ill! 
 
 I 
 
 
 Mil.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 15 V 
 
 LEIGH SPENCERr. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 
 
 13, GREAT MAELBOEOUGH STEEET. 
 
 1867. 
 
 The right of Tiauslation is reserved.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED »Y MACDONALD AND TUUWELL, BL1':NHEIM HOUSE, 
 
 BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.
 
 ^A3 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 \:^ IV/TEEESTOWN is one of those dear old 
 ^ iTX English towns which, after remaining 
 for centuries in exactly the same state, and of 
 exactly the same proportions as those in 
 which it was originally built, has sud- 
 denly become popular, or populative, or both, 
 and being considerably enlarged to meet the 
 demands of its increasing inhabitants, has 
 consequently grown to pretty well treble its 
 original size within the last few years. 
 One result of which is that its component 
 parts correspond as consistently the one to 
 the other, as would a Clapham Villa, removed 
 from its own legitimate sphere by the side of 
 that very tame space of ground, called by 
 courtesy its ^^ Common," and tacked on to the 
 most massive portion of Warwick Castle ! 
 In High Street, for example, the gable- 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 fronted houses jut out across the straitened 
 thoroughfare. The upper halves, projecting a 
 long way beyond the lower story, and leaning 
 forward towards their opposite neighbours, 
 leave but scant space for the free air and 
 sunshine of Heaven to look down upon the 
 pavement below, while they must be having, 
 one fancies, an earnest gossip together on some 
 deeply interesting and decidedly private topic, 
 so closely do they approach their faces the 
 one to the other. Here and there are little 
 balconies with twisted balustrades, or an over- 
 hanging old-fashioned wooden canopy, which 
 throws a peculiar light, or rather shade, on 
 every article displayed in the antique window 
 of the shop below, while to all are long case- 
 ments with wide mullions and small diamond 
 panes. Very picturesque to the eyes gazing 
 from without, though maybe somewhat dark 
 and sombre for the dwellers within and their 
 every-day occupations — but — their every-day 
 occupations ? 
 
 Do they — can they — the inhabitants of 
 those quaint, massive, old-world-houses have 
 precisely the same wants, cares, desires, and
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 3 
 
 daily occupations as have the good folks liv- 
 ing in Newman's Buildings or Fletcher's Row? 
 — both a succession of exact, prim, square, 
 upright, old maidish-looking houses ; every- 
 one with exactly the same number of sash 
 windows, of exactly the same size, possessing 
 each exactly so many panes fitted precisely 
 into the same places, and at the same distances 
 from each other, with bran-new doors in 
 the centre of each house, with terrific-looking 
 lion-headed knockers ; all appearing to be 
 made — as doubtless they were — by line and 
 rule, so as to economize the greatest possible 
 amount of bricks and mortar into the smallest 
 imaginable space ; and as though no single 
 thing but absolute and total destruction could 
 by any means shake them one quarter of an 
 inch out of their highly proper and precise 
 angles, or incline any one of them a hair's- 
 breadth from their very pert-looking, painful 
 perpendicular. 
 
 I had been contrasting the small heart of 
 the town with its big suburbs in my mind 
 somewhat in this fashion ; and being of rather 
 an imaginative turn, had mused myself into the 
 
 b2
 
 4 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 absolute conviction that there must necessarily 
 be a great deal more of romance and interest 
 in the life histories, far more attraction about 
 the characters of the people who saw, or 
 rather did not see, the sun rise through those 
 narrow-paned windows in High Street, than 
 could be the case with their fellow-mortals, 
 who opened their eyes every day, in the square 
 chambers of Newman's Buildings, on the day- 
 light shining through the common sash windows 
 stuck into their straight faces, when I arrived 
 at the old friend's house I was about to visit ; 
 and the necessity of finding out how to open 
 the catch lock of the little wicket in the 
 shrubbery, brought my day-dream to an abrupt 
 conclusion. 
 
 My thoughts came back to the present mo- 
 ment and the objects around somewhat un- 
 willingly. They had strayed far away, and 
 been most happily intent on building up a little 
 romance, the heroes and heroines of which had 
 their abode in a certain ultra-projecting and 
 particularly unperpendicular house, my peculiar 
 pet in my favourite street. 
 
 My old friend and I talked awhile on the
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 5 
 
 topics of the day, and then I told him — he 
 being of the very few to whom one does tell 
 such things — of the fancy which had occupied 
 my thoughts upon the road. He laughed and 
 shook his head. 
 
 " Ah ! Yes, at the old-young trick again. 
 I can well believe such a foolish fancy, and 
 many more passing through that imaginative 
 brain of yours. Many a time have they set 
 mine wandering and speculating when my 
 hair had more brown and less white than now. 
 I remember perfectly one instance when I 
 used to visit at two or three houses as a little 
 boy with my mother, in which, while she was 
 talking to the grave, and to me very tiresome 
 inhabitants, I would take many a mental in- 
 ventory of the matter-of-fact chairs, tables, and 
 stools in those cold bare rooms, where not a 
 single trifling item which was not absolutely 
 necessary for use seemed admitted, what was 
 there being of the plainest, least attractive 
 kind. I used to connect the furniture with 
 its owners, and speculate on the sort of exis- 
 tence they must lead — the possible interests 
 and excitements that could have birth in those
 
 b THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 cold, prim, ugly rooms ; and it was with a 
 shudder of self-gratulation that I got out of 
 them, and felt thankful I did not live there." 
 
 He paused a second. I gave him a sym- 
 pathizing glance, little expecting the next 
 words, and he resumed — 
 
 ^^ But, Fred, I have grown wiser since 
 then — years have taught me, as they will you, 
 that life has much interest, much usefulness, 
 nay, much true enjoyment, and some romance, 
 too, in those dwellings, the despised of my 
 childhood. Yes ! human nature and human 
 history is pretty much the same, whether its 
 story be played out in the most antiquated 
 l)uilding of old, whose foundations were laid 
 centuries ago — or in the modern villa erected 
 but yesterday." 
 
 Again my friend paused, and looked at me. 
 I suppose my expression was somewhat scepti- 
 cal, for he continued with a smile — 
 
 '' To convince you of it, come to me to- 
 morrow evening early, and I will read you a 
 true tale concerning some people who once 
 dwelt in this very town. It was a story that 
 happened when I was younger than I am now,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 7 
 
 and when Newman's Buildings, the oldest part 
 of our new town, were but just built. The 
 particulars interested me, and I wrote them 
 down, combining the different incidents into a 
 sort of tale ; and I will hunt up my MSS. 
 to-morrow, if you have any mind to hear it." 
 I had a very great mind, and accordingly on 
 the next evening I again found myself in my 
 old friend's study, where, established each of us 
 in a most comfortable easy -chair, he read, and I 
 listened to, the following narrative : —
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TT was one of the sultriest of August's most 
 J- sultry evenings. Every brick and tile in the 
 High Street of Merestown seemed still reflect- 
 ing back, and glowing with, the intense heat 
 which the broiling sun had bestowed on them 
 all day, when Hester and Sarah Lockstone left 
 the sofas on which they had been lounging 
 through the whole of it, by the open window 
 of a back room in its principal and central 
 house, and came down to the ordinary family 
 sitting-room fronting the street. 
 
 The casement was partly opened, but only 
 sufficiently so, apparently, to admit a large 
 proportion of heat and dust, without in any 
 measure cooling the oppressive atmosphere of 
 the large and, at this hour, gloomy-looking 
 chamber. The heavy table had been cleared 
 for tea, but no tea was there — only a coating
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. \) 
 
 of dust from the road, but little thinner than 
 that which covered the sideboard and chairs. 
 Everything looked particularly bare and un- 
 comfortable, and so the sisters seemed to think. 
 Hester, uttering an expression of disgust, 
 turned away, and seated herself in the farther 
 corner of the room ; while Sarah, advancing to 
 the window, threw it as widely open as the old- 
 fashioned divisions would permit. 
 
 "What can you be doing that for?" ex- 
 claimed the elder sister in an aggrieved tone ; 
 " have we not dust enough already in the 
 room, that you are letting in a little more ?" 
 
 " Nonsense ! My opening the window will 
 help to drive out what is here already. Don't 
 you see the wind is changed ? Besides, that 
 precious old- water-cart has been down, and 
 pretended to water the street at last. Ugh ! 
 what an atmosphere ! Where is old Eachel 
 and the tea, I wonder ? That woman gets 
 more intolerable every day. I would not have 
 left that passably cool room, I am sure, if I 
 had not believed everything was ready here ; 
 there is no need to be baked sooner than is 
 absolutely necessary. How absurd it is of
 
 10 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 my father, too, keeping us stewing on in this 
 house." 
 
 ^^ Yes, there I agree with you," returned 
 Hester, laying her feet up on the next chair 
 as she spoke ; ^^ but it is all my mother's fault 
 — if she would make more stir in the matter 
 we might get away. It will kill me if we have 
 to live on here much longer — but now ; pray 
 do move out of the way, Sarah, and let me 
 feel a little fresh air, if there is any." 
 
 Sarah shrugged her shoulders and smiled 
 scornfully, as, without the least altering her 
 position in compliance with the peevishly 
 uttered request closing her sister's sentence, 
 she answered the commencement of it. 
 
 *^Yes, that is a fine speech for you to make, 
 truly — you, who give yourself so much trouble 
 in every way, and exert yourself so exceed- 
 ingly, and who, above all, show so much 
 spirit in resisting and opposing my father's 
 whims. Pah ! you and my mother are just 
 alike, and about equally useful as regards that 
 matter ; though, to be sure," she added, as 
 her lip curled with an expression of many 
 mingled emotions, among which sarcasm and
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 11 
 
 anger had chief places, though shame and 
 sorrow were there too, though in some- 
 what distorted guise — ^^ to be sure he would 
 attend very much, doubtless to either her 
 wishes or yours on this or any other point, 
 express them as strongly as you might !" 
 
 There was a pause ; Hester had closed her 
 eyes, and was leaning back in her chair with 
 an air of patient suffering, that might have 
 been interesting, was, possibly, to those who, 
 unlike her sister, did not know that there 
 was no shadow of reason existing why Hester 
 Lockstone should not be as active and cheer- 
 ful as any other damsel of four-and-twenty, 
 possessed of a particularly well-formed body 
 and healthy constitution. 
 
 Sarah continued leaning against the win- 
 dow-frame, her head resting on her hands, 
 her lips still parted with their pecular smile, 
 and her busy eyes roving up and down the 
 street, taking in all — a very little all it was, 
 especially at that hour of the day — that was 
 going on there, while her thoughts were hard 
 at work upon matters very foreign to those 
 which met her eye. Presently, however, her
 
 12 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 countenance changed ; she leaned a little for- 
 ward, and then, as her smile became wholly- 
 satirical, said — 
 
 '* Plere comes Frank Marsden, Hester, so I 
 suppose you will open your eyes, and manage 
 to command so much exertion as to sit up- 
 right and look just half alive at least — not 
 but that from his look I am not sure but you 
 would suit his present mood best as you are ; 
 he walks as statelily as if he were going to a 
 military funeral, and his face is solemn 
 enough to befit such an occasion. Upon my 
 word, I don't envy you your conversation to- 
 night, Hester. You will be an interesting 
 couple to whisper soft sayings to each other, 
 truly r 
 
 She laughed somewhat bitterly as she con- 
 cluded, and the next instant the door opened 
 and the young man she had spoken of entered 
 the room. He was rather handsome, though 
 perhaps the chief charm of his face was its pe- 
 culiarly honest, sincere expression. His years 
 might number some four or five-and-twenty. 
 As he came in he glanced uneasily first at 
 Hester, then at Sarah. Something was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 13 
 
 evidently disturbing his generally equable 
 and happy temperament. However, he shook 
 hands in his usual fashion, observed on the 
 extreme heat of the day, looking again at the 
 elder sister as he did so ; then, sitting down 
 by her side, he remained quite silent, appear- 
 ing lost in a reverie of not the pleasantest 
 nature in the world. 
 
 Hester glanced at him once or twice with 
 a half-displeased, half-injured air; while Sarah 
 watched first one and then the other with an 
 amused expression and the old disagreeable 
 smile — for disagreeable it certainly was, as 
 much so as a very handsome girl's smile can 
 be. 
 
 Suddenly Frank roused himself as some 
 noise in the house, hinting at KacheFs possible 
 approach with the long-delayed tea, startled 
 him ; and, turning to Hester, he said, so 
 hastily that it absolutely made her forget her 
 inert self so far as to start up — 
 
 '* Hester, is this really true — has your 
 father pressed on his claim so closely that 
 the Lees are to be turned out of their beauti- 
 ful old home, without any choice being left
 
 14 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 them of retrieving their prospects through 
 that fine lad's exertions ?" 
 
 The person addressed looked up with some 
 surprise, but with quite recovered composure. 
 Sarah's face flushed crimson for a moment, 
 then resumed the old smile and expression, 
 with perhaps a shade more of scorn added to 
 it. 
 
 " Wait ! — Vm sure I think papa has waited 
 quite sufficiently long already. Why, do you 
 not know he has resolved to keep us all 
 stewed up here till w^e can move at once to 
 Lee Manor ? Surely you cannot have much 
 consideration for me to talk so quietly of 
 waiting. If they have lost, and papa 
 gained the property, I can see no reason 
 for our not taking possession — I am sure 
 / want change of scene enough," and, as 
 if exhausted by so unusually long and ener- 
 getic a speech, Hester sighed heavily, and 
 once more leant back in her seat. 
 
 Frank had looked impatient, almost angry, 
 while she was speaking, and now, getting 
 up, with an irritated air, said, as he walked 
 up and down the room :
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 15 
 
 *' I hope — I think you do not know the 
 circumstances of the case, Hester. No. You 
 could not speak so if you did — or I may have 
 been misinformed myself, but, I am afraid, 
 my authority was too good. I heard a little 
 about the matter when I was here before, but 
 then 1 treated it very lightly, thinking either 
 it was altogether a mistake, or that it would 
 end very differently from what it now pro- 
 mises to do." 
 
 Frank paused a moment ; then, receiving 
 no response from either girl, went on : 
 
 " Your father, as Mr. Lee's man of busi- 
 ness, had a large mortgage on the estate 
 himself, it seems, and has gradually been 
 buying up most of the others ; and now, just 
 latelv, if mv information is correct, he has 
 taken advantage of their present extreme 
 distress and Edward Lee's absence, to 
 enforce his claims, and obtain possession of 
 the whole property, buying up the other 
 mortgages for a mere trifle ; and this while 
 there is great doubt if some of the debts with 
 which the estate is encumbered can be 
 proved to exist at all, much less their payment
 
 16 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 be legally enforced under the circumstances. 
 Besides which, this is done just as the son, 
 a youth of great promise, has nobly 
 launched himself on the world, with the 
 avowed purpose of straining, every nerve to 
 retrieve the affairs of his family. And he will 
 do it, too, if anyone can ; his abilities are 
 first-rate, and his energy untiring, with 
 principles of the highest order ; give him but 
 reasonable time — a few years even — which 
 mercy, nay, justice itself demands in this 
 case, I should say." 
 
 Frank had begun slowly, but he proceeded 
 rapidly, and wdth great excitement, as he 
 brought his harangue to an end, while his 
 face flushed, and his eyes sparkled, in the 
 earnestness of the feelings the thoughts to 
 which he gave utterance had aroused within 
 him. Hester looked up in his face with a 
 quiet astonishment at his energy, and seemed 
 perfectly unable to answer. Sarah, ho\vever, 
 turned round with a freezing air, and said, in 
 a cold, dry voice — 
 
 *' Upon my word, Mr. Marsden, you are 
 very obliging to point out so kindly the right
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 17 
 
 course for my father to pursue in regard to 
 his own affairs. Of course, as you have lived 
 so many more years in the world than him- 
 self, you are more capable of judging what is 
 the fittest course in this matter ; but allow 
 me to say that I, for one, do not carry my 
 benevolence to quite so Utopian a height as 
 you appear to do. I should not at all feel 
 incHned to follow your plan of risking all the 
 profits of a life-long industry on the very 
 doubtful chance of a young man's being 
 ultimately successful in life, and — a still 
 more problematical possibility — of his pos- 
 sessing enough generosity, or principle, as 
 you say, finally to restore one's own pro- 
 perty, but so many years after it was due, 
 that it might perhaps arrive time enough to 
 add dignity to one's funeral honours — not in 
 any way to further one's enjoyments in 
 life. 
 
 Frank bit his lip, and glanced at the 
 speaker almost contemptuously, but he made 
 no answer, and as the instant after Kachael 
 appeared at the door, tea-tray in hand, no 
 more passed at that time upon the subject. 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON that very same sultry August evening, 
 another scene in the drama of human 
 life was being enacted in another part of 
 Merestown. 
 
 This scene was laid in a newly-built little 
 house, one of the row of Newman's Buildings, 
 in fact. It was redolent of paint and putty, 
 and the strong evening sun, which glared 
 fully and fiercely in at its west-fronted, nar- 
 row sash windows, aided not a little to extract 
 the scent of both those charming accompani- 
 ments to freshly erected dwelling-places. The 
 little narrow slip of ground in fi'ont, called by 
 courtesy a garden, was bare of all things ap- 
 proaching to liowers, and the patchy turf 
 was brown with exposure to heat and dust ; 
 the green railings glared painfully in rivalry 
 with the bright red brick of the house, and
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 19 
 
 any one looking on the whole would have 
 scarcely felt surprised that its sole inmate 
 should at that moment be suffering from one 
 of the acutest of headaches. 
 
 She was a fair, delicate girl, looking barely 
 fifteen, though really almost three years older. 
 And there she stood, within the tiny parlour 
 of that oven-like house, in the middle of the 
 room, pressing her hand upon her burning, 
 throbbing brow, but only for a moment. She 
 could afford no longer time to rest, though 
 miserably weary and fearfully hot, for her 
 long day's dreary work was not yet over — 
 those two boxes of books had still to be put 
 in the neat little shelves prepared for them. 
 They were now — partly unpacked — strewn 
 about in confusion, some on the floor, some 
 still within their cases, and they must be 
 stowed away immediately ; there was no space 
 for the admission of untidiness or disorder in 
 these confined precincts. Besides, few in 
 comparison as were those precious volumes, 
 they were books still, their own, and would 
 perhaps help to lend some slight appearance 
 of home to the strange, chilling aspect of this 
 
 c2
 
 20 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 little square room ; so thej must be neatly- 
 ranged in order, and the boxes carried away, 
 and then all would be ready for them. 
 
 Ready ! She glanced round the bare, un- 
 comfortable looking room as the thought 
 passed through her mind. Yes, ready — as 
 fit as such a room, with what narrow means 
 were now in her power, could ever be made 
 for those whom she was now instantly expect- 
 ing. 
 
 A sharp pang shot through her heart. 
 Alas ! alas ! what a place for them to come to 
 — being what they were, leaving what they 
 did — and the vision of a lovely home scene 
 rose vividly before her, just as she had her- 
 self seen it a thousand times over in happy 
 bygone years — such as her fancy, all unbid- 
 den, instantly suggested to her, she might 
 have seen it now. 
 
 A long low house, the middle part higher, 
 and bearing witness in its general aspect to a 
 remoter date of architecture than the two 
 sides, which plainly spoke of the Elizabethan 
 taste and era. A heavy, old-fashioned arched 
 doorway, the door of solid oak, richly carved.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 21 
 
 standing partly open and displaying to view 
 a grand and lofty hall, ornamented richly 
 in every part not only with noble statues, the 
 production of the choicest Italian art, but 
 with the picturesque if more homely evidences 
 of English prowess in wood and field and 
 stream, nay, on the very battle-ground itself ; 
 for on one side were suspended not only two 
 or three grim old helmets, but a line of 
 swords, varying in shape and form from the 
 awkward weapon of some seven centuries be- 
 fore to the lighter but still ponderous broad- 
 sword of the seventeenth century. They were 
 a gallant race the owners of that old mansion, 
 and had never failed to send a soldier forth 
 from their roof-tree to fight for king and 
 country whenever either had been in 
 peril. 
 
 But it was not of swords or battle-fields 
 or warriors that this young maiden dreamt 
 just now— nay, not even of that glorious hall 
 itself, dear as its every part, its every orna- 
 ment, was to her heart ; but of a more domestic 
 genial picture. 
 
 Those three French windows, somewhat to
 
 22 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 the left of the great hall, are wide open, too, 
 and through them you can see in the distance 
 a massive sideboard, with a weight of quaint 
 old family plate resting upon it, and nearer the 
 polished dining-table, with its glittering sur- 
 face reflecting back on all sides the rich 
 fruits, cool wines, and lovely flowers with 
 which it is abundantly laden ; but nearer 
 still are the objects on which the eye naturally 
 rests — animate objects, with human faces that 
 just now are bearing testimony to the enjoy- 
 ment of much quiet human pleasure. 
 
 Quite close to the far-off window is drawn 
 up a capacious easy-chair, and in it sits a 
 white-haired gentleman. Lay somewhat more 
 than ordinary stress on that last word, and 
 there you have his portrait ; for gentleman, 
 old, somewhat infirm, perhaps a little weak 
 and uncertain in his spirit now, but still 
 gentleman is what the present owner of this 
 fair domain looks in an unmistakable and in- 
 tense degree ; and he looks but what he is. 
 Standing opposite, a little way removed, so 
 that she may not intercept his view, but still 
 near enough to catch and answer his every
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 23 
 
 look and gesture with sympathising word and 
 smile, is a fair comely dame of middle age, so 
 fair and comely in her ripe autumn of matron - 
 hood, that had you been the deciding Paris 
 of a second contest for superior beauty, you 
 might have been tempted to award the covet- 
 ed apple to her rather than to the slender girl 
 who, just outside the window, is now bending 
 her young, blushing, laughing face down to- 
 wards her father, as she points out to him the 
 merry gambles of the two other individuals 
 who complete the grouping of that happy 
 family picture. 
 
 These two are farther off, upon the smooth 
 lawn which bounds the broad gravel sweep 
 just in front of the house. A noble, beau- 
 tiful boy, just on the verge of manhood, 
 gambolling, with the exuberant glee of his free 
 young spirits, with an enormous Newfound- 
 land dog, who now lies quietly down, in all the 
 secure dignity of his size and strength, watch- 
 ing his playfellow's cautious advance as he 
 hopes to spring on him at unawares, now 
 just slipping from beneath his young master's 
 hand as it all but secures and seizes him, and
 
 24 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 starting off across the lawn, over into the 
 park, through and round about the trees, 
 then back again, and close up now to the 
 maiden, now to the youth, at a speed which 
 forbids all thought of pursuit. 
 
 And the frame-work of this picture is as 
 fair and pleasing as anything else about it. 
 Immediately in front the sweeping car- 
 riage drive, then the velvet lawn shading 
 down in the distance into the park itself, with 
 all its magnificent wealth of noble old trees, 
 clothed in all the richness of their summer 
 foliage ; at the side, some fine old cedars and 
 evergreens, with one huge lime tree spreading 
 its full sweeping boughs down — down from 
 the summit in ever widening circles, till they 
 rest upon the turf below, hiding the green 
 carpet from every eye, and all else besides, 
 except in one place, where a passing glance 
 can be caught of a glittering flower-bed of red 
 geraniums, and other bright things, giving 
 some slight promise of the floral treasures 
 one step beyond that spreading tree would 
 disclose to you ; and all this lighted up by the 
 glorious splendour of a summer evening, when
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 25 
 
 the bright sun, in the passing sadness of his 
 lingering farewell, casts such long cool shadows 
 over trees, grass, and flowers, that you forget, 
 in their enjoyment, the oppressive ardour of 
 his noontide heat, and are tempted yet to 
 wish his longer abiding with you. 
 
 Such is the bright vision which rises up 
 all too visibly in the truth and earnestness 
 of its colouring before that busy worker at 
 No. 5, Newman's Buildings! 
 
 No. 5, Newman's Buildings ! Ah, what 
 a contrast ! That very address of the 
 new dwelling-place conveys its utter dis- 
 similarity with the former one. This square 
 room, with its four equally sized walls, its 
 one formal window just in the middle of one, 
 the vulgar little grate in another, the door in 
 the third ! Ah ! not all her many ingenious 
 efforts, not even the two little bookshelves 
 dividing the fourth wall between them, though 
 now nicely fitted with her precious treasures, 
 the few old friends she could justly bring 
 hither, can change the character of that room, 
 or make it look much other than what it is — 
 the ugly little parlour and sole sitting-room
 
 26 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 of a house in a second-rate suburban row. 
 
 So at least thinks poor Mabel Lee, as with 
 weary body, and still more weary mind, she 
 takes another look at the result of her day's 
 work, when she returns from dragging the 
 book-boxes out of sight along the narrow 
 little passage, as near the top of the kitchen 
 stairs as her unaided strength can convey 
 them. 
 
 Poor Mabel Lee ! You are yourself at 
 this moment almost as great a contrast to 
 that other self of some months back, looking 
 so joyously in at the dining-room windows of 
 Lee Manor as is this common nutshell of a 
 place to the stately home of your fore- 
 fathers ! 
 
 Yet you do yourself injustice, Mabel, and 
 your careful handiwork, too. Other eyes than 
 yours, especially those less accustomed than 
 your own to every elegance and beauty 
 with which art and nature can adorn a dwell- 
 ing, would discern many tokens in this square 
 room, bare and ugly as it seems to you, that 
 it is not utterly deserted by the spirit of taste 
 and beauty, that a hand has worked therein
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 27 
 
 not altogether identical with such hands as 
 might be supposed ordinarily familiar with 
 such spheres of labour as this ; in short, that 
 the parlour of No. 5 did somehow differ in- 
 teriorly from Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, alike as 
 they might appear on a first glance. 
 
 That old worked ottoman with twisted legs 
 has evidently displayed its comfortable length 
 to other loungers than those of the present 
 century, and yet was never contaminated by 
 the unhealthy atmosphere of Wardour Street. 
 This little table is of a finer and more delicate 
 make than any you could meet with in any other 
 house in this row, or in most others. That 
 China jar speaks of other acquaintanceship 
 than that of ordinary flaunting porcelain. 
 The old picture opposite the window tells its 
 own tale of a generation passed away ; and 
 most simple yet most striking evidence of 
 all, that bright bouquet of precious flowers 
 in its richly cut glass speaks of a presiding 
 spirit of greater taste, refinement, and ele- 
 gance than one would suppose ordinarily falls 
 to the lot of such an abode as No. 5, New- 
 man's Buildings.
 
 28 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Cherished Penates of a happier time, a 
 nobler home, surely ye or your ghosts are 
 still hovering round the hearth of this exiled 
 household ! 
 
 But poor Mabel saw them not — felt them 
 not, and, weary and disheartened, she gave 
 her final glance round that ungenial room. 
 Very desponding was the sigh she gave as 
 she advanced towards the one window to try 
 if, broiling as was the outer air, it might not 
 somewhat improve the atmosphere within. 
 
 She threw the sash wide open, but the 
 glare and heat became yet more acutely 
 sensible ; and, despairingly, she leant forward 
 to see if not one summer breeze of evening, 
 however faint, would steal over from the far- 
 off country lanes to bless these dreary city 
 homes. 
 
 No ! not one ! They were all too busy 
 flirting with the red poppies and yellow cisti 
 in the bright corn-fields, or bestowing their 
 fond caresses on the woods and streams, to 
 have one stray breath to give to such unat- 
 tractive bare resorts as these. 
 
 Thus, atleast, it seemed to Mabel, who tho ught
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 29 
 
 that she and summer joys had said farewell 
 for ever ! 
 
 She drew her head in once more, and then 
 gathered the light muslin curtains close about 
 the window. Perhaps they would give the de- 
 sired shade without adding greatly to the gloom 
 which, to her tired fancy, seemed already to 
 pervade the room, in spite of the unsoftened 
 glare thrown fully into it. 
 
 All the preparations within her power at 
 last completed, Mabel sat down upon the old 
 ottoman to rest ; but she soon found to do so 
 was impossible. If she allowed physical fatigue 
 to overcome her, all mental strength would van- 
 ish. She must give way at last, and that would 
 never do — a tear-stained face was not the one 
 with which she must strive to meet her parents 
 on the threshold of their new home. 
 
 So she got up once more, and occupied 
 herself with wandering from room to room 
 throughout the house — not an over-long journey 
 — putting additional touches of some sort to 
 the arrangements of each, little as they seemed 
 needed, and continuing her sad monotonous 
 pilgrimage till the sound of approaching
 
 30 THE CABI^^ET SECRET. 
 
 wheels struck on her strained senses. She 
 knew it. 
 
 They were coming !
 
 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TTEAVILY on came the one-horse fly of 
 -^-^ Merestown, and very dilapidated and 
 shabby it looked as it drew up before the 
 narrow wicket-gate of No. 5, Newman's Build- 
 ings. How widely different was the graceful 
 prancing curve with which their beautiful bays 
 had been wont to land their carriage at the 
 portal of Lee Manor ! 
 
 But Mabel resolutely forbore to dwell on 
 this just then, though the passing compari- 
 son would glance through her mind. She 
 hastened forward, tying her garden-hat close 
 down over her brows, so as partially to shade 
 her pale, tired face, greeted her mother with 
 a smile which was very sweet, though like the sad 
 gleam of dying day, and then held her arm to 
 help her feeble father in alighting from this 
 novel vehicle.
 
 32 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Mr. Lee had become very weak in mind of 
 late, almost childish indeed, though his fond 
 wife and loving daughter were fain to try and 
 bide the fact as far as they could, both from 
 themselves and from each other. 
 
 " Where have you been, Mabel ?" he asked 
 querulously, as he descended from the fly, and 
 stood leaning heavily on her young arm at the 
 gate : " why do you stay away from me all 
 day, so ? I wanted you." 
 
 ** I have been busy, you know, dearest 
 father, getting ready for you ; come and see 
 all I have done. 
 
 And she looked persuasively up in his 
 face. 
 
 He made one step in advance, then paused, 
 and turning, said fretfully, 
 
 " Where is my cabinet ? You always 
 want to take me away from that now, and you 
 know I must have it." Muttering to himself, 
 *' Keep it safe — yes, quite safe — I must." 
 
 " There it is, papa. Deborah is helping the 
 man to bring it in — see. Will you not come ?" 
 she added pleadingly, for she had suddenly 
 become painfully conscious of the many curious
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 33 
 
 pairs of eyes peering out on them from every 
 window, door, and garden that could command 
 a view of the new neighbours; and the sensitive 
 nature of the poor girl who had hitherto 
 breathed no other social atmosphere than 
 that of the high-bred refinement of seclud- 
 ed aristocratic county life, and rarely of 
 that, shrunk in its young experience from 
 this first ordeal in association with a lower 
 sphere. 
 
 ^^ Dear papa, please come, mamma is wait- 
 ing for us," she again urged, as the old man 
 still obstinately stood by the gate, holding 
 her fast while he watched the conveyance 
 into the house of the treasured object of his 
 care. 
 
 This was a very old and exceedingly curious 
 cabinet, of very peculiar and elaborate foreign 
 workmanship. Its size was rather less than 
 that of an ordinary chefFonier, but it consisted 
 of an innumerable number of little drawers 
 and crevices, which, when they were opened, 
 gave it the air of a well peopled dovecote ; 
 when shut, the compartments were so artfully 
 hidden, that the very handles themselves ap- 
 
 yoL. I. D
 
 34 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 peared only a necessary part of the carved 
 design on its exterior. 
 
 This cabinet had always stood in the draw- 
 ing-room at Lee Manor, and as a rale was 
 never used by the master of the house, though 
 the ladies occasionally put some of their work 
 or other trifles within its hiding-places. It 
 had been a matter of great surprise to both of 
 them, therefore, when Mr. Lee, just about the 
 time that his mind had given unmistakeable 
 symptoms of impending feebleness of intellect, 
 to say the least, had simultaneously mani- 
 fested an all-absorbing interest in his cabinet, 
 and an unceasing watchfulness over it. In- 
 deed, so irritable and anxious' did he shew 
 himself whenever it was long out of his sight, 
 that they had at last resolved to redeem this 
 alone from among all those not absolutely 
 necessary articles which had been handed over 
 with the house to its new owner. It was at 
 a cost entailing some privations on them that 
 this was done ; but a greater sacrifice would 
 have been cheerfully made by either loving 
 woman to gratify even a lighter whim of the 
 afflicted old man.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 35 
 
 So the cabinet had been redeemed and 
 placed in the llj with Mr. and Mrs. Lee, very 
 fortunately, as it turned out, for it was 
 soon evident no earthly power could have 
 induced the former to leave the old Manor 
 House without the exercise of personal com- 
 pulsion, so long as that old cabinet remained 
 within its walls. 
 
 By this time it was resting just at the 
 threshold of the narrow passage in the new 
 little house, and Mr. Lee, seeing it there, 
 consented to advance thither himself ; but 
 no entreaty or persuasion of his daughter's 
 could get him farther thant- he door till 
 he saw his treasure safely stowed aAvay with- 
 in. 
 
 So Mabel, resigning her place by his side 
 to her mother, went in herself, and, with De- 
 borah's aid, stowed the cabinet away in an 
 empty space she had left for it between the 
 bookshelves, and then Mr. Lee and his wife 
 came with their fair daughter into the new 
 home. 
 
 Mrs. Lee sat quietly down in a corner of 
 the room, shading her face with her hand. 
 
 I) 2
 
 36 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 She felt instinctively all that had passed — 
 was passing in her child's mind, and she 
 would not look up till she had so far mastered 
 the agitation within, which she could not 
 quite subdue, as to present at least a calm 
 and placid, if not a contented and happy face, 
 to that anxious watcher. 
 
 The old man, only partially conscious of 
 the change, so far as those about him could 
 judge, and not at all so of its causes, was for 
 the first few moments entirely absorbed in 
 examining the object of his great solicitude. 
 He walked round it, felt over its surface with 
 his hands, opened first one drawer, then ano- 
 ther, and finally, patting it complacently, 
 sat down in his easy chair, which Mabel had 
 pushed near, murmuring in satisfied ac- 
 cents, 
 
 '' All safe— all safe !" 
 
 Mabel drew a stool near, and sat down at 
 his knee, softly caressing the withered hand 
 resting on it, which presently began to play 
 with her hair, as if in acknowledgment, 
 smoothing it fondly, or sometimes twisting 
 his fingers in the silky tresses escaped from
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. o7 
 
 their imprisonment during her day's work, 
 and now falling loosely about her shoulders. 
 There was silence for awhile, but, by-and-by, 
 the old man grew weary of the quietness, and 
 began to look restlessly round. 
 
 " Mabel," he said, querulously, " what 
 have you brought me here for ? I don't like 
 it, my child. This room is small — very 
 small — and it is, oh ! so hot !" 
 
 " It is a hot day, dear papa ; but the sun 
 is nearly gone. Now I will open the cur- 
 tains, then it will be cooler — and see, here are 
 some of your own favourite flowers.'' 
 
 And, hastily drawing the curtains wide, 
 she brought him the vase of flowers, to turn 
 his attention, if possible, to them. 
 
