L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 82B 
 
 V. I
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/mitchelhurstplac01vele
 
 MITCHELHURST PLACE 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 MITGHELHUEST PLACE 
 
 % llobcl 
 
 MARGARET VELEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "for PERCIVAL " 
 
 Que voulez-vous ? Helas ! notre mere Nature, 
 Comma toute autre mere, a ses enfants gates, 
 Et p(jur les malveiius elle est avai*e et dure ! " 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1884 
 
 The Kiijht oJ'Tnuiifliil'ion and Rejti'odwtwn is lieservfd.
 
 CLAV AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
 
 V 5-1 /(TV 
 
 (< 
 
 TO 
 
 Barbara's best friend 
 ELFRIDA lONIDES 
 
 HER STORY IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY 
 AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAfiR 
 
 TREASURES DROPPED AND PICKED UP ... 1 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION ... ... 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 *' WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE " ... 48 
 
 CHAPTEPt IV. 
 
 DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC ... ... 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 AN OLD LOVE STORY ... ... ... 95
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Reynold's resolution ... ... ... 12-1: 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A GAME AT CHESS ... ... ... 160 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Barbara's tune ... ... ... ... 192 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF MAGIC LANTERNS ... ... ... 20iJ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION ... ... 237
 
 MITCHELHUEST PLACE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TREASURES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 
 
 "Dans I'air pale, emanant ses tranquilles lumieres 
 Rayonnait I'astre d'or de rarriere-saison." 
 
 There was nothing remarkable in the 
 scene. It was just a bit of country lane, 
 cut deeply into the side of a hill, and 
 seamed with little pebbly courses, made by 
 the streams of rain which had poured across 
 it on their downward way. The hill-side 
 faced the west, and, standing on this ledge 
 as on a balcony, one might look clown into 
 a valley where cattle were feeding in the 
 pastures, and where a full and softly-flowing 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
 7
 
 2 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 river turned the wheel of a distant mill, and 
 slipped quietly under the arched bridge of 
 the lower road. Sometimes in summer the 
 w^ater lay gleaming, like a curved blade, in 
 the midst of the warm green meadows, but 
 on this late October day it was misty and 
 wan, and light vapours veiled the pale globe 
 of the declining sun. Looking upward from 
 the valley, a broad slope of ploughed land 
 rose above the road, and the prospect ended 
 in a hedge, a gate, through whose bars one 
 saw the sky, and a thin line of dusky, red- 
 trunked firs. But from the road itself there 
 was nothing to be seen in this direction 
 except a steep bank. This bank was crowned 
 with hawthorn bushes, and here and there a 
 stubborn stunted oak, which held its dry 
 brown leaves persistently, as some oaks do. 
 With every passing breath of w4nd there 
 was a crisp rustling overhead. 
 
 This bit of road lay deserted in the faint 
 yellow gleams. But for a wasp of straw,
 
 I.] TREASURES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 3 
 
 cauo^ht on an overhanraio* twio;, and some 
 cart-tracks, which marked the passage of a 
 load, one might have fancied that the pale 
 sun had risen, and now was about to set, 
 without having seen a single wayfarer upon 
 it. But there were four coming towards it, 
 and, slowly as two of them might travel, 
 they would yet reach it while the sunlight 
 lasted. The little stage was to have its 
 actors that afternoon. 
 
 First there appeared a man's figure on 
 the crest of the hill. He swung himself 
 over the gate, and came with eager strides 
 down the field, till he reached the hedge 
 which divided it from the road. There he 
 stopped, consulted his watch, and sheltering 
 himself behind one of the little oaks, he 
 rested one knee on a mossy stump, and 
 thus, half-standing, half-kneeling, he waited. 
 The attitude was picturesque, and so was 
 the man. He had bright grey-blue eyes, 
 hair and moustache brown, with a touch of 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MITCHELHURST PLACE, [chap. 
 
 reddish gold, a quick, animated face, and a 
 smiliog mouth. It was easy to see that he 
 was sanguine and fearless, and on admirable 
 terms with himself and the world in general. 
 He was young, and he was pleasant to look 
 at, and, though he could hardly have dressed 
 with a view to occupying that precise posi- 
 tion, his brown velvet coat was undeniably 
 in the happiest harmony with the tree 
 ao'ainst which he leaned, and the withered 
 foliage above his head. 
 
 To wait there, with his eyes fixed on 
 that unfrequented way, hardly seemed a 
 promising pastime. But the young fellow 
 was either lucky or wise. He had not been 
 there more than five minutes by his watch, 
 when a girl turned the corner, and came, 
 with down-bent head, slowly sauntering 
 along the road below him. His clasping 
 hand on the rough oak-bark shifted slightly, 
 to allow him to lean a little further and 
 gain a wider range, though he was careful
 
 I.] TREASURES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 5 
 
 to keep in the shelter of his tree and the 
 hawthorn hedge. A few steps brought the 
 girl exactly opposite his hiding-place. There 
 she paused. 
 
 She sauntered because her hands and eyes 
 were occupied, and she took no heed of 
 the w^ay she went. She paused because her 
 occupation became so engrossing that she 
 forgot to take another step. She wore long, 
 loose gloves, to guard her hands and wrists, 
 and as she came she had pulled autumn 
 leaves of briony and bramble, and brier 
 sprays with their bunches of glowing hips. 
 These she was gathering together and 
 arranging, partly that they might be easier 
 to carry, and partly to justify her pleasure 
 in their beauty by setting it off to the best 
 advantage. As she completed her task, a 
 tuft of yellow leaves on the bank beside her 
 caught her eye. She stretched her hand to 
 gather it, and the man above looked straight 
 down into her unconscious upturned face.
 
 6 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 She was not more than eighteen or 
 nineteen, and by a touch of innocent shy- 
 ness in her glances and movements she 
 might have been judged to be still younger. 
 She was slight and dark, with a soft loose 
 cloud of dusky hair, and a face, not flower- 
 like in its charm, but with a healthful beauty 
 more akin to her own autumn berries — ripe, 
 clear- skinned, and sweet. As she looked 
 up, with red lips parted, it was hardly 
 wonderful that the lips of the man in 
 ambush, breathlessly silent though he was, 
 made answer with a smile. She plucked 
 the yellow leaves and turned away, and 
 he suffered his breath to escape softly in a 
 sigh. Yet he was smiling still at the pretty 
 picture of that innocent face held up to 
 him. 
 
 It was all over in a minute. She had 
 come and gone, and he stood up, still 
 cautiously, lest she should return, and 
 looked at the broad brown slope down
 
 I.] TEEASUKES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 7 
 
 which he had come so eagerly. Every step 
 of that lightly-trodden way must be re- 
 traced, and time was short. But even as 
 he faced it he turned for one last glance at 
 the spot where she had stood. And there, 
 like coloured jewels on the dull earth, lay 
 a bunch of hips, orange and glowing scarlet, 
 which she had unawares let fall. In a 
 moment he was down on the road, had 
 caught up his prize, and almost as quickly 
 had pulled himself up again, and was stand- 
 ing behind the sheltering tree while he 
 fastened it in his coat. And when he 
 had secured it, it seemed, after all, as if 
 he had needed just that touch of soft 
 bright colour, and would not have been 
 completely himself without it. 
 ♦ " Barbara's gift," he said to himself, 
 looking down at it. " I'll tell her of it 
 one of these days, when the poor things 
 are dead and dry ! No, that jbhey never 
 shall be ! " He quickened his pace. " They
 
 8 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 shall live, at any rate, for me. It would 
 not be amiss for a sonnet. Loves Gleaniiifj 
 — yes, or Loves Alms',' and before the 
 young fellow's eyes rose the dainty vision 
 of a creamy, faintly-ribbed page, with strong 
 yet delicately-cut Eoman type and slim 
 italics. Though not a line of it was written, 
 he could vaguely see that sonnet in which 
 his rosy spoil should be enshrined. He 
 could even see Barbara reading it, on some 
 future day, while he added the commentary, 
 which was not for the world in general, 
 but for Barbara. It became clearer to him 
 as he hurried on, striking across the fields 
 to reach his destination more directly. 
 Snatches of musical words floated on the 
 evening air, and he quickened his pace 
 "unconsciously as if in actual pursuit. To 
 the east the sky grew cold and blue, and 
 the moon, pearl white, but as yet not 
 luminous, swam above him as he walked. 
 So the poet went in quest of rhymes.
 
 I.] TREASUEES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 9 
 
 and Barbara, strolling onward, looked for 
 leaves and berries. She had not gone far 
 when she spied some more, better, of course, 
 than any she had already gathered. This 
 time they were on the lower bank which 
 sloped steeply downward to a muddy ditch. 
 Barbara looked at them longingly, decided 
 that they were attainable, and put her 
 nosegay down on the damp grass that 
 she might have both hands free for her 
 enterprise. 
 
 She was certain she could get them. 
 She leaned forward, her finger-tips almost 
 brushed them, when a man's footsteps, close 
 beside her, startled her into consciousness of 
 an undignified position, and she sprang back 
 to firmer ground. But a thin chain she 
 wore had caught on a thorny spray. It 
 snapped, and a little gold cross dropped 
 from it, and lay, rather more than half-way 
 down, among the briers and withered leaves. 
 She snatched at the danc^lino: chain, and
 
 10 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 stood, flushed and disconcerted, trying to 
 appear absorbed in the landscape, and un- 
 conscious of the passer-by who had done 
 the mischief. If only he would pass by as 
 quickly as possible, and leave her to regain 
 her treasure and gather her berries ! 
 
 But the steps hesitated, halted, and there 
 was a pause — an immense pause — during 
 which Barbara kept her eyes fixed on a 
 particular spot in the meadow below. It 
 appeared to her that the eyes of the un- 
 known man were fixed on the back of her 
 head, and the sensation w^as intolerable. 
 After a moment, however, he spoke, and 
 broke the spell. It was a gentleman's 
 voice, she perceived, but a little forced and 
 hard, as if the words cost him something 
 of an effort. 
 
 " I — I beg your pardon, but can I be of 
 any service ? I think you dropped something 
 — ah ! a little cross." He came to her side. 
 " Will you allow me to get it for you ? "
 
 I.] TREASUEES DROrPED AND PICKED UP. 11 
 
 Barbara went tlirough the form of glancing 
 at him, but she did not meet his eyes. 
 "Thank yon," she said, "but I needn't 
 trouble you, really." And she returned to 
 her pensive contemplation of that spot 
 where the meadow grass grew somewhat 
 more ra.nkly tufted. 
 
 He paused again before speaking. It 
 seemed to Barbara that this youno: man did 
 nothing but pause. " I don't think you can 
 get it," he said, looking at the brambles. 
 *' I really don't think you can." 
 
 If Barbara had frankly uttered her inmost 
 sentiments she w^ould have said, " Great 
 idiot — no — not if you don't go away ! " 
 But, as it was, she coloured yet more in her 
 shyness, and stooped to pick up her nosegay 
 from the ground. He had been within an 
 inch of treading on it. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon ! " he exclaimed, 
 starting back. ** How^ clumsy of me ! " 
 
 Something in his tone disarmed her. She
 
 12 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 feared tliat she hacl been -ungracioiTS, and 
 moreover she was a little doubtful whether 
 she would not find it difficult to res^ain her 
 trinket without his help. " You haven't 
 done any harm," she said. Then, glancing 
 downward, " Well, if you will be so kind." 
 
 The new-comer surveyed the situation 
 so intently that Barbara took the oppor- 
 tunity of surveying him. 
 
 She was familiar, in novels, with heroes 
 and heroines who were not precisely beau- 
 tiful, yet possessed a nameless and all-con- 
 quering charm. Perhaps for that very reason 
 she was slow to recognize good looks where 
 this charm was absent. The tall young 
 fellow who stood a few steps away, gazing 
 with knitted brows at the little wilderness 
 of briers, was really very handsome, but he 
 was not certain of the fact. Beauty should 
 not be self-conscious, but it should not 
 despondently question its own existence. 
 This man seemed to be accustomed to a
 
 I.] TREASURES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 13 
 
 chilly, ungenial atmospliere, to be numbed 
 and repressed, to lack fire. Barbara fancied 
 that if he touched her his hand would be cold. 
 
 In point of actual features he was de- 
 cidedly the superior of the young fellow 
 who was climbing the hill-side, but the 
 pleasant colour and grace were altogether 
 wanting. Yet he was not exactly awkw^ard. 
 Neither was he ill-dressed, though his clothes 
 did not seem to express his individuality, 
 except perhaps by the fact that they were 
 black and grey. Any attempt at descrip- 
 tion falls naturally into cold negatives, and 
 the scarlet autumn berries which were just 
 a jewel-like brightness in the first picture 
 would have been a strange and vivid con- 
 trast in the second. 
 
 His momentary hesitation on the brink 
 of his venture was not in reality indecision, 
 but the watchful distrust produced by a 
 conviction that circumstances were hostile. 
 He wished to take them all into account.
 
 14 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Having briefly considered the position of 
 the cross, and the steepness of the bank, 
 he stepped boldly down. In less than half 
 a second the treacherous earth had betrayed 
 him ; his foot slipped, he fell on his back, 
 and slid down the short incline to the 
 muddy ditch at the bottom, losing his hat 
 by the way. 
 
 Barbara, above him, uttered a silvery 
 little " Oh ! " of dismay and surprise. She 
 was not accustomed to a man who failed 
 in what he undertook. 
 
 The victim of the little accident was 
 grimly silent. With a scrambling eff^ort he 
 recovered his footing^ and lost it ao;ain. A 
 second attempt was more successful ; he 
 secured the cross, clambered up, and restored 
 it to its owner, turning away from her 
 thanks to pick up his hat, which luckily 
 lay within easy reach. Barl)ara did not 
 know which way to look. She was pain- 
 fully, burningly conscious of his evil plight.
 
 1.] TREASUEEvS DROPPED AXD PICKED UP. 15 
 
 His boots were coated with mire, his face 
 was darkly flushed and seamed with a 
 couple of brier scratches, a bit of dead 
 leaf was sticking in his hair, and '' Oh," 
 thought Barbara, "he cannot possibly know 
 how muddy his back is ! " 
 
 She stood, turning the little cross in 
 her fingers. " Thank you very much," she 
 said nervously. " I should never have got 
 it for myself." 
 
 " Are you quite sure ? " he asked, with 
 bitter distinctness. " I think you would 
 have managed it much better." 
 
 " I'm sure I w^ould rather not try." She 
 dared not raise her eyes to his face, l)ut she 
 saw that he wore no glove, and that the 
 thorns had torn his hand. He was winding 
 his handkerchief round it, and the blood 
 started through the white folds. " Oh, you 
 have hurt yourself ! " she exclaimed. He 
 answered only with an impatient gesture 
 of negation.
 
 16 MITCHELHURST PLACE. . [chap. 
 
 " How am I to thank you '? " slie asked 
 despairingly. 
 
 " Don't you think the less said the better, 
 at any rate for me ? " he rej)lied, picking 
 a piece of bramble from his sleeve, and 
 glancing aside, as if to permit her to go 
 her way with no more words. 
 
 But Barbara held her ground. " I should 
 have been sorry to lose that cross. I — I 
 prize it very much." 
 
 "Then I am sorry to have given you 
 an absurd association with it." 
 
 " Please don't talk like that. I shall 
 remember your kindness," said the girl 
 hurriedly. She felt as if she must add 
 something more. '* I always fancy my cross 
 is a kind of — what do they call those things 
 that bring good luck ? " 
 
 '' Amulet ? Talisman ? " 
 
 "Yes, a talisman," she repeated, with a 
 little nod. " It belonged to my godmother. 
 I was named after her. She died before 1
 
 I.] TREASUBES DROPPED AND PICKED UP. 17 
 
 was a year old, but I have heard my mother 
 say she was the most beautiful woman she 
 ever saw. Oh, I should hate to lose it ! " 
 
 " Would your luck go with it ? " He 
 smiled as he asked the question, and the 
 smile was like a momentary illumination, 
 revealing the habitual melancholy of his 
 mouth. 
 
 " Perhaps," said Barbara. 
 
 " AVell, you would not have lost it this 
 afternoon, as it was quite conspicuously 
 visible," he rejoined. 
 
 By this time he had brushed his hat, 
 and, passing his hand over his short waves 
 of dark hair, had found and removed the 
 bit of leaf which had distressed Barbara. 
 She advanced a step, perhaps emboldened 
 a little by that passing smile. " Oh, I beg 
 your pardon," she said, " but when you 
 slipped you got some earth on your coat." 
 (She fancied that " earth " sounded a little 
 more dignified than " mud " or " dirt," and 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [ckkp. 
 
 that he might not mind it quite so much.) 
 " Please let me brush it oft' for you." She 
 looked ap at him with a pleading glance 
 and produced a filmy little feminine hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 He eyed her, drawing back. '' No ! " he 
 ejaculated ; and then, more mildly, " No, 
 thank you. I can manage. No, thank 
 
 you." 
 
 " I wish " Barbara began, but she 
 
 said no more, for the expression of his face 
 changed so suddenly that she looked over 
 her shoulder to discover the cause. 
 
 A gentleman stood a few steps away, 
 gazing at them in unconcealed surprise. 
 A small, neat, black-clothed gentleman, 
 with bright grey eyes and white hair and 
 whiskers, who wore a very tall hat and 
 carried a smart little cane. 
 
 " Uncle ! " the girl exclaimed, and her 
 uplifted hand dropped loosely by her side.
 
 n.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 19 
 
 CHAPTEK 11. 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 
 
 The old gentleman's face would have 
 been a mere note of interrogation, but for 
 a hint of chilly displeasure in its ques- 
 tioning. The young people answered with 
 blushes. The word was the same for both, 
 but the fact was curiously different. The 
 colour that sprang to Barbara's cheek was 
 lio^ht and swift as flame, while the man at 
 her side reddened slowly, as if with the 
 risinor of a dark and sullen tide, till the 
 lines across his face were angrily swollen. 
 The bandage, loosely wound round his hand, 
 showed the wet stains, and the new-comer's 
 bright gaze, travelling downwards, rested 
 
 c 2
 
 20 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 on it for a moment, and then passed on to 
 the muddy boots and trousers. 
 
 " Uncle," said Barbara, *' I dropped my 
 gold cross, and this gentleman was so kind 
 as to get it back for me." 
 
 "It was nothing — I was very glad to 
 be of any service, but it isn't worth men- 
 tioning," the stranger protested, again with 
 a rouo^h edo^e of effort in his tone. 
 
 *' On the contrary," said the old gentle- 
 man, " I fear my niece has given you a 
 great deal of trouble. I am sure we are 
 both of us exceedingly obliged to you for 
 your kindness." He emphasised his thanks 
 with a neat little bow. To the young 
 man's angry fancy it seemed that his glance 
 swept the landscape, as if he sought some 
 perilous precipice, which might account for 
 the display of mud and wounds. 
 
 " Yes," said Barbara quickly. *' the bank 
 is so slippery, and there are such horrid 
 brambles — look, uncle ! I came to meet
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 21 
 
 you, and I was gathering some leaves, and 
 my chain caught and snapped." 
 
 " Ah I that bank ! Yes, a very disagree- 
 able place," he assented, looking up at the 
 stranger. " I am really very sorry that 
 
 you should have received such " he 
 
 hesitated for a word, and then finished, 
 "such injuries." 
 
 "The bank is nothing. I was clumsy," 
 was the reply. 
 
 "I think, Barbara, we must be going 
 home," her uncle suggested. The young 
 man stood aside to let them pass, with a 
 certain awkwardness and irresolution, for 
 their road was the same as his own. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said, abruptly, 
 " but perhaps, if you are going that way, you 
 can tell me how far it is to Mitchelhurst." 
 
 They both looked surprised. "About a 
 mile and a half. AVere you going to 
 Mitchelhurst ? " 
 
 " Yes, but if you know it "
 
 22 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " We live there," said Barbara. 
 
 " Perhaps you could tell me what I want 
 to know. I would just as soon not go on 
 this afternoon. Is there a decent inn, or, 
 better still, could one be tolerably sure 
 of getting lodgings in the place, without 
 securing them beforehand ? " 
 
 "You want lodmns^s there ? " 
 
 " Only for a few days. I came by train 
 a couple of hours ago " — he named a neigh- 
 bouring town — '' and they told me at the 
 hotel that it w^as uncertain whether I should 
 find accommodation at Mitchelhurst ; so I 
 left my luggage there, and walked over to 
 make inquiries." 
 
 "I do not think that I can recommend 
 the inn,'' said the other, doubtfully. " I 
 fear you would find it beery, and smoky, 
 and noisy — the village ale-house, you under- 
 stand. Sanded floors, and rustics with long 
 clay pipes — that's the kind of thing at the 
 *Eothwell Arms.'"
 
 il] an unexpected invitation. 23 
 
 "Ah! the 'Roth well Arms'!" 
 
 "And as for lodgings," the old man con- 
 tinued, with something alert and watchful 
 in his manner, " the fact is people dont care 
 to lodge in Mitch el hurst. They live there, 
 a few of them — myself for instance — but 
 there is nothing in the place to attract 
 ordinary visitors." 
 
 He paused, but the only comment was — 
 
 " Indeed ? " 
 
 "Nothing whatever," he affirmed. "A 
 little, out-of-the-way, uninteresting village 
 — but you are anxious to stay here ? " 
 
 The strano^er w^as re-arranmnor the 
 loosened handkerchief with slender, un- 
 skilful fingers. 
 
 " For a few days— yes," he repeated, half 
 absently, as he tried to tuck away a hanging 
 end. 
 
 "Uncle," said Barbara, w^ith timid eager- 
 ness, " doesn't Mrs. Simmonds let lodgings ? 
 When that man came surveying, or some-
 
 24 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 tiling, last summer, didn't he have rooms 
 in her house ? I'm very nearly sure he did." 
 
 Her uncle intercepted, as it were, the 
 stranger's glance of inquiry. 
 
 "Perhaps. But I don't think Mrs. 
 Simmonds will do on this occasion." 
 
 " Why not ? " the other demanded. " I 
 don't suppose Fm more particular than the 
 man who came surveying. If the place is 
 decently clean, why not '? " 
 
 " Because your name is Harding. I don't 
 know what his might happen to be." 
 
 The young man drew himself up, almost 
 as if he repelled an accusation. Then he 
 seemed to recollect himself. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " it is» How did you 
 know that 1 " 
 
 The little Mitchelhurst gentleman found 
 such pleasure in his own acuteness that 
 it gave a momentary air of cordiality to his 
 manner. 
 
 '' My dear sir," he replied, looking critic-
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 25 
 
 ally at Harding's scratched face, " I knew 
 the Roth wells well. I recognise the Eoth- 
 well features." 
 
 "You must be a keen observer," said 
 the other curtly. 
 
 " Voice too," the little man continued. 
 *' Especially when you repeated the name 
 of the inn — the Roth well Arms." 
 
 Hard in o^ lauo:hed. 
 
 " Upon my word I The Roth wells have 
 left me more of the family property than 
 I was aware of." 
 
 " Then there was your destination. Who 
 but a Roth well would ever want to stay at 
 Mitchelhurst ? " 
 
 " I see. I appear to have betrayed myself 
 in a variety of ways." The discovery of 
 his name seemed to have given him a little 
 more ease of manner of a defiant and half- 
 mocking kind. " What, is there something 
 more ? " he inquired, as his new acquaint- 
 ance recommenced, " And then "
 
 26 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " Yes, enough to make me very sure. 
 You wear a ring on your little finger which 
 your mother gave you. She used to wear 
 it thirty years ago." 
 
 " True ! " said Harding, in a tone of 
 surprise. " You knew my mother then '? " 
 
 " As I say — thirty years ago. She is 
 still living, is she not ? And in good 
 health, I trust ? " 
 
 '' Yes." The young man looked at his 
 ring. "You have a good memory," he 
 said, with an inflection which seemed to 
 convey that he would have ended the 
 sentence with a name, had he known 
 one. 
 
 The little gentleman took the hint. 
 
 " My name is Herbert Hayes." He spoke 
 with careful precision, it w^as impossible to 
 mistake the words, yet there w^as something 
 tentative and questioning in their utterance. 
 The young man's face betrayed a puzzled 
 half-reco2rnition.
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 27 
 
 " IVe heard my mother speak of you," he 
 said. 
 
 "But you don't remember what she 
 said?" 
 
 "Not much, I'm afraid. It is very 
 stupid of me. But that I have heard her 
 speak of you I'm certain. I know your 
 name well." 
 
 " There was nothing much to say. We 
 were very good friends thirty years ago. 
 Mrs. Harding might naturally mention my 
 name if she were speaking of Mitchelhurst. 
 Does she often talk of old days ? " 
 
 " Not often. I shall tell her I met you." 
 
 Barbara stood by, wondering and inter- 
 ested, glancing to and fro as they spoke. 
 At this moment she caught her uncle's eye. 
 
 " By the way," he said, " I have not 
 introduced you to my niece — my great- 
 niece, to be strictly accurate — Miss Barbara 
 Strange." 
 
 Harding bowed ceremoniously, and yet
 
 28 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 with a touch of self-contemptuous amuse- 
 ment. He bowed, but he remembered that 
 she had seen him slide down a muddy 
 bank on his back by way of an earlier 
 introduction. 
 
 ''Mr. Roth well Harding, I suppose I 
 should say ? " the old man inquired. 
 
 "No. I'm not named Rothwell. I'm 
 Reynold Harding." 
 
 " Reynold ? " 
 
 '' Yes. It's an old name in my father's 
 family. That is," he concluded, in the dead 
 level of an expressionless tone, ''as old a 
 name as there is in my father's family, I 
 believe." 
 
 " I suppose his grandfather was named 
 Reynold," said Mr. Hayes to himself. 
 Aloud he replied, " Indeed. How about 
 Adam 1 " 
 
 Hardins: constrained himself to smile, but 
 he did it with such an ill grace that Mr. 
 Hayes perceived that he was a stupid
 
 il] an unexpected invitation. 29 
 
 prig, who could not take a joke, and gave 
 himself airs. 
 
 " About these lodgings ? " the young man 
 persisted, returning to the point. " If Miss 
 Strange knows of some, why won't they 
 do for me ? " 
 
 Mr. Hayes gulped down his displeasure. 
 
 "There is only one roof that can shelter 
 you in Mitchelhurst," he said magnifi- 
 cently, and th^it is the roof of Mitchelhurst 
 Place." 
 
 " Of Mitchelhurst Place ? " Eeynold was 
 taken by surprise. He made a little step 
 backward, and Barbara, needlessly alarmed, 
 cried, " Mind the ditch ! " Her impulsive 
 little scream nearly startled him into it, but 
 he recovered himself on the brink, and they 
 both coloured again, he angrily, she in 
 vexation at bavins; reminded him of his 
 mishap. " How can I go to Mitchelhurst 
 Place ? " he demauded in his harshly hurried 
 voice.
 
 30 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " As my guest," said Mr. Hayes. " I am 
 Mr. Croft's tenant. I live there — with my 
 niece." 
 
 The young man's eyes went from one to 
 the other. Barbara's face was hardly less 
 amazed than his own. 
 
 '' Oh thank you ! " he said at last. " It's 
 exceedingly good of you, but T couldn't 
 think of troubling you — I really couldn't. 
 The lodsfino^s Miss Strano^e mentioned will 
 do very well for me, I am sure, or I could 
 manage for a day or two at the inn." 
 
 " Indeed — " Mr. Hayes began. 
 
 " But I am not particular," said Harding 
 with his most defiant air and in his bitterest 
 tone, " I assure you I am not. I have 
 never been able to afford it. I shall be all 
 right. Pray do not give the matter another 
 thought. I'm very much obliged to you for 
 your kindness, but it's quite out of the 
 question, really." 
 
 " No," said Mr. Hayes, resting his little
 
 11.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 31 
 
 black kid hands on the top of his stick and 
 looking up at the tall young man, "it 
 is out of the question that you should go 
 anywhere else. Pray do not suggest it. 
 You intended to go back to your hotel 
 this evening and to come on to Mitchel- 
 hurst to-morrow ? Then let us have the 
 pleasure of seeing you to-morrow as early 
 as you like to come." 
 
 " Indeed — indeed," protested Harding, 
 " I could not think of intrudincy." 
 
 The little gentleman laughed. 
 
 " My dear sir, who is the intruder at 
 Mitchelhurst Place? Answer me that! 
 No," he said, growing suddenly serious, 
 "you cannot go to the pothouse — you — 
 your mother's son — while I live in the 
 Roth wells' old home. It is impossible — I 
 cannot suffer it. I should be for ever 
 ashamed and humiliated if you refused a 
 few days' shelter under the old roof. I 
 should indeed."
 
 32 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " If you put it so " 
 
 " There is no other way to put it." 
 
 " I can say no more. I can only thank 
 you for your kindness. I will come," said 
 Reynold Harding, slowly. Urgent as the 
 invitation was, and simply as it was ac- 
 cepted, there was yet a curious want of 
 friendliness about it. Circumstances con- 
 strained these two men, not any touch of 
 mutual liking. One would have said that 
 Mr. Hayes was bound to insist and Harding 
 to yield. 
 
 " That is settled then," said the elder 
 man, " and we shall see you to-morrow. 
 I am a good deal engaged myself, but 
 Barbara is quite at home in Mitchelhurst, 
 and can show you all the Both well memor- 
 ials — the Rothwells are the romance of 
 Mitchelhurst, you know. She'll be delighted 
 to do the honours, eh, Barbara?" 
 The wl murmured a shv answer. 
 " Oh, if I trespass on your kindness 1
 
 il] ax unexpected invitation. 33 
 
 think that's enough ; I needn't victimise 
 Miss Strange," said the young man, and 
 he laughed a little, not altogether plea- 
 santly. " And I can't claim any of the 
 romance. My name isn't Rothwell." 
 
 " The name isn't everything," said Mr. 
 Hayes. '' Come, Barbara, it's getting late, 
 and I want my dinner. Till to-morrow, 
 then," and he held out his hand to their 
 new acquaintance. 
 
 Young Harding bowed stiffly to Barbara. 
 " Till to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 The old man and the girl walked away, 
 he with an elderly sprightliness of bearing 
 which seemed to say, " See how active I 
 stilJ am 1 " she moving by his side with 
 dreamy, unconscious grace. They came to 
 a curve in the road, and she turned her 
 head and looked back before she passed 
 it. Mr. Reynold Harding had taken but 
 a couple of steps from the spot where they 
 had left him. He had apparently arranged 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 his bandage to his satisfaction at last, and 
 was pulling at the knot with his teeth and 
 his other hand, but his face was towards 
 them, and Barbara knew that he saw that 
 backward glance. She quickened her steps 
 in hot confusion, and looked straight before 
 her for at least five miDutes. 
 
