And 
 if they or any one did I don't think I would take it as quietly 
 as you do." 
 
 '• Shut up, Gip," again said Jemmy who was the most 
 enlightened of the group. The discipline of a man-of-war 
 had done something for him, and his moony tenderness for 
 Stella did something more. " Don't you see that you are 
 making a mull of things and fouling the rope? I tell you 
 you are skating on thin ice." 
 
 " Am I really ? Well I'm sure I don't want to," said Gip 
 in Pennefather syntax ; and with that she dashed off into a 
 tirade against Mrs. Morshead and her horrid temper,, and 
 howsweel Augusta Latroln- was, and how she, Georgie Penne- 
 father, wished that some one would take pity on the poor 
 darling and carry her clean away from that old dragon. Then 
 turning sharp round to Colonel Moneypenuy she cried out: 
 
190 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Why don't you, Colonel Moneypcnny ? You were always 
 a kind of beau of hers, even before that queer old spidery 
 Professor came on the field." 
 
 So good-hearted, bright-eyed G-eorgie Pennefather managed 
 to do a great deal of practical harm to two people whom she 
 really liked, and to set a stone rolling which would crush 
 more than one tender little plantation before it finally settled 
 at the bottom of the hill. 
 
 Soon after this Mr. Branscombe rose to take his leave. 
 He handed Mr. Pennefather a thick packet of his " Threnody." 
 There was one for each of the family, even including the 
 young Mr. Cowleys and not omitting little Nora. He wished 
 the child always to remember her sainted friend, he said with 
 histrionic solemnity ; and he was sure she would prize the 
 gift. 
 
 The family made queer faces as they received the cards 
 which he solemnly distributed each to each. They were 
 bound by good manners to look grave while nature impelled 
 them so dreadfully to laugh ! Between the two they were in 
 internal convulsions and outward restraint ; and more than 
 one nearly split that thin skin of artificial decorum to let out 
 a flood of wicked merriment which would have spoiled all. 
 They managed however, to keep things in trim till the 
 brougham rolled away ; and then they pulled up the planks 
 and the waters gushed out without restraint. 
 
 "A most objectionable and detestable family," said Mr. 
 Branscombe j)eevishly, as they went through the gates. " I 
 am thankful that is done with ! We need not see them now 
 for another six months ! They are really scarcely human, 
 and more like so many Cherokee Indians than like civilized 
 English ladies and gentlemen. They are too dreadful — really 
 they are." 
 
 " They are very noisy and indiscreet," answered Stella, 
 seeing that her father looked for some reply. " But they do 
 not mean to be rude or disagreeable, and they do not know 
 half they say." 
 
 " To call them irresponsible idiots, my dear Stella, does 
 not mend matters very much," said Mr. Branscombe. " People 
 <vho do not know what they say or do are either idiots or 
 maniacs. To which category of disordered brain do you 
 assign the family of the Pennefathers ?" 
 
 " I did not quite mean that, papa," said Stella with a 
 nervous little laim-h. 
 
THIN ICE. If. I 
 
 " No ': Are you then following the example of your friend* 
 anJ Baying what you do not mean ?" lie asked unpleasant 1 v. 
 
 For her answer Stella stole her hand into his ; but after a 
 short time Mr. Branscombe put it away. 
 
 "Tout hand is hot, my love," he said coldly; "and hot 
 hands are unpleasant." 
 
 The visit t<> Mrs. Mbrshead was not much less disagreeable 
 to Mr. Branscombe than had been that to the family at 
 Sherrardine. The rough old woman had a genuine horror of 
 Finery Fred's silky manners and artificial nobleness ; and 
 spiky as she was to every one, taking a savage pleasur ■ in 
 making herself like a coarse rough bit of huckaback to all 
 satin surfaces, and of meeting affectation and pretentioii- 
 with absolute vulgarity, she was never so coarse, so vulgar, 
 as when she had to protest against the affectations of the 
 master of Eose Hill. 
 
 " The fellow made her quite ill," she used to say with a 
 sneer; ,- and she was sick of his fine airs!" 
 
 To-day she was a Tartar, as usual. What he asserted that 
 she contradicted ; what he praised that she condemned ; she 
 would not now even agree with him in politics, though thev 
 followed the same leaders, but turned aside that she might 
 have the satisfaction of a fling at him with her heavy old heel. 
 She too noticed Stella's pallor, and spoke of it in a manner 
 that made him see she thought it all due to himself; as indeed 
 it was. Which did not however, prevent her snapping at her 
 daughter when the Branscombes had gone and Augusta was 
 lamenting Stella's evident want of tone; saying in her harsh 
 voice : 
 
 " Nonsense, Augusta ! Do you want the creature to look 
 like a milkmaid when her dear mother is just dead? You 
 have no more feeling than a cat, Augusta ! I declare yon 
 have not, and not so much," added the old woman, looking 
 fondly at her Bleeping Shah. 
 
 She too had hard work to receive the Memorial Card with 
 becoming suavity. She had no desire to laugh outright, like 
 those naughty Pennefathers, but she did long to tell that old 
 fribble, as she mentally called handsome Fred Branscombe, 
 the family Apollo, what washy stuff she thought his p 
 
 nd what detestable taste it was, first to write it at all, 
 then to print it as it was printed, and finally to distribute it 
 among the neighbours. By a wonderful exercise of self- 
 control she said nothing of all that was seething in her mind ; 
 
192 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 but she received the card with unmistakable ungraciousness, 
 and laid it on the table without looking at it. 
 
 " I have seen it. You gave one to my daughter only yester- 
 day," she said curtly. 
 
 " For your little grandson," said Mr. Branscombe, grace- 
 fully presenting her with another copy. 
 
 This was more than the terrible old woman's patience could 
 bear. 
 
 " Bless my heart and soul what can a baby make of a thing 
 like that ?" she cried. " What can that child understand 
 about spirits and tombs and Cimmerian gloom, I wonder !" 
 
 " Still, mamma, we can keep it till he is old enough," said 
 Augusta, knowing how children do prize things which they 
 cannot understand nor yet play with. 
 
 " Solemn thoughts do no barm even to the young," said 
 Mr. Branscombe, gracefully as well as mournfully. 
 
 " Solemn fiddlesticks !" snapped Mrs. Morshead. " What 
 has an infant like that to do with solemn thoughts ? Leave 
 those to old people like you and me, Mr. Branscombe, and 
 let the young enjoy themselves wbile they can. It is different 
 with such as you and me, with one foot in tbe grave as one 
 may say, and old enough to know better than spend our time 
 in folly." 
 
 She repeated the association of herself with her elegant and 
 well-preserved guest with evident gusto, knowing how it would 
 rasp him to be classed with her. he having still pretensions 
 to be counted in his prime, and she being an old creature who 
 made herself older than she really was by her carelessness of 
 appearances, and by that something, no one knew what, which 
 kept her to her chair for the most part, though sometimes 
 she might be seen walking feebly and painfully in the garden. 
 
 " I hope not quite so old as that, dear madam !" said 
 Mr. Branscombe with a sickly smile. " Not quite one foot in 
 the grave yet." 
 
 Ho forgot his promise to Stella. 
 
 " As for that, having just lost your dear wife I should think, 
 Mr. Branscombe, the grave would be the happiest place for 
 you," said Mrs. Morshead gravely. " If you are a Christian, 
 as you shotild be, you ought to rejoice at the prospect of meet- 
 ing her again in heaven as soon as God pleases, and not think 
 your death a misfortune." 
 
 "Ah ! just so, my dear madam ; just so !" he sighed rather 
 than said. " By the way, talking of marriages, the Misses 
 
THIN ICE. 193 
 
 Pennefather, my dear Mrs. Latrobe," he continued, turning 
 abruptly to Augusta, " told me that our good friend Mr. Kemp 
 was about to enter the holy state and that you were his con- 
 fidante. Is it so:" 
 
 For a moment the widow's customary self-control deserted 
 her. Not a pale pink flush this time, but a crimson flood 
 poured hotly over the face. 
 
 '• Did they ?" she said as lightly as she could speak. " What 
 girls they are !" 
 
 Mrs. Morshead looked at her sharply. 
 
 ••What is this, Augusta? Sandy Kemp going to be 
 married, and you know all about it ? What does all this 
 mean*:" 
 
 " Nothing, mamma," said Augusta with a smile that vainly 
 tried to make itself look natural. v ' It is only some nonsense 
 of those wild Pennefather girls." 
 
 " So ! Where does the mistake lie, my dear Mrs. Latrobe ?" 
 repeated Mr. Branscombe slowly; "in the report of our 
 friend's marriage at all? — or in assertion that it is not to a 
 fair friend of mine, not a hundred miles from The Laurels ? 
 You must look after your fascinating daughter, Mrs. Mors- 
 head, if you do not want to lose her for a second time !" he 
 continued with graceful jocularity. " The Misses Pennefather 
 have sharp eyes, and they whispered a thing or two to-day 
 which sounded suspicious, to say the least of it." 
 
 " I am not to be held responsible for all the nonsense that 
 Georgie and Pattie Pennefather talk !" said Augusta with 
 cheerful indifference very well put on. 
 
 " I advise them not to talk nonsense of any one belonging 
 
 to me," said Mrs. Morshead grimly, and more slowly than 
 
 she generally spoke. "And as for my daughter marrying 
 
 again, she knows what I feel about that too well to dare to 
 
 do it. I look on a second marriage as no marriage at all ; 
 
 and I think the man or woman who takes another partn i 
 
 with that poor dead thing in the grave waiting for him in the 
 
 other world, is as bad as if he had two wives or she two 
 
 husbands at once. No; you have had your turn, and you 
 
 keep to it ; so I say to all people who marry. Alive or 
 
 dead you are in for it now, and you can't go back or make 
 
 r choice. And Sandro Kemp or any other — my 
 
 daughter or any man's daughter — I say the same thing. A 
 
 ad marriage is: — I won't say the word clean out and an 
 
 unmarried girl like that Stella Bitting there." 
 
 o 
 
194 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 "You are severe but sublime," said Mr. Branscombe. "I 
 quite agree with you. It is, as you say, the loftiest morality, 
 the purest philosophy." 
 
 " I said nothing half so fine," said Mrs. Morshead sourly. 
 " I only said I thought a second marriage a sin. And though. 
 my daughter may not be a lump of perfection all through she 
 is a good and modest young woman, and wouldn't commit 
 that sin. That's all, Mr. Branscombe." 
 
 " I would not like to wager all my fortune on the event," 
 said Mr. Branscombe, still jocular and elegant. 
 
 But the terrible old woman's temper could bear no more, 
 and she " flew," as the servants called it, and left the master 
 of Rose Hill with not a metaphorical rag to his back. 
 
 Decidedly these two visits had not been successful outlays 
 of time and dignity ; and Mr. Branscombe repented of his 
 condescension, and was angry with Stella, himself and the 
 whole world, for the annoyance to which he had been sub- 
 jected. He was very peevish and uncomfortable in the 
 brougham, as he drove from The Laurels to Derwent Lodge ; 
 but when once there he allowed himself to be soothed by 
 Hortensia's delicate appreciation, as he called her silly craze 
 for himself, while Stella was made happy by a long, long talk 
 with Randolph, all about Cyril and his multiplicity of virtues, 
 his noble character, his fine intellect, his sweet temper and his 
 superiority to ordinary human nature in general. 
 
 Meantime the stone set rolling by those Miss Pennefathers 
 was crashing at a rapid pace down-hill at The Laurels, giving 
 poor Augusta yet more trouble in her life, where, as things 
 were and even when at their best, she had so few sunny places 
 and so many thorny tracts ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE GATHERING OP THE STORM. 
 
 Sitting always at home, harvesting the gossip of the place 
 through the gleaning of her maid and the scattered grain of 
 chance visitors, it was hard to say which was the more re- 
 markable — Mrs. Morshead's sharpness of penetration or her 
 boldness of imagination. Give her but the corner of a brick 
 and she would build the whole temple ; show her but one little 
 7}one and she would construct the entire skeleton, and clothe 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 195 
 
 it with fur or feathers as positively as if she had met the 
 creature Leaping in the woods or had seen it fly across the sky. 
 She was the centre of all the gossip that floated through 
 Highwood as it floats through every small communitv ; and 
 had it not been for her the social strand would not have been 
 strewed with half that cruel wreckage of repute for which 
 the little place was famous. 
 
 And sitting thus at home, ever pondering and piecing, 
 exaggerating and deducing, while she knitted her shawls and 
 <et the heels of her coarse black woollen stockings, she went 
 back again and again on that deep blush which had come into 
 Augusta's face at the mention of Sandro Kemp's probable 
 marriage, and asked herself till she was weary : What did it 
 mean ? Was there any nonsense — nonsense ? worse than 
 that ! — between them ? Was Augusta not only thinking of 
 making a fool of herself for the second time, but meditating 
 what Mrs. Morshead believed to be an actual and positive 
 sin ? If she were, then her mother knew what she would do. 
 She would cut off her and her little son with the traditional 
 shilling, and she would leave the whole of her fortune to those 
 three Humane Societies for which she had most sympathy. 
 Emphatically and literally she would take the children's 
 bread and cast it to the dogs. And in the disordered mirror 
 of her own crooked conscience it seemed to her that this 
 would be a holy and a righteous thing to do. 
 
 But she would not be rash. She would not act without 
 good reason and full knowledge. So much sense of justice 
 and fear of evil held her hand. She would watch anil see, 
 and if convinced then she would strike. Second marriages 
 were to her, as we know, primal follies translated into sins. 
 She thought them virtually bigamous, and held that they 
 should be made illegal, and punished as severely as if the 
 had and eternally departed were only in the next street and 
 might come back any day to claim their own again. She 
 thought marriage altogether a mistake — her husband had 
 found it a torture — and rivalled Hortensia Lyon herself in her 
 o intempt for girls who wanted to be wives. And she despised 
 maternity as martyrdom doing no good to any one. Giving 
 life to a human being brought no joy to the giver, according 
 to her,- and conferred no boon on the recipient. She e\< 
 the first because of ignorance, but she held the second to be 
 an offence against wisdom if not decency. It would have 
 taken a very brillant offer of marriage indeed to have recon- 
 
196 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 tiled her to Augusta's wifehood even in the first instance ; for 
 Mrs. Morshead, of The Laurels, was a woman whose social 
 ambition was wholly satisfied and whose desires did not go 
 beyond her possessions. She had all that she cared to have 
 — local position, a good income, a nice house and fine garden 
 — and she could leave what she had where she chose. So 
 that her daughter had no need to marry, either in the first 
 instance or the second. But if she, the mother, had condoned 
 the folly of that first — after a struggle and when the bitter 
 retribution had come — she would never forgive the sin of the 
 second. Had a man of birth and standing offered for Augusta 
 she would have asked him sarcastically : What did her 
 daughter want more than she had and would have ? When 
 it came to an artist fellow like Sandy Kemp — a man without 
 a penny and whose stake in the country was represented by 
 zero — she was simply furious, and on all sides alike. For if 
 it were not true, it was an insult for which those who had 
 offered it should be made to suffer ; and if it were true, then 
 would she discard for ever that shameful girl of hers, and teach 
 her how to disgrace herself again in even a worse manner than 
 she had already. 
 
 Still, she would watch and see. But watching and seeing 
 with Mrs. Morshead did not include the patience of silence, 
 the quiet following up of " stalking." It meant perpetual 
 probing and pricking, perpetual hurrying from place to place 
 in search of those cock-a-trice eggs which the Pennefather 
 girls and Mr. Branscombe had said were hatching. 
 
 Quite suddenly, without the slightest warning and breaking 
 a dead silence between them, she would ask : " When did you 
 last see your dear friend, Sandy Kemp, the sign-painter, 
 Augusta ?" or : " When is your friend Sandy going to bring 
 his wife home, Augusta ? She cannot be much of a thing to 
 marry him, I should say ; but whatever she is, I suppose you 
 will be her bosom-friend, seeing that you are the chosen con- 
 fidante of that fellow." 
 
 One day she said, in the same sudden way, and with a 
 curious mixture of passion and grimness : 
 
 " Answer me truly, Augusta — and look at me when you 
 speak — has that pauper, Sandy Kemp, had the impudence to 
 make love to you ? He must have done so for all these dis- 
 graceful reports to have got about. If I had not known better, 
 unfortunately, I should have said you were no child of mine, 
 Augusta. A young woman like you, with a dear little son to 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 197 
 
 educate and think of, and after having made such a shameful 
 marriage as you did, to be left a beggar on the face of the 
 earth but for me, to be carrying on an intrigue with a fellow 
 like that Sandy Kemp! It is enough to make your poor 
 father turn in his grave ; and it makes me inclined to disown 
 you as you sit there, so wooden and indifferent that I long to 
 shake you to see if I could not shake some life into you ! If 
 it were not for your little boy I would disinherit you to-night. 
 I declare I would !" 
 
 •• Sou are making yourself very uncomfortable, mamma, all 
 for nothing," Augusta answered tranquilly ; as she had 
 already answered the same thing in substance, twenty times 
 at the least. " The Pennefather girls are such wild creatures 
 they never think of what they say or do. Else I am sure 
 they would not have said anything to give me pain or do me 
 harm, if they had thought of it. But they just dash out with 
 anything that comes into their heads, not remembering that 
 every one is not so good-natured and free from spite as their 
 own heedless selves." 
 
 " You think you are getting out of your scrape very 
 cleverly," said Mrs. Morshead ; "but you do not get over 
 me so easily as that, Augusta ! I know what I know, and I 
 see what I see ; and I am only biding my time — that I can 
 assure you of." 
 
 • Very well, mamma," she answered quietly. " If you are 
 determined to see what does not exist, and to make yourself 
 and me unhappy over a few foolish words which mean abso- 
 lutely nothing, I cannot help it. I can do no differently from 
 what I have done, for I have done nothing wrong — and there 
 I must leave it." 
 
 " And there you will just not leave it," said Mrs. Morshead 
 angrily. " If you think you are going scot-free like this, you 
 are very much mistaken. I mean to search the thing to the 
 I i i torn, whatever comes of it. And if I find — what I hope I 
 shall not and fear I shall — then let you and that boy of y< >ur.s 
 look out ! Do you imagine for one single instant that I am 
 going to harbour you here in my house that you may carry on 
 a Becret intrigue with Mr. Sandro Kemp? No! not if I 
 know it! not if I have to die for it. Augusta '."' 
 
 By which it may be seen how fully Mr. Branscombe had 
 revenged himself on that unlucky Critic of Pure Eeason 
 who would not say that his poetry was sublime, and who 
 wanted to detach Stella from her high-toned duties and lead 
 
198 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 her into the dissipation and indelicacy of a walk across the 
 fields during the second month of her mourning. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe was not the only person who, having a 
 sore feeling against Augusta Latrobe, was not unwilling to do 
 her an ill-turn. That luckless chatter about the artist's prob- 
 lematical confidence of love for another and shrewdly sus- 
 pected love-making on his account, had raised up for the poor 
 young widow even a more formidable enemy than the shallow - 
 natured master of Rose Hill; and Colonel Moneypenny, 
 crisped and crimped through jealousy, came up to The 
 Laurels to add his little vial of wrath to those already broken 
 over her head. This sweet-tempei'ed and reasonable creature's 
 virtue of patience and self-control, fate had determined should 
 not rust for want of sufficient exercise ! 
 
 If Mrs. Morshead could be said to have a favourite in this 
 wicked world of men, it was Colonel Moneypenny — in whom 
 she admired all but his name ; and that she forgave. There 
 was much about him that exactly suited her tastes ; and she 
 thought if all meu were more like him, things would go a 
 little better than they did now. He was clean, well-set up 
 and smooth shaven, save for his military moustache — which 
 became him as a man and was the sign of his estate. He 
 wore his grizzled hair cut as close as a brush, not hanging 
 over his ears like that artist fellow Sandy Kemp, nor elabo- 
 rately curled and trimmed like that old fop Mr. Branscombe. 
 He was always well dressed, as a gentleman in the country 
 should be ; his gloves were clean ; his boots without a speck 
 of mu-.T on them ; and he never brought in with him a trace 
 of the weather out of doors, whether it were windy, rainy, 
 dusty, or what not. How he managed to look always so per- 
 fectly clean and unruffled no one could find out ; but he did ; 
 and Mrs. Morshead counted it to him for virtue. 
 
 Then, he was bitter in thought and sharp in speech ; a 
 cynic and a pessimist, equalling herself in universal disdain 
 for all humanity and superior to herself in the method of 
 setting forth his views. They held, too, the same political 
 opinions, founded on the short and easy way of permanent 
 opposition. Whoever was in office was more or less a 
 scoundrel ; and every measure that was passed was one nail 
 the more in the coffin of national prosperity and honour. 
 Belief in good reasons, whereof they did not see the whole 
 bulk, was a stretch of faith which they derided as credulity ; 
 but they gave each man in power credit for every evil motive 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 
 
 that a citizen or discredit a politician. They 
 
 were independent thinkers, they said, when reminded that 
 thev called themselves Liberals ; and they held themselves 
 exempt from all allegiance to the party to which they said 
 they belonged. In fact they called themselves Liberals that 
 they might righteously vilify the Conservatives, yet not be 
 compelled to hold with any section of a party composed of so 
 many different shades as is that of Liberalism. It gave them 
 a wider field for universal opposition than else they would 
 have had and opened endless avenues for proving themselves 
 superior to their titular comrades in judgment, patriotism, 
 and s jin< times in true liberality. In a word they were the 
 mists, the two Irreconcilables of Highwood. And 
 as Mrs. Morshead always agreed with the Colonel and the 
 Colonel always sent everything to the deuce, they were in 
 perfect accord ; and Colonel Moneypenny had more than once 
 been heard to say that he did not see what people had against 
 Mrs. Morshead — he had always found her perfectly easy to 
 
 on with and a remarkably intelligent old woman. He 
 knew better ; but Mrs. Morshead did as well as anything else 
 for a cause of contradiction to the majority. And to defend 
 one so universally dreaded and disliked gave him an air of 
 generosity which gratified himself if it convinced no one else. 
 But if he found her easy to get on with when both put 
 their horses' heads together and charged against all before 
 them, he had not yet tried her with making love to her 
 
 Ejhter. And by the look of things he was not likely to 
 try her very soon in that direction. Stung by jealousy, 
 piqued in his self-love, his pride of position outraged by the 
 intrusion of a mere artist on reserved ground where he had 
 
 ip his own fine military flag, feeling himself insulted in 
 that any one could possibly couple the name of the woman 
 whom secretly he loved with that of any uther man — and 
 that other Saudro Kemp — Colonel Moneypenny believed that 
 he had driven Augusta Latrobe out of his heart for ever, and 
 burnt the last traces of her image in the fire of his unfor- 
 giving wrath. He was sure that now he both latterly despised 
 ly hated her; and he was also sure that he had 
 never really loved her. It had been a mere passing fancy 
 born of compassion more than anything else. He knew that 
 she had a hard life with that old wolf, her mother — the 
 woman whom he defended with his bitter smile and sarcastic 
 allusions when her sins acrainst the world had come more 
 
200 "MY LOVE.'" 
 
 prominently to the front than usual, and had done more than 
 ordinary harm. He knew that the poor thing, the old wolfs 
 daughter, had not a penny-'piece of her own and that her 
 mother made her life of dependence more humiliating than 
 public pauperism would have been. And he had pitied her. 
 As a man and a gentleman he could do no less. Tes ; he 
 had certainly pitied her ; and had she been wise he might 
 have been foolish. But his guardian angel had joined hands 
 with her bad genius to protect him ; and " quern Deus vult 
 perdere" was the text on which had been written the theme 
 of her destruction and his own salvation. 
 
 When therefore he decided on going to Mrs. Morshead to 
 add his vial to those already broken over that peccant head, 
 no ruth for coming pain through his cruelty disturbed his 
 mind, burning as it was with the egoist's flaming fire of 
 humiliated vanity. He had been wounded in those secret 
 recesses of a man's pride where wounds fester and never heal ; 
 and Augusta Latrobe had to learn to her cost what it was to 
 slight a man who might have been more than a friend, and 
 whom now, by her imprudence, she had made into something 
 worse than a foe. 
 
 So, full of bitter thoughts and harsh intent, his anger 
 high, his pride in arms, he called at The Laurels — and found 
 both Mrs. Morshead and her daughter at home. 
 
 Almost as soon as he entered Augusta knew that a bad 
 quarter of an hour was before her. She saw it in the fiery eves 
 which just glanced at her for an instant, then turned them- 
 selves away almost with a jerk as if they had seen what was 
 unpleasant ; — she saw it in the restless lips which seemed as 
 if they could scarcely contain till the fitting moment that 
 flood of bitterness which was working in his soul, longing to 
 pour itself out and overwhelm her with shame ; — she felt it 
 in the very touch of his hand, not limp and nerveless with 
 indifference, but taking hers with the hasty touch and sharp 
 withdrawal of an irritation that was almost as uncontrollable 
 as a flame of fire ; — yes, she saw it all ; and, with that quiet 
 strength which was her characteristic, she prepared to meet 
 with wisdom what she could not avert by courage and to 
 bend under the storm which she could not disperse by 
 resistance. 
 
 For a time the conversation flowed tranquilly over safe 
 places. True, it was always full of acidity and condemnation ; 
 but it did no one any harm if Mrs. Morshead fell foul of the 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 201 
 
 Prime Minister and the Government, and Colonel Money- 
 penny followed suit with objurgations against the Leader of 
 the Opposition — if one prescribed the guillotine for Gambetta 
 and the other a lunatic asylum for the Count de Chambord — • 
 and so on through the arid wastes of general politics. The 
 waters might be poisoned from source to outfall, but they 
 did no harm to living creature ; and Augusta bided her time, 
 knowing full well that this was only the flourish of appear- 
 ances and that the real meaning of her old admirer's visit had 
 to come. 
 
 And in time it did come ; as she knew it would. 
 When the Colonel had delivered himself of his last political 
 sentiment, which was something to the effect that the Turks 
 should be sent out of Europe and the Russian Empire dis- 
 membered, he turned sharply round to Mrs. Latrobe — his 
 fiery eyes ablaze, his thin lips lifted at the corners and 
 crisped into the very embodiment of scorn — saying suddenly: 
 
 '"I hear that I have to congratulate you, Mrs. Latrobe; 
 rather I should say I have to congratulate Mr. Kemp." 
 
 Mrs. Morshead sat bolt upright in her chair, glaring 
 savagely from under her heavy eyebrows. The name of 
 Sandro Kemp, never pleasant to her ears, had by now become 
 the very match to the powder-store, and her anger, never 
 very difficult to rouse, blazed out heaven-high at the mention 
 of this man whom she hated yet was forced to respect. 
 
 "Yes?" answered Augusta with the most benign air of 
 tranquil indifference. "On what?" 
 
 " Oh ! that is too strong !" said Colonel Moneypenny in a 
 voice which made the widow aim <t start, it was so roughened 
 by passion, so strangled and choked by bitterness. "A lady 
 who is engaged to a man asking quietly on what her fiance 
 has to be congratulated — that is drawing with rather too fine 
 a line, Mrs. Latrobe !" 
 
 " Perhaps it would be if there was any line to draw at 
 all," she answered. "But in this case your picture is in 
 the clouds. I was not aware till now that I was engagi 
 Mr. Kemp." 
 
 •' Who has put this lie about ?" asked Mrs. Morshead 
 harshly. " Who is your authority, Colonel Moneypenny, for 
 such a disgraceful statement?" 
 
 " Oh ! the whole place is talking of it," he answered care- 
 " It is not one person more than another. It is 
 y one." 
 
202 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " One of the Highwood romances ?" said Augusta with that 
 kind of good-humour which is held to presuppose indifference. 
 " What foolish things people say here ! How far better it 
 would be if they had something of public interest to occupy 
 thorn — then they would leave their neighbours alone." 
 
 " It would be better if the neighbours gave no cause for 
 talk," said the Colonel significantly. 
 
 "Cause does not come into the question," the young widow 
 answered smiling. " x\s for cause of gossip on my account — 
 with Mr. Kemp or any other — there is not so much as would 
 warrant the faintest whisper. It is just one of those queer 
 things which happen here — a report got up no one knows how 
 or why." 
 
 " You speak with strange confidence, Mrs. Latrobe," said 
 the Colonel with a sneer. 
 
 " Strange ?" she repeated laughing. " Well, really, Colonel 
 Moneypenny, I think I ought to know best in such a matter ! 
 If I am not confident who should be ?" 
 
 " But I want to know who has set this thing afloat," said 
 Mrs. Morshead, sticking to her point. " Where did you first 
 hear it, Colonel Moneypenny?" 
 
 " Where first ?" He seemed to ponder. " Well, you see, 
 Mrs. Morshead, I have heard it so often I am not prepared 
 to say where first. I am quite unable to remember. It 
 might have been at Sherrardine. I will not say so positively, 
 but it might have been. I half think, indeed, that it was." 
 
 " Then I shall do one of two things," said Mrs. Morshead ; 
 •'either bring those Pennefathers to book and make them 
 give up their authority, or forbid Mr. Kemp my house. I 
 will not have such things said of any daughter of mine. She 
 has only me to look to for protection and support, and I will- 
 get to the bottom of this. I swear I will." 
 
 " Yes, madam, do," said Colonel Moneypenny with emphasis 
 and a cruel look to Augusta. 
 
 " If you can," said Augusta. " But that will just be the 
 difficulty. How can you get to the foundation of things 
 which do not exist?" 
 
 " It is as well to try," said the Colonel dryly. 
 
 " You may try to make ropes out of sea-sand, but I fancy 
 you would lose your time," said Augusta with a smile. 
 " There is nothing here to find out. I can say no more." 
 
 " Then I have your authority for saying that nothing of a 
 tender nature" — with what a sneer he said these words! — 
 
THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 203 
 
 "exists between you and Mr. Kemp, have I?" asked the 
 Colonel, addressing Augusta. 
 
 rtainly you have," she answered, raising her clear and 
 candid eyes into his face. They were almost too clear, too 
 candid, too demonstratively innocent to please him. The 
 merest trifle of waver and shyness would have seemed more 
 natural. And why were her cheeks so deeply dyed:— Bhe 
 warmest blush was in general rather a reflection than 
 a blush which had mounted of itself. 
 
 " And you may add from me that Sandro Kemp never 
 - doors again !" said Mrs. Morshead viciously. 
 > in Colonel Moneypenny looked at the young widow. 
 How would she take this last sentence ? Would it be a blow 
 to her? a wnund? a shock? He looked and saw absolutely 
 nothing. The fair face remained as still as if it had been a 
 mask. Not a line, not a curve shifted its place ; not the 
 faintest quiver of the eyelid, of the lip, marked the least 
 ruffle of the feelings. Only her colour suddenly paled from 
 that feverish brightness to dead pure white ; and then the 
 blood rushed back in a burning stream which defied conceal- 
 ment. She was brave truly, but she was not what she 
 assumed to be, indifferent. 
 
 " It is the best thing you can do for your daughter," said 
 Colon.-! Moneypenny, still watching her. ''In her position 
 it is neeessarvto be even more careful than with other 1;: 
 I am glad now that I have been the means of enabling you 
 to act according to your usual vigorous judgment. Mrs. Mors- 
 head. As you say, if you do not wish the report to take root 
 it must be checked in the beginning." 
 
 "It shall be," said Mrs. Morshead, she also watching her 
 daughter. 
 
 On this came a profound silence, during which the m< 
 and the man, who from a lover had lecome an enemy, both 
 watched the young woman as she sat there searching quietly 
 for something in her workboz. Then, as if the proli 
 silence struck on her ears as meaning their waiting her 
 1 up with eyes which were still ahn> 
 rod fixed and candid, and said in a cpuite natural but 
 it monotonous voice : 
 
 •• I >■> as you think best, mamma. It is all a matter of 
 indifference to me." 
 
 - .•• is iinpenetr id the Colonel to himselt'. 
 
 Nick himself could not fathom ] I i' 1 any c - 
 
204 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 put a spoke in that fellow's wheel and spoiled his fun for a 
 time ! It shall never be said that Sandro Kemp and I were 
 rivals for any woman's favour, and that he stole a march on 
 me where I was fancying myself secure I" 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE LAUNCHING OF THE BOLT. 
 
 " Write exactly as I tell you, Augusta, else it will be the 
 worse for you." 
 
 The temble old woman was sitting stiff, upright and 
 square for action in the dull green chair which was specially 
 hers. Her widow's cap was well forward on her head ; tbe sure 
 sign with her of a rather worse state of temper than was even 
 usual, and, as we know, that state was never good. Her black 
 Shetland shawl was folded closely round her shoulders, her 
 black silk mittens came lower than ever over her fingers. By 
 her side slept her favourite cat on his luxurious crimson 
 velvet cushion; in her hand she held one of those eternal 
 coai-se black woollen stockings, to knit which, with alterna- 
 tions of shawls, for the poor, made the sole occupation of 
 her life. 
 
 Augusta sat by the writing-table in the bay of the window. 
 Paper and ink were before her and the pen was in her hand. 
 She was writing to Sandro Kemp, according to the dictation 
 of her mother, a letter which was to end all the gossip about 
 her and him, because ending their acquaintance not to speak 
 of their friendship. 
 
 It was a hard task ; but she knew that she had nothing for 
 it but to obey. Her mother represented the tyranny of 
 circumstances and the irresistible power of fate ; and Augusta 
 was no stronger than Prometheus had been in his day, than 
 Eurydice had been in hers. 
 
 "Are you ready, Augusta?" then said Mrs. Morshead, 
 watching her daughter as she quietly arranged her materials. 
 
 "Yes, mamma," she answered in a perfectly unmoved 
 voice. 
 
 Not that her quiet acquiescence contented the mother any 
 more than the candour of her eyes had contented Colonel 
 Moneypenny. It was almost too complete — too well done. 
 Had there been a little sign of feeling, or annoyance, even of 
 
THE LAUNCHING OF Till: HOLT. 205 
 
 opp sition, both would, have felt more satisfied. They would 
 • . have had the pleasure of victory ; whereas now 
 
 the walls had fallen down at the first blast of the trumpet • 
 and when the fighting blood is up and the blow struck, it 
 gives a tremendous sense of disappointment and checked 
 energies to strike against a bunch of feathers which neither 
 resist nor return. 
 
 " Say then, ' Sir,' " began Mrs. Morshead. " Don't you 
 put ' Dear Sir :' — do you hear, Augusta ? Say simply ' Sir •' — 
 ' Sir : I have to request that you will henceforth discontinue 
 your visits to my mother and myself.' Put ' my mother' too, 
 else the impudent fellow will be coming here to ask me for 
 an explanation on pretence that I am not you ; ' to my 
 mother and myself,' " she repeated. " ' And that you will 
 not presume' — have you put ' presume,' Augusta ?" 
 
 "Yes, mamma," she answered, her face flooded with that 
 same kind of deep flush which had been on it yesterday, but 
 else as still as a painted doll's. 
 
 " • That you will not presume to address me when we next 
 meet,' " continued the old woman. " ' I refuse beforehand to 
 give any explanation of the step which self-respect compels 
 me to take. Augusta Latrobe.' Now, Augusta, have vou 
 written it all out as I have dictated?" she asked very sharply. 
 "Word for word exactly as I said ?" 
 
 " Yes, mamma," her daughter answered. 
 
 "Let me see it," said Mrs. Morshead. "You are too- 
 slippery for me, Augusta ; I cannot trust you." 
 
 "You have no right to say that, mamma," cried her 
 daughter, firing up with a strange feeling of relief at being 
 able to fire up legitimately about something, no matter what. 
 |' Where have you found me slippery and untrustworthy? It 
 is too bad of you to say such a thing to me !" 
 
 "Don't speak to me like that," cried Mrs. Morshead 
 angrily : " I will not submit to be spoken to by my own child 
 in that insolent way ! You are slippery; and so I tell you ; 
 and you are not to be trusted, for all your appearance of 
 obedience. And for all I know, if I did not look sharp aftei 
 you, yon would put in a private note to that Sandy Kemp of 
 yours, and tell him you were made to write like this, and 
 that you were his affectionate sweetheart all through. It 
 would not be the first time that you had deceived me ; nor 
 are you the only young gipsy who has pretended one thing to 
 her parents and done I mtrary to her lover!" 
 
20G "MY LOVE!" 
 
 "Oh, mamma, how can you spoil yourself and mate every 
 one unhappy about you by this dreadful and unjust suspicion," 
 cried Augusta in passionate indignation. 
 
 Her philosophy was scattered to the winds ; and her patience 
 broke down under the combined strain of this heavy task and 
 undeserved insult. She could have accomplished that bitter 
 act of renunciation, even by such a method, had her mother 
 left her in peace for the rest. But together the two things 
 were beyond her, and she lost her self-restraint as one loses 
 one's cloak in a sudden storm. 
 
 " If I make every one so unhappy about me, Augusta, you 
 and your boy had better find another home where you will 
 be happier," said Mrs. Morshead slowly. 
 
 Rash words rose to the young widow's lips, like flames 
 leaping under battened hatches. Her calm, clear eyes shone 
 with an angry light which Mrs. Morshead had seen in them 
 only once before ; — and that was on a certain morning when 
 they had had a serious quarrel over some perfectly insig- 
 nificant trifle — the morning of that day in the afternoon of 
 which Augusta had come back from a walk in the fields to 
 say that she had accepted Mr. Latrobe, and would be married 
 to him in six weeks from that date. Never before nor since 
 had the same look come into her face, the same light shone 
 and flamed in her eyes, until now. She stood, her back to 
 the writing-table where she had just been sitting, transcribing 
 this cruel letter to the man who loved her and whom she 
 loved though she would not permit herself confession. One 
 hand was on the table, the other was on the frill and brooch 
 at her throat. Her heart beat as if it would break through 
 the bars which held it in ; her lips, which had been so tightly 
 set, half unclosed themselves as if to speak ; her bright eyes 
 flashed and flamed ; — when the voice of her little son came 
 on her ears as he ran past the window on the lawn. She 
 saw him as he ran, chasing a peacock-butterfly which was 
 always just going to be caught and never was — his fair hair 
 flying in the wind and his happy little face all agloAv with 
 health and childish joy. In one swift moment came visions 
 of his misery and confinement in stifling lodgings, while she 
 went out on her dull, ill-paid tasks whereby to get him daily 
 bread. She measured his loss in health, in development, in 
 education, in social standing, in future ease and sufficiency, 
 as the price paid for her ungoverned passion, her rash irre- 
 vocable words. She saw it as if it had been a picture flashed 
 
THE LAUNCHING or THE DOLT. 207 
 
 by the sunlight before her eyes; and perhaps Ms death as 
 
 the end of all, because she would not bear her c «s with 
 patience. 
 
 Her hand tightened on the table and her slender ringers 
 seemed to dig themselves into her throat. Her eves dropped 
 to the floor and her common sense, her reasonableness, her 
 self-control, her power of cheerful self-surrender to the 
 inevitable came down on her dangerous mood like the door 
 iron cage where wiM beasts are kept. She must yield 
 □ as so often before, where fighting would do no good but 
 • ■nly make things Avorse for her and ruinous for her ^>ox. Yet, 
 not for herself. Hud >he been alone she would have Hungup 
 all — home, station, inheritance — all, as she had done once 
 before. But now she was not alone. She had her boy ; and 
 she owed herself first to him. 
 
 •• You know, mamma," she said ;is quietly as she could 
 i ; " I do sincerely try to please you, and you know that 
 I obey you." 
 
 '• You obey me, yes, in a way," said Mrs. Morshead, looking 
 at her from under her eyebrows ; " but it is in a way I do not 
 like, Augusta. You always seem to have something behind- 
 hand, as it were. You give nothing but the bare bones of 
 obedience. You do as I tell you because you cannot help 
 yourself, but you do not do it - ; ; — you do not do it 
 
 with your mind. It is only lip-service when ail is said and 
 done. You keep your real thoughts to yourself, and I don't 
 like that. I would rather you came out with things straight 
 to my face, than think one thing and do another." 
 
 " If I do as you wish, it is scarcely fair to accuse my 
 thoughts," said Augusta. " And I do not think you would 
 like it if I were to oppose you," she added. 
 
 " Then I tell you I would," said Mrs. Morshead angrily 
 "How dare you say I would not when I say I would? Yen 
 air a most undutiful and contradictious girl, Augusta. I will 
 not have you give me the lie like this !" 
 
 And Augusta resisted the temptation of that logical demon- 
 stration lying ready-made to her hand. 
 
 ■ A- Last believe," she said quietly, "that I do really 
 to please you, mamma, and that if I fail it is not for 
 I of trying." 
 
 The old woman saw her advantage. The foil was lov. 
 .md her opponent had placed herself at her mercy. No 
 passion was so strong with Mrs. Morshead as the love of 
 
20S "MY LOVnr 
 
 power ; and she bad none of that generosity which accepts 
 surrender magnanimously and forbears to press the fallen. 
 
 " Yes," she answered grimly ; " I will give you credit for so 
 much common sense, Augusta. You know when you are well 
 off and which side your bread is buttered. And it is perhaps 
 just as well that you know too when to give in. A little more 
 of your ingratitude and impertinence, and there would have 
 been an end to everything, I can assure you. You might 
 have gone where you would for that dear child's next velvet 
 suit. He would not have got it from me. I am not used to 
 be spoken to in that manner ; and what is more, I do not 
 intend to get used to it." 
 
 " I am sorry if I offended you, mamma," said Augusta, as 
 quietly as she had spoken just a moment since, seating herself 
 again at the table to address the envelope which was to con- 
 tain that cruel and insulting letter. 
 
 " It is all very well to get out of things in that cool way," 
 said Mrs. Morshead. " You are cool, I must say that for you, 
 Augusta ! Any other girl would have been down on her 
 knees to her mother after she had insulted her as you have 
 just insulted me. But you toss your head and say ' I am 
 sorry,' as indifferently as if you had been speaking to the cat. 
 And then you think you have done all you ought and all that 
 need be done." 
 
 " Well, mamma, I will go down on my knees and say I am 
 very sorry," said her daughter pleasantly, going up to her 
 mother and placing herself on her knees, while she caressingly 
 took the disengaged hand lying at that moment idly on the 
 arm of the easy chair. 
 
 But Mrs. Morshead drew it away with a jerk. 
 
 "Don't be silly, Augusta!" she said snappishly. "Get off 
 your knees this instant, I tell you, and send that impudent 
 ftdlow his letter." 
 
 Augusta obeyed, and did not even sigh. Her mother had 
 truly the power to rouse her temper, sweet and equable as 
 this was ; but she could not wound her heart. Affections 
 which are constantly chilled, repelled and refused, end at 
 last by dying down to the roots, like vines which are too much 
 pruned. The roots are there and the vine is not dead in 
 its entirety ; but all the grace of foliage and sweetness of 
 fruitage have been cut away, at least for the immediate present 
 and this year's vintage. 
 
 She went back to the table to direct the envelope. She 
 
THE LAUNCHING OF THE BOLT. 209 
 
 placed it in the. letter — resisting the temptation that came 
 upon her with almost overwhelming power — of slipping in a 
 word already written : "This is not my own." But of what 
 use to refrain from that which would kill all lingering feeling 
 of tenderness and so destroy for ever this pleasant dream, 
 this streak of moonlight shining like silver in the dark? It 
 would be a sharp pain to him ; and he would despise and hate 
 her. She would be sorry that he should; yet, why not? 
 Their friendship could not bring them happiness, but the 
 contrary. It kept alive delusive and unwise hopes in him ; it 
 stood in the way of her peace at home ; and if in the way of 
 her peace, then in that of her boy's best interests. No. It 
 was hard ; but it was the best thing to do. The note must 
 go as her mother had dictated and she had transcribed, 
 without a word of explanation or disclaimer. She was so 
 much the poorer, but her boy's interests were just so much 
 the more assured. 
 
 Suddenly she was recalled to the fact that she had written 
 the envelope by her mother's harsh voice. 
 
 "When you have done staring at that piece of paper, 
 Augusta, as if you had never seen an envelope before, or were 
 looking through it and the table and everything into the 
 centre of the earth, perhaps you will write that fellow's name 
 so that Page can read it. He shall take it this afternoon, 
 when he goes that way for dahlias." 
 
 Her mother's voice was harsh indeed. It made the young 
 widow start as if a pistol had been fired at her back. 
 
 " I was dreaming," she said ; " and had forgotten all about 
 Mr. Kemp." 
 
 "Oh! had you?" returned Mrs. Morshead dryly. "Glad 
 
 to hear it, Augusta. But it would be more to the purpose 
 
 perhaps if you would condescend to remember him just 
 
 Ai to direct that letter and let it go with Page this 
 
 afternoon." 
 
 "Without another word Augusta took her pen, wrote the 
 address in her large flowing hand, fastened down the fly of 
 '•nvelope, then held the letter to her mother. 
 
 '• s hall I ring the bell, mamma, and send it out to Pag ?" 
 dd. 
 
 "Nfc," said Mrs. Morshead shortly. "I will see my own 
 servants myself." 
 
 "Imnst go and call Tony, then," said Augusta. "It is 
 Qg time for his reading-1-.sson." 
 
 p 
 
210 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 She felt suffocated and strangled, as if in another moment 
 she must cry out or burst into tears. It took all her self- 
 control to keep down the hysterical passion that strove so 
 hard to get the upper hand of reason and good sense. A 
 breath of fresh air, a loving caress from her little son would 
 do her good. She wanted to have the child in her arms, to 
 look into his sweet face, to see his bright eyes and hear his 
 merry voice. She wanted to be able to hold him to her heart 
 and whisper to him fondly : " It is all for you, my boy. Tell 
 me that you love me — I who love you so well !" 
 
 As she stood up to go something almost as dark as a 
 physical shadow crossed the old woman's face. She looked 
 up sharply with her small fierce eyes set so deeply under those 
 thick overhanging brows which gave her such a sinister ex- 
 pression. 
 
 " You will please to stay where you are, Augusta," she said 
 in her hard imperative way. " I do not want you to have a 
 private talk with Page, and all sorts of tender messages sent 
 to that fellow, and perhaps the letter not sent at all. No ; 
 sit down again I say and let that poor child have an extra 
 hour's play this beautiful day. The way you hound him to 
 his lessons is quite inhuman. Do you want him to be an 
 infant phenomeuon at seven and an idiot at seventeen ? That 
 is what you will make of him if you force him as you do." 
 
 Augusta turned one swift glance on her mother, but she 
 said no more. The yoke was on her neck and she had to 
 bend to it ; light or heavy she had in good truth to bend to it 
 and make the best of the weary load she was doomed to draw ! 
 
 Something in her face touched the old woman's shallow 
 spring of pity. After all the girl had done as she was bidden 
 without complaint ; and though there was something about 
 her that her mother could neither fathom nor understand — 
 something that she felt she did not get hold of — still, she had 
 no open cause to suspect or find fault with her. She had 
 been a very undutiful and wicked creature to marry that 
 penniless Professor, and then to let him die so that she had 
 to come back here with that tiresome boy of hers — but what 
 was done could not be undone, and there was no good in 
 harking back over the past, thought Mrs. Morshead, with a 
 sudden and rare accession of good sense. She did nothing 
 now that she ought not ; and on the whole — despite that inner 
 something which escaped her, the mother, that spiritual 
 freedom and selfhood which she would not give up but which 
 
THE LAUNCHING OF THE BOLT. 211 
 
 she only hold and did not fight for — she was as good as could 
 be expected after four years of marriage with .such a man as 
 that Professor. And thinking all this, and watching her 
 daughter's patient lace, the organ which stood for a heart 
 with Mrs. Morshead relented, and she said brusquely : 
 
 "Go and call that little monkey of yours, if you like, 
 Augusta. I dare say Page is at his dinner. Perhaps you do 
 not mean to deceive m ." 
 
 •• When will you believe, mamma, that I never deceive 
 you ?" . d quietly. " I do not think I could teach my 
 
 child his prayers if I were living in an atmosphere of de- 
 >n." 
 
 '• Well, child, perhaps you could not," said her mother. 
 " Still I don't know quite all about everything," she added, 
 going back to her normal attitude of suspicion as if she had 
 suddenly broken a spring. "All this mish-mash about Sandy 
 Kemp must have had some foundation." 
 
 "It has none, mamma," answered Augusta firmly. "It 
 has sprung only from girlish nonsense. Mr. Branscombe and 
 Colonel Moneypenny have made up the whole seriousness of 
 the thing. It is no other person's doing." 
 
 "There! say no more about it, for goodness' sake," said 
 Mrs. Morshead sharply. " I am sick to death of that impu- 
 dent fellow's name. You are always talking of him, Augusta. 
 It is quite tiresome — I declare it is. And go and find that 
 boy of yours. Is he to grow up a dunce for your neglect? 
 At his age he ought to be at school and in Latin. And he 
 cannot read words of four letters. The child is a regular 
 dunce ! I am ashamed to call him my grandson !" 
 
 " I do verily believe mamma is gel I bag softening of the brain 
 and going out of her mind," thought Augusta to herself as 
 she went into the garden for her boy. " Her temper never 
 ntly 1 iad as it is now. There used to be gleams 
 of amiability in poor papa's time; but now her love of con- 
 tion and her bus] icion are really more like insanity than 
 anything else." 
 
 -: so; but then nothing is so like insanity as that kind 
 of ill-temper which puts itself in opposition to ail the world ; 
 and the man who thinks no one in the right but himself is, 
 for all the practical purposes of moral life, as insane as if he 
 had crowned himself with straw and called himself Emperor 
 in Bedlam. 
 
 "All the same I will take care that Pacre does leave this 
 
212 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 note and that Augusta does not see him," said Mrs. Morshead 
 to herself, ringing the hell sharply. " She does as I tell her, 
 I know, and she seems to be all fair and above-board, but 
 there is something — I do not know what it is — but I feel and 
 know that it is there. She gives in to me because she cannot 
 help herself ; but she only obeys — she does not really submit." 
 And so far the terrible old woman was right. 
 Sandro had just finished his luncheon when Mrs. Prinsep 
 brought a letter from The Laurels. He recognized the 
 handwriting at once, and a boyish thrill of pleasure flushed 
 his face and brightened his eyes as he took the note in his 
 hands and felt almost as if he had heard the soft voice of the 
 fair woman speak to him — as if he had seen her dear eyes 
 look at him. 
 
 " She is a darling !" he said half aloud. " The one perfect 
 woman in the world!" 
 
 Then he opened the letter and read what Augusta had 
 written. He could not make it out. The words ran into each 
 other so that he could scarcely see them even as mere sym- 
 bols ; while the sense was so hopelessly confused he could not 
 understand the meaning when he made out the words. It 
 was as if he had been suddenly struck blind, or as if his mind 
 had given way. An awful terror of madness, of imbecility, 
 came over him, and made him tremble like a frightened girl. 
 He read words which had no sense in them — was she mad or 
 he? Then he laid the letter down and thought over its 
 meaning, trying to make it clear to himself. "What had he 
 done to offend her ? The last time they had met they had 
 been good friends — quite good friends, and something more. 
 It could not have been then. Yet if not then, when was it ? 
 The whole thing was a tangle, a maze, a huge distortion 
 wherein he saw nothing clear nor straight. But through it 
 all burnt the one ineffaceable line — " that you will not pre- 
 sume to address me when next we meet." No explanations 
 could soften that command — no tears wash out those hard 
 words. The sweet and tender friendship which had been such 
 a solace to him was at an end ; and henceforth he was not 
 even to speak to her when he met her. All hope was over. 
 What had life left for him? 
 
 He felt that it had nothing left. No fame, no work, no 
 sun, no joy. The woman whom he loved and whose love he 
 had had it ever in his hope to gain when the clouds should 
 have lifted from his path — that woman had taken herself 
 
THE LAST APPEAL. 213 
 
 from liini oven in the Bimple way of friendship. His slur was 
 set; his day was over. Why should he drag through the 
 weary hours of the long, unbroken night? 
 
 Scarcely knowing what he did, and only conscious of the 
 desire to escape he neither knew nor cared where, he crushed 
 the note in his hand and rang the bell for his landlady. 
 
 ■• Mrs. Prinsep," he said in a constrained voice; "I am 
 going up to London to-day. Can yon pack my hag?" 
 
 •• Yes, sir," she answered; but she looked at him curiously 
 as she spoke. 
 
 Something had gone amiss, she did not know what, only 
 it was something very greatly amiss ; and it came on the 
 receipt of that letter from The Laurels. He had smiled when 
 she had taken it in ; there was not much smiling left in him 
 now! 
 
 " Good patience !" she thought as she went upstairs to 
 pack his bag; "he has surely never proposed to Mrs. Latrobe 
 and she given him back a No ! But it looks like it, poor 
 dear. How could she have had the heart? Why our 
 Mr. Kemp is miles better than old Latrobe she was so mad 
 about. Well ! I would not give much for her taste," was her 
 last commentary as she got her lodger's things together and 
 made him ready for his sudden journey. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE LAST APPEAL. 
 
 It might be Stella's duty to obey her father's will, but it 
 was not Cyril Ponsonby's to heed Mr. Branscombe's whim. 
 The anude at which each stood made all the difference in their 
 point of view ; and their point of view determined their 
 principles of action. It was a duel between the two men 
 such as has been many times in the world before and will 
 be many times again — a duel betwe< n the old and the young, 
 inherited duty and acquired L< >ve, 1 hi father who demanded and 
 the lover who desired — with the poor girl's heart as the battle- 
 ground on which they fought — her life the prize for which 
 •ve. 
 
 While saying to himself, generously enough, that his Love 
 only more and more proved the sweet grace of her character 
 by the sacrifice which she had made, Cyril was none the less 
 dL-termined to do his utmost to convince her that this sacrifice 
 
214 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 was all ■wrong, and that her highest duty lay in keeping her 
 word and marrying him before he left for India. This was 
 only natural. The man who would giye up his love at the 
 first summons to surrender by another — be that other father 
 or rival — would not have much to give up ; and Cyril did love 
 Stella with all the fervour of a young man's passion, all the 
 devotion of a faithful heart. What else then could he do but 
 try to prove to her that this noble sense of filial obedience, 
 for -which he honoured her, was all a mistake and wholly 
 wrong and that her highest virtue was to give herself to him ? 
 This was the logic of love if not of reason ; but love was 
 master of the situation, and reason was pressed into his 
 service as his henchman. 
 
 By the tone of her letters, sadder and sadder, more hope- 
 less and more pathetic in their resignation to inevitable 
 sorrow, as the days went by, Cyril saw that the loosening of 
 the engagement, which had begun at Mrs. Branscombe's 
 death, was ever increasing, while the father's hold was grow- 
 ing stronger and his grip tighter. If he, Cyril, could not do 
 something to counteract this morbid influence and draw his 
 Love once more close to himself she would slip from him 
 altogether ; and when he thought of this, he thought also of 
 death. 
 
 He resolved then to go down to Highwood to face, as a 
 man should, the difficulties which beset him ; — to try once 
 more to persuade Stella to follow his fortune and forsake her 
 father's ; — to give herself to love and cast filial duty to the 
 winds. It was his last chance, for in a few weeks he must set 
 sail to India ; and when once so far away — if he could do 
 nothing now he could do less than nothing there. This was 
 emphatically his last chance, his Last Appeal. 
 
 It was a sunless, dull and sultry afternoon. The lurid 
 clouds, heavily charged with coming storm, hung low in the 
 sky. Not a bird sang in the bushes, not a cricket chirped in 
 the grass ; the very bees flew heavily from flower to flower 
 and the butterflies and dragon-flies rested motionless on the 
 flowers and grey stone walls. The pimpernels in the fields 
 and the gezanias in the gardens were shut ; and the scarlet 
 nasturtiums and geraniums glowed with so much electric fire 
 as almost to dazzle those who looked at them steadily. A 
 storm was evidently at hand ; and all nature felt its presence 
 and suffered because of it. 
 
 Without halting even to see Bandolph Mackenzie, Cyril 
 
THE LAST APPEAL. 213 
 
 drove straight from the railway station to the Lodge gates of 
 
 Kose Hill. There was no glad familiarity of the accepted son 
 
 >f the house in his coming to-day, as when he made his 
 
 nventional entrance on that beaming, bright young 
 
 morning in May ; no impatience of happy love that could not 
 
 wait for the day but must seek to distance time by giving 
 
 him chase in the early dawn; no certainty of a reception as 
 
 joyous as his own breathless incoming; no hope of radiant 
 
 I 9 meet and glorify his own. There were only pale fear 
 
 . resolve, that sinking of the heart which foi - ebodes 
 
 tl • setting of the will which, while it foresees 
 
 the pain, courts the struggle. He came to-day less as the 
 
 acknowledged lover than the desperate foeman — no inheritor 
 
 of joy entering gladly on his own but an exile breaking his 
 
 bond of excommunication and returning to the home whence 
 
 he had been banished — that home for revisiting which he 
 
 should be again discarded under maybe a still more severe 
 
 sentence. Or, should he hold his own triumphantly and be 
 
 ■rions over fate and circumstances ? 
 
 This was the question of the hour ; and the moment of its 
 .msw ..r had come. 
 
 Surely the stars in their courses fought for him and the 
 first omen presaged all the rest ! He had tormented himself 
 all the way down as to his chance of being able to speak to 
 Stella alone. If her father chose to forbid, how could he 
 prevent her obedience ? But now all those fears were set at 
 rest, for there was Stella right before him, walking slowly 
 towards the house from the gates. She had been down to 
 the Lodge to see the gatekeeper's httle child who was ill, and 
 now was going back to that desolate home which of late had 
 become so much more like a prison than a home. She was 
 thinking sadly of her sweet mother and her banished lover, 
 her shattered hopes and that poor papa who demanded so 
 much from her and who was sometimes so strangely cold, 
 even while he held her so closely and depended on fa 
 heavily. And thinking all this she did not hear the swift 
 behind her, nor know who was coming till Cvril 
 lightly touched her shoulder and said: "Mj Love! My 
 Lovr!" 
 
 She started and cried out ; but the next moment her arms 
 
 round him as his were round her, and hex face was 
 
 lifted :iding down to meet ln-r : while the onlv sound 
 
 >f welcome was a sob half of joy and half of pain, which told 
 
216 MY LOVE!" 
 
 how she had suffered in his absence. Nor could Cyril speak. 
 Something that was perilously near to tears blurred his vision 
 and cut short his words. He could only hold her in his 
 arms — to his heart — as something lost and now found again, 
 something tender and dear and precious which was safe for 
 him only so long as he held it closely clasped. As she looked 
 at him and once more met those dear faithful eyes and saw 
 the face which represented to her all the nobleness of man- 
 hood, all the security of life and splendour of love, she forgot 
 the dull present and the dim future ; she put aside the pain 
 that she had felt — the anguish which she foresaw — and her 
 sob lost itself in one full happy smile, as she said in a voice 
 that was as the very gift of her soul — " My Cyril ! — Oh, once 
 more my Cyril!" 
 
 It was all told and known ; and now he felt safe. What 
 needless torment he had given himself! — how foolishly he 
 had lacerated his own heart ! She had never wavered. His 
 future was as safe as his past had been sure. She loved him 
 and she would not forsake him. He had done well to come 
 and meet that ghastly enemy of sorrow and despair — of 
 subtle severance and vague forebodings. She could not resist 
 him face to face. She was his and he was hers ; and the 
 little cloud that had risen in the night of absence was swept 
 away by the glad sunlight of actual presence. 
 
 " Come to the summer-house, Stella. We can speak better 
 there, and I have much to say to you, my darling," said 
 Cyril ; and Stella, with a sudden half-frightened look to the 
 house, said a little anxiously : 
 
 " Yes, for half an hour, Cyril ; I must not stay longer." 
 
 " For half an hour then," he replied, putting his arm 
 round her waist; and thus in the old loving way, as if 
 nothing had come between their love and their happiness, 
 the two went down the side-path to the summer-house, and 
 reached it just as the first growl of thunder broke from the 
 sky and the heavy drops of rain began to fall. 
 
 At first they heeded neither the weather nor the altered 
 order of things at home. They were together and alone ; and 
 that was joy enough for the moment. Then the smoke of 
 that glad incense of love and happiness began to clear away — 
 the first momentary excitement subsided — and they came 
 slowly back to things as they were and to the sorrowful 
 truths which were as spectres awaiting them. Each saw 
 how pale and wan and hollow-eyed the other had become ; 
 
I III-: LAST APPEAL. 217 
 
 missed that sense of security, that sense of joy, which 
 had marked the early stages of their love. They were like 
 ■ s rising from the tomb and looking at each other across 
 the moonlit spare where the graves were lying thick and the 
 dead loves of life were buried. There was no reality even 
 here, and no certainty — save of sorrow. But they loved each 
 other. So much was sure. Whatever the future held — they 
 loved each other. 
 
 •• You do not ask me why I have come down," Cyril began, 
 svhen that silent scrutiny and acknowledgment had grown 
 somewhat embarrassing. 
 
 " I was too glad to see you to think of anything else," she 
 answered softly. 
 
 '• I am going to India in about three weeks' time now," he 
 
 •■ And I have come to ask you to go with me." 
 She turned away her head — she could not meet those 
 yearning, faithful eyes— that handsome, loving face, bending 
 down to look into hers. Her hands were in his, closely, 
 tightly clasped. She would not take them away ; but she 
 could not look into his face ! 
 " How can I r" she sighed. 
 " Why should you not ?" he returned. 
 " How can I leave poor papa ? He would die if I were to 
 leave him." 
 
 •• And what shall I do, Stella! Perhaps worse than die ! 
 If you are a daughter, remember also that you are a wife — 
 my wife in the sight of God ; and you owe me as much duty 
 □ owe your father — and more love." 
 Cyril spoke with a gravity and intensity which Stella had 
 never heard in him before. It was as if he had suddenly 
 ceased to be a boy and become a strong, mature and .-It- 
 respecting man. He was less the lover pleading for a grace 
 than the husband, as he called himself, claiming his rights. 
 Till now she had seen him only boyishly earnest in his suit, 
 boyishly radiant in his success, boyishly despairing in his 
 • ; but now he was a man of equal strength and firm- 
 ness with her father, and she felt instinctively that things 
 had come into a new phase and that the moment was all the 
 graver 1- cause of her lover's changed mor 
 
 '• You know that I love you," she said, turning to him with 
 the instinct of a car 
 
 " I know that you do," he answered tenderly ; " but though 
 you love me, you are letting yourself be divided from me— 
 
218 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 perhaps for ever ; and you are giving me more anguish than 
 I once thought I could have borne and lived under !" 
 
 " I am not being divided from you ; excepting for a little 
 while," she answered, woman-like preaching peace -where there 
 was no peace and forbearing to look at facts as they were. 
 " It is only while my poor, darling mother's death is so fresh — 
 while papa misses her so much — that I ask you to put off 
 the marriage; — that is not breaking with you for ever, 
 Cyril !" 
 
 " And when will your father make up his mind to let you 
 go?" he asked. " You know that every day you are slipping 
 farther and farther away from me, because every day you 
 become more necessary to him. When will you find the 
 courage to leave him and come out to me if you have not got 
 it now ?" 
 
 " He is too good and kind to break my heart," she said. 
 " Surely, some time of his own accord he will let me go." 
 
 " Never !" said Cyril firmly. " Of his own accord, Stella — 
 never ! If you have not the courage to insist on it now and 
 to come, he will never, never let you go !" 
 
 " Indeed, you misjudge him, Cyril ! You do, darling ! He 
 is broken now by poor mamma's death ; but he will become 
 more reconciled as time goes on ; and then we can be married 
 without paining him as it would now if I were to leave 
 him. Think what it would be to him to lose wife and 
 daughter both in a few months ! And he so loving and so 
 sensitive — so dependent on home love and care for his 
 happiness !" 
 
 " All this means simply that you love your father better 
 than you love me, and that you are ready to sacrifice me to 
 him," said Cyril with quiet sternness. " We will call things 
 by their right names, Stella. It is a struggle of love, in 
 which I am the weaker and go to the wall." 
 
 " Not that," she answered, the tears swelling into her eyes. 
 " I love my father dearly, as you know, and reverence and 
 admire him as I have been taught all my life to do — as 
 mamma reverenced and admired him — but I love you, too, 
 Cyril ; you know that I do. It is not a struggle of love but 
 it is a matter of conscience and duty. Cannot you see the 
 difference? Cannot you, Cyril?" 
 
 It was his turn now to look away. His face was pale and 
 set ; his eyes were fixed and mournful ; his heart was sore 
 and his pride was wounded. She did then of her own free 
 
THE LAST APPEAL. 219 
 
 will prefer her lather to him ; and it was not coercion so much 
 as voluntary resignation. 
 
 The thunder roared and shook the tittle building where 
 
 they were sheltered; the lightning: Hashed and streamed in 
 
 nee and flaming sheets; the rain poured as if the 
 
 windows of heaven had been opened for the second time and 
 
 the fury of the deluge had been let loose on the earth. But 
 
 neither Cyril nor Stella saw what- was going on in the world 
 
 outside. The storm of grief and despair, of passion, of per- 
 
 . I I . warring with duty, which raged within their 
 
 than that of the elements without ; and 
 
 the thunder and the lightning and the rain which tore and 
 
 1 and fell, were but the natural accompaniments of the 
 
 which shook them to the soul and the anguish 
 
 which made them desoli 
 
 innot you see the difference, Cyril r" she said again, 
 and stealing into his. " Do you doubt that I love you ?" 
 '• You love me ?" he said with a strong effort. How harsh 
 and changed his voice was ! She would not have known it 
 f>>r his had they been in the dark. " Yes, I believe that you 
 do. to a certain extent. But you love your father better, and 
 prefer his convenience to my happiness." 
 
 "If I could leave any one with him to take care of him 
 
 him happy, I would not hesitate for a moment," 
 
 said Stella with sudden passion. " It is not that I love him 
 
 r — you know that it is not that, Cyril ; it is only because 
 
 my father, and it is my duty. Oh, you will break my 
 
 heart if you look like that — if you believe that I do not 
 
 love you !'' 
 
 Her girlish bashfulncss, her pride of maidenhood, her 
 shamefaced reticence — all v. — swept away by the 
 
 storm of passion as the tender little buds and delical 
 were broken and destroyed beneath the heavy deluge of rain. 
 She flunu r her arms round him and carried his head to her 
 bosom. 
 
 " Cyril, say that you believe me," she said, her lips for the 
 tune unasked, pressed to his. u ^Iy own, my Lov 
 that you do not doubt me." 
 
 felt his advantage, and he used it. 
 " if you cannot come with me — if you think it your duty 
 to stay for a little whjle longer with "your father — at least 
 things sure. Marry m I go, if even you stay 
 
 behind, and come out afterwards." 
 
220 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 He spoke "without any outward sign of emotion ; still with 
 that strange absence of boyish pleading and with that 
 stranger weight arid gravity of a mature man. 
 
 "With papa's consent — yes! — yes! — gladly!" said Stella. 
 "Will that satisfy you, Cyril? — then indeed I will !" 
 
 "With your father's consent or without it?" he said. 
 
 She shrank back. The flood-gates which had been lifted 
 began gradually to close down on the turbulence that had 
 been let loose for a few moments. The pride of her maiden- 
 hood, the reticence and shamefacedness of her girlish modesty, 
 the purity of her truth, the wholeness of her duty, all sent 
 back the rushing flood about her heart and cleared her eyes 
 of their mist of passion. 
 
 " Without papa's consent I could not," she said faltering. 
 " I could neither openly disobey him nor live a life of decep- 
 tion. Toil yourself would not respect me, Cyril, if I could." 
 
 "Ah! it is just as I thought," he said with sudden bitter- 
 ness. " Great heavens, do women know how much they torture 
 the men who love them ! All of no use ! — all to no good ! I 
 am distanced and cut off ! No, Stella, this is not love ! It 
 is preference — friendship — fancy — but not love ! — not the 
 love I have for you. Ask anything of me," he continued, 
 his passion rising as hers calmed ; " ask my very life and I 
 would give it you ! You could not ask anything of me, 
 Stella, that I would refuse. Nothing in the whole wide 
 world!" 
 
 "If I asked you to do something that I thought dis- 
 honourable and wrong, you would not do that, Cyril ! " she 
 answered, half frightened, half trying to soothe him. 
 
 "Yes, I Avould!" he cried. "I would go to perdition for 
 you. I would give you my very soul !" 
 
 Just then a blinding flash of lightning seemed to set the 
 whole place in a blaze, and the thunder crashed right above 
 the frail little tenement where they were sitting. Stella 
 was wise and sensible enough, but she was impressionable, 
 and as apt for superstitious fancies as any other girl of her 
 kind and age. 
 
 " Hush, Cyril ! this is blasphemy," she cried, clinging to 
 him in terror. " Remember God hears us, and sees us, 
 and reads our hearts. You offend God when you talk like 
 this." 
 
 Her terrified voice and clinging touch, her pale, scared 
 face and spiritual distress, broke down all the new force and 
 
THE LAST APPEAL. 221 
 
 manly strength which had come into him. He covered his 
 face with his hands and burst into those terrible tears which 
 more than anything else in the world agonize the woman who 
 loves and humiliate the man who is loved. 
 
 " Cyril, do not cry !" she said in a low, still, shocked voice. 
 • Y u are breaking my heart. I do not know you like this. 
 Cyril, look up. Do not let yourself give way like this. Oh, 
 darling, let us pray to God to give us strength to do what is 
 right and what is His will ! There is no happiness for us if 
 we do wbat is wrong and what we know to be wroni;." 
 
 But poor Cyril was in no state to be soothed. He had to 
 
 fight out the fight by himself and to brace himself to bear the 
 
 inevitable, as be felt best for himself. Pure and honest for 
 
 his own part, he could not tempt Stella to do what she felt 
 
 to be wronsr. If he could have changed her heart at this 
 
 moment, and for her own higher morality have substituted one 
 
 weaker, lower and more yielding to love, he would ; but he 
 
 could not tempt her into what she felt to be immoral and 
 
 dishonourable. He had to recognize and accept her virtue. 
 
 He was foot to foot with facts ; and he was cast. He must 
 
 Lrive up all his hope, his pride, his desire. Stella had elected 
 
 ind bv her father and she had laid her conscience as the 
 
 _e. He must abide by her decision ; but it was a bitter 
 
 1, and he felt as if death would have been a more 
 
 merciful decree. 
 
 "You shall not do what you think wrong for me," he said 
 at last, his bloodless Hps quivering. " I would rather have 
 you pure in your own conscience than that you should do 
 what you think wrong for my sake. If you feel it right, I 
 will sive you up. It is like parting with my life to say this; 
 but. it' you feel it right, I must." 
 
 '•Nol give me up, Cyril! — only wait till papa is more 
 reconciled to his loss. This is not giving me up, darling!" 
 she said anxiously. 
 
 •• I: is the beginning of the end," be returned. " If I leave 
 England now. I shall never see you ac, r ain." 
 
 •• Would you wish not to see me again ? Would you 
 rather give me up entirely than keep me for a short time 
 in hop-':" asked Stella in a low voice. 
 
 He caught her eagerly to his heart and smoothed back the 
 from her face. 
 
 "My Love! my Love!" he said with infinite tenderness, 
 with loving reverence. " I would wait for you to the end of 
 
222 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 my life, if you would come to me then ! Give you up, Stella r 
 I give you up ? Never, my darling, never. If we are sepa- 
 rated, it is by your will, not mine. You are mine to the end 
 of my life ! — my own, my Love ! I could never give you up, 
 never cease to love you, never possibly love another!" 
 
 The storm had passed and the sun had come out. That 
 last tremendous outbreak had been the last expression of its 
 fury. The rain-drops still glittered on the grass and trees, 
 but the birds began to sing in the woods, the flowers raised 
 their drooping heads, the butterflies and iridescent flies came 
 out from their leafy shelters. The storm had passed indeed ; 
 but outside this summer-house the plot of Mary-lilies which 
 Stella had planted with her own hands was a broken mass of 
 tangled wreck, and the tender buds of all the delicate flowers 
 were beaten into the ground — never to rise again, never to 
 bloom, never to gladden the air with their sweetness nor to 
 receive the sun's rays into their fragrant hearts. 
 
 "Come and see papa," then said Stella softly. "The 
 storm has gone now. Come and talk to him." 
 
 " It is of no use," said Cyril sadly. " I understand him 
 bettor than you do." 
 
 " Then you understand how sweet and noble he is," said 
 Stella, speaking from the force of old impressions and life- 
 long training, and forgetting for the instant that painful little 
 passage-at-arms — presage of so much worse to come — which 
 had taken place between them some days ago. 
 
 Cyril turned away. Suffering had enlightened him on 
 Mr. Branscombe's real claim to the possession of those 
 qualities for which his wife's deliberate devotion and his 
 daughter's simplicity of belief had given him credit. 
 
 "I will go and see him, of course," he said, after a pause. 
 " I would not like him to think that I had been here in secret 
 and was ashamed or afraid to face him." 
 
 " Oh, Cyril, how good you are !" cried Stella. 
 
 She looked up into his face, enthusiasm, love, devotion in 
 her own. Her large dilated eyes were dark with tenderness ; 
 her sweet fresh lips were a little parted ; her whole heart was 
 throbbing with passionate and high-strung admiration. For 
 the instant she forgot that she had any cause for sorrow. She 
 remembered only that she loved — and that her gladness lay 
 in the grandeur of her beloved. 
 
 Cyril could not answer her. Her enthusiasm was born of 
 his heart-break — her praise came because of his submission to 
 
THE FINAL ANSWER 223 
 
 the terms of his despair. He could not return it ev. i 
 gratitude. 
 
 "Good and great!" he echoed bitterly. "My Stella, 
 rather how weak and miserable ! One more kiss." he then 
 said, turning to her with less of the feverishness of love than 
 the melancholy resignation of death. " I asked you to be my 
 wife in this summer-house. Do you remember, Stellar I 
 watched your window from it the first time I came down after 
 we were engaged. Give me now our last parting kiss — per- 
 haps the ;all ever have — our very last on earth !" 
 
 ,; No, not our last," she said with strange confidence, borne 
 up she knew nut how over the weakness and surging sorrow 
 of the moment. " Our last for the immediate present — but. 
 we have a future, Cyril, and a glorious one. We have a future 
 of true love, of mutual respect and of happiness." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE FINAL ANSWER. 
 
 "My child! where have you been during this terrible 
 storm ?" said Mr. Branscombe, when Stella, with Cyril fol- 
 lowing close behind, went into her father's studio to report 
 herself and present her lover. " I hav< ■ 1 >een in the most acute 
 mental anguish on your account — the most heart-breaking 
 anxiety." 
 
 . ntleman who had been in this great anxiety, as he 
 said, Mr. Branscombe looked smooth and unruffled enough. 
 Also, he had not been ill': for he had painted in a large 
 piece of Hortensia's gown — the folds perhaps a little fanciful, 
 seeing that like most talented amateurs he worked by the 
 light of imagination only, disdaining the dull prose of a 
 !. However that might be, he had evidently diligently 
 occupied himself during his daughter's absence, and had 
 thrown off his mental distress by means of the eccentric 
 and impossible cross-shadows which represented his 
 ideas of drapery. 
 " I was under shelter, papa," said Stella in a strange \ • 
 Now that she had come into the actual presence of her 
 p — the father not of her imagination but of her every- 
 day life — the exalted confidence of her late mood suddenly 
 coole.l and slackened. 
 
224 "MX LOVE!" 
 
 "Where?" lie asked, not looking up. 
 
 " In the summer-house," she said. " The storm overtook 
 Cyril and me as we came up the drive from the Lodge." 
 
 "Cyril? Cyril? What Cyril?" asked Mr. Branscombe 
 •with a vague air, as if searching in his memory for the image 
 that should be attached to that name. 
 