 " Yes, they are very nice, my darling — 
 like my little Mabel herself ; but Fergusson 
 should put some outside too — I must tell 
 him. Where is Dawson ? — ah ! I forgot," 
 and with a look of mingled recollection and 
 helplessness, inexpressibly painful to behold, 
 he put his hand to his head, and sank back 
 again into the chair from which he had risen. 
 Mabel looked despairingly at her mother, who
 
 38 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 had caught that beseeching, agonized look, 
 and now stood by her husband's side. 
 
 "■ My darling," she whispered, soothingly 
 folding her arm round her daughter, ^' it is 
 what we must expect. Do not fear, my 
 love ; he has borne it wonderfully considering. 
 Remember what Dr. Armsdaile said — ' There, 
 he is better now.^ " 
 
 Even as she spoke, the old man looked up 
 once more, with the same vacuous expression 
 of incapacity for reasoning, and smiled con- 
 tentedly as a tardy breeze did at length find 
 its way in at the window, and played for an 
 instant with his thin grey hair, after bringing 
 him the sweet odour of the bouquet it had 
 kissed in its progress. How Mabel blessed 
 that breeze ! 
 
 " Mabel, they are very sweet — I like 
 them," he murmured, as he looked round to 
 where she stood with clasped hands, and an 
 inaudible thanksgiving on her lips — '^ very 
 sweet ; and it is safe — quite safe," he added, 
 glancing once again towards the cabinet — 
 — " that's right— that's well." 
 
 '^ Yes, papa, we are all safe and well,"
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 39 
 
 Mabel answered, making a violent effort to 
 master her emotion, and speak in her usual 
 clear and cheerful tones, which ordinarily had 
 so good an effect on him ; *' and Deborah is 
 here too, you know, and mamma, and Dr.. 
 Armsdaile will be coming soon." 
 
 " Dr. Armsdaile ! — ah ! yes ; that is well 
 — that is right," and a placid smile stole over 
 the worn face — " he is a good man. Dr. 
 Armsdaile." 
 
 The words had hardly passed his lips when 
 a doctor's carriage stopped at the gate, and 
 the gentleman they had been speaking of 
 entered the room. He gave one quick 
 glance at his old friend and patient, and ano- 
 ther at his wife ; then his eyes met the wistful 
 ones which were watching his own face so 
 eagerly, and he smiled. After that smile Mabel 
 scarcely needed the " All is well — better 
 than I expected," which he whispered as she 
 greeted him hurriedly in passing from the room. 
 How thankful she was ! and not the least 
 subject for gratitude at that moment was the 
 doctor's own arrival, which released her for a 
 short time from close attendance on her
 
 40 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 father ; for sorely did she need some respite 
 from forced cheerfulness and constrained 
 composure, after that day of overtaxed 
 strength, both of mind and body. 
 
 She sought her own tiny bed-chamber at 
 the top of the house, and there leaning from 
 the little window in the roof, which com- 
 manded something approaching to a country 
 prospect, she bowed her head upon her hands, 
 and gave way to the torrent of pent-up emo- 
 tion within. 
 
 Not long, however, was she left to indulge 
 the luxury of abandonment. Scarcely ten 
 minutes, hardly one, it appeared to her, had 
 passed away, when she heard a well-known 
 voice calling on her in low but plaintive 
 accents. 
 
 " Miss Mabel, ]\Iiss Mabel, darling, can 
 you come a mhuite ?" 
 
 ^^Yes, Deborah, directly.'' 
 
 And Mabel hastily bathed her head and 
 face in cold water, smoothed her disordered 
 hair, and betook herself to the kitchen, a very 
 small cavern-like place it looked to the un- 
 accustomed eyes now surveying it in its
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 41 
 
 underground dimness ; but, after all, it was 
 cooler than the parlour, and something like 
 an evening sky glow had penetrated into it 
 from the open door of the scullery, which 
 abutted on the little slip of a back-garden. 
 
 " Well, Deborah, how are you getting on?'' 
 Mabel asked with a smile she struggled hard, 
 and with partial success, to make cheering. 
 
 Deborah glanced at the darling of her 
 heart, her own special charge as she had been 
 from the first month of her fair young life, and 
 tried to return that smile with interest, but 
 it would not do. She felt the corners of 
 her mouth twitching, and her eyes growing 
 moister as she looked at the pale face, once 
 so bright and joyous ; so she turned hastily 
 to the fire, and while vigorously poking it, 
 answered, 
 
 ^* Bravely, my pet — bravely! Only, you see, 
 I was not quite sure how the things went up 
 for tea, and I thought you'd show me, sweet. 
 It wouldn't do for him to notice any difference 
 — this night, above all." 
 
 Mabel sighed, and thanked her fond old 
 nurse for her thoughtful care.
 
 42 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ^^ You are quite right, my good Deborah, it 
 would not. My father would notice it di- 
 rectly, even though Dr. Arrasdaile is here ; 
 but you have the things very nearly the same 
 as usual, if not (juite," she added, making 
 some trifling alteration in the arrangement of 
 the tea-tray as she spoke. 
 
 " Well, Miss, I thought I knew pretty 
 near ; I wanted to put them all myself last 
 night, to be right certain ; but Mr. Ashton — 
 he didn't like to let me — he must do it as 
 usual he said the very last night, and he 
 looked so sad and pitiful. Miss, as he said it, 
 and showed me how he put everything, 
 master's cup, especially, I couldn't gainsay 
 him nohow." 
 
 ^^ Poor Ashton !" murmured Mabel, brush- 
 ing the tears again starting from her own 
 eyes, ^^ did he go before you left, Deborah ? 
 — and Stevens, is she gone ?" 
 
 " They are all gone by this, you may be 
 sure, my darling, every mother's child of them. 
 Do you think they'd stay to see another 
 master than a Lee in the old Manor ? No — 
 not they — not one of them, I'm certain, but
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 43 
 
 they would stay to see the very last of master 
 and the mistress." 
 
 '' Oh ! Deborah !" was Mabel's half-fright- 
 ened, half-expostulatory ejaculation. 
 
 " I couldn't help it, pet, they would — they 
 must; they all said ; but they'd be very good, 
 and so they were, Miss, not a tear fell from 
 any one of them, till master was safe into the 
 fly, and had passed through them all." 
 
 " You do not mean they all assembled to 
 see you leave ? — Deborah, how could you let 
 them ?" 
 
 '' I couldn't help it, dear, indeed, and you 
 see it did no harm. They all drew up in the 
 hall, as they used to do when we had a 
 wedding or a christening party coming home, 
 and master and mistress walked down the 
 whole line of them. But don't look so feared, 
 my pet, you see it did no harm. It pleased 
 him, I think, for he nodded and smiled quite 
 happy all the way down, when he noticed 
 them at all, but that wasn't often, he was so 
 unaccountable taken up with that cabinet 
 thing, and having it took out before him." 
 
 *' Did he ask for it when you started, then?"
 
 44 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ** Before ! bless yon, darlin^^, the moment 
 he saw the fly, and knew he was going — 
 ' Corning to you /' as poor mistress told him — 
 he took hold of that cabinet, and never rested 
 till Thomas and John came and carried it out 
 before him. He wouldn't stir out of the room 
 till that old thing had gone first." 
 
 *' How lucky we decided on keeping it ; 
 but what a strange fancy it is — poor papa!'' 
 said Mabel, musingly ; and then she slowly 
 wended her way back to the sitting-room, that 
 she might be ready to make the tea, now her 
 father's favourite meal, when Deborah should 
 bring it. 
 
 Deborah, their one great treasure now, 
 " Old Nurse !" '' Mrs. Dawson !" '' Na-nah !" 
 by all of which fond aliases she was wont to 
 be called in the happy days of that household 
 of which she had been for years a respected 
 member. But very old she really was not, 
 happily for the Lees in their present circum- 
 stances, as she was the one amongst their 
 many old servants who vowed she would 
 never leave them, come wdiat might, and who 
 was, besides, best fitted to fulfil the many and
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 45 
 
 various duties which must now all fall to the 
 lot of their one domestic. 
 
 She was quite a young woman when she 
 became Miss Mabel's nurse, and had quickly 
 transferred to her charge all the fond love 
 of her heart which had not been buried in 
 the grave of her husband and only child ; 
 but as Mabel and her brother grew up, their 
 nurse seemed, to their young experiences, 
 quite an aged personage, and she was perfectly 
 content to be so considered, as, in virtue of 
 that antiquity, she possessed the authority and 
 influence which might have been lost had they 
 realized the fact that she was not much past 
 middle age. 
 
 So Deborah had grown into a privileged 
 person, a humble friend, one of the old and 
 faithful family retainers, such as are now fast 
 becoming extinct, it is to be feared, in these 
 our later days; and great was the comfort and 
 solace her cheerful presence and active bodily 
 service brought to the Lees in the first sad 
 days of their adversity.
 
 46 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " T^ATHER, does a man generally strive 
 -^ very eagerly for that wliich he does 
 not care for when gained ? " asked Sarah 
 Lockstone, breaking the stillness which had 
 reigned for the last hour among the family 
 party, so suddenly that each of them was 
 startled from his or her respective occupations, 
 all of which were of a passive character. 
 
 Her mother, half roused from a tranquil 
 dose, gazed sleepily round ; Hester languidly 
 turned her half-closed eyes reproachfully on 
 the speaker, awakening from her usual lazy 
 muse ; and Mr. Lockstone himself gave a 
 visible start in his great leathern chair, as he 
 raised his head from the drooping position in 
 which he had sunk, while apparently intent 
 on speculations respecting the fireless grate, 
 so fixedly had his sharp sunken eyes been 
 regarding it.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 47 
 
 " No, certainly not," he answered at last, 
 looking somewhat uneasily at his younger 
 daughter. 
 
 ^^ Nor do they risk a life's labour, fortune, 
 health, on a venture which, if attained, they 
 would leave untouched?" she continued asking, 
 as if simply seeking information ; while her 
 father's restless eyes betrayed his mistrust of 
 the singleness of her intent in these queries. 
 " And what would you call a man who, after 
 staking all these, and perhaps more too, 
 should win the prize, but shrink from taking 
 possession of it?" and she raised her large 
 dark eyes to her father's face. 
 
 " A fool, girl !" he answered, impatiently ; 
 '^ a fool, of course !" 
 
 '' And so should I ; and a coward also," 
 she returned composedly, in slow and distinct 
 tones ; ^^ but I should hardly have judged, 
 from your actions, that you agreed with me, 
 father." 
 
 Again she fixed her expressive but cold eyes 
 upon his face inquiringly. 
 
 He gave no audible reply, only moving un-
 
 48 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 easily in his chair. He well knew what was 
 coming. 
 
 " You have periled, if I mistake not, much 
 of all these things — perhaps something also of 
 that which weak men, it seems, value higher, 
 as they christen it honesty — for the winning of 
 Lee Manor. It is yours. Why, then, are we 
 not there ?" 
 
 Mr. Lockstone started from his chair with 
 a muttered curse, and began striding hurriedly 
 up and down the room ; while his wife and 
 elder daughter, both thoroughly aroused, now 
 looked on with timid, frightened faces ; Sarah 
 alone remaining perfectly calm, and watching 
 his movements quietly, as if patiently waiting 
 for the time when restored composure should 
 enable him to give the answer she was evi- 
 dently awaiting. 
 
 And it did come at last ; though none who 
 had never witnessed before similar scenes 
 between this singular daughter and her father, 
 would have credited that the angry turmoil 
 she had so coolly roused within his dark, 
 reserved breast would have merely such a 
 result. After a fierce struggle between his
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 49 
 
 own nature and habitual line of conduct, with 
 the force of the habit now long acquired of 
 yielding, however unwillingly, to a will as de- 
 termined and unscrupulous as his own, but 
 cool and self-governed, which his never had 
 been, he answered at length, 
 
 " You cannot understand these things, 
 Sarah ;" then added slowly, as if in forced 
 obedience to the strict questioning of her 
 unswerving eyes, "there are many reasons 
 which prevent my going at present ; but at 
 Christmas, if not before, we will be there," 
 and he hastily strode out of the room, greatly 
 to the relief of his wife, who, well as she was 
 used to them, (?ould never listen unmoved to 
 the fierce oaths with which he was wont to 
 garnish his discourse when annoyed, and 
 which, though unfit to record, had plentifully 
 bestrewn this reply to his daughter. They 
 seemed a sort of safety-valve for the angry 
 spirit within, which found a sort of secondary 
 satisfaction in venting its thwarted temper 
 by unseemly language that must shock the 
 hearers. 
 
 The gentle Mrs. Lockstone it did shock ; 
 
 VOL. T. E
 
 50 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 the passive Hester attended little to the 
 meaning of the words, but disliked the grat- 
 ing tone in which such ugly expletives are 
 sure to be uttered. Sarah alone sat unmoved, 
 alike regardless of her fatiier's anger, her 
 mother's shrinking terror, Hester's offended 
 love of quiet, and the fearful words them- 
 selves. 
 
 Indeed, she scarcely heard them. They 
 had become matters of course with her — a 
 natural consequence of any discussion with 
 her father, and were passed over unheeded ; 
 the se7ise of his answer was all she attended 
 to, and that did not seem to please her. She 
 knitted her dark brows, and twined her long 
 white fingers nervously together ; and pre- 
 sently, without vouchsafing a word to her 
 remaining companions, she, too, rose and left 
 the room. 
 
 The thouglits passing silently through her 
 brain were these : *' Cannot understand them 
 I can, and better than you yourself, faint 
 hearted man^ as you plume yourself on being 
 riio ! I have not patience with such weak 
 dallying ; sonic preliminaries may be neces
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 51 
 
 sary — must be — but till Christmas — four 
 months — I ivill know what these reasons are, 
 and see if there be any sense in them." 
 
 And so she followed her father to his busi- 
 ness-room — his office, where she alone had 
 ever dared to penetrate ; ruthlessly extracted 
 such explanations as she required from the un- 
 willing betrayer of his own counsels; and then 
 returned to her mother and sister, to whom 
 at length she deigned to impart some of her 
 own knowledge, and the conclusions she de- 
 duced from it. 
 
 " Hester, you must be contented to startle 
 High Street with your active winter move- 
 ments once again, and defer till next spring 
 the wanderings with Frank Marsden in Lee 
 Manor alleys. We shall not be there till 
 Christmas — after, perhaps. " 
 
 " Then it is very hard, and I think you all 
 treat me very unkindly to let my father keep 
 me here in this way," rejoined the elder sister, 
 so much roused as absolutely to sit upright in 
 her chair. 
 
 Mrs. Lockstone, who saw Sarah expected 
 
 E 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILUNOUv
 
 52 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 her to speak also, merely observed very 
 meekly, 
 
 ^' I like the country — at least I used to 
 like it when I was a girl — but if we must 
 stay here still, I suppose we must." 
 
 The strange smile passed over her younger 
 daughter's handsome face as she listened to 
 these words, and her glance of mingled con- 
 tempt and pity for the weakness of their 
 natures, travelled from one to the other as 
 she answered, 
 
 *^ There are reasons in this case why we 
 should remain, but as to submitting to a must, 
 merely because I was told it existed and no 
 more, or, worse still, merely because my 
 father chose to use the word, I would scorn 
 such weakness. And, Hester, if you feel so 
 much the most ill-used among us, I advise 
 you to use your own free will, and tell him 
 you ivill go to Lee Manor this very Aveek. 
 Why not ? None but ourselves can fight our 
 own battles best ! Go and tell him you are 
 determined not to stay here." 
 
 Hester knew it was vain to cope with her 
 sister wlien once she brought forward such an
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 53 
 
 argument as this advice. She gave one re- 
 proachful glance in answer, and then, sinking 
 back into her usual position of luxurious 
 ease, took up a book Frank Marsden had 
 given her the night before, and tried to seem 
 what she was not — reading, and interested in 
 it. 
 
 Meek Mrs. Lockstone attempted no con- 
 versation w^hen her daughters appeared dis- 
 posed to let it cease, and silence again reigned 
 among them. Nor was it broken till, as the 
 sisters were undressing in their own room at 
 night, Sarah carelessly remarked, 
 
 ** By-the-bye, Hester, w^hat ails your swain 
 this time ? He is quite a changed creature 
 from the light-hearted, devoted Frank Mars- 
 den of a year ago. I could almost believe 
 he had learned to reason since I saw him 
 last, but for his still treating you as an 
 invalid," and she laughed a low, satirical 
 laugh. 
 
 Hester fired up, as her sister knew she 
 would. This was attacking her at once on 
 two tender points, the last especially. 
 
 ^' I am sure I don't know what you mean,
 
 54 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Sarah," she answered, quite rapidly ; ^^ you 
 never think of all I go through, I know, but 
 you might leave me to suffer in peace ; and 
 as for Mr. Marsden, whatever he is, or is not, 
 does not matter to you. I like his being 
 quieter all the better, and I wish you would 
 not be so extra-disagreeable to-night, when 
 I'm not equal to it." 
 
 Sarah laughed again ; she was delighted at 
 having roused her sister so unusually, and 
 was really amused by part of her speech. 
 
 ^^Extra-disagreeable, am I, Hester? — very 
 Avell ; I'll try to be so oftener, if I can, if it 
 makes you something less of a log. I sup- 
 pose you know my father gives Frank an 
 interview to-morrow, private and confiden- 
 tial ?" and she looked sharply and suddenly 
 at her sister, to see if she did indeed know 
 it. 
 
 No ; it was evidently news to Hester — sur- 
 prising news, too, and Sarah rejoiced ; but it 
 only affected her for a little while. Her 
 nature was not deep enough, as Sarah's was, 
 to feel certain that the interview portended 
 something unusual; nor, perhaps, if it had
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 55 
 
 been, was her heart's affection so earnest, even 
 as regarded Frank Marsden himself, that she 
 could have been moved much beyond her placid 
 absorption in self for any length of time. So 
 Sarah watched her for a few minutes, then 
 shrugged her shoulders, and without vouch- 
 safing farther speech, lay down upon her 
 pillow and disposed herself to sleep. 
 
 Mr. Lockstone had married late in life, 
 a fair, gentle, and young woman. Her 
 pretty face had charmed him as much as he 
 would allow himself to be charmed by any 
 such unprofitable trifle in a matrimonial 
 bargain ; but her dower and her years were 
 both such as he sought in the partner of his 
 fortune, and so he married her, sufficiently 
 content that a fair face, over and above, 
 accompanied these. 
 
 Mrs. Lockstone was a pleasing girl when 
 she married — perhaps she had a true, loving 
 woman's heart within her well-proportioned 
 form when Stephen Lockstone took her to 
 his home ; perhaps she had the formation 
 of a reasoning, active-souled, duty-fulfilling 
 wife and mother hid amid the chaos of a
 
 5Q THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 gentle girl's yet unmoulded character ; per- 
 haps she had her happy dream as a girl-bride 
 of the loving but firm and clever husband 
 who was to develop all that was good — sub- 
 due all that was evil in her young, untried 
 nature ; perhaps 
 
 Ah ! well — what matters it now what her 
 dream was ? — it visited her five-and-twenty 
 years ago, and Hester Elton is timid, submis- 
 sive Mrs. Lockstone now, afraid of her 
 husband, afraid of her daughters, and 
 most afraid of the times when thoughts and 
 scenes of long ago come back to her, and she 
 trembles at half-formed, stifled longings, and 
 half-comprehended, restless repinings, and 
 worse dreads of the future. 
 
 And the daughters — those two handsome 
 girls ! Alas ! bitter tears has she shed over 
 both many years ago ; she never weeps now, 
 except when a few weak drops fall helplessly 
 from her eyes when frightened at her hus- 
 band's oaths or Sarah's determined will. 
 
 She had but one boy, and he died ; and her 
 husband had set his heart upon a boy, and 
 often had he upbraided her with bringing him
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 57 
 
 strong girls, and only one sickly lad, whom 
 she let die. Often has he told her he married 
 her for nothing but that she might give him 
 a son, an heir to the wealth and position he 
 sees his way to winning, and is resolved to 
 have ; often has he said he wishes he had 
 never married her — that those tiresome girls 
 had never seen the light 1 So often, that 
 though he does not do it now so much, the 
 trembling woman feels as if all natural affec- 
 tion were dead and crushed within her. 
 
 For Hester her father has a sort of in- 
 different admiration ; she has the style of 
 feminine beauty and passive submission of 
 character he admires, and she came before his 
 disappointment was confirmed. She was the 
 first-born child of that strange household. 
 
 For Sarah — it would be difiicult to ex- 
 pound the strange mingling of feelings with 
 which she was regarded. He hated her be- 
 cause she was a woman. He had almost for- 
 given his wife for his disappointment. Destiny 
 had thwarted them. But Sarah ! He could 
 never forgive her, for she might have been a 
 boy, and she was only a girl !
 
 58 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Yet he admired her. He could not fail to 
 do so ; her qualities, those he could see and 
 understand, were so congenial to what he 
 most admired in a man ; but then she was 
 not a man ! What business had she with 
 them ? To aggravate him all the more, be- 
 cause she might have been a son, a son so 
 after his own heart, and yet was nothing but 
 a daughter ! — a woman ! A daughter whom, 
 moreover, he even learned to fear in time. 
 She had many of his own qualities, much 
 more strongly developed ; others which he 
 admired while hardly comprehending them, 
 and withal a will more inflexible than his. 
 
 He knew not himself whether he most 
 hated, admired, or felt in awe of that hand- 
 some, determined woman ! Oh ! if she had 
 but been a boy ! 
 
 And so the years wore on, even till now, 
 W'ith the Lockstone familv.
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ^' lliTELL, young sir, and what is your 
 * ^ business with me ?" Mr. Lockstone 
 asked, in the blandest voice he could assume, 
 when Frank Marsden entered his room next 
 morning. He tried to look jocose and sus- 
 picious too, but do what he would, those rest- 
 less eyes of his betrayed uneasiness. 
 
 ^' I will try and not detain you long, sir,'' 
 Frank Marsden answered, very gravely, and 
 then he hesitated. What he wished farther 
 to say was difficult to word, but he caught 
 the expression in the elder man's face, and, 
 after a moment's thought, proceeded at once. 
 *^ It is better to speak openly, sir, I believe, 
 and I will do so. The position I hold in 
 regard to your family authorises me, I think, 
 to say what might otherwise seem presump- 
 tuous and offensive in a younger man, and 
 once your clerk."
 
 60 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 He paused, and after Mr. Lockstone bad 
 made some movement of assent to what he 
 had said, though rather ungraciously, and 
 without speaking, he went on hurriedly — 
 
 " Eeports of a very unpleasant nature are 
 rife in this neighbourhood, sir, in regard to 
 the concern you have had in the Lees' mis- 
 fortunes. I know that in our profession we 
 must often be unjustly aspersed for only doing 
 what that profession requires; still in this case, 
 there seems to be more than this in question, 
 and I should be very glad if you, sir, will 
 enable me to contradict these most disagree- 
 able stories." 
 
 '* Certainly, my dear young friend," re- 
 turned Mr. Lockstone, blandly, though a 
 scowl darkened on his features ; '^ certainly, 
 you have my full authority for stating that all 
 the concern I have had with the Lees' re- 
 verses is strictly business-like — wholly so — 
 very unfortunate ; but it can't be mended 
 now. You are but young, Frank," he added, 
 with an effort after greater cordiality, ** or 
 you would not attach so much importance to 
 such trilling slanders as these."
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 61 
 
 Frank's brow darkened. He hesitat- 
 ed for an instant, and then spoke boldly 
 out — 
 
 ** Pardon me, sir, I would not outstep the 
 limits of my rights or your forbearance here, 
 but it is absolutely necessary that I should be 
 cognisant of the exact position of the affairs 
 regarding Lee Manor, to be able to refute the 
 statements I allude to with any good result. 
 My merely stating it as received from you, 
 would carry no weight, especially connected 
 as I am with your family." 
 
 Mr. Lockstone paused, ere replying, to 
 weigh all the results likely to attend on the line 
 of conduct he might choose in this somewhat 
 difficult dilemma. Where he wished his son-in- 
 law expectant during that brief pause, we will 
 not inquire. In a short time his mind was 
 made up, and constraining his troubled face 
 into a smile, he said, 
 
 ^' I understand. Here are a few papers 
 connected with the matter. Look them over, 
 and you will see it all in a moment. By the 
 way, you know the proverb, ^ An ill wind.' 
 I hope to make such a provision for Hester
 
 G2 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 now as will enable you to become a Benedict 
 as soon as you will." 
 
 Frank made no answer. Perhaps he did 
 not hear. Mr. Lockstone augured differently, 
 from the flush which his keen eye detected 
 deepening on the young man's cheek as he 
 bent over the documents handed to him ; and 
 this by no means tended to lessen the anxiety 
 rising within him. It might be a lover's 
 blush at anticipated happiness, certainly. But 
 it might not. If anything else caused it, the 
 lawyer intuitively felt it must be something un- 
 satisfactory to him. 
 
 Frank turned over the papers long. The 
 flush deepened, and once or twice his eyes 
 were raised to j\Ir. Lockstone, and flashed 
 mingled scorn and indi2:nation on that irentle- 
 man, sufliciently expressive to have made the 
 youth's sentiments known to him at once, had 
 he seen the glance. But he did not. Though 
 watching Frank, warily as a cat a too-lively 
 mouse, when he seemed absorbed in his study, 
 he hastily withdrew the gaze on his slightest 
 movement, and appeared, in his turn, entirely 
 taken up with the letters before him.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 63 
 
 Presently Marsden rose and withdrew into 
 the old-fashioned window, still holding some 
 papers in his hand. But they were already 
 read, at least enough of them to make him 
 sick at heart ; and he now held them only as 
 an excuse for silence, while he pondered on 
 his own course. For half an hour there was 
 a deep silence ; then the young man turned 
 once more into the room, advanced directly 
 opposite Mr. Lockstone, laid down the papers, 
 and with a white face, but firm tone, thus ad- 
 dressed him: 
 
 " Mr. Lockstone, are you utterly resolved 
 to act in the manner pointed out by these 
 memoranda? Is there nothing that will in- 
 fluence you to a — a — " he was going to say 
 ^'juster," but substituted "milder course? A 
 family so identified with the neighbourhood, 
 held in such honour in the county.'^ 
 
 " In days past, young man, days past. 
 They haven't gone with the times latterly, 
 and Mr. Lee's marriage didn't suit some of 
 his haughty neighbours. They've been isolat- 
 ed in a manner for years, since the old man 
 has been breaking too. No, no, we shall
 
 64 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 compass that with a good face, you'll see. 
 I did not leave it out of my reckoning, I as- 
 sure you." 
 
 Frank's face burned with indignation. He 
 could scarcely command himself, as he an- 
 swered sternly, 
 
 '* I did not mean that. I was not thinking 
 of it in your sense — " he paused somewhat 
 abruptly. 
 
 He was still a very young man, and had 
 stood much in awe of the astute lawyer 
 when a boy clerk in his office ; besides, he 
 could not forget he was the father of his boy- 
 hood's companion and idol, his first love ! 
 
 Mr. Lockstone saw his advantage, and in- 
 stantly availed himself of it. 
 
 '^ I don't know what sense you may mean, 
 Frank Marsden ; but having oflPered you 
 every information you desired, more than you 
 had any right to expect, I think you may 
 wait to give your counsel to one three times 
 your age till you are asked for it." 
 
 " I did not intend giving you any counsel, 
 Mr. Lockstone," Frank answered, his high 
 spirit rising \vitliin him; '^ I see with sorrow it
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 65 
 
 would be thrown away if I did. Indeed, I 
 need say no more — we think very differently 
 on this business, and we each know that we 
 do." 
 
 As he spoke, he fixed his clear eyes straight 
 on the lawyer's face ; the latter moved uneasily 
 in his chair, and answered sullenly, 
 
 ** Well, then, the sooner we quit the subject 
 the better, I should say." 
 
 " Yes, but I have one thing more to say 
 before it is dropped for ever between us, if 
 you please, sir. Hester " 
 
 "Ay," said Mr. Lockstone brightening, 
 and thinking within himself, ^ Yes, yes, all 
 the same all the world over. Money, money, 
 can indeed wash out a multitude of sins, 
 even this young one's foolish, romantic notions, 
 which I was rather afraid were a little stub- 
 born.' *^ Well," he added aloud, *' I bear no 
 malice, Frank ! What I said at first I am 
 willing to stand to — Hester's marriage portion 
 shall be ready at once, and a better one than 
 you expect, too — even now." 
 
 Again Frank coloured deeply, and answered 
 hastily, 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 QQ THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 " Mr. Lockstone, when your daughter was 
 promised me you were comparatively a poor 
 man — more equal with myself ; were you 
 then satisfied with the prospects before her as 
 my wife ?" 
 
 ^' Certainly, or I should not have held to 
 the engagement all these years — perfectly — " 
 
 *' I have not gone back in my profession, 
 sir, as I believe you are aware. Of course, I 
 cannot compete with you, but I have already 
 a yearly competence of my own winning, 
 which promises rapidly to increase.'' 
 
 ^' Well ?" said ]\Ir. Lockstone inquiringly, 
 and somewhat wondering where the discourse 
 was tending. 
 
 " I can now offer Hester a home and yearly 
 income, which, though small, it is true, is yet 
 enough for comfort, and more than many 
 people begin life with. Were she portionless 
 would you give her to me now ?" 
 
 Mr. Lockstone hesitated a moment, then 
 answered, 
 
 ^^ Yes, but " 
 
 Frank hastily interrupted him. 
 
 ** Then, sir, will you give her to me por-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 67 
 
 tionless now ? I do not wish to express my 
 feelings on the point farther — but, you under- 
 stand, sir, I must have Hester as poor as she 
 was a year ago — or — not at all.'^ 
 
 The last words came with some effort, and 
 Frank stood almost trembling after he had 
 uttered them. Mr. Lockstone was so utterly 
 surprised and taken aback he could not for 
 some time collect his wits sufficiently to an- 
 swer, At length he said, almost angrily, 
 
 '^ What folly is this, young man ? You 
 expect me to rob my daughter of what be- 
 longs to her, and all for your own silly 
 scruples and romantic nonsense! You your- 
 self would be the first to blame me for it when 
 years have sobered you a little." 
 
 "No, sir, I should not. I know what I 
 am asking, and I know myself well enough, I 
 hope, to be certain that without this money I 
 should be content and happy — with it, miser- 
 able and self-reproaching. But I do not 
 desire to enter on this part of the subject with 
 you again, sir ; only will you let Hester de- 
 cide for herself? She has never yet known 
 the luxury which now apparently awaits her. 
 
 f2
 
 68 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 If she is content to forego it for my sake, and 
 become my wife on a moderate income, will 
 you, sir, confirm her decision — that is all I 
 ask of you. " He spoke eagerly — confidently, 
 and his eyes brightened as he waited impa- 
 tiently for the reply. 
 
 It came at last, unwillingly as it seemed, 
 and very sullenly, but it was not negative. 
 
 " Do as you will. If Hester is as great a 
 fool as yourself, take her and welcome. I 
 wash my hands of the whole concern, only 
 beware, young man,'' he added more quickly, 
 as if forcing himself at last to arouse some 
 sort of angry spirit within, " if she refuses 
 you on these terms, do not in after-life reflect 
 on me as having promised you my daughter 
 in early years, and then drawn back when I 
 became a rich man. She is there, and her 
 fortune too, now. But once rejected, you 
 shall have neither of them with my free will, 
 depend on it." 
 
 " Thank you, sir, I should not ask it ; 
 but," he added after a slight hesitation, "with 
 your permission I will speak to Hester this 
 evening "
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 69 
 
 lie seemed about to add something more, 
 but changed his mind ; and on Mr. Lockstone 
 sullenly answering, '^As you please," bid 
 him good morning, and took leave. 
 
 Mr. Lockstone left alone was a different 
 man from Mr. Lockstone confronting his ex- 
 pupil and son-in-law aspirant. He had be- 
 trayed by no word or look to Frank the real 
 uneasiness, and something more — something 
 nearly akin to shame which this interview 
 had caused him; but once free from that 
 honest, straightforward youth's observation, 
 he gave way at once, and, leaning his hands 
 on the table and his head on them, uttered 
 an ejaculation somewhat akin to a groan. 
 
 But Stephen Lockstone was not the man 
 to yield long to any such weakness, even if 
 betrayed into it for a moment by such a suc- 
 cession of disagreeable truths as he had of 
 late been unwillingly forced to open his eyes 
 to ; so he soon raised his head again, shook 
 himself, muttered an oath or two, and then 
 said half aloud, 
 
 " Confound me for a weak fool ; that boy 
 has contaminated me, I believe, with his
 
 70 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 young idiot fancies ! If Sarah had been here 
 what would she have said ? I am glad she 
 was not. How she would have scorned us I — 
 me most, for not speaking out. She would 
 have done so fearlessly, before the Avhole 
 world. Ah ! if she were but a man I — what 
 she would have been 1" 
 
 And then he paused, and after searching 
 among his papers once more, looked up again 
 impatiently, and rose from his chair, mutter- 
 ing— 
 
 ^^ Pshaw ! — I don't know what's come over 
 me, but nothing seems to go right with me 
 now. I have what I have been toiling for all 
 my life, and now, when it's within my grasp, 
 I dare not take it at once — my own daughter 
 ridicules my weakness ; and then this boy 
 
 comes — d The world seems changed !" 
 
 And hastily seizing his hat, Mr. Lockstone 
 hurried out to make a distant business visit, 
 and so divert his mind, as far as he could, 
 from dwelling on what was highly unpleising 
 to him.
 
 71 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 T^HE evening sun was gilding his brilliant 
 -^ chariot of mountain-like clouds with gold, 
 and throwing sundry soft lingering lines of 
 shaded light upon the cooling earth and wav- 
 ing trees, when Frank Marsden brought his 
 betrothed bride into a pretty winding path- 
 way, shaded by alders and hazels, some four 
 miles out of Merestown. 
 
 The one-horse fly, opened for the occasion 
 with considerable difficulty, and some danger 
 to its internal economy, besides no slight dis- 
 play of skill on Frank's part, had brought the 
 female portion of the Lockstone family hither 
 after tea, with the young man as their 
 escort. Arrived at this point, he had not 
 had much difficulty in persuading Hester to 
 walk into the pretty Spinney with him, while 
 the others proceeded farther on, to visit one
 
 72 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 of the lions of the neighbourhood — a very 
 tame lion it was, much thought of at 
 Merestown, but with which we have nothing 
 to do. 
 
 Leaning on Frank^s arm, certainly all the 
 more lively for the drive, and refreshed by 
 the cool evening breeze, Hester Lockstone, 
 though still somewhat languid, assuredly 
 looked very pretty, if not so surpassingly 
 lovely as she appeared to her lover, and the 
 young man may be forgiven if he felt his 
 heart palpitate strangely, and his cheek pale 
 as the time drew near when the fate he had 
 so long believed decided was once more to 
 be placed in the balance. Which scale 
 would kick the beam in the hands of his fair 
 companion ? 
 