 During that time it was her uncle who 
 was the hero of her thoughts. His dramatic 
 recognition of Harding and Harding's ring, 
 his absolute refusal to permit the young 
 man to go to any house in Mitchelhurst 
 but the Place, something in the tone of 
 his voice when he uttered his " thirty years 
 ao^o," hinted a romance to Barbara. The 
 conjecture might or might not be correct, 
 but at any rate it was natural. Girls who 
 do not understand love are apt to use it to 
 explain all the other things they do not 
 understand. She waited till her cheeks were 
 cool, and her tliouoiits clear, and then she 
 spoke.
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 35 
 
 " I didn't know you knew the Roth wells 
 so well, uncle." 
 
 " My dear," said her uncle, *' how should 
 you ? " 
 
 " I suppose you might have talked about 
 them." 
 
 " I might," said Mr. Hayes. *' Now you 
 mention it, I might, certainly. But I 
 haven't any especial fancy for the gossip 
 of the last generation." 
 
 " Well, I have," said the girl. And after 
 a moment she went on. " How long is it 
 since they left the Place ? " 
 
 Her uncle put his head on one side with a 
 quick, birdlike movement, and apparently 
 referred to a cloud in the western sky 
 before he made answer. 
 
 " Nineteen years last Midsummer." 
 
 " And when did you take it ? " 
 
 " A year later." 
 
 The two walked a little way in silence, 
 and then Barbara recommenced. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 "This Mr. Harding — he is like the 
 Rothwclls, then?" 
 
 " Roth well from the crown of his head 
 to the sole of his foot. The old people, 
 who knew the family, will find him out 
 as he w^alks through the village — see if 
 they don't. The same haughty, sulky, 
 sneering way with him, and just the same 
 voice. Only every Rothwell at the Place, 
 even to the last, had an air of being a 
 (J rand seigneur^ which this fellow can't very 
 well have. Upon my w^ard, I begin to 
 think it w^as the pleasantest thing about 
 them. I don't like a pride w^hich is con- 
 scious of being homeless and out at elbows." 
 
 Barbara undauntedly pursued her little 
 romance. 
 
 " You are talking about the men," she 
 said. " Is Mr. Harding like his mother ? " 
 
 " Well, she w^as a handsome woman," 
 Mr. Hayes replied indifferently, " but she 
 had the same unpleasant manner."
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 37 
 
 The girl was thrown back on an utter 
 blankness of ideas. A woman beloved 
 may have a dozen faults, and be the 
 dearer for them ; but she cannot possibly 
 have an unpleasant manner. Barbara 
 could frame no theory to fit the perplexing 
 facts. 
 
 As they turned into the one street of 
 Mitchelhurst, Mr. Hayes spoke musingly. 
 
 " To-morrow afternoon, Barbara, let that 
 young man have the blue room — the large 
 room. You know which I mean ? " 
 
 " Yes, uncle." 
 
 *'See that everything is nice and in 
 order. And, Barbara " 
 
 " Yes, uncle," said Barbara again, for he 
 paused. 
 
 "Mr. Keynold Harding will probably 
 look down on you. I suspect he thinks 
 that you and I are about fit to black his 
 boots. Be civil, of course, but you needn't 
 do it."
 
 38 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 '' Tm sure I don't want," said the girl 
 quietly ; " and at that rate I should hope 
 he would come with them tolerably clean 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Mr. Hayes laughed suddenly, showing 
 his teeth. 
 
 '* By Jove ! " he said, " they were dirty 
 enough this afternoon ! " 
 
 " In my service," said Barbara. " Now I 
 come to think of it, it seems to me that I 
 ought to clean them." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " her uncle exclaimed, still 
 smiling at the remembrance. " And you 
 saw him roll into the ditch ? — Barbara, the 
 poor fellow must hate you like poison ! " 
 
 She looked down as she walked, drawing 
 her delicate brows a little together. 
 
 " I dare say he does," she said softly, as 
 if to herself. 
 
 Between ten and eleven that evening Mr. 
 Reynold Harding sat by his fireside, staring
 
 il] an unexpected invitation. 39 
 
 at the red coals as they faded drearily into 
 ashes. Being duly washed and brushed, he 
 showed but slight traces of his accident. 
 The scratches on his face were not deep, 
 and his torn hand was mended wdth little 
 strips of black plaster. Intently as he 
 seemed to think, his thoughts were not 
 definite. Had he been questioned con- 
 cerning them he could have answered only 
 " Mitchelhurst." Anger, tenderness, curi- 
 osity, pride, and bitter self-contempt were 
 mixed in silent strife in the shadows of his 
 soul. The memory of the Eothwells had 
 drawn him on his pilgrimage — a vain, 
 hopeless, barren memory, and yet the best 
 he had. He had intended to wander about 
 the village, to look from a distance at the 
 Rothwells' house, to stand by the Roth- 
 wells' graves in the churchyard, and to 
 laugh at his own folly as he did so. And 
 now he w^as to sleep under their roof, to 
 know the very rooms where they had lived
 
 40 MITCHELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 and died, and for this he was to thank 
 these strangers who played at hospitality 
 in the old home. He thought of the 
 morrow with curious alternations of distaste 
 and eagerness. 
 
 Mr. Hayes, meanwhile, with the lamp- 
 light shining on his white hair, was study- 
 ing a paper in the Transactions of the 
 County Archaeological Society, " On an 
 Inscription in Mitchelhurst Church.'*' Mr. 
 Hayes had a theory of his own on the 
 subject, and smiled over the vicars view 
 with the tranquil enjoyment of unalloyed 
 contempt. 
 
 And Barbara, in the silence of her room, 
 opposite a dimly-lighted mirror, sat brush- 
 ing her shadowy hair, whose waves seemed 
 to melt into the dusk about the pale 
 reflection of her face. As she gazed at it 
 she was thinking of some one who was 
 gone, and of some one who was to come. 
 Dwelling: amono^ the old memories of
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 41 
 
 Mitclielhurst Place, her girlish thoughts 
 had turned to them for lack of other food, 
 till the Kothwells were real to her in a 
 sense in which no other fancies ever could 
 be real. She was so conscious that her 
 connection with the house was accidental 
 and temporary, that she felt as if it still 
 belonged to its old owners, and she was 
 only their guest. They were always near, 
 yet, whimsically enough, in point of time 
 they were nearest when they were most 
 remote. Barbara's phantoms mostly be- 
 longed to the last century, and they faded 
 and grew pale as they approached the 
 present day, till the latest owner of the 
 Place was merely a name. The truth was 
 that at the end of their reign the Eoth- 
 wells, impoverished and lonely, had simply 
 lived in the house as they found it, and 
 were unable to set the stamp of any in- 
 dividual tastes upon their surroundings. 
 They were the Rothwells of the good old
 
 42 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 times who left their autographs in the books 
 in the library, their patient needlework on 
 quilts and bell-pulls, their mouldering rose- 
 leaves in great china jars, their pictures 
 still hanging on the walls, and traces of 
 their preferences in the names of rooms 
 and paths. There' were inscriptions under 
 the bells that had summoned servants long 
 ago, which told of busy times and a full 
 house. The lettering only differed from 
 anything in the present day by being 
 subtly and unobtrusively old-fashioned. 
 "Mb. Gerald" and "Mr. Thomas" had 
 given up ringing bells for many a long 
 day, and if the one suspended above Miss 
 Sarah's name sometimes tinkled through 
 the stillness, it was ouly because Barbara 
 wanted some hot water. Miss Sarah was 
 one of the most distinct of the girl's 
 phantoms. Eightly or wrongly, Barbara 
 always believed her to be the beautiful 
 Miss Rothweil of whom an old man in
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 43 
 
 the village told her a tradition, told to 
 him in his boyhood. It seemed that a 
 Rothwell of some uncertain date stood for 
 the county (''and pretty nigh ruined him- 
 self," said her informant, with a grim, yet 
 admiring, enjoyment of the extravagant 
 folly of the contest), and in the very heat 
 of the election Miss Rothwell drove with 
 four horses to the polling-place, to show 
 herself clothed from head to foot in a 
 startling splendour of yellow, her father's 
 colour. 
 
 " They said she was a rare sight to see," 
 the old man concluded meditatively. 
 
 '' And did Mr. Rothwell get in ? " asked 
 Barbara. 
 
 " No, no ! " he said, shaking his head. 
 " No Rothwell ever got in for the county, 
 though they tried times. But he pretty 
 nigh ruined himself." 
 
 Had she cared to ask her uncle, Barbara 
 might very possibly have ascertained the
 
 44 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 precise date of the election, and identified 
 the darkly beautiful girl who was whirled 
 by her four spirited horses into the roaring, 
 decorated town. But she was not inclined 
 to talk of her fancies to Mr. Hayes. So, 
 assuming the heroine to be Miss Sarah, 
 she remained in utter ignorance concern- 
 ing her after life. Did she ever wear the 
 white robes of a bride, or the blackness of 
 widow's weeds ? Barbara often wondered. 
 But at night, in her room, which was 
 Sarah Eothwell's, she could never picture 
 her otherwise than superbly defiant in the 
 meteor-like glory of that one day. 
 
 As she brushed her dusky cloud of hair 
 that evening she called up the splendour 
 of her favourite vision, and then her 
 thoughts fell sadly away from it to Rey- 
 nold Harding, the man who had kindred 
 blood in his veins, but no inheritance of 
 name or land. Those iron horse-hoofs, long 
 ago, had thundered over the bit of road
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 45 
 
 where Barbara gathered her autumn nose- 
 gay, and where young Harding — oh, poor 
 fellow ! — slipped in the mire, and scrambled 
 awkwardly to his feet, a pitiful, sullen 
 figure to put beside the beautiful Miss 
 Eothwell. 
 
 Was she glad he was coming ? She 
 laid down her brush and mused, looking 
 into the depths of her mirror. Yes, she 
 was glad. She did not think she should 
 like him. She felt that he was hostile, 
 scornful, dissatisfied. But Mitchelhurst 
 was quiet — so few people ever came to 
 it, and if they did come they went away 
 without a word — and at eighteen quiet is 
 wearisome, and a spice of antagonism is 
 refreshing. Did he hate her as her uncle 
 had said ? Time would show. She took 
 her little cross from the dressing table, 
 and looked at it with a new interest. 
 No, she did not like him. " But, after 
 all," said Barbara to herself, *'he is a
 
 46 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Rothwell, and my fairy godmother intro- 
 duced us ! " 
 
 Many miles away a banch of hips, scarlet 
 and orange, lay by a scribbled paper. They 
 had had adventures since they were pulled 
 from a Mitchelhurst brier that afternoon. 
 They had been lost and found, and travel- 
 ling by rail had nearly been lost again. A 
 clumsy porter, shouldering a load, had 
 blundered against an absorbed young man, 
 Tvho was just grasping a rhyme ; and the 
 red berries fell between them to the dusty 
 platform, and were barely saved from perils 
 of hurrying feet. Still, though a little 
 bruised and spoilt, they glowed ruddily in 
 the candle-light, and the paper beside them 
 said — 
 
 " Speech was forbidden me ; I coidd hut stay, 
 Ambushed behind a leafless hawthorn screen^ 
 And look upon her passing. She l\ad been 
 To pluck red berries on that autumn day, 
 And Love, who from her side will never stray, 
 Stole some for pity, seeing me unseen,
 
 II.] AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION. 
 
 And sighing, let tliemfall, that I might glean — 
 ' Poor gift ^ quoth he^ ' that Time shall take axoayP 
 Nay J hut I mock at Time I It shall not be 
 That, Jleet of foot, he robs me of my ijrize ; 
 Her smile has kindled all the sullen skies, 
 Blessed the dull furrows, and the leafless tree, 
 And year by year the autumn, ere it dies, 
 Shall bring my rosy treasure back to me ! "
 
 48 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MiTCHELHURST was, as Mr. Hayes had 
 said, a dull little village, by no means likely 
 to attract visitors. It was merely a group 
 of houses, for the most part meanly built, 
 set in a haphazard fashion on either side of 
 a wide road. Occasionally a shed would 
 come to the front, or two or three poplars, 
 or a bit of garden fence. But the poplars 
 weie apt to be mercilessly lopped, with 
 just a tuft at the extreme tip, which gave 
 each unlucky tree a slight resemblance to a 
 lion's tail, and the gardens, if not full of 
 cabbages, displayed melancholy rows of 
 stumps w^iere cabbages had been. There 
 was very little traffic through Mitchelhurst
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 49 
 
 Street, as this thoroughfare was usually 
 called, yet it showed certain signs of life. 
 Fowls rambled aimlessly about it, with a 
 dejected yet inquiring air, which seemed to 
 say that they would long ago have given 
 lip their desultory pecking if they could 
 have found anything else to do. A wind- 
 mill, standinor on a slight eminence a little 
 way from the road, creaked as its sails 
 revolved. Sounds of hammering came from 
 the blacksmith's forge. Children played on 
 the foot-path, a little knot of loungers 
 might generally be seen in front of the 
 " Kothwell Arms," and at most of the door- 
 ways stood the Mitchelhurst women, talking 
 loudly while their busy fingers were plaiting 
 straws. This miserably paid work was much 
 in vogue in the village, where generation 
 after generation of children learned it, and 
 grew up into stunted, ill-fed girls, fond 
 of coarse gossip, and of their slatternly 
 independence. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 At the western end of the village, beyond 
 the alehouse, stood the church, with two or 
 three yews darkening the crowded grave- 
 yar-d. The vicarage was close at hand, a 
 sombre little house, with a flagged path 
 leading to its dusky porch. Mitch elhurst 
 was not happy in its vicars. The parish 
 was too small to attract the heroic enthu- 
 siasts who are ready to live and die for 
 the unhealthy and ignorant crowds of our 
 great cities. And the house was too poor, 
 and the neighbourhood too uninteresting, 
 for any kindly country gentleman, who 
 chanced to have "the Reverend" written 
 before his name, to come and stable his 
 horses, and set up his liberal house-keeping, 
 and preach his Sunday sermons there. No 
 one chose Mitchelhurst, so " those few sheep 
 in the wilderness " were left to those who 
 had no choice, and the vicars were almost 
 always discontented elderly men. As a rule 
 they died there, a vicar of Mitchelhurst
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 51 
 
 being seldom remembered by the givers of 
 good livings. The incumbent at this time 
 was a feeble archaeologist, who coughed 
 drearily in his damp little study, and looked 
 vaguely out at the world from a narrow 
 and mildewed past. As he stepped from 
 the shadowy porch, blinking with tired 
 eyes, he would pause on the path, which 
 looked like a row of flat unwritten tomb- 
 stones, and glance doubtfully right and left. 
 Probably he had some vague idea of going 
 into the village, but in nine cases out of 
 ten he turned aside to the graveyard, and 
 sauntered musingly in the shadow of the 
 old yews, or disappeared into the church, 
 where there were two or three inscriptions 
 just sufficiently defaced to be interesting. 
 He fancied he should decipher them one 
 day, and leave nothing for his successor to 
 do, and he haunted them in that hope. 
 
 When he went into the street he spoke 
 kindly to the women at the doors, with an 
 
 E 2 , UNIVERSITY OF 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY.
 
 52 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 obvious fororetfulness of names and circum- 
 stances which made him an object of con- 
 temptuous pity. They could not conceive 
 how any one in his senses coukl make such 
 foolish mistakes, and were inclined to look 
 on the Established Church as a convenient 
 provision for weak - minded gentlefolks. 
 They grinned when he had gone by, and 
 repeated his well-meant inquiries, plaiting 
 all the time. It was only natural that the 
 vicar should prefer his parishioners dead. 
 They did not then indulge in coarse 
 laughter, they never described unpleasant 
 ailments, and they were neatly labelled 
 with their names, or else altogether silent 
 concerning them. 
 
 The vicar's shortcomings might have been 
 less remarked had the tenants of Mitchel- 
 hurst Place taken their proper position in 
 the village. But where, seventy or eighty 
 years before, the great gates swung open 
 for carriages and horses, and busy servants,
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHUEST PLACE." 53 
 
 and tradesmen, there came now down the 
 mossy drive only an oLi man on foot, and 
 a girl by his side, with eyes like dark 
 waters, and a sweet richness of carnation 
 in her cheeks. Mr. Hayes and his niece 
 lived, as the later Rothwells had lived, in 
 a corner of the old house. It was queer 
 that a man should choose to hire a place 
 so much too big for him, people said, but 
 they had said it for nineteen years, and 
 they ne^er seemed to get any further. 
 Herbert Hayes might be eccentric, but he 
 was shrewd, he knew his own business, and 
 the villao^ers recog-nised the fact. He was 
 not popular, there was nothing to be got 
 by begging at the Place, and he would not 
 allow Barbara to visit any of the cottages. 
 But it was acknowledged that he was not 
 stingy in payment for work done. And if 
 he lived in a corner he knew how" to make 
 himself comfortable there, which was more 
 than the last Rothwell had been able to do.
 
 54 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 The church and vicarag^e were at one 
 end of Mitchelhurst, and the Place, which 
 stood on slightly rising ground, was at the 
 other. It was a white house, and in a dim 
 light it had a sad and spectral aspect, a 
 pale blankness as of a dead face. The 
 Rothwell who built it intended to have 
 a stately avenue from the great ironwork 
 gates to the principal entrance, and planted 
 his trees accordingly. But the site was 
 cruelly exposed, and the soil was sterile, and 
 his avenue had become a vista of warped 
 and irregular shapes, leaning in grotesque 
 attitudes, dwarfed and yet massive with 
 ao-e. In the leafiness of summer much of 
 this singularity was lost, but when winter 
 stripped the boughs it revealed a double 
 line of fantastic skeletons, a fit pathway 
 for the strangest dreams. 
 
 The gardens, with the exception of a 
 piece close to the house, had been so long 
 neglected that they seemed almost to have
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 55 
 
 forgotten that they had ever been culti- 
 vated. Almost, but not quite, for they had 
 not the innocence of the original wilderness. 
 There were tokens of a contest. The plants 
 and grasses that possessed the soil were 
 obviously weeds, and the degraded survivals 
 of a gentler growth lurked among them 
 overborne and half strangled. There was a 
 suggestion of murderous triumph in the 
 coarse leaves of the mulleins and docks that 
 had rooted themselves as in a conquered 
 inheritance, and the little undulations which 
 marked the borders and bits of rock-work 
 of half a century earlier looked curiously 
 like neglected graves. 
 
 It seemed to Barbara Strange, as she 
 stood looking over it all, on the day on 
 which Mr. Harding was to come to Mitchel- 
 hurst, that there was somethiug novel in 
 this aspect of desolation. She knew the 
 place well, for it was rather more than a 
 year since she came, at her uncle's invita-
 
 56 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 tion, to live there, and she had seen it 
 with all the changes of the seasons upon it. 
 She knew it well, but she had never thought 
 of it as home. The little Devonshire 
 vicarajre which held father and mother, and 
 a swarm of 5^oung sisters and brothers — 
 almost too many to be contained within 
 its walls — was home in the past and the 
 present. And if the girl had dreams of 
 the future, shy dreams which hardly re- 
 vealed themselves even to her, they certainly 
 never had Mitchelhurst Place for a back- 
 ground. To her it was just a halting-place 
 on her journey into the unknown regions of 
 life. It was like some great out-of-the-way 
 ruinous old inn, in which one might chance 
 to sleep for a night or two. She had merely 
 been interested in it as a stranger, but on 
 this October day she looked at it curiously 
 and critically for Mr. Harding's sake. She 
 would have liked it to welcome him, to 
 show some signs of stately hospitality to
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 57 
 
 this son of the house who was coming 
 home, and for the first time a full sense of 
 its dreariness and hopelessness crept into 
 her soul. She could do nothing, she felt 
 absurdly small, the great house seemed to 
 cast a melancholy shadow over her, as she 
 w^ent to and fro in the bit of ground that 
 was still recognised as a garden, gathering 
 the few blossoms that autumn had spared. 
 
 Barbara meant the flowers to brighten 
 the rooms in wdiich they lived, but she 
 looked a little doubtfully into her basket 
 while she walked tow^ards the house. They 
 were so colourless and frail, it seemed to 
 her that they were just fit to be emptied 
 out over somebody's grave. '' Oh," she 
 said to herself, " why didn't he come in the 
 time of roses, or peonies, or tiger lilies ? 
 If it had been in July there might have 
 been some real sunshine to warm the old 
 place. Or earlier still, when the apple 
 blossom was out — why didn't he come
 
 58 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 then ? It is so sad now." And she 
 remembered what some one had said, a few 
 weeks before, loitering up that wide path 
 by her side : '' An old house — yes, I like 
 old houses, but this is like a whited 
 sepulchre, somehow. And not his own — 
 1 should not care to set up housekeeping 
 in a corner of somebody else's sepulchre." 
 Barbara, as her little lonely footsteps fell 
 on the sodden earth, thought that he was 
 perfectly right. She threw back her head, 
 and faced the wide, blind gaze of its many- 
 windowed front. Well, it was Mr. Hard- 
 ing's own family sepulchre, if that was any 
 cousolation. 
 
 Her duty as a housekeeper took her to 
 the blue room, which Mr. Hayes had chosen 
 for their guest, a large apartment at the 
 side of the house, not with the bleak north- 
 ern aspect of the principal entrance, but 
 looking away towards the village, and com- 
 mandino- a wide prospect of meadow land.
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 59 
 
 The landscape in itself was not remarkable, 
 but it had an attraction as of swiftly vary- 
 ing moods. Under a midsummer sky it 
 would lie steeped in sunshine, and dappled 
 with shadows of little, lightly-flying clouds, 
 content and at peace. Seen through slant 
 lines of grey rain it was beyond measure 
 dreary and forlorn, burdening the gazers 
 soul with its flat and unrelieved heaviness. 
 One would have said at such times that it 
 was a veritable Land of Hopelessness. Then 
 the clouds would part, mass themselves, 
 perhaps, into strange islands and continents, 
 and towering piles, and the sun would 
 go down in wild splendours of flame as of 
 a burning world, and the level meadows 
 would become a marvellous plain, across 
 which one might journey into the heart 
 of unspeakable things. Then would follow 
 the pensive sadness of the dusk, and the 
 silvery enchantment of moonlight. And 
 after all these changes there would probably
 
 60 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 come a grey and commonplace morning, in 
 which it would appear as so many acres of 
 very tolerable grazing land, in no wise 
 remarkable or interesting. 
 
 Barbara did not trouble herself much 
 about the prospect. She was anxious to 
 make sure that soap and towels had been 
 put ready for Mr. Harding, and candles in 
 the brass candlesticks on the chimney-piece, 
 and ink and pens on the little old-fashioned 
 writing-table. With a dainty instinct of 
 grace she arranged the heavy hangings of 
 the bed, and, seeing that a clumsy maid 
 had left the pillow awry, she straightened 
 and smoothed it with soft touches of a 
 slender brown hand, as if she could sym- 
 pathetically divine the sullen weariness of 
 the head that should lie there. Then, 
 fixing an absent gaze upon the carpet, 
 she debated a perplexing question in her 
 mind. 
 
 Should she, or should she not, put
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHUEST PLACE." 61 
 
 some flowers in Mr. Harding's room ? She 
 wanted to make him feel that he was 
 welcome to Mitchelhurst Place, and, to 
 her shyness, it seemed easier to express 
 that welcome in any silent way than to put 
 it into words. And why not ? She might 
 have done it without thinking twice about 
 it, but her uncle's little jests, and her own 
 loneliness, while they left her fearless in 
 questions of right and wrong, had made 
 her uneasy about etiquette. As she leaned 
 against one of the carved pillars of the 
 great bed, musing, with lips compressed 
 and anxious brow, she almost resolved that 
 Mr. Reynold Harding should have nothing 
 beyond what was a matter of housewifely 
 duty. Why should she risk a blush or a 
 doubt for him ? But even with the half- 
 formed resolution came the remembrance of 
 his unlucky humiliation in her service, and 
 Barbara started from her idle attitude, and 
 went away, singing softly to herself.
 
 62 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 When she came back she had a little 
 bowl of blue and white china in her hands, 
 which she set on the writing-table near the 
 window. It was filled wdth the best she 
 could find in her basket — a pale late rose- 
 bud, with autumnal foliage red as rust (and 
 the bud itself had lingered so long, hoping 
 for sunshine and warmth, that it would 
 evidently die with its secret of sweetness 
 folded dead in its heart), a few heads of 
 mignonette, green and run to leaf, and 
 rather reminding of fragrance than actually- 
 breathing it ; a handful of melancholy 
 Michaelmas daisies, and two or three white 
 asters. The girl, with warm young life in 
 her veins, and a glow of ripe colour on her 
 cheek stooped in smiling pity and touched 
 that central rosebud with her lips. No 
 doubt remained, if there had been any doubt 
 till then — it w^as already withered at the 
 core, or it must have opened wide to answer 
 that caress.
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 63 
 
 "Don't tell me !" said Barbara to herself 
 with a little nod. " If such a drearily dole- 
 ful bouquet isn't strictly proper, it ought to 
 be!" 
 
 It was late in the afternoon before the 
 visitor came. There was mist like a thin 
 shroud over the face of the earth, and little 
 sparks of light were gleaming in the cottage 
 windows. Keynold Harding held the reins 
 listlessly when the driver got down to open 
 the great wrought-iron gate, and then re- 
 signed his charge as absently as he had 
 accepted it. He stared straight before him 
 while the dog-cart rattled up the avenue, 
 and sufiered himself to sway idly as they 
 bumped over mossy stones in the drive. 
 The trees, leaning overhead, dropped a dead 
 leaf or two on his passive hands, as if that 
 were his share of the family property held 
 in trust for him till that moment. 
 
 There was something coldly repellent in 
 the stony house front, where was no sign
 
 64 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 of 2freetino[ or even of life. The driver 
 alighted again, pulled a great bell which 
 made a distant clangour, and then busied 
 himself at the back of the cart with 
 Harding's portmanteau, while the horse 
 stood stretchinor its neck, and breathinor 
 audibly in the chilly stillness. There was 
 a brief pause, during wbich Harding, who 
 had not uttered a word since he started, 
 confronted the old house with a face as 
 neutral as its own. 
 
 Then the door flew open, a maid appeared, 
 the luo[o:ao:e was carried into the hall, and 
 Mr. Hayes came hurrying out to meet his 
 guest. " AYelcome to Mitchelhurst Place ! " 
 he exclaimed. That '' Welcome to Mitchel- 
 hurst Place ! " had been in his thoughts for 
 a couple of hours at least, and now that it 
 was uttered it seemed very quickly over. 
 Harding, who was paying the driver out of 
 a handful of change, dropped a couple of 
 coins, made a hurried attempt to regain
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 65 
 
 them, and finally shook hands confusedly 
 with Mr. Hayes, while the man and the 
 maid pursued the rolling shillings round 
 their feet. "Thank you — you are very 
 kind," he said, and then saw Barbara in 
 the background. She had paused on the 
 threshold of a firelit room, and behind her 
 the warm radiance was glancing on a bit 
 of white-panelled wall. Reynold hastily 
 got rid of his financial difficulties and went 
 forward. 
 
 '* Oh, what a cold drive you must have 
 had ! " she cried, when their hands met. 
 " You are like ice ! Do come to the fire." 
 
 '' We thought you would have been here 
 sooner," said Mr. Hayes. ''The days draw 
 in now, and it gets to be very cold and 
 damp sometimes when the sun goes down." 
 
 Hardino^ murmured somethinor about not 
 having been able to get away earlier. 
 
 " This isn't the regular drawing-room, 
 you know," his host explained. "I like 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 space, but there is a little too much of it in 
 that great room — you must have a look at 
 it to-morrow. I don't care to sit by my 
 fire-side and see Barbara at her piano across 
 an acre or two of carpet. To my mind this 
 is big enough for two or three people." 
 
 •' Quite," said Reynold. 
 
 '^ The yellow drawing-room they called 
 this," the other continued. 
 
 The young man glanced round. The 
 room was lofty and large enough for more 
 than the two or three people of whom Mr. 
 Hayes had spoken. But for the ruddy 
 firelight it might have looked cold, with 
 its cream-white walls, its rather scanty 
 furniture, and the yellow of its curtains and 
 chairs faded to a dim tawny hue. But the 
 liberal warmth and light of the blazing 
 pile on the hearth irradiated it to the 
 furthest corner, and filled it with wavering 
 briditness. 
 
 o 
 
 " It's all exactly as it was in your uncle's
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 67 
 
 time," said Mr. Hayes. " When he could 
 not go on any longer, Croft took the whole 
 thing just as it stood, with all the old 
 furniture. But for that I would not have 
 come here." 
 
 " All the charm would have been lost, 
 wouldn't it ? " said Barbara. 
 
 " The charm — yes. Besides, one had 
 need be a millionnaire to do anything with 
 such a great empty shell. I suspect a 
 millionnaire would find plenty to do here 
 as it is." 
 
 " I suppose it had been neglected for a 
 long while ? " Eeynold questioned with his 
 hard utterance. 
 
 Mr. Hayes nodded, arching his brows. 
 
 " Thirty or forty years. Everything 
 allowed to go to rack and ruin. By Jove, 
 sir, your people must have built well, and 
 furnished well, for things to look as they 
 do. Well, they shall stay as they are while 
 I am here ; I'll keep the wind and the 
 
 F 2
 
 68 MITCHELHURST PLACK [chap. 
 
 rain out of the old house, but I can do no 
 more, and I wouldn't if I could. And when 
 Fm gone. Croft, or whoever is master then, 
 must see to it." 
 
 "Yes," said the young man, still looking 
 round. " Fm glad you've left it as it used 
 to be." 
 
 " Just as your mother would remember 
 it. Except, of course, one must make 
 oneself comfortable," Mr. Hayes explained 
 apologetically. "Just a chair for me, and 
 a piano for Barbara, you see ! " 
 
 Eeynold saw. There was a large eastern 
 rug spread near the fire-place, and on it 
 stood an easy-chair, and a little table 
 laden with books. A shaded lamp cast its 
 radiance on a freshly-cut page. By the 
 fire was a low seat, which was evidently 
 Barbara's. 
 