 "Cyril Ponsonby, sir; Stella's affianced husband," said 
 Cyril, coming forward and speaking in a calm, clear, level 
 voice. 
 
 " Oh, Cyril Ponsonby, is it ! Gad, my dear fellow, I had 
 forgotten you !" said Mr. Branscombe with careless amia- 
 bility. " And what in heaven's name has brought you out 
 here on such a day !" 
 
 He spoke as if Cyril had come in from next door ; and as 
 if he had been here only yesterday and might be here again 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " I came to see you and Stella," said Cyril. 
 
 " Vastly obliging !" said Mr. Branscombe with his best-bred 
 smile, tempered with melancholy as his eye caught the band 
 of crape on the arm of his velvet coat and he remembered all 
 the circumstances in which he stood. 
 
 In the first flush of surprise he had remembered only the 
 one fact — that Cyril wanted to take Stella from him ; with 
 the determination, as a rider, that she should not go. 
 
 " I am going to India in less than three weeks now," began 
 Cyril ; " and I have come to ask Stella to marry and come 
 with me." 
 
 Mr. Branscombe put his head on one side the better to 
 examine the effect of his latest bit of cross-hatching. 
 
 " I thought all that was arranged and done with," he said 
 quietly. "'When I had last the pleasure of seeing you I 
 remember we threshed out that question fully — threshed it 
 out to the last fibre. It was agreed then, I think, that Stella 
 would not leave me — at least for the first year of her mourn- 
 ing ; that she would not commit the indelicacy of treading on 
 the heels of her mother's funeral as a bride given up to 
 Circean pleasures. Why reopen a closed book, my young 
 friend? Do you not think we have enough to do with things 
 present and to come without going back on those which are 
 sealed and past ?" 
 
 " I do not hold this matter to be sealed and past." said 
 Cyril. " I was willing to concede something to your grief at 
 the sudden shock of "your loss, but I did not give Up my 
 
THE FINAL ANSVr*. . 223 
 
 claims. I waived them for the immediate moment; but I 
 hold to them as absolute." 
 
 " I think you gave them up so far as any definition of time, 
 any express limitation of suspended rights, went," returned 
 Mr. Branscombe smoothly. " It was agreed, if I remember 
 aright — expressly agreed — that Stella should not marry this 
 year ; therefore that she could not go out to India with you 
 in September. Indeed, I imagine that you would scarcely 
 prevail on her to desert me in the heartless manner proposed. 
 by you. Such a dutiful and pious child as she could hardly 
 g dlty of an act wherein indecency would be equalled only 
 by irreligion." 
 
 " I think, too, that Stella remembers a little what is due to 
 me and her promise," said Cyril, always speaking in that 
 calm, clear, level voice which betrays the consciousness of 
 struggle even more than the loud tones of expressed excite- 
 ment, and, with the consciousness of struggle, the presence of 
 hidden force. 
 
 " Duty to parents comes first in a good girl's catalogue of 
 virtues," said Mr. Branscombe. 
 
 u And faithfulness to a promise — fidelity to a husband — ai*c 
 also virtues which hold rank in her mind," Cyril answered 
 back. 
 
 •• When she has the husband, yes," said Mr. Branscombe 
 with a slightly contemptuous smile. " A foolish hov and 
 girl engagement can scarcely claim the appellation which 
 includes the sacred tie of marriage." 
 
 "A foolish boy and girl engagement? I do not under- 
 stand you, sir," said Cyril hastily. 
 
 "No ? Y't I speak plainly, do I not ? I use no technical 
 terms, do I?" 
 
 Mr. Branscombe asked this question with the simplest air 
 of transparent candour ; as if sincerely wishing to be answered 
 and instructed. 
 
 " Not technical terms but unintelligible ones — words which 
 do not apply to the case in hand," said Cyril. 
 
 ' No? You are now unintelligible to me, my dear fellow,' r 
 he answered, smiling. " Explain yourself." 
 
 ■• I do not think I need, Mr. Branscombe. When you can 
 call a solemn engagement, like Stella's and mine — an engage- 
 ment sanctioned by both you and her dear mother — an en. 
 which this very month, almost this very day, v. 
 
 . fulfilled by our marriage — when you can sneer at 
 
226 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 this as a foolish boy and girl affair, then I think I have the 
 right to ask you for your meaning on the ground that you are 
 unintelligible." 
 
 " Oh, that is where the crux lies !" said Mr. Branscombe. 
 " I am sorry if I have offended your susceptibilities. I am 
 always sorry to wound the feelings of any one." 
 
 " Dear papa !" murmured Stella, still in the region of faith 
 as she was. 
 
 " Still, I must keep to my nomenclature," be continued. 
 " In spite of all you may say I maintain the folly, the unfit- 
 ness, and the uncle sir ability of this affair." 
 
 "Unfitness? undesirability ?" said Cyril, almost as if in a 
 dream. 
 
 " Frankly speaking, my dear fellow," Mr. Branscombe 
 went on to say with imperturbable calm ; " you are not the 
 kind of husband I would have chosen for Stella. Her mother, 
 sainted soul! — liked you — you are, I suppose, the kind of 
 thing women do like — and I was always the attentive inter- 
 preter of my good Matilda's wishes, as also I thought that 
 the mother had perhaps more right to regulate the daughter's 
 life than had even the father, I gave in to her desire and 
 sanctioned the engagement because she had endorsed it. But 
 now when, by the mysterious decree of Providence, she has 
 been removed from this earthly sphere and I am left sole 
 guardian of my child, I must use my own discretion, act 
 according to my own ideas, and regulate her life as I think 
 best for her happiness here and hereafter. We cannot be 
 guided by the counsels of the dead. Though I am sorry to 
 distress you and to annoy my child, I must speak plainly ; 
 and, plainly, I do not approve of this engagement." 
 
 " Mr. Branscombe!" — " Papa!" said the two young people 
 in a breath. 
 
 "And if Stella is the dutiful daughter I believe her to 
 be," said Mr. Branscombe in conclusion, not heeding those 
 two passionate ejaculations ; " she will give it up now at 
 once, here in this room and in my hearing." 
 
 "Papa! papa! I cannot !" cried poor Stella, instinctively 
 turning to Cyril. 
 
 The young mau put his arm round her and held her to 
 him in the attitude of protection. 
 
 " She will not leave me," he said a little triumphantly. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe laid down his paint-brush and palette, as 
 he had done once before. He made a few stej)s nearer to the 
 
THE FINAL ANSWER. 227 
 
 young people as they stood before kirn, and saw Paul and 
 Virginia clinging together in the last embrace. As be came 
 nearer he held out his arms. 
 
 - -Must they be held out to empty space ?" he said, his 
 mellow voice trembling. " Must I go down to the grave in 
 the evening of my life a lonely and deserted old man? — 
 without wife or child to cheer my darkened day, to guide my 
 faltering steps ? You, my child, my idolized child— my Stella 
 — my Star— you to leave me for a stranger ? — to desert me 
 with such ungrateful haste? It will not be for long. I shall 
 not keep her for many months, young man ! Cannot she 
 tarry with me for these few weeks till my weary eves are 
 sealed in death, and my lifeless form is laid in 'the silent 
 grave beside her dear, dead mother ? Must I be the modern 
 Lear, pleading in vain?" 
 
 " Dour papa ! I cannot bear to hear you talk like this," 
 said Stella, disengaging herself from her lover but not giving 
 herself to her father — standing for a brief moment" as if 
 undecided between the two. 
 
 •• You look well and vigorous, sir, by no means near the 
 end you depict so forcibly," said Cyril unwisely and 
 hastily. 
 
 His eyes were not blinded by long years of habit and 
 tender teaching. He heard the hollow ring of the base metal 
 so adroitly passed off for gold, and saw through the flimsy 
 cheat which poor Stella accepted so simply for reality. 
 
 "Are you so eager, young man ?" asked Mr. Branscombe 
 with pathetic dignity, dashed with a not unnatural, not 
 unmanly, indignation. " Are you so weary of this little spell 
 of waiting and so anxious to have me safely housed in that 
 grave which gives not back its prey when once engulphed, 
 that you may enter in such indecent haste on your own 
 pleasures P" 
 
 " No, Cyril did not mean that, papa !" Stella said in 
 igony. "You did not, Cyril, did vou? Say that vou did 
 not !" 
 
 " I did not wish you dead, sir ; and I congratulat yon on 
 your prospect of long life," said Cyril slowly. "But I do 
 not want to hold Stella only on the contingency of your 
 I want her to be mine in your lifetime, while we are 
 young and you are healthy. It is a very natural wish. I 
 should scarcely be a man to feel differently." 
 
 Ila has her own heart only to consult," said Mr. Brans- 
 
228 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 combe -with a sudden throwing up of bis cards. " Sbe knows 
 tbat I will not stand in tbe way of ber happiness. If she can 
 find her happiness in this desertion of her father I will not 
 oppose it. She may marry if she will. I will not forbid that 
 marriage ; but I cannot sanction it by my approval or my 
 presence. I should regard it as an impious insult to her 
 mother's memory, as well as the warrant of my own death. 
 Let that be as it may — marry, if you will. Marry — yes, 
 marry, my child — to-morrow if it seems good to you ; but 
 take your leave of your old father for ever, and know that 
 you have walked over his heart to the altar and that you 
 have desecrated your mother's grave!" 
 
 "But this is too terrible — too dreadful!" cried Stella 
 wildly. " Papa ! you know that neither Cyril nor I would 
 give you pain." 
 
 " Yet you are giving me pain — acute pain — anguish, I 
 may say !" cried Mr. Branscombe, suddenly laying his hand 
 on his heart and sinking into a chair. 
 
 His head was thrown back, his mouth was open, his eyes 
 were shut and his arms hung loosely by his sides. It was 
 the best imitation of fainting that could be seen on the stage 
 or off it ; and it was more than poor Stella could bear. She 
 did not see the true face peeping out from behind that; tragic 
 mask ; and her father's histrionic make-believe had on her 
 all the terrifying and softening effect that he had hoped and 
 for which he had played. 
 
 Cyril too, though he had not had much experience in 
 attacks of this sort, and though he doubted in his own mind 
 the geuineness of what he saw now, was obliged to accept 
 it as truth, not being able to prove its falsehood ; and 
 he did his best with Stella to revive that which had not 
 failed. 
 
 After a time Mr. Branscombe thought fit to come out of 
 his swoon and to be once more alive to facts and awake to 
 sorrow. He raised his head from Stella's breast, sat upright 
 and looked about him a little vaguely. Then he passed his 
 hand over his eyes and smiled faintly, sweetly, with resig- 
 nation and benignity. 
 
 " You have surprised my secret, my dear children," he said 
 with the most touching air of noble self-surrender. " My 
 heart has long been affected, like my dear wife's. Poor soul! 
 she never knew ! And any strong emotion reduces me to the 
 state in which you have just seen me. After my loss I passed 
 
 
THE FINAL ANSWER. 229 
 
 sights in this semi-death — this terrible condition of insensi- 
 bility from which the waking is so agonizing — so destroying! 
 But now let the past conversation, and all its pain, be for- 
 gotten. You shall not find me in your way, my Stella. My 
 good Cyril, I will not stand against your happiness. Marry, 
 marry, and let me die, knowing that though I am heart- 
 broken you are happy." 
 
 " I cannot leave you like this, papa," said innocent Stella 
 with an appealing look to Cyril. " Dearest Cyril, we cannot 
 leave him," she repeated. 
 
 " Yet I can die alone !" he said, smiling faintly. " It would 
 be pleasant to see my child's angel face as the last thing on 
 earth visible to my failing sight — the last thing here before 
 I meet her mother there ; but " 
 
 Here he stopped. His voice faltered ; he turned away his 
 head ; then taking Stella to his heart he broke down into a 
 purely feminine flood of weeping. 
 
 So here were her two beloved men, each in one day reduced 
 to the level of hysterical girls, and all because of her ! 
 
 If Cyril's tears had been painful, her father's were terrible 
 to poor Stella to witness. Her whole life had been trained 
 in belief in and adoration of him. He represented to her her 
 mother's love and reverence — her mother's counsels and 
 decrees. He was all her past and all her duty, her love, her 
 home, her religion. Cyril was her future, her young love and 
 her happiness ; but her father was her life ; and in her obe- 
 dience to him was included the approbation of the Supreme 
 and the clearness of her own conscience. 
 
 " You shall not be left, papa," she said in a moved and 
 solemn voice. " Cyril himself would not wish it. Cyril, you 
 would not ask me to leave papa in this state, would you, 
 darling ? I should never be happy if I did !" 
 
 '• I would not ask you to do what you think to be wrong," 
 Cvril answered. " I only wish you to act according to the 
 dictates of your own conscience and the inspiration of your 
 own heart." 
 
 " Yes, act according to your own heart and conscience," 
 said Mr. Branscombe feebly, taking the girl's hand ami 
 carrying it to his lips. " My child, choose! Your father 01 
 your lover — choose quickly ! I cannot support this much 
 longer !" 
 
 Tears stood in his eyes again and he gave a deep B 
 then he began to sob ; and it seemed as if the fainting fit 
 
230 U MY LOVE!" 
 
 from which lie had just recovered were to be re-enacted. As 
 Mr. Branscombe gave these premonitory symptoms of 
 another collapse Cyril stiffened and hardened. Until now he 
 had stood pale and quiet, as if struck to stone ; but now bis 
 lip curled with contempt. 
 
 "Cyril, say I am right!" pleaded Stella, whose faith in 
 her father was as yet illimitable and unshaken. 
 
 " Eight in what ?" he asked sternly. 
 
 It was cruel to her, but for himself he wanted the sharp- 
 ness of the spoken word — he wanted to have the knife turned 
 in his wound. 
 
 " To stay with papa," she said, turning to her father but 
 holding out her hand to her lover. 
 
 " Good-bye," then said Cyril, after a moment of dumb 
 agony. " Good-bye for ever, Stella." 
 
 " No, no ! not for ever ! Cyril, say not for ever !" she 
 pleaded. 
 
 "For ever !" he repeated. " Your father will take you from 
 me for ever. Good-bye, Stella. God bless you ! God bless 
 you, my one only Love ! May you never repent your choice ! 
 Be happy without me, Stella ; but I shall remain faithful to 
 you to the end of my life." 
 
 He took her almost forcibly from her father, and held her 
 closely pressed in his arms ; kissed her pale face with all a 
 boy's passion and a man's devotion — with the reverence of 
 worship, the fervour of love ; then, without another word, 
 with no sign of farewell to Mr. Branscombe, no repeated 
 blessing to Stella, he turned and left the room. A moment 
 after Stella heard the house door close, and knew then that 
 the sunshine of her life was shut out for ever, and that she 
 was left only to the cold dim starlight of sacrifice and duty. 
 She turned to her father and knelt at his feet, lifting her 
 bloodless face to his in mute agony, dumb appeal. It was 
 the devotee entreating the grace of her god to whom she had 
 sacrificed ber beloved. 
 
 " My child," said Mr. Branscombe solemnly, laying his 
 hand on ber head ; " that young man was not worthy of you. 
 You have chosen the better part, my Stella, and while you 
 have blessed me you have redeemed yourself!" 
 
 " No, no !" cried Stella wildly ; " anything but that, papa ! 
 My heart, my life, all — all I have — but leave me my faith in 
 Cyril ! As long as I live I must love Cyril !" 
 
 " Poor, passionate, misguided moth !" sighed Mr. Brans- 
 
HER F1EST RESERVE, _'J1 
 
 combe grandly. M On my breast let the scorched wings be 
 
 healed !" 
 
 He raised her from her knees and held her to his heart, 
 even at this moment his eyes wandering towards his 
 and that interrupted bit of cross-hatching. But for the first 
 time in her life her father's caress gave poor Stella neither 
 joy nor comfort — gaye her instead something akin to pain — 
 something from which she involuntarily shrank as partly a 
 wound and partly a desecration. 
 
 CHAPTER XXY. 
 
 HER FIEST RESERVE. 
 
 Is all country places where the boys of the several families 
 come down in the summer to go back in the autumn, the 
 sudden transition from abounding gaiety to blank and dreary 
 dulness is one of the most painful experiences which life can 
 give to the girls who have lost then playfellows and to the 
 mothers who have parted with their sons. For two months 
 the whole neighbourhood has been riotously alive with the 
 doings of the young fellows whose whole aim of existence has 
 been to get through as much enjoyment as can be compressed 
 into the twenty-four hours, and to make as much noise about 
 - if pleasure needed a trumpeter to tell the world how she 
 Shouts and laughter, signal and song, have wakened 
 up the echoes of the day ; and the low whisper, the fond 
 word, the stolen 1. added to the harmonies of the 
 
 fragrant night. These fine, swift, stalwart, beardless lads 
 have been in their strength like young lions and in their 
 beauty like boy-gods — lords of the earth and masters of life 
 and of L>v, — p of the present and heirs of the future 
 
 alike. The whole pla< - een theirs. By their frank 
 
 good-humour, by their thoughtless joy, by the very for 
 their vitality, they have taken all the fortresses of sk 
 and pridi . •■• and ill-will; till even the crabbedest old 
 
 maid has smoothed her ribbons as they passed, and the most 
 suspicious mother of a well-dowered daughter has learned to 
 believe there was n>> harm in them after all. 
 
 And now they have gone and the bright bubble has broken ! 
 
 t, deserted, --. the scene of their pleasures and the 
 
 theatre of their triumphs knows them no more ; melancholy 
 
232 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 reigns in the place of delight ; and the women have to endure 
 regret where they formerly possessed gladness. No longer 
 boats shoot down the river or skim across the lake — boats 
 where emphatically youth was at the prow and pleasure at 
 the helm, and the Burden was one of Fair Women with no 
 place for Our Lady of Pain among them. No longer the 
 ping of the guns is heard from wood and swamp, from stubble 
 field and heathery moor. Foxes may carry their brushes in 
 peace and pride ; hares may crouch in their forms and never 
 prick their ears in fearful listening for the footsteps of the 
 enemy ; rabbits may nibble the sweet grass of the meadows 
 and turn up their little white tufts in disdain of powder and 
 shot, a good aim and a long range ; and all the birds of the 
 air may fly where they will, their feeding-grounds under the 
 heavens are once more safe and their own. 
 
 Lonesome and given up to maiden meditations, by no 
 means faucy free, the girls are now as safe as the birds of the 
 air and the little brown beasts of the field. They may come 
 and go, walk out or bide at home as they list ; not the most 
 careful mother now feels anxious as to where her Juliet may 
 be roaming nor what she may be doing. She can come to no 
 harm ; unless, indeed, ineligible Eomeos should spring up on 
 the moorlands like mushrooms in a night, or the woods should 
 grow detrimentals like berries on the bushes. This conscious- 
 ness of safety makes life to Juliet's mother a very different 
 thing from what it was when Romeo — rich in health, in youth, 
 good looks and hope, but with never a profession as yet to 
 his name, nor a penny-piece to call his own save what his 
 father pays for his education and allows him for pocket- 
 money — was rambling through space and experimentalizing 
 on elective affinities. Then no one knew what might be 
 asked in the gloaming to be granted in the moonlight, and to 
 bring trouble to every one concerned when the cool morning 
 came and impossibility was seen to be beyond the stature 
 and strength of love. All this harass and anxiety are over 
 now. The hour of youthful bliss in peril, and of maternal pain 
 in fear, is at an end ; and the dulness of safety with the peace 
 of security reigns in its stead. 
 
 This was the kind of thing that had come now to High- 
 wood. Social dreariness and feminine freedom from danger 
 were at their height. All those young fellows, whose presence 
 had brought so much happiness and no less danger, had now 
 gone. Cyril Ponsonby, no longer a joyous confident boy, but 
 
HER FIRST RESERVE. 233 
 
 a crave, stern, saddened man, was on his way to India. 
 Randolph Mackenzie was in London, unsettled as to his 
 future, but not inclining to the Orders so warmly insisted on 
 by his cousin. The Cowley boys were at the University 
 which had the honour of bearing them on its books, but 
 which had not yet been able to hew out a mental pathway by 
 which to cart the bricks of the higher mathematics into their 
 brains. Jemmy Pennefather had joined his ship, and was 
 now sailing away to the Chinese seas ; the middle two boys 
 had been drafted off, the one to college and the other to 
 school ; while Jack, the youngest, who loved adventure and 
 despised Latin, had gone out to a tea-plantation in India, 
 not far from Cyril's station. Sandro Kemp was, no one 
 knew where ; and Highwood was given up to women, needle- 
 work, dulness and regret. 
 
 The only bachelors left in the place were Colonel Money- 
 penny andDr. Quigley ; but these, though eligible for matri- 
 mony, were not lovers like Cyril, friends like Sandro, nor con- 
 fidants like Randolph. Least of all were they playfellows 
 like the Pennefathers and the Cowley boys. And as for the 
 matrimonial possibilities included in their state and fortune 
 — no one wanted anything with them. 
 
 No ; the sun of Highwood had set for the season, and 
 Ichabod was the epitaph written over its russet woods for 
 summer green, its bare brown fields for golden grain, its 
 autumn weeds for spring-time flowers. Spring, summer and 
 the rich red days of autumn had gone ; and they had entered 
 now into that" season of drip and damp, of mud and mire 
 and rank decay which comes before the time of frost and 
 snow. 
 
 Where all were sad it was hard to say who most deserved 
 compassion. That specious doctrine of compensation was 
 true for once, and to each was left a little flower of moral 
 satisfaction, which in some sort atoned for the loss of the 
 larger growth. Stella had the sense of duty well-fulfilled, 
 her sweet unselfishness, and her beloved papa. Augusta had 
 also the sense of her duty well-fulfilled, her cheerful reason- 
 ableness of submission to the inevitable, and her darling boy. 
 The Pennefathers had their good spirits which were indepen- 
 dent of conditions, and the satisfaction of devising and 
 embroidering certain startling costumes to be worn at 
 Christmas when the boys should be at home and there would 
 be more than one pocketful of fun, arranged according to the 
 
234 "MY LOVE.'" 
 
 season. Hortensia had her elegant idol, who was occupied in. 
 making her mind much as she had desired to make her stal- 
 wart cousin's. And for the rest — who can undo the past or 
 soften the decrees of that inexorable Fate whereby we are 
 ruled to our sorrow ? What was, was ; and the fardels of 
 life had to be borne, whether light or heavy, pleasant or 
 painful. 
 
 Still, things were very blank and very dreary ; and the 
 efforts of the women to look bright and content, as they stood 
 under their dripping umbrellas and greeted each other by the 
 church-porch or on the roads, were heroic if useless. It was 
 simply the meeting of the Roman aiigurs who looked into 
 each other's faces and did not laugh. 
 
 A coolness, without name or explanation, had sprung up 
 between The Laurels and Rose Hill. Augusta recognized in 
 Mr. Branscombe an active enemy who would even give him- 
 self trouble to give her pain ; and Mr. Branscombe recognized 
 in Augusta a critic whose sharp eyes were not to be dazzled 
 by finery nor dimmed by flattery. No wash of gold nor 
 softening tint of rose-colour for her ! JSTo feverish enthusiasm 
 nor blind belief for this calm, cool Critic of Pure Reason ! 
 No wonder, then, that he was her active enemy, living as he 
 did for praise alone and caring nothing for truth and things 
 as they were. 
 
 There was no ill-feeling between Augusta and Stella, and 
 each knew herself loved, pitied and in some sense understood 
 by the other ; but the widow was as angry with Mr. Brans- 
 combe as with Colonel Moneypenny, and with both so far as 
 reason would allow her to be angry with any one. Like all 
 wise people she looked on passions as boomerangs which come 
 back with a blow on one's own pate, save when one is so 
 powerful as to rise above circumstances ; and then they are 
 luxuries. Being angry, she did nothing to break down the 
 coolness that had sprang up between her and Rose Hill ; but 
 being reasonable, she did nothing to add to it. She took no 
 public action, and to the world was on exactly the same terms 
 as before ; but she kept away from the house — and Mr. Brans- 
 combe understood why. 
 
 One day the two young women met face to face on the road. 
 Both were walking — Augusta with her child, Stella alone. 
 
 "Why, Stella, alone! How is this?" cried Augusta, as 
 they came up to each other. 
 
 She took the girl's hands in hers and kissed the poor, pale 
 
UK 11 FIRST RESERVE. 233 
 
 £ace that looked so white and wan, surrounded by its mourn- 
 ing veil, for all that this was the public road and a ploughman 
 had his horses' heads to the hedge. 
 
 "Papa 1ms gone to Derwent Lodge. He did not want me 
 to-day, and said I had better go for a little walk," answered 
 Stella. 
 
 She had the leaden look and listless accent of a person 
 whose fount of happiness has run dry, and whose life is now 
 one of sufferance rather than of active energy. She carried 
 her cross in patience truly, but she did not try to cheat 
 herself into the belief that it was wreathed with flowers- not 
 thorns. 
 
 " Turn back with me and come for a pleasant walk by the 
 river-side. It is fresher than this dull road ; and Tony and 
 I are going. Come ! It will be better for you than tramping 
 along the highway by yourself." 
 
 Stella had an idea, by no means hazy, that her beloved 
 papa would rather she did not walk by the river-side or else- 
 where with Augusta Latrobe ; and had she seen her way to 
 an excuse she would have refused on any ground but the 
 right. But she was taken unawares and unprepared ; and she 
 could not find it in her heart to pain this sweet-tempered, 
 kindly-mannered woman, who had always been good to her 
 and who had, besides, been such a favourite with dearest 
 mamma and Cyril's staunchest friend. So, yielding to the 
 temptation of complaisance, she said: "Yes, she would go; 
 and it would be pleasanter by the river-side with Augusta 
 and little Tony than here on the dull high-road by herself." 
 
 Whereat the two went into the field through which thev 
 had to pass before they reached the river, and talked as they 
 went on everything outside their hearts and in which they 
 Gait no kind of interest. 
 
 Augusta had not been to the river since that day when she 
 had met Sandro under the elm-tree, sketching the rock over- 
 grown with flowers. This had been the day after Mrs. Brans- 
 combe's funeral; and though she was as little superstitious a 3 
 weak, she caught the coincidence of thus falling \\\»n\ Stella 
 on thevery day when she had determined to brave hex 
 memories and suppress them by the overlay of a new asso- 
 ciation. These coincidences which mean nothing, often occur 
 in our lives, she thought sagely. Still it was odd ; and she 
 noted it curiously. 
 
 "Augusta," said Stella suddenly, just as they crossed the 
 
236 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 field and came full on to the river ; " what has become of 
 Mr. Kemp? Do you know?" 
 
 She spoke without note of warning; quickly, abruptly ; as 
 if the sight of that river, which ran so full of his name and 
 presence to Augusta, had suddenly brought the artist to her 
 mind too. 
 
 " I do not know, dear," answered the widow, turning to 
 struggle with a tough bit of ragwort and calling to her boy 
 to come and have a few golden flowers stuck into his cap. 
 
 "You do not know where he is?" said the girl again. 
 " Then no one does, for you were his best friend." 
 
 "Was I?" replied Augusta, occupied with her boy's cap 
 and his golden flowers. " I was not aware of that fact, Stella 
 mia," she continued with admirable indifference ; " but if you 
 say so, I suppose I was." 
 
 " We always thought so," said Stella. 
 
 " Oh yes, I remember now !" replied Augusta with a little 
 dash of malice which she knew Stella would not understand. 
 " Your father made out some odd theory of the same kind 
 the last time you called on us. But you have it all to your- 
 selves," she added with a forced laugh. "I make you a 
 present of the whole affair — friendship, intimacy, every- 
 thing." 
 
 " I did not know, of course, but I always thought you were 
 very great friends," repeated Stella, wide of the truth and 
 dense as to her companion's meaning. "At all events, he has 
 left Highwood and I do not think that he intends to come 
 back." 
 
 " So ?" returned Augusta quietly; but her fair face grew 
 from fair to pale, and she opened her lips while her nostrils 
 dilated as if her breath came with difficulty. 
 
 " He is very unhappy about something ; so perhaps that 
 marriage which was talked about is broken off, poor fellow!" 
 6aid Stella, her eyes filling with tears. 
 
 Reason enough, according to her own sorrowful glossary, 
 why any one should be unhappy, and why tears should come 
 into her eyes for sympathy with those who, like herself, had 
 lost their Love ! 
 
 " Perhaps it is," said Augusta. " Who told you he was 
 unhappy ?" 
 
 " Mary — Mrs. Prinsep. She did not say why. She said 
 indeed, she did not know ; but he left Fernacres quite sud- 
 denly one day after he had received a letter ; and he did not 
 
HER FIRST RESERVE. 237 
 
 say -where he was going. Nor has he written to say where 
 he is, nor when he was coming back. It is very strange, is it 
 not?" 
 
 " Very strange," said Augusta, speaking automatically. 
 
 "Poor fellow! Something must have gone wrong!" con- 
 tinued St. 41a. 
 
 '•Yes, something must," said the widow. 
 
 " I wonder what it is, Augusta !" 
 
 " I wonder," was the echo. 
 
 "Mary said he looked dreadfully unhappy," continued the 
 innocent torturer. 
 
 "Ah?" returned her listener. 
 
 " I am so sorry he has left like this. I had seen a good 
 deal of him lately. Papa used to have kirn to the house very 
 often ; and I liked him so much. He was always so kind 
 and gentle. I liked him really very much of late ; did not 
 you, Augusta?" 
 
 '•I? Yes, I liked him," said Augusta, in the manner of 
 one waking from sleep and making an effort to concentrate 
 her attention. " Every one liked him, so far as that goes," 
 she added vaguely. 
 
 '•"What a miserable world it is! How much unhappiness 
 there is everywhere !" said Stella. " Once I used to think 
 that every one, excepting the very poor, was necessarily 
 happv. I could not imagine why people complained so much 
 of the miseries of life ; but now I do not wonder. Every one 
 seems to be so wretched ! I really think the Pennefather.-v 
 are the only thoroughly happy people Lore. Even Hortensia 
 is not sincerely so, though she declares that she is ; and you 
 are not either, Augusta." 
 
 " No, I am not happy," said Augusta with a sudden rush 
 of feeling. " Certainly, I am not happy '." 
 
 " Poor darling ! you most be wretched ! I know you must," 
 said Stella, thinking of the dead husbaud with a side glance 
 to the living mother. " You have lost so much !" 
 
 For a moment Augusta felt inclined to open her heart and 
 make the girl a present of her confidence. She stopped her- 
 self in time, and kept back the dangerous thoughts before 
 they took shape or sound in words. No, she must be silent. 
 It was not in her way to make confidences at any time. She 
 knew that the more she was sufficient for herself the more 
 completely she would triumph, not only over her own weak- 
 nesses which were few, but over her external difficulties which 
 
298 • "MY LOVEV 
 
 were many. Besides, an unmarried girl cannot understand 
 how a widow, or a woman past her first youth, should be in 
 love at all. The one is sacrilegious, the other ridiculous. 
 No ; she must not reveal herself to Stella Branscombe, She 
 must receive confidences, not give them ; give sympathy, not 
 receive it. She must let no one see the shadow of the cross 
 she bore for love of her boy — she must scarcely confess to 
 uerself that she bore any cross at all ! Strength grows better 
 the less we dig about the roots of our difficulties, and sorrows 
 increase by contemplation but dwindle when we refuse to look 
 at them. Nor could she even say : " I have had to write a 
 dreadful letter to Mr. Kemp," for that would be giving the 
 clue which would lead straight into the heart of the maze. 
 She must say nothing save what was substantially untrue as 
 an indication, as she repeated Stella's words : 
 
 " Yes, I have indeed lost much ! But not more than you 
 have, my darling. You, too, have lost all." 
 
 " I have papa," said Stella with a sob. 
 
 " And I my boy," said the widow, checking a sigh. 
 
 Suddenly she turned with strange passion to the girl. 
 
 " Oh, Stella !" she cried, stopping in her walk and laying 
 her hands on the shoulders which had once been so round 
 and smooth and were now so sharp and angular ; " you 
 should have done as I told you. You should have married 
 Cp - il Ponsonby ! You should not have minded what any one 
 said — you should have kept your promise and have married 
 him !" 
 
 " How could I, Augusta?" said Stella piteously. " Papa 
 would have died without me !" 
 
 " Oh, no, he would not!" said Augusta, still with the same 
 odd unusual heat of manner traversed now by a bitter vein 
 of sarcasm. " He would have got on quite well without you. 
 He would have missed you at first, of course, but he would 
 soon have made some comfortable arrangement for himself, 
 and he would have been quite as well satisfied as he is now. 
 And you and Cyril would have been happy. Now you will 
 regret your loss all your life, and so will Cyril. For of course 
 I know, like all the world, that the engagement is broken off 
 now — not only the marriage postponed, as it was at first ; 
 and I know that I may speak to you as if you were my 
 younger sister." 
 
 " But papa is so good. He could not have been left after 
 poor mamma went. It was my duty to stay with him. And 
 
HER FIRST RESERVE. 
 
 he is so good," Stella said again, as if she were re] 
 charm. 
 " If he had been as good as you say, he would have let you 
 marry and be happy, instead of sacrificing you to his own 
 
 vanity and selfishness," thought Augusta. But again she 
 d back dangerous thoughts before they had taken 
 
 • or sound. Stella's blind faith in her father almost 
 trritat 1 h< r seeing so clearly as she did ; it seemed to be less 
 filial piety than intellectual fatuity: and she longed to 
 enlighten the girl and make her see the truth as she herself 
 and others saw it. Still, it was not her duty, Augusta 
 reflected, to open a daughter's eyes to the pitifulness of the 
 sham whereof love had made a demigod ; but she kept to her 
 point all the same. 
 
 •• You shorn 1 d have married him," she repeated, as warmly 
 as before. "You have ruined his life as well as your own ; 
 and it was not in your duty to throw him off as it would be 
 in mine. You have no one to care for, to protect, for whom 
 to sacrifice yourself as I have. Your father can take care of 
 himself; my boy can not — and he has only me to love him 
 and take care of his best interests." 
 
 And then, how strange a thing to happen ! — Augusta 
 Latrobe, the calm, reasonable, sell-restrained woman sud- 
 denly loosed the reins of her control and covered her face in 
 her bauds ; and Stella saw the tears steal through her fingers 
 and fall like rain to the ground. 
 
 She was shocked, startled, half-frightened. She felt as if 
 Augusta had told her that she had some mortal malady and 
 must die, or had committed some deadly crime and must be 
 punished. She could not understand it all, nor see what she 
 meant and to what she alluded ; when suddenly the little 
 fellow came running up to his mother, clinging to her gown 
 and whimpering. 
 
 "Mamma, why do you cry ?" he said. "This is just the 
 place where you cried that day when we saw Mr. Kemp. 
 What makes you always cry here ? Has Stella been tal 
 i" you as Mr. Kemp did ?" 
 
 • truth leapt out like fire into the girl's face. 
 
 ■•She loves Sandro Kemp and has had to refuse him 
 because her mother would not lei her marry him !" 
 
 This was the meaning of it all. Henceforth she knew the 
 
 of her friend's life. It was a shock, of course, a wrench 
 
 to hei t, a trial of her faith, as Augusta knew that it 
 
240 " MY LOVE!" 
 
 would be. But mental prejudices generally go down before 
 affection and sympathy, and Stella remembered only that her 
 friend suffered, and forgot that as a widow beyond thirty she 
 had no right to suffer as she did at all. 
 
 " Poor darling ! poor love !" she said in an undertone,, 
 kissing her even as Augusta had kissed her, from the fulness 
 of her sympathy and sorrow. 
 
 The widow raised her face and returned the caress. 
 
 " Never speak of this to me," she said in a low voice ; and 
 then gave herself to the task of comforting her little boy who 
 had suddenly broken his heart for sorrow, fear and jealousy 
 together. 
 
 So now the two understood each other without fullei 
 explanation, but with perfect confidence; and womanlike 5 
 each was as much interested in the other's love as if it had 
 been her own. And while Augusta wondered if she could 
 not induce Stella still to marry Cyril, Stella wondered if there 
 was any way by which Augusta could possibly permit herself 
 to marry Sandro. Poor, dear, loving women ! And the men for 
 whom they wept thinking them hard, cold and heartless ! 
 
 This walk and confidence with Augusta Latrobe was the 
 first secret kept from her father in Stella's transparent life. 
 She felt as if she had somehow fallen from grace and had 
 come into sin, and as if she should never be her old innocent 
 self again, because she did not run, open-mouthed, to tell 
 him all that she had done and learned. She would not even 
 say that she had seen Augusta. She did not know why, but 
 she could not volunteer even this apparently insignificant 
 little statement. Nevertheless, when, later in the evening, 
 he asked her where she had been ? and whom she had seen ? 
 she would not conceal the bare bones of the fact if she still 
 kept the heart of the circumstance hidden. 
 
 " I met Augusta Latrobe, and went for a walk by the 
 river-side," she answered. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe frowned. 
 
 " Of all the young women in the place she is the least 
 desirable companion for you," he said slowly and emphati- 
 cally. " I thought I had made this clear to you already, my 
 child. However that may be, you will bear it in mind for 
 the future, will you not ? I do not approve of Mrs. Latrobe 
 as your companion. This is the text on which you must 
 embroider the various renderings of obedience and renuncia- 
 tion as occasions may occur. You understand me ? " 
 
HER FIRST RESERVE. 211 
 
 "Yes, if yon wish it, papa," faltered Stella, "It is so 
 unfortunate that you do not like her," she added, plucking 
 up so much courage of opposition as was contained in this 
 plea. •' She is so very kind and sweet! And I always 
 remember that dearest mamma liked her so much, and wag 
 so sorry for her." 
 
 " As I once expressed myself to you, my dear Stella, your 
 sainted mother, my good Matilda, had the unfortunate 
 propensity for making pets of very undesirable people," 
 said Mr. Branscombe significantly. " Of more than this 
 objectionable young woman," he added with a cruel smile. 
 
 Stella said no more. She knew for whom her father meant 
 the ricochet of this bullet aimed at Augusta ; and Mr. Brans- 
 combe, looking at her flushed face and a certain unexpressed 
 fire of indignation in her blue eyes, wondered for a moment 
 if it were in the possible ordaining of future things that his 
 Star should become less radiant than heretofore — his docile 
 child learn to be so far disobedient and recalcitrant as to 
 encourage affections which he disallowed. 
 
 To make sure of her, at least for the present, he gave 
 himself a great deal of trouble that evening ; putting himself 
 forth, as he so well knew how, as the embodied ideal of moral 
 
 tion and mental splendour; dazzling, as so often before, 
 the mind made subservient to his by the long training of 
 love and worship — till Stella felt that for papa — dear, dear 
 papa — martyrdom itself would be not only right but easy. 
 
 It was a little trial to her on all sides, when next Sunday 
 she and Augusta met in the church porch as the manner of 
 the place was, and she had to speak to her with studied 
 indifference. Mr. Branscombe had by now relaxed the 
 severity of his mourning isolation ; and he and Stella joined 
 the Sunday church-door club according to the manner of the 
 Highwoodites in general. As usual, he did not see the pretty 
 widow clearly enough to shake hands with her, but he 
 matched his daughter while appearing to be occupied only 
 with Mrs. Lynn and Hortensia. Augusta saw the whdfc 
 
 •n as clearly as if it had been laid down in black and 
 white ; and she know what Stella was feeling and what were 
 
 Eficulties. Wherefore she simply smiled and gave the 
 girl's hand a friendly, secret squeeze which betrayed nothing 
 
 jsed all. Then she passed out into the dam p 
 with the noisy Doves, and troubled no one. But Si 
 now a Becret in her hitherto pure and crystalline life. Sha 
 
243 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 had established a private understanding with _ Augusta 
 Latrobe whom her father disliked, and bade her dislike also 
 and shrink from. And she, of all in Highwood, knew the 
 secret of the young widow's life and what had been the 
 moving cause of Sandro Kemp's sudden departure. It was 
 a terrible burden for a girl who had never thought a thought 
 nor done a deed with the faintest semblance of reserve or 
 mystery. But fate is often very hard on us ; and nothir g 
 pleases a malign fortune so much as to push us into actions 
 uncongenial to our qualities. The truthful she forces into 
 insincerity, the self-sacrificing have to appear selfish, the 
 generous are thrust into misers' rags, and the gentle-hearted 
 have to be judges and executioners. And this malignity 
 Stella experienced for the first time, when, the very soul of 
 truth and candour as she was, she returned Augusta's hand- 
 press with one as significant and warm, and neither wished 
 nor allowed her father to see. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " RUN DOWN." 
 
 " How ill Stella Branscombe is looking !" 
 
 This was the one common piece of news which each ex- 
 changed with each and all passed on to the next comer. 
 
 And she was, as they said, looking wretchedly ill. She 
 was pale and thin, to the loss of all that lovely colouring, that 
 graceful outline, so characteristic of her former self. Her eyes 
 were too deeply sunk for one so young, and large blue circles 
 were round the orbits. Her lips were too colourless, her 
 hands too transparent, her step was too heavy, her bearing too 
 listless. And she had, beside this want of life and spirit, a 
 harassed expression in her face behind which could be read a 
 certain kind of strange fear that set folks wondering why, 
 and made them think of Mrs. Branscombe. So that many 
 supplemented their first piece of information with : " and how 
 like she grows to her poor mother!" But, like that mother, 
 she did not complain ; and when asked somewhat significantly 
 how she was, answered always in the same way : " Well — ■ 
 quite well, thank you." 
 
 Of course her father saw nothing of what was so visible to 
 every one else. Devoted to elegance and art as he was, he 
 
"MX DOWN." 
 
 shut his eyes to the prosaic conditions of indigestion and 
 nervous exhaustion ; and if forced to accept "delicacy" as a 
 fact, accepted it only in its aesthetic aspect, ana it up 
 
 with images of spirits and angels and flowers and moonlight 
 nights, of mist-wreaths on the hill and of snowflakes on the 
 young grass. He could not by any possibility come down to 
 the gross truths of physiology, and preferred his poetic 
 rendering to any scientific interpretation that could be given. 
 It was rather an awkward position for Dr. Quigley. He 
 saw, even more clearly than the rest, that Stella had " run 
 down," but he was not called in to give his opinion ; aud pro- 
 fessional etiquette is against a man's taking a patient by force 
 or volunteering advice without leave asked or request made. 
 Nevertheless, he determined to break through the conven- 
 tional etiquette so far as he might, and to do what he could 
 to make Mr. Branscombe see things as they were, and do 
 his duty when he had seen them. Accordingly, one bright, 
 crisp, frosty day he went up to Rose Hill, and found father 
 and daughter at home, with Hortensia Lyon to bear them 
 company. 
 
 He was ushered into the studio where Mr. Branscombe 
 received those visitors whose presence pleased him or whose 
 praise he coveted. The room was hot, close, stifling ; full of 
 the odours of paint and varnish and heavily-scented green- 
 house flowers, combined with the perfume of a small fountain 
 of eau de Cologne, always playing on the table. The atino- 
 sphere and temperature alone were sufficient to account for 
 uiount of pallor and lassitude in the girl, thought Dr. 
 Qaig] the constant stooping over her desk 
 
 and the strain of that unremitting mental servitude which 
 imanded of her by her father — and, thought the doctor 
 - iff it was when it was done ! — and was it to be 
 wondered at if Stella looked worn-out and run down as she 
 . and as if she would fall into a severe illness unless her 
 
 rous mode of life were interrupted ? 
 Dr. Loved this Lrirl as if she had been his own. 
 
 Had he not loved her mother as the one perfect woman of his 
 
 i —venerated her as the saint whose sufferings he 
 known without confession and whose martyrdom he had tried 
 in vain to avert ? Loving and pitying the child — loving, 
 venerating and pitying the mother — bis 6 »r Mr. 
 
 Branscombe were d most amiable kind. But he had 
 
 to dissemble, like the stock villain of a Surrey melodrama ; 
 
244 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 and though he could not stoop to the indignity of obtaining 
 by flattery what would be denied to direct demand, still he, 
 like every one else who had to influence Mr. Bransconibe, was 
 forced to finesse deeply that he might catch the trick. If he 
 could have done as he would, he said to himself, he would 
 have taken that old fop by the scruff of the neck and have 
 thrust him into the midst of good useful prosaic parochial 
 work, which would have necessitated open-air exercise and 
 being somewhat hardly handled by his fellow-men. He would 
 have taken Stella clear away from Highwood and her father, 
 and would have sent her off to India by the next mail, with 
 directions to be given into Cyril Ponsonby's keeping and 
 married out of hand the day after her arrival. As for 
 Hortensia, whose character he understood to the echo, and 
 whose feelings and motives were clearer to him than they were 
 even to herself, he would have put an interdict on Rose Hill 
 and Mr. Branscombe ; he would have taken her out of her 
 father's hands and given her into those of her mother, with 
 instructions to be carried out to balls and parties and theatres 
 and operas till some of this Puritanical nonsense had been 
 knocked out of her and a little of the mildew of moral affec- 
 tation had been rubbed off her silly little mind. But instead 
 of all these strong and wholesome measures he had to dis- 
 semble in good truth, and to content himself with a mere 
 " Pouf !" as he flung back his coat, wiped his forehead, fanned 
 himself with his handkerchief, and said in a cheery fox- 
 hunting kind of voice : 
 
 " You are terribly hot here, Mr. Branscombe ! How 
 stands the thermometer ? And don't you find all this scent 
 oppressive ! It. would give me headache in half an hour." 
 
 " I am a Son of the South," said Mr. Branscombe with a 
 languid smile. " Warmth, flowers, perfumes — these are as 
 necessary for my existence as the gross bread and meat of 
 coarser organizations. I must have them if I am to live at 
 all." 
 
 " But these two young ladies here are daughters of the 
 North ; and this kind of thing is especially bad for Miss 
 Stella," returned the doctor. "I understand now why she 
 looks so pale and run down. She wants more exercise in the 
 open air than she has, and a fresher and cooler atmosphere 
 than this when she is in the house. Believe me, this is 
 destruction for a young creature of her age. And, Miss 
 Hortensia Lyon, you too have no business here ! Why are 
 
"RUN DOWX." 245 
 
 you not running about the garden instead of sitting in the 
 house such a day as this? Hothouses are bad rearing- 
 grounds for the young." 
 
 " I like warmth and I adore hothouse flowers," said 
 Hortensia primly. 
 
 Stella did not speak. 
 
 " Tut ! what you like and what you adore don't come into 
 the question," said Dr. Quigley with a good-humoured 
 impatience of manner that matched her real annoyance well 
 enough. " Both you young ladies, I say, have no business in 
 such an atmosphere as this. You ought to be out now on the 
 Broads with the rest. The water is frozen as thick as a mill- 
 stone, and all Highwood is skating. Such a glorious day as 
 this, it is a pitvthat you are not both out. "What do you say, 
 Hiss Stella, eh r" 
 
 Qa glanced with a hurried look of inquiry at her father. 
 Hortensia turned her large eyes slowly to Mr. Branscombe, 
 and fixed them on his face with that kind of worshipping 
 humility which finds in obedience to superior power the 
 greatest happiness of a loving life. 
 
 " I think tnat papa wants me," said Stella nervously. 
 
 " Not to your own disinclination, my child," said Mr. 
 Branscombe loftily. 
 
 " If you like to go out, Stella, I can finish your copying," 
 said Hortensia, a certain eagerness of hope mingled with an 
 amount of reproach in her voice. 
 
 Always the faithful Abra ! — always the constant incense- 
 bearer ! 
 
 " No, Miss Hortensia, you have no more right to be here 
 than Miss Stella," said Dr. Quigley. " Let me advise you all 
 — you. too, Mr. Branscombe, as well as the young ladies — put 
 on your strong shoes, wrap up warm, go to the Broads where 
 they are skating, and all three of you take a turn on the ice. 
 That will put a little colour into your faces ; for you are all 
 as pallid as if you had not half a dozen red corpuscles among 
 you ! And upon my soul you will have to send for me before 
 long if you do not mend the error of your ways ! Let me 
 advise you as a friend and a doctor too." 
 
 " If the ladies will," said Mr. Branscombe stiffly. " For 
 myself, I am beyond the need of such vulgar considerations." 
 
 "As fresh air and exercise?" said Dr. Qui-ley. "Then 
 you are beyond the conditions of ordinary humanity," he 
 added with ill-concealed contempt. 
 
216 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Wo do not wish it if you do not, papa," said Stella. 
 " It is so far nicer here !" echoed Hortensia, whose occupa- 
 tion was nothing more onerous than sitting by Mr. Brans- 
 combe, watching him paint and listening to the frothy rubbish 
 which he offered and she accepted for poetry of the loftiest 
 kind and morality of the sublimest cast. 
 
 " Tut !" said Dr. Quigley again. " Go and put on your 
 bonnets, both of you — else, Miss Hortensia, so far as you are 
 concerned, I shall be forced to say a word or two in your 
 mother's ear which you will not like when it has to be trans- 
 lated for your benefit. I cannot have you all run to seed in 
 this way. Come, Miss Stella, put that writing of yours 
 away. It is a positive sin to waste such a day as this 
 indoors." 
 
 " Shall we, papa ?" asked Stella. 
 
 What a wicked girl she was to be so weary of her present 
 life and endless absorption in papa's beautiful work ! — and 
 how worse than wicked to be so tired of Hortensia Lyon ! 
 Hortensia was right to reproach her with those grave re- 
 proving eyes. Yes ; she was wicked, and her friend knew it. 
 " I wish no sacrifice of young lives. Go, my dears," said 
 Mr. Branscombe majestically ; and Stella felt the burden of 
 her sin in his tone as well as in Hortensia's eyes. 
 
 " Stella, you are inexplicable ! I cannot understand you," 
 said the little Puritan with frank, ungodly temper, as they 
 went upstairs. 
 
 "No?" returned Stella wearily. "Sometimes I cannot 
 understand myself." 
 
 Few people indeed can, when they come to the state in 
 which she was — utterly weary with her present conditions yet 
 without energy enough to know what she would like better. 
 She only knew that she was tired of copying papa's poetry 
 and music ; that she was tired of being always in the studio ; 
 that she was tired of seeing Hortensia Lyon day after day, 
 day after day ; — Hortensia always, and no one else ; and that, 
 above all, she was tired of that odd jargon and jumble of 
 words which were always sounding in her ears and never 
 entering into her mind, never giving her a new thought, a 
 definite fact, a clear image, or a cheerful sensation. She was 
 so tired of it all and wished that she could go to sleep with 
 her dear mother ! But, save this wish, which was not to be 
 called an active desire, she did not know what it was that she 
 wanted in the place of that which she had. " Bun down" to 
 
"BUN DOWN." 217 
 
 the extent of patient despair ; and she so young and once so 
 near the green glades of Paradise ! 
 
 " You must look after that child of yours," said Dr. Quigley, 
 when the girls had left. " She is going the way of her 
 mother ; and unless you look out, by George ! Branseonibe, 
 she will slip through your fingers before you know where 
 you are !" 
 
 He spoke with intentional abruptness and coarseness of 
 tone, thinking that this old fop had need of some smart blow 
 • rhinoceros' hide of his self-conceit were to be made to 
 feel. 
 
 " Oh, you doctor fellows are always on the look out for 
 ' cases,' " said Mr. Branscombe irritably. " My daughter's 
 health is perfect ; simply perfect. She has never had a day's 
 indisposition of any kind, and seems to me to be in the most 
 ictory condition possible. If you had said that I wanted 
 looking to I should have understood it. Had you even said 
 that Miss Lyon's constitutional fragility might give those 
 who love her cause for uneasiness, that also I should have 
 understood. But, my dear sir !" here he smiled in a superior 
 and sarcastic way ; " Miss Branscombe is simply superb — in 
 perfect condition, mind and body ; and I thank God for it !" 
 he added, piously raising his eyes to the ceiling. 
 
 " Now, see here, Mr. Branscombe," said Dr. Quigley ; " it 
 is no business of mine to warn you — don't you see? My 
 business would be to let your daughter go on as she is now, 
 when I should have a ' case.' as you call it, on my hands and 
 a pocketful of fees as the result. But I don't want this case, 
 and I would rather nev another fee again than one 
 
 for Stella Branscombe's illness. So I give you fair and 
 friendly warning. If you do not loosen the curb a little — 
 provide the girl with some kind of amusement necessary for 
 her age — force her to go more into the fresh air than she 
 
 ,— make her tal td give up this eternal p 
 
 over her desk in this hut, heavily-loaded atmosphere, Stella 
 will die — die, sir, bo sorely as her mother died before her. I 
 do not mince matters, you see ; for I am in earnest. The girl 
 ime way as her mother, and" — significantly — 
 " from the 
 
 "God bless my soul, what can I do with her!" cried 
 Mr. UiMiiscombe angrily. "She has her appointed ■". 
 and she must fulfil them. You are alarming me without 
 • . She is not in the bad way you make out. 
 
218 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 I am ; but she is not — and I cannot lose her valuable co» 
 operatiou. Everything will go by the board if I do !" 
 
 "As to that, take a secretary," said Dr. Quigley. " Rather 
 a dozen secretaries than lose your daughter." 
 
 " You startle me, you distress me, you disturb me," said 
 Mr. Branscombe. " How can I take a secretary ? Why not 
 advise me to take a white elephant at once ! Where shall I 
 find a seci-etary ? How can I introduce a young man with a 
 rumpled shirt-front and inky fingers into the penetralia of 
 my establishment ? He will steal my ideas and fall in love 
 with my daughter." 
 
 " In all probability he will do neither one nor the other,"' 
 said Dr. Quigley brusquely. " But the difficulties of the 
 position are not my affair. My duty is to warn you, as I have 
 done, that your daughter's health is giving way to such an 
 extent — she is running down so rapidly — that unless some 
 radical change is made in her mode of life I will not answer 
 for the consequences. Ah ! here they come !" he cried, as the 
 girls entered the room. " Now for a brisk good walk to the 
 Broads, and a tumble or two on the ice to whip up the circu- 
 lation !" 
 
 " Miss Branscombe and Miss Lyon are not a couple of milk- 
 maids," said Mr. Branscombe with haughty irritation. 
 
 "And a deuced sight better for both if they were," returned 
 the doctor — his chin in the air and his keen eyes full of fire. 
 That fellow's airs and affectation always tried his patience, 
 as he said to himself. That such a selfish windbag as this 
 should have been the husband of that saint and the father of 
 this sweet child! "Ah, well! Providence has queer ways of 
 its own," said Dr. Quigley as he turned from this stately, 
 refined and artificial house and drew a deep breath when well 
 out in the sunshine and the crisp cold air of this bright 
 winter's day. 
 
 As his daughter and his young worshipper had to " leave 
 off work," by orders which the master of Rose Hill was too 
 wise in his generation to disobey, it was not in the nature 
 of things that Mr. Branscombe should stay behind and alone. 
 He therefore made himself fit to bear the inclemency of this 
 frightful weather, as he put it ; and in his fur-lined coat, with 
 its deep collar and cuffs of Astrachan, his broad-leaved, 
 Rembrandt-looking hat, and beaver gloves, he was really glad 
 in heart to have the opportunity of showing himself. " He 
 certainly was a handsome fellow," he said to himself, as he 
 
"RUN DOWN." 
 
 pulled his hair into festoons and curls from beneath his hat 
 and settled hims elf with precision everywhere, from his he I 
 to his feet. Certainly a handsome fellow, now and always ; 
 " Handsome Fred Bransconibe" to the last ! So Hortensia 
 thought, and so Stella thought too ; and the three set out to 
 walk according to the doctor's directions, for the sake of that 
 health and "tone" which burnt away like tinder and was 
 ited like smoke in the life and atmosphere of the 
 studio. 
 
 And as they were going Mr. Bransconibe, taking the sug- 
 gestion as his own, told Stella that he was going to lighten 
 her labours by engaging a secretary, so that she might havi 
 more time to amuse herself — he said this with a strange kind 
 of emphasis — and more opportunity for fresh air and exercise. 
 
 " But, papa " she began. 
 
 " Let me be your secretary, Mr. Bransconibe," interrupted 
 Hortensia. " Nothing would make me so happy, and I am 
 sure I could do it with a little practice. I should soon be 
 able to do almost as well as Stella." 
 
 "Quito," said Mr. Bransconibe emphatically. 
 
 " If papa thinks it too trying for me would it not be so for 
 you too, Hortensia?" said Stella a little hurriedly. 
 
 She was not jealous by nature — not in the least ; but the 
 thought of Hortensia at Rose Hill every day by right did 
 undeniably startle her, and not pleasantly. 
 
 " Hortensia would put goodwill into the work," said Mr. 
 Branscombe cruelly. 
 
 "Oh, papa! does that mean that I do not?" cried poor 
 Stella, her eyes filling with tears. 
 
 "That means nothiir-r against you, my dear," said Mr. 
 Branscombe. "It means only praise of your good little 
 friend. Is commendation of the one blame of the other? 
 Fie !" 
 
 "No — but " began the girl. 
 
 "No — but . But I know who is a very silly, jealous 
 
 little girl," said Mr. Branscombe with forced jocularity; 
 "so do not let us have any more ' No buts.' If your _• l 
 little friend is willing to undertake the office I shall he only 
 too proud to accept her services. Between you both I may 
 hope to get something done." 
 
 And as by this time they had reached the Broads further 
 conversation on the subject was impossible. 
 
 In the evening, Hortensia broached her notable scheme to 
 
250 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 her parents. She was going to undertake Mr. Branscombe's 
 copying for him — to be in fact, sbe said, bis secretary ; as 
 Stella evidently did not care for tbe work wbicb was just 
 what sbe herself would like. 
 
 "Mr. Branscombe's what, my little maid?" asked her 
 father, opening his eyes. 
 
 " His secretary," sbe repeated demurely. 
 
 He flung himself back in bis chair and laughed aloud. 
 
 " Not if. I know it !" he said. " You can go and see Stella 
 as often as you like. There is no kind of objection to that; 
 but you won't go on any such wild-goose errand as being 
 the old gentleman's secretary. If he wants one let him hire 
 one. They are to be had for the asking. Let him take 
 Ban. He writes a capital hand, and it is just the work he 
 would like." 
 
 " Randolph would scarcely do for Mr. Branscombe's secre- 
 tary," said Hortensia with tbe daintiest little accent of 
 sarcasm. " He is a dear good boy but I do not think he is 
 quite up to that work." 
 
 " No ? Not quite down to it you mean, my little maid," 
 said her father, laughing again. " The old gentleman's verses 
 are rather feeble stuff I must say for such a young son of 
 Anak to tackle. Still it will give him something to do, 
 and he might be at a worse crank if he could scarcely find 
 a weaker. At all events, I will propose it ; and if the cat 
 jumps that way I will write to Ban, who would not say No. 
 Whatever happens however, I will not have any nonsense 
 about you, do you understand? No secretaryships, my 
 little maid, for Mr. Branscombe or any one else." 
 
 " But why not, papa?" asked Hortensia loftily. " I could 
 not be better employed! I could not be doing anything 
 that would refine and elevate me more than this." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense, my dear," he answered with good- 
 humoured impatience. " You might be making a pudding 
 in the kitchen or casting up the weekly bills for your mother ; 
 and that would be far more elevating, and a deal more useful, 
 than copying out that queer rubbish which our friend at Eose 
 Hill calls poetry. And whether or no, you don't do it, do 
 you hear ? So now there's no more to be said ; and go and 
 sing me ' Cherry Ripe' like a dear." 
 
 But Hortensia broke down before sbe had got half through 
 the first verse, and cherries turned to tears in her song. 
 
 " Why, bow now !" said her father. "What is this, my 
 
'•RUN DOWSr 251 
 
 little maid? You are not getting so that you cannot be 
 thwarted, even in an absurd fancy like this, -without showing 
 silly tempers that a child should be ashamed of? Is this 
 the right reward for all the love and indulgence with which 
 you have been treated from the day of your birth up to now? 
 Is this really my little maid who has grown so peevish and 
 unpleasant ?" 
 
 " I have always told you, William, that you spoil the 
 child, and that some day you would find it out," said his 
 wife irritably. 
 
 In gen «ral, her interference when things went wrong 
 between father and daughter, only brought herself into 
 : bnl this evening her husband felt somehow unable 
 to cope with Hortensia's latest folly. There was something 
 in it that puzzled and confounded him, and he was not sorry 
 to give the reins for the moment to his wife. 
 
 " Well, take her and manage her your own way." he said, 
 also irritably. " I think the very mischief gets into you 
 women so that you do not know what you want nor what you 
 ail ! I wash my hands of you both, and you may go your- 
 own way for what I care. But tears or no tears, Hortensia," 
 he added severely, " you do not make yourself Mr. Brans- 
 combe's secretary, as you choose to call it. There is some- 
 thing in all this that I neither like nor understand." 
 
 On which he flung himself out of the drawing-room and 
 went to his own study in a pet — the most good-natured 
 father in the world now really annoyed with his idolized little 
 maid ! 
 
 " Now, you have vexed papa in earnest," said Hortensia's 
 mother, also severely. 
 
 She was not sorry to have this opportunity for unrestricted 
 censure. Her husband stood so sturdily between her and 
 her maternal right asjwell as duty — shall we add pleasure? — 
 of rebuke, that she felt quite comfortable in having thus 
 delegated to her her own natural task of moral castigation. 
 
 •• Your temper is getting really too bad to be borne, 
 Hortensia," she went on say. "And I foresee that you will 
 weary even papa, who has always been so kind and indulgent 
 to you. One silliness after the other, and tears and sobs if 
 you are checked in a single desire ! Your papa has spoilt 
 you — that is just the truth of it!" 
 
 Hortensia mad.- no reply. She only wept with a little 
 more demonstration. 
 
252 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Why are you crying, Hortensia ? In the name of patience 
 what is there to cry about?" said the mother sharply. 
 
 " I should like to be of use to Stella," sobbed Hortensia. 
 with unconscious hypocrisy. 
 
 Her mother looked at her narrowly. 
 
 " I think you go up to Rose Hill a great deal too much as 
 it is," she said. "I do not approve of these tremendous 
 friendships. They are unwholesome, and always come to 
 bad ends. I shall try to make papa forbid this incessant run- 
 ning up to Mr. Branscombe's. It is too much." 
 
 " No, mamma, it is not. There is no reason why I should 
 not go," said Hortensia with sobbing energy. "It is the 
 only pleasure I have. Stella is my only friend." 
 
 " Oh !" said Mrs. Lyon drily. " Then I think it would be 
 just as well if you made a friend of some one else — Mrs. 
 Latrobe, for instance, or those good-natured Pennefather 
 girls. It is not wise to be so very exclusive." 
 
 " Mrs. Latrobe ! the Pennefathers !" said Hortensia scorn- 
 fully if still tearfully. " Not two ideas among them !" 
 
 " Perhaps they are none the worse for that," said Mrs. Lyon 
 tartly. 
 
 She had about one idea and a half on her own account, and 
 she rather despised intellect in women as something un- 
 feminine and inimical to good housekeeping. But she said 
 no more, and Hortensia did not answer. Mrs. Lyon was not 
 remarkable for wisdom, but she had sense enough to hold 
 her peace and not give life to the special thought which had 
 come into her mind more than once of late. She held her 
 peace even to her husband ; saying only, when they discoursed 
 on their daughter's latest craze that night : 
 
 " You never do take my advice, William, but I most 
 earnestly advise you to put a stop to this perpetual going 
 up to Eose Hill. It is getting to be too much. And I do 
 not like the idea of Randolph's being mixed up in Mr. 
 Branscombe's affairs. It will keep up what is a very un- 
 wholesome excitement with Hortensia." 
 
 " Stuff, Cara !" said Mr. Lyon ; " the child must have some 
 amusement, and Stella Branscombe is the safest friend she 
 could have. And it is the very thing for Ran. And if I 
 can manage it, I will." 
 
 " Then you'll repent it," said Mrs. Lyon sharply. 
 
 " When I do I shall not blame you, Cara," retorted her 
 husband. 
 
HIS SECRETARY. 253 
 
 They always wrangled over their daughter, and never 
 about "anything else. But Horteosia had been their one 
 steady bone of contention ever since she began to talk and 
 ask for sugar, which her mother forbade and her father gave. 
 As time went on, and more than sugar came between them, 
 the quarrels were graver in meaning and more frequent in 
 occurrence ; quarrels wherein the mother had the better 
 and worse method, and where the father was amiably 
 wrong and lovingly mischievous. If only their little maid 
 had been content to be good, and hr.d not n spired to be 
 superior ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 HIS SECRETARY. 
 
 It all came about as Mr. Lyon had proposed. Randolph 
 Mackenzie was formally engaged as Mr. Branscombe's secre- 
 tary, with a salary to make things business-like and to put 
 them on a mutually honourable footing ; and Stella was thus 
 free to find such amusement as was to be had in the empty 
 drawing-room and leafless gardcu. But this was better 
 than her close confinement in that stifling studio ; and at 
 least she could now read other things beside her father's 
 poetry, practise other pieces of music, or work with some sort 
 of profitable earnestness, not interrupted every moment by 
 calls on her attention which made her days like so many 
 scattered bits of a puzzle without order or sequence, without 
 meaning or completeness. Both poetry and music were of 
 course grand and lovely; but she hardly dared confess it 
 to herself — indeed she would have held it for sin had she 
 acknowledged it — how unutterably weary she had become of 
 them and what wonderful emptiness she found in them now ! 
 This institution of the secretary, and the choice of the 
 ■u made to fill it, pleased every one but Mrs. Lyon. 
 Mr. Branscombe, despising Randolph personally and looking 
 on him as an intellectual grub within which the potential 
 butterfly was so dwarfed as to be practically dead, was yet 
 by the clearness of the grub's handwriting, by the 
 of his copy, and by the good-nature with which he 
 bore rebuf -. II ■ glad too, to have a daily and recognized 
 link with that pretty little devotes whos£ worship was so 
 sweet to his a superiority and in whose mental culture 
 
254 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 he took so much delight ; and he was proud to be able to 
 say, " My Secretary," when he bid for his neighbours' praise 
 by detailing his various achievements. Stella was glad to 
 have Cyril's faithful friend and confidant so near to her that 
 snatches of stolen talk on the lives of young civil servants in 
 India were possible, if, under all the conditions of the case, 
 not very profitable. Randolph was glad to be able to watch 
 over Cyril's interests — against whom ? — and to sun himself 
 daily in the light of Cyril's star, and because Cyril's — only 
 because Cyril's — his own also. Hortensia was glad that her 
 elegant idol should put his graceful hand to the work of 
 tilling her cousin's tardy soul — that work which she had 
 taken on herself, and which she had found so almost im- 
 possible owing to the clayey nature of the soil. Mr. Lyon, 
 who had his own views in keeping Randolph close under his 
 eyes, was glad that his wish had been carried into execution 
 and that he had found folks as reasonable as he had hoped. 
 Only Mrs. Lyon refused to add her note to the chord of 
 congratulation, and always maintained that it was a mistake, 
 and time would show that it was when too late for reparation. 
 
 Of course the neighbours laughed at the affectation of the 
 whole affair, and ridiculed the idea of that old fop wanting a 
 secretary at all — as if he had anything to do that was of the 
 very least importance. But then people are so ill-natured to 
 merit. The jays peck so enviously at the nightingale ! 
 
 Two results came about by this engagement of the secre- 
 tary — Stella's lines of liberty were enlarged at all borders so 
 generously as to take in even Augusta Latrobe without 
 rebuke, and Mr. Branscombe's fount of creative energy ran 
 curiously dry in Randolph's presence. It was not that he 
 feared anything like hostile criticism from his grub. He 
 would as soon have looked for a repetition of the miracle 
 which set Balaam wondering. But he missed the stimulus of 
 loving flattery, and he felt like a man who has been walking 
 on a pair of stilts when suddenly brought flat-footed to the 
 ground. In consequence of this dryness in the fount, there 
 was a great deal more out-of-door life than hitherto, and the 
 four friends were to be met riding and walking about the 
 frozen country to an extent heretofore unknown to hothouse- 
 living Finery Fred. They did not do much in the way of 
 driving, which naturally he would have preferred as his mode 
 of exercise when forced out of that indolent activity of his 
 studio life. It was no pleasure to him to go in the brougham 
 
HIS SECRETARY. 
 
 alone with Stella ; or in the carriage with Hortensia opp 
 to him mill thai big, clumsy cousin of hers by his side and 
 opposite to Stella; or even with the two girls alone. His 
 pleasure was in unrestricted converse with his little devotee 
 alone, and in cultivating her mental garden free of bystanders 
 and u' t?. If he could not have this he would not have 
 
 the rest. So they went out in a party of four; and Mr. 
 Branscombe always managed to draw off with Hortensia 
 while Randolph was left with Cyril's Star — and, because 
 Cyril's, his own as well. 
 
 Thus, for bosom friends as they were supposed to be — 
 friemls so near and dear and so mutually necessary as to 
 her perpetual desertion of home and its duties with 
 the little Puritan — the two girls were very little together,* 
 and the work of making Randolph's tardy soul went on at a 
 snail's pi 
 
 What Stella lost in Hortensia however, she gained in 
 ii's cousin — " Brother Randolph." Yes, he was just 
 that — her dear, dear, good, trustworthy brother; unselfish, 
 . loving her as much as she wanted to be loved and 
 not a hair's-breadth less or more ; the mere echo of her 
 wish ; the copy of her attitude ; a reflection ; a repetition ; 
 in no wise active for his own part, nor with feelings, ideas, 
 sentiments of which she did not set the exact lines. That 
 was the unspoken theory in force between Cyril's friend and 
 Cyril's former fiancee; and both believed it to be eminently 
 workable and standing four square on all sides. It is one of 
 the most delightful of all the theories which women make 
 for themselves ; though alas ! one of the most slippery and 
 unstable. Nevertheless it pleases the eye till the inevitable 
 day comes when card-houses must perforce tumble into ruins, 
 when ropes of sea-sand fall to dust, when iridescent bubbles 
 vanish into thin air, leaving only a tear behind. Meantime, 
 and before the dawn of that inevitable day, it serves as a 
 dream and an amusement, and holds the ground against 
 perhaps less innocent. 
 
 Randolph's brotherhood was a delightful addition to 
 Stella's arid life; and Stella's sisterhood was even more 
 delightful to him. How pleasant it was to see her blue 
 brighten and glisten with such manifest affection when he 
 came into the room ! — to see her look at him as it' he were 
 really her brother, and something of her very own ! It was 
 all for Cyril, of course — all her affection for him, all his 
 
256 "MY LOVE."' 
 
 devotion to her — all for the lover from whom she had 
 separated herself, for the chum whose lapsed interests he was 
 eo sedulously guarding. He was always telling himself this, 
 as a piece of information specially needful to be planted 
 fathoms deep in his mind ; but he rejoiced in this reflected 
 affection, this vicarious happiness, as much as if it had been 
 because of himself alone ; and one day when she said to him : 
 " How glad I am that dear papa thought of making you his 
 secretary, Eandolph! I do not know what I should do 
 without you now !" he felt his heart swell within him with 
 such a sudden rush of joy as to be almost pain. 
 
 That fraternal relation was certainly one of the most 
 charming things in the world, and he was one of the luckiest 
 fellows in the world. Hortensia and Stella, two such dar- 
 ling girls, both like sisters to him, and both so sweet and 
 good as to make him like a brother ! — it was the happiest 
 time of his life ; and his charity covered even Mr. Brans- 
 combe, while his happiness touched his matutinal employ- 
 ment of writing in a fair hand, and with accurate divisions, 
 words of which he knew no more the ultimate meaning than 
 if they had been modern Greek or Venetian patois. 
 
 But what cold, coarse minds people have ! What a hateful 
 young ass that Bob Pennefather was when he said to him, 
 Eandolph, one day : " I say, Kan, you'll get to be spoons on 
 Stella Branscombe if you don't look out!" 
 
 How willingly he would have given the fellow a caning on 
 the spot for the brutality of his suspicion and the insolence 
 of putting it into words ! " Spoons" indeed ! as if one can 
 be " spoons" on one's sister, one's Star, on the treasure 
 which one is guarding for one's friend, "Spoons!" Well, 
 he would never be " spoons" on Gip or Pip, so the Penne- 
 fathers need not trouble themselves about him ; and he 
 would take care to make them understand that, and give 
 them a wide berth for the future. " Spoons ?'" " spoons," on 
 Stella Branscombe ? Why not on Hortensia as well ? The 
 phrase fretted him like a sore and he could not forget 
 it. He was a slow kind of creature in most things, and 
 when he got an idea into his head he kept it for a long 
 time and bothered himself more than was in any way 
 necessary. 
 
 And then even Mrs. Latrobe, whom else he liked so much, 
 even she must touch his susceptibilities, and that with a 
 somewhat cruel hail*. Why did she say to him one day 
 
HIS SECRETARY. 257 
 
 with such marked significance — "I do not think that Stella 
 Branscombe will ever love again. She is one of the single 
 flowering kind — our bloom and no after blossom r" Why 
 did she look at him so fixedly when she said this, and lay 
 such an odd emphasis on her words ? Of course, Stella 
 would never love again. He. Randolph, could not love her 
 as he did if he did not believe her to be absolutely loyal. 
 Fancy Stella marrying Jemmy Pennefather or one of the 
 Cowley boys, . Sandro Kemp, or any other man alive ! It 
 was : to imagine such a thing. No, she was 
 
 staunch and loyal to the death ; and he was her brother, 
 because Cyril was his friend and had been her lover. 
 
 This was the staple of his morning and evening reflections 
 and orisons while he prowled round her like a faithful watch- 
 dog whose fidelity was incorruptible and whose watch was 
 unremitting. Thus the time wore on, and the four oddly- 
 matched companions kept their respective bubbles afloat, and 
 their card-houses in the most admirable appearance of stable 
 equilibrium. 
 
 One day Randolph's honest face had an expression in it 
 of more than ordinary preoccupation. When he came into 
 the room he looked at Stella as people do who have some- 
 thing to tell in private which they do not wish others to hear 
 in public ; while they betray the existence of a secret as 
 plainly as if they carried it printed on a placard. He shuffled 
 and fidgeted, and turned his eyes so continually on bis 
 employer's daughter that Mr. Branscombe himself noticed 
 the uncomfortable uneasiness of his grub, and wondered 
 what the deuce ailed the creature. Calling Stella to him, 
 and fixing his spectacles rather low on his nose while he 
 looked at her critically, his chin well up in the air, he said in 
 a dry tone : 
 
 •• My dear Stella, what is there about you to-day different 
 from your ordinary usage ? I see you attract Mr. Randolph's 
 attention to a distracting extent. Excuse the pun. It was 
 too obvious to be allowed to slip. What is it, Mr. Randolph, 
 that you find rare and unusual in my daughter, hey ': I see 
 nothing." 
 
 " I am not aware of anything, sir," said Randolph, colouring 
 like a great girl. 
 
 " Then may I ask why you gaze so intently at Miss Brans- 
 combe ?" demanded Stella's father, looking over his glasses at 
 his secretary* 
 
25S "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Did I look at her more than usual ?" stammei'ed Ran- 
 dolph. 
 
 " I think so," said Mr. Branscombe with suave severity. 
 " If indeed you see nothing as you say on which to comment 
 in Miss Branscombe' s appearance, we will resume our inter- 
 rupted occupation. My dear Stella, perhaps you will be good 
 enough to take this Nocturne into the drawing-room where 
 you can practise it more at your ease than here. I and Mr. 
 Randolph will join you at luncheon. Thus I give you the 
 whole morning for yourself and your amusement, free of all 
 but this small duty" — with a curl on his thin lips that cut 
 Stella to the heart. "By the way," he continued, as his 
 daughter with a very pale face was taking up the music ; 
 " perhaps your little friend will give us the pleasure of her 
 society at luncheon. She promised yesterday that she would 
 come in her hat and habit to take a ride — if you should feel 
 disposed to come. At your own pleasure, of course. Your 
 pleasure before all other considerations," again curling his 
 thin lips. 
 