 Had anyone asked Frank if he doubted her 
 decision, her simple-mindedness, her unselfish 
 love for himself, he would have been 
 extremely angry, and indignantly denied it — 
 nay, he might even perhaps have knocked 
 the curious questioner down, if a man, for he 
 was young, and hot-tempered where his love 
 was concerned. Why was it, then, that he
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 73 
 
 felt such a chill at his heart, such a 
 strange, choking sensation in the throat, 
 when he felt the time had come ? Why, 
 too, had he dallied over their walk so 
 long, till he knew he must speak at once, 
 or lose his opportunity, if there was no 
 shadow of fear but that the maiden would 
 return as she came, leaning on his arm, 
 reposing on him as her natural protector ? 
 Why, if he doubted not, did he so lingeringly 
 hold her hand in his own, and press the arm 
 within his to his side, as if it were indeed the 
 last time such privileged companionship and 
 freedom would be his ? 
 
 They came at last to an old gnarled beech, 
 whose roots, twining out of and about the 
 ground in many fantastic shapes, afforded 
 rude but pleasant seats for tired pedestrians. 
 Here Frank paused, and after once looking 
 wistfully in Hester's eyes, which responded to 
 his eager gaze with their usual quiescent 
 glance of unmoved placid tranquillity, led 
 her gently to one of the most convenient of 
 the seats Nature offered them, and threw 
 himself down close by her side.
 
 74 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 It was very pleasant sitting there in the 
 cool shadow of the beech leaves, as they 
 softly rustled ov'erhead in answer to the 
 gentle caresses of the southern wind ; to see 
 the bright network of mingled light and 
 shade lazily dancing at their feet ; to listen 
 to the softly-cooed notes of the ringdoves as 
 they whispered their last fond good nights to 
 each other ; to smell the fir cones and wild 
 thyme which made the air fragrant. Very 
 pleasant, Hester thought it, reclining on 
 her easy seat, with her natural and 
 encouraged taste for the dolce far niente. 
 It exactly suited her, this dreamy repose, 
 where sight, sound, and scent, all came to 
 offer their gratification to the senses without 
 giving them the trouble of seeking them — 
 hardly of receiving them. Very pleasant, 
 Frank thought it also, and none the less that 
 Hester's position enabled him to see to the 
 greatest advantage her fair smooth face and 
 perfect features — to gaze his fill on the form 
 he loved so entirely — the case that contained, 
 as he fondly believed, the priceless jewel of a
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 75 
 
 true woman's heart, wherein he was himself 
 enshrined, its first and only idol. 
 
 But, pleasant or not, the spell must be 
 broken.- Time was fleeting fast, and there 
 was the question of his life's happiness, as he 
 believed, to be decided within the next ten 
 minutes. 
 
 ^' tiester," he at last began in a voice that 
 wavered and trembled sensibly, although the 
 person addressed seemed unaware of it, ^'Hes- 
 ter, I ha,ve something serious to say to you — 
 something that concerns my happiness very 
 nearly, that is, wholly, in fact. Do you 
 remember the day you promised to be my 
 very own, Hester ?" 
 
 He paused, and she raised her blue eyes 
 wonderingly, as was her wont when some- 
 thing out of the common was said to her. 
 They seemed to Frank unusually large and 
 lovely at that moment. He seized her hand 
 passionately, and went on — 
 
 " That is seven years ago, Hester — seven 
 long years ; but it is- nine, ay, more since I 
 loved you, Hester. Truly, as long as was
 
 76 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Jacobus first probation, so long has mine been. 
 You know well how your beauty took my 
 boy's fancy captive almost as soon as I 
 entered your father's house. You know how 
 the fancy ripened — how I learnt to love your- 
 self, till my one dearest hope on earth was to 
 call you wife — you know as well as I do that 
 your father sanctioned our love, and I had 
 only to wait till I could offer you a home 
 worthy of my treasure, to claim you for my- 
 self for ever." 
 
 He stopped, again looking eagerly in her 
 face. A faint gratified smile played on her 
 lips, and her cheek was, perhaps, one shade 
 or so deepened in colour — no more ; the eyes 
 wore the same look as ever, giving no evi- 
 dence of depths within, which had been surely 
 stirred had they existed. He was half dis- 
 appointed, though he would not allow it even 
 to himself, and went on more calmly : 
 
 ^^ That time has come, Hester. I have 
 wherewith to build myself a house and take 
 my chosen household mate ; but I am not 
 rich — I could only offer you such quiet com- 
 fort as has been hitherto your lot — as was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 77 
 
 yours when first I asked you for my wife. I 
 cannot compete with such an establishment as 
 your father will soon surround himself with ; 
 I can only offer you a moderate competence, 
 joined to the tried love of the heart that has 
 been yours for years. Choose, then, between 
 the two." 
 
 Hester had listened with quiet placidity to 
 the commencement of this speech, but the end 
 appeared to trouble her. At any rate, it had 
 the effect of rousing her dormant faculties, 
 and it was with some amount of energy that 
 she replied, 
 
 '^ But, Frank, if my father has grown so 
 much richer, he can make me richer too, and 
 of course he will. He doesn't want to go 
 from his word with you, does he ?" she added 
 almost quickly. 
 
 Frank was enchanted. He believed she was 
 thinking of Ms interests — ready to fight for 
 his right — and was charmed accordingly. 
 
 " No, my own love, no. Do not fear such 
 a thing. He is perfectly willing and eager 
 indeed to do all he ever undertook, and more, 
 but "
 
 78 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Frank, Frank, why hesitate thus to trust 
 this peerless idol — this second self — with your 
 inmost and noblest thoughts? It is not because 
 you must blame her father by implication, if 
 not openly ! You know that before this she 
 has annoyed you a very little — as far as you 
 would allow aught she did to annoy you — by 
 joining passively in her sister's open abuse of 
 some of that father's proceedings. Why, 
 then, hesitate ? Yet you do hesitate, and 
 Hester at last utters, almost impatiently, the 
 word, 
 
 "Well?'^ 
 
 *^ Hester, it is difficult for me to tell you 
 all — some of my feelings as regards this ac- 
 cession of wealth to your father you already 
 know — therefore perhaps you will understand 
 — yes, 1 am sure you will — ^why it would be 
 utterly repugnant to my feelings to accept 
 any increased dowry with you, dearest, which 
 came from such a source. Hester, I could 
 not do it." 
 
 He had added the last words involuntarily, 
 in a sort of resolute despair, as the young 
 girl's expression had at length altered sud-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 79 
 
 denly from its continuous look of languid 
 quiescence to one of surprised, impatient in- 
 quiry. 
 
 " Why not ? I don't understand. Do you 
 know these Lees, then ?" 
 
 "No, 1 have never seen one of them, poor 
 people, to my knowledge." 
 
 ** Then, why should you care about it? 
 What concern is it of yours ?" 
 
 *^ The concern every " — he was going to 
 say '^ every honest man has in condemn- 
 ing injustice;" but he checked himself, and 
 altered his sentence altogether — " In one 
 way, I cannot help its being my concern, 
 Hester — I am sorry to say — connected as I 
 am with your father — but 1 do not wish to 
 enter into its details with you, dear. Be 
 satisfied to know only that your father and I 
 are totally at variance on this matter, and 
 that I have utterly refused to accept now, 
 or at any future time, any moneys whatever 
 coming to you from that source." 
 
 " Do you mean that you will not let me 
 have my own fortune ?" 
 
 " I mean, Hester, that if a larger fortune
 
 80 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 is of greater worth in your eyes than my love, 
 and the inferior home I only can offer you — 
 the dream of my life is over — the " 
 
 *^ Do you really mean you will not take my 
 money ?" 
 
 And Hester absolutely rose from her silvan 
 couch, and leant on her elbow to look at 
 him. 
 
 " Yes ; at least, that I will not take more 
 than what your father could have given you 
 years ago. In short, Hester — doubtless it 
 is a strange choice to lay before you, dear — 
 but / have no choice except to do so — if you 
 will not take me — comparatively poor as we 
 both are — I — I must give you up — rather 
 than act contrary to my conscience." 
 
 The die was cast now, and Frank Marsden 
 who had been hesitating, timid, unlike himself, 
 became once more the firm, strong, honest- 
 hearted youth, waiting anxiously enough, but 
 yet proudly, the decision of the person he loved 
 best in the world. 
 
 ** I think you are very unaccountable, 
 Frank," was the lady's reply after a slight 
 pause, while her pretty arched lip began to
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 81 
 
 pout, '^andvery — very — unkind too. Just as 
 I am going to be comfortable, and have all the 
 luxuries I want, you come and ask me to give 
 them up, and all for a whim !" 
 
 '^ Not for a whim, dear Hester — God forbid ! 
 I would surround you with every luxury and 
 comfort the world can offer, as you must 
 know, my love ; but here it is a case of con- 
 science, Hester — luxury or self-approval — it 
 is not comfort even, Hester, not you — ^not our 
 mutual love — only luxury, the less or more of 
 that bright metal which, after all, precious as 
 it is, cannot give happiness, dear." 
 
 "• I don't know what you may think of it ; 
 but 1 think it is not to be despised at all, I 
 can tell you. I can't think what you mean. I 
 don't understand. I thought it would all be 
 so smooth now." 
 
 ^' My own Hester, you would not understand 
 the business details even if I could tell them 
 you, which it is much better I should not, for 
 all our sakes; but will you not rest on my word 
 — my assurance that there is no middle path 
 for me, dearest — I know I should do wrong if 
 I took the money your father offers me. I 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 must refuse it — yes, if I lose you with it, 
 Hester. But must I lose you ? Is wealth — 
 are all its luxuries so very precious that they 
 must separate those who have loved for years? 
 Hester, it is for you to decide — I will not 
 urge you further by word or look. Your 
 father will give you to me comparatively 
 dowerless, as I have asked for you, if you are 
 willing. Hester — choose. Will you be the 
 rich man's daughter, or the poor man's much- 
 loved wife ?" 
 
 Once more his voice trembled as he uttered 
 the last words ; but he quickly recovered 
 himself,, rose from the ground, and stood 
 before her, proudly and steadily waiting her 
 reply. 
 
 *' I am not fit to be poor, and you know 
 that very well. It is very cruel and unkind 
 
 of you to force me to — to " 
 
 Hester stopped in her pettishly-uttered 
 rejoinder. Even she could not fail to see 
 how unfounded was the charge she was 
 bringing against her noble-minded lover. 
 He flushed crimson as she spoke, and when
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 83 
 
 she paused, said, in a low, constrained, but 
 very gentle voice : 
 
 "I do not force you, Hester — nay, I do 
 not even wish to influence you. I have only 
 put before you two courses, one of which 
 must be followed. Let your own heart and 
 feelings decide for your own happiness. It is 
 all I ask." 
 
 ^^ If you choose to give me up because I 
 have a fortune, I cannot help it. It is not 
 my doing. I cannot be poor — I am not fit 
 for it," — and Hester pouted her pretty lips 
 again, and for once in her life looked flushed 
 and excited. 
 
 There was even a touch of her sister's 
 manner in her way of uttering the first 
 sentence, though she immediately relapsed to 
 her more usual languid tones, joined now to 
 a dash of irritable peevishness. 
 
 Frank once more crimsoned as she spoke, 
 then paled to a deeper white than her dress. 
 He stood silent for an instant, then, in a 
 voice whose depth would have betrayed to 
 some the acuteness of the stifled emotion 
 
 q2
 
 84 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 within, but which Hester noticed only for its 
 unusual hoarseness, he asked, slowly — 
 
 " This, then, is your final choice ? — you 
 will not be ray wife without that money I 
 cannot, with a clear conscience, take ? 
 Hester, is it so ?" 
 
 Something, either in his voice or look, or 
 some thought within herself — she knew not 
 what — abashed her as the last words struck 
 upon her ear. She, too, coloured, but it was 
 only with increased peevishness that she 
 replied : 
 
 " It isn't my doing — what do you put it 
 upon me for ? It is not fair. I did not 
 want to go back from my word, but I cannot 
 be poor. It is you who are so tiresome and 
 silly in teazing me about your own non- 
 sense." 
 
 ** Farewell, then, Hester. God bless you, 
 and may you be as happy in your own path 
 as it would have been my heart's desire to 
 have made you, had you gone with" me in 
 mine." 
 
 Solemnly he spoke, and his face seemed to 
 have grown so stern in those last few minutes,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 85 
 
 it almost frightened her. He took her hand, 
 pressed it to his lips once, then wringing it 
 with a pressure that absolutely hurt her, he 
 dropped, almost threw it from him, and in a 
 moment would have been out of sight, so 
 rapid were his strides, but that a sudden 
 thought impelled her to recall him. 
 
 Frank heard his name repeated in the 
 well-known tones to which his foolish boy- 
 heart had leapt for so many years ; it again 
 bounded within him as he responded to the 
 call, and stood, in three hasty strides, once 
 more by her side. 
 
 " You have left me here without ever 
 thinking how I was to get home. You might 
 have taken me back to the fly before you 
 went away, I should think.'' 
 
 Hester Lockstone, you have done Frank 
 Marsden greater service during the minute it 
 took you to utter these words than you have 
 ever done him before, or ever would do him, 
 probably even in a long lifetime. True, they 
 pierce into his sore heart like a two-edged 
 broken knife, but, nevertheless, they are like 
 the stroke of a skilful surgeon, which saves
 
 86 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 from prolonged torture by acute present 
 pain. 
 
 He smiled. Very bitter was his smile, but 
 he bowed also, and very courteous was the 
 bow — more so, Hester thought, than any she 
 had ever seen him give. He patiently 
 attended on her slow progress to the road, 
 passively waited till the return of the fly, 
 then handed all the ladies in ; formally J 
 answered Sarah's sarcastic question regarding 
 his own movements, when she saw he was not 
 going with them, by stating his intention of 
 walking back by the fields, bade them all a 
 very polite good evening, and sauntered 
 leisurely on, while the fly was still in sight. 
 Once lost to view, and a startled deer would 
 scarcely more than rival the speed with which 
 the young man commenced his return home- 
 wards. 
 
 Poor Frank ! It was a bitter lesson he 
 had had — a very sudden and grievous loss he 
 had sustained. Not only had he learnt his 
 idol was very clay, but worse ; he had not 
 only lost his first love — his affianced bride — 
 but he had lost her from his heart, his me-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 87 
 
 mory ; the creation he imagined was his own, 
 was not — had never been. 
 
 What a tide of mingled feelings, all more or 
 less painful, goad the poor lad on, trying to 
 lose in violent physical exertion that sense of 
 mental torture which seems so overwhelming. 
 He is not thankful for the dispelling of his 
 blindness now — feels he would rather have 
 gone stumbling on in the pleasant ways of 
 such darkness. But cheer up, Frank ! You will 
 recognise the blessing of sight some day if 
 you can fight manfully with your present 
 misery now, and perhaps rejoice in the pain- 
 ful operation that made it so sure and safe, 
 bitter as the trial now seems. 
 
 He cannot rest in Merestown when he gets 
 there ; and so, within an hour or two of that 
 farewell scene in Linwood Spinney, Frank 
 Marsden is galloping ofi" to the nearest cross- 
 road to meet the London coach, which will 
 carry him back to daily work and the heat of 
 business, and, as he hopes, forgetfulness. 
 
 And Hester ! Does she repent as she 
 realizes the fact, now made known by her 
 father to the rest of the family, that Frank
 
 88 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Marsden is lost to her for ever ? — that she is 
 once more a disengaged young lady ? No. 
 At first she missed him in his bodily presence 
 and in his letters and presents, and she was 
 more peevish and complaining in consequence. 
 But new interests arose. Lovers were not 
 wanting — had not been before to pretty- 
 faced Hester Lockstone — were still less likely 
 to be so to Miss Lockstone of the Manor, 
 as she complacently reflected ; and, after all, 
 Frank was not half so pleasant as when he 
 was a boy. He had such odd notions, too, 
 and had startled her so while he was down 
 this last time. She dared to say they should 
 not have suited at all well together, though 
 she had so liked him once ; and Mr. Geld- 
 finder was almost as good-looking, and a great 
 deal more considerate of all her feelings ! 
 So argued the i\Ierestown beauty — and so was 
 finally severed the link Love was supposed 
 to have forged between Hester Lockstone and 
 Frank Marsden !
 
 89 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 ^FHE little square house in Newman's Build- 
 -■- ings was not so strange to its inhabitants 
 now. Three months, ay, more than three 
 had passed away, and though Mrs. Lee and 
 Mabel still felt it would always be impossible 
 to call it home, yet they had begun to be 
 familiar with its general aspect — accustomed 
 to the size and height of the rooms, and to 
 feel, in a limited sense, though this was almost 
 unknown to themselves, that it was there in 
 very truth their Penates did now abide. 
 
 One dull December day Mabel sat alone 
 by the solitary window of their sitting-room, 
 gazing abstractedly forth on the mono- 
 tonous, wearisome scene without, namely, a 
 dusty road ; alive at certain hours of the 
 day, it is true, either with butchers' carts 
 and bakers' boys, or with half-gentlemanly,
 
 90 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 half- doubtful individuals returning from their 
 day's business in town, but still very dull 
 upon the whole, and excellently adapted for 
 promoting that much dreaded, almost incur- 
 able disease yclept the blues — now looking 
 half fondly at the flower-glass before her, not 
 empty even now, midwinter as it is, for there 
 blooms as fresh and sweet a nosegay as 
 December can produce, which, if not so 
 costly as one gathered in the conservatories 
 of Lee Manor might have been, was yet very 
 precious in Mabel's eyes — more precious, per- 
 chance, even than one from them w^ould have 
 been, since this gave constant pleasant proof 
 of the staunch adherence, at least, of one friend 
 to the Lees, even in their present low estate. 
 They came from the old Eectory garden, 
 just without the Manor House lodge-gates, 
 and never a w^eek passed without one at least, 
 generally two, such reminders from the good 
 old couple who dw^lt therein — the rector, 
 who had seen more than fifty winters hang 
 their icy pendants from the trees and roofs of 
 their parish, and his grey-haired wife, who 
 had dwelt with him among the people for
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 91 
 
 about as long. Both too infirm now for 
 much distant visiting, especially in winter, or 
 be sure those flowers would have been much 
 oftener brought than sent. 
 
 Mabel was thinking this, and sighing over 
 the fact of her father's enforced separation 
 from his old associate, vainly wishing, as 
 human beings will do, the impossibilities, 
 which, if compassed, would in the very act 
 annihilate the motives originating the wish, 
 when she saw their one other true friend, Dr. 
 Armsdaile, walking briskly up the path. 
 
 He had been there once before that day, 
 but only to see his old friend and patient 
 started with his wife for an airing in his 
 brougham, the good doctor' himself stating 
 it as a necsssity that both his horse and him- 
 self must have exercise, which this arrange- 
 ment would give both without inconvenience 
 to either, thus doing away all Mrs. Lee's and 
 Mabel's scruples on the score of using what 
 he must need himself. 
 
 He had been a short round on foot since 
 seeing them safely off, and now returned for 
 the purpose of a private and confidential chat
 
 92 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 with Mabel, whom he found, as he expected 
 and intended, alone. 
 
 '' Well, little lady," he exclaimed, his 
 name for her ever since she could toddle 
 round a room alone, " so here you are in 
 solitary grandeur, eh ? ^ Monarch of all you 
 survey ' in any case, child, whether that be 
 great or small ; so cheer up, little lady, I must 
 not have you grow one whit paler or thinner, 
 there's not a bit to spare of you, and I can't 
 and won't change my comparative ! Least lady 
 does not suit my ^ most musical ear ' at all, 
 though, sooth to say, it would assuredly be 
 * most melancholy ' !" 
 
 Mabel looked up, gratefully smiling at the 
 beginning of this address, and finally laughed 
 outright at its conclusion. The doctor's serio- 
 comic expression, both of face and tone, joined 
 to his absurdly mixed quotations, was irresisti- 
 ble. 
 
 ** I don't think I am thin, doctor, and you 
 know I was never famous for very rosy cheeks. 
 Edward got all my share in that way, I be- 
 lieve. Look at the picture he had done for 
 mamma, in town. It ought to have come
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 93 
 
 long ago, but we only had it yesterday." 
 
 And she opened a little case on the table, 
 and displayed the bright happy features of a 
 healthy, hopeful lad just verging into man- 
 hood. 
 
 Tears rose to the sister's eyes as she gazed 
 on it, and even Dr. Armsdaile blew his nose 
 somewhat louder than ordinary, after studying 
 the familiar features for a few minutes. Heir, 
 a worthy heir, too, of the long and noble 
 race of Lee, yet an exile from his country, 
 self-banished from his home, in the vain hope 
 of redeeming the patrimony of which he was 
 already robbed ! 
 
 ^^ Confound that entail business !" muttered 
 the doctor under his breath. 
 
 And then to conceal the emotion roused 
 within ; he spoke once more abruptly, and 
 almost roughly, to his gentle companion. 
 
 " Yes ! yes, very well done. Very like him, 
 too ; but I did not come here to waste time 
 over that, Mistress Mabel, but to have a 
 little rational talk with you. How are you 
 getting on ?" 
 
 Mabel knew the doctor well, so she shut
 
 94 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 up the case, with one lingering look and sigh, 
 dried her eyes, and sitting down on the sofa 
 by her old friend's side, prepared to answer 
 the catechism she foresaw impending, as she 
 knew he liked to be answered. 
 
 *^ Better, much better than we dared hope. 
 He appears quite used to this place now, and 
 if anything is going on in the road, it seems 
 even to amuse him." 
 
 ^* I told you so, my frightened fawn. Not 
 fidgety or restless at all ?" 
 
 " Oh ! yes, sometimes — but very seldom, 
 considering ; and he is quite used to one room 
 and Dorothy now." 
 
 ^' Ah ! no complaints ?" 
 
 ii Yery few. The old restlessness, when the 
 time came for his usual drive or ride, is nearly 
 gone off. The only times at all bad are 
 dressing and undressing. He is very fidgety 
 then, and seems to miss Richard terribly." 
 
 " Ever ask for him by name ?" 
 
 '' Not often ; but he has done so. He can- 
 not bear mamma or I should do anything 
 for him, and yet to have Dorothy in makes it
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 95 
 
 " Of course. Don't attempt that. Let him 
 do all he can for himself — as much as possi- 
 ble. Ah ! it's a cruel thing at his time of 
 life. Teach your boys to be their own valets 
 in time of need, if they are to be as rich as 
 Croesus !'' 
 
 Til is was not exactly intended for Mabel's 
 future guidance in respect to her possible 
 sons, but an aphorism enunciated for the 
 public benefit of all and sundry to whom it 
 might chance to apply. 
 
 ^' He does almost everything for him- 
 self now, and I think, when he does not think 
 about its being strange, the effort amuses and 
 occupies him." 
 
 '^ Right, like my little lady's wisdom ! Ah ! 
 we shall do very well — better than I expected 
 even. We have come triumphantly out of 
 the worst slough, and now we shall go on 
 capitally — capitally, no doubt !" 
 
 But the energetic tone in which the poor 
 doctor reiterated that word was somewhat 
 belied by the deep sigh heralding its utter- 
 ance. The picture of that blank future, so 
 triumphantly anticipated in words, was too
 
 96 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 much for him, as it spread out before his fancy, 
 poverty-stricken, saddened by separation, de- 
 privation ! 
 
 Mabel's eyes grew moist again, too, in 
 spite of her, as she said sadly, 
 
 " There is only one thing I very much 
 
 dread now, Mr. , that — that man's visits. 
 
 They " 
 
 '^ Man's visits! — what man? That — 
 you don't mean to say that d d scoun- 
 drel, begging your pardon, Mabel ? I can't 
 help it — you don't mean that he dares 
 intrude himself on your father now? — that 
 very devil in man's guise, Stephen Lock- 
 stone !" 
 
 " Indeed he does ; and my father is always 
 so upset by his visits that I dread them more 
 than anything. It was bad enough when we 
 were at home when he came, but here it is a 
 thousand times worse. They seem to rouse 
 up all the old feelings and associations in my 
 father's mind, besides being so evidently 
 frightening to him in themselves." 
 
 "Frightening! He doesn't dare threaten 
 more mischief, does he ? Indeed, there is 
 
 J
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 97 
 
 none that he can do, that I know of. He has 
 taken good care to do his worst." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! He makes his visits on 
 some plea of business, though I don't know 
 what it can be, and he is very civil always." 
 
 " Damn him !" muttered the doctor under 
 his breath, but very heartily, and then con- 
 tinued aloud, " Why don't you refuse him ad- 
 mittance, Mabel ? — he can have no right 
 here." 
 
 ^' I did think of it, but mamma and I both 
 feared doing more mischief. You see, he still 
 holds the place of my father's man of business, 
 and it seems hardly possible to deny his en- 
 trance. If anything farther wrong arose, it 
 might be said that was the reason." 
 
 " Man of business ! — pshaw ! it is perfectly 
 ridiculous. The man who holds the estate man 
 of business to the one who has lost it ! Absurd 
 anomaly on the face of it! However, I am afraid 
 you are right— better not quarrel with the 
 brute in your peculiar circumstances. Whew ! 
 I only wish I was a lawyer." 
 
 And Dr. Armsdaile, much discomposed, 
 began pacing up and down the little square 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 room, very much like a lion freshly caged at 
 the Zoological Gardens. Presently Mabel 
 said, 
 
 *^ He used to see my father alone at the 
 Manor, but I have been afraid to leave them 
 together, and always stay in the room. He 
 has never asked me to go, though I think he 
 often wishes me away. I fancy my presence 
 keeps my father quieter." 
 
 '' Quite right again, my dear. Don't on 
 any account let him have my poor friend all 
 to himself. But this annoyance must be 
 stopped, Mabel — indeed it must ; and, besides, 
 there are other things should be seen into and 
 settled. I wonder what the fellow wants 
 now ? — there's something about this business 
 I never could understand. Ah !" and the 
 doctor stopped, or, at any rate, did not con- 
 tinue his musings aloud. He did not care to 
 speak of the weakness of the father before the 
 loving, venerating daugliter, especially now 
 that that father w^as so afflicted. Perhaps, after 
 all, it had been natural physical infirmity, un- 
 developed as yet to its full extent, which had 
 originated the extreme weakness of character 
 
 r
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 99 
 
 displayed in some acts of poor old Mr. Lee's 
 life. It might be so. At any rate, he could 
 not speak to Mabel as he would have done 
 had she not been the daughter of his patient. 
 He looked at her instead, and presently his 
 thoughts reverted to the old strain, and he 
 again repeated, 
 
 " It must be stopped !" 
 
 Mabel did not answer, but her wistful eyes 
 told how eagerly she desired that it might, 
 and how gladly she would use any means 
 pointed out for the purpose. The doctor still 
 looked at her, but did not speak till he had 
 taken another turn or two through the room ; 
 then he came back, and sat down by her 
 again, asking, as he did so : 
 
 '' Does your brother know the worst ?" 
 
 Mabel coloured. 
 
 ^^ No — not yet. Oh ! doctor, it would be 
 so hard just as — so full of hope and eager- 
 ness — he is thinking he is sure to succeed 
 — to be told it is all in vain. It would be 
 too cruel !" 
 
 " It would not be cruel, but the kindest 
 thing, as his sensible little sister would allow, 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 if she could judge of it dispassionately. 
 Mabel, he must be told. It is right — abso- 
 lutely necessary, indeed. Besides, do you 
 believe my experience, little lady? — The blow 
 will be sharp enough, I don't deny, but it 
 will fall less heavily now, in the first excite- 
 ment and novelty of his new life and exer- 
 tions, than when they have become a weary 
 life work, and this false hope of redeeming 
 the old Manor the one bright vision which 
 alone gilds and lightens them. Mabel, you 
 must write at once." 
 
 Again Mabel's colour came and went, and 
 she faltered — 
 
 " But, besides my brother, my uncle, 
 mamma " 
 
 *' I know — I know all about it ; but never 
 mind that — mamma won't, when she finds 
 how much good conquering that — well, that 
 little bit of feminine feeling will do, as I feel 
 convinced it will. Have no more secrets 
 from your uncle, Mabel. I don't know him 
 myself, but from all I have heard — yes, I 
 mean it — and being your mother's own 
 brother, he cannot fail to be worth trusting,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 101 
 
 in spite of any old prejudices and delusions 
 he may see fit to cling to. Has he not 
 received your brother with open arms ?" 
 
 *^ Of course," and Mabel's little figure 
 dilated with something of family as well as 
 sisterly pride as she spoke the word, and 
 looked very expressively, too, as if she would 
 have added, *^ Who could help doing so ? A 
 Lee, and such a Lee, to seek a trading uncle 
 out in America ! Was it not an honour to be 
 so sought, even if the Lee did chance to come 
 well-nigh penniless to seek his fortune with 
 that uncle's help." 
 
 Dr. Armsdaile laughed as he watched his 
 gentle favourite, albeit in no merry mood. 
 
 *^ Ah ! Mistress Mabel Lee, you would 
 make a good fellow-picture now to that one 
 in the old gallery yonder of your kinswoman 
 and namesake, some time maid of honour to 
 poor Henrietta Maria, and afterwards the 
 haughty reprover of her fugitive son's mis- 
 timed gallantry. I wish Uncle Charlton 
 could see you now, Mabel. He could not 
 quarrel with you, I think, for being so true 
 a Lee, looking as you do now, though I
 
 102 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 believe he made Edward doubly welcome 
 because he was so like your mother." 
 
 Dr. Armsdaile said the last words slowly. 
 He meant them to have due effect on his 
 listener, and so they had. The soft flush 
 mounted again into the fair cheek, and the 
 head bowed down a little, as she said, after a 
 little struggle with herself : 
 
 " I will write, if you think I ought." 
 "I do think so, Mabel, and that 
 without delay. You are left here with no 
 natural guardian. Your poor father's state 
 renders him unfit to be troubled with 
 business details, and yet we cannot safely 
 refuse to let this man see him, unless some- 
 thing can be definitely settled by those who 
 can properly represent your father. That 
 were reason enough, but there are others 
 which imperatively demand your letting your 
 brother know, without delay, the extreme 
 step taken by this man. Indeed, he should 
 have been written to at once," and Dr. Arms- 
 daile once more began his march up and 
 down the room, with a vexed mind and a 
 troubled brow.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 103 
 
 Mabel did not speak. She had undertaken 
 a most distasteful task, and was meditating 
 how best to perform it. To tell the darling 
 brother of the hopelessness of his most 
 cherished schemes ! — prove that the unknown 
 uncle's prognostics of ruin following sooner 
 or later on such weak yieldings and helpless 
 submissions as her father's had been only 
 too true ! — it was a bitter task. She knew 
 nothing of her uncle beyond his annoyance at 
 his sister's marriage without the necessary 
 business forms he would have considered the 
 first essentials in such a step, and the scarcely- 
 veiled contempt he had expressed as to some 
 of her father's later proceedings in regard to 
 his embarrassments ; and she reverenced — 
 adored that father. No marvel she shrank 
 from the work before her. 
 
 And so each continued the train of their 
 reflections, till roused to the consciousness of the 
 present, and the necessity of shaking off all 
 outward signs, at least, of gloom and sorrow, 
 by the return of the old lord of Lee Manor 
 and his wife.
 
 104 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BERNARD LEE had been an only child, 
 and his mother dying when he was a 
 mere infant, he had been left entirely to the 
 guardianship of a proud and somwhat passion- 
 ate father, with no gentle, refined feminine 
 influence to counterbalance any mischievous 
 bias given to his character by such ungenial 
 wardenship. 
 
 His father was wedded to old customs, old 
 times, old exclusiveness, but there was much 
 sterling worth of character and honesty, if 
 not warmth of heart, beneath the formal cold 
 exterior which distinguished his ordinary 
 demeanour. The one master-passion of his 
 existence, however, was the pride of family 
 descent. In the proud consciousness of the 
 antiquity of the Lee race, their pure patrician 
 blood, the centuries wherein the Manor had
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 105 
 
 uninterruptedly descended from father to son 
 in their family, he lived, moved, breathed. 
 An unsuitable alliance — a tarnish of any sort 
 on the name of Lee — would have been worse 
 than death ! 
 
 Bernard's disposition scarcely fitted him 
 for a congenial son to such a father. True, 
 he passionately loved his home, and had in- 
 herited to a certain extent the family pride in 
 it and their name, which was as the very 
 breath of existence to his father ; but he was 
 of a lighter, more jovial temper, quite sub- 
 scribed to Solomon's maxim, that ^' much 
 study, " or much thought even, is ^^a weariness 
 to the flesh," and could often find great pas- 
 time, nay, real enjoyment, in company and 
 occupation by no means suited to his father's 
 taste, and which that father considered it 
 almost a degradation to share in. So, in 
 process of years, it happened that, after Ber- 
 nard's residence from home to finish his edu- 
 cation, and his consequent mixing with much 
 and various society, a circumstance neither 
 new nor uncommon came to pass — a certain 
 distance and estrangement grew up between
 
 106 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 these two, the cold, proud, yet fond father — 
 the young joy-loving, yet affectionate son. 
 The one lived all alone and stately in his old 
 Manor House, thinking harder thoughts daily 
 of his absent son — the other wandered here 
 and there, enjoying the many pleasures life 
 offered him, sometimes thinking little of his 
 father, it must be confessed, or of the old name 
 and home, but always fondly and kindly when 
 he did remember them, and now and again 
 with a half sigh, an earnest wish he could 
 get on better wdth that father. He would 
 have done it if he could, he thought, but 
 Nature had denied him the perception of the 
 way; and, alas! there was no loving, honoured 
 wife and mother to guide the boy's conduct, 
 or soothe the chafed spirit of the father. 
 
 So years passed on, and matters between 
 Bernard and his father did not mend. He 
 had wished his son to marry a daughter 
 of one of the neighbouring county families, 
 as highborn as themselves, and titled to boot, 
 but the stately and not very young lady was 
 not to the youth's taste, and the match never 
 took place. Then Bernard was as open-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET; 107 
 
 handed as he was open-hearted, and spent 
 more money than his father, alheit no niggard, 
 thought at all necessary for the maintenance 
 of even his son. A remittance was refused ; 
 the young man's spirit was roused — he applied 
 to his father no more, but in an evil hour 
 took to raising money, as many of his friends 
 were wont to do, but as he had never done 
 before. 
 
 So things progressed, and the heir of all 
 the Lee honours was no longer a young man, 
 and still unmarried, to his father's chagrin, 
 when chance threw him in somewhat close 
 companionship with a young and very pretty 
 woman. Agnes Charlton was an orphan, and 
 residing with well-born though distant rela- 
 tives ; but her father had been a London 
 merchant, and not a very rich one — her 
 brother was at that moment an American 
 trader, as Mr. Lee, senior, would have called 
 him. Was this a fitting match ? — a girl so 
 connected the suitable mate for Bernard 
 Lee? 
 
 His father, now an old man, was hor- 
 ror-stricken at the notion, and absolutely and
 
 108 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 unconditionjilly refused his consent, saying 
 some hard things, too, of the unknown, un- 
 seen innamorata of his son, which stung that 
 personage to the quick. He felt his father 
 Avas unjust, unkind, exacting more than human 
 nature could endure. What if Agnes' father 
 had been a merchant — he was a respectable 
 man, ay, and a well-born one too, very nearly 
 equal to the Lees in good descent, if it came 
 to that, though his family had fallen in the 
 world ! So he brooded over the matter in pas- 
 sionate anger and disappointment for a while, 
 and then — rebelled ! His father vowed he 
 would never see his face again, or suffer him 
 to cross the threshold of the Manor House in 
 his lifetime ! 
 