 " That's the way to enjoy old furniture," 
 said Mr. Hayes. " Sit on a modern chair 
 and look at it — eh ? There's an old piano
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE." 69 
 
 in that further corner ; that's very good to 
 look at too." 
 
 '' But not to hear ? " said Harding. 
 
 " You may try it.'* 
 
 "That's more than I may do," said 
 Barbara, demurely. 
 
 " You tried it too much — you tried me 
 too much," Mr. Hayes made answer. " You 
 did not begin in a fair spirit of investi- 
 gation. You were determined to find music 
 in it." 
 
 The girl laughed and looked down. 
 
 " And I did," she murmured to herself. 
 
 "Ah, you are looking at the portraits," 
 Mr. Hayes went on. " There are better 
 ones than the two or three we have here. 
 I believe your Uncle John took away a few 
 when he left. Your grandmother used to 
 hang over there by the fireplace. The one 
 on the other side is good, I think — Anthony 
 Rothwell. You must come a little more 
 this way to look at it."
 
 70 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Harding followed obediently, and made 
 various attempts to find tlie right position, 
 but the picture was not placed so as to 
 receive the full firelight, and being above 
 tlie lamp it remained in shadow. 
 
 ''Stay," said the old gentleman, 'Til 
 light tbis candle." 
 
 He struck a match as lie spoke, and the 
 sudden illumination revealed a scornful face, 
 and almost seemed to give it a momentary 
 expression, as if Anthony, of Mitch elhurst 
 Place, recognised Reynold of nowhere. 
 
 The younger man eyed the portrait coldly 
 and deliberately. 
 
 " Well," he said, " Mr. Anthony Rothwell, 
 my grandfather, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Great-grandfather," Mr. Hayes corrected. 
 
 " Oh, you are well acquainted with the 
 family history. Well, then, I should say 
 that my great-grandfather was remarkably 
 handsome, but " 
 
 " If it comes to that you are uncommonly
 
 III.] "WELCOME TO MITCHELHUEST PLACE." 71 
 
 like him,'^ said his host, with a little chuckle, 
 as he looked from the painted face to the 
 livingr one, and back aojain. 
 
 Eeynold started and drew back. 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! " he said, with a short 
 laugh. If he had been permitted to con- 
 tinue his first remark, he would have said, 
 " but as unpleasant-tempered a gentleman 
 as you could find in a day's journey." 
 
 The words had been so literally on his 
 lips that he could hardly realise that they 
 had not been uttered when Mr. Hayes spoke. 
 
 For the moment the likeness had been 
 complete. Then he saw how it was, laughed, 
 and said — 
 
 " Oh, thank you." 
 
 But he flashed an uneasy glance at 
 Barbara, who was lingering near. Was he 
 really like that pale, bitter-lipped portrait ? 
 He fancied that her face would tell him, 
 but she was looking fixedly at Anthony 
 Rothwell.
 
 72 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 "Mind you are not late for dinner, 
 Barbara," said her uncle quickly. 
 
 She woke to radiant animation. 
 
 "/won't be," she said. "But if you are 
 going to introduce Mr. Harding to all the 
 pictures first " 
 
 "I'm not going to do anything of the 
 kind." 
 
 " That's right. Mr. Harding's ancestors 
 won't spoil if they are kept waiting a little, 
 but I can't answer for the fish." 
 
 "Pray don't let any dead and gone 
 Rothwells interfere with your dinner," said 
 Eeynold. " If one's ancestors can't wait 
 one's convenience, I don't know who can."
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 73 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 Barbara was the first to reappear in 
 the yellow drawing-room. She had gone 
 away, laughing carelessly ; she came back 
 shyly, with flushed cheeks and downcast 
 eyes. She had. put on a dress which was 
 reserved for important occasions, and she 
 was conscious of her splendour. She felt 
 the strings of amber beads that were wound 
 loosely round her throat, and that rose and 
 fell with her quickened breathing. Nay, 
 she w^as conscious to the utmost end of the 
 folds of black drapery, that followed her 
 with a soft sound, as of a summer sea, when 
 she crossed the pavement of the hall. For
 
 74 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Barbara's dress was black, and its special 
 adornment was some handsome black lace 
 that her grandmother had given her. Some- 
 thing of lighter hue and texture might have 
 better suited her age, but there was no 
 questioning the fact that the dignified rich- 
 ness of her gown was admirably becoming 
 to the girl. One hardly knew whether to 
 call her childish or stately, and the per- 
 plexity was delightful. 
 
 Her heart was beating fast, half in appre- 
 hension and half in defiance. Over and 
 over again while she waited she said to 
 herself that she had not put on her best 
 dress for Mr. Harding's sake, she had not. 
 She did not care what he thought of her. 
 He might come and go, just as other people 
 might come and go. It did not matter to 
 
 g 
 
 her. But his coming seemed somehow to 
 have brought all the Roth wells back to life, 
 and to have revealed the desolate pride of 
 the old house. When she looked from 
 
 /
 
 IV.] DINNEE AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 75 
 
 Reynold's face to Anthony's, she suddenly 
 felt that she must put on her best dress 
 for their company. It was no matter of 
 personal feeling, it was an instinctive and 
 imperative sense of what the circumstances 
 demanded. She had never been to such 
 a dinner party in all her life. 
 
 The feeling did her credit, but it was 
 difficult to express. Feelings are often diffi- 
 cult to express, and a woman has an especial 
 difficulty in conveying the finer shades of 
 meaning. There is an easy masculine way 
 of accounting for her every action by sup- 
 posing it aimed at men in general, or some 
 man in particular ; and thus all manner of 
 delicate fancies and distinctions, shaped 
 clearly in a woman's mind, may pass through 
 the distorting medium to reach a man's 
 apprehension as sheer coquetry. The know- 
 ledge of tliis possibility is apt to give even 
 innocence an air of hesitating consciousness. 
 Barbara was by no means certain that her
 
 76 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 uncle would understand this honour paid, 
 not to any living young man, but to the 
 traditions of Mitchelhurst Place, and her 
 blushes betrayed her shame at his probable 
 misreadino: of her meaninof. And what 
 would Mr. Harding himself think 1 
 
 He came in with his languid, hesitating 
 walk, looking very tall and slender in his 
 evening dress. He had telegraphed home 
 for that dress suit the day before. The fact 
 that he was travelling for a week or two, 
 with no expectation of dining anywhere 
 but in country inns, might naturally have 
 excused its absence, but the explanation 
 would have been an apology, and Harding 
 could not apologise. He would have found 
 it easier to spend his last shilling. Perhaps, 
 too, he had shared Barbara's feeling as to 
 the fitness of a touch of ceremony at 
 Mitchelhurst. 
 
 At any rate he shared her shyness. He 
 crossed the room with evident constraint,
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 77 
 
 and halted near the fire without a word. 
 Barbara's shyness was palpitating and 
 aflame; his was leaden and chill. She 
 did not know what to make of his silence ; 
 she waited, and still he did not speak ; 
 she looked up and felt sure that his 
 downcast eyes had been obliquely fixed on 
 her. 
 
 " Uncle is last, you see," she said. '* I 
 knew he would be." 
 
 " I was afraid I might be," he replied. 
 " A clock struck before I expected it. 1 
 suppose my watch loses, but I hadn't found 
 it out." 
 
 " Oh, I ought to have told you," she 
 exclaimed penitently. " That is the great 
 clock in the hall, and it is always kept ten 
 minutes fast. Uncle likes it for a warning. 
 So when it strikes, he says, ' That's the hall 
 clock ; then there's plenty of time, plenty 
 of time, I'll just finish this.' And he goes 
 on quite happily."
 
 78 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " I fancied somehow that Mr. Hayes was 
 a very punctual man." 
 
 " Because he talks so much about it. I 
 think he reminds other people for fear they 
 should remind him. When I first came he 
 was always saying, 'Don't be late/ till I 
 was quite frightened lest I should be. I 
 couldn't believe it when he said, ' Don't be 
 late,' and then wasn't ready." 
 
 " You are not so particular now ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I am," she answered very 
 seriously. " It doesn't do to be late if you 
 are the house-keeper, you know." 
 
 A faint gleam lighted Harding's face. 
 
 " Of course not ; but I never was," he 
 replied, in a respectful tone. "How long 
 is it since you came here '? " 
 
 " I came with my mother to see uncle a 
 great many years ago, but I only came to 
 live here last October. Uncle wanted some- 
 body. He said it was dull." 
 
 " I should think it was. Isn't it dull for 
 vou ? "
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 79 
 
 " Sometimes," said Barbara. *' It isn't at 
 all like home. That's a little house with a 
 great many people in it — father and mother, 
 and all my brothers and sisters, and father's 
 pupils. And this is a big house with nobody 
 in it." 
 
 " Till you came," said Keynold, hesitating 
 over the little bow or glance which should 
 have pointed his words. 
 
 " Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with 
 a smile, ''he must count for somebody. 
 But /feel exactly like nobody when I am 
 going in and out of all those empty rooms. 
 You must see them to-morrow." 
 
 The clock on the chimney-piece struck, 
 and she turned her head to look at it. 
 " Thafs five minutes slow," she said. 
 
 " And the other was more than ten minutes 
 fast." 
 
 "Yes, it gains. Do you know," said 
 Barbara, " I always feel as if the great clock 
 were the time, so when it fairly runs away
 
 80 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 into the future and I have to stop it, to let 
 the world come up with it again, it seems to 
 me almost as if I stopped my own life too." 
 
 " Some people would be uncommonly 
 glad to do that," said Harding ; " or even 
 to make time go backward for a while." 
 
 " Well, I don't mind for a quarter of an 
 hour. But I don't want it to go back, 
 really. Not back to pinafores and the 
 schoolroom," said Barbara with a laugh, 
 which in some curious fashion turned to a 
 deepening flush. The swift, impulsive blood 
 was always coming and going at a thought, 
 a fancy, a mere nothing. 
 
 Harding smiled in his grim way. " I 
 suppose it's just as well not to want time to 
 run back," he said at last. 
 
 " Uncle might find himself punctual for 
 once if it did. Oh, here he comes ! " The 
 door opened as she spoke, and Mr. Hayes 
 appeared on the threshold with an inquiring 
 face.
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 81 
 
 " All ! you are down, Barbara ! That's 
 right. Dinner's ready, they tell me." 
 
 Eeynold looked at Barbara, hesitated, and 
 then offered his arm. Mr. Hayes stood 
 back and eyed them as they passed — the 
 tall young man, pale, dark-browed, scowling 
 a little, and the girl at his side radiantly 
 conscious of her dignity. Even when they 
 had gone by he was obliged to wait a 
 moment. The sweeping folds of Barbara's 
 dress demanded space and respect. His 
 glance ran up them to her shoulders, to the 
 amber beads about her neck, to the loose 
 coils of her dusky hair, and he followed 
 meekly with a whimsical smile. 
 
 They dined in the great dining-room, 
 where a score of guests would have seemed 
 few. But they had a little table, with four 
 candles on it, set near a clear fire, and shut 
 in by an overshadowiug screen. " We are 
 driven out of this in the depth of winter," 
 said Mr. Hayes. " It is too cold — nothing 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 MITCHELHURST. PLACE. [chap. 
 
 seems to warm it, and it is such a terrible 
 journey from tlie drawing-room fire. But 
 till the Ijitter weather comes I like it, and 
 I always come back as soon as the spring 
 begins. We were here by March, weren't 
 we, Barbara ? " 
 
 The girl smiled assent, and Harding had 
 a passing fancy of the windy skies of March 
 glancing through the tall windows, the 
 upper part of which he saw from his place. 
 But his eyes came back to Barbara, who 
 was watching the progress of their meal 
 with an evident sense of responsibility. 
 The crowning grace of an accomplished 
 housekeeper is to hide all need of manage- 
 ment, but this was the pretty anxiety of a 
 beginner. " Mary, the currant jelly," said 
 Miss Strange in an intense undertone, and 
 glanced eloquently at Eeynold's plate. She 
 was so absorbed that she started when her 
 uncle spoke. 
 
 " Why do you wear those white things —
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 83 
 
 asters, are they not ? They don't go well 
 with your dress." 
 
 Barbara looked down at the two coloui'less 
 blossoms which she had fastened amongr the 
 
 o 
 
 folds of her black lace. " No, I know they 
 don't, but I couldn't find anj^thing better in 
 the garden to-day." 
 
 " It wouldn't have mattered what it was," 
 Mr. Hayes persisted, with his head critically 
 on one side. " Anything red or yellow — - 
 just a bit of colour, you know." 
 
 " But that was exactly what I couldn't 
 find. All the red and yellow things in the 
 garden are dead." 
 
 " AVhy not some of those scarlet hips you 
 were gathering yesterday ? " said Eeynold. 
 
 *' Oh ! Those ! " exclaimed Barbara, look- 
 ing hurriedly away from the scratch on the 
 cheek nearest her, and then discovering that 
 she had fixed her eyes on his wounded hand. 
 " Do you think they would have done ? 
 Well, yes, I dare say they might." 
 
 G 2
 
 84 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " I should think they would have done 
 beautifully, but you know best. Perhaps 
 you did not care for them ? You threw 
 them away ? " He was smiling with a 
 touch of malice, as if he had actually seen 
 Barbara in her room, gazing regretfully at a 
 little brown pitcher which was full of au- 
 tumn leaves and clusters of red rose-fruit. 
 
 "Of course they would have done," said 
 Mr. Hayes. 
 
 " Yes, perhaps they might. I must bear 
 them in mind another time. Uncle, Mr. 
 Harding's plate is empty." And Barbara 
 went on with her dinner, feelino^ ano^ry and 
 aggrieved. " He might have let me think 
 I had spared his feelings by giving them 
 up," she said to herself. " It would have 
 been kinder. And I should like to know 
 what I was to do. If I had worn them he 
 would have looked at me to remind me. I 
 can't think what made uncle talk about the 
 stupid things."
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 85 
 
 During tlie rest of the meal conversation 
 was somewhat fitfuL The three, in their 
 sheltered, fire-lit nook, sat through pauses, 
 in which it almost seemed as if it would be 
 only necessary to rise softly and glance 
 round the end of the screen to surprise 
 some ghostly company gathered silently at 
 the long table. The wind made a cheerless 
 noise outside, seekinor admission to the OTeat 
 hollow house, and died away in the hope- 
 lessness of vain endeavour. At last Miss 
 Strange prepared to leave the gentlemen to 
 their wine, but she lingered for a moment, 
 darkly glowing against the background of 
 sombre brown and tarnished gold, to bid 
 her uncle remember that coffee would be 
 ready in the drawing-room when they liked 
 to come for it. 
 
 Mr. Hayes pushed the decanter to his 
 guest. " Where is John Roth well now V he 
 asked. 
 
 " I don't know," said Harding, listlessly.
 
 86 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 He was peeling a rough-coated pear, and he 
 watched the long, unbroken strip gliding 
 downward in lengthening curves. " Some- 
 w^here on the Continent — in one of those 
 places where people go to live shabbily." 
 
 Mr. Hayes filled the pause with an 
 inquiring '' Yes ? " and his bright eyes 
 dilated. 
 
 " Yes," the other repeated. " Didn't you 
 say he took some pictures away with him ? 
 They must be all gone long ago — pawned 
 or sold. How would you raise money on 
 family portraits ? It would look rather 
 queer going to the pawnbroker's with an 
 ancestor under your arm." 
 
 " But there was his mother's portrait. 
 
 He would not " 
 
 " Hm ! " said Harding, cutting up his 
 pear. "Well, perhaps not. Perhaps he 
 had to leave in a hurry some time or 
 other. ^ A miniature would have been more 
 convenient."
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 87 
 
 *^But this is very sad," said Mr. Hayes. 
 He spoke in an abstract and impersonal 
 manner. 
 
 Harding assented, also in a general way. 
 
 " Very sad," the other repeated. Then, 
 quickening to special recollection — '* And 
 your uncle was always such a proud man. 
 I never knew a prouder man than John 
 Eothwell five-and-twenty years ago. And 
 to think that he should come to this ! " 
 
 He leaned back in his chair and slowly 
 sipped his wine, while he tried to reconcile 
 old memories with this new description. 
 The wine was very good, and Mr. Hayes 
 seemed to enjoy it. Eeynold Harding 
 rested his elbow on the table, and looked 
 at the fire with a moody frown. 
 
 " Some pride can't be carried about, I 
 suppose," he said at last. "It's as bad as a 
 whole gallery of family portraits — worse, for 
 you cannot raise money on it." 
 
 Mr. Hayes nodded. " I see. Eooted in
 
 88 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 the Mitch elhurst soil, you think? Very 
 possibly." He looked round, as far as the 
 screens permitted. "And so, when this 
 went, all went. But how very sad ! " 
 
 The young man did not take the 
 trouble to express his agreement a second 
 time. 
 
 " And your other uncle," said Mr. Hayes 
 briskly, after a pause. " How is he ? " 
 " My other uncle ? " 
 
 " Yes, your uncle on your father's side — 
 Mr. Harding." 
 
 " Oh, he is very well — getting to be an 
 old man now." 
 
 *' But as prosperous as ever ? " 
 "More so," said Hardins^ in his rouo;h 
 voice. " His money gathers and grows like 
 a snowball. But he is beginning to think 
 about enjoying it — he is evidently growing 
 old. He says it is time for him to have a 
 holiday. He never took one for some 
 wonderful time — eighteen years I think it
 
 v.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 89 
 
 was ; but he lias not worked quite so bard 
 of late." 
 
 *' Well, he deserves a little pleasure 
 now." 
 
 " I don't know about that. If a man 
 makes himself a slave to money-getting I 
 don't see that he deserves any pleasure. 
 He deserves his money." 
 
 The old gentleman laughed. " Let the 
 poor fellow amuse himself a little — if he 
 can. The question is whether he can, after 
 a life of hard work. What is his idea of 
 pleasure '? " 
 
 " Yachting. He discovered quite lately 
 that he wasn't sea-sick ; he hadn't leisure to 
 find it out before. So he took to yacbting. 
 He can enjoy his dinner as well on board 
 a boat as anywhere else, he can talk about 
 his yacht, and he can spend any amount 
 of money." 
 
 " You haven't any sympathy with his 
 hobbv ? "
 
 90 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " I ? I've no money to spend, and I am 
 sea-sick." 
 
 " You are ? I remember now," said Mr. 
 Hayes, thoughtfully, " that your grandfather 
 and John Eothwell had a great dislike to 
 the water." 
 
 " Ah ? It's a family peculiarity ? A proud 
 distinction ? " Harding laughed quietly, 
 looking away. He was accustomed to laugh 
 at himself and by hiQiself. '' It's something 
 to be able to invoke the Rothwell ancestry 
 to give dignity to one's qualms," he said. 
 
 Mr. Hayes smiled a little unwillingly. 
 He did not really require respect for the 
 Roth well sea-sickness, but it hardly pleased 
 him that the young fellow should scoff at 
 his ancestry, just when it had gained him 
 admission to Mitchelhurst Place. " Bad 
 taste," he said to himself, and he returned 
 abruptly to the money-making uncle. '' I 
 suppose Mr, Harding has a son to come 
 after him ? "
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 91 
 
 " Yes, there's one son," Keynold replied, 
 with a contemptuous intonation. 
 
 " And does he take to the business ? " 
 
 " I don't know much about that. I fancy- 
 he wants to begin at the yachting end, 
 anyhow." 
 
 " Only one son." Mr. Hayes glanced at 
 young Harding as if a question were on his 
 lips ; but the other's face did not invite it, 
 and the subject dropped. There was a 
 pause, and then the elder man began to 
 talk of some Roman remains which had 
 been discovered five miles from Mitchel- 
 hurst. Reynold crossed his long legs, 
 balanced himself idly, and listened with 
 dreary acquiescence. 
 
 It was some time before the Roman 
 remains were disposed of and they rejoined 
 Barbara. They startled her out of her 
 uncle's big easy-chair, where she was half- 
 lying, half-sitting, with all her black 
 draperies about her, too much absorbed in
 
 92 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 a novel to hear their approach. Harding, 
 on the threshold, caught a glimpse of the 
 nestling attitude, the parted lips, the hand 
 that propped her head, before Miss Strange 
 was on her feet and ready for her company. 
 
 Mr. Hayes, stirring his coffee, demanded 
 music. He liked it a little for its own sake, 
 but more just then because it would take 
 his companion off his hands. He was tired 
 of entertaining this silent young man, who 
 stood, cup in hand, on the rug, frowning 
 at the portraits of his forefathers, and he 
 sent Barbara to the piano with the certainty 
 that Harding would follow her. As soon 
 as he saw them safely at the other end of 
 the room he dropped with a sigh of relief 
 into the chair which she had quitted, and 
 took up his book. 
 
 The girl, meanwhile, turned over her 
 music and questioned Keynold. He did 
 not sing ? — did not play ? No ; and he 
 understood very little, but he liked to
 
 IV.] DINNER AND A LITTLE MUSIC. 93 
 
 listen. He turned the pages for her, once 
 or twice too fast, generally much too slowly, 
 never at the right moment. Then Barbara 
 began to play something which she knew 
 by heart, and he stood a little aside, with 
 his moody face softening, and his down- 
 ward-glancing eyes following her fingers 
 over the keys, as if she were weaving the 
 strands of some delicate tissue. When she 
 stopped, rested one hand on the music-stool 
 on which she sat, and turned from the 
 piano to hear what her uncle wished for 
 next, he saw, as she leaned backward, the 
 pure curve of her averted cheek, and the 
 black lace and amber beads about her softly- 
 rounded throat. 
 
 " Oh, I know that by heart, too ! " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 He took up a sheet of music from the 
 piano, and gazed vaguely at it while she 
 struck the first notes. He read the title 
 without heeding it, and then saw pencilled
 
 94 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 above it in a bold, but somewhat studied, 
 hand, 
 
 " Adrian Scarlett." 
 
 For a moment the name held his glance ; 
 and when he laid the paper down he looked 
 furtively over his shoulder. He knew that 
 it was an absurd fancy, but he felt as if 
 some one had come into the room and was 
 standing behind Barbara.
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 95 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AN OLD LOVE STORY. 
 
 The next morDing saw the three at 
 breakfast in a little room adjoining the 
 drawing-room. The sky was overcast, and 
 before the meal was over Barbara turned 
 her head quickly as the rain lashed the 
 window in sudden fury. She arched her 
 brows, and looked at Mr. Harding with 
 anxious commiseration. 
 
 " It's going to be a wet day," she said. 
 
 He raised his eyes to the blurred 
 prospect. 
 
 " It looks like it, certainly." 
 
 Her expression was comically aghast. 
 
 " I never thought of its being wet ! "
 
 96 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap, 
 
 " Yet such a thing does happen occa- 
 sionally." 
 
 " Yes, but it needn't have happened to- 
 day. I thought you would want to go 
 out. What loUl you do ? " 
 
 *' Stay indoors, if you have no ob- 
 jection." 
 
 " But there is nothing to amuse you. 
 You will be so dull." 
 
 " Less so than usual, I imagine," said 
 Keynold. '' Do you find it so difficult to 
 amuse yourself on a wet day ? " 
 
 " No, but I have a great deal to do. 
 Besides, it is different. Don't men always 
 want to be amused more than women ? " 
 
 " Poor men ! " said he. 
 
 Mr. Hayes read his letters and seemed 
 to take no heed of his niece's trouble. But 
 it appeared, when breakfast was finished, 
 that he had arrano-ed how the morninof 
 should be spent. He announced his in- 
 tention of takino^ vounoj Hardinor over the
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 97 
 
 Place, and lie carried it out with a 
 thoroughness which w^ould have done 
 honour to a professional guide, showing 
 all the pictures, mentioning the size of the 
 rooms, and relating the few family tradi- 
 tions — none of which, by the way, reflected 
 any especial credit on the Rothwells. He 
 stopped with bright-eyed appreciation 
 before a cracked and discoloured map, 
 wdiere the Mitchelhurst estate was shown 
 in its widest extent. Reynold looked 
 silently at it, and then stalked after his 
 host through all the chilly faded splendour 
 of the house, shivering sometimes, sneering 
 sometimes, but taking it all in with eager 
 eyes, and glancing over the little man's 
 white head at the sombre shelves of the 
 library or the portraits on the walls. Mr. 
 Hayes was fluent, precise, and cold. Only 
 once did he hesitate. They had come to 
 a small sitting-room on the ground floor, 
 which, in spite of long disuse, still somehow 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 MITCIIELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 conveyed the impression that it had 
 belonged to a young man. 
 
 " This was John Rothwell's favourite 
 room," he said. He looked round. " I 
 remember, yes, I remember, as if it were 
 yesterday, how he used " 
 
 Harding waited, but he stood staring 
 at the rusty grate, and left the sentence 
 unfinished. 
 
 "And to think that now he should be 
 living from hand to mouth on the Conti- 
 nent ! " he said at last, and compressed his 
 lips significantly. 
 
 He took the youug man to the servants' 
 hall, across which the giggling voices of 
 two or three maids echoed shrilly, till they 
 were suddenly silenced by the master's 
 approach. Eeynold followed him down long 
 stone passages, and thought, as he went, 
 how icy and desolate they must be on 
 a black winter night. He was oppressed 
 by the size and dreariness of the place,
 
 v.] AN OLD LOYE STORY. 99 
 
 and bewildered by the multiplicity of 
 turnings. 
 
 '* I think," said Mr. Hayes suddenly, 
 " that I have shown you all there is to see 
 indoors." 
 
 And, as Reynold replied that he was 
 much obliged, he pushed a door, and 
 motioned to his guest to precede him. 
 Reynold stepped forward, and discovered 
 that he was in the entrance hall, facing 
 Barbara, who had just come down the 
 broad white stairs, and still had her hand 
 upon the balustrade. It seemed to him 
 as if he had come through the windings 
 of that stony labyrinth, the hollow rooms 
 and pale corridors, to find a richly-coloured 
 blossom at the heart of all. 
 
 " Oh, Barbara, I'll leave Mr. Harding to 
 you now," said the old gentleman. " Tm 
 going to my study — I must write some 
 letters." 
 
 He crossed the black and white pavement 
 
 H 2
 
 100 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 with brisk, short steps, and vanished 
 through a doorway. 
 
 " Has uncle shown you everything ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " I should think so." 
 
 " It's a fine place, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Very fine, and very big," said Harding 
 slowly. " Very empty, and ghostly, and 
 dead." 
 
 " Oh, you don't like it ! I thought it 
 would be different to you. I thought it 
 would seem like home, since it belonged to 
 your own people." 
 
 " Home, sweet home ! " he answered 
 with a queer smile. " Well, it is a fine 
 place, as you say. And what have you 
 been doing all the morning 1 " 
 
 " Housekeeping," said Barbara. ^' And 
 now" — she set down a small basket of 
 keys on the hall table, as if she were pre- 
 paring for action — " now I am going to set 
 the clock riofht."
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. loi 
 
 "I'll stay for that if you'll allow me," 
 said Reynold. " I remember what you told 
 me last night. It is the time, and the 
 world stands still when it stops." 
 
 " For me, not for you," the girl replied. 
 *' You have your watch — you don't believe 
 in the big clock." 
 
 ''Yes, I do. Here, in Mitchelhurst, what 
 does one want with any but Mitchelhurst 
 time % What have I to do with Greenwich ? 
 But as for Mitchelhurst, your uncle has 
 talked to me till I feel as if I were all 
 the Rothwells who ever lived here. Why, 
 what's this ? Sunshine ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Barbara. *' It's going to 
 clear up." 
 
 It could hardly be called actual sunlight, 
 but there certainly was a touch of pale 
 autumn gold growing brighter about them 
 as they stood. 
 
 Harding was listening to the monotonous 
 tick — tick— tick — tick.
 
 102 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " I remember a man in some book," 
 he said, " who didn't like to hear a clock 
 going — always counting out time in small 
 change/' 
 
 " Oh, but that's a worrying idea ! I 
 should hate to think of my life doled out 
 to me like that ! " 
 
 " I'm afraid you must," he answered, 
 with his little rough-edged laugh. " It 
 would be very delightful to take one's life 
 in a lump, but how are you going to have 
 more than a moment in a moment ? There 
 are plenty of us always trying to do it. If 
 you could find out the way " 
 
 '' How, trying ? " said Barbara. 
 
 " Trying to keep the past and grasp the 
 future," Harding replied. " Working and 
 waiting for some moment which is to hold 
 at least half a lifetime — when it comes ! 
 Oh, I quite agree with you ; I should 
 like a feast, and I am fed by spoonfuls ! " 
 
 She looked up at him a little doubtfully,
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 103 
 
 and the clock went on ticking. " I always 
 thought it was like a heart beating," she 
 said, swerving from the idea he had pre- 
 sented as if it were distasteful. "Now I" 
 
 There was silence in the empty hall, as 
 if, in very truth, she had laid her brown 
 young hand upon Time's flying pulse, and 
 stilled it, 
 
 " Talk of killino; time ! " said Hardino^. 
 " No," Barbara answered, without turning 
 her head. " Time's asleep — that's all — 
 asleep and dreaming. He'll soon wake up 
 again." 
 
 She had so played with the idle fancy 
 that, quite unconsciously, she spoke in a 
 hushed voice, which deepened the im- 
 pression of stillness. Harding said no 
 more, he simply watched her. His im- 
 agination had been quickened by the sight 
 of the Place ; its traditional memories, 
 its pride, and its decay had touched him 
 more deeply than he knew. Life, with its
 
 104 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 hardness and its haste, its obscure and ugly 
 miseries and needs, had relaxed its grasp, 
 and left him to himself for a little space 
 in the midst of that curious loneliness. He 
 felt as if the wide, living, wind-swept 
 world beyond its w^alls were something 
 altogether alien and apart. Everything 
 about him was pale and dim ; the very 
 sunlight was faded, as if it were the faint 
 reflection of a glory that was gone ; every- 
 thing rested as if in the peace of something 
 that was neither life nor death. Everything 
 was faded and dim, except the girl who 
 stood, softly breathing, a couple of steps 
 away, and even she seemed to be held by 
 the enchantment of the place, and to wait 
 in passive acquiescence. Eeynold's grey 
 eyes dilated and deepened. 
 
 But as she stood there, unconscious of his 
 gaze, Barbara smiled. It was just the 
 slightest possible smile, as if she answered 
 some smiling memory ; a curve of the lip,
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 105 
 
 hardly more than hinted, which might 
 betoken nothing deeper than the recollec- 
 tion of some melodious scrap of rhyme or 
 music. Yet Reynold drew back as if it 
 stuno^ him. " That's not for me ! " he said 
 to himself. 
 