 He had never forgiven Dr. Quigley's interference in his 
 household affairs, and revenged on Stella the indignity of 
 which she had been the occasion. 
 
 " I shall be delighted, papa," said Stella in a constrained 
 voice. 
 
 She was not only hurt at her dear papa's sarcastic smile 
 and double-edged words, but she thought it odd that Hor- 
 tensia had said nothing to her yesterday about coming 
 up to luncheon or going out for a ride — Randolph on his side 
 thinking it odd that she had said nothing to him that morn- 
 ing. But no comment was made; and, feeling herself dis- 
 missed, Stella went into the drawing-room to practise the 
 new Nocturne which was written in three flats and began 
 with a chord in sharps. 
 
 She wondered as she stumbled her way among these 
 musical tombs of harmony what was amiss with Randolph 
 to-day ; and then why her father had got into such an un- 
 comfortable way of speaking to her. Something, she did not 
 know what, was changing him towards her ; some strange 
 mildew of coldness was creeping over his tone and manner to 
 her ; some vague barrier of displeasure was slowly arising in 
 his heart against her. She felt herself in silent disgrace and 
 as if in some sort shut out from his affection, ever since Ean- 
 dolph had. been engaged as his secretary. Yet why? She 
 
HIS SECRETARY. 239 
 
 loved him as much, as she had always loved him, and would 
 again, were ii necessary, sacrifice her own happiness for his, 
 as she had already done. She had done nothing that should 
 have displeased him. And yet — was she quite whole-hearted 
 in saying this ? — seeing that she was so undutiful as to have 
 got tired of her work for him — so wicked as to have wearied 
 of his art to such an extent that she could no longer find 
 beautv in his poetry, melody in his music, or charm in his 
 pictures. Was this the meaning of it all ? Had he seen her 
 naughtiness ; and was it then, her fault, not his, that he was 
 displeased r 
 
 Meanwhile she stumbled over the notes of his latest Noc- 
 turne, while the tears gathered round her heart, as she hoped, 
 so piteously, that papa was not turning against her ; for then, 
 what should she have left ? Papa no longer caring for her, 
 and Cyril parted from her for ever — life would be little 
 worth having should the day ever come when that beloved 
 r should steel his heart against her and shut her out 
 from his affections! And mingled with this piteous hope 
 was a wish as strong if not so pathetic, that Hortensia Lyon 
 would not come here so often, and that she would not get 
 about papa and flatter him so much when she did come ! 
 There was something in it all that pained and i-evolted her 
 more than she could say. She did not know why ; but it 
 did. Was it because- she was jealous? 
 
 What a wicked girl indeed she was getting ! How she 
 wished that she had a director who might give her good 
 counsel and bring back her straying soul into obedience to 
 the higher law and the ways of faithful self-sacrifice and sup- 
 •ii. Yet there was no one to whom she could open her 
 heart. Brother Randolph, though so good, was so dense in 
 all mental matters ! — he never understood states of feeling. 
 And Augusta Latrohe, though so sweet, was so fearfully rea- 
 sonable ! And Stella wanted some one who would be as wise 
 as Augusta and as good as Randolph, but with more compre- 
 hension of moral difficulties than the one and with more 
 enthusiasm for high-flying virtue than the other. In fact 
 she wanted her Mother ; and when she thought of that sweet 
 faithful guide and love she laid her head down on the piano 
 and sobbed, as her accompaniment to her lather's soulless 
 bnrne. And yet she did not wish her back again. She 
 had begun to understand now something of the hidden secret 
 of her life. 
 
260 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Merry or sad, the time passes somehow, and at the luncheon- 
 hour, Hortensia rode up to the door, equipped for the ride on 
 which she and her elegant idol had agreed yesterday. It was 
 against her will, against her better and wiser self, but Stella 
 could not help being cool rather than demonstrative to her 
 friend, who, as if to make up for some secret treachery, was 
 more than ordinarily caressing and affectionate to her. Stella 
 felt that she was '" an awful wretch," as the modern phrase 
 runs ; but it was stronger than herself. She could not ! — 
 and she held back in an odd, angular, uncomfortable way 
 which Hortensia took care not to notice. The relations 
 between the two girls were getting decidedly strained ; but 
 they would last for some time yet without breaking. Girlish 
 friendships go through a great deal of strain before they 
 come to the breaking-point and it takes a century of quarrels 
 before all the gold embroidery gets worn off the fabric. 
 
 The luncheon however was singularly silent ; every one 
 was more or less ill at ease and acting a part, so that the 
 ride came as a decided relief and the four set off with curious 
 alacrity. They went for some time all in a line, the two girls 
 in the middle — Mr. Branscombe by his daughter and Ran- 
 dolph flanking Hortensia ; but, as soon as they had passed 
 through the village, Mr. Branscombe and Hortensia found 
 themselves together, leading the way down a narrow lane 
 where only two could ride abreast. And thus the " brother 
 and sister" remained together. 
 
 " I wanted so much to speak to you, Miss Stella," Randolph 
 began so soon as they were alone. 
 
 ' ; I saw there was something. What is it ?" she answered 
 eagerly, her heart beating fast with a sti'ange kind of expec- 
 tation, as if she were afraid of some misfortune yet hopeful for 
 some great gain. 
 
 " I have had a letter from Cyril," he said. 
 
 She looked into his face, her own as white as the linen band 
 about her throat. 
 
 "Yes? What does he say? Is he well? Is he happy? 
 Does he tell you anything about his life and his work ? Does 
 he ask after his friends at home ?" 
 
 She spoke breathlessly, her questions falling confusedly 
 over each other. 
 
 " He asks after all at Highwood," said Randolph. " He 
 does not speak much of himself. Poor old fellow, I do not 
 think he is very happy. How can he be ?" 
 
HIS SECRETARY. 2C1 
 
 " Is he "well ?" she asked again. 
 
 " I suppose so. He says nothing to the contrary." 
 
 " Did he tell you what he was doing ?" 
 
 "Only pig-sticking and looking out for tiger-shooting." 
 
 " Oh, that is dangerous !" she said with a shudder. " Did 
 he sav nothing else r" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Not how he liked his work ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Did he toll vou who were his friends out there ?" 
 
 " No ; oh, yes! the Whites : a Major and Mrs. White." 
 
 " Did he speak of any one here ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Not of one of us by name ?" 
 
 She asked this in a lowered voice, hating herself for her 
 want of dignity ; but this too was stronger than herself. 
 
 '"No," answered Randolph in a lowered voice and with a 
 terribly distressed face, for he knew that this was the core of 
 the whole matter ; and that his negatives hitherto, reducing 
 that letter as they did to a mere fact shorn of circumstances, 
 were as nothing compared to this. 
 
 " Ah ! he has forgotten us ! He is right !" said Stella with 
 irrepressible passion. 
 
 But if right, why did she burst into that tempest of weep- 
 ing ? — a tempest wherein all pride and reticence were swept 
 away as straws in a Highland " spate." It was worse than 
 folly to weep for what was not only natural but right ! All the 
 same, she did, and as if her heart would have broken with its pain. 
 
 Randolph's anguish ecpualled hers. She wept for Cyril's 
 forgetfulness of the old bonds which she herself had sundered, 
 and his eyes were dim because of her distress. But what can 
 you do when you are on horseback in a narrow lane ? He was 
 only able to exhort her to quietness and self-control. He 
 could not take her to his heart as he longed to do, comforting 
 her as a brother might. He could only say : " Don't ! don't, 
 Miss Stella ! Please don't cry ! please don't !" as if hearts 
 can break and piece themselves together again at will, and a 
 girl who has made her own unhappiuess can turn her tears on 
 and off like so much bath-water at her pleasure! 
 
 She cried so passionately however, and was so thoroughly 
 overcome, that Randolph jumped oil' his horse and st> 
 : then took her from the saddle and set her on a 
 tree by the way side. And then he knelt on the hard and 
 
262 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 frozen ground before her, and. said in a voice which brought 
 her back to herself by very surprise of its intensity : 
 
 " Do you want to break my heart too, Miss Stella ?" 
 
 No ; she did not want to break his heart ; assuredly not ; 
 her good, true, loving brother ! What should she do without 
 him ? He was all that she had of her very own now that she 
 had not Cyril and that the strange mildew of coldness was 
 creeping over her father's manner towards her ! No ; she did 
 not want to break his heart; and therefore, to avoid this 
 terrible contingency she controlled herself into the wise and 
 patient Stella of her normal state ; dried her eyes — " pulled 
 herself together," as he said — and mounting her horse rode 
 off at a brisk pace to get within reasonable distance of Mr. 
 Branscombe and Hortensia. But when they all joined forces 
 again the lids of those big, blue eyes tolcl Hortensia in unmis- 
 takable language that Stella had been crying — crying to 
 cousin Randolph ; and about what ? 
 
 The cpiestion a little disturbed Mr. Branscombe's devotee ; 
 perhaps because her own conscience was not quite so clear as 
 it ought to have been. She drew away from her idol and put 
 her horse's head in line with Stella's. 
 
 " What is the matter, Stella ? You have been crying," she 
 said with a reproving air. 
 
 Girls are always hard on the tears of other girls ; and 
 though they may do a good deal in that way themselves, they 
 generally hold themselves justified in showing the most 
 virtuous indignation against the like weakness in their sisters. 
 
 " Nothing is the matter," said Stella with evident constraint. 
 
 Hortensia was the last person whom she could take into her 
 confidence in this matter ! Fancy confessing to her that she 
 had cried bitterly because Cyril Ponsonby had not asked after 
 his old love by name and with many questions ! 
 
 " It is not fair to shut me out of your confidence as you do 
 — not friendly, not what I deserve," said Hortensia, a little 
 too warmly perhaps for the living saint for whom she some- 
 what posed. 
 
 " You have no right to reproach me, Hortensia ! You make 
 mysteries and secrets enough on your own side !" said Stella 
 with refreshing indignation. 
 
 On this Hortensia turned her horse's head away in dudgeon, 
 and dropped behind on pretence of asking cousin Kandolpk 
 the name of a book which she had not read and of which he 
 had never heard. 
 
A NEW Til UK AD. 2G3 
 
 TLI- inly increasing, the strand was getting 
 
 thinner, i. more bare, and the hidden split was 
 
 threatening to show itself too plainly for future politic i - 
 iiiL'. When an elderly man, father to one and i>" 
 other, is the only bond of union between two girls of the same 
 in a bad way ; and the very bond itself makes 
 them no better. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 A NEW THKEAD. 
 
 Christmas came, and with it the interrupted innings of 
 that objectionable family which owned those noisy Doves as 
 its most prominent members. The two brothers left in 
 England came down for the vacation, and the Cowley boys 
 came as well ; the startling costumes devised and executed in 
 the dark days of autumn were brought to light and publicity 
 — to the scandalization of certain unfriendly critics of whom 
 old ilrs. Mor&head was the chief; and the rousing reveille 
 at Sherrardine woke up Highwood to full and fast activity. 
 Fortunately the weather continued fair and frosty, and skating 
 was the order of the day, while dances and round games, snap- 
 :i and charades made the evenings " go" in such sort 
 that the fun might be said to overflow at all four corners. 
 The whole place was astir with the gaieties of the season ; and 
 Le set by the family at Sherrardine seemed infectious 
 and to pass from house to house, like measles or whooping- 
 cough, in orderly succession. 
 
 u Mr. Branscombe was not proof against the contagion 
 of thi oic. Having already greatly relaxed the 
 
 severity of his mourning, he relaxed it now still more because 
 of the and its claims. He could not, he said, throw 
 
 the chill of his gloom over this joyous time; and he the 
 
 his tion to his sainted Matilda best bj doing 
 
 which would be most congenial to her sentiments 
 she able to direct him viva voce. His daughter, his 
 
 . must n< much shut up. It was touching and 
 
 r wi?h for isolation i'rom the crowd, an . 
 
 ;':panionship with him alone. Dear child! 
 
 she lived but in hi.s si^ht ! And of course that would be h : - 
 
 wi>h also, his sole source of pleasure ; but he i 
 
 do violence to I bat he might do crood to her. There- 
 
2C4 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 fore, he and his daughter would accept whatever invitations 
 were afloat ; and they even went to Sherrardine, whei'e natu- 
 rally one so elegant and artistic as Mr. Bransconibe had no 
 business to go. 
 
 But that is the worst of a country society, he said, when 
 discussing these things with Hortensia Lyon. If you go to 
 one place you must to all, else you make enemies by showing 
 favour. It was all for his daughter, he repeated — to the 
 world with bland and painful resignation ; to Hortensia with 
 an appearance of only half-concealed chagrin, chagrin very 
 cleverly concealed and very artfully displayed — all for her pale 
 cheeks, peaked shoulders, blue-encircled eyes, and the health 
 which had run down so visibly, but to which the hidden 
 disease had not yet given its name. 
 
 So it might be. We have no right to look behind a man's 
 words for his motives ; but for an unwilling sacrifice, as he 
 made himself out to be, Mr. Bransconibe was certainly what 
 the Pennefather girls called " awfully jolly," though he was 
 so " awfully stilted and humbugging and affected," as well. 
 Still, he was decidedly jolly ; and any one would have said 
 that he enjoyed his sacrifice like the rest of them. 
 
 All this however, did poor Stella no appreciable good. 
 Though not apparently so much depressed, she was just as 
 pale and thin as ever ; and not even a half-romping turn at 
 " Sir Roger de Coverley" did more than bring the colour into 
 her face for just so long as the exertion lasted. "When her 
 breath came back the soft pink roses in her cheeks faded into 
 the normal pallor of her present condition, and she looked 
 even more fragile and diaphanous than before. Dr. Quigley 
 was looking after her in his own way, but silently. He was 
 waiting for spring-time, and beyond ; waiting until sundry 
 things should declare themselves more plainly than at present, 
 before he again took on himself the unauthorized direction of 
 events. He was waiting and watching vigilantly; and for 
 more things than one. But he took no one into his confidence, 
 and the revelations conveyed by those keen eyes and that 
 active brain remained his own property only, shared and 
 suspected by none. 
 
 " Supreme !" That was Valentine Cowley's present working 
 word — the traction-engine which drew the whole verbal load, 
 the camel which was laden with all the separate straws of 
 admiration. Everything of which he approved was " su- 
 preme ;" and this Christmas-time Stella Bransconibe, who 
 
A NEW THREAD. 2G3 
 
 bad always been nice, was supremcst of the supreme. The 
 truth was, Valentine Cowley had suddenly become a new man. 
 He had fallen under influences which, as he said, had com- 
 pleted his being. To his former magnificent muscularity and 
 worship of manly strength he had added a passiou for blue 
 china, Queen Anne architecture, Morris's papers, Rosetti's 
 poems, Ruskin's prose, half-tones in blue and green, earnest- 
 ness in men and tender stillness in women — with a Bublime 
 contempt for trade, luxury, the doctrine of evolution and the 
 fourth dimension. He had met a certain man of mark — one 
 of the leaders of this school — just as he was casting his boyish 
 mental skin and becoming more manly and reflective; just as 
 he was slipping like a hermit-crab from one intellectual shell 
 to another, getting tired of play and casting about for " work" 
 and " his life's meaning." And this man had cultivated him 
 on his own lines and made him, intellectually, a new creature 
 — having, as he said, completed his being, leaving him his 
 muscles but adding thereto reverence for art and knowledge of 
 the true meaning of poetry. 
 
 Having thus gone past the point when noisy hoydens were 
 his chosen chums, Val had entered on the higher platform of 
 refinement and idealistic womanhood, of saints in their sweet- 
 ness, of ladies in their grace, even of blossoms tenderly 
 blighted and delicate to the verge of sickliness. And Stella, 
 who was just as beautiful now in the days of her pallor as she 
 had been in those of her freshness — though beautiful in a 
 different way, and with more soul about her, said Yal — 
 seemed to him just the kind of thing that he liked best of all, 
 and just the person for whose appreciation nature had fitted 
 him. Gip and Pip were still awfully jolly and awfully nice ; 
 the best girls in the world, and with the least nonsense about 
 them that could be ; but Stella Branscombe touched a higher 
 level than they could ever aspire to reach. Gip and Pip were 
 of the arrested, non-developing class, while for Stella ill 
 manner of spiritual progress might be exp.-cted. And Gip 
 and Pip laughed too much and too loud, and had eyes far 
 too bright and bold and wandering for his taste as it stood 
 now, while Stella's sweet, low, tender tones and mild, sa I, 
 Btead 3eemed to him the very perfection of their kind. 
 
 Wherefore, after they had met once on the ice, and dipped 
 their fingers together into the blazing brandy of snap- 
 dragon, and laughed at the ghastliness gathered round the 
 blue light made of the salt so liberally ladled in — alter they 
 
266 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 had waltzed till they were tired, and acted lovers in a charade — 
 Valentine pronounced her "supreme;" and made Georgie 
 Pennefather free of his verdict. 
 
 To which Georgie, laughing as if it were a small battery of 
 guns fired off in salute, said in a shrill voice: "Why, Val! 
 are you going to be one of those duffers who go in for washed- 
 out faces and sentimental voices ? I thought you had more 
 nous in you than that ! Stella Branscombe is all very well in 
 her way ; but her way was never too much of a good thing, 
 and now it is less so than ever. I would as soon make love 
 to a ghost at once, if I were a man, as to her. I don't know 
 indeed but that the ghost would be the better fun of the two !" 
 
 " You incorrigible young person !" said Valentine, his 
 gaiety a little forced. 
 
 " And you incomprehensible individual !" retorted Georgie, 
 her rattling laugh as little really spontaneous as his smile. 
 
 A little off-room at Sherrardine opened on to the drawing- 
 room, where, at this moment, dancing was going on. Gip and 
 Pip always called it, in their audacious way : " The spooning- 
 roorn ;" and held themselves free to rally any one who might 
 be found therein, and to assume whatever they chose beyond 
 the patent fact of occupancy. Dancing being to Valentine, in 
 his new character of pre-Eaffaelite enthusiast, a rather vulgar 
 and decidedly unpoetic exercise, and Stella being tired, the 
 two were sitting quietly in a corner playing at " spillikins" — 
 not a very intellectual game — where Stella was perpetually 
 keeping Valentine from committing suicide by toying with the 
 "trident" when too much involved, or for the "pipe" when 
 certain to shake. 
 
 Since she had got over the first pain of Cyril's letter to 
 Randolph — reading his silence as renunciation even of her 
 memory — Stella had honestly and heroically clone her best to 
 live down her pain and to be in all things like other girls. So 
 long as it had been a mutual heart-break between her and her 
 lost Love she had carried her sorrow as her flag of fealty ; but 
 now when she believed herself if not absolutely forgotten — 
 who can really forget ? — yet resolutely set aside, she deter- 
 mined to bury that sorrow deep in her own breast, and even 
 to do her best to make herself forget that she had other cause 
 for active grief than that, sufficiently heavy in itself, of her 
 dear mother's death. She knew that, for her own part, she 
 should love Cyril all her life, and love him only. No other 
 affection would ever take the place of this which she had 
 
A NEW THREAD. 267 
 
 worn as her glory and now bore as her cross. But she would 
 not go about the world as a love-lorn damsel, wearing the 
 willow and bidding for sympathy. She would be no Blighted 
 Being whom the gentle would pity and the cynical deride. 
 And now that papa had thought it good for her to go again 
 into society, she would go like any one else and force herself, 
 at least to appear to take interest in all that went on — though 
 she had no more real pleasure therein, and derived no more 
 moral sustenance therefrom, than does the .starving man 
 when the typical stone is tossed into his lap for bread. Good- 
 natured she had always been ; ever ready to play chess with 
 beginners or draughts with children ; to rattle off waltzes or 
 quadrilles for others to dance to ; or to count her marriages 
 in besique and her points in piquet with the stupid and the 
 old. But now she was even more good-natured and more 
 helpful than before, if that were possible. Whenever any one 
 was wanted to do a kind turn to others, or to do what was 
 unpleasant to herself, Stella Branscombe came to the front and 
 took up all the little social fardels in a row, shouldering them 
 without a murmur. If a bore had to be got out of the way, 
 Stella took him on her own hands and off the necks of the 
 rest ; if there were too many in a set, and some one had to 
 give up, Stella was that some one ; if an uncomfortable bit of 
 duty had to be done in the parish, Stella was asked t<> do it, 
 and she always did what she was asked. Young as she was, 
 she was getting to hold that impersonal kind of place which 
 belongs to the " altruistic" nature, to be a kind of youthful 
 social fairy godmother, to whom all came for help in moments 
 of need, and from whom no one was turned away unsatisfied. 
 
 Still, she felt that beyond all this she had to find some 
 more absorbing occupation than even social altruism gave 
 her — something that should make her quite forget her own 
 trouble in the activity of serious well-doing. Helping papa 
 had failed to console her. She never quite understood why, 
 but she knew that it had ; and she did not feel as if being a 
 kind of drawing-room fairy godmother was the exact ultimate 
 of her aspirations or abilities. But all this was by tb 
 What she had to do in the immediate present was to make 
 herself generally useful and universally amiable; to thrust 
 Cyril deep, deep into the recesses of her thoughts, as far in the 
 background as was possible ; and to forgel herself all round 
 An 1 she fulfilled her self-imposed task to tin/ 1 
 
 Over his spillikins, which served as a pretei ... atine 
 
268 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 fixed his dark eyes on the sweet fair face before him bending 
 over the table with all Stella Branscombe's sincerity of inte- 
 rest in the thing on hand. He looked at her long and 
 ardently, then suddenly, without preface or warning, he asked 
 in a soft sentimental kind of way : 
 
 " Tell me, Miss Branscombe, what is your ideal of life ?" 
 
 Stella, who had never gone into abstruse questions of this 
 kind, even under her father's frothy tuition, looked up with a 
 puzzled face, and then said : 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 " Your ideal of life," repeated Valentine, as if repetition were 
 explanation, and a puzzle said twice over gave its own key in 
 the echo. 
 
 " I do not know that I have any," she said in a pretty 
 hesitating way, feeling dreadfully dense and silly. " I have 
 never thought of it. I suppose we ought to do what good 
 we can— to be as useful to others and as sincere to ourselves 
 as is jjossible. I cannot give any other answer. What is 
 your ideal ? Then I shall know better what you mean by 
 your question." 
 
 " Mine ?" returned Valentine. " My ideal of life is Ear- 
 nestness — the worship of the tender and the beautiful, the 
 bringing of religiousness and spirituality into our daily 
 doings like dear old George Herbert — striving after the better 
 way through the culture of poetry by means of love and art." 
 
 An odd little movement of repulsion passed almost like a 
 shudder over Stella. 
 
 " I do not think I care much for poetry," she said naively. 
 " I think I like something more practical." 
 
 " Oh !" he said in aggrieved tone ; " and you look the very 
 soul of poetry in your own person ! You care not for poetry, 
 when you are made to be a man's muse, to inspire his loftiest 
 thoughts, his noblest aspirations ?" 
 
 " I sincerely hope not," said Stella with curious gravity. 
 " I do not think that is my function at all." 
 
 " No. What then ? Where does your great gift of influ- 
 ence lie ?" he asked eagerly. 
 
 He had made a bad shot by his first guess, but, Supreme 
 as she was, he must know in what censer he might burn his 
 incense and by what liturgy intone his devotions. 
 
 " I am so matter-of-fact," she said, as if accusing herself of 
 a fault. " I care so much more for realities than for all this 
 kind of thing, as I just said. I would care to do good to the 
 
A NEW Iiuu:.\D. 169 
 
 poor, to help the sorrowful, to nurse the sick — anything of that 
 kind — so much more than to write poetry, or even inspire it." 
 
 '• You might still be practical, yet inspire the poet, and 
 with his loftiest themes!" answered Valentine warmly. " The 
 graci< -us Ladyes of the past — the sweet chatelaines who walked 
 in their gardens and sat in their bowers — bore also the castle- 
 keys al their girdles, and were servers of bread and leeches in 
 their degree. The Ladye of La Garaye was the Lady Boun- 
 tiful of whom you paint the outlines so delicately, so deli- 
 ciously." 
 
 "But I do not think I should ever care to inspire a poet at 
 all." persisted Stella. " A man ought to lead such a much 
 freer and healthier and such a much more practical life than 
 poets and artists do. To me, health and strength and energy 
 are such grand things !" 
 
 " In man perhaps, not in woman," said Valentine in his 
 sentimental craze for want of hseinatine and for relaxed fibre. 
 '•A woman should be a dainty, bender, delicate creature, all 
 soul and spirit — a low-voiced, sweet-faced, fragile saint, to be 
 taken care of by her husband to whom she should be at once 
 his guardian angel and his charge. Her pure counsels should 
 be his fount of inspiration and the guidance of his life, while 
 his strength should give her service and pi*otection." 
 
 Stella looked at her companion with frank surprise. She 
 forgot even the " thirty" trident, at which she had been so 
 tely working, and which was one of the great prizes of 
 their odd. little game. 
 
 "You say all this ?" she said. " I thought you cared only 
 for fun and gaiety, and that what you liked best in woman 
 was good-humour and high spirits and all that kind of thing 
 — girls who could walk and ride and row, and were never 
 tired and never sad, and whose whole lives were just like so 
 much dance-music." 
 
 " No, a thousand times no !" answered Valentine with 
 strange energy. " Women of that kind are good to laugh 
 with, I grant. They are first-rate fun and capital fellows all 
 through ; but the Supreme to idealize and idolize is of a very 
 different type. My ideal would be a girl, pale, slender, gentle, 
 fair, reminding one of a lily that had been a little bowed 
 under the weight of a passing storm ; of a blush-rose, sur- 
 charged with the tears of the morning ; of a saintly martyr 
 floating in the still lake, her hair spread out like an aureole 
 about her; of all tilings tender and soft and plaintive, to 
 
270 "JIT LOVE!" 
 
 whom I should minister — she demanding care because of her 
 sublime weakness, and I, strong and reverent, proud to give 
 her on my knees the . service of my life. That is my ideal 
 woman ; and I would give her your form and features." 
 
 "Would you?" said Stella, with the most simple, the most 
 sincere amazement. " How odd !" 
 
 Nothing being farther from her thoughts than loving, 
 nothing was farther from her perceptions than being made 
 love to. And if any one had told her that this was Valentine 
 Cowley's method of making love she would have thought her 
 informant was dreaming, or perhaps wilfully trying to deceive 
 her. 
 
 At this moment, and before Valentine could answer, the 
 music ceased in the drawing-room, and Randolph Mackenzie 
 came lumbering through the doorway, bringing Grip on his 
 arm. In their quality of hostesses she and Pip were looking 
 after laggards and beating up partners for the next dance. 
 Immediately behind these two came in Pip with Mil — more 
 constant to the original type than his elder brother had shown 
 himself to be. But then he was three years younger ; he had 
 not the steadying prospect of future inheritance and family 
 headship to put a little moral ballast into him ; and he had. 
 not yielded to the influences of Albert Jones and the love of 
 blue china. He was still in the era of tomboys and fun. 
 There were no flaws in the Pennefather pottery for him ; he 
 saw no beauty in saints destitute of haaniatine and with fibres 
 all relaxed ; and poetry was simple bosh, when not an uglier 
 word still. His brother's new vein of sentimentality 
 surprised him as much as it surprised the Doves, but 
 he supposed he would work out of it again. If he did 
 not, he was a good fellow spoilt, said Mil ; and he 
 wondered how he could be such a duffer as to be taken in by 
 one who himself was nothing but a duffer all round. How- 
 ever that was his own affair, and if he liked it, let him go the 
 pace till he got tired ! Just now he seemed to be going the 
 pace at a hand-gallop, to judge by his face, which was the 
 first thing they saw as the four came surging through the 
 doorway, Randolph and Gip leading. 
 
 " I say, you pair of spoons !" shouted Gip ; " what are you 
 doing here, when you ought to be doing your duty by 
 Augusta Latrobe, who has been playing for us like an angel 1 
 "What's the use of you both if you don't dance when you 
 shonll ? Snooninsr-time never comes till after supper !" 
 
A NEW THREAD. 271 
 
 " One cannot be always .lancing, Gip !" said Valentine a 
 shade testily. "And Miss Branscombe was tired." 
 
 " Then Misa Branscombe might be content to be tired for 
 herself, without carrying off one of our partners to keep her 
 eompnnv !" said Gip with a grimace. " There's Hortensia 
 Lyon been sitting out and little Lucy Grey and half a dozen 
 Is; and here are you carrying on over spillikins in- 
 stead of doing your duty like a man ! England expects every 
 man to do bis duty. Do you know that, Mr. Val ! We don't 
 allow laggards at Sherrardine !" 
 
 She laughed when she said this, just in her usual boisterous 
 and extensive way ; but her eyes were painfully bright and 
 her laugh unmusically hard. 
 
 Valentine changed colour, and for a moment looked as if he 
 were going to be angry. He seemed to think better of it 
 however, and put on the most amiable face at his command. 
 
 " All right, Gip ! I will do my duty next time like a man," 
 he laughed ; " and you shall be my Britannia !" 
 
 And at this they all laughed, as at an exquisite joke ; all 
 save Randolph Mackenzie, who looked like a man standing at 
 the bar of the Old Bailey waiting for his sentence, and Stella, 
 who wished that she was not so obtuse and could understand 
 the fun which amused others so much. But the spell was 
 broken for Valentine, the charm flown for the evening. He 
 felt something like an enchanted prince who had been per- 
 mitted to come out of that rough-skinned husk in which he 
 was enclosed, and appear as a lovely young man for a moment ; 
 but who must now go back to his mask and his hide, and be 
 once more the mere kitchen scrub, if not the Beast of his 
 daily appearance. He was no longer Valentine the poetic 
 adorer of the ideal, but Val, the chosen chum of a noisy, wild 
 • .mewhat vulgar tomboy to whose " business " he had to 
 play, keeping in the same line as hers and with the like 
 
 :0d. 
 
 The two sitting at the little table got up, and all six went 
 
 into the drawing-room where Stella undertook to play the 
 
 set of quadrilles, and Randolph raid he would turn over 
 
 the leaves of her music-book. Colonel Moneypenny had just 
 
 doing the like office for Mrs. Latrobe, though indeed she 
 
 had scarcely needed his assistance, seeing that her waltz had 
 
 occupied only one page and there were no leaves to turn. 
 
 But as suddenly as Valentine Cowley's declaration of his ideal 
 
 - 11a Branscombe — as much without preface or warning — 
 
272 "Mil LOVEt" 
 
 the Colonel had abandoned his displeased attitude towards 
 the fair-faced widow, and to-night had devoted himself to her 
 as if no shadow of coolness had been between them. And, as 
 taking no notice and letting things slide were the main points 
 of Augusta's philosophy, she had accepted his attentions with 
 the most delightful and sweet tempered forgiveness of past 
 rudeness, and never seemed to remember that to-day had had 
 a yesterday or might have a to-morrow. 
 
 Hortensia was sitting between her father and Mr. Brans- 
 combe, a meek and self-denying little Puritan, preferring 
 quietness and lofty converse to all this loud and mindless 
 gaiety. And even when a whist-table was formed, she went 
 off with the elders, better pleased to watch a game of which 
 she knew neither the rules nor the value of the cards, but 
 where Mr. Branscombe was an authority, than to take part in 
 the fun going on among the rest. With all these odd little 
 kinks however, the rose-coloured thread of mirth and merri- 
 ment ran on the whole smooth and straight ; and only Ran- 
 dolph kept a saddened face, feeling as if his heart had leaden 
 weights which dragged it down and made it heavy. Gip, who 
 had got back her oid playfellow, was as bright as it was her 
 nature to be ; and Pip, who had had no such twitch as had 
 made her sister feel as if things had gone very crooked some- 
 how within the last half -hour, was all that Pip ever was. 
 Thus the evening passed in an apparent cloud of silver and 
 gold floating over a sky all of blue and rose colour ; and only 
 when all the guests had gone and the two Doves were safe in 
 their own rooms with each other was the secret displayed. 
 
 " I say, Patrick," began her sister, as she brushed her fine 
 hair with vigour ; " what did you think of Val and Stella to- 
 night ? Is it a case ? Looks like it, doesn't it ?" 
 
 " Yes, I think he's awful nuts on her ; I do indeed, 
 George," said Pip gravely. 
 
 There was silence for a few moments. 
 
 " Those horrid quiet sly girls !" burst out Gip with strange 
 passion. " They carry everything off and pretend they don't 
 want to. Of all things in the world, I hate most a quiet 
 flirt ; and I am sure Stella Branscombe is a quiet flirt — I am 
 sure of it from to-night." 
 
 " So I think, too, George; nasty mean thing," said Pip 
 with energy. " Why cannot she be honest and above-board ? 
 — and why cannot she keep to her own spoons ? We didn't 
 interfere with Cyril when he was humbugging about ; and we 
 
ON GUARD. 273 
 
 don't want that long lout of a Ran, who is as much in love 
 
 with her as he can be. She might leave Val and Mil to us 
 
 id of coming in with her sly ways and spoiling all our fun. 
 
 They'll be no good to any one if they get spoons on a girl ; 
 
 ■ !i;it's what will be the end, if things go on like this !" 
 
 " It is too bad of her !" returned Gip. " Girls who poach 
 
 on other girls' manors deserve to be shot !" 
 
 Which was a tolerably strong sentiment for rattling Georgie 
 
 Pennefather, she whose good-humour was as proverbial as her 
 
 fastness, and whose amiability and vulgarity were held to be 
 
 in equal measure one with the other. But when the jade 
 
 9 dues it not show that she is galled? 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ON GUARD. 
 
 The new thread laid on the night of that little dance at 
 
 Shei-rardine was not suffered to lose itself in confused tangles, 
 
 and knots which fastened nothing. It was very evident to 
 
 tine Cowley that Stella's soul was not made in the way 
 
 in which he held" souls should go ; and he set himself to the 
 
 task of moulding that delicate particle according to his own 
 
 ideas. It seemed to him also that it would be the most 
 
 delightful thing in the world to have Stella Branscombe as 
 
 wn private and particular friend — his soul's sister — 
 
 whom he could love without fear and worship without stmt, 
 
 while being to her the spiritual Prometheus whom she in her 
 
 turn would love and worship. Like all the world he knew 
 
 tad Cyril Ponsonby had been engaged; an J, also 
 
 like all the world, he could see for himself how much she had 
 
 ed through the cancelling of that engagement — the 
 
 ■ n being as patent as the fact. And this little drama, 
 
 wherein the girl had played so sad and sweet a part, filled 
 
 him with the most intense desire to make up for the loss of 
 
 her lover by the gift of a spiritual brother — a handsome, 
 
 g and muscular young Prometheus who would make her 
 
 soul and comfort her heart. 
 
 Acting then with this ever in view, Valentine soon made 
 
 hims.-li' conspicuous by the exclusive devotion which he paid 
 
 abe when they met in public — which was 
 
 -and by the headlong manner in which he conducted 
 
274 a MY LOVE!" 
 
 his spiritual husbandry. He had ingratiated himself to a 
 marvellous extent with Mr. Branscombe, who professed to 
 find in him the Ideal Youth — Adonis in boating flannels and 
 Antinous in cricket costume. Just such another as he him- 
 self had been at the same age, he used to say when discussing 
 the young heir to the Cowley estates — handsome, well-born, 
 strong and intellectual, all in one — an athlete, a poet and a 
 modern English gentleman complete. Yes ; Mr. Valentine 
 Cowley was just such another as he himself had been and as 
 he would have desired his son should have been, had fortune 
 been kind enough to present him with an heir. And feeling 
 for the young fellow as he did, he encouraged him to come to 
 Eose Hill as often as he wished ; though, strangely enough 
 when he did come he was for the most part relegated to the 
 care of Stella unassisted, whose soul he might make without 
 interruption while Mr. Branscombe devoted himself to Hor- 
 tensia or his Muse, as things might chance. When it was to 
 his Muse the poor grub had a bad time of it ; for, with a 
 mind fixed on that spiritual husbandman, who to him was 
 nothing more nor less than a poacher, Bandolph was not 
 quite up to his usual mark of mechanical accuracy ; and 
 Prospero's elegant ferule was both sharp and heavy. 
 
 Highwood began to talk, as of course was to be expected ; 
 and to laugh in its witless sleeve at the weak-backed theory 
 of maiden constancy and broken hearts. Stella Branscombe 
 had made fuss enough about her disappointment, they said; 
 meaning that her health had run down and that her face had 
 grown pale and thin ; but now they all wagered — some of 
 them their heads and others sixpences — she would pick up 
 again and be quite herself before another month was out! 
 One nail would drive out another in the approved way tested 
 by centuries, they said with the cruel sneer of people who 
 speak at random, applying general principles like quack 
 blisters without stopping to inquire into symptoms or to 
 search into causes. 
 
 This little sop of gossip came at a time of dearth in 
 " ducks ;" and the affair between Cyril's lost love and Grip's 
 favourite chum began to be discussed as a foregone conclu- 
 sion and evident arrangement, according to the way of people 
 who are on low diet in the matter of their neighbour's doings. 
 The only gossipers who scouted the idea of any grave mean- 
 ing in all this attention were the Doves themselves; and they 
 maintained that there was no more in it than there was in 
 
ON GUARD, 275 
 
 the man in the moon. Val thought no more of Stella Brans- 
 combe than he did of any other good-looking girl — only she 
 was not so good-looking after all, and had gone off no end of 
 late! She was fairly nice to talk to, and not such a stupid 
 as to thinlc every man -i gone" who spoke to her ; and of course 
 Val liked to talk to her. But there was no more in it than 
 this. 
 
 All this they said in public in the loudest and clearest 
 and with the wildest cascades of laughter; but in 
 private, between themselves, they struck another note and 
 declined the useless trouble of trying to deceive each other. 
 During this time of her playfellow's secession Gip had 
 enough to do to hold up her head, square her shoulders and 
 make-believe not to mind, as a brave girl should. She had 
 also enough to do to refrain from girding at Val for his incon- 
 stancy and twitting Stella for her slyness. But she did. She 
 had a certain amount of maidenly pride for all her wildness, 
 and carried her fox like a Spartan — Pip alone knowing what 
 Bhe hid beneath her cloak. 
 
 Randolph Mackenzie on his side was made miserable by 
 this sentimental fancy of Val's. The guard which hitherto 
 had been provisional became now a fact and an anxious 
 charge. Had Stella been Cyril's portable and saleable pro- 
 perty, given into his safe keeping till called for, and had 
 Valentine Cowley been a burglar with skeleton keys and a 
 dark lantern, Randolph could not have been more constant in 
 lance; more vigilant in his character of preventive 
 officer and private detective; more watchful against dan- 
 gerous chances and advantages gained by boldness on the 
 one side and granted by negligence on the other. Under the 
 pressure of the moment the young fellow developed a keen- 
 ness of perception, a craftiness of policy worthy of Machia- 
 v.lli himself. He was ubiquitous and always ready ; always 
 armed at all points and prepared for every emergency. Val 
 Cowley was ubiquitous too; so that between the two Stella 
 was well provided with cavaliers, and she at least had no 
 reason to complain — as Georgie Pennefather said with two 
 burning cheeks and Hashing eyes, and a jerky little toss of 
 her curly head. Manifestations of feeling which struck 
 Stella as odd, to say the least of it, and such as she could not 
 quite understand. 
 
 Neither could she understand how it was that she and her 
 father were so almost entirely separated of late. From having 
 
276 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 kept her so close a prisoner in the studio, and so continually at 
 work, in the first months after her dear mother's death, he had 
 now not only ceased to desire her presence but was often even 
 actively annoyed when she entered the Temple of the Muses — 
 unless she brought Hortensia Lyon in her hand. He and his 
 grub seemed to get on together in perfect harmony ; and ever 
 since Mr. Branscombe had written a little poem called " My 
 Caliban," and Eandolph had not seemed to see the personal 
 application, Prospero had forgiven his mooncalf, having 
 worked oft* his ill-humour against him according to the 
 method of poets in general. And as, moreover, the little 
 devotee supplied the necessary stimulus of flattery and ap- 
 plause, the mechanical perfection of Caliban was all that he 
 desired. Thus Stella was one too many in the Temple, save 
 in her quality as the assigned cause for Hortensia's daily 
 presence ; and Mr. Branscombe was not sorry when Valen- 
 tine Cowley came to the front as a possible future aspirant 
 and present lightener of so much dead-weight of duty. The 
 education of Hortensia Lyon's extremely interesting mind 
 and sympathetic nature, was, according to him, the work 
 given him by Divine Providence at this moment ; and as a 
 devout believer in Direction he devoted himself with zeal to 
 the task assigned him. 
 
 Helped by her father, Valentine Cowley was ever with 
 Stella. In riding he was on one side of her if Randolph was 
 on the other. In skating she somehow found herself ever 
 between these two, each as careful of her as if she had been a 
 costly piece of Salviati glass insufficiently packed. In the 
 evening Val danced twice with her for once with any one 
 else ; and when she sat out or played for the rest he generally 
 found himself sitting out too, turning over the pages of the 
 music-book at the wrong places, or discoursing in modern 
 terms on the supreme beauty of quietness and the precious 
 eloquence of silence. Yet go where he would and do what he 
 would, the lumbering form of Randolph Mackenzie ever ob- 
 truded itself like a huge iceberg between him and the sun, 
 cooling his blood by the very force of propinquity, and making 
 him more angry than he dared to confess or could wholly 
 conceal. All "the people talked, and even the more sensible 
 among them assumed the truth of things whereof this was 
 only the appearance ; and the " duck" flew up to The Laurels 
 and Mrs. Morshead, as all such ducks always did. 
 
 How that terrible old woman sitting like Bunyan's Pope 
 
OX GUARD. 277 
 
 and Pagan in her easy-chair and never stirring from her 
 home, got to know everything that was going on in the pla 
 was a standing marvel to all. But it was a fact if a wonder ; 
 and far from being behind the rest The Laurels was a kind of 
 well-head of local ^r< »ssip ; and old Mrs. Morshead was the 
 nursing mother of all the little dmlcs which flew. 
 
 There was something in this report of Valentine Cowley's 
 approaching if not completed engagement with Stella Brans- 
 combe that roused Mrs. Morshead' s curiosity to its extremest 
 point. She questioned Augusta closely and did her best to 
 draw her; but she drew blank; as she always did on such 
 matters. The fair-faced widow had none of that love of 
 !• and keenness in ill-natured criticism which are such 
 strong characteristics in women, and she preferred "not to 
 know" rather than to help in laying the trail and setting on 
 the hounds. She preferred too, the scolding which her igno- 
 rance was sure to bring down on her head to the conscious- 
 nesa that sh<- had done an unoffending neighbour a bad turn 
 and thrown another brand into a burning house. 
 
 " You are the most uninteresting girl I ever saw." said INI r s . 
 Morshead pettishly, when Augusta, looking candid and igno- 
 rant, had effectually stopped her mother's curiosity and ren- 
 dered her questions of no avail by answering: — "No; she 
 knew nothing; had heard nothing ; seen nothing; suspected 
 nothing ; and did not think there was anything for anyone to 
 know." — " You might be a hoodie-crow for all that you see 
 and hear. You have no more sense than a blind puppy; 1 
 declare you have no; !" 
 
 The mistress of The Laurels was a vulgar old creature for 
 all her grand proprietorship and that stake in the county of 
 which she was so proud. Like many ancient dames of good 
 family in country places, she- affected a certain breadth of 
 provincialism and bygone fashions which passed for local 
 patriotism and made her like a superior kind of peasant. 
 
 •'lam very Borry, mamma," said Augusta quietly; "but 
 you know of old that 1 never gossip. I am the la.-t to hear 
 of anything that is going on, for I never ask and no one 
 tells me." 
 
 "A burnt child dreads the fire," said Mrs. Morshead grimly. 
 "Your very careful ami very good-natured people have gene- 
 rally too much of the glass-house about them to please me. I 
 don't wonder that you don't gossip, AuguMa. as you call it. 
 Perhaps in your place I Bhould be as careful as you are. 
 
278 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 But then you see I have nothing to be afraid of; and people 
 may throw stones at me as much as they like. I have no 
 windows of my own that they can break," she added signifi- 
 cantly. 
 
 " No, you have not," assented Augusta with matter-of-fact 
 serenity. 
 
 Mrs. Morshead twitched her shawl ; her sure sign of 
 annoyance. 
 
 " I wish to my heart I could say so much for my daughter," 
 she said with a curious kind of snap. " If you had followed 
 in the footsteps of your mother, Augusta, things would have 
 been very different from what they are." 
 
 The widow made no answer. What indeed, could she say ? 
 Had she objected, defended herself, pushed her mother to ex- 
 plain her meaning and then demanded proof of "what she would 
 have said, there would have been a quarrel and one of those 
 wordy tempests which it was the great aim of Augusta's 
 home-life to avoid. It was so far easier to slip under the 
 harrow than to try and force those cruel teeth to take another 
 direction, or to go back on their line and cover up its traces ! 
 "Wherefore she kept silence now, as always, when her mother 
 flung about the wild-fire of these unjust accusations ; and at 
 this moment, as her own ill-luck would have it, Stella Brans- 
 combe came into the room. Her visits had become somewhat 
 less rare of late, since her father had given her more liberty 
 and had taken off the interdict laid on Augusta. They were 
 by no means frequent even now ; partly because Stella was 
 afraid of Mrs. Morshead, and partly because she did not care 
 to appear as if she took a greedy advantage of her com- 
 parative freedom ; still, they Avere not quite so few and far 
 between as they had been during the late summer and 
 autumn. 
 
 "You here alone?" said Mrs. Morshead as her greeting, 
 lifting up her heavy old grizzled eyebrows as Stella entered. 
 
 " Yes," said Stella ; " papa was busy." 
 
 "And you come without your shadow?" the old woman 
 said, repeating her movement of surprise. 
 
 Stella smiled in a pretty, perplexed, uncertain way, and 
 looked from the mother to the daughter. 
 
 "Who is my shadow, Mrs. Morshead?" she asked, still 
 smiling. 
 
 " Oh, I forgot ; you have two — or perhaps I should say two 
 and a half," answered Mrs. Morshead. " That young mounte- 
 
'H'ARD. 279 
 
 bank Valentine Cowley ; that great lout Randolph Mackenzie ; 
 and that affected little piece of goods, Hortensia Lyon. She 
 is v.niv halt* — the other half of her belongs, by all accounts, 
 our father." 
 
 Mrs. Morshead said this in her grimmest way, and looked 
 l1 Stella to Bee how- she took the blow. 
 
 •■At least I am richer than poor. Peter Schlemil," said 
 Stella good-temperedly. "He had none, and you say that I 
 have three!" 
 
 " Two too many, young lady," said Mrs. Morshead sharply. 
 mg ladies should not let themselves get talked about." 
 
 "Am I talked about?" asked Stella, in her turn lifting up 
 .brows — her surprise a little more genuine than Mrs. 
 Morshead's had been. 
 
 •• Sfou need - arcely ask such a simple question as that!" 
 said the old woman, even more sharply than before. "A 
 young lady who is never seen without two young men tacked 
 to her skirts is sure to be talked about! What else can she 
 expect F Do you think people are blind or dumb?'' 
 
 " They may save themselves the trouble of talking about 
 me!" said Stella with a flash of indignation. "People 
 must indeed be badly off for subjects of conversation, to 
 choose me !" 
 
 " I suppose you do as well as any one else ?" retorted 
 Mrs. Morshead. " Do you think you are sacred — not to be 
 touched or looked at — tabooed, like a South S?a Island idol? 
 Neither you nor any one else ; and so I tell you! From the 
 Queen on her throne to the kitchen-maid in the scullery, 
 every woman gets talked about, more or less ; only some who 
 are imprudent a great deal more than less. And that will be 
 your fate, Miss Stella Branscombe, if you don't look sharp 
 and are not more careful than \o\\ are!" 
 .. Mrs. Morshead!" cried .Stella. 
 
 ••Well — 'oh, Mrs. Morshead, 1 and what then?'' said the 
 mistress of The Laurels with gruff irony. "Saying, 'oh, 
 Mrs. Morshead, 9 and getting as red as a peony won't help 
 matters when a friend is kind enough to tell you the truth. 
 A motherless girl as you are, you should be grateful to any 
 one who will take the trouble of trying to put you in the right 
 way, and not set yourself against them when they are doing 
 what they can to be of use to you." 
 
 " I did not mean to set myself against you," said Stella 
 juietly ; but the terrible old woman was in an atrociously bad 
 
2S0 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 temper to-day and not to be mollified by any process known 
 to humanity. 
 
 " Whether you meant it or not, you did it," she said crossly. 
 "And I speak only for your good and because I respected 
 your poor dear mother who is dead and gone, and who would 
 have been the first to have objected to such goings on. And 
 I am a mother myself," she added, as if giving a piece of 
 news that clinched the argument. 
 
 " I am sure I am very much obliged to you for your good 
 intention," was Stella's meek reply ; and then Augusta cutting 
 in with : " Where are you going, Stella ? shall Tony and I 
 come with you ?" the conversation turned off at a sharp angle 
 by Mrs. Morshead refusing to allow her daughter to go out 
 at all — such a cold day as it was — enough to freeze that poor, 
 dear little child to the very marrow ! But Augusta never 
 thought of her boy, poor fellow ! If she wanted to do anything 
 that would give herself pleasure, that poor, dear, little delicate 
 creature might be scorched to a cinder or frozen to death for 
 anything she cared. She was as strong as a horse herself, 
 and did not seem able to understand that a young child needed 
 care and attention. It was a ridiculous day for any one to 
 be out in ; and if Stella Branscombe took her advice she 
 would go straight home at once, and make herself comfortable 
 by her own warm fireside. What did she want with prancing 
 about like this in a frost and cold enough to kill a cart-horse ? 
 Such folly! She, Mrs. Morshead, hated all this gadding 
 about. Why could not people stay cpuietly at home ? It was 
 the best place for them. But well ! there ! she was an old- 
 fashioned woman, born and brought up in a time when women 
 were women and home was home, and the world had not gone 
 mad after pleasure and gadding as it had now. 
 
 " I have promised to meet papa at Derwent Lodge. We 
 are all going to the Broads," said Stella, as if apologizing 
 for not obeying the terrible old woman on the spot. 
 
 "Oh!" said Mrs. Morshead drily. "I thought you said 
 your dear papa was too busy to call here with you to- 
 day ?" 
 
 " Yes, when I came out he was," answered the girl inno- 
 cently. " But he said he would be ready in half an hour and 
 then I was to meet him. I do wish Augusta would come too !" 
 she added, retui^ning to the charge with a pretty coaxing 
 kind of persistence that would have won any heart but Mrs. 
 Morshead's. " It is really a beautiful day when you arc out,. 
 
ON GUARD. 281 
 
 Mrs. Morshead, and not nearly so cold as it is is. the b 
 There is no wind, and the sun is really quite warm !" 
 
 •• i >a, of course! — of course it is!" Mrs. Morshead answered. 
 "A frosty day in January, with the hills all covered with snow 
 and the thermometer below zero, is quite mild and genial. 
 We all know that when young ladies want to shut the house- 
 < i< m \x 1 lehind them. You can go if you like, Augusta, of course. 
 You are not in prison in your mother's house; and you can 
 that poor dear child with you, if you like. You are 
 his mother, and must do as you think best. But if he has 
 croup or inllammation of the lungs to-night, do not blame 
 me and do not ask me to sit up with him — that is all !" 
 
 '• I think I will take the chance for the sake of the good 
 the run will do him," said the widow cheerfully ; and Mrs. 
 Morshead, on this, gave an angry kind of grunt, and twitched 
 her shawl with so much energy that she tore the border and 
 somehow made it out to be Augusta's fault. 
 
 But as everything was somehow Augusta's fault, when the 
 lines of life at The Laurels ran crosswise, one sin, more or 
 less, did not much signify in the sum total of the year. And 
 after her daughter had expressed her sorrow at this mis- 
 fortune, had offered to mend the rent to-night and been 
 severely scolded for her meddlesome disposition, the two 
 young women went upstairs to Augusta's room, while she 
 dressed herself and the child for their walk and kept laud- 
 able and unfeminine silence on the skeleton of the house 
 below. 
 
 The only sign given by the young widow of having endured 
 anything unpleasant was a quick little sigh as she shut the 
 door of her bedroom, and a sudden turn to Stella, whom she 
 kissed. 
 
 "How good of you to come for me to-day, darling!" she 
 said with a smile which seemed less to express pleasure 
 than to mask pain. "I was just longing for some fresh 
 air when you came in ; but my mother is in one of her most 
 uncomfortable states to-day, and I do not think I should 
 have got leave to go out had you not called and carried 
 me off." 
 
 " I am so glad I came," said Stella. 
 
 And neither said anything more. They were getting to 
 that pass of intimacy when they understood without the 
 need of explanation. 
 
232 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 PLAIN TRUTHS. 
 
 " And yet, Stella, dearie, mamma is right — people are talk- 
 ing about you and Valentine Cowley." 
 
 Augusta said this when they had got well out of the grounds 
 of The Laurels. She spoke abruptly, suddenly interrupting 
 the silence that had fallen between the two since they left 
 the house. 
 
 "Oh, Augusta, how can you be so cruel?" said Stella, 
 startled as if out of a sleep. 
 
 What Mrs. Morshead might choose to say was only a pin- 
 prick of no more value than the mere momentary irritation ; 
 what Augusta said was of a very different character and had 
 to be taken as serious and important. 
 
 " No, I am not cruel ; I am only telling you what you 
 ought to know," returned Augusta. " To mamma, of course, 
 I admitted nothing ; but there can be no concealment between 
 you and me. So I tell you the truth ; and this is the truth — 
 people are talking." 
 
 " But what are they saying ?" cried Stella, her face on fire 
 yet with something of terror in it too. But in general, terror 
 blanches, not flushes. 
 
 " That you are engaged to be married to Valentine Cowley," 
 returned Augusta as tranquilly as she would have said: 
 " Your hat is not straight," or " a hair-pin is coming out." 
 
 " What dreadful nonsense ! He has never said a word to 
 me ! He cares no more for me than he does for Hortensia 
 Lyon, and not half so much as for Ceorgie Pennefather." 
 
 Stella said this with an indignant rush, as if her mere 
 assertion were proof sufficient for all rational persons. 
 
 " As for that I think you are mistaken," said the widow 
 quietly. " From what I have seen I am quite sure that 
 Valentine Cowley is only biding his time and seeing what 
 his chances are likely to be before he makes you an offer. 
 Every one thinks this who does not think you already 
 engaged," she added, looking at her companion. 
 
 "Augusta!" 
 
 Stella could say no more. This information came upon her 
 with something more than surprise — with a feeling of sacri- 
 lege to Cyril's memory, of disloyalty to the past that was 
 
PLAIN TRUTHS. 283 
 
 almost unendurable. She felt fallen from her place of pride 
 in her purity, and guilty of some nameless sin. She must 
 have been to blame to make it possible for people to say such 
 dreadful things. She must have done something wrong. 
 
 And had 1 D innocent in her guilt. She had not 
 
 known when or where she had sinned. 
 
 "He seems to be a very nice fellow," said Augusta, after 
 she had given her poor friend a little time to recover herself. 
 s being horridly cruel ; that she knew and con- 
 : . ; but love is some! inns cruel to be kind in the end, 
 and when an operation had to be performed the most humane 
 surgeon is he who does it with most determination. It was 
 for Stella's good ; and she must bear the smart for the sake 
 of the future healing. 
 
 " He seems to be immensely improved this year ; don't 
 you think so?" continued Augusta. 
 
 " I have not thought much about him in any way," 
 answered Stella with a little film of sulkiness in her manner, 
 suit of choking back her natural inclination to cry. 
 
 Had she obeyed that natural inclination she would have 
 sat down on the frozen snow by the road-side, and would 
 there have given way to those tears which help women so won- 
 derfully in their sorrow. Not being able to do this she battled 
 with her weakness and overcame it so far as to answer ration- 
 ally enough, but with just a shade of temper as her protest. 
 
 " I think he has — immensely," continued Augusta, seeing 
 and not hi 'ding. " I think him one of the handsomest young 
 men I have ever seen." 
 
 "Do you?" said Stella with indifference, seeing that she 
 was expected to say something. 
 
 " Don't you?" returned Augusta. 
 
 "I have not thought about it.'' repeated the girl. 
 
 " You dear little 1 >at . you must be blind ! He is splendid !" 
 aaid Augusta enthusiastically. "And he will be very rich 
 when his father dies. He is the eldest, is he not?" 
 
 "Yes; he is the eldest," said Stella. 
 
 •• And his people are very wealthy, are they not?" 
 
 "I believe so; but I know nothing more than yon do, 
 
 A istal" with a decided accent of impatience'. "How 
 
 Bhould I possibly know more of the Cowleys than anyone 
 
 Ef you want to learn all about them why do you 
 
 ik the Pennefathers instead of m 
 
 The widow glanced sideways at the girl. Was craft or 
 
284 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 boldness the best game to play with her? — careful stalking or 
 a sweeping drive? There were so few points in her character 
 of what Augusta would have called reasonableness, and perhaps 
 what others might have said was worldliness, by which she 
 could be moved to her own advantage — she allowed herself 
 to be so completely dominated by that troublesome and 
 inconvenient conscience backed up by her affections and her 
 romantic ideas about constancy and the like — that it seemed 
 almost hopeless to try and influence her to her own good. 
 Yet — if she could be swayed ; what a grand thing it would be 
 for her ! 
 
 " I wish, Stella, my darling, that you — " 
 
 The widow stopped. Should she spoil all by a premature 
 direction ? 
 
 " That I, what ?" asked Stella without curiosity. 
 
 "That you could like Valentine Cowley and marry him!" 
 said Augusta with the feeling that now she had done it ! 
 
 "Augusta!" 
 
 Stella turned away with a gesture of frank abhorrence. 
 
 " Now you are not to be angry with me. I love you 
 dearly, and I want only your happiness," said Augusta. " It 
 would be the best thing that yotx could do — by far the best — * 
 to marry Valentine Cowley. If you give him the least 
 encouragement he will ask you, and oh! Stella, dear child, 
 accept him when he does ! Take my advice — I am older 
 and more experienced than you ; you will save yourself 
 infinite sorrow if you do as I tell you !" 
 
 "Do not say that, Augusta, please do not!" said Stella, 
 with a kind of agony on her face. " It sounds like blasphemy 
 to me to tell me that I am to marry any one !" 
 
 " But if Cyril has really acquiesced in your decision ? — it 
 was yours, remember, dear. He did not wish it ! And men 
 are not to be played fast and loose with at your will. If we 
 do give them up, you know, we must expect them to take us 
 at our words ; and there is no good in looking back. To give 
 up the substance and live on the shadow is not very wise!" 
 she added with a hard laugh, while her cheeks with their 
 iwo bright burning spots made the double application as 
 plainly as words would have done. 
 
 " He mav ; and has," said Stella, her lips quivering as she 
 spoke ; " but though he may give me up in his memory, I 
 cannot forget him ! I shall never love again ! never ! never !" 
 she repeated. 
 
PLAIN T RUT US. 285 
 
 " Well, you know best, of course, but don't let people say 
 you are breaking your heart for a man who has forgotten you ! 
 Wearing the willow all your life is not a very dignified kind 
 of life, my dear. And by far the wisest thing would be to 
 make your happiness in another direction now that the 
 oal venture has failed." 
 " How can you say such things, Augusta! I sometimes feel 
 as if yoj? were two people !" cried Stella, almost angrily. " So 
 charming and sympathetic and sweet in some things ; so hard 
 and worldly in others !" 
 
 " So reasonable you mean, dear," the widow answered 
 gaily ; and yet her gaiety had a terribly artificial sound in it ! 
 ■" So opposed to all silly sentimentality, and so heartily de- 
 spising weakness in all its forms. That is what you call being 
 hard and worldly. I don't. However, good-bye for the 
 '.it. Here we are at that little snake's house ; for she is 
 a snake, Stella, and so you will find out some day ! I will not 
 •n and I must go home now. We have had our run, 
 Tony and I, and mamma is so uncomfortable to-day, I had 
 better go back. Good-bye, darling. Think over what I have 
 said, and look me in the face before I go and say you are not 
 ry with me." 
 For an instant Stella kept her eyes to the ground ; then she 
 raised them frankly and gave both her hands affectionately. 
 
 " No, I am not angry, dear !" she said, her own sweet tender 
 smile about her lips while her eyes were still grave and thought- 
 ful. " You mean well by me, I know — only we do not agree 
 as to what is Avell." 
 
 •• Time will show !" laughed the widow, as she turned away 
 
 with her boy, a little relieved that all had ended as smoothly 
 
 Lad dune. She had plunged into deep waters, but she 
 
 had not damaged herself nor shipwrecked the friendship 
 
 which made a great part of her private happiness. And her 
 
 • from tl: to which she had voluntarily exposed 
 
 If in Stella's affections counted to her as a gain from 
 
 ii she would make a further step yet in advance. 
 
 - la found them all waiting for her at Derwent Lodge — 
 
 her father in his fine furred coat and general look of gloss and 
 
 p ; Hortensia in her quaintly-severe dress, always with 
 
 the flavour of Evangeline about her; Mr. and Mrs. Lyon, the 
 
 tic, rubicund, the other with that 
 odd mixture of depression and irritation proper to wives who 
 are sat upon by their husbands ; and Randolph, with his good, 
 
286 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 brave, honest, unintellectual face — the clear, big, human 
 watchdog that he was ! And as soon as the girl appeared the 
 whole cavalcade set out — Hortensia between her father and 
 her elderly idol, Stella between Mrs. Lyon and Cyril's chum. 
 
 Surely something was in the air to-day ! What vas it ? 
 Valentine Cowley had never pressed himself on Stella with 
 so much evident intention of absorbing her ; Georgie Penne- 
 father, who had the trick of turning up where least expected 
 and least desired, and who could hold on like a leech without 
 showing that she was sticking voluntarily to her post, had 
 never been more ubiquitous nor more tenacious ; and Ean- 
 dolph had never shown himself more resolute in guarding 
 Cyril's property from all chance of theft by interlopers or 
 from the bolder robbery of burglars. It was like a game of 
 blind-man's buff where every one was being caught against 
 his or her will. 
 
 For one little moment on the ice Valentine got Stella to 
 himself. Gip's skate had become unfastened, and though she 
 had called to her old playfellow to help her, she was obliged 
 to be content with the aid that Eandolph was compelled to 
 give in Val's wilful deafness and rapid absence. 
 
 " Do you like that great lumbering fellow, that Mackenzie ?" 
 asked handsome Val with irrepressible ill-humour. 
 
 At the moment jealousy was beyond brotherly love ; and 
 he could not employ the moment better than by slinging his 
 stone against the watch -dog. 
 
 " Very much indeed," said Stella, trying to stop her rapid 
 transit ; adding : " Let us wait for them." 
 
 Valentine, who had her hand, took no notice of her last 
 words. He bit his lip with vexation ; bit it vigorously, as a 
 scorpion might have stung itself ; and then said sharply, dis- 
 agreeably, with a sneering smile : 
 
 " And he, I suppose, is fond of you in return ?" 
 
 " I hope so," said Stella with grave dignity. 
 
 " What kind of tie can there be between you, the very soul 
 of grace and sweetness, and that great awkward fellow — that 
 lout who has only his inches to recommend him !" said Valen- 
 tine with disdain. " 1 should as soon have expected you to 
 have made your favourite friend of Chang himself as of Ean- 
 dolph Mackenzie ! These overgrown fellows have neither 
 brains nor muscles ! They are mere carrots when put to it." 
 
 Stella changed colour. She could not tell the truth and 
 say that she liked Eandolph because she had loved — had 
 
PLAIN TRUTHS. 297 
 
 loved ? — Cyril ; and Randolph had a flavour of Cyril, and 
 brought with him the remembrance, the association of her 
 lost love. She could not confess this ; and she dared not take 
 up the cudgels too warmly in her friend's behalf because of 
 this in her heart. But she did say with extreme pride : 
 
 " I like him because he is honest, truthful, unselfish — 
 because I can trust him." 
 
 • You could not say less of a dog," laughed Valentine un- 
 v. M It is the clod and the goddess over again." 
 
 " But he is not a clod and I am not a goddess," said Stella, 
 " and do stop, Mr. Cowley ! Let us wait for them." 
 
 " Xo, do not ask me that," he said, his manner suddenly 
 changing. " I have so seldom the chance of seeing you alone 
 — vmu are always so closely pursued by that fellow. I can never 
 get a moment with you without witnesses and listeners !" 
 
 '• Why should we not have witnesses and listeners?" re- 
 peated Stella hastily. " There are no secrets between us !*' 
 
 •• There may be some day," said Valentine with meaning ; 
 and Stella, enlightened by Augusta, answered with half- 
 frightened promptitude : 
 
 "That is impossible, Mr. Cowley. I never make secrets 
 with any one !" 
 
 And as at that instant the pursuers came up with them, 
 heated and out of breath, Valentine could make no reply and 
 could only look as if he had none to make. 
 
 " How awfully fast you went, you two!" cried Gip. " You 
 looked like running away — I declare you did. 1 began to 
 wonder whether Gretna I rn en was at the end of the Broads, 
 didn't I, Ran?" she said, turning to Randolph and laughing 
 till the echoes rang again. 
 
 •■ What kept you two back, Gip ?" asked Val. " Were you 
 spooning? I believe you were ; and want to turn the tables 
 upon innocent ] 
 
 " No, I don't think Ran or I are gone on each other," said 
 Gip with another laugh. "It was only my bothering skate 
 that came loose. The horrid old strap broke. I called no 
 end to you, but you were as de;if us a post and went on 
 like a couple of lamplighters! I tell you, it looked just 
 like a case of Gretna Green ; and I heard a lot of people 
 notice it." 
 
 " Georgia! how can you say such dreadful things?" cried 
 Stella indignantly. 
 
 "Why are they dreadful?" retorted Georgie. "Do you 
 
283 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 want to be like an ostrich, Stella, and to stick your head in 
 a bag believing that no one sees you because you can't see 
 yourself? Of course it looked like spoons, your flying off 
 from us in that mad way ! — and you would hare been the 
 first to say so yourself if you had seen it in any one else. But 
 I'm sure you are quite welcome. I don't want to spoil sport. 
 So come along, Ean, and let us leave these two to themselves. 
 We don't want to pick gooseberries, do we ?" 
 
 " Do not talk such nonsense, G-eorgie !" cried Stella, even 
 more indignantly than before. 
 
 Turning to Randolph she held out her hand, making him 
 her skating-partner and balancing-pole as if to cut short all 
 this undesirable folly. It was not often that she looked 
 haughty and superb ; but she did at this moment — her head 
 held high, her face flushed, her eyes dark and bright, and a 
 new spirit altogether animating and informing her. Valen- 
 tine looked at her with admiration which made his face like a 
 book or a mirror. 
 
 " By Jove !" he said, drawing his breath as a man does 
 when he is startled. If he had thought Stella Branscombe 
 supreme in her sweetness he thought her still more so in her 
 pride. 
 
 "You needn't look like that, Stella, as if you would Lite my 
 nose off!" said Gip with another peal of laughter. "I de- 
 clare you and Val seem as if you were acting a charade 
 together." 
 
 "Her voice and words seemed to waken her old play-fellow 
 from a dream. Evidently he pulled himself together, as he 
 would have expressed it ; and turning from Stella, looked at 
 Gip at first with surprise, then with curiosity, and then as if 
 asking something or seeking something. Suddenly he burst 
 into a queer kind of laugh as he took her hand in his and 
 said : 
 
 " Now, don't be savage, Gip, and satire is not your style. 
 Come for a spin with me, and perhaps you will have got into 
 a good temper by the end. Why, you little fury, I didn't 
 know vou had so much malice in you!" he said, as they 
 skated off and left the causa belli standing with her watch- 
 dog. 
 
 To which Gip answered candidly : 
 
 " Well, Val, of all things I hate a sneak about the worst. 
 A.nd that little Stella Branscombe is a real sneak, out and 
 out!" 
 
PLAIN TRUTHS. 289 
 
 So what with Hortensia a snake, and Stella a sneak, the 
 girlhood of Highwood had not much to congratulate itself on 
 in the way of honesty. 
 
 Randolph, his lace flushed and his eyes full of dumb re- 
 proaeh, stood all this time, grounded on his heels, awkwardly 
 holding Stella's hand in his. He had none of that kind of 
 courage which makes a man take advantage of a chance. As 
 Gip said of him to Pip in those confidential hours when the 
 Doves dissected their neighbours : " He could not spell op- 
 portunity to save his life." And she said the truth. Cer- 
 tainlv, with Stella Brauscombe, who was surrounded with the 
 sanctity belonging to Cyril's property and who was his own 
 Star — "because Cyril's — he was always that step in the rear 
 which needs direction and in a sense permission before it 
 goes on. 
 
 " Let us u r o back to where papa and the Lyons are stand- 
 
 _ ." said Stella ; and Randolph obediently answered : "Very 
 well. Let us ;" as he would have answered had she proposed 
 anything else. 
 
 And on this they set off at a much tamer step than she had 
 been forced to take with Valentine. As they went, Randolph, 
 whose heart was too full to be contained in silence, broke his 
 way out with all the frank and tactless honesty which was so 
 specially bis own. 
 
 "I was so sorry, Miss Stella, when you went off like that 
 with young Cowley !" he said. 
 
 " I could not help it," returned Stella rather stonily. 
 
 " Georgie made such a row ! The whole Broads must have 
 heard her. I wanted you so much to turn back," said Ran- 
 dolph. 
 
 " What a silly girl that Georgie is !" cried Stella. " I am 
 sure I do not want Mr. Cowley ever to speak to me again. 
 Why does she let him? If she is so jealous of him, I wish 
 she would keep him to herself." 
 
 "I wish he did not pay you quite so much attention,' 1 
 hazarded Randolph. " People are speaking of it so much ; 
 and I am sure you do not wish that, Miss Stella." 
 
 " Speaking of what ? What do they say?" cried Stella, 
 up in arms as she had been more tban once I ■■- • 
 
 " Well, just what people do who have nothing else to say, 
 and no brains to say it with," replied Randolph in ;i c 
 mixed way. "They say that he is in love with you — and of 
 course it is easy to see that he is— and that you are eng 
 
 u 
 
290 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 to him ; which you are not. I tell every one you are not," 
 he added with energy. 
 
 "What a shame! what a horrid shame!" cried Stella, tears 
 rushing into her eyes. " How I wish I could get away from 
 Highwood !" she addpd with a girl's natural petulance. " It 
 is too horrid to be made the subject of gossip and falsehood 
 like tbis." 
 
 " But you are not angry with me because I have told you ?" 
 said Randolph anxiously. " It is only my duty to give you a 
 word of warning, when I think you want it. And indeed, 
 dear Miss Stella, you must be careful with Valentine Cowley, 
 if you do not want people to think more than is true. I am 
 sure you don't mind my saying this. Tell me that you 
 don't." 
 
 "~No" said Stella, making an heroic effort over herself; 
 " I am much obliged to you. I know that you have done it 
 for my good." 
 
 All the same she felt horribly humiliated and ill-treated by 
 fate, fortune and humanity in general, and wished that she 
 could run away from home to-morrow and hide herself in 
 some inaccessible place where neither Val Cowley nor High- 
 wood gossip could find her, 
 
 " I am going off the ice now," she said more coldly in spite 
 of herself than usual, as she and Randolph neared the bank 
 where her father was waiting with the .Lyons. 
 
 " So soon !" he said ruefully. 
 
 " Yes, I have had quite enough of it," was her reply ; and 
 poor Randolph, feeling in disgrace, said no more. 
 
 " Tou have not been long, Stella," said Hortensia who 
 wished she had stayed away longer. 
 
 " My dear, have you had enough already ?" asked her 
 father, who shared Hortensia' s wish. 
 
 " Yes," said Stella, feeling herself unwelcome, being sen- 
 sitive enough to feel "the sound of a shadow" at this 
 moment. 
 
 She turned to Mrs. Lyon and put her hand within her 
 arm. Here at least she was not one too many ; and a 
 mother was always something precious and comforting to 
 her. 
 
 " You and young Mr. Cowley made quite a feature on the 
 broad expanse," said Mr. Branscombe with a courtly air. 
 '• I was proud of the elegance and swiftness with which you 
 went. It was really quite suggestive !" 
 
"OTHER J:') 291 
 
 " I am glad you were pleased with me, papa !" said Stella, 
 her face brightening as she spoke. Praise from her dear 
 papa, a little too rave in these days, was so delightful! so 
 consoling ! 
 
 "Yes, quite well pleased," returned her father. "You 
 made really a striking couple — quite what I call a show 
 couple !" he added with an odd expression about his mouth. 
 
 Soon after this Valentine and Gip, having finished the 
 " spin" by which the former had bargained for the return 
 to good-temper of the latter, came up to the little group on 
 the bank. 
 
 •• 3Ir. Valentine Cowley," said Mr. Branscombe in a loud 
 artificial voice ; " allow me to congratulate you on your 
 elegance and prowess. You remind me of my own young 
 days, and, egad, sir ! once I was the crack skater of the re- 
 giment. I have never seen one who has come near me but 
 yourself." 
 
 " Very glad, Mr. Branscombe, I am sure," said Val, pleased 
 at the old fellow's butter — as Gip called it in private a few 
 minutes after — because it was Stella's father who gave it. 
 
 " I shall be glad if you will come back with me and dine at 
 Rose Hill, this evening," continued Mr. Branscombe. " I 
 have one or two little trifles to show you that I think with 
 your taste you will appreciate." 
 
 " Delighted, I am sure !" said Val, radiant, while Stella 
 blushed scarlet, Randolph looked as if he had received his 
 sentence of death, and Gip, scarcely waiting to be out of 
 hearing, cried out to her old playfellow : " The most audacious 
 bid I ever heard in my life. You will be green, Val, if you 
 are taken in by that old fop !" 
 
 " Never tear, Gip," said Val with a laugh. " I know what 
 I am about!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 " OTHER EYES." 
 
 Suddenly Highwood blazed with news of Cyril Ponsonby. 
 livery one was talking of him ; every one had his or her com- 
 ments to make, his or her deductions to draw ; every one had 
 either foreseen such a chance as this from the first and was 
 not in the least degree surprised when it came, knowing the 
 voung man's character so well ! — or else, had never been bo 
 
292 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 profoundly shocked, would never have suspected that Cyril 
 Ponsonby, such a nice fellow as he was, could have been 
 guilty of such a thing, and would not have believed it save on 
 such good authority as that of Jack Pennefather's. For 
 Jack, whose tea-plantation was quite close to Cyril's station, 
 had written home to his people Avhat the family called an 
 awfully jolly yarn ; and among other bits of news had in- 
 formed them that Cyril was quite " gone" on a pretty little 
 woman, a Mrs. White, the wife of Captain White, of the 
 Ninety-ninth ; that he fairly lived in their bungalow ; and 
 that this little woman, who was called " Lalla Rookk" by the 
 fellows, was never seen without Cyril lashed to her skirts. 
 The old man was in awfully good form, continued Jack, and 
 as lively as a cricket ; always in the front of the fun and the 
 life of the place all round. He was a dead shot at big game, 
 and made bags that made one's mouth water ; but even brave 
 men said he was too reckless, and that some day he would 
 come to grief no end. But though he was a good fellow 
 enough, he was not quite on the square to carry on as he did 
 with Lalla ; for the Captain had stuck up for him, and been 
 his friend from the first, and it did not seem quite the thing 
 to spoon his wife in return. However, that was their own 
 affair, said Jack, with the commendable philosophy of letting 
 people order their own households as they would ; and no 
 one had the right to interfere if the Captain didn't object. 
 