 The son repented and sorrowed ; the 
 young wife, who had not been told the state 
 of the case before her marriage, pined and 
 wept, and bitterly reproached herself, inno- 
 cent though she was; and Bernard began 
 to fear for her safety, and for the life of 
 another little being who was expected in the 
 future, to bless their little household with the 
 purity of its young spirit. He humbled
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 109 
 
 himself to his father as he had never done 
 before — explained, entreated, urged. For 
 awhile no answer was vouchsafed. At last 
 one came; the boon he asked should be 
 accorded, but on certain conditions — and 
 what conditions ? — that he joined instantly 
 with his father in cutting off the entail. He 
 would have indignantly and at once refused, 
 but for his wife's earnest entreaties. 
 
 " What did it matter ? They could not 
 hope for happiness while under such a ban 
 as a father's curse ; only let that be removed 
 ere the birth of their own child. What 
 matter, once free from that, how poor they 
 were ? — She did not care ; she would not 
 care, so long as Bernard was with her, and 
 free from that dreadful malediction." 
 
 So he yielded, though his heart sunk 
 within him as he looked at her earnest, lovely 
 face — thought of the beautiful home he had 
 hoped to give her, and of the probability that 
 it was exactly to avoid such a disgrace as the 
 old Manor's ever descending to any child of 
 hers, which had induced his father to relent on 
 such terms as those to which he had acceded.
 
 110 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 The yoiinf^ couple were .then on the 
 Continent, Bernard's means at this time 
 making a cheap residence very desirable, if 
 not necessary, and he had to hasten to Eng- 
 land with what speed he could, to comply 
 with his father's wishes before it might, 
 perhaps, be too late. Stephen Lockstone 
 was then, as now, the agent and man of 
 business for the Lee Manor estate. How 
 much he had to do with the singular resolu- 
 tion of the elder Mr. Lee — if he had any- 
 thing to do with it — rested between him and 
 his conscience. Bernard never suspected that 
 he had, on the contrary, habitually applied 
 to him for advice, and even assistance, in all 
 his own difficulties. The entail w^as cut off, 
 the son forgiven, though with but a bad 
 grace, and he had the satisfaction of reflect- 
 ing that his own act had enabled his father 
 to rob his own children — nay, himself, of 
 their rightful inheritance, should such be that 
 father's pleasure. 
 
 A succession of painful events, however, 
 hurried fast on each other after this, and had 
 Mr. Lee formed any such resolve, it subse-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. Ill 
 
 quently appeared lie had either not the incli- 
 nation or the leisure to carry it, out. 
 
 Bernard was hurried off again by the news 
 of the premature confinement and dangerous 
 illness of his young wife, whose infant had 
 died ; and when she recovered, he was himself 
 seized with brain fever, the result of all the 
 mental excitement and agitation he had of 
 late undergone, and for awhile his life was 
 despaired of. Natural affection in the old 
 father's mind now, for the first time, super- 
 seded every other feeling. He hastened to 
 his son with a speed the effects of which 
 shortened his own life, made acquaintance 
 with his obnoxious but fair daughter-in-law, 
 and discovered, all too late, that she was not 
 unworthy to be the mistress of Lee Manor 
 — the mother of a future generation of 
 Lees. 
 
 The old man returned home softened, 
 altered, troubled in mind, and before Bernard 
 and his family, travelling homewards also, 
 but more slowly, had touched the soil of their 
 native land, he lay at the point of death. 
 An express brought his son to his side ere he
 
 112 THE CyVBINET SECRET. 
 
 breathed his last, but hardly in time to hear 
 more from his, father than his dying blessing 
 on him and his ; and Bernard had scarcely 
 time to realise his loss and gain — for Lee 
 Manor was his, no will in favour of the dis- 
 tant cousin having been made — before he was 
 again prostrated with a worse attack than 
 before of his old complaint. 
 
 He recovered at last, but very slowly, and 
 Dr. Armsdaile's private opinion, though he 
 never uttered it to either wife or daughter, 
 was that Mr. Lee was never the same man 
 after that last attack, either physically or 
 mentally ; and, indeed, even his fond wife 
 could not diguise from herself that his memory 
 had failed sadly, and that occasionally he was 
 weak as a child in some matters, for many 
 weary months, though she did fondly flatter 
 herself that these symptoms gradually wore 
 off. Mr. Stephen Lockstone, meanwhile, was 
 in his element ; undisputedly he reigned over 
 the whole estate, arranged all Mr. Lee's 
 affairs, and negotiated with the harpy credi- 
 tors, whom, in an evil hour, years ago, Ber- 
 nard had dealt with for ready money and
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 113 
 
 present ease, at a heavy cost for the future. 
 All this Stephen Lockstone did. With what 
 result time had now made only too evi- 
 dent ! 
 
 Owing to the painful circumstances under 
 which Lee Manor welcomed its new owner 
 and his wife, none of the neighbouring gentry 
 made immediate calls on them ; and subse- 
 quently rumour gave out such strange versions 
 of the truth (whence emanating no one could 
 discover — Stephen Lockstone might know), 
 both as regarded Mrs. Lee's maiden connex- 
 ions, the marriage, the family disunion, and 
 the cutting off the entail, that people were 
 shy of making many advances to intimacy 
 with them. This roused the passionate, almost 
 unreasoning resentment of Mr. Lee, who 
 haughtily drew back from any thing but the most 
 distant and formal exchange of civilities, when, 
 in process of time, a few calls were made ; and 
 this, together with his own increasing weak- 
 ness of intellect, had reduced their inter- 
 course with the county families generally to 
 something so slight, that the young Lees hardly 
 knew one of them by name. 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 However, for several years things within 
 the Manor House appeared to go on most 
 quietly and pleasantly ; Mr. Lee^s health im- 
 proved, and although his former buoyant 
 spirits were replaced by an almost indolent 
 quietness, yet he seemed thoroughly to enjoy 
 all the home-pursuits and amusements of a 
 country gentleman, pursued in a quiet, lazy 
 way, and he, his wife, and children were com- 
 pletely happy. 
 
 But there was a dark cloud looming over- 
 head, though to their happy minds, the wife 
 and children unsuspicious and ignorant, the 
 husband and father supine and trusting, it 
 was entirely invisible ; yet day by day, and 
 month, by month it grew and darkened, fast 
 and fearfully. 
 
 At last the time arrived when, in Stephen 
 Lockstone's opinion, the shadow of that dis- 
 mally black thunder chariot should be partially 
 displayed before the terrified gaze of the Lord 
 of the Manor House ; and Bernard Lee learnt 
 that his estate, the home of his forefathers, 
 the birthplace of himself, his son — the place 
 had grown dearer and more precious every
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 115 
 
 year of his later life, till he had come to re- 
 gard it almost as sacredly as had his father — 
 was heavily mortgaged, hopelessly entangled ; 
 that Edward's birthright was indeed alienated 
 now, and not by his grandfather's quickly re- 
 pented deed, but by his own father's negligent 
 supineness. 
 
 Bitter was the knowledge to the shaken 
 mind of the already aged Bernard Lee. He 
 was stung to the quick, and struggled for a 
 while manfully but uselessly — hopelessly. The 
 new-born energy and wonderful acuteness 
 which, with extreme effort, he brought to bear 
 on his personal inquiry into the state of his 
 affairs, were begot by efforts too great to be 
 persevered in for a long continuance, and at 
 terrible risk to his enfeebled intellect. The 
 accounts were very complicated — Mr. Lock- 
 stone himself seemed hopeless, desponding ; 
 and when, in utter despair, the poor father 
 hinted at renewing the entail, the lawyer most 
 reluctantly, as it appeared, rather mysteriously, 
 and yet all too plainly, conveyed to the un- 
 happy man that this was a step impossible to 
 be taken — the creditors would interfere, and 
 
 l2
 
 116 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 successfully, he feared. It was too late ! 
 
 This was the last drop in the unfortunate 
 father's brimming cup of sorrow and self-re- 
 proach. His mind nearly gave way under that 
 shock, and a discovery suddenly made com- 
 pleted the mischief. Though not absolutely 
 imbecile, he became so nearly so, that Mr. 
 Lockstone was alarmed lest higher authority 
 should step in and take the matter up. For 
 awhile all further proceedings were arrested, 
 and in time Mr. Lee became better ; really 
 less capable than before of entering into busi- 
 ness, it is true, but safer from the charge of 
 incapacity, since there was no one sufficiently 
 interested to bring it against him ; as, so long 
 as he was not top ostensibly incompetent, 
 there was little danger of the fond hearts 
 round him interfering in business, in any way 
 that could prove him worse than he really 
 was. 
 
 It was necessary, however, that the facts of 
 the charges on the estate should become known 
 to those other innocent dwellers in the old 
 Manor House. Gradually, therefore, the truth, 
 or something like the truth, was unfolded.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 117 
 
 Carefully, judiciously was it done, Stephen 
 Lockstone ! and for awhile no distrust, no dis- 
 like or dread of you, arose in those simple 
 hearts. All went on instead as you could 
 have most desired, but least expected, in one 
 instance at least; for Edward, instead of return- 
 ing to Oxford, where he had just kept one 
 term, resolved, nobly and promptly, to seek 
 out his trading uncle in America, and try to be 
 as fortunate in winning money as report said the 
 latter had been. The women tried to retrench as 
 much as in their small knowledge of the reality 
 of poverty they believed possible ; and so some 
 few more months went by, and then the stroke 
 came which brought about the changes de- 
 tailed in a former chapter, and Stephen Lock- 
 stone was nolongerso implicitly reposed in, even 
 by the two helpless, innocent women left be- 
 hind by the young son and brother, under his 
 care, to guard their helpless broken father. 
 
 Not many days after Mr. Armsdaile's visit, 
 one of Mr. Lockstone's, those so much dreaded 
 by Mabel, occurred. She was sitting at her 
 father's feet, chatting and laughing with him, 
 almost as she would have done to a child,
 
 118 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 when the click of their little front gate made 
 her look up, and she saw the one person on 
 earth whom she had well-nigh learnt to hate, 
 gentle as was her nature, coming up the path. 
 
 Her first impulse was to bid Deborah deny 
 them to him, but she checked it. To what 
 end, since it would but defer the evil day. 
 If denied now, he would come back within the 
 week, as experience had taught her. No; 
 let him come now, and it would be over. Her 
 father was tolerable to-day — better fitted to 
 see him, and her mother was out. Gone mar- 
 keting! It was lucky for the lady of Lee 
 Manor, as well as for her reduced household, 
 that early acquaintance with the straits of 
 a limited income prevented this being such 
 an utter impossibility to Iter as it would have 
 been to most others fallen from her position in 
 the world. 
 
 Stephen Lockstone's was not, had never 
 been a firm manly tread, such a one as seems 
 to bear witness to the hearty honest purpose 
 of him who uses it, and his resolve to fulfil 
 that purpose to the best of his ability. No, 
 it was a doubtful, hesitating step, ever advanc-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 119 
 
 ing certainly, but edgeways as it seemed, to 
 whatever object he had in view. Quite de- 
 termined to reach it, but ready to make 
 such detours or windings as might hold out 
 any prospect of advantage ; and to-day the 
 gait seemed less assured, the tread less erect, 
 and the sidelong glances from his downcast 
 eyes more oblique than ever. 
 
 Mabel thought so, as she watched his ap- 
 proach, and was conscious of a creeping shud- 
 der pervading her whole frame, such as she 
 might have felt at the sight of a noxious ser- 
 pent, as she turned to prepare her father for 
 his entrance. 
 
 ^' Papa, dear, here is Mr. Lockstone coming 
 in. I suppose he wishes to have a little busi- 
 ness talk with you to-day.^' 
 
 The old man's face, which had been placid, 
 almost happy, in its expression, underwent a 
 singular change. A worn, harassed, frightened 
 look spread over the features, very painful to 
 see, but such as the fond daughter had been 
 only too familiar with in past days. He looked 
 up helplessly at her, and muttered something 
 unintelligible; while Deborah, with *^most vine-
 
 120 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 gar aspect," ushered the lawyer into their 
 presence. He was the first to speak, though 
 with some hesitation and embarrassment. 
 
 Good morning, my dear sir ; I hope I see 
 you better to-day. Good morning. Miss Mabel. 
 Ah — a fine day — ahem !" 
 
 Mr. Lee still glanced askance at his visitor, 
 and up at Mabel, as if asking and relying on 
 her assistance, without giving any reply to the 
 lawyer ; and she answered him with a cold 
 dignity of manner, under which, armour proof, 
 as he was, with selfish fraud and insensibility, 
 he could not forbear wincing a little. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Lockstone. My father, 
 as you see, continues very much the same. 
 If you have anything on which you wish to 
 speak to him, may I beg you will do it at once, 
 and make the interview as short as possible. 
 Dr. Armsdaile forbids all harassment or ex- 
 citement." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know. Miss Mabel — I'll be as 
 careful as possible, but you see it is necessary 
 I should see him sometimes. I trouble him as 
 little as — I can. 
 
 The last words were almost inaudible. Mabel
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 121 
 
 had fixed her clear blue eyes upon the speaker, 
 and, in spite of himself, they met his own and 
 seemed to look into his very soul. He changed 
 colour, and became at last deadly pale. He 
 had never met such a look in his life before. 
 Sarah's were not pleasant to encounter some- 
 times ; but that — he quailed before it. 
 
 Mabel saw her advantage, but unhappily 
 she was too young and inexperienced to follow 
 it up. Her tender heart melted at the evidently 
 genuine confusion of the man. She hoped, in 
 her innocence, that he might be repentant, and 
 she motioned him to be seated ; an advantage 
 he was by no means slow to avail himself of. 
 
 '^ I shan't detain Mr. Lee long, Miss Mabel ; 
 it's nothing very important I came for, only a 
 paper or two to show him, that he may see 
 they are right and attest them." 
 
 Mabel already dimly conscious of her wrong 
 move, bowed her head impatiently, and re- 
 sumed her own seat close to her father. The 
 lawyer pulled some papers from his pocket and 
 kept looking first at one then another as if 
 waiting for something, but Mabel did not go, 
 and presently poor old Mr. Lee, partly himself
 
 122 THE CABIiNET SECRET. 
 
 again from the very extremity of the agitation 
 which dislike to his visitor and any allusion to 
 business were now almost certain to bring on, 
 said impatiently, 
 
 *' What am I to do, Lockstone ? Let me 
 do it, I want to get it over. I'm going out 
 directly, Mabel, shan't I ?" 
 
 " Yes, dear father," she whispered, pressing 
 his hand, and looking once more towards the 
 lawyer, tried again if that glance was indeed 
 a spell. No. At least no very potent one 
 now. She had lost the chance of making it 
 so, for Mr. Lockstone would not meet it, and 
 though not absolutely comfortable, even when 
 only feeling the scrutiny of those fearless 
 truth-speaking eyes, he was not going to alter 
 his course for them, or yield a second time to 
 any such momentary weakness as had attacked 
 him before. 
 
 " You will just sign these papers, my dear 
 sir ; I think they are the last, if my memory 
 serves me right," and he busied himself with 
 the pen and ink before him. 
 
 Mr. Lee took up the pen with a trembling 
 hand. The lawyer ran over the papers, which
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 123 
 
 were not very important documents, though 
 sounding terrible to Mabel's ears, understanding 
 as they did not one word of the repeated tau- 
 tology of which, as it seemed to her, they were 
 composed, and her father began signing them 
 with a little irritability of manner, it is true, 
 but very passively. 
 
 The last was before him when Mr. Lock- 
 stone, suddenly looking up to Mabel with some- 
 thing of the same cadaverous look on his face 
 as had raised her compassion before, said in a 
 broken voice, 
 
 '^ Miss Mabel — I — I am very much ashamed, 
 but might I ask for a glass of water. I am 
 very faint." 
 
 Poor Mabel ! She knew Deborah was out ! 
 She must herself bring that glass of water to 
 this arch enemy. She, on whose slightest 
 gesture so many eager servants of the house 
 had once attended, this man among the num- 
 ber. It was hard. For the meanest beggar she 
 would have done it, ay, and more than gladly, 
 with alacrity, but for this man — for a second 
 pride and compassion struggled within — the 
 last conquered, and she rose and left the room.
 
 124 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Mr. Lockstone revived in a most wonderful 
 manner as she disappeared in search of the 
 water. Had he heard Deborah go out, a 
 minute or so before ? 
 
 His proceedings woukl seem to infer as 
 much, for no sooner had the door closed than 
 he sat up briskly in his chair, laid his hand on 
 Mr. Lee's arm, and putting his lips close to 
 the terrified old man's ear, hissed out, in a tone 
 of semi-command and threat, 
 
 " Is that old deed found yet, sir ? It must 
 be, you know, and the sooner the better. Will 
 you tell me where it is, or not?^' 
 
 Stephen Lockstone had small sympathy with 
 others, small knowledge, therefore, how to deal 
 with an infirm old man like Mr. Lee, or he 
 would not have attacked him thus. The only 
 answer to his query was a helpless cry, al- 
 most like that of an infant, and the poor soul 
 shook and trembled like one in an ague, with 
 his efforts to gasp forth ^* No — no," while his 
 whole face was deformed by terror. 
 
 Once more Stephen Lockstone bent forward, 
 once more his face approached that of his old 
 master, when Mabel opened the door, and the
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 125 
 
 lawyer, with a guilty start, sunk again in his 
 chair, and covered his face with his hands. 
 
 Mabel was not naturally suspicious ; the 
 freshness of youth was about her still, despite 
 all that had passed, but as her quick eye de- 
 tected her father's state, the thought Hashed 
 on her that she had been purposely deluded 
 into leaving the room. She flew to her father's 
 side and fondly put her arms about him. He 
 clung to her desperately and fearfully, in a way 
 it was pitiable to behold in a man who should 
 have been yet strong and hearty, protecting 
 instead of protected by that slight young girl. 
 
 " What have you dared to do to my father, 
 sir?" demanded Mabel, in a voice so stern and 
 commanding it startled herself. 
 
 '^ I ?" cried Mr. Lockstone, who had been 
 languidly sipping the water, his hand still 
 over his eyes, and now prepared for his 
 role. '^ I done ? God bless my soul !" looking 
 up. " What is the matter, my dear sir ? 
 Shall I call assistance, Miss Mabel ?" 
 
 " No, Mr. Lockstone, but one thing, if you 
 will do, and at once, I shall be obliged to you," 
 and Mabel, her eyes flashing, glanced too
 
 126 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 significantly towards the door for even Mr. 
 Lockstone to be able wilfully to misunderstand 
 her desire. 
 
 He did not at that instant feel equal to re- 
 sistance even, and slowly rising, muttered 
 further embarrassed assurances of his having 
 done and said nothing ; and with a farewell, 
 to which neither father nor daughter re- 
 sponded, took himself off at last.
 
 127 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHRISTMAS was come. Christmas! that 
 time of hospitality and happiness, of 
 family reunion and Christian thanksgiving, 
 of jovial merry-makings with equals and 
 liberal charities to inferiors — that time when, 
 of all others, if at all, a man would think 
 seriously of fulfilling his part on earth as a 
 Christian, small as that part might be, in 
 promoting '* peace on earth, and good-will 
 amongst his fellows !" 
 
 Sarah Lockstone, it is to be hoped, did 
 hers, so far as her own family, at least, were 
 concerned, when she vigorously kept her 
 father up to the mark, and untiringly fought 
 against the wavering moods which often en- 
 dangered the keeping of that much-talked-of 
 promise — the spending Christmas at Lee 
 Manor. 
 
 It was hard work, no doubt, and the scenes
 
 128 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ensuing from her valiant prowess were 
 certainly more stormy than peaceful while 
 enacting ; but she gained her end at last, and 
 then, one may trust, peace was ensured in the 
 family for good — on that point at least. But 
 they were not to move till Christmas Eve ; all 
 her efforts failed to accomplish a speedier 
 transit. Before Christmas Eve it was not to 
 be, and as the time approached her father's 
 face, consenting though he was, grew more 
 and more anxious and gloomy. 
 
 The night before they were to leave High 
 Street, Hester and Sarah wei'e together in 
 their room; the one already in bed, but watch- 
 ing her sister with wide open though languid 
 eyes, the other sitting in front of the fire, and 
 looking into it fixedly, her raven hair set free, 
 and hanging about her shoulders in very 
 picturesque disorder. 
 
 A striking picture Sarah would have made 
 at this moment, truly ; her handsome features 
 in repose, the cynical expression on them less 
 visible than in general, and her attitude such 
 as gave her figure just that unbending ease 
 which it sometimes lacked. She would have
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 129 
 
 been a splendid model at that instant for a 
 Juno brooding in her privacy how best to 
 counteract her Jove in some actions thwarting 
 her own imperial will. 
 
 *' Are you going to sit there all night, 
 Sarah ?" asked her sister at last. 
 
 *^ Not quite. At least, I have not resolved 
 that I will yet, unless you are particularly 
 anxious that I should. Keep a vigil through 
 our last twelve hours of darkness in this old 
 house ? Ha ! ha !" and she laughed a low 
 peculiar laugh. 
 
 '^ How can you be so silly, Sarah ? Of 
 course I only want you to go to bed, and not 
 keep me awake so. Oh ! I am so tired V 
 
 Ah ! that's a novelty, isn't it, Hester ? I 
 should have thought Messrs. Geldfinder and 
 Felmer's small doses of incense had not been 
 so wearying as all that ! A powerful narcotic 
 some folks might have found them !" 
 
 " There you are again ! I can't bear you, 
 Sarah, when you're in those moods. I wish 
 you'd get some one for yourself, and then per- 
 haps you wouldn't tease me so — that I do !" 
 
 " A very kind sisterly wish ! Thank you ! 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Now couldn't you spare one of your two or 
 three, I may say, if not more, to me, don't you 
 think ? Turn one of them over to-morrow ! 
 Don't you think he'd be willing ?" and Sarah 
 turned her flashing, mocking eyes to her 
 sister's face. 
 
 " I don't know — I don't care. How tire- 
 some you are !" and Hester coloured a little 
 — a very little. 
 
 '^ Ah !" and again she laughed her low 
 mischievous laugh. She knew if Hester was 
 touchy on one especial point, or proud of one 
 possession, it was concerning the lovers she 
 had and her sister had not. '* However," 
 she proceeded, *^I don't want to make any such 
 bargain with you to-night, Hester, so you 
 needn't be afraid. One thing I was going to 
 say. What if we shouldn't stay at Lee Manor 
 after all ?" 
 
 " What ?" cried Hester, and she absolutely 
 raised herself in bed, so great was her excite- 
 ment, and looked wild and terrified at her 
 sister. Sarah watched her composedly, and 
 with much apparent satisfaction, for some 
 time, but when the interrogative was repeated,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 131 
 
 with the addition, " Whatever can you mean?" 
 she condescended to answer. 
 
 " Not very much ; but if the very prospect 
 of going there makes our brave father look as 
 he has done this last week, why, I don't think 
 he'll stay there very long, that's all !" 
 
 '' But, Sarah. Oh ! dear. Surely you'll 
 do something ? If he doesn't stay, surely we 
 can ? Oh ! dear I It would be worse than 
 not going at all !" 
 
 ^^ For once in your life you are right, 
 Hester. It would be much worse, but not in 
 the sense you mean." She paused, and leaned 
 thoughtfully on her hand, then went on, more 
 to herself than her sister. ^' To get acquainted 
 with the neighbourhood — just gain one's point, 
 and then shrink back again. Oh ! no, it will 
 not do at all." 
 
 *^No, of course it won't. What put such a 
 dreadful notion into your head, Sarah, I can- 
 not think." 
 
 *^Have you not seen how your father's 
 altered, nor how sour he begins to look now 
 the evil day is come ?" 
 
 " Oh ! I don't know, he never looks very 
 
 k2
 
 132 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 pleasant, does he? Is that all? I was afraid 
 you knew something." 
 
 "So I do, Hester, a good many things. 
 Oh ! you need not get frightened again, 
 nothing you will think very dreadful. It 
 won't affect Mr. Geldfinder, or Mr. Felmer, or 
 young Turner, or the Hitchcocks. Not even 
 you — not even you, in a very great degree. 
 But I do know when a man is too great a 
 coward to reap the harvest he has taken such 
 care to sow, and is willing, almost ready, to 
 shrink from laying even one little finger on it 
 himself." 
 
 " Sarah, you are very tiresome. You 
 frighten me to death, and then say it is all 
 nothing. I wish you wouldn't !" the ordinary 
 peevish burden of her song. 
 
 " I never said it was nothing. Only nothing 
 that need trouble you very much, if you play 
 your cards well, Hester. And now I'm going 
 to bed, and don't mean to talk any more." 
 
 Hester murmured a dissatisfied answer, but 
 she knew from experience how useless it was 
 to seek to get more from her sister after such 
 a fiat had gone forth, and both the girls —
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 133 
 
 heiresses of Lee Manor now — were soon asleep. 
 
 Christmas ! Christmas Eve ! Bright, clear, 
 and frosty dawned the morning of that day. 
 Not only was it Christmas, but the real, old- 
 fashioned English Christmas — snow upon the 
 ground two feet deep or more in untrodden 
 places, where traffic and labour failed to come ; 
 the beaten roads hard and ringing ; the air 
 crisp and pleasant, though sharp and a little 
 biting, it may be ; the sun bright and cheer- 
 ing after the day was old enough for him to 
 have strength to dissipate the morning mist ; 
 in short, it was a bright, fine, joyous Christ- 
 mas-time, so far as genial weather could make 
 it so. 
 
 The High Street of Merestown was by no 
 means deserted when Mr. Lockstone's carriage 
 drew up for the first time before his door. 
 There were many happy faces to be seen 
 there — boys and girls home for their holidays, 
 all brimming over with the joy of freedom 
 and home once more ; quiet mothers, equally 
 happy, but less demonstrative ; a few proud 
 fathers, inveigled away from business or study 
 by the young generation " for a walk or
 
 154: THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 shopping, just this once, because it was 
 Christmas-time ;'' young men and maidens 
 holiday-making, too, and perhaps making 
 something else, one or two of them, just a 
 little, if one might judge from appearances, 
 •which strongly indicated that a certain little 
 god had been at some mischief with bow and 
 arrow. 
 
 Some, if not all of these passers-by, turned 
 more than once to look back at the handsome 
 carriage, as it stood there with its prancing 
 steeds. The Lockstone daughters were both 
 looking at it, too, from the shadow of their 
 old-fashioned window. Hester, with quite a 
 brightened face stirred from her ordinary lan- 
 guid indifference by gratified pride. It was 
 delightful to know they should not leave the 
 shabby old home so stylishly, unwatched. If 
 the Fates were but propitious, even Mr. Geld- 
 finder himself might pass to or from his 
 luncheon at the moment, and young Turner's 
 head was alreadv visible over a distant blind, 
 taking a critical, interested survey of the 
 whole concern. It was very gratifying — ^just 
 what it should be, and she was well satisfied
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 135 
 
 accordingly. Sarah's sharp black eyes were 
 watching, too, but with a far different air. 
 Gratified she certainly was, to a certain ex- 
 tent ; but only from conscious power. It was 
 her will that had thus arranged the manner 
 of their flitting ; her influence, the time. 
 Except for that, she would perchance have 
 been indifferent about the matter. A scornful 
 amusement was now the dominant expression 
 on her handsome face, as she curled her red 
 lip contemptuously. 
 
 Stephen Lockstone, meanwhile, was pacing 
 his own room with hurried steps, conscious 
 that the hour had come for him to begin a new 
 life, to come forth in another character, and 
 feeling incompetent to meet that hour as he 
 was conscious he ought, as Sarah would re- 
 quire him. He twisted his damp hands ner- 
 vously together, glanced fearfully at the little 
 common clock hanging in one corner of his den, 
 and then stopped to listen if the carriage was 
 really come ; he had heard it stop, knew it 
 must be his own, and yet pertinaciously clung 
 to the impossible chance that it was not there. 
 In vain. The time is come, and if he can-
 
 136 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 not meet it as he should, there is one deter- 
 mined he shall meet it as he may. 
 
 The door opens suddenly, and Mr. Lock- 
 stone, in his startled fright, trembles before 
 his own footman, after narrowly escaping fall- 
 ing into his arms. 
 
 The man was well-trained ; but if the 
 muscles of his mouth were adamant, his eyes 
 danced with amusement as he said, 
 
 ^^If you please, sir, Miss Lockstone desired 
 me to let you know they are w^aiting.'^ 
 
 What ! in his own old place of business, 
 that old secret chamber which had witnessed 
 so many self-colloquies, and could tell so much 
 if it could but speak — even here, was he not 
 still the lawyer Lockstone yet in here ? Mr. 
 Stephen Lockstone, your act's consequences 
 will follow you everywhere — ay, even to the 
 grave ! No place is sacred from their intru- 
 sion ; and in this very place, where the first 
 thought of what might be, what is now, came 
 to your scheming brain, so here begins that 
 other life which looked so fair and full of 
 promise then ! 
 
 The grand old trees of the Manor Park
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 137 
 
 looked noble and magnificent in their shining 
 winter garments of bright hoar frost, with here 
 and there a glittering icicle depending from 
 their branches, that the sun's rays had been 
 too feeble to melt in the cold atmosphere, as 
 the Lockstones skirted round the ample boun- 
 dary of their new domain. But no one noticed 
 them. Mr. Lockstone was not looking at 
 anything apparently, his head rested on his 
 breast, so as completely to conceal his face, 
 and he never moved. Perhaps he was asleep. 
 His wife seemed half afraid of her position by 
 his side, and wholly occupied in keeping the 
 very hem of her garments from touching or 
 disturbing either him or Sarah. Hester 
 leaned back luxuriously^ with half-closed eyes, 
 and was enjoying the ease of her position and 
 the rapid motion with exceeding zest. Sarah, 
 as usual, watched them all, alive to the pe- 
 culiarities of each, and herself well amused 
 with them, as she journeyed. True, she now 
 and then looked from the window, but only to 
 note what progress they had made. What 
 were trees to her, when she had human beings 
 — her fellow-creatures — to study and to laugh 
 at?
 
 138 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 The carnage rolled rapidly on ; one sweep 
 more, and they stood before the iron gates 
 which should admit them to their much- 
 coveted paradise. They were not open, and a 
 flush rose to Sarah's brow as she perceived it. 
 
 " Father, why are not the gates open as 
 they ought to be ? Is this fitting welcome to 
 a place for its master ?" and she looked fixedly 
 at her father as she spoke. 
 
 Hestartedathervoice, and glanced hurriedly 
 round, then gathered his senses about him, 
 and as he too became aware of the negligence, 
 grew into Stephen Lockstone again, and, 
 angry and disturbed, looked from the carriage 
 window. 
 
 There was a little lodge at the gates, small, 
 but very picturesque, which had made the 
 chief feature in many an old sketch of Mabe.rs, 
 with its ivy-covered chimneys and curling 
 smoke. No smoke, however, was there now ; 
 the pretty windows were shuttered and 
 desolate — the whole place silent and deserted 
 as the grave. 
 
 **This is some mistake. How is this?'' 
 said Mr. Lockstone hurriedly, as his eye
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 139 
 
 noted these facts, and the locked gates, which 
 forbade farther progress into his new property. 
 
 The servant, meantime, had descended, and 
 was shaking the gates, and calling for their 
 absent guardian in no measured tones. The 
 keen air, which had chilled him on his seat by 
 the coachman, was by no means a pleasant 
 atmosphere to be kept waiting in longer than 
 could be possibly avoided. 
 
 Mr. Lockstone's pallor returned upon him 
 as he gazed blankly at the silent lodge. The 
 old couple who had dwelt there as long as he 
 could remember even, he had believed, hoped 
 would remain still. He had held out induce- 
 ments for them to do so, had eagerly striven 
 to play the condescending landlord and patron 
 to them. He could not afford to lose one old 
 retainer from the Lee property. The servants 
 had left to a man. The tenants were many 
 of them about to follow their example, all who 
 could. They were a faithful race, and had 
 most of them lived with the Lees, from father 
 to son, for many generations, and the world 
 was a little younger, too, in those days. 
 Mutations on so grand a scale were not fre-
 
 140 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 quent in the county, and neither servants 
 nor tenants regarded a change of masters and 
 fealty as a matter trifling and easy as a change 
 of clothes. 
 
 They were no worshippers of new lights 
 for the sake of the warmth they might bestow. 
 Besides, Stephen Lockstone, the rising sun of 
 Lee Manor, was not liked by those who loved 
 *' the family." He was feared and despised 
 much ; loved, not at all. Hardly a cottage 
 dweller would remain under the new land- 
 lord. Despise them, oh ! ye more enlightened 
 philosophers ! They were blind, yea, blind as 
 moles or bats to their own interests. 
 
 Stephen Lockstone gazed, but no sign of 
 life, of living creature, was there about that 
 quiet, desolate little lodge. The servant had 
 suspended his shakes and shouts in despair. 
 Not a sound broke the oppressive silence of 
 those few moments, during wdiich they all 
 looked forth in despair on the fast-locked gates, 
 the deserted cottage. The very horses stood 
 motionless ; not a jingle of their bright har- 
 ness, not a deep-drawn breath was heard 
 in that dull, heavy stillness. The raw,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 141 
 
 piercing cold of the day, the dreary, misty air 
 in which, as the afternoon drew on, they were 
 enveloped, seemed for the moment so to have 
 benumbed their faculties that they scarcely 
 knew how to act. 
 
 Where were the old couple ? How were 
 they to enter their own park ? 
 
 Suddenly, as they were all looking from 
 one window, there appeared at the other a 
 face, worn, wrinkled, lined by age and suffer- 
 ing, but full of resolution and fire still, lighted 
 by eyes dark, piercing, and flashing as Sarah's 
 own, full now of anger, mixed with a strange 
 contempt, as they looked first at one, then at 
 another inmate of the carriage. 
 
 The face belonged to a tall old woman, 
 wrapped in a red cloak, which she had drawn 
 tigMy round her. Ordinarily she stooped so 
 much from the weight of those many years 
 which had perfectly silvered her once raven 
 locks, that you had no idea what a Meg 
 Merrilies she was in stature. But she looked 
 Meg her very self now, as she met Stephen 
 Lockstone's startled glance, and a smile of 
 defiant scorn curled her lip.
 