 The movement startled Barbara from 
 her reverie. " Oh, how like you are to 
 that picture in the drawing-room ! " she 
 exclaimed, impulsively. 
 
 He knew what she meant, and the 
 innocent utterance was a second sting. 
 But he laughed. " What, the good-looking 
 one ? " 
 
 It seemed to her that she could have 
 found a light answer but for his eyes upon 
 her. As it was, he had the gratification of 
 seeingr her colour and hesitate. " I — I 
 wasn't thinking — I didn't mean — " she 
 stammered, shyly. " Oh, of course!" And 
 then, angry with herself for her unreadi- 
 ness, she stepped forward, and, with a
 
 106 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 gesture of impatience, set the pendulum 
 swinofinor. 
 
 " Time is to go on again ? " said he. 
 
 " Yes," Barbara replied, decidedly. " It 
 would be tiresome if it stood still long. It 
 had better go on. Besides, I'm cold," and 
 she turned away with a pretty little shiver. 
 " I want to go to the fire ; I can't stay to 
 attend to it any longer." 
 
 Hardinoj lino-ered, and after an instant 
 of irresolution she left him to a world which 
 had resumed its ordinary course. 
 
 At luncheon there was the inevitable 
 mention of the weather, and Mr. Hayes, 
 with his eyes fixed upon his plate, said, 
 "Yes, it has cleared up nicely. I suppose 
 you are going into the village ? " 
 
 The young people hesitated, not know- 
 ing to whom the question was addressed. 
 Miss Strange waited for Mr. Harding, 
 and Mr. Harding for Miss Strange. Then 
 they said "Yes" at the same moment,
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 107 
 
 and felt themselves pledged to go to- 
 gether. 
 
 "I thought so," said Mr. Hayes, and 
 began to remind his niece of this thing 
 and that which she was to be sure and 
 show their visitor. " And the sooner you 
 go the better," he added when the meal was 
 over. " The days grow short." 
 
 Barbara looked questioningly at Mr. Har- 
 ding. " If you like to go " 
 
 " I shall be delighted, if you will allow 
 me," said the young man, and a few 
 minutes later they went together down the 
 avenue. 
 
 "The days grow short," Mr. Hayes had 
 said, and everything about them seemed set 
 to that sad autumnal burden. The boughs 
 above their heads, the ground under foot, 
 were heavy with moisture, the bracken was 
 withered and brown, there were no more 
 butterflies, but at every breath the yellowing 
 leaves took their uncertain flight to the wet
 
 108 MITCHELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 earth. The young people, each with a neatly 
 furled umbrella, walked with something of 
 ceremonious self -consciousness, making little 
 remarks about the scenery, and Mr. Hayes, 
 from his window, followed them with his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Roth well, every inch of him," he said 
 to himself, as Reynold turned and looked 
 backward at the Place. " I never knew one 
 of the lot yet who didn't think that par- 
 ticular family had a right to despise all the 
 rest of the world. The only difference I can 
 see is that this fellow despises the family 
 too. Well, let him! Why not? But, 
 good Lord ! what an end of all his mother's 
 hopes ! " And Mr. Hayes went back to 
 his fireside — Ms, while John Roth well was 
 dodging his creditors on the Continent ! 
 There was unutterable dreariness in the 
 thought of such a destiny, but the little old 
 man regretted it with a complacent rubbing 
 of his hands and a remembrance of Roth-
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 109 
 
 well's arrogance. There is a belief, engen- 
 dered by the moral stories of our childhood, 
 that it is good for a man that his un- 
 reasonable pride should be broken — a belief 
 which takes no heed of the chance that 
 its downfall may hurl the whole fabric of 
 life and conduct mto the foulness of the 
 gutter. Mr. Hayes naturally took the moral 
 story view of a pride by which he had 
 once been personally wounded ; yet he wore 
 a deprecating air, as if Fate, in too amply 
 avenging him, had paid a compliment to 
 his importance which was almost over- 
 powering. 
 
 It was more than a quarter of a century 
 since Rothwell and he had been antagonists, 
 though they had not avowed the fact in so 
 many words, and Rothwell, with no honour 
 or profit to himself, had baffled him. 
 Herbert Hayes was then over forty and 
 unmarried. The Mitchelhurst gossips had 
 made up their minds that he would live
 
 110 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 and die a bachelor. But one November 
 Sunday he came, dapper, bright-eyed, and 
 self-satisfied, to Mitchelhurst church, gazed 
 with the utmost propriety into his glossy 
 hat, stood up when the parson's dreary 
 voice broke the silence with "AVhen the 
 
 wicked man " and, looking across at the 
 
 Roth wells' great pew, met his fate in a 
 moment. 
 
 The pew held its usual occupants — the 
 old squire, grey, angular, and scornful ; 
 young Rothwell, darker, taller, paler, less 
 politely contemptuous, and more lowering ; 
 Kate, erect and proud, sulkily conscious of 
 a beauty which the rustic congregation 
 could not understand. These three Hayes 
 had often seen. But there was a fourth, 
 a frail, colourless girl, burdened ratlier than 
 clothed with sombre draperies of crape, 
 pale to the very lips, and swaying languidly 
 as she stood, who unconsciously caught his 
 Sflance and held it. She suffered her head,
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. Ill 
 
 with the little black bonnet set on the 
 abundance of her pale hair, to droop over 
 her Prayer-book, and she slid downward 
 when the exhortation was ended as if she 
 could stand no longer. The time seemed 
 interminable to him until she rose again. 
 
 His instantaneous certainty that there 
 was no drop of Eothwell blood in her veins 
 was confirmed by later inquiry. He learnt 
 that she was distantly related to the squire's 
 wife, and had recently lost her parents. 
 Though she had not been left absolutely 
 penniless, her little pittance was not enough 
 to keep her in idleness, and she was staying 
 at Mitchelhurst while the question of her 
 future was debated. It was difficult to see 
 what Minnie Newton was to do in a hard- 
 working world. She could sink into help- 
 lessly graceful attitudes, she could watch 
 you with a softly troubled gaze, anxious 
 to learn what she ought to think or say ; 
 she was delicate, gentle, and very slightly
 
 112 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 educated. She had not a thouo-ht of lier 
 own, and she was pure with the kind of 
 purity which cannot grasp the idea of evil, 
 and fails to recognise it, unless indeed vice is 
 going in rags and dirt to the police-station, 
 and using shocking language by the way. 
 Her simplicity was touching. She thought 
 nothing of herself; she would cling to the 
 first hand that happened to be held out 
 to her. She might be saved by good luck, 
 but nature had obviously designed her for 
 a victim. 
 
 Miss Newton was polite to Mr. Hayes 
 as to everybody else, but she was the last 
 person at Mitchelhurst Place to suspect the 
 little gentleman's passion. The very ser- 
 vants found it out, and wondered at her 
 innocence. John Rothwell laughed. 
 
 " What a fool she is ! " he said to 
 his sister, as he stood by the window 
 one day, and saw Hayes coming up the 
 avenue.
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 113 
 
 " That's an undoubted fact," said the 
 magnificent Kate. 
 
 "And what a fool he is ! " John continued. 
 
 *' Well, we won't quarrel about that 
 either," she replied liberally. '' They will 
 be all the better matched." 
 
 '' Matched ? " said Rothwell. " No." 
 
 She looked up hastily. 
 
 " Eh ? " she said. " Not matched ? And 
 why not ? " 
 
 Instead of answering, he deliberately 
 lighted a cigarette and smoked, gazing 
 darkly at her. 
 
 Kate shruo^o^ed her shoulders. 
 
 " What difference can it possibly make 
 to you ? " 
 
 He took his cigarette from his lips 
 and looked at it. 
 
 " It will make a difference to him," he 
 said at last. 
 
 The bell rang, and the knocker added 
 its emphatic summons. One of Rothwell's 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 doo^s beoran to bark. Kate had risen, and 
 stood with her eyes fixed on her brother's 
 face. 
 
 " It would be a very good thing for 
 the girl," she remarked meditatively. " I 
 don't see what is to become of her, poor 
 thing, unless she marries." 
 
 '* Damn him ! " said Roth well. 
 
 The answer was not so irrelevant as 
 it appeared. His gaze was as steady as 
 Kate's own, and seemed to prolong his 
 words as a singer prolongs a note. She 
 drew her brows together, as if perplexed. 
 
 "Well," she said, turning away, "I must 
 go and look after our lovers ! " 
 
 '' And I," he said. 
 
 The dapper, contented little man had 
 done Roth well no harm, but the young 
 fellow cherished a black hatred, born of the 
 dulness of his vacant life. Hayes, without 
 being rich, was very comfortably off, and he 
 was apt to betray the fact with innocent
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 115 
 
 ostentation. A sovereign was less to him 
 than a shilling to John Roth well, and it 
 seemed to the latter that he could always 
 hear the gold chinking when Hayes talked. 
 One could do so much with a sovereign, and 
 so little with a shilling. Eothwell was 
 hungry, with a huuger which only just fell 
 short of being a literal fact, and he bad 
 to stand by, with his hands in his empty 
 pockets, while Hayes could have good 
 dinners, good wine, good clothes, good 
 horses, whatever he liked in the way of 
 pleasure — and was " such a contemptible 
 little cad with it all," the young man 
 snarled. His own poverty would have been 
 more bearable had it not Ijeen for his neigh- 
 bour's ease and security. And now, heaven 
 be praised! — heaven? — the prosperous man 
 had set his heart on this whitefaced, fair- 
 haired, foolish girl wlio was under the roof 
 of Mitchelhurst Place, and for once he should 
 be baffled. 
 
 I 2
 
 116 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Kothwell set to work with evil ingenuity 
 — it seemed almost fiendish, but, really, he 
 had nothing else to do — to ruin Hayes's 
 chance of success. But for him it must 
 have been almost a certainty. Kate was 
 inclined to favour the suitor. The old squire 
 disliked him, perhaps with a little of his 
 son's feeling, but would have been very well 
 satisfied to see the girl provided for. And 
 Minnie Newton was there for any man, 
 who had a will of his own, and was not 
 absolutely repulsive, to take if he pleased. 
 The course of true love seemed about to 
 run with perfect smoothness till young 
 Rothwell stepped in and troubled it. 
 
 Mockery, not slander, was his weapon. 
 As Miss Newton idled over her embroidery 
 he would lounge near her and make little 
 jests about Hayes's age, size, and manners. 
 She listened with a troubled face. Of course 
 Mr. Eothwell was talking very cleverly, 
 .and she tried not to remember that she
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STORY. 117 
 
 had found Mr. Hayes very kind and pleasant 
 when lie called the day before. Of course 
 it was absurd that a man of that age should 
 want to be taken for fi ve-and-twenty — yes, 
 and he had a very ridiculous way of putting 
 his head on one side like a bird — when Mr. 
 Rothwell had insisted on having her opinion, 
 she had said, " Yes, it was very ridiculous " 
 — and a gentleman, a real gentleman, would 
 not talk so much about his money, and 
 what he could do with it — Mr. Rothwell 
 said so, and he certainly knew. And as she 
 had agreed to it she supposed it was quite 
 right that he should repeat this at dinner- 
 time, as if it were her own remark, though 
 she wished he wouldn't, because his father 
 turned sharply and looked at her. But, no 
 doubt, Mr. Hayes did look absurdly small 
 by the side of John Rothwell, and there 
 was something common in his manners. 
 Many people might think they were all 
 very well, but a lady would feel that there
 
 118 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 was something wanting. And so on, and so 
 on, till she began to ask herself what John 
 Rothwell would say of her if, after all this, 
 she showed more than the coldest civility 
 to Mr. Hayes. 
 
 Kate perfectly understood the position 
 of affairs, but did not choose openly to 
 oppose her brother. If Hayes would have 
 come and carried Minnie oflf, young Loch- 
 invar fashion, she would have been secretly 
 pleased. As it was, she was contemptuously 
 kind to the girl, and if the little suitor met 
 the two young women in the village. Miss 
 Eothwell shook hands and looked away. 
 Once she found herself some business to do 
 at the Mitch elhurst shop, and sent Minnie 
 home, lest she should be out too long in the 
 December cold. She had spied Herbert 
 Hayes coming along the street, and had 
 rightly guessed that he would see and 
 pursue the slim, black-clothed figure. And, 
 indeed, he used his walk with Miss Newton
 
 v.] AN OLD LOVE STOEY. 119 
 
 to such good purpose that he might have 
 won her promise then and there if a tall 
 young man had not suddenly sprung over a 
 stile and confronted them. Minnie fairly 
 cowered in embarrassment as she met Eoth- 
 weirs meaning glance, which assumed that 
 she w^ould be delighted to be rid of a bore, 
 and she suffered him to give her his arm 
 and to take her home, leaving poor Hayes 
 to feel very small indeed as he stood in the 
 middle of the road. He tried a letter, 
 but it only called forth a little feebly- 
 penned word of refusal as faint as an 
 echo. 
 
 Hayes never suspected the young man's 
 deliberate malice. He fancied the old 
 squire, if anybody, was his enemy ; but he 
 was more inclined to set the difficulty down 
 to the Koth wells' notorious pride than to 
 any special ill-will to himself. 
 
 *' No one is good enough for them, curse 
 them ! " he said over the little note. " They
 
 120 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 won't give me a chance of winning her. 
 I'm not beaten yet though ! " 
 
 But he was. Early in January Minnie 
 Newton took cold, drooped in the chilly 
 dreariness of the old house, and died before 
 the spring came in. 
 
 One day Kate Rothwell came upon Hayes 
 as he lingered, a melancholy little figure, by 
 the girl's grave. 
 
 " Ah, Miss Rothwell," he said, looking up 
 at her, " I wanted to have had the right 
 to care for her and mourn her, but it 
 was not to be ! " 
 
 " No," said Kate. " I'm sorry," she 
 added, after a moment. It was just at 
 the time when she herself was about to 
 defy all the barren traditions of the 
 Eothwells to marry Sidney Harding with 
 his brilliant prospects of wealth. Harding's 
 half-brother, who had made the great 
 business, was pleased with the match, 
 and promised Sidney a partnership in a
 
 v.] AX OLD LOVE STORY. 121 
 
 couple of years. Everything was bright 
 for Kate, and she could afford a regret- 
 ful thought to poor Hayes. " I'm sorry," 
 she said. 
 
 Her voice was hard, but the slightest 
 proffer of sympathy was enough. " Ah ! I 
 knew you wished me well — God bless you ! " 
 said the little man, " and help you as you 
 would have helped me ! " 
 
 Perhaps Kate Rothwell felt that at that 
 rate Providence would not take any very 
 active interest in her affairs. She turned 
 aside impatiently. " Pray keep your thanks 
 for some one who deserves them, Mr. 
 Hayes. I don't." 
 
 " You could not do anything, but I know 
 you were good to her. She told me, that 
 
 afternoon " He spoke in just the proper 
 
 tone of emotion. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " Kate answered, sharply. 
 " How could she ? there was nothing to 
 tell." Mr. Hayes might well say, even a
 
 122 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 quarter of a century later, that Miss Roth- 
 well had an unpleasant manner. 
 
 Nevertheless she held a place in that 
 idealised picture of his love which in his old 
 age served him for a memory. In Sidney 
 Harding's death, within a year of the mar- 
 riage, he saw a kindred stroke to that which 
 had robbed him of his own hope, and he 
 never thought of Kate without a touch of 
 sentimental loyalty. When he met Kate's 
 son that October afternoon, with the familiar 
 face and voice, on his way to Mitchelhurst, 
 he had felt that, Eothwell though he was, 
 he must be welcomed for his mother's sake. 
 And yet it had almost seemed as if it were 
 John Roth well himself come back to sneer 
 in a new fashion. 
 
 How came he to be so evidently poor 
 while old Harding was rolling in wealth ? 
 Mr. Hayes, sitting over the fire, wondered 
 at this failure of Kate's hopes. People 
 had called it a fair exchange, her old name
 
 v.] AX OLD LOVE STORY. 123 
 
 for the Hardings' abundance of newly- coined 
 gold. But where was the gold ? Plainly 
 not in this young Harding's pockets. What 
 did he do for a living ? Why was he not 
 in his uncle's office, a man of business with 
 the world before him ? There was no stamp 
 of success about this listless, long-legged 
 fellow, who had come, as hopeless as any 
 Roth well, to linger about that scene of slow 
 decay. " He'll do no good," said Mr. Hayes 
 to himself, stirring up a cheerful blaze.
 
 124 MITCHELHURST PLACE [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Reynold's resolution. 
 
 Meanwhile the young people had passed 
 through the great gate and turned to the 
 right. " Do you mind which way you go ? " 
 Barbara asked, and Reynold replied that he 
 left it entirely to her. "Then," she said, 
 " we will go this way, and come back by 
 the village ; you will get a better view so." 
 
 At first, however, it seemed that a view 
 was the one thing which was certainly not 
 to be had in the road they had chosen. On 
 their left was a tano^led hedg^e, on their 
 right a dank and dripping plantation of 
 firs. The slim, straight stems, seen one 
 beyond another, conveyed to Reynold the
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 125 
 
 impression of a melancholy crowd, pressing 
 silently to the boundary of the road on 
 which he walked. It was one of those 
 fantastic pictures which reveal themselves 
 in unfamiliar landscapes, and Barbara, w^ho 
 had seen the wood under a score of varying 
 aspects, took no especial heed of this one, as 
 she picked her way daintily by the young 
 man's side. Indeed she did not even note 
 the moment when the trees w^ere succeeded 
 by a turnip-field, lying wide and wet under 
 the pale sky. But when in its turn the 
 field gave place to an open gateway and a 
 drive full of deep ruts, in which the water 
 stood, she paused. " You see that house ? " 
 she said. 
 
 It was evident from its surroundings of 
 soaked yard, miscellaneous buildings, dirty 
 tumbrils, and clustered stacks, that it was 
 a farm-house. Harding looked at it and 
 turned inquiringly to her. " It was much 
 larger once," said Barbara. "Part of it
 
 126 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 was pulled down a long while ago. Your 
 people lived here before they built Mitchel- 
 liurst Place." 
 
 He pushed out his lower lip. " Well," 
 he said, " I think they showed their good 
 taste in getting out of this." 
 
 "But it w^as better then," said the girl. 
 " And even now, sometimes in the spring 
 when I come here for cowslips " 
 
 She stopped short, for he was smiling. 
 " Oh, no doubt ! Everything looks better 
 then. But I have come too late." He had 
 to step aside as he spoke to let a manure 
 cart go by, labouring along the miry w^ay. 
 " And what do you call this house ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Mitchelhurst Hall. I don't think there 
 is anything much to see, but if you would 
 like to look over it or to walk round it " 
 
 " No, thank you ; I am content." He 
 took off his hat in mocking homage to 
 the home of the Roth wells, and turned to
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 127 
 
 go. '*And have you any more decayed 
 residences to show me, Miss Strange ? " 
 
 " Only some graves," she answered, simply. 
 
 " Oh, they are all graves ! " said Harding 
 with his short laugh, swinging his umbrella 
 as they resumed their walk. Already Bar- 
 bara had become accustomed to that little 
 jarring laugh, which had no merriment in it. 
 She did not like it, but she was curiously 
 impressed by it. When the young man was 
 grave and stiff and shy she was sorry for 
 him ; she remembered that he was only Mr. 
 Reynold Harding, their guest for a week. 
 But when he was sufficiently at his ease to 
 laugh she felt as if all the Rothwells were 
 mocking, and she were the interloper and 
 inferior. 
 
 " I suppose it does seem like that to you 
 
 — as if they were all graves," she said 
 
 timidly, as she led the way across the road 
 
 to a gate in the tangled hedge ; the field 
 
 . into which it led sloped steeply down.
 
 128 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " That is what people call the best view of 
 Mitchelhurst," she explained. 
 
 To the left was Mitchelhurst Place, gaunt 
 and white among its warped and weather- 
 beaten trees. Before them lay the dotted 
 line of Mitchelhurst Street, and they looked 
 down into the square cabbage-plots. The 
 sails of the wdnd-mill swung heavily round, 
 and the smoke went up from the black- 
 smith's forpje. To the rio;ht was the church, 
 with its thickset tower, and the sun shining 
 feebly on the wet surface of its leaden 
 roof. Barbara pointed out a small oblong 
 patch of grass and evergreens as the vicarage 
 garden, while a bare building, of the rawest 
 red brick, was the Mitchelhurst workhouse. 
 The view was remarkably comprehensive. 
 Mitchelhurst lay spread below them in 
 small and melancholy completeness. 
 
 "Yes, it's all there, right enough," said 
 Reynold, leaning on the gate. " An excel- 
 lent view. All there, from the Place where
 
 VI.] EEYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 129 
 
 my people spent their money, to the work- 
 house, where By Jove ! " his \^ice 
 
 dropped suddenly, " I'm not Roth well 
 enough to have a right to be taken into 
 the Mitchelhurst workhouse ! They'd send 
 me on somewhere, I suppose. I wonder 
 which they would call my parish ! " 
 
 " Are you sorry ? " Barbara asked, after 
 a pause. 
 
 '' Sorry not to be in the workhouse ? " 
 indicating it with a slight movement of 
 his finger. " No, not particularly." 
 
 " I didn't mean that," said the girl, a 
 little shortly. " I meant, of course, are you 
 sorry you are not a Rothwell ? " 
 
 '' I don't know." 
 
 He spoke slowly, half reluctantly, and 
 still leaned on the gate, with his eyes 
 wandering from point to point of the little 
 landscape, which was softened and saddened 
 by the pale light and paler haze of October. 
 It was Barbara who finally broke the silence. 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " You didn't like the house this morning, 
 and you didn't like the old hall just now, 
 so I thought most likely you wouldn't care 
 for this." 
 
 ''Well, it isn't beautiful," he replied, 
 without turning his head. ''Do you care 
 much about it, Miss Strange ? Why should 
 anybody care about it ? There are won- 
 derful places in the world — beautiful places 
 full of sunshine. Why should we trouble 
 ourselves about this little grey and green 
 island where we happened to be born ? 
 And what are these few acres in it more 
 than any other bit of ploughed land and 
 meadow ? " 
 
 " I thought you didn't care for it," 
 said Barbara, sagely. " I thought you 
 scorned it." 
 
 " Scorn it — I can't scorn it ! It isn't 
 mine ! " He turned away from it, as if in 
 a sudden movement of impatience, and 
 lounged with his back to the gate. " It's
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S EESOLUTIOK 131 
 
 like my luck ! " he said, kicking a stone 
 in the road. 
 
 Barbara was interested. Harding's tone 
 revealed the strength and bitterness of his 
 feelings. He had never seemed to her so 
 much of a Rothwell as he did at that 
 moment. *' What is like your luck ? " she, 
 ventured to ask. 
 
 He jerked his head in the direction 
 of Mitchelhurst. " I may as well be 
 honest," he said. '' Honest with myself — 
 if I can ! Look there — I have mocked at 
 that place all my life ; for very shame's 
 sake I have kept away from it because I 
 had TO wed I didn't care whether one stone 
 of it was left upon another. What was it 
 to me ? I am not a Kothwell. I'm Reynold 
 Harding, son of Sidney Harding, son of 
 Reynold Harding — there my pedigree grows 
 vague. My grandfather is an importan 
 man — we can't get beyond him. He died 
 while my father was in petticoats. He 
 
 K 2
 
 132 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 was a pork-butcher in a small way. I 
 believe he could write his name — my name 
 — and that he always declared that his 
 father was a Reynold too. But we don't 
 know anything about my great-grandfather 
 — perhaps he was a pork-butcher in a 
 smaller way. My uncle Robert went to 
 London as a boy and made all the money, 
 pensioned his father, and afterwards edu- 
 cated his half-brother Sidney, who was 
 twenty years younger than himself He 
 would have made my father his partner if 
 he had lived. If my father had lived I 
 might have been rich. As it is, I'm not 
 rich, and I'm not a Rothwell." 
 
 *' Well, you look like one ! " said Barbara. 
 She was not very wise. It seemed to her 
 a cruel thing that this earlier Reynold 
 should have been a pork-butcher — a mis- 
 fortune on which she would not comment. 
 She looked up at the younger Reynold 
 with the sincerest sympathy shining in
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 133 
 
 her eyes, and in an unreasoning fashion 
 of her own took part with him and with 
 the old family, as if his grandfather were 
 an unwarranted intruder who had thrust 
 himself into their superior society. "You 
 look like one ! " she exclaimed, and Reynold 
 smiled. 
 
 '^ And after all," she said, pursuing her 
 train of thought, "you are half Rothwell, 
 you know. As much Rothwell as Harding, 
 are you not ? " 
 
 He was still smiling. "True. But that 
 is a kind of thing which doesn't do by 
 halves." 
 
 She assented with a sigh. She had never 
 before talked to a man whose grandfather 
 was a pork-butcher, and she did not know 
 what consolation to offer. She could only 
 look shyly and wistfully at Mr. Harding, 
 as he leaned against the gate with his 
 back to the prospect, while she resolved 
 that she would never tell her uncle. She
 
 134 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 did not think her companion less interest- 
 ing after the revelation. This discord, this 
 irony of fate, this mixing of the blood of 
 the Roth wells and the small tradesman, 
 seemed to her to explain much of young 
 Harding's sullen discontent. He was the 
 last descendant of the old family of which 
 she had dreamed so often, and he was the 
 victim of an unmerited wrong. She wanted 
 him to say more. " And you wouldn't 
 come to Mitchelhurst before ? " she said, 
 suggestively. 
 
 "No; but the thought of the place was 
 pulling at me all the time. I couldn't get 
 rid of it. And so — here I am ! And I 
 have seen the dream of my life face to 
 face — it's behind my back just at this 
 minute, but I can see it as well as if I were 
 looking at it. I'm very grateful to you 
 for showing me this view, Miss Strange, 
 but you'll excuse me if I don't turn round 
 while I speak of it ? "
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 135 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Barbara, wonderingly. 
 
 He had his elbows on the top rail of the 
 gate, and looked downward at the muddy 
 way, rough with the hoof marks of cattle. 
 " You see," he explained, " I want to say 
 the kind of thing one says behind a — a 
 landscape's back." 
 
 " I'm sorry to hear it," she answered. 
 She had drawn a little to one side, and 
 had laid a small orloved hand on one of 
 
 o 
 
 the gate posts. Somebody, many years 
 before, had deeply cut a clumsy M on 
 the cracked and roughened surface of the 
 wood. The letter was as grey and as 
 weather-worn as the rest. Barbara touched 
 it delicately with a finger-tip, and followed 
 its ungainly outline. Probably it was his 
 own initial that the rustic had hacked, 
 standing where he stood, but she recognised 
 the possibility that the rough carving might 
 be the utterance of the great secret of joy 
 and pain, and the touch was almost a caress.
 
 136 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " Some people follow their dreams through 
 life, and never get more than a glimpse 
 of them, even as dreams," said Harding, 
 slowly. *' Well, I have seen mine. I have 
 had a good look at it. I know what it 
 is like. It is dreary — it is narrow — cold 
 — hideous." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Barbara, as if his words 
 hurt her. Then, recovering herself, " Fm 
 sorry you dislike it so much. Well, you 
 must give it up, mustn't you ? " 
 
 He laughed. " Life without a fancy, 
 without a desire ? " he said. 
 
 " Find something else to wish for.'' 
 
 " What ? If there were anything else, 
 should I care twopence for Mitchelhurst ? 
 No, it is my dream still — a dream I'm 
 never likely to realise, but the only possible 
 dream for me. Only now I know how poor 
 and dull my highest success would be." 
 
 " You had better have stayed away," said 
 the girl.
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 137 
 
 He took his elbows off the gate, and 
 bowed in acknowledgment of the polite 
 speech. " Oh, you know what I mean," 
 she said hurriedly. 
 
 " Yes, I know. And, except for the 
 kindness of your fairy godmother, I believe 
 you are perfectly right. T/iat, of course, 
 is a different question." 
 
 Barbara would not answer wdiat she 
 fancied might be a sneer. " You see the 
 place at its worst," she said, " and there is 
 nobody to care for it ; everything is 
 neglected and going to ruin. Don't you 
 think it would be different if it belonged 
 to some one who loved it ? Why don't you 
 make your fortune," she exclaimed, with 
 sanguine, bright-eyed directness, as if the 
 fortune were an easy certainty, " and come 
 back and set everything right ? Don't you 
 think you could care for Mitchelhurst 
 if " 
 
 She would have finished her sentence
 
 138 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 readily eDough, but Reynold caught it 
 up. 
 
 '' If !'' he said, with a sudden startled 
 significance in his tone. Then, with an air 
 of prompt deference, " Shall I go and make 
 the fortune at once, Mibs Strange ? Shall 
 I ? Yes, I think I could care for Mitch el- 
 hurst, as you say, if — " He smiled. " One 
 might do much with a fortune, no doubt." 
 
 " Make it then," said Barbara, conscious 
 of a faint and undefined embarrassment. 
 
 " Must it be a very big one "? " 
 
 " Oh, I think it may as well be a tolerable 
 size, while you are about it. Hadn't we 
 better be movino^ on ? " 
 
 Mr. Harding assented. "Where are we 
 going now ? " 
 
 " To the church. That is, if you care to 
 go there." 
 
 *' Oh, I like to go very much. I wonder 
 what you would call a tolerable fortune," 
 he said in a meditative tone.
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S EESOLUTIOK 139 
 
 *' My opinion doesn't matter." 
 
 '' But you are going to wish me success 
 while I am away making it ? " 
 
 " Oh, certainly." 
 
 "That will be a help," he said gravely. 
 " I shan't look for an omen in the sky just 
 now — do you see how threatening it is out 
 yonder 1 " 
 
 The clouds rolled heavily upwards, and 
 massed themselves above their heads as 
 they hastened down a steep lane which 
 brought them out by the church. Barbara 
 stopped at the clerk's cottage for a ponderous 
 key, and then led the w^ay through a little 
 creaking gate. The path along which they 
 went was like a narrow ditch, the mould, 
 heaped high on either side, seemed as if it 
 were burdened with his imprisoned secrets. 
 The undulatiog graves, overgrown with 
 coarse grasses, rose up, wave-like, against 
 the buttressed walls of the churchyard, 
 high above the level of the outer road.
 
