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 BY JOHN OLLIVE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A WOOING OF ATE," 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 • LONDON : 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 
 
 {All Kights Reserved,)
 
 Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 in 2009 with funding from • 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/rotheryselfertqc01olli
 
 8S3 
 
 ^ 
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 5>«<C 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 *' I DO wish so much I could make you see it 
 \ all as I do, Frank," she said regretfully. 
 
 For they were looking at more together 
 than the red and yellow of the fading sky, or 
 of the old-fashioned houses and roofs that 
 studded the banks of the silent river, still clear 
 enough — though so near London — to give 
 half the colour back to the generous dying 
 day. There was a mighty black cedar in the 
 garden where they stood, blocking with its 
 grim stature no small part of the light that 
 still lingered in the June sky, and pink blos- 
 soming- thorn-trees were round them too ; 
 filling the night air with countless fragrance, 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 2 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 as at noonday they had turned the sunlight 
 into a myriad hum of insect life. 
 
 But there was room enough, and light 
 enough, for him to look into the speaker s 
 eyes, had she not told him already that there 
 would be no answer there to satisfy the long- 
 ing of his gaze. 
 
 '* I wish I could make you see it all as I 
 do," she repeated, with a sort of wonder in 
 her tone, as if she could not quite understand 
 how any human being could take a different 
 view to her own of that other and more dimly 
 outlined prospect which they were looking at 
 together. 
 
 He was standing by her with a magnolia- 
 blossom in his hand, which he was nervously 
 pulling to pieces, as though more anxious 
 to look into its shattered centre than into 
 Lena Morden's eyes, and with a look almost 
 of humiliation about his whole fio^ure which 
 he certainly did not carry off well. And yet 
 there was no particular reason why that or 
 any other look should have sat ill upon him,
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 3 
 
 for he was a well-looking young fellow 
 enough, with fair light hair, and a downy 
 face, and a clear woman's complexion — all 
 of which must have made it difficult for 
 him to look as sombre as he was doing at 
 that moment. . 
 
 He looked up after a moment's silence, 
 and turned a pleading face towards the 
 speaker. 
 
 ''If you would only try, Lena dear, I am 
 sure you would love me soon. I am certain 
 that if you would only marry me, you would 
 get on very well, and we should be as happy 
 as possible." 
 
 " That is simply nonsense, Frank," she said 
 a- little scornfully, blushing, not for herself, 
 but for him, as she listened to such language. 
 She did not know much about the love her 
 cousin was asking her for, but the childish 
 prattle he was trying to deceive her with 
 about the innocent domestic happiness that 
 was waiting for them in the future, if she 
 would only accept it, seemed quite con- 
 
 I — 2
 
 4 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 temptible in her ears. '* Simply nonsense,"" 
 she repeated with indignation, 
 
 " Very well," the boy answered almost 
 sullenly. " Of course, most that I say is 
 nonsense. You tell me so often enough, and 
 in time, I suppose, I shall learn to believe it. 
 I wonder if you ever think what is going to 
 become of me, when I have done talking 
 nonsense !" 
 
 '^ Finish the nonsense !" she answered 
 lightly, as if trying to laugh off his earnest- 
 ness, " and I will tell you. I am not going 
 to stay out here with you any longer, you 
 know. It is getting dark, and papa will want 
 some music. Please try not to look so dread- 
 fully unhappy, or they will ask you what you 
 have been doingf." 
 
 He did not seem quite to understand that 
 she was serious in her wish to assure him that 
 she never intended to try '* being as happy as 
 possible" in the way he suggested, and looked 
 up again with almost a sanguine expression 
 in his face.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 5 
 
 *^ Won't you kiss me once, Lena ?" he sug- 
 gested, with just a shade of timidity in his 
 voice, and yet as if he was asking no very 
 impossible boon, after all. 
 
 '' Certainly 7^^/," she answered in a high 
 state of indignation. '^ Haven't I just told 
 you that I haven't the slightest intention of 
 ever becoming engaged to you ? I wonder 
 how I shall make you understand it ?" 
 
 She turned away from him as she spoke, 
 and walked straight towards the house, as if 
 it was no part of her business to see what 
 became of her boy- lover. But she was aware, 
 nevertheless, that he did not follow her, but 
 vaulted over the little wall which separated 
 them from the road, and walked slowly and 
 sulkily away without a word of farewell. So 
 she was merciful, and called out '' Good- 
 night" in a voice which must have reached 
 his ears, though he did not turn, or even 
 answer it. 
 
 She felt half-repentant as she entered the 
 house, and began to ask herself whether it
 
 6 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 would have been so very shocking if she had 
 said " yes" to his last request. After all, he 
 was her cousin, and up to the last year or so, 
 had certainly kissed her as often as he felt 
 disposed, without either of them thinking 
 anything at all of the matter. Of course that 
 was before he had begun to '' talk nonsense,'' 
 since which epoch they had both of them 
 thought a great deal of it ; and on the whole, 
 Lena came to the conclusion that she had 
 done right. A caress so asked for and so 
 given could not, she thought, have been any 
 great consolation to him, while it might 
 afterwards have become a matter of serious 
 remorse to her. 
 
 '' Frank has gone, papa dear," she said 
 lightly, the moment she passed out of the 
 sweet twilight into the more garish atmo- 
 sphere of gas and broadcloth and meaningless 
 murmur from which her rejected suitor had 
 shrunk; ''and if you want me to play any- 
 thing, I will," she added in a whisper, bending 
 down, with a grace that seemed natural ta
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 7 
 
 her, over the shrunken Httle frame and care- 
 worn forehead that could never have been 
 the least like her own. 
 
 He was not much over forty, this father 
 of hers, and yet his hair was whitening fast, 
 and had left sundry bumpy protuberances 
 on his head bare already, as if the rest of 
 his head had been of a softer grain than the 
 rest, and had been washed away like sand- 
 stone, by the buffetings of the sea of troubles 
 which had beaten round it. What there 
 was left of him all looked worn and timid, 
 too, and so fraorile that one almost won- 
 dered how he had reached the arm-chair to 
 which he was helplessly clinging in safety, 
 much more how he had passed through the 
 more serious dangers of even forty years. 
 
 He looked up with a weary, half-scared 
 expression into the face of the graceful 
 young beauty who was bending over him, 
 which softened into inexpressible fondness 
 and admiration as he answered : 
 
 "Yes, yes, my dear," he said nervously.
 
 5 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 " Ask your — your mother. I am sure she 
 will be pleased." 
 
 Without deeming, apparently, that this 
 additional formality was necessary, the girl 
 passed on to the pianoforte, and opening it 
 quietly for herself, sat down * as if alone, and 
 broke into grand massive chords which led into 
 the harmonious majesty of Beethoven. There 
 were voices in the room as she began, but the 
 mighty music went on, in disregard of such 
 feeble competition, until they were all stilled, 
 and all eyes were turned towards the lithe, 
 childish hands that were calling it into life 
 with such unerring strength and accuracy of 
 touch. 
 
 She rose quietly when the last move' 
 ment of the sonata was concluded, seeming 
 to ignore the thanks of her audience, though 
 not scanty, almost as completely as she had 
 done their presence while at the instrument. 
 One voice, so peculiarly clear and devoid of 
 feeling that it made itself conspicuous above 
 the general murmur of congratulation, came
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 9 
 
 SO unmistakably to her ears that she was, in 
 a sense, compelled to turn and acknowledge it. 
 There were not more than half-a-dozen 
 people besides Mr. and ]\Irs. Morden in the 
 room, and Rothery Selfert had a voice and 
 a face that would have been conspicuous 
 enough even amongst a far larger number. 
 They had lost the freshness of youth cer- 
 tainly, for he was at least as old a man as her 
 father, though cast in a very different mould. 
 The face was perhaps hard, and a little worn, 
 bearino: on it evident traces of time, which 
 thick dark whiskers, just shot with grey, 
 made no attempt to conceal, but there was 
 an attractive look of power and energy there 
 which had been rather developed than dimin- 
 ished by time, and, if the storms of wind and 
 weather had washed away any of his head, 
 they had certainly left it in the most sym- 
 metrical form possible. Perhaps the real 
 feature which stamped his countenance with 
 so much force and character was his fore- 
 head, which stood out smooth and massive
 
 lO ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 above the dark grey eyes, as if the very pride 
 of intellect was enthroned behind it, and few 
 women could look on Rothery Selfert's face 
 without that instinctive sense of intellectual 
 inferiority which is, perhaps, as likely to 
 attract a woman's mind towards its object as 
 any other impression which a woman's mind 
 is prone to receive. 
 
 Lena Morden's eyes, at any rate, wandered 
 furtively more than once during the remain- 
 der of the evening towards the face of this 
 particular listener, and her ears were always 
 open when he spoke, which he did often, 
 with a voice which, as has been said, insisted 
 upon making itself heard, and generally quite 
 justified the assumption which an invidious 
 critic might have detected in it. Lena Mor- 
 den, however, was certainly not invidious, 
 and hardly critical, though she had not re- 
 frained from criticising the language and 
 aspirations of her over-ambitious boy-lover 
 that evening with very unpalatable severity. 
 But then the two men seemed to her so
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. II 
 
 different! The one only appeared different 
 to herself, because she had been all her life 
 accustomed to regard him as something that 
 would be a man some day. The other — 
 well, of him she had not been accustomed to 
 think at all, nor indeed had she been accus- 
 tomed to think of any one the least like him ; 
 but it was just this very sense of novelty 
 which prevented her from detecting anything 
 in his voice or his manner which could jar 
 upon her feelings. She knew, of course, that 
 he was much older than her cousin Frank, 
 but she did not believe that even when the 
 problematic day, when the latter was to 
 become "a man," had arrived, he could ever 
 impress her as something stronger, wiser, 
 less amenable to pain and sorrow than her- 
 self, as this older and sterner specimen of 
 humanity had done at once. 
 
 If j\Ir. Selfert had even been twenty years 
 younger than he was, she thought that the 
 respect with which he inspired her would 
 scarcely have been diminished. Yet she
 
 12 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 wondered, as he shook hands with her when 
 he said good-night, whether he had ever 
 been as weak and fooHsh twenty years ago 
 as Frank had been that night in the garden, 
 and she thought it unhkely that all men had 
 to wait until they had reached the further side 
 of forty before they are able to inspire fear 
 or respect in a woman's mind. 
 
 Lena Morden had nothing to say that 
 evening to the lady who filled, with the 
 majestic and self-satisfied grace of maturity, 
 the place of the girl's dead mother ; but she 
 went to her father's dressing-room when their 
 guests were gone, and that footsore wayfarer 
 on life's dusty road had retired for one of the 
 few solitary hours in which he was allowed to 
 indulge; and knocking softly, went in with 
 the assured step that demands a welcome. 
 She was quite accustomed to her father's 
 society in these his moments of relaxation, 
 and it brought no smile to her face to see that 
 he had cast aside the black garment in which 
 he had been pilloried all the evening, and
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 3 
 
 was sittincr with his back to the door, feebly- 
 caressing the more doubtful parts of his head 
 with a hair-brush, as if to comfort himself 
 with the assurance that all was not bald and 
 barren yet. 
 
 Going gently behind him, she took both 
 his hands in her own firm, soft palms, and 
 bending down over him as she had done when 
 she came in from the garden in the 
 evening, just touched his forehead with her 
 lips, very much as if she was caressing a 
 child. 
 
 " Have you come to say good-night, my 
 dear ?" he asked, submitting patiently as she 
 took the brushes from his hand, and turned 
 him round in his chair so that she could look 
 into his face. 
 
 '* Yes, and I have had such a wretched 
 evening !" the girl answered with energy, 
 though not at all in a grumbling tone, for it 
 had never occurred to her that her father was 
 responsible for anything which caused her 
 vexation, or could be called upon to set it
 
 14 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 right. ''So have you, I'm afraid, haven't 
 you ?" 
 
 '' I hope your — your mother hasn't been 
 saying anything trying, you know, my dear," 
 hazarded the author of her being in a timid 
 voice, and ignoring the suggestion as to his 
 own discomfort altogether. 
 
 " Mrs. Morden !" said Lena scornfully. 
 " Oh no, nothing out of the common. It's 
 something worse than Mrs. Morden this time. 
 It's my cousin Frank." 
 
 *' Oh !" said Mr. Morden, looking a good 
 deal relieved at hearing there was anything 
 worse than Mrs. Morden. " Yes, of course — 
 your cousin Frank. I suppose he wants you 
 to say you'll marry him, isn't that it ?" 
 
 '' I don't know why you should guess that 
 as such a likely thing to have happened," said 
 Lena, pulling her father out of his chair, and 
 seating herself in it, "but that's exactly it. 
 At his age ! I think he was quite childish 
 to-night, do you know !" 
 
 "Well," said the victim of the ejectment
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 5 
 
 pensively, trying to sit upon the end of a 
 portmanteau, which immediately gave way 
 with him, and nearly brought him into an 
 extremely undignified position, " you know 
 he's nearly two years older than you, my 
 dear, and I'm sure he doesn't think you 
 childish. I don't see why you shouldn't 
 marry him some day, when you both know 
 your own minds a little better." 
 
 " I think yo2(^ are getting childish now,'' 
 said the girl, with a magnificent assumption of 
 superiority over the male sex generally. 
 " Why, he would be always asking my ad- 
 vice ! How would you like a husband who 
 could do nothing better than that, if you were 
 a woman, I should like to know !" 
 
 Whatever such a propensity might be in 
 a husband, Mr. Morden felt that he could 
 imagine greater faults in a wife, and perhaps 
 his daughter guessed what his thoughts might 
 be, for she went on without waiting for an 
 answer. 
 
 " He was so unreasonable, papa, and lost
 
 1 6 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 his temper, and went away without being- 
 commonly civil. Do you think it would be 
 nice to marry a man who could make such an 
 exhibition of himself as that ? About nothing, 
 too !" 
 
 *' Nothing, my dear ?" said her father in- 
 terrogatively, trying to get the portmanteau 
 into an efficient condition again. 
 
 "Oh, you know what I mean," she answered 
 impatiently. " Don't let us talk about it any 
 more. Only I was obliged to tell somebody, 
 you know." 
 
 Somebody looked quite incapable of afford- 
 ing any assistance, and rather relieved to find 
 that the subject was not to be pursued. He 
 had by this time succeeded in balancing him- 
 self upon the end of the upright portmanteau, 
 but was nearly shaken off his perch again by 
 the suddenness with which his daughter 
 started an entirely new subject. 
 
 ''What sort of man is Mr. Selfert, 
 papa : 
 
 '' Rothery Selfert, my dear ? Well — he is
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 7 
 
 Mrs. Morden's brother, you know. He has 
 only been here twice before." 
 
 " I know that," said Lena petulantly, " but 
 I want to know what sort of man he is. 
 Anybody might be Mrs. Morden's brother. 
 Is he clever, I mean, or only bad-tem- 
 pered ?" 
 
 '' I beg your pardon, my dear," said her 
 father humbly. " People say he is very 
 clever, and I dare say he is. I know he 
 makes a great deal of money. He is a bar- 
 rister, you know, and a Q.C, and all that sort 
 of thing ; and, as I was saying just now, he is 
 Mrs. Morden's brother. I don t think I can 
 tell you anything m.ore about him." 
 
 The shadow of Mrs. Morden had by this 
 time so completely fallen over Mrs. Morden's 
 husband that his daughter forbore from ask- 
 ing him whether all Mrs. Morden's relations 
 had their personal identity so completely 
 merged in that proprietorship as the speaker 
 appeared to think the subject of their conver- 
 sation had, perhaps from a consciousness 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 1 8 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 of his own position. Instead of doing so^ 
 she kissed him again on the knobbiest 
 portion of his head, and said good-night. 
 He looked wistfully after her as she shut 
 the door, and then sank helplessly back into 
 the shadow of the matrimonial wing which 
 was falling upon him for the night.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RoTHERY Selfert WES, as Mr. Morden had 
 said, making a lot of money. Judged by 
 that not always infallible test, and judged by 
 others of greater severity, he was, as people 
 were said by Mr. Morden to say, a clever 
 man. Whether or not he w^as also a happy 
 man, and why, it will be the object of these 
 pages in some measure to show. 
 
 Twenty years ago, when Rothery Selfert 
 had begun his profession, and joined the 
 circuit upon which he was now as well-known 
 as any member of the circuit mess, his aspira- 
 tions were perhaps easier to understand, and 
 more likely to be gratified. In so far, at any 
 rate, as they were bounded by mere ambition 
 
 2 — 2
 
 20 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 of professional success, they had not been, for 
 a man of his intellectual powers, unreason- 
 able; and at the time at which this history 
 begirfs, they had been satisfied to the full. 
 Yet, as this history commences when Rothery 
 Selfert was a man of forty-five, it is obvious 
 that some chapters of his life, and those not 
 the least interesting, must remain unread. 
 What those chapters had been was known 
 to Rothery Selfert himself, and to very few 
 people besides. For he had been throughout 
 his life essentially a reserved and self-con- 
 tained man, and such hopes and desires as 
 he had cherished, either in or out of his 
 professional career, he had kept to himself. 
 There was a grave in a little country church- 
 yard where some of them, at least, lay buried ; 
 but no one knew it, and the girl whose love 
 had been nearly dear enough to him to draw 
 him out of the dusty struggle, to which he 
 was committed, into a more peaceful and 
 ignoble obscurity, was little more to him now 
 than the fading image of something in the
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 21 
 
 imaginary past, long since beyond his power 
 or will to grasp. 
 
 He had not been a popular man, either, 
 lacking always that genial buoyancy of ^irits, 
 and happy sympathy with those around him, 
 which men in other respects inferior so often 
 enjoy, and for the want of which there are so 
 few gifts which can compensate. Throughout 
 his life his back had been stiff, and his manner 
 unyielding, and he had even seemed to find 
 a pleasure in the petty disputes and antipa- 
 thies which are perhaps inseparable from the 
 life of a barrister on a large circuit. The 
 wine committee of the circuit mess knew him 
 as a stern and always troublesome critic, and 
 he had ever been foremost in dragging 
 before that rigid though voluntary tribunal 
 the most trifling transgression of its eti- 
 quette, dealing with the offender, in manner 
 at least, as if he had been a personal enemy 
 of his own. Perhaps personal enemies were 
 not likely to be altogether avoided in such 
 a life as this; at any rate, it may safely
 
 2 2 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 be said that Rothery Selfert made but few 
 personal friends, and did not seem much con- 
 cerned by the knowledge that such was the 
 case. ^ Yet, unpopular though he may have 
 been, he was, and had always been, universally 
 respected, and almost feared. He had not 
 written a book, nor married into a good legal 
 connection, nor had a miracle been wrought 
 in his favour — the three roads popularly said 
 to be the chief if not the only avenues to 
 success in his profession — but nevertheless 
 he had succeeded, and that without any 
 undue delay. Whatever might be said of 
 his social demerits, he had when actually 
 engaged in professional work almost every 
 attribute which could win an attorney's heart; 
 and by sheer force of such gifts he had forced 
 his way to the front rank of his profession, 
 holding his place there so unmistakably that 
 none, either among his seniors or juniors, 
 were found to grumble when he took his silk 
 gown, and with it the lion's share of the most 
 lucrative business on his circuit.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 23 
 
 From forty to fifty is said to be the age at 
 which a man, if ever, gives himself up unre- 
 servedly to ambition ; and Rothery Selfert, 
 being then still unmarried, may be supposed 
 to have had abundance of energy to spare for 
 such considerations. To all appearance he 
 was quite alive to them, and having recently 
 stood with success for a small borough which 
 still defied the reforming spirit of the age, 
 may be considered to have had a widening 
 prospect of professional advancement opening 
 before him. As yet, however, he had made 
 no mark in the House, while men were even 
 beginning to whisper that his wonderful suc- 
 cess was not likely to travel from the courts 
 at Westminster to the higher region upstairs, 
 and that he was but a mere nisi pritts advo- 
 cate after all. Such ill-natured whispers, 
 however, were nothing more than what must 
 be expected by every man who climbs to 
 any eminence at all above those who have 
 been his equals, and Rothery Selfert was 
 certainly not the man to show that they
 
 24 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 had in any way reached his ears. The 
 position of a mere nisi prizes advocate may not 
 be a very lofty one, but it is at any rate high 
 enough, when secure, for a man who has 
 attained it to look down with tolerable equa- 
 nimity at those who would sneer at his success. 
 
 Mr. Morden had been able to tell his 
 daughter hardly anything of Rothery Selfert 
 beyond what has been expanded here, except 
 that he was Mrs. Morden's brother. Some 
 knowledge of Mrs. Morden is necessary to 
 explain fully the advantages and disadvan- 
 tages of such a relationship, and happily Mrs. 
 Morden was not so difficult to understand as 
 her brother. 
 
 Enough has already been said to make it 
 clear that this lady was not Mr. Morden's 
 first wife, but it will not be so easy a task to 
 explain why she became his second. Cer- 
 tainly, if Lena Morden's wishes on the matter 
 had been consulted, she would not have 
 attained that position ; but Mr. Morden's 
 daughter (and natural protectress) was away
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2$ 
 
 from his side on a prolonged visit when that 
 timid victim of the practised trapper first 
 placed his foot on the matrimonial snare. 
 The jaws of the gin, artfully concealed by the 
 dry leaves of the past which had been spread 
 over them, closed with a snap upon the un- 
 suspicious prey, and from that time until the 
 present Mr. Morden had been held by the 
 leg. There was no possibility of escaping 
 from the fatal grip, even if it had been prac- 
 ticable to sacrifice a limb, and, like a snared 
 rabbit, Mr. Morden knew that he would 
 have to wait until death released him from 
 its hold. No wonder that, in this unpleasant 
 predicament, Mr. Morden sometimes felt that 
 the iron was eating into his soul. 
 
 The lady who had baited and set this suc- 
 cessful trap was not inexperienced in such 
 ventures, having before this time seen her 
 rabbit taken away by the grim gamekeeper 
 by whose hands Mr. Morden s release was 
 one day to be given to him. She was a 
 masculine lady of a certain age, not unlike
 
 26 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 her brother in her apparent disregard of the 
 feehngs of rabbits and the world around her 
 generally, but her outward appearance was 
 somewhat softer and fuller in its outlines, as 
 befitted her gentler sex ; and despite the sus- 
 picion of a moustache which gave a certain 
 degree of decision to her upper-lip, her coun- 
 tenance was by no means uncomely or devoid 
 of attraction in the eyes of men with a 
 thoroughly matured taste. 
 
 Mr. Morden's taste was thoroughly matured, 
 but it cannot be said that either the mous- 
 tache or the other somewhat abundant charms 
 of his captress had exercised much attraction 
 over his mind as he approached the snare. 
 Probably by this time he had forgotten that 
 they existed, if, indeed, he had ever known 
 it, but he was quite conscious of the existence 
 of a great many other things, for which he 
 had certainly never looked. He was an 
 essentially domestic man, with such a weak 
 and clinging nature that he had found it 
 absolutely impossible to face the remainder
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 27 
 
 of his existence without something Hke the 
 companionship to which, until the last three 
 years of his life, he had been accustomed ; 
 but he had not bargained for exactly the sort 
 of companionship with which the new Mrs. 
 Morden provided him, nor indeed for quite 
 so much of it. That the new Airs. Morden 
 should like her own way was no doubt 
 natural, but he did think that she might have 
 occasionally relaxed the tightness of the grip 
 with which the jaws of the matrimonial gin 
 were eating into his leg. 
 
 Although Rothery Selfert was not a man 
 given to society, unless it was society of 
 a nature likely to contribute towards the 
 worldly success on which he set such store, 
 he had generally been in the habit of acced- 
 ing to his sister's requests, with a sort of 
 cold-blooded substitute for affection which he 
 had learned to consider as inseparable from 
 fraternal duty. Consequently, he had come 
 to set the seal of his own exceeding respecta- 
 bility on the new connection she had formed,
 
 28 TLOTHERY SELFPLRT, Q.C. 
 
 and Mrs. Morden had that evening been dis- 
 playing her timid little captive with much 
 pride for his inspection. The captive had 
 certainly not borne the inspection gracefully, 
 but then it is so difficult, under the most 
 favourable circumstances, to be graceful in 
 such a position ! Wherever the introduction 
 to any of his wife's family is postponed until 
 after marriage, the bridegroom will have 
 more or less a difficult part to play. It is so 
 hard to impress such critical spectators with 
 the double idea that he thinks himself 
 scarcely worthy of his good fortune, and that 
 he is, in reality, eminently so ! It is hard to 
 look as if he was not criticising them ; it is 
 harder still to look as if he was not being 
 criticised himself! 
 
 Such social gymnastics are certainly not 
 assisted by that sense of constraint about the 
 leg under which Mr. Morden was suffering,, 
 and it cannot be said that he showed com- 
 plete proficiency in the part he was expected 
 to play. He was conscious, moreover, that
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 29 
 
 his shortcomings had not passed wholly un- 
 noticed, and it was not without trepidation 
 that he quitted the sanctuary of his dressing- 
 room that night, and prepared himself for the 
 slight corrective stimulant which matrimony 
 had rendered inseparable from the hours of 
 rest. 
 
 *' Mr. Morden," said the inexorable voice 
 which had been so strange, so utterly un- 
 known to him a year ago — " Mr. Morden, it 
 is strange to me that you find it impossible 
 to show a little more cordiality towards my 
 relations." 
 
 " My dear," replied the submissive victim, 
 making a feeble ''offer" at the light, as 
 though he would fain extinguish it, and seek 
 some shelter beneath the protecting veil of 
 darkness, "I — I did my best." 
 
 " Leave the candle, if you please, Mr. 
 Morden, for a minute. Your best ! Do you 
 usually do * your best' with your head half 
 out of the window, and your legs sprawling 
 among your guests — like — like centipedes ?"
 
 30 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Mr. Morden was too cowed to remind the 
 voice that centipedes were not generally- 
 enveloped in black cloth tubing, tipped with 
 black sealing-wax, feeling that, however 
 erroneous Mrs. Morden's views on entomo- 
 logy might be, the present was hardly the 
 time to correct it. Indeed, if he had never 
 anything worse to listen to than hearing his 
 limbs compared to "hundred-legs," he felt that 
 he could have faced the remainder of his 
 existence with tolerable equanimity. The 
 lady, indeed, did not wait for her comparison, 
 to be criticised. 
 
 *' Of course, Mr. Morden, if you are 
 ashamed of your face, or if you are ashamed 
 of me, I can understand your conduct. But 
 even then, I could wish that you would pay 
 sufficient regard to society to place your legs 
 in a more respectable position in my draw- 
 ing-room. You must have had plenty of 
 other opportunities of — sprawling." 
 
 The wretched man felt as if he would 
 never have sufficient energy to "sprawl"
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 3 1 
 
 again, but could hardly attempt to conciliate 
 his censor by promising to be more careful 
 of the manner in which his legs were dis- 
 posed for the future. So he again feebly 
 remarked that " he was very sorry," and 
 looked vacantly round the room as if looking 
 for a safe place, out of the reach of Mrs. 
 Morden's observation, in which to deposit 
 them for the night. 
 
 "My brother Rothery," continued the 
 sepulchral voice, having apparently ex- 
 hausted the subject of centipedes, '' Is 
 anxious, if possible, to be of service to — to 
 my husband's family. He was good enough 
 to take some interest In the future of your 
 daughter, and to ask what facilities she had 
 for entering Into society. It would have 
 been painful to me in the extreme to ex- 
 plain that the utter want of sympathy be- 
 tween your daughter and myself rendered 
 it impossible for me to enter into her feelings 
 and wishes on the subject, and I was obliged 
 to refer him to you. At that very moment,"
 
 32 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 continued Mrs. Morden severely, '' your 
 head was out of the window, and your 
 boots came in contact with Mrs. Prinsep's 
 dress." 
 
 " My dear, I am very sorry," repeated Mr. 
 Morden for the third time, in a tone which 
 a very humble kitchen-maid might have 
 used to a cook. *' If you have no further 
 occasion for — for the candle, my dear, I 
 think I will go to bed." 
 
 Mr. Morden was this time successful in 
 his attempt to extinguish the light, and lay 
 down to rest, trying to imagine what sort of 
 future awaited him, if his wife was to be 
 assisted by Mr. Selfert in discharging the 
 domestic responsibilities she had assumed 
 when she undertook the reformation of his 
 household.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Frank Morden heard his cousin's "eood- 
 night" clearly enough, but never turned his 
 head, as he set off to walk his anger cool 
 that hot June night. Like all roads near 
 London at that time of the year, the ground 
 beneath his feet was hot and dusty, though it 
 passed between cool green gardens, rich with 
 the scent of limes and horse-chestnuts, just 
 like the one he had quitted the moment 
 before. He had not stopped to get his hat, 
 and his shoes were soon half-full of soft 
 powdery gravel, but his mind was too 
 crowded with what he deemed his wrongs to 
 allow him to notice such discomforts as 
 these. Of course it is not every man, w^ho 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 BOTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 fails in persuading some particular woman of 
 his own exceeding merit, that has the right 
 to grumble at his want of success, and it is 
 only at one epoch of his life that a man is 
 likely very seriously to do so ; but Frank 
 Morden was just at that critical age which 
 expects to be taken by everybody at its own 
 valuation, and looks upon any attempt on 
 the part of outsiders to form an original 
 opinion as a personal affront. It may be 
 added, in further excuse for his ebullition of 
 temper, that Frank Morden was, and always 
 had been, quite incapable of understanding 
 his cousin Lena. To him she was only a 
 tall slight girl with glorious grey eyes, and a 
 clear soft complexion that glowed and paled 
 with every passing emotion. He knew she 
 had a sweet voice, that somehow or other 
 always appeared to him a little deficient in 
 tenderness when it addressed him, and a 
 clear well-cut mouth, that it seemed to him 
 almost sacrilege to wish to kiss, but yet 
 which he could not look at without longing
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 35 
 
 to do SO. Such a privilege would, he knew, 
 be some man's at some future day, and he 
 did not quite see why it should not be his. 
 He really knew or understood very little 
 more about her, and yet he had never been 
 able to get rid of a feeling that he was not 
 likely ever to be fortunate enough to call all 
 these charms his own. He could not ima- 
 gine a time at which the idea of sacrilege, 
 just mentioned, would entirely cease from 
 troubling his mind, and had always had a 
 consciousness that the reverence he felt for 
 her had no counterpart in her thoughts, and 
 ought not, in a properly assorted couple, to 
 be all on one side. Nevertheless, as has 
 been said, he was very angry as he went 
 tramping bare-headed along the dusty road, 
 and the sense of his disappointment rankled 
 as keenly in his breast as if he had never 
 anticipated it as a possible calamity. 
 
 Perhaps what really stung his temper most 
 was the thought that he had really had no 
 rival to contend with. He did not believe 
 
 3—"^
 
 36 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. • 
 
 that any other man had ever even spoken to 
 Lena Morden of love, as he had done, and 
 he was quite sure that none had, at any rate, 
 enjoyed the advantages for discussing such a 
 subject that had been his. There was a cer- 
 tain modesty about his youth, or at all events 
 he fancied for the moment that there was, 
 which would almost have prevented him from 
 entering the lists for such a prize, had there 
 been any competitor whose claims he might, 
 without loss of self-respect, believe superior 
 to his own ; but how ignominious it was to 
 fail for no other reason than his own incapa- 
 bility ! He had always distrusted himself a 
 little, after the fashion of his age, but had 
 never realised before that night how poor and 
 weak a creature he must really be ! If he 
 had failed here, with such a motive and such 
 a hope to spur him on, was It likely that he 
 would ever succeed in attaining any object 
 that was worth an effort ? 
 
 He was not vicious by nature, and believed 
 that up to the present time he had shown
 
 .ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 37 
 
 tolerable steadiness and self-denial in keeping 
 straight, where he saw so many of his daily- 
 companions go wrong ; but he began to-night 
 to wonder whether, after all, the right way to 
 live was not to grasp at as much of what 
 seemed like pleasure as came in his way, and 
 take the chance of such thorns and nettles as 
 might be scattered among the flowers. Whe- 
 ther or not it is a salutary thing, as some men 
 will say, for a boy to be baulked in his first 
 love, it is certain that Frank Morden that 
 night found the draught at any rate a bitter 
 one. 
 
 The taste had lost none of its bitterness an 
 hour or two afterwards, when he got back to 
 the little station from which he had to take 
 the train back to town, and found one of his 
 fellow-guests of that evening waiting on the 
 platform. Even though it may be an un- 
 comfortable thing to make your way home by 
 railway from a suburban dinner-party, yet on 
 a midsummer night, when the guest has 
 a cigar in his mouth, and is satisfied with the
 
 2,S ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. • 
 
 claret his host has provided for him, even the 
 anticipation of twenty minutes In a first-class 
 smoking-carriage is not sufficient to take all 
 appearance of prosperity and content from the 
 outward man. At any rate, Rothery Selfert 
 looked prosperous and contented enough to 
 jar horribly upon the lad's sense of his own 
 misfortunes, and might, for anything that 
 marred the peace of his impassive counte- 
 nance, have never had a disappointment, or 
 a wish ungratified, since he was promoted 
 from a more juvenile costume into knicker- 
 bockers and tunics. 
 