 142 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 He was willing to cling to a belief that all 
 was right, that some mistake had made the 
 lodge desolate so unexpectedly, and kept 
 them there. He would not see lier expression, 
 but changing his own look and tone to almost 
 cringing ones, began, 
 
 " Oh ! dame, here you are," when she burst 
 forth fiercely, impetuously, 
 
 " Yes, I am here, Stephen Lockstone, and 
 I wish I were in my grave instead, before I 
 see what I see this day — the servant in his 
 master's place. D'ye think any blessing will 
 light on ye here, man ? / tell you no. As 
 the woman says in the Bible, for bad woman 
 though she was, it were^a true word she spoke, 
 that the man had no peace Avho took his 
 king's place ; so will there be no peace for 
 you here. If he slew his master, you kave 
 done worse ; better our master had died out- 
 right, than been driven to the state he has, 
 and from here ; and you, how dare ye come 
 here ? — don't ye fear the very walls will fall 
 about your ears, you that have fattened and 
 prospered on the wages of father and sou ? 
 Ye to turn them out, to rob them of their
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 143 
 
 rights,, who was born to live and die here, to 
 send the beautiful boy, as should come to the 
 Manor, like every Lee before him, for more 
 years than man can count, over the sea, and 
 steal away his own ! Aren't ye afraid, Stephen 
 Lockstone ?" 
 
 She paused a moment — not for breath ; old 
 — feeble, as she generally was — energy and ex- 
 citement had supplied that, as it had given her 
 the strength and power to regain for awhile 
 the height and uprightness of her youth ; but 
 she paused as though to emphasize the heinous- 
 ness and enormity of that man's crime whom 
 she was thus apostrophising. Mr. Lockstone 
 appeared powerless to interrupt her. None 
 but Sarah would have dared; and she — she 
 chose to see the play played out without in- 
 terfering. 
 
 The aged woman, her furrowed face one 
 glow of excitement, her dark eyes flashing 
 sparks of fire, one withered hand held up 
 aloft in an attitude of warning, looked the 
 very personification of a Sibyl of the ancient 
 times, as she went on with heightened voice 
 and threatening gesture :
 
 144 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 *^ Do ye think to come here and live as 
 those did before ye, who had a right to the 
 place ? Will ye and yer upstart brood within 
 there live honoured and respected, think ye, 
 and die in a good old age, wept and regretted? 
 I tell you no I Ye have robbed the weak and 
 the feeble, the young and the woman, and a 
 curse will foller ye so long as ye hold yer ill- 
 gotten gain ! Did ye think 1 was going to 
 wait on yer pleasure and eat yer bread ? Not 
 I ! Sooner would I and my old man, grey- 
 headed and feeble as we are, beg our bread 
 from door to door through the snow of this 
 winter ! Go and seize on yer fine new home. 
 May ye never know an hour's peace within it! 
 May yer heart ache worse, ay, a thousand 
 times worse, than theirs ever have ye turned 
 out ! Go, and an old woman's bitterest 
 heart's curse go with ye, Stephen Lockstone !" 
 
 She violently flung the heavy gate-key into 
 the carriage as she spoke, and was gone. It 
 alighted in Hester's lap, who gave a startling 
 scream, and this was the Lockstones' Avelcome 
 to the Manor.
 
 145 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 l/TEANWHILE how had things been pro- 
 ill grassing at No. 5 Newman's Buildings ? 
 Very well, on the whole ; the infirm old man, 
 who should have been its stay and support, 
 was no more like what a man of his years 
 should have been, it is true, no less a wreck 
 of his former manhood, still he had been 
 shielded by Mabel's vigilence from any more 
 interviews with Mr. Lockstone, and he was 
 placid and quiescent, if nothing more. Mabel 
 and her mother, the two most troubled, the 
 only active hearts in the little household, had 
 been very anxious regarding that communica- 
 tion to Edward, which, after many troubled 
 cogitations on the matter, they had at last 
 resolved on sending according to good Dr. 
 Armsdaile's advice ; and when at last it had 
 gone forth on its bitter embassy, they waited 
 very fearfully, and in much disquietude, for 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 the result, in anxious pain and foreboding as 
 to its effect on the well-loved son and brother, 
 but beyond this they were happier. Almost 
 content in the new home, enjoying a species 
 of repose and assurance, in this end of all the 
 painful uncertainties and changes in which 
 they had previously lived, which was very wel- 
 come, and when at last an answer came from 
 Edward, more satisfactory than either had 
 dared to hope for, there seemed something of 
 happiness in life again ; that letter appeared 
 for the moment as the herald of a time of 
 jubilee, a year of release. 
 
 Dr. Armsdaile had been quite right about 
 Edward. His answer surprised, almost disap- 
 pointed, while it delighted his mother and 
 sister. True, there was much indignation, great 
 wrath against Stephen Lockstone, and some 
 lamentation ; but there was also a great deal 
 about his own new life, his hopes for the 
 future, his interest in all the novelty sur- 
 rounding him. The one object of his life, 
 over which he had so brooded the last year of 
 liis home-life, in which alone he had seemed to 
 live, might be his cheif aim still ; but it was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 147 
 
 not SO to the exclusion of every other, as it 
 had been. There was great comfort in this, 
 as regarded Edward himself, and so his mother 
 said and felt ; but Mabel was a little, a very 
 little dissatisfied. She need not have been so 
 very fearful of applying to him then — they 
 might have had this consolation before. Lee 
 Manor was not so all-absorbing to Edward as 
 it had been ; and Mabel sighed, travelled up 
 to her own little chamber, looked towards that 
 point of the compass where her early home 
 was lying quiescent under its usurpation, 
 thought over all her brother said, felt a little 
 angry with him, wept a few hot tears, scolded 
 herself for being selfish and unreasonable, and 
 so came down again better pleased, and re- 
 solved to think it all right. At any rate, 
 there was great comfort in knowing an effectual 
 stop would now be put to Mr. Lockstone's 
 pitiless persecutions of her father. 
 
 And there was no real reason for condemn- 
 ing Edward as a traitor to his boyhood's 
 creed ; even the feeling of sorrow, the linger- 
 in g: sentiment which Mabel could not banish 
 with the others, would have departed could 
 
 l2
 
 148 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 she have seen and perfectly comprehended 
 her brother's state of mind. The young man's 
 love for his home, the birthright of himself 
 and his forefathers, was just as vivid as ever — 
 it was still the darling object of his life to 
 redeem the beloved Manor, and make it their 
 very own once again ; and in the buoyancy 
 of his young spirit, he clung to this hope yet, 
 even after the sad tidings of its being finally 
 given up to Stephen Lockstone had reached 
 him. His travels, his new occupation, above 
 all his association for the first time with many 
 fresh and different minds, had matured his 
 character and ripened his experience in these 
 few months, as years passed in the old life at 
 home would have failed to do. The passion- 
 ate, unreasoning longing for personal oppo- 
 sition to Stephen Lockstone's machinations, 
 the despairing boyish rebellion and resistance 
 to the inevitable, was calmed into the man's 
 cool forethought and calculating planning. 
 He was as resolved as ever that if a man 
 could accomplish it, Lee Manor should be their 
 o^vn again ; but he knew that time, patience, 
 and steady work were the only sure weapons
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 149 
 
 to fight tlie battle with — he had become re- 
 conciled to their adoption, and willing in the 
 interim to make the best use of his own time 
 and opportunities in winning knowledge, and 
 even sharing enjoyment among scenes and 
 objects not all so immediately connected with 
 this chief aim of his young life, though chief 
 aim it still remained. Well was it for Edward 
 and all others that this was so, that his youth- 
 ful wisdom, joined to his uncle's lessons, had 
 shown him the reasonableness of such a 
 course ; and that the change and variety of his 
 life had given him strength of spirit to adopt 
 and persevere in it.
 
 250 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 CHRISTMAS and the New Year had come 
 and gone, passed by on the restless wings 
 of that old compatriot of our mortal world, 
 Time ; and the Lockstone's moved and lived, 
 thought and speculated, in the old halls and 
 pleasant chambers of the Manor. Living in 
 it was no longer a novelty ; yet still the in- 
 habitants scarcely looked at home there — that 
 is, the master and mistress. The latter, de- 
 pressed, listless, seemed more subdued, less 
 able to take her own place in the household 
 than ever — the strange large rooms, the new 
 luxury of her life, had no charm for her. What 
 little of a woman's happiness she had known 
 since her girlhood had been lived through 
 in the forsaken old house in the High Street 
 — there her babies, her own then, had lain 
 upon her bosom, clung to her knees. Here 
 all was cold, desolate, telling only of the
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 151 
 
 hopeless dull present ; and there was nothing 
 even for her to do — she missed the homely 
 housewifely cares belonging to the country 
 attorney's wife ; out of character — degrading, 
 Sarah said, to the lady of Lee Manor. 
 
 For the lawyer, he was as moody, restless, 
 and miserable as he well could be ; so deep and 
 absorbing were his fits of gloom and distrac- 
 tion, he even forgot sometimes to snub his un- 
 happy wife ; and Sarah herself, when she did 
 attack him, which was not often just now, 
 sometimes failed to rouse him. At last, partly 
 through her proposal, partly, as it appeared, 
 because living always in the Manor House 
 was no longer endurable, Stephen Lockstone 
 betook himself regularly to his own old den 
 in Merestown. Daily he resorted thither ; 
 sometimes he would remain away a whole 
 week ; never were more than half a dozen of 
 his waking hours passed in his grand new 
 home, and in those he was so uneasy, so rest- 
 less and excited, that it seemed doubtful, as 
 Sarah had partly foreseen, whether he would 
 long come there at all. 
 
 In Hester the removal had effected little
 
 152 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 alteration, beyond, perchance, a little increase 
 of indolence, if that were possible, and decided 
 additions to her natural affectation. Mr. Geld- 
 finder, being the most clever of all her devoted 
 squires in ministering to her foibles and weak- 
 nesses, was becoming, perhaps, the most 
 favoured among the suitors who found Lee 
 Manor to the full as accessible as the High 
 Street, and there seemed some probability 
 that the wooing would end before long in 
 marriage. Had the gentry of the neighbour- 
 hood come forward at once, as had been the 
 secret conviction and eager hope of the family, 
 it is possible that higher views might have 
 been entertained for and by the co-heiress ; 
 but they had hitherto kept provokingly, de- 
 terminedly aloof, and even Mr. Lockstone 
 encouraged the present aspirant. If he did 
 feel an interest himself in anything about Lee 
 Manor and his family now, it was apparently 
 that his daughter should marry at once. 
 
 As to Sarah, she was Sarah Lockstone, 
 neither more nor less, whether in Merestown, 
 High Street, or in Lee Manor ; and yet, of all 
 the family, she alone seemed to fit into the
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 153 
 
 new home and the new life, to become 
 naturalized, or rather to appear a part of the 
 place from the first. For awhile she let 
 things alone, and watched the progress of 
 affairs in her usual cold, amused, critical way; 
 but at last she resumed her old habit, and 
 commenced indirectly guiding her father's 
 uncertain course. 
 
 ^* Do you ever happen to see your bailiff, 
 sir ?" she asked, one day ; " or is he such a 
 paragon among his fellows that he interprets 
 your wishes unspoken, and carries them out 
 regardless of his own interests ?" 
 
 Mr. Lockstone started from one of his 
 gloomy reveries, and changed colour like a 
 guilty man, as he met his resolved daughter's 
 unswerving eye fixed on him. 
 
 " Yes, of course — why not ? What can you 
 know about it, Sarah ?" 
 
 ** Oh ! nothing, of course, only I was look- 
 ing round the home farm yesterday, and I 
 saw quite enough to make me remember the 
 master's eye was the only one to find out the 
 stag, and I chanced to hear that Tuffnell has 
 had no orders from you since Christmas Eve."
 
 154 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 *^ I — I have been busy, and it is all new 
 work to us yet/' returned Mr. Lockstone, 
 helplessly. He was so changed, he seemed to 
 succumb without a word, confess himself to 
 blame without one attempt at justification." 
 
 *' Indeed !" and Sarah's lofty eyebrows 
 arched in high contempt — '^ it appeared to 
 come quite naturally to you formerly when 
 the Lees' old bailiff came regularly to Meres- 
 town for direction. Has the land undergone 
 any curious geological change since your open 
 occupation of it, or have the principles of 
 agriculture altered ? I was not aware of 
 it." 
 
 He winced beneath the calm irony of her 
 words. His head drooped, and he seemed to 
 have absolutely lost the power to answer her 
 at all. She looked down on him calmly, 
 curiously, scarcely with contempt, and yet it 
 was more with that feeling than any pity that 
 she proceeded to relieve him from his pitiful 
 perplexity, by suggesting a remedy to the 
 uneasiness and falterings of his mind. 
 
 ^^ Why should your living here make so 
 much difference in your arrangements ?" she
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 155 
 
 asked. ^' You choose to go to the office as 
 sedulously as if your bread depended on it 
 still — why not let TufFnell meet you there, as 
 usual ?" ' 
 
 Mr. Lockstone looked eagerly up — a ray of 
 comfort seemed about to visit his wretchedly 
 unhinged mind ; but before he could answer 
 in words a shadow crossed his face, and his 
 daughter saw the thought that brought it, 
 and again relieved his embarrassment. 
 
 " No ; there would be nothing strange in 
 it, as you persist in your own daily visits to 
 Merestown — why should not the bailiff give 
 in his accounts on market days at the old 
 office, as he used to do ? You are so little at 
 home '' — she laid a stress on the word ; 
 " strangers may well fancy importunate 
 business carries you over there — the winding 
 up of your legal affairs, perhaps — before their 
 transfer " 
 
 " I tell you, Sarah, I am not.'' 
 
 " Nay, why expend so much needless 
 breath ? Don't / know as well as you that 
 you never intend giving up those precious old 
 haunts to anyone else ? No. It would be
 
 156 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 contamination, wouldn't it ? — for one party, 
 at least," she added, with a cruel, searching 
 look, and the curled lip more mocking than 
 ever. 
 
 Mr. Lockstone winced. Sarah had greatly- 
 relieved his mind, and he had been almost 
 grateful to her a minute ago. Now he felt 
 he had never so nearly hated her. Her eyes 
 were on him still, and presently she gave a 
 short, scarcely pleasant laugh ; then she 
 spoke in her ordinary tone, but her words 
 sounded more like a command than a 
 question. 
 
 " You will follow this plan ?" 
 
 ** Yes," he replied, sullenly — " it will suit 
 me best, I think." 
 
 " Ah ! I wonder the shadow of the old 
 place did not suggest it to you. Whatever 
 you allow yourself to become here, surely in 
 his own den Lawyer Lockstone might find 
 something of the man still !" 
 
 Her father winced again, and fidgeted 
 towards the door. 
 
 " It is time I was going, Sarah — I cannot 
 stop now."
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 157 
 
 Sarah looked at the timepiece. 
 
 '^ Indeed ! — a quarter to nine yet. Ah ! I 
 understand ; you are going round by the 
 Home Farm to bid TufFnell go to you to-day, 
 and will be picked up there. An excellent 
 plan. I congratulate you on originating an 
 idea again." 
 
 Mr. Lockstone glanced up at her from 
 beneath his bushy eyebrows, but she was 
 looking intently at the ornaments on her 
 watch-guard, which she was rearranging. 
 Her whole attention appeared absorbed in this 
 occupation. The expression on her face quite 
 baffled him. Had she known he had never 
 even remembered it was market-day — had 
 only sought to escape her, and so mocked at 
 him as usual, or were her words for once the 
 genuine expression of her thoughts ? It 
 might be possible, and he drew a long, 
 relieved breath in that hope, as he answered, 
 
 " Yes — no need to delay till next week." 
 
 " Not the least, and you need not trouble 
 about your orders to the coachman. I am 
 going in with you this morning, and will let 
 him know myself."
 
 158 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ** You !" faltered Mr. Lockstone, in dis- 
 mayed astonishment. 
 
 " Yes — why not ? Is it so very wonderful 
 that I should share your close aifection for 
 the old house ?" 
 
 ^^ But what will you do all day ? — there's 
 nothing. You'll find it very dull, Sarah." 
 
 " Never mind, thank you — I have my 
 business to attend to also ; you need not 
 concern yourself so paternally on my 
 account." 
 
 Her scornful smile had more of bitterness 
 than usual as she spoke, significantly 
 adding — 
 
 " I am resolved to go." 
 
 Then it was no use to say any more — no 
 use to try and defer the jaunt to the Home 
 Farm, to hope for a reprieve in that matter of 
 Tufi'nell ; and so the master of Lee Manor 
 thought very ruefully as he slowly left the 
 room with lingering steps and troubled 
 brow. He must go. He must follow the 
 course his clever, unyielding, terrible daiigh- 
 ter had suggested. She would follow him in 
 the carriage ; she would know whether he had
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 159 
 
 followed the plan chalked out for him. Yes, 
 there was no help for it, and he went. 
 
 Sarah watched him from the room, and, 
 by-and-by, out of the side-door leading away 
 through the shrubbery to the Home Farm — 
 watched him with the usual scoffing smile at 
 first ; then, as he slowly disappeared behind 
 the shrubs in the last visible turn of the 
 winding path, she walked away from the 
 window to the fire, and stood leaning with 
 her elbow on the old carved mantelpiece, a 
 slight frown contracting her broad white 
 forehead, and a look of intense thought on 
 her face ; finally, as she at last quitted her 
 resting-place, and passed out of the room to 
 prepare for her drive, she murmured, half 
 aloud, 
 
 " There is something more behind — some- 
 thing I do not know — I feel certain of it. 
 Never mind ; I will know yet, and see if 
 there is really the least foundation for this 
 childish weakness." 
 
 And then Sarah walked upstairs with her 
 usual haughty mien, rang for her maid, and 
 as the stable clock clanged nine, stood ready
 
 160 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 equipped in the hall, at the same instant that 
 the carriage drove rapidly to the door — the 
 open carriage which took Mr. Lockstone 
 daily into Merestown now. Her maid stood 
 ready with the wraps, and the butler hurried 
 forward in astonishment to open the door. 
 She got in, allowed the obsequious servants 
 to wrap her warmly up, and then, as foot- 
 man and butler still stood waiting, said 
 sharply, 
 
 " That will do — shut the door, if you 
 please, and bid Drayson drive to the Home 
 Farm." 
 
 She was obeyed, but the men stood watch- 
 ing her for a moment, in spite of the cold, as 
 the carriage drove off, before retiring into the 
 warm hall. 
 
 " She'd make a rare queen now, wouldn't 
 she ?" half-asked, half-affirmed the younger 
 man, admiration and awe on his face. 
 
 A damson, the well-trained butler, just 
 fresh from the service of Lady Harpstone, 
 and double his understrapper's age, shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 «« Um — umph ! — she's nearly the hand-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 161 
 
 somest woman I ever saw, James, and I've 
 seen a rare lot in my time ; but I'd sooner 
 have her for my queen than my daughter any 
 day/' and he turned into the house. 
 
 Not without reason had Mr. Lockstone 
 shrank from visiting the Home Farm. True, 
 the residents there, Tuffiiell and his family, 
 were his own creatures, in a manner installed 
 there by him, not very long before the Lees 
 had gone away — people honest and straight- 
 forward in their way. Mr. Lockstone 
 thought honesty in a bailiff very desirable, 
 but he preferred it in one not of the neigh- 
 bourhood — in one who neither knew nor cared 
 much about the real family of the Manor. 
 The Home Farm, however, was frequently 
 visited by others — those who came to see 
 the bailiff on business, especially on market 
 days — and as the master walked up to' the 
 gate, he saw his worst forebodings realized. 
 He had dreaded to meet some of those 
 tenants who looked on him as a usurper ; and 
 there, standing side by side with Tuffnell, he 
 saw Reuben Hernshaw, the one man of all 
 others whom he most disliked, tenant of tho 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 best farm on the Manor estate, with a favour- 
 able lease, seven years of which had yet to 
 run, but already, as he knew, eager to cancel 
 that lease, even at a loss ; anything rather 
 than stay — unless compelled to do so — under 
 the new dynasty. His light cart, with his 
 eldest boy as driver, stood now near the gig, 
 waiting for Mr. Tuffnell. The man advanced 
 down the walk, and Tuffnell exclaimed — 
 
 " Here comes the master himself, Mr. Hern- 
 shaw, you had better speak to him on your 
 little matter." 
 
 Mr. Hernshaw drew himself up stiffly. " No, 
 thank you, Mr. Tuffnell, I've said my say to 
 you, you'll do the best you can for me, and 
 now I'm in haste to get to market ;" and he 
 hurried on, returning Mr. Lockstone's la- 
 bouredly bland " good morning, Hernshaw," 
 by the slightest of bows, and jumping into his 
 cart, which, as his boy shook the reins, disap- 
 peared rapidly along the drive. 
 
 Tuffnell looked on at this scene with a half 
 puzzled, half amused air, and after receiving 
 Mr. Lockstone's directions as to meeting him 
 at his office, said, " Hernshaw's been about his
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 163 
 
 lease again, sir. He'd better have spoken to 
 you at once." 
 
 " What is it ? why can^t he rest now he's 
 had his answer," was the impatient rejoinder. 
 
 '^ So I told him ; but now he wants leave to 
 underlet on certain conditions, sir ;" and TuiF- 
 nell shrugged his shoulders. Mr. Lockstone 
 muttered one of his favorite expletives. 
 
 ^^ And that he shan't have; the man's a fool !" 
 
 " Some folks do like to quarrel with their 
 own bread and butter," the bailiff replied re- 
 flectively ; he was by no means sure his master 
 did not, in another fashion from Hernshaw. 
 Altogether, shrewd Northerner as he was, the 
 general aspect of affairs as to Lee Manor 
 estate, was a riddle to him just at present, and 
 he was by no means clear which way his own 
 feelings tended. People had a right to fortunes 
 honestly come by. Ups and downs had ever 
 been in life, and ever would be. It was a 
 pity one man couldn't get rich without an- 
 other's being made poor, certainly ; but 
 some always lost money, some always won it. 
 Things must be taken as they were and made 
 the best of. He was sorry for the Lees, the 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 women folk especially ; but if that simple old 
 man had chosen to fool away all he had, why, 
 surely the man who'd got it, and done his best 
 for him all along, too, was the right person to 
 succeed him — some one must. Better he than 
 a stranger. 'Twas heard to quarrel with a 
 man for doing his best, because that best had 
 won him fortune." So argued Mr. Tuffnell. 
 His sympathies went certainly with the strong 
 men, not with the weak. He had ever had 
 a sovereign contempt for poor broken Mr. 
 Lee, ,' and now, since Mr. Lockstone had come 
 to rt^e Manor, he too seemed to be falling away 
 from his strength of mind, and purpose. Was 
 there some baneful influence in the house that 
 worked such effect on its inmates ?
 
 165 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1I|E. HERNSHAW'S haste to get to market 
 ■^*-*- appeared to have deserted him as he 
 neared the Town. He fidgeted, took his 
 watch in and out of his pocket, checked young 
 Reuben's skilful, rapid driving more than once, 
 dragged a big covered basket from under the 
 seat, half raised the lid, pushed it back again, 
 and altogether so demeaned himself as to oc- 
 casion considerable surprise to his son. 
 
 *' What's the matter, father ?" asked that 
 young gentleman at last, in the steady, straight- 
 forward fashion inherited from his usually 
 self-possessed, sensible parent. Mr. Hernshaw 
 started as though detected in some unlawful act, 
 and his bronze cheek flushed a little. He looked 
 first at his son, then at the sky, then at his 
 horse, then down on the rough horsecloth over 
 their knees in embarrassed silence, finally
 
 166 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 meeting his boy's eye, he laughed, laughed his 
 own frank hearty laugh, and recovering him- 
 self at one jump as it were, said, 
 
 ** Well, Ben, I suppose I'm just a bit nervous 
 this morning at my errand, that's just about 
 the long and short of it, I take it ; and wouldn't 
 * mother' scold me rarely for being such a ninny 
 — but taking them a present, the likes of us. 
 Besides, I can't bear going nigh that place, it 
 just cuts my heart in two. I went once, and to 
 see it, and think of them, it was near making a 
 woman of me, Ben, and that's the truth. I'd 
 as lief feel a big serpent crawling over me 
 as meet Steve Lockstone, but I'm not sure 
 that isn't better, one way, than going such a 
 journey as this," and the honest farmer paused 
 and heaved a huge sigh. 
 
 Reuben looked up at his father and smiled. 
 His bright blue eyes were very pleasant to 
 look into in their frank innocence, but he was 
 rather too young to understand or enter into 
 all the complication of feelings which had 
 given rise to this speech. One part only he 
 fully appreciated, as appeared from his reply. 
 '^ Steve Lockstone always looks as if he
 
 THE CABINET SECRET, 167 
 
 deserved a good licking, and expected it, 
 father ; and shouldn't I like to be the one to 
 give it him !'' 
 
 Hernshaw laughed, and as they had now 
 entered the suburbs of the town, and taken a 
 turning leading quite away from the market- 
 place, he began pulling out his basket again, 
 and trying, as it seemed, to brace himself up 
 to a certain point of courage for some dreaded 
 encounter. 
 
 Not anything very formidable, people 
 might think, who saw him five minutes after 
 trudging up the narrow walk of No. 5, New- 
 man's Buildings, the heavy basket on his arm, 
 with a firm, heavy tread, though an unusually 
 crimson face. 
 
 Deborah opened the door. Her face, which 
 had something akin to the crab-apple in its 
 first expression, cleared as she saw who it 
 was. 
 
 " You, Mr. Hernshaw, no ! Come in ; we 
 can't afford to turn well-known faces from 
 the door now-a-days. Master is a-bed yet, of 
 course, and the mistress is with him this morn- 
 ing, as it happens, but Miss Mabel — oh ! you'll
 
 168 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 not go and never see her !'' as Mr. Hernshaw, 
 growing redder and redder every minute was 
 backing towards the door, after awkwardly 
 thrusting his basket almost on Deborah's 
 toes. 
 
 "I am going to market, Mrs. Deborah, 
 you see — only the missus, she thought per- 
 haps you didn't get quite such fat chickens or 
 sweet butter in Merestown as we grow — " the 
 honest farmer was confounding his butter with 
 some idea of his wheat samples in his confu- 
 sion ; " so I made so bold — she sent — " not a 
 word more could he utter, for there, looking 
 at him through the half-opened parlour-door, 
 was Mabel's sweet face, a little flushed, too, 
 and a soft dew gathering in her violet eyes. 
 
 The good-hearted farmer snatched his hat 
 from his head and dropped it. He would 
 have turned and fled precipitately, but that 
 Deborah, taking advantge of an ill-directed 
 lurch to save his hat, had summarily shut the 
 door. 
 
 Mabel came forward with outstretched 
 hands. 
 
 '' No, Mr. Hernshaw, Deborah is right ;
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 169 
 
 you must not go without letting me thank 
 you heartily for your kindness ;" and, seeing 
 he had not yet recovered from his confusion, 
 she continued, smiling, '^ the market must 
 wait a little longer for you still, while I hear 
 how Mrs. Hernshaw and all your family are. 
 It was so very good and thoughtful of her to 
 think of sending us some of her capital butter, 
 you must tell her how very kind we think it, 
 and that we thank her very much, and you 
 for bringing it. It is so pleasant to see a 
 face from the old place !" she added, with a 
 quiver in her voice she could not quite sub- 
 due, though she tried bravely. 
 
 The worthy farmer's honest face beamed 
 with pleasure as she spoke, and though he 
 had hardly ventured to give the warm squeeze 
 he longed to bestow on the little white hand 
 lying in his rough palm, he had held it there 
 all the time, and now bowed over it, as he re- 
 leased it, with as much native grace and 
 gallantry as one of the knights of Lee 
 Manor himself might have shown centuries 
 ago. 
 
 There was a good deal of the best spirit of
 
 170 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 the old feudal times, with none of the mischief 
 of it, belonging to the feelings with which 
 some of the tenants still regarded the Lee 
 family, and Hernshaw stood foremost amongst 
 these. When Mabel, as a lovely toddling 
 child, had delighted to make voyages of dis- 
 covery amid the treasures of Meadowlands 
 Farm, she had been petted and delighted in 
 as a little one, but at the same time, baby 
 as she was, had been respected and held 
 somewhat in awe as their liege lady, '^A 
 Lee." And now, in her fallen estate, she 
 was still a Lee to him, worthy of all honour 
 and reverence for her birth as for her misfor- 
 tunes. 
 
 " Tm right glad you're not offended. Miss 
 Mabel, though I might have known you 
 wouldn't be, though it does seem out of the 
 way, somehow — but there," he abruptly broke 
 off, " ril tell my missus, and she and I — we 
 shall be so proud and pleased — she'll take 
 more heed to her churn now than ever ; and 
 she's brave, thank you. Miss Mabel, and all on 
 us, only " 
 
 But again the frank, good-hearted fellow
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 171 
 
 broke off in embarrassment, and hurriedly 
 anxiously asked for the Squire. 
 
 *^ Much the same, thank you, Mr. Hern- 
 shaw — better, indeed, lately, than we could 
 have hoped. I will not ask you to wait and 
 see him, though," she added, sorrowfully, 
 "for I am afraid it would make him sad, not 
 glad, as it does me, to see you, and know you 
 don't quite forget us. His memory is not so 
 good as it was, you know, and he is happier 
 forgetting all about liome. You won't mind?" 
 she said, a little anxiously. 
 
 "Mind! Bless ye. Miss Mabel, no — I 
 never thought to see you, let alone him — I 
 wouldn't for the world. God bless him, 
 though, and you too, and the lady, and the 
 young lord — oh ! Miss Mabel, will he never 
 come to his rights ?" 
 
 And poor Hernshaw forgot all his resolu- 
 tions not to touch on the subject foremost in 
 his thoughts, and broke forth in a torrent of 
 abuse against Stephen Lockstone and his 
 actions. His honest indignation was expressed 
 in no measured terms, and it was grateful to 
 poor Mabel to listen to it, though she blamed
 
 172 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 herself all the time for feeling so uncharitably 
 pleased. Do what she might, Mabel could 
 not divest herself of the conviction that their 
 once trusted and respected agent was a rogue. 
 The idea had been slow in coming, often dis- 
 lodged, often argued away, but had returned 
 agg-in and again, and now, at last, was so se- 
 curely fixed, that there was small chance of 
 its banishment henceforth, and all that tended 
 to prove there was no injustice in harbouring 
 it was becoming unconsciously welcome to the 
 poor child. 
 
 Feebly she tried to check Herushaw's out- 
 burst. 
 
 '' Oh ! Mr. Hernshaw. Perhaps it is wrong 
 to blame Mr. Lockstone. Everything was 
 legally done, it is said, and if — if we have 
 lost everything, we must learn to bear it.'' 
 
 MabeFs cheeks were flushed, and tears 
 stood in her eyes as she spoke. The sight 
 recalled her honest but helpless champion to 
 himself, to a remembrance of the cautions of 
 his wife against alluding to the great griev- 
 ance. 
 
 ^* Maybe they've learnt to put up with it a
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 173 
 
 bit better, Eeuben," the good woman had 
 said ; " and it's no good bringing it all back 
 fresh again, so if you do see any of V.m, don't 
 say a word — they'll know how we feel without, 
 and 'tisn't as if we could do any good — we 
 can't. God knows the rights, and in His 
 good time we may too — but don't bring it 
 up to 'em again. 
 
 "And that's just what Iv'e gone and done in 
 my blunder-headed fashion," thought the poor 
 man with exceeding contrition. " 'Twas all see- 
 ing that toad, Steve Lockstone, at Tuffnell's. 
 I'd heard he didn't go nigh the Home Farm 
 now, or I wouldn't have gone, I'm very sure." 
 
 And full of these thoughts, and many like 
 them, he stammered still more in the words 
 of apology he was trying to get out to Mabel. 
 She saw his confusion, and partly guessing its 
 cause, interposed with farther messages of 
 thanks to Mrs. Hernshaw, and shaking 
 hands once more, retreated under cover of 
 Deborah's reappearance with the basket emp- 
 tied of its contents. 
 
 As she let him out, Deborah asked with a 
 peculiar intonation,
 
 174 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 " Are you going to stop at Meadowlands* 
 now, Mr. Hernshaw?" 
 
 He started. Had Deborah been reading 
 his inmost thoughts at that instant, she could 
 hardly have asked a more pertinent question. 
 The farmer stared at her, before answering 
 with vigorous emphasis, 
 
 ^' Not one moment longer than I can help, 
 Mrs. Deborah, you may be sure of that — nor 
 so long if there's any way of preventing it with 
 their lawyering devilry, '^ with which not very 
 logical addition he bid Deborah good-bye, and 
 hurried down the path and into his cart, feel- 
 ing very sore all the time in the consciousness 
 that he ivas a tenant of Steve Lockstone's. 
 Yes, that man was his landlord, it was only 
 too true. A fact nothing could alter at the 
 moment. That ever it should be so, and the 
 honest farmer writhed at the thought as in 
 corporal pain. Oh ! to get rid of that lease at 
 any cost — yes, any, he'd — and then his eye 
 fell on Reuben, and his face changed and fell. 
 Ah ! yes, at any cost if he and his wife had 
 been alone — but there were six children !
 
 175 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "MR. LOCKSTONE'S open carriage swept 
 ■^■^ up to the gate leading into Tuffnell's 
 little garden as that individual was still 
 pondering this one problem of his present life, 
 and while his master had yet the angry look 
 upon his face called up by the repetition of 
 the Hernshaw business. Sarah scanned both 
 men fixedly, returned the bailiff's low bow 
 with a slight haughty inclination of her hand- 
 some head, and then bestowed her whole at- 
 tention to her father as he hastened into the 
 carriage, the old uncertain expression re- 
 turning on his face. 
 
 " Well, sir, you and your bailiff might have 
 sat for an exact representation of the cur and 
 the Newfoundland exemplified in the human 
 race," she observed, as they bowled rapidly
 
 176 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 away over the hard, smooth road. " May I 
 ask what had gone wrong?'' 
 
 Not if her father could have prevented it, 
 certainly ! But he could not, any more than 
 he could refrain from answering her. Her 
 mastery over him was too complete, and 
 she was soon in full possession of all that had 
 transpired. 
 
 '• I wish I'd not gone near," ended Mr. Lock- 
 stone querulously ; '^ it was all your doing, 
 Sarah, and I could have sent just as well." 
 
 Sarah took the trouble to sit quite upright 
 in the carriage for half a minute after this 
 speech, during which she looked at him with 
 that cold, pitiless stare of contempt he knew 
 so well and dreaded so thoroughly. He 
 shrank back farther into his own corner, and, 
 her gaze accomplished, she too fell back again, 
 quickly observing, 
 
 *^ Let the man go — what does it matter ? 
 Scores of willing tenants would jump at Mea- 
 dowlands." 
 
 "No, no, Sarah, I can't," Mr. Lockstone ex- 
 claimed vehemently, and utterly regardless for 
 the moment of his daughter's scorn. " He
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 177 
 
 is a first rate farmer, and his family have 
 been on the land from generation to genera- 
 tion." 
 
 *^ Ah ! I have always understood that was 
 the case with the Lees themselves, yet you 
 did not think it so impossible for them to be 
 replaced." 
 
 " How can you talk like that, girl ?" 
 and Mr. Lockstone showed some of his old 
 spirit, and used one or two of his favourite 
 oaths. *^It's no good talking folly; Tve set my 
 heart on keeping this fellow. He shall stay." 
 
 Sarah paused a minute before replying. 
 
 ** Well, if that's your resolve, to be carried 
 out with or without reason, let it be ; but 
 understand 1 consider you are mistaken." 
 