 140 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 The church itself looked as if it had been 
 dug out of the sepulchral earth, so closely 
 was it surrounded by these shapeless 
 mounds. Barbara, to whom the scene was 
 nothing new, and who was eager to escape 
 the impending shower, flitted, alive, warm, 
 and young, througli all this cold decay, 
 and never heeded it. Harding followed 
 her, looking right and left. They passed 
 under two dusky yew trees, and then she 
 thrust her big key into the lock of the 
 south door. 
 
 "Are my people buried in the church- 
 yard ? " he asked. 
 
 ''Oh, no!" she exclaimed reverentially. 
 " Your people are all inside." 
 
 He stepped in, but when he was about 
 to close the door he stood for a moment, 
 ffazins: out throuo;h the low-browed arch. 
 It framed a picture of old-fashioned head- 
 stones fallen all aslant, nettles flourishing 
 upon forgotten graves, the trunks of the
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 141 
 
 great yews, the weed-grown crest of tlie 
 churchyard wall, defined with singular clear- 
 ness upon a wide band of yellow sky. The 
 gathered tempest hung above, and its 
 deepening menace intensified the pale tran- 
 quillity of the horizon. " I say," said Hard- 
 ing as he turned away, "it's going to 
 pour, you know ! " 
 
 "Well, we are under shelter," Barbara 
 answered cheerfully, as she laid her key 
 on the edge of one of the pews. "If it 
 clears up again so that we get back in 
 good time it won't matter a bit. And 
 anyhow we've got umbrellas. The font is 
 very old, they say." 
 
 Harding obediently inspected the font. 
 
 "And there are two curious inscriptions 
 on tablets on the north wall. Mr. Pryor 
 — he's the vicar — is always trying to read 
 them. Do you know much about such 
 things ? " 
 
 " Nothinor at all."
 
 142 MITCHELHUR^T PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " Oh ! " in a tone of disappointment. 
 '' I'm afraid you wouldn't get on with Mr. 
 Pry or then." 
 
 ^a'm afraid not." 
 
 " Perhaps you wouldn't care to look at 
 them." 
 
 " Oh, let us look, by all means." 
 
 They walked together up the aisle. "•/ 
 don't care about them," said Barbara, " but 
 I suppose ]\Ir. Pryor would die happy if 
 he could make them out." 
 
 **Then I suspect he is happy mean- 
 while, though perhaps he doesn't know 
 it," Keynold replied, looking upward at 
 the half effaced lettering. 
 
 " He can read some of it," said the girl, 
 " but nobody can make out the interesting 
 part." 
 
 Harding laughed, under his breath. Their 
 remarks had been softly uttered ever since 
 the closing of the door had shut them 
 in to the imprisoned silence. He moved
 
 VI.] EEYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 143 
 
 noiselessly a few steps further, and looked 
 round. 
 
 Mitchelhurst Church, like Mitchelburst 
 Place, betrayed a long neglect. The pave- 
 ment was sunken and uneven, cobwebs 
 hung from the sombre arches, the walls, 
 which had once been white, were stained 
 and streaked, by damp and time, to a 
 blending of melancholy hues. The half 
 light, which struggled through small panes 
 of greenish glass, fell on things blighted, 
 tarnished, faded, dim. The pews with their 
 rush- matted seats were worm-eaten, the 
 crimson velvet of the pulpit was a dingy 
 rao^. There was but one bit of vivid modern 
 colourinoj in the whole buildinor — a slim 
 lancet window at the west end, a discord 
 sharply struck in the shadowy harmony. 
 " To the memory of the vicar before last," 
 said Barbara, when the young man's glance 
 fell on it. Such gleams of sunlight as 
 lingered yet in the stormy sky without
 
 144 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 irradiated Michael, the church's patron 
 saint, in the act of triumphing over a 
 small dragon. The contest revealed itself 
 as a mere struggle for existence ; a Quaker, 
 within such narrow limits, must have fought 
 for the upper hand as surely as an arch- 
 angel. Harding as he looked at it could 
 not repress a sigh. He fully appreciated 
 the calmness of the saint, and the neatness 
 with which the little dragon was coiled, but 
 it seemed to him a pity that the vicar 
 before last had happened to die ; and he 
 was glad to turn his back on the battle, 
 and follow Miss Strange to the north 
 chancel aisle. "These are all the Roth well 
 monuments," she said. " Their vault is just 
 below. This is their pew, where we sit on 
 Sunday." 
 
 Havino; said this she moved from his 
 side, and left him gazing at the simple 
 tablets which recorded the later generations 
 of the old house, and the elaborate
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 145 
 
 memorials of more prosperous days. More 
 than one recumbent figure slept there, each 
 with upturned face supported on a carven 
 pillow ; the bust of a Rothwell was set up 
 in a dusty niche, with lean features peering 
 out of a forest of curling marble hair ; 
 carefully graduated families of Roth wells, 
 boys and girls, knelt behind their kneeling 
 parents ; the little window, half blocked by 
 the florid grandeur of a grimy monument, 
 had the Rothwell arms emblazoned on it 
 in a dim richness of colour. In this one 
 spot the dreariness of the rest of the build- 
 ing became a stately melancholy. Harding 
 looked down. His foot was restinor on the 
 inscribed stone which marked the entrance 
 to that silent, airless place of skeletons and 
 shadow^s, compared to which even this dim 
 corner, with its mute assemblage, was yet 
 the upper world of light and life. If he 
 worked, if fortune favoured him, if he suc- 
 ceeded beyond all reasonable hope, if he 
 
 VOL. L L
 
 146 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap 
 
 were indeed predestined to triumph, that 
 little stone might one day be lifted for him. 
 The windows darkened momentarily with 
 the coming of the tempest. Through the 
 dim diamond panes the masses of the yew- 
 trees w^ere seen, and their movement was 
 like the stirring of vast black wings. The 
 effio^ies of the dead men frowned in the 
 deepening gloom, and their young de- 
 scendant folded his arms, and leaned 
 against the high pew, with a slant gleam 
 of light on his pale Kothwell face. Barbara 
 went restlessly and yet cautiously up and 
 down the central aisle, and paused by the 
 readinof-desk to turn the leaves of the OTeat 
 old-fashioned prayer-book which lay there. 
 When its cover was lifted it exhaled a 
 faint odour, as of the dead Sundays of a 
 century and more. While she lingered, 
 lightly conscious of the lapse of vague 
 years, reading petitions for the welfare of 
 **Thy servant GEORGE, our most gracious
 
 VI.] EEYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 147 
 
 King and Governour," " her Koyal Highness 
 the Princess Dowager of Wales, and all the 
 Royal Family," the page grew indistinct in 
 the threatening twilight, as if it would 
 withdraw itself from her idle curiosity. She 
 looked up with a shiver, as overhead and 
 around burst the multitudinous noises of 
 the storm, the rain gushing on the leaden 
 roof, the water streaming drearily from 
 the gutters to beat on the earth below, and, 
 in a few moments, the quick, monotonous 
 fall of drops through a leak close by. 
 This lasted for ten minutes or a quarter of 
 an hour. Then the sky grew lighter, the 
 downpour slackened, a sense of over-shadow- 
 ing oppression seemed to pass away, and 
 St. Michael and his drao;on brig;htened 
 cheerfully. Barbara went to the door and 
 threw it open, and a breath of fresh air 
 came in with a chilly smell of rain. 
 
 As she stood in the low archway she 
 heard Harding's step on the pavement 
 
 L 2
 
 148 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 behind her. It was more alert and decided 
 than usual, and when she turned he met 
 her o^lance with a smile. 
 
 "Well?" she said. "I didn't like to 
 disturb you, you looked so serious." 
 
 " I was thinking," he admitted. " And 
 it was a rather serious occasion. My people 
 are not very cheerful company." 
 
 " And now you have thought ? " 
 
 "Yes," he said, still smiling. "Yes, I 
 have thought — seriously, with my serious 
 friends yonder." 
 
 Barbara, as she stood, with her fingers 
 closed on the heavy handle of the door, 
 and her face turned towards Harding, fixed 
 her eyes intently on his. 
 
 " I know ! " she exclaimed. " You have 
 made up your mind to come back to 
 Mitchelhurst." 
 
 "Who knows?" said he. "I'm not 
 sanguine, but we'll see what time and 
 fortune have to say to it. At any rate
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 149 
 
 my people are patient enough — they'll 
 wait for me ! " 
 
 To the girl, longing for a romance, the 
 idea of the young man's resolution was 
 delio^htful. She looked at him with a 
 little quivering thrill of impatience, as if 
 she would have had him do something 
 towards the great end that very moment. 
 Her small, uplifted face was flushed, and 
 her eyes were like stars. The brightening 
 light outside shone on the soft brown 
 velvet of her dress, and something in her 
 eager, lightly-poised attitude gave Eeynold 
 the impression of a dainty brown-plumaged, 
 bright-eyed bird, ready for instant flight. 
 He almost stretched an instinctive hand to 
 grasp and detain her, lest she should loose 
 her hold of the iron ring and be gone. 
 
 " I know you will succeed — you will 
 come back ! " she exclaimed. " How long 
 first, I wonder ?" 
 
 '' Shall I succeed ? " said Reynold, half
 
 150 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 to himself, but half- questioning her to win 
 the sweet, unconscious assurance, w^hich 
 meant so little, yet mocked so deep a 
 meaning. 
 
 "Yes!" she replied. "You will! You 
 must be master here." 
 
 Master ! She might have put it in a 
 dozen different ways, and found no word 
 to weaken the swift, meaning flash in his 
 eyes w^hich that word did. Her pulses did 
 not quicken, she perfectly understood that 
 he w^as thinking of Mitchelhurst. She could 
 not understand what mere dead earth and 
 stone Mitchelhurst was to the man at her 
 side. 
 
 " You will have to restore the church one 
 of these days," she said. 
 
 Harding nodded. 
 
 " Certainly. But it will be very ugly, 
 anyhow." 
 
 " Well, at least you must have the roof 
 mended. And now% please, will you get
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S EESOLUTION. 151 
 
 the key ? It is on the ledge of that pew 
 just across the aisle. I think we had better 
 be going — it has almost left off raining." 
 
 She stepped outside and put up her 
 umbrella, while he locked up his ancestors, 
 smiling grimly. It seemed rather un- 
 necessary to turn the key on the family 
 party in that dusty little corner. They 
 were quiet folks, and, as he had said, they 
 would wait for him and his fortune not 
 impatiently. If he could have shut in the 
 brightness of youth, the warmth and life 
 and sweetness which alone could make the 
 fortune w^orth havino^ if he could have come 
 back in the hour of success to unfasten the 
 door and find all there — then indeed his big 
 key would have been a priceless talisman. 
 Unfortunately one can shut nothing safely 
 away that is not dead. The old Eoth wells 
 were secure enough, but the rest was at 
 the mercy of time and change, and all the 
 winds that blow.
 
 152 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 The pair were silent as they turned into 
 Mitchelhurst Street. Eeynold looked at the 
 small, shabby houses, and noted the swing- 
 ino^ sign of the " Eothwell Arms," thouo^h 
 his deeper thoughts were full of other 
 things. But about half way through the 
 village he awoke to a sudden consciousness 
 of eyes. Eyes peered through small- paned 
 windows, stared boldly from open doorways, 
 met him inquisitively in the faces of loiterers 
 on the path, or were lifted from the dull 
 task of mending the road as he walked by 
 with Barbara. He looked over his shoulder 
 and found that other people were looking 
 over their shoulders, after which he felt 
 himself completely encompassed. 
 
 "People here seem interested," he re- 
 marked to Miss Strange, while a pale- 
 faced, slatternly girl, with swiftly-plaiting 
 fingers, leaned forward to get a better 
 
 view 
 
 Why, of course they are interested.
 
 vl] REYNOLD^S resolution. 153 
 
 You are a stranger, you know. It is quite 
 an excitement for them." 
 
 " You call that an excitement ? " said he. 
 
 " Yes. If you spent your life straw- 
 plaiting in one of these cottages you would 
 be excited if a stranger went by. It would 
 be kinder of you if you did not M^alk so 
 fast." 
 
 *'No, no," said Harding, quickening his 
 steps. " I don't profess philanthropy." 
 
 *' Besides, you are not altogether a 
 stranger," she went on. " I dare say they 
 think you are one of the old family come 
 to buy up the property." 
 
 " Why should they think anything of the 
 kind ? " he demanded incredulously. 
 
 " Well, they know you are staying at the 
 Place. Every child in the street knows that. 
 And, you see, Mr. Harding, nobody comes 
 to Mitchelhurst without some special reason, 
 so perhaps they have a right to be curious. 
 I remember how they stared a few months
 
 154 MITCHELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 ago — it was at a gentleman who was just 
 walking down the road " 
 
 " Indeed," said Harding. " And what 
 was Ids s]3ecial reason for coming ? I 
 suppose/' he added quickly, " I've as good 
 a right to be curious as other Mitch elhurst 
 people." 
 
 *' Oh, I don't know. He was a friend of 
 Uncle Herbert's — he came to see him." 
 
 " And did he walk slowly from motives of 
 pure kindness ? " the young man persisted. 
 
 *' Yes," said Barbara defiantly. " He 
 stood stock still and looked at the straw 
 plaiting. I don't know about the kindness ; 
 perhaps he liked it." 
 
 '^ Well, I don't like it." 
 
 " But you needn't take such very long 
 steps : these three cottages are the last. 
 Do you know I'm very nearly running ? " 
 
 Of course he slackened his pace and 
 begged her pardon ; but in so doing he re- 
 lapsed into the uneasy self-consciousness of
 
 VI.] EEYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 155 
 
 their first interview. When they reached 
 the gate of the avenue he held it open for 
 her to pass, murmuring something about 
 walking a bit farther. Barbara looked at 
 him in surprise, and then, with a little 
 smiling nod, went away under the trees, 
 wonderinor what was amiss. " I can't have 
 offended him — how could I ? " slie said to 
 herself, and she made up her mind that 
 her new friend was certainly queer. It was 
 the Roth well temper, no doubt, and yet his 
 awkward muttering had been more like the 
 manner of a sullen schoolboy. A Rothwell 
 should have been loftily superior, even if he 
 were disagreeable. It was true, as Barbara 
 reflected, almost in spite of herself, that Mr. 
 Harding had no such hereditary obligation 
 on the pork-butcher side of his pedigree. 
 
 Reynold had spoken out of the bitterness 
 of his heart, and a bitter frankness is the 
 frankest of alL But perhaps he had not 
 shown his wisdom w^hen he so quickly
 
 156 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 confided his grandfather to Miss Strange. 
 Because we may have tact enough to choose 
 the mood in which our friend shall listen 
 to our secret, we are a little too apt to 
 forget that the secret, once uttered, remains 
 with him in all his moods. In this case 
 the girl had been a sympathetic listener, 
 but young Harding scarcely intended that 
 the elder Reynold should be so vividly 
 realised. 
 
 Later, when all outside the windows was 
 growing blank and black, Barbara went up 
 to dress for dinner. She was nearly ready 
 when there came a knock at her door, and 
 she hurried, candle in hand, to open it. In 
 the gloom of the passage stood the red- 
 armed villag-e sfirl who waited on her. 
 
 ** Please, miss, the gentleman told me to 
 give you this," said the messenger, awk- 
 wardly offering something which was only 
 a formless mass in the darkness. 
 
 *' What ? " said Miss Strange, and turned
 
 VI.] REYNOLD'S RESOLUTION. 157 
 
 the light upon it. The wavering little 
 illumination fell on a confusion of autumn 
 leaves, rich with their dying colours, and 
 shining with rain. Among them, indis- 
 tinctly, were berries of various kinds, hips 
 and haws, and poison clusters of a deeper 
 red, vanishing for a moment as the draught 
 blew the candle flame aside, and then re- 
 appearing. One might have fancied them 
 blood drops newly shed on the wet 
 foliage. 
 
 " Oh ! " Barbara exclaimed in surprise, 
 and after a moment's pause, " give them to 
 me." She gathered them up, despite some 
 thorny stems, with her disengaged hand, 
 and went back into her room. So that was 
 the meaning of Mr. Harding's solitary 
 walk ! She stood by the table, delicately 
 picking out the most vivid clusters, and 
 trying their efi'ect against the soft cloud of 
 her hair, cloudier than ever in the dusk 
 of her mirror. " I hope he hasn't been
 
 158 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 slipping into any more ditches I " slie said 
 to herself. 
 
 With that she sighed, for the thought 
 recalled to her the melancholy of an 
 autumnal landscape. She remembered an 
 earlier gift, roses and myrtle, a summer gift, 
 the giver of which had gone when the 
 summer waned. She had seen him last on 
 a hot September day. '* We never said 
 good-bye," Barbara thought, and let her 
 hand hang with the berries in it. '' He 
 said he should not go till the beginning of 
 October. When he came that afternoon 
 and I was out, and he only saw uncle, I 
 was sure he would come asfain. Well, I 
 suppose he didn't care to. He could if he 
 liked — a girl can't ; there are lots of things 
 a girl can't do ; but a man can call if he 
 pleases. Well, he must have gone away 
 before now. And he didn't even write a 
 line, he only sent a message by uncle, his 
 kind regards — Who wants his kind regards ?
 
 vl] REYNOLD'S EESOLUTION. 159 
 
 — and lie was sorry not to see me. Very 
 well, my kind regards, and I'm sure I don't 
 want to see him ! " 
 
 She ended her meditations with an 
 emphatic little nod, but the girl in the 
 mirror who returned it had such a defiantly 
 pouting face that she quite took Barbara by 
 surprise. 
 
 " I'm not angry," Miss Strange declared 
 to herself after a pause. "Not the least in 
 the world. The idea is perfectly absurd. 
 It was just a bit of the summer, and now 
 the summer is gone." And so saying she 
 put i\lr. Harding's autumn berries in her 
 hair, and fastened them at her throat, and, 
 with her candle flickering dimly through 
 the long dark passages, swept down to the 
 yellow drawing-room to thank him for his 
 
 crift
 
 160 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 A GAME AT CHESS, 
 
 Whek Kate Rothwell promised to be 
 Sidney Harding's wife she was very honestly 
 in love with the handsome young fellow. 
 But this happy frame of mind had been 
 preceded ^by a period of revolt and disgust 
 when she did not know him, and had 
 resolved vaguely on a marriage — any 
 marriage — which should fulfil certain con- 
 ditions. And that she should be in love 
 with the man she married was not one of 
 them. In fact, the conditions were almost 
 all negative ones. She had decreed that 
 her husband should not be a conspicuous 
 fool, should not be vicious, should not be
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 161 
 
 repulsively vulgar, and should not be an 
 unendurable bore. On the other hand he 
 should be fairly well off. She did not 
 demand a large fortune, she was inclined to 
 rate the gift and prospect of making money 
 as something more than the possession of 
 a certain sum which its owner could do 
 nothing but guard. Given a fairly culti- 
 vated man, and she felt that she would 
 absolutely prefer that he should be engaged 
 in some business which might grow and 
 expand, stimulating the hopes and energies 
 of all connected with it. The sterility and 
 narrowness of life at Mitchelhurst had 
 sickened her very soul. She was conscious 
 of a fund of rebellious strength, and she 
 demanded liberty to develop herself, liberty 
 to live. She knew very well how women 
 fared among the Eothwells. She had seen 
 two of her father's sisters, faded spinsters, 
 worshipping the family pride which had 
 blighted them. Nobody wanted them, their 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 MITCHELHURST PLACE, [chap. 
 
 one duty was to cost as little as possible. 
 That they would not disgrace the Roth well 
 name was taken for granted. Kate used to 
 look at their pinched and dreary faces, and 
 recognise some remnants of beauty akin to 
 her own. She listened to their talk, which 
 was full of details of the pettiest economy, 
 and remembered that these women had 
 been intent on shillings and half-pence all 
 their lives, that neither of them had ever 
 had a five-pound note which she could 
 spend as it pleased her. And their penuri- 
 ous savino- had been for — what ? Had it 
 been for husband or child it would have 
 been different, the half-pence would have 
 been glorified. But they j)aid this life-long 
 penalty for the privilege of being the Misses 
 Rothwell of Mitchell] urst. Life with them 
 was simply a careful picking of their way 
 along a downward slope to the family vault, 
 and it was almost a comfort to think that 
 the poor ladies were safely housed there,
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 163 
 
 with their dignity intact, while Kate was 
 yet in her teens. 
 
 Later came the little episode of Minnie 
 Newton and her admirer. Kate perceived 
 her brother's indifference to the girl's wel- 
 fare, and the brutality of his revenge on the 
 man whose crime was his habit of chinking 
 the gold in his waistcoat pocket. Probably, 
 with her finer instincts, she perceived all 
 this more clearly than did John Roth well 
 himself. She did not actively intervene, 
 because, in her contemptuous strength, she 
 felt very little pity for a couple whose fate 
 was ostensibly in their own hands. Minnie 
 was not even in love with Hayes, and Kate 
 did not care to oppose her brother in order 
 to force a pliant fool to accept a fortunate 
 chance. She let events take their course, 
 but she drew from them the lesson that her 
 future depended on herself. And, miserably 
 as life at Mitchelhurst was maintained, she 
 was, perhaps, the first of the family to see 
 
 M 2
 
 164 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 that the time drew near when it would not 
 be possible to maintain it at all, partly from 
 the natural tendency of all embarrassments 
 to increase, and partly from John Eothwell's 
 character. He could not be extravagant, 
 but he had a dull impatience of his fathe-r's 
 minute supervision. Kate made up her 
 mind that the crash would come in her 
 brother's reign. 
 
 She had already looked round the neigh- 
 bourhood of her home and found no 
 deliverer there. Had there been any one 
 otherwise suitable the Rothwell pride was 
 so notorious that he would never have 
 dreamed of approaching her. An invitation 
 from a girl who had been a school friend 
 offered a possible chance, and Kate coaxed 
 the necessary funds from the old squire, 
 defied her brother's grudging glances, and 
 went, with a secret, passionate resolve to 
 escape from Mitclielhurst for ever. She 
 saw no other way. She was not conscious
 
 vil] a game at chess. 165 
 
 of any special talent, and she said frankly 
 to herself that she was not sufficiently well 
 educated to be a governess. Moreover, 
 the independence which achieves a scanty 
 living was not her ideal. She was cramped, 
 she was half-starved, she wanted to stretch 
 herself in the warmth of the world, and 
 take its good things while she was young. 
 
 Fate might have decreed that she should 
 meet Mr. Robert Harding, a successful man 
 of business in the city, twenty years older 
 than herself, slightly bald, rather stout, 
 keen in his narrow range, but with very 
 little perception of anything which lay right 
 or left of the road by which he was travelling 
 to fortune. The beautiful Miss Roth well 
 would have thanked Fate and set to work 
 to win him. But it is not only our good 
 resolutions that are the sport of warring 
 chances. Our unworthy schemes do not 
 always ripen into fact. Kate did not meet 
 Mr. Robert Harding, she met his brother
 
 166 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Sidney, a tall, briglit-eyed, red-lipped young 
 
 fellow, with the world before him, and the 
 
 pair fell in love as simply and freshly as if 
 
 the croquet ground at Balaclava Lodge were 
 
 the Garden of Eden, or a glade in Arcady. 
 
 In a week they were engaged to be married, 
 
 and were both honestly ready to swear that 
 
 no other marriage had ever been possible 
 
 for either. To her he appeared wdth the 
 
 golden light of the future about his head ; 
 
 to him she came with all the charm and 
 
 shadowy romance of long descent, and of a 
 
 poverty far statelier than newly- won wealth. 
 
 Friends reminded Sidney that with his 
 
 liberal allowance from his brother, and his 
 
 prospect of a partnership at twenty- five, he 
 
 might have married a girl with money had 
 
 he chosen. Friends also mentioned to 
 
 Kate, with bated breath, that the Hardings' 
 
 father, dead twenty years earlier, had been 
 
 a pork-butcher. Sidney laughed, and Kate 
 
 turned a\^'ay in scorn. She was absolutely
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 167 
 
 glad that she could make what the world 
 considered a sacrifice for her darlino-. 
 
 At Mitchelhurst her engagement, though 
 not welcomed, was not strongly opposed. 
 John Roth well sneered as much as he dared, 
 but he knew his sister's temper, and it was 
 too like his own for him to care to trifle 
 with it, So he stood aside, very wisely, for 
 there w^as a touch of the lioness about Kate 
 with this new love of hers, and he saw 
 mischief in the eyes that were so sweet 
 while she was thinking about Sidney. It 
 was at that time that she spoke her word 
 of half-scornful sympathy to Herbert Hayes. 
 
 And in a year her married life, with all 
 its tender and softening influences, was 
 over. An accident had killed Sidney Hard- 
 ing before he was twenty-five, before his 
 child was born, and Kate was left alone 
 in comparatively straitened circumstances. 
 For her child's sake she endured her sorrow, 
 demanding almost fiercely of God that He
 
 168 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 would give her a son to grow up like his 
 dead father, and when the boy was born 
 she called him Reynold. Sidney was too 
 sacred a name ; there could be but one 
 Sidney Harding for her, but she remem- 
 bered that he had once said that he wished 
 he had been called Eeynold, after his father. 
 It was pathetic to see her dark eyes fixed 
 upon the baby features, trying to trace 
 something of Sidney in them, trying hard 
 not to realise that it was her own likeness 
 that w^as stamped upon her child. '*He is 
 darker, of course," she used to say, " but — " 
 He could not be utterly unlike his father, 
 this child of her heart's desire ! It was 
 not possible — it must not be — it would be 
 too monstrous a cruelty. But month by 
 month, and year by year, the little one 
 grew into her remembrance of her brother's 
 solitary boyhood, and faced her with a 
 moody temj)er that mocked her own. No 
 one knew how long she waited for a tone
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 169 
 
 or a glance which should remind her of her 
 dead love, remind her of anything but the 
 old days that she hated. None ever came. 
 The boy grew tall and slim, handsome after 
 the Eothwell type, with a curious instinct- 
 ive avidity for any details connected with 
 Mitchelhurst and his mother's people. He 
 would not confess his interest, but she 
 divined it and disliked it. And Key d old, 
 on his side, unconsciously resented her 
 eternal unspoken demand for something 
 which he could not give. He would scowl 
 at her over his shoulder, irritated by his 
 certainty that her unsatisfied eyes were 
 upon him. Mother and son were so fatally 
 alike that they chafed each other continu- 
 ally. Every outbreak of temper was a 
 pitched battle, the combatants knew the 
 ground on which they fought, and every 
 barbed speech was scientifically planted 
 where it would rankle most. 
 
 A crisis came when it was decided that
 
 170 MITOHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Keynolcl should leave school and go into his 
 uncle's office. The boy did not oppose it 
 by so much as a word; but as he stood, 
 erect and silent, while Mr. Harding enlarged 
 on his prospects, he looked aside for a 
 moment, and Kate's keener eyes caught 
 his contemptuous glance. To her it was an 
 oblique ray, revealing his soul. He despised 
 the Hardings; he was ashamed of his 
 father's name. She did not speak, but in 
 that moment with a pang of furious anguish 
 she chose once and for ever between her 
 husband and her son, and sealed up all 
 her tenderness iu Sidney's grave. 
 
 Eeynold's stay in Robert Harding's office 
 was short, but it was not unsatisfactory 
 while it lasted. He never professed to like 
 his work, but he went resignedly through 
 the daily routine. He was not bright or 
 interested, but he was intelligent. What 
 was explained to him he understood, what 
 was told him he remembered, as a mere
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 171 
 
 matter of course. He acquiesced in his life 
 in a city counting-house, as his grandfather 
 at Mitchelhurst had acquiesced in his narrow- 
 existence there. It seemed as if the men 
 of the family were apathetic and w^eary 
 by nature, and only Kate had had energy 
 enough to revolt. 
 
 An unexpected chance, the freak of a rich 
 old man who had business relations with 
 Robert Harding, and who remembered 
 Sidney, made Reynold the possessor of a 
 small legacy a few months after he had 
 entered his uncle's service. He at once 
 announced his intention of going to Oxford. 
 Of course, as he said, without his mother s 
 consent he could not go till he was of 
 age, and if she chose to refuse it he must 
 wait. Kate hesitated, but Mr. Harding, 
 who was full of schemes for the advance- 
 ment of his own son, did not care for an 
 unwilling recruit, and the young fellow 
 was coldly permitted to have his way.
 
 172 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 His mother, in spite of her disapproval, 
 watched his course with an interest which 
 she would never acknowledge. Was he 
 really going to achieve success in his own 
 fashion, perhaps to make the name she 
 loved illustrious ? 
 
 Nothing was ever more commonplace and 
 unnoticeable than Keynold's university 
 career. He spent his legacy, and came 
 back as little changed as possible. It 
 seemed as if he had felt that he owed 
 himself the education of a gentleman, and 
 had paid the debt, as a mere matter of 
 course, as soon as he had the means. 
 " What do you propose to do now ? " Kate 
 inquired. He answered listlessly that he 
 had secured a situation as under-master in 
 a school. And for three or four years he 
 had maintained himself thus, making use 
 of his mother's house in holiday time, or in 
 any interval between two engagements, but 
 never taking anything in the shape of
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 173 
 
 actual coin from her. She suspected that 
 he hated his drudgery, but he never spoke 
 of it. 
 
 Thus matters might have remained if it 
 had not been for Robert Harding's son. 
 The old man, whose dream had been to 
 found a great house of business which 
 -should bear his name when he was gone, 
 was unlucky enough to have an idle fool 
 for his heir. Eeynold's record w^as not 
 brilliant, but it showed blamelessly by the 
 side of his cousin's folly and extravagance. 
 Mr. Harding hinted more than once that 
 his nephew might come back if he would, 
 but his hints did not seem to be under- 
 stood. Little by little it became a fixed 
 idea with him that Reynold alone could 
 save the name of Harding, and keep his 
 cousin from utter ruin. He recognised a 
 kind of scornful probity in his nephew, 
 which would secure Gerald's safety in his 
 hands, and perhaps he exaggerated the
 
 174 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 promise of Reynold's boyhood. At last he 
 stooped to actual solicitation. Kate gave 
 the letter to her son, silently, but with a 
 breathless question in her eyes. 
 
 The old man offered terms which were 
 almost absurdly liberal, but he tried to 
 mask his humiliation by clothing the pro- 
 posal in dictatorial speech. He gave 
 Reynold a clear week in which to consider 
 his reply, and almost commanded him to 
 take that week. But Mr. Harding wrote, 
 if in ten days he had not signified his 
 acceptance, the situation would be filled 
 up. He should give it, with the promise 
 of the partnership, to a distant connection 
 of his wife's. " Understand," said the final 
 sentence, " that I speak of this matter for 
 the first and last time." 
 