 The lad forgot to add, or rather he himself did not stop to 
 reflect, that perhaps there was not a word of truth in the 
 whole of this notable report ; and that if analyzed and reduced 
 to its original basis it would probably be found of no more 
 weight than a pinch of dust — the gossip of a small Indian 
 station not being worth the breath consumed in repeating it. 
 Jack said nothing of this, and no one said it for him ; so the 
 letter made a profound sensation at Highwood and on none 
 more than the Pennefathers. 
 
 It was one thing for girls to like fun and noise, and to call 
 their playfellows " old men," " dear boys," and by their 
 Christian names when not by some yet more familiar nick- 
 name ; and another thing for young married women to get 
 talked about with young unmarried men! The one was 
 legitimate ; and not only legitimate but laudable as a protest 
 against Sticks — Sticks being anything but laudable ! But 
 prancing after a young married woman — spooning another 
 man's wife — ugh ! that was ugly, and wicked, and shameful ; 
 
"OTHER EY£S. n 203 
 
 and both Gip and Pip, wild little pusses as they were, got red 
 with genuine indignation when they spoke of it. This creature, 
 this 31 re. White, ought to be cut for a little wretch who 
 wanted more than her share ; and Cyril Ponsonby deserved a 
 thrashing to bring him to a sense of good manners. As he 
 was the one known to the Highwood community, while 
 Mrs. White was only a name, he got the severer half of the 
 punishment. Had it been the other way — or had Mrs. White 
 1 n known too — she would have come in for more than her 
 ' ; thirds," while the man would have been perhaps pitied as 
 the victim of her wiles. 
 
 The place echoed so loudly with indignation at this report 
 of Cyril's misdeeds, that, of course, it came to Stella's ears. 
 There are never wanting good-natured people to tell you of 
 what will wound you to hear ; and the society at Highwood 
 was no exception to the rule. If no one else had enlightened 
 her, Gip and Pip would have been sure to have carried both 
 matches and candle. As it was, she heard the news from 
 every one, as it seemed to her, at once; though the shock was 
 softened by Augusta making herself the first medium of 
 communication, and telling her what she knew would be so 
 much anguish to hear, with some regard to humanity in the 
 method. For though Stella did not agree with Augusta in 
 her views of life and common-sense conduct — did not follow 
 her advice and thought that advice all wrong — still they 
 were true and loving friends and held closely together. The 
 widow had too much reasonableness, Stella too much sweet- 
 ness, and both too much mutual affection, to quarrel with 
 other for a difference of opinion. As neither could 
 prove herself right, each therefore must be allowed to 
 think as she would ; and fights in the air are stupid things 
 to wage. 
 
 "I knew that you will hear it from others, so I thought I 
 would be the first to tell you. You would bear it better from 
 me because you know how much I love and feel for yon," 
 Augusta kindly. 
 
 I come up to Rose Hill on a cold, damp, dri;' 
 day — one of those days of chilling thaw which rots the ice 
 • turns the snow to muddy slush, but which bring no sense 
 of warmth or release — simply to warn her friend of the trial 
 that was before her. 
 
 la held by her flag of fealty to the one whom she had 
 loved. 
 
294. "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " I do not believe it," she said simply ; her disclaimer so* 
 essential a confession of love as well as of faith. 
 
 " It may be exaggerated — I dare say it is ; but there must 
 be some groundwork," said Augusta. " There is no smoke 
 without fire, dear Stella." 
 
 "He is not that kind of man ; I know him better than 
 this," said Stella, sticking to her point. " He cannot have 
 changed in such a short time ; and I know what his principles 
 were." 
 
 "Still, a man's character comes out only under trial," 
 urged the widow. " It makes all the difference whether he is 
 happy or unhappy, tried or not tried. Many of us who do 
 perfectly well if things go right with us fall utterly to pieces — 
 go headlong to ruin when they go wrong. And Cyril Pon- 
 sonby may be of that kind, you know, dear. We cannot tell 
 yet." 
 
 " Then in that case it is I who have ruined him body and 
 soul," said Stella, covering her face. 
 
 Augusta looked at her for a moment in silence. Another 
 woman would have said : " Did I not advise you to marry 
 him ? And if you had taken my advice would not all this 
 have been spared both to you and to him ?" But Augusta was 
 not like other women in things of this kind, and at all times 
 cared more for the establishment of a principle than for self- 
 glory or justification. After a little time of silence, she said, 
 gently : 
 
 " There is no good in going back on our actions. You did 
 what you thought best at the time. Let the rest go. If the 
 story is true as it stands it only shows that Cyril was essen- 
 tially weak, and you have had an escape." 
 
 Stella did not answer, but she thought within herself, as a 
 woman naturally would think : " No, it only shows that he 
 loved me, and that I have ruined him !" 
 
 "But now, darling," said Augusta; "be brave to the 
 world. Let no one see that you suffer, and do not defend 
 him too warmly. Just listen in silence, without saying any- 
 thing one way or the other. Be inscrutable. Do not give the 
 faintest indication of what you feel. That is the bast armour 
 for a woman to wear — a smooth surface, but as impenetrable 
 as it is smooth." 
 
 " I do not think I can bear to hear him slandered without 
 defending him," said Stella with quivering lips. 
 
 " Then all the world will say that you are in love with him, 
 
"OTHER EYES." 
 
 Stella," said Augusta, the lightest little accent of scorn lying 
 in her voice. 
 
 "They may, if they like," said Stella. 
 
 "And you do not object to the appearance of caring for a 
 man who has c L to care for you? Whether you broke 
 off the engagement or not, at all events he has shown that 
 he has forgotten vou and has consoled himself with some one 
 else." 
 
 " I defend him as a friend ; and he has not consoled him- 
 self." said Stella, with more fidelity than lode. 
 
 The widow went over to where she was sitting, and laid her 
 hands on her shoulders. 
 
 " Stella, dear child, I cannot bear that you should make 
 this frightful mistake !" she cried, speaking so earnestly that 
 the blood came into her face like fire and her grey eyes 
 glistened and grew dark. " I know the world so much better 
 than you do, and I know too, what idle and ill-natured people 
 are capable of saying. I cannot have you jeered at by all the 
 foolish and slanderous tongues in Highwood. You must not ; 
 you must not, indeed !" 
 
 " Must not what, Augusta?" asked Stella, laying her hands 
 in turn on her friend's arms. 
 
 " Defend Cyril Ponsonby," said Augusta. 
 
 " I cannot hear him slandered and not defend him," 
 answered Stella gravely. "That would be too base, and 
 cowardly !" 
 
 " That conscience again !" half sighed the widow. " It is 
 a troublesome possession to you, my <• 
 
 '• I would rather have the trouble of it than be without it," 
 said Stella; and A -aid no nioiv. 
 
 They were on such different planes of principles, she thought 
 there was no use in trying to bring things together. They 
 must be content to mutually love and respect each other for 
 what was worthy to be loved and respected in each ; and they 
 inn-; Let the rest go. Discretion ranked with Augusta as the 
 greatest social virtu.-: duty was to Stella the epitome of the 
 wlmle world of morals. There was no middle term between 
 the two; and each must workout her own redemption her 
 own way. But though Augusta had not done all that she 
 had hoped to do in thus making herself the bearer of ill— 
 tidings, she had done something. She had put Stella on her 
 guard against a sudden shock from othera; anil had thus 
 saved from unnece- and damaging self-betrayal the 
 
296 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 girl with whom she said to herself twenty times a day she was 
 really too angry to care what became of her, and for whom 
 she felt that irrepressible respect which the conscientious and 
 truthful perforce inspire. 
 
 " Well ! you must act as you think best, of course, dear." 
 Augusta said, throwing up the game. " We are different ; 
 and must be content to remain so. Nothing would humiliate 
 me so much as to be thought in love with a man who no 
 longer cared for me." 
 
 "And I would rather people said that of me than that I 
 should seem to believe a slander and join in disparagement 
 of a friend — whom I respect," said Stella. 
 
 On this the widow kissed her and talked of something else. 
 But when they parted at the house door — Stella going into 
 the hall with her friend to help her to fasten her waterproof, 
 and to see that she was as well protected from the weather as 
 was possible — standing face to face for the last words, Stella 
 threw her arms round the widow and said with a sudden out- 
 burst of feeling which swept away every vestige of misunder- 
 standing : 
 
 "You are the kindest, dearest, wisest woman in the 
 world!" 
 
 To which Augusta answered : 
 
 "And you have the best heart, my darling ; but we will not 
 speak about the dear head! — God bless it!" 
 
 By which it may be seen that they parted on more than 
 ordinarily amicable terms, and that the difference in their 
 moral standpoints made no difference in their mutual affection. 
 
 That evening thei*e was to be a charade-party at the Lyons', 
 and, of course, both the Branscombes and the Pennefathers 
 were there. It was just one of the ordinary evening-parties 
 so frequent at this time, when every one in the place was 
 invited and no one dreamed of refusing ; and apparently there 
 was no point of difference between this or any other. And 
 yet there was a difference ; and every one felt as if society had 
 put on a new dress and the diamond had received another 
 facet ; as if the curtain had risen on a new act and at least 
 one of the actresses had to appear in an untried character. 
 
 How would she look ? how would she bear herself ? Poor 
 thing ! said some, it would be a trial for her ; but others 
 sniffed at the word, and said : " Trial ! How should it be a 
 trial to her when she was carrying on a flirtation on her own 
 side, and probably was at this moment engaged to that young 
 
'• OTHER EYES." - : 
 
 Mr. Cowley? Did a girl want all the world at her feet, and 
 that one nian should be sighing his heart out for her in India 
 while another was making love to her in Englan d ? Trial! 
 what trial could there be for her in hearing that Cyril Pon- 
 sonby was making a fool of himself and worse, out there? 
 id thrown him over ; so she had nothing to say !" 
 
 N .-rtheless, they were all on the very tiptoe of expecta- 
 .ud each wondered who would launch the first thunder- 
 holt and who cast the first stone. 
 
 • aiding grouped about the room, as people do 
 Ding-parties before they have settled down to the work 
 of the hour. Stella and Augusta were side by side, and talk- 
 ing to them were Valentine Cowley and Colonel Moneypenny. 
 The twins were at the farther end of the room, arrai._ _ 
 with their brothers. Milford Cowley and one or two more, 
 about the charades. For though it was the Lyons' party and 
 the Lvons' house the Pennefathers were the moving spirits, 
 as they always were in matters of fun and gaiety. Presently 
 Val and Augusta were wanted for the green-room. 
 
 " I'll -j" for them," said Grip, her bright eyes looking a 
 link- dangerous and her manner somewhat that of a Bedouin. 
 a Bashi-Bazouk, or what one will of aggessive and deter- 
 mined, with the victim within sight and the plan of attack 
 
 Going across the room she broke into the little circle. 
 
 "Augusta, dear, we want you." she said very prettily — 
 for noisy Georgie Pennefather quite sweetly indeed ; " and 
 you, Val, we want you too, if you can possibly tear yourselves 
 away from Stella 'Branscombe's skirts. Will you give him 
 leave to come and act with us, Stella?" she added with a 
 loud lauLrh. 
 
 It was so little in her way to be ill-natured that even now, 
 when she had stung herself into this sharp hostility to her 
 old chum's latest realization of the Supreme in Woman, she 
 was obliged to retain her old manner — though it was only 
 manner ; the informing spirit and impulse being something 
 quite different. 
 
 •• What are you going to trot out, Gip?" asked Val. a cer- 
 tain look of insolence in his studied nonchahu. 
 
 "Oh! I can't give the word, yon know," said Gip with 
 another laugh. ""That would be telling. Ton hai 
 song, though — Lover's 'What would yon do, love*;' Oh, by 
 the 1 . - t," she added, turning suddenly to the girl, and 
 
298 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 speaking in a loud, clear, ringing voice, which all the room 
 could hear; "talking of 'other eyes,' have you heard of 
 your old flame, Cyril Ponsonby, how he is spooning a young 
 married woman — and the wife too of the man who has been 
 kindest of all to him at the station'? Isn't it a shame? 
 Don't you think it horrid?" 
 
 The' curtain had drawn up and the new act of the drama 
 had begun. There was a dead silence among the guests. Mr. 
 Branscombe, who had heard nothing of Cyril's misdemeanour 
 before this moment, was startled, and looked at his daughter 
 quite naturally, not having had time to take up an attitude 
 or to put himself into any kind of moral pose. He was 
 anxious to see how Stella would bear herself, but he did not 
 feel able to give her any note of direction. She must get out 
 of the scrape in the best way she could, and only when it was 
 all over would he come in with his final flourish. Eandolph 
 Mackenzie, near Hortensia, turned all manner of colours, his 
 whole being thrilled with pain for Stella and with indignation 
 against Georgie Pennefather ; and Hortensia's prim little 
 face became rigid and rather red, as befitted a tender- souled 
 and virtuous Evangeline before whom naughty subjects were 
 discussed. For the rest, they merely held their breath and 
 listened ; while Dr. Quigley, appearing to be absorbed in a 
 book of photographs, kept his eyes fixed on Stella, looking up 
 sideways from under his bushy brows. 
 
 " It would be very dreadful indeed if it were true," said 
 Stella in a low but perfectly distinct voice, standing there 
 with her head slightly bent and her eyes fixed and steady, a 
 little too self-composed and nerved for perfect simplicity oi 
 parry. She was evidently prepared for the attack and was 
 not taken by surprise. 
 
 " Oh. ! it is true enough ! Jack knows all about it," said 
 Grip. " And hasn't he made good use of his time, just ? He 
 has not worn the willow for those he left behind him, what- 
 ever other people may have done ! But after all, wearing the 
 willow is out of fashion now, isn't it, Stella ?" 
 
 Again a wild, forced, rude kind of laugh gave extra point 
 and meaning to her words ; and again the room heard and 
 understood and watched in silence for more to come. 
 
 " Is it ?" said Stella quietly. " I suppose constancy — for 
 that is what you mean by wearing the willow, is it not ? — is 
 as much the' fashion now as it ever was with some, and as 
 little so with others." 
 
"OTHER EYES." 299 
 
 "Those ' some' don't lodge here," said Gip. 
 
 "Do they not?" said Stella, with an admirable appearance 
 of sublime indifference. 
 
 " I don't think yw need ask," said Georgie Pennefather 
 sharply, -lancing at Valentine, her bold black eyes showering 
 down on him an infinitude of fiery reproach. 
 
 •• No ':" said Stella. " The whole epiestion does not belong 
 to me in any way. I have nothing to do with it." 
 
 Georgie was baffled. She had been cut by that impene- 
 trable smoothness which causes all the arrows to glance off 
 into space and turns the point of all the spears ; and even she, 
 reckless as she was, dared not cast conventional politeness so 
 entirely to the winds as to attack at too close quarters the 
 girl of whom she was jealous. 
 
 •• At all events," she said, going back to the point which 
 she knew to be vulnerable, though she could not see the 
 wound ; " at all events, Cyril Ponsonby has shown what he is 
 made of. He cannot lay claim to constancy, or even to 
 common honour. A man spooning a young married woman. 
 Horrible! Disgraceful! At least I think so if you don't, 
 Stella!" 
 
 "I should think so too if I believed it to be tx-ue," said 
 Stella. " But I do not believe it," she repeated, this time 
 even more firmly than before. 
 
 Augusta touched her foot in warning ; Mr. Branscombe 
 twisted his moustache in a nervous and irritated manner ; 
 Colonel Moneypenny bent over to Augusta Latrobe and 
 whispered : 
 
 " What a uoble creature ! How few would do as she has 
 dared to do !" 
 
 But in Baying this he thought of himself and the fair 
 widow's advocaey of him and belief in him, should he be 
 attacked in her presence and slandered) in his own absence. 
 He did not think of Sandro Kemp, say ; nor would he have 
 called it noble in her had she defended thai obnoxious de- 
 ]■ of walls ami ceilings had he been vilified, however un- 
 justly. Valentine Cowley bit his lip as his manner 
 annoyed; and very heartily in his mvn miml consigned Cyril 
 Ponsonly and Georgie Pennefather to the infernal 6 
 
 her. Dr. Quigley, still watching and looking, made up 
 his mind as to the meaning of the whole affair ; and Ran- 
 dolph had a curiously mixed feeling of admiration, sympathy, 
 sorrow — and something quite unuelina-Ue to himself — 
 
300 "MY LOVE !" 
 
 thing that made him rejoice at Val Cowley's discomfiture and 
 yet sorry and disappointed somehow ; but why he did not 
 know and could not for the life of him understand. Mean- 
 while Stella stood there quite quietly, alone in her advocacy 
 and yet quite sufficiently supported by her lover and her 
 courage. 
 
 Then Dr. Quigley came up to her and said in a slow, 
 measured way : 
 
 " Tou are quite right, Miss Stella, not to believe ill words 
 of an old friend. I don't believe a word of it all ! There is 
 some mistake somewhere ; or it is merely the ordinary gossip 
 of a small station where people have nothing better to do 
 than pick holes in each other's coats and make nothing into 
 something. Cyril Pousonby was not the fellow to make love 
 to another man's wife." 
 
 " No, he is not," said Eandolph from the other side of the 
 room. " The story is either a mistake or an exaggeration. I 
 am sure of that !". 
 
 Her two supporters nearly broke down Stella's guard. She 
 had borne both loneliness and opposition in her advo- 
 cacy, but when it came to help and the rallying of shield- 
 bearers she was nearly overcome. Still she had to control 
 herself for pride's sake ; and she did manage to keep her face 
 set as before. And then others, who had been taken by sur- 
 prise in the beginning and who had held their breath in ex- 
 pectation of the drama to come, began to talk among them- 
 selves, as people will, no matter what is afloat, after the first 
 few moments of silent excitement. The sharpness of the 
 interest was blunted by the inevitable egoism of human 
 nature, and the whole thing passed off into the noise and 
 movement of an ordinary evening-party. 
 
 But when they were arranging their charades, Yal said to 
 Gip, in a kind of aside : 
 
 " I did not think you had it in you, Gip ! If any one had 
 told me I would have denied it on your behalf!" 
 
 " What ?" asked Gip, with the most innocent manner in the 
 world. 
 
 " Such abominable cruelty ! I hate to see such cruelty from 
 one girl to another ! It was really too mean of you to take 
 such an advantage. I could not understand you, Gip. I do 
 not understand you !" 
 
 Valentine spoke hurriedly, with scarcely suppressed excite- 
 ment and evident annoyance of a graver kind than the occa- 
 
« orniiii i: J i 30i 
 
 sion seemed to warrant, seeing that he was originally Grip's 
 friend and only a later adherent of Stella's. 
 
 •■ Y"ii will take her part, of course," said Gip, with an odd 
 mixture of defiance and discomfort. 
 
 Valentine turned his eyes right into hers. 
 
 "Any one would take her part," he answered. 
 
 " Oh. if you are as much gone as that, I have no more to 
 say '.'' said Gip, with flashing eyes and a little quiver about 
 her lips. "I didn't know that you had come spoons as far 
 as that."' 
 
 " Nonsense, Gip ! And you know it is nonsense ! It has 
 nothing to do with being gone or coming spoons," said 
 Valentine angrily. " It was simply a case of ordinary feeling 
 — ordinary womanly delicacy of compassion. It was an un- 
 provoked attack from first to last, and I can only say I am 
 sorry for it. I would not have believed such a thing of you 
 unless I had heard it with my own ears." 
 
 And on this he turned away, while Gip's quick-beating 
 heart said: Did I do wrong?" the faintest echo of a "Yes," 
 whispered by her conscience, breaking through the louder 
 " No" of her jealousy and wrath. That yes would have had 
 to be spoken in a far more distinct voice before she would 
 have been brought to the grace of penitence and the nobility 
 of confession. Crying '• peccavi" and " mea culpa" was not 
 much in Georgie Pennefather's experience. Up to now she 
 had never been so deeply stirred as to be led to do a serious 
 wrong. Her peccadilloes hitherto had been of a very insig- 
 nificant and superficial kind; and it was easy to say: "I'm 
 awfully sorry !" for a mistake which had not been intended 
 and which had not been very damaging when made. When 
 it came to the acknowledgment of evil thoughts, and re] 
 ance for a cruel action, that was another matter altogether. 
 The smoke of the battle must clear away before you can 
 bury your dead ; and passions must be subdued before you 
 can feel that you have wronged another while under their 
 influence, and so come into the clearer light of consciou- 
 of sin and avowal of your fault. 
 
 There was however just bo much sense of wrong-doing in 
 9 to make her say thai night, when she and Pip, in blui 
 slippers and crimson-flannel dn wns, were talking 
 
 over the events of the evening: 
 
 " Was I a brute to Stella, Patrick ? I was wild against 
 her! — but was I a brvA ?" 
 
302 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Well, you were a little rough on her, I must say," said 
 Pip, with the air of one who is sorry to condemn, but who 
 cannot help herself. 
 
 " If I was, she is a sneak and deserved it," said Grip, tearing 
 at her embroidery with vigour. 
 
 Then she burst into a furious fit of crying, alternating with 
 a wild and harsh kind of laughter which frightened Pattie, 
 and made her think that her twin Dove had gone mad. But 
 this unwonted hysterical attack soon passed ; and after they 
 had both agreed that Stella was a sneak as Grip had said , and 
 that Val was an awful idiot to be taken in by her, and that it 
 was downright horrid in a girl to pretend to be constant to 
 one man when she was doing everything she could to get 
 hold of another, they felt a great deal easier in their minds. 
 All the same, Pattie repeated, sorrowfully : 
 
 " But you were awfully rough on her, George, and I was 
 sorry ; for it is such awfully bad form, you know, to be nasty 
 like that before such a lot of people !" 
 
 To which Gfeorgie answered with an evanescent glance of 
 repentance on her flushed little face : 
 
 " I'm awfully sorry if I gave it her too hot ; she deserved 
 it ; but I did not want to be a brute." 
 
 " But you were," said Pattie with grave regret. 
 
 " If I was, Val slated me hard enough. So we may cry 
 quits over that !" said Gip, her gleam of repentance passing 
 into space and her naughty passions once more triumphant. 
 
 , CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE OLD, OLD STORY. 
 
 The only effect which Georgie Pennefather's ill-timed 
 attack had on Valentine Cowley was to make him still more 
 tenderly devoted to Stella, and doubly anxious to take that 
 place of spiritual brother which conceals so much more tban 
 it confesses and gives so much more than it asks. So far the 
 poor Dove had taken nothing, and had lost a great deal, by her 
 imprudent outburst ; but after that first " slating," as the 
 vulgar little, creature called it, Valentine said no more, and 
 cut the ground of complaint from under the feet of his former 
 playfellow by his almost rude rollick, his rough gaiety when 
 they were together. It was rollick that was forced and 
 
THE OLD. OLD STORY. 303 
 
 gaiety that was assumed; and Qip, who was by no means 
 remarkable for either sensitiveness or perspicuity. >,nv 
 throuirh the veil and resented the attempt to blind her 
 She was scarcely like herself in these later days; and from 
 the l -if' in-:', joyous, unconcerned kind of modern 
 
 -loving Thalia, developed into a very fury, always more 
 or less in a bad humour and alternating between shrill imper- 
 tinence and gloomy sulks. She made even her own fami 
 the Budden change that had been wrought in her — a cl 
 for which Valentine Cowley alone was responsible, and the 
 which should by rights have been confined to him. 
 But she was too sore, poor little creature, to be wise or just ; 
 and the fox which she had carried so bravely in the begin - 
 ning had by now leaped out and shown his cruel muzzle to 
 more than one onlooker. 
 
 As far as St.dla herself was concerned, she would have 
 
 rejoiced to have given back her chum to curly-headed 
 Grip, and to hare freed herself from the shaping hand of her 
 would-be Prometheus. Yet how could she? Mr. Brans- 
 combe's admiration for this Ideal Youth — himself restored to 
 adolescence — was so openly expressed and so strongly marked, 
 his invitations were so frequent and so warmly given, and his 
 occupations so unfortunately peremptory when the young 
 fellow did come to Rose Hill, that Stella was thrown more 
 and more in Valentine's way and with less than ever of out- 
 side interference. All Highwood said that it was a case, 
 and Miss Stella was doing better than might have been 
 expected for a young lady who had been publicly engaged 
 and as publicly cast aside; but some more astute shook 
 their heads and said: "No; that was not it. It was the 
 father not the daughter — a case of settlements not of in- 
 con si 
 
 The one who suffered most of all — even more than Stella — 
 was poor Randolph. He was miserable and almost without 
 knowing why. He could scarcely flatter himself that fa 
 Cyril's lieutenant, holding the ground sacred because his 
 friend had planted there his flag. After all that had been 
 said by Jack Pextnefather — with that axiom about fire and 
 echoing in his ears — and after the unsatisfactory and 
 reckless Letters which he himself had received, he could not 
 pretend to believe that the thing had any life in it now, or that 
 the future had any hope. Nevertheless, he gloomed and 
 
 ted, and wondered about that would-be Prometheus and 
 
304 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 his version of Psyche, with a ferocious kind of care which 
 more than once brought him into trouble. It made Valentine 
 furious and Stella embarrassed, and brought down on his 
 intrusive pate Mr. Branscombe's elegant ferule with a force 
 that made even the poor grub smart. But nothing in the 
 way of castigation had any lasting effect on him. He was 
 still the jostling and ubiquitous watch-dog to the office of 
 which he had devoted himself; and if at times he embarrassed 
 Stella, at times he helped and protected her. And one suc- 
 cess wiped off the score of twenty failures. When he saw the 
 dear troubled eyes brighten as he came into the room, where 
 she sat alone with Valentine, listening to love so thinly dis- 
 guised as to be recognized even by her — anxious as she was 
 not to hear and not to see — he felt then that he had estab- 
 lished his claim and given a reason for his existence. If she 
 had really wanted Val Cowley's attentions, he would have 
 been broken-hearted and he would have retired. He should 
 have lost his faith in her, and by her in womankind in 
 general, but he would not have stood in her way. As things 
 were, with the troubled eyes becoming bright when he entered 
 and interrupted, he was satisfied with himself and full of 
 determination to go on as he had begun. 
 
 One day, indeed, he went so far as to leave his " work" for 
 the sake of cutting short a tete-a-tete which he knew was 
 taking place in the drawing-room. And when he went in, 
 making a foolish and very transparent pretext of wanting 
 something that did not exist, Stella was so evidently relieved, 
 so frankly glad and grateful for his coming, that the poor 
 fellow turned redder than usual with delight ; and if Miss 
 Stella at that moment had asked him to die for her he 
 would have performed Hari-Kari as a short cut to Para- 
 dise. 
 
 Valentine almost gnashed his teeth with anger at the 
 intrusion. He had been working up to his point with admir- 
 able skill and artistry, and it was annoying to have all his 
 clever approaches trodden down and scattered under the 
 huge foot of this stupid son of Anak ! Little Randolph 
 cared for the black looks and flaming eyes of the baffled 
 besieger! He had helped and relieved the dear, half- 
 frightened besieged, and that was his reward. But his 
 fingers were well rapped by his employer, who soon came to 
 look for him and carry him back to his grind, and who made 
 the rest of the morning uncomfortable enough. 
 
THE OLD, OLD STORY. 305 
 
 All the same, those artistic approaches were destroyed for 
 the present ; and Stella was able to prevent their immediate 
 construction. 
 
 She made it evident to Val in her own quiet wav, that 
 hing definite would he premature and a dead "failure. 
 His only chance lay in his spiritual fraternity; in his keeping 
 his disguise so close that she should cease to fear the possi- 
 bility of a new revelation; in accustoming her to him as a 
 nit and innocuous fact in her life. When habit had 
 welded this fact thoroughly into the substance of her davs, 
 .'.ml had made it part of her thoughts and one with her 
 ga, then he might come out of his husk, throw aside his 
 disguise, and carry his point by the very force of habit. A 
 n will give to a man who has made himself a necessary 
 friend, what she would have denied to the lover ; and Valen- 
 tine knew this as a theory which he designed to test by 
 practice. This then, was his scheme; and on paper and in 
 potentialities it stood fair and firm. 
 
 The visit of the Cowley boys to Highwood was drawing to 
 a close, but Stella's soul was still incomplete and her fidelity 
 to Cyril unshaken. Val would scarcely flatter himself that 
 he had done much, but he kuew that he had done something ; 
 and the rest would come in time. Meanwhile, in the frankest 
 and most gentlemanlike way possible, he asked Mr. Brans- 
 combe's consent to a correspondence which was to do Stella 
 some unknown and undesignated " good ;" and in the frankest 
 and most gentlemanlike way possible Mr. Branscombc gave 
 that consent and hoped that his dear child would profit by the 
 chance. So far the young fellow cleverly enough kept the 
 place open and the future in hand. 
 
 And then the brothers went off to spend the second half of 
 
 the vacation at their own home; and Val' s letters were so 
 
 tent and so long, so full of questions to be answered and 
 
 ibjects to be discussed, they took almost as much of 
 
 Stella's time as Cyril's had done. Stella took care to male 
 
 them household property, and to Id Val know that she threw 
 
 them over to her father even before reading them erself. 
 
 old have cut the whole thing short had she done as 
 
 me would; but Mr. Branscombe insisted on the correspon- 
 
 for the sake of that mysterious "good" which was to 
 
 her mind and natur.-. As there was really n< thing 
 
 which ought to either frighten or revolt her, she was forced 
 
 . and to submit to a c 
 x 
 
SOS "MY LOVE!" 
 
 spondence which seemed to her in some sort a desecration of 
 the past if of no evil in the present. 
 
 Not having much to do of any kind, and nothing that was 
 absorbing, Colonel Moneypenny gave a great deal of time and 
 attention to his neighbours ; and this little drama of Stella 
 Branscombe's, with the unanswered questions : " Would she 
 be faithful to Cyril's memory ?" — or, " Would she console 
 herself with Valentine Cowley?" interested him almost as 
 much as if it had been his own private and personal affair. 
 He professed himself charmed with Stella Branscombe, 
 though he did not say which way he wished her to take ; and 
 he envied the young fellows their chances which ever way she 
 went. She was a delightful girl and worth any man's money ; 
 and so he said to Augusta, with a little sparkle of malice in 
 his deep-set eyes, watching to see how she would take praises 
 of such unstinted warmth for one who had evidently the trick 
 of winning men's love. When a girl, in a country-place where 
 young men are precious by their rarity, could boast of one 
 lover, one aspirant and one watch-dog, she may be marked 
 dangerous and a fit subject for other girls' jealousy. But so 
 was Augusta dangerous, in just the same way and to exactly 
 the same degree. If Stella had three marked off to her share, 
 the widow had found the same number, including hirnself in 
 Valentine Cowley's place ; with the poor dead husband to 
 balance the exiled lover ; and Sandro Kemp keeping even 
 step with Randolph Mackenzie. Yet not quite even — Sandro 
 was a burnt-out sky-rocket, and Randolph was a watch-dog 
 in situ. But the burnt-out sky-rocket was the more dangerous 
 of the two ! 
 
 " She really is a most chai-ming girl," the Colonel said, the 
 malicious light of exaggeration flashing over bis sincerity ; 
 " and she will some day make some man supremely happy. I 
 know no one better able to make a man thoroughly happy 
 than Miss Stella Branscombe." 
 
 " She has no business to make any man happy, unless it is 
 Cyril Ponsonby ; and that will never be !" said Mrs. Morshead 
 tartly. " She was as good as married — engaged in the face ot 
 the world as she was and with all her wedding-things ordered ! 
 If the young hussy marries, I say she will be just as bad as it 
 she were a widow ; and I hope she has too much good feeling 
 and too much modesty to do such a thing. I think too well 
 of her, Colonel Moneypenny, to suppose it possible ; though 
 they have talked of this young Cowley, and of that long 
 
THE OLD, OLD STORY. 3 7 
 
 Kandolph Mackenzie too ! I don't believe a word of either — 
 not a word. And so I have always said. Have I not, Augusta ?" 
 
 " Have you, mamma ?" asked the widow sweetly, in the 
 voice that meant assent. 
 
 " Have I ': Why of course I have !" snapped Mrs. Mors- 
 head sharply. 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny twisted his moustache with his lone 
 nervous fingers, and flushed, as he always did when am: 
 
 " I think you are a little severe, Mrs. Morshead," he "said 
 in an irritable voice. 
 
 o ; I am not severe at all," the terrible old woman 
 answered. M If I, and such as I, did not keep people straight, 
 where would society go to I should like to know ? Severe ! I am 
 a great deal too lenient ; that is what it is — not the other way." 
 
 ''Do you share your mother's views?" asked the Colonel, 
 turning to Augusta rather abruptly. 
 
 The widow looked sweet, mindless, tranquil ; and yet her 
 cheeks had that pretty pink glow which marked a state of 
 internal excitement well covered down and concealed. 
 
 " It is a difficult question," she said quietlv. 
 
 " Difficult ! Where is the difficulty, I should like to know !" 
 said Mrs. Morshead. "It is as plain as a turnpike road! 
 Where is the difficulty, Augusta?" 
 
 " In the children," answered her daughter. 
 
 " Not in the woman ?" asked the Colonel quickly. 
 
 " More in the children," she replied. " A good stepmother 
 or a good stepfather is so difficult to find !" 
 
 She looked into the Colonel's face as she said this, her 
 calm and candid eyes as expressionless, as free from conscious- 
 ness as if they had been a doll's. 
 
 " And I say it is in the woman," said Mrs. Morshead. " A 
 second marriage is not a bit better than heathen vice and 
 polygamy !" 
 
 " Oli, Mrs. Morshead !" remonstrated the Colonel. 
 
 " Well, Colonel Moneypenny, I think I ought to know 
 when I have been a widow myself these twelve years and 
 more !" said Mrs. Morshead in a thin voice ; and Colonel 
 Moneypenny, not to be beaten, answered bade : 
 
 " I don't see how that affects the question, Mrs. Morshead. 
 I have been a widower these twenty-two years, and I don't 
 see the sin of marrying again." 
 
 •' It would be more to your credit, perhaps, if you did," 
 snapped the old woman ; and her voice and eyes and mariner 
 
SOS "MY LOVE!" 
 
 again sent the blood into the Colonel's face — and kept it 
 there. 
 
 A day or two after this little brush with his generally con- 
 cordant gossip, Colonel Moneypenny called again at The 
 Laurels on some frivolous pretence about the next meeting of 
 the book-lending society, with which neither Mrs. Morshead 
 nor Augusta had anything whatever to do. He brought a 
 showy toy for Tony — it was not an expensive one, extrava- 
 gance being dead against the Colonel's principles; and he 
 gave it with a curious parade of consciousness in well-doing 
 and bashfulness combined. It was the first time in his life 
 that he had done such a thing ; and when he handed the toy 
 waggon to Augusta he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a 
 girl when she receives her first offer and does not love the 
 man. Then he graciously inquired of the fair widow if she 
 would like her little fellow to ride his pony ? His groom 
 should hold him on, and every care should be taken of him. 
 If she wanted him to have a good seat she could not begin 
 too early with him ; and he would be very glad to see that he 
 was taught well. Hitherto he had thought of the boy only 
 as a hindrance and a nuisance ; now he gave him the place of 
 a medium and association. He was so very pressing in his 
 offers of service, so very paternal and thoughtful, that he 
 showed his hand too plainly and let Mrs. Morshead into the 
 secret of his play. 
 
 " Is that old fool making up to you, Augusta?" she said 
 sharply, when he left. " What a tiresome girl you are, to be 
 sure !" she added. " It is all your fault ; and I am sure I do 
 not know how you do it. First one and then another — I 
 have no peace in my life with you !" 
 
 " Well, mamma, I do not see what I do that should annoy 
 you," said Augusta with tranquil unconcern. 
 
 " You do everything," replied Mrs. Morshead. " I think 
 all you young women in Highwood have taken leave of the 
 few senses Providence ever gave you to go on with. There is 
 Stella Branscombe and Cyril Ponsonby ; Stella Branscombe 
 and that young Cowley ; Stella Branscombe and that long 
 1'andolph Mackenzie ; and you and all the men you can get 
 hold of. It is horrible. Nothing but flirting and marrying, 
 or wanting to get married ! It is downright indecent ; I de- 
 clare it is !" 
 
 " It is the old, old story, mamma," said Augusta impru- 
 dently. 
 
THE OLD, OLD STORY. 809 
 
 " The old, old rubbish ! That's what it is !" growled her 
 mother Bai " Let me catch you at it, Augusta, that's 
 
 all ! I'll soon" teach you what the old, old story means ! 
 vou lost all your dignity, all your modesty, 1 want to 
 know ? You are nothing better than a mere light-o'-love, 
 that is what you are ! Flirting here and flirting there, and 
 vou a widow, who should be in weeds and with a decent cap 
 . instead of with nothing at all and your hair 
 like a girl. You are shameful ; and no more fit to be the 
 mother"of that dear, little fatherless boy than if you were 
 sixteen. I am sick and tired of it all ; I declare I am ; and I 
 almost wish that you would marry so that I might be at 
 peace for the rest of my days !" 
 
 " Do you, mamma ?" said Augusta, rising with that same 
 sadden excitement almost fierceness of face which her mother 
 had seen in her before, if so rarely, and once to such disas- 
 trous results. It was the face which betokened such a strong 
 stirring of the usually quiet waters, that it both angered and 
 frightened the old woman. 
 
 " Don't look like that at me !" she said harshly. " I won't 
 be looked at like that, Augusta, as if you were going to strike 
 me ! Leave the room, Miss, until you can behave yourself as 
 you ouu'ht : and be thankful that I do not say leave the 
 house for a bad, wicked, undutiful girl that you are — and as 
 ungrateful as you are high ! Go and marry !" she continued, 
 her passion increasiiiL; with expression. " Don't think that I 
 want t< i keep you at home. You are nothing but a nuisance 
 from first to last — a trouble and a plague, both you and 
 vour boy. Go and marry that old prig, or Mr. Branscombe, 
 or Sandy Kemp the Bign-painter" — how she sneered and 
 showed her fang-lik thwhen she said this — "anybody 
 
 you like ! I wash my hands of you, and shall be glad to get 
 rid of you. And so I say it!" 
 
 Augu^a did not answer. Whatever was in her heart of 
 
 r and humiliation she stifled, as she had so often stifled 
 
 it before. But this time she controlled only the expression; 
 
 the feeling raged if her lips were still, and she felt as if she 
 
 could not bear all this misery and contumely and live. 
 
 Without another word she turned and left the room ; and 
 in a few moments Mrs. Morshead heard her leave the house 
 and saw her walk hurriedly down the drive — alone. For 
 one of the few occasions since she had returned to the cold 
 shelter of this un genial home, she left her little son to the 
 
310 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 care of the maids while she went off on her own business 
 without hiin. 
 
 " I have a great mind to say that she shall never comeback 
 again, that she may pack up and go — she and her trouble- 
 some little brat. She is a wicked and undutiful young hussy, 
 and as sly as she is disobedient. She has been nothing but a 
 torment to me ever since she was born. She may go; and 
 joy go with her !" said Mrs. Morshead aloud. 
 
 But her heart was heavy, and she tried in vain to stiffen 
 her resolution by artificial aid — to keep her anger hot by 
 crackling thorns. In vain too, she sought for comfort in her 
 cat. The Shah purred lazily when she caressed him, but went 
 to sleep on her lap, understanding nothing of all that terror 
 of consequences, that unacknowledged regret for what she had 
 said, and that one hot tear which fell from her eyes. It was 
 all to give and nothing to receive in this worship of her four- 
 footed favourite ; and at this moment what she wanted was 
 the support of sympathy in her wrong-doing, and the assur- 
 ance that she had acted with dignity, spirit and maternal 
 propriety all round. 
 
 Walking, she scarcely knew where nor for what purpose — 
 not conscious of the cold north wind that blew with such 
 bitter force, nor of the heavy clouds which were massing sul- 
 lenly overhead — not conscious of anything but the pain by 
 which she was stung as by a living serpent — Augusta went 
 on with a rapid step ; her head on fire and her heart one great 
 throb of passionate despair. What should she do ? She 
 could not, would not, must not, bear it ! Her son's future 
 fortune was precious and her care ; but were not some things 
 even more precious than that fortune ? To live as he and she 
 were living now, under perpetual insult, scoff, rebuke, sus- 
 picion — in perpetual subjection — was not this paying too 
 dearly for his patrimony ? At this moment she thought so ; 
 and she thought too, with a woman's madness — that madness 
 of despair and rash resolve which was so seldom hers — that 
 she would give herself to the first man who might ask her ; 
 to Sandro Kemp, were he here, for love and without fortune ; 
 to Colonel Moneypenny, for fortune and without love ; — to 
 any one indeed, rather than remain the sport and victim of 
 her mother's tongue and temper. Any one ! any one ! yes, 
 even to the Colonel ! 
 
 "Well met!" said a voice with an indescribable ring of 
 satisfaction in its tones. 
 
oy THE BRISK. 311 
 
 She started as if from a dream and found herself imme- 
 diately in front of the Colonel's place, Bellevue ; — with 
 the owner himself on the point of entering in at the lodge 
 
 " Well met !" be said again, taking her hand. " You are 
 just in time to shelter. The snowstorm has begun." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ON - THE BRINK. 
 
 Hehe ! — of all places in the world, this ! The widow started 
 at the sound of Colonel Moneypenny's voice as if he bad been 
 a spirit called from out the infinite by the spell of her desire. 
 She looked up with a frightened and bewildered face. The 
 guard which she usually maintained with so much care was 
 suddenly broken down, and she was as confused and over- 
 as any other woman might have been. Had she been 
 a mere school-girl met out of bounds, or caught in the act of 
 ^ng sacred apples, she could not have been more abashed 
 for the moment than now, when Colonel Monevpenny woke 
 her from her dreaming wrath and took her hand to lead her 
 to his house for shelter. 
 
 That shelter was typical. She felt the secret correspon- 
 dence of her unspoken thoughts with this translated action, 
 and shivered as if the snow-flakes, falling fast, had touched 
 her heart as well as her pallid face. 
 
 " You are quite pale ! The weather is too much for vou. 
 You ought not to be out in such a storm," said Colonel 
 ■ penny with all his best courtesy — his finest mingling 
 of the gentleman's dignity with the lover's tenderness. " Let 
 us make haste up the avenue," he continued. "We shall 
 soon :-each the house." 
 
 '•' Thank you," said Augusta mechanically. 
 
 As mechanically she let him take her hand on his arm. and 
 hold it for a moment closelv clasped, as they walked raj idly 
 between the leafless chestnuts which ad creaked in 
 
 the wind and caught the snow as it fell in their branches like 
 a net. The wind beat in their feces, and the large densely- 
 frozen flakes stung her soft flesh as they were driven with 
 almost the force of hail. She knew how strange it must 
 to the Colonel that she should be ont on such a day; 
 
312 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 stranger still that she should have been met just at his gate 
 But it was pleasant to feel that she had this shelter before 
 her — that she might, if she would, escape once and for ever 
 from all the present storms of her life — both from this in the 
 midst of which she walked and from that other yet more 
 difficult to bear at home. 
 
 She waited up the avenue with a strange sense of possible 
 drifting out of present pain into temporary safety and future 
 danger. She felt like a person slipping down a smooth and 
 pleasant decline instead of continuing on a rugged, toilsome 
 ascent. The motion was soothing and she shut her eyes to 
 the rest. The storm raged without and her mother's house 
 was even more inhospitable than the elements ; she was on 
 the Colonel's arm, making for the shelter of his home ; and 
 she knew that it rested only with her to hold that shelter as 
 her own for ever if she would. 
 
 Nothing was said between them as they went up the 
 avenue. Like a wise man who knows how to take care of 
 himself, the Colonel objected to opening his mouth in such 
 weather as this. He suffered not infrequently from neuralgia ; 
 and he and the dentist at Lingston knew a few secrets 
 which the world at large did not even suspect. But when 
 they came to the house, he led her in with the same fine 
 mingling of courtesy and tenderness as before ; checked only 
 by the presence of his man from showing perhaps too openly 
 what pleasure her crossing his threshold thus gave him. He 
 did really love her, as much as a man naturally selfish and 
 arbitrary, a little mean and very irritable, can love any one 
 outside himself; and his hesitation, both before her marriage 
 and now when she was again free, was but the ordinary hesi- 
 tation of a man who has stiffened in his widower's groove, 
 and who has more things to think of than one before he 
 finally resolves to break the spell and renew his past in a 
 second marriage. 
 
 He looked on this odd meeting at his own gates as a kind 
 of sign — a correspondence — what some would call " a leading ;" 
 and he was excited and elated. That fellow whose presump- 
 tion had so disturbed him had suddenly slipped like a snake 
 out of his path, and he was master of the situation. There 
 was no one else in Highwood or any other place who, so far 
 as he knew, disputed with him the gi'ound which he had 
 marked out for his own. Sandro Kemp off the field, he had 
 the course to himself. As for Mrs. Morshead's ferocious con- 
 
O.V TELE BRINK. 313 
 
 stancy to the dead, that was a simple absurdity — a brutuni 
 fuluieii which hurt no one. If Augusta loved him he had 
 resolved that ho would marry her. And he had 
 money enough to secure her future, though she would not 
 perhaps be quita so well off as if she inherited from her 
 mother. The old woman lived on about half her income, if 
 so much, and invested the other. Ke lived up to the last 
 farthing of his. There was too, this little son of his dead 
 rival to be thought of ; and perhaps others whose claims 
 would be greater and their share larger. He would not make 
 his heir of the Professor's son, if he had his own to endow ; 
 but he could give the lad a good education and see him 
 through the first sterile years of his profession. Pecuniarily 
 it would not be so good for Augusta to marry him and be 
 • ".-inherited by her mother, as to remain where she was, 
 waiting for that weary wearing of the dead woman's shoes. 
 Still it would not be poverty; and she would make him 
 happy. 
 
 Even at this moment of a lover's exaltation and a lover's 
 keen appraisement of the value of the thing he wants, Colonel 
 Moneypenny did not say to himself that he would make 
 Augusta happy. That came as of course — as the corollary, 
 the reflection, the inevitable secpience to his own state of 
 content. Or rather it did not enter into his calculations at 
 all, one way or the other. When we hire a servant or buy a 
 horse we do not think of the servant's happiness under our 
 mastership, of the horse's pleasure under our guidance. If 
 we give sufficient wages to the one, good food to the 
 other, we are cpiit of all obligation; but our own advanta^*; 
 remains, as the rope on which the whole value of the transac- 
 tion depends. The Colonel was not the only man in England 
 who, courtinu a woman with delicate devotion while she 
 holds herself mistress of the situation, free to grant and able 
 to withhold, keeps her as a caged creature, fairly caught and 
 trapped, when once she has come down from her heig ; 
 his hire; and in keeping her thus forgets to ask if she likes 
 her fat- — and would not -top for the answer if she did. 
 
 The drawing-room at Bellevue was. as is so often tic 
 in the houses of unmarried men, reserved for state social 
 occasions when there were dinner-parties on hand, or one of 
 those pleasant little dances with supper to follow, for which 
 the Colonel was famous. He himself lived in tin- dining- 
 room and library, both of which were comfortable enough ; 
 
314 "MY LOVI-!" 
 
 and now, as he and Augusta came in from the wind and th« 
 snow outside, the bright "blazing fire and not ungraceful littei 
 of occupancy were as a welcome to Home. Without doubt 
 the library was essentially masculine in its circumstances, and 
 wanted the graceful touch of a woman's hand, the fringe of 
 pretty nothings which she always adds. But it was full of 
 the substantial luxury which a man finds pleasanter to his 
 senses than those spots of colour and spai-kle which are 
 known by the general term of ornaments. And if the books 
 were not what is called drawing-room books, they were hand- 
 some and solid and gave one the impression of stores of 
 latent learning in the Colonel's mind, and a kind of colossal 
 literary digestion. It was all very warm and strong and 
 ample ; and the Colonel himself seemed to gain in breadth 
 from the comfoi'table stability of his surroundings. 
 
 By this time Augusta had recovered herself. The question 
 had formed itself clearly in her mind : — Should she ? or : — 
 Should she not? He had enough to make her future safe if 
 not brilliant — enough for her son, who must be the only 
 heir. And she could if she would. The house was full of 
 capabilities if once she put her hand to it ; her social position 
 as his wife would be unexceptionable ; she might even in time 
 win her mother over to forgiveness ; and this fire was so com- 
 forting ! It was with a sense of real bien-etre that she sank 
 down in the easy chair which he pulled up for her close to 
 the fender. It was not his own special chair. That was 
 sacred even against Augusta Latrobe ; for Colonel Money- 
 pennv was a man who understood the whole theory of self- 
 respect and practised the whole art of self-indulgence. In 
 her present state of moral destitution, the mere physical en- 
 joyment of this rest and fire, the material sufficiency of the 
 Colonel's home, had a curiously soothing effect on her. As 
 she sank back in the long low curved chair, and put up her 
 pretty feet on the fender — had she given herself time to 
 think she would have been ashamed of the extent to which 
 these purely physical pleasures touched her. 
 
 The Colonel rang the bell for cake and wine. Un- 
 married men always give their lady visitors wine. Where a 
 woman would show her baby the man brings out his port 
 and sherry. Augusta laughed a little and blushed a little 
 more, as she said : " No ; she did not want any wine. She 
 never took it before dinner, and very little even then." 
 
 " But," insisted the Colonel ; " you must, indeed, Mrs. 
 
OX THE BRINK. 315 
 
 Latrobe ! The first time you have been to my house — like 
 this — you must have a glass of wine for good luck !" 
 
 He could not say that it was the first time she had been to 
 his house at all ; for he gave parties, as has been said, like 
 any other decent citizen; but ''like this" meant her coming 
 here alone — coming out of the storm and inclemency of 
 the day — out of the wretchedness and humiliation of her 
 home — coming in now as the favoured guest to be made 
 future mistress should his humour finally decide that 
 
 way. 
 
 "I shall be glad to do anything for good luck!" said 
 Augusta rashly, -with a little laugh to hide the bitter spring- 
 head of her words. 
 
 The Colonel looked at her with an odd expression in his 
 She was quick-witted, but she could not quite read 
 that look. 
 
 " Do you want good luck in your life r" he asked slowly. 
 
 "Oh.no! not much! Not more than one always wants 
 something which one has not got!" she answered lightly. 
 " It is only a foolish way we all have of making ourselves out 
 ill-treated by fortune !" 
 
 She thought that, if anything had to come to her from this 
 side, it must not be coloured with compassion. If she herself 
 knew that she was simply selling herself for peace, the 
 Colonel must never believe but that she gave herself grandly, 
 to bless and be blessed. 
 
 At this moment the servant brought in the wine, and with 
 his own hand the Colonel poured out a glassful and gave it 
 to Augusta. It was that soft, silky, insidious, old brown 
 sherry, which, in defiance of gout, some people still drink. 
 All the fire of the alcohol which had once inflamed it had 
 burnt itself out by time, leaving only strength and disguising 
 the presence of what it left. Soft as cream and strong as 
 brandv, it completed the sense of bien-etre which the p 
 widow' felt ; and, after she had drunk half her glassful, she 
 -aid with a sinih' : 
 
 "What excellent wine ! I am no great judge of sherry, 
 but this seems to me superb." 
 
 •■ I am glad you like it," said the Colonel with Bttpreme 
 satisfaction "And — pardon me — you are a good judge! 
 This win- is ii. dent. It is no hyperbole to call i1 
 
 Buperb. Ah!" he added, as he held up his glass between 
 him and the light, and lovingly noted its merits of body, 
 
316 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 bouquet and colour ; " this is not to be had in the market 
 now for love or money ! — Unique ! — quite unique ! And you 
 like it ! I am so glad !" 
 
 He almost laughed as he said this ; for naturally a man 
 does not like to throw his wine away on an unappreciative 
 palate ; and women are so stupid as to the value of brands 
 and bins ! 
 
 "Let me fill up your glass," he then said, advancing 
 towards his guest, decanter in hand. 
 
 She drew her glass away, covering it with her pretty black- 
 gloved fingers, and laughing in her nice bright way as she 
 looked up into his eyes. 
 
 " No ! no !" she said. " I am so little used to wine at 
 this time of the day ; and this is so strong. I should be 
 afraid." 
 
 How friendly they were getting! To see them there in 
 this familiar, laughing, half-playful kind of domesticity, no 
 one would have thought that for years the Colonel had 
 cherished against Augusta Latrobe a chronic resentment 
 which only so lately had taken so acute a form — a form 
 which had done her so much irreparable mischief at home 
 and had dealt the man, whom in her heart she loved, a blow 
 that she knew would be to him like death. 
 
 " Well, finish that. It will do you good after your cold 
 walk," said the Colonel ; and Augusta obeyed. 
 
 " Yes, it is very good," she said, drinking it frankly ; not 
 with the timid little sips of a woman half afraid of what she 
 is about, or as if she expected to find a spider or a newt at 
 the bottom of the glass. The fair widow had just her right 
 share of healthy, natural sensualism — not a line in excess — 
 just her right and fitting share. 
 
 How warm and pleasant it was ! The two sat over the fire 
 in an easy, sociable, confidential way that had its charms and 
 warmed their souls as the soft brown sherry warmed their 
 blood. The snow was falling fast, and The Laurels looked so 
 far off ! The interior was so pleasant, and it composed so 
 naturally ! 
 
 " How delightful it would be to have you always here!" 
 said Colonel Moneypenny abruptly . 
 
 She laughed in her light easy way. 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," she said with a little mocking 
 accent — patently artificial; but the colour deepened under 
 her bonnet. 
 
0.V THE BRINK, 317 
 
 "lam," said the Colonel. "My life is so lonely!" he 
 added pathetically. 
 
 She m< ived her chair a few inches from the fire, and took a 
 newspaper from the table as a screen for her face. 
 
 "Better lonely than uncongenial," she said. "The fire 
 catches one's face so dreadfully alter a walk in the cold wind !" 
 she added, as if apologizing for the ruddy glow that had 
 come into hers, and for the improvised screen made out of 
 the newspaper. 
 
 " It is a melancholy look-out to live and die alone," began 
 the Colonel again. 
 
 This little break had somewhat baffled him ; but he had 
 tenacity and could always begin where he loft off. 
 
 " One gets used to it," said Augusta, fluttering through the 
 leaves of her paper. " After a time one gets used to every- 
 thing," was her philosophic addendum. 
 
 " Not to happiness — at least not in the sense of satiety," 
 blundered the Colonel. 
 
 " Is there any real happiness in the world ?" asked 
 Augusta lightly. 
 
 •• You need not ask this," he replied. "Capable of giving 
 so much as you are, you must be capable of receiving in the 
 same proportion." 
 
 He brought his chair a couple of inches nearer to hers, and 
 looked into her face with a certain agitation, a certain tender- 
 ness in his eyes which betokened danger. 
 
 The incline was very smooth and she was slipping down it 
 pleasantly. After all, the Colonel was really not a bad man. 
 ls irritable and arbitrary, jealous and selfish, but he was 
 honourable and a gentleman; and every woman thinks that if 
 an unmarried man, who is now cross-cornered and disagree- 
 • • but married to her, he would be all right, and 
 everything would go on velvet. She could manage him if she 
 were his wife. And the Colonel could not be harsher to 
 boy, Augusta wenl on thinking, than was her own mother. 
 Probably he would be far less harsh ami. I tnpathy of 
 
 sex, would take an interest in him and help to make him the 
 honourable gentleman of lei - ambition. 
 
 Yes; the incline was pleasant; and surely that was a firm 
 sward at the bottom? It was not a treacherous I 'it of 
 swamp covered over with a lying growth of superficial 
 herb 
 
 She raised her pretty eyes to his with a soft and yielding look. 
 
318 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " A woman's best happiness," she said gently, " is in that 
 which she gives. What she gives she receives back twenty- 
 fold." 
 
 " Ah, how true ! How beautiful !" he said, with the deep- 
 drawn breath of a man violently moved. 
 
 He rose from his seat and went over to her ; but just as 
 he took her hand in both of his and bent his head to 
 speak, the man-servant came into the room to tell him that 
 he was wanted, if he would please to come ; the constable 
 was in the Justice-room, and had come to speak to him 
 now at once. 
 
 It was the most annoying, the most mistimed interruption 
 that could be imagined ; and the Colonel had only just time 
 to let Augusta's hand fall on her lap, while he made believe 
 to take a book from the table. How much the man saw, and 
 how much he suspected, remained his own secret. His 
 manner showed nothing, and the Colonel was in a sense his 
 prisoner and the constable's — waiting for him in the Justice- 
 room. 
 
 He made a stately kind of bow to Augusta and muttered a 
 few formal words of apology for his absence ; then left the 
 room with his man whom, if it had been policy and good 
 manners, he could have kicked with hearty goodwill. 
 
 Augusta on her side, drew a deep breath when he had 
 gone. She raised herself from her lounging position in the 
 easy-chair, and walked to the window, looking out on the fast- 
 falling snow, which however fell more quietly than before. 
 The wind had fallen and the more active energy of the storm 
 had passed. 
 
 She still held the paper in her hand. Partly to relieve 
 the awkward suspense of the moment with its sense of check 
 and discovery in one, partly to divert her thoughts from the 
 discomfort of the home that she had and the doubtful 
 security of the home that she might have if she would, she 
 looked through the items of news, scarcely knowing what she 
 saw. Suddenly a name caught her eye. Her flushed face 
 paled to the whiteness of that snowdrift against the leafless 
 rose-trees, as she read a short abstract of the will of Henry 
 Kemp, given as a quotation from the paper which does this 
 special business. The personalty was sworn under sixty 
 thousand pounds ; and with the exception of a few insignifi- 
 cant legacies, the whole was left to his brother Sandro, the 
 sole executor and residuary legatee. The time of poverty 
 
GLY THE BRINK. 319 
 
 then had passed Ear him, and he was now rich liki 
 brothers, as he should always have been ! 
 
 And as nothing comes alone in this odd life of ours — as, 
 when fate gives one blow, fortune adds a second and chance 
 
 follows op with a third — so, when fortune grants one boon, 
 others fall from the skies at every point and the golden 
 shown- multiplies as it rain* down ; — thus, now when San 
 Kemp had come into this sufficient inheritance, free of work, 
 his work was now made of supreme value. A few paragraphs 
 from this extract stood one which Augusta also read, statins- 
 how Mr. Sandro Kemp's designs for that important cathedral 
 had been accepted by the committee apppinted to judge the 
 work of the competitors ; and how grand the writer, who was 
 reviewing then- several merits while stating this fact, held 
 special designs to be. He was then rich and famous at 
 a blow ; and she would not marry the Colonel. 
 
 And yet, had she not chilled and shocked, perhaps for ever, 
 the man whom she knew in her own heart she loved, and who 
 L< >ved her ? How could she undo that fatal past ? — how make 
 him understand that she had acted under coercion, and that 
 what she had done had been for her child's sake and not by her 
 own desire ? She could not write to him even to congratulate 
 him. She could not fling herself in his way now that fortune 
 had so richly endowed him, seeing that she had thrust him 
 aside when he was still under the lash of fate. She had done 
 what she believed right at the time. And yet, haunting 
 thoughts of the sa redness of Love — of Love the best thing 
 in life — of Love at any price and all the rest let go for him — ■ 
 of Love before riches — of Love even before duty ; had she not 
 counselled this to Stella? — of Love as the Great God, with 
 every other virtue, every other ah Vet ion, standing simply as 
 his henchman — haunting thoughts of all this divine sacredr 
 ness and of her adverse decision, came across her brain like 
 the echoes of a triumphal march drowned by the mournful 
 strain of a funeral dirge. If only she had clung to Love and 
 had abjured fear and the future! If only she had! And 
 yet ; she had done for the best. She bad plucked her own 
 breast bare and bleeding that her child might be kept safe 
 and warm. It had turned out ill; but ever and ever she 
 cam.' round to that one constant point — she had done for tho 
 best. And she would not marry the Colonel. 
 
 When Colonel Moneypenny came back from that trouble- 
 some bit of magisterial business which had taken him to the 
 
320 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 room lie called his Justice' s-room, and the constable waiting 
 for that magical bit of paper duly signed and delivered, he 
 was made to feel, he did not know how, that the favourable 
 moment had passed, that the fire had burned down into 
 Sshes, that the vane of the pretty widow's humour was set to 
 another wind, and that everything was changed. 
 
 She was her old self again — clear, candid and inscrutable ; 
 soft to the touch and unyielding at the core ; sweet, sympa- 
 thetic, womanly, pure womanly in manner, but, when probed, 
 apparently destitute of all feeling, all romance, all passion, all 
 pleasant feminine weakness ; eminently her old reasonable, 
 well-controlled self, whom no one could soften or warm or 
 deflect beyond the limits which she had marked out for 
 herself. The tender darkness had gone out of her eyes ; the 
 drooping curve had left her lips ; her face showed no gentle 
 indecision, her figure no yielding lines of graceful self-aban- 
 donment. She had gone back to her old shape of waxen 
 smoothness and adamantine hardness — of crystalline clearness 
 and crystalline inflexibility. 
 
 She was still standing by the window as he caine in, but 
 she had laid the paper on the table — the page doubled 
 inward where she had read about Sandro Kemp. 
 
 " I think the storm is passing now," she said cheerily, her 
 voice as clear as a silver bell and about as soulless. 
 
 " I hope not," said Colonel Moneypenny, making an attempt 
 to return to his interrupted gallantries. 
 
 He spoke with a grave kind of tenderness sufficiently 
 obvious. She laughed in her pleasant, light, superficial way. 
 
 "We shall all be snowed up if it lasts much longer !" she 
 said. 
 
 " There might be a worse fate in store for me than to be 
 snowed up with you as my guest," said the Colonel. 
 
 She gave an affected little shiver and looked at him with 
 eyes exasperatingly clear. 
 
 " What an awful idea !" she said with well-acted gaiety. 
 " As that would never do, and may be possible, I think I had 
 better set out at once. The wind has quite fallen, and a 
 quiet snow-shower bursts soon." 
 
 She gave a pull at her bonnet- strings which were not 
 untied, and smoothed down her gloves which she had not 
 withdrawn. These actions were " survivals," and expressed 
 her feeling of " dressing to go out." 
 
 " You cannot go out while this lasts," said Colonel Money- 
 
TESTED FOR TRUTH. 321 
 
 pennv as gravely as before, but with a certain latent beat and 
 eagerness which ho had not the power to c mtrol, though he 
 felt that it was bad policy to show too much feeling at the 
 moment. "Why this sudden haste r" he asked, forcing a 
 smile. '" Come lack to the fire and make yourself comfort- 
 able again." 
 
 " It is getting late," she said, glancing at the clock. " It 
 will soon be quite dusk." 
 
 " You have a full half-hour of daylight yet, and I will see 
 that you are taken care of," said the Colonel. '"Come! It 
 ly is too bad for you to think of going yet !" 
 
 As he spoke the door-bell rang sharply. A tramplii_ 
 feet in the hall; a sound as of many huge dogs shaking 
 themselves and of at least half a dozen men stamping them- 
 iv of something that would cling ; bursts of loud 
 laughter ; shrill cries of high-pitched voices ; all these were 
 L And then the library-door was fluug open andGeorgie 
 and Pattie Pennefather, in light drab coachman's coats, with 
 soft felt unomaniented hats and blue bird's-eye neckties came 
 streaming into the room ; the two multiplied into a small 
 crowd by the noise and tumult and " go" of their entrance. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 TESTED FOP. TRUTH. 
 
 •• Upoh my word !" shouted Pip as they came into the room 
 and took in the situation at a glance — the two easy-chairs 
 drawn close up to the fire; the wine and cake on the table; 
 the look of home and domesticity iu the whole arrangements. 
 '• Well I never! — upon my word!" she repeated. 
 
 •• » »h, you sly-boots, Augusta!" vociferated Gip. 
 
 •• And who would have thought it r" cried both these char- 
 tered tormentors in a breath. 
 
 •• Who would have thought what, girls ?" asked the widow, 
 with smiling unconsciousness of possiide evil. 
 
 "Oh, I say, that is coming it t.»> strong! 'Who would 
 have thought what ?' when we find you sitting here like Darby 
 and Joan, you and the Colonel, as cozy and comfortable as 
 you please." 
 
 " Uli ! that is what you mean. Yes ; is it not shocking ?" 
 returned the widow, still smiling, iu her pleasant, frank, un- 
 
 v 
 
322 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 conscious way, as if there were no evil possible in the world 
 of man and no suspicion in the mind of woman. " But when 
 one is caught in a storm, what is one to do ?" she added with an 
 amiable little laugh. " Bellevue or Sherrardine, or any other 
 place of shelter, I can assure you, my dears ! A cowshed in 
 such a frightful storm as it was !" 
 
 " Oh, that is all very well," said Pip. " But what brought 
 you out such a day as this, I should like to know ? Such a 
 chimney-corner creature as you are, what business had you to 
 be on the tramp in weather which every one could see was 
 going to be a buster ?" 
 
 " Yes," echoed Grip ; " what business had you out at all, 
 Mrs. Augusta ? Come, you have to confess, you know, so you 
 might as well begin !" 
 
 "And what brings you two out ?" said the widow, with the 
 air of turning the tables. " I think you had better begin 
 with your confession, and I will come after." 
 
 " Oh ! we have a good reason, haven't we, George ?" said 
 Pip, diving into one of the pockets of her coachman's box- 
 coat, which she had opened like a man, " to get the good of 
 when she went out again." " We have come on an errand of 
 charity, so we are all safe. There is that poor old Eeuben 
 Norris, of Barnes," she continued, pulling out a damp bit of 
 crumpled paper ; " don't you know him ? — the old creature 
 with a wooden leg, and that hard-working Jessie of a daughter 
 who goes out charing and more than half keeps the house ? 
 Well ! poor Jessie is down with fever ; and there is old Eeuben 
 crying about the lane in the snow with his wooden leg and no 
 fire, and not a bit in the house to eat and no one to go near 
 poor Jessie or to boil him so much as a potato-paring. They 
 are all afraid, the cowards ! So we are getting up a subscrip- 
 tion for them ; and we have got quite a nice little hatful for 
 the poor things already. And that's why we have come here. 
 So now that's the whole of that. And t am sure you won't 
 refuse, Colonel r" she added with what she meant to be a coax- 
 ing accent and an irresistible look of appeal. " You'll come 
 down handsomely like the rest, won't you r" 
 
 Now, the two things most abhorrent to Colonel Moneypenny 
 were to be chaffed for the one part and asked to subscribe for 
 the other. He was proud, sensitive, irritable, mean ; and that 
 these madcap hoydens should have it in their power to talk 
 of him, laugh at him, make fun of the visit which had gone 
 so near to be one of the most serious matters of his life, and 
 
JESTED FOR TRUTH. 323 
 
 then that they should have asked him for a subscription in 
 the pr- Augusta Latrobe whose good graces, tJ 
 
 he wished to win. he thought dearly purchased by the gift of 
 a sovereign — that they should have all this in their power 
 annoyed and disturbed him almost beyond his power of con- 
 vent:, raal concealment. 
 
 " Well, I don't know about that," he said, vigorously stir- 
 ring the fire which wanted no stirring at all. " I must first 
 nvinced of the justice of the case. Tou ladies, with your 
 charities and all the rest of it, often go beyond the borders 
 and do more harm than the deuce," he added irritably. 
 
 I: did him g tod to have this little fling. 
 
 " Oh, but Colonel Moneypenny '. — poor old Reuben !" said 
 Gip, opening her eyes. Doubt, caution, inquiry holding back 
 + ill fully satisfied as to the merits of a case — nothing of all 
 this came into the Pennefather category of wise action ! 
 ry one knows what a hard-working old chap he is, 
 wooden leg and all. And there is no mistake about Jessie. 
 She is down with fever as sure as ever any one was ; and she 
 will not do a stroke of work for a month of Sundays. "We 
 can't be doing harm in making up a little sum for him just to 
 help him over the style, poor old beggar!" 
 
 •■ Jessie won't be out for another ten weeks at the earliest — 
 Dr. Quigley says bo," chimed in Pip ; " and we thought that if 
 we could get ten or twelve pounds or so it would just keep 
 them for the time she has got to be laid by. You can't call 
 that paupering the people, as you are so fond of doing." 
 
 "Pauperizing!" said Colonel Moneypenny in a voice with a 
 decided tendency to become a growl. 
 
 "Well, pauperizing," said Pip, with a grim; 
 
 " You made a bad shot there, Patrick, with your big words," 
 shouted Gip with a laugh. 
 
 "No; tl: >d case as you say. girls ; does it 
 
 not, Colonel Moneypenny?" put in Augusta with her sweet 
 womanly reasonable air, like a very nice-looking Themis hold- 
 ing the scale's evenly between the two sides. 
 
 "Ah, you dear old thing! What a wise thing yoi: arc, 
 Augusta!" said Gip, giving the widow an affectionate hug. 
 The Dores were odd girls in the wholesale way in which they 
 identified 1 is with any "case" like th or old 
 
 Reuben Noma. They made it their own; and '"worked it" 
 with a superabundance of zeal and eagerness — including ani- 
 mosity for those who did not join with them, and overflowing 
 
324 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 affection and gratitude for those who act. " I always say to 
 every one that Angusta Latrobe is out and out the best sort 
 here." she added, addressing space and universe. " You are 
 not a sneak," she went on, turning back to the concrete and 
 the widow. " You are always fair and above board, and we 
 all know what you are after !" 
 
 Her tone, as she said this, was harsh and bitter. It did no 
 good to shoot out her arrows against Stella when neither the 
 girl herself nor her special friend and admirer, Val, was there. 
 But it soothed her angry passion for just the moment ; and 
 no one cared nor noticed. 
 
 " You are very kind to say so," said Augusta, that pretty 
 pale pink flush in her cheeks, for which she was famous, 
 deepening a little uncomfortably. " At all events, I am a 
 true friend," she added prettily, looking at the sisters ; but 
 she meant Colonel Moneypenny to profit by the application. 
 He had to be flung overboard, and she would not stint soft 
 words before the hard deed of his immolation. " Now to busi- 
 ness. What subscriptions are you making ? How much do 
 you want ? What am I to put down?" 
 
 This ready offer of service and conformity with the general 
 rule was magnanimous on Augusta's part. Her mother allowed 
 her only thirty pounds a year for her own dress and menus 
 plaisirs ; just the same sum as she had when she was eighteen. 
 And though the old woman took on herself the charge of the 
 child's wardrobe, still, there were many little expenses for him 
 which naturally fell on Augusta and which she could not carry 
 over to the great account. Hence, she was emphatically 
 " badly off;" and any kind of subscription told on her slender 
 finances heavily. All the same she said: " What am I to put 
 down?" with the air of one who had thousands at the back of 
 her poor little shabby tens. 
 
 " Well, every one has given a sovereign as yet," said Pip in 
 a doubtful tone. 
 
 She knew that Augusta was always hard up, as they called 
 it ; and though she wanted to land the Colonel's gold she was 
 sorry to have to bait with Augusta's. 
 
 " Then I will give a sovereign also," said the widow with 
 the tranquil stoicism of the Eed Indian who parts with his 
 pound of flesh. 
 
 " You are a darling !" said Gip. 
 
 " It is a large subscription," said the Colonel discontentedly. 
 'Half-a-crown would have been ample !" 
 
TESTED FOR TRUTH. 325 
 
 "Oh! we were not enough for that," said Pip. "We will 
 bring in the little fishes utter we have gaffed the big ones. 
 The half-crowns and sixpences will come in when we have 
 tackled all the gohl we can collar. So now, Colonel, if you 
 please. Shall I say two, as you are the only gentleman 
 among us?" 
 
 "No," said the Colonel shortly. "One is seventeen and 
 sixpence too much!" 
 
 "Oh!" cried Pip. " What an awful old screw you make 
 yourself out to be, Colonel, when every one knows you are as 
 generous as you please. Don't give yourself a bad character ; 
 and come, down with your sub handsomely." 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny's face was, what stupid people call, 
 " a study." He hated the Pennefather slang and rollick as 
 bitterly as did old Mrs. Morshead herself; he was angry at 
 tli interruption and revolted at having to give his money; 
 but he was in a trap and there was no way of escape. Sul- 
 lenly he brought out his purse and had a difficulty with the 
 clasp. "When he had got it fairly open he fingered all his 
 gold pieces one after the other, rejecting this and that till he 
 finally chose the one which was most worn and defaced. This 
 he handed to Gip, with a cross : " There !" expressive of 
 anything rather than the generosity for which Pattie had so 
 mischievously given him credit. 
 
 "No, not to Codlin — to Short," shouted Pattie. "I'm 
 treasurer, and George only does the touting. Very much 
 ta' !" she added, as she took the money from her sister and 
 put it loose into her box-coat pocket. "Now, your name, 
 Colonel ; and yours too, Augusta, please ; just there — under 
 the Branscombe fist. Shall I bracket them?" she asked 
 audaciouslv after they were written ; " and put Bellevue after 
 both r" 
 
 "What a child you are, Pattie!" said Augusta, with the 
 most careless good humour — but how her cheeks burned ! 
 
 "Patrick, mind your manners," shouted her sister. 
 
 " What's the harm?" said Pattie innocently. " There's no 
 harm, is there. Colonel ? Augusta is here, isn't she ?" 
 
 " So are you, Miss Pennefather," answered Colonel Money- 
 penny with what he meant to be a significant manner. 
 
 " Yes, we are; but George and I don't count with you," 
 returned Pip. 
 
 And at this both the Doves laughed as at an exquisil 
 till the Colonel speculated privately on the possibility of 
 
326 "Ml LOVE!" 
 
 turning them bodily out of his house, and retaining his 
 gentlehood at the same time. 
 
 Gip, not actively engaged in the little skirmish of wits and 
 having to fulfil only the light duties of laughing chorus, had 
 been looking round the room, her bold black roving eyes 
 searching everywhere, hungry for something to fasten on for 
 " chaff." She saw the newspaper lying on the table ; and 
 took it up. It wus the same as that which they affected at 
 Sherrardine and of which she religiously skimmed the smaller 
 items of news every morning. 
 
 " Oh, Augusta," she shouted ; ;: did you see that your old 
 flame, Sandro Kemp, has had a fortune left him? His 
 brother has died and Sandro has come in for all the tin. And 
 he has come in too, for no end of kudos for something he has 
 done — I don't know what exactly ; a church or a workhouse, 
 or something ; but it seems a very fine set-out according to 
 the paper. Ain't you glad ? I am. He was always a good 
 fellow, though he was as dull as old boots. He was heavy, 
 and no mistake ! I shall never forget him at our picnic in 
 the summer. He was that dismal — I never saw ! Still, I 
 am glad that he has tumbled into all these good things, ain't 
 you ?" 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny's thin and puckered face became livid ; 
 Augusta's, fair, smooth, soft, was crimson. 
 
 " Indeed ?" she said with as much ease as she could assume ; 
 but her breath was the least in the world interrupted. 
 
 "I should have thought you would have known first of all 
 people. You and he were always such chums together," said 
 Gip, with all her old spirited audacity, laughing and twinkling 
 her bold bright eyes as she spoke. 
 
 Augusta laughed too. 
 
 " I was always supposed to be Mr. Kemp's mysterious con- 
 fidante," she said quite pleasantly ; " but I knew no more 
 of him than the rest. However, I am glad of his good 
 fortune." 
 
 "You hadn't seen it?" said Gip with no ulterior motive. 
 " It is in this very paper," fluttering the leaves. 
 