 ^* There are few enough of the old people 
 left now, and — and don't you see how it would 
 look if they all went; it's very few I can keep, 
 but Hernshaw's one. He can't afford the 
 money I'd make it cost him to get his whim, 
 and I'll keep him, I tell you, willingly or not." 
 
 " Your whim versus his, in short, and you 
 win the day. I don't see it as you do; indeed, 
 I think the better plan would be the whole- 
 
 TOL. I. N
 
 178 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 sale clearing of the estate, as I have told you 
 before; still, I don't know that it is a matter of 
 vital importance either way, only let me coun- 
 sel you — keep your temper in such affairs. 
 Be as firm as you like, if you have any power 
 of firmness left, but don't show your feelings 
 on it — not even to Tuffnell. And, I have 
 intended saying it long, so it may as well 
 follow that. Leave off swearing at me — at any 
 of us, when the servants are by. It has not 
 the ring of the true metal, and they know it. 
 Remember," and uttering the last word with 
 exceeding significance, Sarah relapsed into 
 silence to the great relief of her father. He 
 had dreaded a much greater amount of opposi- 
 tion — a determination in the opposite direc- 
 tion equally superior to his own, and then 
 — why, he must have yielded; at any rate he 
 would have yielded as in other things, and he 
 cared very much about this. To keep Hernshaw, 
 in spite of the man's dislike of him and love 
 of the Lees, gratified his vindictive spirit ; be- 
 sides that he believed his own view the better 
 one, and wished to act upon it. 
 
 Sarah was a wonderful womaUj no doubt.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 179 
 
 Her judgment and penetration were singular. 
 In most things she was right — but in this, no. 
 Perhaps she felt she was not so sure of her 
 ground here, and that was why she didn't in- 
 sist on it. Greatly comforted, Mr. Lock- 
 stone began to recover himself as they neared 
 Merestown, to look about in the old sharp way, 
 to be the astute, self-possessed lawyer again, 
 instead of the uncertain, frightened-looking 
 Squire of Lee Manor. 
 
 They were already close upon the suburbs 
 when a sudden involuntary movement of her 
 father's — astartand shiver that shook the whole 
 carriage — roused Sarah from a reverie i^to 
 which she had fallen, and caused her to look 
 quickly, first at him — and she saw he had 
 turned lividly pale and was staring fixedly as 
 at an apparition — then at the road, on which his 
 eyes were bent. Standing there, transfixed, 
 too, apparently, but with intense astonishment 
 as it seemed, stood a shabby, wretched, dirty- 
 looking man. A suit of threadbare, rusty 
 black, with ill-fastened rents here and there, 
 gave him a more deplorable air than had his 
 body been clothed in commoner stuff; a bat- 
 
 n2
 
 180 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 tered black hat, very greasy and very ill-fit- 
 ting, was perched on his head ; while a red- 
 nosed, spotted, bloated face below, very un- 
 pleasant to look upon, led to the conclusion 
 that it was not through misfortune alone he 
 had been reduced to such apparent poverty 
 and so repulsive a figure. 
 
 His small, cunning, watery eyes were stare- 
 ing at Mr. Lockstone with all their power, his 
 mouth had fallen open, and but for the disgust 
 excited by his appearance, it would have 
 been intensely ludicrous at the moment. 
 Sarah had but that instant to look at him, to 
 take in all the details of dress and feature, for 
 the carriage was going very rapidly, and the 
 two men had been confronted for a bare half- 
 minute only. 
 
 '' Who is he ?" she demanded of her father 
 as they rolled quickly out of sight. She re- 
 ceived no answer. Mr. Lockstone sat with 
 the same fixed stare of dismay, the same livid 
 complexion that had first excited her atten- 
 tion. He appeared utterly unconscious of 
 all outward things — unable to recover his scat- 
 tered senses.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 181 
 
 '^ Who is that man ?" was imperiously re- 
 peated by his daughter, and she shook his arm 
 impatiently ; they were close upon the High 
 Street now. 
 
 The bewildered man looked up with a scared, 
 puzzled expression, and for the third time Sarah 
 demanded, 
 
 '♦ Who is that man ?'' 
 
 " I — I thought he was dead," murmured 
 Mr. Lockstone helplessly. 
 
 " I did not ask you for your thoughts, I 
 asked for a fact. Who is that man ?" i 
 
 " I — I haven't seen him for so many years, 
 Sarah — and to see him now — " and he paused 
 and trembled. 
 
 " Well, sir, as we are close to your office 
 now, perhaps you'll defer that interesting so- 
 liloquy and answer me — once more who is 
 he?" 
 
 *^ Only — only an old clerk of mine,'^ re- 
 turned her father submissively, and nearly 
 restored now to his lost composure. 
 
 Sarah watched him closely as he answered, 
 nor, though vouchsafing no reply, did she 
 remove her eyes from his face till he had got
 
 182 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 out of the carriage and entered his office. She, 
 too, descended, but more slowly. Her father 
 had seemed glad to escape, and hurried off as 
 soon as the carriage stopped. 
 
 She gave an order or two to the servants, 
 spoke to Rachel, who had been left in charge 
 of the High Street premises since the family 
 flitting, and then passed slowly on into the old 
 sitting room. There it was, just the same 
 as ever, the long, common-looking table with 
 its covering of dust, the hard chairs and com- 
 fortless sofa, the wide fireplace, the deep 
 sombre-looking oak window-seats, the narrow- 
 paned windows themselves. How familiar it 
 all was, and yet how different from the Manor 
 House. Sarah sat down in her old favourite 
 seat, declined Rachel's offers of fire and re- 
 freshment, and showed so plainly her im- 
 patience of that person's company, that Rachel, 
 albeit somewhat tired of her solitary reign in 
 the grim old house and very anxious for 
 news from the Manor, quickly took herself 
 off in no very amiable frame of mind towards 
 Sarah. 
 
 As a rule she liked her the best of the two
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 183 
 
 girls she had watched grow up to woman- 
 hood, but there were times when she regarded 
 her with something of the wonder — and, but 
 for a naturally braver spirit, it might have 
 been the fear, too — that Mr. Lockstone 
 entertained for her, and she knew that 
 Sarah's mood now was such that, for her OAvn 
 peace, she had best restrain her curiosity and 
 leave her alone. 
 
 Alone Sarah sat for many a long hour, feeling 
 nothing of the sharp cold, wrapped in her warm 
 comfortable furs, noting little and realizing 
 nothing of what was going on without in the 
 familiar street. Deep in her own thoughts she 
 sat perfectly still and motionless, but for a 
 mechanical movement of her hands now and 
 then as she passed them over each other ; her 
 eyes even were quiet and fixed, but her brain 
 was very, very busy. 
 
 So she remained till the old clocks in Meres- 
 town began chiming out the hour — two o'clock. 
 She had been there four hours then ! One of 
 the old scornful smiles flitted over her face for a 
 moment as she thought this — scorn of herself ; 
 then she rose, threw away her abstraction,
 
 184 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 and became once more the watchful, attentive 
 actor in the present. First she gave a rapid, 
 searching glance up and down the street, then 
 took a survey of herself in the small old- 
 fashioned oval mirror that hung over the 
 chimney piece, finally opened the door and 
 passed noiselessly down the passage, and be- 
 yond, into old Eachel's precincts. She found 
 that personage in no very amiable frame of 
 mind, and quite able to show it even to Miss 
 Sarah. 
 
 But Sarah had expected and was prepared 
 for this, so she began by saying she felt very 
 hungry, could Kachel find her some bread and 
 butter, and then, while eating it, volunteered 
 scraps of news as to Lee l\Ianor and her mother 
 and sister, till old Eachel condescended to ask 
 questionsagain,andatlast, completely mollified, 
 entered heart and soul into a gossip of the 
 sort she most delighted in. This had lasted 
 an hour when Sarah began a few questions on 
 her own account, as to how Rachel got on in 
 the old house, how many visitors she had, and 
 so on, till she worked her way round to what 
 she really wished to ascertain, namely, who had
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 185 
 
 been with her father on this day, as she 
 expected Kachel was perfectly able to answer, 
 though the people had gone to the office door. 
 
 "Well, not many ; one or two of the old lot 
 that alius come, and Mr Tuffnell, he came a 
 good bit ago and was only just gone when you 
 come down, I see him as I was upstairs tidy- 
 ing your room a bit.^' 
 
 "Ah ! that's right, Rachel," Sarah answered, 
 after a hardly perceptible pause wherein she 
 had digested the first news. " I was just 
 going to ask if I could go up there ; I left a 
 few things behind, and I want to look at them. 
 Do you know, Rachel, I think I shall come in 
 here sometimes with my father. It will be an 
 amusement, you know, something to do." 
 
 Rachel looked curiously, furtively up in her 
 young mistress's face. She, too, had often 
 thought what a man — a lawyer — Sarah Lock- 
 stone would have made, now she only said, 
 
 " Very well. Your room'll be ready for 
 
 you." 
 
 Sarah went upstairs. Presently she called 
 Rachel, who had gone up too, into her own 
 room.
 
 186 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ^^ I am going out for a stroll, Rachel, to 
 look at some of the places we used to go to 
 when we were children ; but I don't care for 
 people^s knowing me, you see, it wouldn't do. 
 Am I plain enough dressed, do you think ?" 
 
 Eachel thought she was, though she knew 
 well enough in her heart that her opinion in 
 this matter would not weigh much with the 
 beautiful, imperious woman who demanded 
 it. Very handsome she looked now, though 
 all her beautiful rich furs and her costly 
 bonnet and mantle had been discarded. 
 A dark skirt, a large plain cloak which com- 
 pletely enveloped her, and a close fitting black 
 bonnet now formed her sole adornments ; but 
 there was a light and spirit in her eyes, bright- 
 ened by the colour in her cheek, which was 
 sometimes lacking to her stately beauty. 
 
 *^ When you see my father, Eachel, tell 
 him I have gone out, and shall not be ready 
 to go home till half-past five ; and now give 
 me the latch key, and in an hour put up the 
 lock so that I can slip in quietly. Good- 
 bye," and with an unusually gracious smile 
 Sarah took the proffered key and went down.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 187 
 
 Rachelhastenedafterhertoopenthedoor. Sarah 
 passed out, and as she did so dropped a thick 
 veil over her face. No one who met her could 
 recognise her in the least. None would dream 
 the swiftly-moving dark figure, so plainly, not 
 to say commonly, dressed, could be one of the 
 Miss Lockstones of Lee Manor. 
 
 But as she neared the office door Sarah 
 stopped, and presently stooped down to disentan- 
 gle her dress, caught apparently in the railings. 
 From the time it took to free, it must have 
 become curiously embarrassed. She passed 
 on at the same moment that the office door 
 closed on a man slinking into it. The winter's 
 afternoon was very heavy, and here in Meres- 
 town it was already nearly dark, but Sarah 
 felt almost certain she had recognized that 
 shabby dress and slouching gait when 
 she first descried its approach down the ill- 
 lighted street. Now she was quite so ; and 
 glancing up to the windows above was also 
 satisfied that Rachel had seen the new comer 
 too. She smiled to herself more scornfully than 
 usual, then went rapidly on.
 
 188 
 
 / 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MABEL turned into the little sitting-room 
 of No. 5, Newman's Buildings after 
 her farewell to honest Reuben Hernshaw. 
 Why did it look so small, so mean, so bare, so 
 altogether worse than it had done when she left 
 it barely ten minutes ago? Was it the tears in 
 her eyes, now that she was alone fast welling over 
 and down her soft young cheek ? or was it the 
 memory of that other room, those rooms which 
 the good farmer's visit and words had brought 
 so vividly before her ? Mabel herself scarcely 
 knew, she was only conscious of a weight of 
 grief and regret, and an intensity of sorrow at 
 their changed estate such as she had hardly 
 felt before, even at the first — a mourning so 
 deep for the sad fate of those she so dearly 
 loved that her heart felt breaking; and sinking 
 down in a corner of the little square room 
 she gave way to the passion of tears which
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 189 
 
 nature sent for her relief. Had Deborah been 
 a whit less occupied with the thoughts her own 
 talk with the farmer had set busily to work, 
 she would surely have heard some of the sobs 
 which were shaking poor Mabel's frame. As 
 it was, she passed the parlour door lost to all 
 outward things, and was soon downstairs oc- 
 cupied with her work again. Possibly it was 
 better so. 
 
 By and by Mabel's grief exhausted itself, and 
 as she roused herself up and began smoothing 
 her hair and trying to remove all traces of her 
 emotion, she began also to feel a little ashamed 
 of her indulgence in it. She thought she had 
 grown so brave, so submissive, and resigned. 
 Was the simple visit of one of the old tenants 
 to overthrow it all ? And then her thoughts 
 flew away to Meadowlands, to. the old days 
 when she and Edward were children, and when 
 one of their greatest treats was a visit to that 
 pretty, ever busy farm. 
 
 How well she remembered the couple of 
 miles of bridle road through which they went 
 to it, Dorothy and Susan walking, she and
 
 190 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Edward riding their dear old Shetland, Tawney, 
 by turns. 
 
 How beautiful the Park glade w^as which led 
 out on the common, and how they used to enjoy 
 a scamper across that corner of it which they had 
 to traverse before entering the green lane whither 
 the way next led them. She could smell the 
 golden furze, and see the tall waving bracken 
 and pretty purple heath now, and the lane 
 with its steep picturesque banks and roof of 
 hazel arches quite meeting overhead in most 
 places, and the little gurgling brook, so bright 
 and sparkling, with one narrow plank by way 
 of a bridge. How often Dorothy had stood 
 on it and scolded while she or Edward would 
 keep Tawney pawing in the water ; they liked 
 to see the glittering drops showering round so 
 much, and felt quite sure neither Dorothy nor 
 Susan would walk into the water after them. 
 
 How naughty and how happy they were ! — 
 and then the fields at the end of the lane, 
 which were reached some five minutes after 
 passing the stream — those delightful fields, 
 with always something fresh in them — now 
 the pretty herd of red and white and dappled
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 191 
 
 COWS ; now some young colts, which occasioned 
 Dorothy to insist on holding Tawney's bridle, 
 and frightened Susan into leaving off that 
 ceaseless chatter of hers ; now some calves of 
 different ages and sizes, each so charming 
 they changed their minds half a dozen times 
 at least before the field was crossed, as to 
 whether the '^ two year old," with its budding 
 horns, or the little meek-looking, just-weaned 
 Alderney was their favourite ; then a flock of 
 sheep would dot the meadow over with their 
 white snowy fleeces ; and sometimes there 
 were some lambs, some dear little long-tailed 
 lambs ; and then, as they neared the farm, 
 there would be stray cocks and hens, and 
 ducks and geese, and yellow little lumps of 
 goslings, and the turkey-cock, with his fierce 
 strut and gobble-gobble. 
 
 Oh ! how happy she and Edward had been 
 then ! — how happy ! And then she went on 
 thinking of their welcome at the farm itself. 
 How Reuben Hernshaw in person, if at home, 
 would lift them from Tawney's back and lead 
 them into the best parlour, redolent of lavender 
 and dried rose-leaves, and shout to his comely
 
 192 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 young wife that missey and the ^^ young lord " 
 were come, and she would bustle in with her 
 rosy cheeks and kindly smile and insist on 
 taking Mabel's hat off, while she ate as much 
 cake and strawberries and cream as Dorothy 
 could be prevailed on to allow ; and then on 
 went the hat again, and away they flew 
 after Mr. Hernshaw into the farm-yard, the 
 stables, the cow-house, the very pig-sties — 
 each and all had charms for the children ; and, 
 crowning delight of all, they watched the 
 cows milked, and the little calves let in to 
 their lowing mothers ; the sole drawback to 
 which intense excitement was the knowledge 
 that tea, tea in the best parlour, and Mrs. 
 Hernshaw in her best cap, filling their plates 
 with such bread and butter, and such biscuits, 
 would follow immediately upon it. Finally 
 Dorothy would say they must go, go at once, 
 and there would only be time, during the 
 half hour, at least, that her last words to 
 Mrs. Hernshaw took to say, for just one 
 scamper up and down and round the old- 
 fashioned grass paths and espalier-lined walks 
 of the garden, and then the day, the delight-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 193 
 
 ful day was over — only, just as they were 
 really starting, Mrs. Hernshaw would rush 
 wildly out, and stuff into Mabel's bands a 
 huge nosegay of Sweet Williams, and gilly 
 flowers, and " old man's love/' so sweet and 
 so magnificently gaudy — far superior to any 
 old Jelly, their own head-gardener, ever 
 gathered for her. So Mabel used to 
 think. 
 
 Ah ! those days ; and the added joys when 
 young Eeuben was born, and there was 
 " baby " to look at in the cradle, and now 
 and then to hold in her lap, as she sat on the 
 floor, Dorothy or Mrs. Hernshaw being always 
 close by. Those visits were the gala days of 
 their quiet, secluded childhood. Meadow- 
 lands was their child's paradise, possessing far 
 superior charms, in their young eyes, to those 
 of the stately Manor House, beautiful as that 
 and its grounds really were, precious, only too 
 precious, as they had since become. But there 
 was little live stock about the Manor House 
 itself ; and with the home farm they had 
 never been familiar. Dorothy considerd it 
 dangerously near, and, besides, did not admire 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 1 94 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 its occupant, who even then was of Mr. Lock- 
 stone's choosing. 
 
 From the sweet memories of childhood and 
 early youth, Mabel went on to think of the 
 later days, of the gradual change for the worse 
 in her father, of Stephen Lockstone's altered 
 manner, of many little incidents unheeded at 
 the time, but now returning on her with 
 strange vividness and new meaning. Was 
 there some secret about that man's possession 
 of their home ? Had it been indeed honestly 
 earned by him — really, if weakly lost by her 
 father ; or was he the knave she had begun 
 to think him, and yet they powerless to prove 
 it and to right themselves ? 
 
 Mabel pondered this problem long and pain- 
 fully, and she was still completely absorbed 
 in its study, and utterly lost to all present 
 outward things, when a hand was laid on her 
 shoulder, and she gave a violent, half- frightened 
 start, as she looked up to find Dr. Armsdaile's 
 kind face looking down on her. 
 
 " What, I really frightened you, my dear ? 
 I am sorry for that, but I began to fancy 
 the bad fairy's old spell revived again, and
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 195 
 
 that it had taken effect on you. Dorothy 
 and I made noise enough together as I came 
 in, and yet here you were, statue-like and 
 motionless. What is it ?" he added, more 
 anxiously, as he saw the traces of her late 
 weeping-fit, and watched the troubled changes 
 through which the sweet face passed to regain 
 its wonted calm. 
 
 *' Nothing — at least nothing new. Only I 
 was very foolish. Mr. Hernshaw has been 
 here, bringing us delicacies from dear old 
 Meadowlands, and — and I began to think 
 about it — and all — and I was very naughty, 
 doctor ; scold me, it will do me good," and 
 she looked up with a gentle smile. 
 
 *^ Well, you were very naughty, and ex- 
 tremely foolish ; but as you know your fault, 
 and ask for their deserts, why, I'll let you off 
 this time — only beware of the next !" and he 
 shook his finger at her threateningly, and then 
 went on. " Your father not down yet, Doro- 
 thy tells me — fancies his cold worse, a sure 
 sign it is better, my dear, so don't look 
 anxious. A cold doesn't really affect him, 
 and helps to occupy his thoughts. I shall be 
 
 2
 
 196 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 rather sorry Avhen even he must acknowledge 
 it well. I'm going up to see him presently, 
 and while I am there you'll get ready to 
 come with me as far as the Rectory. Mrs. 
 Ravenshaw is laid up with a cold, too — really 
 ill, and I promised you should have an hour's 
 chat with her. I'm going on to Castle Neville, 
 and will pick you up as I come back. There, 
 don't look scared, you'll be home in plenty of 
 time for tea, and I'll make it all right up- 
 stairs." 
 
 So ran on the good but imperative doctor, 
 and Mabel was really smiling before he had 
 done. He had divined her thoughts so accu- 
 rately, answered them so completely, unspoken 
 though they were, and put aside her objec- 
 tions so entirely, yet so quietly, she could not 
 but be amused. To leaving her father even 
 for a few hours she would, however, have de- 
 murred in spite of all this, had not the news 
 of her kind old friend's illness weighed greatly 
 in the opposite scale. She thought a little, 
 and then, as the doctor was going upstairs, 
 came out too, saying anxiously, 
 
 "You think I may go?"
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 197 
 
 "To be sure ! You conceited little puss, do 
 you think they can't live five hours, ay, or a 
 hundred, without you?" and patting her on 
 the shoulder as when she was a child, he 
 turned into Mr. Lee's room, and Mabel pro- 
 ceeded on her way to dress for her drive. 
 
 When she was ready she went to say good- 
 bye to her father, who was sitting wrapped up 
 in his easy chair by the fire, Dr. Armsdaile 
 close to him, her mother opposite. He looked 
 up as she came in, and taking her hand fondly, 
 said, 
 
 " Going to see Mrs. Kavenshaw, Mabel ? 
 Yes, that's right ; and get them to send^ her 
 something nice, Mabel, won't you ? Speak to 
 Mrs. Ashton about it. She's ill, you know. 
 What is it ? Yes, a cold — a nasty cold like 
 mine. Poor thing ! — poor thing !" and he 
 fondled his daughter's hand all the time he 
 spoke. 
 
 She only answered by a kiss, somehow her 
 heart was too full that morning to venture on 
 answering a speech which showed how en- 
 tirely her father failed to realize their changed 
 estate.
 
 198 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Dr. Armsdaile watched her as thej drove 
 along through the keen, bracing air, and in- 
 wardly resolved his feeble old patient must 
 and should learn to bear Mabel's absence, not 
 only once in a way, but for some hours each 
 day, if he could so manage. 
 
 " I thought something was to be done as 
 to our excellent friend Mr. Lockstone ?" he 
 observed by-and-by, as they were nearing 
 the Rectory. 
 
 ''Yes, Edward said so, but you see he 
 answered our letter directly, and there was no 
 time for the other to be sent by that ship, I 
 believe. No doubt we shall hear about it be- 
 fore very long, in a little more than another 
 month, I should think.'' 
 
 " Ah ! that's right," and as he spoke the 
 carriage stopped at the Rectory door. 
 
 It was growing dusk when Mabel once 
 more entered No. 5, Newman's Buildings. The 
 doctor had been detained longer than he 
 anticipated, and could not come in again him- 
 self. She said good-bye as he handed her out, 
 and as she passed hurriedly in at the gate her 
 dress brushed against that of another person
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 199 
 
 who was at the same instant passing into 
 the next house. She glanced up a little sur- 
 prised, for No. 4 was empty, and had been so, 
 rather to her relief, ever since they themselves 
 had inhabited the row. The house looked 
 grimy and desolate enough, so did the little 
 slip of ground with heaps of rubbish and of 
 bricks, even yet left about ; still, even that 
 was preferable, poor Mable thought, to having 
 neighbours — neighbours such as Newman's 
 Buildings were likely to afford them. 
 
 She now turned to see if the woman was 
 going to look at the house ; she might be, pre- 
 paratory to becoming that dreaded neighbour 
 herself; but no, there was no sign of her, though 
 surely she did pass through the gate. Once 
 more Mabel looked round, then, concluding 
 herself mistaken, and that she had really 
 passed on, hastened up to the door, which 
 Dorothy was already holding open for her. 
 As Mabel came close she saw the faithful 
 servant was disturbed, and before she could 
 speak Dorothy burst forth, 
 
 ^* Oh ! Miss Mabel, I am glad you've come, 
 ril not do it again when you're out ; if there's
 
 200 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 a peck of dust under it — rubbishing thing," 
 she added sotto voce, as a little relief to the 
 outraged feelings her kind heart forbade her 
 in this instance to display otherwise. 
 
 " Oh ! Dorothy, what is it ?" cried poor 
 Mabel, breathlessly. 
 
 " Not much, miss. Nothing at all to most 
 folks. There, darling, don't look like that, 
 it'll be all right now you've come. I've not 
 had the chance of doing the room out — little 
 closet of a place as it is — not as should be, 
 you see, since we came, so to-day, as he chose 
 to stay up to dinner, and madam wouldn't 
 leave him, why, I set to work, after you went, 
 and cleaned it thoroughly, that's all." 
 
 " But," said Mabel, still mystified and 
 hesitating, with her hand on the door, " I 
 don't see " 
 
 " Why, the cabinet, dear. It's quite true 
 I did move it — pushed it out of the place alto- 
 gether, for the matter of that — but I thought 
 I'd put it back just in the exact spot, ay, to a 
 hair's breadth, I could swear I did, after the 
 pains I took," and tears of vexation stood in 
 poor Dorothy's eyes.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 201 
 
 " And papa found out it had '^ 
 
 " Went up to it directly, dear, and will 
 have it some one's been at it. To think of 
 such a fuss being made over it, even if it is 
 an inch or so out of place/' concluded Dorothy, 
 in her despair. 
 
 ^' Never mind, Dorothy, I'll see if I can't 
 make it all right," and Mabel went in at last. 
 
 Poor old Mr. Lee was standing — a most 
 unusual thing for him — close by his jealously- 
 guarded treasure, leaning on it, fumbling about 
 it, and ever and again muttering almost in- 
 coherent lamentations, piteous assurances that 
 " someone had touched it — someone had in- 
 deed ;" and even the sight of his daughter, 
 as she came eagerly towards him, failed to 
 divert his attention at once. She had to pass 
 her arm round his, and kiss his pale cheek 
 again and again before he would turn to her. 
 At last he did, but it was only to repeat the 
 same cry even more piteously than before, 
 
 " Mabel, someone's touched it — they have 
 indeed !" 
 
 *' Yes, papa, dear. Dorothy's been dust- 
 ing it, you know — see, it's quite clean now,'^
 
 202 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 and Mabel laid her little white hand on the 
 cabinet, and then held up her fingers for her 
 father's inspection. 
 
 The old man looked at them curiously. 
 The idea was a new one, but simple enough 
 for him to grasp, though neither his wife nor 
 Dorothy had ventured to suggest it. Fearing 
 to complicate matters, they had confined them- 
 selves to assurances that no one had been in 
 the room. After the grave inspection of 
 Mabel's pretty fingers, he again looked sus- 
 piciously at the cabinet, passing his own hand 
 all over the top again and again, muttering, 
 " Dusting — dusting." 
 
 Then he turned once more to his child, 
 and looking anxiously in her face, demanded, 
 
 " Are you sure, Mabel ? — quite sure ?" 
 
 " Yes, dear papa, quite certain — look how 
 nice and clean it is, and everything else ; 
 besides, she has cleaned it all so nicely," and 
 Mabel glanced round the room, hoping to 
 turn his attention elsewhere. 
 
 But in vain. His look followed hers, it is 
 true, but he was evidently not thinking of 
 what he saw, and soon his eyes were again
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 203 
 
 riveted on the cabinet, and he once more 
 began painfully, laboriously, to pass his hand 
 over every part of it, peering round every 
 now and then as he did so, with a cautious, 
 alarmed look, as if fearful of his proceedings 
 being observed. 
 
 Mabel watched him with a troubled mind. 
 It was so new to see such an expression on 
 that placid, vacant face, and she began to 
 regret her having been prevailed on to leave 
 him, and to fear she might fail to quiet him 
 as soon as she had hoped. Her quick eye 
 had detected that the cabinet was really some 
 inch or so out of its usual place, and taking 
 advantage of one of those furtive glances of 
 her father's, she gently pushed it into position. 
 The movement escaped him, and had a most 
 happy result, for when he once more paused 
 to observe his treasure, his face cleared. He 
 saw it was all right now, and began to forget 
 he had discovered it otherwise on first coming 
 down. 
 
 " You are quite sure, Mabel ? — quite sure ?" 
 he once again repeated ; and on her answer- 
 ing assurance sank quietly down in his chair,
 
 204 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 very tired and languid, but rousing once to 
 whisper, as he pointed to this day's fruitful 
 source of trouble, ^* We must take care, 
 Mabel — you know, great care — no one must 
 get at it — he must not," glancing timidly 
 round ; and then he listened to her talk on 
 other matters, as she gradually drew away 
 his thoughts to Mrs. Eavenshaw, the messages 
 she had sent, how bad was her cold, and so 
 forth, till he had quite forgotten the cabinet's 
 displacement and all his trouble over it. 
 
 Then Dorothy came in with the tea and 
 lamp, and Mabel went herself to the window 
 to draw the curtains. As she was about to 
 pull the second, she started with an uncom- 
 fortable feeling of being watched, and looked 
 hastily out into the dusk ; but the little 
 garden was deserted, and the line of wall on 
 either side apparently unbroken in its blank- 
 ness.
 
 205 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IIEEESTOWN was as yet innocent of gas — 
 ■^^ indeed, that brilliant friend of shop- 
 keepers and troublesome enemy of burglars 
 was hardly established in London, and country 
 towns were still debating, very hotly some- 
 times, the chances of the new and wonderful 
 light turning out a failure or success, not 
 dreaming of attempting its adoption So the 
 streets of Merestown, those that were lighted 
 at all, were still illuminated by the old- 
 fashioned oil and wick, whose feeble rays served 
 rather to make darkness more visible beyond 
 the little circle of their own immediate neigh- 
 bourhood, than to really light the town. 
 
 Through its dim streets sped Sarah Lock- 
 stone, taking a very devious way to her de- 
 sired goal ; for she wished to avoid being 
 watched, should she by chance be recognised, 
 and had besides a strong inclination to pass
 
 206 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 certain Louses — houses whose inhabitants she 
 knew. Possibly, probably she should see 
 nothing but the bare walls, and, it might be, 
 a lighted window or two ; but there was a 
 chance she might see more — if not, no matter ; 
 but she had begun to have a curious wonder 
 within her inmost soul, whether other house- 
 holds in the privacy of home resembled theirs 
 in any way. Should she find as much food 
 for her satire in the heads of other families 
 as in her own ? What was jovial Mr. Turner 
 like, for example, the father of one of 
 Hester's many suitors ? — was he the serene, 
 rather loud, but good-natured social being in 
 his own dining-room as in other people's ? — 
 or did he swear at his rosy little wife and try 
 to tyrannize over his children ? 
 
 So wondering, Sarah turned into the very 
 street where their house stood, and as she did 
 so, ran straight against Mr. Geldfinder, who 
 was walking as fast as herself in the opposite 
 direction. Both paused. Sarah to see if she 
 was recognised, Mr. Geldfinder to see who had 
 interrupted his progress. One glance was 
 apparently sufficient — it was only some com-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 207 
 
 moil person, and with an impatient " Can't 
 you make use of your eyes, woman ?" he passed 
 on. 
 
 Sarah looked after him amused. Ah ! he 
 could be very different then from the suave, 
 obedient attendant on Hester's lightest word 
 — she had thought so before ; well, it was 
 Hester's concern, not hers, certainly. Mr. 
 Geldfinder interested her in no way ; and 
 though it was satisfactory to know how truly 
 she had judged him, she had felt too little 
 doubt on the matter to be conscious of much 
 excitement at the certainty. He was soon out 
 of her thoughts, and she standing by the 
 Turners' house, or, rather, under the shadow 
 of the old-fashioned porch above the door. 
 
 Ah! the blind was not drawn yet, and every- 
 body was there except the master of the family. 
 Even young Turner, with the Benjamin of 
 the family on his knee, a little thing of some 
 three years old, now stuffing its mouth with 
 the sweets ^'Broser WiUie" had brought home. 
 *^ Umph ! Hester's made her usual mistake," 
 was Sarah's secret comment as she noticed 
 this, and shrugged her shoulders scornfully.
 
 208 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Mrs. Turner ? Yes, there, half-asleep, of 
 course, in the arm-chair, in spite of a vigorous 
 dispute going on between the two younger 
 girls close at her elbow. Poor Mrs. Turner ! 
 she was certainly idle, there was no doubt 
 about it, and gave herself very little trouble 
 in her efforts to conquer the embonpoint over 
 whose approach she occasionally lamented. 
 The eldest daughter was knitting busily be- 
 tween her favourite elder brother and two lads 
 home from the day-school, who on their knees 
 on the rug were trying to catch what little 
 light the fire gave on the to-morrow's lessons 
 they were conning. 
 
 It was a pretty domestic picture of an 
 English home of the middle class, speaking to 
 the best feelings of our nature, but it stirred 
 no tender depths in Sarah's heart, or, if it did, 
 it was unknown to herself ; she took it all in 
 with a keen, rapid glance, even to the dis- 
 tracted, not quite happy expression on young 
 Turner's face, and then she gave the old smile, 
 with threefold intensity of bitterness, but 
 there was no soft light in her eye, rather a 
 glitter of scorn as she muttered half-aloud,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 209 
 
 '' Ah ! you're beginning to feel the game's 
 lost. Well, she could sleep in your easy chair 
 as well as your mother, no doubt ; so perhaps 
 you are right to grieve." 
 
 As she spoke the door of the parlour opened 
 — opened so noisily she heard it where she 
 stood — and Mr. Turner appeared on the 
 threshold — no further, he had not time. His 
 very turning of the handle had been recog- 
 nized, and the small baby thing had scrambled 
 off the young man's knee and was clasping 
 his father's as the door opened, the little girls 
 were clinging to his arms, the boys had flung 
 aside their books, his wife received him with a 
 welcoming smile and a happy light in her 
 eye, the eldest son hastened to push his 
 father's chair to the fire, and the daughter laid 
 down the sock she was knitting him to stir 
 that fire into the bright blaze she knew he 
 loved. Sarah could not hear the cordial 
 words he had for all his family, but she saw 
 their greeting, and the genial smile on his 
 face, and as she turned away at the same 
 moment that " Willie " drew the blind down 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 she felt all doubts at rest for ever. There 
 was truth in that home at least ! 
 
 What should she find in the other ? That 
 was now her one absorbing thought as she 
 sped faster and faster along ; she had lingered 
 on her way for more minutes than she had 
 intended, and began to fear she might be too 
 late for her next inspection ; but no, it would 
 be lighter in the outskirts, day lingered longer 
 there ; and on she hurried, very curious now, 
 and something excited. She had never yet 
 seen those on whom she now hoped to look — 
 never, not even as a child, if her memory did 
 not play her false, and it was not given to do 
 that, she thought, with exultation. Hester had 
 once seen them, she believed, long ago, on one 
 of their rare visits to the town, but she never. 
 They had very rarely driven in like the other 
 county families, and latterly had never come 
 at all. What were they like ? 
 
 The old man was a fool, of course. The 
 wife vulgar, she supposed, not so ladylike as 
 her own mother even. The girl haughty, 
 stately, and proud. She had heard of her 
 as a true Lee, and at the selfsame instant
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 211 
 
 Sarah brushed against a slight girlish form 
 just then alighting from a quiet-looking 
 brougham. 
 
 It startled her for once, she had been so 
 lost in her own thoughts she was not even 
 conscious that she had already reached her 
 destination ; but she was mistress of the 
 position in an instant, and had turned into 
 the deserted plot of ground in front of No. 4, 
 Newman's Buildings before Mabel had opened 
 their own little gate, and was watching her 
 intently from behind a friendly rubbish-heap 
 before she had turned to see what could have 
 become of her. 
 