 " I think," said Reynold, looking round 
 for writing materials, " that I had better 
 answer this at once." 
 
 " Not to say ' No ! ' " cried Kate. " You
 
 til] a game at chess. 175 
 
 shall not ! " She stood before him, darkly 
 imperious, with outstretched hand. It 
 seemed to her as if the whole house of 
 Harding appealed to her son for help. He 
 was asked to do the work that Sidney 
 would have done if he had lived. " You 
 shall not insult him by refusing his offer 
 without a moment's thought — I forbid it ! " 
 she exclaimed. 
 
 "Very well," said Keynold. "I will 
 wait." He turned aside to the fire-place, 
 and stood gazing at the dull red coals. 
 
 His mother followed him with her glance, 
 and after a moment's silence she made an 
 effort to speak more gently. "He is your 
 father's brother," she said. 
 
 " Yes," Reynold replied, in an absent 
 tone. " Such an offer couldn't come from 
 the other side." 
 
 The words were a simple statement of 
 fact, the utterance was absolutely expres- 
 sionless, but a sudden flame leapt into
 
 176 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Kate's eyes. "Answer when and as you 
 please ! " she cried. Her son said nothing. 
 He was waiting at the time to hear about 
 , a tutorship which had been mentioned to 
 him. The matter was not likely to be 
 settled immediately, and the next morning 
 he appeared with his bag in his hand, and 
 announced that he w^as going into the 
 country for a few" days, and would send his 
 address. In due time the letter came with 
 " Mitchelhurst " stamped boldly on it, like 
 a defiance. 
 
 When Barbara Strange bade young Hard- 
 ing go and make his fortune, she did not 
 know the curious potency of her advice. 
 The words fell, like a gleam of summer 
 sunshine, across a world of stony antagon- 
 isms and smouldering fires. And, with all 
 the bright unconsciousness of sunshine, they 
 transformed it into a place of life and hope. 
 She had called her little cross her talisman, 
 but Harding's talisman — for there are such
 
 vn.] A GAME AT CHESS. 177 
 
 things — was the folded letter in his pocket- 
 book. As she stood beside him, flushed, 
 eager, radiant, pleading with him, " Could 
 not you care for Mitchelhurst, if — " she 
 awakened a sudden craving for action, a 
 sudden desire of possession in his ice-bound 
 heart. To any other woman he could have 
 been only Eeynold Harding, a penniless 
 tutor, recognised, perhaps, as a kind of 
 degenerate offshoot of \\iq Eothwell tree. 
 But to Barbara he was the one remaining 
 hope of the old family of which she had 
 thought so much ; he was the king who 
 was to enjoy his own again, and her shining 
 glances bade him go and conquer his king- 
 dom without delay. And in Mitchelhurst 
 Church, as he stood among his dead people, 
 with the rain beating heavily on — 
 " The lichen-crusted leads above," 
 he had made up his mind. He would cast 
 in his lot with the Hardiness till he should 
 have earned the right to come back to the 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Eotliwells^ inheritance. He would do it, 
 but not for the Koth wells' sake — for a 
 sweeter sake — breathing and moving beside 
 him in that place of tombs. He looked up 
 at the marble countenance of his wigged 
 ancestor, considering it thoughtfully, yet 
 not asking himself if that dignified person- 
 age would have approved of his resolution. 
 Keynold, as he stared at the aquiline 
 features, wondered idly whether the lean- 
 faced gentleman had ever known and loved 
 a Barbara Stranofe, and whether he had 
 kissed her with those thin, curved lips of 
 his. Of course they wxre not as grimy and 
 pale in real life as in their sculptured like- 
 ness. And yet it was difficult to picture 
 him alive, with blood in his veins, stooping 
 to anything as warm and sweet as Barbara's 
 damask-rose mouth. It seemed to Eeynold 
 that only he and Barbara, in all the world, 
 were truly alive, and he only since he had 
 known her.
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 17& 
 
 When lie went back into the lanes alone, 
 after leaving her at the gate, the full 
 meaning of the decision which had swiftly 
 and strangely reversed the whole drift of 
 his life rushed upon him and bewildered 
 liim. He hastened away like one in a 
 dream. It was as if he had broken through 
 an encirclino; wall into light and air. Ever 
 since his boyhood he had held his fancy 
 tightly curbed, he had reminded himself by 
 night and day that he had nothing, was 
 nothing, would be nothing ; in his fierce 
 rejection of empty dreams he had chosen 
 always to turn his eyes from the wonderful 
 labyrinthine world about him, and to fix 
 them on the dull grey thread of his hope- 
 less life. Now for the first time in his 
 remembrance he relaxed his grasp, and his 
 fancy, freed from all control, flashed forward 
 to visions of love and wealth. He let it 
 go — why should he hinder it, since he had 
 resolved to follow w^here it led ? In this 
 
 N 2
 
 180 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 sudden exaltation his resolution seemed lialf 
 realised in its very conception, and as he 
 gathered the berries from the darkening 
 hedgerows he felt as if they were his 
 own, the first-fruits of his inheritance. He 
 hurried from briar to briar under the pale 
 evening sky, tearing the rain-w^ashed sprays 
 from their stems, hardly recognising himself 
 in the man who was so defiantly exultant 
 in his self-abandonment. Nothing seemed 
 out of reach, nothing seemed impossible. 
 When the darkness overtook him he went 
 back with a triumphant rhythm in his 
 swinorinor stride, feelins: as if he could have 
 gathered the very stars out of the sky for 
 Barbara. 
 
 This towerino' mood did not last. It was 
 
 o 
 
 in the nature of things that such loftiness 
 should be iu secure, and indeed Eeynold 
 could hardly have made a successful man 
 of business had it been permanent. It 
 would not do to add up Barbara and the
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CTTESS. 181 
 
 stars in every column of figures. But the 
 very fact of passing from the open heaveus 
 to the shelter of a roof had a sobering 
 eflfect, the process of dressing for dinner 
 recalled all the commonplace necessities of 
 life, and in his haste he had a difficulty 
 with his white necktie, which was distinctly 
 a disenchantment. The shyness and reserve 
 which were the growth of years could not 
 be shaken oflf in a moment of passion. 
 They closed round him more oppressively 
 than ever when he found himself in the 
 yellow drawing-room, face to face with Mr. 
 Hayes, and, being questioned about his 
 walk, he answered stiffly and coldly, and 
 then was silent. Yet enough of the exalta- 
 tion remained to kindle his eyes, though his 
 lips were speechless, when he caught sight 
 of Barbara standing by the fire-side, with a 
 cluster of blood-red berries in her hair, and 
 another nestling in the dusky folds of lace 
 close to her white throat. The vivid points
 
 182 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 of colour held his fascinated gaze, and 
 seemed to him like glowing kisses. 
 
 He had a game of chess with his host 
 after dinner. As a rule he was a slow 
 and meditative player, scanning the pieces 
 doubtfully, and suspecting a snare in every 
 promising chance. But that evening he 
 played as if by instinct, without hesitation. 
 Everything was clear to him, and he 
 pressed his adversary closely. Mr. Hayes 
 frowned over his calculations, apprehending 
 defeat, though the game as yet had taken 
 no decisive turn. Presently Barbara came 
 softly sweeping towards them in her black 
 draperies, set down her uncle's coffee-cup 
 at his elbow, and paused by Harding's side 
 to watch the contest. Her presence sent a 
 thrill through him which disturbed his 
 clear perception of the game. It made a 
 bright confusion in his mind, such as a 
 ripple makes in lucid waters. He put 
 out his hand mechanically towards the
 
 vil] a game at chess. 183 
 
 pawn which he had previously determined 
 to move. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Barbara, strong in the 
 traditional superiority of the looker-on, 
 " why don't you move your bishop ? '* 
 
 Reynold moved his bishop. 
 
 Quick as lightning Mr. Hayes made his 
 answering move, and, when it was an ac- 
 complished fact, he said — 
 
 " Thank you, Barbara." 
 
 Reynold and Barbara looked at each 
 other. The aspect of affairs was entirely 
 changed. A white knight occupied a pre- 
 viously guarded square, and simply offered 
 a ruinous choice of calamities. 
 
 " Oh, what have I done ? " the girl ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 Reynold laughed his little rough-edged 
 laugh. 
 
 " Nothing," he said. " Don't blame your- 
 self. Miss Strange. You only asked me why 
 I didn't move my bishop. I ought to have
 
 184 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 explained why I did/it. Instead of which 
 —I did. It certainly wasn't your fault." 
 
 Barbara lingered and bit her under-lip 
 as she gazed at the board. 
 
 " I've spoilt your game," she said remorse- 
 fully. '* I think I'd better go now I've done 
 the mischief." 
 
 " No, don't go ! " Harding exclaimed, and 
 Mr. Hayes, rubbing his hands, chimed in 
 with a mocking — 
 
 " No, don't go, Barbara ! " 
 
 The girl looked down with an angry 
 spark in her eyes. 
 
 **' Well, I'll give 3^ou some coffee," she 
 said to the young man ; " you haven't had 
 any yet." 
 
 *' And then come back, Barbara ! " her 
 uncle persisted. 
 
 She did come back, flushed and defiant, 
 determined to fight the battle to the last. 
 But for her obstinacy Mr. Hayes would 
 have had an easy triumph, for young Hard-
 
 vn.] A GAME AT CHESS. 185 
 
 ing's defence collapsed utterly. Apparently 
 he could not play a losing game, and a 
 single knock-down blow discouraged him 
 once for all. Barbara, taking her place by 
 his side, showed twice his spirit, and at one 
 time seemed almost as if she were about 
 to retrieve his fallen fortunes. Mr. Hayes 
 ceased to taunt her, and sat with a puckered 
 forehead considering his moves. He kept 
 his advantage, however, in spite of all she 
 could do, and presently unclosed his lips to 
 say ** Check ! " at intervals. But it was not 
 till he had uttered the fatal " Mate ! " that 
 his face relaxed. Then he got up, and made 
 his- niece a little bow. 
 
 " Thank you, Barbara ! " he said, and 
 walked away to the fire-place. 
 
 The young people remained where he 
 had left them. Barbara trifled with the 
 chessmen, moving them capriciously here 
 and there. Eeynold, with his head on his 
 hand, did not lift his eyes above the level
 
 186 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 of the board, but watched her slim fingers 
 as they slipped from piece to piece, or 
 lingered on the red-stained ivory. She 
 brought back all their slain combatants, 
 and set them up upon the battle-field. 
 
 " I wish I hadn't meddled ! " she said 
 suddenly. " I spoilt your game." 
 
 She spoke in a low voice, and Reynold 
 answered in the same tone, 
 
 " What did it matter % " 
 
 " No, but I hate to be beaten. I wanted 
 you to win." 
 
 " Well," said he, still with his head down, 
 " you set me to play a bigger game to- 
 day." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Barbara, decidedly. " I 
 won t meddle with that ! " 
 
 *' No ? " he said, looking up with a half- 
 hinted smile. Her cheeks were still burn- 
 in o^ with the excitement of her Ion or 
 struggle, and her bright eyes met his 
 questioning glance.
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 187 
 
 " Perhaps you think I can't help 
 meddling ? " she suggested. 
 
 " Perhaps you can't. You are super- 
 stitious, aren't you ? You believe in 
 amulets and that kind of thing — or half 
 believe. Perhaps you are foredoomed to 
 meddle, and destiny won't let you set me 
 down to the game and go quietly away." 
 
 Barbara was holding the king between 
 her fingers. She replaced it on its square 
 so absently, while she looked at Reynold, 
 that it fell. His words seemed to trouble 
 her. 
 
 "Well, if this game is an omen, you 
 had better not let me meddle," she said at 
 last. 
 
 " How am I to help it ? " 
 
 "Thank you !" she exclaimed resentfully ; 
 " I'm not so eager to interfere in your 
 affairs as you seem to take for granted ! " 
 
 " Indeed I thought nothing of the kind. 
 I thought we were talking of destiny. And,
 
 188 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 you see, you were good enough to take a 
 little interest this afternoon." 
 
 She uttered a half- reluctant '^ Yes." She 
 had a dim feeling that she was, in some 
 inexplicable way, becoming involved in 
 young Harding's fortunes. 
 
 The notion half-frightened, half-fascinated 
 her. When they began their low-voiced 
 talk she had unconsciously leaned a little 
 towards him. Now she did not precisely 
 withdraw, but she lifted her face, and there 
 was a touch of shy defiance in the poise of 
 her head. 
 
 Mr. Hayes, as he stood by the fire, was 
 warming first one little polished shoe, and 
 then the other, and contemplating the 
 blazins: los^s. 
 
 " Barbara," he said suddenly, '* did we 
 have this wood from Jackson ? It burns 
 much better than the last." 
 
 Barbara was the little housekeeper again 
 in a moment. She crossed the room, and
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 189 
 
 explained that it was not Jackson's wood, 
 but some of a load which Mr. Green had 
 asked them to take. " You said I could 
 do as I pleased," she added, " and I 
 thought they looked very nice logs when 
 they came." 
 
 "Green— ah! Jacob Green knows what 
 he's about. Made you pay, I dare say. 
 No, no matter." The girl's eyes had gone 
 to a little table, where an account-book 
 peeped out from under a bit of coloured 
 embroidery. " I'm not complaining ; I 
 don't care about a few extra shillings, if 
 things are good. Get Green to send you 
 some more when this is burnt out." 
 
 Reynold had risen when Barbara left 
 him, and after lingering for a moment, a 
 tall black and white figure, in the lamplight 
 by the chessboard, he followed her, and took 
 up his position on the rug. The interruption 
 to their talk had been unw^elcome, but it 
 was not, in itself, unpleasant. He liked to
 
 190 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 see Barbara playing the part of the lady of 
 the Place. It was a sweet foreshadowing 
 of the home, the dear home, that should one 
 day be. There should be logs enough on 
 the hearths of Mitch elhurst in October 
 nights to come, and, though the fields and 
 copses round might be wet and chill, the 
 old house should be filled to overflowing 
 with brightness and warmth and love. 
 Some wayfarer, plodding along the dark 
 road, would pause and look up the avenue, 
 and see the lights shining in the windows 
 beyond the leafless trees. Eeynold pictured 
 this, and pictured the man's feelings as he 
 gazed. It was curious how, by a kind of 
 instinct, he put himself in the outsider's 
 place. He did not know that he always 
 did so, but in truth he had never dreamed 
 anything for himself till Barbara taught 
 him, and his old w^ay of looking at life was 
 not to be unlearnt in a day. Still he was 
 happy enough as he stood there, staring at
 
 VII.] A GAME AT CHESS. 191 
 
 the fire, and thinking of those illuminated 
 windows. 
 
 He could not sleep when he went to bed 
 that night. The head which he laid on the 
 chilly softness of his pillow was full of a 
 joyous riot of waking visions, and he closed 
 his eyes on the shadows only to see a girl's 
 shining glances and rose-flushed cheeks.
 
 192 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 baebaea's tune. 
 
 Haeding fell asleep towards morning, and 
 woke from his slumber with a vague sense 
 that the world had somehow expanded into 
 a wide and pleasant place, and that he had 
 inherited a share of it. And thoudi the 
 facts were not quite so splendid when he 
 emerged from his drowsy reverie, enough 
 remained of possibilities, golden or rosy, to 
 colour and brighten that Saturday. It is 
 something to wake to a conviction that 
 one's feet are set on the way to love and 
 wealth. 
 
 While he dressed, he thought of the 
 letter he had to write, and then of its
 
 VIII.] BARBARA'S TUNE. 193 
 
 consequences. How long would it be 
 before he wouJd have the right to come 
 and say to Barbara, *' I have begun the 
 fortune you ordered, I am not rich yet, 
 but I have fairly started on the road to 
 riches and Mitchelhnrst — will you wait for 
 me there ? " Or might he not say, " Will 
 you travel the rest of the way with me ? " 
 How long must it be before he could say 
 that ? Two years ? Surely in two years 
 he might unclose his lips ; for he would 
 work — it would be no wearisome task. A 
 longing, new and strange, to labour for his 
 love flooded the inmost recesses of his soul. 
 The man's whole nature was suddenly 
 broken up, and flowing forth as a stream 
 in a springtide thaw. It seemed to him 
 that he could give himself utterly to the 
 most distasteful occupations ; in fact, that 
 he would reject and scorn any remnant of 
 himself that had not toiled for Barbara. 
 The girl herself woke up, a room or two 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 away, and lay with her eyes fixed on the 
 tester of the great shadowy bed. It was 
 early, she need not get up for a few minutes 
 more. The pale autumn morning stole in 
 between the faded curtains, and lighted her 
 vivid little face, a little face which might 
 have been framed in a couple of encircling 
 hands. And yet, small as it was, where it 
 rested, with a cloud of dusky hair tossed 
 round it over the pillow, it was the centre 
 and the soul of that melancholy high- 
 walled room. She had dreamed confusedly 
 of Reynold Harding, and hardly knew where 
 her dream ended and her waking thought 
 began— perhaps because there was not much 
 more reality in the one than in the other. 
 
 Girls have an ideal which they call First 
 Love. It is rather a troublesome ideal, 
 involving them in a thousand little per- 
 plexities, self-deceits, half-conscious false- 
 hoods ; but they adore it through them all. 
 First Love is the treasure which must be
 
 VIII.] BARBARA'S TU>:E. 195 
 
 given to the man they promise to marry ; 
 the bloom would be off the fruit, the dew- 
 drop dried from the flower, if they could 
 not assure him that the love they feel for 
 him was the earliest that ever stirred within 
 their hearts. The utmost fire of passion 
 must have the freshness of shy spring 
 blossoms. Love, in his supreme triumphant 
 flight from soul to soul, must swear he 
 never tried his wings before. 
 
 But, to be honest, how often can a girl 
 speak confidently of her first love ? She 
 reads poems and stories, and the young 
 fellows who come about her, while she is 
 yet in her teens, are hardly more than 
 incarnate chapters of her novels. How did 
 she begin ? She loved Hector, it may be, 
 and King Arthur, and Roland, and the Cid. 
 Then perhaps she had a tender passion for 
 Amyas Leigh, for the Heir of Redclyfl'e, or 
 for Guy Livingstone; and the curate, or the 
 squire's son. just home with his regiment 
 
 2
 
 196 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 from India, carries on the romance. This 
 she assures herself is the mystic first love ; 
 but the curate goes to another parish, or the 
 lieutenant's leave comes to an end, and the 
 living novel is forgotten with the others. 
 She will order more books from Mudie's and 
 take an interest in them, and in the hero 
 of some private theatricals at a country 
 house close by. She will meet the young 
 man who lives on the other side of the 
 county, but who dances so perfectly and 
 talks so well, at the bachelors' ball. She 
 will think a while first of one, then of the 
 other ; and afterwards, when the time comes 
 to make that assurance of first love, she 
 will, half unconsciously efi'ace all these 
 memories, and vow, with innocent, smiling 
 lips, that her very dreams have held no 
 shape till then. 
 
 Miss Strange w^as intent on the change in 
 her little W'orld of coloured shadows. Adrian 
 Scarlett and Reynold Harding rose before
 
 VIII.] BARBARA'S TUNE. 197 
 
 her eyes as pictures, more life-like than 
 she could find in her books, but pictures 
 nevertheless, figures seen only in one aspect. 
 Adrian, a facile, warmly- tinted sketch of 
 a summer poet ; Eeynold, a sombre study 
 in black and grey — what could the little 
 girl by any possibility know of these young 
 men more than this ? Eeynold's romance, 
 with its fuller development, its melancholy 
 background, its hints of passion and effort^ 
 might well absorb the larger share of her 
 thoughts. Her part was marked out in it ; 
 she was startled to see how a word of hers 
 had awakened a dormant resolution. She 
 was flattered, and, though she was frightened 
 too, she felt that she could not draw back ; 
 she had inspired young Harding with 
 ambition, and she must encourage him 
 and believe in him in his coming fight 
 with fortune. Barbara found herself the 
 heroine of a drama, and for the sake of her 
 new character she began to rearrange her
 
 198 MITCHELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 first imjDressions of the hero, to dwell on 
 the pathos of his story, to deepen the 
 ditch into which he had slipped in her 
 service, till it would hardly have known 
 itself from a precipice, to soften the chilly 
 repulsion which she had felt at their meeting 
 into the simple eflPect of his proud reserve. 
 She lay gazing upw^ard, with a smile on 
 her lips, picturing his final home-coming, 
 grouping all the incidents of that triumph- 
 ant day about the tall, dark figure with the 
 Eothwell features, who w^as just the puppet 
 of her pretty fancies. The vision of his 
 future, expanding like a soap-bubble, rose 
 from the dull earth, and caught the gay 
 colours of Barbara's sunny hopes. Every- 
 thing would go well, everything must go 
 well ; he should make his fortune while 
 he was yet young, and come back to the 
 flowery arches and clashing bells of rejoicing 
 Mitchelhurst. Beyond that day her fancy 
 hardly went. Of course he would have to
 
 VIII.] BARBARA'S TUNE. 199 
 
 take the Dame of Roth well, the name which, 
 for the perfection of her romance, should 
 have been bis by right. At that remem- 
 brance she paused dissatisfied — the pork- 
 butcher was the one strong touch of reality 
 in the wbolc storv. In fact the mere 
 thought of him brought her back to every- 
 day life, and to the certainty that she must 
 waste no more time in dreams. 
 
 Reynold, consulting his uncle's letter, 
 found with some surprise that he had 
 pushed silence to its utmost limit, and that 
 another day's delay would have overstepped 
 the boundary which Mr. Harding had so 
 imperiously set. The discovery was a 
 shock ; it took away his breath for a 
 moment, and then sent the blood coursiag 
 through his veins with a tingliug exhilara- 
 tion, the sense of a peril narrowly escaped. 
 He was glad — glad in a defiant, unreason- 
 able fashion — that he had not yielded till 
 the last day, though at the same time he
 
 200 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 was uneasy till liis answer should be 
 despatched. He went up to his room 
 immediately after breakfast, and sat down 
 to his task at the writing-table which faced 
 the great window. 
 
 After one or two unsatisfactory beginnings 
 he ended with the simplest possible note of 
 acceptance, to which he added a postscript, 
 informing his uncle that he should remain 
 two or three days longer at Mitchelhurst 
 Place, and hoped to receive his instructions 
 there. He wrote a few lines to end the 
 question of the tutorship for which he had 
 been waiting, addressed the two envelopes, 
 and leaned back in his chair to read his 
 letters over before folding them. 
 
 As he did so he looked out over the far- 
 spreading landscape. The sunshine broke 
 through the veil of misty cloud and widened 
 slowly over the land, catching here the sails 
 of a windmill, idle in the autumn calm, 
 there a church spire, or a bit of white road.
 
 VIII.] BARBARA'S TUNE. 201 
 
 or a group of poplars, or the red wall of an 
 old farmhouse. The silver grey gave place 
 to vaporous gold, and a pale brightness 
 illumined the paper in his hand on which 
 those fateful lines were v;ritten. One would 
 have said Mitchelhurst was smiling broadly 
 at his resolution. Reynold stretched himself 
 and returned the smile as if the landscape 
 were an old friend who greeted him, and 
 tilting his chair backward he thrust his 
 letter into the directed cover. 
 
 " When I come back," he said to himself, 
 '•' I will take this room for mine." 
 
 AYriting his acceptance of his uncle's offer 
 had not been pleasant, yet now that it was 
 done he contemplated the superscription, 
 
 ^' B. Rarding, Esq.^' 
 
 with grave satisfaction. Finally, he took 
 up the pen once more, hesitated, balanced 
 it between his fingers, and then let it fall. 
 " Why should T write to her ? " said he,
 
 202 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 while a sullen shadow crossed his face. 
 " She will hear it soon enough. Since she 
 is to have her ow^n way about my career for 
 the rest of my life, she may well wait a day 
 or two to know it. Besides, I can't explain 
 in a letter why I have given in. No, I 
 won't write to-day." He shut up his 
 blotting- case with an impatient gesture, 
 and there was nothing for Mrs. Sidney 
 Harding by that afternoon's post. 
 
 He went down the great stone stairs with 
 his letters, and laid them on the hall table, 
 as Barbara had told him to do. Then, 
 pausing for a moment to study the weather- 
 glass, a note or two, uncertainly struck, 
 attracted his attention. The door of the 
 yellow drawing-room was partly open, and 
 Mr. Hayes was presumably out, for Barbara 
 was at the old piano. When Harding 
 turned his head he could see her from 
 where he stood. The light from the south 
 wandow fell on the simple folds of her soft
 
 VIII.] BARBAEA'S TUNE. 203 
 
 woollen dress, and brightened them to a 
 brownish gold. She sat with her head 
 slightly bent, touching the keys question- 
 ingly and tentatively, till she found a little 
 snatch of melody, which she played more 
 than once as if she were eagerly listening to 
 it. The piano was worn out, of that there 
 could be no doubt, yet Eeynold found en- 
 chantment in the shallow tinkling sounds. 
 He could not have uttered his feelings 
 in any words at his command, but that 
 mattered the less since Mr. Adrian Scarlett 
 had enjoyed his feelings in the sumnur 
 time, and, touching them up a little, had 
 arranged them in verse. It was surely 
 lionour enough for that poor little tune 
 that its record was destined to appear one 
 day in the young fellow's volume of poems. 
 
 AT HER PIANO. 
 
 It chanced I loitered through a rooin, 
 Duf<h' with a shaded, sultry gloom,
 
 204 MITCHELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 And full of memories of old, times — 
 / lingered, slicqnng into rJujmes 
 My visions of those earlier days 
 'Mid their neglected loaifs and strays 
 A yellowing keyhoard caught my gaze, 
 And straight I fancied, as I stood 
 Resting my hand on polished loood, 
 Letting my eyes, contented, trace 
 The daintiness of inlaid grace, 
 That Music's ghost, outworn and spent. 
 Dreamed, near her antique instrument. 
 
 But when I broke its silence, fain 
 To call an echo ha.ck again 
 Of some old fashioned, tender straiji, 
 Played once by playo long since dead — 
 I found my dream of music fled ! 
 The chords I wakened could but speak 
 In jangled utterance, thin and loeak, 
 In shallow discords, as when age 
 Reaches its last deci^epit stage. 
 In feeble notes that seemed to chide — 
 This loas the end ! I stepped aside. 
 In my impatient weariness, 
 Into the window's draped recess. 
 Without, was all the joy of June ; 
 Within, a piano out of tune ! 
 
 But lohile, half hidden, thus I stayed, 
 There came in one icho lightly laid 
 White hands upon the yellow keys
 
 VIII.] BAEBARA'S TUNE. 205 
 
 To seek their linciering harmonies. 
 I think she sighed — / know she smiled — 
 And straighficay Music was beguiledj 
 And all the faded bygone years, 
 With all their bygone hopes and fears, 
 Their longforgotten smiles and tears, 
 Their empty dreams that meant so much, 
 Began to sing beneath her touch. 
 
 The notes that time had taught to fret, 
 Racked with a querulous regret, 
 Forsook their burden of complaint, 
 For melodies more sweetly faint 
 Than lovers ever dreamed in sleep — 
 Than rippling murmurs of the deep — 
 Than lohispered hope of endless j^eace — 
 Ah, let her play or let her cease, 
 For still that sound is in the air, 
 And still I see her seated there I 
 
 Yet, even as her fingers ranged, 
 T knew those jangled notes unchanged. 
 My soul had heard, in ear's despite. 
 And Love had made the music right. 
 
 So had Master Adrian written, after a 
 good deal of work with note-book and 
 pencil, during a long summer afternoon, 
 and then had carried his rhymes aw^ay to 
 j)olish them at his leisure. Reynold
 
 206 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Harding merely stood listenicg in the hall, 
 as motionless as if he were the ghost of 
 some tall young Kothwell, called back and 
 held entranced by the sound of the familiar 
 instrument. Barbara knew no more of his 
 silent presence than she did of Adrian's 
 verses. When she paused he stepped 
 lightly away without disturbing her. He 
 was very ignorant of music ; he had no 
 idea what it was that she had |)layed ; to 
 him it was just Barbara's tune, and he felt 
 that, when he left Mitchelhurst, he should 
 carry it in liis heart, to sing softly to him 
 on his way. 
 
 He passed into the garden and loitered 
 there, recalling the notes after a tuneless 
 fashion of his own. The neglected grounds, 
 which had seemed so sodden and sad when 
 first he looked out upon them, had a pale, 
 shining beauty as he walked to and fro, 
 keeping time to the memory of Barbara's 
 music. The eye did not dwell on their
 
 VIII.] BARBARA'S TUNE. 207 
 
 desolation, but passed through the leafless 
 boughs to bright misty distances of earth 
 and cloudland. Reynold halted at last by 
 the old sun-dial. The softly diffused 
 radiance marked no passing hour upon it, 
 but rather seemed to tell of measureless 
 rest and peace. There was a slight 
 autumnal fragrance in the air, but the 
 young man perceived a sweeter breath, 
 and stooping to the black earth, he found 
 two or three \iolets half hidden in their 
 clustering leaves. He hardly knew why 
 they gave him the })leasure they did ; he 
 was not accustomed to find such delicate 
 pleasure in such things. Perhaps if he had 
 analysed his feeliugs he might have seen 
 that, for a man who had just pledged 
 himself to a life of hurrying toil, there was 
 a subtle charm in the very stillness and 
 decay and indolent content of Mitchelhurst, 
 breathing its odours of box and yew into 
 the damp, windless air. It was a curious
 
 208 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 little pause before the final plunge. 
 Eeyuold felt it even if he did not altogether 
 understand, as he stood by the sun-dial 
 which recorded nothing, with the violets at 
 his feet, and the rooks sailing overhead 
 across the faintly-tinted sky. A clump of 
 overgrown dock-leaves stirred suddenly, 
 Barbara's cat pushed its way through them 
 and came to rub itself asjainst him. He 
 bent down and caressed it. " I'll come 
 again — I'll come home," he said softly, as 
 he stroked its arching back.
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 209 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 
 
 It was fortunate that young Harding 
 demanded little in the way of gaiety from 
 Mitchelhurst. Such as it could give, how- 
 ever, it gave that evening, when the vicar, 
 and a country squire who had a small place 
 five or six miles away, came to dinner. 
 The clergyman was a pallid, undersized 
 man, who blinked, and twitched his lips 
 when he was not speaking, and had a 
 nervous trick of assenting to every pro- 
 position with an emphatic " Yes, yes." 
 After the utterance of this formula his 
 conscience usually awoke, and compelled 
 him to protest, for he considered most 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 tliinsfs that were said or done in the 
 world as at any rate slightly reprehensible. 
 This might happen ten times in one con- 
 versation, but the assent did not fail to 
 come as readily the tenth time as the first. 
 It would only have been necessary to say, 
 with a sufficient air of conviction, "You 
 see, don't you, Mr. Pryor, that under these 
 circumstances I was perfectly justified in 
 cutting my grandmother's throat with a 
 blunt knife ? " to secure a fervent " Yes, 
 yes ! " in reply. 
 