 " Is it ? I had the paper in my hand," said Augusta w r ith 
 deliberate prevarication and intention to mislead 
 
 " It was odd you did not see it," said Colonel Money penny 
 speaking slowly, his eyes levelled at that fair and practically 
 mendacious face, and his bitter voice full of doubt. 
 
 " I should, if I had read it," she answered smiling. 
 
Tl STED FOR TRUTH. 327 
 
 But for all hi atrol, and though she tried, sue could 
 
 not look into the Colonel's face when she spoke. 
 
 " He will be quite a swell now!" said the innocent mischief- 
 maker with a loud laugh. "My goodness! fancy (.1,1 Sandro 
 
 Kemp a swell ! Ho will not be bis old stupid soli' if he's a 
 swell !" she said witb another peal, in which her sister 
 joined. 
 
 "Ho bad better return here, if be bas money. He went, I 
 remember, suddenly — they said he ran away from bis cre- 
 ditors," said tbe Colonel, biting off eaeb word, and spe, 
 witb uncontrollable malice and spite. 
 
 "Did be, now?" answered Crip meditatively. "I didn't 
 tbink tbat, Colonel. I think old Kemp was an bonest old 
 cbap. Mrs. Prinsep says so — though be was as dull as old 
 boots and as heavy as lead." 
 
 " And I don't ; and I have good reason to know," said 
 Colonel Moneypenny viciously. 
 
 And bis falsehood, though indirect, was a worse crime than 
 
 Augusta's, which was apparently tbe more brazen and sinful. 
 
 '■ Well, we never know who's who !" half sighed Gip, from 
 
 the sorrowful experience of Val's defection and Stella's 
 
 sneakiness. "At all events," she added, turning again to 
 
 Augusta witb that odd kind of sudden affection which meant 
 
 less love for her than a blow at these two absent sinners: 
 
 " You are true, Augusta ; you are not a sneak ; you don't tell 
 
 lies ; you wouldn't say one thing and mean another and 
 
 change your mind half a dozen times a day ! And you 
 
 wouldn't pretend to care for one man when all the time you 
 
 bringing on another !" 
 
 "No," >aid Augusta, just as she had said "No" to her 
 
 knowled dro Kemp's good fortune. 
 
 " Well, girls," said Pip suddenly : " if you are going to stay 
 here all day I'm nut. 1 have to go. You mav do as you 
 
 like" 
 
 "All right, Patrick," said Gip; '-I'm ready. We 
 leave Augusta," she added slily. 
 
 iming too," said the widow ; and the Colonel 
 this time made no objection. 
 
 fire had burned out in very truth and only dull dead 
 And yet how near a thing it had been! — 
 how near ! 
 
 The irruption of these curly-headed was so far to 
 
 Augusta's good, in that sbe was able to answer her mother 
 
328 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 and baffle her, while giving an account of herself that should 
 conceal what she did not wish to have known without the 
 need of another direct falsehood. This dangerous weapon of 
 defence the poor widow reserved as a last resource on grand 
 and perilous occasions. Had she been rebuked, she would 
 have justified herself by saying that she never told untruths 
 when she could possibly avoid it. True, she did not always 
 tell all that was ; but reticence was not necessarily falsehood ; 
 and Mrs. Morshead was undoubtedly a dangerous woman in 
 whom to confide. And then Augusta made the distinction 
 which many others make between active and negative false- 
 hoods ; also between those which do harm to others and those 
 which only protect ourselves. 
 
 When she had taken off her walking-things, and been for a 
 little time with her boy — whom she found crying for her 
 return, restless, feverish, peevish and unlike himself — she went 
 into the drawing-room to her mother. The red fire was low 
 in the grate, a mass of fiameless cinders giving heat but no 
 light ; the lamp had not yet been brought in ; the shutters 
 were not closed ; the curtains were not drawn ; out of doors 
 could be seen only by the black branches of the leafless trees, 
 the solemn whiteness of the snow, the grey look of the sky ; 
 within, was the lonely old woman, there in the dim light of 
 the melancholy evening, sitting silent and stiff in her high- 
 backed chair like a grim sentinel of sorrow, without work in 
 her hands as without joy or love or gladness in her life. She 
 was quite alone. Even her cat had left her, and she had 
 dismissed her maid sharply. She was glooming over her 
 daughter's prolonged absence, and fearing she scarcely knew 
 what ; reproaching her bitterly by her voluntary thoughts, 
 but reproaching herself more bitterly in her involuntary 
 conscience. 
 
 The dull lifelessness of it all — the want of brightness, of 
 welcome, of the sense of home and peace, struck on the 
 widow with painful force. It seemed to her that she was 
 returning to her prison, if not her grave. And after that 
 glance of possible companionship with Colonel Moneypenny 
 — that drama, spoilt as it was, of possible happiness with 
 Sandro — this miserable, uncongenial, loveless home was a 
 veritable torture. Anything rather than this ! — yes, for 
 herself, anything ! But her boy, her little son — for him she 
 must still suffer and be strong. 
 
 " Oh, that is you, is it?" said Mrs. Morshead, as she came 
 
TESTED FOR TRUTH. 320 
 
 p, with the child in her hand. " And where have yon been 
 ill this time, I should like to know? I was just beginning 
 nder if yon over meant to condescend so far as to come 
 home at all or no. Going out on such a day as this ! One 
 would think yon had St. Yitus's dance aud could not sit still ! 
 Where have you been, I say r" sharply. 
 
 " I came home with the Pennefather girls," said Augusta 
 prevaricating. 
 
 ■■ Well, yon are the most extraordinary younc: woman I ever 
 saw, and* the most inconsiderate!" said Mrs. Morshead. 
 " You < T o out and come in just as you like, and treat me with 
 no more consideration than if I were a shoeblack. You never 
 ask my leave, but just go tramping about, here and there, as 
 if vou were mistress of everything and I had nothing to do 
 but to find money and food and clothing for you and that boy 
 of V0UT8. Troublesome little toad! I have heard him crying 
 at least a dozen times since you went out. AVhat you are 
 made of I can't think, to go and leave the poor fellow as you 
 do. You are an odd kind of mother, I must say! Like 
 daughter like mother — and so it is, sure enough." 
 
 "Hush, mother," said Augusta with strange and sudden 
 sternness- " I cannot bear it ! You must not, you must not !" 
 she added, her voice full of something so unusual to her, so 
 unnatural, that her little boy squared his lips almost in fear, 
 and her mother very nearly started. It was like a trans- 
 formation — the sudden putting on of a wolfs fangs in the 
 lamb, of an eagle's beak and claws in the dove. 
 
 •• Well, I'm sure! What next, I should like to know? I 
 am not mistress in my own house, I suppose? I am not the 
 owner? You are a bad-tempered and impertinent girl, that 
 is what you are ; but you always were, so I suppose I must 
 put up with it. But don't let me have any more of your 
 insolence, for J cannot bear it; and so I tell you! And 
 perhaps you will be so very condescending as to ring the bell 
 for the lamp, if it is not asking too much of you! 
 
 The words were aggravating and harsh enough; and the 
 voice was no softer than the words ; but by that certain subtle 
 something in her manner which tells of defeat, even when a 
 front is kept, Augusta knew that her nioth.T had b en 
 dominated and that for the next few hours there would be no 
 more active insult. 
 
 The day had been so full of emotion, of distress, of false 
 security and real danger, of regret and excitement generally, 
 
330 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 that the naturally calm nerves and quiet self-command of 
 the widow had broken under the strain and she found herself 
 unable to bear the old woman's acrid humour with her usual 
 serenity. Her mother recognized the strain also, and was 
 wise enough not to hang on it more than she could help, so 
 that the next few hours did, as Augusta expected, pass in 
 comparative quietness. The little fellow sat in his mother's 
 lap amused by a book of pictures, either not speaking a/t all 
 or speaking below his breath ; but he was languid and very 
 feverish, and Augusta had some difficulty in keeping him 
 from being fretful — which would have drawn down on him 
 the wrath of his grandmother, always so ready to be drawn 
 down on his poor little sunny head ! 
 
 Later in the evening however, he seemed to grow so much 
 worse that when Augusta came from putting him to bed she 
 said with a white face : 
 
 " Tony seems very ill to-night, mamma ; will you let me 
 send for Dr. Quigley ?" 
 
 " What has the child got ?" snapped the old woman. " He 
 is always ill, or something !" 
 
 " I do not know, but he is feverish and certainly very much 
 out of sorts. His little hands are burning and his face is as 
 hot as fire," answered Tony's mother, trembling. 
 
 " Oh, it is nothing ! You make such a fuss about him ! It 
 is only a feverish cold that he has. Give him a little sweet 
 spirits-of-nitre and wrap him up well. You would take him 
 out the other day when I told you not, and warned you ; so 
 now you are punished for your obstinacy, as I said you 
 would be." 
 
 Mrs. Morshead gave her shawl the well-known twitch when 
 she said this, and seemed prepared for a quarrel. 
 
 " That was ten days ago. He took no cold then, and this 
 is not a feverish cold," said Augusta firmly. " I think Dr. 
 Quigley ought to be sent for," she repeated. 
 
 " You are not over thoughtful for that poor man, nor for 
 any one else — sending out on such a night as this," said 
 Mrs. Morshead. 
 
 " May I ask John to go ?" repeated Augusta. 
 
 "I don't believe there's the smallest occasion," answered 
 the old woman. " You frighten yourself for nothing at all 
 about that child. If his finger aches you think he is going 
 to die, and it is the doctor here and the doctor there ; such 
 nonsense !" 
 
TURNING THE KNIFE. 331 
 
 "If I may not send John I must go myself," said Augusta 
 •with her well-known quiet tenacity; "but I want to slay 
 with my boy." 
 
 " Uh ! have your own way, for goodness' sake, and don't 
 worry me any move !" said Mrs. Morshead angrily. " Send 
 for Dr. Quigley, or a dozen doctors if you like — send for 
 Dr. Mann, from Lingston, now at once if you choose — but 
 for mercy's sake Jo let me have a little peace! I am sick to 
 death of all this noise and confusion. Of all the worrying, 
 troublesome L;irls I ever met in my life, Augusta, you are the 
 worst ; and do leave me in peace !" 
 
 So the doctor was sent for, and when he came he would not 
 give a deeided opinion. 
 
 " It is fever," he said. 
 
 But whether it would turn out to be measles, scarlet-fever, 
 or something else, neither he nor any one else could tell at 
 this early stage. All that the mother knew was, that her 
 little buy was ill and that she must stand between him and 
 death — if she could. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 TURNING THE KNIFE. 
 
 It would not have been the Pennefathers if they had no* 
 sent over to Jack in exile all the news which they could scrape 
 together. Still less would it have been they if they had not 
 widened all the borders and de epened all the hues, so that 
 everything should be presented in such vivid colours as would 
 "amiiM- the poor old chap" and give him agood grip on things 
 as they were at the old place. And among the rest they told 
 him all about \'alentiue Cowley's shameful and outrageous 
 conduet in "following up" Stella Branscombe ; though why 
 shameful and outrageous they forgot to explain. And 
 they launched out into denunciations of Stella's horrible 
 "sneakiness" in allowing herself to be followed up at all, and 
 her sinful humbug in bringing Val on as she did while pre- 
 tending all tli" tame that she did not. That Stella was this 
 which they determined to prove her, they still further 
 need by saying, in true Pennefather Btyle, how Bhe was 
 never out of Kan Mac's pocket, and how Kan followed her 
 about Like a shadow, and Looked at Val jus: as one dog looks 
 at an.ther with a bone between. "And for the matter of 
 
332 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 that," said Gip, who was the scribe on this occasion : " Stella 
 Branscoinbe is little better than a bone — such a lean, scraggy, 
 washed-out thread-paper as she has grown ! What Val or 
 any one else can see in her I can't tell ; and no one else can 
 so far as I can make out ! Little wretch she is !" — Gip went 
 on to say, indignation running off with her pen like an un- 
 bitted horse ; " there is Val making up to her no end, and 
 looking such a loon when he does ! — and Ean is never out of 
 her pocket ; and she is all the while putting on lackadaisical 
 fine-lady airs as if she were breaking her heart for that good- 
 for-nothing Cyril over in India. Isn't it a screaming farce ? — 
 a screaming shame, too !" 
 
 Such a multiplicity of adoi'ers was indeed an offence against 
 good morals in the Pennefather code, because it was an offence 
 against justice and good fellowship, fair dealing and doing by 
 others as you would be done by. And these are virtues of 
 the first magnitude in a society mainly composed of marriage- 
 able maidens where, if things are to hold together at all, the 
 whole duty of a girl is to be content with her own lover and 
 . not to poach on her neighbours' preserves. 
 
 And as Stella Branscombe, whether wilfully or innocently — 
 they said wilfully — had offended against this code, and had 
 poached on Georgie Pennefather's preserves, it was only right 
 and fitting that she should be " trounced ;" and trounced she 
 was accordingly. 
 
 If such a letter as this from the old home was as of course, 
 it was also as of course that Jack should ride over to Cyril 
 the day after its reception, to pour out all the gossip con- 
 tained therein as a sieve would let down a bucket of water. 
 There was not the slightest intention of paining Cyril or of 
 doing Stella any harm by this generous transfer of Highwood 
 news. Jack was too kind-hearted to intentionally hurt any 
 one ; but he had the Pennefather insensitiveness and want of 
 imagination ; and facts were to him the only things in the 
 world. It would have been to him like taking aim at a cloud 
 had he been asked to allow for feelings in his dealings with 
 facts. If Stella and Val were putting their horses' heads 
 together, they were, and there was no use in denying it ; and 
 if Kan lived in her pocket, and went after her like a shadow, 
 and looked at Val across her shoulders as a dog looks at 
 another over a bone, he did ; and there was no use in denying 
 that either. So he presented both items of news to Cyril ; 
 as he would have told him that a certain cricket-match had 
 
TURNING THE KNIFE. 333 
 
 "been lost, or a certain boat-race had been won ; and left him 
 to make the best of them at his leisure. 
 
 That result was a letter to Randolph which pained that 
 faithful chum even more than had the former whereof the 
 eloquent omissions had made poor Stella cry. It was a mad, 
 wild, wicked letter, suggestive of everything rather than an 
 honest man's Tightness of life or a gentleman's nobility of 
 feeling. It was a letter which seemed as if Cyril must have 
 been out of his sober self when he wrote it ; or as if, which 
 was worse, his physical sense being straight, his mind had 
 gone aslant and his soul had become poisoned by reckless- 
 ness and vice. In it he spoke of Randolph's secretaryship 
 and devotion to the Branscombe family with a ferocious 
 disdain which made Pylades wince. It did not comfort him 
 to say to himself that the keynote of this ferocity was 
 jealousy ; and that Orestes, banished and dispossessed, would 
 have been neither ferocious nor jealous bad he not still been 
 in love. We do not reason on the exact shape of a wound 
 wbile we are smarting from the pain ; and the rough, rude 
 and sneering tone of this letter was a wound to the good 
 friend who had made himself the watch-dog guarding the 
 absent chum's ewe lamb from the wolves. Perbaps Asmodeus 
 might have whispered with a laugh : Quis custodlet? Failing 
 Asmodeus the honest fellow's loyalty was without a flaw, 
 and the return was — this black ingratitude ! 
 
 But so much may be said for Cyril — to people at a distance 
 
 the most exaggerated reports come like gospel truths, and 
 
 few stop to sift or analyze. And he was not one of those 
 
 few. He ha 1 always had unbounded trust both in Randolph 
 
 and Stella ; but he knew human nature, he said to himseli' 
 
 after the manner of tbose who blaspheme it, and he was 
 
 prepared for treachery even from him, and for infidelity even 
 
 from her. Wherefore he first chaffed Pylades about the 
 
 arvship, and then he added: — "From wbat I hear, 
 
 b<>\v ever, you cannot be going for the gloves, as the fair lady 
 
 in question has apparently made her choice; and tbe two 
 
 strings to her bow, of which you are only one, poor old man! 
 
 have coalesced into a single line of catgut — Mr. Valentine 
 
 Cowley! They say that orange-blossoms may be looked for 
 
 ■ quarter before lotg. I should like to bave a square 
 
 the bride-cake, just to see how it looks." Then, 
 
 to his mad work, one thought engendering another 
 
 and _ iting doubt, he added an unworthy bit of 
 
334 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 moral bravado, which was essentially despair, and said : — 
 <; Well ! I am no dog in the manger. As I cannot marry 
 Miss Stella Branscombe myself, I hope she will find her 
 happiness with Mr. Valentine Cowley, though I would rather 
 she had chosen you. So you see, old fellow, the sublime 
 state of philosophy to which I have brought myself. Give 
 me credit for the endeavour. And read this to Stella. I wish 
 it. It will set to rest any little lingering feeling that she 
 may still have for me, and I owe it to myself that she should 
 not think I am breaking my heart for her or because of this 
 marriage. Having once thrown me over all the rest comes 
 easy." And then he added : " Perhaps I shall follow her 
 example myself one of these days. We have no end of nice 
 girls floating about here ; and a man might do worse than 
 take one of them to himself. We shall see. At all events, it 
 is on the cards." 
 
 This letter placed Randolph in a difficult position. He 
 was one of those blindly- faithful men who obey against their 
 own better reason. If Cyril commanded him to tell Stella 
 what he had said, Eandolph saw no way out of the obli- 
 gation. The whole thing was a frightfully painful tangle 
 from first to last ; but, coupled with Jack's reports of Cyril's 
 " goings on" with Mrs. White, it did really seem a renuncia- 
 tion of the past and the playing away of trust after hope ! 
 And perhaps, if Cyril had really not only given up all claim 
 on Stella, but all desire of future holding, it would be better 
 to tell her, so that she should not break her heart for a man 
 who had so satisfactorily patched up his own. 
 
 All the same, Eandolph knew that nothing was really 
 " on" between Stella and Valentine Cowley ; and he could 
 not very well show her what Cyril had said about himself. 
 But he had to tell her something. And even if he had 
 decided on keeping silence his manner would have betrayed 
 him. as it always did when any trouble brooded over his 
 face and his heart, like a fog between earth and sky. 
 
 Since that evening at the Lyons', Cyril's name had not 
 been mentioned at Eose Hill. Mr. Branscombe had con- 
 tented himself with a few slighting allusions to false gods 
 and women who declined on lower levels ; and Hortensia had 
 taken occasion once or twice to declaim against the wicked- 
 ness of modern youth in general, and to say how far the men 
 of the elder generation surpassed them in nobility and refine- 
 ment. To all of which Stella had given a calm and im- 
 
TURNING THE KNIFE. 335 
 
 personal kind of assent, as to ?ague propositions which Lad 
 
 no special application to her; while stiffening her Blender 
 
 neck so that no one should see what she felt or if indeed she 
 
 felt anything at all. Those cruel words were the cross on 
 
 which she hong the garlands of her faith, of her denial, her 
 
 . her love. She would as soon have denied her 
 
 ■ »n as have doubted Cyril Ponsonby — an unspoiled 
 
 :i having at least this advantage over the nohler sex, in 
 
 "knowledge of human nature"' does not include with 
 
 her pessimistic unbelief or blasphemous denial. She may be 
 
 ignorant, enthusiastic, credulous, blind. Be it so. She has 
 
 for compensation the happiness of ever living with her ideal 
 
 enthroned in the innermost recesses of her heart — of holding 
 
 the man whom she has once loved to be ever worthy of her 
 
 love — and she escapes the pain of doubting the divine, and 
 
 the Bacrilege of making war on her gods. 
 
 Her eyes made quick by suffering and keen by love, Stella 
 saw that something ailed her good friend and self-appointed 
 g — her father's secretary and Cyril's representative. 
 She guessed at once that it had • to Cyril. Cyril — 
 
 and all that grew about him ackers from a rosebush, 
 
 the shoots of a vine — were the Alpha and Omega of her 
 relations with Randolph. She was his Star to him; he was 
 only the reflection of her Love to her. Were Cyril to pass 
 out of her memory Randolph would pass out of her 1!. 
 the shadow fades away when t 1 e sun goes down. While the 
 one lived and was loved — and while he lived he would be 
 loved! — his friend would be hers, because part of himself by 
 association. To love Randolph was one way of expressing 
 love for Cyril ; just as if this good and faithful Pylades had 
 been a horse or a dog which Cyril had confided to her hands, 
 and which was therefore sacred to her because it had beer 
 to him. 
 
 Hence, when she saw that something was amiss with 
 Randolph she thought of Cyril : and when sin' said : " Ran- 
 dolph, what is the matter?" she did not mean '-with you?" 
 but "with Cyril?*' 
 
 •• Why do you ask, M : in eonfusion. 
 
 3e I can see thai something is wrong,*' was li.-r 
 reply. 
 
 " I wish you had not asked!" he said again, looking at her 
 •wfully. 
 
 •• But you must tell me," she returned with a certain 
 
336 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 serious authority, a certain gentle qucenliness which it was 
 impossible for him to disobey. 
 
 Nevertheless, though he knew he must yield in the end, 
 he hung back now and hesitated, unwilling to strike the 
 blow which would pain her so acutely. 
 
 " I would rather not," he said reluctantly. 
 
 " Tell me," she said again with her gentle peremptoriness, 
 
 " I have heard from Cyril," he began ; and then he 
 stopped. At that moment he realized the whole anguish 
 of Jephthah, the tragic obedience to his vow to Aga- 
 memnon. 
 
 " Well ? from Cyril," she repeated ; the colour deepening 
 on her face, but no glad smile on her lips, no sunshine or 
 delight in her eyes. " What does he say ? What does he 
 write about ?" she asked. 
 
 " He has heard something about Valentine Cowley," said 
 Randolph with the blundering honesty of a faithful servant 
 doing his duty and devoid of tact. 
 
 The blood left her face and then came back till her cheeks 
 burned as if with fever. 
 
 " Yes ?" she said, as quietly as she could speak. " What 
 has he heard?" 
 
 " That you are engaged and going to be married," said 
 Randolph. 
 
 Now the worst was over. The murder was out and no 
 more remained behind ! 
 
 " Does he believe it?" asked Stella, speaking slowly. 
 
 He hung his head. This feeling of relief and the worse 
 known was premature. The poison-bag had yet another 
 drop ; and he must empty it on her heart. 
 
 " Yes," he answered in a low voice. 
 
 " He does ? — He believes it, Randolph ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She was silent for a few moments, silent because a little 
 stunned. It was a cruel return for her own faith in him. 
 She had refused to believe a word to his discredit, and she 
 had defended him publicly in the face of the world. At the 
 first lying report, his faith in her had gone into dust and he 
 believed her capable of an act of infidelity which with her 
 took rank as a crime. 
 
 " And what does he say ?" she asked after a pause. 
 
 She too must turn the knife in her wound after the manner 
 of the tortured. 
 
TURNING THE KNIFE. 337 
 
 " He sends his congratulations," said Randolph ; " and 
 hopes you will be happy." 
 
 •■ He wants me to marry?" 
 
 •' He did not say that he wanted you to marry," he 
 answered. 
 
 " But he does not disapprove ?" 
 
 " No ; he does not disapprove." 
 
 " And he congratulates me ?" 
 
 " Yes ; he congratulates you," repeated the poor watch-dog 
 sadly. 
 
 She held her head high. An odd look of pride struggled 
 with her pain, and on the whole, perhaps, overcame it. 
 
 " I shall never marry Valentine Cowley, who, in the first 
 place, has not asked me," she said ; " but do not say so to 
 Cyril," she added imperiously. " If he doubts me he must ; 
 but I will not do anything to undeceive him. You will do as 
 I say, Randolph ? You will not tell him that it is all a mis- 
 take, and that I am not going to be married to any one ? If 
 you say anything about me, merely say that you told me; 
 and nothing more. You will do this ?" she asked again. 
 
 " Yes," he answered humbly. 
 
 " Nothing about me ; nothing; not a word !" she repeated 
 passionately. " Only that you gave me his message. It was 
 a message, Randolph, was it not?" 
 
 " Yes," he said, still so humble in his consciousness of crime 
 and cruelty. " He said I was to tell you." 
 
 " Well, say that you told me — that you gave me his message 
 and that I said nothing," reiterated Stella, her passion 
 deepening. " I rely on you to do this." 
 
 " You may ; I will do just as you say," he answered. " Oh, 
 how sorry I am about it all ! What miserable work all this 
 gossip is !" 
 
 " He will know better some day," she said with vehe- 
 mence and pride together. Then, suddenly relaxing into the 
 self-pity of surprise at his distrust, she added tremulously ; 
 " I should have thought he would have known better now." 
 
 And with this her passion broke; the unnatural strain 
 relaxed ; and she hurried from the room because she could not 
 control her weakness and did not wish even her good friend 
 and watch-dog to discover it. 
 
 It was a fair and sunny afternoon, and Hortensia Lyon was 
 with them as one of the family. Indeed she was now almost 
 as much one of the Branscombe family as of her own. Ran- 
 
 z 
 
338 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 dolpk had done his work for the day and had been dismissed r, 
 and the three sat in the study in spite of Dr. Quigley and his 
 advice — an artistic fever-fit being at this moment strong on 
 Mr. Branscombe. Stella was paler even than usual, pallid as 
 she always was ; and a certain feverish irritability of manner, 
 a certain strained hardness of expression made her as unlike 
 her ordinary self as this cruel distrust was unlike the Cyril of 
 her love. Her voice had a thin metallic ring in it, which of 
 itself betrayed suffering ; for when the naturally hard become 
 unnaturally soft, and the soft make themselves hard, then we 
 may know that the shadowy arrow has struck and that the 
 wound is bleeding inwardly. And at this moment poor 
 Stella's heart was bleeding in such sort that all her joy, all 
 her hope and peace and happiness and love, now and to come, 
 seemed ebbing away for ever. But she was brave through it 
 all, and gave no other sign than was to be found in this 
 curiously hard and feverish manner, this thin metallic ring in 
 her voice. 
 
 " Have you heard that Mrs. Latrobe's little boy is very ill r" 
 asked Hortensia, breaking the silence which had fallen on the 
 trio. 
 
 It was a silence which had come upon an interchange of 
 flatteries between the elderly idol and his young devotee, 
 wherein each had presented the other with a piece of moral 
 embroidery of unusual brilliancy, and both had accepted the 
 offering with perfect good faith in its fitness. 
 
 Hortensia was at this moment sitting to Mr. Branscombe 
 as Una. His model for the lion was one of those natural- 
 history cax'ds which are published for schools and coloured by 
 the intelligent foreman of the printing-works. Mr. Brans- 
 combe had enlarged the copy and gone beyond the foreman 
 in his reds and browns ; so that he had made a very queer- 
 looking thing on the whole, like nothing so much as a pin- 
 cushion. Una was a respectable marionnette, a little dislocated ; 
 but the original was charmed with herself as seen on the 
 canvas, and, her mind bringing the desire to find perfection, 
 she found it. 
 
 "Have you heard of it, Stella?" asked Hortensia, in thy 
 patronizing tone which had become habitual to her now when 
 addressing her elderly idol's unsatisfactory daughter. 
 
 " No," answered Stella, taken out of her own thoughts as 
 by a violent wrench. " "When d»d you hear it ? — and when 
 was he taken ill?" 
 
TURNING THE KNIFE. 339 
 
 " A few days ago. I know it from the Pennefathers. They 
 called yesterday about a subscription for that old Reuben 
 Norris who lives out at Barnes, and they told us. The little 
 boy has some kind of dreadful fever. I do not know what it 
 is, but he is very ill and Dr. Quigley thinks rather seriously 
 of him." 
 
 " I should like to go and inquire," said Stella, rising with 
 nervous haste. 
 
 "My dear, unreasonable, impulsive child! — a malignant 
 fever of an unknown character, and you entering the house ? 
 Is that wise, my little daughter ?" asked Mr. Branscombe, in 
 a sweetly repressive manner — wisdom laying a large cool 
 hand on the feverish head of folly. " A note by a servant 
 will be sufficient." 
 
 " Should I run any danger, papa, bv simply inquiring at the 
 door?" asked Stella. 
 
 She was so unhappy herself, she felt as if she must go to 
 Augusta who was even more unhappy. Community of sorrow 
 seems somehow to soothe and lighten individual pain ; and the 
 folly of all this flattery between her father and Hortensia, 
 always revolting, jarred on her to-day almost beyond bearing. 
 If Randolph Mackenzie had been there she might have 
 endured it better. As it was, the irritation that it roused in 
 her was more than she could well suppress. She did not 
 know how it had come about, but always, always now, she 
 found herself set in some kind of antagonism to her father. 
 And as for Hortensia — had she been able to do as she would, 
 she would have cut short their friendly intimacy to a hand- 
 shake on the Sunday, and would have felt the cessation of 
 their daily intercourse almost as restful as sleep. 
 
 " No ; you must not go," said Mr. Branscombe with less 
 Buavity and more decision. 
 
 " But, papa " began Stella. 
 
 "If your father says not, Stella?" said Hortensia with a 
 reproving air. 
 
 1 v dear, do as you are bid ; — write a note and send it by 
 the groom," said Mr. Branscombe with still less suavity and 
 still more decision. "Take a pattern from your excellent 
 little friend and do not for ever dispute my will in this 
 childish manner " 
 
 Stella did not answer. She felt terribly rebellious and 
 impatient, and wanted to break out into open wrath against 
 this excellent little friend ; but she bit her lips with a vexed 
 
340 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 air ; held her peace ; and wrote her note to Augusta saying 
 that she would, if she could, call at the house to-morrow to 
 learn all particulars. Then she sealed her envelope and sent 
 off the note by the servant, and took up a piece of embroidery 
 which suddenly had become as distasteful as everything else 
 in life. 
 
 Hortensia was sitting absolutely like a statue. Her eyes 
 were as fixed as if they had been of glass. Save for the light 
 rise and fall of the severely-cut gown, covering her small 
 childish bosom, she might have been a clothed and painted 
 statue, lifeless for all eternity. 
 
 " How can you sit so still ? I declare you do not even 
 wink," suddenly cried Stella with odd petulance. " I should 
 stiffen into stone if I sat as you do." 
 
 " But then I am not impatient," said Hortensia. " It is no 
 trouble to me to sit still and think." 
 
 " Tou are the most perfect model in all respects," said Mr. 
 Branscombe enthusiastically. " You were born for the 
 studio." 
 
 " Tou are so good to say so ! I am always so pleased when 
 I do anything that pleases you — so proud to be praised by 
 you !" said Hortensia with maidenly modesty, but turning her 
 eyes on Mr. Branscombe with their well-known look of adora- 
 tion. 
 
 " My praise will not content you for long, I am afraid," 
 returned Finery Fred with a tender and regretful kind of 
 gallantry, a marshalling, as it were, of his sixty winters in 
 front of her nineteen summers. " Some day others, more 
 appropriate, will give you the happiness that you ought to 
 have ; but none will be so sincere as those of your old friend 
 at Eose Hill." 
 
 " Yours will content me for ever," said Hortensia, humble, 
 devout, adoring. 
 
 He turned to her with a smile. It was the smile of hand- 
 some Fred Branscombe when he had picked up another 
 foolish, fluttering little heart and was holding it in his hand 
 as a study. 
 
 Stella flushed to the roots of her hair. She felt (hat things 
 could not go on long as they were. Her dislike of Hortensia 
 was growing daily, and would soon burst through the present 
 bounds of prudence and reserve. She could not bear it much 
 longer — she knew that she could not ! Irritable, nervous, sore 
 as she was to-day, this sentimental flirtation between her 
 
TURNING THE KNIFE. 341 
 
 father and the little Puritan tried her to the utmost. She did 
 not see it as flirtation — that is not the word which she would 
 have given it. She saw it more as an encroachment on her own 
 domain, and was jealous, not of the future but of the present. 
 
 " I shall become quite jealous of you, Hortensia," she said 
 in a forced manner — forced because attempting to be gay and 
 careless while in reality she was angry ^and disturbed. " You 
 make too much of papa." 
 
 •• What an odd thing to say!" said Hortensia, opening her 
 eyes with her now usual look of reproof. " Can any one make 
 too much of your father :'' 
 
 " His daughter apparently thinks so," said Mr. Branscombe, 
 with what was meant to be a pained but always generous smile 
 of magnanimity. 
 
 " I do not like any one to take my place," said Stella, laying 
 her hand on her father's arm. 
 
 " Then you are not going to be jealous ; you are so already," 
 returned Hortensia with prim logic. " And to be jealous is to 
 be naughty." 
 
 " I am not apt to feel things without a cause. If I am 
 jealous I have cause," said Stella, with her array of logic. 
 
 " You have no cause, my dear Stella," said her father 
 gravely. 
 
 " People are often jealous for no reason whatever. And 
 Stella has none to be jealous of poor little insignificant me," 
 said Hortensia with the deepest humility, tears coming into 
 her eyes as she spoke. 
 
 " No daughter would like to feel that she was being sup- 
 planted," said Stella, flashing out the secret fire which was so 
 difficult to damp down. 
 
 " It is too bad. of you to say that !" said Hortensia angrily. 
 " How cruel you are, Stella ! I did not think you could have 
 so cruel !" 
 
 " Hush ! hush, my children !" broke in Mr. Branscombe's 
 level, artificial voice. " What a pair of foolish young creatures 
 you are !" he added with a not displeased smile. He rather liked 
 indeed, this little passage of arms of which he had been the 
 cause, though it was only between a couple of children — of 
 whom one was his own daughter. Still, it was better than 
 nothing; and undoubtedly it both soothed and inspirited him. 
 But now he turned to Stella. 
 
 " My dear," he said with his well-worn urbanity of manner; 
 " no daughter need fear to be supplanted so long as she does 
 
342 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 her duty. While you are conscious of doing your duty in a 
 whole-hearted and unbroken chain of thoughts and actions, 
 be not afraid of your charming little friend here, nor of any 
 other. The fear and the remedy lie in your own bands. Your 
 position with your father depends on yourself alone. Jealousy 
 is tbe mark of a vulgar mind and a bad conscience : I do not 
 wish to think you possess the one or the other. And now, my 
 dear Una, attention, if you please. I am just at the debcate 
 curves of your exceedingly dainty and difficult little mouth, 
 and it is essential that we have peace and quiet. My Genius 
 is a very Egeria, and needs the sweet influence of repose if she 
 is to guide my hand to good work. So please remain as you 
 are. You are perfect, my little friend — absolutely perfect !" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 TAKING BP.EATH. 
 
 The next few weeks passed cpuietly. Local history stood 
 still, and nothing was afloat save the illness of Mrs. Latrobe's 
 child, and the speculations of the neighbours as to whether 
 Dr. Quigley would pull the little fellow through or no. Winter 
 was slowly passing into spring — very slowly indeed — like the 
 tardy waking of a sluggard who will not raise himself to active 
 life; and the moment was emphatically one of suspended 
 animation and taking breath all round. 
 
 To Stella it was as if she had come into a strange phase of 
 existence where she had to leam a new language and forget 
 her old songs. She and Randolph Mackenzie had now nothing 
 to say to each other, and spent their time, when they were to- 
 gether, in staring blankly at the dead past. The fertile theme 
 of converse was closed against them, and they stood in dumb 
 distress before the shut gates of their forbidden pleasance. 
 Cyril, who had been their one inexhaustible subject of living 
 talk, lay now as a dumb, dead thing between them. They 
 thought of nothing else, but they never spoke of him ; and 
 they had nothing else to speak of. Therefore, the presence of 
 that good, honest-hearted if stupid- headed Pylades, which had 
 always brought with it the reflected lustre of memory and 
 association, became now as dark as the rest ; and poor Stella 
 had no more of that moonlight- coloured happiness, which 
 until now it had been his appointed mission to bestow. 
 
TAKING BREATH. 343 
 
 Also, without doubt, she had lost her old place with her 
 father — and Hortensia Lyon had taken it ; and as yet she 
 1 v understood the boundaries of her new sphere, or could 
 say when or where Hortensia had dispossessed her. An odd 
 kind of coolness had sprung up between daughter and father, 
 which both felt and which neither would have confessed nor 
 could perhaps have assigned to its exact cause. Certainly, she 
 bad broken down under the strain of her close attendance on 
 him after her mother's death, bo that he bad been forced to 
 have a secretary to do the work for which, since nature had so 
 manifestly consecrated her, he thought that love should have 
 made her strong enough. And she knew that he was dis- 
 appointed and annoyed with her because of her failure — a 
 failure which Hortensia always accentuated so bitterly and 
 against which she placed in contrast herself and her devotion, 
 as a shining statue of silver against a dull background of lead. 
 
 Yet Stella could not beg her father to let her take up her 
 dropped burden. She could not ! — no, not even if that should 
 include his renewed approbation ! She felt that it was better 
 for both, and better even for her love for him, that she knew 
 little of, and was associated not at all with, the life of that 
 stifling studio. The work, in the admiration of which she had 
 been brought up as in a fixed doctrine of righteousness, had 
 become quite another thing to her of late from what it 
 had been in the old days of reverent worship, when her mother 
 had impressed on her, as the eleventh commandment, the 
 majesty of papa's genius, the gloriousness of its results, and 
 the indisputable right of the domestic Apollo to her very life 
 and her first cares. Stella bad noi yet come to Mrs. More- 
 head's state of mind when she could call it all " horrid stuff" 
 and " vile balderdash." That woidd have been a species of 
 blasphemy still to her. But she was in the stair when the 
 paternal poetry and music wen' inexpressibly wearisome; win 11 
 she had no kind of interest in the paternal pictures - ; and 
 when the whole thing was to her dry husks and lifeless chad 
 It was all her own fault, that she knew ; still, there it wafi I 
 she could not conceal it from herself! 
 
 Beyond this unconfessed cookies of her intellectual 
 
 defection from her duty stood Hortensia, as even a graver 
 cause for sorrow. Creeping into Stella's rightful place in Mr. 
 Branscomhe's heart, nearer and nearer as the days went on, 
 the little Puritan was indeed taking thai place which was the 
 daughter's and should have remained hers to the end. But 
 
344 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 how to cut the ground from under those stealthy crafty feet ? 
 She, Stella, could not tell her father that he was not to write 
 odes and sonnets to Hortensia Lyon, because she, his daughter, 
 was jealous and did not like it. Neither could she tell Hor- 
 tensia that she was not to be her father's model, now as Una, 
 now as Miranda, again as Evangeline, and again as only her- 
 self idealized, because she, her friend, was jealous of that too, 
 and did not like it. She had to bear it quietly, whether she 
 liked it or no ; and her feelings in the matter made no part of 
 the play. 
 
 Again, she knew that she was displeasing this dear father of 
 hers about Valentine Cowley. He held to their frequent cor- 
 respondence, and she, knowing all that she did, shrank from it 
 as falsehood, treachery, desecration, and a dozen other bad 
 things, like so many snakes in a basket. And Mr. Brans- 
 combe resented nothing so much as disobedience to his will. 
 But that he should so hold to this correspondence was a puzzle 
 which Stella could not understand, look at it how she would. 
 He so careful, so delicate, so fastidious as he was about the 
 conduct of women, to force her into this frequent interchange 
 of letters with a young man for whom she had no special 
 liking — to rebuke her as he did if her answers were too short, 
 too tardy, too lifeless — and to praise the young fellow himself 
 at the expense of all other men, and especially at the expense, 
 by implication, of poor Cyril and his friend Randolph Mac- 
 kenzie ; what did it all mean ? Over and over again that swift 
 glance of terror at the coming awakening, which Sandro Kemp 
 had once seen, translated itself into a rapid thought of doubt 
 and anguish. No ; it could not be called a thought ; it had 
 not formulated itself so plainly as that. It was only a vague 
 sensation, a blinding flash of fear lest some day she should see 
 clearly to find her father less than the godlike being she had 
 been taught to believe him — his genius a sham behind which his 
 vanity was the only living thing — that vanity the real cause of 
 her mother's death — and his dealing with herself eminently 
 and entirely cruel, selfish, unfair, and unfatherly. She did not 
 think all this in so many set terms : she only dumbly feared 
 and unconsciously foresaw. But just as the lagging spring, 
 though slowly was surely awakening out of the sleep of winter, 
 so would that drowsy sentiment of hers one day break into 
 life and confession. And then all dumb doubt and love- 
 created denial would be at an end. 
 
 Times were hard with poor Stella at this moment. Begin- 
 
TAKING BREATH. 345 
 
 nine: to unconsciously suspect the flimsy pretentiousness of 
 her beloved father — a certain estrangement setting in between 
 them — jealous of Hortensia, whose influence somehow wrought 
 against her, she scarcely knew how — the girl was also unutter- 
 ably distressed by this correspondence with Valentine Cowley. 
 Forced on her by the one to whom she would naturally have 
 looked for protection against an intimacy which she herself 
 did not desire, what could she do? Every week Val wrote 
 to her one or more long, long letters, to which she sometimes 
 said to her father, passionately, she would not reply. For 
 rare as passion used to be with Stella in the days gone by, it 
 mhappily by no means infrequent now ; and if her father 
 sometimes said he did not know his child — his sweet and 
 placid child — in the irritable and nervous rebel whose will so 
 often came into collision with his own, Stella did not know 
 herself. She used to be dreadfully sorry and ashamed of 
 herself ; she would resolve to be more patient and self- 
 restrained another time ; not to let little things annoy her as 
 they did ; not to be so irritable with Hortensia ; not to be so 
 strange and sore with her father. Yet something stronger 
 than herself seemed to possess her on the next occasion, and 
 she stood before the dark shadow of her new self terrified, 
 repentant, but somehow unable to do better. 
 
 If only she could cut short this correspondence with 
 Valentine Cowley ! She thought that everything would go 
 so much more smoothly if she were but fairly rid of this 
 oppressive incubus. How she hated those long letters of his, 
 all about nothing, as they were, yet always with a secret 
 thread, a hidden core, which she would not recognize and 
 could not deny ! This last, over the answer to which she and 
 her father had had something like a quarrel, what nonsense 
 it all was! She cared nothing for the "Earthly Paradise," 
 nor for the " Stones of Venice ;" the " Story of the Golden 
 Fleece," nor that of the "Apples of the Hesperides ;" the 
 description of the old church at Torcello and the meaning of 
 its architecture, nor for the fine fancy which tossed up in 
 solid foam the cupolas of St. Mark, and that, as fine, which 
 chronicled the deed. All this was of course intellectually 
 true enough, she dared say, but she really had no interest in 
 it ; ami still less in the little undercurrent of personal appli- 
 cation which carried these surface-flow rs of eloquence to 
 their destination. And when her father, to whom she gave 
 the letter unopened, launched out in praise of its beauty of 
 
346 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 thought and picturesqueness of expression, its tender tone of 
 poetry, its sweet religiousness of feeling, and called on her to 
 laud with him the writer of such an admirable essay, she 
 could not bring herself to be his echo — she could not, and 
 she would not ! Nor would she answer this letter itself. A 
 few significant phrases embedded in the more purely literary 
 mass frightened and repelled her. Val once spolce of the 
 future in connection with her as a mysterious happiness 
 lying in his way ; and once he hinted at the time when he 
 should be able to direct her mind to his favourite subjects 
 more thoroughly than now, and to take joy in her companion- 
 ship on his special line of thought. The words came in 
 quite naturally and as if born of the preceding phrases. All 
 the same they revolted Stella ; and she felt that she must 
 put a stop to this correspondence before she had been further 
 committed. 
 
 She was not a girl to think a man in love with her because 
 he liked her society. And of herself she had not seen in Val 
 what the outside world had detected clearly enough. But 
 she was by no means a fool, and had her possibilities of 
 enlightenment free of vanity, like others. And she had been 
 enlightened, as we know. Wherefore it was that she sud- 
 denly took her stand, and, in spite of her father's displeasure, 
 said with strange passion : 
 
 "Papa! I will not write any more to Mr. Cowley. His 
 letters do not interest me. I am tired of them." 
 
 " My will, my dear Stella, is that you do write," her father 
 answered with quiet firmness and majestic decision. 
 
 " You will not force me when it is so much against my 
 inclination ?" said Stella, turning to him a white face and a 
 pair of dark, wide-opened eyes. 
 
 " I would have your inclination run parallel with my own," 
 was his reply. 
 
 " It cannot, papa. I hate these letters !" said Stella 
 warmly. " Why should I write to a young man like Mr. 
 Cowley ?" she continued indignantly. " He is the only man 
 to whom I do write — why should I to him ? I do not care 
 for him half as much as I care for James Pennefather, 
 or even for poor dear noisy Jack ; and I do not write to 
 them." 
 
 " My dear, when you can compare a young man of Mr. 
 Valentine Cowley's superior acquirements to two such earth- 
 worms, such mere clods and beetles as the Pennefathers, it is 
 
TAKING BREATH. 347 
 
 time to close the conversation. I shall Lave you next bring 
 on the field hit groom or my gardener's lad ; — you would not 
 "ii an appreciably lower level if you did!" 
 "J 1 Stella. 
 
 •• You and I, my dear Stella, do not agree in our tastes, I 
 am sorry to say," continued her father loftily. "You prefer 
 matter to mind in all directions. Between your little friend 
 osia, with her delicate organization and pearly purity, 
 and the coarse fibre of Mrs. Latrobe, you choose the latter ; 
 between this noble youth, this Admirable Crichton, Mr. Valen- 
 tine Cowley, and that clod-like Mr. Randolph Mackenzie, with, 
 his companion clods the Pennefathers, you prefer these latter 
 : undoubtedly we do not agree, my dear Stella, in 
 our estimate of the best things in human nature; and I am 
 sorry for it." 
 
 •• That has nothing to do with my writing to Mr. Valentine 
 Cowley," said Stella ; '"and," she added with strange rebel- 
 liousness ; " I do not think I should be forced to do it when 
 I do not like it." 
 
 " You are not forced ; you do it because I wish it," said 
 her father, suddenly setting his sails to the old tack. 
 
 •• And you will not wish it if I so much dislike it ':" said 
 Stella, with as sudden a return to her old coaxing and 
 caressing manner. 
 
 "For this once, oblige me," said her father, smoothing 
 the hair from her forehead and kissing her gently — " for this 
 once." 
 
 And poor Stella was conquered, as he knew she would be. 
 Valentine wae by this time feverishly in love with Cyril's 
 r fiancee. He knew the elementary rules about preparing 
 •1 and sowing the geed before you can expect to 
 er; nevertheless, scientific knowledge did not supply prac- 
 mted his harvesl before the grain had 
 ■ nne to ripen. Left to his own fancy , which was active, he 
 thought himself more and more in love than he had ; 
 even when in the presence of his Beautiful Lady, as he c 
 
 for his lati ition — and he made up his own mind 
 
 without knowing whether Stella'swould ever be broughl unto 
 harmony therewith. She was Ids Supreme.; and he intended 
 bo marry her. He fell sure of her lather's con- at; SO sure, 
 indei d. that had anything been able to throw him ofl 
 
 . ii would have been Mr. Branacombe'-s too evident 
 desire to call him son-in-law. The consent of his own parents 
 
348 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 was also a foregone conclusion ; for the Branscombes wene 
 their own social equals all round ; Stella herself was unex- 
 ceptionable ; and, wl'.at was more to the purpose perhaps, in 
 their estimate of things, she would not come empty-handed. 
 If he had chosen Georgie Pennefather he would not have 
 been quite so sure of a home-welcome to his bride. The 
 Pennefathers were also the Cowleys' equals so far as 
 birth and social position went — but the girl herself! Mrs. 
 Cowley was fastidious about the girls of her acquaintance, 
 and the picture of a daughter-in-law who laughed and talked 
 slang and rollicked, as Georgie and her twin Dove and all 
 belonging to them laughed and talked and rollicked generally, 
 made Valentine sometimes laugh and sometimes feel a little 
 qualm — which was a very good substitute for remorse. 
 
 Meanwhile he Avas passionately and honourably in love 
 with his equal in all things — his equal whom he intended to 
 marry — his present ideal and Cyril Ponsonby's former lover 
 — Stella Branscombe. 
 
 Stella was not actively ill, but she was on the verge of that 
 state called generically " breaking down ;" and Dr. Quigley 
 made it his business to go as often to Rose Hill as he could 
 find any excuse for a visit. He had of late found an excellent 
 one, having dug out of the mining population a young fellow 
 who had a talent for painting and whose sketches he brought 
 to Mr. Branscombe, ostensibly for that gentleman's valuable 
 criticism. In reality it was to be able to ask Stella this 
 question about herself and to make that inquiry of Jane 
 Durnsford ; to be able to give those sharp prominent collar- 
 bones of hers a few ringing taps beneath his long lean fingers ; 
 every now and then to listen to her heart and lungs with the 
 stethoscope to his large flat ear ; to make sure that no vital 
 mischief had as yet set in, and to make also sure that she 
 was taking his medicine regularly, and, if not gaining good, 
 yet staving off evil. He was pulling Augusta's child through 
 with all his known skill and care, and he intended, when the 
 little fellow should be well enough, to send him and his 
 mother to the seaside ; and Stella should go with them. 
 This was his design for the immediate future. Meanwhile 
 and for the present he, like all the rest, held his breath. 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny was perplexed. He could not tell 
 what was false and what was true in that fair widow's con- 
 d\ict. It was odd if she had not seen that notice which his 
 jealous eye devoured so greedily immediately after she had 
 
TAKING BREATH. 349 
 
 left. Yet would she have perpetrated such an unblushing 
 falsehood as was this denial of hers, at least by implication if 
 not by direct assertion? Yet again, if she had not seen it, 
 what had changed her manner with such strange suddenness 
 between his leaving the room and returning after so short an 
 interval 'i It was an odd little thornbush, looked at all round. 
 He could not see his way through it ; and, as a gentleman, 
 he was bound to accept her word that there was nothing to 
 see. He intended to try his fate definitely when the boy was 
 better. Until then he must wait, ponder, hope — was it hope ? 
 — and fight with his wild beast of jealousy, doubt and 
 wounded pride, as well as he knew how. 
 
 On her side Mrs. Morskead was softened by this illness of 
 the child to a degree that took her household by surprise. 
 And she was out of sorts herself. So far she admitted, but no 
 more. She had a mysterious something amiss with her of 
 which she never made confession. She rejected with scorn 
 the proposition to " speak to Dr. Quigley," when she looked 
 so ill and walked so feebly, and was evidently in so much 
 suffering that both her daughter and her maid saw for them- 
 selves what she hid with so much care from all the world. 
 She believed in him for that " poor fellow," her grandson, but 
 for herself she despised him as she would despise any other 
 quack or humbug. So Augusta need not give herself the 
 trouble to ask her. She knew what she was about, and the 
 least said the soonest mended, at all times. 
 
 She said this sharply enough ; still, with less than her 
 usual acrimony ; for since the boy's illness she had been 
 almost humane to her daughter — certainly, if not positively 
 loving, yet negatively inoffensive, and even taking a little care 
 not t<> add hex usual tale of thongs and whips to the poor 
 yountj widow's scorpions of anxiety. 
 
 The neighbourhood too, interested in the boy, came often 
 to The Laurels ; and this frequent influx of visitors a little 
 diverted the lonely old woman. Colonel Moneypenny came 
 perhaps the most frequently. He never saw Augusta ; never 
 once ; but that perennial Hope of man kept up a steady 
 flame <>f expectation on every occasion, and the terrible old 
 woman had the good of the light. 
 
 In this universal attention paid to her for the sake of her 
 
 daughter, the acrid humour of the mistress of The Laurels 
 
 what sweetened and her bitt r tongue had a certain 
 
 respite. Even the Pennefathers got off with fewer rebukes 
 
350 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 than usual, and she scoffed with less malignant verve at 
 Pinery Fred and all his affectation. To Stella she was almost 
 maternal and very nearly affectionate ; and, now that no one 
 said so and she was not bound by the law of her being to 
 deny and contradict, she saw for herself how close the girl 
 was to that one step which goes over the border of Time into 
 the abyss of Eternity. She told Mr. Branscombe to his face, 
 sharply and curtly as her manner was, that he was not fit to 
 have the care of a nice girl like that. Any one with only half 
 an eye, she said, not to speak of four — looking contemptuously 
 at the pince-nez on that long, straight handsome nose — could 
 see that poor dear Stella was next thing to gone ; and it was 
 a shame and a sin not to look after her better ! What would 
 her dear mother have said to see her neglected like this? 
 Never a woman to make sure that she was taken care of, to 
 boil her up a comfortable posset at nights, or to see that she 
 wore flannels next her skin and put her feet into hot water 
 — it was a sin and a shame ; and so she told him ; and some 
 of these fine days he would be sorry for it and wish that he 
 had taken friendly advice when it was offered. But men 
 were a poor lot, take them all round ; and for her part she 
 did not see what good they were in the world at all ! They 
 only rampaged about and put all things into confusion ; and 
 women had nothing else to do but attend to their humours, 
 and see that they had their buttons sewn on and their shirt- 
 fronts starched and ironed like so much glazed card-board — 
 give them good dinners, and treat them like a parcel of over- 
 grown school-boys, as they were. But not while she had a 
 tongue in her head would she refrain from telling the truth 
 — no, not if she had to die for it ! And the truth was that 
 Stella was looking downright dreadful, and in a very little 
 while she would lose all her beauty if she went on like this ; 
 and then where would she be ? 
 
 " Where she is now, my dear madam," answered Mr. 
 Branscombe grandly ; " in her father's home and heart." 
 
 " Her father's fiddlesticks," snapped the vulgar old 
 creature crossly. " Better have given her to that young man 
 when you were about it ! She was fond of him ; as she 
 ought to have been, seeing that she was engaged to him and 
 made fuss enough over him. A father's home and heart are 
 not as good as a husband's to a nice girl like that ; and it was 
 downright cruelty to keep her back as you did, Mr. Brans- 
 combe ! She has never been the same creature since. And 
 
TAKING BREATH. .151 
 
 any one but yourself could see that she is breaking her heart 
 -any one. Ah. it takes a mother to learn these things !" 
 she a Ided, with unconscious contradiction, wishing to punish 
 her adversary by this allusion to his good Matilda. 
 
 " Providence has denial her the continuance of the one 
 good parent, bul I think I have somewhat successfully sup- 
 plied the hiatus," said Mr. Branscombe with rigid stateliness. 
 
 •• And I don't," said Mrs. Morshead snappishly. 
 
 " There, my dear madam, we must agree to differ," an- 
 swered Stella's father with a superior smile. " You, on your 
 part, doubtless think that you have successfully supplied the 
 of father to your daughter and to your little grandson. 
 In like manner, I claim credence for the faithful and fit per- 
 formance of my delegated duties. If we fail, you and I, we 
 fail in concert ; and neither can say ' le peche de mon 
 voisin.' " 
 
 " God bless my heart and soul !" said Mrs. Morshead with 
 satirical disdain. " Tour language is beyond me," she added. 
 " I am only a plain, rough, everyday body and you are super- 
 fine and gilt-edged all over. Tou always make me think of 
 musk and white-kid gloves ; and I am sure you must live 
 chiefly on butter and honey, yon are so soft and silky." 
 
 " I thank you for the compliment, Mrs. Morshead," said 
 Finery Fred smiling sweetly. " Tou have expressed to the 
 letter the character I wish to have and the impression I 
 hope and endeavour to make. Refinement and softness — 
 what a flatterer, my dear madam, you are! Ah! who could 
 ever call Mrs. Morshead rough? — not I for one !" 
 
 " Then I am sorry, Mr. Branscombe," said Mrs. Morshead 
 grimly. " I am proud of being called rough, for that means 
 true; and if you call me soft I know that I have done and 
 said something that I should not." 
 
 •• Ah, you are a wag, my dear madam, a wag!" said Mr. 
 Branscombe airily. " You really are supreme good company ! 
 But I must tear myself away, else I should like to enjoy j our 
 pleasant society for hours longer. Au revoir, ehere madame ; 
 a bientot," he said, knowing that Mrs. .Morshead hate,l 
 French phrases as muchas she hated Battery. And with this 
 he bunched up his long white fingers into a knot and blew 
 the oil woman ,-, u r ;l ]i au t kiss, leaving her spec hless with dis- 
 gust and vexation. 
 
352 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 Really his daughter's health was getting to be almost as 
 oreat a nuisance to Mr. Branscombe as her love-affair with 
 Cyril Ponsonby ! It broke in on the rhythm of his thoughts, 
 interfered with his habits, disturbed his reflections and 
 annoyed him all through. So that when Dr. Quigley told 
 him, brusquely enough, to pack off his girl to the seaside with 
 Mrs. Latrobe and her little boy, albeit Augusta's companion- 
 ship was theoretically against his idea of fitness, he assented 
 to the proposal, not only without demurrer but with a decided 
 feeling of relief from a very real and pressing personal annoy- 
 ance. 
 
 At one time it would have seemed impossible that Stella's 
 father should have become thus painfully estranged from the 
 Star of his House — the smiling, dimpled object of his graceful 
 paternal love — the sweet inspiration of his domestic muse. 
 And at one time Stella would have thought it impossible that 
 she should have left that dear papa and Rose Hill with a sense 
 of escape from duress into freedom, from sickliness into health, 
 from falsehood and make-believe into reality and truth. But 
 times had changed with both; and each knew the fact, h 
 Stella had not enough moral hardihood to acknowledge all 
 her share. Indeed, had she understood herself and read her 
 father, she would have held her life to have come to an end 
 for all its happiness and all its worth. 
 
 On his side however, Finei-y Fred had never lacked the 
 courage which acknowledges things as they are and con- 
 fesses when the loving have ceased to please and the beloved 
 to be of value. There was no weak allowance with him ot 
 this fault or that folly, accepted with the rest, quand mcme. 
 If his dearest failed, they failed ; and if they were in his way 
 they were, and must be removed. He believed in the value 
 of mental repose for the artistic nature, and held that the 
 poet's soul should never be vexed whatever happened. And 
 as his work in life was the creation of beauty, so he said, all 
 which told against that work must be eliminated from his 
 path, as you would remove logs and orange-peel from the 
 track of a runner. And as Stella had, unfortunately for her- 
 self, proved of late an obstruction and a cause of vexation to 
 
;;y THE SEASIDE. 353 
 
 iis soul, ho had the courage to say so when he took private 
 founsel with himself and balanced incompleteness here with 
 fulfilment there. 
 
 " She annoys me," he said, as he sat, pen in baud, unable to 
 write the "Song to the Sweet South Wind" (Hortensia) 
 which had presented itself to him in the watches of the night 
 — unable to " sing," as he called it, because so full of his 
 daughter's ill-health, changed temper, want of proper affection 
 for her incomparable little friend, evident fretting after that 
 vouiilt clown pig-sticking out there in India, and felt if not 
 jsed indifference to his own work. "She annoys me; 
 and I should do better without her. She has changed since 
 the rupture of her foolish engagement and has become morose 
 and disagreeable. She does not respect my genius as she 
 ouidit and at one time did; from a help she has become a 
 hindrance. It is well that she leaves me for a while. The 
 wheels will run more smoothly without her ; and, if I can, I 
 will remove her altogether !" 
 
 Pondering over chances and probabilities, and dreadfully 
 out of humour with that once radiant and now undeniably 
 dingy Star, Mr. Branscombe sat down and composed one of 
 his most elegant epistles for the benefit of Mr. Valentine 
 Cowley. He began by telling his dear young friend, hi3 
 Admirable Crichton, Himself Redivivus, that he was despoil- 
 ing himself of his sweet child's invaluable companionship, and 
 sending her to St. Ann's under the care of Mrs. Latrobe, 
 who had obligingly offered to be her chaperon and caretaker. 
 He hoped his dear love would not be dull. He himself would 
 go to see her soon after her installation; and perhaps, he 
 added significantly, other friends more suitable to her age 
 than even a fond father would find themselves in her neigh- 
 bourhood before long. It would be a favourable moment for 
 reflection and deep-seated impression ; and he trusted that his 
 dear young friend would do what he could for his sweet child's 
 solace and amusement while by the solemn shores of the 
 sounding sea. He looked on them as brother and sister, he 
 said, and only wished that heaven had sent him such a sou for 
 himself — such a brother for his daughter. 
 
 He made the letter specially long and friendly ; Eor, in spite 
 of her natural loyalty, Stella had kept her promise of reply to 
 Valentine's last effusion only to the ear and in no wise to the 
 hope, and had written so curtly that in effect she need not 
 have written at all. "Wherefore Mr. Branscombe, irate on 
 
 ■1 K 
 
354 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 this point also against his Star, took the thing into his own 
 hands, hoping that the warm light of a father's friendship 
 might shed a ruddy glow over a daughter's frozen indifference. 
 It was his design to keep Mr. Valentine Cowley on the stocks 
 so long as was possible, and not to let him slip off into deep 
 water if to be held by any chain or cable known to man. He 
 wanted Stella to marry, and he intended that she should 
 marry the heir of Greyhurst Manor. If there was power left 
 in a father's will she should be the young man's wife before 
 the year was out; and then he himself — Handsome Fred 
 Branscombe — well; what of himself? Who knows what 
 passed through his mind as he looked at his face in the glass, 
 scanning every square inch of his skin with microscopic 
 minuteness of observation, then drawing himself up smiling 
 and saying half aloud : " Handsome Fred Branscombe still !" 
 
 Wherefore he wrote Mr. Valentine Cowley a letter, which 
 was substantially an offer of Stella's hand and an assurance 
 that his own would be accepted, and which held behind those 
 more evident lines the filmy network of an undeclared resolve 
 — cost what it might, a resolve that should find issue in fact. 
 
 How delightful it was at the seaside ! St. Ann's, one of the 
 loveliest places on the whole north-coast of England, never 
 looked so lovely as now in the bright months of early spring, 
 when the clouds were so tender and the clear vault of heaven 
 against which they rested was as blue as the sky of Italy and 
 as clear as that which flashes down on the glaciers of the 
 Engadine — when the sweet wild-flowers dyed the cliffs and 
 meadows golden and pink and silver by turns, and scented 
 the green lanes with perfume that was as subtle as a spirit 
 and as fall of fragrant harmonies as a song — when the 
 resinous larches of the inland woods caught the sunlight m 
 their rose-red tassels to give back in odour what they received 
 in colour — when the sea seemed younger and fresher, more 
 vigorous and more vitalized than usual, answering to the re- 
 newed freshness and vitality of the earth. 
 
 It was like another and better state of existence to Stella 
 to sit here amongst the rocks, either alone or with Augusta 
 and her boy. Sheltered from the wind and turned full to the 
 light of the beautiful sea, she dreamed herself in Italy ; and 
 was sure that not even the cliffs of Sorrento nor the sheltered 
 bays of Capri could give more exquisite delight in mere exist- 
 ence than that which she felt now on this North of England 
 coast. The sense of peace which came upon her was as infinite 
 
BY THE SEASIDE. 355 
 
 as that of healing ; and she felt as if part of the heavy burden 
 of her Borrow were slipping from her as she forgot herself in 
 the love of that Great Mother who holds all the gifts of peace 
 and health in her benign hand. And what a charming com- 
 ' The more she was known the nicer she 
 i herself to be. Friends the two had ever been, so far 
 ls a young girl and a married woman ten years her senior c:.n 
 he friends. But they grew nearer and nearer together in the 
 sweet solitude, the near intimacy of their present life; and it 
 seemed to Stella as if the cheeked and troubled current of her 
 affections ha 1 once more a dear and pleasant outfall, and that 
 Augusta brought back to her something of the beloved 
 mother whom she had lost and of the young lover whom she 
 had renounced. 
 
 On the brink of becoming morbid as she was, Stella could 
 not have found a more wholesome companion than Augusta 
 Latrobe. Sympathetic in nature and soft in speech, the widow 
 was essentially cheerful, strong, and above all things unro- 
 mantic. She was the essence of common-sense wisdom warmed 
 by kindness and spiced with a genuine love of fun and 
 pleasure. She was undoubtedly what people would call 
 worldly; but she was not selfish nor inhuman. She thought 
 that life held more than the simple affections — especially that 
 affection between man and woman which goes by the name 
 par excellence of love. It held for her ease of circumstance 
 and solidity of social position, peace at home, and above all, 
 duty such as she owed to her hoy • and nothing seemed b 
 so foolish as useless regrets and meaningless sentimentality. 
 Her favourite two axioms were : "Break or beaf " for the first 
 past, and " Lite lies before and not behind us " for the second. 
 When things had | to be borne, it wa d, she 
 
 said, i! ;;• they should be borne with the dignity of cheerful- 
 ness. And when a loss is eternal and irreparable, we must 
 bury our sorrow deep in the shadow of the grave which lies 
 behind us, and press forward with hope and courage to the 
 future before us. 
 
 had lived in the practice of these princi] ''- ; Eor herself, 
 and she applied them now to Stella. Cyril Ponsonby was 
 done with. That act of the girl's life drama wae ended to ad 
 appearances forever; the page was turned down; ami An: 
 Latrobe allowed no weal: peering through the closed l< 
 no vain a tempt to reconstruct the stage. 'The seal of fate was 
 set; and of what use tears and sighs? What was done, was 
 
356 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 done. Now to the future, and what had to come ; and the 
 widow, like Mr. Branscoinbe, would, if she could, turn that 
 future to the benefit of Mr. Valentine Cowley as the best por- 
 tion that Stella could expect for her share. 
 
 It was at the breakfast-table one morning when the first 
 loophole was opened, where the reasonable, calm-judging 
 friend could lay her guns and whence she could take her aim. 
 The letters were brought in ; three — all in masculine hand- 
 writing — were for Stella. One was from her father, one from 
 Randolph Mackenzie, the third was from Valentine Cowley. 
 To Augusta came none at all. 
 
 "Upon my word, young lady," laughed the widow plea- 
 santly ; " you are, what those vulgar little Pennefather girls 
 would call ' going the pace.' Three letters, all from gentle- 
 men ! Come, confess — from whom?" 
 
 " Papa," said Stella, taking up one and kissing the enve- 
 lope. " Dear papa ! This is from that good Eandolph 
 Mackenzie. I know his handwriting, but this is the first 
 time he has written to me — I wonder about what — " a little 
 anxiously, one might almost say with embarrassment. "And 
 this," she said, tossing down the third with what was saved 
 from being indifference only by displeasure ; " this is from 
 Valentine Cowley. How tiresome he is !" 
 
 " And why tiresome, ma belle ? And why, if tiresome, do 
 you write to him at all or allow him to write to you ? — more 
 especially after what I told you the other day, and what not 
 only I but every one else can see ? Why, Stella ! where is 
 your logic and reasonableness in all this, my dear?" 
 
 " It is not my fault," said Stella hastily. " I do not wish 
 either to write to or hear from him. If I had my own wav I 
 would never see nor hear from him again. He worries me to 
 death, Augusta ; and I am not to blame." 
 
 " So ? then by whose will is it ? Mr. Cowley's or your 
 father's, or both ?" 
 
 " Papa's," answered Stella in a low voice. 
 
 She had to tell the truth if she said anything at all ; and 
 though she did not like making what seemed to her such a 
 damaging statement against her father, still she was bound 
 to do so ; and it was a relief to explain the whole position to 
 her friend. 
 
 " He makes you correspond with Mr. Cowley against your 
 will ?" asked Augusta. 
 
 " Yes," said Stella. 
 
BY THE SEASIDE. 357 
 
 "And Mr. Cowley knows that it is against your will?" 
 
 '• I try to make him feel it," she answered with a little flash, 
 
 '• But be perseveres?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He writes often?" 
 
 " Yes ; once a week always, and sometimes twice. I hate 
 his letters! I cannot tell you how much I hate them!" said 
 Stella with a petulant gesture, throwing half -across the table 
 that which had just come in and which she had not opened. 
 
 " Has he made you an offer yet ?" asked the widow in her 
 matter-of-fact way, probing with that firm, direct, assured 
 touch of surgeons who put you to torture and pretend that 
 you scarcely feel. 
 
 " No !" said Stella with indignant energy. 
 
 " But he makes love in his letters ? He does not write, I 
 suppose, only about the colour of the clouds or the last new 
 poem ?" 
 
 "He makes a great many silly speeches," answered Stella, 
 with a curious mixture of annoyance and reluctance. 
 
 "And you could not possibly like him? You could not 
 make up your mind to marry him ?" asked Augusta, still 
 serenely unconscious of giving pain while she turned the knife 
 with a steady hand and pushed the probe still deeper into the 
 wound. 
 
 "Augusta! never! never! Marry Valentine Cowley? I 
 would rather die first!" said Stella, with as much passion of 
 denial as if she had been asked • Could she commit murder or 
 plan a forgery? 
 
 " You might do worse. He is a nice young fellow. You 
 might indeed do worse, my dear," said Augusta. 
 
 ■• I am much obliged to you for your estimate, but I do not 
 think I could do much worse !" said Stella, holding her head 
 high and speaking in an offended tone. 
 
 Decidedly that dear girl's temper had not improved of late ! 
 There was no danger now of her sweetness weary i z l>y its 
 uniformity — of the smooth and limpid serenity of tl waters 
 fatiguing the onlooker for want of the pleasant cl rage of 
 ripple and ruffle! She had developed of late quite a refresh- 
 ing amount of irritability, in which her nature clothed itself 
 as in a uew dress with fresh appointments. And as it 
 that kind of irritability which is without bitterness and with- 
 out personal application — which is due only to an uncou 
 able state oi the nerves and to a ! ' run-down" condition of the 
 
358 ' MY LOVE r 
 
 health in general — it did not seriously affront those to whom 
 it was shown. She was distinctly cross at times ; but it was 
 crossness which exhausted itself in a breath ; crossness which 
 was born and then died in a moment and which did no one 
 any real harm while it lasted. 
 
 Augusta smiled to herself at the girl's little " spurt." It 
 did not affect her the least in the world. What she had to say 
 should be said, whether it made her companion cross or not. 
 She had to have the thing out and do what she could to make 
 oil and vinegar mix. 
 
 " Then, Stella, dear girl, if you feel all this, and are so set 
 and determined, you should not write to him nor let him 
 write to you," said the widow, very quietly but very firmly. 
 " It is scarcely fair to him and certainlv not right to your- 
 self." 
 
 " But what can I do ? — papa makes me," said the girl, 
 her irritability gone and self-reproach remaining. Her doc- 
 trine of filial obedience had not been lessened because her 
 belief in paternal perfection was somewhat diminished. Her 
 father's will still represented to her the most righteous obli- 
 gation of her life ; and though she could not obey cheerfully 
 in this matter of Valentine Cowley, nevertheless she did not 
 disobey. Perhaps things would have been better if she had 
 been less conscientious and more self-willed. 
 
 " Tour father evidently wishes you to marry Mr. Cowley," 
 then said Augusta, summing up the whole question. " And 
 he does what he can to encourage the young man's hopes. If 
 you really do not intend to marry him, you would do better 
 to disobey your father now than to disappoint him afterwards. 
 You will do less harm ; for, as things are, you are giving poor 
 Valentine false hopes which will make your future refusal 
 only the more severe. Take my advice, Stella — either break 
 off this correspondence which is doing harm all round, or 
 make up your mind to marry the young fellow when vou are 
 asked." 
 
 " Do not say that, Augusta," said Stella with a solemn 
 kind of earnestness, a tone almost of menace in her voice. 
 
 " I tell you again that you might do worse," repeated the 
 widow drily. " He is a nice young fellow on the whole ; and 
 Greyhurst Manor would be a most charming home for you." 
 
 " Do not talk like that, Augusta ! You are so sweet and 
 good when you are your best self ! I cannot bear to hear you 
 so worldly ! Do not be vexed with me. What would Grey- 
 
THE LOVERS LEAP. 359 
 
 if I iliil not love the inan ? — and huw 
 could I ever love Mr. Cowley ':" 
 
 '• And why not'r" 
 
 "Aug sta!" said § 11a revolted. 
 
 • I irst Manor would be a lovely home whatever the 
 
 i Augusta, not noticing that interjection and 
 
 pursuing her theme with her most provoking air of genial 
 good sense, of heartless reasonableness. "And if you did not 
 : with all that tremendous amount of nonsense which 
 girls think necessary, you would end in the placid con- 
 tentment which comes from habit, ease of position and mutual 
 t. And I assure you, Stella child, habit and respect 
 and enough money for all your wants and a good social posi- 
 tion and a nice house, and all that kind of thing, go farther 
 to make a happy marriage than the romantic enthusiasm and 
 blind adoration of the phantom which goes by the name of 
 love. If you could bring yourself to marry Valentine Cowley 
 ymi would be much happier than you are now, or perhaps ever 
 will be. But if you cannot," she went on to say, stopping 
 Stella as she was about to speak ; " at least do not let him be- 
 That you will. Father or not, do not be induced to play 
 with him now only to disappoint him in the end." 
 
 " How impossible it is to do right !" said Stella with a quick 
 Bigh of impatience. "We are taught from our childhood to 
 obey our parents as the tirst duty in life, for in obeying them 
 we ai » God — and when we are older, if we do as they 
 
 tell lis, We do wroii 
 
 "B do wrong when we make a fetish for 
 
 ourselves, which we worship beyond reason ;" said Augusta. 
 
 •• The only safe guide in life is common sense; and that is the 
 
 • of all. Not the fin.-st virtue in the world — not the 
 
 — can stand the strain of excess ; and even obe- 
 
 Lts can be carried to excess — as in the matter of 
 
 yours with Valentine Cowley. So now. after this lectu; 
 
 us «o out. It is a sin to waste the sunshine." 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVIII. 
 
 THL" LOVER'S LEAP. 
 
 At every seaside place, where there are cliffs and rocks 
 worthy of the name, are sure to be found a Smuggler's Leap 
 and a Smuggler's i ound which are gathered fierce 
 
360 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 traditions having still the power to stir the blood and rouse 
 the imagination. Sometimes there is a Lover's Leap instead 
 of the Smuggler's, where tragedy takes the place of romantic 
 crime and the sympathy is all on the side of the sufferer. At 
 St. Ann's there was of course the due amount of local interest 
 and tradition ; for the coast was wild and rock-hound ; and 
 in the old days of high duties and strict Protection it had 
 been famous for the boldness of its law-breakers and the 
 success with which their daring ventures had been made. 
 Shreds and ends of fine Flanders lace were still among the 
 cottage heirlooms of the fisher folk ; here a louis d'or and 
 there a Spanish doubloon was hung against the walls or laid 
 in the bowl of the quaint Venetian vase with the twisted 
 threads of white run through the stem ; and the odour of 
 cognac and schiedam seemed to linger yet in the air. But all 
 these stirring times were past now — put to death by the 
 prosaic facts of free-trade and the coastguard ; and only 
 memories and traditions remained of this bold "Will Watch, 
 or that more terrible Paul Jones — only here and there a 
 blood-stained grave marked the last resting-place and crystal- 
 lized the history of some wild desperado whom nature had 
 designed for a hero and of whom fate had made a ruffian and 
 fortune an outlaw. Still, all these memories and old-world 
 stories gave a kind of historical point and meaning to places, 
 which surrounded them with human interest and lifted them 
 into the regions of poetry and romance. 
 
 The most beautiful of all these places at St. Ann's was the 
 Lover's Leap ; and the story was as pathetic as the place was 
 picturesque. It was the old, old story of loving not wisely 
 but too well; of parental cold-blooded denial and youthful 
 hot-headed passion ; of love strong as death and greater than 
 fear ; of the youth who jumped into the sea from his pursuers 
 and was saved ; of the maid who flung herself in after him in 
 despair, and was lost. And partly because she was love-lorn 
 in her own life, and naturally therefore given to sentimental 
 sympathies, and partly because the spot was so beautiful, 
 Stella's favourite resting-place was on the rocks just below 
 that fatal cliff whence the man had struck out to safety and 
 the girl had sunk down to death. 
 