 He looked a little curiously at the lad, who 
 had been sitting opposite him that evening at 
 dinner, and almost took the trouble to wonder 
 at his flushed face and bare head. Some- 
 thing in his look, perhaps the utter composure 
 which was such a contrast to his own, seemed 
 to irritate Frank Morden nearly beyond en- 
 durance, and he forced himself to speak in 
 order to destroy the charm which he felt 
 growing upon him.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 39 
 
 "I went out to have a cigar," he said bluntly, 
 *' and dropped my hat over the bridge." 
 
 It must be admitted that he did not tell 
 his little gratuitous story well, and his hearer 
 smiled a little inwardly as he tried to remem- 
 ber the name of the excitable young gentle- 
 man who was taking the trouble to apologise 
 for his appearance. 
 
 Just then the train came up, and they got 
 in together. Before they got to London the 
 elder man remembered that he had seen the 
 excitable young gentleman in question pass 
 into the garden with Mrs. Morden's new 
 step-daughter, the girl with the big grey eyes, 
 in whom, as Mrs. Morden had rightly said, 
 he had been good enough to take some in- 
 terest ; and he thought it worth his while to 
 ask the excitable young gentleman, who cer- 
 tainly looked as if he had lost something else 
 besides his hat, whether he was not some 
 connection of the family. 
 
 '' Yes," said the lad brusquely, " she is my 
 cousin."
 
 40 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 *' Mrs. Morden, do you mean ?" inquired 
 the other, again with that shght inward smile 
 which he hardly took so much trouble this 
 time to conceal. 
 
 Frank blushed with vexation at his own 
 gaucherie, 
 
 '' No," he said with a little awkwardness; 
 "Mr. Morden is my uncle. My name is 
 Morden, you know.'' 
 
 " Yes ?" said the elder man equably, know- 
 ing that it was not necessary at all to tell his 
 own name. 
 
 Mr. Morden's family, who had been privi- 
 leged by becoming matrimonially connected 
 with the sister of Rothery Selfert, Esq., Q.C.,. 
 M.P., could hardly want instruction as to the 
 outward appearance of the source of so much 
 dignity and honour. So he lighted another 
 cigar without saying more, and sat watching 
 his companion with a calm look of superiority 
 in his face that was expressive enough in 
 itself. 
 
 The lad sat under it, inwardly chafing for
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 4 1 
 
 a few minutes, and then turned impatiently 
 to his elder companion, with a flushed and 
 almost defiant face. 
 
 ''You are Mr. Selfert, I think," he said 
 abruptly ; '' Mrs. Morden's brother ^ 
 
 Mrs. Mordents brother intimated, by a 
 placid motion of his head, that Mrs. Morden, 
 and through her the rest of the Morden 
 family, had the honour of that relationship. 
 
 " I don't know if you know," pursued the 
 lad, putting his hand to his heated forehead 
 as he spoke, and feeling a little disconcerted 
 by being thereby reminded that his head 
 was bare; '*I dont know if you know," he 
 repeated with the same awkwardness of ex- 
 pression "that Mrs. Morden and — my cousin 
 — are not getting on very well together ?" 
 
 Rothery Selfert, always with that same 
 irritating inward smile, replied condescend- 
 ingly : 
 
 " Need we enter into that ?" 
 
 "/ need," said Frank Morden, fretting 
 under the other's manner, "because she is my
 
 42 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C 
 
 cousin, you know. I said that before. And 
 I want to know if you don't think some con- 
 sideration is due to a girl Hke that, who is 
 put into the background, and made wretched, 
 simply because her father has chosen a — a 
 lady — to fill her mother's place ? Of course 
 I can't speak to her, but I think you ought to 
 concern yourself in the matter." 
 
 " I suppose you have been commissioned 
 to make this complaint to me ?" said Mr. 
 Selfert, as if that was a matter of course, but 
 knowing perfectly well that such was not the 
 case. 
 
 The lad looked again a little disconcerted, 
 but did not like to fall back upon his previous 
 assertion that " she was his cousin," and said 
 nothing. 
 
 '* I see that it is not so," continued the 
 elder man in the same equable voice, '* and 
 that you have been — a little injudicious. 
 You must not appoint yourself other people's 
 champion like that. Of course you have no 
 right to criticise Mrs. Morden's conduct at
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 43 
 
 all, and you certainly cannot know very well 
 what may pass in a house to which you do 
 not belong — unless you are speaking the 
 words of somebody else, which I am sure is 
 not the case. If you had been an older man, 
 I should have, told you that your language 
 had been nothing less than impertinent. As 
 it is " 
 
 Rothery Selfert, Q.C, relapsed into silence, 
 as if he really did not know what a man who 
 was not an older man ought to be told, and 
 just then the train stopped at the platform. 
 The lad jumped out, but fired a parting shot 
 before he went. 
 
 ** You seem to think," he said, with an 
 imitation, that was almost ridiculous, of his 
 antagonist's calm deliberate manner, *' that it 
 is impossible for a man to be impertinent to 
 anybody except his elders. I think I spoke 
 to you in a manner that deserved a more 
 civil answer than you have chosen to give 
 
 me." 
 
 Rothery Selfert got into a cab, and lit
 
 44 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 another cigar, but as he drove to his rooms 
 in Mount Street it did occur to him once or 
 twice to wonder what his injudicious young 
 friend and Lena Morden had found to say 
 to each other that night in the garden.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The leisure-time of Rothery Selfert, Q.C., 
 during the next two or three days, was hardly 
 sufficient for the solution of the question 
 which was mentioned as troubling his mind 
 at the end of the previous chapter. He was 
 busily engaged from ten to four just then in 
 endeavouring to persuade a very innocently- 
 minded special jury, under the protection for 
 the time being of the weakest judge on the 
 bench, that the lord of a very ill-defined 
 manor or reputed manor in Yorkshire, not- 
 withstanding a reservation in a conveyance 
 from the bishop of the diocese in 1572, re- 
 tained the exclusive right to the minerals 
 under certain waste land comprised in that
 
 46 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 conveyance. The minerals in question had 
 been entirely exhausted for at least a hundred 
 years, which rendered the evidence of the 
 score or so of aged witnesses who were 
 brought up from Yorkshire for the purpose 
 rather less conclusive than it otherwise would 
 have been on the subject ; but it was never- 
 theless a question of the last importance to 
 the parties concerned, and one that called 
 urgently for a definite solution one way or 
 the other. A compromise was nearly effected 
 at the end of the second day, but eventually 
 came to nothing, owing to the peculiar cha- 
 racter of the litigants on either side. 
 
 The lord of the manor (or reputed manor) 
 felt that his ancestral dignity was nearly con- 
 cerned, and made it a sine qua no7i that 
 certain excavations in the West Moor, made 
 so long ago as 1799 by the lessees of the 
 then bishop, should be filled up, and the 
 ground restored to its pristine condition. 
 The bishop reflected that he was a corpora- 
 tion sole, having {qttd bishop) neither body
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 47 
 
 to be kicked nor soul to be d d, and felt it 
 
 his duty, in the interests of his possible suc- 
 cessors and of the church at large, to resist 
 the encroachments of the laity in a matter so 
 fraught with peril to the safety of the esta- 
 blishment. Consequently, it was necessary 
 that the rights and extent of the manor (or 
 reputed manor) in question should be pro- 
 nounced upon by a jury, and two more days 
 were necessarily consumed, and another batch 
 of aged witnesses sent for from Yorkshire, 
 before the matter could be laid before them 
 with sufficient clearness to enable them defi- 
 nitely and finally to disagree. It will easily 
 be understood that this desirable consumma- 
 tion was not reached without the consum.ption 
 of a good deal of Rothery Selfert's time and 
 energies in the matter. 
 
 To the intelligent reader, who has already 
 recognised by internal evidence the particular 
 session in which these events took place, it 
 is hardly necessary to add that the demands 
 made by the House upon the time of
 
 48 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Rothery Selfert, Esq., Q.C, M.P., after his 
 dinner were even more urgent than those 
 occupations the nature of which has been 
 already detailed. As everybody knows, the 
 Bill for the better Regulation of the Qualifi- 
 cation of Juries in England and Wales had 
 just been introduced by a perfectly intract- 
 able member of the most factious Opposition 
 of the century, and was supported by the 
 whole strength of that party, in direct viola- 
 tion of a tacit pledge, given by a gentle- 
 man, who was understood to be acting as its 
 Leader, on an occasion which his adherents 
 contended could hardly be described as even 
 semi-official. Whether a tacit pledge, given 
 by a politician about whose functions there 
 seemed to be considerable doubt, on an occa- 
 sion as to which there was even more dis- 
 pute, was in any sense binding upon those 
 who loudly professed their anxiety to follow 
 the lead of the right man, in the right place, 
 and at the right time, was a moot-point 
 which was just then exercising the minds of
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 49 
 
 the more timid politicians on both sides of 
 the House. But certain provisions had 
 been artfully introduced into this Juries' 
 Bill, which would (the Government declared) 
 seriously affect the whole fabric of the con- 
 stitution. The result, if the Bill was passed, 
 would be to subvert entirely the order of 
 precedence at present obtaining between the 
 Chancery and Common Law Judges, while 
 at the same time it equalised (and reduced) 
 the annual salaries of their chief clerks. 
 There was a minor provision to regulate the 
 sale and distribution of land on an intestacy, 
 which the intractable member incidentally 
 mentioned would result in the re-establish- 
 ment of a yeoman class on their native soil, 
 but it was generally understood that this 
 clause would not be pressed in Committee, if 
 the Bill ever got so far, and the other objects 
 aimed at were of sufficient importance 
 and sanctity in themselves, for the Govern- 
 ment to use all its influence and energy in 
 preventing the obnoxious measure from ever 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 reaching that stage. The Attorney-general 
 had on a previous occasion rather committed 
 himself on the subject of Juries generally^ 
 and it was understood that the Solicitor- 
 general was to become Master of the Rolls 
 as soon as the present aged possessor of that 
 title was removed from his office by old age ; 
 so that it was absolutely necessary to find an 
 honourable and learned member free from 
 the suspicion of ^ bias or prejudice In the 
 matter to support the Government views ; 
 and it was already known that Rothery 
 Selfert, Q.C, would close the debate on the 
 second reading by urging the rejection of the 
 Bill. In the midst of such varied and dis- 
 tracting anxieties, it is hardly to be wondered 
 at, as has been already said, If the words of 
 the hatlesss young gentleman he had re- 
 buked In the railway carriage were not 
 constantly present to Rothery Selfert s 
 mind. 
 
 On the day, however, when It was finally 
 decided that the dispute as to the minerals
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 5 1 
 
 under the manor (or reputed manor) must 
 be begun all over again, the barrister found 
 that notwithstanding his multifarious duties, 
 he had the evening to do pretty well what 
 he liked with. Notice had been given in 
 the House that a subordinate member of the 
 Government would be asked whether he had 
 not publicly stated it to be his opinion that 
 the refusal of the Committee of the Stock 
 Exchange to grant a quotation to a project 
 for a railway in the Republic of Lima was 
 calculated to complicate the relations of her 
 Majesty's Government with that power ; but 
 it was not thought absolutely necessary that 
 the champion who had been selected to 
 demolish the Juries' Qualification Bill should 
 be present on the occasion. Tvlr. Selfert had 
 leisure, therefore, to turn his attention to the 
 domestic difficulties which had been brought 
 under his notice on the evening that he had 
 inspected the new arrangements made by 
 Mrs. Morden for her future comfort, and 
 decided upon going down to offer himself as 
 
 4—2 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY
 
 52 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 a kind of skilled referee in the matter. But 
 he was so much more accustomed to hold his 
 arbitrations in his own chambers at the 
 Temple, under the immediate supervision of 
 his clerk, that he had some difficulty in re- 
 pressing a consciousness that he was acting 
 almost irregularly in the matter, by defraud- 
 ing that inflexible guardian of his pro- 
 fessional honour of his due share of the 
 fees. 
 
 The door of the house which led into the 
 garden was open, but Rothery Selfert was a 
 man who always felt a sort of awkward diffi- 
 culty in entering a room without being an- 
 nounced ; the more punctiliously and unmis- 
 takably the better; and he impressed this 
 fact upon the open door and the bell-handle 
 with as much emphasis as possible, feeling as 
 if he was paying a refined and dignified 
 compliment to Mrs. Morden no less than to 
 Mrs. Morden's brother by so doing. He had 
 been wondering vaguely as he walked from 
 the station whether he should see the young
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 53 
 
 gentleman who had, so to speak, delivered 
 him his brief in the reference, and was con- 
 scious that he should not be altogether dis- 
 satisfied if such were to be the case, as his 
 dignity was rather improved, in his own 
 opinion, by such contrasts. But he did not 
 see the young gentleman lurking anywhere 
 about, and came to the conclusion that on 
 this occasion his dignity would have to 
 stand alone. 
 
 The two figures in the drawing-room were 
 still and orderly enough when he entered to 
 satisfy the most exigent demands of society, 
 which objects to emotion on principle, and 
 holds that the gusts of human passion should 
 be allowed to sweep over its lowest strata 
 alone. Nevertheless, there was an unde- 
 finable sensation in the air that is not gener- 
 ally associated with calm settled weather, and 
 Rothery Selfert almost felt that, like Elijah 
 of old, he could hear a *' sound of abundance 
 of rain." There were drops, at any rate, he 
 could almost have sworn, in the big grey
 
 54 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 eyes, and the clear complexion was a shade 
 more flushed than he had s^en it two or 
 three evenings before; while Mrs. Morden 
 welcomed him with a voice that sounded as 
 if it had been a little relaxed by the oppres- 
 sion of the moral atmosphere, and had lost 
 something of its purity of tone in conse- 
 quence. 
 
 " I told you, Rothery," said Mrs. Morden, 
 in a tone which seemed rather to pride itself 
 upon jarring in its hearer's ears than otherr 
 wise, ''that there was no sympathy between — 
 Mr. Morden s daughter — and myself. I am 
 hardly sorry that you have come at a moment 
 when it would be impossible to conceal the 
 fact even from a stranger." 
 
 Yet it did not look difficult to sympathise 
 with Mr. Morden's daughter, as she stood in 
 the window recess, with her graceful young 
 head half-averted from her step-mother, and 
 the lashes drooping on her soft cheek, as if 
 they would fain hide from the grey eyes all 
 that could leave a profane or vulgar image
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 55 
 
 on the pure mirrors within. A less exacting 
 critic than Mrs. Morden might have easily- 
 fancied that the honour so recently done to 
 Mr. Morden's family was not fully appreciated 
 by at least this one member of it. 
 
 " I am sorry," said Mr. Selfert, with less 
 than his usual fluency, and feeling that it 
 would not be easy to give all the fraternal 
 support that was expected from him — ^' I am 
 sorry that it should be so difficult for two 
 \Yho are so closely connected to sympathise 
 with each other. I am sure that Miss 
 Morden regrets the difficulty oi' which you 
 complain quite as earnestly as you yourself, 
 Catherine, can do.'' 
 
 The words and phrasing were stilted and 
 formal, but they hardly sounded so in the 
 girl's ears. Of course it was not the kind of 
 thing that her cousin Frank would have said, 
 but she did not expect men like Mr. Selfert 
 to talk like her cousin Frank. Had she not 
 told the latter that he spoke like a child ? 
 Here was a man who, at any rate, had put
 
 56 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 away childish thinors, and yet, as she felt 
 intuitively, was endeavouring to say that 
 which should not be displeasing for her to 
 listen to. She would not pretend to look as 
 if she really desired that sympathy between 
 Mrs. Morden and herself of which the former 
 spoke, but Rothery Selfert thought he could 
 detect a willingness to accept another sort of 
 sympathy in the grey eyes which looked up 
 to thank him. 
 
 " I should be glad to satisfy myself of 
 that/' said Mrs. Morden in her Iciest tone; 
 and certainly the amount of ice which must 
 have been necessary to produce the resulting 
 degree of chill was quite calculated to freeze 
 into torpor any tendency to natural affection 
 with which it might have come in con- 
 tact. " Perhaps Mr. Morden's daughter 
 may feel disposed to tell you whether she 
 is willing to apologise to me for the language 
 she used a few minutes before you came 
 in. Unless she can overcome her pride 
 so far as to do so, it is impossible that we
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 5/ 
 
 can continue members of the same house- 
 hold.'' 
 
 Rothery Selfert felt, almost for the first 
 time, some slight distrust of his own powers 
 of persuasion, as the refrigerator In which 
 the above diornified ultimahcm had been Iced 
 conveyed Itself smoothly, as If running on 
 castors, out of the room. What he might be 
 called upon to do, if the pride of which the 
 chilly voice had spoken proved too much for 
 Miss Morden to overcome, he did not quite 
 know ; but he was conscious that a certain 
 effect of disappointment would be produced in 
 his own mind, if it so far succumbed as to pro- 
 duce the apology which was so much desired 
 by the elder lady. Especially as he had still 
 a lingering sort of feeling that the elder lady, 
 by virtue of her relationship, was almost to 
 be regarded as his client In the matter. 
 
 The graceful head was still half-averted 
 from the rest of the room; and the grey eyes so 
 persistently refused to give his own another 
 opportunity of meeting them, that Mr. Selfert
 
 58 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 was compelled at last to ''open the case" for 
 himself. With some lameness and hesita- 
 tion, it must be confessed; and yet on the 
 question of the reservation of minerals in the 
 Bishop's lease, he had been almost fluent ! 
 
 ''You will forgive me for saying again, 
 Miss Morden, that I regret very much the 
 difference which has so unhappily arisen 
 between my sister and yourself?" 
 
 " Between — ?" said Lena hesitatingly, as if 
 she did not quite understand him. 
 
 " Between my sister — Mrs. Morden — and 
 yourself. I regret it the more, because I am 
 conscious that, in many respects, she — my 
 sister — is not an easy person to live with." 
 
 There had been days, indeed, when the 
 lady who was now afflicting the soul of Mr. 
 Morden had done battle with the more stub- 
 born spirit of her brother; and though she 
 had been compelled to retire ignominiously 
 worsted from the fray, yet In the soul of her 
 conqueror there yet lived a lively recollection 
 of the ardour with which the struggle had
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 59 
 
 been carried on. The girl simply inclined 
 her head, still not quite understanding whe- 
 ther she was to look upon Mrs. Morden's 
 brother as a friend or a foe ; though, as has 
 been already said, the formal style in which 
 he spoke was not altogether displeasing to 
 her. It did not seem possible that such a 
 tone could ever become dissonant with pas- 
 sion, or allow itself to utter anything which 
 could sound unseemly in a lady's ears ; 
 which was more^ at any rate, than could with 
 truth be said of the voice which had just 
 been conveyed, refrigerator and all, out of 
 the room. 
 
 " I know that she is not disposed to admit 
 that any of the fault can be on her side, in 
 any case," continued ]\Ir. Selfert, beginning 
 to forget on which side his brief had been 
 delivered to him in the matter ; '' but if you 
 can put any trust in me, I will do my best to 
 — to remove any of the difficulties which lie 
 in the way of your happiness here. Perhaps 
 you would like me to speak to Mr. Morden ?"
 
 6o ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 " To papa ?" said the girl, turning round, 
 with a little contempt in her voice, as if at 
 that she really found it necessary to try and 
 persuade her adviser of the utter useless- 
 ness of the proceeding he proposed. " I 
 think that would be quite useless, thank 
 you, Mr. Selfert. And I am sorry to say he 
 has quite enough to distress him already, 
 without being made unhappy on my account." 
 
 " Then I suppose there is nothing I can do 
 for you," said Rothery Selfert somewhat irre- 
 solutely, feeling that the Juries' Bill would be 
 easier to demolish than the measures his 
 sister had introduced into the house of 
 Morden. 
 
 " I have not asked that anything should be 
 done," said the victim of Mrs. Morden's apti- 
 tude for reform, with something of that pride 
 in her voice to which the ardent legislatrix so 
 strongly objected. "It is Mrs. Morden, you 
 know, who has thought it necessary to trouble 
 you with this miserable business." 
 
 Mr. Selfert repressed a strong inclination
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 6 1 
 
 to let her know that somebody else, the young 
 gentleman without a hat to wit, had felt the 
 same necessity, notwithstanding the curiosity 
 he felt to see how she would take the in- 
 formation. She had turned her face more 
 fully towards him now, and there was enough 
 of the evening light left to show him as much 
 of the bright grey eyes as their dark lashes 
 were not too coy to hide. He wondered, not 
 without a sort of half-developed idea that the 
 thought was almost too trivial to be worthy 
 of him, whether the light in them had been 
 softer when the presumptuous young gentle- 
 man aforesaid had looked into them in the 
 garden, a night or two back. 
 
 " I am sorry that Mrs. Morden has given 
 me so ungracious a task," said Rothery Sel- 
 fert, steeling his breast, so far as its ordinary 
 cuirass would fit, against such puerile fancies. 
 " But since it has been imposed upon me, I 
 hope that you will at least believe that I sin- 
 cerely sympathise with the difficulties of your 
 position."
 
 62 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 There must have been something in Lena 
 Morden's eyes that suggested the idea of 
 sympathy, for very few people saw much of 
 them without that most desirable of all the 
 forms of human charity immediately present- 
 ing Itself to their minds. 
 
 When Frank Morden had talked about 
 being as '* happy as possible," he simply had 
 the imaginary prospect before his eyes of 
 being allowed one day to show a particular 
 kind of sympathy for his cousin in as 
 demonstrative a manner as he chose, and 
 perhaps of receiving some in return. The 
 same word had suggested itself to Mrs. 
 Morden's lips, as a desirable sort of thing, if 
 tempered with a little respect, to be looked 
 for between Mr. Morden's daughter and Mr. 
 Morden's wife. And here was Rothery Sel- 
 fert, a man not too much given, undoubtedly, 
 to sympathise with his fellow-creatures in 
 general, solemnly tendering his own peculiar 
 and refined sympathy, the very aroma of 
 which was almost sufficient. In his opinion, for
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 63 
 
 his Christian charity to bestow upon ordinary 
 deserving objects, for Miss Morden's accept- 
 ance ! 
 
 Whether this last-mentioned sympathy 
 resembled most closely, in its essential quali- 
 ties, that coveted by the young lady's step- 
 mother or by her cousin, was a problem which 
 did not present itself to his mind for solution. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, looking up with 
 eyes that were very innocent and child-like 
 after all, when those puzzling lashes were not 
 catching the rays that shot from them, and 
 twisting them into a hundred incomprehen- 
 sible combinations of light and colour. And 
 she meant " thank you," too, for the provision 
 made by nature for exciting sympathy for 
 Lena Morden in minds like those of her 
 cousin Frank and Rothery Selfert was 
 by no means a purposeless arrangement. 
 Lena Morden liked sympathy very much. 
 '' Indeed, if I thought I could do any good 
 by talking to you of — my troubles, I would 
 do so. But I am going away almost directly,
 
 64 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 to Stay in Devonshire, with one of my dearest 
 friends, and I hope matters will have arranged 
 themselves better by the time I come back. 
 It is no good making oneself unhappy about 
 the future, do you think it is ?" 
 
 There was something almost childlike in 
 the way the question was put, and Mr. Selfert 
 smiled a little as he answered : 
 
 *' Perhaps your future will arrange itself 
 in the meantime, Miss Morden." 
 
 " How do you mean ?" she asked quickly, 
 not at all understanding his allusion. 
 
 *' I only mean," he replied, feeling hot and 
 uncomfortable at having to explain his mean- 
 ing, as if he had been making a bad joke, 
 *' that you do not, of course, look forward 
 to spending the whole of your life in your 
 father's house, and that at your age, you 
 cannot exactly foresee what may happen to 
 change your situation entirely. For ex- 
 ample " (he went on rather lamely, as if he 
 had been interrupted by the Court while 
 addressing the jury), *' there is a cousin of
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 65 
 
 whom I have heard — indeed, I saw him here 
 the other niofht — and it did not seem extra- 
 vagant to suppose that he might be fortunate 
 enough to be the means of giving you a 
 home of your own. Or some one Hke 
 him." 
 
 The sHght figure drew itself up with a 
 magnificent expression of contempt. 
 
 " That is most improbable, Mr. Selfert," 
 she said coldly. 
 
 Indeed, the particular form -of sympathy 
 offered by her cousin Frank had been so 
 entirely distasteful to her feelings, that she 
 looked down with a splendid scorn upon the 
 possibility of her ever accepting such a thing 
 from any man, and almost wondered that ]\Ir. 
 Selfert had condescended to speak of such 
 trivialities. She supposed that he was doing 
 so under the idea that such a style of conver- 
 sation was suitable to her sex and age, and 
 felt anxious to justify herself in his eyes. 
 Nothing could be more absurd than the idea 
 that all women, simply because they were 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 young-, had the visions of love and marriage 
 constantly floating before their eyes. 
 
 *' Well, well," said Rothery Selfert, a good 
 deal puzzled by her manner, and yet with a 
 vague feeling of satisfaction that it appeared 
 to promise so little for the success of her 
 cousin's suit, " that, of course, I can know 
 nothing of. Only it will give me great 
 pleasure to think that you will place sufficient 
 confidence in my good-will to have recourse 
 to me for advice, should any further trouble 
 arise between you and Mrs. Morden, on that 
 or any other subject. You will let me assure 
 myself of this ?" 
 
 *' Certainly," answered Lena Morden, hesi- 
 tating a little as she accepted the entirely 
 novel form of sympathy with which she was 
 now being honoured, "as you are kind enough 
 to interest yourself in my happiness." 
 
 She did not at all understand the motives 
 which could induce so great a man to profess 
 an interest in it of so lively a nature, and was 
 not a little flattered by the empresse^nent of his
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 6^ 
 
 manner. Her experience of step-uncles, In 
 which relation, if any, she supposed that 
 Mr. Selfert stood to herself, was necessarily 
 limited, and she had certainly not antici- 
 pated such a manifestation of what might 
 be almost called affection from the referee 
 Mrs. Morden had called in. If it was 
 flattery, it was flattery of a very refined 
 description, and she felt a certain amount 
 of conscious pride in having attracted it. 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Selfert's proffered protec- 
 tion was accepted in a very demure and quiet 
 manner, and the eyelashes and cheeks con- 
 spired together to hide the grey eyes more 
 closely than ever as she shook hands with 
 Mrs. Morden's brother at his departure. 
 Mrs. Morden's brother had some little diffi- 
 culty In giving a satisfactory account of his 
 interview to that lady, before he was allowed 
 to return to town for the night. He could 
 not exactly say that IMIss Morden had ex- 
 pressed her willingness to make the apology 
 which was so earnestly desired, but he had 
 
 5-2
 
 6S ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 satisfied himself that Miss Morden did (as 
 he had begun by saying) regret the difficulty 
 which had arisen quite as earnestly as "Ca- 
 therine " herself could do, and ventured to 
 remind ''Catherine" that a litde forbearance 
 might be desirable on both sides. '' Cather- 
 . ine" was very anxious that he should commit 
 himself to a formal denunciation of the ma- 
 lignity and disrespect which had induced 
 Mr. Morden's daughter to withhold her 
 " sympathy " from her stepmother, but Mr. 
 Selfert refused to enlarge upon this subject, 
 and declared that he m.ust dismiss the whole 
 matter from his mind until after the Juries' 
 Bill was disposed of He understood that 
 the difficulty was to be temporarily solved by 
 Miss Morden's absenting herself from home; 
 but in any event, his time and thoughts were 
 so much taken up just now by his parlia- 
 mentary duties — he had almost said his 
 official duties — that, until the session was 
 over, If It was absolutely necessary that he 
 should consider the family embarrassments
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 69 
 
 of which ''Catherine" spoke, that considera- 
 tion must for the present be postponed. So 
 Mr. Selfert returned to town ; but as he had 
 just got rid of the exception in the bishop's 
 lease, and the right to the exhausted minerals, 
 it is only reasonable to suppose that the men- 
 tal space thus left unoccupied, or some of it, 
 was taken up by the remembrance of his 
 step-niece's pleading eyes, and of the incon- 
 siderate haste with which he had taken her, 
 eyes and all, under his protecting wing.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 There are worse counties than Devonshire 
 for a man to settle down in for the rest of 
 his life, when he has come to that stage of it 
 which calls most earnestly for the absolute 
 tranquillity which domestic life offers to the 
 would-be Benedict — when seen, at any rate, 
 in perspective. And if such a man is con- 
 tented with tranquillity and the other do- 
 mestic joys which crowd themselves into the 
 mental picture of such a state of existence, 
 presenting to the enraptured view of the 
 gazer into futurity almost as little individu- 
 ality as a flock of sheep with their heads 
 buried in clover — if, I say, he is satisfied 
 with delights that offer that very limited
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 7 1 
 
 amount of variety or change, he might un- 
 doubtedly fix upon worse spots in that iair 
 county than Lydcombe, or Lydcombe-cum- 
 Saltham, as he would more strictly designate 
 the parish, if his interest in it w^as clerical. 
 The interest of the Reverend x\lbert Carfax 
 in it was essentially clerical (as well as being 
 domestic), and the full meaning of the more 
 lengthy appellation had accordingly entered 
 into his soul. 
 
 Of the Reverend Albert Carfax, and of 
 the fortunate young lady who had already 
 entered upon the task of providing those 
 sheep-like joys which had been so attractive 
 in anticipation, something in the nature of a 
 portrait shall be given after the description 
 of the parish in which the joys were being 
 realised. 
 
 Lydcombe-cum-Saltham w^as one of those 
 piebald monstrosities of a parish which are 
 common enough on the sea-coast all round 
 England. Lydcombe was the parish proper, 
 and. in Lydcombe was the parish church—
 
 72 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 older, as a parish church ought to be, than 
 anything^ within sight from its tower, but it 
 was in Saltham that the bulk of the Rev. 
 Albert Carfax s parishioners lived, and from 
 Saltham the chief part of the congregation, 
 even of the parish church, was drawn. 
 
 Saltham had, of course, a church, or rather 
 a chapel-of-ease, to itself, where the Rev. 
 Albert Carfax and his curate ministered 
 alternately; and a very ostentatious, irrepres- 
 sible chapel-of-ease it was, apt indeed, in the 
 Saltham season, when the summer visitors 
 were down and the bathing-machines out, to 
 ignore the maternal functions of the mother 
 church altogether. Yet Saltham was as 
 ugly, as modern, and as artificial, as Lyd- 
 combe was old, picturesque, and Arcadian ; 
 and on the Sundays when it was his turn to 
 take the more important duty there, the 
 Rev. Albert Carfax felt almost as if his 
 domestic joys were being vulgarised by their 
 surroundings. It was a two-sided, vacil- 
 lating sort of watering-place, set corner-wise
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 73 
 
 at the mouth of a tidal estuary, with one 
 face looking blankly over an expanse of 
 mud and sea-gulls, and one trying to re- 
 deem the character of the place by boldly 
 confronting the breezy, open sea. Having a 
 high, and to do it justice, a deserved repu- 
 tation for salubrity, Saltham was densely 
 populated by children in the summer, and 
 by valetudinarians of both sexes above fifty 
 (with a preponderance of old maids), in the 
 winter ; so that it was an extremely lively and 
 exhilarating place, and was fast rising (as 
 the agent of the chief land-owner stated in 
 his advertisements) to a perfectly giddy 
 summit of prosperity. 
 
 But though Saltham, so far as the town 
 itself went, might perhaps have been criti- 
 cised unfavourably, it had certainly its com- 
 pensating advantages. Chief among these 
 was that it lay within easy reach of some of 
 the loveliest scenery in Devonshire, where 
 the cliffs that stretched from its seaward 
 side, seamed and scarred all over with the
 
 74 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 anger of many winters, broke suddenly into 
 deep green '' combes" that ran down to the 
 very verge of the sea, with a tiny rivulet in 
 the centre of each, lost and hidden under a 
 mass of thicket and fern and meadow-sweet, 
 and only betraying its cool presence beneath 
 by the whisper of its mimic waterfalls, and 
 the deeper green that was spread along its 
 course. Still farther away from the bathing- 
 machines, the cliffs grew higher and grander, 
 and lifted a steeper barrier against the waves 
 that beat beneath ; until all of a sudden the 
 wanderer passed the proudest headland of 
 all, and came where the sea had taken its 
 revenge. A mighty landslip had rent away 
 a mile or two of the wall that had looked 
 down upon the waves for centuries, and torn 
 out a new edge to the coast at least a hun- 
 dred yards farther back than the old one. 
 Between the two there lay a wonderful and 
 glorious ruin, as if some Titanic hand had 
 hurled together a chaos of rock, and tree, 
 and thicket, and moorland, and beach with
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 75 
 
 indiscriminating rage. Here and there great 
 masses of earth stood as they had fallen from, 
 their places, three hundred feet above, with 
 the heath and scented turf that clothed them 
 still unbroken. Towerino^ out of the wreck 
 stood great pinnacles and buttresses of rock, 
 defiant even in their fall, and looking like 
 the ribs of the earth itself exposed to view. 
 
 A hundred tiny streams had hollowed 
 themselves out new courses amongst them 
 already, hiding themselves, as their wont 
 had been, beneath a thicket of tangled green ; 
 and everywhere their soft voices went whis- 
 pering round the mighty ruins, as peacefully 
 as though they had not been in league with 
 the mightier waves of the sea outside to 
 work all this destruction, and were not hurry- 
 ing to join them in triumphing over the 
 victory they had won together. 
 