 The squire was not half an inch taller, 
 a little beardless man with withered red 
 cheeks, and brown hair which was curiously 
 like a wig. Barbara had doubted through 
 two or three interviews whether it was a 
 wig or not, and she had been pleased when 
 he talked to her, because it gave her an 
 excuse for looking fixedly in the direction 
 of his head. At last he arrived one day 
 with his hair very badly cut, and a bit
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 211 
 
 of plaster on his ear, where the village 
 barber had snipped it, after which she took 
 no further interest in him. Happily her 
 previous attention had given him a very 
 high opinion of her intelligence and good 
 taste, and Mr. Masters remained her loyal 
 admirer. " A very sensible girl, Miss 
 Strange," he would say, and Mr. Pry or 
 would reply " Yes, yes," and then add 
 doubtfully that he feared she was rather 
 flighty, and that her indifference to serious 
 questions was much to be regretted. This 
 meant that Barbara would not take a class 
 in the Sunday-school, and cared nothing 
 about old books and tombstones. 
 
 The dinner was not a conversational 
 success. Mr. Masters, on being introduced 
 to Reynold Harding, was amazed at the 
 likeness to the old family, and repeatedly 
 exclaimed, " God bless my soul ! How very 
 remarkable ! " Harding looked self-con- 
 scious and uncomfortable, and the vicar 
 
 p 2
 
 212 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 said " Yes, exactly so." The little squire's 
 eyes kept wandering from the young man's 
 face to the wall and hack again, as if he 
 were referring him to all the family 
 portraits. By the time they had finished 
 their fish the resemblance was singularly 
 heightened. Reynold was scowling blackly, 
 and answering in the fewest possible words, 
 which seemed to orrate a2:ainst each other as 
 he uttered them. Mr. Hayes, who did not 
 care twopence for his young guest's feelings, 
 looked on with indifferent eyes, and would 
 not interfere, while Barbara made a gallant 
 little attempt to divert attention from 
 Reynold's ill-temper by talking with in- 
 coherent liveliness to the clergyman. As 
 ill-luck would have it, Mr. Masters, who 
 had more than once addressed his new 
 acquaintance as " Mr. Roth well," suddenly 
 grasped the fact that he was not Roth well 
 at all, but Harding, and began to take 
 an unnecessary interest in the Harding
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 213 
 
 pedigree. He was so eager in his investi- 
 gation that he did not see the young 
 man's silent fury, but went on recalling 
 different Hardings he had known or heard 
 of. " That might be about your grand- 
 father's time," he reckoned. 
 
 " You never knew my Hardings ! " said 
 Reynold abruptly, in so unmistakable a 
 tone that Mr. Masters stopped short, and 
 looked wonderingly at him, while Barbara 
 faltered ia the middle of a sentence. At 
 that moment the remembrance of his grand- 
 father was an intolerable humiliation to the 
 poor fellow, tenfold worse because Barbara 
 would understand. The dark blood had 
 risen to his face and swollen the veins on 
 his forehead, and his glance met hers. 
 She coloured, and he took it as a con- 
 fession that he had divined her thoughts. 
 In truth she was startled and frightened 
 at her hero of romance under his new 
 aspect.
 
 214 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 '' Pry or," said Mr, Hayes sharply, " you 
 nre all wrong about that inscription in 
 the church. Masters and I have been 
 talking it over— eh, Masters ? — and we 
 have made up our minds that your theory 
 won't do." 
 
 "Yes," said the vicar, and Mr. Masters 
 chimed in, following his host's lead almost 
 mechanically. The worthy little squire 
 concluded that he must have said some- 
 thing dreadful, and wondered, as he talked, 
 what these Hardings could have done. " I 
 suppose some of 'em were hanged," he said 
 to himself, and stole a glance of commisera- 
 tion at Eeynold, who was gloomily intent 
 upon his plate. *' People ought to let one 
 know beforehand when there's anything 
 disagreeable like that — -why, one might talk 
 about ropes ! I shall speak to Hayes, 
 though perhaps he doesn't know. A 
 deucedly unpleasant young fellow, but so 
 was John Kothwell, and it must be
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 215 
 
 uncommonly uncomfortable to have any- 
 thing of that kind in one's family. God 
 bless my soul ! he looked as if he were 
 going to murder me ! " 
 
 Barbara breathed again when the in- 
 scription was mentioned, recognising a safe 
 and familiar topic, warranted to wear \^ell. 
 They had not ended the discussion when 
 she left them to their wine. Mr. Masters 
 was quicker than Reynold, and held the 
 door open for her to pass, with a little 
 old-fashioned bow, but he exclaimed over 
 his shoulder as he closed it, "No, no, Pry or, 
 you are begging the question of the date,'* 
 and she went away with those encouraging 
 words in her ears. Mr. Masters and Mr. 
 Pryor might disagree as much as they 
 pleased. They would never come to any 
 harm. 
 
 Still, as she waited alone till the gentle- 
 men should come, she could not help feeling 
 depressed. The yellow drawing-room was
 
 216 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 more brilliantly lighted than usual, and the 
 portrait of Anthony Roth well chanced to be 
 especially illuminated. Barbara sat down 
 on a low chair, and took a book, but she 
 turned the leaves idly, and whenever she 
 lifted her eyes she met the painted gaze of 
 the face that was so like Eeynoid. By 
 nature she was happy enough, but her 
 lonely life in the desolate old place, the lack 
 of sympathy, which threw her back entirely 
 on her own thoughts, the desires and dreams 
 which she did not herself understand, but 
 which sprang up and budded in the twilight 
 of her innocent soul, had all combined to 
 make her unnaturally imaginative. A little 
 careless irresponsibility, a little healthy fun 
 and excitement, would have cured her 
 directly. But, meanwhile, the silence and 
 decay of the great hollow house impressed 
 her as it would not have impressed a heavier 
 nature. She was like a butterfly in that 
 wilderness of stone, brightening the spot on
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 217 
 
 which she alighted, but failing to find the 
 sunlight that she sought. Her moods 
 would vary from one moment to the next, 
 answering the subtle influences which a 
 breath of wholesome air from the outer 
 world would have blown away. As she sat 
 there that evening she wished she could 
 escape from Mitchelhurst and Mr. Harding. 
 His angry glance had printed itself upon 
 her memory, and it haunted her. She had 
 been playing with his hopes, trying to 
 awaken his ambition, thinking lightly of 
 the Eothwell temper as a mere item in the 
 romantic likeness, and suddenly she had 
 caught siorht of somethino* menacinoj and 
 cruel, beyond all strength of hers. She 
 lifted her head, and Anthony Rothwell 
 looked as if he were smiling in malicious 
 enjoyment at her trouble. The very effort 
 she made to keep her eyes from the picture 
 drew them to it more certainly, till the 
 firelit room seemed to contract about the
 
 218 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 portrait and herself, leaving no chance of 
 escape from the ghostly tete-d-tHe. 
 
 The sound of steps broke the spell. She 
 threw down her book as the door opened, 
 and could scarcely help laughing at the 
 queer little company, the three small elderly 
 men, and the tall young fellow who towered 
 over them. A covert glance told her that 
 Keynold was as pale, or paler, than usual, 
 and she noticed that he answered in a 
 constrained but studiously polite manner 
 when the good-natured little squire made 
 some remark on the chilliness of the autumn 
 evenings. After a moment he came across 
 to her, and stood with his elbow on the 
 chimney-piece, looking at the blazing logs, 
 while Anthony Eothwell smiled over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 Barbara wondered what she should say to 
 the pair of them, and she tormented her 
 little lace- edged handkerchief in her em- 
 barrassment. Finally she let it fall. Young
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS, 219 
 
 Harding stooped for it, and as lie gave it 
 back their eyes met, and be smiled. 
 
 " Are you going to play to us ? " be asked. 
 
 '' I wish Miss Strange would play for me 
 at my entertainment at the schools next 
 week," said Mr. Pryor plaintively. *' Won't 
 you be persuaded, Miss Strange ? " 
 
 " I'll play for you now if you like," she 
 answ^ered, *'but you know my uncle won't 
 let me play at the penny readings. And 
 really it is no loss, I am nothing of a 
 musician." 
 
 The vicar sighed and looked across at 
 Mr. Hayes. *' I wish he would ! " be said. 
 ** Couldn't you persuade him ? I can't get 
 the programme arranged properly." 
 
 " Why, haven't you got the usual people?'* 
 
 *' Yes, yes, I have got the usual people. 
 But perhaps," said Mr. Pryor, not unreason- 
 ably, " it would be as well to have some- 
 thing a little different — a little new, you 
 knuw. It is extremely kind of them, but
 
 220 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 the audience, the back benches, don't you 
 know '? — Well, I suppose they like variety." 
 
 Barbara looked gravely sympathetic. 
 
 " And it's rather awkward," Mr. Pry or 
 continued, '^ young Dickson at the mill has 
 some enorao'ement that evenino;, and won't 
 be able to sing ' Simon the Cellarer,' unless 
 I put it the fiist thing." 
 
 " Why, he sings nothing else ! " Miss 
 Strange exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, he does know two other songs, I 
 believe, but they are, in my opinion, too 
 broadly comic for such an entertainment as 
 this. He hummed a little bit of one in 
 my study one evening, in a very subdued 
 manner, of course, just to give me an idea. 
 I saw at once that it would never do. I 
 stopped him directly, but I found myself 
 singing the very objectionable words about 
 the parish for days. Not ahud^ you know% 
 not aloud l^^ 
 
 Mr. Pryor looked sternly over the top of
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 221 
 
 j\liss Strangers head, and pressed his lips 
 so tightly together that she was quite 
 sure he was singing Mr. Harry Dickson's 
 objectionable song to himself at that very 
 moment. 
 
 " But why shouldn't he sing * Simon the 
 Cellarer' at the beginning just as well as at 
 the end ? " she questioned. 
 
 " Yes," said the vicar, *' but there is my 
 little reading, of course that must come in 
 early — my position as the clergyman of the 
 parish, you see. And I thought of some- 
 thing a little improving, a short reading out 
 of a volume of selections I happen to have, 
 ' Simon the Cyrenian '." 
 
 " Why, you read that before," Barbara 
 began, and then stopped and coloured. 
 
 '* Yes, yes," said Mr. Pryor, '* I did, but 
 I don't think they paid much attention, 
 the back benches were rather noisy that 
 evening, and it is a nice length, and seems 
 very suitable. But the difficulty is how to
 
 222 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 keep ' Simon the Cellarer ' and ' Simon the 
 Cyrenian ' apart on the programme. I don't 
 know how it is to be managed, I'm sure. I 
 thought perhaps you would play us some- 
 thing appropriate between the song and the 
 reading. I'm afraid some of the audience 
 may smile." 
 
 Reynold took his arm from the chimney- 
 piece. '' Appropriate to both Simons ? " he 
 inquired. 
 
 *' Yes, just so, to both Simons. At least, 
 not exactly that, but something by way of 
 a transition, I suppose." 
 
 " I wonder what that would be like," 
 Barbara speculated. " I'm really very sorry 
 I can't help you, Mr. Pryor." 
 
 "Oh never mind," said the clergyman. 
 " I did tell Dickson he misht chanoe the 
 name in his song, but he wouldn't, in fact 
 he answered rather flippantly. Well, 1 
 suppose I must find another reading, but 
 it's a pity, when I knew of this one. Such
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 223 
 
 a suitable length ! Unless/' he looked at 
 Reynold, " unless your friend — " 
 
 Reynold's " No ! " was charged with 
 intense astonishment and horror. *' I can't 
 play a note," he added. 
 
 *' But you could recite something," Mr. 
 Pryor persisted. "Now that would really 
 be very kind. Something like the * Charge 
 of the Light Brigade ' — ' Into the valley of 
 death,' don't you know, 'Rode the six 
 hundred' — that pleases an audience. We 
 had a young man from Manchester once 
 who did that very well, a little too much 
 action, perhaps, but remarkably w^ell. Or 
 something American — American humour. 
 If it isn't flippant I see no objection to it ; 
 one should not be too particular, I think. 
 And it is very popular. Not flippant, and 
 not too broad — but I needn't say that — I 
 feel very safe wdth you. I'm sure you 
 would not select anything broad." 
 
 Harding had recoiled a step or two, and
 
 224 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 stood with a stony gaze of unspeakable 
 scorn. " It's out of the question," he said, 
 " I couldn't think of such a thing. It's 
 utterl)^ impossible. Besides, I shall be gone." 
 
 " Well, I'm very sorry," said the vicar, 
 *' I only thought perhaps you might." He 
 turned to Barbara, " Your other friend was 
 so very kind at our little harvest home. 
 Mr. — I forget his name — but it was very 
 good of him." 
 
 "Mr. Scarlett," said Barbara. She had 
 her hand up, guarding her eyes from the 
 flickering brightness of a log which had 
 just burst into flame, and Reynold, looking 
 down at her, questioned within himself 
 w^hether there were not a faint reflection 
 of the name upon her cheek. But it might 
 be his jealous fancy, 
 
 " Yes, yes, Scarlett, so it was. A very 
 amusing young man." 
 
 This soothed the sullen bystander a little, 
 though he hardly knew why, unless it
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 225 
 
 might be that he fancied that Barbara 
 would not like to hear Mr. Scarlett de- 
 scribed as a very amusing young man. But 
 when she answered " Very amusing," with 
 a certain slight crispness of tone, it struck 
 him that he would have preferred that she 
 should be indifferent. 
 
 The vicar took his leave a little later, 
 mentioning the duties of the next day as 
 a reason for his early departure. " Must 
 be prepared, you know," he said as he shook 
 hands with the squire. 
 
 Mr. Hayes came back from the door, 
 smiling his little contemptuous smile. 
 " That means that he has to open a 
 drawer, and take out an old sermon," he 
 said, turning to Mr. Masters. *'Well, as 
 I was saying " 
 
 " Does he always preach old sermons ? " 
 Reynold asked Barbara. 
 
 " I think so. They always look very 
 yellow, and they always seem old." 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " Always preaches old sermons, and has 
 the same old penny readings — do you go ? " 
 
 "Oh yes, we always go. Uncle thinks 
 we ought to go, only he won't let me do 
 anything." 
 
 '^ Do you loant to do anything % " 
 
 ''No," said the girl. It was a truthful 
 answer, but her consciousness of the intense 
 scorn in Harding's voice made it doubly 
 prompt. 
 
 " But do you like going ? " 
 
 She hesitated. " Oh yes, sometimes. I 
 liked going to the harvest home entertain- 
 ment." 
 
 " Oh ! " A pause. '' Did Mr. Scarlett 
 sing ' Simon the Cellarer ' ? " 
 
 " No, he did not." After a moment she 
 went on. "They are not always penny 
 readings ; a little while ago we had a magic 
 lantern and some sacred music. They were 
 views of the Holy Land, you know, that 
 was why we had sacred music."
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 227 
 
 " Oh ! " said Reynold again. " And did 
 you enjoy the views of the Holy Land ? " 
 
 "Well, not so very much," she owned. 
 " They didn't get the light right at first, 
 and they were not very distinct, so he told 
 us all about Bethlehem, and then found out 
 that they had put in the wrong slide, and it 
 was the woman at the well, so they had to 
 change her, and then he told us all about 
 Bethlehem over again. Joppa was the best ; 
 a fly got in somewhere and ran about over 
 the roofs of the houses — it looked as big as 
 a cat. I shall always remember about 
 Joppa now. Poor Mr. Pryor began quite 
 gravely — " Barbara paused, turned her head 
 to see that her uncle was sufficiently 
 absorbed, and then softly mimicked the 
 clergyman's manner. **' Joppa, or Jaffa, 
 may be considered the port of Jerusalem. 
 It is built on a conical eminence over- 
 hanging the sea ' — and then he saw us all 
 whispering and laughing and the fly running 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 about. He told us it wasn't reverent ; lie 
 was dreadfully cross about it. He stopped 
 while tbey took Joppa out, and, I suppose, 
 they caught the fly. Anyhow it never got 
 in any more. Oh yes, it was rather amusing 
 altogether." 
 
 '' Was it ? " 
 
 She threw her head back and looked up 
 at him. "You are laughing at me," she 
 said in a low voice, " but it isn't always so 
 very amusing at home." 
 
 His face softened instantly. " I oughtn't 
 to have laughed," he said. " I ought to 
 know — " He could picture Barbara shut 
 up with her smiling, selfish, unsympathetic 
 little uncle, in the black winter evenings 
 that were coming, all the fancies and 
 dreams of eighteen pent within those white- 
 panelled walls, and exhaling sadly in little 
 sighs of weariness over book or needlework. 
 
 But he saw another picture too, a dull 
 London sitting - room whose ^ dreariness
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 229 
 
 seemed intensely concentrated on the face 
 of a disappointed woman. Life had held 
 little more for him than for Barbara, but he 
 had rejected even its dreams, and had spent 
 his musinoj hours in distillinoj the bitterness 
 of scorn from its sordid realities. He would 
 not have been cheered by a magnified fly. 
 " You are wiser than I am, Miss Strange," 
 he said abruptly. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " You take what you can get." 
 
 She considered for a moment. " You 
 mean that I go to Mr. Pryor's entertain- 
 ments, and hear ' Simon the ' " 
 
 " Cyrenian ! Yes, and see Joppa in a 
 magic lantern. That is very wise when the 
 real Joppa is out of reach." 
 
 " I don't know," said Barbara hesitatingly, 
 " that I ever very particularly wanted to go 
 to Joppa." 
 
 "Nor I," said Harding, "but being some 
 way oflf it will serve for all the unattainable
 
 230 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 places where we do want to be. 'Joppa 
 may be considered the port of Jerusalem ' — 
 w^asn't that what Mr. Pryor said ? " He 
 repeated it slowly as if the words pleased 
 him. '' And where do you really want to 
 go?" 
 
 " To Paris," said Barbara, with a world of 
 longing in the word. " To Paris, and then 
 to Italy. And then — oh, anywhere ! But 
 to Paris first." 
 
 " Paris ! " Harding seemed to be re- 
 cording her choice. "Well, that sounds 
 possible enough. Surely you may count on 
 Paris one of these days. Miss Strange ; and 
 meanwhile you can have a look at it with 
 the help of the magic lantern." 
 
 She laughed. " Not Mr. Pryor's." 
 
 "Oh no, not Mr. Pryor's. I shouldn't 
 fancy there were any Parisian slides in his. 
 But I suspect you have a magic lantern of 
 your own which shows it to you whenever 
 you please."
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 231 
 
 " Pretty often," she confessed. 
 
 The dialogue was interrupted by a tardy 
 request for some music from Mr. Masters. 
 Barbara went obediently to the piano, and 
 Reynold followed her. She would rather 
 he had stayed by the fireside ; his con- 
 scientious attempts to turn the leaf at the 
 right time confused her dreadfully, and she 
 dared not say to him, as she might have 
 done to another man, *' I like to turn the 
 pages for myself, please." Suppose he 
 should be hurt or vexed ? She was learning 
 to look upon him as a kind of thunder- 
 cloud, out of which, without a moment's 
 warning, came flashes of passion, of feeling, 
 of resolution, of fury, of scorn. She did 
 not know what drew them down. So she 
 accepted his attentions, and smiled her 
 gratitude. If only (" Yes, please ! " in 
 answer to an inquiring glance) — if only he 
 would always be too soon, or always a little 
 too late ! Instead of which he arrived at
 
 232 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 a tolerable average by virtue of the variety 
 of his failures. Worst of all was a terrible 
 moment of uncertainty, when, having turned 
 too soon, he thought of turning back. 
 *' No, no ! " cried Barbara. 
 
 " Fm very stupid," said Harding, " I'm 
 afraid I put you out." " No, no," again 
 from Barbara, while her busy fingers worked 
 unceasingly. "Couldn't you give me just 
 a little nod when it's time ? " A brief 
 pause, during which his eyes are fixed with 
 agonised intensity on her head, a fact of 
 which she is painfully conscious, though her 
 own are riveted on the page before her. 
 She nods spasmodically, and Eeynold turns 
 the leaf so hurriedly that it comes sliding 
 down upon the flying hands, and has to 
 be caught and replaced. As usual, dis- 
 pleasure at his own clumsiness makes him 
 sullen and silent, and he stands back with- 
 out a word when the performance is over. 
 Mr. Masters thanks, applauds, talks a little
 
 IX.] OF MAGIC LANTERNS. 233 
 
 in the style which for the last forty years 
 or so he has considered appropriate to the 
 young ladies of his acquaintance, and finally 
 says good night, and bows himself out of 
 the room. 
 
 Mr. Hayes stands on the rug, and hides a 
 little yawn behind his little hand. " Is 
 Masters trying to make himself agreeable ? " 
 he asks. " Let me know if I am to look 
 out for another housekeeper, Barbara." 
 
 Barbara has no brilliant reply ready. 
 The hackneyed joke displeases her. As her 
 uncle speaks, she can actually see Little- 
 mere, the village where the small squire 
 lives ; a three-cornered green, tufted with 
 rushy grass, with a cow and half-a-dozen 
 geese on it ; a few cottages, with their 
 week's wash hung out to dry; a round 
 pond, green with duckweed ; a small ale- 
 house ; a couple of white, treeless roads, 
 leading away into the world, but apparently 
 serving only for the labourers who plod out
 
 234 MITCHELHUKST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 in the morning and home at night ; an 
 ugly little school-house of red brick and 
 slate ; and Littlemere Hall, square, white, 
 and bare, set down like a large box in the 
 middle of a dreary garden. She cannot 
 help picturing herself there, with Mr. 
 Masters, caught and prisoned ; the idea is 
 utterly absurd, bat it is hideous, as hateful 
 as if an actual hand were laid on her. She 
 shrinks back and frowns. ^' You needn't 
 get anybody just yet," she says. 
 
 " Very good," her uncle replies. " Give 
 me a month's warning, that's all I ask." 
 He yawns again, and looks at his watch. 
 Eeynold takes the hint, and his candle, and 
 goes. 
 
 " Good riddance ! " says the little man on 
 the rug. " Of all the ill-mannered, cross- 
 grained fellows I ever met, there goes the 
 worst ! A Roth well ! He's worse than any 
 Rothwell, and not the genuine thing either ! 
 Can't he behave decently to my friends at
 
 IX.] or MAGIC LANTERNS. 235 
 
 my own table *? "What does he mean by his 
 confounded rudeness? Masters is a better 
 man than ever he will be ! '' 
 
 Barbara shuts the piano, and lays her 
 music straight. Poor little Barbara, trying 
 with little soft speeches and judicious 
 silences to steer her lig-ht-winged course 
 among these angry men, is sorely perplexed 
 sometimes. Now as Mr. Hayes mutters 
 something about '* an unlicked cub," she 
 thinks it best to say, "Well, uncle, it isn't 
 for very long. Mr. Harding will soon be 
 going away." 
 
 "Yes, he'll soon be going aw^ay, and for 
 good too ! Never will he set foot inside 
 Mitchelhurst Place again — I can tell him 
 that ! When he crosses the threshold he 
 crosses it once for all. Never again — never 
 again ! " 
 
 This time Barbara, who is looking to the 
 fastenings of the windows, is in no haste 
 to speak. She feels as if she had been
 
 236 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 conspiring with Harding, and, remembering 
 their schemes for his return, her uncle's 
 reiterated assurances ring oddly and mock- 
 ingly in her ears. " When lie crosses the 
 threshold, he crosses it once for all." No, 
 he does not ! He is going away to work, 
 he will come back and buy the Place of 
 Mr. Croft, he will be living there for years 
 and years when poor Uncle Hayes is dead 
 and gone. And she, Barbara, has done it 
 all. With a word and a look she has given 
 a master to Mitchelhurst. 
 
 But, being a prudent girl, she merely says 
 " Good night."
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 237 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 
 
 Mr. Pryor, aloft in his pulpit in Mitchel- 
 hurst church, with a sounding-board sus- 
 pended above his head, was preaching about 
 the Amalekites to a small afternoon con- 
 gregation. The Amalekites had happened 
 to come out of that drawer in his writiug- 
 table of which Mr. Hayes had spoken, 
 and perhaps did as well as anything else he 
 could have found there. He was getting 
 over the ground at a tolerable pace, in spite 
 of an occasional stumble, and was too much 
 absorbed in his manuscript to be disturbed by 
 an active trade in marbles which was going 
 on in the front row of the Sunday scholars. 
 Indeed, to Mr. Pryor's short-sighted eyes,
 
 238 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 his listeners were very nearly as remote as 
 the Amalekites themselves. 
 
 Some of the straw-plaiting girls, whose 
 fingers seemed restless during their Sunday 
 idleness, were nudging and pulling each 
 other, or turning the leaves of their hymn- 
 books, or smoothing their dresses. A 
 labourer here and there sat staring straight 
 before him with a vacant gaze. A farmer's 
 wife devoted the leisure moments to think- 
 ing out one or two practical matters, over 
 which she frowned a little. The clerk, in 
 his desk, attended officially to the Amalek- 
 ites, but that was all. 
 
 Barbara and Eeynold were apart from all 
 the rest in the square, red-lined pew which 
 had always belonged to the Roth wells. 
 When they stood up their heads and Rey- 
 nold's shoulders were visible, but during 
 the sermon no one could see the occupants 
 of the little inclosure except the preacher. 
 
 Reynold had established himself in a
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNEE DISCUSSION. 239 
 
 corner, with his head slightly thrown back 
 and his long legs stretched 'out. Barbara, 
 a little way off, had her daintily-gloved 
 hands folded on her lap, and sat with a 
 demurely respectful expression while the 
 voice above them sent a thin thread of 
 denunciation through the drowsy atmo- 
 sphere. Harding did not disHke it. Any- 
 thing newer, more real, more living, would 
 have seemed unsuited to the dusty marble 
 figures which were the principal part of the 
 congregation in that corner of the church. 
 He had knelt down and stood up during 
 the service, always with a sense of union 
 between his own few years of life and the 
 many years of which those monuments were 
 memories ; and the old prayers, the " Lighten 
 our darkness, we beseech Thee, Lord," 
 had fallen softly on his ears. Perils and 
 dangers seemed so far from that sleepy 
 little haven where he hoped to live his 
 later days, and to come as a grey-haired
 
 240 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 man, when all the storms and struggles 
 were over, and hear those words Sunday- 
 after Sunday in that very pew. Barbara, 
 from under her long lashes, stole a medi- 
 tative, questioning glance at him while he 
 was musing thus, and the glance lingered. 
 The young fellow's head rested against the 
 faded red baize, his eyes were half closed, 
 his brows had relaxed, his mouth almost 
 hinted a smile. He was not conscious of 
 her scrutiny, and, seeing his face for the 
 first time as a mere mask, she suddenly 
 awoke to a perception of its beauty. 
 
 Overhead, it appeared that the Amalekites 
 typified many evil things, and were by no 
 means so utterly destroyed as they should 
 have been. Mr. Pry or intended his warn- 
 ings to be as emphatic as those of the fierce 
 old prophet, and he drew a limp white 
 finger down the faded page lest he should 
 lose his place in the middle. Time had 
 made the manuscript a little unfamiliar.
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 241 
 
 " My brethren," said the plaintive voice 
 from beneath the sounding-board, " we must 
 make terms — ahem ! — we must never make 
 terms with these relentless enemies who lie 
 in wait for us as for the Israelites of old. 
 Eem ember " — he turned a leaf and felt the 
 next to ascertain if it w^ere the last. It was 
 not, and he hurried his exhortation a little, 
 finding it long, yet afraid to venture on 
 leaving anything out. Meanwhile a weary 
 Sunday-school teacher awoke to sudden 
 energy, plunged into the midst of the boys, 
 and captured more marbles than he could 
 hold, so that two or three escaped him and 
 rolled down the aisle, amid a general mani- 
 festation of interest. The luckless teacher 
 was young and bashful, and the rolling 
 marbles seemed to him to fill the universe 
 with reverberating echoes. 
 
 The vicar reached the goal at last, and 
 gave out a hymn. Then the young people 
 in the red-lined pew appeared once more, 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Miss Strange singing, Reynold looking round 
 to deepen and assure his recollection of that 
 afternoon. When he found himself in 
 the churchyard, passing under the black- 
 boughed yews with Barbara, he broke the 
 silence. " I shall be far enough away next 
 Sunday." 
 
 Tt was so strange to think that by the 
 next Sunday his work would have begun, 
 the work which he so loathed and so desired. 
 He had directed his letter to his uncle at 
 his place a few miles out of town, where 
 Mr. Harding always wxnt from Saturday to 
 Monday, and he remembered as he spoke 
 that the old gentleman would have received 
 it that morning. Reynold pictured a little 
 triumph over his surrender, but he did 
 not care. Something — it could hardly be 
 Mr. Pryor's sermon — had sweetened his 
 bitter soul, and he did not care. He felt as 
 if that little corner of Mitchelhurst church 
 had become an inalienable possession of his,
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 243 
 
 and he could enter into it at any time 
 wherever he might chance to be. 
 
 Barbara was sympathetic, but slightly 
 pre-occupied. If young Harding had under- 
 stood women a little better he would 
 certainly have perceived the pre-occupation, 
 but as it was he only saw the sympathy. 
 When they got back to the Place she delayed 
 him in the garden, as if she too felt the charm 
 of that peaceful afternoon and regretted its 
 departure. They loitered to and fro on the 
 wide gravel path, where grass and weeds 
 encroached creepingly from the borders, and 
 paused from time to time watching the sun 
 as it went down. iVt last, when there was 
 only a band of sulphur-coloured light on the 
 horizon, Barbara turned away with a sigh. 
 