 " How true to life !" she thought sadly, as she sat there in 
 front of the placid sea and under the shadow of the over- 
 hanging rocks. How true to her own history ! Cyril had 
 struck out into the smooth waters of indifference, where 
 
THE LOVER'S LEAP. 301 
 
 another love would save him ; she had gone down like a stone 
 under the black waves of despair whence she should never 
 be rescued by living hand! How true to the difference 
 between man and woman ! she thought again, woman-like, 
 heaping on the collective man all that bitterness of blame 
 which "is only the other side of individual love. Yes, the 
 strong man struck out and was saved, and the weak woman, 
 who Loved him, went down and was lost. 
 
 So she sat, mournfully dreaming — her eyes shut as though 
 she were sleeping ; while Augusta and her boy, out there in 
 the bright, wholesome sunlight, slipped about among the sea- 
 weed and the rocks, looking for sea-anemones, catching the 
 Little baby crabs running distractedly through the tiny 
 shallows left by the receded tide, and picking up the tropical 
 shells which had been brought from the far-off regions of the 
 sun bv the strong north current to the shores of bonny Cum- 
 berland. 
 
 The child's happy voice and Augusta's cheerful tones came 
 
 upon the girl's ear like echoes from another life as she lay 
 
 there dreaming, with those melancholy visions of loneliness 
 
 and despair, those sad thoughts of ruin and disappointment, 
 
 grouped round her like shadowy spectres. But they i-oused 
 
 her and made her ashamed of this slothful indulgence of 
 
 unavailing sorrow. Selfish, silly, weak, contemptible — she 
 
 called herself all sorts of hard names as she resolutely cleared 
 
 her brain of these misleading mildewing spectres. She sat 
 
 up with a strong stiff back, as a reasonable woman should — 
 
 no longer lounging against the rocks sunk in that slothful 
 
 reverie of speechless saduess. She took off her hat and let 
 
 th'' wind raise and ruffle her pretty hair; passed her hands 
 
 over her eyes as if clearing them from the lingering heaviness 
 
 of sleep ; opened the book in her hand and glanced at the 
 
 page where she had left off ; looked out on the sea and 
 
 watched Augusta and her boy — their figures dark against 
 
 the shining waves and glittering sand ; and again sh 
 
 the glad glow of young blood in her veins, tb>' glory of life, 
 
 and that all was not lost to her even though Cyril Ponsonby 
 
 were parted from her for ever. There was love still left in 
 
 the world; there was beauty; and there was always duty 
 
 with work. No ; all was not lost, though she should never 
 
 be any man's wife, ami never love again. Still, the present 
 
 was good, and the future was not the hopeless wreck which 
 
 but a few moments ago it had seemed to her to be. So, full 
 
362 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 of renewed courage and cheerfulness, she began again on her 
 book, which was Julian Sturgis's delightful story of " An 
 Accomplished Gentleman/'* 
 
 What a charming story it was ! she thought; how easy in 
 its style, how graceful and playful ! — how it touched the 
 surfaces of things with such a light and pleasant hand, and 
 yet was not shallow ! Still, something in the story pained 
 her. Something in the circumstances, not in the cha- 
 racter — no, certainly not in the character — of Hugo Deane 
 reminded her so horribly of her own dear father! It 
 was like a bad caricature, where the resemblance is unde- 
 niable but where the likeness is detestable. She hated 
 herself that such a thing should come to her; but she 
 could not chase it entirely away, though she banished it to 
 the background of a mere uneasy consciousness. Her dear 
 papa like Hugo Deane ? Certainly not ! The one was true, 
 the other false — the one a genius and the other only a sham ; 
 and it was sacrilege to connect the two together. So, reso- 
 lutely refusing to acknowledge the likeness which her con- 
 sciousness could not deny, she went on reading as if her 
 whole life's interest were concentrated in the tale. 
 
 Suddenly a man's hasty step on the shingle made her look 
 up, when, to her infinite dismay, she saw the tall, handsome 
 figure of Valentine Cowley striding over the loose stones and 
 rubble towards her. A letter, still unopened, from him this 
 morning, and now he himself at noon ! What did it mean? 
 and why had he come ? 
 
 He came up to her and held out his hand, as with the 
 other he took off his hat and stood bareheaded in the sun. 
 What a happy smile on his fine face matched the living light 
 of that lustrous sun ! Eeally it was a fine face, if not a 
 beloved one. Even Stella, though she did not love it, was 
 forced to confess its beauty. His lithe young figure looked 
 instinct with life and strength, with the daring of his youth, 
 the confident satisfaction of his present place and future 
 certainties. He was of the kind to whom life and the land 
 belong by nature and inheritance ; of the kind consecrated 
 by fate to take boldly what he meant to hold firmly. 
 
 * Just at this part of my story I read for the first time Mr. Sturgis's 
 pleasant novel. I was painfully struck with a certain coincidence of 
 character and idea in his Hugo Ueane and my own Fred Branscombc; and 
 I make this explanation here to save myself from the charge of plagiarism 
 and to express my keen appreciation of the elder work. 
 
THE LOVERS LEAP. 
 
 As her hand lay in his he drew a breath that waa lit 
 
 joyous interjection. 
 
 "I thought I should* find you down here!" be > 
 
 laughing with simple happiness. This sudden straight dis- 
 
 . good omen. "Had I not a fine instinct?" 
 
 •- . b 3 told me that you had gone down to the 
 
 - - - . and I came here straight as a bird flies — made a 
 
 -line and fell upon you as if I had known already." 
 
 Ua's face stiffened, paled, grew as prim as if she were 
 Hort. nsia in spirit and herself only in form. 
 
 •■ How do you do, Mr. Cowley?" she said coldly, pulling 
 her hand from bis and neither expressing surprise nor 
 offering welcome. 
 
 " Did you not expect me ?" he asked, his spirits dropping 
 to zero. 
 
 •• No," she answered, with the finest little accent of disdain. 
 the question were in itself an impertinence. Why 
 should she have expected him? Why thought of him 
 at all? 
 
 "Did you not receive my letter?" he asked again. " I told 
 you that I was coming to-day. Have you not had a letter 
 from me this morning ? Tou ought. It was posted in right 
 time." 
 
 Stella looked a little confn 
 
 •■ Y s, there was a letter from you," she said. 
 
 " But I told you that I was coming !" persisted Val. 
 
 " I have not read it yet," said Stella in a tone of studied 
 indifference. 
 
 Valentine's fair face flushed with sudden anger. The 
 Blight implied in her words and emphasized by her nut: 
 hit him hard ; and even a man in love is susceptibl 
 he must call an impertinence, though it comes from the 
 beloved. The difference between this and a like offence from 
 another bes in the ease with which be forgives, and the odd 
 transformation of anger into bum ibty and offended dignity 
 into abject entreaty. 
 
 •• I am sorry you find my letters of so little interest that 
 lo not care even to read them," be said. 
 
 "I do not think I ever gave you reae 
 they <lid interest nie so very much!" said Stella in her 
 unpleasant voice and manic 
 
 "Pray give me back my morning's unfortunate epistle — 
 the letter that you have not cared even to "pen — and let me 
 
364 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 destroy it," said Val, the flush still on his face and his voice 
 studiously cold and haughty. 
 
 " I have not got it with me," said Stella, cold and haughty 
 without study. " I left it on the breakfast table ; but you 
 are welcome to destroy it when you go back to the house." 
 
 " Stella !" cried Val impulsively. 
 
 " Mr. Cowley !" returned Stella, indignant at the fami- 
 liarity of the address. 
 
 " I expected a diffei*ent reception from this I must con- 
 fess," said Val, his mood melting and his anger changiug, as 
 it was certain to do. from wrath to sorrow. " I did not think 
 you would receive me so coldly, so cruelly. I expected some 
 kind of welcome from you." 
 
 " Why should you ?" answered Stella quickly. " I never 
 let you suppose that I would welcome you if you came here, 
 Mr. Cowley; — quite the contrary." 
 
 " Your father told me he would be glad if I came, and that 
 you would be glad too," said Valentine. 
 
 " You are papa's friend and he likes you," answered Stella 
 stiffly. " Papa spoke as he felt for himself; but even he has 
 no right to speak for me." 
 
 This was a tremendous bit of self-assertion on the part of 
 the girl who had been born and bred in the faith of filial 
 submission ; but the exigencies of the moment were strong, 
 and she must assert herself if she would not be swamped in 
 the heavy wash where she found herself. 
 
 " Then I am not your friend ?" said Val sorely. 
 
 " You are an acquaintance," said Stella, a little less coldly 
 than before. She hated to give pain even when it was as 
 necessary as now. " I have no young men friends — except 
 Randolph Mackenzie," she added. " I am not the kind of 
 girl to have them." 
 
 " But girls do not keep up a correspondence with acquaint- 
 ances — only acquaintances," said Val with an imprudent 
 accent of reproach in his voice to match the reproach in his 
 heart. 
 
 Stella's eyes, usually so mild and of late so mournful, 
 flashed at this with a sudden blaze of indignation. 
 
 " I was forced to write to you," she said proudly. " Papa 
 wished it. I do not know why, but he did ; and I wrote to 
 please him, because he made me, and not of my own free 
 will." 
 
 " I am sorry that you have been forced into anything so 
 
THE LOVER'S LEAP. 363 
 
 unpleasant against your will," said Valentine Cowley, the 
 
 touchwood of his pride again taking fire. But the fin 
 
 not long-lived, and when he turned away his head something 
 
 moved over his eyes that felt like tears. 
 
 The girl's soft heart smote her. She did not like to see 
 this tall, fine, strong young fellow so suddenly humiliated, so 
 strangely cast dowu and softened. She felt that he had, or 
 thought he had, the right to reproach her as he liked. Hal 
 not Augusta said so? It was no business of his that her 
 father had forced her to write against her will. He had only 
 to do with the fact that she had written, not once, but often. 
 And though her letters were purposely made the deadest, 
 the most soulless, the coldest, the most unintei-esting thin gs 
 in the world ; still they were letters; and he was a young 
 man while she was a girl. 
 
 " I said just now that I was not the kind of girl to have 
 young men friends ; and I am still less the kind to keep up 
 a correspondence with one of my own accord," said Stella, a 
 little less icily than before. 
 
 He recognized the partial thaw in her voice. 
 
 " But you made an exception in my favour ; and will again ?' 
 he asked eagerly. 
 
 She looked up into his face then down on to the sand. 
 
 " No," she said ; " I told papa before I left home that I 
 would not write to you any more." 
 
 " I will try to change that negative into an affirmative. 
 Some day it will come !" said Valentine confidently, hoping 
 all things and believing as much as he hoped because hei 
 voice was softer and her eyes looked down in pity, not up in 
 defiance. All the hopes of love are built out of these small 
 splinters. Not the finest Roman mosaic is composed of such 
 miuute pieces; not the ultimate atom itself is more micro- 
 scopic, more intangible, than the shadowy nothings whic 
 to create that gigantic and omnipotent Love who rules the 
 world and makes of man the ecpual of the gods or the sport of 
 the demons ! 
 
 " No, do not try, you cannot change it," said Stella, just as 
 Augusta and her boy c une to them, laden with slimy treasures 
 and strong smelling "finds" of all sorts and descriptions. 
 
 "When did you come?" cried the widow in her genial 
 glancing with a half-amused, half-anxious air to Stella as if 
 to see how she bore herself and what effect the Budden advent 
 of her father's Admirable Crichton had had on her. 
 
306 "MY LOVE " 
 
 ' ; Just now," said Valentine. 
 
 " It is quite a surprise," said Augusta. " Why did you not 
 give us notice?" 
 
 ''I did," returned Valentine, heroically conquering his pride 
 and swallowing his mortification. " If Miss Branscombe had 
 done me the honour of reading my letter she would have 
 found that I intended to be here by the ten-forty train this 
 morning!" 
 
 "Oh, that naughty, lazy girl ! " cried Augusta pleasantly. 
 "People should always read their letters as soon as they 
 arrive. I believe it was Lord Palmerston who said all letters 
 answered themselves if left long enough; but that is not my 
 way." 
 
 " I wish you would make your way your friend's," said 
 Valentine, with a rueful look to where Stella was strolling 
 away among the rocks with the boy. 
 
 The little fellow could never have enough of anemones and 
 long green slimy ribbons, and thought the dirt and drip of 
 the seaside the most enjoyable part of the business. 
 
 "And I wish," added Val significantly, "that you would 
 stand my friend, Mrs. Latrobe." 
 
 " I do ; I am your friend," answered Augusta also signifi- 
 cantly. " I want to see Stella well married. She would be 
 so much happier and better in every way than she is now, 
 with only that dreadful father of hers to be her companion ! 
 But, frankly, for all her soft manners and sweet-tempered 
 acquiescence in little things, she is exceedingly difficult to 
 influence in graver matters." 
 
 " Time works wonders ; and constant dropping wears away 
 even granite. And she is not granite !" laughed Valentine, 
 with a sudden flush of confidence. 
 
 " But sometimes time only confirms," said the widow, in 
 her character of Justice, holding the balance even, and 
 weighing chances as Avell as merits. 
 
 The tide had turned and was now coming in. Stella and 
 the boy had gone far away to the very border of the waves. 
 It was such fun to run forward a few steps, as if to defy that 
 incoming crest, and then to scamper back as fast as those 
 small feet could run to prevent being overtaken by the water ! 
 And as Stella was essentially good-natured and easy to live 
 with, she let the child enjoy himself in his own way, glad for 
 her own part to be rid of poor Valentine Cowley and his less 
 than welcome attentions. 
 
THE LOVER'S LEAP. 3G7 
 
 were standing on the firm yellow sand, playing 
 with the ineoi . they were being surrounded in 
 
 strange insidious way which characterizes certain sea-o 
 Silently and rapidly they were being cut off from the main- 
 land, and soon were standing on a little island which i 
 
 mailer, while every moment the barrier of 
 intervening waters became wider and deeper. There was as 
 i kind of to life. It was just an unpleasant little 
 
 ; are which carried with it wet feet and a pair of hope- 
 ruined boots. But when Val and Augusta made out 
 utation of which Stella, for want of looking behind her, 
 was entirely ignorant, they rushed over the sands at full 
 ; . — Augusta calling to her boy and Val shouting to 
 
 - la. 
 
 rhere you are, Mrs. Latrobe," then said Valentine. 
 "I will get them through. There is no danger — don't alarm 
 yourself.' 1 
 
 Stella turned at their voices, to find herself with the boy on 
 a mer sand with the waters all round her. and Valen- 
 
 tine Cowley dashing through, over his ankles, even now, while 
 the tide poui-ed in and spread onward almost as swiftly as a 
 iiorse could gallop. 
 
 "Don't move till I come to you!" said Valentine, grateful 
 to Providence for the ch 
 
 How well he looked as he came on in the sunshine, splashing 
 
 through the rat idly risil the kind of action 
 
 becomes a man ami puts him in good humour with 
 
 himself, conscious as he is that he shows well and makes a 
 
 large display at a little cost. Val knew that he looked hand- 
 
 - 'in>' and i d strong and helpful as he went striding 
 through the rising waters to where the girl whom he loved, 
 and the child of whom she had undertaken the care, were 
 standing. He knew that he show, d well, and that h> • 
 laying the foundations for future gratitude. He had i 
 
 I as now ; and he intended to make the 
 of the situation. 
 •" I am so sorry,*' s.i 1 Stella in a humiliated voic 
 how I irned, not in her favour. "I don't 
 
 so stupid and neglectful." 
 •• V >u did not look round," said Valentine with what he 
 I to be a soothing concession ;•> her wounded , 
 
 ■ you through. There is no real 
 ■r at this moment, but there will be if you are not quirk. 
 
368 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Here, you young powder-monkey, do you hold fast up aloft,'' 
 lie continued, with a reminiscence of the Pennefather manner 
 in his voice and action, as he snatched up the boy and set 
 him astride on his shoulders. Then, without losing time in 
 compliment or argument, choosing not to hear Stella's decla- 
 ration that she would walk through on her own feet and 
 despise the wetting that would follow, he took her bodily in 
 his strong young arms ; and in this way carried both her and 
 the child in safety through the waters. It was all done easily 
 and quickly ; for the young fellow was muscular and well- 
 trained in athletics ; and it had the air if not the reality of 
 saving life at his own risk — an air of which, as has been said, 
 he intended to make the most for future use. If he had not 
 been in love and repulsed, he would have been the first to 
 laugh at the whole matter as not worth thanks of any kind. 
 As things were he was not sorry to be able to pose for a 
 hero ; albeit the dangers encountered had been no more for- 
 midable than if a white mouse had set its teeth at him. 
 Tendrils, weak and soft, help to support the heavily-laden 
 vine ; and Val's love could not afford to despise the most in- 
 significant little aid. 
 
 So they walked back to the inn, the young man dripping 
 from his knees downwards and carrying his handsome head 
 like a hero — Augusta his friend and brother for life, seeing 
 that he had preserved her little boy from what might have been 
 indeed dangerous to him — Stella, ashamed and annoyed with 
 herself, her heart set against gratitude and her conscience 
 pulling her towards thankfulness, in a most uncomfortable 
 and distracted state of mind altogether, and with that feeling 
 of slipping down the incline, so terrible to her, yet which 
 Augusta had found anything but terrible not so long ago. 
 Stili, as she was the only unhappy one of the little group, the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number carried the day. 
 
 As they went, Valentine Cowley, too content with life as it 
 was and too certain of himself and hopeful of results to make 
 love in any overt way — rather letting fate and fortune make 
 love for him — turned to Augusta, and not thinking he was 
 touching tender places said in a light and airy way : 
 
 " "Who do you think came in the same train with me from 
 Grange this morning ? Mr. Kemp ! — with the prettiest woman 
 you can imagine — one of those fragile, slender, delicate crea- 
 tures who look made up of clouds and moonbeams, with a 
 pair of soft, brown eyes that went half over her face and tht 
 
COUSIN ETHEL. 369 
 
 test voice I over beard. One of the sweetest," he added, 
 correcting himself; for her melodious voice was one of Stella's 
 " points." " He seemed awfully wrapped up in her, I must 
 -ay," Yal continued with the same hlundering ignorance of 
 depths. "And I don't wonder at it; she was so awfully 
 pretty and awfully good style." 
 
 " Indeed !" said Augusta, with a hard little laugn and her 
 fair face suddenly aflame. "All Highwood seems to have 
 gathered to St. Ann's." 
 
 "By Jove, talk of the Here he is !" cried Valentine, 
 
 as Sandro Kemp, carrying a shawl, a camp-stool, a white 
 urnhrella, an olive-wood folding-footstool, an artist's port- 
 folio, and bearing on his arm a tall, graceful, diaphanous- 
 looking woman, came out of the hotel door just as Augusta 
 and the others drew up, and thus met the little party face to 
 face. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 COUSIN ETHEL. 
 
 Saxdro's first impulse was to make a movement of glad 
 surprise towards that fair, false, morally perjured woman — 
 his first mental process was a swift suppression of all the 
 pain and wrath which had possessed him since those cruel 
 words of undeserved insult, that heartless abandonment of 
 their pleasant friendship. His next was a return to his now 
 normal attitude of wounded pride and outraged affection, and 
 that bitter assumption of indifference by which we attempt to 
 master our pain, and by which instead of concealing it we 
 show it. 
 
 As coldly as if this were nothing but a chance meeting 
 between two mere acquaintances, Sandru Kemp lifted his soft 
 felt hat to Augusta and her party. He would have passed on 
 / .- i t b. the pretty woman and all her b lnngings on his arm, 
 had not Tony rushed at him, after the manner of a child who 
 knows nothing of the meaning of things, and who would not 
 te to make mud-pies out of Mecca clay, nor to take 
 cockshies at sacred symbols. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Kemp, where have you been away to ?" he said, 
 jumping about him like a little dog. " I have been ill ; and 
 irraiidmamma gave me some jelly one night in a spoon ; and 
 Shah killed a robin redbreast in the snow ; and the river was 
 
 2b 
 
370 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 frozen — that bit where you made mamma cry," he added with 
 a suddenly serious face. 
 
 Doubt as to the propriety of his own joy at this unexpected 
 meeting with one who had dealt so evilly by mamma came 
 visibly into his clear eyes, his drawn mouth ; but his mother 
 smiled at him and then at their friend in an amiable and 
 inane way; and her smile reassured the child. 
 
 " Why, Tony, do you remember me, little man ?" said 
 Sandro, flushing with pleasure. 
 
 He looked from the child to the mother — from the eloquent 
 little face, bright and beaming, to that vague mask of inane 
 amiability. 
 
 " It would have been odd if he had forgotten you," said 
 Augusta, with perfect tranquillity of voice and manner and a 
 very audacity of forgetfulness, such as the French would 
 have characterized as sublime. 
 
 But then this was essentially Augusta's way. When she 
 chose she could make herself like a smooth palimpsest newly 
 prepared for fresh inscriptions and with all the old lettering 
 seemingly obliterated for ever. To see and hear her at these 
 times no one could believe that anything bad ever gone before 
 — that the history of a life lay hidden beneath the waxen sur- 
 face, the blank serenity, of the moment. As now ; no one 
 could have imagined by her manner that a thought had ever 
 connected her future with Sandro Kemp — that a tear had 
 ever come into her eyes because of the pain of renunciation — 
 that the strong wing of passion had ever swept over her as 
 she stood midway, baiting for a moment, between duty and 
 inclination — that the darkness of despair had ever fallen 
 about her like a cloud because of the cruelty of fate which 
 denied what she desired. She met him as if they had parted 
 yesterday, and as if nothing had ever been between them 
 more than a dance, a flower, a merry jest, a careless laugh. 
 Not the keenest onlooker could discern the faintest shadow 
 of feeling in her face, of embaiTassment in her manner. Not 
 even Stella, who knew something, could divine more ; while 
 Sandro himself felt bewildered, and as if he had somehow lost 
 his way. He was like a, man who, wandering among path- 
 less crags and over arid wastes, suddenly finds himself at 
 home, brought thither, as it seems to him, by some act of 
 enchantment as inexplicable as delightful. Had he been a 
 coward ? or what did it all mean '? Was she playing with him 
 now ? or had she been compelled to wound him then ? 
 
COUSIH ETHEL. 371 
 
 "You have been away such a long time, Mr. Kemp, it 
 is quite delightful * you again !" then said Stella, as 
 
 a to the odd if pleasant confusion of the 
 mon. 
 
 Her voice and manner were kind to exaggeration ; for she 
 
 I not on! I as shield-bearer to Augusta, but to 
 
 admin i4 kind of cold douche to poor Valentine which 
 
 sta in showing extreme warmth to one who is confessedly 
 
 rent, in contrast to the chill reserve just shown another 
 
 who is confessedly makin_ efforts to win favour. It is the 
 
 '•high light" by which the whole picture takes its tone and 
 
 receives i 
 
 Sandro turned to her with a smile. Here at least was no 
 deception. Stella Branscombe had no reason to mislead him. 
 What she said was all sincere, true, hearty ; and her kindness 
 might be accepted as confidingly as it was offered generously, 
 is the common judgment of the world such as it is — that 
 judgment which each man believes so infallible wh 
 forms it ! 
 
 The tall, graceful, diaphanous kind of woman, who as 
 Valentine had said, seemed to be made up of clouds and 
 moonbeams, opened her big eyes and looked at Stella 
 
 : surprise. How odd this flattering manner from a girl 
 
 gentleman ! she thought. In her own life she was accus- 
 
 tomeu to have men about her as her slaves, nut to make 
 
 If their incense- bearer ! But here was a girl who said 
 
 . unmarried man how delightful it was to see him i 
 
 and how long it was since they had met, in a voice which 
 
 ■d equivalent to a caress — which was tantamount to 
 
 og herself at his head! What wretched style ! What 
 
 manners ! That elder woman was a little better. 
 
 • was non" of this milkmaid exuberance about her; but 
 
 really if this girl intended to go on as she had begun, this 
 
 trn at St. Ann's, so necessary for health and strength, 
 
 . : - . unp] -ant. 
 
 die Sandro's companion had been thinking all this m 
 
 wn mind, Augusta had been taking mental stock of her. 
 
 - she, this tall, eminently graceful and poe tiolooking 
 
 i She was very beautiful ; but it was a pity that she 
 
 up so much. She was not quite in her first youth, 
 
 ,'h her veil, thanks to powder and paint, to antimony 
 
 roun ; 9 and to artful touches everywhere, she seemed 
 
 to have the colouring of sixteen ; and her figure, of that 
 
372 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 slender and sinuous kind which retains its early forms far 
 into the other half of maturity, helped the general delusion. 
 She was dressed in the extreme of the prevailing fashion. 
 Her gown was as if moulded on her like a second skin, and 
 her skirts were tied back with so much vigour that she could 
 only walk by plaiting her feet one before the other. Her hat 
 was a marvel of picturesque assimilation ; and beneath the 
 feathers, which seemed almost part of her head-gear as 
 nature had made it, her gold-coloured hair shone in the sun 
 like a much-frizzed nimbus — owing the chief part of its glory 
 to auricomous fluid and soda washes. Her small feet were 
 shod in coquettish boots mounted on narrow heels like minia- 
 ture stilts ; her six-buttoned gloves were of the palest grey ; 
 and the bracelets, multitudinous bangles, broad dog-collar, 
 earrings and brooch, with which she was in a sense armour- 
 plated, were of the finest kind of Indian jewellery. Her face 
 was delicately modelled ; her style went to simulate more 
 fragility of health than was true ; and she had the air of one 
 accustomed to command, accustomed to be ministered to, and, 
 beyond all things, used to the homage and admiration of men. 
 And again Augusta wondered how Sandro Kemp, of all men, 
 had come into toils like these, and how be — the lover par ex- 
 cellence of truth and simplicity — should be standing there 
 with this graceful piece of elegant make-up leaning as it 
 seemed to her triumphantly on his arm. 
 
 Suddenly the artist seemed to remember his companion 
 and their joint position. 
 
 " Ethel," he said to her very courteously ; " let me introduce 
 you to Mrs. Latrobe and Miss Branscombe." To Augusta 
 he said, as if with emphasis : " My cousin, Mrs. White." 
 Then he looked at Stella. " Mrs. White has just come from 
 India," he said smiling. " I believe she knows some friends 
 of ours out there — Mr. Cyril Ponsonby." 
 
 It was now Stella's turn to feel the ground unsteady 
 beneath her tread. Here before her stood the cause of some, 
 if not of all, her sufferings— that Mrs. White to whom the 
 Pennefathers had said her own true Love had turned the 
 once sacred current of his affections ! This woman, painted, 
 artificial, made-up and dangerous — the cause for which she, 
 Stella, had been banished so effectually from his life — 
 was now looking into her face, bowing, smiling, speaking as 
 any other might have done ! 
 
 " I have heard of Miss Branscombe," said Mrs. White in a 
 
COUSIN ETHEL. 373 
 
 s weet flute-like voice-, with a pretty little catch that just 
 escaped being a lisp. 
 
 Stella made a slight movement with her head. Had her 
 life depended on it she could not have spoken. 
 
 " I used to see a good deal of Mr. Ponsonby," Mrs. White 
 went on to say in her soft way. " We got to be quite friends. 
 He is such a pleasant person ; and my husband liked him so 
 much." 
 
 •• We heard of your kindness to him," said Augusta, coming 
 to Stella's rescue, as just now Stella had come to hers by 
 emphasizing her greeting to Sandro Kemp. 
 
 " Oh ! I cannot speak about kindness," said Mrs. White 
 with a tender kind of smile. " In India we are all kind to 
 each other. We are like one family, you know, and have less 
 stillness than you in this cold England of yours." 
 
 She was an Englishwoman herself, but part of the furni- 
 ture of her personality was the affectation of foreign ways 
 and corresponding strangeness to all belonging to the old 
 home. She even spoke with a certain broken-backed little 
 accent, as if her native tongue had been learned abroad — 
 muking her vowels very open, pronouncing her small words 
 with punctilious breadth, and giving each syllable with com- 
 mendable distinctness. 
 
 " He ; .s a very nice fellow," said Augusta with vague amia- 
 bility; and Ethel White, looking at Stella, smiled again and 
 said : " Very," as the echo. 
 
 All this time Valentine had been standing essentially shut 
 out from the rest. He had not been introduced to the grace- 
 ful woman of whose advent he had been the herald ; and for 
 the moment he was effac id. Wet from the knees downward 
 and set aside, he was conscious of appearing ridiculous for the 
 one part, and of playing a very humiliating chord on the 
 second fiddle for the other. He was sore at heart, wounded 
 in his pride, and furious against that vague mischance, thai 
 shadowy foe, called Fate. Was there ever such an unlucky 
 coincidence ! — just when he had founded such an undeniable 
 claim to Stella's gratitude, and put their relations on so much 
 better a footing — built up such a pleasant little temple where 
 Love was at once the architect and the enclosed god — to 
 have everything blown about his ears by this inopportune 
 meeting ! 
 
 He stood then', his blood boiling as the name of Cyril 
 Ponsonbv was bandied about from one to the other. He saw 
 
374 "MY LOVEl" 
 
 how pale Stella had become when the name of her reported 
 rival had been uttered, and how her eyes had suddenly filled 
 with memories of her old Love as patently shown as if pictures 
 had been painted on the dilated pupils — as if words had been 
 printed on the darkened iris. It was too bard a trial for his 
 philosophy to bear with equanimity. He was not disposed at 
 any time to bear trials with equanimity, more especially 
 those which touched his young man's pride ; and now the 
 fever of his wrath burnt like fire in his veins, and expressed 
 itself on his face and bearing as plainly as those memories of 
 Cyril had written themselves in Stella's eyes. 
 
 But he was not going to give up his hope, to abandon the 
 field. He would wrestle with the shadowy rival, this haunt- 
 ing memory, as Jacob wrestled with the angel. And perhaps 
 he would overthrow him. The Kingdom of Heaven is won 
 by much seeking ; and Val was pertinacious when he had 
 made up his mind and until that mind changed of itself, as it 
 was apt to do. The very difficulties in his way made the 
 struggle more enthralling and the hops of attainment all the 
 sweeter; and — " les absents ont toujours tort." He was 
 present, and Cyril was hundreds of miles away. He could 
 perform gallant actions which stood out firm and solid as 
 triumphant facts, while his rival lived only in the misty 
 atmosphere of memory. On the whole his place might have 
 been more untenable than it was ; and he thought he saw 
 daylight. 
 
 Tired of being thus effaced, thinking that Sandro had 
 behaved with impertinent neglect in not introducing him to 
 his cousin and feeling very uncomfortable about those well- 
 shaped lower limbs of his, Valentine turned to Augusta with 
 his off-hand, easy air. 
 
 " I think I will go in now, Mrs. Latrobe," he said. " I 
 am rather dilapidated, and must put myself into dry clothes." 
 
 A deep colour came into his fair, handsome face, as he 
 looked down on his stained and cWpping garments, not sorry 
 to recall to Stella's mind his heroic deed of half an hour ago, 
 and thinking it hard to have got wet, spoiled his get-up, and 
 then to be shunted as he had been. 
 
 " Yes, do. Indeed you should have gone before," said 
 Augusta eageidy. " What a thoughtless thing to do, stand- 
 lig there so wet as you are ! We shall have you down with 
 rheumatic fever next." 
 
 " Do go in and change, Mr. Cowley," said Stella, humanity 
 
COUSIN ETHEL. 575 
 
 nice. " We should not have let you stand 
 
 ite." 
 
 •ntine looked radiant as Stella spoke. It was a little 
 
 that she should pub] ow so much interest 
 
 in him — a little balm to his won: le that she should 
 
 Cyril Ponsonby's intimate 
 brightened as if the sun had passed 
 
 uddei bri 'itness gave a tolerably correct map of the 
 
 country to pretty Mrs. White. In all that related to love 
 
 1 the whole art and mystery of flirtation, she had 
 
 hawk behind those large lustrous eyes of hers. 
 
 Mrs. Morshead herself was not more an adept in the science 
 
 of building up an entire temple out of one brick, of construct- 
 
 creature out of one bone, than was Ethel 
 
 Whi usin from India. Here before her was 
 
 ■k — at her feet a hone : and she made the most of both. 
 
 " Where shall you be in half an hour's time. Mrs. Latrobe ?" 
 
 then asked Valentine. 
 
 in the prosaic act of dining," said Augusta 
 with a smile. "Wehav arly on account of tin 
 
 and r with shrimp., and marmalade is not so bad. 
 
 And you ':*" 
 
 '• I shall join you when you have finished dinner, if you will 
 r me," said Valentine, purposely not looking at Stella. 
 
 Augusta, an ' - prayed her to say 
 
 "N< ." But A ad her own idea of things ; and when 
 
 she bad an idea sb kepi 'it pretty closely. She 
 
 liked Valentine Cowley ; and she too 1 elieved in the value of 
 lacity, tb . and the disintegrating in- 
 
 flui D 
 
 ' Y ■■ do c ■ -iid cenially. "It is such a delight- 
 
 ful day. we might make a little excursion this afternoon. It 
 would !>• • if you came with a 
 
 v. That will do well," said Valentine. "At 
 what tin.' 
 
 " Three," said Augusta. • : jo in and get rid of your 
 
 " 
 Ethel V. 1 at Sandro. 
 
 "It would be very nice for us to go somewhere too this 
 i in her pretty graceful way, showing 
 :e with Auguflta and her party. "I) 
 jron think we c 
 
376 " MY LOVE!" 
 
 "Certainly; nothing is easier if you would like it," he 
 answered. 
 
 " Shall we join in one party ?" then said Ethel, addressing- 
 Augusta as easily and amicably as if they had been friends for 
 a generation. 
 
 Perhaps this was part of that frank hospitality, that oecu- 
 menical friendliness, for which Anglo-Indians are famous. 
 Certainly the proposal seemed to come quite naturally, with- 
 out design, premeditation or hidden meaning of any kind. 
 It would be pleasanter to go in a body than in two scattered 
 and meagre detachments ; and, being pleasant, Sandro's 
 cousin said so, and offered that sudden coalescence as the 
 most natural thing in the world. The faint pink tinge for 
 which she was famous came into the widow's fair face. She 
 put on her waxen mask, smiled with inane amiability and 
 looked perseveringly at Stella. 
 
 " It will be very pleasant," she said with an affected little 
 drawl. " What do you say, Stella?" 
 
 " Yes ; it will be very pleasant," echoed Stella, divided 
 between her instinctive shrinking from Mrs. White, Cyril's 
 favourite friend, and her desire to be separated by " people" 
 from Valentine Cowley. 
 
 And Valentine himself, though he detested the proposition, 
 could scarcely negative the decision of the others. 
 
 Sandro Kemp did not speak. He simply turned his grave, 
 kind eyes on Augusta, a little wonder, a little speculation and 
 more sorrow, more inquiry in them than he himself knew of. 
 But the engagement held good ; and at three the break came 
 round and they all went off together. 
 
 They had a charming drive. The country was beautiful j 
 the old castle which they went to see was interesting ; the 
 day was perfect ; and no accident of any kind happened to 
 mar the enjoyment which each was supposed to feel. They 
 all kept very close together ; and every one but Val and Tony 
 seemed determined to resist all attempts at separation from 
 the main body, and to resolutely decline that dangerous 
 " solitude a deux" which more than one had reason to fear 
 and from which no one had great cause to hope. Sandro 
 was naturally his cousin's bodyguard ; and to be Ethel 
 White's bodyguard was no sinecure and left but little margin 
 of freedom for aught else. Stella clung to Augusta as if her 
 very life depended on keeping tight hold of that firm round 
 arm. She was not to be tempted away by all Val's invita- 
 
THE CRIMSON BARS OF EVENING. 377 
 
 tiona to mount this bit of broken wall for the sake of the 
 view — to come with him to that angle oflhe ruined court for 
 sake of architectural effects. She clung to Augusta like 
 a child; and like a child Augusta took care of her. For her 
 own part, the fair widow talked amiably to Ethel White ; and 
 Sandro kept silence. The Pennefathers would have called 
 him as dull as old boots, but Augusta did not. For once or 
 twice their eves met ; and when they did, it was to her as if 
 his had audibly asked her a question, to which she took care 
 to make no reply. So the afternoon passed and with the 
 evening they all came home. But nothing had been done to 
 advance the various dramas holding the stage save the intro- 
 duction into the circle of Ethel White, Cyril's chosen friend 
 in India and Sandro Kemp's favourite cousin, and the easy 
 manner in which she had established herself as an old friend 
 among them all. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 THE CKIMSON BARS OF EVENING. 
 
 To a married woman living in India, a train of admirers 
 comes as naturally as a train of servants. Why should she 
 not be adored ? It does the dear boys good to come about 
 her bungalow like so many tame rabbits ; and it keeps them 
 straight to have a friend like herself, maternal and admonitory 
 if she be their junior and exceptionally pretty — their frank 
 playfellow and younger sister if older than they and only 
 comely or maybe commonplace. And if it does them good 
 it does her no harm, and it makes her husband a little more 
 on the alert, a little more careful to keep what he has got, 
 than English husbands are in general. Without question, a 
 train of adorers is a very pleasant addition to the social 
 appanage of a young wife in India ; and to do her justice sh ■ 
 seldom stints herself in the strength of her following. 
 
 But what comes so naturally to her and the dear boys who 
 1 round her in the compound and run in and out her 
 bungalow like so many tame rabbits on the hunt for parslej , 
 is a state of things quite foreign to the life at home. It 
 takes a certain education before a young Englishman of 
 ordinarily healthy morality and ordinarily honourable train- 
 ing can bring himself to make love to a married woman, 
 whether her husband be bis friend or no. And it soon 
 
378 "MY LOVE. i» 
 
 became evident to Ethel White that no happy hunting- 
 grounds were open'to her here, and that she must he content 
 to feel herself distanced by Stella, and shut out all round. 
 This handsome young fellow, this Valentine Cowley, did not 
 attempt to take up the glove thrown down by her expressive 
 eyes. Neither during that drive, nor after it, did he advance 
 one step towards that mental condition which the Doves were 
 wont to localize under the name of " Spooney Green." He 
 bad eyes only for Stella, and the attentions which he paid to 
 her, Ethel White, were of the coldest and most perfunctory 
 hind. How different from the devotion she was accustomed 
 to receive in that much-abused land of punkahs and rupees ! 
 There she was supreme ; here she was nobody — distanced by 
 a little country girl without style or furniture, and who had 
 already a lien on another ! 
 
 Really this sojourn at St. Ann's threatened to be horribly 
 slow. Ethel wished now that she had remained with her 
 husband's stiff old aunt, instead of breaking loose after a 
 week's stay and one fit of hysterics. She would not have 
 been duller there than it was evident she would be here ; 
 ■and she would have pleased her husband and won golden 
 opinions from his very stupid family — which was always 
 something gained. Now, subordinate to Stella Branscombe 
 with this handsome Mr. Cowley ; knowing that there had 
 been an affair between her and Cyril Ponsonby on whom she 
 had expended a large amount of useless powder and shot; 
 and her cousin Sandro somewhat odd in his manner to this 
 Mrs. Latrobe — who yet was nice enough in her own way — 
 it all was really too horrid ; and no wonder she did not like it. 
 
 Her secret dissatisfaction however, showed itself only in 
 increased friendship to the women and more and more 
 delightfulness of gracious queenhood to the men — in taking 
 her place among them all, as if born into it and corning now 
 frankly into her inheritance — and in practically assuming 
 the headship of everything and making every one subservient 
 to her will, while professing only sweet submission to the vote 
 of the majority. It was only her wretched health, her stupid 
 weakness which was in the way at times. She was so sorry ; 
 but she could not help it, could she ? And how she envied the 
 great strong robustness of both Mrs. Latrobe and Miss Brans- 
 combe ! If only she could be as strong ! 
 
 Her manner all through was perfect. Indeed, she was 
 famous for her manner throughout the Presidency. She had 
 
THE CRIMSON BARS OF EVENING. 370 
 
 never yet met the man — gave Cyril Ponsonby — whom sb 
 not m - : — and 0; - in some sense her 
 
 •the pattern that she had de- 
 
 And she had never met the woman whom she had 
 
 to secure as an active friend or an innocuous neutral. 
 
 She ^ ad she knew it ; the finest flower of the 
 
 [lilv-root of woman grown by this nineteenth-century 
 
 civilization. 1 U this grace and dignity combined, 
 
 -trict in her views on morality and social 
 
 ;.ble on the score of orthodoxy and ritual; 
 
 and her m iration for her husband was only equalled 
 
 by the philosophy with which she bore their separations — 
 
 were frequent. She spoke very much against women 
 
 who laced ti^ht, flirted in public, were suspected of rouge 
 
 and did not live happily with their husbands. Hence, she 
 
 ::iinently safe both as a maternal Mend for young men 
 
 rly companion for gi 
 
 The first day of the cousins' arrival passed without other 
 
 incident than this coalescence of forces in the drive — this odd 
 
 : ng together like so many swarming bees, when at the 
 
 castle. Neither Augusta nor Stella " showed" in the later 
 
 evening; and Valentine mooned among the rocks alone and 
 
 wondered what his best plan really was — whether he si 
 
 make Stella a plain, straight "her as things stood, or 
 
 work away a little longer at that sapping and mining which 
 
 ;>rove successful in the end. When 
 
 Ethel and Sandrow nt out for that evening stroll on the 
 
 sands which comes in as pan of the seaside duties, they 
 
 saw the young fellow sta gainst the sunset sky, L 
 
 ry hands i much as if he would b I 
 
 r fox a nice little talk with a pretty woman who m 
 
 art of judicious Btirring up. But he did not 
 .nice. With one quick look to maki 
 that Stella was nowhere pinned to the diaphanous woi 
 
 . he Lifted his hat and let the c s on, 
 
 while he continued to stare at the sands and the sky in 
 
 alternate fluctuations of imbec air and irrational 
 
 He was very much disappointed and very much dis- 
 
 L he did not _ flung 
 
 of this diaphanous-looking woman. 
 
 ie— only fox her! And, 
 
 ,._ her, neither youth nor health, neither the present 
 
 . 
 
380 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 "What a rude young man that Valentine Cowley is!" said 
 Ethel pettishly, breaking into the midst of her cousin Sandro's 
 artistic raptures about the sunset. 
 
 " Val Cowley? Oh, he is well enough!" said Sandro 
 kindly. 
 
 " Cousin Sandro, you are a great goose," said Ethel with 
 charming insolence. " You never did understand anything, 
 except your paint-box ; and you never will. You are just a 
 child." 
 
 " I am sorry, dear," he began penitently. 
 
 " What is the use of being sorry ?" she interrupted crossly. 
 " That does not make you any wiser. What is the good for in- 
 stance of all this rubbish about the sunset, when I am cold and 
 tired ? All that you say is great nonsense. This vile English 
 climate of yours is horrid. And as for your stupid skies and 
 things, they are nothing compared to ours. I have seen far 
 finer sunsets than this ; and it makes my eyes ache to look 
 at it. Let us go in. I want to go to bed." 
 
 " I am sorry you are tired, dear," said Sandro again 
 very kindly. " I am afraid I have made you do too much." 
 
 "I am so delicate," said Ethel with a sigh. "I am so 
 sensitive to climate and fatigue and everything of thai kind. 
 I am not like these great English milkmaids of yours — this 
 Augusta Latrobe and Stella Branscombe. They look to me 
 like grenadiers in petticoats — great, strong, coarse things ! 
 I am a mimosa ; and they are great, square, tough-skinned 
 oaks !" 
 
 " Oh !" said Sandro a little disconcerted. " But I am very 
 sorry you are tired, Ethel. Perhaps I have made you do too 
 much. I must take more care of you another time." 
 
 " Oh, you cannot take care of any one !" said Ethel rudely. 
 " You are nothing but a stupid moony old artist. So good 
 night, and try and get a little more sense if you can. It 
 would not be to your disadvantage." 
 
 Saying which, she raised her big eyes to Sandro with a look 
 that was substantially a caress, while she openly yawned in 
 his face. 
 
 For all that, she had an irresistible manner, and was 
 famous for her power of fascinating and conciliating women — 
 even the women whom she dispossessed. 
 
 "How very glad I was to see Mr. Kemp again!" said 
 Stella the next morning. " Were you glad too, Augusta ?" 
 she asked earnestly,* 
 
THE CRIMSON BARS OF EVENING, 381 
 
 "Was I?" returned Augusta, with a heightened colour 
 and a forced laugh, " TLuit is rather what lawyers call a 
 leading question, Stella mia. Yes and no. For somethings 
 [ was very glad; for others I do not know what to say!" 
 
 "But which is most — your pleasure or your doubt?" the 
 girl asked again. 
 
 " Come ! come ! remonstrated Augusta, still laughing in the 
 same forced manner as before ; " who made you my inquisitor, 
 young lady? Why should I confess to you?" 
 
 " Because I love you, and am your friend," said Stella. 
 M And do not laugh, Augusta ; I am so much in earnest !" 
 
 •• Well, I will be in earnest, too," said Augusta, suddenly 
 tiing serious. " I am more glad than sorry. I shall be 
 much more glad if " 
 
 She stopped, looking out of the window in a hesitating, 
 half-bashful way. 
 
 " If what, Augusta ?" 
 
 " If I find that he has forgiven me a terrible wrong which I 
 was forced to do him some time since, and that he likes me as 
 much as he used to do ;" said Augusta, making a little move- 
 ment with her hands as if she had flung down something on 
 the table. 
 
 " Then you do really love him ! I never felt quite sure 
 whether it was fancy or real love !" cried Stella, going up to 
 her and kissing her w T ith that odd impulse of sympathy which 
 one woman feels for the love affairs of another. 
 
 " I like him as much as I did — as much, perhaps, as I could 
 like any one," said that disappointing Augusta, with a return 
 to her old cautious and more natural attitude. 
 
 " Well enough to marry him?" asked Stella. 
 
 " Shall I wait till he asks me before I answer that ques- 
 tion?'' answered Augusta coldly; and the girl shrank back, 
 feeling Bnubbed and rebuked. 
 
 " If ever I marry again," Augusta went on to say quietly ; 
 " it will be to a man aide to support me well and to assure my 
 boy's future. VA<>\ be assured, little girl, I never shall !" 
 
 "What an extraordinary woman you are!" said 81 
 almost as if in soliloquy. "You are unlike any one I ever 
 saw before." 
 
 " How ? and why?" asked the widow. 
 
 " Such a strange mixture of reserve and frankness— of high 
 principle and such dreadful worldliness !" answered Stella. 
 
 " Because I have common sense, and act upon it. What 
 
382 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 kind of mother should I be if I doomed my child to poverty 
 and disinheritance that I might make a fool's paradise for 
 myself with a poor man ? It is both wiser and better philo- 
 sophy to bear patiently all the troubles which beset me at 
 home, when I can not do better for him by leaving them. If 
 I could improve, or keep his position even with what it is 
 now, I would marry — any one I cared for — if he asked me ; 
 but only on consideration that Tony's future was not com- 
 promised." 
 
 Augusta spoke as calmly as if she had been speaking of 
 parallelograms and rhomboids rather than the living impulses 
 of love, the emotional forces of a life. 
 
 " Still it is strange to hear you discuss it all so coolly," said 
 Stella, far from being satisfied and as far from being con- 
 vinced. 
 
 She knew what it was to sacrifice love for duty in her own 
 life ; but this kind of frigid calculation, this even balancing 
 of accounts and relative values, was another matter alto- 
 gether. 
 
 " If you did not want to hear the true truth, you should not 
 have questioned me," said Augusta. 
 
 " I did want to hear the true truth," returned Stella. 
 
 The widow shook her head, half seriously, half playfully. 
 
 " I tell you what it is, Stella mia," she answered ; " you 
 are like all the rest ; you want to hear only what pleases you 
 and what suits your own ideas ; — not things as they are, but 
 things as they should be." 
 
 " If one loves any one one wants them to be perfect," said 
 Stella, her grammar false, her sentiment true. 
 
 " And this confession of mine that I would not marry a 
 poor man, even if I loved him, and that I would marry a rich 
 one with only a moderate amount of affection, seems to you 
 very imperfect, does it?" said Augusta. 
 
 " It seems too cold and calculating," repeated Stella. 
 
 " That is just what it is," Augusta exclaimed with a smile. 
 " And I defend it on the ground that to be cold and calculat- 
 ing — that is, cool-headed and rational — is to be wise, when 
 the contrary is foolish." 
 
 " It is not having much romance in one's life," said Stella. 
 
 " Certainly not ; but then you know I pride myself on not 
 being romantic," said Augusta with exasperating tranquillity. 
 " And, Stella mia, the best thing that you could do would be 
 to follow my advice in this, and marry where the conditions 
 
THE CRIMSON BARS OF EVENING. 
 
 Mr, without bothering yourself too much \ 
 love. That woui ts I said before." 
 
 " N( vir!" answered Stella. 
 
 Aj Bhe said this the door opened and the servant admitted 
 Valentine Cowley. And when he had hidden them smilingly 
 "Good morning," asked after the health of each as anxiously 
 as if there had been cause for doubt, inquired, -with almost 
 paternal inter, Tonv was and how he did, and then 
 
 disposed of his fine person on a chair, Stella got up from her 
 aid quietly left the room. 
 
 •■ I that Mass Branscombe positively hates me!" 
 
 \";il, stung to wrathful exaggeration as Stella disapp 
 . the doorway and left him to the widow. 
 
 is too gentle to hate any one, even if she had 
 i,"' said Augusta quietly. " And she has no reason, that 
 I know of, even to dislike, still less to hate, you." 
 
 " She does, reason or not. And I am sure I do not knew 
 what I have ever done to make her dislike me so much," said 
 Val still hotly. 
 
 Augusta looked up. Her calm face betrayed the faintest 
 little inclination to si 1 in her qui s1 eyes was something 
 
 that looked very much like a mischievous little twinkle. 
 
 '"Don't you think you follow her up a little too openly?" 
 she said, with c immendable demureness. " I think she 
 a little frightened, and as if she did not know what was 
 coining □ -xt. She is not a girl who cares for the admiration 
 of men ; and I think if I were you I would be more reserved 
 and not show my hand quite pi nly." 
 
 "I cannot help it!" said Valentine. "I do admire her, 
 
 Mrs. hat; than 1 have admired any girl in my life. 
 
 She is Suprem ; m\ highest idea of a woman. Were I an 
 
 L would paint trans 'ombe as Dante's Beatrice." 
 
 •• You mean | rately in love with 
 
 her," said Augusta quietly. 
 
 " Perhaps I am," he answered with a deep blush, making a 
 feint to be uncertain. 
 
 " Tou know you are," said Augusta. " We all know it — 
 Stella too, if she would but own it." 
 
 "Then, it' she dot - its me cruelly," he said in much 
 
 agitation. 
 
 "Why? Would you have her give you false hopes?"' 
 asked the widow. 
 
 '• Why should they be Ealse?" pleaded Val. 
 
384 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " Who can control these things ?" she said. " If Stella saw 
 with my eyes matters would be very different." 
 
 "Then you are still my friend!" he cried in a voice of 
 triumph. 
 
 He could not have used a more jocund tone had she 
 promised him an earldom and given him a fortune. 
 
 " Undoubtedly," she said in her quiet way. " I have 
 always told you so. I despise Mr. Branscombe so much that 
 I would give worlds to see Stella freed from him. She is 
 unhappy as it is at home — she would be more unhappy still if 
 she knew all !" 
 
 " Ah, I see," said Val, holding up his head. " I am only 
 a pis-aller even to you ! You would have her take me to 
 escape from her father ; — not because she loved me — not 
 because I love her and am worthy of her love." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Cowley," said the widow smiling ; " I am 
 one of those cold-blooded creatures who think that love is 
 only one of the ingredients in marriage. We want so much 
 else ! I would not counsel what even I should call a good 
 marriage where there was decided dislike ; but provided there 
 is harmony of taste, mutual respect and no pronounced aver- 
 sion, I think a well-arranged marriage, without any great 
 amount of love, has as much chance of turning out happily 
 as one with. You know as well as I that Stella was engaged 
 to Cyril Ponsonby ; and you can see as well as I that she has 
 not quite got over her disappointment even yet. I should be 
 very glad if you could make her forget him, as there seems no 
 chance of that affair coming on again ; but " 
 
 " But you would prefer Mr. Ponsonby ?" interrupted Val 
 with sarcastic fury. 
 
 " Of course I should !" she answered. " Failing him " 
 
 " You would back me ?" was his second interruption, as 
 sarcastic and furious as the former. 
 
 " Certainly. You are a very nice fellow ; you love her ; 
 you have enough now, and will have a splendid position when 
 vour father dies. I think it would be a charming marriage," 
 said Augusta with maddening coolness. 
 
 " You flatter me !" said Val, the " risus sardonicus" con- 
 torting his face. 
 
 " Oh ! I have always been your advocate since the marriage 
 with Cyril Ponsonby was broken off," said Augusta simply. 
 
 And here the conversation ended abruptly; for Sandra 
 
THE CRIMSON BARS OF EVENING. 3S5 
 
 Kemp ami Ethel White came in to make one of those formal 
 aong people who, living in the same place and 
 doing the same things at the same hours, see each other tw<> 
 or thri ■■ times a day but feel hound all the same to pay formal 
 uh other- . as if they lived miles apart and 
 
 met only by chance once a month in general society. 
 
 The time at St. Ann's passed pleasantly enough for all con- 
 cerned if we except Stella, whose pleasure was of a more 
 intermittent kind than the others fouud theirs to be. The 
 facilities of meeting were many and liberally utilized, and the 
 five friends were, in a manner, inseparable. Still they clung 
 together like five roses in a bunch, and private interviews 
 between any two were of the things which were not. Mrs. 
 White was always the centre, and the rest hung about her as 
 bees round their queen. She had taken a great fancy to 
 Stella, whom she treated as a younger sister needing careful 
 chaperonage — and having it ; Val was to her as a younger 
 brother, she said — "just what Cyril Ponsonby used to be to 
 me !" she used to add in her sweet, languid way — fetching, 
 carrying, meandering about her all day long in concert with 
 cousin Sandro ; and Augusta Latrobe was her confidante and 
 never let out of sight. Thus it came about that no private 
 interviews were possible where Ethel White was queen, and 
 Sandro and Augusta looked at each other across the space 
 that divided them — looked and longed and nothing more ! 
 
 The evening promised to give one of those absolutely perfect 
 sunsets which sometimes at the seaside make a life an acted 
 ■ if poetry and the earth a very paradise of beauty. The 
 wide dome was like one large opal, marked here and there 
 with narrow crimson bars where the light airless clouds caught 
 th' r 'dness of the sinking sun; but save these forestanding 
 bars the whole dome was of resplendent purity, as bright and 
 tender in its p in the gold of the west to the purple of 
 
 the east, as if this strong North Sea were the lagoons of Venice 
 or the waters of the Mediterranean. All the visitors at St. 
 Ann's had turned out on to the sands to watch the final de- 
 cline of the sun ; and among the rest were the five friends : — 
 Ethel dressed as if fur a opera-house where she might 
 
 wear her bonnet, and with the paint and powder well con- 
 L beneath her tightly-drawn white tulle veil. Natundlv 
 they all met on the Minds; and as naturally when they had 
 mei they did not separate. 
 
 Ethel, giving cousin Sandro her folding- seat, her olive-wood 
 
 2 c 
 
386 "JUT LOVE!" 
 
 footstool and her umbrella, asked Val to carry her shawl. She 
 then took Stella's arm as her aid ; thus placing herself between 
 the girl and the man who loved her. Augusta was on Stella's 
 other side ; Sandro was walking in line, but at a little dis- 
 tance from them all. Seeing Tony doing something reprehen- 
 sible with the seaweed, Augusta detached herself from the 
 group and went back to the child. Before she knew what she 
 was about she found herself alone with Sandro Kemp — Tony, 
 out of his scrape and free from slime, running on ahead. It 
 was the first time since his arrival that the artist had been with 
 the widow out of earshot of his cousin ; and he felt his heart 
 beat as if it would break itself to pieces against his ribs, as he 
 walked by the side of the woman whom he loved and who had 
 paid back that love with such undeserved contempt — such 
 cruel wrong. 
 
 He looked at her as she walked by his side with her easy 
 step, at once light and firm ; her upright carriage, supple and 
 yet so strong ; her calm face, which seemed to him the face of 
 a goddess — or was it only the face of a woman who knew her 
 game and played it with judgment ? The fixed smile, which 
 he knew so well and which concealed so much, was on her lips, 
 and her eyes had drawn over the soul, which else would 
 have shone through them, that mask of calm candour, of in- 
 difference that was almost hardness, which with her implied 
 an effort and betrayed a struggle. Both he shared. For he 
 was doing his best to keep back that love which outraged 
 pride should have destroyed for ever — which should have died 
 when his self-respect had been assailed. And he could not ! 
 he could not ! 
 
 "Tell me," he said abruptly, when the silence between them 
 had become too eloquent, too oppressive ; " why did you write 
 that letter?" 
 
 " It was my mother's doing," said Augusta, looking straight 
 before her. 
 
 " It nearly broke my heart," said Sandro, his voice faltering. 
 " It made me d^ubt both Providence and humanity." 
 
 " I am sorry," said Augusta very softly. 
 
 " And your mother made you ? It was not your own will ? 
 It did not come from your heart?" 
 
 He spoke in a low and agitated voice, to which the gentle 
 murmur of the receding tide came as a symphony, lending it 
 cadence and melody. 
 
 " How should it have come from my own heart ?" she 
 
THE CRIMSON BAES OF EVENING. 387 
 
 answered. " What reason had I to -write such a cruel note to 
 you?" 
 
 "It was cruel! You knew that it was cruel?" He took 
 her hand and laid it on his arm. "You knew how I must 
 suffer !" he said again. 
 
 " I knew that it was indefensible," she answered. 
 
 " I wish I could read yon !" said Sandro feverishly. " You 
 have always been the one womau in the world to me — the one 
 perfect woman; bul you have always been my Sphinx, too — 
 Lovely and inscrutable!" 
 
 " Have I ?" she said. 
 
 She turned to him, and her eyes put off their mask for one 
 instant. It was only for an instant, but it was enough. He 
 caught his breath, and felt as if he staggered as he walked. 
 What was false and what was true ? — and which of all those 
 varying motives, those crossing feelings, was to be accepted? 
 
 " You know that I am now rich," he said, speaking in the 
 same sudden way as before. 
 
 ''Yes," she answered frankly. 
 
 •' Was it only my poverty in days gone by that stood between 
 us?" 
 
 She lr>i .Iced at her little son. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. " It was for his sake." 
 
 " And now when I am rich ?" 
 
 The crimson bars were burning slowly into purple ; the 
 golden glories of the burnished west were fading, and the 
 translucent beauty of the opal was passing into one universal 
 space of blue. One by one the stars came out as the day sank 
 deeper into the sleep of night. Prom vapoury cloud the moon 
 ow becoming clear and silvery. The soft peace and rest 
 of night were falling on the earth and the hot turmoil and 
 hard struggle of the day were done. 
 
 "And now when I am rich ?" he asked again. 
 
 " Yoti have all the power you wanted," she answered softly. 
 
 "Power t'» win your love?" 
 
 " That was never wanting," she said. " I had to be prudent 
 but " 
 
 A vivid blush and two sudden tears completed her sent, 
 
 "My Queen! .My heloved ! At last I have reached my 
 
 ;„'oal and now see heaven open before me !" said Sandro. " Now 
 
 i have won yon I forget all the rest. And, perhaps," he 
 
 idded with all his old generous magnanimity; "perhaps I love 
 
 you better for the pain you gave me, because it shows how 
 
388 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 great and good you are and how you can, when need be, sacri- 
 fice yourself to your duty." 
 
 " It wanted only that !" said Augusta with indescribable 
 tenderness of voice and face. " Now you hold me for ever !" 
 
 Just then the party before them came back on their steps. 
 
 " Cousin Sandro," said Ethel languidly, " would you give 
 me my pliant and footstool ? And would you mind holding 
 the umbrella over rue? I am so tired and the wind is so 
 cold!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 THE WEAVING WEB. 
 
 " I am so sorry, Augusta !" 
 
 " About what, Stella, penserosa?" laughed the widow. 
 
 For herself she did not look able to be very sorrowful about 
 anything this morning. Never had her face been so sincerely 
 bright ; never had been so frankly laid aside that mask of 
 suave amiability, that appearance of unemotional suavity, 
 which it was so often her best policy to assume. Her laugh 
 had the joyous cadence of a child's — laughing because she was 
 glad, and glad she scarcely knew why ; her happy eyes, 
 softened by love, shone clear and bright as the stars of last 
 night's sky ; her fair face looked younger, rounder, fresher 
 than ever ; that pretty dimple in her cheek was deeper and 
 her skin was as transparent as a rose-leaf. She had put back 
 her age ten years at the least since those fiery crimson bars 
 had burned themselves out in the evening sky, to be lost in 
 the tender peace of the silver moonlight — since the moment 
 when Sandro Kemp had made the dark things clear, and had 
 knitted up the ravelled sleeve of doubt and despair into a gar- 
 ment of certainty and divine content. 
 
 All the burden of her days was laid aside. She stood now 
 free and unopposed. For the first time in her life she was 
 both safe and supremely happy. The man whom she loved 
 loved her ; he was rich, and she was to marry him. She wa3 
 to escape from the grinding thraldom of her mother's house, 
 yet keep her boy's future secure. The stars were on her side ; 
 fate had borrowed the golden wheel of fortune ; and all her 
 flowers had borne their fruits. She was happy ; oh, how 
 happy ! And here was Stella looking into her face with a 
 pucker of trouble on her own. 
 
THE WEA 7ING WEB. 389 
 
 It seemed almost sacrilege to Augusta that any one should 
 be dissatisfied to-day. Surely life was good and the earth 
 divine for all ! 
 
 '• What is troubling you, dear?" she asked after a short 
 i, during which Stella had looked at her with a certain, 
 - sarce reproach so much as surprise, on her sensitive face for 
 *his unsympathetic brightness on her friend's. 
 
 " I have had a letter from papa," said Stella. 
 
 " Yes ? and then ? He does not want you at home just yet, 
 - be ?" asked the widow. 
 
 " No ; but he tells me I am to ask Hortensia Lyon to come 
 and stay with me," said Stella. 
 
 " Anil that afflicts your little ladyship ?" 
 
 " I do not like it," said Stella gravely. 
 
 She wished that Augusta would be more serious this morn- 
 ing, when she herself was so much disturbed ! 
 
 •' You do not like Hortensia, you mean ?" said the widow. 
 
 ■• Not much," answered Stella. 
 
 " Then why have her always, and always at Eose Hill ?" 
 asked Augusta. 
 
 " Papa likes her," answered Stella. 
 
 " Oh,'" said Augusta drily. After a short pause she added 
 frankly, with a pleasant laugh to take off the sting ; " What 
 a goose you are, Stella mia!" 
 
 •• Why ?" asked Stella, smiling for sympathy, but again a 
 little surprised, this time by the vagueness as well as the 
 abruptness of the accusation. 
 
 •" Because you never see a danger until you are in the 
 
 midst of it," answered the widow. "You got surrounded by 
 
 the tide the other day for want of looking about you. Val 
 
 ley helped you off then ; you had better let him help you 
 
 now out of a worse mess." 
 
 31 r. Cowley — how I wish you would not speak of him," 
 said Stella jH'tulautly. "I hate his very name!" 
 
 " Do I not tell you that you are a goose ?" returned Augusta 
 Miilly. " You would do far better to like it the best of 
 ill names in the world, and to let him help you." 
 
 " Help me from what ? What is the worse mess you hint 
 at?" asked Stella with a little shiver of dread as at thep 
 of ghostly footsteps — something intangible, yet full of terror. 
 
 "If you do not see it I will not enlighten you — at least not 
 
 to-day," said the widow significantly but lightly. " Only, let 
 
 gain, you are to blame, my dear, for not escaping 
 
390 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 from the incoming tide while you can. Meantime, you have 
 to write to Hortensia Lyon and beg her as a favour to come 
 and interrupt our happiness. Ah ! you see, even you, my 
 straightforward Stella, have to be a little fox at times and 
 work in ambush like others. Even you have to say one thing 
 and mean another — as we all must on occasions !" 
 
 " First a goose and next a fox — what next ?" said Stella 
 forcing a laugh. 
 
 " And a duck always," returned that silly Augusta, looking 
 at her with strange tenderness — silly and tender both, because 
 she was so happy ! 
 
 So the letter was written as Mr. Branscombe had desired, 
 and Hortensia was besought to come to St. Ann's for a little 
 change of air ; it would do her so much good and give her 
 affectionate friend Stella so much pleasure ! And when this 
 was done, and the letter posted beyond recall, Augusta had to 
 spend some of her surplus strength and serenity in persuading 
 her poor downhearted friend that it was the very best thing 
 in the world which could have happened ; and that they 
 would be all the merrier, according to tbe old proverb, by the 
 introduction among them of that one more, albeit the most 
 notorious wet-blanket and puritanical kill-joy to be found in 
 Highwood. 
 
 " We will put her and Mrs. White together," said Augusta, 
 eaughing like a harebrained school-girl. " How they will bate 
 lach otber ! They will be like two Kilkenny cats, or a couple 
 of Sir John Lubbock's stranger ants. There will be nothing 
 left of either in a short time." 
 
 But Stella was moody and a little cross, and between Val 
 Cowley and Evangeline saw nothing to laugh at in the matter. 
 
 " Hortensia, will never consent to go with Mrs. White," she 
 answered, wilfully making the worst of things. " She will 
 fasten herself on me from morning to night. I know her so 
 well ! And of course, as I am her special friend and have had 
 to ask her, I shall be forced to look after her. And then I 
 shall see nothing of you, Augusta!" 
 
 She forgot that, if this view of Hortensia' s advent and its 
 results were true, she would be protected from Val Cowley's 
 unwelcome attentions, even if cut off from her present close 
 communion with Augusta. She was too much disturbed to 
 remember anything by way of mitigation. 
 
 " Oh yes, you will ! You will see as much of me as you do 
 now — as much of me as you like," answered the widow 
 
THE WEAVING WEB. 301 
 
 cheerily. " Courage ! It may not turn out so badly after all. 
 You will always have me as your background, of course ; 
 if Mrs. White is of no good, your poor despised Val Cowley 
 will come in useful as a paratonuerre," she added with good- 
 humoured maliciousness. 
 
 Not old be more delightful than Augusta's manner 
 
 and nothing could be less natural. It was the truth, but not 
 the whole truth — nothing feigned, but something concealed. 
 
 colour came suddenly into her face, and as suddenly 
 the egoistical trouble which had clouded it left it free, expan- 
 sive, I v the royal gift of nature. She fixed 
 her eyes with an eager kind of light on her friend. 
 
 ily th"se?'' she asked smiling and with nieanig . 
 " Mrs. White, Mr. Cowley, yourself — no one else that I may 
 count on for championship r" 
 
 •• And Tony, who is devoted to you. Tou are the boy's first 
 la. Little scamp ! he has begun early !" said Tony's 
 mother quite pleasantly, not looking at her friend and not 
 rising to her fly. 
 
 " Aud no one else r" asked Stella again. 
 
 " You mean Mr. Kemp ? Of course, Mr. Kemp. He has 
 always been your faithful friend and preux chevalier, and is as 
 devoted to you in his way as Tony is in his. Of course, Mr. 
 Kemp," said Augusta, with studied indifference, still declining 
 to be "drawn." 
 
 But what she declined Stella divined. Going behind the 
 sofa, where the fair widow sat, very prosaically mending the 
 knees of her boy's stockings, Stella bent back her head and 
 i her on the forehead. 
 
 '•My darling! dear, 'barest Augusta!" she said softly. 
 "No mo. now by the river-side! All dried now, 
 
 ning ! I am so glad, so glad !" 
 
 • Silly child! What do you mean?" laughed the widow, 
 l>ut tin-_r up her soft white hand to caress the face bending so 
 Lovingly over b 
 
 " Everything. Tell me the truth. It is, is it not, Augusta?" 
 : lla, in the enigmatii »e of confidential women 
 
 handling a love-secret daintily. 
 
 . however, that was as well understood by 
 the hearer as by the speaker — an enigma to which each had 
 the key. The soft, clear eyes of the pretty widow grew dark 
 and humid, and her fresh mouth slightly quivered as she 
 smiled. 
 
3C2 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Yes," she said ; " it is. Oh, Stella, how happy I am ! 
 Ah ! niy child, how I wish that you had as much true happi- 
 ness as I have to-day ! Waited for so long, and now come at 
 last ! So perhaps it will be for you." 
 
 " Your happiness is mine, darling," said Stella tenderly ; 
 hut her soft eyes filled with tears which somewhat belied her 
 braver words. 
 
 " It will come !" said the widow lovingly ; and then the boy 
 rushed, shouting and shipping, into the room and cut short the i 
 delicately-touched confidences of the friends by the prodigality 
 Avith which he gave his own. 
 
 The promise of the glorious sunset and the message of the 
 tranquil night were well kept in the exquisite beauty of the 
 day. It was a day when to live was blessedness — what then 
 was it to live, to love and to be loved ! And after Augusta 
 had fulfilled her prosaic but, all things considered, necessary 
 domestic duty of weaving mats over the holes and running 
 shafts up the " Jacob's ladders " of Tony's stockings, she and 
 her two " children" went out on the sands as usual. As 
 usual too, they were joined by the cousins and Val Cowley ; 
 and the parti-coloured web of their various lives went on 
 weaving itself in the old way. 
 
 No great change in the external aspect of things was made 
 this morning. They all kept in a compact body because Eth 
 needed now cousin Sandro's arm and now Val Cowley's hand; 
 because the one had to carry this and the other had to give 
 her that ; because dear Mrs. Latrobe — whom might she call 
 Augusta ? — was so full of information on every question she 
 could not do without her as her charming encyclopaedia ; and 
 dear Miss Branscombe — whom really she must call Stella, 
 might she ? — looked so sweet in that grey felt hat with that 
 soft scarf wound so picturesquely round her, she must posi- 
 tively be put into cousin Sandro's sketch book ; because she 
 posed as a queen and lisped her songs of enchantment like a 
 siren, and so brought both men and women under the sway 
 of her sceptre and the spell of her power. Thus, she made it 
 impossible for the little party to fall asunder or to follow their 
 own devices, and she kept them briskly to their main duty of 
 attending on her. 
 
 So the morning passed in all outward appearance of serenity, 
 if secretly the sense of frustration, capture, disappointment 
 and boredom rather spoiled the spirit of the thing ; and in the 
 afternoon the hotel break came round at three o'clock, as 
 
THE WEAVING WEB. 393 
 
 usxial, and the six souls at this moment blended in one group, 
 
 - ml'led at the door for their daily drive. They had 
 arranged to go again to that fine old castle which had been 
 the object of their expedition on the memorable day when had 
 arrived Sandro Kemp with his cousin Ethel White, and Val 
 Cowley with only love as his comrade ; and to some at least 
 among them thu.se grey old stones would wear a different 
 
 • and tell a different story from that which they had 
 worn and told, counting by time, not so very long ago. Count- 
 ing by time not so very long ago, but by events — how infinite 
 the space ebtween now and then ! 
 
 How beautiful it was ! Fresh yet genial, the air blowing 
 from the distant mountains set like a blue barrier between 
 earth and sky, was as if full of hope and life and faith and 
 love ; while the grand old castle, standing as a witness of the 
 hoary past all now crumbled to ruin and decay, was also as 
 a witness of the lush and living present in the thick luxuriant 
 growths which spoke of spring-time and its vitality — in the 
 suhtle scents which added grace to strength — in the tender 
 flowers which gave beauty to endurance and concealed the 
 scars of time by the touch of love. Here somehow, the little 
 group usually kept so close and compact did get separated. 
 While Valentine Cowley was holding her large white umbrella 
 over Ethel, as she leaned with plaintive grace on his strong 
 voung arm — her other hand laid on Stella's shoulder for 
 "double support to her weakness and sisterly companionship 
 to her soul — Sandro and Augusta found themselves oppor- 
 ly lost somewhere about the outer lines. They were by the 
 side of the "Id dry moat where no one spied after them, and 
 ■ little Tony, at once their bond and their shield, knew 
 no more of what was passing between them than did the 
 
 - in the bushes or t lie lambs in the fields. It was like 
 two Livers not to speak of their future ; not to make 
 
 plans for remote days; not to anticipate dates or events. 
 
 They knew that t ; e; but they knew also that 
 
 Augusta would have to pass over burning ploughshares 
 
 • Bhe should come to her final peace in love. Sufficient 
 
 then for the day was its joy as its sorrow; emphatically 
 
 Lent. 
 
 They walked together scarcely speaking; but sometimes 
 
 i.i< long, long lunk into the eyes which, no longer 'veiled, 
 
 Ldassy, cold, were now so frankly tender, so eloquent of a love 
 
 at once honest, pure, faithful and not ashamed, was like 
 
894 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 speech to both ; and sometimes her soft questioning was like 
 a loving caress to him, which his smile retux-ned. How happy 
 they were ! — how trustful, how strong ! It was love without 
 any of love's folly, void of his fears, free of his doubts ; it 
 was love which gave life and was ready for death. It was 
 the love of a man and a woman who knew the value of the 
 stakes for which they had played and now had won — a man 
 and woman who had known the sorrow of the struggle before 
 they had come to the glad triumph of the victory. But it 
 was quiet, undemonstrative, assured, serene. It was love 
 that was felt, not love that was made — it was love that was a 
 fact and a vow, and in nowise a mere hope and a dream. 
 And thus it was that in the undisturbed security of this 
 quiet wandering through the deserted courts and alleys of 
 the old ruined castle, the future was not touched on and the 
 rich totality of the present was accepted almost as if it were 
 all that was to be. 
 
 At last this pleasant ramble was interrupted by the trio 
 whereof Ethel was the central figure. Incautiously Sandro 
 and Augusta passed the open space whence those in the 
 inner court looked out across the breach to the landscape 
 beyond. The quick eyes of the " Queen" caught the passing 
 figures ; and henceforth their isolation was at an end. 
 Cousin Sandro must be brought back to his duty of attend- 
 ance, and Augusta Latrobe must be made to understand hers 
 of subordination. 
 
 " Cousin ! Cousin Sandro !" Ethel called in her clear, 
 sweet, flute-like voice. " Cousin Sandro!" 
 
 He looked at Augusta with a smile deprecating and 
 regretful. She looked back at him with a smile that 
 matched his own, cheerful but regretful too. There was 
 nothing for it however, but to turn up through the opening 
 and go back to their former posts — their little spell of 
 eloquent silence and loving liberty at an end. 
 
 " Cousin Sandro," said Ethel very prettily ; " I do wish 
 that you would make a sketch of this view. It is so lovely ! 
 Make a nice little sketch, cousin, and put us all in !" 
 
 Ethel was one of those women who never let a man forget 
 his profession. If an artist, she would perpetually beg him 
 to make a sketch of this, a picture of that, and give it to 
 her ; if a musician, no matter of Avhftt rank nor of what 
 delicate organization, she would beg for a " little music" on 
 an ill-toned piano, for a " nice little song" out on the lake or 
 
T1IK WEA VING WEB. 896 
 
 moor. Of a philosopher she would have asked, in a 
 g way: "Tell me what Begelianism or Spinozaism 
 
 itician she would have demanded the expla- 
 
 irithms, or how "to clo" algebra. "Wherefore 
 
 to cousin Sandro, a nice little sketch, 
 
 cousin, and put us all in!" as she would hi 1 Tony to 
 
 pull her a daisy. 
 
 ••I will make a sketch if you like, but I do not know 
 about putting you all in," said Sandro gently. " I have not 
 time to make vou perfect ; and I would not like to spoil 
 you." 
 