 It was at the top of one of the green 
 combes that ran back from cliffs like these 
 that Lydcombe lay, and the tower of the 
 old church that has been already mentioned
 
 76 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 had been a landmark to fishermen in the bay 
 ever since it was built. Part of the hamlet 
 (for it was little more) straggled down one side 
 of the combe itself, and there were always one 
 or two fishing-boats drawn up on the beach 
 beneath ; though this, like almost all other 
 occupations of Lydcombe, had passed almost 
 entirely into the hands of Saltham, that noisy, 
 modern upstart three or four miles to the 
 west. There was a little coastguard station 
 there too, lodged in a shelf of rock, which the 
 blue-jackets had tarred and whitewashed as 
 high as they could reach, with the idea that 
 the truest beauty was to be found in that sort 
 of cleanliness, so sacred to all sailors. And 
 thither, when the pressure of his clerical 
 duties was not very great, the Rev. Albert 
 Carfax had been wont, in his celibate days, 
 to wander, with the pipe that was the relic 
 of his Cambridge life in his mouth ; and 
 sitting upon that whitewashed seat, with the 
 carefully tarred roots of clematis above him, 
 had gazed with a sort of honest vacuity upon
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. '77 
 
 the shimmering sea beneath, and looked 
 vaguely forward to the approaching time 
 when his own Florry should share all these 
 joys with him, side by side. That time had 
 arrived now considerably more than a year, 
 and though perhaps the Rev. Albert did not 
 make quite so many pilgrimages, pipe in 
 mouth, to the coastguard station as he had 
 anticipated, it may safely be said that none of 
 the other domestic joys that he had looked 
 forward to had yet begun to pall, from want of 
 variety, upon his taste. Men more difficult to 
 satisfy than the Rev. Albert might indeed have 
 found quite sufficient happiness to spread over 
 a fair extent of married life in the society of 
 Florry, who added to a very large quantity of 
 commoner attractions the inestimable one of 
 appreciating the Rev. Albert (or rather, the 
 Rev. Bertie), not merely at his ow^n valuation, 
 but at something even higher. 
 
 She was a fair, tall, slight English girl, with 
 dove-like eyes, and an infinite capacity within 
 her for devotion and enthusiastic disreofard
 
 78 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 of self. To say that an infinite capacity is 
 ever satisfied is, no doubt, a contradiction in 
 terms, but the Rev. Bertie was just the man 
 to give such a capacity an alarming quantity 
 of work, and Mrs. Albert Carfax did not 
 find any pressing necessity for devoting her- 
 self in other directions at present. There 
 was certainly a more juvenile Bertie, who 
 had lately made his appearance, and whose 
 extremely tender age made no inconsiderable 
 demands upon Florry's time and attention ; 
 but she was the very model of a wife, and 
 had quite made up her mind already that such 
 demands must be met at anybody's expense 
 rather than at that of the primary object of 
 devotion. To this proposition the Rev. 
 Bertie, who felt far too honest to ignore his 
 own deserts, very cheerfully assented. 
 
 Mrs. Albert Carfax was the '' dear friend " 
 at whose house Lena Morden had announced 
 to Mrs. Morden's brother her intention of 
 becoming a visitor ; and though the Rev. 
 Bertie did not quite approve of his wife
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 79 
 
 cherishing a violent affection for anybody 
 or anything- in the world but himself, he 
 could hardly with decency raise any objection 
 to a friendship of such long standing as that 
 between Florry and Lena Morden. They 
 had not exactly been schoolgirls together, 
 and perhaps their intimacy would not have 
 been quite so lasting in its nature if they had 
 been, but they had stayed in the same houses, 
 played the same music, and endured the 
 sentimental attentions of the same incipient 
 males, quite long enough to understand each 
 other very well, and to like what they under- 
 stood. In the opinion of Florry, there never 
 w^as, and there never would be, a girl so 
 admirable and worthy of imitation in all 
 respects as Lena Morden ; and her one 
 regret,, expressed with a pertinacity that was 
 almost wearying to its object, was that no 
 man had yet been found sufficiently perfect 
 to be to Lena what '' Bertie" was to herself. 
 She never wrote a letter to her paragon 
 without inquiring whether no star capable
 
 8o ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 of affording such a guiding light had yet 
 appeared on the horizon, and the fact that it 
 had not yet risen had begun to fill her mind 
 with a dreadful apprehension that the para- 
 gon was so rare and perfect that no star 
 could ever be found bright enough to guide It, 
 and that It would become necessary for it to 
 complete Its existence in the very Imperfect 
 and unsatisfactory condition from which she 
 herself had so lately emerged. She did, 
 however, cherish a hope that the spectacle of 
 connubial bliss, which Lena was coming to 
 Lydcombe to witness, might . result In awak- 
 ening the latter's mind to a sense of the 
 peaceful ecstasies to which her eyes were 
 at present shut, and in stimulating her to look 
 about with a less critical glance for some 
 one whose perfections might In some measure 
 resemble those of the Reverend Bertie. 
 
 " Bertie dear," said the unselfish matron, 
 as they were driving in the little pony- 
 carriage to meet their expected guest at the 
 Saltham railway station, " don't you think
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 8 1 
 
 we might ask young Rudyer over for a day or 
 two next week while Lena is with us ? Or per- 
 haps Mrs. Clark's son ? I hear he is home 
 from Cambridge." 
 
 The Reverend Bertie, though theoretically 
 the most unselfish of men, felt some vague 
 objections to allowing his peaceful home to 
 be put to such unhallowed purposes as those 
 for which his better half apparently destined 
 it, and did not perhaps sympathise with 
 her desire to lead other people into the 
 paradise she had found for herself quite so 
 strongly as, considering the compliment 
 it implied to himself, he ought to have 
 done. 
 
 " I don't much mind," he answered doubt- 
 fully, stroking his clerical beard as though 
 conscious that neither Mrs. Clark's son nor 
 young Rudyer could vie with him in that 
 particular, *'but I don't think it would be 
 quite fair to young Rudyer, you know. He 
 always falls in love when he's home for the 
 holidays, and you had much better let him 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C/ 
 
 do it With some one who'll let him down 
 easier." 
 
 Florry only looked half convinced. 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Clark's son then," she said 
 despondingly. 
 
 ''If you ask me," replied the Reverend 
 Bertie, " I think you might just as well ask 
 Mrs. Clark herself; and, as a matter of fact, 
 on the whole, I should like it better. There 
 never used to be such offensive young prigs at 
 Cambridge, in my time." 
 
 The Reverend Bertie was rather fond of 
 recalling his own college life, and cherished 
 the idea that his career at St. Margaret's had 
 been wild and reckless in the extreme. He 
 treasured, indeed, a fruiterer's bill for Sunday 
 desserts of a most sumptuous description 
 (which had been principally consumed by the 
 committee who edited an extremely dreary 
 college Magazine, of which he was the secre- 
 tary), as an incontestableproof of the unlimited 
 extent of his dissipations ; and used occasion- 
 ally, when giving the finishing touch to a ser-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. S^ 
 
 mon prepared for the more critical congrega- 
 tion at Saltham, to congratulate himself upon 
 the moral stability and soundness of principle 
 which had enabled him to check his headlong 
 career on the road to ruin, and attain the 
 peaceful haven in which his lot was now cast, 
 with his wings still unscorched by the fire 
 through which they had passed. 
 
 Florry herself, though not believing in her 
 inmost heart that such perfections as those 
 with which her ideal was endowed could ever 
 have been dimmed by the iniquitous associa- 
 tions of all the universities in England, yet 
 sometimes cheated herself into the pleasing 
 fancy that her soft influence had been selected 
 by Providence as the happy agency of deliver- 
 ing the man she loved from so much peril, 
 and with all due modesty plumed her dove- 
 like feathers as she gazed fondly at the rescued 
 brand. But the rescued brand was clearly 
 not disposed to fall in with her wishes on this 
 occasion ; and she felt with a sigh that her 
 well-intentioned efforts on behalf of Lena 
 
 6—2
 
 84 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Morden must be postponed for a more 
 fitting opportunity, when . brighter planets 
 than Mrs. Clark's son might be wandering 
 in convenient proximity to the object she 
 desired to bring under some such kindly 
 influence. 
 
 They were at the station before she had 
 thought of another planet ; and to her horror 
 they found the train already in, and Lena 
 standing at the station-door, rather embar- 
 rassed by the rival claims of the Royal Hotel 
 (claiming to be the only hotel in England 
 '* standing in its own grounds"), and the Sal- 
 tham Arms, which exulted in a proud and 
 commanding view of its competitor's chimney- 
 pots. With so much ardour were these dis- 
 tinguishing advantages being pressed upon 
 the new arrival by the conscientious 'bus- 
 drivers, that all access to the bewildered 
 stranger was temporarily blocked up, and 
 Florry's transports of welcome were necessarily 
 conveyed to her guest over their toughened 
 shoulders, which the friction of generations
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 85 
 
 of luggage had rendered almost insensible to 
 human touch. 
 
 The 'bus-drivers were dispersed at last, by 
 dint of the Reverend Bertie wagging his 
 pastoral beard at them, and betook them- 
 selves to the partition of a solitary commercial 
 traveller, in default of larger game. It is 
 perhaps unnecessary to relate whether the 
 grounds or the view proved most seductive 
 in his eyes, and by what process of mental 
 ratiocination he arrived at his decision ; but 
 it may be mentioned that the bagman's selec- 
 tion was made, without undue delay, at the 
 precise moment that the pony-carriage drove 
 off, and Florry, leaning back in the seat with 
 a sigh of intense gratification, said, " Now, 
 Lena darling, that is Bertie, and you must 
 promise to think of him exactly as if he was 
 your brother from this very moment !"
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Leaving undecided the question whether 
 three miles of Devonshire lanes succeeded in 
 accustoming Lena to the new relationship 
 which had been found for her, by the time 
 the Vicarage at Lydcombe had been reached, 
 it may be as well to see how Frank Morden, 
 whose proffered twinklings had been thought 
 insufficient to perform the functions of a 
 guiding star by that critical young lady, and 
 who had no Devonshire lanes to go to, at- 
 tempted to console himself for the very un- 
 complimentary dismissal which he had been 
 compelled to undergo. 
 
 Frank Morden was undoubtedly not the 
 sort of man who would have satisfied Florry's
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 8/ 
 
 aspirations on behalf of her paragon, any more 
 than he satisfied those of the paragon herself ; 
 but he was, perhaps, quite as deserving a 
 young gentleman as Mrs. Clark's eldest hope, 
 and had not as yet exhibited any of that fatal 
 facility in developing attachments which had 
 been young Rudyer's bane through life. The 
 passion which had just been nipped so rudely 
 in the bud had really grown up with the boy's 
 very nature, and the revulsion of feeling which 
 followed upon the process of nipping left a 
 general sense of disquiet over the whole of 
 his moral being. He had written a plead- 
 ing sort of appeal to his cousin the day 
 after the night on which he had left her in 
 the garden (and 'had afterwards quarrelled, 
 in his pigmy fashion, with the new fountain 
 of honour to all the Mordens, on their way 
 back to town), imploring her to give him one 
 more chance, and reiterating his conviction 
 of the amount of happiness they might jointly 
 enjoy if he were only allowed to marry her first, 
 and " eain her heart" afterwards. The letter
 
 SS ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 concluded with a brief mention, from the 
 writer's point of view, of the incident in the 
 railway carriage, written under the apprehen- 
 sion that, if it was not alluded to, she might 
 hear of it first from other and less favourable 
 sources ; but the narrative, even as given by- 
 Frank himself, was not at all a successful one, 
 and had an extremely distasteful effect upon 
 his cousin's mind. 
 
 It seemed to her quite outrageous that 
 such a boy as her rejected suitor should ven- 
 ture to obtrude his own views and desires 
 upon Mr. Rothery Selfert at all, but she 
 blushed up to the ears to think that he had 
 done so in such a manner as to represent 
 her in Mr. Selfert's eyes as the passive 
 recipient of his boyish addresses, and the 
 almost fatherly allusion that gentleman had 
 afterwards made to such a possibility was 
 hardly more disagreeable to her than the 
 first consciousness that she might expect 
 such allusions had been. Consequently, she 
 answered her cousin Frank's letter very
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 89 
 
 shortly indeed, but at sufficient length to ex« 
 press a most energetic refusal to entertain 
 for a single day the ideas of future happi- 
 ness suggested for her consideration by that 
 young gentleman, which iced the warmth of 
 his sanguine aspirations very effectually in- 
 deed. The desolation it brought upon his 
 soul was succeeded, after a brief interval, by 
 a sullen determination to revenge himself by 
 obliterating his weakness altogether, and for- 
 getting, as soon as he could manage it, all 
 about the happiness of the thankless being 
 in whose welfare he had vainly attempted 
 to interest himself. 
 
 The only difficulty in carrying this laud- 
 able resolution into effect was, that he really 
 had not the slightest idea how to set about 
 it. Lying awake at night, and swearing to 
 banish every thought of the heartless woman 
 who has jilted you from your mind, may be 
 an excellent preparation for the process of 
 banishment itself, but it is not exactly the 
 same thing ; and yet, for the first week after
 
 90 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C, 
 
 the resolution was formed, it was quite as far 
 as Frank Morden got. He knew, theoreti- 
 cally, that it is difficult to expel the remein« 
 brance of even the most heartless of women 
 from one's mind, except by the aid of some 
 other woman, with more or less heart, as the 
 case may be ; but his range of female society 
 was too limited for him to know exactly 
 where to turn for such assistance ; and, to 
 say the truth, he felt some dread of the 
 details of the necessary procedure. It was 
 essential, he felt, to find some lady who 
 would take all responsibility for such details 
 upon herself; and though he was not so 
 inexperienced as to be ignorant that many 
 such ladies are to be found, he was not 
 aware of any lady within the limits of his 
 acquaintance, who possessed the necessary 
 qualifications for the desired process. 
 
 He was reading for his army examination, 
 intending to go into the cavalry, and was in 
 the habit of going up to London every day 
 to his '' coach," who was driving him, in
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 9 1 
 
 company with sundry other promising young 
 gentlemen, through the course of study pre- 
 scribed by a beneficent government for such 
 purposes, and had chambers in a street off 
 the Strand dedicated to that occupation. 
 There was an eating-house not far from 
 Charing Cross to which he was often accus- 
 tomed to resort, during the hour in the middle 
 of the day at which the coach stopped to give 
 the wearied travellers an opportunity for 
 refreshment ; and there, in much lowness of 
 spirits, he betook himself one day when his 
 resolution was nearly a week old, after jour- 
 neying over a very severe stage of modern 
 European history, considered from a strate- 
 gical point of view. There were one or two 
 other young gentlemen, who had booked 
 seats by the same educational conveyance, 
 generally ready to enliven him with their 
 society on such occasions, but since his dis- 
 comfiture Frank had felt disinclined to share 
 in the light-hearted revelry which charac- 
 terised their joint repasts during that festive
 
 92 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C 
 
 hour, and was getting into the habit of steal- 
 ing off to partake of a soHtary and misan- 
 thropical chop by himself. On this particular 
 day the lean of his chop appeared more 
 smoky, and the fat more abhorrent to his 
 feelings, than ever ; and he sat moodily over 
 the dregs of his half-pint of cheap claret, with 
 a growing conviction that he was of all men 
 the least fitted for bachelor fare, and an in- 
 creasing sense of the atrocious wrong his 
 cousin Lena had done him by refusing to 
 come and personally superintend his repasts 
 for the future. 
 
 He finished the triumphant result of Mr. 
 Gladstone's beneficent legislation at last, and 
 stalked gloomily up to the bar to liquidate 
 the expenses of his entertainment, and to 
 obtain a light for the cigar with which, at 
 such periods of the day, he was accustomed 
 to solace his feelings, from the attendant 
 Hebe who presided there. This particular 
 Hebe knew him very well by sight, and had 
 done him the same kindly office on more
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 93 
 
 than one previous occasion, when his heart 
 had been less crushed by its experiences of 
 the falsity of woman, and he had felt more 
 able to join in the light and playful courtesies 
 which are common between such Hebes and 
 those to whom they minister. 
 
 '' Dear me," said that young lady, " and 
 I'm not to have ' thank you ' for it, I sup- 
 pose r 
 
 " I'm really awfully sorry, Lizzie," said 
 Frank, feeling that Lizzie, at any rate, had 
 done him no wrong, and could not be ex- 
 pected to understand how difficult it was for 
 a sensitive nature like his own, when over- 
 whelmed by misfortune, to w^ear its wonted 
 garb before the curious eyes of an unsym- 
 pathising world. '' The fact is, I've got the 
 deuce of a headache to-day, and hardly 
 know what I'm about." 
 
 " It's London air, I suppose," said the 
 young lady, Avith a sympathetic glance. " I 
 often get 'eadaches myself this time of the 
 year. It must be nice to get down
 
 94 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 into the country whenever one likes, mustn't 
 it?" 
 
 Lizzie, when properly dressed for the 
 afternoon customers, was a young woman of 
 considerable personal attractions, and Frank, 
 though he had no headache further than that 
 for which the Gladstone claret of the pre- 
 ceding day might have been responsible, felt 
 that the expression of her sympathy, "'ead- 
 aches" and all, was not ungrateful to his 
 feelings. And though Lizzie was not a 
 backward young lady in any sense, and 
 would indeed have been quite unfitted for 
 her post if she had been, yet it must be 
 remembered that she was expressing her 
 sympathy with the sufferings of a gentleman 
 who was by no means a perfect stranger to 
 
 her. 
 
 Before Frank's cigar got properly lighted, 
 he had agreed, with a view to the cure of 
 their joint headaches, to take Miss Lizzie 
 Deacle down to the Crj/stal Palace that 
 evening for a little fresh air; and though
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 95 
 
 that young lady might have hesitated before 
 trusting herself to a more dangerous-looking 
 cavalier, Frank's downy cheeks and irre- 
 proachable style of conversation were suffi- 
 cient guarantees, in her eyes, of the desirability 
 of his escort. Ladies in that ill-defined stratum 
 of society, in which Miss Deacle had pre- 
 sumably been brought up, are necessarily not 
 so entirely dependent for their relaxations 
 upon the availability of a chaperon as their 
 contemporaries a little higher up the social 
 scale ; and it must not be supposed that 
 Miss Deacle, in assenting to the arrangement 
 which Frank proposed, was committing any 
 sin against the rules of etiquette or morality 
 by which she was accustomed to govern her 
 conduct. Of course she knew that the society 
 of a gentleman of her own class would be the 
 more regular thing, and more likely to lead 
 to the acquisition of a permanent establish- 
 ment of her own; but as no gentleman of her 
 own class had offered his services for that 
 evening, she was very well satisfied to take
 
 96 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 the gentleman who did ; and the evident fact 
 that his social position was different to her 
 own did not cause her much disquiet. 
 
 Frank travelled one or two educational 
 stages further in company with his coach 
 that afternoon, but came away with a very 
 hazy notion of the nature of the country 
 through which the journey had been made. 
 He had a vague sort of idea that his revenge 
 upon his cousin, for what he was pleased to 
 solace himself by calling her perfidy, was 
 about to begin ; but beyond this sensation it 
 cannot be said that he anticipated any par- 
 ticular delights from the manner in which he 
 proposed to spend his evening, or the society 
 which he had succeeded in securing. Miss 
 Lizzie Deacle was true to her appointment at 
 the Victoria station, having apparently had 
 little difficulty in obtaining a temporary re- 
 lease from her position behind the bar; a post 
 whose duties she had consented to discharge 
 (according to the account she gave Frank) 
 more from a feeling of what she owed to her
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 97 
 
 family than from any sordid considera- 
 tions. 
 
 "You see it's my uncle keeps the concern," 
 she explained to Frank, "and I ain't going to 
 be too proud to take an easy place with him, 
 with a day off whenever I want to ask for it, 
 instead of going out to one of those railway re- 
 freshment places, perhaps, where you all have 
 to dress alike in black or something of that 
 sort, with a rose stuck in the front of your 
 dress, and draw beer for a lot of shop-boys 
 till twelve o'clock every night." 
 
 Frank expressed, of course, his admiration 
 of her good sense and discretion, and said 
 that he thought a rose stuck in the front of 
 her dress would look very nice indeed. 
 Lizzie laughed, feeling quite sure that this 
 young gentleman would not succeed in 
 making a fool of her by speeches like that; 
 if he was to attempt such a feat. 
 
 " You haven't told me your name, you 
 know," she remarked a little later on in the 
 evening, when they had finished their dinner 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 (during which Miss Lizzie displayed powers 
 of consumption that appeared quite profes- 
 sional, and she had repeated her previous 
 performance of lighting Frank's cigar for him. 
 '' If Fm to come out with you to do this sort 
 of thing, I think I ought to know what to 
 call you." 
 
 The young man felt rather guilty; and had 
 a vague sort of feeling that he would be more 
 comfortable when he got home if Miss Deacle 
 did not know what to call him. 
 
 *' My name's Frank," he said, hesitating a 
 little. 
 
 '' All right," said Lizzie, laughing, *' Frank 
 will do very well. I suppose you've got 
 another name, like most other people, but 
 you're afraid I shall look you out in the 
 Directory to see where you live, if I know 
 it. You're quite right not to tell me, if that's 
 what you're thinking of." 
 
 *' Fm not afraid of any such thing," said 
 Frank, driven into a corner. ''My name's 
 Morden — Frank Morden."
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 99 
 
 " I don't care twopence what it is — it 
 doesn't matter to me," said Lizzie. " How 
 do you spell it ?" 
 
 Frank, who was keenly alive to the ab- 
 surdity of entering into such a question of 
 orthography, gave her an envelope of an old 
 letter which he had in his pocket, address 
 and all, by way of reply. 
 
 ''I shouldn't have believed that was your 
 name at all, if you hadn't shown me this," 
 said Lizzie, eying it closely. '' That's where 
 you live, is it? Ain't you afraid I shall come 
 down some day to see you there ?" 
 
 " I don't think you'll do that," said Frank. 
 ** Besides I'm never at home ; so you 
 wouldn't find me, if you did." 
 
 " I expect I should astonish somebody 
 down there, though," pursued Miss Deacle 
 contemplatively. " You don't live by your- 
 self, I suppose, do you ?" 
 
 Frank began to wonder how much further 
 into his family affairs Lizzie's interest in him 
 would extend, but could hardly refuse to 
 
 7—2
 
 lOO ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 answer her questions with a certain amount 
 of truth. The girl had undoubtedly told 
 him all, or what might very well be all, about 
 herself, with the greatest apparent candour ; 
 and her insinuation, that he was afraid to Dut 
 a like confidence in her, had touched his 
 pride very keenly. 
 
 Before her escort bade her good-night at 
 the door of the Metropolitan District Rail- 
 way Station, with a promise to come and 
 visit her again at her uncle's establishment 
 very shortly. Miss Deacle had extracted 
 from him an amount of information as to his 
 home- life which, twenty- four hours before, he 
 would have laughed to scorn the idea of 
 giving to any stranger ; and though she had 
 not yet heard Lena Morden's name, she was 
 quite aware that there was a young lady in 
 the case, and that the young gentleman's 
 heart was by no means free from the pertur- 
 bations incident to his sex and age. That 
 Frank did not that night repent his rash 
 confidences quite so bitterly as his timidity
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. lOI 
 
 had anticipated, may be taken as a proof 
 that Miss Deacle knew, at any rate, how 
 to make herself agreeable under such cir- 
 cumstances.
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 Mr. Morden, when he married Mr. Rothery 
 Selfert's sister, was, as that lady scornfully 
 remarked on one or two occasions after the 
 ceremony, a " mere Treasury clerk," and 
 being, like so many other worthy men, a 
 person of far more standing and consequence 
 away from his domestic hearth than beside It, 
 received by virtue of his seniority a very 
 respectable stipend from the country for his 
 services In that capacity. So creditable was 
 the appearance which its amount enabled 
 him to make In general society, that the new 
 Mrs. Morden, when she secured her prey, 
 was under the Impression that she was 
 making a much more valuable capture than
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. IO3 
 
 actually proved to be the case, and com- 
 menced the regulation of her household in 
 accordance with such views. There was 
 another man-servant added to the establish- 
 ment, and a pony-carriage was already more 
 than talked about ; and Mr. Morden began 
 to feel that however necessary these luxuries 
 might be to the sister of so eminent a 
 Queen's Counsel as Mr. Selfert, the Civil 
 Service regulations, in fixing his annual 
 stipend, had not contemplated that they 
 should be supplied at his expense. He had 
 once or twice, in his timid way, brought the 
 amount of his salary under her notice — and 
 indeed, he could not have concealed it from 
 her for twenty-four hours, had he been 
 desirous of doing so — but the knowledge 
 was very far from producing the desired 
 effect upon her mind. She was one of those 
 women (generally among the most delightful 
 of their sex) who are naturally incapable of 
 estimating the value of money, or judging 
 what sort of expenditure a particular income
 
 I04 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 will warrant ; and only knew that her first 
 matrimonial venture had not been very suc- 
 cessful in a pecuniary point of view, her 
 former lord and master having left her 
 nothing but a small life-income, part of 
 which she lost by her second marriage. To 
 do her justice, she was not a mercenary 
 woman, and thought very little about the 
 matter indeed ; but she knew that either out 
 of the Treasury savings, or from some other 
 source, Mr. Morden had accumulated enough 
 to add a little independent income to his 
 earnings, and carefully abstained from allow- 
 ing him to tell her its amount. This was by 
 no means from any idea that it ought ulti- 
 mately to go to Lena, or any other motives 
 of like delicacy, but rather from a desire to 
 cherish a feeling of unlimited resources to 
 fall back upon, and also to keep in reserve 
 the power of upbraiding the Treasury clerk, 
 on some future occasion, with his neglect to 
 confide in the wife he had taken to his 
 bosom. She had never, of course, made any
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I05 
 
 suggestion of producing, for general pur- 
 poses, such of the income left to her by her 
 late husband as she still enjoyed, which she 
 looked upon as her own peculiar private 
 property, quite in the way the sportsman 
 views the tiger-skin which hangs, a trophy 
 of his prowess, over his smoking-room arm- 
 chair ; and Mr. Morden had not the faintest 
 idea what the amount of such income might 
 be. He only knew that he never saw a 
 sovereign in her purse that had not come 
 out of his, or a bill receipted save in answer 
 to a cheque with his signature, and hoped 
 that when he got more accustomed to Mrs. 
 Morden, he might venture to broach the 
 delicate subject. This had been in the 
 sanguine days which followed immediately 
 after his capture, when it was still reasonable 
 to hope that his leg would grow used in 
 time to the iron teeth which grasped it ; but 
 it had not taken him lonof to arrive at the 
 conclusion that such ideas were worse than 
 chimerical, and that his courag^e would never
 
 I06 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 prove equal to the arduous task he had once 
 thought it possible he might undertake. 
 But it appeared to him that Mrs. Morden's 
 expenditure was not of a nature likely to 
 decrease from natural causes, and it became 
 more and more necessary that something 
 should be done or said on the subject. 
 
 Mr. Morden was not nearly so afraid of 
 other men, even of his wife's relations, as he 
 was of his wife ; and though unpleasant, it 
 did not appear to him impossible to say a 
 word or two to Mrs. Morden's brother on the 
 subject. He knew, of course, that he could 
 not expect to do so without receiving a sub- 
 sequent moral castigation of the severest 
 description ; but this he thought would not be 
 more difficult to bear than the daily correc- 
 tions he received for matters which he had 
 been all his life accustomed to regard as in- 
 nocent and blameless, and whereof his con- 
 science accused him not. He fancied, timidly 
 conscious of the craven submission with 
 which some of these corrections had been
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I07 
 
 received, that it might be easier to combat Mrs. 
 Mordents displeasure if his conscience told 
 him that he was not guiltless of having done 
 something to awaken it. 
 
 Mr. Morden was released from his Treasury- 
 duties on Saturdays at two o'clock, and took 
 his way one hot July afternoon to Mr. Sel- 
 fert's chambers in the Temple, having ascer- 
 tained that none of the Courts sat after that 
 hour, and that the great lawyer would pro- 
 bably therefore be then accessible. Mr. Sel- 
 fert's clerk scanned him very closely indeed, 
 to see if he was an attorney, and appeared to 
 consider that a personal injury was inflicted 
 on himself by the fact of any gentleman, who 
 wished to see Mr. Salfert, belonging to any 
 less interesting class of individuals. It is 
 obvious that the present system by which bar- 
 risters' clerks obtain their emoluments, must 
 result, at any rate, in causing them to take a 
 lively interest in their master's professional 
 welldoing, and in the visitors he receives. 
 
 Mr. Morden's card having been taken in
 
 108 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 to Mr. Rothery Selfert, not by the insulted 
 clerk but by the clerk's young man (who 
 appeared, in a less conspicuous way, almost 
 as much outraged as his superior, as became 
 one who was interested in his master's fees 
 to the extent of threepence in the half-crown 
 which the higher official received on the 
 guinea), Mr. Rothery Selfert was gracious 
 enough to send back an immediate message, 
 requesting Mr. Morden to walk in, which 
 Mr. Morden, feeling that much of his 
 confidence was leaving him, and with the 
 same sensation that he usually experi- 
 enced when about to go to bed, promptly 
 did. 
 
 Mr. Rothery Selfert moved in his seat as 
 if in welcome to his brother-in-law, rising 
 about an inch and a quarter higher from his 
 chair than he usually did for a solicitor of 
 unblemished reputation and position, and not 
 getting very high after all, and pushed away 
 a towering mass of brief paper, relating prin- 
 cipally to the reputed manor and the exhausted
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. IO9 
 
 minerals, which rather overshadowed the 
 cane-bottomed chair in which Mr. Morden, 
 who always endeavoured to be unobtrusive, 
 was taking his modest seat. 
 
 " I dare say you can manage to find room, 
 Morden," said . the great man condescend- 
 ingly. " Yes, shove all that out of your 
 way." 
 
 Mr. Morden was much embarrassed by the 
 flattering nature of this reception, but he 
 moved his hands timidly as if to carry out 
 Mr. Selfert's directions as to " shoving out of 
 the way," and tried to look happy and com- 
 fortable. There was a fabulous sum marked 
 in guas, upon the papers which were to be 
 thus contemptuously treated, and Mr. Selfert's 
 guest felt as if it was almost sacrilege to lay 
 a disrespectful hand upon them. The very 
 atmosphere around that inscription seemed as 
 if it were impregnated with an aroma of opu- 
 lence. 
 
 " I thought I might be fortunate enough to 
 find you disengaged," said Mr. Morden ner-
 
 no ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 vously, " It being Saturday afternoon ; and I 
 had just a word or two I wanted to say to 
 you. 
 
 '' I can give you a quarter of an hour very 
 well," answered the lawyer In what he really 
 meant to be a cordial tone, " if that will do 
 for you. There's that confounded bill coming 
 on again on Monday, and I hear Bumpus Is 
 going to make himself objectionable, as usual. 
 He ou^ht to be kicked out of the House." 
 
 All this pretence that their thoughts and 
 interests were identical was intended to set 
 the Treasury clerk at his ease, but it only im- 
 pressed Mr. Morden, who had never heard of 
 Bumpus in his life, and felt no particular 
 animosity towards that hero of debate, with a 
 deeper sense of the gulf between them, and 
 the absurdity of expecting so great a man to 
 take any interest in his Liliputian embarrass- 
 ments. 
 
 *' The fact is, Mr. Selfert" (he would have 
 given a great deal to have been able to say 
 " Selfert" without the prefix, but the profanity
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. Ill 
 
 Stuck In his throat), '' I want to speak to 
 you about business. I don't know if you've 
 heard anything about my circumstances ?" 
 
 There was a knock at the door as Mr. 
 Morden got to this point, and the clerk, who 
 considered that the barrister was acting almost 
 unprofessionally in allowing so much of his 
 time to be consumed without profit, came in 
 with a bundle of papers which had been lying 
 in the clerk's room at least three days uncared 
 for. 
 
 " Not just now, Brooking,'' said Mr. Sel- 
 fert, who generally addressed Brooking In a 
 tone of greater deference than he used to 
 almost anybody else ; "just put those down, 
 and say I am engaged for the next ten minutes, 
 if any one calls." 
 
 Brooking put the papers on a side table, and 
 retired, leaving a stronger whiff of guineas 
 about the room than ever. 
 
 " About your circumstances ?" said Mr. 
 Selfert. " No, I'm not aware that anything 
 has been said to me. Perhaps, In my sister's
 
 11^ ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 interests, I ought to have made some inquiry, 
 but I took it for granted she'd look after that 
 sort of thing for herself. You're in the 
 Treasury, I believe ?" 
 
 " Oh yes," said Mr. Morden almost proudly, 
 feeling that not even Mrs. Morden's family 
 could take any objection to his position there. 
 " I've some seniority, you know, and they've 
 treated me very fairly, considering. But I've 
 very little else to look to, and I don't think 
 Mrs. Morden quite understands my position. 
 Perhaps you'd say a word to her on the 
 subject ?" 
 
 " Who ? — I ?" said the barrister, opening 
 his eyes rather wide. "It's too late for that 
 sort of thing now, isn't it ?" 
 