 So that was Miss Lee, was it ? She heard 
 Dr. Armsdaile's farewell shout, and thus her 
 first suspicion became certainty. Miss Lee, 
 her predecessor in those long galleries and 
 stately halls of Lee Manor. By the way, it 
 must be called Lee Manor no more. She 
 made a mental note to that effect, and de- 
 termined to speak to her father on it as they 
 drove home. AVhat a slight, graceful girl! 
 Pretty, people would call her, she supposed — 
 a gentle beauty like Hester's in character ; 
 
 p2
 
 212 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 only and there handsome Sarah Lockstone 
 
 made a deep pause, and looked with greater 
 intentness on the pure, fair face advancing up 
 the walk. 
 
 Ah ! no she was not simply the mindless 
 pink and white likeness of Hester. Her 
 beauty, if as delicate, was of a higher order, 
 there was intellect in that face, and — and — 
 well, birth, perhaps. Of course it was the 
 haughtiness for which she had looked, only 
 not exactly in that form, and Sarah strained 
 her eyes after the retreating figure, and finally 
 left her hiding-place and followed it till she 
 stood with only the slight partition wall be- 
 tween them, very close to the open door — so 
 close that she heard the strange greeting of 
 Dorothy to her young mistress, and lost for 
 the moment every other feeling in that of 
 intense curiosity. She held her breath to 
 listen, but very needlessly ; the cold evening 
 air was very still, Dorothy's voice by no means 
 even so low as usual in her excitement, and 
 every word came clear and distinct to her ear, 
 except one or two of Mabel's as she advanced 
 further into the passage.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 213 
 
 Dorothy had left the door open during the 
 colloquy, and did not shut it till Mabel opened 
 that of the parlour. No sooner had she done 
 so than Sarah rapidly shifted her position so 
 as to command a full view of the one window. 
 Luck befriended her here. As in the former 
 case, the window was uncurtained, the fire- 
 light brighter, and she could see quite plainly 
 that part of the room where the cabinet stood. 
 
 How fixedly did she gaze, and with what 
 absorbing interest watch every movement of 
 father and daughter. Her own face would 
 have been a study, and a strange one, while 
 she did so, so many changes passed over its 
 usually immovable calmness of expression. 
 She lost no gesture, however slight, of those 
 within, no variation in their countenances, 
 and not even to look at Mrs. Lee, where she 
 sat, helpless, troubled, and anxious near the 
 fire, did she remove her eyes from father and 
 daughter till the last had subsided for some 
 minutes into his chair, and the vacant look 
 once more taken possession of his face. Oh ! 
 that she could hear as well as see, but that 
 was impossible, so she strained her eyes to
 
 214 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 their utmost tension in her anxiety not to let 
 one movement, one look escape. When she 
 felt the scene was over, she gave one sigh of 
 relief, and then for the first time took note of 
 gentle Mrs. Lee. She recognised the unmis- 
 takable though very quiet gentlewoman at 
 once, and then immediately her earnest gaze 
 returned to Mabel, and was not removed again 
 till the change on Mabel's face, as she was draw- 
 ing the curtains, showed that she was conscious 
 of the curious inspection. Then Sarah dipped 
 for an instant below the w^all, the next, with 
 one glance which showed that Mabel was gone, 
 and the window completely draped, she was 
 on her way back into the town, more visibly 
 excited than she had ever been in her life. 
 
 She was herself perfectly conscious of this, 
 and also, which was worse, of the real stir 
 within, the unusual thoughts and feelings 
 surging up and oversetting that equable calm 
 to which she owed so much of the power over 
 others which she so greatly valued. She was 
 angry with her unusual weakness, and strove 
 hard to regain her composure, walking faster 
 than ever as she did so ; partly because con-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 215 
 
 scious she was late, partly that tierce bodily 
 exertion might quiet the excitement astir with- 
 in her mind. 
 
 By the time she had reached the entrance 
 to High Street she had succeeded, and it was 
 the ordinary cold, calm Sarah Lockstone, only 
 with a brighter glitter than usual, it m.ight 
 be, in her handsome eyes, that glided softly 
 into their old home, dropped the lock behind 
 her, and hastening upstairs found Eachel 
 standing ready at her door, candle in hand. 
 
 *' Thank you, Rachel. I am afraid I am 
 late, but really it is more amusing than I 
 expected, I find, and no one knew me — Mr. 
 Geldfinder even ran quite against me at the 
 corner of Craven Street, and had no idea who 
 it was. Has my father been waiting long ?" 
 
 "Not at all, Miss Sarah. At least, he's 
 not asked for you — indeed, he's never come 
 out of the office yet, as I've heard. Someone 
 came in just as you went, and I don't think 
 he's been gone very long. I know he didn't 
 go out with the clerk." 
 
 " Oh ! well, that's all right. Just help 
 me on with this cloak, Rachel, will you?
 
 2 1 6 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 There now, I am quite ready — it's not worth 
 while going down till the carriage comes, I 
 think. We'll stay up here. Who was the 
 person, do you know, Kachel?" she added, 
 suddenly turning her eyes full on Rachel's. 
 
 But that elderly domestic was by no means 
 embarrassed by their gaze, nor did her own 
 fall beneath it. She was used to ''Miss Sarah," 
 and though she admired her, -was no whit 
 afraid of her on such occasions as these ; and 
 perhaps this was why Sarah treated her with 
 rather more consideration than she ever did 
 anybody else. Eachel would not tempt her 
 into an outburst of wrath by interfering with 
 her reserved moods ; but in a talk she knew 
 her own value, and that of her information, 
 and could hold her own. 
 
 '' I'm not sure that I do. Miss Sarah — it 
 was very dusk, as you saw yourself, and I 
 hadn't a very good chance to look at him, but 
 I've a fancy I knew his cut, though if it 
 is him, I've never set eyes on him for 
 years." 
 
 Rachel paused, there was a strange falter- 
 ing in her voice at the last words. It was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 217 
 
 odd, the sip^lit of him, though it had startled 
 her at the moment, had not so vividly recalled 
 what her own words had now done — this 
 man's connection with the one bright spot in 
 her memory, the one brief happiness of a very 
 lonely, somewhat hard life. 
 
 Sarah was surprised, but she partly guessed 
 at the truth, and made no comment, only say- 
 ing, 
 
 *^ You knew him yourself, then, Eachel ?" 
 
 *' If it's the same one as I fancy, I did, 
 Miss Sarah ; and I wish I never had, nor 
 no one else here either; though, maybe, 
 'tvvouldn't ha' made much odds," she concluded, 
 in a lower tone. 
 
 ^^ Who is he, then?" 
 
 Now Sarah repeated the old question, not 
 that she had absolutely disbelieved her father, 
 but she was not sorry his statement should be 
 confirmed, and it was a good introduction to 
 a quest of further particulars, such as she 
 hoped Eachel would be able to add to the 
 bald fact she alone knew ; but the old ser- 
 vant's present answer was nearly word for 
 word what her master's had been.
 
 218 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ^' An old clerk of Mr. Lockstone's, miss — 
 nothing more.'' 
 
 " A very reputable one, too, Eachel, I 
 should say," she replied, with a half-smile ; 
 "judging by appearances, that is." 
 
 " He was once,'' Eachel answered, almost 
 fiercely, " and looked as well as your father 
 himself, for that matter." 
 
 The mocking light shone very visibly in 
 Sarah's eyes, but she put a strong constraint 
 upon herself, and forbore to give full force to 
 the feeling in the tone wherein she said, 
 
 "An old love, eh, Eachel?" 
 
 The woman looked quickly up. It was no 
 good, there had been just a shade, ever so 
 slight, but still a shade of mockery in the 
 tone, and Eachel, ever quick to detect such 
 things, was in a mood to be doubly so just 
 now, and to resent them, too. 
 
 " And what if he were ?" she demanded, 
 angrily. 
 
 " Nay, Eachel, now don't quarrel with me. 
 Why shouldn't I ask ? Upon my word 1 
 didn't mean to afTront you." She spoke quite 
 truly there, and Eachel felt she did, but was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 219 
 
 only half-appeased notwithstanding. Sarah 
 saw it was so, and condescended to add, " You 
 know I'm so used to Hester and all her lovers, 
 1 suppose I can't think of any one else's with- 
 out it's amusing me, as they do ; but I really 
 should like to hear about you and yours, 
 Eachel, I should, indeed. There, sit down 
 and tell me," she spoke half-kindly, half-im- 
 periously, and the woman who had known her 
 from babyhood, and loved her in a fashion, 
 obeyed so far as sitting down went, but she 
 did not speak, only sat with her hands on her 
 knees, holding the old-fashioned brass candle- 
 stick between them, and seeming perfectly 
 indifferent, perhaps unconscious of the flame 
 that flickered up in her face and threw its 
 chief light there — her eyes were fixed moodily 
 on the opposite wall. 
 
 Sarah watched her in silence for a minute, 
 glad her own face was in shadow, then she 
 said, 
 
 ''Well, Rachel?" and the tone made the 
 woman start, as she had intended. It was 
 that of command, such as she had been used 
 to hear from those lips for many years now.
 
 220 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 The habit of obedience in a general way had 
 grown strong, and she yielded to it now in- 
 stinctively, as Sarah had hoped and expected. 
 
 '^ Well, miss, he did pretend to care for me, 
 and I was fool enough to believe him then." 
 
 " Is it long ago ?" 
 
 ^'Long! I should just think it was. Be- 
 fore — yes, just before you were born ; he'd 
 been here above a year then, but up to that 
 time " 
 
 *' What ?" asked Sarah, gently for her, 
 seeing the woman's face contract, as with a 
 spasm of pain, as she paused. 
 
 " Ah ! if it hadn't been for that," said 
 Kachel, and the pain came into her voice and 
 made it shrill as she spoke, *^it wouldn't have 
 been so bad ! but for the thought of Joel — 
 poor Joel I I shouldn't mind so much now," 
 and Rach^, hard, wrinkled, brown-faced 
 Rachel, absolutely dashed away a tear from 
 her still line but generally harsh eyes. 
 
 "Who was Joel, then?" again asked Sarah, 
 who found she must help the story on. 
 
 " The only relation I ever had — to know, 
 I mean, of course — in all the world ; he was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 221 
 
 a far-away cousin of my mother's, and a big 
 lad when I was only a bit of a child, and he'd 
 come and see me at the workhouse many a 
 time, and bring me things, as I know now he 
 must have denied himself half his food to get. 
 I'd only him to care for then, and I did care for 
 him — as to that, I allers did care for him, 
 only he got to care for me as I couldn't — 
 perhaps I might if I'd gone on trying as he 
 asked me to, and as I promised ; but I loved 
 him dearly, like a father or an elder brother. 
 Oh ! if Anthony had never come between us!" 
 
 It was curious, but all the time Eachel was 
 speaking she did so more as if going over her 
 story in an outspoken soliloquy than as if 
 telling it to an interested listener. Probably 
 from an unconscious but deep feeling that 
 there was no real sympathy with her in the 
 present auditor's breast, in spite of the sen- 
 tences which filled up her own pauses. 
 
 ** He was jealous ?" half asked half sug- 
 gested Sarah. 
 
 *' N — n — no, I don't think it was that. I 
 was very young then, younger than you are 
 now even. Miss Sarah," and Rachel looked at
 
 222 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 the handsome face beside her with a dim 
 consciousness that its possessor would never 
 have been guilty, however young, of the soft- 
 hearted folly and vanity that had clouded her 
 own youth. Turning away again, she went 
 on, ^' And people said I was pretty — there — I 
 know I was — my glass told me that — though 
 I'm ugly enough now — and Anthony Hicks 
 seemed to me a sort of a gentleman, and a 
 dashing one, too, so I must needs be fool 
 enough to set to watching him in, in the morn- 
 ing, and out at night. Poor Joel ! he'd have 
 given his right hand if I'd ever looked out for 
 him like that " 
 
 ^^Yes, Rachel." 
 
 " Well, by-and-by Anthony finds out what 
 a fool I am, and he begins noticing me, and 
 I'm as proud as a peacock, and begin thinking 
 I shall be a lady — a lawyer's wife, and as 
 good as my mistress. Hicks said he didn't 
 mean to keep clerk all his life ; and then 
 Joel, he soon saw how it was, and he pretty 
 near broke his heart, poor fellow ! Well, it's 
 odd how such things go, I fancied I loved 
 Anthony Ilicks in two months dearer than
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 223 
 
 ever I'd done poor Joel in all those years." 
 
 " And what did he do ?" 
 
 " Went away for a bit, and then came back 
 to try his chance again, he said — let each 
 have a fair run for it ; just as if it wasn't 
 all over already. Then Anthony tried being 
 friends with him, and Joel found he'd wild 
 ways, and told me, and I — I said I liked him 
 the better for them ; but that wasn't true, 
 only it vexed me so, and Joel telling of him ; 
 and, oh, dear ! oh, dear ! he believed me, and 
 took to wild ways himself. They were quite 
 different in him though — seemed so to me at 
 least, and a deal worse than with Anthony ; 
 and last of all the two got quarrelling when 
 they were both in liquor, and tried to fight, 
 but Joel's foot slipped, so they said, and he 
 got an ugly knock on his head, and — and he 
 died." 
 
 ''What, at once?" asked Sarah, really a 
 little shocked. 
 
 '' No, they took him to the infirmary, and 
 he lived a week; but I thought I should 
 never have been happy again. That sobered 
 me, and it was well it did, or I don't know
 
 224 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 bow I should have borne the rest — and witli- 
 out Joel to comfort me.'* 
 
 '^ What ?" 
 
 " Why, Tony went off — your father sent 
 him, he told me ; and he was aw\ay, oh ! such 
 a weary long time, and when he came back 
 he was grander than ever.'' 
 
 *^ And not so fond of you, Eachel ?" 
 
 Sarah guarded her tone very carefully this 
 time. 
 
 '^ Well, yes, but he said he was going off 
 again, should go off on the sudden and very 
 quiet, and wanted me to go with him, and be 
 married afterwards, and I told him I wouldn't, 
 and he did go one morning, and I never knew 
 a word, and have never seen him since till to- 
 day. I didn't think he meant it," she con- 
 cluded, under her breath. 
 
 No, or Eachel would have gone with him, 
 in spite of all, so wildly did she then love that 
 worthless scapegrace, Anthony Hicks. His 
 going had made her the prematurely old and 
 wrinkled woman she now was, the hard, cross- 
 grained fellow-servant all the younger maids 
 had held in abhorrence as well as awe.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 225 
 
 There was a long pause. Sarah did not 
 break it this time, till the rumbling of wheels 
 in the distance warned her the carriage was 
 coming, then she said softly, 
 
 ^^ I wonder what could have made him go 
 away." 
 
 ** I don't know ; he said something of 
 getting what would make our fortune if he 
 did ; but I don't fancy there was much truth 
 in it. Sometimes I've thought he'd got into 
 so many scrapes Merestown had grown too 
 hot for him, as Joel always said it would." 
 
 *^ Did he stay with my father to the last ?" 
 
 '' Oh ! yes, up to the very night before he 
 was missing — very late he was that night, I 
 remember, and master, too — they were shut 
 up together in the office long after his time 
 was up." 
 
 *' Did my father know he was going ?" 
 
 '^ Law, no. Miss Sarah, he was as much 
 surprised as any of us ; though it's not his 
 way to say much, he did say a good deal 
 that morning, and was terribly put out for a 
 clerk, he was so busy at the Manor just 
 then." 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 '^ How ?" and Sarah's voice sounded just 
 the same, thougli the words had interested 
 her beyond any that had gone before. 
 
 " Why, it was just about the time the fuss 
 was about the young gentleman's marriage, 
 the Mr. Lee as is now, I mean, and the old 
 gentleman ill, and all that." 
 
 ^^ Oh ! and you don't know at all where 
 this man went ?" 
 
 Rachel shook her head. With the telling 
 of the story of her youth, much of her emo- 
 tion had passed away, and she was now almost 
 the same Rachel as ever. 
 
 " And he never came back once all these 
 years till to-day ?" 
 
 *' No — I never saw him, at least, if he did, 
 or heard of him — there's your father." 
 
 ^^ Yes ; and abominably late he is. Well, 
 Rachel, good-bye. Remember, I shall look 
 in on you sometimes, and I shall quite want 
 to know when you see this man again," and 
 Sarah went downstairs and entered the car- 
 riage, without a word to Mr. Lockstone, 
 though a keen glance had shown her he was 
 more pallid than ever, and that his hands
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 227 
 
 shook nervously as he drew on his gloves. 
 
 Eachel gave one look after the carriage as 
 it dashed away through the dimness, mutter- 
 ing as she returned and closed the door, 
 
 " What is she after now, I wonder — some- 
 thing.'' 
 
 q2
 
 228 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 '^ A ND to-night I had hoped our Mabel 
 -^ might take her place among her equals 
 — perhaps been the belle of the room," thought 
 Mrs. Lee, very sadly, as she sat as much in 
 the shade as the persistent squareness of the 
 sitting-room at No. 5, Newman's Buildings 
 allowed, watching her daughter humouring 
 the querulousness of the old man's convales- 
 cence. 
 
 It ^vas between eight and nine, the tea had 
 long been removed, the lamp stood alone in 
 its glory in the middle of the table, and as 
 the time stole on Mrs. Lee's thoughts had 
 flown away to a very different scene, which 
 was now probably commencing not so very 
 far away from that poor little room. Even 
 balls began earlier some forty years ago, and 
 it was the county ball of which poor Mrs. 
 Lee was now thinking. Yes, this was the
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 229 
 
 night — the night of the county ball — looked 
 forward to so long by many a fair young 
 matron and eager pleasure-loving girl ; looked 
 back to so often with regret as having passed ; 
 the one exciting bit of ^gaiety which alone 
 really broke the tedium of that winter's so- 
 journ in the country — so very wearisome and 
 dull to those petticoat wearers who could not, 
 or did not, venture to emulate their mascu- 
 line relatives' exploits in the hunting-field 
 and coursing-ground. 
 
 The county ball was a grand affair at Meres- 
 town, too — a very grand affliir. Nobody ever 
 failed to go without a very valid excuse 
 indeed, and anybody Avho could not go re- 
 gretted the circumstance very sincerely. The 
 county families always mustered strongly. 
 Married sons and married daughters were 
 certain to choose the time of the county ball 
 for visits to the paternal roof, if so. doing was 
 in any w^ay feasible. Then visitors were asked 
 with the one object of enlivening the ball, 
 so that altogether it was no wonder that 
 so much was thought, talked, and written 
 about it !
 
 230 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Lee ! Hers was by no means 
 an ambitious soul — very happily for herself, 
 or how would her sufferings during the past 
 few years have been quadrupled. She had 
 lived contentedly at the Manor all the years 
 of her married life in a seclusion which would 
 have been unendurable to most women. The 
 neglect, which to other ladies in her position 
 would have been gall and wormwood, was un- 
 felt, scarcely even noticed, except when it 
 irritated her husband. 
 
 While he remained tolei'ably healthy in 
 body and mind, while her darling children 
 were children still, Mrs. Lee was happy, en- 
 tirely happy. She had known straitened cir- 
 cumstances, almost privation, and to her the 
 beauty and luxury of such a home as the 
 Manor was enjoyment, happiness enough. She 
 had mixed very little in society, and that 
 little, thoijgh she had met her husband there, 
 had rather given her a distaste to it ; and, 
 perhaps, in her inmost soul, unrecognised 
 even by herself, there was a feeling of re- 
 joicing and escape at her present enforced 
 immunity from it. Her visits to her hus-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 231 
 
 band's cottages, her almsgiving of kind Avords 
 and deeds, as well as of money, food, and 
 clothes to the sick and suffering, well occu- 
 pied what little leisure was left her from the 
 calls of her happy home life, and afforded her 
 all she required of interest and excitement 
 from without. Mind, heart, and soul of the 
 lady of Lee Manor were each and all filled — 
 well filled. 
 
 And so it went on, till ^' the little ones " 
 ceased to be such, and as they budded into noble 
 youth and lovely maidenhood, Mrs. Lee re- 
 cognised the want she had failed to see before. 
 Yes, it was not well that they should lead 
 the isolated life which had hitherto made her 
 hjippiness, and she began to look around and 
 note the doings and ways of the neighbours 
 who ought to have been her friends and as- 
 sociates. 
 
 The result was a discovery that society was 
 not confined to that peculiar sort, the English 
 abroad — and that society forty years back, 
 remember — with which she alone was conver- 
 sant, and her mother's heart grew yet more 
 anxious than her husband's had ever been,
 
 232 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 even in the clays when most impatient and 
 irate at the neighbourhood's neglect of his 
 wife, that they should visit at last, that some 
 opening should offer for Edward and Mabel's 
 introduction to those with whom they had a 
 right to mix. Nor was she without hope of 
 this, for, as before noticed, some slight ad- 
 vances had of late been made, and it was now 
 her chief care and object that these should be 
 met in such a manner as to encourage others. 
 
 No want of welcome, no resentment of 
 former slights, on hei' part, at least, should 
 check tliis weakly plant of friendliness in the 
 bud ; it had been long, very long in shooting 
 at all — no frost of coldness must nip it now. 
 So the few straggling callers at Lee Manor 
 were unexpectedly pleased with its lady, 
 though they found its lord barely courteous and 
 somewhat distrait in manner, and they left it 
 declaring " Mrs. Lee must be a lady, wherever 
 that queer man had picked her up ; she was 
 so gentle, so charmingly refined, only a 
 little naive, but that made her all the more 
 piquante.'^ 
 
 Just a little longer and it was very pos-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 233 
 
 sible Mrs. Lee and her handsome children 
 might have become the fashion down in their 
 county, but that "little longer" was not 
 allowed — had Stephen Lockstone suspected 
 there might be danger in it ? — the season 
 called the neighbouHiood to London before 
 any real friendliness had been established be- 
 tween even one county family and that of the 
 Manor, and before they returned, the Lees had 
 dropped altogether out of their circle, were 
 lost to it completely ; and now it was only, 
 '^ Dear, dear, have you heard about the Lees ? 
 — such an old family, too — how shocking ! — 
 what terrible imprudence !" 
 
 *' It serves that stupid bear of a man right 
 — how horribly he behaved, dear, didn't he ? 
 But I am sorry for his wife, and those child- 
 ren, too, what has become of them, I wonder?" 
 
 '' Ah ! gone abroad — well, it's the best 
 thing, I suppose, when those sort of things 
 happen. I'm really grieved ; but to be sure 
 I've heard he picked her up abroad, so it's 
 the sort of life she's been used to." 
 
 No one cared to ascertain the real facts, no 
 one, had they known them, would have
 
 234 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 dreamed of seeking the gentle lady out, how- 
 ever charming or piquante, at No. 5, New- 
 wan's Buildings ! 
 
 Mrs. Lee knew this very well, and she did 
 not expect that they should. Nevertheless 
 the knowledge did not make her regret any the 
 less bitter, nor the utter destruction of all her 
 newborn hopes easier or pleasanter to bear ; 
 and this night of all others she felt these 
 most acutely, for at this same county ball 
 Mabel was to have ^' come out," and the do- 
 ting mother had expected great things from 
 the event. Mabel, once seen in her own 
 proper sphere, must be recognized at once as 
 a true Lee ; Avas she not the living representa- 
 tive of the beauty of 1660, whose portrait by 
 Sir Peter Lely was the chief ornament of the 
 picture gallery, only Mabel's face possessed 
 sweetness as its distinguishing characteristic 
 in lieu of the coquetry which was that of the 
 elder Lee ! Once seen she must be admired, 
 loved, was the secret conviction of the mother's 
 heart. Therefore she would be sought, and 
 so all come right in the end. Alas ! that was 
 all over now, the vision vanished. By this
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 235 
 
 time Lady Olivia Frazer had probably for- 
 gotten completely all about that little talk 
 upon the point, which, slight as it had been, 
 had sufficed to paint a very pretty, very 
 gratifying picture on Mrs. Lee's mind. 
 
 Her beautiful Mabel, sole daughter of the 
 Lees, chaperoned to this same county ball by 
 Lady Olivia herself. Lady Olivia, eldest 
 daughter to the Earl of Avonsdale, of Neville 
 Castle, and hardly ten years Mabel's senior, 
 though already the mother of five little 
 Frazers. Ah ! she had forgotten all about it, 
 no doubt, but poor Mrs. Lee had not, she 
 only wished she had, as she sat there in the 
 little square parlour of No. 5, Newman's 
 Buildings, her thoughts, her mind, in spite of 
 herself, not with her feeble husband and 
 patient child, but away in the large room of 
 Merestown's chief Lm, where the stewards 
 were already busy, where Mabel ought to have 
 been, might have been now dancing her first 
 dance in public, perhaps; and the sad mother, 
 now first fully realising the privileges and 
 advantages of station and birth, and valuing 
 them unduly, of course, now they were lost,
 
 236 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 as it is our nature to do, wiped a few scaldinp^ 
 tears warily from her soft, loving eyes, at 
 tlie same moment that IVIr. Lee querulously 
 exclaimed, 
 
 *' It is time for my soup, Mabel, I'm quite 
 sure it is, and I want it directly, '^ and his 
 voice was raised to a painfully shrill pitch in 
 his impatience. 
 
 Mabel glanced furtively at the timepiece, 
 the only one they had brought with them, and 
 not a very ornamental one, but their own, or 
 rather Mabel's, since it had been specially 
 given to her years back for the school- 
 room. 
 
 It still wanted a full quarter to nine. 
 Deborah was punctuality itself, and her father 
 had been fidgeting for this soup for half an 
 hour past already. A weary look rose for a 
 moment to the young girl's face, and quickly 
 as it was banished, and replaced by a sweet, 
 loving smile, Mrs. Lee saw it, and with a sharp, 
 bitter pang. 
 
 ^* Shall I go and see about it, papa ?" 
 
 " You ? No, of coui'se not, my darling — 
 ring the bell. Why can't the servants attend
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 237 
 
 to their work ? They've been very irregular 
 lately, very, and I've not heard the stable 
 clock strike for months, I'm sure. They keep 
 it slow, the knaves, I'm sure they do." 
 
 Poor lord of Lee Manor ! He was that still 
 in fancy more often than Avas pleasant or good 
 for his two gentle companions. This wrung 
 their heart more than all, not only as prov- 
 ing how completely his mind had failed, 
 but because the full consciousness of all his 
 calamities, which generally succeeded such 
 outbursts as these, was so inexpressibly 
 painful. 
 
 ** You did not care for your tea to-night, 
 papa, and you are hungry," faltered Mabel, 
 afraid to leave the subject altogether, yet 
 dreading any comment that suggested itself to 
 her. 
 
 *^Tea! — tea!" said the old man, in a puzzled 
 tone. '* Ah ! no," he went on, more briskly, 
 " the rolls weren't fresh, Mabel, and the butter 
 — it was very nasty, Mabel, I didn't like it," 
 he concluded, piteously, looking in his child's 
 face for sympathy. Alas ! such petty trifles 
 were of more import to him now as a rule
 
 238 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 than the one great crushing grief of which 
 they were the natural consequences. 
 
 " It wasn't very nice, papa, dear. We 
 must try and get some better/' 
 
 '^Yes, tell them I won't have it, Mabel. 
 They take advantage of my being ill, shut up 
 here; but I'll go to the home farm myself 
 to-morrow morning, Mabel. Remember, my 
 dear, to-morrow morning. You'll remind me, 
 eh, Mabel ?" 
 
 " Yes," poor Mabel answered, with down- 
 cast eyes, when she found silence impossible. 
 
 ^' They oughtn't to do it. I can't think 
 what Stephen Lockstone '^ 
 
 Ah ! that name recalled it all, and the old 
 man came to an abrupt pause as lie uttered it, 
 while its sound sent a creeping shiver through 
 Mabel's whole frame. 
 
 She could not attempt an answer this time, 
 only fixed her soft eyes with mute pity on her 
 father's face. She was surprised to see it 
 unwontedly excited, working with passion, 
 and in great alarm she hastened to him and 
 put her arm caressingly over his shoulder, as 
 he broke out incoherently.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 239 
 
 '' It's cruel, Mabel, it's very cruel ; but he 
 shan't — be shan't — he can't, you know — and 
 he knows, too, it's no good — it's a trick, a 
 deception. I found it out, Mabel, I did — I've 
 got it safe — safe, you know," sinking his 
 voice to a mysterious whisper, " and, Mabel — 
 Mabel, you shall bring them to me, dear, and 
 we'll show it to somebody else — an honest 
 one, dear, and he shan't — he shan't, I say. 
 He can't, Mabel, can he ?" 
 
 " No, father, dear," Mabel hastened to 
 answer in her most soothing tones, for she 
 was greatly alarmed at the violent agitatio^i 
 her father had put himself into, and though 
 entii-ely at a loss to conceive at what he was 
 aiming, of what speaking, unless of Mr. Lock- 
 stone's general proceedings, she caught eagerly 
 at the first chance of calming him. Her touch 
 and words had the desired effect, and, ex- 
 hausted by his emotion, the old man once 
 more subsided, murmuring indistinctly, 
 
 *' To-morrow — yes, we'll do it to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 Was it only the home farm and the butter 
 he was thinking of, after all? Some such
 
 240 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 question flitted across Mabel's mind as she 
 watched the lined face resume its placid 
 vacancy of expression, and the eyelids droop 
 wearily over the now quiet eyes — so fierce a 
 moment ago. It did not much matter, she 
 thought ; whatever it was, it had had the good 
 effect of averting the usual painful conclusion 
 to such fits of oblivion to their changed estate 
 as had occurred just now, while the whole 
 scene had lessened the dreaded quarter of an 
 hour so considerably, Deborah would probably 
 arrive with the soup before her father again 
 reused himself to ask for it, and to tax her 
 just now almost exhausted powers of amus- 
 ing him and diverting his childish impatience 
 for the one thing happening to occupy his 
 thoughts. 
 
 Yes, nine o'clock came, and Deborah with 
 it, and the poor feeble old man did not sit up 
 in his chair or open his eyes till Mabel her- 
 self called his attention to the excellent basin 
 of soup now smoking before hiui. After eat- 
 ing it he was helped upstairs, and went to 
 bed, and Mabel was left to a welcome hour of 
 solitude and repose, while her mother was
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 241 
 
 attending on her husband as far as he would 
 permit her assistance. 
 
 Sometimes Mrs. Lee came down again, 
 sometimes not. To-night she returned to the 
 room in less than the usual time, her step 
 unusually brisk, her face eager. 
 
 " Mabel," she said, as she came up to her 
 child, and laid a caressing hand fondly on the 
 rich tresses of hair coiled about the shapely 
 head, *' Mabel, darling, do you think that 
 — that there was anything in what he said ?" 
 and she looked anxiously, yearningly in 
 Mabel's face. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Lee ! It was no thought for 
 yourself, no regret on your own account, that 
 had woke in your heart that painfully intense 
 desire to glean hope, meaning, from your hus- 
 band's random words. 
 
 Mabel had been reading — reading one of 
 the then not long published " Waverley 
 Novels," one she had not read before. Dr. 
 Armsdaile had brought it her only that morn- 
 ing, and she was already lost in its absorbing 
 interest, forgetful alike of the evening's petty 
 but wearing, constantly-recurring trials, and 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 of her own exceeding weariness of mind, when 
 her mother's address startled her. She looked 
 up puzzled, but with a brighter look on her 
 face than it had worn since dinner, and on 
 this Mrs. Lee feasted her eyes thankfully. 
 Mabel was not thinking of the county ball, 
 evidently not longing to be there, but griev- 
 ing afresh over all that prevented it. Per- 
 haps she did not even remember this was the 
 night. Mrs. Lee was inclined to think not 
 as she watched her child trying to recall what 
 her mother alluded to — and Mrs. Lee was 
 right. 
 
 ^' I — Fm afraid, mamma, I don't quite 
 know what you mean," Mabel answered, at 
 last. Those mind-wanderings of the broken 
 man were such painful topics to the wilfully 
 blind wife and daughter that she feared to 
 mistake her mother's meaning, and wound her 
 unwittingly. 
 
 "What he said about having something 
 safe, Mabel, and showing it to an honest one. 
 Do you think there is something — something 
 we don't know that is of consequence? Surely 
 there was a meaning in it," and her eyes 
 sought Mabel's wistfully.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 243 
 
 The latter thought for a moment before 
 answering, then she said, 
 
 *' No, I'm afraid not, mamma — not the 
 meaning you were hoping for, at least. It 
 struck me as something unusual while he 
 spoke, but I don't think it had any meaning 
 — imj particular meaning, that is." 
 
 Mrs. Lee's countenance fell a little, but she 
 exclaimed, 
 
 '' It struck you, too, Mabel, did it ? I 
 daresay I am very silly, and that there was 
 no special meaning in it, as you say ; but still, 
 Mabel, do you know I cannot help feeling 
 there was, and I feel so still." After a 
 minute's pause she added fervently, " Oh ! my 
 darling, if it would please God to restore your 
 father to what he was — if he could but tell 
 us !" and she paced up and down the room in 
 a manner very unlike her ordinary peculiarly 
 calm and equable demeanour. 
 
 Mabel watched her in surprise, and some 
 anxiety. It was a most unusual thing for her 
 gentle mother to be thus moved. Presently 
 she stopped, and sitting down by Mabel's side 
 said, in a low voice, 
 
 r2
 
 244 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 *' Mabel, sometimes I fear, I almost fear 
 we were not wise or right in shrinking 
 from — from appealing to — Perhaps we ought 
 to have given some one authority to act for 
 us. Dr. Armsdaile thought so, you know," 
 and her voice faltered, the wifely shielding 
 and sheltering care was beginning to be sorely 
 opposed by the mother's anxieties and loving 
 cares. 
 
 ^^ Well, dear mamma, if it is so it is not too 
 late. We have done it at last — at least 
 Edward has — and you need not reproach 
 yourself about it. Indeed — indeed, mamma," 
 she added, anxiously, " I am afraid it will 
 prove all useless. I don't think there is any 
 chance " 
 
 She brought her sentence to an abrupt end. 
 She had intended to say boldly " of our re- 
 covering our home," but she found there ivas 
 a great chance of her breaking down should 
 she attempt it, so left the blank her mother 
 could fill up but too well. 
 
 *^ True, dear, it is done at last. I had for- 
 gotten at the moment, and was only thinking 
 of our past forbearance. How soon can we
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 245 
 
 hear again, Mabel? They will send by the 
 next mail, will they not ?" 
 
 " Oh ! yes, my uncle would be sure to be 
 back then, Edward said ; and I think a letter 
 may come every day now, mamma/' 
 
 Mrs. Lee said no more, but she thought a 
 great deal as she sat by her child's side, one 
 hand on hers. She regretted past weakness 
 on her own part, as she was inclined, hardly, 
 to term her tenderness for her husband ; won- 
 dered anxiously as to the possibility of those 
 words of his having any hidden meaning or not; 
 thought once more of the ball, of Mabel, of 
 her not being there ; and finally, as she at 
 last went upstairs again, marvelled, " Were 
 those people there ? — those now in her own 
 old home ? — had they gained admittance to 
 the county ball ?"
 