 " Well ! do something," said Ethel with pretty authority, 
 tapping his arm with her fan ; and her cousin smiled and 
 obeyed. 
 
 This "passed the time," as people say — that time which 
 
 is so much too quickly for us all ! — until Ethel was tired 
 
 of sitting there even as queen of her little court ; and again 
 
 they began to make those explorations which were the 
 
 ible reason of their visit to the old ruin. By one of 
 
 ■s of chance shuffling which sometimes happen 
 
 with people as with cards, Val Cowleyand Stella were thrown 
 
 together alone, to his delight and the girl's dismay. They 
 
 were on that same lower line where Augusta and Sandro 
 
 had walked — by the side of the old moat. This was now 
 
 and grassy and filled with wild-flowers of all kinds ; while 
 
 against the walls of the outer court grew sundry rose-bn 
 
 1 with docks and wild-briars, and themselves almost 
 wild for lack of care and cultivation. 
 
 Valentine was in his element, in a scene like this. He 
 a keen imagination and a facile, fluent knack of on 
 speech which made a L, r ood substitute for true poetry. The 
 it Bcene excited him, and the rare opportunity of a 
 confidential talk with Sfcell dm still more. Tn 
 
 he knew that he made no way with her and that her 
 was set as a flint against him, he lived ever in expectation of 
 ■ bw birth and the working of the miracle that was to 
 _e all. At this moment he was a knight of olden time 
 and she was a gentle iady to whom he paid his >l 
 so he launched out into time and space, and, always meaning 
 himself and Stella, poured forth a rhapsody about the chival- 
 rous past, of which, of course, he made his idei It 
 was a torrent of words as pretty to listen to as he wafl hand- 
 some to look at ; and, with that undercurrent of meaning to 
 
396 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 give it life, it was not the mere fustian that else it would 
 have been. It had the merit of earnestness of intention, if 
 the method was a little affected ; and Stella could not be 
 deaf to the real meaning of it all. 
 
 At last they came to a plot of rose-trees which had once 
 been evidently objects of some care. Now they were mere 
 graceful sweet-scented weeds, scarcely worthy of the name of 
 roses at all. Val, having finished a sjnrited sketch of a 
 tournament wherein he was the successful knight and Stella 
 was the Queen of Beauty, suddenly changed the key-note of 
 his fanciful melody as he stopped before this plot of neglected 
 rose-trees. 
 
 " What an emblem of life !" he said in a melancholy voice. 
 " What a visible sign of the wasting power of neglect and 
 loneliness !" 
 
 Stella looked with studied indifference at the straggling, 
 spindled bushes. 
 
 " Yes ; they want pruning dreadfully ! But they are of a 
 very poor kind," she said in a dull, matter-of-fact way that 
 had far more power of wounding in it than if she had argued 
 the question on its merits and had laughed at the senti- 
 mental application. 
 
 Her manner was so wounding, so matter-of-fact, so chilling, 
 that Valentine found it impossible to go on, and stopped 
 short in his display. How could he continue these brilliant 
 fireworks of fancy in the face of a leaden indifference which 
 acted on his mind as some kind of paralyzing agent acts on 
 the nerves ? At times he felt as if he hated this girl whose 
 love he was making these ever baffled, ever unsuccessful 
 efforts to win ; and this was one of them. Then his sudden 
 ill-humour passed, and he forgave her because he loved her. 
 
 He halted for the second time before one large straggling 
 bush, where the young pink buds were beginning to show 
 themselves among the leaflets of tender green, through the 
 tangle of weeds and coarser growths which threatened to 
 choke the whole tree. 
 
 " Corisande gave Lothair a rose," he said significantly. 
 " Will you be my Corisande and make me your Lothair ? 
 Will you give me a rose, Miss Branscombe ?" 
 
 " I never act charades," said Stella coldly. 
 
 " Would it be a charade to give me a flower ?" asked Yal 
 hastily. 
 
 " Something like it," returned Stella. 
 
THE WEAVING WEB. 30/ 
 
 "Charades are acted words. What word would that 
 water" said Val, making an effort over himself not to be 
 offended. " Miss Branscornbe gives Valentine Cowley a 
 rose ; — what can one make out of that ? Something that 
 would express the lady's bestowal of her favour on her 
 knight. Can you think of anything, Miss Branscornbe ?" 
 
 " No," said Stella curtly ; " and if I knew of any word it 
 would not fit, for certainly I shall not give you a flower, nor, 
 if I did, would it be like a lady bestowing her favour on her 
 knight ; quite the contrary." 
 
 Now all this was rude and ungentle enough ; but Stella 
 was getting frightened at her position and felt that she must 
 break through the toils weaving themselves around her, at 
 once and unmistakably if at all. If only she could prevent 
 that declaration which was so near, and which would be such 
 a mistake when made ! 
 
 Just then Tony came singing round the corner. With 
 whal a sense of relief the half-frightened, half-revolted girl 
 called to him to come and see the beautiful green beetle in 
 the grass at her feet, like a glittering jewel fallen from the 
 sky to the earth ! In her eagerness to escape from her present 
 companion she fairly ran to catch the flying little Puck 
 whose madcap humour was not to be depended on. And Val 
 understood why. He bit the inside of his cheek savagely, 
 and turned away humming a fragment of Offenbach to 
 express an indifference of equal weight and measure with 
 her own. But he failed, as of course ; and Stella had the 
 naughty girl's pleasure of knowing that she had not only 
 saved herself from an unpleasant confession but that she had 
 annoyed the man who had wanted to make it. For fcl 
 cruellest and most heartless creature in the world is the 
 woman who is pursued against her will by a man whom she 
 does not like. 
 
 Val spent all that remained of the afternoon in the most 
 devoted attention to Ethel White. But Ethel, who un 
 stood the whole science of love-making from A to Z, was not 
 deceived by this Budden fervour, and laughed softly to hersell 
 as she looked at Stella from between her narrowed eyes. 
 
 Three days after this the train brought to St. Ann's not only 
 Hortensia, who was expected, but Mr. Branscomb' and Ran- 
 dolph Mackenzie, of whom no one had dreamed. 
 
 In spite of Mrs. Lyon's dislike to the proposal — perhaps a 
 because of that dislike and its somewhat imprudent 
 
398 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 expression — Mr. Lyon allowed his little maid to accept Stella's 
 invitation. And even when old Finery Fred said that he 
 himself would take the dear child, even then Hovtensia's 
 father did not disapprove, though her mother did. He 
 accepted the offer as frankly as it was made ; but he supple- 
 mented it by slipping a bank-note into Randolph's hand, 
 saying : 
 
 " I should like you to go, too, Kan, my boy. You will take 
 care of your cousin ; and it will be a nice outing for you." 
 
 " If any one is wanted to take care of the child I ought to 
 go, William," said Mrs. Lyon tartly. 
 
 " Oh ! she will do well enough with Stella to amuse her 
 and Mrs. Latrobe to look after her ! You are best at home 
 with me, Cara," returned the husband. 
 
 " But why is Mr. Branscombe going?" asked Cara uneasily. 
 " I do not like it, William ; I do not like it at all!" she re- 
 peated, with the reduplication so much indulged in by weak 
 people. 
 
 " Why should he not go to his daughter, wiseacre ?" laughed 
 her husband, a little contemptuous in his playfulness. 
 
 " William, you are blind and deaf, and worse than mad !" 
 said Mrs. Lyon angrily. " You do not see that the child likes 
 that old fop a great deal better than she ought; and you 
 encourage what will some day be her ruin and your own 
 shame. Now I have said it!" she added, folding her hands 
 with a kind of desperate resignation to sin and its punish- 
 ment. 
 
 " No, Cara, it is you who are mad," answered her husband 
 still more angrily. " Like all silly women you run your 
 foolish head against posts of your own making, and see dangers 
 which do not exist out of your own heated fancy. You are 
 always in full cry after love — love, love everywhere ( . An old 
 fellow like that — older than I am — his wife not dead quite a 
 year — and the child young enough to be his granddaughter ! 
 It hurts me to think you capable of imagining such a mon- 
 strosity," he added, getting up and walking about the room, 
 fuming with rage against his wife, Finery Fred Branscombe, 
 his little maid and life in general, but not against himself 
 nor his decision. 
 
 " And when it is too late you will have to confess that I 
 was right," said Mrs. Lyon, roused to that point of irritation 
 which has no fear of consequence. " But you are like all 
 men, William ; you never see an inch beyond your own nose, 
 
UNDER PRESSURE. 309 
 
 and you are far too conceited to allow that other people see 
 better than yourselves!" 
 
 " I have more faith than you, both in the child's common 
 sense and propriety of feeling, and in the natural goodness of 
 the human heart," said Mr. Lyon loftily ; " and let us hear no 
 more about it, Cara. It is my will that she goes to St. Ann's ; 
 the change will do her good ; and Ran will look after her." 
 
 " I wish I had died when she was born, and then you might 
 have had her all to yourself and done what you like d with 
 her for ever!'' said Mrs. Lyon, bursting into tears. 
 
 But when she began to sob her husband's heart softened 
 towards her, as indeed it always did when she broke down, if 
 he never changed his resolution for the sake of her tears ; and 
 after having given her a friendly kind of kiss and told her not 
 to be a fool but to trust more to him than she did, he pro- 
 posed that they shoidd have an outing on their own account 
 while their little maid was away, and that they should go to 
 Manchester for a week. And when he had done this, he had 
 satisfied his masculine conscience, and henceforth held himself 
 free to consider the whole thing at an end, and all his short- 
 comings atoned for. 
 
 "She is a good soul," he said to himself; "but as weak as 
 water and as soft as butter. Still, she is a good soul, and 
 deserves a little care when she gets low. And she shall 
 have it." 
 
 She on her part thought : 
 
 " William is a dear old fellow, but he treats me like a child, 
 and thinks he can make me forget how he wrongs me as a 
 mother by giving me a little treat or a new bonnet — as if I 
 a mere baby or really the fool he thinks me !" 
 
 So the waxen surface here was more of a surface than 
 either suspected the other knew. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 UNDER PRESSURE. 
 
 The arrival of the three new comers from Highwood shifted 
 
 rhole arrangement of things at St. Ann's. To Augusta and 
 
 Sandro it brought the relief of comparative freedom, with the 
 
 :!1 more vigilant prudence if they did not want their 
 
 affairs made public property betimes ; to Stella it was bondage 
 
400 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 in the courts of purgatory — Hortensia ever between her and 
 her father, and that father gently but inexorably thrusting 
 her nearer and nearer to Val ; to Val it was reinforcement ; to 
 Ethel White it was extension of domain and one more courtier 
 in her train. 
 
 As for Mr. Branscombe, his desire that his daughter should 
 marry the possessor of Greyhurst Manor was unquestionably 
 the central point of the whole position, but one which he 
 thought no one discerned. When he walked and talked apart 
 with Val it was to himself as if he offered to the world a 
 beautiful picture, whereof the motif was that of a teacher 
 instructing an alumnus, one of the illuminati inspiring an 
 acolyte, Mentor with Telemachus. He did not think that 
 Ethel White said to herself: " He is trying to catch the young 
 heir for his daughter ;" that Augusta Latrobe said to Sandro : 
 " I want Stella to marry Val Cowley, but really that old 
 creature's manoeuvres are too indelicately open ;" and that 
 Randolph Mackenzie, as clearsighted as the rest, had almost 
 a quarrel with Hortensia because he said he wished Mr. Brans- 
 combe would not make so much of Val Cowley, and she 
 answered loftily that Mr. Branscombe was the best judge of 
 his own conduct, and that if he thought Mr. Cowley a fit 
 companion for himself and Stella, he was quite right to make 
 much of him — as he was right in everything that he did. All 
 this was hidden from Finery Fred to whom Val was the 
 occasion for both present display and past demonstration — 
 his pupil now but himself rejuvenated. All the same it was 
 an open secret that he wished this young transcript of himself 
 to marry Stella ; and that he was doing what he could to help 
 on the affair, and force his reluctant daughter to yield to fate 
 and his will. 
 
 Surrounded by friends though she was, Stella felt that she 
 was like a hunted creature standing at bay — a creature, save 
 for the faithful advocacy of Randolph Mackenzie, absolutely 
 alone and undefended. She could not rely even on Augusta, 
 for Augusta was onVal's side and always advocated what she 
 called " escape" by means of him. Hortensia had lately made 
 herself the handsome young fellow's ardent encomiast ; and 
 Ethel White followed in the same strain. So that, hemmed 
 in on all sides as she was, the line of careful walking was 
 fearfully narrowed for the poor child, and she scarcely knew 
 how to escape the pitfalls which abounded. 
 
 One day they were all on the sands, as usual. Stella and 
 
UNDER PRESSURE. 401 
 
 Hortensia wore standing close to Mr. Branscombe ; Ethel was 
 
 sitting on her camp-stool under the shade of the big white 
 
 umbrella which Finery Fred held over her with his best air 
 
 m and chivalry: Valentine Cowley and Randolph 
 
 •nzie were on the outer margin of the group — a little to 
 the back of Ethel — both looking at Stella ; Stella was looking 
 at the sea ; Hortensia' s eyes were raised to Mr. Branscombe, 
 whose chivalrous devotion to this painted woman from India 
 
 1 to her somewhat strange and in some sort a desecra- 
 tion ; Sandro Kemp and Augusta were at the back of all, 
 looking at the sea, the sky, the little boy digging a hole that 
 was to go to the middle of the earth, and at each other. By 
 degrees they edged away from the rest, and were soon out of 
 hearing and. then out of sight, as they rounded the spur of 
 the cliff — and the barrier of the Lover's Leap rose behind 
 them. 
 
 Soon after this. Mr. Branscombe, at her command offering 
 his right arm to Ethel, and having on his left Hortensia, led 
 the march of his little cohort across the firm, clean sands. 
 Stella took her place n^xt to Hortensli, and heroically con- 
 cruered her inclination to dispossess her as an intruder who 
 had taken what did not belong to her — a cuckoo who was 
 shouldering out the lawful inhabitant of the nest. She would 
 have found it too late had she tried. The mischief had been 
 done. Hortensia had been wiser than Stella; and flattery 
 had proved more potent than love. Soon the stretch of dry, 
 firm, unmarked sands narrowed to a mere slip ; and the ribbed 
 and furrowed tract, with the wet lying in the hollo 
 sitated the falling back of some among them. They could 
 
 ;dk dryshod in a line of six. Hortensia was on Mr. 
 Branscombe's left arm, Ethel White was on his right, a? has 
 
 -iid ; Stella and the two young men were thus walking 
 free. Was not the fitness of things evident? 
 
 "My dear child!" said Mr. Branscombe, with his best-bred 
 
 parental "Ipr r yon not to walkthrough 
 
 that wet ! Mr. me delegate to you my duty of 
 
 ad protection. Will you kindly look alter in;. 
 •■ [ do not wani any one to look after me, papa," said Stella 
 
 "Dear Stella, why do you not do as your father wishes 
 without always an- back and ?" said Hor- 
 
 _ . but distinct enough for 
 
 Mr. Branscombe to hear. 
 
 2 n 
 
402 "MY LOVE.'" 
 
 As his commentary lie pressed her hand against his side, 
 and stooping his handsome head, whispered in her ear : 
 
 " Little saint ! child angel ! soul of seraphic purity! mind 
 of honey sweetness !" 
 
 Stella heard the whisper, as perhaps it was intended that 
 she should. If so, it had the effect desired, for she fell back 
 at once, pale as death, her eyes dark with tears which yet must 
 perforce remain unshed. Impulsively she held out her hand 
 to Randolph Mackenzie and turned her shoulder to Val 
 Cowley. Poor Randolph! All things considered it was 
 rather Lard on him to make him merely the shield and 
 buckler against another — to smile on him by way of empha- 
 sizing a frown ! 
 
 Soon after this Ethel said again that she was tired. Her 
 indolent Indian habits clung to her, and she found walking 
 for her health, as she had been ordered to do, one of the most 
 disagreeable facts of her life. Hence she was always sitting 
 down under this undeniable pretext of beiug tired; which 
 thus made the folding-seat and the folding-footstool, the 
 shawl, the big umbrella, and the bearers of these same, neces- 
 sary parts of her equipage. To-day it was Randolph who 
 carried the greater part of her things, while Mr. Branscombe 
 was her knight in courtly attendance. Val Cowley, strange 
 to say, was left free and entrusted with no particular func- 
 tion ; and Stella, whose place with her father was taken by 
 Hortensia and whose sisterhood with Ethel had become a 
 little slack, was as desceuvree as the Admirable Crichton. Mr. 
 Branscombe, standing in an elegant attitude near Mrs. White, 
 with a fine mingling of protection and deference in his pose, 
 like a lord-in-waiting doing his devoir to the queen, gave the 
 big white umbrella, which was heavy, to Randolph Mackenzie 
 to hold, while he himself, still having Hortensia on his arm, 
 held over her the light parasol which cost him no effort. 
 Then turning to his daughter with a smile which he passed 
 on with a peculiar look to Valentine Cowley, he said in 
 dulcet tones of very positive command : 
 
 " I wish you two young people would take a brisk walk 
 together. You have come here for your health, my dear 
 Stella. This is not doing justice to your very admirable 
 physician, nor to yourself, nor to me. Mr. Cowley, may I 
 again delegate my duties? "Will you kindly escort my 
 daughter in a swift and health- giving walk across the 
 sands ?" 
 
UNDER PRESSURE. 403 
 
 " With pleasure." said Val eagerly. 
 
 " No, raid Stella reluctantly. 
 
 "Oh, Stella, don't object so much !" again remonstrated 
 Hortensia in her low, reproving and clearly-heard tones. 
 
 " I do not want to walk," said Stella not heeding Hor- 
 tensia — standing this time fairly at bay. 
 
 " It is niv wish, my dear child," said Mr. Branscombe with 
 a singular smile. '-Mr. Cowley will accompany you." 
 
 too, Miss Stella?" asked Eandolph, oblivious 
 of the duty to which he had been told off, and only anxious 
 to help his dear Star whose pained and harassed look cut 
 him to the heart. 
 
 '• Yes," said Stella, as impulsively as she had offered him 
 her hand ; " do you come too, Eandolph !" 
 
 " My dear, good, obtuse, young friend," said Mr. Brans- 
 combe with playful impertinence; " and this fair lady's um- 
 brella? No ; stay where you are, Mr Eandolph , and do you, 
 mv dear Mr. Cowley, go as my child's guardian against the 
 scaly monsters of the deep. And now, my dear Stella, no 
 more opposition, I beg. Take the walk prescribed for you 
 by circumstances and common sense — the walk which is the 
 raison d'etre of your being here at all." 
 
 "Come, Miss Branscombe; — it will do vou good," said 
 Val. 
 
 And Stella, feeling herself indeed surrounded by the tide, 
 
 but not with Val Cowley this time as her saviour, suddenly 
 
 withdrew her opposition and yielded to the pressure put on 
 
 her. She said nothing; she simply stiffened her slender 
 
 . as her manner was wh*:fl she felt obstinate and was dis- 
 
 d, and set off without a word, to meet what she knew 
 
 would be one of the most important crises of her life. She 
 
 one glance of mingled entreaty and despair to Eandolph 
 
 as she turned away ; but if she could not help herself neither 
 
 could he. The Philistines were upon her and she must go 
 
 through her trial to th< 
 
 had had a Long talk that morning with Mr. Brans- 
 conibe which had finally settled the preliminaries of things. 
 He was authorized by the father to propose to the daughter; 
 and he was assured that she would consent — if not now then 
 ;t'ter. It wenl him to feel that perhaps by this 
 
 Mr. Branscombe meant a little parental coercion ; but he was 
 in for it now and tired of indecision. 
 
 Scarcely knowing whether he most loved the girl he 
 
404 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 wanted to win, or most hated her because she would not be 
 won — wanting to see clearly the thing as it was, and to put 
 an end to doubt or to begin his happiness — supported by- 
 Mr. Branscombe — encouraged by Augusta ; — helped by his 
 young man's vanity and spurred on by his jealousy of the 
 past— he made Stella that offer which had so long hung fire 
 and which it was Mr. Branscombe's intention she should 
 accept. 
 
 And when he had made it, Stella said " No," out there in 
 the sunJight, clearly, loudly, unmistakably. The birds heard 
 it as they flew overhead, the wind carried it to the sea, and 
 the sea echoed it back to the land. It was to Val as if all 
 nature knew and scoffed at his discomfiture ; as if a brazen 
 wall had suddenly built itself up between him and her — 
 between him and the sun — between him and all the happiness 
 and honour of life. 
 
 " No," she said firmly, under pressure and brought to bay 
 as she was. " I do not love you, Mr. Cowley, and I never 
 could love you ; and I will never marry you, never ! never !" 
 
 "Oh," said Val cruelly; "I see you still love that fellow, 
 Cyril, who flirted with Mrs. White till he compromised his 
 own name and hers. Miss Branscombe! I should have 
 thought you had had more pride than this !" 
 
 Stella turned on him as an Amazon might have turned on 
 a curled and scented Corinthian. How her eyes flashed and 
 the roseleaf of her cheeks deepened to flaming crimson — to 
 blood-red fire ! 
 
 " Do not you dare to speak of Mr. Ponsonby like that !" 
 she cried with more passion than he thought she possessed. 
 " It is no affair of yours whether I still love him or not, or 
 what he may have done in India. I am his friend now as I 
 always was ; and neither you nor any one else shall speak 
 against him in my presence. That is not the way to make 
 me your friend, Mr. Cowley." 
 
 To which said Val, with less chivalrousness than pride and 
 temper, with less manly dignity than boyish pique : 
 
 " I do not care for the friendship of a girl who can still 
 love a man who no longer loves her." 
 
 So there went the whole house of cards ; — and Stella's 
 soul was still to be made after Mr. Valentine Cowley's plan; 
 while her hand was yet to be won in that matrimonial mar- 
 ket where her father had so openly placed her. 
 
 That evening Ethel White wrote a long letter to Cyril 
 
UNDER PRESSURE. 405 
 
 Ponsonby. She was one of those women who spend half 
 their lives in writing long letters to young men. It -nas her 
 solo occupation aft* r 1 read the gossip columns in the 
 
 weekly papers and the police reports in the daily journals. 
 
 The end of the letter ran thus : 
 
 •' Your old flame, Stella Branscombe, and her father ar c 
 : so are a certain Mr. Valentine Cowley who is he 1 
 adorer, and Miss Hortensia Lyon who is his — I mean Mr 
 Branscombe's. I don't know how far things have gone with 
 these last, but they have certainly gone some distance on that 
 ttrimony which some one once called the grave of 
 love. Old Branscombe makes a perfect fool of the little girl, 
 and she returns the compliment by making a perfect fool of 
 him : .dr. Cowley is very assiduous in his attentions to Miss 
 Stella, but she fights shy of him on every occasion. It is 
 evidently a case of the father's will and the girl's dislike. 
 She is a sweet dear creature, and I love her like my sister; 
 and I confess I pity her. I wish that she would marry Mr. 
 Cowley, or a certain big blundering but very good-hearted 
 Mr. Randolph Mackenzie, who worships her down to the 
 ground. She has trouble before her else. Her father is an 
 old horror ; and as for her future stepmother I should like to 
 see her well shaken. Now write me a long letter of station 
 news in return for my budget, and tell me how you and that 
 little Letty Jones are going on. I think Miss Letty touched 
 you? Remember me always as your sincere friend anu 
 sympathizing confidant . 
 
 " Ethel White." 
 
 "I wonder if I have done that little toad a good tuna by 
 telling Cyril Ponsonby all this?" said Ethel to herself \ 
 she had finished her letter. " She is a proud, cross, cold 
 little wretch, but I should like to see her out of her scrape it 
 only to spite that awful old father of hers. I wouder if Cyril 
 likes her still? If he does he ought to ( 
 and take Mi>s Stella to himself like that flying mail 
 rescued the girl on the rock from the monster. Heigh ho! 
 He would make a verynice lover — at least I should thin!; 
 she added, with an odd little sigh. 
 
406 "MY LOV 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 AT THE REBOUND. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Branscombe ! I am off by the evening 
 train." 
 
 Valentine tried to speak with the masterly ease of indif- 
 ference. He succeeded only in speaking with the ill-concealed 
 wrath of offended love, the savage nonchalance of wounded 
 pride and the brusqueness of a decidedly unheroic fit of ill- 
 temper. What a fool he had been ! he thought bitterly. 
 What made him tempt Providence as he had done, and put 
 himself in the humiliating position of a rejected lover, when 
 he ought to have seen and known beforehand that Stella 
 would not marry him ? She had been frank enough in her 
 declared aversion for him. He could not blame her for 
 coquetry, nor say that she had given a fellow false hopes. 
 Why then, had he not accepted her lead rather than her father's 
 false nourish of support and Augusta Latrobe's perfectly 
 useless advocacy ? It had been his own fault all through ; 
 but that did not make it the better to bear. On the contrary, 
 it made it the worse. For he could not shelter himself 
 behind that friendly plea of bad calculators and worse actors, 
 and say with a nourish, accusing Providence: "Just my 
 luck !" For just my luck had been his own wilful conduct, 
 his vanity and his folly ; and he knew it. So now when he 
 stood at the postern gate which led from the fool's paradise 
 in which he had been blindly walking into the stern reality 
 of facts as they were, he had no help for it but to pass 
 through, railing at fools' paradises in general as he stumbled 
 over the bad places of the real thing. Wherefore he gathered 
 up his forces and said " Good-bye" to Mr. Branscombe with 
 affected unconcern — his departure confessing his discom- 
 fiture. 
 
 "A farewell? — going by this evening's train? Indeed! 
 Tour leaving us in the midst of our pleasant villeggiatura is 
 sudden as it is grievous," said Finery Fred gravely. 
 
 He looked from Valentine — flushed, affectedly debonnaire, 
 secretly angry, outwardly polite, inwardly chafing that he 
 could not show the insolence and temper which he felt — to 
 Stella who, now that she had finally taken her stand and 
 shaken off her erotic incubus, was just the least bit in the 
 
AT THE REBOUND. 407 
 
 world afraid of that dear papa of hers ; yet afraid only on the 
 surface of things — resolute enough at the core ! 
 
 " I must go — I — I " ..ore J Val, who had forgotten 
 
 to make up an excuse and who was not good at sudden 
 reasons delivered point-blank out of the vaf 
 
 '• You have r - of busin - : — ram from 
 
 the Master ': — your rather is dangerously ill ?" said Mr. 
 
 :li a disagreeable smile. " I see, Mr. Cowley ! 
 
 — the old chaplet of excuses to mash an inclination which we 
 
 do not wish to com 
 
 " Xo inclination, sir, necessity," said Valentine. 
 
 '• Stella, my child, will you not ask Mr. Cowley to remain 
 yet a little while longer as our honoured guest?" said Mr. 
 Branscombe with a sweet manner and a severe face. 
 
 Bv the way, Valentine Cowley paid his own hotel bills ; but 
 11 to call him their guest; and Mr. Branscombe 
 was a man whose poetic fancy was at all times grandly 
 superior to the fettering contraction of literalness. 
 
 '• Mr. Cowley knows best what he ought to do," said 
 
 Stella with a moral hardihood which surprised herself, per- 
 
 sonallv quaking, as she was, with fear of her father's certain 
 
 displeasure wh 'one with him and he should 
 
 ■ learned all. 
 
 ' : Thanks for . my child," Mr. Branscombe 
 
 answered with another of his most silky and therefore most 
 
 disagi uiles ; "a rebuke somewhat sharply admi- 
 
 iust. Precious balms from the hand of 
 
 I, breaki: -r's head but purifying his heart and 
 
 his conduct. Thank you, my love !" 
 
 '• I did not mean that, papa," said Stella earnestly. 
 
 "No?" He smiled again ; this time with almost pathetic 
 
 ity. ' : Then you did what you would not. By 
 
 yourself the guiding angel to your father 
 
 — the lost wayfarer. 1 ign I equally thank 
 
 you, my i 1 a 
 
 "At all events I must _ r o." ■ . 1, whose ill-humour did 
 
 not reach the length of likiug to hear Stella virtually bullied 
 while apparently commended, and who at this moment hated 
 old Finery Fred almost past bear 
 
 "I am sorry," Baid Mr. Branscombe with dignity. 
 
 "V" yon ask him . when your E 
 
 tells . d Horteusia in that low voice of hers, which 
 
 sounded so dulcet, so modest and which was so audible. 
 
40S "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Because my daughter has not the sweet submission of her 
 little friend," said Mr. Branscombe, answering the girl. 
 " Because she thinks her judgment superior to her father's, 
 and prefers the green fruit of unripeness to the golden grain 
 of experience — that is why, my dear Miss Hortensia Lyon — 
 and I wish it were otherwise." 
 
 "I do not wish Miss Branscombe to ask me to stay, if it is 
 against her real wish," said Val, gallantly effacing his disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 " A dutiful child should have but one wish, and that her 
 father's," said Finery Fred with unction. 
 
 " Sometimes that is impossible," said Stella. 
 
 " As now?" her father asked with meaning. 
 
 Val turned a flushed face and a pair of darkened eyes 
 towards the girl ; Mr. Branscombe put on his pince-nez and 
 looked at her seriously ; Hortensia plucked at her sleeve and 
 in her audible way again whispered : 
 
 " Do as your father wishes, Stella. It is too dreadful to see 
 how disobedient you are !" 
 
 Augusta, who as yet had not taken any part in this discus- 
 sion, whereof the mystery was so unconcealed and the secret 
 so open — who had sat a little apart, watching the whole play 
 but aside from it all — now forced Stella to look at her by the 
 magnetic attraction of her eyes, the power of her will, the 
 electric vitality of her thought. 
 
 "Yield! — accept Valentine Cowley as your husband, else 
 worse will befall you," said Augusta's eyes. " You are sur- 
 rounded by the tide ; let him carry you from danger to safety." 
 
 It was to Stella as if she heard these words — as if they 
 were said as distinctly by Augusta's face as they would have 
 been by her voice. For the moment she felt as if she were 
 carried away in the swirl of a torrent. Would she do well to 
 obey her beloved father's will and follow her dear friend's 
 wise advice ? — or was it better to stand by her barren fidelity 
 to the past and let the present go by the board ? Would it 
 be well to escape from home pain and. personal humiliation by 
 this — to her way of thinking — dishonourable and unblessed 
 marriage with Valentine Cowley ? — or was it better that she 
 should bear in patience and in constancy the domestic cross 
 of her father's displeasure — retaining as her inalienable 
 treasure the right to love without sin to the end of her days 
 the only man whom she ever could love ? 
 
 This moral indecision lasted but for an instant. Then 
 
AT Till: REBOUND. 409 
 
 came back the clear, swift, strong perception of her highest 
 duty, her noblest self-:-. 
 
 '• N aid firmly, but with a soft voice and eyes more 
 
 sad than defiant; still for all that sadness it was firmni 
 which vibrated not the faintest echo of weak self-surrender. 
 " I cannot and will not ask Mr. Cowley to stay." 
 
 All • told, all known, all confessed. Her way of 
 
 was shut off by her own hand and henceforth -she must 
 bear the pain which she would not renounce when she could. 
 She had chosen her part ; and only her own conscience — and 
 Randolph Mackenzie — said that she had done well and that it 
 would have been base had she done otherwise. 
 
 So poor, rejected, disappointed Val left by the evening 
 mail, as he said ; and finally and for ever that prettily-built 
 castle in Spam vanished into smoke, leaving a very unpleasant 
 residuum of ashes behind. 
 
 " You have disappointed me ; you have angered me ; you 
 have grievously and wantonly upended me. I consider myself 
 humiliated and insulted ; and I shall find forgiveness a diffi- 
 cult virtue to exercise on behalf of a perverse and ungr; 
 child, such as you have proved yourself to be !" 
 
 Mr. Branscombe opened his conversation with Stella later 
 in the evening, after Valentine had left and when Augusta and 
 Hortensia had gone to bed, with this exordium majestically 
 delivered and very sincerely felt. 
 
 " Papa, what would you have had'me to dor" cried Stella, her 
 courage drowned in despair at this litany of reproaches from 
 her lather, once so blindly worshipped and still so fondly 
 loved, if not so wholly believed in as before. 
 
 "I would have had you wise, modest and obedient," he 
 answered, fixing his eyes on her with a frown. " I would 
 have had you accept Mr. Valentine Cowley's exceedingly 
 desirable proposals, and marry the man of your father's 
 choice." 
 
 •• Without loving him, papa ?" 
 
 " Without rubbishing sentiment, without selfish considera- 
 tion, without unmaidenly proclivities, and without the i*oot- 
 less fancy of your own silly imagination," he an.- . 
 angrily. "Had you been the Stella of old days, the Stella of 
 my hope, you would have trusted your happini as, lib 
 mind, your will, your heart, your head, your love, to me; you 
 would have lei me regulate your life as the best architect of 
 jour fortune and :l have found what I had done, 
 
410 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 well. Who so good a guide for his child as a loving father, 
 with experience and a mind to comprehend life all round ? I 
 know you ; and I know that exceedingly excellent young 
 man. It was the marriage of all others most suitable, most 
 desirable. I planned and arranged for it; and you have 
 wilfully disappointed and, I may say, deceived me." 
 
 "No, papa, I never deceived you!" interpolated Stella. 
 
 "You are no longer my Stella," continued Mr. Branscombe, 
 not heeding her. " You are to me as a changeling ; and" 
 henceforth you must live as an exile from those deepest 
 recesses of my heart where hitherto you have had your 
 home !" 
 
 " Papa, do not say that !" cried Stella, covering her face. 
 
 "You have elected, and you must take the consequences," 
 he answered coldly. 
 
 " But why do you want me to marry at all ? Why do you 
 want it ?" then said the girl, suddenly looking up with a 
 curiously scared expression. What did she think? What 
 suspect ? What foresee ? " Only a short time ago you would 
 not hear of it, and now — why do you want to force me ? I 
 love Cyril Ponsonby," she went on to say in a strange, reckless 
 way ; " and I do not care in the least for Mr. Cowley. Yet 
 you made me break with the one and now you want me to 
 take the other. I cannot understand it ; nor why you should 
 be so angry with me because I have not accepted a man I do 
 not care for, when" — she stopped herself in time. It was not 
 necessary to repeat her confession of faith within so short a 
 time. 
 
 " I loved you too well to give you to that very ordinary 
 young boor, Mr. Cyril Ponsonby," cried Mr. Branscombe ; 
 " and it was because I loved you that I wished you to marry 
 7 ■ r. Cowley — in every way your ecpial and fit match. Is that 
 such a difficult problem to you, Stella?" 
 
 " But I do not want to marry any one," said Stella. 
 
 " And I wish that you should marry some one — and soon," 
 
 id her father sternly. 
 
 She looked at him with her large eyes, dark and frightened. 
 
 " Papa," she said slowly ; " do you want to get rid of 
 me?" 
 
 " I wish you to marry, and to marry well," he repeated 
 evasively. 
 
 She burst into a passion of tears. 
 
 " Oh, this is too much !" she cried in her bitter ansruish of 
 
A2 THE HE DO USD. 411 
 
 despair. " You took me from Cyril to bo your comfort and 
 companion, and now you want me to leave you ! You have 
 broken my heart twice over, papa — I who have only loved you 
 beti fcter, too, than Cyril." 
 
 ■• . -ril! Cyril!" said Mr.Branscombe,now thoroughly roused 
 and forgetting even to pose. " Hear me, Stella, I command 
 vou never to repeat that name in my presence again. You 
 led yourself by your love for that young man in the 
 uning; you degrade yourself doubly by what I suppose 
 you woidd call your constancy now. Let this end You have 
 chosen, and I will say dared, to reject the choice which I had 
 made for you. So be it, You will have to learn the mistake 
 that you have so wilfully made. But I will not have a 
 daughter of mine openly profess her love for a man who has 
 definitely cast her off as this Ponsonby has cast off you. 
 Foolish, obstinate, undutiful you may be and are ; but immodest, 
 by heavens, no ! — this is more than I can bear ! Do you think 
 that precious little virginal angel, Hortensia Lyon, would act 
 as you act ? Take counsel by her sweet example, and let your 
 shame lead you to the higher levels of repentance and the 
 refined paths of maiden modesty." 
 
 And with this Mr. Branscombe took up his chamber 
 stick and went off to his own room — one of the rare times in 
 his life when he was absolutely in earnest, if by no means 
 beautiful or poetic. 
 
 Meanwhile, Stella sat in the deserted sitting-room, stu. 
 and terrified; feeling as if the very earth had given way 
 that the solid things of life had become floating and insecure ; 
 as it' all 1: bppiness had died for ad that her father 
 
 fitting on the tomb where her still living L 
 And the only person at the back of her consciousne >s, of whose 
 was sure, was her good friend Randolph — 
 Brother Randolph — brother now more than ever! 
 
 Valentine, humilial ; and sore, too pure and honest a 
 gentleman to seek in dissipation relief from pain yet una' 
 live among the broken fragments of his shatti 
 mutilated prid > Highwood and the Pennefal 
 
 at Least he would have "fun" and such distraction as 
 this included. There he could not be poetical nor moody nor 
 aught but "jolly" and "all there " as they Baid. And Gip was a 
 
 girl and thoroughly healthy-minded. And then 
 the question which he did not 'see was pr< y his 
 
 wounded pride; " Was it all sincere? Did I nol fancy my- 
 
412 "MY LOVE !" 
 
 self more in love thtan I really was ? Was Stella Branscombe 
 so Supreme as I thought her? Did I not exaggerate my 
 own feelings, spurred on by her coldness rather than by any 
 living passion in myself? Was it not rather the desire to 
 distance a rival memory than spontaneous love on my own, 
 part? — and am I not on the whole well out of it?" 
 
 He asked himself these questions honestly and clearly ; and 
 he answered them as honestly — at least so he thought. " Yes ; 
 he was well out of it." But if he were, he had a singularly 
 harassed look for a man just escaped from a danger ; and any 
 one would have said that, instead of escape, he had had a fall, 
 and a heavy one. And indeed all the Sherrardine people did 
 say so, each in his own manner, as they received him with an 
 effusiveness of welcome which made him feel like the Prodigal 
 Son restored to his own and regaled with the fattest of the 
 fattest calves in the stalls. They fairly raved at him for his 
 queer looks ; and suggested all kinds of absurd explanations 
 — all save Gip, and she by a rare accession of tact, an almost 
 intuitive perception of thin ice, strangely foreign to her 
 general nature, said nothing. But perhaps she noted more 
 than the others ; certainly she guessed nearer the truth. 
 
 Once only did she touch the secret sore, and then with the 
 lightest, kindest, deftest fingers in the world. As she and 
 Val were strolling over the lawn one evening after dinner, 
 she turned her face up to his and said in a voice softer than 
 hers in general, and one that slightly trembled in spite of 
 herself : 
 
 " Val, you have come here out of tune, old man ; but, re- 
 member, you have come among chaps who really love you 
 without humbug or palaver. So you just paddle your own 
 canoe in your own way, till you are all square again. No one 
 shall bother you; and I'll take care that no one shall chaff 
 you ; and I will never ask what it is." 
 
 The genuine kindness, the substantial delicacy of this queer, 
 rough speech, overcame Val. 
 
 " Come with me into the shrubbery, out of sight of the 
 windows, Gip," he said, his voice too slightly trembling, and 
 his manner a strange mixture of headlong excitement and 
 almost ferocious melancholy. " Whatever is amiss with me 
 you can cure — and you only." 
 
 Whereupon they plunged into the dark depths of the shrub- 
 bery, and there words were said which left Gip radiant as a 
 sunbeam and Val like a thundercloud traversed by unwhole- 
 
LOV&S SHADOW— HA IE. 413 
 
 some lightning. They were words spoken once for all ; and 
 words which would be stuck to. And if the mother at home, 
 in that stately place in Warwickshire, did not like them, so 
 much the worse for her. But that would not affect the 
 position of her future daughter-in-law. The rejected heart 
 had been caught at the rebound, and Georgie Pennefather 
 held the prize. 
 
 " Something has gone wrong," she said to her sister when 
 she told her the news at night ; " but, Patrick, I will never, 
 r, never ask what it is ! I am engaged to him now and 
 I am far too jolly to whine about old scores." 
 
 •• Bight you are, George," said Pip between laughing and 
 crying, kissing and sobbing ; "but oh, mercy me ! whatever 
 shall I do without you! Oh, George, I shall go dead when 
 you have gone ! Yal will have to marry me, too !" 
 
 ' ; You'll get a Val of your own, Patrick, and then you'll not 
 mind." said Gip soothingly. 
 
 But the pretence was too patent ; and the two Doves 
 sobbed and kissed each other alternately — Gip's long-desired 
 i _ nt to that dear old chap, that nice old man, Val 
 
 ■y, having, strange to say, its drawbacks ! 
 
 CHAPTER XLIY. 
 
 LOVE'S SHADOW — HATE. 
 
 The cure of the boy was now complete and Augusta had 
 urn home. Not many letters had passed between her 
 and her mother ; and those which had been written were all 
 on the daughter's side. The terrible old woman was a had 
 : and of late her bodily activities in every 
 direction had noticeably deer -«» that she laid aside all 
 
 exertion which she was not absolutely obliged to un<! 
 Certainly she laid aside that epiite unnecessary work of supere- 
 
 '.un — a correspondence with her daughter ; and 
 grunted in her peculiar manner, v.ith less pleasure than 
 doubt and critical i ben she received one of Aug 
 
 letters, largely written, fluent in word, flowing in form, 
 telling substantially nothing; — not even telling I irtant 
 
 andro Kemp and his cousin Ethel White were in 
 the same I » ; that 1 f all went out tog 
 
 to the memorabl-- to the crimson sunset- 
 
414 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 lighted sands ; and that words had been spoken there which 
 could never be recalled, and by which the whole history of 
 life had been changed for both mother and daughter. 
 
 All this had to wait until affairs were somewhat arranged ; 
 when Augusta would say it face to face and take the conse- 
 quences bravely. She knew what those consequences would 
 be, and she did not see the wisdom of anticipation and pre- 
 maturity. 
 
 Her heart light, her winsome face beautified by her inner 
 joy, her pleasant laugh clear as silver bells, Augusta returned 
 to the home which had been essentially her prison, as one 
 fortified by a charm from all evil present and to come. The 
 ©Id woman, keen as a hawk to see all changes in the world 
 around her, caught almost at a glance the new spirit which 
 sat like a crown on her daughter's head. 
 
 " What is it ?" she asked herself. " What has she done, 
 or what is she going to do ? She has done something ; and I 
 must find out what it is." 
 
 But she said nothing on that first evening. She thought 
 she would wait for an opening and, when that was made, 
 then she would enter and put all to the rout. That unknown 
 Something which ailed her had been rather troublesome of 
 late ; and when that was troublesome her temper generally 
 followed suit, as those who formed her household knew to 
 their cost. Meanwhile she sat in her easy-chair, with her 
 heavy old eyebrows lowered over her small keen eyes, watch- 
 ing her daughter's brightened face with its radiant crown of 
 secret joy as her cat might have watched a bird on the lawn, 
 waiting for the moment when it should come near enough for 
 that fatal spi-ing to be made. 
 
 The next day passed as this first evening had done. 
 Augusta said little about what had happened at St. Ann's 
 and nothing at all about Sandro Kemp. For she, like her 
 mother, was waiting on opportunity and the fit moment and 
 would not open the bag before the run for the creature within 
 was open and assured. But the silence of suspicion on the 
 one side and of reserve on the other, made itself felt between 
 them as the dead stillness of the coming storm presages the 
 furious outbreak at hand. 
 
 It was Sunday. All Highwood had assembled as usual in 
 the church-porch after service, where the returned travellers 
 were greeted with as much animation of welcome as if they 
 had been to the North Pole and had come back laden with 
 
LOVE'S SHADOW— HATE. 415 
 
 sealskins and free of frostbites. Every one was, what the 
 slang of the clay calls. " in good form," and the elixir of life 
 ran bright and clear for each and all. The Doves were espe- 
 cially beaming and resplendent ; their saucy faces were all 
 over dimples ; their bold black roving eyes shone like highly 
 polished spheres of ebony set in ivory ; and Gip, re-trans- 
 formed from her late sharp and spiny larva to something 
 even beyond her old buoyant, breezy, butterfly self, 
 what she would have called a jolly good fellow to all the 
 world and in splendid case all round. To Stella Branscombe, 
 to whom she had been so cruel and spiteful in the dark days 
 by, now that she knew her jealousy to be a mere glmst 
 of which she held the substance, she was like the most affec- 
 tionate sister. It seemed as if she tried to make up for her 
 ill-humour and roughness by a corresponding excess of sweet- 
 ness and fellowship. 
 
 " Dear Stella ! how prime you look !" she said, in her 
 clear, ringing tones, squeezing the girl's hand till she nearly 
 made her cry out with pain. " How awfully jolly to have 
 you back again and to see your dear little face look a mite more 
 round and rosy than it did ! You're not quite up to your 
 old self yet, but you are not such a peaky lank as you were 
 by miles. It was so awfully nice to see you in your old place 
 again ! — I declare I could not say my prayers as I ought for 
 looking at you !" 
 
 "And I am glad to see you look so well, Georgie," 
 answered Stella, Bmiling in her sweet way ; a little surprised 
 at the exuberance of this greeting, but glad that the cloud 
 had passed and that Georgie Penuefather had " come out of 
 the sulks," as Georgie herself would have called it. 
 
 "Oh! Patrick and me, we are al I as trrv 
 
 said that slangy, fast, objectionable young person, laughing 
 and looking at hei significantly ; and Pip, i 
 
 the cue, laughed and gave back the significant look 
 interest, shouting as her r< 
 
 "George is tighter than any trivet, ain't you. I 
 
 " Eather," said the twin Dove, a wild outburst of irrepres- 
 sible hilarity tumbling from her lips like a cascade of jocund 
 waters. 
 
 "And how was old Sandro Kemp, Augusta ?" asked Gip 
 when she had done with Stella. "Val told us what a jolly 
 little party you made. Val came b i know, a 
 
 while alter he left St. Ann's, and Lav.' us all the news. 
 
416 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Fancy old Sandro and that Mrs. White with yon ! What 
 larks ! — jam for some one I should say, Augusta, should not 
 you?" with impudent merriment — "poking fun" at the end 
 of a quarter-staff. 
 
 Colonel Moncypenny, who had been speaking in a low 
 voice and with manifest gallantry to the fair widow, caught 
 the hated name as a man catches the echo of a challenge. 
 He stiffened himself as if on parade and fixed his fiery eyes 
 on Augusta's, asking her in plain language — if looks can be 
 called plain language — "What did it mean?" and had it 
 been the "jam" of the Pennefathers' vernacular to have had 
 Sandro Kemp's society at St. Ann's ? 
 
 He looked in vain. That waxen mask of mindless amia- 
 bility for which Augusta Latrobe was famous, came over her 
 face like a shadow, hiding the truth and her soul beneath the 
 vacant sweetness which was her favourite weapon of defence. 
 
 " It was very pleasant to have them there," she answered. 
 " Mr. Kemp is always good-natured, and Mrs. White" — 
 " That was Cyril Ponsonby's chum," shouted Gip paren- 
 thetically — "Mrs. White is a very remarkable kind of 
 woman," continued Augusta, not noticing the parenthesis. 
 
 "What way?" asked Gip, elliptical when she was not 
 vulgar, and ungrammatical always. 
 
 " She is a thorough Anglo-Indian," said Augusta, as if 
 this were an explanation. 
 
 " And flirts like fun all round," cried Gip. 
 
 Augusta laughed that vacant, mindless little laugh of hers 
 which meant nothing. 
 
 " Why, she tried it on Val, who hated her, and on old 
 Kemp as well !" said Gip. " But Val said that didn't run ! 
 Old Kemp knew better than that ; and so did some one else, 
 didn't they, Augusta ?" 
 
 " Mr. Kemp did not flirt with her, so far as I could see," 
 answered Augusta, with that kind of crass literalness which 
 makes an effectual barrier against further conversation ; at 
 least -with most people. It did nothing with Georgie Penne- 
 father. 
 
 " But if he did not with her, he did with some one else," 
 she said in a loud whisper ; " and from what Val said we 
 may be looking out for orange-blossoms in good earnest this 
 time. Oh, you sly-boots ! oh. my ! Augusta ! Those spoons, 
 then, were true ; and you looking all the time as if butter 
 would not melt in your mouth !" 
 
LOVE'S SHADOW— SATE. 417 
 
 Augusta laughed again. It might be in deprecation i r 
 in acceptance of the charge, who can tell? Not even Colonel 
 Moneypennv watching her so closely, nor Dr. Quigley, who 
 was watching both. 
 
 " I was not aware that IVIr. Kemp was one of your party," 
 the Colonel then said slowly, his face livid, his deep-set eyes 
 burning like two coals blazing from among the ashes. 
 
 •• No?" answered Augusta, her eyes raised to the level of 
 his cravat, not beyond. " He came there with his cousin a 
 week after we went." 
 
 '• And stayed there all the time?" 
 
 " Yes ; we left them still there," she answered with the 
 prettiest air of girlish frankness and most admirably- acted 
 indifference. 
 
 " When is it to be, Augusta ?" asked Gip. 
 
 " When is what to be, Georgie?" answered the widow. 
 
 " Orange-blossoms and old Kemp," laughed that saucy 
 minx. 
 
 '• Ah, when r" said Augusta. " I will tell you when you weai 
 your orange-blossoms for Val Cowley!" she added, drawing 
 her bow at a venture — Stella with her father and the rest of 
 the Highwoodites being a little in advance and quite out of 
 hearing. 
 
 " I'll take you at your word !" shouted Gip, as she and 
 Pip, laughing like two mad creatures, rushed off down the 
 lane which led from the high road to Sherrardine. 
 
 " She had you there, George," laughed Pip. " I wonder 
 if she knows !" 
 
 " Oh, it was only a fluke !" said Gip. " But who cares ? 
 It'll have to be told soon ; I don't care how soon ; and I 
 don't care who knows, do you, Patrick ?" 
 
 " No, I am too awfully jolly about it to want to keep it 
 dark," said Pip ; and her sister answered franklv : " So 
 am I." 
 
 Too much or too little had been said for the Colonel's 
 peace. It was or it was not ; and in any cast' he must know 
 which. Fortunately he had not committed himself ; fortu- 
 nately for his dignity he had not made that offer which 
 more than once had been so near and which a merciful 
 Providence had always prevented. But he must know the 
 truth. For his own sake he must be put in possession of 
 facts as they stood; and if Mrs. Latrobe would not confide in 
 him of her own free will, he must force her hand as he had 
 
 2 .: 
 
418 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 tried in vain to do once before. But this time something 
 told him that he should be more successful. 
 
 "You were much with your old friend?" he began, in his 
 thin rasping voice, as the main body of Highwoodites moved 
 along the highroad. 
 
 "Yes, very much," said Augusta, with her most inane 
 smile. 
 
 " And he was as charming as ever ?" returned the Colonel. 
 
 " I did not see any difference in him," she said. 
 
 "You were always his advocate, I remember," said the 
 Colonel. 
 
 She smiled again. 
 
 " Yes ? Was I ?" she replied ; adding : " What a lovely 
 day this is !" 
 
 " Where does Mr. Kemp live now ? And what does he do 
 since he came into his fortune? — that fortune of which, 
 by all accounts, he stood so much in need?" asked the 
 Colonel. 
 
 " He has been away," she said ; " and I do not know what 
 he does." 
 
 " No ? You do not know what he does ? That is 
 strange ;" he returned with satirical emphasis. 
 
 "Is it?" she replied good-temperedly. "How beautiful 
 those distant hills are !" 
 
 "You are glad to return to your old home?" said the 
 Colonel, suddenly changing front and speaking with tender- 
 ness as little disguise:! as his bitterness had been. 
 
 " Home is always home," was the safe rejoinder. 
 
 " And you will not leave us again ?" 
 
 " My trunks are not packed," she returned with a sweet 
 little smile. 
 
 " You will stay here for ever among us ? We miss you so 
 much when you go !" 
 
 The Colonel spoke with still more pronounced tenderness. 
 All the same his eyes were bloodshot and fiery and his smile 
 was more acid than sweet. 
 
 " You are very good," she returned. 
 
 " I should like to keep you for ever," said the Colonel. 
 " Do you remember how happy we were that stormy day, 
 when my house was your shelter?" 
 
 " When was that ?" said Augusta, as if considering. "Oh, 
 yes ! I remember now. I took shelter in your house from 
 the snowstorm. What a dreadful day it was !" 
 
LOVES SHADOW— HATE. 419 
 
 " ilv house was then a real shelter?" he asked in a 
 lowered voice. 
 
 "Well, the snow did not come in through the roof, i I 
 suppose it Was !" said the widow lightly. " What a contrast 
 between that day and this!" 
 
 " That was the happier for me," said Colonel Moneypenny. 
 
 " You like winter best? I like spring and summer," she 
 said. 
 
 •And the sea-side better than the inland country?" he 
 asked. 
 
 Augusta put on her mask close and tight. 
 
 " Sometimes." she said with the very sublimity of vacuitv. 
 " It all depends." 
 
 " On wl: 
 
 " On the weather," she answered, holding out her hand as 
 they came up to The Laurels. " Good-bye, Colonel Money- 
 penny. Good-bye, dear," to Stella, who was walking with 
 Randolph Mackenzie. " Take care of yourself, dear child," 
 she added with tenderness. 
 
 Stella whispered : " Has he found out ?" and by her whisper, 
 which he could not hear, excited the man's suspicion and 
 jealousy afresh. 
 
 All that night Colonel Moneypenny lay awake, half mad 
 with this jealousy, this suspicion, which burned bike tire and 
 ran like poison in his veins. Baffled as he had been, he was 
 far from being convinced that Augusta's apparent unconcern 
 real, and he determined to have it out. Cost what it 
 might, his self-respect demanded that he should know the 
 truth. Wherefore, full of this determination, he went to The 
 Laurels the next day, as he had done once before, prepared 
 to dig the pit into which the woman, for whom his love so 
 often took the form of love's shadow — hate — should fall ; 
 this time ne\ in. 
 
 The greetings were .riven and all the proper formalities 
 of preliminary courtesy were gone through, even more punc- 
 tiliously than usual. It was the salute of the duellist, the 
 hand-shake of the prize-ring after the caps have been thrown 
 down to show that they are " there." 
 
 '■ What kind of person is Mrs. White ?" asked the Colonel, 
 turning to Augusta and speaking suddenly. 
 
 '•Inwi replied the widow, the colour beginning 
 
 to mount into her face very slowly, very quietly, but un- 
 mistakably ; " in beauty or character :" 
 
420 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 " Both," he said. 
 
 Mrs. Morshead looked a little lost. 
 
 " What Mrs. White ?" she asked. 
 
 " Mr. Kemp's cousin," said Augusta, as steadily as if she 
 had said Tony's new hat: Then, to give the conversation 
 a turn, if possible, she added : " She is the person about 
 whom and Cyril Ponsonby all that gossip was made in the 
 winter." 
 
 " It was odd, was it not, that she should have gone to 
 ►St. Ann's without her husband, and only escorted by a man 
 like Mr. Kemp ? Cousin or not, that was a little queer, I 
 think." 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny said this with his well-known acid 
 iiuiile — that smile which, more than all else, expressed the 
 burning passion that he did his best to conceal. 
 
 " They have been brought up together, and are like brother 
 and sister ; and Captain White is in India," said Augusta, 
 neither faltering nor quailing for all that her mother's eyes 
 were fixed on her with ominous surprise, with sharp suspicion 
 and with the very darkness of latent wrath. 
 
 " Nevertheless it argues a large amount of trust in Captain 
 White," said Colonel Moneypenny, still smiling in his sharp, 
 acid way. " He could not have known that you would have 
 been there to act as a — what shall I say ? I cannot say 
 chaperon, but rather as a counter-charm, a more powerful 
 attraction." 
 
 " He probably knew both his wife and his cousin, when he 
 sent Ethel home," replied Augusta, tranquilly as to manner, 
 but the tell-tale flush had deepened, now to burning crimson 
 on her face. 
 
 " What does all this mean ?" asked Mrs. Morshead. She 
 had been sitting in her chair, stiff and upright as if she had 
 been cased in iron ; her eyebrows nearly meeting, and her 
 eyes almost concealed beneath their shaggy fringe. " Was 
 that sign-painter, Sandy Kemp, at St. Ann's, Augusta ?" 
 
 " Yes, mamma," answered her daughter. 
 
 " And you spoke to him ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Were good friends with him ? — as if nothing had hap- 
 pened ?" asked the mother. 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny laughed in a forced, affected, rasping 
 kind of way. 
 
 " Quite good friends and something more, if report sj^eaks 
 
LOVE'S SHADOW— HATE. 121 
 
 true '."lie said with pretended lightness. " Come now, con" 
 fess, Mrs. Latrobe, was it not so p" 
 
 •' Really, Colonel Money penny, your question is too enig- 
 matical either to answer or understand," said Augusta, she 
 also laughing with affected lightness. 
 
 u Don't be hypocritical, Augusta," said her mother savagely. 
 " Colonel Moneypenny is quite easy to understand; and you 
 know he is ; and answer that question directly : "Were you 
 good friends with Sandy Kemp, and something more?" 
 
 The young widow looked at her mother, and from her to 
 her former lover now her bitterest enemy. She was not 
 defiant, not insolent, but she was calm and strong as if pre- 
 pared for all encounters. She seemed to draw her graceful 
 figure somewhat together, as if sL ■! her shoulders and 
 
 strengthened her neck to bear — and to bear triumphantly. 
 
 " Yes," she said, in a low, clear voice ; " we arc good friends 
 — friends and somethinir more, for life." 
 
 Colonel Moneypenny's livid face grew as pale as the face of 
 a dying man; then the blood came back into his thin, worn 
 cheeks as if a hot flood of fire poured through his veins. 
 
 " I thought so !" he said in a suffocated voice. " I knew it 
 months ago !" 
 
 " Then you knew what I did not," said Augusta. " Our 
 meeting at St. Ann's was by chance." 
 
 " You sit there, Augusta, and quietly tell me that you love 
 that impudent fellow r" asked Mrs. Morshead, with portentous 
 stillness. 
 
 " Yes, mamma, T do; I am sorry that you do not. You 
 would if you would but let yourself know him," answered her 
 daughter. 
 
 " You are going to marry him ?" 
 
 " Yes, mamma." 
 
 " Then before Colonel Moneypenny I say it, you leave my 
 house to-day — you and your boy. No second wife shall darken 
 my doors with her shameless sin ; and I would rather see a 
 daughter of mine in her grave than the wife of Sandy Kemp. 
 You have chosen between him and me, Augusta. Go to y ur 
 precious bargain, and never let me see your face again! You 
 are no daughter of mine, and never have been!" 
 
 '• Mrs. Morshead!" remonstrated the Colonel. 
 
 His revenge had a little overstepped itself. He had 
 wanted to punish the woman, whom ouce he had loved, 
 but not to this extent. This retribution was too savage, too 
 
422 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 severe, even for such an offence as hers, and for such revenge 
 as his. 
 
 " Do not plead for me, Colonel Moneypenny !" flashed out 
 Augusta, turning round on him with one of her rare outbursts 
 of passion. "Leave my mother and me to settle our own 
 affairs by ourselves. Be satisfied with what you have already 
 done, and leave the rest alone. You have revenged yourself 
 enough." 
 
 He started to his feet. 
 
 " I might have done more," he said cruelly : " and were I 
 not a gentleman and a man of honour, I would." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders with a disdainful gesture. 
 That was her sole answer to his assertion of gentlehood and 
 honour. 
 
 " If you have more to say, say it out, Colonel Moneypenny," 
 said Mrs. Morshead, who, in this little passage at arms, secretly 
 sided with her daughter, liking her spirit. 
 
 " Madam," said the Colonel grandly ; " I respect your age 
 too much to afflict you more than you are afflicted already; 
 and to your daughter I leave the stings of her own conscience. 
 Good-day, madam, and accept my sympathy ; you need it." 
 
 With no word of adieu to Augusta, he turned and left the 
 room, leaving the mother and daughter together and alone. 
 
 "Now, Augusta," said Mrs. Morshead, as the house-door 
 shut against the young widow's foe ; " you know what is before 
 you ; you don't sleep another night in this house, neither you 
 nor your boy. So go and pack, and never dare to cross this 
 threshold again. If I want you I will send for you ; but I 
 think I would rather die by the road-side than do that. No y 
 don't come near me, Augusta. I don't want to wish you 
 good-bye. You have deceived me all through, and now I have 
 done with you and yours for ever. Go ; and don't come back 
 to take leave ; only let me know that you have gone and that 
 I shall never see you again." 
 
 " Mamma!" said Augusta in a pleading voice. 
 
 " If you do not want me to lay my curse on you, Augusta — 
 a mother's curse, a dying woman's curse— leave me now and 
 for ever !" almost shouted Mrs. Morshead, carried out of her- 
 self by passion. " Leave me, you bad, ungrateful, shameful 
 girl ! Would that you had never been born !" 
 
 So Colonel Moneypenny's work had not been quite fruitless 
 to-day, and Love's shadow — -Hate — had fallen in good truth 
 with power across the young widow's path. 
 
A - Fin: H AS HIS HEART. 423 
 
 Presently Mrs. Morshead rang the drawing-room bell twice, 
 sharply. 
 
 "Take me to bed, Martha," she said feebly, when her 
 maid appeared. " Take me to bed, hussy. I have had my 
 
 death-blow." 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 AS HIGH AS HIS HEART. 
 
 Me. Beaxscombe was sitting on the seat under the cedar- 
 tree on the lawn. He was turned sideways to the house, and 
 thus looked down the grounds towards the Lodge and the 
 road. It was odd to see him sitting there alone. In all her 
 experience Stella did not remember such a strange departure 
 from his normal habits. She remembered to have seen him 
 there with her mother. She herself had sat with him there ; 
 but that this solitude-hating father of hers should have gone 
 out and deliberately placed himself under the cedar-tree alone 
 • range indeed. 
 
 Laying aside her present work — she was painting a bouquet 
 
 of roses on a length of white velvet to be hereafter made into 
 
 a sachet, scented with attar of roses, for his shirts — she went 
 
 out to him, timidly. She had become timid in these latter 
 
 — timid because he was relentless and cold, unforgiving 
 
 and displeased. Since Val's rejection by her and public 
 
 •lial to Georgie Pennefather, the relations between the 
 
 once idolizing daughter and the fondly receptive father had 
 
 almost to the breaking point and (.-hilled almost 
 
 to the freezing. Nevertheless, in the foolish way of loving 
 
 women, she tempted Providence and defied probabilities, and 
 
 went out to her father sitting there alone on the seat unde: 
 
 the cedar-tree on the lawn — where she used to sit so often 
 
 v.ith Cyril in the happy days of long ago — though if she 
 
 stopped to reflect she would have known that the ch 
 
 die would be snubbed for officio ud made to feel 
 
 unwelcome. 
 
 "You here alone, dear papa! I do not like to see you 
 alone !" she said with a caressing accent and a coaxing smile, 
 both sadly dashed by fear. 
 
 " Alone !" he answered with mock nioumfulne.->s ; " alone ! 
 When am I ever aught but alon> 
 
 To Stella it seemed that, what with Hovtensia Lyon as his 
 
424 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 constant chorus, Randolph Mackenzie as his obedient copyist, 
 and the whole visitable world of Highwood for ever flowing 
 through his gates, this dear father of hers was not much 
 alone when you came to think of it and sum up the whole 
 matter. But she was wise enough not to say this. She only 
 smiled again with a timid, coaxing kind of air, as she said : 
 
 " May I stay with you, papa?" 
 
 He turned his grey eyes on her slowly. 
 
 "As my companion?" he replied. "But companionship 
 includes sympathy ; and the only sympathy possible between a 
 father and daughter is in the unlimited obedience of the latter 
 to match the tender prevoyance of the former. By your act 
 of disobedience you have severed that bond of sympathy which 
 once existed and which should have always existed between 
 us. Will your presence, your bodily presence, Stella, free me 
 from the spiritual loneliness which oppresses me ?" 
 
 "Are you never going to forgive me, papa ?" pleaded the 
 girl, tears in he»r eyes. 
 
 " My dear Stella," he answered ; " all actions bear their 
 logical consequences. It is not a question of voluntary for- 
 giveness, or of intentionally nursed wrath to keep it warm on 
 my part. You have done a certain action and the conse- 
 quences are so-and-so — as necessary, as logical, as inevitable 
 as if you had put your hand into the fire and thus had burned 
 your flesh. Let me hear no more childish folly about ' for- 
 giveness.' It is fate, logic, circcumstance, necessity, that we 
 should discuss ; because it is fate, logic, circumstance, necessity, 
 under which we live, not the nursery puerilities of a little 
 child who breaks her doll without knowledge or design — then 
 asks to be forgiven for what is not a fault. Your action 
 was not this, my dear Stella. Your action was deliberate and 
 foreseeing disobedience to my will. The logical consequence 
 therefore, is my paternal displeasure and the solution of con- 
 tinuity in our amicable relations." 
 
 " Papa ! I did not think you could have been so cruel !" 
 cried Stella, the very passion of despair in her voice. 
 
 " Had you not better return to the house, my dear Stella ?" 
 said her father with frosty civility and a deadly kind of 
 courtesy. " Would you not think it well to resume such 
 occupations as you might have been engaged in? I wish to 
 reflect and meditate on a certain course of action on my own 
 part, and I desire to be left in solitude — the solitude to which 
 you yourself have doomed me." 
 
AS HIGH AS HIS HEART. -125 
 
 On -which Stella, obedient and dejected, went back into the 
 drawing-room; but she put away that square of white velvet 
 and her jar of roses, and did no more to-day to that sachet, 
 scented with attar of roses, which she wes painting for her 
 dear papa's fine-worked shirts. The spirit had gone out of 
 her hand, and she could as little have drawn the forms or 
 laid the colours as she could have sympathized with her 
 father's thoughts, had she known them, as they buzzed like 
 bees beneath the cedar-tree and drew themselves across his 
 brow like long lines of light traversing the darkness. 
 
 His sainted Matilda among the angels in heaven and there- 
 fore of no use to him here on earth — Stella, a disappointment 
 and worst: ; by no means now the Star of his Home in whose 
 rays he was to find comfort, guidance and companion- 
 ship, but a very uncomfortable and shabby little farthing 
 rushlight which served only to make the surrounding darkness 
 more visible — Randolph Mackenzie, a mere bit of human 
 mechanism, a cleverly-constructed grub, good for a certain 
 amount of caligraphic ability and good for nothing else — the 
 fount of his genius drying up for want of that praise and de- 
 q, that loving flattery, that stimulating absorption which 
 made its only real source — Mr. Bransconibe had but one 
 shrine to which to turn, one rock by which to anchor. Let 
 the" world say what it would, he had resolved. He had 
 his own life and comfort and genius to think of first of all 
 things. Lei the herd rave. Is not a poet superior to such 
 ravings? and must not Egeria be his chief care? So he had 
 red, as has been said; and the moment for putting his 
 mental determination into deeds had come. Presently Stella 
 saw her father get up from his seat and walk across the lawn. 
 His gait and air had something in them more than usual — a 
 curious blending of the majesty and courtesy, the grace and 
 dignity for which he was famous, with a haste, an eagernea 
 not often shown at all and never so strongly marked. Then 
 she saw him lift his broad-brimmed hat and stand uncoi 
 in the sunshine, as he took Hortensia's hand and drew it 
 within his arm, bending his handsome head as if sp 
 low tones while they walked slowly back across the lawn t i 
 the seal beneath the cedar-tree from which he had just risen — 
 that Beal on which so much of the Bransconibe family life had 
 been transacted. 
 
 "Sim her>' again! Why! she was here this morning! — 
 and she did not tell me she was coming again this afternoon. 
 
426 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 I cannot bear it much longer ! I know I shall quarrel with 
 her," said Stella to herself, colouring with vexation. 
 
 Then she turned pale and shivered with something more 
 serious than vexation, as her eyes were fixed with a kind of 
 fascination on her father and her friend. 
 
 " Child, do you know that you have grown ?" said Mr. 
 Branscombe in his most dulcet tones, as he placed Hortensia 
 on the seat and drew her close to his side, so close that she 
 leaned against his arm — which was what she liked. 
 
 The little Puritan, feeling that something was in the air, 
 was pale and trembling, not knowing whether she ought to 
 feel frightened or elated, hopeful or despairing. What was 
 the meaning of this exordium ? Had she grown beyond her 
 place of supplementary daughter ? of youthful Egeria ? of 
 childlike chorus and artistic shield-bearer — and was she 
 therefore to be banished? Had Stella's jealousy been too 
 much for her, and was she to suffer from it in the diminution, 
 if not total cessation, of the friendship which made her life's 
 joy and was her crowning honour, and without which it seemed 
 to her that her days would become a dull dead blank scarce 
 worth the trouble of traversing? What did this sublime 
 and lovingly-adored man mean by her having grown ? — that 
 she had outstretched her precious privileges ? 
 
 " Grown ?" she repeated, her voice a little unsteady ; but 
 she did her best to keep her manner natural and as if uncon- 
 cerned. " No ; I have not grown, dear Mr. Branscombe ; not 
 for the last year. And at all events," she added, her pale 
 lips forcing themselves to smile ; " I hope that I have not 
 grown beyond your affection or my clear old place at Rose 
 Hill." 
 
 " Tes ; you have grown within this last year ; and you have 
 grown beyond your place at Eose Hill," said Finery Fred in a 
 low soft voice — how often used before in life! — stooping his 
 head to look into her face and smiling at her fear, at her 
 pretence of calmness, at her girlish nervousness altogether. 
 " You have grown indeed — ' as high as my heart,' Hortensia ! 
 Grown into my heart I may say ; grown so closely one with 
 myself that I cannot live without you — that the days are dull 
 when I have not you as my rosy-fingered dawn, my noonday 
 sun, my evening star — grown round me as the ivy round the 
 oak, so that I cannot be separated from you. And now I ask 
 you to leave your home and come to mine — to tell me that I 
 may count on your devotion and companionship to the end of 
 
AS HIGH AS HIS HEART. 
 
 my days — to assure me, with that refined and gracious little 
 mouth wh< • curves are real enchantment to me, that 
 
 you will never leave me ag tin. Will you, sweet child?" 
 
 A vain the girl was uncertain of his meaning. Was this 
 an offer of marriage or of adoption? She did not know ; and 
 truth to Bay, for herself she did not care which it might be. 
 She only knew that the dearest wish of her heart was to be 
 able to devote herself to Mr. Branscombe — to live with him 
 always and never leave him ; but it was all one to her whether 
 she were his wife or his daughter so long as her position was 
 secure and her devotion had free outlet. 
 
 " There is nothing on earth that would make me so happy 
 as to dedicate my life to your service," she said, raising her 
 eyes to his with almost religious exaltation of worship shining 
 in them. 
 
 For though she was silly to excess, and in some sense 
 artificial, she was terribly in earnest in her admiration for 
 this imposing bit of froth and foam, this sham Apollo, this 
 pasteboard Jupiter in whom she believed throughout, and 
 whom she loved and reverenced in ecpial proportions. 
 
 " But have you foreseen consequences ?" Mr. Branscombe 
 went on to say. •"If friends deride? If home influences 
 interfere with this sweet union of our souls, can I count on 
 holding you contrary to the will of your parents? Loving 
 you. child, as I do, can I be the one all-sufficient in your life ? 
 • I ask for so much from you?" 
 
 '■ Oh, Mr. Branscombe !" said Hortensia in frank agony; 
 " you will not let any one divide us after to-day ? You will 
 not send me away again after having opened your house to 
 ni'-r You will let me live with you, whatever any one Bays ?" 
 
 She laid her clasped hands on his .shoulder. It was with 
 an effort that she did not fling her-, If across his breast. 
 
 For answer, Mr. Branscombe put his arm round her waist — 
 thert.', in full view of the house; Stella, standing just within 
 the open frame of the window, irresolute whether to go and 
 speak to her friend —or to her who was assumed to he her 
 friend — or whether to stay quietly where she was and let the 
 two manage by themselves what seemed somewhat important 
 business. His arm round her waist, in full view of the house ; 
 of Stella, undecided what to do and full of secret trouble ; of 
 Jan • Durnsford, watching from poor dear Mrs. Branscombe's 
 room for what she had 1 rag expected; "i Jones and the r - 
 of the servants, peeping from the staircase windows; of the 
 
428 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 gardener and the gardener's lad, peering from behind the 
 laurustinus bushes in the shrubbery ; — there, in fall view of 
 earth and sky, of man and the gods, Mr. Branscombe once 
 more stooped his lordly head, and this time kissed the girl 
 long and tenderly on her trembling lips. 
 
 " My kiss of consecration," he said grandly. " The kiss 
 which claims you as my child-wife." 
 
 " Oh ! if you mean to marry me, no one can divide us," said 
 Hortensia naively, smiling with the happiness of relief from 
 dread, as her fears were now at rest. Adoption, with a father 
 and mother of her own alive, might have been difficult, but 
 marriage was an honourable state ; and she was secure. 
 
 Womanlike, even at this supreme moment, she glanced 
 timidly towards the house and saw Stella standing within the 
 window-frame, looting at them. Even at this distance the 
 whiteness of her face and the darkness of her eyes were 
 visible ; and her whole look and attitude suggested an aveng- 
 ing spirit. 
 
 " Oh !" cried Hortensia in genuine terror. " Stella has 
 seen !" 
 
 " Sweet trembler ! have no fear. Trust in me — I am your 
 protector, now," said Mr. Branscombe with tranquillizing 
 dignity, again pressing her to him as if to make the whole 
 thing more plain and evident. Turning to the house, he 
 called out to his daughter. " Stella, come here, my dear 
 child," he said blandly. " I have to speak with you." 
 
 Stella came forward ; very slowly, very reluctantly. 
 
 To have seen her dear papa kiss Hortensia Lyon — kiss her 
 as if he meant it — was almost as if she had seen him trans- 
 formed into the likeness of the Prince of Darkness himself. 
 It was a sin, was it not ? — a crime ? — something to grow hot 
 and cold over, to blush for, to be ashamed of, to tremble at ? 
 What could it mean ? Why should he kiss Hortensia Lyon, 
 who was not his own child ? — he, that fastidious and delicate- 
 minded papa who had left off kissing his own daughter, and 
 who, not so long ago, had held a long and wonderfully- refined 
 discourse on the grossness of personal demonstrativeness and 
 the sweetness of absolute reticence and stillness. And now 
 he was kissing Hortensia Lyon on the seat under the cedar- 
 tree, full in view of the house and its inmates ! 
 
 She had found no solution to the terrible enigma by the 
 time she had come up to the two, still sitting closely pressed 
 together ; Mr. Branscombe, with his arm round Hortensia's 
 
AS HIGH AS HIS HEART. 429 
 
 waist — Hortensia, with her hands clasped in his, and their 
 whole look and attitude eloquent of more than the mere 
 arrangement of a new picture, the inspiration of a new poem. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe, mindful of the future fitness of things, 
 forcibly held Hortensia to her place and prevented her rising 
 to greet his daughter. This last came to pay homage, not to 
 receive the courtesy of an equal; and the child-queen must 
 know her place. But if he prevented her rising, he loosed her 
 clasped hands, took one and laid it in his daughter's, covering 
 both with his own. 
 
 " Love each other, my dear children," he said theatrically. 
 " Stella, my daughter, receive your former friend as your 
 father's sweet companion and peerless source of inspiration 
 and joy. I present you, my dear Stella, to my child- wife — ■ 
 the sweetest and most sacred Egeria of my genius." 
 