 Mr. Morden felt with a sigh that it was 
 indeed too late, and wished devoutly that 
 there had been somebody to caution Mrs. 
 Morden against the step she meditated a 
 year ago, when her fell design was first con- 
 ceived. He was compelled to admit, in 
 answer to his brother-in-law, that he was
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. II3 
 
 aware that the Rubicon had been passed ; 
 and he feh bound to add, with more polite 
 ness than truth, that he had found the stream 
 an extremely easy and pleasant one to ford. 
 The exact object of his visit to the Temple 
 was more difficult to explain, but Mr. Selfert, 
 who had a fair knowledge of the peculiarities 
 of "Catherine" to assist his comprehension, 
 drew it all out of him with professional 
 expertness at last, and felt that it would be 
 like kicking a man in the stocks to reproach 
 him with being too much of a moral coward 
 to speak to that lady himself. He could not 
 engage that " Catherine " should take his 
 representations in exactly the right spirit, but 
 he promised that some representation should 
 be made. 
 
 " She lost half her income by marrying 
 a second time, you know, Morden," said Mr. 
 Selfert explanatorily. 
 
 " I can't say I exactly knew that," said 
 Mr. Morden, as if he felt it necessary to 
 apologise for his ignorance. ''As to the 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 amount of what she may have left, I haven't 
 an idea." 
 
 "I'd take care I had 2.n idea, for the future, 
 if I were you, Morden," said the barrister, 
 with something very Hke compassion in his 
 tone. " She's got about ;^200 a year left, 
 but I think she's fond of putting it by, you 
 know. I'm one of her trustees, of course." 
 
 " I've always tried to put by something, 
 myself," said Mrs. Morden's husband^, rather 
 astonished at the information which had just 
 been given him. " Of course I've got my 
 daughter to look after. I'm afraid I'm keep- 
 ing you," pursued Mr. Morden, rising as if 
 to take his departure, as another knock came 
 at the outside door. 
 
 '' Not at all, I assure you," said Mr. 
 Selfert quite energetically. ''Brooking, if 
 that's anybody for me, you must ask him to 
 wait in the other room. Yes, of course you 
 must look after your daughter, Morden. 
 That's the worst of having daughters, I sup- 
 pose."
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. II5 
 
 " I suppose it Is," responded Mr. Morden 
 plaintively. '* But she's a very good girl, 
 and I don't grumble at that." 
 
 " I dare say somebody will take the trouble 
 of providing for her off your hands soon," 
 said Mr. Selfert, in a tone of suggestion. 
 *' I'd see that she didn't get entangled with 
 any penniless young fellow, If I were you. 
 There isn't anything of that sort going on, I 
 suppose ?" 
 
 " Oh dear no," answered the parent whom 
 Mr. Selfert was cautioning, rather startled at 
 the idea. '' Nothing of the sort. Lena 
 never had a secret from me in her life, I 
 believe." 
 
 "That's right," said Mr. Selfert warmly. 
 " You were quite right to come to me, and I 
 hope matters will smooth themselves down 
 sooner than you expect. By-the-bye, you're 
 not pressed at all, are you ?" 
 
 '' Pressed ?" repeated Mr. Morden, not 
 quite understanding the other's meaning, and 
 thinkino; that if he meant to refer to the 
 
 o
 
 Il6 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 phenomena of matrimonial life, ''squeezed" 
 would be a more truthful and expressive 
 term. 
 
 " Pressed for money, ready money, I 
 mean," said the barrister. '' The best of us 
 are, sometimes. Because I shall be delighted 
 to let you have a couple of hundred or so, if 
 you want it. Only say the word, if it's any 
 convenience, and I'll write you a cheque at 
 once." 
 
 '* Upon m.y word you're very kind," said 
 the recipient of this liberal offer, who was 
 quite unused to that sort of consideration, 
 even at the Treasury, and who would have 
 liked to cash a cheque for a couple of hun- 
 dred or so very much. 'T couldn't think 
 of such a thing, thank you. But I'm very 
 much obliged to you — I am indeed." 
 
 " No obligation at all," said the other. "I 
 always have to keep a pretty large balance at 
 the bank — Brooking manages that — and you 
 may just as well have the benefit of some of 
 it as the London and Westminster. Let me
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. II J 
 
 know if you change your mind. I suppose 
 I must see that fellow outside, now." 
 
 " Fm afraid I've taken up a great deal of 
 your valuable time," said Mr. Morden, more 
 humble than ever in his gratitude. 
 
 "Not at all, not at all," said the barrister. 
 "YouVe been an absolute godsend, com- 
 pared to some of the men I have to see. 
 I've no doubt, when Brooking lets that fellow 
 in, he'll make himself perfectly unendurable 
 for the next half-hour !"
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 It was with a guilty conscience and much fore- 
 boding of heart, chiefly manifesting itself in 
 even greater anxiety than usual to prevent 
 his nether limbs from falling into attitudes that 
 might be open to objection, that Mr. Morden 
 cowered under his wife's eye during the next 
 day or two, while the full measure of his 
 iniquity was to that lady still unknown. It 
 would, indeed, have been almost a relief to 
 his mind had the critical view she took of his 
 ordinary little domestic delinquencies been 
 expressed even as loudly as usual; but, on 
 the contrary, his tendency to remorse was 
 fostered and coaxed into life by a display on 
 the part of his better half of more suavity
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. lig 
 
 and peacefulness of temper than had yet 
 been exhibited since the waning of their brief 
 honeymoon, and Mn Morden bhnked under 
 the unwonted placidity of her gaze with an 
 increasing dread of the storm that was brew- 
 ing above his head. Perhaps the fair weather 
 that prevailed was in a measure owing to the 
 fact that, in the absence of her step-daughter, 
 Mrs. Morden was able to forget that craving 
 for the sympathy of the latter which made 
 itself so painfully sensible to her expansive 
 breast when that young lady was present. 
 Whatever might have been the cause, such 
 an effect certainly made itself visible ; and Mr. 
 Morden at times began almost to think, that 
 if the pony-carriage suggestion could have 
 been resisted by his unaided efforts, matters 
 might have '' smoothed themselves down " 
 sufficiently for him to keep his matrimonial 
 feet, without the necessity of having to con- 
 sult Mr. Rothery Selfert after all. 
 
 The consultation had, however, been 
 effected ; and though Mr. Morden might
 
 I20 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 have been relieved if Mr. Selfert had neg- 
 lected to fulfil his promise of making a repre- 
 sentation to " Catherine," he felt quite sure 
 that the representation would be made ; and 
 the awful and ominous silence which en- 
 livened his dinner, when he came back from, 
 the Treasury, three days after his visit to the 
 Temple had been accomplished, needed no 
 explanation to warn him of the coming storm. 
 It was Mrs. Morden's majestic fancy that her 
 drawing-room was not to be polluted by any 
 altercations, however one-sided in their cha- 
 racter, between husband and wife ; and she 
 was accustomed to reserve such trifling criti- 
 cisms as Mr. Morden's conduct and deport- 
 ment demanded for the less holy regions 
 upstairs, where she had her victim better 
 under command. There is an ingenious 
 print which has been circulated by some of 
 the enthusiastic opponents of scientific vivi- 
 section, representing an elaborate combination 
 of a vice with jagged edges, a common rack 
 (as used by order of the Star-Chamber),.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 121 
 
 and the apparatus commonly employed for 
 nailing down carpets, which is said to be an 
 exact picture of the machinery used on the 
 Continent for keeping rabbits " quiet " w^hile 
 scientific experiments are going on. It is 
 unlikely that Mrs. Morden's attention had 
 been called to this instructive engraving, but 
 her preference for the connubial bed-chamber, 
 as the scene of any little correction required 
 by Mr. Morden's imperfect nature, was no 
 doubt actuated by similar considerations. 
 Mr. Morden was so much more easily " kept 
 quiet " upstairs. 
 
 The storm broke as soon as the necessities 
 of Mr. Morden's existence had forced him 
 into the apartment which Mrs. Morden had 
 selected as her operating room, and Mr. 
 Morden cowered even lower than usual be- 
 neath the fury of the blast. 
 
 " To think that a man should be afraid to 
 speak to his wife for himself !" 
 
 '* My dear, I did speak," said " the man," 
 submissively, "but I thought you did not
 
 122 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 quite understand. It seemed to me that your 
 brother would be able to put the matter so 
 much more clearly before you than I could 
 do." 
 
 " Understand this, Mr. Morden," said the 
 outraged lady, in a tone that made the *'man" 
 quake, '' I will have no complaints carried to 
 my brother, or to anybody else, as long as I 
 am mistress in this house. No one shall 
 come between us, do you hear ?" 
 
 Mr. Morden, alas ! heard, and knew that it 
 was as she said. No one should deliver him 
 out of her hands. 
 
 "As to my expenses," pursued the operator, 
 having thus made sure of her grip, " I wonder 
 what you mean by daring to mention such a 
 subject ! Didn't you undertake to support 
 me at the altar ?" 
 
 '* TVi^/i all my worldly goods I thee endow ^^ 
 had been the fatal words, and Mr. Morden 
 shivered as they came back to his memory. 
 He had fancied that some general power of 
 control over the endowment was reserved to
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 23 
 
 the endower, but could not in his confusion 
 recall any particular part of the service which 
 supported such an idea. He was quite certain, 
 however, that such endowment ought to be 
 reciprocal, although the Prayer-bock might 
 be silent on the subject, and the thought of 
 the ;^200, which Mrs. Morden still enjoyed 
 yearly, passed through his mind. 
 
 **I certainly did say something about money 
 to Mr. Selfert, my dear," observed the victim, 
 blenching from the steel. ''My expenses 
 have been so very heavy lately. Tm afraid 
 Mr. Selfert thought I wanted to borrow 
 money from him." 
 
 " You may borrow money from anybody 
 who is fool enough to lend it to you, as far 
 as I am concerned," said the lady scornfully. 
 *' Only I don't intend to live like a pauper. 
 That girl's dress costs more than all my 
 expenses put together." 
 
 '' What, Lena !'* said the unhappy father, 
 aghast at such an assertion. '' I allow her 
 thirty pounds a year.''
 
 124 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 *' Thirty fiddlesticks," said the lady con- 
 temptuously. *' If you're such a beggar as you 
 make out, why doesn't she do something for 
 herself — go out as a governess, or something 
 of that sort." 
 
 Mr. Morden gasped for breath at such a 
 monstrous suggestion, never having looked 
 upon poor Lena's personal expenditure in 
 the serious light in which it presented itself 
 to her step-mother's eyes. 
 
 " Vm afraid you don't suit each other very 
 well," he observed timidly, remembering little 
 confidences that had taken place between his 
 daughter and himself in his dressing-room 
 since Mrs. Morden had assumed the direction 
 of his household. 
 
 " Suit each other !" said the lady who had 
 done him that greatest of favours, with inex- 
 pressible scorn. *' I should think not! And 
 I may as well tell you, Mr. Morden, that 
 unless your daughter is prepared to treat me, 
 for the future, in the manner to which I have 
 been accustomed from — young persons of
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 25 
 
 her age, I can't allow her to continue in my 
 house. I suppose my happiness is your first 
 consideration !" 
 
 Mr. jMorden was allowed to go to sleep at 
 last, having purchased this indulgence by 
 abstaining from any protest against the very 
 uncomfortable suggestion as to his family 
 arrangements which had thus been thrust in 
 his face, but he was thoroughly dismayed by 
 the possible prospect he saw before him. It 
 did seem hard that, as a punishment for his 
 desire to retrench by giving up a pony- 
 carriage, he should be told that he must 
 suppress his daughter ; but he felt that if his 
 tyrant was really in earnest in making such a 
 menace, and pressed it to the bitter end, he 
 was not strong enough to resist. It cer- 
 tainly appeared to him a monstrous thing 
 that such a total disruption of his domestic 
 happiness should be even possible, simply 
 because his wife was too arros^ant and 
 exacting to live in peace with a girl whom 
 he did not in his heart believe guilty of a
 
 126 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 single fault ; and he cast about feebly in his 
 mind, with a consciousness that it was his 
 duty to do so, for something that he might 
 call in to the aid of his own nerveless will in 
 this matter, in order to cope with hers. All 
 day long he carried his burden with him, and 
 yet found no place, even in the Treasury, 
 where he could lay it down. He had made 
 up his mind to be more or less miserable at 
 home for the rest of his existence, but what a 
 fearful thing it was that he should have put 
 it in this woman's power to disturb the peace 
 of his daughter's life as well ! His wife's 
 happiness to be his first consideration ! The 
 words, as he repeated them to himself, 
 seemed almost a mockery; and he knew 
 very well that not even as she uttered them, 
 could she have deluded herself into a belief 
 in their truth. 
 
 By dint of perseveringly thinking over the 
 matter till the horrible novelty had in some 
 measure worn off, he at last came almost to 
 the conclusion that the least miserable
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 27 
 
 course, after all, would be to let his wife 
 have her way in the matter. There had 
 been a semblance of peace between them, 
 as has been said, since Lena's presence had 
 ceased to be a daily cause of irritation, and 
 he thought with a shudder what a Gehenna 
 might 'be made of his home if she were to 
 return against his wife's consent ! At any 
 rate for a time, it might be better that Lena 
 should cease to be an inmate of such a 
 household ; and though he was more 
 wretched than ever at the idea of such a 
 separation, he saw no other way by which 
 she could be spared the constant and daily 
 distress under which he had already seen her 
 suffering. 
 
 Of course it could not be such a trial 
 to her to leave her home for a time, under 
 such circumstances, as it was to him to 
 part with her, and he hoped he might even 
 be able to find her a home in which she 
 might be tolerably happy, despite the separa- 
 tion. The world had not dealt well with
 
 128 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 the Morden family, in a pecuniary point of 
 view, and his elder brother, who was the 
 incumbent of a poor London parish, drew 
 a considerably smaller stipend from it than 
 that with which the seniority of the Trea- 
 sury clerk was rewarded ; but Mr. Morden 
 thought that even his wife could not decently 
 prevent his making such pecuniary arrange- 
 ments with the London incumbent as should 
 give his daughter a temporary home with 
 her uncle. If he was driven to such an 
 expedient, he thought that this could be 
 managed, but the prospect of having to carry 
 out such an idea was by no means pleasant 
 in his eyes. 
 
 It did occur to Mr. Morden, after his mind 
 was almost made up, that there might be 
 some objections to this plan. Lena had 
 spoken of her '^ cousin Frank" as having 
 become even a greater infliction, from her 
 peculiar point of view, than Mrs. Morden ; 
 but her father could hardly bring himself to 
 believe that this would be a serious obstacle
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 29 
 
 to her consenting to become an inmate of his 
 father's house. He did not himself see why 
 they should not suit each other very well, in 
 time ; and if Lena had not protested so vio- 
 lently against the absurdity of such '^childish" 
 pretensions, would not himself have objected 
 to the prospect of such a provision for her 
 future, despite Mr. Selfert's denunciations 
 of the evils of a ''penniless entanglement." 
 At any rate, if her only objection to her 
 cousin was that he was childish, he hoped 
 that she was not likely to make any fuss 
 about the necessity of living under his father's 
 roof, if that should be required of her. 
 
 Frank Morden, who had been in the habit 
 of running down to Kew to his uncle's house 
 often enough, so long as he expected to find 
 his cousin Lena there to welcome him, had 
 not thought it necessary to continue such 
 visits when that motive ceased to attract, and 
 Mr. Morden had not seen his nephew since 
 the evening on which his ''childishness" had 
 been displayed. Perhaps, if he had not 
 
 •VOL. I. 9
 
 130 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 known that Lena was in Devonshire, even 
 the consolatory society of Miss Deacle would 
 not have been sufficiently engrossing to have 
 prevented him from making another attempt 
 at the reconciliation which he had been 
 unable to effect by post. It is astonishing 
 what a lot of singeing some moths' wings 
 will take! 
 
 "We haven't seen you down at Kew 
 lately," said Mr. Morden, meeting his nephew 
 one afternoon while waiting for the five 
 o'clock train at the Waterloo terminus. 
 
 Frank had come to the station simply to 
 meet his new consoler, having got into the 
 habit of indulging himself with her society at 
 least once a week, and looked round to make 
 sure she was not in sight before he answered, 
 with a very uncomfortable sensation of guilt. 
 " You see it's such a nuisance getting about 
 at night, and all my days are pretty well 
 taken up." 
 
 " Come down when you've nothing better 
 to do," said Mr. Morden, who was not afraid
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I3I 
 
 of his nephew, " but dcn't put yourself out of 
 the way. What are you doing with yourself 
 to-night ?" 
 
 " I'm to meet a — a man here to go down to 
 Richmond with and dine," said Frank — lying, 
 of course, but being certainly compelled to a 
 He, under the circumstances. *' All well at 
 Kew r 
 
 Mr. Morden — lying also, equally of course 
 — intimated that such was fortunately the 
 case. 
 
 " Lena's away, I hear," said Frank, feeling 
 like a moth that has been injured by having 
 its candle unfeelingly blown out. 
 
 " She won't be back for a fortnight or three 
 weeks," answered Mr. Morden. '' I've been 
 thinking of asking your father to take her 
 in for a little when she comes back. We're 
 going to have the house turned upside down 
 — painting and papering." 
 
 " I'm sure he'd be delighted," said Frank, a 
 little scared by the brilliancy of the prospect, 
 and just then catching sight of a hat very 
 
 9—2
 
 132 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 like Miss Deacle's in the refreshment-rooin. 
 " That's your train, isn't it ?" 
 
 " I suppose it is," said Mr. Morden, with- 
 out displaying that alacrity to secure his seat 
 which had been hoped for by his informant. 
 "Just mention it to your father, will you ?" 
 
 "Oh, of course," answered Frank, wishing 
 most devoutly that they were not standing 
 in such a conspicuous part of the platform, 
 and keeping a watchful eye on the refresh- 
 ment-room door. '' You'd better hurry up, 
 I think." 
 
 Mr. Morden did at last hurry up, according 
 to his nephew's recommendation, and left the 
 latter free to join Miss Deacle in the refresh- 
 ment-room—a trysting-place which, perhaps 
 because it was endeared to her by profes- 
 sional associations, she especially affected. 
 
 " That was the governor, I suppose, w^asn't 
 it ?" she asked, when the first emotion of the 
 meeting was over. 
 
 ''Oh no," said Frank, not thinking it neces- 
 sary to explain the exact nature of the rela-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 33 
 
 tionship to Miss Lizzie. " I'm afraid I've 
 kept you waiting, but I couldn't very well 
 get away, you know." 
 
 '' Of course not, if he was your governor," 
 said Lizzie, who was gifted with quite the 
 average power of seeing through a stone 
 wall ; '^ but you say he wasn't ?" 
 
 " Oh dear no," said Frank again. " Just 
 wait here a minute while I get the tickets, 
 will you ?" 
 
 Miss Deacle did not like being treated with 
 a want of confidence, and almost wished she 
 had emerged from the refreshment-room a 
 little sooner. Some reward was due to her, 
 she thought, for her discretion in having 
 abstained from so doing. 
 
 " I suppose you don't like being seen with 
 me — that's about it," she said. 
 
 " Don't be cross, Lizzie," said Frank, who 
 was still rather afraid of his companion. 
 " You can be as jolly as possible, when you 
 like." 
 
 Miss Deacle saw that there was nothing
 
 134 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 to be gained by being ''cross," and allowed 
 Frank to procure the tickets, having taken 
 a very accurate mental photograph of the 
 apparent ''governor" for purposes of future 
 recognition. It is not difficult to be "jolly" 
 at Richmond on a summer's eveninsf, but 
 notwithstanding Lizzie's efforts, on this 
 particular occasion her jollity rather hung 
 fire; and Frank, whose mind was a little 
 distracted by the prospect of his cousin's 
 society which was dangling before his eyes, 
 did not, it is to be feared, contribute as 
 much to her amusement as is generally ex- 
 pected from an escort on similar occasion^. 
 
 " You're not very lively to-night," said the 
 young lady, as they were going back in a first- 
 class carriage after dinner. " I don't wonder 
 she wouldn't have anything to say to you, if 
 you were always as slow as this." 
 
 From which it may be seen that Frank had 
 confided to his consolatrix something more 
 than was to be gathered from the back of the 
 envelope he had shown her. Young gentle-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 35 
 
 men with constitutions like Frank Morden's 
 are very prone to feel the absolute necessity 
 of unburdening their oppressed souls when 
 in such companionship ; and still more prone 
 afterwards to regret the indiscretion with 
 which they m9,y have done so. 
 
 " You can't tell how I've been bothered all 
 day," said Frank apologetically, not wishing 
 at that moment to alienate all the world from 
 him. " That's why I like being with you — 
 you keep me going, you know." 
 
 /'I dare say," observed the young lady 
 sarcastically. '' Don't you think it's very 
 good of me to take so much trouble with 
 you ?" 
 
 " I don't know about that," said Frank, 
 '' but you're a sort of relief sometimes, one 
 way or the other." This certainly was not 
 too strong a compliment to be swallowed, 
 and he was observant enough, even in his 
 depression, to detect a cloud on Lizzie's face. 
 '' You could be awfully nice if you chose, I 
 know," he added, feeling that some emenda-
 
 336 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 tion was necessary. ** I wish you'd take a 
 little more trouble." 
 
 " Then I shan't choose," said Lizzie 
 rather brusquely, being accustomed to 
 rather stronger doses of flattery from her 
 admirers, '^ so it's no good your expecting 
 it." 
 
 " You may as well say something kind to 
 a fellow," said Frank, trying at the same 
 time to " say something kind " rather nearer 
 Miss Deacle's face than was quite necessary 
 for the ordinary purposes of kindness. 
 
 " Hands off, if you please/' said that young 
 lady, who was not yet conciliated. 
 
 There certainly seemed to be something 
 unlucky about the manner in which the 
 manifestations of Frank's affection were 
 received by its objects.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The arrangements which were being made in 
 London for Lena's future happiness had not 
 yet penetrated to Devonshire, or they might 
 have caused her an amount of discomposure, 
 which would have interfered with her appre- 
 ciation of the conjugal merits of the Reverend 
 Bertie. As it was, it may be doubted whether 
 she as yet regarded that amiable cleric quite 
 in the paternal light which had been sug- 
 gested to her on her arrival, and Florry was 
 by no means satisfied with the amount of 
 emulation which the contemplation of her 
 own unheard-of good fortune appeared to 
 have kindled in her unmated paragon's mind. 
 " It is such a happy thing to have some-
 
 138 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 body whom you can go and ask about any 
 difficulty of that sort as soon as you get 
 puzzled/' said Mrs. Carfax, referring to 
 certain doubts which had arisen concerning 
 the soundness of the views contained in a 
 new manual of private devotion which had 
 been imported by the Saltham bookseller. 
 
 " Yes," responded Lena, a little dubiously, 
 thinking privately that the happiness would 
 depend more upon the nature of the answer 
 to be obtained than the opportunity of 
 inquiry. *' It must be very nice, of 
 course." 
 
 '' Bertie always satisfies me so completely," 
 continued the enthusiastic matron, insisting 
 on her privileges. " And he never seems to 
 be taken by surprise by anything, I may say. 
 That's what I like so much. Haven't you 
 found that yourself ?" 
 
 " Of course a man with his education must 
 understand these things better than we do," 
 said Lena, rather evading the question of 
 her own personal experience of Bertie's
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 39 
 
 mental resources, and feeling that perhaps 
 she had not yet gauged his intellect. 
 
 "Ah, but it's something more than educa- 
 tion with him," said Mrs. Carfax triumphantly. 
 " You can't help seeing that." 
 
 "You know I hardly know anything of 
 him, compared to you," said Lena, feeling 
 that the lukewarmness of her views on the 
 subject required something in the way of 
 apology. "He is almost a stranger to me, 
 still." 
 
 " Of course you don't live with him, as I 
 do," said Florry pityingly. "I do wish we 
 weren't going away so soon, and then you 
 might stay with us till you understood him 
 ever so much better. I don't like to think of 
 your going back to that dreadful Mrs. Morden 
 almost directly." 
 
 " It isn't very pleasant, certainly," said 
 Lena, who had managed for a time to get 
 rid of the disagreeable image of her step- 
 mother among the Devonshire Janes. "Only 
 I suppose I shall get used to It by-and-by."
 
 140 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 " If there was only anybody good enough 
 for you to marry !" said Florry, with a Httle 
 sigh at the uncertainty of the future. " I 
 suppose you're quite sure that cousin of 
 yours won't do ?" 
 
 " It isn't the least bit possible," said Lena, 
 with a great deal of determination. ''I didn't 
 tell you that he went and made a fuss to Mr. 
 Selfert about me, did I ?" 
 
 "Who is Mr. Selfert?" asked Florry. 
 " You haven't said a word about him 
 before." 
 
 " He's Mrs. Morden's brother," said Lena, 
 with a sort of feeling that however remarkable 
 a man Mr. Selfert might be in himself, that 
 was the salient point about him, after all. 
 *' Mr. Rothery Selfert — in Parliament, and a 
 barrister, you know, and all that sort of thing. 
 Papa says he's the cleverest man at the bar." 
 
 " Then he isn't very young, I suppose ?" 
 said Florry, pricking up her ears. 
 
 "Oh no, quite old," answered Lena. "That 
 is, you know, he isn't young — nearly as old
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I4I 
 
 as papa, I should think. But then, of course, 
 he's not old for a man. I didn't think him 
 old at all — at the time." 
 
 " What time ?" asked Mrs. Carfax, not 
 quite understanding this qualification of the 
 first verdict pronounced on the age of the 
 gifted being of whom they were speaking. 
 " He can't be very young, I should think, if 
 he's Mrs. Morden's brother. He hasn't got 
 any sons, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Oh dear no," said Lena, feeling that she 
 must have given an absurdly patriarchal 
 idea of Mr. Selfert's time of life. " He isn't 
 married at all, and he's not the least like 
 Mrs. Morden. She used to live with him 
 once, I believe, but I don't think they suited 
 each other very well." 
 
 " Why ?" asked Florry, who v;as getting a 
 little out of her depth, and was not accustomed 
 often to allow the conversation to wander so 
 far from Bertie's excellencies, except when 
 prophetically surveying those of Bertie junior. 
 
 " I don't know — exactly," answered Lena,
 
 142 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 who remembered one or two expressions 
 concerning Mrs. Morden's peculiarities which 
 had fallen from Mr. Selfert's lips, but was 
 checked by a kind of idea that he had not 
 expected her to publish such unwonted confi- 
 dences. " He saw something of the way in 
 which she and I disagreed, and said some- 
 thing to me about it. He meant to be kind, 
 I think." 
 
 Mrs. Carfax did not quite understand the 
 quality of kindness which Rothery Selfert 
 had exhibited, but she failed to obtain any 
 more satisfactory definition of the manner in 
 which the exhibition had been made, as Bertie 
 just then came in for his tea in a state of 
 exhaustion produced by a pastoral expedition 
 to Saltham on foot, which required the im- 
 mediate administration of that sustaining 
 fluid. The manual of devotion was pro- 
 duced as soon as he was partially restored, 
 but Bertie declared that they had been 
 making a mountain out of the smallest of 
 mole-hills, and promised that certain passages
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 43 
 
 should be introduced into his sermon next 
 Sunday, which should remove the faintest 
 possibility of doubt from their minds. Be- 
 yond this he would not commit himself by 
 any extra-official utterances, feeling, doubtless, 
 that on certain theological questions not even 
 a Cambridge man is safe in giving an ex- 
 tem^porary opinion. 
 
 Mr. Rothery Selfert did not again become 
 the subject of conversation that evening, that 
 being a period of the day at which Mr. Carfax 
 required a good deal of conjugal attention at 
 Florry's hands. But the next morning there 
 came a letter from Mr. Morden which discom- 
 posed Lena's thoughts a good deal, and quite 
 drove the difficulty which Florry had raised 
 on the private devotion question out of her 
 mind. The Reverend Bertie, who had taken 
 occasion to fortify his mind on the point since 
 he had been appealed to for guidance the 
 night before, was almost disgusted by the 
 want of attention paid by his guest to the 
 exposition he had prepared.
 
 144 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 *' Such difficulties are entirely the creation 
 of those who are responsible for the divisions 
 in the church," he was saying with some 
 warmth. " I don't know if you quite under- 
 stand me, Miss Morden ?" 
 
 '' Do let her read her letter, Bertie," said 
 Florry, with perhaps less wifely respect than 
 she was accustomed to exhibit. But it must 
 be remembered that, as Mrs. Bertie, she had 
 already, since the previous evening, enjoyed 
 an opportunity of hearing a full clerical dis- 
 cussion on the subject. " What is it about, 
 Lena !'' 
 
 " You may read it, if you like to take the 
 trouble," said Lena, throwing it across the 
 table wath an assumption of indifference. 
 
 The permission was not intended to apply 
 to her host, but was appropriated to himself 
 by that slighted divine with an unconscious 
 coolness to which it was difficult to take 
 exception. 
 
 ''It seems rather hard on you, I must say," 
 he remarked, passing it on to Florry, after a
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 45 
 
 dilatory exhaustion of its contents which tried 
 that lady's patience considerably. *' You'd 
 better read it, Florry." 
 
 " I never heard such a shameful thing In 
 my life !" exclaimed Florry when she had 
 mastered it in her turn. 
 
 "Poor old man," said Lena, in a voice that 
 tried to be composed, ''he means to be as 
 kind as possible. It's harder on him than on 
 anybody else, in reality." 
 
 " I wish we could keep you with us 
 always," said Florry, giving her back her 
 father's letter. " How long do they mean 
 you to stay with your uncle, do you sup- 
 pose ?" 
 
 " Not a day longer than I can help," 
 answered Lena, thinking how easy it would 
 be for Frank Morden to worry her to death 
 in the asylum which it was proposed to open 
 for her reception. " Of course I must go 
 there for a little, as they've settled it all 
 between them." 
 
 ** What a pity it all is !" sighed Florry, 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 thinking of the young Rudyers and Clarks 
 who had been ready, if allowed, to render all 
 this casting about for an asylum unnecessary. 
 She had almost begun to fancy it was her 
 own negligence which had caused her paragon 
 to be still unprovided with a home of her 
 own. 
 
 " Don't let us worry about It any more 
 now, please," said Lena, quite understanding 
 what Florry was thinking about. **I daresay 
 I shall manage very well, when the time 
 comes." 
 
 "What's all that about a Mr. Selfert ?" 
 asked the Reverend Bertie, who had no 
 notion of dropping the subject until the 
 document which had, as he considered, been 
 submitted to him for perusal, had been 
 thoroughly explained to him. 
 
 " Oh, that's only Mr. Morden's brother-in- 
 law," said Florry, who saw that Lena was 
 not anxious to give any further explanations, 
 and was rather afraid that Bertie might 
 consider himself slighted if any information
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I47 
 
 was withheld. *^ He doesn't seem quite to 
 approve, that's all — no wonder, I'm sure. 
 He's a barrister, Lena says." 
 
 "The Q.C, of course — I know," said Bertie 
 complacently, being very proud of such frag- 
 ments of worldly knowledge as an occasional 
 dinner under the shadow of Exeter cathedral, 
 and a parson's fortnight once a year in London, 
 enabled him to retain in spite of the inacces- 
 sibility of the Devonshire lanes. " He's to 
 be Solicitor-general, they say." 
 
 " Is he?" said Lena, with something almost 
 of awe in her tone, as she heard this tribute 
 to the splendour of her patron. " I suppose 
 that is a great thing, isn't it? But then he is 
 so very clever, everybody says." 
 
 " He was down at Exeter — specially re- 
 tained — last year," said the clergyman, who 
 did not feel able exactly to define the height 
 of the social pinnacle to which it was sug- 
 gested that Mr. Selfert might eventually 
 climb. " I don't suppose there is any man 
 at the bar so run after." 
 
 10—2
 
 148 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 *' I rather like him," said Lena, who had 
 gathered from her fathers letter that the 
 great man had again been called in to the 
 arbitration — adjourned, as it were, from the 
 sitting at which he had formerly taken her 
 under his wing — and had said something 
 which had not, at any rate, been intended 
 as a justification of Mrs. Morden's conduct. 
 *' It is so refreshing to talk to a man whose 
 opinion, on any subject, must be worth re- 
 specting." 
 
 *' That's just what I always tell you,'' said 
 Florry, standing out resolutely for the merits 
 of the conjugal rod on which she herself 
 leaned. Was not the support of a clergyman 
 necessarily better than any other ? 
 
 They were going to drive to the landslip, 
 about three miles along the cliff, that day, 
 and have a sort of picnic tea in a cottage 
 there which laid itself out for such purposes. 
 The "parson's fortnight" was to be taken next 
 week, so that Lena knew this was to be one 
 of the last da3^s at Lydcombe on which she
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 49 
 
 would be allowed to forget everything but 
 the sea, and cliff, and sky, and she did her 
 best to get rid of the feeling of discomfort 
 which the post of that morning had left 
 behind in her mind. She wandered away by 
 herself for a few minutes, and climbed up 
 a rugged sheep-track that led up to the 
 higher parts of the cliff till she almost got 
 giddy, and was obliged to sit down before 
 she could begin her descent. As she buried 
 her face in the soft mountain turf, that 
 seemed all tiny flowers and fragrance, and 
 perfumed the air all round like a bed of 
 heliotrope, she could not help for a moment 
 envying Florry, who was to spend her life 
 within reach of such places as that, with the 
 means of satisfying every anxiety, spiritual as 
 well as temporal, always by her side. It 
 hardly seemed to her, just then, that it would 
 be a drawback to be as easily satisfied as 
 Florry was, if the satisfaction was always to 
 be obtained. Only Lena was conscious that 
 her own needs were not Hkely to discover
 
 150 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 anybody who should be able to minister 
 to them in such places as Lydcombe. It was 
 not amonof such cliffs and such lanes that 
 men like Rothery Selfert grew Into full 
 maturity. 
 