 Reynold did not understand her reluctance 
 to go in. In truth she was uneasy at the 
 thought of the long evening which her 
 uncle and he must spend in the same room. 
 Mr. Hayes had come down in a dangerous 
 
 R 2
 
 244 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 mood that morniDg, not showing any special 
 remembrance of Harding's offence of the 
 night before, but seeming impartially dis- 
 pleased with everything and everybody. If 
 ill-temper were actual fire, his conversation 
 would have been all snaps and flashes like 
 a fifth of November. Letters absorbed his 
 attention at breakfast, but Barbara perceived 
 that they only made him crosser than before. 
 Happily, however, since a storm of rain 
 hindered the morning's church-going, he 
 went to his study to write his answers, and 
 was seen no more till lunch-time, after 
 w^hich the weather cleared, and the young 
 people walked ofi" together to hear about 
 the Amalekites. Reynold had no idea how 
 anxiously Barbara had been sheltering him 
 all day under her little wing, but now the 
 sun w^as down, there w^as no help for it, 
 they must go in and face the worst. She 
 had paused and looked up at him as if she 
 were about to say something before they
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 245 
 
 left the garden, but nothing came except 
 the little sigh which he had heard. 
 
 Even when they went in, fate seemed a 
 little to postpone the evil moment. Harding, 
 coming down-stairs, saw a light shining- 
 through the door of a small room — the 
 book-room, as it was sometimes called. A 
 glance as he passed showed Barbara, with 
 an arm raised above her head, taking a 
 volume from the shelf. " Can I help you ? '' 
 he asked, pausing in the doorway. 
 
 " Oh, thank you, but I think this is 
 right." She examined the title-page. The 
 window shutters were closed, the room was 
 dusky with its lining of old brown leather 
 bindings, aad Barbara's candle was just a 
 glow-worm glimmer of brightness in it. 
 " You might put those others back for me 
 if you would. I can manage to take them 
 down, but it isn't so easy to put them up 
 again." 
 
 Tall Keynold rendered the required service
 
 246 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 quickly enough, while she laid the book she 
 had chosen with some others already on the 
 table, and began to dust them. It was an 
 old-fashioned writing-table, with a multitude 
 of little brass-handled drawers. The young 
 man took hold of one of these brass handles, 
 and noticed its rather elaborate workman- 
 ship. " Look inside," said the girl, as she 
 laid her duster down. 
 
 The drawer was full of yellowing papers, 
 old bills, and miscellaneous scraps of various 
 kinds. She pulled out a few, and they 
 turned them over in the gleam of candle- 
 light. "Butcher, Cliristmas, 1811," said 
 Barbara, " and here is a glazier's bill. What 
 have you got ? " 
 
 '' To sink in o' and bricking^ new well, 32 ft. 
 deep," Reynold replied. "It is in 1816. 
 To making new pump, 38 ft. long." 
 
 "Why, that must be the old pump by 
 the stables," said Barbara. " Look at this 
 receipt, ' for work Don accord en to Bill ? ' "
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 247 
 
 " There seem to be plenty of them. Are 
 the other drawers full too ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think so. You had better take 
 one as a souvenir." 
 
 " No, thank you." He smiled as he thrust 
 the bills he held down among the dusty 
 bundles in the drawer, and brushed his 
 finger tips fastidiously. " Souvenirs ought 
 to be characteristic. A receipted bill w^ould 
 be a very respectable souvenir, but I'm 
 afraid it would convey a flilse impression of 
 the Rothwells." 
 
 She looked away, a little perplexed and 
 dissatisfied. It seemed to her that the 
 future master of Mitchelhurst should not 
 talk in that fashion of his own people, and 
 she did not understand that the slight 
 bitterness of speech was merely the outcome 
 of a life of discontent. He hardly knew 
 how to speak otherwise. " I suppose they 
 would have paid everybody if they hadn't 
 had misfortunes," she said.
 
 248 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " No doubt. We would most of us pay 
 our bills if we had nothing else to do with 
 the money." 
 
 " Well," Barbara declared with a blush, 
 " the next Kothwell will pay his bills, I know." 
 
 " We'll hope so." His smile apparently 
 emboldened her, for she looked up at him. 
 " Mr. Harding," she began. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 She put her hand to her mouth with 
 an irresolute gesture, softly touching her 
 red lips. " Oh — nothing ! " she said. 
 
 *' Nothing?" he questioned. But at that 
 moment there was a call. " Barbara ! 
 Barbara ! are }^ou stopping to write those 
 books?" 
 
 She turned swiftly, caught them up and 
 was gone, sending an answering cry of 
 *' Coming, uncle — coming ! " before her. 
 
 Reynold lingered a little before he 
 followed her, to wonder what that some- 
 thinoj was that was nothing. 
 
 o o
 
 X.] AX AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 249 
 
 When he went in he found Mr. Hayes 
 and Barbara both industriously occupied with 
 their reading, after the fashion of a quiet 
 Sunday in the country. He took up the 
 first volume that came to hand, threw 
 himself into a chair, and remained for a 
 considerable time frowninor and musine^ over 
 the unread page. Mr. Hayes turned his 
 pages with wearisome regularity, but after 
 a while Barbara laid her Good Words on 
 her lap and gazed fixedly at the window, 
 where little could be seen but the reflection 
 of the lamp in the outer darkness. The 
 silence of the room seeming to have become 
 accustomed to this change of attitude, the 
 slightest possible movement of her head 
 brought Reynold within range. He moved, 
 and she was looking at the window, from 
 which she turned quite naturally, and met 
 his glance. Her fingers were playing 
 restlessly with her little gold cross, and 
 Harding said, " Your talisman ! "
 
 250 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 No word had been spoken for so long that 
 the brief utterance came with a kind of 
 startlino^ distinctness. 
 
 " My talisman still, thanks to yon," 
 Barbara replied. 
 
 The absurdity of his misfortune was a 
 little forgotten, and the fact of his service 
 remained, so Harding almost smiled as he 
 rejoined — 
 
 " I say * thanks to it ' for my introduction." 
 Mr. Hayes knitted his brows, and looked 
 from one to the other with bris^ht, bead-like 
 eyes. When, a minute later, a maid came 
 to the door, and asked to speak to Miss 
 Strange, he waited till his niece was gone, 
 and then sharply demanded — 
 
 " What was that about a talisman ? " 
 " That little cross Miss Strange wears. 
 She calls that her talisman." 
 
 " Indeed ! Why that particular cross ? " 
 '' It belonged to her godmother, I believe," 
 said Harding.
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 251 
 
 The old gentleman stared, and then con- 
 sidered a little. 
 
 " Her godmother, eh ? Why," he began 
 to laugh, *'her godmother — what does Bar- 
 bara know about her ? " 
 
 " I think she said she was named after 
 her " 
 
 '^ So she was." 
 
 " And that her mother told her she was the 
 most beautiful woman she ever knew " 
 
 " That's true enough. She was beautiful, 
 and clever, and accomplished, no doubt 
 about that. One ought to speak kindly of 
 the dead, they say. Well, she was beautiful, 
 and if ever there was a selfish, heartless 
 coquette " 
 
 " Hey ! " said Reynold, opening his eyes. 
 " Is that speaking kindly of the dead ?" 
 
 " Very kindly," with emphasis. 
 
 " But Miss Strange's mother " 
 
 " Well, I should think she must havT- 
 begun to find her friend out before she died.
 
 252 . MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 I don't know, thougli; Mrs. Strange isn't 
 over wise, she may contrive to believe in 
 her still. I wonder what Strange would 
 say, if lie ever said anything ! So that 
 is Barbara's talisman ! Not much virtue 
 in it, anyhow ; but I dare say it will do 
 just as well. There have been some queer 
 folks canonised before now." 
 
 He ended with a chucklino^ little lauoh. 
 Evidently he knew enough of the earlier 
 Barbara to see something irresistibly comic 
 in the girl's tenderness for this little relic 
 of the past. 
 
 Harding was grimly silent. Barbara's 
 fancy might be foolish, but since she 
 cherished it, he hated to hear this ugly little 
 mockery of her treasure, and he had found 
 a half-acknowledged satisfaction in the re- 
 membrance that the little cross was a link 
 between himself and her. Now, when she 
 came into the room again, and Mr. Hayes 
 compressed his lips, and glanced from the
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DIXXER DISCUSSION. 253 
 
 little ornainent to his visitor, and then to 
 his book again, in stealthy enjoyment of 
 his joke, the other felt as if there were 
 something sinister in the token. He wished 
 Barbara would not caress it as she stood 
 by the fire. He would have liked to throw 
 it down and tread it under foot. 
 
 There miVht have been some malio;nant 
 influence in the air that day, for Barbara 
 will w^onder as long as she lives what made 
 her tw^o companions insist on talking politics 
 at dinner. She did not like people to talk 
 politics. She had never looked out the 
 word in the dictionary, and perhaps she 
 might not have objected to a lofty discussion 
 of " the science of government, that part 
 of ethics which consists in the regulation 
 and government of a nation or state." She 
 looked upon talking politics as a masculine 
 diversion, which consisted in bandying 
 violent assertions about Mr. Gladstone. It 
 never led, of course, to any change of
 
 ^54 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 opinion, bat it generally made people raise 
 their voices, and interrupt one another, and 
 get red in the face. As far as her oppor- 
 tunities of observation went, Barbara had 
 judged pretty correctly. 
 
 Her uncle held what he called his political 
 creed solely as a means of enjoyable argu- 
 ment. He considered himself an advanced 
 Liberal, but he had so many whims and 
 hobbies that he was the most uncertain of 
 supporters. No one held his views, and if, 
 by some inconceivable chance, he had con- 
 vinced an adversary, he would have been 
 very uncomfortable. He would have felt 
 himself crowded out of his position, and 
 would have retired immediately to less 
 accessible ground, and defied his disciple to 
 climb up after him. When he had arranged 
 his opinions he was obliged to find ingeni- 
 ous methods of escaping their consequences. 
 For instance, with some whimsical recollec- 
 tion of the one passion of his life, he chose
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 255 
 
 to hold advanced \ie\vs about Woman's 
 Rights, which disgusted his country neigh- 
 bours. Woman was, in every respect but 
 physical strength, the natural equal of man. 
 She was to be emancipated, to vote, to take 
 her place in Cliurch and State — when Mr. 
 Hayes was dead. At present she was 
 evidently dwarfed and degraded by long 
 ages of man's oppressive rule, and needed 
 careful education, and a considerable lapse 
 of time, to raise her to the position that 
 was hers by right. Meanwhile she must be 
 governed, not as an inferior, on that point 
 he spoke very strongly indeed, but as a 
 minor not yet qualified to enter into posses- 
 sion of her inheritance, and he exerted 
 himself, in lather a high-handed fashion, to 
 keep her in the proper path. The womau 
 of the future was to do exactly what she 
 pleased, but the woman of the present — 
 Barbara — was to do as she was told, and 
 not talk about what she did not understand.
 
 256 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 By this arrangement Mr. Hayes was able 
 to rule his womankind, and to deny the 
 superiority of his masculine acquaintances. 
 
 It was precisely this question that came 
 up at dinner-time. Harding had no real 
 views on political matters ; he was simply 
 a Conservative by nature. He had none of 
 the daring energy which snatches chances 
 in periods of change ; his instinct was that 
 of self-defence, to bold rather than to gain ; 
 to gather even the rags of the past about 
 him, with the full consciousness that they 
 were but rags, rather than to throw himself 
 into the l)attle of the present. It was true 
 that he was going to work for Mitclielhurst 
 and Barbara, but the double impulse had 
 been needed to conquer his shrinking pride- 
 That a man should be hustled by a mixed 
 and disorderly crowd was bad enough, but 
 that a woman should step down into it, 
 should demand work, should make speeches, 
 and push her way to the polling-booth, was
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINXER DISCUSSIOK 257 
 
 in Harding's eyes something hideously de- 
 grading and indecent. As to the equality 
 of the sexes, that was rubbish. Man was 
 to rule, and woman to maintain an ideal of 
 purity and sweetness. Education, beyond 
 the simple old-fashioned limits, tended only 
 to unsex her. 
 
 He would have opposed Mr. Hayes's 
 theories at any time, but they cut him to 
 the quick just then, when he bad felt the 
 grace of womanhood, when a woman bad 
 passed into his life and transformed it. 
 The old man was airily disposing of the 
 destinies of the race in centuries to come, 
 the young man was fighting for his own 
 little future. He could not rule the world. 
 Let it roar and hurry as it would, but never 
 dare to touch his wife and home. What 
 did the man mean by uttering his hateful 
 doctrines in Barbara's hearinor ? Her brioht 
 eyes came and went between the speakers, 
 and Reynold longed to order her away, 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 to shut her up in some safe place apart, 
 where only he might approach her. 
 
 He need not have been anxious. There 
 was no touch of ambition in the girl's tender 
 feminine nature to respond to her uncle's 
 arguments. She did not want to vote, and 
 wondered why women should ever wish to 
 be doctors or — or — anything. Her eager 
 glances betokened uneasiness rather than 
 interest. Indeed the inferior being, scenting 
 danger, had tried to turn the conversation 
 before the terrible question of Woman's 
 Rights had been mentioned at all. She 
 had endeavoured to talk about a lawn-teunis 
 ground rather than the aspect of Lish 
 affairs. Harding did not know much about 
 lawn-tennis, but he was quite ready to talk 
 about it, just as he would have talked about 
 crewel-work, if she had seemed to wish it. 
 Mr. Hayes, however, pooh-poohed the little 
 attempt at peace. 
 
 " What is the good of planning the
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 259 
 
 ground now ? " he said. " x4.nd who cares 
 for lawn-tennis ? " 
 
 " I do," said the girh " It's much more 
 amusinor than talkinor about Mr. Gladstone 
 and Mr. Parnell.'' 
 
 " That's all you know about it," her 
 uncle retorted. " Now if you had been 
 educated — " 
 
 " Oh yes, of course," she replied, with 
 desperate pertness. "You are always talking 
 about the woman of the future — I dare say 
 she will like to see people make themselves 
 hot and disagreeable, arguing about Ireland." 
 She made a droll little face of disgust. 
 " Well, she may, but I don't ! " 
 
 " Perhaps the woman of the future will 
 be hot and disagreeable too," Harding 
 suggested. 
 
 " You mio^ht not find her ag^reeable," said 
 
 Mr. Hayes drily. '* She would be able to 
 
 expose the fallacy of your views pretty 
 
 clearly, I fancy." 
 
 s 2
 
 260 MITCHELHUEST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 "Weil," Barbara struck in liiirriedly, 
 amazed at her own boldness, " we g-et hot 
 enough over tennis sometimes, but nobody- 
 is ever so cross over that, as men are when 
 they argue." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Mr. Hayes. " To 
 think that women, w^ho rightfully should 
 share man's most advanced attainments and 
 aspirations — " and off he went at a canter 
 over the beaten ground of many previous 
 discussions. 
 
 Barbara looked from him to young Har- 
 ding. His dark eyes were ominous, he was 
 only waiting, breathlessly, till Mr. Hayes 
 should be compelled to pause for breath. 
 " I hope you don't mean to imply, sir — " 
 he began, and Barbara perceived that not 
 only had she failed to avert a collision, bat 
 that, by her thoughtless mention of the 
 woman of the future, she had introduced the 
 precise subject on which the two men were 
 most furiously at variance. Thenceforward
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 261 
 
 she merely glanced from one to the other 
 as the noisy battle raged, watching in dumb 
 suspense as one might watch the rising of 
 a tide. Mr. Hayes had been thoroughly 
 cross all day, and had not forgiven Rey- 
 nold's rudeness of the evening before. Under 
 cover of his argument he was saying all the 
 irritating things he could think of, while 
 Harding's harsher voice broke through his 
 shrill-toned talk with rough contradictions. 
 
 After a time Barbara was obliged to 
 leave them, and she went back to the 
 {lrawino;-room with a sin kin o[ heart. She 
 had been uneasy the night before, but that 
 was nothing to this. How earnestly she 
 wished Mr. Pryor back again! She was 
 pitiless, she would have flung the gentle 
 flaccid little clergyman between the angry 
 combatants without a moment's hesitation, 
 if she could only have brought him there 
 by the force of her desire. Happily for Mr. 
 Pryor, however, he was safe in his study,
 
 262 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 putting away the Amalekites a,t the bottom of 
 the drawer, till their turn should come again. 
 
 At last when Barbara was in despair at 
 the lateness of the hour, she sent one of 
 the maids to tell the gentlemen that coffee 
 was ready, and crept into the hall behind 
 her messenger to hear the result. At the 
 opening of the door there was a stormy 
 clamour, and then a sudden silence. It 
 was closed ag^ain, and the maid returned. 
 " Master says. Miss, will you send it in ? " 
 The last hope was gone, she could do 
 nothing more but pour out the coffee, and 
 wish with all her heart it were an opiate. 
 
 She was as firmly convinced as Reynold 
 himself of the vast superiority of men, 
 but these intellectual exercises of theirs 
 upset her dreadfully. If only it had been 
 Mr. Scarlett ! He had a light laughing 
 way of holding her uncle at arm's length, 
 avowing himself a Conservative simply as a 
 matter of taste, and fighting for the old
 
 X.] AX AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 263 
 
 fashions which Mr. Hayes denounced, be- 
 cause he wanted something left that he 
 could make verses about. Barbara, as she 
 stood pensively on the rug, recalled one 
 occasion when Adrian Scarlett put forward 
 his plea. He was sitting on the sill of 
 the open window, with the evening sky 
 behind his head, and while he talked he 
 drew down a long, blossomed spray of 
 pale French honeysuckle. "Oh yes, I'm a 
 Conservative," he said ; " there are lots of 
 things I want to conserve — all the pictur- 
 esqueness, old streets, and signs, and manor- 
 houses, old customs, village greens, fairs, 
 thatched cottages, little courtesying maidens, 
 old servants, and men with scythes and 
 flails, instead of your new machines." She 
 remembered how Mr. Hayes had interrupted 
 him with a contemptuous inquiry whether 
 there was not as much poetry to be found 
 on one side as on the other. " Oh yes," 
 he had assented, idly swinging his foot,
 
 264 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 " as fine on your side no doubt, or finer. 
 You have the Marseillaise style of thing to 
 quicken one's pulses. Yes, and I came 
 across a bit the other day, declaring — 
 
 " ' Que la Liherte sainte est la seule deesse, 
 Que Von n' adore que dehout! " 
 
 The words, uttered in the sudden fulness 
 of his clear, rounded tones, seemed to send 
 a great wave of impulse through the quiet 
 room. Barbara could recall the sharp " Well, 
 then ? " with which Mr. Hayes received it. 
 
 " Ah, but not for me," young Scarlett 
 had answered. " You don't expect me to 
 write that kind of thing ? It isn't in me. 
 No, I want to rhyme about some little 
 picture in an old-fashioned setting — Pamela, 
 or Dorothy, or — or Ursula, walking between 
 clipped hedges, or looking at an old sundial, 
 or stopping by a basin rimmed with mossy 
 stone to feed the gold fish. Or dreaming 
 - — -and she must not be a Girton young
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 265 
 
 woman — I couldn't imagine a Girton young 
 woman's dreams ! " 
 
 And so the argument ended in laughter. 
 If only it could have been Adrian Scarlett 
 instead of Reynold Harding in the dining- 
 room that night ! Barbara's apprehensions 
 would all have vanished in a moment. 
 But Mr. Scarlett was gone, (" He mifjht 
 have said good-bye," thought Barbara,) and 
 the pleasant time was gone with him. The 
 window was closed and shuttered, and the 
 honeysuckle, a tangle of grey stalks, shivered 
 in the wind outside. 
 
 She tried to amuse herself with Good 
 Words again, but failed. Then she went to 
 the piano, but had no better success there. 
 She was listening with such strained atten- 
 tion, that to her ears the music was only 
 distracting and importunate noise. As a 
 last resource she bethought her of a half- 
 finished novel which she had left in her 
 bed-room. She had not intended to go on
 
 266 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 with it till Monday, but she ivoidd, and 
 she ran up-stairs with guilty eagerness to 
 fetch it. 
 
 She was coming back along the passage 
 with the book in her hand, when she heard 
 the opening and shutting of doors below, 
 and the quick fall of steps. In another 
 moment Reynold Harding came springing 
 up the wide stairs to where she stood. 
 There was a lamp at the head of the stair- 
 case, and as he passed out of the dusk 
 into its light, she could see his angry eyes, 
 and she knew the veins which stood out 
 upon his forehead, looking as if the blood 
 in them were black. 
 
 He saw her just before he reached the 
 top, and stopped short. For a moment 
 neither spoke, then he drew a long breath, 
 and laid his hand upon the balustrade. 
 
 "Miss Strange," he said, 'Tin going 
 away." 
 
 Barbara hardly knew what she had ex-
 
 X] AN AFTEE-DINNER DISCUSSION. 2G7 
 
 pected or feared, but this took her by 
 surprise. 
 
 " Goinof ? Not now ? " she exclaimed in 
 amazement. 
 
 "Not to-night — it is too kte. I mud 
 stop for the night. I can't help m3^self. 
 But the first thing to-morrow morning." 
 
 *'0h, why?" 
 
 *' I can't stay under the roof of a man 
 who has insulted me as your UDcle has 
 done. It is impossible that we should meet 
 again," said Eeynold. His speech seemed 
 to escape in fierce little jets of repressed 
 wrath. *' I'm not accustomed — I ought 
 never to have come here ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Barbara, in a tone of 
 pained reproach. 
 
 He was silent, looking fixedly at her. 
 The meaning of what he had said, and 
 the fatal meaning of what he had done, 
 en me upon him, arresting him in the midst 
 of his passion. All his fire seemed suddenly
 
 268 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 to die down to grey ashes. What madness 
 had possessed him ? 
 
 They faced each other in the pale circle 
 of lamplight, which trembled a little on the 
 broad, white stairs. Eeynold, stricken and 
 dumb, grasped the balustrade w^ith tightening 
 fino-ers. Barbara leaned ag;ainst the white- 
 panelled wall. She was the first to speak. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said in a low voice. " That 
 you should be driven out of Mitchelhurst ! " 
 
 "Don't!" cried he. "God! it was my 
 own fault ! " 
 
 " What was it ? What did you quarrel 
 about ? " 
 
 "Do I know % " Reynold demanded. 
 " Ask him ! Perhaps he can remember 
 some of the idiotic jangling. Why did 
 we begin ? Why did w^e go on ? I don't 
 believe hell itself could be more wearisome. 
 I was sick to death of it, and yet something 
 seemed to goad me on — I couldn't give 
 in ! It was my infernal temper, I suppose."
 
 s.] AN AFTER-DINXER DISCUSSION. 269 
 
 '* Oil I am so sorry ! " Barbara whispered. 
 
 ** He shouldn't have spoken to me as he 
 did, when I was his guest at his own 
 table," young Harding continued. " But 
 after all, he is an old man, T ought to 
 have remembered that. Well, it's too late ; 
 it's all over now ! " 
 
 " But is it too late ? Can't anything be 
 done?" 
 
 He almost smiled at the feminine failure 
 to realise that the night's work was more 
 than a tiff which might be made up and 
 forgotten. 
 
 " Kiss and make friends — eh ? " he said. 
 " Will you run and fetch your uncle ? " 
 
 The leaden little jest was uttered so miser- 
 ably that Barbara only sighed in answer. 
 
 ^'No," said the young man, "it's all 
 over. Even if I could apologise — and I 
 can't — I couldn't sit at his table again. 
 It wouldn't be possible. No, I must go ! " 
 
 " And you are sorry you ever came ! "
 
 270 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap.. 
 
 " Dou't remind me of that ! I'm just as 
 sorry I came here as that I ever came 
 into the world at all." 
 
 The old clock in the dusky hall below 
 struck ten slow strokes. 
 
 " This will be good-night and good-bye," 
 said Harding. " I shall be gone before you 
 are down in the morning." 
 
 Even as he spoke he was thinking how 
 completely his bitter folly had exiled him 
 from her presence. 
 
 " You are going home ? " 
 
 *' Home ? Well, yes, I suppose so. By 
 the way, I don't know^ that I shall go 
 home to-morrow. I may have to stay 
 another day in Mitchelhurst. That depends 
 — I shall see when the morning comes. 
 Your uncle's jurisdiction doasn't extend 
 beyond the grounds of the Place, I suppose. 
 I won't trespass, he may be very sure of 
 that, and I won't stay in the neighbour- 
 hood any longer than I can help. Only,
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 271 
 
 you see, this is rather a sudden change 
 of plans." 
 
 " I am so sorry," the girl repeated. " I 
 hate to think of your goii]g away like 
 this. I'm ashamed ! " 
 
 '* No ! no ! Tm rightly served, though you 
 needn't tell Mr. Hayes I said so. I was 
 fool enough to let my temper get the upper 
 hand, and I must pay the penalty. How 
 I could be such an inconceivable idiot — but- 
 that's neither here nor there. It was my ow^n 
 fault, and the less said about it the better." 
 
 Barbara shook her head. 
 
 " No, it w^as my fault." 
 
 This time Harding really smiled, drearily 
 enough, but still it was a smile. 
 
 " Yours ? " he said. " That never occurred 
 to me. How do you make it out ? " 
 
 " Well," she said, looking down, and 
 tracing a joint of the stone with, the tip 
 of her little embroidered slipper, " it was 
 partly my fault, anyhow."
 
 272 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 Tills "partly" seemed to point to sorne- 
 tliino^ definite. 
 
 '* How do you mean ? " he asked, looking 
 curiously at lier. 
 
 "I knew he Avas cross," she said. "I 
 knew it this morning as soon as he came 
 down, andc he generally gets worse and 
 worse all day. He isn't often out of temper 
 like that — only now and tlien. I dare say 
 he will be all right to-morrow, or perhaps 
 the day after." 
 
 "That's a little late for me!" said 
 Harding. 
 
 " So you see it 2ca^ my fault. I ought 
 to have told you." 
 
 "Well, perhaps if you had, I might have 
 been a trifle more on mv o^uard. I don't 
 know, I'm sure. Yes, I wish you had 
 happened to warn me ! But you mustn't 
 reproach yourself. Miss Strange, it v\^asn't 
 your fault. You didn't know what 1 was, 
 you couldn't be expected to think of it."
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNEli DISCUSSION. 273 
 
 "But I did think of it!" Barbara cried 
 remorsefully. 
 
 ''You did?" 
 
 " Yes, I was tliinkiiig of it all day. OJi 
 how I loish I had done it ! But I wasn't 
 sure you would like it — I didn't know. I 
 thought perhaps it nnght seem" — she 
 faltered — " might seem as if I thoucrht 
 that yoti " 
 
 ''I see ! '"' Reynold answered in his harshest 
 voice. " I needn't have told you just novv^ 
 that I had a devil of a temper ! " 
 
 Barbara drew herself up against the wall 
 with her head thrown back, and gazed 
 blankly at hnn. 
 
 " Oh, don't be afraid ! " he said with a 
 lauQ:h. " I'm not oroino; to Itit you 1 " 
 
 " Don't talk like that ! " she cried. " Oh ! 
 there's uncle comino[ ! " and turning^ she 
 fled back to her own room. Harding heard 
 the steps below, and he also went off, not 
 quite so hurriedly, but with long strides, 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 MITCHELHURST PLACE. [chap. 
 
 and vanished into the shadows. The inno- 
 cent cause of this ahirni crossed the hall, 
 from the drawing-room to the study, banging 
 the doors after him, and the lamplight fell 
 on the deserted stairs. 
 
 Harding struck a light and flung himself 
 into a chair. Barbara's words and his own 
 mockino; lauohter seemed still to be in tlK>. 
 air about him. The silence and loneliness 
 bewildered him, he could not realise tha 
 his chance of speech had escaped him, and 
 that Barbara's entreaty must remain un- 
 answered. Her timid self-reproach had 
 stabbed him to the heart. That the poor 
 little girl should have trembled and been 
 silent, lest he should speak harshly, and 
 then that she should blame herself so 
 bitterly for her cow^ardice — it was a sudden 
 revelation to Reynold of the ugliness of 
 those black moods of his. One might have 
 pictured the evil power broken by the 
 shock of this discoverv and leavino- shame-
 
 X.] AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION. 27.i 
 
 stricken patience in its place, or, at least, 
 one might have imagined strenuous resolu- 
 tions for the days to come. But Reynold's 
 very tenderness was mixed with wrath ; he 
 cursed the something in himself, yet not 
 liimself, which had frightened Barbara, he 
 could not feel that he was answerable. That 
 she, of all the world, should judge him so, 
 filled his soul with a burning sense of wroncr. 
 
 " How could you think it ? " he pleaded 
 with her in his thoughts, *' my dear, how 
 could you think it ? " And yet he did not 
 blame her. Ah God ! what a bitter, miser- 
 able wretch he had been his whole life 
 through ! Why had no woman ever taught 
 him how to be gentle and good ? He 
 blamed neither Barbara nor himself, but a 
 cruel fate. 
 
 It was not till late, when he had collected 
 his things, and made all ready for his de- 
 parture in the morning, that he remembered 
 that he would not see her again, that he 
 
 T 2
 
 276 MITCHELHURST PLACE. 
 
 absolutely could not so much as speak a 
 word to make amends. He must cross the 
 threshold of the old house as early as he 
 possibly could, his angry pride would not 
 allow him a moment's delay, and what 
 chance was there that she would be up and 
 dressed by then ? It was maddening to 
 think of the long slow hours which they 
 would pass uiider the same roof, each hour 
 gliding away with its many minutes. And 
 in one minute he could say so much, if 
 but one minute were granted him! "But 
 it won't be," he said sullenly, as he lay 
 down till the dawn should come, '' it isn't 
 likely." And he ground his teeth together 
 at the remembrance of the many minutes 
 spent in wrangling with Mr. Hayes, while 
 Barbara waited alone. 
 
 END OP VOL. I,
 
 Ml:ssrs. MACMILLAX & CO.'S NEW XOVELS. 
 
 JILL. By E. A. Dillwyx. 2 vols. Globe 8vo. 
 
 125. 
 
 " A very lively and spirited Btorj', written with a good deal of the 
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 young lady. . . . Extremely entertaining and life like. It will be seen 
 from this that Miss Dillwyu has hit perfectly the tone of sincere 
 biography." — The Spectator. 
 
 " A very original autobiographical narrative, so cynically frank and 
 so delightfully piquant, that it is quite a marvel. Read with under- 
 standing, the narrative is not uninstructive ; it is certainly well worth 
 reading for entertainment only." — The iSt. James's Gazette. 
 
 A ROMAN SINGER. By F. IMarion Crawford. 
 
 Author of "Mr. Isaacs," "Doctor Claudius." Crown 
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 " Mr. Crawford's new book is in its way as much a success as his 
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