 " Tour wife, papa !" cried Stella, shrinking back as if she 
 had been struck. 
 
 " My wife !" he repeated loudly, so loudly that all the 
 listeners and peepers round heard the word. 
 
 Stella turned away abruptly, her hands clasped over her 
 eyes and her whole being overcome with grief, passion and 
 despair. 
 
 " Papa !" she cried after a moment's pause, taking her 
 hands from her face and confronting them with a wild, heart- 
 broken expression. "You say this here, where my mo 
 lived — where she hears you now, up there, in heaven!'' 
 
 "What a cruel girl you are, Stella!" sobbed Hortensia. 
 "What has a dead wife to do with her husband's second 
 marriage r" 
 
 " And if your sainted mother docs view this scene from her 
 home in the realms of bliss, my dear Stella," said Mr. Brans- 
 combe ; " she will rejoice that I have supplemented such an 
 unsatisfactory daughter as she bequeathed to me, with a wife 
 made after my heart and her own model. So that calling on 
 tli s name of your mother to bring distress upon your father's 
 future wife does no good to any one, my dear Stella. It 
 simply recoils in confusion on your own head. And now, niv 
 dear, that I have informed you of the momentous decision ol 
 the hour, I will not detain you from your avocations. Youi 
 ffweel little friend will excuse you, and I give you leave to 
 wii hdraw." 
 
 But if that good Matilda in the realms of bliss was sc 
 certain to rejoice at this inauspicious union of January and 
 
430 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 May, Hortensia's parents took another view of things, and 
 one not quite in harmony with the venerable idol and his 
 youthful adorer. Mrs. Lyon was specially furious, though 
 secretly not wholly displeased that events had vindicated her 
 better judgment and that her husbaud was thus forced to 
 acknowledge the superiority of her insight. 
 
 " I told you so, William, twenty times !" she said, when 
 Hortensia, who knew better than Finery Fred how to manage 
 her parents, had given them the startling news of her 
 betrothal ; on the hearing of which her mother had ordered 
 her angrily from the room, her father not objecting. " You 
 would not believe me, but I have seen it all along. I was 
 certain of it from the very first !" 
 
 " Then if you were so certain you should have prevented 
 it," said her husband with masculine injustice. " What was 
 the good of being certain then, and doing nothing ? And 
 what is the good of saying all this now, when it is too late ?" 
 
 Mrs. Lyon burst into those tears which mean less pain than 
 passion, and were born less of grief for Hortensia's wayward 
 folly than of wrath with her husband's injustice. 
 
 " That is just like you,"jWilliam ! Just like you men !" she 
 said angrily. " You take all the power out of our hands and 
 refuse to believe a word we say — spoil the children and 
 weaken our authority — and then you blame us when things 
 go wrong which we might have prevented if we had been 
 allowed. You would not let me have the smallest influence 
 over Hortensia ; and now you blame me because she has got 
 into a disgraceful scrape and made worse than a fool of 
 herself for life !" 
 
 " A disgraceful scrape ! — No disgrace at all !" said Mr. 
 Lyon sharply. "Disgrace? What disgrace, Cara? I am 
 ashamed to hear you talk so ! There is a little disparity in 
 years, certainly ; but where is the disgrace, I want to know, of 
 a girl marrying a man like Mr. Branscombe ? Good family, 
 stainless reputation, more than well-to-do, fine person, un- 
 questionable attainments — what disgrace is there in all this, 
 I say ?" he repeated, energetically drumming on the table as 
 he warmed to his work of advocacy and defence. 
 
 " A man old enough to be her grandfather — a man years 
 older than her father — the father of her most intimate girl- 
 friend — his wife dead only just a year — it is horrible ! — it is 
 sacrilege !" said Mrs. Lyon shuddering. 
 
 " Pshaw ! The age of the man does not signify. If it had 
 
AS HIGH AS HIS HEART. 431 
 
 been the other way you might have talked," said Mr. Lyon 
 linfully. 
 " Then if I died, I suppose you would think of marrying 
 Stella.'' said Mrs. Lyon with weak sarcasm. 
 
 " More unlikely things might happen," returned Mr. Lyon, 
 with a peculiar kind of sniff familiar to his intimates. " But 
 is not much likelihood of your giving me any chance," 
 _ i-naturedly ; " so we need not discuss impro- 
 bable hypotheses. We have enough to do with things in 
 hand. And after all, Cara," he continued in a softer \ 
 
 v over to his wife and laying his broad hand on her still 
 round shoulder ; " things might have been worse for tko 
 child. ' Better be an old man's darUng than a young man's 
 slave,' don't you know? and our little maid is peculiar and 
 has fads of her own." 
 
 " Peculiar and something more !" put in Hortensia's 
 mother in a low voice. The " peculiarities" of her daughter 
 had so often Vexed her, she was glad to be able to have her 
 fling at them without much fear of rebuke. 
 
 " I confess I have had other views for her," Mr. Lyon went 
 on to ly not hearing his wife's undertones. " And I 
 
 am disappointed more than you can be, Cara. But she has 
 chosen for herself; and perhaps she knows what she wants 
 better than we do. She may have done for the best. Mr. 
 Branscombe is old and therefore will have a gentler hand over 
 her than Ran would have had. Ban is the best fellow in the 
 world, but he is a bit of a humbler when all is said and done ; 
 and our little maid lias always been fastidious and over-sensi- 
 tiv.'. I know she had it at heart to make something of Ban ; 
 but, Lord, what can you d<> with a good honest dunderhead 
 like that? Perhaps an artistic, musical, picture-making old 
 fellow like Fred Branscombe, who will keep her in cotton- wool 
 and cocker her up like a little queen, will be better for her than 
 poor old Kan, God help hini! who opens his round eyes when 
 _oes on her high ropes, and looks as if Bhe were talking 
 m when Bhe launches out about the divinity of art and 
 thr — what is her favourite word? — the precionsness, y< 
 
 ions preciousness' of a dab of colour here or a twirlig g 
 on the piano there. No ; Ban would hardly have cottoned to 
 that, I reckon !" he said with a queer kind of laugh. ** At all 
 events," he added in the tone of a man who has taken a 
 Ive and means to keep it; "at all events, Cara, it is her 
 deliberate choice ; and I won't have her bullied. You hear me, 
 
432 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 Cava ? I won't have her bullied ; and we must respect her 
 choice." 
 
 " Oh, William, how can you he so foolish !" cried Mrs. 
 Lyon. "If that child proposed murder you would sanction 
 it ! You cannot spoil her enough, it seems to me !" 
 
 " When she does propose murder and I do sanction it, 
 then you may cry out," answered Mr. Lyon quietly. " Mean- 
 while the main question is — she loves that old fellow and 
 wants to marry him. Whether it is good taste or bad, she 
 wants to marry him. And I give my consent to the thing, 
 and say again, I won't have her bullied ; so look where you 
 go, Cara." 
 
 " I wish I was dead !" said Mrs. Lyon in a rage. 
 
 Whereupon the conversation ended, and Hortensia, recalled 
 to the drawing-room, was informed by her father that she 
 was a little fool, but that she was old enough to know her 
 own mind and to follow out her own course. And she was 
 to come and give him a kiss ; and God bless her, and grant 
 her happiness in the years to come ! She and his youthful 
 son-in-law would make a pretty pair and be well matched for 
 height and age, he added, not able to resist this little fling 
 at Finery Fred ; but he hoped the dear boy would be dutiful 
 to himself and attend to what his dear mother-in-law might 
 have to say to him. She would probably have a great deal 
 to say, he added with a queer smile. With the same queer 
 smile he hoped that Stella Branscombe would agree with her 
 step-mother ; and that the two Queens of Brentford would 
 not fall out about the wearing of the crown. 
 
 To all of which Hortensia answered only a few prim and 
 respectful monosyllables. She knew her father's humour, 
 and so long as she got her own way she did not interfere 
 with the wording of her charter. 
 
 But when she drew herself out of his arms, and went over 
 to kiss her mother and to receive her blessing also, Mrs. 
 Lyon, on pretence of wiping her eyes, turned away her face 
 till she left just the tip of her ears and the nape of her neck 
 as the only kissable tracts ; saying, in a low voice, so that her 
 husband should not hear ; 
 
 " I cannot give you my blessing, Hortensia ! This marriage 
 seems to me too monstrous for God or man to bless. I can- 
 not sanction it!" 
 
 "Monstrous!" repeated Hortensia in a loud voice. "It 
 is a marriage which God Himself has made and sanctified !" 
 
NO WORSE 77/.1.Y THE REST. 433 
 
 "Now, Cava, what did I say just this minute?" cried 
 Mr. Lyon, guessing at the truth as Hortensia meant that he 
 should. " No bullying and no opposition, if you please. 
 The thing is done, and we have both — both, mind your" — 
 v.-ith emphasis — " accepted the situation. There is no good 
 in doinu' things by halves, and I will not spoil the cloak for 
 the sake of the thread. So," ringing the bell; "we will 
 drink to the health of our future son-in-law in a bottle of 
 champagne, and long life to the happy pair!" 
 
 "That, wild horses should not make me do !" said Mrs. 
 Lyon, bursting into an hysterical passion of tears and hurry- 
 ing out of the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVL 
 
 NO WORSE THAN THE REST. 
 
 "I do not believe it," said Mrs. Morshead with feeble 
 ferocity, half raising herself from among the pillows whereby 
 she was supported in her bed. " I do not believe a word of it, 
 Martha ! You are just cheating me with lies, like all you 
 hussies. There was never one among you that could speak 
 the truth." 
 
 "No, ma'am, it is gospel truth," answered Martha. "All 
 the place is talking of it ; and no one seems to think of any- 
 thing else." 
 
 " Then don't tell me any more about it. I don't want to 
 hear of such wickedn id the old woman savagely. 
 
 " Th> both to g dewell; that's what I £ 
 
 it; and the law should step in to prevent it. A mere baby 
 like that and an old fellow who might be her great-grand- 
 r — it is a Bhame and a Bin — worse than heathen Mor- 
 inonisni, I declare it is. It makes me ill tu chink of it." 
 
 " Well, ma'am. I'm sorry I told you," said Mailha peni- 
 tently. " I didn't expect you tu take it to heart like that. 
 I told you only to amuse you and pass the time." 
 
 "Then you don't amuse me, and I would rather not pass 
 time in such shameful thoughts," said Mrs. Morshead 
 — ly ; and Martha, who knew her, held her peace. 
 
 Presently the old woman spoke again. 
 
 " And when is the marriage to take place?" she asked 
 quite suddenly. 
 
 •■ Well, ma'am, as soon as Miss Lyon can get her things 
 
 •1 y 
 
434 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 together," said the maid. " They do say that Mrs. Lyon is 
 that put out she won't lend a hand to one mortal thing, and 
 that Miss Lyon she has no one to help her but her pa'. But 
 then they say a heap of things here at Highwood." 
 
 " And if Mrs. Lyon is put out and won't help, she is quite 
 in the right," snapped Mrs. Morshead; "and now go down 
 and get your dinner." 
 
 "It's not time yet, ma'am," said Martha, who was a 
 devoted soul and had all the nursing, night and day, on her 
 shoulders. But they were sturdy ones; and she worked 
 through her task without too great fatigue. 
 
 " I tell you it is," said her mistress sharply. " Go down, 
 I say, and don't come back till I ring." 
 
 "Whatever has she in her head now!" said Martha to 
 herself as she left the room. " For most parts she can't abear 
 me out of her sight, and now to-day, when she's so much 
 weaker and looks so strange, she sends me off afore my time. 
 Well, poor dear, the Lord's will be done ! — but He made a 
 queer lot when He made her !" 
 
 Left alone, Mrs. Morshead shut her eyes and thought. 
 She knew as well as Martha — as well as Dr. Quigley 
 would have known, had she suffered him to come near her — 
 that her end was at hand, and that the mysterious malady 
 which had so long held and oppressed her, had now almost 
 reached its fatal culmination. Not her days, but her hours, 
 were numbered, and she was dying, unreconciled to her 
 daughter. She laid there and thought ; and tears began to 
 steal silently down her withered, parched and miserable face. 
 Presently a few sobs burst from her lips with the irrepres- 
 sible impulse of bodily weakness. A board creaked in the 
 next room — the dressing-room — belonging to this, the best 
 room in the house— the door between the two standing very 
 slightly ajar. The old woman dried her eyes as hurriedly as 
 if her tears had been sins of which she was ashamed. 
 " Who is there ?" she cried sharply. 
 
 There was no answer, and the boards ceased to creak. For 
 a moment she looked anxiously to the door ; then with a 
 fresh sob, this time of disappointment, she said to herself, 
 but not aloud : " I thought it might have been that bad girl. 
 I think she might have come to see me when she knows how 
 ill I am." 
 
 She rang the bell twice hurriedly. 
 
 Martha was by her bedside before the echoes had ceased 
 
NO WORSE Til AX THE REST. 435 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ?" she said a little breathlessly. " You was 
 a-wantdng of me?" 
 
 •• Martha,' 1 said Mrs. Morshead, " who is in the next room ?" 
 
 "Lor, ma'am, no one! Who should there be?" was 
 Martha's answer ; but her heart ached when she met those 
 wistful eyes, the secret desire of which she thought she 
 read. 
 
 '• Shut the door, then. And now go at once for my 
 daughter," said Mrs. Morshead. " I dare say you know where 
 she is. though her 'lying mother, whom she has deserted so 
 cruelly, does not. You are all in a plot together, you hussies, 
 and no one knows where to have you. But go for her, and 
 tell her to come this very minute if she wants to see her 
 mother alive in this world — which I dare say she does not. 
 " Go, can't you !" she said savagely. 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." said Martha, disappearing. 
 
 In another instant Augusta, without her bonnet, came into 
 the room and went noiselessly up to the bed. 
 
 "You want me, dear mamma?" she asked quietly. 
 
 " Oh ! there you are, are you ?" her mother said, keeping 
 up the old sourness of her manner — yet her poor dim eyes 
 brightened. " So you have condescended to come at last and 
 see your dying mother, have you ? And now, are you not 
 ashamed of yourself when you see how ill I am ?" 
 
 "What is it. dear mamma?" asked Augusta anxiously. 
 
 "Cancer," was the answer, made with the invalid's odd 
 pride in the gravity of the malady. " Cancer ; that's what I 
 : and you as hard and indifferent all the time as if it 
 wer< • a mere pinprick. And all those years when I knew it was 
 coining, and when I had it, you not caring a jot ! You ought 
 lined of youself, if ever a daughter was," the poor 
 old thiii'.; said, whimpering. 
 
 "I did not know. Remember, you never told me, dear 
 mamma," Baid Augusta gently. 
 
 ■' Then you ought to have found out for yourself. Any 
 other daughter would," said Mrs. Morshead, her tears of 
 weak: :liii_;- v.ith her temper. "And here have you 
 
 left me to the care of these hussies of servants, and no one to 
 look alter anything. All the housekeeping going wrong, the 
 butchers' hills mounting up to goodness knows how much, 
 the drawing-room fender and fireirons left to rust, and you, 
 who ought to have been my right hand and seeing after every- 
 thing, away no one knows where, enjoying yourself while 
 
436 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 your mother was dying. It is a shame! — a shame!" she 
 replied with fresh tears. 
 
 "Dear mamma, I have never left you," said Augusta 
 softly. "I have been here all the time; watching in the 
 dressing-room when Martha was downstairs ; taking care of 
 the house and keeping all things straight." 
 
 " You have stayed on here of your own free will after I 
 ordered you out of my house ?" ashed Mrs. Morshead, opening 
 her eyes on her daughter and half raising herself in her bed. 
 
 At'this moment she looked terrible ; like an ancient Fate, 
 twin sister of death and sin, lying there for the persecution of 
 mankind. 
 
 " How could I leave you when you were so ill ? You were 
 taken ill on the day you told me to go," said Augusta. 
 
 " And you stayed here of your own accord, against my 
 orders ?" 
 
 "Yes, mamma." 
 
 "Well, Augusta, I must say you are the very coolest 
 young woman I ever met with," said Mrs. Morshead, with a 
 curious kind of endeavour to keep up her anger against the 
 promptings of her heart. " So, I am not mistress in my own 
 house, am I not ? I am not to be obeyed when I say that 
 you and that troublesome little toad of yours are to go? 
 You stay and stay and stay because I cannot see you, and 
 disobey me as if I were a mere nobody ; — upon my word — 
 what next I wonder ! And where is that little monkey of 
 yours ? And why, if you are here, have I never heard him ?" 
 " I sent Tony away that he should not disturb you, mamma," 
 said Tony's mother. 
 
 "And what business had you to send the poor fellow 
 away ?" snapped Tony's grandmother " If you chose to stay 
 why might not he too ? — with a nice garden to run about in 
 and good food to eat ? You are not a very kind mother, I 
 must say, Augusta, to keep all these good things for yourself 
 and let that dear little boy go without." 
 
 " I was afraid he would disturb you with his noise," said 
 Augusta again. 
 
 " I should have liked his noise," said Mrs. Morshead. " I 
 was never so impatient with him as you were. Poor fellow," 
 whimpering afresh ; "I should like to have seen his pretty 
 face once more." 
 
 " Shall I send for him, dear mamma?" asked Augusta. 
 " Send for him now — what nonsense !" was the reply. 
 
TiO WORSE THAN THE REST. 437 
 
 " Why should a dear little light-hearted child be broughl 
 see an old wretch like me, like a death's-head? Send foi 
 him. no! Let things be." After a pause she asked, not 
 opening her eyes, " Has that Sandy Kemp of yours been 
 living here too ? I should be surprised at nothing now." 
 "No," answered Augusta quietly. 
 " Where is he ? — in Highwood r" 
 "Yes, mamma." 
 
 There was silence for a few moments, broken only by the 
 subdued and sleepy purring of the cat lying in his accustomed 
 place on the bed. 
 
 M Well, send for him," then said Mrs. Morshead, still with- 
 out opening her eyes. " You are all mad and bad together. 
 That's what I think of you. But you are no worse than your 
 neighbours. With that little hussy, Hortensia Lyon, and 
 that old fop, Mr. Branscombe, going to make a match of it, 
 I may as well look over your fault. So send for that sign- 
 painter of yours, Augusta, and let us hear what he has to say 
 for his impudent self." 
 
 " He is downstairs now. mamma," said Augusta, her 
 colour deepening as she spoke. " I saw him come up the 
 garden a few minutes ago. He comes -.very day to ask for 
 you." 
 
 " Oh !" said Mrs. Morshead in her old dry way ; " does he ? 
 I'm vastly obliged to him, I am sure. I dure say the state 
 of my health is of greal I to him. ■ However, if he iz 
 
 here without leave he may as well come up with it. So send for 
 him, Augusta. I want to give him a little piece of my mind." 
 I a few words to Martha, standing outside in 
 the passage, and shewei ' lirs softly. Softly too came 
 
 up tSun In. Kemp; bur when lie entered the dimly-lighted 
 room, with its wide- open window and closely-drawn green 
 blinds, the old woman was lying <piiet and silent, her 
 
 1, her breathing regular, peacefully asleep. The artist 
 came up to her bed where Augusta was standing, and haul 
 in hand they kept watch and ward over the frail and 1: 
 ing lit'.-, waiting until the poor invalid should awaken. Her 
 and somewhat deep-drawn breathing was, as it were, 
 echoed by the sensually satisfied purr of the cat at her 
 the clock licked sharp and clear <>n the chimneypiece ; out of 
 doors only a few birds twittered iu the shrubbery bu- 
 and the warm, still, sultry afternoon was as peaceful as if it 
 had been itself the court of death. 
 
438 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 For more than an hour the two stood there watching the 
 sleep which they half expected would never turn to waking, 
 when suddenly Mrs. Morshead opened her eyes and looked at 
 them both with a smile. 
 
 " I have had such a nice dream," she said ; "and I declare 
 I have no pain, Augusta ! All my pain has gone like magic !" 
 
 She spoke in quite a different voice from her ordinary one ; 
 weaker, lower, but without the usual acrimony. 
 
 " I am so glad you are so much easier, dear mamma," said 
 Augusta lovingly. 
 
 "So you are there, Sandy Kenrp?" then said the old 
 woman, fixing her eyes on the artist. " Well ! you are a bold 
 fellow, I must say, to come and stare at me like this ! But 
 you always were as impudent as you were high. I wanted to 
 see you through. So you are going to marry my daughter, are 
 you?" 
 
 " I hope so, Mrs. Morshead," said Sandro gently. 
 
 " And you will make her a good husband ?" 
 
 " I think I can say yes to that, without even the hope," he 
 answered with a sweet grave smile. 
 
 " You will do well by the boy, poor fellow ?" 
 
 " Yes ; have no fear. He will be as my own son," was the 
 reply. 
 
 " And you expect to get all my money? Not a farthing, 
 Sandy Kemp ! Not a farthing ! I have made my will, and 
 you will not have the benefit of a single silver sixpence. If 
 you take the girl and her boy you take them on your own 
 hands — mind that ! The boy comes in for all when he is of 
 age ; but it has to accumulate — accumulate at compound 
 interest — and you will not have a golden guinea for his school- 
 ing, or his birthdays, or anything. Now are you content with 
 your bargain ?" 
 
 The old woman had spoken very feebly, very slowly, but 
 with perfect distinctness. Her mind was as clear as ever ; 
 only her body had gone. 
 
 " I am quite content, Mrs. Morshead. I have enough for 
 my wife and her boy," said Sandro firmly but tenderly. 
 " Your money was the last thing I had in my mind when I 
 asked Augusta to be my wife ; and I am glad that you have 
 left all to her boy. He should have been my heir if he had 
 not been yours." 
 
 " You are an impudent fellow to put us both on a'par," said 
 Mrs. Morshead sharply ; " and remember, he takes my name. 
 
NO WOIiSE THAN THE REST. 430 
 
 He shall be no Latrobe, nor Kemp, nor rubbish of that sort. 
 He is a Morshead ; and be comes in for all because be is a 
 Morshead. Do yon bear, Augusta?'' 
 
 " Yes, mamma. He sball bear your name and my father's," 
 said Augusta. 
 
 " And keep that impudent sign-painter of yours in his 
 old woman in a feeble wandering kind 
 of way. Then she smiled and seemed to recollect herself. 
 " No, he doesn't mean it, I dare say," she said. " I believe 
 he is an honest man at bottom. I believe so — I believe so. 
 Oh ! this blessed freedom from pain !" 
 
 She seemed to doze a little on this, but presently she woke 
 up again. 
 
 " Have I been a hard mother to you, Augusta?" she asked. 
 " Sometimes I think I have been a little — have I ?" 
 
 " You have been a little sometimes," answered Augusta, 
 frankly but gently. 
 
 " And you would have been hard too, if you had had a wolf 
 in your inside for years as I have had," said Mrs. Morshead 
 sharply. " Then 1 have been a bad mother to you, Augusta r" 
 
 "No, not that, mamma." 
 
 " But bard and disagreeable — cross in fact — a peevish, 
 scolding, cross old woman?" 
 
 " We will not think of that now," answered Augusta 
 soothingly. " I have always loved you ; and I have always 
 known that undera • » yon have loved me." 
 
 "Yes," whimpered the poor creature pitifully; "I know 
 that I have born bad to you. I know that I have, Augusta ; 
 and to that poor little . I rapped his pretty hands 
 
 once when he had done no wrong. I know — I know. But 
 I've made amends now ; and I was always in pain, and no one 
 knew. So perhaps you'll not mind now when you do know, 
 for it was pain that was bad to bear. And I was hard to 
 you too, Sandy Kemp ; but I thought you came after my 
 money as well as my daughter. Now it's over — so forgive 
 m. — forgive me," she sobbed. "Think of me gentry when 
 I'm gone !" 
 
 She said all this almost in a whisper, her glazi 
 turning slowly from each to each. Feebly she made as if to 
 put her hands together ; and when, divining her wish, they 
 clasped them beneath hers, her dying fingers pressed them 
 gently as a weak, wan smile fli I >ut her lips. 
 
 " Kemember me gently when 1 am gone !" she said again 
 
440 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 in a low whisper ; " and pray God to forgive me my sins — 
 and your own too," she added with one of her sudden, sharp 
 looks — the last that ever she gave. 
 
 A long, dull silence fell on the room, broken only by the 
 more laboured breath of the dying woman, the sleeping purr 
 of the cat. the ticking of the clock, marking off the relentless 
 pace of time. For the last time the old woman opened her 
 eyes and looked up. 
 
 " Taka care of Martha," she said. " The hussy has done 
 well of me — and don't let the boy tease the cat." 
 
 Her eyes closed and a slight convulsive shiver seemed to 
 run over her whole frame. Her breathing ceased ; her jaw 
 dropped ; the last moment had come and gone. Then sud- 
 denly the cat started from his sleep, gave a loud unearthly 
 yell, and, with his tail thick and arched, dashed off the bed 
 and down the stairs as if pursued by a legion of fiends. 
 
 CHAPTER XLYII. 
 
 THE NEW OEDEEING. 
 
 No one's affairs excited so much attention or sympathy at 
 this time at Highwood as Stella Branscombe's. Georgie 
 Pennefather's engagement with Valentine Cowley came as a 
 matter of course and made no stir. People said : " So she has 
 caught him at last !" and there they left it. Augusta La- 
 trobe's future marriage with Sandro Kemp had nothing in it 
 to cause uplifted eyebrows, shrugged shoulders or ill-natured 
 smiles. It was so eminently suitable that no one, save 
 Colonel Moneypenny, had a word to say in its disfavour. 
 But Hortensia Lyon and old Mr. Branscombe — a mere child 
 and an old fellow who ought to have been thinking of his 
 grave and what was to come after — that was another matter 
 altogether ; and one for which no person in the place had either 
 sympathy or respect. Taken by itself even, who could have 
 given a blessing to such a marriage ? But when was added to 
 this intrinsic unsuitability the thought of that poor, dear Stella, 
 and what would become of her ? and how could she be ex- 
 pected to get on with a stepmother younger than herself? and 
 how shamefully she had been sacrificed throughout by that 
 furred and frogged, curled and dyed and scented father of 
 hers, first by her own marriage, and now by his — then the 
 
THE NEW ORDERING. Ml 
 
 world lifted its head and hissed in its own underhand and 
 hypocritical way. That is, it congratulated Hortensia and 
 her elderly idol to their faces and laughed at them, when it 
 did not vilify them, behind their backs. 
 
 The marriage took place very soon after the engagement. 
 Anticipation disturbed Mr. Branscombe's nerves, and he was 
 impatient to begin his new life and to get all things in order. 
 Wherefore he declined to wait for conventional arrangements. 
 His sweet angel, his child- wife, his Little Love, he said, did 
 not pin her heart on millinery pomp, and she would be as 
 happy with three frocks as thirty : — " Happier," said Hor- 
 tensia meekly: — And as, according to Mr. Branscombe, 
 " frocks" are the great barriers to feminine speed in all 
 mutters, the decision of " one off, one on, and one to spare" 
 id the question ; and the marriage was the great event 
 of the day, just three weeks after that conversation on the 
 garden-seal beneath the cedar-tree on the lawn. 
 
 During the honeymoon, which lengthened out into nearly 
 three, nothing could exceed the kindness of the neighbour- 
 hood to Stella. Every one offered her a home, and she was 
 made the spoiled child of the place. Augusta begged her to 
 come to The Laurels — but then Ethel White was there, and 
 Stella a little shrank from her; also she felt a little con- 
 strained with that sweet Augusta herself, remembering all 
 the good advice that she had given her, and her warnings 
 about the incoming tide, the full meaning of which she under- 
 stood now though it was hidden from her then. So she said 
 "No" to Augusta, and held on her way alone at Eosc Hill. 
 
 Then the Pennefathers asked her; but Sherrardine was 
 noisy, and the constant coming and going of Val might bean 
 embarrassment. Wherefore Sherrardine would not do for a 
 temporary home ; nor would Derwent Lodge, though tho 
 LyoDs were perhaps the most pressing of all. Mrs. Lyon 
 had a vague idea of adopting Stella as their daughter in the 
 place of tho one who had lefl them; and she was unwise 
 enough to say so. After she and her husband had pr 
 the girl to go back with them to Derwenl Lodg . Mr. Lyon, 
 in his hearty, hospitable way. meaning simply what he said: 
 "To pass the time till the happy pair came home" — the 
 still incensed and unreconciled mother hurst into tears and 
 added : 
 
 " Yes, come home with us, dear Stella, and make ityoui 
 own. Be my daughter; for I have lost my own!" 
 
442 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 But when she said this Mr. Lyon turned round on her and 
 rebuked her sternly, saying : 
 
 " No, no, not that, Cara. The little maid has not perhaps 
 made the marriage that I would have chosen for her, but 
 children marry to please themselves, not their parents ; and 
 she has only done like the rest. We did the same ourselves 
 in our day," he added significantly. " So, although I shall 
 be as glad to see you, my dear child" — to Stella — " as if you 
 were a princess, I cannot countenance any nonsense about 
 your taking our little maid's place, or that we are daughter- 
 less now. She will be always our own and our dearest ; and 
 we cannot supply her place ; — and have no need to." 
 
 In the face of all this, Stella wisely thought that going to 
 Derwent Lodge would only complicate matters already too 
 much involved for perfect peace ; and that standing as a bone 
 of contention between husband and wife was not exactly the 
 happiest position in the world. Wherefore, this invitation 
 was rejected with the rest ; and the girl remained at Rose 
 Hill with the feeling of one keeping close to an old friend 
 about to be lost, or who at least will never be the same 
 again. 
 
 But of all the offers of home and keep that made by Dr. 
 Quigley was the oddest. He drove up to Eose Hill one day, 
 to find Stella alone, as he had hoped and scarcely expected ; 
 for she was not left much to herself, and people were really 
 very kind and rather worrying. 
 
 " Grlad to see you and to find you alone," said the doctor, 
 as he alighted from his dog-cart and came up to her as she 
 sat reading on the lawn — but not on the seat underneath the 
 cedar-tree. She had never sat there since the clay when her 
 father had kissed Hortensia Lyon in the face of day, and then 
 presented her to her future stepmother. " Grlad to find you 
 nlone," he repeated. 
 
 " Yes?" said Stella smiling, as she held out both her hands 
 and looked into his face affectionately. 
 
 Dr. Quigley was a great favourite with her and she had 
 always treated, him a» if he had been some sort of uncle. 
 
 " I want to make a proposal to you," he said, looking at 
 her from under his bushy eyebrows. 
 
 " Yes ?*' she answered again, smiling. 
 
 The word might have been ominous to some ears ; but 
 Stella's were not sharp to detect echoes of a doubtful kind. 
 
 " I want to make a proposal," he repeated, watching her. 
 
THE NEW ORDERING. i 3 
 
 " What are you going to do when your father comes home 
 with your young stepmother?" 
 
 •• What am I going to do?" echoed Stella. " Nothing !" 
 
 " You will live at home ?" 
 
 " Surely ! What eke can I do ?" 
 
 '• You can bear i 
 
 " It will be very painful at the first ; but where can I go?" 
 returned Stella. 
 
 • C ome to me," said Dr. Quigley. " I have a sister who is 
 much older than I — she will come and be your chaperon if you 
 want one ; but do you come to me as my daughter. Be my 
 child. I was your mother's nearest friend. I knew of her 
 what no one else did. She trusted me, and there was no one 
 in the world, and never has been one, whom I have reverenced, 
 admired, worshipped as I did her." His eyes filled with tears 
 as he said this. He stopped for a moment, unable to speak for 
 emotion. " And you are her child," he then went on to sav ; 
 " and because you are her daughter you are as dear to me as my 
 own. Will you leave this house of certain sorrow, Stella, and 
 come to me as my own prized and cherished child — mv 
 daughter, and my sister's treasure ? — for I know how dearly 
 she will love you." 
 
 " Thank you — I cannot say how much I thank you," said 
 
 Stella, tears in her eyes too; "but I could scarcely do that, 
 
 dear Dr. Quigley. 1 feel your iroodness more than I can ex- 
 
 . but I could scarcely put such an affront on papa as to 
 
 Leave him and choose another father." 
 
 " Ah, well, child ! — if you see it in that light I have no 
 more to say," replied the doctor sadly. " I cannot force any 
 one's ice j and of course, as you say, taking another 
 
 lather is a different thing from talcing a husband. That you 
 I do without remorse. Have you no kind of liking for 
 any young man here?" he asked, thinking of Eandolph 
 enzie. 
 
 " No ! no !" said Stella energetically, thinking of Valentine 
 Cowley. 
 
 " And now answer me truly — and look me in the E 
 yon speak, Stella Branscombe ! — La your heart where it was? 
 Do you still love Cyril Ponsonby ?" 
 
 Dr. Quigley spoke slowly, almost sternly. He spoke not 
 as a pleader, but as an inquisitor who meant to come to the 
 truth. 
 
 " Cyril Ponsonby does not love me," said Stella evasively. 
 
444 "MY LOVE ?* 
 
 The tears in her eyes were more expressive than her words. 
 
 " That is no answer. Women, God help them, poor fools I 
 go on loving men long after they have ceased to be loved ; 
 and you are one of that sort. You love him still ?" he asked 
 again. 
 
 " I do not love any one else," she answered. 
 
 " Tou love him ?" he persisted. 
 
 Stella was silent for a moment. Then she turned to the 
 old friend who was torturing her for her own good, and said 
 gently but frankly : 
 
 "Yes, I do." 
 
 "Ah!" said the doctor briskly; "now I know where I 
 stand and what I have to do." 
 
 Upon which he took his leave in his usual hurried and 
 imperative way, as if suddenly ordered off by some viewless 
 commander whose behests he must obey at all cost and all 
 hazards ; leaving Stella plunged in wonder as to where he 
 was standing and what he meant to do. 
 
 That pleasant honeymoon in the great art- centres of Europe 
 could not be prolonged for ever, and the happy pair must 
 perforce come home. It was an odd home-coming essentially, 
 if on the surface of things everythiug was after the regula- 
 tion pattern of bridal welcome. Flowers were set in pots 
 along the carriage-drive, and flowers were set in vases in all 
 the rooms ; the gates and doors were thrown wide open; the 
 servants, dressed in their Sunday best, stood waiting to wel- 
 come in the hall ; Mr. and Mrs. Lyon, with Eandolph Mac- 
 kenzie and Stella, were at the hall-door, and all ran down the 
 steps as the carriage drove up. Everything was as it should 
 be ; but, save in Mr. Lyon's embrace to his daughter, the 
 heart was out of everything and it was just a mere raree-show 
 in which no life nor soul nor meaning lay. Still, the look of 
 things was as it should be ; and no one has the right to go 
 behind the look of things and inquire into the hidden spirit. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lyon stayed to dinner ; so did Eandolph ; 
 and thus Stella was helped through the awkwardness of the 
 first evening. It was only Stella who felt any awkwardness or 
 who needed to be helped ; for Hortensia was as culm and com- 
 posed, as much at her ease and as much at home, as if she 
 had been married in her cradle and had grown up on Finery 
 Fred's knee. She was the same cpuiet, prim, unabashed little 
 Puritan as ever : but she had added a certain — not sensual,, 
 but somewhat audacious — demonstration of affection which 
 
THE NEW ORDERING. 446 
 
 set the teeth of all the onlookers on edge. She made as 
 much love to her Precious Prince, as she now called her 
 elderly idol, us if the two had been alone in their private 
 apartments at the " Continental" or the "Grand;" and she 
 made them all understand that henceforth her devotion to 
 her husband would be not only supreme and undivided, but 
 also aggressive; — thai it would be flourished in their faces 
 us an affront, a defiance to thorn in proportion to its intensity 
 to him. And it was also evident that she would be jealous 
 aud exacting in all that she demanded from him, as a return 
 for the exclusiveness of the affection given to him. 
 
 She manifestly intended to do the thing thoroughly 
 throughout. As she had undertaken the position of an old 
 man's wife, she would do what she could to sink her own 
 childishness and ape the maturity which as yet she was so 
 far from having attained. She had bought in London a 
 large stock of wide-frilled and exaggerated " Charlotte 
 Corday" caps, which covered all her hair and gave her the 
 quaintest look of masquerade imaginable. She wore a very 
 high ruff and a Marie Antoinette fichu; and, save in the 
 exuberance of her idolatry for her husband — which, for all 
 its excess, was wanting in all that sentiment which brings dew 
 to the lip, a quiver to the eyelid, a blush to the cheek — in all 
 that impulse of self-forgetfulness which is the crown of a 
 woman's love — she was very prim and mortally staid and 
 proper. Long ugo she had abjured cakes and ale for her own 
 part and had denied them to others — long ago she had set 
 her seal against youthful follies of every kind — but she had 
 drawn the bands of denial yet more closely since the day 
 which had made her Finery Fred Branscombe's wife, and in 
 the dignity of her position found even laughter an anomaly 
 and a j •: reprehensible. How intensely dignified she was to 
 all tin- o m side world ! and how intensely she was satisfied 
 with, and glorified by, her new husband! Language seemed 
 unable to express her delight in her elderly plaything, her 
 joy in her conjugal doll. She could not bear to be absent fr< >m 
 him, nor, when in his presence, to be separated by more than 
 a few inches from his side. At the breakfast-table the 
 Precious Prince had to leave his long-accustomed place at 
 the foot of tin- table that he might sit close to her at the 
 head — so close that she could touch his hand when she gave 
 him his chocolate; put her slender angers on his knee by way 
 of hidden caress ; butter his toast ; take from his plate to her 
 
446 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 own the bones of his fish, of his fowl ; and turn so that she 
 could look into his face across the angle of the table that 
 came between them. At dinner she deserted her rightful 
 place at the head that she might come down close to him at 
 the foot — Stella sitting some way up the other side. In the 
 studio she interrupted his work by her caresses, which how- 
 ever he did not resent — going back on what he had done as 
 titles to honour of so much magnitude he need not repeat 
 them, the time having come when he might rest on his 
 laurels — but what laurels and what a rest! Though she 
 interrupted and cut short his activities in a fashion too 
 delighful for him to suppress, she did not damp his aesthetic 
 ardour nor wound his artistic susceptibilities. She fed that 
 restless craving, which he called his genius and those who 
 knew him best his vanity, with food at once rich, sweet, 
 delicate — food eminently suited to his taste, and by which he 
 was exhilarated and made content. The whole thing ran on 
 casters and stood on velvet ; and the young wife's marriage 
 crown of roses had but one thorn — and that thorn was 
 Stella. 
 
 If only Stella would find herself a husband and take her- 
 self away ! Why could she not ? What a wicked, disobe- 
 dient, tiresome girl she was to have refused Valentine Cowley ! 
 — andwhyon earthshould she not marry Randolph Mackenzie? 
 He was just suited to her. He had not a poetic idea in his 
 head, nor had she ; and they would go through life in the 
 most admirable harmony of earthworminess and intellectual 
 vacuity. Why not Randolph ? Why not, indeed ! 
 
 In their wish to free themselves from the somewhat embar- 
 rassing presence of the daughter, both husband and wife 
 agreed to a line ; and Randolph got the good of the situation. 
 He was almost as much at Rose Hill now as in the days of 
 his secretaryship ; and Stella, who was indeed stupid in these 
 things, saw neither the designs of the authorities nor the 
 feelings of the poor fellow himself. She only knew that it 
 was pleasant to have her Brother with her so constantly, and 
 that it was dull when she was left so very much alone. 
 
 For, in the house, she was always alone — cut off as com- 
 pletely from her father as if she were living in a brazen tower 
 where she only saw him in the evening walking in the garden 
 below. Hortensia could not bear to have her in the same 
 room with them. It seemed to take that marriage crown of 
 roses from her brow and to reduce her once more to plain 
 
THE NEW ORDERING. 
 
 Dsia Lyon, here on sufferance and holding only | 
 second ] 'lure with her beloved idol. If Stella came into the 
 studio in the ni<~>rnincr, as at first she did and until better 
 ithful Btepmother, sitting close to the domestic 
 Apollo wl - she hud renewed so lavishly, would lift 
 
 her head from his shoulder and say in her prim way : 
 
 " Dear Stella, this place does not suit you. Dr. Quigley 
 said so, if you remember. Precious Prince, don't you think 
 Stella had better not stay? The atmosphere suits tis; but 
 then she is not like its — is she ?" 
 
 On whieh Finery Feed, who wanted his daughter no more 
 than did Hortensia, would smile blandly and smooth his 
 wife's silky hair and say to Stella, not looking at her : 
 
 " My dear Stella, Mrs. Branscombe is quite right. The 
 atmosphere here of art, flowers and perfume does not suit 
 you ; why attempt it, my dear child r" 
 
 When the two Avent out it was always together and Stella 
 was left behind. Hortensia would say : 
 
 •• I do not think it would look well, dear Stella, if you came 
 with us to-day. We are going to pay a return call" — here or 
 there — " and it would scarcely do for you to be with us. It 
 makes it awkward for me, such a great girl a- you are now!" 
 she sometimes added with an indescribable air of superior 
 maturity, as if she had been a pretty wife of about thirty and 
 Stella a lanky hoyden of sixteen, - 
 
 >n the days when they went to pay their return calls, 
 or when they wanted to walk by - and gain inspira- 
 
 tion, or when they had business in the town, or liked better 
 than anything else to stay in the house, or to lounge about 
 the garden, or to take a brisk ride deep into the country — 
 that is. every day Bave Sunday — the elderly husband and his 
 youthful - •• in each <>t ; 
 
 fathers -aid, and Stella was left alone — or with . 
 Mackenz 
 
 There was another change in tin' girl's relations with her 
 Gather which cut her to the heart; he had entirely lei 
 kissing her. Since his first cold embra< n ■. ! lir home- 
 coming, he had never touched even hi I oor sufi I 
 her to touch his. It made his child-wife, his little angel, 
 unhappy; and he respected her Bcruples of delicacy an I 
 elusiveness. Wherefore he merely put out two fingers when 
 he wished his former Star goodnight and good morning; and 
 Hortensia did not do even this. 
 
448 "MY. LOVE!" 
 
 Times were indeed changed for Stella ! — and it was difficult 
 to learn her new place and to remember her lessons. One 
 evening when the three were sitting with Randolph Mackenzie, 
 in the drawing-room — paired off as but little more than a 
 year ago the father and mother, the lover and his betrothed, 
 had been paired — Stella rang the bell. 
 
 " Why did you ring ?" asked Hortensia, pulling the corners 
 of her lips together. 
 
 " For a glass of water," said Stella simply. "A glass of 
 water, if you please, Jones," she said, as the man came into 
 the room ; but Hortensia's tones over-ruled hers, as she too 
 said in a decided and staccato kind of voice : 
 
 " Jones ! a glass of water for Miss Branscombe." 
 
 When the water had been brought and the man had come 
 and gone, Hortensia turned to her cousin. 
 
 "Randolph, it is time for you to go," she said in a quiet, 
 prim way. "It is half-past nine." 
 
 " Yes, Hortensia — I mean Mrs. Branscombe," stammered 
 Randolph, who had been strictly tutored but who never re- 
 membered. " I did not know that it was so late." 
 
 " I think my good Mr. Randolph knows very little of any- 
 thing at any time," said Mr. Branscombe with a lofty kind 
 of smile — Prospero magnanimously refraining from torturing 
 Caliban but never forgetting his brutish inferiority. 
 
 Randolph coloured. 
 
 " I know I am stupid, Mr. Branscombe," he said awk- 
 wardly. 
 
 " Never mind being stupid," said Stella naively. " You are 
 good." 
 
 " What an extraordinary thing to say !" said Hortensia, 
 putting on her most Puritanical air. " I am Randolph Mac- 
 kenzie's cousin, almost like his sister, and I never paid him 
 an open compliment like that !" 
 
 "It is not a compliment, it is the truth," answered 
 Stella, 
 
 " Come ! it is time for you to go, Mr. Randolph. Have 
 you not heard Mrs. Branscombe's desire ?" put in Mr. Brans- 
 combe impatiently. " How long do you wish to detain your 
 young friend, my dear Stella, for the pleasure of making 
 pretty speeches to him ? Will they not keep till to- 
 morrow ?" 
 
 " Yes, papa, cpute well," said Stella a little defiantly. 
 
 It was not her dear papa whom she defied but the thought 
 
THE AAli ORDERING. 4 .0 
 
 of Hortensia which spoke through Lis lips, the spirit of I 
 mischievous usurper who used that majestic form and fa 
 her mask. 
 
 ■'Good niu r ht !' ? then said Randolph hurriedly; he was 
 to hear Stella rebuked for him — but bow sweet the occasiou ! 
 Good? she thought bim good? Would she? Could she 
 ever be brought to cling to bim as to her safeguard, her 
 protector, her lover? Ob! how be would protect her, bow 
 be would care for ber! — and Cyril, who bad renounced 
 wished that be bad been ber choice ! Would it ever come ? 
 Heaven in its mercy grant it ! Dear stars shining above, 
 send down sweet influences into her heart! All good ang< Is, 
 all blessed spirits breathe the thought into her heart and 
 guide ber wish to meet his prayer ! 
 
 Never since he was born had Randolph felt as be felt to- 
 night, when watting home to his uncle's bouse. He did not 
 
 - himself, nor life, nor thought, nor desire. ■ One with the 
 starrv night, yet longing for the sunny day — glad in the 
 
 ". in the sleeping stillness, of nature, yet yearning for tho 
 flush and flow of her activities — blessed in the actual moment, 
 but looking forward to to-morrow — the present and the future 
 both bad a different meaning for him from what either ever 
 bad before ; and love wrought in his dull soul the great 
 miracle of transformation — from a clod evolving a poet, out 
 of clay striking the divine fire of inspiration. He seemed to 
 tread on air as he walked along, and to move as if in some 
 rainbow-coloured dream. The sharp night wind of early 
 autumn was like great draughts of wine which stirred his 
 
 blood and | pled his brain with glorious visions of saints 
 
 Is, of fair gardens and stately palaces; — all because 
 a pale and sad-eyed girl had Baid he was good and had been 
 rebuked for ber advocacy, which yet she had not withdrawn. 
 Oh Love! oh Love! king and magician — god and demon — 
 the wind that blows over the harp of the human heart — the 
 Bun-rays which colour the clouds: — and we — what are we 
 but poor fools in your great court, shaped, blessed and broken 
 
 •.ding to your own supreme will ! 
 And now had com-- Hortensia's domestic opportunity for 
 final and decisive self-assei-tion. She had been waiting foritj 
 and it had come at last. So Boon as the door had shut on 
 Randolph Mackenzie she very quietly unhooked froi 
 chatelaine the master-key which represented her authority in 
 
 bouse and her mistresshood. With a meek air of solemn 
 
450 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 renunciation she laid it on the little table beside Mr. Brans- 
 combe's glass of " eau sucree a fleur d' orange." 
 
 "Dear Stella," she said — she was generally careful to add 
 the " dear" when she called the girl by her name — " Dear 
 Stella, I wish you to take the housekeeping. I do not care 
 to have it if it makes you unhappy. I have your precious 
 father ; and he is all the world to me. But if I am to be 
 mistress I must be sole mistress. We cannot have two ring- 
 ing the bell and ordering the servants. It must be you or I 
 — one or the other — but not both. Am I not right, Precious 
 Prince ?" 
 
 " Certainly, Little Love ; one must be at the head of affairs. 
 That is only logical," was Mr. Branscombe's answer. 
 
 " But is there anything against your authority in my ask- 
 ing, in my own home, the servant whom I can remember ever 
 since I was born, to bring me a glass of water ?" said Stella 
 rather warmly. 
 
 " He is my servant now," answered Hortensia ; " and pray, 
 dear Stella, do not lose your temper at such a very small ob- 
 servation. I feel it due to your dear father, far more than to 
 myself, to keep my proper place and prevent encroachments. 
 But where is the need of getting into a passion about it ? 
 You lose your temper so soon, dear Stella!" 
 
 " I do not think you can say that, Hortensia," said Stella 
 hastily. 
 
 " And, dear Stella," Hortensia continued in her quiet 
 monotonous hard voice ; " I wish you would not call me 
 plain Hortensia, just as when we were girls together. I do 
 not care for myself, of course ; but I do not think it is re- 
 spectful to your father — whose wife I am. In respecting 
 me you respect him, and the contrary. If you do not like to 
 call me mamma" — "No !" flashed out Stella, " I will never do 
 that !" — " at least call me Mrs. Branscombe," continued Hor- 
 tensia in the same smooth quiet way as before. How that 
 wicked Stella longed to shake her ! " I may be young to be 
 your stepmother ; and of course you are a great girl now and 
 grown up, and you may not like to have me here as the 
 mistress and your precious father's wife ; but it was his will, 
 and that ought to be sacred to you. Am I not right, Precious 
 Prince ?" she added as her peroration, turning her adoring 
 eyes on her husband. 
 
 " My Little Love is always right," returned Pinery Fred, 
 with a dash of uneasiness in his manner. " And Stella, my 
 
AT THE BliEAKFAST TABLE. 451 
 
 dear child," lie added, steadying himself into the semblance 
 of grave displeasure — but why ? " you will find your best 
 happiness as your best policy in respect for my wife and in 
 attention to what she desires." 
 
 " I am to understand then, that I am not to ring the bell, 
 here in my own home, nor ask the servant to even bring me a 
 glass of water without your permission?" said Stella, she too 
 speaking quietly so far as manner went, but her heart -within 
 on fire. 
 
 "Not in my presence," answered Hoi'tensia. "I am the 
 mistress, and I must be treated as the mistress." 
 
 •• And as for calling you Mrs. Branscombe — yes, I will, with 
 pleasure," Stella went on to say, her colour rising, her eyes 
 darkening, her voice deepening. "I would call you anything, 
 Hortensia, that should best express the unfathomable gulf 
 there is between us and the infinite wrong that you have 
 done me!" 
 
 '• Precious Prince, protect me !" cried Hortensia, flinging 
 herself into her husband's arms and bursting into tears. 
 " Now you see what I have to endure !" she added, sobbing. 
 
 " Stella, apologize to my wife," said Mr. Branscombe 
 sternly. 
 
 •• Never !" said Stella, rising and facing her father. " It is 
 she who has done me the wrong, not I who have injured her. 
 I will not apologize, papa !" 
 
 ' : Then leave the room," said Mr. Branscombe, whom the 
 • of his Little Love distressed as much as his former 
 Star's wicked temper and contumacy annoyed. " Leave the 
 room, and do not let me see your face again till you have 
 come to a better frame of mind, and can recognize both your 
 blessings and your Buperior 
 
 So down with a crash went another cardboard Temple of 
 Love ; and the warrant of poor Stella's disinheritance from 
 her father's affection was finally and definitely signed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 AT THE BR EAKFAST TABLE. 
 
 The next morning, when Randolph p to Eose Hill 
 
 as usual, he e to gravely 
 
 disturb Stella — Stella, always his radiant Star, how much so- 
 ever she might hav 
 
432 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 The excitement of the foregoing night was still upon the 
 faithful soul for whom Mr. Branscombe, as Prospero, could 
 find no simile so exact as that of Caliban. He felt as if he 
 bore in visible characters about him the words of his great 
 desire, his fervent thought, and, by dint of desiring and 
 thinking, his fragrant hope. As he walked along the road 
 that led to Eose Hill, he felt as if he were coming to the 
 term of his present career and to the opening of a new 
 life. But when he saw Stella's face, pale and mournful 
 as in the days when love had been at war with duty 
 and Cyril's was the one name to which she dare not give 
 utterance, then his heai't died within him ; and yet it did not 
 die. Only himself and all his own great hope and yearning 
 aank into the background, and how he could best make her 
 happy was the guardian sentinel of all the rest. 
 
 " What is the matter, dearest Stella ?" he said, as he took 
 both her hands in his, in his deep love and faithful sympathy 
 forgetting to be formal and conventional. 
 
 " Eandolph, I am just broken-hearted," she said. " You 
 must help me ; you must tell me what I am to do. I am too 
 wretched as things are — it is impossible to go on like this ; 
 but I am bewildered, and do not know where to turn for 
 help." 
 
 " I am glad you have come to me. What is it ?" he said 
 again, simply but earnestly. 
 
 How his heart beat ! Why did she leave her hands in his ? 
 Did she feel the spirit that ran through his blood, as a song 
 not yet born into sound flows in unspoken melody through 
 the brain ? 
 
 " I will tell you, and then you can judge," she answered — 
 poor miserable Stella ! with her somewhat prosaic sorrows 
 created by feminine jealousy and girlish littleness as her 
 answer to his poetic exaltation, his divine fire ! 
 
 And on this she told him of what had happened last night 
 after he had left ; of the coldness like death existing between 
 her and her father; of how Hortensiahad come between them 
 so that things would never be right again ; and of how it was 
 impossible for her, Stella, to remain at home in the false and 
 humiliating position to which her young stepmother had 
 doomed her. 
 
 " You cannot stay," said Eandolph in a low voice. " You 
 must leave, Stella, for your own sake, your own self-respect." 
 
 " I know I must," she answered; "but where can I go ? 
 
AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. £3 
 
 What can I do? It -would bo such an affront to papa if I 
 went out as a companion ov a governess! And I could not 
 live with any one here. When I go I must go quite away." 
 
 " You must," echoed Kandolph — " quite away." 
 
 All this time he had been holding her hands in his, she 
 
 •ly knowing that he was doing so, but only conscious of 
 
 a certain sense of friendly sympathy and protection, of a 
 
 certain tender brotherliness which made the sadness of the 
 
 moment less intolerable. 
 
 " Stella," he then said, his voice low and sweet as a son::, 
 his face transformed from its usual clumsy goodness and 
 like devotion into the face of a man of full purpose, res 
 .impassioned, and raised by love to the dignity of self-asser- 
 tion, to the majesty of manhood ; " dear Stella, come with 
 me. Give me the right to care for you, to love you, to protect 
 you, to make you happy. I do not ask you to love me — not 
 yet — only to let me love you and work for you ; to keep von 
 from all harm and to make you as happy as the devotion and 
 ■ t of my life can make yon. You are the only woman I 
 have ever loved, and if I could make your life happy I should 
 ask nothing more of fate or fortune." 
 
 That softened voice, those pleading eyes, that earnest face ! 
 
 — and the true good loyal heart within whieh these but faintly 
 
 ssed! Stella looked up at him, her own eyes dark and 
 
 humid ; her own face full of emotion ; but alas ! not of the 
 
 kind that matched his. 
 
 " Oh, Randolph ! Randolph ! I am so sorry !" she said, 
 
 bending towards him in pure sweet pity. " I never dreamt of 
 
 such a thing — I did not see nor suspect it. You are just to 
 
 ly own dear, dear brother, and I had no idea that I was 
 
 to you. What can I do! what can 1 say! I am so 
 
 sorry, 1, but I could not marry you, dear. It would 
 
 ! — it would be sacrilege !" 
 
 " Why ':" d, his ruddy face as pale as the white hand 
 
 b he still held in his own. 
 
 "• You are my brother," she said evasively. 
 
 "There is no law against such a brotherhood as mine 
 y something nearer and dearer," pleaded Randolph 
 with uteness than he generally displayed. 
 
 " But I could not," she answer 
 
 "Tell me straightly why, Stella — Star of all the earth to 
 me," said ] " [a it h te? — 
 
 only because you do not love m ■ ':" 
 
454 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 She looked down, her face full of distress. 
 
 " Or is it," he continued, his voice grave and steady, no 
 longer low and musical but like the voice of one to whom 
 truth is dearer even than love ; " is it because you still love 
 Cyril?" 
 
 Stella turned away her head. 
 
 "He no longer loves me," she said; then she looked up into 
 Randolph's face ; " but I do still love him," she added, with a 
 kind of spiritual self-abandonment, as flattering in its own 
 way, if less satisfactory, than if she had confessed that she 
 loved him himself. " I cannot help it, Randolph ! I know that 
 it is mean-spirited, weak, unwomanly, horrid, but I do love 
 him ! I do !" she repeated fervently. " And never to the 
 end of my life could I love any one else !" 
 
 " Then all is said," answered poor Randolph sadly, and yet 
 how noble in his sadness, how heroically unselfish, how grand 
 in his self-suppression ! " I could not even beseech you to love 
 me, if your heart is still with Cyril. But you must always let 
 me be your brother, Stella, and you must forget all that I 
 have said. It was just the madness of the moment ; and you 
 must make use of me as if I were really the own brother you 
 feel me to be. Will you promise this, dear ? You do not 
 know how I can keep back what it would be unworthy, as 
 well as unwise, to encourage. You will never see anything 
 more in me than you have hitherto, if only you will love me as 
 your best friend, your true brother." 
 
 He still kept her hands and bent forward, looking into her 
 face. All the inspiration, the fervid poetry, the ecstatic 
 dream, the grand awakening from the earth-bound poverty of 
 his daily life had gone. He was once more only the humble 
 guardian, the faithful watch-dog, the devoted friend, the un- 
 selfish, loyal and protecting brother, the incorruptible lieu- 
 tenant guarding the captain's treasure ; he was once more 
 Brother Randolph, and the sudden, swift, illumination had 
 passed as if it had never been. 
 
 " Promise to give me back your trust and sisterly love," he 
 said, tears in his eyes. 
 
 " Yes," said Stella fervently. " I believe in you, Randolph, 
 as I believe in the day, and I trust vou as I trust my own 
 soul." 
 
 " Thank you; and Cod bless you," said Randolph, lifting 
 her pale thin hands to his lips, and kissing them as a devotee 
 might have kissed the shrine of his god. 
 
AT TEE BREAKFAST TABLE. 4Zo 
 
 But all this had not answered Stella's latest questions: 
 What waa she to do? and "Where was she to go ? 
 
 When Randolph went back to Derwent Lodge he found a 
 
 am waiting tor him there — a telegram which had exer- 
 
 his aunt Cara greatly and made her as terrified as people 
 
 who live in the country are generally made by these swift and 
 
 messengers. He opened it, and found that the 
 
 I lyril Ponsonby ; the place, London ; the date, that 
 
 very i It was concise and peremptory, saying simply: 
 
 • "nee. You will find me at the club ;" leaving 
 
 him in as to all the rest : — "Why Cyril had come back so 
 
 India ; why he wanted to see him, Eandolph ; 
 
 and v to be the upshot of all this strange confusion. 
 
 obey the summons of his friend ; and without 
 
 _• a message to Stella, he flung his things into his 
 
 I and just caught the up-train, without half a 
 
 mini ire. 
 
 It v • when he got to London, but mindful of his duty 
 
 as lies " and friend, he drove straight to the rendezvous 
 
 appoint* I. He found Cyril, with his hat over his eyes, sitting 
 in the \> ding-room, pretending to be interested in the dullest 
 news]'': er on the table and not seeing a word of what he 
 looked 
 
 "A - iid Cyril, drawing a deep breath as Eandolph 
 
 •• God bless you, old fellow ! I knew that I could 
 const on you." 
 
 "To • e death," said Randolph below his breath. Aloud 
 lie on' red: "Of course. What brings you over, old 
 
 - ' then asked Pylades, looking wistfully at the grave, 
 lancholy face of the once careless, happy boy. 
 racter of it had altered ! How all the laughter 
 I to stern decision; all the gai rave inten- 
 
 atterlythe boy had died, and with what mournful 
 man had risen from his ashes ! 
 "Stella !" said Cyril. 
 
 Etai Iph felt his own face grow pale, but he neither 
 I nor shrank. It was the hour of his ordeal and hi 
 >ugh with it to the end. 
 ■• V .- . why r" he answered, his light blue eyes raised 
 straight and calm into his friend's fao • 
 
 " Both Ethel White and old QuLdy have written to me," 
 
 yril. " And both have told me to come home and see 
 
 Stella. But I cannot believe in any one a> I believe in you, 
 
156 "MY LOVE!'- 
 
 old fellow — you will tell me the truth. What is the truth, 
 Ran ? Does Stella still love me, or am I wanted by the 
 friends as a kind of pis-aller against her father? I know 
 that Val Cowley is engaged to the Pennefather girl, so there 
 is no truth in that report ; but lam sore, Ran, and suspicious, 
 and do not see my Avay. I loved that girl. God ! yes, I 
 loved her !" he said. 
 
 He turned away his head, then crossed his arms on the 
 table and laid his face upon them, trembling. 
 
 " And she loves you," said Randolph in a steady voice, lay- 
 ing his hand on Cyril's shoulder. " She has never wavered, 
 Cyril. When all sorts of reports came down she stuck to you 
 in public as well as private, and refused to believe a word to 
 your disfavour. Go down to her, old man. You will find her 
 where you left her." 
 
 Not a chord in the clear voice shook ; not a muscle of the 
 honest face changed. His strong heart was braced to sacri- 
 fice, and the holocaust was offered up without failing or 
 wavering. 
 
 " Is this true, Ran ? God's own truth r" cried Cyril lifting 
 up his face. 
 
 " True as the sun in the sky," said Randolph. " There is 
 no purer lovelier soul in Christendom than Stella Bransconibe ; 
 and she loves you." 
 
 Cyril held out his hand to his friend, and the two ex- 
 changed one of those silent pressures which mean more than 
 words to men. 
 
 "Thank you," he said simply. "I know that I have to 
 thank you !" 
 
 "No," said Randolph frankly; "you have to thank her 
 alone. I love her as much as you do, Cyril ; but she loves you 
 only. And now good-bye ; you have no time to lose. The 
 night-train will take you down in time for breakfast, and she 
 is too good to be kept longer in suspense. Good-bye, old 
 fellow; and good luck." 
 
 "But you — when shall I see you again?" said Cyril 
 anxiously. 
 
 A sad kind of smile came over Randolph's face. 
 
 " That is rather uncertain," he said. " I am off to New 
 Zealand by the next mail, and do not see my way back to 
 England again just yet. But I must not keep you. Hurry 
 up, and God bless you." 
 
 Once more the two young men clasped hands ; and then 
 
AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 'T 
 
 Randolph Mackenzie passed out into the distance ami the 
 night, never more t<> cross the platforms of those lives which 
 he bad helped to bless at the expense of his own. 
 
 Was it a good omen or a bad that Cyril should have chosen 
 that very carriage oyer the window of which, more than a year 
 •w, he bad scrawled, out of the very exuberance of his 
 happiness and hope : " My Love ! My Love !" ? " My Love !" 
 — How it thrilled him with a strange sense of presage when 
 he firsl • tbose graven words and remembered all the 
 
 glad folly of the hour ! "Was it the word of the past done 
 with and dead ? or was it the earnest of the future linking it- 
 self on to ' Eandolph had assured his success ; and 
 Randolph never lied. It was surely for good — a prophecy of 
 safety, an omen of success. Much as he had learned to 
 doubt, little as he now suffered himself to hope or to trust, 
 this time the old spirit conquered the new Lessons. Yes, it 
 was an omen for good ; and he fairly laughed aloud as he 
 drew his diamond ring from his finger — her ring which he bad 
 not returned and which until now had never left his hand — 
 and scrawled a big Star in the corner of the pane. Then he 
 added the date; and his voice went up like a prayer — "My 
 Love! My Love !" 
 
 The Branscombe family were at breakfast when he arrived 
 at Rose Hill, just as on "that bright May morning when the 
 
 • d Wver, the glad son of the house, had come down to 
 his own, full of that confident assurance which has gone past 
 the stage of hope. Now, as then, he had sent on no word of 
 warning, no avant courier, either of demand or prayer. He 
 trusted all to the revelation of tbe moment, to the truth made 
 manifest by the unprepared confession of surprise. It was a 
 
 .ays than one, and thoughtless as regarded 
 .Stella ; l.'Ut he did not wait to think ; and so, without warn- 
 ing or previous notice, became into the room — Jones opening 
 the door and saying : " Mr. Ponsonhy," as if the lad had < 
 
 • nlv yesterday and was fully expected to-day. 
 
 Stella started to her feet and turned (o him, but without 
 moving. She only said, in a breathless kind of way : 
 
 " Cyril, have you come at last ':" 
 
 But one look in his eyes was enough. The sad face of the 
 bronzed, mournful, bearded man was the face of bim who bad 
 loved her as a boy and who loved her now as much as then. 
 The honest eyes, less glad tban they were a year ago, were 
 still as frank and truthful, as candid, as sincere, and still the 
 
458 "MY LOVE!" 
 
 eyes of one who could neither lie nor feign. The hands held 
 out to her were as strong to hold, the arms which clasped her 
 close to that throbbing heart, ran with blood as warm and 
 loyal as in the days gone by. The voice which said " My 
 Love ! My Love !" — the lips which kissed hers there in the 
 sight of prirn Hortensia, to whom only her own kisses were 
 virtuous — of elegant Mr. Branscombe, to whom he was but an 
 earthworm and a clod — those lips were as loving as before, as 
 faithful as were her own. What need of explanation ? Who 
 wanted assurance ? All was told and all was known. They 
 loved each other now as they had loved each other then ; and 
 the clouds which had risen between them were swept away 
 for ever now when the great sun-god Love shone on them 
 once again. The bonds which had been broken were reunited ; 
 and the checked fountain of joy sprang up from the barren 
 sands where it had been lost — laughing in the sun as it 
 rose. 
 
 Mr. Branscombe looked at Hortensia for a lead. His Little 
 Love had her hand on the silken rein, and the finest, smallest, 
 most invisible but most inflexible silver hook was in the 
 nostrils of the great autocrat. She looked back at him, 
 understanding his appeal and taking in the whole situation at 
 a glance. 
 
 " How glad I am !" she said smiling as she bent her head 
 to his, speaking in an audible whisper. " Dear Stella ! she 
 has deserved her happiness. This is the marriage of all 
 others for her! How wise she has been to see it ! Don't 
 you think so, Precious Prince ?" 
 
 "Yes, Little Love. I have always wished it — always 
 desired it," said Mr. Branscombe with graceful acquiescence, 
 stately and jocund in one. 
 
 He turned to Cyril, and, just as in olden times, held out 
 two long white scented fingers, with their filbert-shaped nails 
 so delicately pared and daintily polished. He did not even 
 rise from his s?at. The Son of the House was beyond these 
 small formalities, and paternal familiarity was the better 
 welcome. 
 
 " Ah, Cyril, dear boy, good morning !" he said, exactly as 
 if he had seen him over night, with no excitement, no surprise, 
 no questioning as to how or why he had so suddenly appeared. 
 " Jones, a plate for Mr. Ponsonby. What will you have, my 
 dear boy ? I can recommend those kidneys a la Soubise ; and 
 young appetites are generally sharp-set. By the way, 
 
AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.. 459 
 
 first let me present you to Mrs. Bransconibe. I think you 
 knew her in olden days ?" 
 
 '•Yes," said Cyril, shaking hands with Hortensia ; but for 
 the life of him he could not be cordial either to her or to her 
 husband. 
 
 " This is the only change you will find in your old home," 
 continued Mr. Brausconibe airily. " All else just the same ! 
 Stella as good a girl as ever and as devoted to you ; I, as 
 much your friend and as glad to see you as before ; my wife 
 your firm and constant champion : — only a year has passed 
 since last we met — a year which has left us all, I trust, with 
 an added increment of wisdom, happiness and health. Now, 
 my dear boy, attack those kidneys while they are hot else they 
 will lose half their flavour : and Stella, my good child, pass 
 your future husband the toast !" 
 
 THE END. 
 
 • 'k-itroet, Covcat-e'i'-lcu, W.C 
 
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 Anthony Trollope. 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. By 
 
 T. A. Trollope. 
 
 PICCADILLY NOVELS." 
 
 Sebastian Strome. By Julian 
 
 Hawthorne. 
 The Black Robe. By Wilkie 
 
 Collins. 
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 Edwardes. 
 
 "My Love!" By E. Lynn 
 
 Linton. 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. By James 
 
 Payn. 
 The Chaplain of the Fleet. By 
 
 Walter Besant and James Rice. 
 Proud Maisie. By Bertha 
 
 Thomas. 
 
 The Two Dreamers. By John 
 
 Saunders. 
 What She Came through. By 
 
 Sarah Tytlek. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s. 
 
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 By J. R. Planche. Edited, with an Introduction, by his Daughter, 
 Mrs. Mackarness. 
 
CHAT TO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 23 
 
 Post Svo, illustrated boards, 2J. each. 
 
 Popular Novels, Cheap Editions of. 
 
 [Wilkie Collins' Novels and Besant and Ricb's Novels may also be had in 
 cloth limp at 2s. dd. See, toe, tlie Piccadilly Novels, for Library Editiont.~S 
 
 Man and Wife. W. Collins. 
 Poor Miss Finch, \V. Collins. 
 Misa or Mr3. P W. Collins. 
 New Magdalen. W. Collins. 
 The Frozen Deep. W. Collins. 
 Law and the Lady. W.Collins. 
 Two Destinies. W. Collins. 
 Haunted. Hotel. W. Collins. 
 Fallen Leaves. By W.Collins. 
 Leo. BvDutton Cook. 
 A Point of Honour. By Mrs. 
 Annie Ecwardes. 
 
 ArchieLovell. Mrs A. Edward es 
 Felicia. M. Betham-Edwards. 
 Roxy. By Edward Eggleston. 
 Polly. By Percy Fitzgerald. 
 Bella Donna. P. Fitzgerald. 
 Never Forgotten. Fitzgerald. 
 The Second Mrs. Tillotson. By 
 
 Percy Fitzgerald. 
 Seventy-FiveBrookeStreet. By 
 
 Percy Fitzgerald. 
 
 Filthy Lucre. By Albany de 
 
 FONBLANQUB. 
 
 Olympia. By R. E. Francillon. 
 The Capel Girls. By Edward 
 
 Garrett. 
 Robin Gray. By Chas. GIBBON. 
 For Lack of Gold. C. G 1 
 "What will the World Say ? By 
 
 Charles G 
 In Honour Bound. C. 
 The Dead Heart. By I 
 In Love and War. C. Gibbon. 
 For the King. By C 
 Queen of the Meadow. By 
 
 Charles Gi 
 Dick Temple. By James 
 
 Greenwood. 
 Every-day Papers. By Andrew 
 
 Hai.liday. 
 
 Paul Wynter's Sacrifice. By 
 
 Lady D - 1 1 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 Bj Thomas Hakdy, 
 
 Confidences. Hami: 
 Carr of Carrlyon. II. Ai 
 Maid, Wife, or Widow P By 
 
 Mrs. Alexander. 
 
 Ready-Money Mortiboy. By 
 
 Walter Besant and James Rice. 
 
 With Harp and Crown. By 
 
 Walter Besant and James Rick 
 
 This Son of Vulcan. By W. 
 
 r and James Rice. 
 My Little Girl. By the same. 
 Tho Case of Mr. Lucraft. By 
 
 Walter Besant and James Rice. 
 The Golden Butterfly. By W. 
 r and James Rich. 
 
 By Celia's Arbour. By Walter 
 
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 The Monks of Thelema. By 
 
 Walter Besant and James Rice. 
 
 'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay. By 
 
 Walter Besant and James Rice. 
 
 Seamy Side. Besant and Rice. 
 Grantley Grange. By Shelsley 
 
 HAHF. 
 
 An Heiress of Red Dog. By 
 
 Bret Hartk. 
 The Luck of Roaring Camp. 
 
 By Bret Harte. 
 
 Gabriel Conroy. Bret IIarte. 
 Surly Tim. By F. E. Burnett. 
 Deceivers Ever. By Mrs. L. 
 
 HON. 
 
 Juliet's Guardian. By Mrs. 
 
 Lovktt Caj 
 The Cure of Souls. By Mac- 
 
 The Ear Sinister. By C. 
 
 Alls'; 
 Antonina. By WilkieCollins. 
 Basil. By Wilkie Collins. 
 Hide and Seek. W. Collins. 
 The Dead Secret. W. Collins. 
 Queen of Hearts. W. C01 ; 
 My Miscellanies. W. Collins. 
 Woman in White. W.COJ 
 The Moonstone. W. Collins. 
 
2 4 
 
 BOOR'S PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Popular Novels — continued. 
 
 Garth. By Julian Hawthorne. | 
 Golden Heart. By Tom Hood. 
 TheHunchback of Notre Dame. 
 
 By Victor Hugo. 
 Thornier oft' s Model. By Mrs. 
 Alfred Hunt. 
 
 Fated to be Free. By Jean 
 
 Ingelow. 
 Confidence. By Henry James, 
 
 Jun. 
 
 The Queen of Connaught. By 
 
 Harriett Jay. 
 The Dark Colleen. By H. Jay. 
 Number Seventeen. By Henry 
 
 KlNGSLEY. 
 
 Oakshott Castle. H.Kingsley. 
 Patricia Kemball. By E. Lynn 
 
 Linton. 
 Learn Dundas. E.LynnLinton. 
 The World Well Lost. By E. 
 
 Lynn Linton. 
 Under which Lord ? By E. 
 
 Lynn Linton. 
 
 The Waterdale Neighbours. 
 
 By Justin McCarthy. 
 Dear LadyDisdain. By the same. 
 My Enemy's Daughter. By 
 
 Justin McCarthy. 
 A Fair Saxon. J. McCarthy. 
 Linley Eochford. McCarthy. 
 Miss Misanthrope. McCarthy. 
 Donna Quixote. J. McCarthy. 
 The Evil Eye. By Katharine 
 
 S. Macquoid. 
 Lost Rose. K. S. Macquoid. 
 Open! Sesame 1 By Florence 
 
 Marryat. 
 Harvest of Wild Oats. By 
 
 Florence Marryat. 
 
 A Little Stepson. F. Marryat. 
 Fighting the Air. F. Marryat. 
 Touch and Go. By Jean 
 
 Middlemass. 
 Mr. Dorillion. J. Middlemass. 
 Whiteladies. ByMrs.OLiPHANT. 
 Held in Bondage. By Ouida. 
 Strathmore. By Ouida, 
 Chandos. By Ouida. 
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 Idalia. By Ouida. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine. By Ouida. 
 Tricotrin. Ey Ouida. 
 Puck. By Ouida. 
 Folle Farine. By Ouida. 
 A Dog of Flanders. By Ouida. 
 Pascarel. By Ouida. 
 Two Little Wooden Shoes. By 
 Signa. By Ouida. [Ouida. 
 
 In a Winter City. By Ouida. 
 Ariadne. By Ouida. 
 Friendship. By Ouida. 
 Moths. By Ouida. 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. J. Payn. 
 A Perfect Treasure. J. Tayn. 
 Bentinck's Tutor. By J. Payn. 
 Murphy's Master. By J. Payn. 
 A County Family. By J. Payn. 
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 AWoman'sVengeance. J. Payn. 
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 Family Scapegrace. J. Payn. 
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 Found Dead. By James Payn. 
 Gwendoline'sHarvest. J. Payn. 
 Humorous Stories. J. Payn. 
 Like Father, Like Son. J. Payn. 
 A Marine Residence. J. Payn. 
 Married Beneath Him. J. Payn. 
 Mirk Abbey. By James Payn. 
 Not Wooed, but Won. J. Payn. 
 Two Hundred Pounds Reward. 
 By James Payn. 
 
 Best of Husbands. By J. Payn. 
 Walter's Word. By J. Payn. 
 Halves. By James Payn. 
 Fallen Fortunes. By J. Payn. 
 What He Cost Her. J. Payn. 
 Less Black than We're Painted. 
 
 By James Payn. 
 
 By Proxy. By James Payn. 
 Under One Roof. By J. Payn. 
 High Spirits. By Ja's. Payn. 
 Paul Ferroll. 
 
 Why P.Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 The Mystery of Marie Roget. 
 
 By Edgar A. Pok. 
 
CHATTO & WIND US, PICCADILLY. 25 
 
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 Pat Your 3elf in his Place By Talas for the Marines. By 
 
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 Her Mother's Darling. By Mrs. The Way we Live Now. By 
 
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