 '* I wonder if I could throw a stone as far 
 as that old crow !" said Mr. Carfax's curate, 
 who made the fourth In the pony-carriage, 
 and had come up the path In search of Miss 
 Morden unpercelved. The old crow proved 
 to be not quite within range of the diaconal 
 arm, and the unsuccessful marksman turned 
 round In search of appreciation for his 
 prowess. "So deceptive, you know. Miss 
 Morden, looking down from a height like 
 this ! I used to be able to throw a cricket 
 ball a bit, and yet I couldn't get near that 
 point of rock. It's very jolly up here, 
 isn't It?" 
 
 'T suppose I must get down again, some- 
 how," said Lena, who did not feel that the 
 jollity of her position had been Increased by 
 the new arrival. " They will be putting
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I5I 
 
 the things into the pony-carriage again 
 directly." 
 
 " There isn't any hurry," said the young 
 curate, who had not met many girls like 
 Miss Morden at either Lydcombe or even 
 Saltham, and was thinking how satisfactory 
 it would be if she were to stay through the 
 autumn and take a class at the schools. 
 " YouVe hardly had time to get used to 
 places like this yet, have you, Miss Mor- 
 den ?" 
 
 " I don't know," said Lena, stumbling reso- 
 lutely down without accepting the aid which 
 was eagerly pressed upon her. It did appear 
 to her that half the male population of the 
 world was made up of babies like her cousin 
 Frank.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Mr. Selfert had indeed expressed himself 
 pretty strongly on what he termed the grossly 
 unreasonable conduct of his sister in making 
 Mr. Mordents house an unendurable home 
 for his own daughter, but that lady, being 
 strongly entrenched in her position, and hold- 
 ing her husband for the most part helpless 
 and at her mercy, was not to be shaken from 
 the ground she had taken up. Lena was to 
 come home for a couple of days, that neces- 
 sary preparations might be made, and was 
 then to go to her uncle's house for a visit of 
 indefinite length, it being understood between 
 the brothers that the Treasury salary was to 
 be diminished, and the clerical stipend aug-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I 53 
 
 mented, by such a sum as should neutrahse 
 the consequent change in the expenditure of 
 the two households. Perhaps the only in- 
 dividual who contemplated the proposed 
 arrangement with real satisfaction was the 
 young gentleman whom Miss Deacle had 
 taken under her wing. Although Frank did 
 not succeed in persuading himself that such 
 a close view of his imperfections was likely to 
 induce his cousin to change her mind, he 
 cherished a sort of belief that such proximity, 
 even under present circumstances, must be 
 very pleasant. A mioth that has anything of 
 a wing left cannot but feel some satisfaction 
 at the prospect of having the candle relighted 
 to complete the business. 
 
 The Lydcombe days did not take long in 
 running themselves out, and the pony-carriage 
 carried Lena and her baggage back to the 
 Saltham station again, leaving behind her 
 the great overhanging hedges, still fragrant 
 with white honeysuckle, and the straggling 
 cottaees that seemed to be built of red mud,
 
 T54 ROTI-IERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 and the disconsolate curate, and all the other 
 things which had made her life at the Lyd- 
 combe parsonage so different from that to 
 which she was used, and to which she was 
 hastening back. It cannot be said that the 
 Reverend Albert Carfax was particularly dis- 
 tressed at the departure of his guest, who 
 had materially altered all his domestic arrange- 
 ments, and monopolised a good deal too 
 much, in his opinion, of the time and atten- 
 tion which was due to a man with the respon- 
 sibilities of a whole parish, a curate, and the 
 health of the pony, upon his shoulders. 
 Bertie had generally a feeling, too, that Lena 
 did not believe in him — at any rate, not with 
 the satisfactory and thorough-going faith that 
 formed such an excellent feature in Florry s 
 character ; and all things considered, it is not 
 perhaps to be wondered at that the vicar 
 of Lydcombe felt a little relief as he turned 
 the pony's head homeward, after Florry Had 
 watched the train steam out of the station. 
 ** Her father must be a very weak man.
 
 ROTIIERY SELFERT, Q.C. T55 
 
 altogether," he remarked, as they were 
 drivinor back. *' I don't think she can 
 have been what I call properly brought 
 up, you know." 
 . " Bertie !" remonstrated Florry, who did 
 not like to hear one of her divinities criti- 
 cising the other, and yet was conscious that 
 the paternal relation which she had so 
 sanguinely prophesied a month ago had 
 not been entirely realised. 
 
 *' I dare say she might be made a great 
 deal of, if she got into right hands," said 
 Bertie, meaning thereby hands as capable 
 and as determined as his own. " I wish 
 you'd copy out that sermon for me when 
 we get home. I've made such a mess of 
 it that I know I shan't be able to make 
 it out when it comes to Sunday morning." 
 
 The journey from Devonshire to London 
 was concluded about the same time as 
 Florry's task, and produced about the same 
 amount of depression in Lena's mind as her 
 conjugal duties in that of the Vicar's wife.
 
 156 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Mr. Morden met his daughter at Waterloo, 
 not looking at all as if the matrimonial yoke 
 had become easier to wear during her ab- 
 sence, and apparently in greater need of 
 being petted and supported by somebody 
 than ever. 
 
 " I hope you don't mind, my dear," he 
 said nervously, when they had got into the 
 Kew train, ''but Mr. Selfert is to be with 
 us to-night." 
 
 '' Mr. Selfert !" said Lena, a litde startled, 
 feeling that her mind was not sufficiently 
 prepared for an interview with so impor- 
 tant a person. The thought, however, that 
 something of her step-mothers edge would 
 be taken off by such a presence, served in. 
 some measure to reconcile her to the pros- 
 pect of the evening's amusement which she 
 found awaiting her. 
 
 "Yes, my dear," said her father apolo- 
 getically. *' He asked himself, you know, 
 and of course I couldn't help it." 
 
 " Never mind," said Lena, almost gaily,
 
 ROTHERY- SELFERT, Q.C. I 57 
 
 making the effort which she generally felt 
 to be necessary in order to prevent Mr. 
 Morden's spirits from sinking into the abyss 
 of despair. '* I dare say he won't talk to 
 you and me." 
 
 ** I'm afraid .he will, my dear," responded 
 Mr. Morden doubtfully. " He was a good 
 deal displeased when he heard — something 
 that Mrs. Morden said about your coming 
 back, and Tm sure he will say something 
 about it." 
 
 " It can't concern him at all, I should 
 think !" said Lena, flushing a little. 
 
 Of course, to a certain extent, it was 
 satisfactory to be brought into contact with 
 a man like Mr. Selfert at all, who was about 
 the only man she had ever met who did 
 not come into conflict wnth the great idea 
 she had always cherished of the superiority 
 of the other sex over her own, but she did 
 not like the notion that the little worries of 
 her own life were the only topics they could 
 have in common. Nevertheless, as she re-
 
 158 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 membered, he had so manifested his interest 
 in them on a former occasion that she had 
 been compelled to feel grateful; and she 
 could not be altogether displeased. 
 
 Mr. Selfert, who did not choose to talk to 
 " Catherine," and had often already failed 
 in his endeavours to talk to Mr. Morden, 
 exerted himself during dinner to find some 
 other subjects suitable for discussion with 
 Lena, and apparently not without success. 
 
 She did not as yet feel able to refer such 
 questions to him as that which had dis- 
 tressed Florry in reference to the devotional 
 manual, and hardly thought that any woman 
 could learn to do so. But she told him a 
 great deal about the Devonshire coombes, 
 and the coastguard station on the cliff, and 
 grew quite enthusiastic as she described the 
 pinnacle from which she had looked down 
 on the crows that sailed from knoll to knoll 
 of the mighty landslip, with the peaceful 
 silence of the sea glowing in the evening 
 sun beneath them all.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I5Q 
 
 Rothery Selfert listened with an amused 
 sort of wonder to the girl who could talk to 
 him so entirely without the constraint that he 
 had a sort of idea he generally carried about 
 with him, as if it were a tonic to administer to 
 society. It sounded very nice and refreshing, 
 and though he did not care to analyse the 
 merits of her conversation, or even to lend a 
 comprehending ear to the whole of it, it was 
 certainly far pleasanter to listen to than the 
 pseudo-philosophical utterances on the advan- 
 tages of the Juries' Bill, with the supporters 
 of which statesman-like measure he had been 
 carrying on a triumphant struggle during the 
 last fortnight in committee. He had not ex- 
 amined the beauties of the Devonshire coast 
 for himself, and did not much expect ever to 
 be seized with a longing to do so ; but he 
 was quite contented for that evening to take 
 them on trust from Lena Morden, who was 
 so evidently ready to take far weightier 
 matters on trust from himself. That readi- 
 ness was an excellent thing in woman, in
 
 l6o ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Rothery Selfert's opinion, no less than in 
 that of the Reverend Albert Carfax, and 
 perhaps of some small proportion of the 
 male sex generally. 
 
 Later on in the evening he asked her to 
 play for him, and sat watching her as she did 
 so with a face of such grave solemnity that 
 Mr. Morden, looking upon him, was lost in 
 wonder that a man so intellectual, and dwell- 
 ing in such an earthly and opulent Olympus 
 of his own, could take the trouble to feign 
 an interest in a pianoforte at all. As to any 
 interest in the performer abstracted from the 
 music-stool, Mr. Morden was wholly incapable 
 of discernment ; having already rubbed his 
 mental eyes into a state of temporary blind- 
 ness, in a vain attempt to clear their vision. 
 
 Rothery Selfert had only seen this girl 
 three times, and had not hitherto believed 
 himself to be a man likely to be carried away 
 by a gust of passion. As a matter of fact, he 
 felt no passion at all in the matter ; but had, 
 nevertheless, almost made up his mind to
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. l6l 
 
 select Lena Morden for his wife. There 
 had been growing on him of late years a 
 consciousness that his life was in some mea- 
 sure defective, compared to that of other 
 men. He did not want gusts of passion, 
 having spent a . quarter of a century or so in 
 keeping clear of such things; but he knew 
 that he was not a happy or contented man, 
 and had often wondered whether the incom- 
 pleteness, which made itself felt, was due to 
 his separation from all domestic interests. 
 Before this girl had come in his way, he had 
 almost resolved that he would make the 
 experiment of changing his life entirely 
 in this respect, and had very little appre- 
 hension of any danger to be incurred by 
 doing so. Of course no man could insure 
 himself against the possibility of his wife 
 bringing shame upon him, but he had 
 sufficient confidence in his own powers of 
 selection to think such a calamity at least 
 improbable, and in no other way did he 
 believe that any woman could use the 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 1 62 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 position of his wife to compromise his 
 happiness. 
 
 His mind, notwithstanding the distractions 
 of Juries' Qualification Bills and bishops' 
 leases, was in this state when he first saw 
 Lena Morden, and it seemed to him at once 
 that there was exactly the sort of woman he 
 had been looking for. No particular sort of 
 woman had, as a matter of fact, been up nil 
 then before his mind, as his experience was 
 hardly large enough to enable him to piece 
 together an ideal from it, but the impression 
 produced upon him by Lena Morden was 
 that there had been such an ideal, and that 
 here at last was its realisation. If this is 
 not falling in love, it is as promising a sub- 
 stitute for that good old-fashioned process as 
 anything which a man with Rothery Selfert's 
 views of humanity is likely to experience. 
 
 Lena Morden played Chopin and Beet- 
 hoven at Mr. Selfert's request, without in the 
 least suspecting what the solemnity of Mr. 
 Selfert's gaze concealed, only too sensible
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 63 
 
 that it was better to play Chopin and Beet- 
 hoven to Mr. Selfert, than to be compelled to 
 swallow the acerbities of Mrs. Morden which 
 that dignified presence suppressed. Had she 
 been able to foresee all the results of her 
 evening's performance, Mrs. Morden's acer- 
 bities, by such a comparison, would not have 
 seemed quite so likely to stick in her throat. 
 
 It is difticult and dangerous to say of any 
 woman that she is ever quite unaware of 
 the fact, when any man, however unlikely 
 in himself to have done so, regards her as 
 his possible wife. There is an undefinable, 
 almost imperceptible something in the man- 
 ner — a tone, almost inaudible, in the voice 
 — a glance, almost imaginary, in the eye — 
 which the sternest male resolution may strive 
 in vain to hide, and which the weakest speci 
 men of feminine discernment never fails to 
 detect. Lena Morden's perception of the 
 fact was not yet so real that she was com- 
 pelled to fasten her attention upon it, or 
 decide in what manner it must be dealt with ; 
 
 II — 2
 
 164 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 but she was dimly conscious of a wonderful 
 reason that might exist for this man's presence 
 by her side, for the thoughtfulness with which 
 he tried to ward off annoyances from her, for 
 the pleasure — real or assumed — which he took 
 in everything she said or did. Being sadly 
 in need of a mortal god, she had already 
 begun to wonder whether she could believe 
 that this man possessed any of the attributes 
 of divinity. She knew he was wise ; she 
 saw no reason why he should not be good. 
 That other girls looked for, and were con- 
 tent with something that was not wisdom or 
 goodness merely, she knew very well ; but 
 she was inclined to think that it was not 
 until after marriage that such a discovery 
 would comie to her. Yet she was a girl who 
 knew the value of her own future ; and as 
 she sat playing Beethoven to Rothery Selfert, 
 she had by no means made up her mind that 
 Rothery Selfert's wisdom or goodness were 
 enough to satisfy her. He had not said a 
 word to her that evening yet that might not
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 65 
 
 liave been published in the next morning's 
 paper, and she felt no fear of his doing so 
 when they were left alone together, not long 
 before she knew he must leave to catch the 
 last train back to London. She even stopped 
 playing, and . closed the piano without any 
 feeling that it might be dangerous to give 
 him the opportunity of breaking the silence. 
 
 "I trust you will not think that the interest 
 I take in your future is intrusive," he said, 
 with the formality he found it so difficult to 
 get rid of, " but may I venture to hope that 
 the stay I understand you are to make with 
 your uncle is not repugnant to you ?'' 
 
 '' No; not repugnant," she answered 
 frankly enough, thinking at the same time 
 that repugnance was rather too hard a term 
 to use about her cousin Frank's " childish- 
 ness;" "but there are reasons which do not 
 exactly make the prospect pleasant. 1 
 suppose most people have to put up with 
 some unpleasantness occasionally, and there 
 is nothing more than that."
 
 1 66 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 " I am sorry there should be so much," 
 said Mr. Selfert, " whatever the ' reasons ' 
 may be. Would you forgive my asking you 
 if there is any man likely to be fortunate 
 enough to be allowed to put an end to the 
 unpleasantness ?" 
 
 A man can hardly be blamed for trying 
 to make sure that there is no obstacle in the 
 way, before he takes such a step as Rothery 
 Selfert contemplated, and Lena did not see 
 how she could very well refuse to answer the 
 question ; but she would very much have 
 preferred it if she could have referred him 
 to Florry for an answer. 
 
 " No," she answered, flushing slightly^ 
 " there is not. I do not think the un- 
 pleasantness will be put an end to in the 
 way you are speaking of." 
 
 She did not wish that he should think 
 her silly and girlish enough to affect to mis- 
 understand what was so very intelligible, 
 and felt almost a contempt for her weak- 
 ness in blushing as she answered. A man
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 67 
 
 like Rothery Selfert must, she thought, 
 see quite enough that was despicable in 
 any woman without that. 
 
 " I think you were right in answering 
 me plainly," he said, still more confirmed 
 in his opinion that she was less infirm of 
 mind than most of the other young women 
 with whom he had come in contact. *' Then 
 there is nothing to prevent me from saying 
 what I hope may put you out of the reach 
 of anything unpleasant for the future. I 
 think you might reasonably expect as much 
 as that, if you became my wife." 
 
 At any rate, there was nothing childish 
 in such a proposal as this, and though Lena 
 was rather startled by the suddenness of 
 its development, it was not at all out of 
 keeping with what she had led herself to 
 expect from a man of Mr. Selfert s mental 
 superiority. It was difficult to imagine him 
 suing for love as her cousin Frank had done ; 
 and in her then exalted state of mind, she 
 would almost have looked upon it as drag-
 
 1 68 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 ging God's image in the dust had he so sued. 
 She had not at all realised how close and 
 dear a thing a husband must be, at any rate 
 occasionally, to his wife, and felt that she 
 could be quite contented to carry on her 
 worship at a reasonable distance. Yet she 
 hesitated a little, not being quite sure of 
 the exact distance which would ultimately be 
 agreed on between them, or indeed, of the 
 nature of the worship which would be ex- 
 pected of her. 
 
 ''Perhaps you have not considered this 
 yet," he said, after waiting a little for an 
 answer, *' and would like a day or two to do 
 so. I wall say nothing of this to any one else 
 until you are ready to answer me ; and you 
 can keep it to yourself, or not, just as you 
 think best. Remember that I will do my 
 best to insure your happiness, and that I 
 shall find my own happiness in doing so." 
 
 "You are very good," she stammered, 
 feeling quite incapable of choosing words or 
 phrases, as he could do, and with a kind
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 69 
 
 of idea that the very inabiHty was another 
 proof of her own inferiority to him. 
 
 " I hope you will always think so," said 
 Mr. Selfert, with a grim smile, having cer- 
 tainly not hitherto indulged the belief that 
 his goodness was his strong point, though he 
 decidedly meant that his wife should be of 
 that opinion. *' Perhaps there is nothing 
 more that I can say just now, except to 
 repeat that I fully believe that what I pro- 
 pose will be for the happiness of both of 
 us. I will wait a day or two for an answer, 
 and hope you will try to make it a favourable 
 one. Would it be too much to ask you to let 
 Mr. Morden know that I am waiting to say 
 good-night ?" 
 
 Lena felt it a relief to escape from the 
 room, and allowed her father to despatch his 
 guest unassisted, hoping that the ardour of 
 her lover would not cause him to forget his 
 promise of maintaining his reserve for the 
 present. She need have been under no 
 apprehension in the matter, as Rothery Selfert
 
 170 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 had not the sHghtest idea of taking any such 
 inferior animal as Mr. Morden into his con- 
 fidence until the revelation became absolutely- 
 necessary. In his view, his marriage was a 
 thing that concerned himself alone — his wife^ 
 perhaps, in a secondary degree — and he was 
 not sure that it would not have been a wiser 
 dispensation of Providence had the world 
 been composed of isolated units altogether. 
 Ties of paternity and relationship became, he 
 was inclined to think, mere cumbrous super- 
 fluities as soon as a certain age was reached, 
 and the wants of infancy ceased to be 
 clamorous. 
 
 He was, however, sufficiently in earnest in 
 the matter to be quite sure, as soon as he got 
 home, that he had not done anything injudi- 
 cious, and grew almost enthusiastic as he 
 contemplated the vision of the future peace- 
 ful serenity of his married life. He was 
 not old enough to be indifferent to such per- 
 sonal attractions as those he intended to 
 make his own, although he had carefully
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 171 
 
 eschewed feminine beauty for many years 
 past, and the bright mystery of Lena's eyes, 
 to say nothing of the soft clear complexion 
 and supple figure, was very attractive even 
 to his matured taste. There was, besides, he 
 fancied, just the fitting amount of intellect 
 and the most desirable kind of morality, and 
 he did not think it probable that a very large 
 percentage of young women combined these 
 estimable qualities in the same degree. Clas- 
 sifying women generally, he considered that 
 the number of those who deserved to be 
 placed in the first class was small ; and as the 
 idea that any one who was not in the first 
 class could ever become Rothery Selfert's 
 wife was monstrous to him, he felt con- 
 siderable complacency in the reflection that 
 he was at last secured against such a contin- 
 gency. On the whole, he fell asleep, after 
 taking a digestive pill which had become 
 habitual to him, with more satisfaction in the 
 prospect of the remainder of his life than 
 he had experienced for a long time. It did
 
 1/2 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Strike him, however, that it might become 
 annoying when there was somebody from 
 whom it would be well to conceal such 
 personal trifles as digestive pills for the 
 future.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Starting with the premises that there are, 
 roughly speaking, say half a million more 
 women than men in the British Isles, and 
 that some men certainly, perhaps the 
 majority, risk a proposal more than once 
 in their lives, it would be a curious calcu- 
 lation to discover what is the average 
 number of bond fide offers which an ordi- 
 nary young woman may look forward to 
 during the debateable years of her life. 
 Whatever the number may be, Lena 
 Morden had undoubtedly already enjoyed 
 more than her fair share, and ought to 
 have known how to set about making her 
 mind up on this particular occasion ; but as
 
 174 ROTKERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 she could not in the least understand the 
 motives which had induced Rothery Selfert 
 to follow in the track of his predecessors, she 
 found a difficulty in deciding whether they 
 were such as would make what he offered her 
 worthy her acceptance. She was almost 
 equally perplexed with her own state of mind, 
 and only knew it v/as different to anything 
 she had before experienced on similar occa- 
 sions. If the only real sort of love was such 
 as Florry felt for the staff she had chosen for 
 herself, Lena was quite certain that she did 
 not love the man who had come to her in 
 such a novel way. But then she remem- 
 bered that he had never asked her to love 
 him at all ! unless such a condition was 
 Implied in the remark he had made about 
 the happiness of both. Notwithstanding 
 this omission, she thought she could learn to 
 do so, In her own peculiar way. Of course 
 she did not expect that the affection of such 
 a man as Mr. Selfert would partake of the 
 gushing extravagance which she had found
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 75 
 
 SO objectionable in her cousin Frank ; but as 
 he could have no other inducement to choose 
 her as his wife, she thought she might 
 assume that his love, which would be of 
 course of the most superior description, 
 would be given to her. 
 
 Not a word had been said to " Catherine" 
 by her attached brother which would lead 
 her mind to a suspicion of the truth, but 
 Catherine had more discernment than was 
 possessed by her husband, and had formed 
 her own conclusions on the matter. Con- 
 sequently, Lena was left very much to her- 
 self during the following day, after Mr. 
 Morden had made his daily escape to the 
 Treasury, and wandered aimlessly about 
 the house and garden, trying to realise to 
 herself what manner of man Rothery Selfert 
 Vv^as, and what a life spent by his side would 
 be like. 
 
 Frank Morden, who, in consequence of 
 the contemplated arrangement, of course 
 knew the day of his cousin's return, turned
 
 176 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Up With rather a shamefaced look in the 
 afternoon, having perhaps found even Miss 
 Deacle's society beginning to pall upon him. 
 He had forgotten all about his expectation 
 of being cured, and came back to singe all 
 that was left of his wings with a perfect 
 greediness for the flame. 
 
 '' So you are coming to us for a little !" he 
 said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, when 
 the difficulty of the first salutation was over. 
 
 " I believe that is what papa intends," said 
 Lena, hesitating a little as she remembered 
 that the proposed arrangement would pro- 
 bably have to be modified, should she decide 
 upon becoming Mrs. Selfert. 
 
 '' Oh, it's a settled thing !" said the moth, 
 exulting in its coming tortures. '^ You can't 
 imagine how we're all looking forward to it. 
 This is Friday — I suppose you won't be able 
 to manage the move to-morrow ?" 
 
 Lena had a keen sense of the ridiculous, 
 and was almost inclined to laugh at the 
 absurdity of the situation.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 77 
 
 " I dare say you'll get on very well without 
 me a little longer. What have you bee;i 
 doing with yourself all the last month ?" 
 
 '* Oh, working," said Frank, ignoring the 
 relaxation Miss Deacle had provided for him, 
 and being ungrateful enough at that moment 
 to wish he had never set eyes upon Lizzie s 
 exuberant charms. " I suppose I mustn't 
 ask you if anybody's been trying to make love 
 to you down there ?" 
 
 '' Making love" was an expression which 
 Lena always thought particularly odious, but 
 it was just the kind of thing she expected 
 from Frank. She felt certain that Mr. 
 Selfert would never have used such a hor- 
 rible phrase, any more than he would have 
 done the thing itself — as Frank did it. 
 '' Manifesting affection" w^ould be the nearest 
 approach to such a thing Mr. Selfert could 
 ever be expected to accomplish. 
 
 Something in her look showed her dis- 
 pleasure, but Frank misinterpreted it, of 
 course. 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 ** You don't mean to say ' yes ?' You 
 haven't let anybody come between us yet, 
 surely ?" he said, with quite unaffected In- 
 dignation. 
 
 '* You are more childish than ever, I think," 
 said the girl with magnificent contempt. 
 *' How can you dare to talk about people 
 coming * between us' after what I told 
 you ?'' 
 
 " Then there has," said the lynx-eyed 
 young idiot ungrammatically, being quite 
 able to understand the drift of an evasive 
 answer. '' I don't suppose you have ever 
 taken the trouble to remember that you 
 have been trifling with my happiness all the 
 time ?" 
 
 '* Trifling !" repeated Lena In high Indig- 
 nation, but feeling almost directly that It was 
 impossible to expect reason from such a male 
 baby. " You have no right to say such 
 things, Frank," she said more seriously. '' I 
 have always told you plainly that I shall 
 never marry you, and it would be absurd that
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. I 79 
 
 you should make a disturbance about my 
 marrying anybody else." 
 
 " Then there is somebody else ?" he re- 
 peated sullenly, as if he was determined to 
 get a confession out of her. 
 
 Up to that moment, Lena had not made 
 up her mind whether there was somebody 
 else or not, and had certainly not intended 
 to say anything to her cousin about her 
 deliberations. 
 
 '' Yes," she said almost solemnly, ''there 
 is. I am going to marry Mr. Selfert, but 
 I do not wish it spoken about for a day 
 or so." 
 
 '' Mr. Selfert ! " almost shouted Frank, 
 scarcely believing his own ears. *' Why, he's 
 old enough to be your father !" 
 
 *' I think that's my own concern," said 
 Lena, with a little scorn on her lip. Were 
 not the excellences which had been offered 
 for her acceptance such as to put all con- 
 siderations of age or personal experience 
 beside the question ? " At any rate, he has 
 
 J 2 — 2
 
 l8o ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 asked me to marry him, and I mean to do 
 
 so." 
 
 '' I never heard such d d nonsense in 
 
 my life," said Frank, who was getting angr\\ 
 ^* Why, he's almost your uncle ! I don't 
 believe you can do it, to begin with — there's 
 something in the Prayer-book about it, I 
 know." 
 
 " You had better go away, if you want to 
 insult me," said Lena with dignity. '' I did 
 not think you were so unreasonable." 
 
 " Of course I'll go away," answered the 
 outraged lover. " A man can't help a rough 
 word or so, you know. I can tell you I 
 feel like rough words, but Fll go away, of 
 course. That's the best thing I can do, I 
 suppose." 
 
 . " I think it is," said Lena coolly, who did 
 not at all consider the apology sufficient, 
 ^' if that's all you have to say. I dare say 
 you'll get over the feelings you talk about 
 before very long." 
 
 " Get over !" repeated Frank, wondering
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. l8l 
 
 what would succeed where Miss Deacle's 
 charms had failed. '' It doesn't matter to 
 you what I do, of course, but I'm not likely 
 to do much good. I suppose you won't 
 come and stay with us now, then ?" he added 
 lamely, by way of an after- thought, remem- 
 berlno^ that an intellio^ible account of his 
 mission would be required of him. 
 
 Lena thought that, in deference to her new 
 prospects, she might probably be spared that 
 humiliation, and signified as much to her 
 disconcerted suitor, who returned to town 
 with a firmer conviction than ever that he 
 was the most ill-treated beinor on the face of 
 the earth. It was a positive insult to be 
 what he called " thrown over" for a man a 
 good deal more than twice his age, and he 
 hardly realised even yet that his cousin 
 really meant to carry out her threat. There 
 is perhaps no conviction more widely spread 
 among men of from twenty to thirty, than 
 the theory that any feminine love for a 
 middle-aged object must be a sham. In the
 
 1 82 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 cases which do occur of such an object being 
 well on the wrong side of fifty, the feminine 
 love (seen from the said youthful standpoint) 
 assumes the still stronger form of a revolting 
 manifestation of hypocrisy. Let it be left to 
 the feminine readers of these lines to say 
 at what age the male being becomes in- 
 capable of inspiring what is generally signi- 
 fied by the much-abused word ; certain it is 
 that as each lustre of a man's life passes 
 away, his tendency to push the limit farther 
 on increases. It may be assumed, at any 
 rate, that Lena Morden would not con- 
 sciously have committed herself to any such 
 sham as that denounced. 
 
 Of course it was necessary to speak to 
 her father of her determination, and Lena 
 thought it would be best to do so even 
 before her suitor himself was told of his 
 success. 
 
 " Papa," she said, getting him alone into 
 the garden after dinner, " I am afraid you 
 have been having a lot of worry about me ?"
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. iS 
 
 " My dear/' said Mr. Morden. feelin:^ 
 that he had been worried about most things 
 with which he had been concerned, " it 
 doesn't matter." He laid his hand on her 
 shoulder, more as if feeling for a support 
 than bestowing a caress, and looked feebly 
 back to make sure that he was not being 
 watched from the enemy's camp within. " It 
 doesn't matter at all." 
 
 " I know it doesn't matter, in a way," 
 answered the girl, touching his hand with 
 her own as if to show that she understood 
 him, " but I am very sorry for it, all the 
 same. Now I am going to frighten you — 
 you mustn't call out." 
 
 ** My dear," said Mr. Morden again, trying 
 to rub his eyes (metaphorically speaking) 
 until he induced a sort of mental ophthalmia, 
 *' I won't be frightened if I can help it." 
 With a mental reservation in his own mind 
 as to the effect produced by Mrs. Morden in 
 her own special department. 
 
 *' It sounds rather absurd, I'm afraid," said
 
 184 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Lena, with half a blush and half a laugh, 
 " but Mr. Selfert wants me to marry him. 
 At least he said so, last night." 
 
 Mr. Morden was so utterly incapable of 
 guessing what his daughter's views of such a 
 proposal might be that he did not think it 
 wise to hazard any opinion on the subject. 
 It seemed to him, of course, a good thing 
 in itself for a girl to be taken up with the 
 Olympus of men like Rothery Selfert, and yet 
 he was so painfully conscious that the Olym- 
 pus might not be an Olympus at all, if his 
 daughter was not obliged to look at it from 
 such an unfortunate level. So he said no- 
 thing, being perhaps afraid of transgressing 
 her injunction by calling out. 
 
 *' This is the letter I am going to send 
 him," continued Lena, w^ho had succeeded, 
 after an infinity of anxiety and deliberation, 
 in producing something which she was able 
 to contemplate the possibility of submitting 
 to her suitor's criticism. She was by no 
 means contented with it, but reflected that
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 185 
 
 If she was unable to write her intended 
 husband a letter, she was certainly unfitted 
 to become his wafe. 
 
 '' Dear Mr. Seefert, 
 
 '' I feel that I ouo-ht to g^ive vou 
 an answer as soon as possible, and do not 
 wish you to think that I am unable to 
 make up my mind on such a matter. What 
 you propose does not seem impossible to 
 me, and therefore I suppose that I am 
 justified in accepting your offer. It sounds 
 almost presumptuous for me to say that I 
 hope you did not speak hastily or unad- 
 visedly, but that is the feeling I have on 
 the subject. As to my happiness for the 
 future, I would rather feel that it was in 
 your hands than my own. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Lena jMorden." 
 
 j\Ir. Morden played a little nervously
 
 1 86 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 with the envelope before giving It back 
 to his daughter, looking as if he doubted 
 whether she were old enough to be trusted 
 with such a perilous document. 
 
 '' You are quite sure you are right, my 
 dear ?" he said, wondering how much 
 responsibility was generally assumed by 
 fathers in such matters. 
 
 " I don't know his address," said Lena, 
 who did not by any means always think 
 it necessary to answer her fathers obser- 
 vations. 
 
 " Paper Buildings, Temple, is all I know," 
 said Mr. Morden, relieved to find that he 
 was not expected to have a voice in the 
 matter. " I don't know where he lives the 
 least in the world." 
 
 " He ought to get it as soon as possible," 
 said Lena. *' I wish you'd post it for me 
 to-night." 
 
 The direction was added, and the letter 
 posted, although Mr. Morden did not feel 
 at all sure that by going to the lawyer's
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 87 
 
 chambers, it would not come under the 
 surveillance of Brooking with the rest of 
 Mr. Selfert's more professional correspon- 
 dence.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The only person who felt no surprise what- 
 ever at Lena Morden being willing to accept 
 such a companion as Rothery Selfert for the 
 remainder of her life was, perhaps, Rothery 
 Selfert himself; who, though he was quite 
 satisfied with the humility of her reply, would 
 have felt his estimate of himself from an ob- 
 jective point of view considerably overset had 
 its tenor been different. He was gracious 
 enough to assure her, on more than one sub- 
 sequent occasion, that he was quite incapable 
 of any such hastiness as that which she ap- 
 peared (very prudently) to believe possible. 
 It might have been possible with other men, 
 but not, he assured her (with an honest belief
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 89 
 
 in his own words), in the case of Rothery 
 Selfert. 
 
 Lena, who was really blinded by her be- 
 lief in the man's brain and manifest mental 
 superiority, saw nothing in his language 
 which could be called arrogant or ridicu- 
 lous. There was much to which she v/as 
 not accustomed, but she was able to con- 
 vince herself, as often as anything ought to 
 have jarred upon her ears, that the apparent 
 dissonance only owed its existence to her 
 defective hearing, and set herself resolutely 
 to work to educate her ear to the high 
 standard which the music of the future 
 seemed to require. 
 
 Of course the projected transplanting of 
 such a weed to the London incumbent's 
 domestic soil was at once dismissed from 
 everybody's recollection, and the bride- elect 
 was treated by all, even (with a grim imita- 
 tion of courtesy) by Mrs. Morden, with 
 something of the respect which was due to 
 the exaltation which was in store for her.
 
 IQO ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Nor was the time of her Hfting up to be 
 unduly postponed, as the barrister was 
 anxious to get through the mysterious em- 
 barrassments of the honeymoon before 
 Brooking compelled him to return to his 
 chambers for the winter. The precise date, 
 by dint of consultations with Brooking on 
 the one hand, and references to the lady's 
 trousseau requirements on the other, was at 
 last settled ; and, thanks to the expectant 
 bridegroom's discretion in not making either 
 his faults or his excellences too cheap till 
 they had been taken for better or worse, 
 Lena saw her wedding-day approach without 
 the slightest misgiving as to the wisdom of 
 her choice, or the uncertainty of the future 
 into which she was about to plunge. ''Omne 
 ignotum pro magnifico ;' and perhaps, if 
 enlightenment never came, the imaginary 
 magnificence would do quite as well as the 
 real, and would certainly have the advan- 
 tage of being more easily met with by those 
 who search.
 
 ROTIIERY SELFERT, Q.C. IQl 
 
 It was a quiet wedding enough, neither 
 the bridegroom nor bride rejoicing in that 
 particular form of parade which is more 
 generally considered essential to a young 
 lady's peace of mind on so disturbing an 
 occasion, and was not even graced by the 
 presence of all the bride's immediate rela- 
 tions. 
 
 Frank, having now not a particle of wing 
 left to get singed, was almost divine in his 
 wrath and contempt for the iniquitous pro- 
 ceeding he was unable to stop, and refused 
 to come near the house which afforded 
 shelter to the wrongdoers. He wrote a 
 lone letter to his cousin at least once a 
 week (though, fortunately for her, it was 
 only occasionally that he was sufficiently 
 satisfied with his production to send it to 
 her), breathing the spirit of manly indigna- 
 tion and revolted love which such perfidy 
 had of course excited; but perhaps even 
 a more satisfactory vent for these essential 
 but inconvenient sentiments was ^ound in
 
 192 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 the society which had lately become almost 
 necessary to him, and Miss Deacle's gentle 
 (and well-developed) bosom received a great 
 deal of the froth and fury which inevitably 
 ensued upon the literary efforts to which 
 he so often had recourse. There was a 
 delightful feeling, too, as if of immorality, 
 about such outpourings, which was novel 
 to the sufferer, and impressed him with an 
 idea of the reality of the anguish which had 
 driven him to such extreme lengths. It 
 was a pity that so innocuous a violation of 
 the laws of etiquette as that in which Frank 
 had indulged, under Lizzie's patronage and 
 guidance, should ever have failed to satisfy 
 his sympathetic cravings ! 
 
 Lizzie, however, had begun to fancy that 
 her young friend would not long be con- 
 tented with paying for her dinners at Rich- 
 mond and the Crystal Palace. 
 
 Whatever the nature of his intimacy with 
 Miss Deacle had been or was to be, Frank 
 had been discreet enough, in its earlier
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 93 
 
 Stages, to keep the knowledge of that young 
 lady's existence a secret from those to whom 
 his leisure hours ought more properly to be 
 given ; but he had grown more rash as 
 matters progressed, and had begun rather to 
 glory in the disturbance which the suspicion 
 of his misconduct caused at home. Lizzie 
 had not been always as discreet as on the 
 occasion when she hid herself from the eyes 
 of the presumed "governor" in the refresh- 
 ment-room, and envelopes with the loudest 
 of monograms, and directed in a hand that 
 almost spoke to the anxious maternal eye, 
 had found their way more than once to the 
 parental roof Frank was even rather proud 
 of these trophies of his success, and received 
 a gentle remonstrance on the subject with an 
 independence that was itself almost a con- 
 solation to him. 
 
 " If I can't have my own letters here, I 
 can have them sent to Chaftin's, of course,'' 
 he had said with indignation that was partly 
 real. 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 " Nobody wants to Interfere with your cor- 
 respondence, Frank, you know very well/ 
 answered his mother, who knew, of course, 
 of her son's disappointment, and treated him 
 with much consideration in consequence ; 
 *^ only I hope you don't get letters here or 
 anywhere else that you're ashamed of." 
 
 As a matter of fact, Frank was not so 
 much ashamed of Lizzie and her gorgeous 
 envelopes, as he would have been a few 
 months back, but, nevertheless, he was hardly 
 inclined to talk about them to his mother. 
 
 " I don't mean to be ashamed of anything," 
 he said brusquely, walking out of the room. 
 
 Of course his mother could not understand 
 the feelings of a man who had passed through 
 experiences such as his ! 
 
 He was quite convinced, however, that 
 Lizzie could, and certainly that young lady 
 had enjoyed better opportunities than the 
 clergyman's wife for studying the phenomena 
 of male eccentricity, from other points of 
 vantage than the bar at the avuncular eating-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 95 
 
 house. Frank knew, of course, that he had 
 been stooping in the gutter, but then he 
 more than half beheved that he had dis- 
 covered a pearl ! She was certainly a finer 
 woman than his " cousin, spider-hearted," with 
 really quite a magnificent torso, and a com- 
 plexion which Frank had assured himself 
 beyond all manner of doubt was not painted 
 — at any rate when it was within his reach. 
 As to her general effect, he remembered 
 with triumph that young Danebury had 
 raised his hat the other day with almost an 
 expression of reverence when he met Frank 
 with his fair charge at the Zoological Gardens 
 one Sunday. Danebury had been at school 
 with Frank, and was eating his dinners for 
 the bar, and Frank felt quite certain that 
 Danebury would not have raised his hat 
 unless impressed with the belief that the 
 lady he saw with his friend was — well, was a 
 lady. Since Danebury's unfortunate tribute 
 of respect, Frank's pride in his successful 
 search for consolation, and his belief in the 
 
 13—2
 
 196 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 goodness of Lizzie's ^' form," had, beyond a 
 doubt, become unduly exalted. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Lizzie, who 
 took such a natural interest in Frank's home- 
 belongings, had been at all reticent about her 
 own. Long before the stage just described 
 had been reached, Frank was able to address 
 letters so as to find Miss Deacle elsewhere 
 than at the eating-house, mention of which 
 had come to be tacitly avoided between them, 
 and knew that his pearl resided in a little 
 street off the New Road, with Mr. and Mrs. 
 Deacle. People of the highest respectability 
 were Mr. and Mrs. Deacle, according to 
 Lizzie's account, but she did not pretend 
 that their respectability was of such a nature 
 as to render her services at her uncle's place 
 of business at all incongruous or painful to 
 their feelings. Mr. Deacle was, she said, 
 connected with the Echo, which sounded v/ell 
 at first, until it was explained that his par- 
 ticular department was concerned principally 
 with the little red carts in which that valuable
 
 ROTPIERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 97 
 
 publication is conveyed, by special express, 
 to the hands of the milHons who are always 
 hungering for its perusal. Frank did not 
 think it likely that a person of Mr. Deacle's 
 age and respectability actually drove any of 
 the little red carts himself, except in cases of 
 sudden emergency ; but, nevertheless, he felt 
 sufficiently uncomfortable whenever such a 
 vehicle passed him in Lizzie's company, 
 unless the tender age of the driver was such 
 as to defy apprehension. The exigencies of 
 the Echds sale mio^ht not allow the little red 
 carts to stop in order to satisfy the domestic 
 responsibilities of the driver, but Frank 
 thought that such a renco7itre might never- 
 theless be attended with embarrassing 
 consequences. Lizzie's ideas of propriety, 
 however, though peculiar, were very strict ; 
 and she had lately come to the conclusion 
 that her aristocratic friendship was more 
 likely to become a source of advantage to 
 her if some such meeting could be brought 
 about.
 
 igS ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 ** I suppose you're ashamed to come in- 
 side ?'* she said, when Frank had seen her 
 as far as Gotha Street, New Road, about 
 nine o'clock one eveninpf. " That's where I 
 live, you know." 
 
 Frank, as has been seen, did not at all like 
 being told he was ashamed, and liked it no 
 better from Lizzie than he had done from 
 his mother. 
 
 *' I'm not ashamed at all," he protested, 
 trying to believe that he was speaking the 
 truth. " Only I don't quite see what good it 
 would do. I suppose your father and mother 
 have never heard of me in their lives ?" 
 
 " Where do you suppose they fancy I go 
 in the evenings, then ?" said Lizzie, who had 
 not, however, always been in the habit of 
 giving her parents a strict account of the 
 hours she devoted to relaxation. '' Of course 
 they know I'm not alone all the time, or I 
 shouldn't be able to get away." 
 
 If Lizzie meant that she was safer in 
 Frank's society than when left to her own
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 1 99 
 
 sweet will, she undoubtedly spoke the truth, 
 but Frank was not quite prepared for the 
 apparent stringency of Mr. Deacle's domestic 
 reo^ulations. He saw that the o-lrl wished 
 that he should become known, so far as his 
 personal appearance was concerned, to some 
 others of her own family, but was too un- 
 sophisticated to see the real reason, wonder- 
 ing only whether she thought that the general 
 respectability of his outer man was such as 
 would impress her natural guardians with a 
 belief in the safety and propriety of such a 
 connection. But he certainly would not have 
 gone inside at Lizzie's request had not the 
 door opened, and a fat — a very fat — old lady, 
 who might easily have been the wife of such 
 an employe of the EcJw as has been de- 
 scribed, appeared on the scene to add her 
 entreaties to those of her daughter. 
 
 " Won't Mr. Frank come in, Liz T she 
 asked of the young lady, whom she had 
 probably, twenty or thirty years before, re- 
 sembled very closely. '' She always speaks
 
 200 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 of you as Mr. Frank," she continued, turning 
 to the unfortunate young man who had not 
 been resohite enough to escape ; " and I 
 don't know no other name to call you. But 
 name or no name, I hope he'll come inside." 
 
 Any man with ordinary strength of mind 
 might still have fled; but Frank hesitated, 
 having in his mind the dread of Lizzie's dis- 
 pleasure, and in another minute the door had 
 closed, leaving him on the other side. 
 
 "Just one glass of brandy hot," said the 
 hospitable old lady. 
 
 It was some comfort that the Echo em- 
 ployS was not present to do the honours of 
 Gotha Street as well as Lizzie's mamma, but 
 even in her presence Frank did not succeed 
 in making himself thoroughly at home. 
 
 Frank spent at least an half hour sitting 
 opposite the fat old woman, and drinking his 
 brandy and water, not liking to outrage 
 Lizzie's feelings by making too abrupt a 
 departure. Then Mrs. Deacle, looking like 
 a sack that had burst at the bottom without
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 20I 
 
 letting out its contents, waddled out of the 
 room, and left the — well, the lovers — for a 
 few minutes alone. 
 
 " I wonder what the young lady down at 
 Kew would say if she could see you sitting 
 here!" said Lizzie, laughing. 
 
 Frank was past laughing by this time, but 
 finished his brandy and water with a gulp, 
 and declared that he didn't care a d — n what 
 the young lady at Kew would say. He 
 wondered, as he said it, whether such an 
 infliction as he had been undergoing was the 
 penalty generally paid for society like Miss 
 Deacle's. Nevertheless, there was nothing 
 in the girl herself which was distasteful to 
 him. He was still inclined to believe in the 
 pearl, but the gutter was so extremely nasty ! 
 
 *' I expect father'll be in directly," said 
 Lizzie. 
 
 This was too much for Frank, who felt that 
 nothing more could be reasonably expected 
 of him that night. 
 
 " Upon my word I must be off," he
 
 202 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 said, getting up in some alarm. " Good- 
 night." 
 
 " Good-night, ' said Lizzie, putting up her 
 face to be kissed in the most natural manner 
 possible. Frank had no objection to the 
 operation in the abstract, but he could not 
 help feeling that there was something ominous 
 in the very matter-of-fact incidents of this 
 particular salutation. Where so much was 
 given, was there not a danger that something 
 would be required ? 
 
 ''And about Saturday afternoon/' said 
 Lizzie. 
 
 *' Oh, I'll write a line," answered Frank, 
 feeling that if nothing more was required of 
 him than Saturday afternoons, the payment 
 for the brandy and water, and the rest of his 
 entertainment, including Lizzie's kisses, would 
 not be so very difficult after all.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 *' My very dearest Lena, 
 
 " Now that you have been Mrs. 
 Selfert a w/wle week, I daresay you will be able 
 to spare five minutes to read a letter from 
 Bertie and myself — at least, I mean from 
 myself alone, for Bertie will send no message 
 except his very kindest love, and says you 
 won't want to be bothered with that. I want 
 you to write and tell me as much as you can, 
 just as if you were back at dear old 
 Lydcombe talking to me, about the man who 
 has been lucky enough to marry the dearest 
 girl in the world. Of course I was talking 
 nonsense when I said he must be old, and I 
 remember you were almost angry with me
 
 204 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 for thinking so. A man may be any age he 
 Hkes if he is really nice, and I always thought, 
 until after we were engaged, that Bertie was 
 at least ten years older than me, although he 
 never wore a beard at all until after we were 
 married. I am afraid this sounds silly, but 
 it would be absurd for me to scratch anything 
 out when I was writing to dear old Lena, 
 especially as by this time I hope that you have 
 learnt to be silly yourself, sometimes. I 
 always thought it would do you good to 
 forget to be sensible for a little. 
 
 " Perhaps Mr. Selfert likes you to be 
 sensible when you talk to him, as he is so 
 clever ; but then you have had a week to talk 
 in. I know Bertie and I had ever so many 
 things to settle at first, but we had nearly 
 finished by the first fortnight. I mean the 
 things that had to be regularly talked over. 
 And then Mr. Selfert cannot tell you about 
 his profession, as Bertie did, because of 
 course you can't understand law, though I'm 
 sure you're clever enough to, if you tried. I
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 205 
 
 suppose you have had to settle about your 
 house, and It will be so nice to see you in one 
 of your own, as I hope I shall some day. 
 You will be much grander people than we are, 
 you know ; and I am so glad that you are going 
 to have lots of money, because it all helps. 
 
 '' Everything is very quiet here, as usual. 
 We have ofot a new curate cominof next 
 month, and Mr. Roberts is going away. I 
 think he must really have ca7rd for you — do 
 you know ? — because he looked so angry 
 when we told him about it, and next Sunday 
 his nose began to bleed in church, just as he 
 was going to read the Lessons. At least he 
 said afterwards it was his nose, but at any 
 rate he had to go into the vestry. Bertie 
 says he has often seen young men at Cam- 
 bridge walk out like that, holding their hand- 
 kerchiefs to their faces, when they were tired 
 of chapel. I shall begin to talk nonsense 
 again, if ! don't stop. Do find time to write 
 soon to your affectionate 
 
 " Florry."
 
 206 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 This letter, which was addressed to Mrs, 
 Rothery Selfert, Grand Hotel, Ilfracombe, 
 was the first in which Lena had seen her 
 new title on paper, and it was difficult at first 
 to get rid of the idea that all envelopes so 
 directed were intended for the perusal of Mr. 
 Rothery Selfert in the first instance. Not 
 that her husband, even in the earliest flush 
 of honeymoon assimilation, was likely to 
 dream of claiming such a privilege ; for Mr. 
 Rothery Selfert had as little idea of making 
 his wife's thoughts his, as he had of sharing 
 his own superior mind with his wife. The 
 element of domesticity, which he had hitherto 
 considered wanting in his character, could 
 very well, he considered, be supplied, with- 
 out going to any such extreme length as 
 that. But even this, in his opinion, could 
 not be properly developed during such an 
 abnormal and transitional period as that 
 which the customs of society were just then 
 requiring him to spend at Ilfracombe. 
 
 As to the process of assimilation, it had
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 20/ 
 
 not perhaps progressed very fast ; certainly 
 not as fast as Florry represented it to have 
 taken place in her own case. Of course this, 
 again, was to be put down to the superior 
 nature of the bridegroom's mind, and Lena 
 was really amused at Florry's suggestion that 
 all the regular topics of conversation between 
 them had by this time become exhausted. 
 Exhausted they were not likely soon to be, 
 but she did think occasionally it was time 
 that some of them were opened, being still 
 almost as much in the dark as to the riches of 
 her husband's intellect, as she had been the 
 day he first proposed to take her future hap- 
 piness under his care. So far, his provision 
 for her happiness had been very much what 
 he would have made for a doll which he sup- 
 posed to have been miraculously endued with 
 an unusually large appetite; and though he had 
 not shown any resentment or ill-temper, he had 
 certainly displayed considerable surprise on 
 one or two occasions when she had timidly at- 
 tempted to show that she would like him to
 
 208 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 take an interest in her thoughts as well as 
 her digestion. His own letters came for 
 him every morning, almost in packets, being 
 of too important a nature to be suppressed 
 during the sacred month, as are occasionally 
 those of lesser men ; and Lena could not 
 help wondering, as she saw him sit engrossed 
 with them for a couple of hours after break- 
 fast, whether the time would ever come 
 when she would be of sufficient use to him 
 to be able, at any rate, to sort those volumi- 
 nous piles of correspondence. In her anxiety 
 to hasten the assimilating process, she would 
 have given him poor Florry's epistle to read, 
 had she not remembered that Florry's name 
 was at least as unknown to her husband as 
 the signatures of even the attorneys most 
 favoured by Brooking were to her. Of 
 Brooking she had already heard, that official 
 having had, as has been said, almost as 
 much to do with fixing the wedding day as 
 she herself. 
 
 " I suppose you would like to go out for a
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2O9 
 
 drive this afternoon, or something of that 
 sort, wouldn't you ?" said Mr. Selfert, who 
 had by this time exhausted his corre- 
 spondence, and had just commenced on the 
 evening journals of the previous day, which 
 had been sent down specially by Brookings 
 discretion. 
 
 Brooking had evidently studied the subject 
 of honeymoon, and knew that though it is diffi- 
 cult to go in cold blood to a library in search 
 of distraction during such a period, it is one of 
 the easiest things imaginable to take up a 
 paper, without the possibility of laying one- 
 self open to censure, or even to remorse. 
 Consequently, the Pall Mall Gazelle and the 
 Globe had both been despatched regularly by 
 Brooking for his master's relief, and Lena 
 had been rather surprised by her husband's 
 forethought when she found both those excel- 
 lent journals lying on the breakfast-table, the 
 very morning after their wedding-day. He 
 certainly passed his newspapers on to her, 
 when he had finished them; but notwith- 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Standing this, Lena did not feel that their 
 whole resultant effect was to promote con- 
 versation. 
 
 '' Pray don't think of trying to amuse 
 me, if it bores you to drive about," said 
 Lena in answer to her husband's vague 
 suggestion. *' I never get tired of sitting 
 on the rocks, and looking at that splendid 
 
 sea.'' 
 
 It was quite right that a woman should be 
 so easily pleased, but Mr. Selfert did not 
 himself care so much about looking at the 
 splendid sea, and assured his wife that 
 driving about with her would bore him as 
 little as anything else that was feasible at 
 Ilfracombe. It was true that by so doing 
 his perusal of the London papers would be 
 delayed, as they did not come in till four 
 o'clock, a calamity which did not at first 
 occur to him. Eventually they compromised 
 the matter by deferring their expedition 
 until after the Times had arrived, and then 
 drove over to Watermouth Bay, Mr. Selfert
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 211 
 
 carrying that indispensable product of civili- 
 sation in his pocket. 
 
 Watermouth Bay was almost as pretty as 
 anything Lena had seen in the neighbour- 
 hood of Lydcombe, with a graceful arm of 
 the sea stretching up as if to embrace 
 the castle, whose massive rounded outlines 
 stood boldly up from the bright green sward 
 that ran down almost to the very verge of 
 the water. Lena tried to make a little 
 sketch in her pocket-book of what pleased 
 her in the view, while her husband sat down 
 on the grass to read his TimeSy leaving the 
 carriage to wait a little distance off. He had 
 been uncomfortable all day until that moment 
 had arrived, having a sort of presentiment 
 that there would be something in it of more 
 than ordinary interest, if only because he had 
 put himself in such an out-of-the-way corner 
 of England that it was almost impossible, if 
 anything in the London papers necessitated 
 the writing of a letter, to post one that would 
 be delivered in town next morning. 
 
 14—2
 
 212 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 On this particular day the death of one of 
 the most venerable of the judges who had 
 presided in one of the courts at Westminster 
 for many years, was the first announcement 
 that met his eye. 
 
 It was quite understood in well-informed 
 circles that the Attorney-General, who could 
 now claim it as a matter of right, had long 
 had his eye upon the seat thus rendered 
 vacant, and the great arbiter of public feeling 
 did not hesitate to mention that this appoint- 
 ment only wanted formal completion. 
 
 The Solicitor-General would of course be- 
 come Attorney, and the great question was, 
 who would step into the place of the 
 Solicitor- General. Now three names w^ere 
 spoken of by the Times as men on whom 
 such an appointment might probably fall, and 
 Rothery Selfert's name was not one of the 
 three. 
 
 Lena could not help seeing the frown on 
 her husband's face, as he read over the dis- 
 tasteful paragraph. He had not expected,
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2I3 
 
 and did not expect, that the coveted post 
 would be offered to himself on this occasion. 
 Stonely who was popularly said to have 
 spent over twelve thousand pounds in unsuc- 
 cessfully-contended elections, had undoubtedly 
 stronger claims upon his party, and Rothery 
 Selfert had already been given to understand 
 that, until Stonely was provided for, no such 
 good fortune would come in his direction. 
 He did not complain of the suggestion as to 
 Stonely. But of the other two names that 
 were mentioned, one was that of a visionary 
 theorist, whose voice was listened to with 
 more respect in the House than in the courts 
 below, and the other that of a man much 
 junior to both, who might possibly, in 
 Rothery Selferts opinion, be fit for the 
 position in question in another ten years. 
 After his herculean efforts in the matter of 
 the Juries' Bill, it did seem to Rothery 
 Selfert almost a personal slight to express a 
 belief in the possibility of his being post- 
 poned to such men as these.
 
 214 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 *' Haven't you found something in the 
 paper to worry you ?" asked Lena, who had 
 not got rid of the idea that such worries, if 
 they existed, should be shared in common, if 
 the assimilation which the visit to Ilfracombe 
 was intended to effect was to attain anything 
 like reality at all. 
 
 Notwithstanding such a view, however, 
 she was quite sensible that there were diffi- 
 culties in the way of her sharing such worries 
 as those which were likely to affect her 
 husband ; and did not make the attempt to 
 carry out her theory with confidence. 
 
 The frown on his face was rather deepened 
 than otherwise as he answered her. Any 
 annoyance w^hich reached him was always, in 
 his opinion, doubly intensified when it be- 
 came visible to the world outside him, a term 
 which now included his wife ; and it was his 
 theory that no unpleasant matters should, 
 if it was possible to avoid it, ever be made 
 the subjects of discussion. Not that he was 
 a man who thought lightly of his troubles,
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 215 
 
 but he was accustomed to brood over them 
 in silence, and did not wish that such a habit 
 should be interrupted. 
 
 '' No, no/' he said shortly ; ^' what puts 
 such ideas into your head ? Would you 
 like to look at. the supplement ?" 
 
 In default of sharing- her husband's 
 thoughts, Lena was compelled to share his 
 paper, but she saw that he was displeased, 
 and wondered whether she had stepped out 
 of a wife's path in showing something of the 
 curiosity with which she regarded the work- 
 ings of his mind. She found it difficult to 
 bring her thoughts to the chronicle of births, 
 deaths, and marriages which she held in 
 her hand, and putting down the paper, 
 walked down by herself to the water, which 
 was already turning from the transparent 
 violet of twilight to the cold dead opaqueness 
 that it was fain to borrow from a starless 
 sky. It cannot be said that she was actually 
 distressed by being rebuffed as she had 
 been, but she could not repress a gloomy
 
 2l6 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 fancy that It would be of very little use to 
 have married a husband whose thoughts 
 were not as those of the rest of mankind, 
 if all the offspring of his imagination were 
 shut away from her imperfect ken. Except 
 for the empty satisfaction of the thing, she 
 might just as well have married the curate 
 who wanted her to watch him throwing^ 
 stones at a crow ! At any rate, such a bride- 
 groom as that would have been anxious 
 that she should take an interest in his 
 pursuits. 
 
 Mr. Selfert finished the paper with great 
 tranquillity, lighting a cigar to console him- 
 self for the want of judgment (and he thought 
 he might say, trustworthy information) dis- 
 played by the Jupiter of the press ; and only 
 when he had thoroughly exhausted the lead- 
 ing articles (which he generally read last) did 
 he think it necessary to go in pursuit of his 
 wife. It never occurred to him that any- 
 thing had been wanting In his manner towards 
 her, or that she had walked away from his
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 21/ 
 
 side because it distressed her to remain there 
 without being spoken to. Had anybody told 
 him that he had been harsh and cold, if not 
 absolutely brutal, he would have thought his 
 accuser mad. He had always been told that 
 the supplement of the Times was the most 
 interesting part of the paper in a woman's 
 eyes ! 
 
 He was not so blind, however, as to be 
 unable to perceive that something was amiss 
 when he came up to Lena's side, and saw 
 that there were tears in her eyes. 
 
 " Is there anything the matter ?" he asked 
 gloomily. In how different a tone had his 
 wife sought to know the reason of the frown 
 on his brow twenty minutes ago ! 
 
 *' Of course not," said Lena bravely, feel- 
 ing instinctively that anything like complaint 
 in such a matter would only widen the gulf 
 between them. " Isn't it getting late enough 
 to go home ?" 
 
 Mr. Selfert gave her his arm, that being 
 one of the recognised duties of a bridegroom
 
 2l8 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 in his mind, and they went back to the 
 carriage together. It was too dark of course 
 for him to solace the weariness of the drive 
 back by a second perusal of the paper, but 
 the time was not wholly given to conversa- 
 tion, all the same. Mr. Selfert, who did not 
 think his constitution required him to limit 
 his consumption of nicotine when he was 
 away from London, lit another cigar ; and it 
 was a peculiarity of his (which he had already 
 taken an opportunity of inculcating on his 
 wife), that he did not like to be disturbed by 
 conversation when smoking. At such mo- 
 ments the mighty operations of his mind 
 required perfect isolation from the petty cares 
 and turmoil of the outside world. 
 
 There was an uneasy feeling in the bride's 
 mind next morning, when she woke to the 
 still novel consciousness of her married life, 
 which she would willingly have forced herself 
 to ignore, had it been possible. Up to the 
 day before, Lena had not felt a single mis- 
 giving as to the wisdom of the step she had
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2I9 
 
 taken, with so little ground for the confidence 
 which prompted it. - Knowing, as she did, 
 very little of men, and hardly more of women, 
 she had conceived for herself an absolute and 
 perfect theory of both, and made up her 
 mind to find in her own wedded life its 
 complete realisation. The marriage of bodies 
 was in her eyes next to nothing, or only 
 something so far as it was essential to the 
 marriage of souls. It may sound unintelli- 
 gible to some, and ridiculous to others, to say 
 that her views were Swedenborgian, but so 
 far as it is possible for a woman to coincide 
 with a philosophy of which she knows 
 nothing, such was in truth the case. Only 
 she had breathed into it the pure practicalism 
 which comes from a woman's innocence, and 
 the mystic fancies which disfigure the writ- 
 ings of the philosopher had no part or place 
 in her mind. It was horrible to her instincts 
 to conceive a life in which the thoughts of 
 her husband and herself should for ever 
 remain strange and uninterpreted to each
 
 2 20 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Other, and though she had married without 
 knowing how the interpretation was to be 
 effected, she had never yet doubted that it 
 was sure to follow. The experience of the 
 preceding day had for the first time alarmed 
 the certainty of this conviction. It was not 
 so much that she was distressed at beginning 
 to suspect that the man she had chosen to 
 fancy a god was of as common clay as other 
 men, with assumptions that might almost be 
 ridiculous, and defects perhaps even con- 
 temptible. That was little in her eyes, com- 
 pared with the fear that the man himself, 
 with whatever virtues or faults he possessed, 
 might always remain as personally unknown 
 to her as he had been on the day when 
 they stood before the altar. If it were so, 
 she knew that she could never make herself 
 known to him either. It was in the very 
 nature of her mind to long to bestow its 
 riches upon others, and the thought that this 
 relief might be denied her was enough to 
 make her miserable.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C, 221 
 
 She sat over her breakfast a lono: time, 
 eating it very slowly, and watching her 
 husband devourino: the mental food which 
 the providence of Brooking had furnished by 
 post, with a resolution in her mind to struggle 
 against such a. gloomy possibility with all the 
 resources she could command. Whether she 
 possessed tact or not she did not know, but 
 she resolved that she would possess it. Yet 
 her heart almost sank within her, as she 
 looked at the hard solemn face opposite her, 
 which seemed to have grown even more 
 hard and solemn after its nightly petre- 
 faction. Still, if he could not yet allow her 
 to peep into the arcana of his mind, she 
 thought it possible that he might at any rate 
 care to know something of hers. 
 
 " I don't think I showed you this letter — 
 the one I got yesterday," she said nervously, 
 waiting until he had laid down the paper he 
 was reading, lest her little remark should 
 conflict with weightier matters. 
 
 '' No," he answered, *' vou did not show it to
 
 2 22 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 me, certainly. Is there anything you would 
 wish me to read in it ?" 
 
 It was plain, at any rate, from his tone, 
 that Lena would not be troubled by any 
 attempted surveillance^f her correspondence, 
 but in her present state of mind, it was 
 hardly a consolation to know this. 
 
 " Oh no !" she said, crimson at the con- 
 sciousness of being misunderstood, ''only it 
 is from Florence Carfax — Mrs. Carfax — my 
 greatest friend almost. And I thought you 
 would understand more about it — her — I 
 suppose I mean about myself — if you were 
 to see what she says. Or I thought you 
 might perhaps be amused by some of it. 
 Pray do not trouble yourself to look at it 
 at all, if you don't feel disposed just now." 
 
 She stops, feeling wretchedly aware that 
 her explanation is laboured and inconsistent, 
 and that her husband is looking at her as 
 if they belonged to two different species of 
 wild beasts, caged together by way of a 
 scientific experiment.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 223 
 
 Mr. Selfert makes an effort as if he were 
 trying to soothe a sick child, whose whin- 
 ings and Hspings w^ere quite unintelligible 
 to him. 
 
 '' I am quite disposed, my — my dear," he 
 answers gravely. 
 
 He always feels half-ashamed of himself 
 when that endearing appellation, to which he 
 is by no means accustomed, seems necessary, 
 and has formed a sort of resolution to drop 
 it if it does not become easier to his toneue. 
 Still, in the honeymoon, something of the 
 sort can hardly be avoided, unsuitable as it is 
 to his habit of mind ! And havine thus ex- 
 erted himself to please his wife by calling her 
 " my dear," he proceeds further to humour 
 her by reading her letter. 
 
 How absurd the idea that he *' miorht be 
 
 o 
 
 amused by some of it " appears to Lena's 
 mind, as she sits watching him turn over 
 the pages ! and how she hates herself for 
 having suggested that she expects such a 
 result ! She blushes as she remembers a
 
 224 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 word or two about his age, and another 
 ridiculous word or two about the disap- 
 pointed curate. Perhaps her husband 
 would think that what she expected him to 
 be amused at was poor Florry's harmless 
 little joke about Mr. Roberts exit from 
 church ! A joke must be very good in- 
 deed to bear passing on like that, with 
 special reference to its excellence, and Lena 
 feels that this particular joke is hardly good 
 enough to conve}^ a very clear idea of the 
 nature of the friendship between Florry and 
 herself. 
 
 " Bertie is her husband, of course — a 
 clergyman, I think you said ?" remarks Mr. 
 Selfert, trying to take an interest in the 
 minutiae of Florry's domestic joys, and un- 
 conscious that they are meant to be in any 
 way a pattern for his own. He really strives 
 to keep any of the contempt he feels out of 
 his voice, but there is a ring of sarcasm in 
 It all the same, which he cannot for the 
 very life of him suppress.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 225 
 
 " Yes, a clergyman down In Devonshire," 
 Lena answers mechanically, feeling that her 
 husband does not really care the least 
 whether her friend is married to a clergy- 
 man or a chimney-sweeper. '* I was staying 
 with them just before — this summer, you 
 know." 
 
 " Yes, I remember now," he says, putting 
 down the letter coldly, without any comment 
 on its contents. Nothing Is more distasteful 
 to him than " gush " in any shape, and he is 
 Inwardly thinking that Bertie must be even 
 a greater fool than the majority of men to 
 have married a woman who could produce 
 such a letter as that. 
 
 " She Is a little Impulsive, perhaps," says 
 Lena, with a loyal feeling that something 
 must be said in favour of her friend ; '' but 
 she Is really one of the few £Ood girls I have 
 ever known. So few women have any re- 
 ligious principle at all, I think." 
 
 All this Is absolutely repellent to Rothery 
 Selfert. The clearest view of religious prin- 
 
 VOL. I. 1^
 
 226 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 ciples he has ever taken Is, that it Is not ex- 
 pedient to discuss such matters with women, 
 least of all with his own wife ; and he resents 
 almost as an intrusion upon his own moral 
 privacy any language which may seem to 
 invite an enunciation of his personal opinion 
 upon those questions. If his wife means to 
 get to heaven, surely she can manage it 
 without interfering with his own theories 
 on her prospects of doing so ! 
 
 *' I have no doubt she has been quite 
 deserving of your friendship," he answers, 
 more coldly than ever, '' but I should not 
 advise your having recourse to her in any — 
 any religious difficulties which may occur 
 to you. It Is far better not to discuss such 
 things with comparative strangers." 
 
 " I certainly never went to her for guid- 
 ance," says Lena, a little hurt; ''even when 
 I had no one else to ask, and It is not at 
 all likely that I should do so now, though 
 I do not look upon her as a ' comparative 
 stranger' at all. All I meant was, that I
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2 2/ 
 
 always admired her good qualities, which are 
 much deeper and more real than you would 
 perhaps imagine from reading her letter." 
 
 Rothery Selfert signifies, by taking up 
 again the paper which has been laid down 
 during this discussion, that he has had quite 
 enough of the excellences of Mrs. Carfax 
 in particular, and of his wife's confidences 
 in general. As he told Lena when he first 
 proposed that she should come and exert 
 such domestic influence as she was able 
 over him, he had certainly meant that her 
 happiness should be secured as well as his own; 
 but in making such a promise he had much 
 more in his mind the physical necessities 
 of her existence and the unfortunate sur- 
 roundings of her home, than the possible 
 requirements of her less material desires 
 and aspirations. It seemed to him almost 
 beyond the limits of good taste that a 
 woman to whom so much had been given 
 should weary him with her feeble attempts 
 to secure more. He did not understand
 
 2 28 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 that she was audacious enough to look 
 for Identification with him, but he could 
 perceive an assumption of equality which 
 was particularly disagreeable to his 
 mind. 
 
 Nevertheless, he had quite expected that 
 there would be something for him to correct 
 in any woman he might select, and had no 
 misgivings as to the ultimate result of his 
 experiment with Lena. The effusiveness 
 and want of restraint to which he objected at 
 present were the natural products, in his 
 mind, of such associations as those of which 
 she boasted in connection with the Devon- 
 shire clergyman's wife, and he had no fear 
 that they would not pass off under the heal- 
 thier influence he was now able to exert. Of 
 the excellence of the material which he had 
 to work upon, although they were nearly at 
 the end of the second week, of their honey- 
 moon, he had still no doubt; and quite 
 believed that when the domestic life which 
 he anticipated had fairly commenced, it would
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2 29 
 
 be seen that he \vas as fortunate among men 
 as she among women. 
 
 The bridegroom always considered a 
 couple of hours after breakfast as consecrated 
 to his own personal uses, and his daily cor- 
 respondence was indeed generally sufficient 
 to demand at least as much of his exclusive 
 attention. Lena was not at all exigeaiite in 
 such matters, and had it been necessary for 
 him to sit in a room by himself the whole day 
 writing, would not have dreamed of believing 
 herself slighted or neglected, had he onh' 
 given her the reality of his society when he 
 professed to do so. On this particular morn- 
 ing, however, she felt chilled and repelled by 
 the manner in which her overtures towards 
 familiarity had been received, and the task of 
 attempting to answer the letter from Devon- 
 shire in the spirit in which it was written 
 was particularly distasteful to her. Never- 
 theless, she did her best to prevent her 
 depression of spirits from being manifest in 
 her reply to it, and flattered herself that she
 
 230 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 had succeeded In doing so. The idea of 
 appearing in Florry's eyes afraid of or dis- 
 satisfied with her husband was horrible in her 
 mind. 
 
 She got hold of the papers her husband 
 had been reading in the course of the day, 
 and managed to discover for herself the cause 
 of the cloud she had seen on his brow when 
 studying the Times the evening before. The 
 Vicar of Lydcombe had said of Rothery 
 Selfert that he was a man who looked to 
 becoming- Solicitor-General some day, and 
 during her brief engagement she had carefully 
 caught up and digested every word spoken 
 In her hearing respecting the man of whom 
 she thought so much. Of course she 
 knew that it was a great thing to be Solicitor- 
 General, thouf?h she had never thouorht of 
 the secondary honours which would devolve 
 upon her own head if so splendid a dream 
 were realised ; and she could understand that, 
 even in his honeymoon, a man's eyes might 
 well be clouded at the dimmine of such a
 
 ROTHERY SEl^FERT, Q.C. 2^1 
 
 prospect. As she thought over the matter 
 she began to wonder less that, with all this 
 strong meat for his mind, her husband had 
 found it difficult to turn his attention to 
 such babyish pap as the consideration of her 
 trivial interests and aspirations must be ; and 
 before the day closed, she had almost per- 
 suaded herself that she had been exacting 
 and unreasonable in feeling any discontent at 
 his reserved and abstracted manner at all. 
 She sat looking wistfully at him after dinner, 
 almost afraid to speak even of ordinary matters 
 lest she should appear to be intruding upon 
 his privacy, and her constraint became after 
 a time manifest even to his pre-engaged 
 faculties of perception. He meant to be per- 
 fectly kind to her, if she would only abstain 
 from bothering him about- subjects upon 
 which he was not willing to talk ; and he 
 was uneasy, after his own fashion, at the idea 
 that she might think that she had a grievance. 
 " I hope you did not fancy I meant to say 
 anything uncomplimentary of any of your
 
 232 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 friends this morning," he said, trying to 
 smile. 
 
 '' Oh no," answered Lena, who was by 
 this time almost contrite for having thought 
 it possible that Florry's domestic excellences 
 could interest a man who knew it was pro- 
 bable that he might become Solicitor- General 
 at some future day. " Besides, I should like 
 you to say uncomplimentary things if you 
 feel them. I would much rather know what 
 }ou really think than — than have to guess 
 at It." 
 
 She felt that there was a difficulty about 
 explaining her meaning, and hesitated as she 
 made the attempt. It would not do to 
 imply that she thought all the workings of 
 so great a mind fit subject-matter for sacri- 
 legious conjecture and unlicensed curiosity. 
 
 ''If my thoughts had seemed to me un- 
 pleasant for you to listen to," said Mr. 
 Selfert, '' I certainly should not have spoken 
 of them. If two people are to live happily 
 together, it is absolutely necessary that they
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 233 
 
 should know — both of them — when to hold 
 their tonorues." 
 
 o 
 
 A warning that might with advantage 
 have been deferred till the honeymoon was 
 over, though the speaker was in reality only 
 glorying in his own infallible judgment and 
 self-control, and did not at the moment in- 
 tend to hold those qualities out for his wife's 
 imitation. 
 
 Lena, however, did not doubt about 
 putting the latter construction upon his 
 words, and grew crimson with vexation as 
 she accepted the rebuke which she had 
 schooled herself into believing that she de- 
 served. 
 
 '' I know that I often speak without 
 thinking sufBciently," she said with difficulty, 
 humbling herself as it were in the dust before 
 the deified being she had chosen to worship. 
 *' But do not think it necessary to be silent 
 about anything for my sake. I had so much 
 rather know what you really think — even 
 Avhen vou wish to find fault.''
 
 234 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 The deity was still dissatisfied, notwith- 
 standing the incense of adulation. He did 
 not like the sensation of being granted per- 
 mission to criticise his wife's peculiarities as 
 he pleased, and felt that it was necessary to 
 say something which should convey to her 
 clearly that he meant to reserve his own 
 mind — or at any rate, the greater part of it — 
 for his own peculiar use and gratification. It 
 had always appeared to him that the gentle- 
 man who has become famous by the azure 
 tint of his beard was more than justified in 
 wishing to exclude his wife from one chamber 
 at least in his house, and that the verdict of 
 posterity upon his marital indiscretions w^as 
 at any rate hasty. 
 
 *' I do not think you quite understand 
 me," he said slowly. " My meaning is, that 
 no man's thoughts — and I should think no 
 woman's — are always fit to be communicated 
 to any other person. It is healthy, in my 
 judgment, for the mind to learn to rest en- 
 tirely on itself in many matters — perhaps in
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, q.C. 235 
 
 most. There should, of course, be confidences 
 between man and wife — and I hope that 
 between us there will be many — but it would 
 be a mistake to think that all the litde 
 eccentricities of the imaiirination would 
 be the better for being shared with some- 
 body else. I am sure that you will not 
 misunderstand the intention with which I 
 say this." 
 
 Lena saw that he meant to avoid an)^ 
 appearance of unkindness, and was not so 
 much discouraged by the enunciation of this 
 rather unsympathetic philosophy, as she had 
 been the day before by its practical illustra- 
 tion. It was something, at any rate, to have 
 got at some of her husband's opinions, un- 
 promising as they made the prospect of 
 getting at the remainder. If she was not to be 
 allowed to peep behind the curtain, she was 
 at least allowed to inspect the machinery 
 which drew it. And there were to be con- 
 fidences too ; though she could not help 
 wondering of what nature those confidences
 
 236 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 would be. It was something to be quite 
 sure that, whatever form they might take, 
 they would never be such as to endanger the 
 health of either his mind or hers.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Mr. Mordex the clergyman, who has been 
 mentioned as not having made even as good 
 a fight of it with the world as his brother the 
 Treasury clerk had done, v\^as the incumbent 
 of a large district somewhere up to the north- 
 east of Islington, called in the maps Lord's- 
 end, and being indeed one of the most remote 
 spots to which the spiritual arm of the metro- 
 polis reached. It was by no means a mass 
 of dirt and ignorance and precocious depravity 
 like the ordinary East-end parishes, which 
 seem from the railway to consist principally 
 of candle-factories and gas-works, being 
 indeed more what the house-agents call a 
 " residential " district ; but those who there
 
 238 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 resided were principally small tradesmen 
 from the dirtier parts of London, who were 
 themselves more godly than cleanly in their 
 ways, and furnished a congregation whose 
 devotional warmth it was (especially in sum- 
 mer time) impossible to ignore. Sophy 
 Morden, Frank's elder and only sister, had 
 some excuse for declaring herself dissatisfied 
 with the form in which the rites of the church 
 were performed at St. Jude's, and in attaching 
 herself to an edifice more Anglican in its 
 views, which was barely accessible by railway 
 from Lord's-end station in time for the morn- 
 ing service. Even to the incumbent himself 
 the whole tone of Lord's-end was so distasteful, 
 that he could hardly quarrel with his daugh- 
 ter very seriously for the slight thus cast 
 upon his ministrations, and only stipulated 
 that nothing beyond her own pocket-money 
 should be expended in her conveyance to and 
 from the more attractive place of worship. 
 
 In one respect at least the clerical brother 
 was more fortunate than the Civil servant,
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 239 
 
 being blessed with a wife of as equable a 
 temper as ever was given to woman in order 
 to make man happy. Most men, probably, 
 have noticed how much more common it is 
 to meet with a good clergyman's wife than 
 a good clergyman ; all the virtue presumably 
 derived from the bishop's hands and the 
 benediction of the church beino^ as it were 
 strained through the imperfect male medium 
 into the weaker but water-tight vessel. 
 Whatever may be the reason the fact is 
 undeniable, and in placidity and sweetness 
 of temper the incumbent of Lord's-end was 
 certainly surpassed by his wife ; though 
 nothing is hereby meant to be said against 
 the moral excellences of Frank's father, who 
 was undoubtedly as hard-working and con- 
 scientious a parson as was to be found within 
 the metropolitan district, and had never 
 flinched from even the most unsavoury of 
 his duties among the residential tradesmen. 
 Yet in the discharge of his family responsi- 
 bilities the Reverend Mr. Morden was not
 
 240 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 always so judicious or tender-hearted as the 
 quiet woman to whom any domestic back- 
 slidings were a much sorer affliction ; and 
 had his father been as able to interpret the 
 secret of the gorgeous envelopes addressed 
 to Frank as well as the keener feminine 
 discernment, it is probable that the inde- 
 pendence of that misguided young gentleman 
 would have met with a less timid rebuke than 
 that which he had successfully resisted. 
 
 The bosom of one's family is undoubtedly 
 the cheapest place in which a young man in 
 Frank's position can reside, even when the 
 additional railway fare from such a howling 
 wilderness as Lord's-end to the more habit- 
 able parts of London is taken into considera- 
 tion ; but circumstances had lately occurred 
 which had led Frank to doubt whether the 
 total absence of privacy thereby rendered 
 necessary was not rather a dear price to pay 
 even for such advantages. Just at present, 
 he was much annoyed by finding that the 
 thinofs which should have been for his
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 24 1 
 
 pride were turned into an occasion of 
 falling. 
 
 Young Danebury's faith in the undeniable 
 position and respectability of the young lady 
 he had seen his friend Frank escorting had 
 unfortunately been only too genuine, and 
 though gratifying to that young gentleman's 
 feelings, led to results which were not quite 
 so unobjectionable. i\s Frank had osten- 
 sibly spent that Sunday in thoroughly irre- 
 proachable society at Brighton, which he had 
 indeed been accustomed to frequent before 
 he had fallen away from the straight paths 
 in which his boyhood had walked, it was 
 nothing short of a calamity that Danebury, 
 •who had been at the Lord's-end parsonage 
 often enough in his school-days now gone by, 
 should have taken the occasion of his meeting 
 Sophy at the i\nglican place of worship 
 (which was fashionable in the afternoon) to 
 mention that he had seen Frank at the 
 *'Zoo'' the Sunday before, ''not unaccom- 
 panied/' to use a classical and expressive 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 idiom. Sophy's religious principles, whether 
 because or in spite of their Anglican ten- 
 dency, were sufficiently strong to fill her with 
 a holy horror at the possible depths of 
 iniquity thus laid bare to her innocent gaze ; 
 and having ascertained that her suspicions 
 were at least well founded, she brought the 
 dark mystery (from purely conscientious 
 motives) before the family conclave in 
 solemn form. There was perhaps no great 
 harm in the " Zoo," or even in his having 
 taken a turn there with a well-dresssed 
 young woman of prepossessing appearance ; 
 but Frank had distinctly given his family 
 bosom to understand that he had solaced 
 his weary brain on that particular day at 
 Brighton ! 
 
 Frank was not fond of telling unnecessary 
 falsehoods, or even of adhering too closely 
 to such as he had thought necessary, and 
 confessed, when taxed with his iniquity, that 
 he had allowed a — a misapprehension to 
 prevail.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 243 
 
 " The fact was, I meant to go down to 
 Brighton in the morning," he explained, 
 calmly facing the storm, '' but I changed my 
 mind." 
 
 " My dear boy," said his mother, looking 
 anxiously at the gathering blackness on Mr. 
 Morden's brow, "why didn't you tell us so 
 when you came back ? Nobody would 
 have accused you of doing anything wrong 
 then." 
 
 Frank simply shrugged his shoulders, de- 
 claring that he did not feel called upon to 
 account for the way in which he had spent 
 every hour of his time. At the same time 
 he thought how difficult it w^ould be to enter 
 into the details of his visit to Gotha Street, 
 and the hospitality which the mother of his 
 Lizzie had shown him there. 
 
 " I expect you, sir, to spend your time in 
 such a manner that you need not be ashamed 
 to give an account of it, if necessary/' said 
 the clergyman sternly. " The fact that you 
 thought it necessary to lie in the matter 
 
 16 — 2
 
 244 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 makes it difificult to believe that the — the 
 companion with whom you were seen was 
 one in whose society no shame need have 
 been felt. Still, if you can assure me on 
 your honour that it was so, I will not refuse 
 to accept your word." 
 
 Frank, who had on previous occasions 
 been wont to shrink from the paternal wrath, 
 felt comparatively stubborn now, and by no 
 means disposed to give the required assur- 
 ance in the terms in which it was asked. 
 
 '' I didn't consider there was anything to 
 be ashamed of," he said sullenly. " I don't 
 suppose you'd have cared about walking 
 with the girl yourself." 
 
 The clergyman cast up his eyes at the 
 hideous suggestion, but could not find words 
 at the moment to express the righteousness 
 of his wrath. 
 
 *' I suppose Danebury told you she looked 
 respectable," continued Frank triumphantly, 
 thinking with pride of the salute which the 
 excellence of Lizzie's 'form' had extorted
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 245 
 
 from that competent authority, and which 
 was now costing him so dear. 
 
 " You had better leave my house, sir," 
 said the clergyman, making a motion with 
 his hand as if to put away the unclean thing 
 from him. 
 
 '' Richard !" said Mrs. Morden appeal- 
 ingly, knowing that Richard was not gene- 
 rally wont to disregard her appeals. 
 
 On this occasion, however, the man, who 
 was conscious of his weakness^ had deter- 
 mined to be strong. 
 
 "Where is he to go ?" said the mother, 
 shuddering at the idea that other and less 
 fastidious homes might open to receive the 
 reprobate. 
 
 " Perhaps we could get him a room at 
 Bastin's," said Sophy suggestively, who was 
 a little frightened at the thought that she 
 might be called responsible for what was 
 happening. 
 
 Bastin was a thoroughly respectable grocer 
 a couple of hundred yards from the parson-
 
 246 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 age, who had occasionally accommodated 
 the clergyman's family with a bedroom in 
 such an emergency as the presence of an 
 additional guest. It was an excellent room, 
 and would have been beyond criticism, if 
 only the smell of cheese could have been 
 kept from coming up the passage ; but such 
 a resource was hardly sufficient to solve the 
 present difficulty, and Sophy's suggestion 
 was allowed to fall to the ground. 
 
 Frank, who knew very well that his 
 father did not mean to turn him out without 
 a sovereign in his pocket, and could not very 
 well afford to pay for his son's board and 
 lodging elsewhere for the sake of gratifying 
 his ideas of parental discipline, compromised 
 the matter by walking out of the house, and 
 absenting himself for the remainder of the 
 day. It did appear to him very hard that 
 his efforts to obtain congenial society should 
 expose him to this kind of annoyance, and he 
 thought how much pleasanter, after all, had 
 been the way in which Mrs. Deacle had be-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 24/ 
 
 haved on discovering how indiscreet the 
 young people had been. 
 
 Nevertheless, he restrained his momentary 
 inclination to go and allow Lizzie's mother to 
 mix him another glass of brandy and water, 
 and walked gloomily about the streets instead, 
 until it was late enough for him to attain the 
 privacy of his own room without a renewal of 
 the parental discipline. He might, of course, 
 have gone to an hotel, but there was no hotel 
 within a couple of miles of Lord's-end, and it 
 would have been necessary to have taken the 
 railway back to town to find one. 
 
 It is to be feared that as he prowled about 
 the residential district, he did not feel as well 
 disposed towards his sister Sophy as her 
 well-intentioned suggestion with respect to 
 the accommodation to be obtained at Bastin's 
 deserved. 
 
 The next day was a Saturday — the very 
 Saturday with regard to which he had pro- 
 mised to communicate with Miss Deacle — 
 and he managed to get his breakfast and
 
 248 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 escape from the house without again sustain- 
 ing the thunder of his father's ire. As he 
 shook the dust of the house off his feet he 
 felt that he positively loathed Lord's-end^ 
 and all the appurtenances thereof, and even 
 the genial squalor of Gotha Street seemed 
 preferable to such an atmosphere of squab- 
 bling sanctity. 
 
 His mother, fearing that such threats as 
 the clergyman had used might be repeated, 
 had obtained for him since the previous night 
 his quarter s allowance ; and with twenty 
 pounds in his pocket he felt almost indepen- 
 dent — so independent, indeed, that having 
 put in an appearance at ^' Chaffin's " for a 
 couple of hours, he left that resort of aspiring 
 youth about one o'clock with a perfect glow 
 of virtue stealing over him, and a keen sense 
 of the undeserved indignities which had been 
 heaped upon his head. As to there being 
 anything at all irregular in his acquaintance- 
 ship with Lizzie, surely a man whose affec- 
 tions had just been trampled on by pitiless
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 249 
 
 heels, as his had been, might be allowed some 
 little latitude in such matters ! 
 
 That, he felt, was just the point which 
 neither his father nor mother, nor even Sophy, 
 could be expected to understand. Only a 
 man who had suffered as he had done could 
 fully comprehend the necessity under which 
 he laboured of obtaining some kind of 
 relief. 
 
 It was the middle of the day by the time 
 that he arrived at this conclusion, and he re- 
 membered that his promised communication 
 to Lizzie with respect to his plans for the 
 afternoon had not been made. No doubt 
 Lizzie could have manao^ed some lio^ht relaxa- 
 tion for herself in his absence, and would 
 have been wise enough to have thought twice 
 before she quarrelled with him for his non- 
 attendance, but Frank's inclinations just then 
 were such as to cause him to regard the 
 sanctity of his obligation to Lizzie for that 
 afternoon with a most conscientious eye. 
 
 It would never do to allow Lizzie to be
 
 250 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 punished because there had been a little un- 
 pleasantness at Lord's-end, and eventually all 
 this scrupulous reasoning and unselfish deter- 
 mination resulted, of course, in Lizzie being 
 induced to overlook his broken promise of 
 writing, and go down with him to Gravesend 
 for the afternoon. 
 
 It did not appear to be necessary that Lizzie 
 should give notice to Mrs. Deacle, or any- 
 body else, of her intention to absent herself 
 till nightfall ; but, of course, as she told 
 Frank, her mother knew she wasn't alone, 
 and had unlimited confidence in the honour 
 and integrity of *' Mr. Frank." 
 
 It was quite certain, at any rate, that in 
 the Deacle household no such accurate ac- 
 count of her time was expected from Miss 
 Lizzie as that demanded by the Lord's-end 
 clergyman from his reprobate offspring. 
 
 Frank, whose trust in his twenty pounds 
 at the beginning of every quarter was always 
 quite unbounded, was very free with his 
 money that evening, and ordered their dinner
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 25 1 
 
 with SO much insoitciance that \Jylz\^, not 
 without experience in such matters, was in- 
 duced to form a higher estimate of his 
 resources than the balance of the twenty 
 pounds quite warranted. 
 
 There is probably no error more widely 
 spread among the inferior classes than the 
 idea that the outward manners and semblance 
 of a gentleman are invariably accompanied 
 by financial resources which render the ex- 
 penditure of a sovereign and a shilling 
 matters of equal indifference. Is there a 
 labourer in the world who would believe, if 
 disappointed in his expectation of a shilling 
 for beer, that the gentleman who withheld 
 the boon did so with any knowledge of the 
 number of shillings in his pocket he might 
 draw upon ? 
 
 Smoking and drinking coffee in a balcony 
 that overlooks the water, in the soothing 
 society of the one woman in the world who 
 takes the trouble to sympathise with you, is 
 an occupation highly calculated to render the
 
 252 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 flight of time less perceptible than usual, and 
 Frank certainly gave less attention to that 
 subject than was quite prudent, considering 
 the sotcpqon of impropriety which flavoured 
 his presence in that balcony at all. 
 
 The last train was to leave for London at 
 a quarter before eleven, and it ought cer- 
 tainly to have been Miss Deacle's especial 
 care that a sufficient margin of time was left, 
 after paying the bill, to insure her return to 
 Gotha Street at least some time that night. 
 
 Either the sympathetic influence of Frank s 
 cigar, however, or the witching nature of the 
 situation altogether, prevented Lizzie from 
 being quite as wakeful in the matter as it 
 behoved a young lady to be whose position 
 in life enabled her to dispense with the 
 superfluity of a chaperon, and a little delay 
 in changing one of Frank's five-pound notes 
 rendered the situation still more critical. 
 
 It only wanted ^v^ minutes of the quarter 
 when they at last made their attempt to 
 reach the railway station in time, and the
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 253 
 
 attempt was then made more with the view 
 of easing their consciences than with any 
 idea that it could be successful. 
 
 Of course they saw nothing of the train, 
 and had to make their way back to the hotel 
 they had just quitted without their consciences, 
 or at least one of their consciences, being as 
 much relieved by the exertions they had 
 made as would have been desirable. It was 
 quite evident that Lizzie, at any rate, must 
 stay there for the night. 
 
 Frank, who was just a shade alarmed at 
 his position, and very anxious to save Miss 
 Deacle from as much of the embarrassment 
 of the situation as possible, declared that he 
 could walk back to London perfectly well. 
 It was only about twenty miles, at the out- 
 side, he thought, to Lord's-end ; or even if he 
 could not get so far, plenty of the public-houses 
 on the way would be open quite early in the 
 morning and he could rough it out easily 
 alone. 
 
 There would of course be no difficulty in
 
 254 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 obtaining accommodation for Miss Deacle 
 where they were, and as she would be quite 
 unknown, no harm would be done beyond 
 shocking the old lady who had been so ready 
 with her brandy and water. 
 
 " I never heard such an Idea in my life,'^ 
 said Lizzie, unwilling that so much discom- 
 fort should be incurred solely by reason of 
 her late carelessness. " How can you walk 
 about the country all night by yourself ?" 
 
 As she certainly did not mean that she 
 would be ready to walk about the country 
 all night with him, it is to be presumed that 
 she did not see the necessity of his walking 
 about at all. 
 
 '' I don't mind It a bit," said Frank, con- 
 fronting the difficulty manfully. *' I could 
 smoke till I was black in the face." 
 
 '^ Nonsense," said Lizzie, who had set her 
 face against such folly altogether. " There 
 must be plenty of room in the hotel. You'd 
 better ask them if they can't give you an- 
 other room, and sleep here like a Christian.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 255 
 
 Then we'll breakfast together in the morning, 
 and nobody need be a bit the wiser. It's all 
 humbug being afraid of what people will say 
 — there isn't anybody to say anything. I 
 don't suppose you'll talk to the Kew people 
 about it." 
 
 Frank was not at all disposed in reality to 
 smoke until facial blackness was produced, 
 and began to waver, reflecting that it was 
 almost absurd for two people who were con- 
 scious of such complete innocence of design 
 to make themselves absolutely uncomfortable 
 in deference to the prejudices of an evil- 
 thinking world. If Lizzie was not afraid of 
 the authorities at Gotha Street, he certainly 
 did not see why he should consider the people 
 at Kew. 
 
 He rang the bell, after a little vacillating, 
 and it was found that the resources of the 
 establishment were equal to the unexpected 
 demand thus made upon them. So he had 
 just one more cigar in the balcony with 
 Lizzie, and then said good-night. 
 
 ^
 
 256 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 The salute, however, which had followed 
 upon the brandy and water at Gotha Street, 
 was on this occasion, in deference to the 
 peculiarity of their position, tacitly omitted ; 
 and Frank was quite convinced, by the time 
 he got to bed, that no exception to the pru- 
 dence of his conduct in their little dilemma 
 could possibly be taken. 
 
 By the time, however, that morning came, 
 the glow of self-satisfaction had a little gone 
 off, and he began to have vague apprehen- 
 sions that all would not end for him as com- 
 fortably as Lizzie had predicted the night 
 before. ;He felt a cowardly impulse to escape 
 from the place without eating the sociable 
 breakfast which had formed a part of the 
 programme then sketched out for him, pay- 
 ing the bill, and leaving a little note for 
 Lizzie to explain that he had thought it best to 
 take the earliest train, so as to reach Lord's- 
 end in time for morning service, but he was 
 conscious that such an offence would never 
 be forgiven, even by one so ready to make
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 257 
 
 allowances as Miss Deacle, and felt that he 
 was bound to face the matter out. So he de- 
 scended very slowly to the coffee-room in which 
 they had ordered breakfast, trying to console 
 himself by the thought that even if he had 
 escaped to Lord's-end in time, the morning 
 service there would not have been a much 
 more pleasant ordeal. 
 
 Lizzie was standing with her back to the 
 door, looking out of the bow-window, and 
 did not even look round when she heard the 
 noise of Frank's entrance. 
 
 Unfortunately they had the room to them- 
 selves, and he felt compelled to try and 
 assume something of the off-hand and m- 
 soiiciant manner which had first conciliated 
 Miss Deacle's affections. 
 
 " There hasn't been an earthquake in the 
 night, you see," he said cheerfully, approach- 
 ing the window. 
 
 '* Oh, Frank, I am so miserable !" said Miss 
 Deacle, disconcerting Frank's well-meant 
 efforts very much by bursting into a passion 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 ROTHERY SEI.FERT, Q.C. 
 
 of tears, and throwing herself, as if with the 
 hope of irrigating that stony ground, upon 
 his breast. 
 
 " My dear Lizzie," said Frank, a little per- 
 plexed by the suddenness of the young lady's 
 emotion, and with a salutary dread of being 
 discovered by the waiter, or other unpre- 
 judiced observers, while under his present 
 difficulties, *' what can be the matter ?" 
 
 '' I — don't — know — what — ever I shall 
 do !" sobbed Lizzie, apparently endeavouring 
 to obtain temporary relief by rubbing her 
 forehead against the buttons of Frank's coat. 
 ** I haven't had a bit of sleep all night." 
 
 '* You'll be all right when you have had 
 some breakfast," said Frank encouragingly, 
 trying to persuade himself that the secret of 
 Miss Deacle's distress lay no deeper. '* Soda 
 and milk, you know — have you ever tried 
 that ? It's a capital thing in the morning." 
 
 But the '' sweet oblivious antidote " pro- 
 posed did not seem attractive to Miss Deacle, 
 who began rubbing Frank's buttons in a
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 259 
 
 horizontal direction instead of vertically by 
 way of signifying a negative. 
 
 " What shall I say to — to them at home ?" 
 she managed to gasp out when no further 
 recuperative was suggested. " How ever 
 could I have been such a — such a fool !" 
 
 " Why, my dear Lizzie," said Frank, who 
 felt injured by the inconsistency of his dear 
 Lizzie's distress, *' you didn't seem to mind it 
 a bit last night. I'm awfully sorry if you think 
 you'll be bothered about it, but it's no good 
 making a fuss now. You'd much better 
 come and have some breakfast quietly. 
 There's some coffee, if you're sure you don't 
 care about any soda." 
 
 As to the folly of which the young lady 
 accused herself, Frank felt that the less said 
 the better ; at any rate, by him. Lizzie, who 
 by this time had been prevailed upon to dis- 
 engage herself from the buttons, and was 
 trying the cooling effect of a white pocket- 
 handkerchief, only shook her head convul- 
 sively, as if to imply that by no stimulant or 
 
 : 7- 2
 
 26o ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 corrective beverage could the tone of a dis- 
 ordered conscience be restored. 
 
 " I don't believe mother will let me into 
 the house," she whispered between her sobs, 
 which were coming at regular intervals, In 
 the way In which hiccoughs are wont to afflict 
 their victims, and did not allow of a longer 
 remark being made without Interruption. 
 Frank was so confounded by the extraor- 
 dinary change in Lizzie's demeanour from 
 that which had shown Itself nine or ten hours 
 before, that he had not courage to remind 
 her of the very words in which she had 
 declared that the comments of the world on 
 their conduct could be braved with perfect 
 impunity. It did not, however, for a moment 
 occur to him to doubt the reality of her woe ; 
 though when she talked about her restless 
 night, he could not help remembering that 
 the strong tendency to fall asleep, which she 
 had displayed In the balcony the previous 
 evening, had not led him to expect that the 
 hours of darkness would be vexed by any
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 26 1 
 
 such infliction. He turned abruptly away 
 from the contemplation of her distress, and 
 rang the bell for breakfast, feeling that such 
 a proceeding was the first step, at any rate, 
 towards emancipating himself from the diffi- 
 culties of his present position. Surely the 
 efforts of other men to obtain momentary 
 oblivion for such sufferings as his were not 
 hampered by difficulties like those which 
 beset him at every turn ! 
 
 He ate his breakfast almost in silence, and 
 was a little relieved to see that, notwithstand- 
 ing her reception of his suggestions as to 
 soda-water and coffee, Lizzie was not in- 
 capacitated from making a very satisfactory 
 meal. They had to wait until the middle of 
 the day for a train back to town, and perhaps 
 Frank would have found even the morning 
 service at Lords-end less depressing than 
 the manifestations of Miss Deacle's self- 
 reproach to which he was compelled to listen. 
 Of course he was sorry for her, but the blan- 
 dishments with which he attempted to soothe
 
 262 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 her distress were awkward and clumsily 
 offered. He had sought the attractions of 
 his Lizzie's society, in the first instance, in 
 order that she might console him, and did 
 not at all like the present necessity of re- 
 versing the process. 
 
 " You'll take me home yourself, won't 
 you ?" said Lizzie when they were in the 
 railway-carriage, a considerable hole having 
 been made in one of Frank's five-pound notes 
 before they got away from the scene of their 
 misadventure. 
 
 '* I suppose so, if you wish it," said Frank 
 gloomily, thinking that his present position 
 would hardly be improved if Lizzie were to 
 take him home to Lord's-end, No doubt, 
 however, the denizens of Lord's-end and 
 Gotha Street would look upon matters from 
 a different point of view. 
 
 '' I daren't go home at all, if you don't," 
 said Lizzie, beginning to sob again, and re- 
 jecting altogether the caresses with which 
 Frank, moved almost to despair, attempted
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 263 
 
 to Stanch the flow of her grief. '' Father'd 
 hah" kill me, if he fancied anything was 
 wrong. He's an awful brute sometimes." 
 
 It must be remembered that the terrors of 
 Deacle pere had not yet been presented to 
 Frank, and he almost shuddered at the pros- 
 pect of this addition to the amenities he 
 might expect at Gotha Street. 
 
 '^ I'll do anything you like," he said, feeling 
 that the hiccoughs, or sobs, must be checked 
 at any price ; ^^ only you mustn't cry like that. 
 What on earth is there to cry about ? I tell 
 you ril do anything you want." 
 
 " I don't believe you would," said Lizzie 
 between the sobs. " You wouldn't marry 
 me if it was ever so. There isn't any good 
 pretending you're really sorry for me, or you 
 wouldn't have got me into this mess. You 
 were glad enough of anybody to be sorry for 
 you, but it's no good talking. Wh — what a 
 fool I was !" 
 
 This sort of thing went on most of the 
 way up to London, so that their return was
 
 264 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 by no means so pleasant as the journey down 
 had been, and Frank had enjoyed quite 
 enough of his companion's society by the 
 time they had got into a cab for Gotha 
 Street. He would willingly enough have 
 done something to compensate Lizzie for the 
 disagreeable consequences of his imprudence^ 
 but there was a grim sort of comedy about 
 the matrimonial suggestion, at which he could 
 almost have laughed, even in the midst of his 
 troubles. Eighty pounds a year at present^ 
 with the prospect of a subaltern's pay when 
 he had done with Chaffin's, would hardly, he 
 thought, tempt Lizzie to leave her post of 
 dignity behind the bar at her uncle's eating- 
 house ; and he felt so sure of the scorn with 
 which that young lady would have received 
 a candid account of his financial position,, 
 that he did not think it necessary to repudiate 
 her suggestion quite as energetically as would 
 perhaps have been prudent. It should be 
 remembered that nothing about Lizzie was 
 even yet distasteful to him ; even her distress
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 265 
 
 had been rendered less unpleasant to him 
 than it otherwise would have been by the 
 efforts he had been allowed to make to 
 soothe it ; and it w^ould have been repugnant 
 to his feelings to have been compelled to tell 
 her point-blank that he had no more inten- 
 tion of marrying her than of marrying her 
 mother. He did not, in fact, believe that 
 she had been quite in earnest when she made 
 such a suggestion, looking upon her — quite 
 justly — as a good deal too shrewd to labour 
 under any misapprehension in the matter. 
 
 By the time Gotha Street was reached, 
 Miss Deacle had conquered her emotion, 
 symptoms of amelioration having set in as 
 soon as the familiar purlieus of the New 
 Road came in view, almost as if the monu- 
 mental graves and plaster-of- Paris trophies, 
 with which that thoroughfare is decorated, 
 exercised some occult and soothing influence 
 over her soul. It really seemed as if some 
 sympathetic instinct had taught her what 
 would be expected of her by the family
 
 266 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 authorities ; for certainly the greeting which 
 awaited the truants would have rendered 
 any violent display of penitence incongruous 
 and absurd. The old lady who looked so 
 like a sack of meat opened the door, as she 
 had done on a former occasion, and though 
 she looked a little grave at first, welcomed 
 Mr. Frank, when he had done paying the 
 cabman, with quite her old effusiveness. 
 
 " Lor, Lizzie, youVe given us such a 
 fright !" she exclaimed. *' Your father was 
 just talking about putting a notice in the 
 paper about you." 
 
 Probably Mr. Deade's connection with 
 the Echo offered him certain facilities for 
 advertising at a reduced rate, and Frank 
 shuddered at the thought of the ubiquitous 
 little red carts being posted with handbills, 
 setting out the details of his personal appear- 
 ance. 
 
 " Don't make a fuss, mother," said Lizzie, 
 entering the house with as much composure 
 as if she had just come back from church.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 267 
 
 *' Just tell father he needn't trouble himself, 
 while I put off my hat." 
 
 Frank felt compelled to follow the old 
 woman into the house, seeing that Lizzie 
 had evidently no idea of his deserting her 
 yet, though he would have given the re- 
 mainder of his twenty pounds with pleasure 
 to have been allowed to leave her to get 
 through the rest of her troubles unsup- 
 ported. 
 
 " I don't know what her father 'ull say, 
 Mr. Frank," said the old woman, leering at 
 him ; " but you'd better come in and put it 
 all straight." 
 
 " There's nothing to put straight, Mrs. 
 Deacle," said Frank, with as brazen a look 
 as innocence could wear; "but of course I'll 
 come in for a minute. I haven't much time 
 to spare, all the same." 
 
 The man who was connected with the 
 distribution of the Bc/io had not apparently 
 been expecting visitors, as he was sitting in 
 his shirt-sleeves, smoking, and apparently as
 
 268 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 little distressed by his daughter's defalcation 
 as could have been wished. 
 
 '* Glad to see you," he said jovially, as 
 Frank entered. '' So you've brought my 
 girl back all right ? I don't know as there's 
 any other man as I'd have trusted her with 
 but you, but then I know a gentleman when 
 I sees him." 
 
 " There's no harm done, Mr. Deacle," said 
 Frank, who was relieved by the man's friendly 
 tone. '' The truth is, a lot of us went 
 dov/n to dine at Gravesend last night, 
 and we missed the last train back. I 
 thought I'd better bring her home myself, 
 just to show you all was right. She's 
 been frightening herself a good deal about 
 nothing." 
 
 " There ain't no reason for her to be 
 frightened/' said the man, and it certainly 
 did seem as if Lizzie's terrors had been 
 rather exaggerated. '' I always says my 
 mind, and then there's an end of it. You're 
 not above sitting down and having some-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 269 
 
 thing to drink ? I know mine's a poor place 
 for a gentleman." 
 
 Frank, who began to think that he and 
 Lizzie had been making a mountain out of a 
 molehill, would have drunk out of the man's 
 pot if he had thought Mr. Deacle would 
 have been conciliated by such a condescen- 
 sion, and made no difficulty about the festivity 
 in which it was proposed to drown the me- 
 mory of the past. Lizzie, having washed 
 away the traces of her emotion, came down 
 and mixed his brandy and water with her 
 own fair hands, and an additional air of 
 comfort was given to the whole proceeding 
 by the gusto with which the fat old lady 
 partook of a similar beverage. There was 
 a strong smell of Irish stew in the room, 
 and a suspicious appearance of an unmade 
 bed in one of the corners, but it was all very 
 peaceful and unconstrained, and Frank felt 
 that he had been doing Mr. and Mrs. Deacle 
 an injustice. He was certainly being let off 
 as easy as his most sanguine hopes could
 
 270 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 have anticipated, and began to congratulate 
 himself upon the peculiar tact and readiness 
 to adapt himself to his company which was 
 apparently serving him so well. 
 
 It was two o'clock by the time he was 
 allowed to take his departure, the greater 
 part of a bottle of brandy having been con- 
 sumed in his honour, and the cordiality of 
 the leave-taking left nothing to be desired. 
 
 " I always likes to see a gentleman in my 
 house/' said Mr. Deacle, knocking out the 
 ashes from his last pipe, and rising to speed 
 the parting guest. 
 
 Lizzie said nothing, but a convulsive 
 pressure of the hand betrayed that the 
 volcano within was hardly yet quiescent. 
 
 " I suppose you'll be about here again 
 soon, Mr. Frank," said the fat woman, with 
 the leer that was the most unpleasant thing 
 Frank had met with in the house. '' Only 
 there oughtn't to be any more trains missed!"
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Perhaps the period popularly assigned for the 
 perfect assimilation of husband and wife, as 
 necessary before the two elements can blend 
 into a new chemical form fit for the ordinary 
 purposes of life, is too short. Perhaps such 
 assimilation, even under the most favourable 
 circumstances, is too difficult. At any rate it 
 would be interesting, perhaps salutary, if sta- 
 tistics could tell us in how many cases the 
 honeymoon waxes and wanes, without doing 
 anything towards reconciling the antagonistic 
 principles which must be found, more or less, 
 in every two individual specimens of the 
 human race. It would be unpleasant to 
 believe that in the majority of instances the
 
 2 72 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 antagonism is more conspicuous than before 
 the stripping off of the graceful robes, in 
 which love, while still expectant, is wont to 
 drape the intellectual and moral being ; but it 
 certainly often happens that the mystic period 
 has no other achievement to boast of, and no 
 doubt, to a student of anatomy, there is an 
 advantage in getting at the bones of a subject 
 as soon as possible. Lena Selfert, however, 
 felt it as her chief disappointment that she 
 was unable to get at her husband's mental 
 and moral bones at all, so carefully were they 
 swathed and put away from view. He was 
 a man who almost appeared to consider it a 
 kind of indecency to expose his bare naked 
 mind to the eyes of any human being, and 
 scrupulously pulled the nearest covering at 
 hand over it, at the least appearance of peep- 
 ing. Not wishing himself to intrude upon 
 other people's minds, he could not understand 
 why they should take an interest in his, and 
 had certainly not married a wife with any 
 such view. Those who knew him best, being
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 273 
 
 for the most part those who attempted to 
 know him least, were at some loss to discover 
 why he had married a wife at all. 
 
 For whatever reason he had done so, 
 Rothery Selfert did not attempt to disguise 
 from himself his extreme satisfaction when 
 the month at Ilfracombe came to an end, and 
 he was permitted to return to his ordinary 
 avocations. There had been no data in his 
 mind from which he could form an estimate 
 of the amount of gratification to be derived 
 from the society of a woman like Lena Mor- 
 den, and he had been perhaps a little disap- 
 pointed at the result. He had no doubt that 
 she admired and respected him quite as much 
 as he thought It probable that any woman 
 would be found to do, but he certainly could 
 have wished that her admiration and respect 
 had assumed a slightly more passive form. 
 There was a visible straining after some 
 theor)^ of identification with her husband 
 which had formed Itself In the girl's mind, 
 which appeared to him so out of place as to 
 
 VOL. I. 1 8
 
 2 74 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 be almost ludicrous. He hoped that this was 
 only the result of the entire novelty of her 
 position, and as he had not calculated upon 
 this feature in her character, felt that, if it 
 was more than a temporary phenomenon, it 
 was likely to become an intense bore. 
 Nevertheless, he still hoped that the idea of 
 domestic felicity which he had conceived 
 would be realised as soon as the girl from 
 whom he had hoped so much had settled 
 down quietly to the routine of every-day life. 
 To read the Times every day under such 
 uncomfortable conditions as he had done at 
 Watermouth Castle would, he felt, be a 
 serious drawback to the necessary tranquillity 
 of his existence. 
 
 They came back to London at the end of 
 October, a house having been taken for them 
 in Wimpole Street, not exactly by Lena's 
 choice, for the selection she had been nomi- 
 nally invited to make had been considerably 
 circumscribed by the suggestions the bride- 
 groom had deemed it within his province to
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 275 
 
 make. As to the furnishing, that had been 
 principally done by Brooking, who had con- 
 sented to assume the responsibility of super- 
 intending it at his master's request ; though 
 perhaps such matters did not, strictly speak- 
 ing, fall within the radius of the duties of a 
 barrister's clerk. However, Brooking had 
 sacrificed part of his vocation to the task of 
 making the necessary arrangements, and 
 Lena felt that it would be ungracious to 
 quarrel with the results he had achieved. 
 She would have liked to have chosen her own 
 carpets, being not exempt from the weakness 
 which is common to brides, but had not ven- 
 tured to insist upon such an inclination when 
 the subject was mooted before the wedding 
 day. 
 
 Mr. Selfert had, indeed, suggested that 
 she should make a sort of picnic some day 
 with Brooking to a great emporium in Hol- 
 born recommended by that invaluable func- 
 tionary, and had offered to spare half an hour 
 to meet her in the city for lunch, but Lena 
 
 18—2
 
 276 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 had felt sure that he wished her to decline, 
 and had done so accordingly with the best 
 grace in the world. She did not, however, 
 feel free from certain misgivings that Brooking 
 would almost expect a voice in choosing the 
 guests to sit round the excellent mahogany- 
 table which he had regarded as perhaps his 
 most judicious purchase. 
 
 Mr. Selfert lost no time in intimating to 
 his wife, after their installation in Wimpole 
 Street, that he wished the merits of the 
 mahogany table to be tested, and a list of 
 guests was handed to her, in the preparation 
 of which she by no means felt sure that 
 Brooking had not had some part. Stonely, 
 who had of course been made Solicitor-Gen- 
 eral, in accordance with the prophecy of the 
 Thunderer' and the general opinion of 
 the profession, was to be the Q.C.'s most 
 honoured guest, thougl;! unfortunately there 
 was no Lady Stonely who could be asked to 
 accompany him. Stonely, following the ex- 
 ample which has been set by so many pillars
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 2"]"] 
 
 of the law, had unfortunately married a lady 
 whose only fault had been that she had con- 
 sented to defer that ceremony a little longer 
 than Is usual in good society. However, 
 there was no difficulty In supplying the 
 vacancy thus caused, and Mrs. Selfert was 
 to be supported at her dinner-table by at 
 least one judge's wife, in addition to two of 
 the lesser luminaries of the profession, better 
 halves and all. That the legal flavour at 
 the festive board might not be too strong, 
 literature was represented in the person of 
 Mr. Dunkerry Smith. Mr. Dunkerry Smith 
 was the successful editor of the Periodic 
 Review^ a publication which had higher aims 
 and motives than the ephemeral, hebdomadal, 
 or even the monthly rivals which crowded its 
 path. Its distinguishing feature, when it 
 first appeared, was Its announced intention of 
 instructing and admonishing the world three 
 times, and three times only, In every year ; 
 the idea being presumably that as there 
 were so few men capable of worthily filling
 
 278 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 its columns, care must be taken that no un- 
 healthy pressure was put upon the gradual 
 emanations of such refined minds. If con- 
 ception in the brain of each contributor to 
 the Periodic followed immediately upon the 
 issue of a number, it was assumed that a 
 period of four months would be sufficient 
 for gestation, allowing for two or three weeks 
 wet-nursing in the printer's office. As the 
 undertaking had prospered, it must be sup- 
 posed that the idea was a sound one. The 
 Periodic had already established for itself a 
 name in philosophical circles, and Rothery 
 Selfert was by no means the most distin- 
 guished of those who were reported to be 
 contributors to its pages. 
 
 Mr. Dunkerry Smith was a man of middle 
 age, with a bulbous forehead and chin that 
 enclosed no other feature of any significance, 
 and very little sandy hair, that had the ap- 
 pearance of being extremely firmly rooted in 
 very barren ground. It cannot be said that 
 he was an ornament to the dinner-table,
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 279 
 
 especially as (owing to the very pronounced 
 opinions held by the editor of the Periodic 
 on the relations of matrimony to the state 
 and the individual) there was no Mrs. Dun- 
 kerry to set him off. 
 
 With a description of guests to which she 
 was entirely unaccustomed on her hands, 
 Mrs. Selfert was not free from doubt as to 
 the order and disposition of such incongruous 
 elements. In particular, she was extremely 
 puzzled to know what she ought to do with 
 one Mr. Hurst Atlee, of whom she knew 
 absolutely nothing until he entered her draw- 
 ing-room. 
 
 Hurst Atlee was Mr. Selfert's '' devil," or 
 rather, had 'Mevilled" for Mr. Selfert a 
 good deal a few years back, and still did a 
 little in the demoniacal line when cases of 
 emergency arose. It may be necessary to 
 explain, for the benefit of those to whom the 
 arcana of the courts are altogether unknown, 
 that ''devilling" is the term applied to the 
 system by which one barrister with a small
 
 28o ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 practice, or oftener with no practice at all, 
 relieves the necessities of a greater favourite 
 of fortune — and of attorneys — who has more 
 on his hands than his individual efforts can 
 deal with. As the devil Is almost invariably 
 unpaid, either by his employer or his em- 
 ployer's clients, It must be presumed that 
 there are contingent advantages, known only 
 to the Initiated, which induce devils to spend 
 their energies thus gratuitously. 
 
 Mr. Hurst Atlee had grown rather tired of 
 unprofitable devilry, undertaken at Rothery 
 Selfert's request, but had been careful. not to 
 detach himself entirely from the skirts of his 
 successful patron, looking forward no doubt 
 to the time when the rich man's table should 
 have Its splendours so augmented that 
 crumbs would fall from it in greater pro- 
 fusion. In the meantime, the unsuccessful 
 barrister had grown almost indispensable to 
 the successful one, and notwithstanding the 
 fact that he was greatly the junior of the 
 two, had perhaps achieved something more
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 281 
 
 like friendship with the elder man than 
 any of the latter's contemporaries had 
 managed. 
 
 There was no lady for Mr. Hurst Atlee 
 to take in to dinner at the new house in 
 Wimpole Street, as the male element so 
 largely predominated in the list which had 
 been handed to Lena as her instructions for 
 the feast. Fortunately, Mr. Dunkerry Smith 
 was similarly left out in the cold, and the two 
 men, who knew each other well enough, sat 
 together at dinner. 
 
 The editor of the Periodic was disap- 
 pointed in Rothery Selfert, having always 
 flattered himiself that he had succeeded in 
 impressing some part of his own views as 
 to the abstract disadvantages of matrimony 
 upon the barrister. 
 
 " Rash experiment of Selfert's, this, don't 
 you fancy so ?" he said as they were going 
 down the stairs to his companion. 
 
 Hurst Atlee looked at him as if he was 
 speaking Chinese. It was the peculiarity of
 
 282 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 Hurst Atlee to take almost every possible 
 occasion of giving his fellow-creatures the idea 
 that he could not understand them, nor they 
 him. He belonged in truth to a different order 
 of animal from that of which Mr. Dunkerry 
 Smith was a specimen, and though he too 
 had on one occasion contributed something 
 to the pages of the Periodic, did not by any 
 means hold the same theories as to the 
 proper function of woman which were part 
 of the religion of its editor. Perhaps his 
 own external appearance had unconsciously 
 modified his views on such subjects, for 
 Hurst Atlee was the last man in the world 
 to ignore the fact of his own personal beauty, 
 or to neglect the advantages which it procured 
 for him in his intercourse with the other sex. 
 He was consequently quite satisfied with the 
 rigime under which he lived, and by no means 
 . disposed to the ideas for the subversion of 
 social relations generally of which Mr. Dun- 
 tiv kerry Smith was an ardent propagandist. 
 
 Hurst Atlee looked at Mr. Selferts *' ex-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 283 
 
 periment " with considerable interest as she 
 sat at the bottom of the table, with a puisne 
 judge on one side of her, and the new 
 Solicitor-General on the other, and wondered 
 whether it was possible that a woman with 
 eyes like hers could possibly have anything in 
 common with the '' perfrida frons " of the 
 man who had taken her to amuse so much of 
 him as was not spent in the daily dredging of 
 his profession. 
 
 " I shouldn't think Selfert runs much risk," 
 he said sententiously, in reply to his com- 
 panion. *' She may." 
 
 '' I don t know that," said Mr. Dunkerry 
 Smith. " She looks good, you see ; and I 
 have a theory that the more perfectly candid 
 and pure the expression in a woman's face, 
 the more dangerous is what lies beneath. 
 Just look at the portraits of ' Carita,' as she 
 calls herself, flaunting in every photographer s 
 shop in London — did you ever see a face 
 that expressed more apparent sweetness and 
 innocence "^ If you think for a moment of
 
 284 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 the women you have known, you will find 
 half a dozen illustrations of my meaning.'' 
 
 '* Your meaning, my dear Smith," said the 
 younger man, ** is always past my finding out. 
 I take your word for it that you /lave a mean- 
 ing, at least in the majority of cases, but upon 
 my soul I very seldom see it !" 
 
 He bent forward a little as he spoke, en- 
 deavouring to catch a full view of the 
 gracious beauty of his hostess, which ap- 
 peared so ominous of misfortune to Rothery 
 Selfert in his companion's eyes. She had 
 not spared him a word or a look yet, except 
 the conventional smile that his introduction 
 rendered necessary when he first entered, and 
 It chafed him to think that she was, and 
 always would be, compelled to devote herself 
 to such incongruous surroundings as Stonely 
 and his satellites, instead of basking in the 
 sunlio^ht of devotion which she seemed to have 
 been created to attract. 
 
 Was it possible that she could have sacri- 
 ficed herself willingly to such a cheerless
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 285 
 
 destiny ? he wondered, looking from the soft 
 face, on which light from some unseen source 
 seemed always playing, to the ponderous un- 
 sympathetic brow on which she had, he sup- 
 posed, pressed bridal kisses of some sort. 
 
 " Psha !" he muttered to himself, rejecting 
 the entrie which came round at that moment. 
 ** As if women did not do it every day! 
 Why, in Heaven's name, should her caresses 
 be more sacred than those of others ?'' 
 
 Hurst Atlee had rather the reputation of 
 being a brilliant talker, but he had sat silent 
 enough during the greater part of that dinner, 
 it being quite unnecessary for any one to assist 
 the host in the task of securing the table from 
 the blight of silence. 
 
 Rothery Selfert had not, indeed, the knack 
 of talking from the heart, or even of appear- 
 ing to do so, but he loved, on occasions, to 
 listen to the gentle thunder of his own voice, 
 and on this particular evening his conversa- 
 tional energy was perhaps a shade too obtru- 
 sive. It was almost a relief, at least to one of
 
 286 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 the party, when all the eminent lawyers pre- 
 sent declared that they had drunk enough 
 claret, and they went in to the further relief 
 of the bride, who had been getting rather 
 mauled by the judge's wife in the drawing- 
 room for the last half hour. 
 
 " Atlee will give us some music, I have no 
 doubt, if you ask him," said Mr. Selfert to 
 his wife, rather as if he was speaking of one 
 of his possessions to another of them. For 
 men like Atlee, Mr. Selfert considered that 
 music was an eminently suitable accomplish- 
 ment, and he felt proud of displaying his 
 protigS's powers. 
 
 " If Mrs. Selfert has any — any interest in 
 that kind of thing/' said the younger man, 
 looking for the first time full into Lena's eyes, 
 *' I shall be delighted." 
 
 ^ He did not wait for an answer, but sat 
 down at the piano, and dashed into Chopin's 
 weird and fantastic music, as if he neither 
 knew nor cared whether any of his hearers 
 could understand or appreciate it.
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 287 
 
 " I don't think I caught that young man's 
 name," whispered the judge to his host when 
 he got up from the piano. 
 
 The judge was an old gentleman of benevo- 
 lent and bird-like aspect, who had for years 
 been in the habit of keeping his energies awake 
 for such nocturnal dissipation by the simple 
 process of going to sleep in court for a quarter 
 of an hour, at three o'clock regularly every 
 day. 
 
 " Atlee ? Did you say he practised at all ?" 
 
 " He's held a brief or two for me at odd 
 times," said the successful barrister. *' I think 
 he'll do something." 
 
 " Clever, I dare say," said the old gentle- 
 man, who had not got over the effect of 
 Chopin, " but — hardly professional !" 
 
 The old gentleman, however, meant only 
 to disparage Hurst Atlee's law, and not his 
 music, which he did not understand. Mean- 
 while Mr. Atlee had made his way to Lena's 
 side, being a man who liked very much to be 
 appreciated, and to hear of his appreciation.
 
 288 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Selfert," he said, '' I play a 
 good deal. In such a legal atmosphere as 
 this, it sounds rather incongruous, I dare 
 say." 
 
 Lena's ideas of what was professional were 
 not so strict as those of the eminent legal 
 luminary, and possibly she was not yet ac- 
 quainted with the density of the atmosphere 
 of which Hurst Atlee spoke. It did strike 
 her, however, after a moment or too, that she 
 had never thought of expecting music from 
 Rothery Selfert. 
 
 " I suppose there is no reason," she said, 
 ** why a barrister should give up all his tastes 
 and pursuits for one idea." 
 
 '*You have hardly become thoroughly 
 imbued with the true professional spirit yet, 
 Mrs. Selfert," said Atlee half ironically. " Of 
 course a man like Mr. Selfert may keep as 
 many ideas as he likes ; but ask him some 
 day what he thinks of my versatility." 
 
 It was impossible, of course, to imagine 
 the faintest dream of a sarcasm on her hus-
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 289 
 
 band in his protege's words, but had he been 
 speaking of any other man, Lena could have 
 believed that there was something very Hke 
 a covert sneer beneath the comparison. She 
 moved away, a Httle puzzled and displeased. 
 There could hardly at that moment have 
 been a greater offence in her eyes than the 
 assumption of knovv'ing her husband better 
 than she was capable of doing. 
 
 Atlee walked home with ]\Ir. Dunkerry 
 Smith until their roads diverged, but listened 
 rather more silently than was his wont to that 
 unofallant gentleman's exoosition of Periodic 
 philosophy. 
 
 "A man can't help thinking, when he 
 sees a marriage like that," said the editor. 
 *' Surely a sufficient proportion of our male 
 population are driven by the strongest of all 
 impulses into matrimony, without men of 
 maturer age and no impulses at all rushing 
 into the same error in obedience to the mere 
 conventionalities of society I I can conceive 
 such a social regeneration as will render 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C, 
 
 motives of both kinds, at any rate, far less 
 universal in their action ; and such a change 
 would be for the eood of mankind at 
 
 t> 
 
 large." 
 
 " You can^t say now they are universal, as 
 long as you and I are left," said Atlee, who 
 was indisposed to grapple seriously with the 
 difficulty of the subject. " There's something 
 pulling the other way, I suppose." 
 
 *' You ought to know that nothing is so 
 illogical as a personal application of a prin- 
 ciple," said Mr. Dunkerry Smith, who did 
 not like to have his own impulses discussed, 
 and by no means confided his individual ex- 
 periences to the pages of the Periodic. " I 
 don't ask you to tell me why you never 
 married, you know." 
 
 " No, my dear fellow," answered his com- 
 panion. *' I can never sufficiently admire the 
 delicacy with which, while tickling dangerous 
 ground with the point of your toe, you never 
 overstep the line. I am afraid we part com- 
 pany here."
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 29 1 
 
 The editor of the Periodic was never 
 quite sure that Atlee was not laughing at 
 him, and walked off with a little justifiable 
 irritation. 
 
 " Pah!" said Hurst Atlee to himself as he 
 lit a cigar, " the cursed self-satisfaction of that 
 ape always makes me sick ! I believe I'm 
 the only man in the world who is not satisfied 
 with himself, as far as he can see." 
 
 There may have been some self-satisfaction 
 to be got out of even this thought, but it 
 could hardly have been of a very pleasurable 
 kind, judging by the settled cloud on the 
 thinker's brow, as he let himself into his 
 chambers. Probably he was not satisfied 
 with them either, as they were certainly not 
 the rooms of a man w^ho indulged himself 
 recklessly in external comforts, and wore as 
 cheerless an aspect as any misanthrope could 
 have well desired in what he called his home. 
 A piano littered with music was almost the 
 only visible instance of luxury, and a hideous 
 wooden table, covered with hopeless-looking 
 
 19—2
 
 292 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 manuscript and dirty blotting--paper, took ofT 
 all the genial effect which such a token of re- 
 finement might have produced. 
 
 There are plenty of comfortable, evei> 
 luxurious, sets of chambers in the Temple, 
 but those at the top of Vernon Buildings 
 were probably built with a view to the more 
 incidental advantages of cheapness and seclu- 
 sion — advantages which it is not easy to secure 
 in such localities without penetrating through 
 a considerable husk of dirt. Like the sparks 
 in the experience of the preacher, the dirt of 
 London has a general tendency to fly upward. 
 
 There was a letter on the table, which, in 
 default of a better, is something of a welcome 
 when a man comes home for the night ; but 
 Hurst Atlee pitched it into the fire, after 
 glancing at its contents, without the cloud on 
 his brow losing anything of its gloom. 
 
 " On my thirty-first birthday," he said to 
 himself, with a short laugh as he did so, ** I 
 might have asked them to have drunk my 
 health to-night at dinner."
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 293 
 
 He threw himself into the arms of a 
 ragged arm-chair, as if that was the only 
 kindly embrace he had ever knovvm, and pro- 
 ceeded to honour the anniversary by as 
 wholesomely bitter a reverie on the result of 
 thirty-one years as the most stringent moralist 
 could have desired. Perhaps, If he had kept 
 a diary, he would have written a little instead 
 of thinking much ; but it may safely be af- 
 firmed that no man ever trusted to the most 
 subjective of journals such maunderings as 
 the following : 
 
 " D d self-satisfied idiot ! Talks as if 
 
 the world was full of herrings !....! 
 wonder where he picked up such a girl 
 as that ; I wonder whether she jumped 
 down his throat directly he opened it !" (It 
 may be presumed that the Image of 3»Ir. 
 Dunkerry Smith here ceased to occupy the 
 thinker's mind.) "An impostor like- -that 
 always has the devil's own luck. . . . -I don't 
 know that he's an impostor either— the 
 biggest fools always let the lesser ones come'
 
 294 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 to the top. . . . Thirty-one years ! Kick 
 over the cradle and jump into the coffin ! In 
 you go !" 
 
 He moved impatiently as he spoke, as if 
 the coffin did not feel prospectively satisfactory 
 either, and levelled a curse at somebody's 
 head — certainly not his own or that of Mr. 
 Dunkerry Smith. Listening to the hearti- 
 ness of the malediction, one might perhaps 
 have guessed that the man's heart and soul 
 were steeped in biting, corrosive envy — the 
 envy of a man who sees all the ideal objects 
 of his own fervent desire in the cold, careless 
 *, grasp of another, and clutches himself at 
 empty air. 
 
 " The softest places, and the choicest food, 
 and the best women, are all picked out for 
 those who can't care much about them, it 
 sieems .to me. Some of these days, when I 
 am beginning to drivel and babble, I suppose 
 I shaiil get my turn at them too. . . . What 
 an intolerably offensive prig that fellow 
 Selfert has grown ! I wonder if he ever
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 295 
 
 Speaks to that poor woman when he's alone 
 with her. I wonder how she Hkes it if he 
 doesn't — or if he does. I don't know that 
 I'm not rather a fool to sit up here smoking ^HUL^ 
 any longer. . I must knock off a pipe a day, 
 I fancy. I know I've been looking con- 
 foundedly seedy lately. Thirty-one ! and 
 ten years ago I made up my mind that the 
 only part of life worth a man's living was 
 that under five and twenty. I suppose it's 
 
 all for the best — those d d attorneys 
 
 won't believe in a man unless he looks like 
 a corpse. Into the cofhn, as fast as you can ! 
 — that's the moral of it all. I suppose I shall ^ 
 be all riofht to-morrow morning." 
 
 With which consolatory reflection the 
 thinker threw his legrs over the side of the 
 metaphorical sepulchre into which he had 
 been trying to fit himself, and got into\bed 
 instead. v^ - ■ 
 
 *' Indigestion, I suppose," he murmured as 
 he dropped off placidly to sleep ; " I know 
 I shall be all right in the morninc:. Must .
 
 296 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 have a mattvais q 7 cart d'hetcre now and 
 then !" 
 
 It has been mentioned that Mr. Rothery 
 Selfert had a salutary habit of guarding 
 against the possibility of a maicvais quaint 
 d'hettre so produced by the simple but 
 prosaic means of a vegetable pill. Men 
 have hardly accustomed themselves, however, 
 to such precautions at the age of thirty-one, 
 being perhaps not quite able to detect the 
 nature of their own symptoms until a longer 
 experience has made them familiar. As 
 Hurst Atlee, without being unusually preco- 
 cious, had arrived at this stage of perception, 
 it may be presumed that he was not entirely 
 wrong in anticipating his own development 
 into the mental and physical state which he 
 found so unattractive in Rothery Selfert. At 
 any rate, Rothery Selfert was much too far 
 advanced in wisdom to Indulge himself In 
 thinking about cofBns while consuming his 
 last nocturnal cigar. 
 
 '' Don't take too much notice of that fellow
 
 ROTHERY SELFERT, Q.C. 297 
 
 Atlee," he said to his wife before retiring- for 
 the night. " He's just the man to get in- 
 sufferably conceited if a Httle attention is 
 shown him." 
 
 "I don't suppose he's Hkely to be spoilt 
 by my attentions," said Lena, smiling. '' He 
 doesn't give me the impression of being what 
 you would call a contented man ?" 
 
 " He's the most dissatisfied prig I know," 
 said the successful barrister. " I don't know 
 what those fellows expect — some of them 
 seem to think the world was created for 
 them to grow their moustache in." 
 
 '' Is he at all — intimate — with you ?" asked 
 Lena, who had not herself formed such an 
 unfavourable opinion of the subject of their 
 discussion, but would have rejected with 
 scorn the suggestion that his personal ap- 
 pearance had anything to do with it. 
 
 " Intimate !" said her husband, with some- 
 thing of reproof at such a monstrous sugges- 
 tion. " He's a man who has often been useful 
 to me, and one must acknowledge the fact 
 
 VOL. I. 19 — 3
 
 298 ROTIIERY SELFERT, Q.C. 
 
 now and then. I dare say you'll see him 
 here often enough." 
 
 " Then I certainly won't spoil him by too 
 much attention," said Lena, smiling again. 
 
 It was so seldom that her husband had 
 pulled aside his robes and allowed her to 
 glance at any of his real thoughts. She felt 
 really grateful to Mr. Hurst Atlee for having 
 been the occasion of her being indulged In 
 such a familiarity. As she dropped off to 
 sleep, she almost hoped — what she had nearly 
 given up hoping — that she might one day 
 become intimate with the man who had 
 chosen her for his wife. 
 
 END OF VOL. 1. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, TRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOI9-URBANA 
 
 0112 055266552 
 
 
 ¥^