 24G 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ADMITTANCE to the Merestown county 
 ball was not a natural consequence of 
 ability and willingness to pay for your tickets. 
 No. The tickets could only be obtained 
 through the stewards, and it was a perfectly 
 optional matter whether or not those gentle- 
 men chose to accord them ; while admittance 
 to the assembly was all the more eagerly 
 desired by any whose birth or position was 
 such as to render it doubtful whether these 
 grants would be unhesitatingly accorded. 
 
 An anxious desire to be among the happy 
 privileged, to give her own fair face the chance 
 of bearing off the palm of beauty from the 
 county belles, had arisen in Hester Lockstone's 
 mind from the first instant that entrance into 
 such a paradise seemed possible to her — a 
 desire by no means lessened by the know- 
 ledge that her wedding-day was almost fixed,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 247 
 
 the settlements already drawn, and Mr. Geld- 
 finder by no means ambitious of accompanying 
 her, or of her going alone, into all the dazzling 
 allurements and untried novelties of the county 
 ball society. He yielded his own wishes to 
 hers — of course, he always did ; but, never- 
 theless, had clearly intimated that he thought 
 it would be just as well, much more pleasant, 
 if she gave up all idea of going. 
 
 '' Isn't it stupid of him, Sarah ?" Hester 
 indolently asked, as she poised some delicate 
 muslins in her hands, the better to estimate 
 their respective merits. 
 
 *' On the contrary, I am quite delighted to 
 find he can venture even to possess, much 
 more to express, an opinion of his own, 
 though only on one point — before marriage," 
 was Sarah's sarcastic and carefully emphasised 
 reply. 
 
 Hester's large eyes were lazily raised, as 
 usual, to her sister's face. 
 
 '^ I don't know what you mean, Sarah — I 
 never do ; but I can't see why Harman can't 
 have the same opinion with me," she pouted. 
 
 *^How reasonable you are, Hester ! Once
 
 248 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 dissentient — for a million times consenting. 
 My dear, if this affects you so strongly," 
 and she looked at the supine figure reclining 
 near her in an easy chair with scornful 
 ridicule, ^^ how will you endure the inevitable 
 reverse of the pretty picture of all-enduring 
 subservience now presented by your devoted 
 swain ? " 
 
 '^ I don't want any pictures — I only want 
 Harman to like to go to the ball," Hester 
 answered petulantly, and so foolishly that 
 Sarah looked at her this time in genuine sur- 
 prise. Did she really not see the gist of her 
 remarks, or would she not take the trouble to 
 discover it ? 
 
 "It is only on your account he objects to 
 go," she said, after a moment's pause of con- 
 sideration. 
 
 " My account ! I do wish, Sarah, you 
 would not talk such nonsense — it's no use 
 telling me that, you know. If he'd any desire 
 to please me in it, he'd be delighted to go. 
 I'm sure poor Willie Turner would." 
 
 " Why not elect him cavalier e ser rente for 
 the evening, then ? No doubt he would fly
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 249 
 
 at your behest, and these last few weeks of 
 cold looks and rebuffs would be as short in 
 remembrance as Jacob's service for Rachel/' 
 
 *^ I'm sure I'm quite willing he should go," 
 returned Hester, in an injured tone; ^^it was 
 you yourself, remember, who said I couldn't 
 have both." 
 
 '^Nay, Hester, if you attempt to quote me, 
 do so correctly, let me beg. I simply inquired 
 whether you thought it possible to marry 
 both." 
 
 '* Well, it's all the same — you were very 
 teasing, as you always are. I believe you 
 wanted one of them yourself," ventured Hes- 
 ter, roused to something of recrimination by 
 the cool, provoking tone of her sister. 
 
 " Ah !" was the answer of the latter, no 
 whit moved ; " and which would you assign 
 me, most considerate sister, supposing such 
 to be the case ? Which would suit me best, 
 eh?" 
 
 Hester would have replied, had she known 
 how, and had she dared, that any assignment 
 on her part would be rendered worse than 
 useless by the resistance of the young men to
 
 250 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 any such transfer of their fealty. Something 
 of the sort passed through her mind, and gave 
 a momentary light to her eyes, as was oc- 
 casionally the case when baited beyond en- 
 durance. Sarah saw it and was gratified. 
 She gloried in rousing the indolent spirit of 
 her sister, no matter by what means. Though 
 but a transient and very feeble kindling, 
 every fresh success proved some latent fire 
 did exist ; and this simple conviction was 
 a satisfaction, however hopeless was the pros- 
 pect of its ever being excited to any purpose. 
 She watched her now with mingled curiosity 
 and speculation, but no words came, and the 
 eyes resumed their ordinary insipid gentle- 
 ness, the figure its indolent repose. 
 
 *^ So it is as much trouble to answer as 
 it is to understand," she said at last ; ^^ for 
 once I will repeat my assertion — it is on 
 your account Mr. Geldfinder objects to your 
 presence at the ball.'' 
 
 This time Hester let her muslins fall and 
 looked up, in what Willie Turner would pro- 
 bably have thought " pretty bewilderment," 
 at her puzzle-speaking sister. To Sarah it
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 251 
 
 appeared simple stupidity, and she impatiently 
 exclaimed, 
 
 " On my word, Hester, you tempt me oc- 
 casionally to believe you a born idiot. Why 
 is your own heart so set on this thing ?" 
 
 *^ The ball ! Law, Sarah, what a question ! 
 Doesn't everybody like to go who can ? — 
 and — and it isn't pleasant to be left out of 
 what other people enjoy, of course, and — and 
 all that." 
 
 " And Miss Lockstone does not anticipate 
 that her beauty will be the least admired in 
 such an assembly, and she is not sorry 
 a chance for competition in that respect 
 should offer with the first people in the 
 county, and — and would not be inconsolable 
 to find a twelfth or thirteenth — which is it, 
 by the way ? — admirer among the very grand 
 gentlemen frequenting it ; and — and all that," 
 sneered Sarah ; adding, after a moment's 
 pause, " and it is precisely for those reasons 
 Mr. Geldfinder would prefer your not going, 
 Hester. He knows you are quite pretty 
 enough to charm even a Neville ; while I sus- 
 pect he does not know with equal certainty
 
 252 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 how firm his hold on your heart might prove 
 should such a catastrophe befall." 
 
 Hester simpered a little, nay, even coloured 
 at this ; she felt greatly llattered at such a 
 speech from Sarah, and as she drawled forth 
 *^ What nonsense," it was quite evident to 
 that singularly clear-sighted girl that notions 
 akin to those she had hinted at must have 
 arisen in her sister's mind before, though pro- 
 bably only in a misty sort of fashion, which 
 she by no means disliked some clear elucida- 
 tion of from herself. 
 
 She gave a quick, piercing glance at the 
 momentarily excited face, and then laughed 
 her old low, scornful laugh. 
 
 " So you had thought of so lamentable a 
 contingency as not impossible ? Could you 
 not have been honest for once and allowed 
 it?" She paused again for a few seconds, 
 still contemplating her sister, and then asked 
 in a different tone, her eyes intently fixed on 
 Hester's, ** Granted that you had one of these 
 gentry at your feet, would you dismiss this 
 man as you did Frank Marsden? Tell the 
 truth this time, Hester, if you please," she 
 added, determinedly.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 253 
 
 Hester betook herself to her ordinary refuge 
 ■when close pressed, and covered her face 
 with her handkerchief. 
 
 '^ You are very unkind, Sarah. I wish you 
 wouldn't talk so. / didn't dismiss poor Frank, 
 as you call it. I wish you wouldn't talk like 
 that — but you've no feeling — you never have 
 about these things." 
 
 " What things ? The depth of feeling 
 which prompts peopfe to change their lovers 
 once a month or so ? Well, I'm afraid I do 
 not sympathise with such a proceeding, as 
 perhaps I ought. And now suppose you 
 answer my question. Would you turn Mr. 
 Geldfinder over if you found his substitute in 
 some great gun at the Merestown ball ?" 
 
 " How you do tease, Sarah ! How should 
 I know ? — of course not. How could I, unless 
 he liked ?" 
 
 "Ah! — well, Hester, it is because he does 
 not like, that he ventures to hint a distaste to 
 your pleasure in this instance. He wouldn't 
 in the least mind your going as Mrs. Geld- 
 finder ; but till that happy change in your 
 condition is safely effected, he would prefer 
 not running more risks of losing his prize
 
 
 IffifibBi «Di) m lAe sUreidk ti 
 
 arlHftBl»1iK db^ 
 
 aec^jm ^ 
 
 lili£«E lius 
 
 S^ 
 
 ^T'r'TiJT 
 
 Id 
 
 «F
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 255 
 
 " Not sure of going ! — Sarah, what do you 
 mean ?" 
 
 '' I don't generally take the trouble to say 
 anything I do not think," retorted her sister, 
 calmly ; " and I repeat, to what end decide 
 on the dress for a ball to which it is very un- 
 certain if you will be able to go/' 
 
 ^' I mean to go, Sarah — I have told Harman 
 so," gasped Hester. 
 
 " Without tickets ?" returned Sarah, calmly. 
 " I doubt if even your dazzling beauty would 
 overcome that slight obstacle. It wouldn't 
 be pleasant to be turned away from the door." 
 
 " But we have tickets, of course." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, I am sorry to contra- 
 dict you, but we have not. They are not 
 sent unless applied for. We have not applied, 
 and what is more, I strongly doubt your 
 father's having the slightest intention of asking 
 for any." 
 
 " Oh ! Sarah," and there was real trouble 
 in Hester's tones ; "but you will make him, 
 won't you? Oh ! you will !" 
 
 Sarah laughed. 
 
 " What will you do if I say no? Bribe
 
 256 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 me with the reversionary interest in Messrs. 
 Turner and Geldfinder, for which you believed 
 me so anxious just now ; or go and boldly 
 demand the tickets from your father yourself, 
 as your light, the elder born ?" and the lip 
 curled scornfully. 
 
 ** Oh ! Sarah, dear Sarah, you know I 
 can't. You will get them, won't you ? You 
 can't be so cruel !" and Hester positively 
 turned pale with dismay. 
 
 " I could be, as you very well know, Hester, 
 and most probably should if I did not think 
 it perfectly right I should get the tickets 
 myself. I can put you out of your misery so 
 far. I do intend the tickets to be applied 
 for, but, remember, they may be refused." 
 
 This was almost a worse evil than the 
 other, but before Hester could recover from 
 her consternation at its possibility to make 
 any observation on it, her sister had left the 
 room. She was in no mood for any more of 
 those helpless, peevish platitudes just then ; 
 besides, it had occurred to her that it really 
 was time to see about the tickets. Her fatlier 
 had remained at home that day, a most un-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 257 
 
 usual thing, and she determined the matter 
 should be decided without another moment's 
 unnecessary delay. After a few minutes' re- 
 flection as to Stephen Lockstone's probable 
 whereabouts, she concluded he would be found 
 in the breakfast-room. Thither she accord- 
 ingly repaired, and found him sitting with his 
 head upon his arm, and that on the table be- 
 fore him. The morning paper, in which he 
 had attempted to appear absorbed, had fallen 
 unheeded at his feet ; he was lost in a reverie 
 which his knitted brows and compressed lips 
 sufficiently betokened was of no pleasanter 
 character than usual. He started violently 
 as Sarah approached, making a futile, helpless 
 effort to regain the newspaper. 
 
 ^^ Spare yourself the exertion, sir, I beg," 
 was her sarcastic observation as she noted the 
 spasmodic movement, *'it is quite needless. 
 I am alone, and I, as you are well aware, 
 can see through any blinds of your manu- 
 facture." 
 
 Stephen Lockstone groaned, or rather he 
 would have done so had he dared. Sarah's 
 presence reduced the sound he uttered to 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 something like a grunt. He would fain have 
 spoken, but for the positive impossibility of 
 finding words. 
 
 ^' The news was not sufficiently exciting to 
 rivet your attention this morning, and so you 
 fell asleep over the attempt to get interested, 
 no doubt," proceeded his daughter, scoffingly. 
 "And truly I scarcely wonder. It is the 
 fitting, legitimate result for a country squire, 
 when he chances to spend the intermediate 
 hours between a heavy breakfast and equally 
 weighty luncheon by his fireside, instead of 
 bestirring himself among his acres. By the 
 way, did you ever carry a gun, sir ?" 
 
 "What folly," was the angry excla- 
 mation responding to this query, Avhich Sarah 
 put as innocently as though really seeking 
 information. 
 
 Her rejoinder, too, was meekness itself, 
 though aggravating to a degree to one who 
 knew her as well as did her father. 
 
 " Oh ! pray pardon me — above all, please 
 spare me such naughty words. Of course I 
 didn't mean to suggest your taking a gun in 
 the snow, only if you don't shoot, yourself,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 259 
 
 mightn't your friends like to try the Manor 
 preserves ?" 
 
 *^ He — he doesn't know how to shoot," 
 blurted forth Stephen Lockstone, and then 
 all but wished himself shot for the inad- 
 vertence. 
 
 Sarah's worst look, that cool, cruel, ques- 
 tioning, irresistible gaze, was upon him in an 
 instant. What a mistake he had made ! He 
 had been a fool indeed. No after correction, 
 no self-contradiction or mystifying, would avail 
 here. He kncAv that but too well, and pre- 
 served a sullen silence, hardly knowing 
 whether he felt relieved or more disturbed 
 when Sarah's expression changed, and she 
 simply observed, with intense contempt of 
 tone, 
 
 " Cannot shoot ! No, I should not think 
 he could." 
 
 Of whom was she thinking? Had she 
 guessed ? What did she know ? — or rather 
 what did she not know ? But he had hardly 
 time to ask himself these questions, and feel 
 how completely his daughter was an enigma 
 to him, however plainly he and his best-laid 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 plans were read by her, when she went on in 
 a totally changed tone, 
 
 '^/was thinking of very different people 
 when I spoke of jour friends. If you choose 
 to forget what friends the master of the Manor 
 House has a right to claim, I do not ; and I 
 fancy the young Nevilles, for example, would 
 not object to carry a gun over our well-stocked 
 acres." 
 
 ^^ The — the Nevilles ?" murmured Stephen 
 Lockstone, and for once he spoke without an 
 oath, and with one genuine and single feeling 
 — surprise. 
 
 ^* The Nevilles — yes — I beg your pardon — 
 I fancied my pronunciation even unusually 
 distinct, or — stay, they are made of superior 
 clay to that of others, perhaps ? Ah ! I see it 
 is so, and you are in the secret. Well, I con- 
 fess I was not, and from what little I have 
 heard and seen of them, I judged they were 
 very much like other people. They don't 
 shoot, then?" 
 
 " Sarah ! what is it you mean? for the life 
 of me I can't tell,'^ and once again, in very 
 desperation, he spoke the simple truth.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 261 
 
 " Indeed ! Considering your ordinary pow- 
 ers of comprehension, sir, which occasionally 
 outrun my powers of expression, that is sur- 
 prising ; but to reward such rare humility, I 
 will speak very plainly. It is high time you 
 invited the young Nevilles, and some of your 
 other neighbours, to try the Manor covers. 
 You have taken very excellent care they 
 should be kept forbidden ground to all but 
 the keepers for as many years as I can re- 
 member. Now it is time the key should be 
 turned. The privilege will be welcomed all 
 the more eagerly, depend on it, for the past 
 abstinence. Suppose you write a note or two 
 to-day. We have not much time left, re- 
 member — I will drive in with you after 
 luncheon, and we can leave one for the 
 Nevilles, with your application for the ball 
 tickets — or you have them, perhaps ?" 
 
 And then Stephen Lockstone, who, care- 
 ful to observe Sarah's prohibition of oaths be- 
 fore the servants, indemnified himself whole- 
 sale when alone with his family for such trying 
 abstinence, spit forth a torrent of unseemly 
 words, but nevertheless he felt there was much
 
 262 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 weight in those of his tormentor. Why had 
 he kept the Manor covers so carefully for all 
 these years? — why thrown cold water on all 
 poor Mr Lee's feeble proposals regarding 
 shooting parties ? Battues were not in those 
 days. Why suavely but determinedly set 
 aside Mrs. Lee's sweet but firm arguments re- 
 garding the same matter ? Why — but with 
 the very idea now put before him to be acted 
 on by his daughter. Did she not know after 
 all, or did she suspect — and yet urge him on. 
 Oil ! if he could but feel as bold, now that his 
 object was accomplished, with but that one 
 terror to be dreaded, as he had felt before — that 
 Sarah had been a boy — that — but Sarah's voice, 
 cold and cutting as the brightest steel, broke 
 on his self-communings, regrets, and wishes. 
 
 " If you have quite ended a blasphemous 
 tirade more befitting that respectable acquaint- 
 ance of yours, Tony Hicks, than the lord of Lee 
 Manor, sir, perhaps you will kindly inform me 
 at what hour you propose ordering the car- 
 riage ; if I am not mistaken, this is one of the 
 days the stewards are supposed to attend at 
 the ' Eoebuck ' to receive applications for
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 263 
 
 tickets, therefore it will suit remarkably well." 
 
 Stephen Lockstone winced, and grew more 
 pallid than ever as his daughter spoke. Yes, 
 she had touched him to the quick then, as she 
 had fully intended ; and a short, bright Hash of 
 triumph darted from her eyes, composed the 
 next instant to a quiet but very determined 
 gaze upon her quailing father. A question 
 rose to his lips, and had almost escaped them, 
 but it was checked in time, and he sullenly 
 muttered, 
 
 *' Do you suppose you will get tickets this 
 year ?" 
 
 " Yes. At any rate, if we do not, neither 
 shall we next. Take your position at once, 
 sir — if you have one grain of courage to occupy 
 it, at least." 
 
 And Stephen Lockstone rang the bell and 
 ordered the carriage, and by-and-by he and his 
 resolute younger daughter dashed up to the 
 porch of the "Roebuck." Very busy that little 
 inn thought itself on that day — very busy, 
 and very grand, for two or three of the 
 stewards really were there, though it was by 
 no means a matter of course that they should
 
 264 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 be, as Mr. Wellcome, the portly master of the 
 place, and whilom head butler at Castle 
 Neville, as often as not transacted all the real 
 business connected with the ball himself. He 
 glanced out of the door now as the handsome 
 carriage and prancing horses drew up *at it. 
 Not always did he condescend to greet even 
 his best customers himself, and now, after a 
 passing scrutiny of the vehicle, he turned on 
 his heel with an expression on his jovial face 
 which its occupants might scarcely have re- 
 lished — one of them, that is; Sarah would have 
 been indifferent, or, more probably, would 
 have taken measures to change it very quickly. 
 
 " Are you to act a lacquey's part, and dance 
 attendance yourself on an old servant ?" she 
 asked, her tone low and contemptuous, as 
 she saw her father preparing to descend. He 
 desisted mechanically, and she said aloud, 
 
 " You had better send for Mr. Wellcome, 
 perhaps he can tell us if any one is here." 
 
 So the footman Avent, and the innkeeper, 
 after keeping them waiting some five minutes, 
 slowly descended the doorsteps, his hat on, 
 and his manner particularly indifferent.
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 265 
 
 " What can I do for you, Mr. Lockstone ?" 
 he inquired, staying his farther progress, while 
 still beneath the shelter of his portico. 
 
 Before that hesitating gentleman had time 
 to answer, however, Sarah came to the rescue, 
 her brilliant eyes fixed on the abashed inn- 
 keeper's face, her haughty gesture motioning 
 him nearer. 
 
 " We wish to know what gentlemen are in 
 the steward's room to-day, Mr. Wellcome. Be 
 good enough to ascertain, if you please — par- 
 ticularly if either of the Mr. Nevilles is there." 
 
 In spite of himself Mr. Wellcome now stood 
 at the carriage door, bowing low, too, yes, 
 absolutely bowing to the beautiful face before 
 him, though owned by Stephen Lockstone's 
 daughter. *^ Dashed if he could help it," as 
 he afterwards explained apologetically to his 
 wife ; " there she sat, as much at ease as a 
 born lady, and with such eyes — lor ! Why, 
 Lady Olivia, no, nor that friend of hers, the 
 beauty from London we all thought so much 
 of at Castle Neville the year of the wedding, 
 you know, even she couldn't hold a candle to 
 her. She is handsome, and no mistake !"
 
 266 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 So Mr. Wellcome, half mechanically, half 
 unwillingly, wholly bewildered for the moment, 
 found himself doing her haughty behest, while 
 the familiar smile of intense contempt stole 
 over Sarah's features as she recognized that 
 precise effect she had calculated on producing. 
 
 Two stewards of the ball were louncrin^r in 
 the comfortable little room appropriated to 
 them at the " Roebuck," the great hotel, as it 
 was considered to be at Merestown, though 
 half a dozen such, and more, could easily be 
 swallowed up by that magnificent piece of 
 modern luxury at Charing Cross. 
 
 One was middle-aged, the other young, 
 with a fresh, good-tempered face, clustering 
 chestnut curls, and frank blue eyes, very plea- 
 sant to look upon. What little they had to 
 do had been done, and now they were idling 
 away the time as best they might, and very 
 hard work tliey found it on that dull after- 
 noon in a stagnant country town. The elder 
 one sat in an easy chair, poising a paper-knife 
 very dexterously on one finger ; the young 
 man now leant against the window-frame and 
 looked out on the sloppy street, with its half-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 267 
 
 melted patches of snow, all black begrimed, 
 and little impromptu rivulets running here 
 and there in the warmer parts ; now walked 
 over to the fire, poking it for the hundredth 
 time, or turned over once more the miscel- 
 laneous assortment of cards and papers dexter- 
 ously fitted into the frame of the chimney- 
 glass by Mr. Wellcome's practised fingers. 
 
 "What a terrible nuisance it is stopping 
 here in this way, Neville ; but Lady Eaymond 
 particularly wished to see your sister to-day, 
 so she has taken the carriage over, and I am 
 a prisoner till her return ; but for that I'm 
 not sure I should have come in at all," ob- 
 served Sir Charles Eaymond, during an inter- 
 val of obstinacy on the part of the paper- 
 knife, when it insisted on falling three 
 times running. " It's all a great farce, you 
 know, and Wellcome can do it all just as well 
 as we can." 
 
 "And better," half-yawned, half-laughed 
 young Neville. " However, I'm only too 
 grateful for any chance that brings you here 
 to-day. I am doing very hard filial duty in 
 the matter, you know, taking my father's
 
 268 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 place. Hilloa ! here comes Wellcome, some- 
 thing up, eh ? Whj, what's happened ? He 
 looks as if he had been guilty of an emotion. 
 Is such a thing possible for our staid ex- 
 butler? What is the missive. Sir Charles?" 
 
 ^* Read it, it concerns you as much as 
 
 Oh ! you have another. Well, that is capital. 
 He's not willing one chance should escape." 
 
 ^'Eh? I don't understand. This thing 
 is simply a card of admission to shoot for Fred 
 and me, apparently ; and to the Manor, too, 
 by Jove ! I'm not sorry, they're glorious 
 preserves, and we have often longed to try 
 our hands there, but they were kept as sacred 
 as a Turk's seraglio. It's a favour, I can tell 
 you, sir." 
 
 ^' Umph !" returned the baronet, somewhat 
 doubtingly. " If so, it is one not extended 
 to me. This," and he held the paper towards 
 him, " is simply a formal note of application 
 to us for ball tickets. Fancy that fellow 
 Lockstone, the attorney — we shall have the 
 apothecary applying next, I suppose. Just 
 write word there are none, Wellcome. You 
 know how to manage it. That is what your
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 269 
 
 father would wish, eh, Neville ? Who hrought 
 the note ?" 
 
 *^ The footman gave it me, sir," hesitated 
 Wellcome ; ** but the carriage is at the door 
 now, and the lady in it." 
 
 " What !'' cried young Neville, bounding 
 to the window. " A lady who can electrify 
 you, Wellcome, as I gather she has, must be 
 worth seeing." 
 
 Of that the Hon. Harry Neville had a very 
 good though short-lived chance of judging, 
 for Sarah's haughty face was turned full to- 
 wards the hotel as he looked out ; but her 
 veil was dropped a moment after, not, how- 
 ever, till he had seen enough to induce a pro- 
 longed " whew — w — w !" and a rapid inter- 
 ception of Wellcome as he was leaving the 
 room. 
 
 *' Stop a bit. I say, Raymond, she's a 
 regular beauty. It would be a sin to miss 
 having her at the ball, and you know they 
 are living at the Manor now. Of course you 
 must draw the line somewhere. Ha ! yes, I 
 knew that was what you were going to say ; 
 but he's a landed gentleman now, you know.
 
 270 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Oh ! let them have the tickets. Hang it all, 
 if you could just see her you'd think she was 
 worth swallowing one, or even two attorneys 
 for." 
 
 So Sarah Lockstone returned with the ball 
 tickets in her muff, and as she flung them into 
 Hester's lap, said, 
 
 " There, Hester. Have three more dresses 
 made up and discarded, and give your humble 
 adorer his ticket with your own fair hands, 
 then you can judge if Madame Carson's 
 patience or his is the most inexhaustible."
 
 271 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 " To Messrs. Sharpe, Kewter, and Watchemklose, 
 Solicitors, London, England. 
 
 GENTLEMEN,— 
 " May I beg the favour of your 
 immediate attention to the business I am 
 about to entrust to you ? 
 
 ^' My father, Mr. Lee, formerly of Lee 
 Manor, near Merestown, has been for some 
 time past incapable, through a long and try- 
 ing illness, of conducting his affairs, and we 
 have reason to fear there has been some very 
 culpable neglect of his interest, to say no 
 worse, on the part of his late agent, Mr. 
 Stephen Lockstone, of Merestown. 
 
 " I am the only son, and in my absence 
 there is no one in England to watch Mr. 
 Lockstone's proceedings, or guard against any
 
 272 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 future injury he may have it in his power 
 to do. 
 
 ^' My desire is that you should undertake 
 this business, demand an account of his past 
 conduct from Mr. Lockstone, and see if there 
 be no means of restoring my family to Lee 
 Manor, whence, as I have just learned, this 
 man has turned them out by foreclosing mort- 
 gages on the property he had bought up, my 
 grandfather having unhappily cut off the en- 
 tail before my birth. 
 
 " I have advertised my mother and sister 
 to put you, or any agent you may send down, 
 in possession of all the papers they have, to 
 give you a full statement of the particulars of 
 the facts, and I leave the matter entirely in 
 your hands to act as you may see fit, with full 
 confidence that you will do the best and ut- 
 most possible under the circumstances. 
 
 " My uncle, Mr. Charlton, the only other 
 near male relative of my family, joins in my 
 request, and renders himself responsible with 
 myself for the consequences. 
 
 " He recommended my applying to you, 
 and writes you by tliis post, confirming all I
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 273 
 
 have said, and authorising you to draw on 
 him for any money requisite to conduct this 
 business. 
 
 " I am, gentlemen, 
 
 ^' Your obedient servant, 
 
 *' Edward Lee." 
 
 Mr. Watchemklose sat alone in his little, 
 dark, smoke-begrimed London den as he read 
 this letter. He did so rapidly, with a half- 
 smile on his lip. Poor young Edward was 
 scarcely a business man yet, and he had 
 written in great agitation, insisting on doing 
 so himself, though Mr. Charlton^s was the 
 really necessary missive. The lawyer tossed 
 the letter from him for the present on a heap of 
 many others, while he proceeded to further 
 lessen the huge packet of unopened corres- 
 pondence yet lying before him. 
 
 In due time he arrived at Mr. Charlton's 
 communication, and over that he paused a 
 second longer than over any other, then put 
 it down by the side of the heap, and went 
 forward to the business of breaking seals once 
 more. 
 
 ,VOL T. T
 
 274 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 At last the letters were all read, orders 
 given to various clerks, answers to many letters 
 dotted down in a sort of private short-hand, 
 and turned over to be copied by subordinates. 
 Then Mr. Watchemklose took up the American 
 despatches once more, and pondered a little 
 further on their purport ; next, he rose up 
 and proceeded with them to another little den, 
 dirtier and dismaller than his own, if that 
 might be, where Mr. Sharp was busy hanging 
 up his hat and taking off his coat, having only 
 just come in from some far-off business jaunt. 
 
 '' Bead those," said the first gentleman, 
 and the second did so, in the middle of which 
 proceeding he rang a little handbell, and 
 presently the third partner joined the con- 
 clave. When he had read the letters, which 
 he did in*no time at all to speak of, he looked 
 briskly up, and said in a rapid voice, cutting 
 his words short off, as if he had by no means 
 time to accord them their full complement of 
 sound, 
 
 " That man's the greatest rascal among us 
 — long been expecting he'd give us some 
 work — come at last — send some one down."
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 275 
 
 **Just what I thought; and there's the 
 man," returned Mr. Watchemklose, pointing 
 to the figure of a young man who just then 
 hurried past the window on some errand from 
 the office. 
 
 ^' Yes — he's a clever chap, but a little too 
 soft, eh ?" returned the senior partner. 
 
 '^ Not a bit, not a whit, sir," snapped little 
 Mr. Kewter ; " the very identical individual, 
 and the sooner he's off the better, Watchem- 
 klose." 
 
 *' Yes, I was thinking so ; if anything is to 
 be done, which I doubt, we should not lose an 
 hour." 
 
 *' Certainly not. You'd better set it going- 
 offhand, eh, Sharpe, and let the young gen- 
 tleman, or, rather, the old one across the 
 water hear in no time that we accept his 
 trust." 
 
 So in about four minutes and three-quarters 
 these three busy men of business and astute 
 lawyers had arranged the entire course of 
 action to be followed in a matter which had 
 cost the parties more immediately concerned 
 in it many a weary hour's reflection and days 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 of cogitation ere they could resolve on the 
 very first initiative step to be taken. The 
 die was cast at last, however, and the thief set 
 to catch the thief. 
 
 Before that evening all necessary instruc- 
 tions had been given. What little information 
 could be obtained in London regarding Lee 
 Manor was collected and stowed away in the 
 brains of Mr. Watchemklose's chosen agent, 
 and within a week he himself was on his way 
 to Merest own; with full powers to do all he 
 mightfind practicable to circumvent,if it wereyet 
 possible, the plans of Mr. Stephen Lockstone. 
 
 A short letter to Dr. Arrasdaile, from the 
 lawyer who had been referred to him by Mr. 
 Charlton as the intimate friend of the family, 
 apprized him of what was to be expected, and 
 so delighted that energetic gentleman, that he 
 instantly flew off to Newman's Buildings, 
 quite regardless of the expectant patients 
 on his round for that morning, dashing into 
 the little parlour of No. 5 so hastily, that he 
 nearly knocked down gentle Mrs. Lee, who 
 was coming out, and sent Mabel into one of 
 the old laughing fits that had used so often to
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 277 
 
 gladden her mother's heart by their sweet, 
 joyous ring through the old rooms at Lee 
 Manor. The familiar but long unheard tones 
 brought a smile to her lips now, though the 
 tears sprung to her eyes at the same instant, 
 and they were very glistening as she raised 
 them to the doctor's face to reply to his rather 
 incoherent apologies. 
 
 " Ha ! little lady, you dare laugh at me ! 
 Beware ! I'll seal up my budget of good 
 news, and only let it out to your mother there, 
 if that's the fashion you treat a hurried, busy 
 man like myself," was his semi-indignant 
 greeting to Mabel, the apology made and ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 " Good news ! — from Edward ?" queried the 
 mother, eagerly. 
 
 " Not exactly, my dear madam," returned 
 the Doctor, drily ; '^ American mails do not 
 arrive every day just yet ; and I fancy you 
 had just received your own despatch when I 
 was here four days ago." 
 
 ^^ But it was so short -and hurried," pleaded 
 Mabel. 
 
 "Nevertheless, I'm afraid the Govern-
 
 278 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ment has not been induced to send out a 
 second special post on that account/' returned 
 the gentleman, who was evidently in a very 
 mischievous mood. *^ Very remiss of them, 
 no doubt, but still true/' 
 
 " You are as teasing as ever. Dr. Arms- 
 daile," said Mabel, smiling ; " and I don't 
 believe you've any good news at all." 
 
 *' And you are as scheming, Miss Mabel ; 
 but you shouldn't get it out of me that way, 
 though you did your new dolls sometimes, you 
 little puss ; but that I really can't stay three 
 minutes — ought not to be here now. Why, 
 that famous London firm, those lawyers who 
 have brought such a heap of iniquity to light, 
 you know, is the one your brother is accus- 
 tomed to communicate with, it appears, 
 madam ; they are written to by this last mail, 
 and their agent is to be here before the end 
 of the week. A very well chosen one, too, or 
 I am mistaken," added the Doctor, with a 
 mischievous twinkle in his eye. 
 
 ]\Iabel noticed this-, but her mother did not. 
 Tlie idea of the London lawyer, of the great 
 step being really taken, made her nervous,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 279 
 
 and a thousand doubts and fears about her 
 husband crowded into her mind. Before she 
 could express one, however, the good Doctor 
 had divined her trouble, and laying his hand 
 kindly on her shoulder, said, 
 
 *' No fear, my dear lady, no fear. That 
 time is past. I mean,'' he added hastily, 
 lest he might hurt their over-sensitive feelings 
 regarding the cherished invalid, ^^ I mean, 
 now this man has done his worst, it will be 
 rather a relief, than not, to have another to 
 depend on and refer to. A protection, if no 
 good result should follow. Depend on it he 
 will feel it so." 
 
 *^ Do you really think so ?" faltered Mrs. 
 Lee, anxiously. 
 
 " I am sure of it, my dear madam, after, 
 perhaps, just the first shock of having a stranger 
 about; for you know this young man must 
 necessarily be here a good deal. He must 
 pick up as much as he can to be of any real use. 
 Have the entree, in fact. You understand ?" 
 
 Yes, the flush on Mrs. Lee's face, and the 
 annoyance in her eyes, proved that she did
 
 280 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 only too well, without the " Must this be ?" 
 which she uttered in a low, sad tone. 
 
 *^ Yes, of course, and a very good must, too. 
 If he's the man I rather take him to be, you'll 
 find it a very pleasant intrusion and variety. 
 I believe I know him slightly. His family I 
 knew well, and a very nice, honourable, high- 
 principled race they were. Anyhow, I shall 
 be here to take care no wolf is admitted to 
 our fold ; and now I must run away. There's 
 poor old Northcote will be as savage as a wolf, 
 that I'm not there before this, though I can do 
 him little real good. His fit of gout will have 
 its way, and a terribly sharp way that is for 
 him, I'm afraid ;" and so saying, the good 
 doctor hurried away, just popping in his head 
 once more to explain, ^' He may be here di- 
 rectly now — those London fellows don't let the 
 grass grow under their feet, I can tell you — 
 to-day, even." 
 
 But it was not to-day that he arrived, no, 
 nor on the morrow, but on the third day, when, 
 having ridden his own horse down, the young 
 man towards mid-day entered Merestown once 
 again, and as he reached the first row of
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 281 
 
 houses a merry peal of bells greeted his ears. 
 How madly they rang, and well they might. 
 Mr. Geldfinder had secured his prize at last, 
 and it was with no niggard hand he paid the 
 bell-ringers for celebrating the event. 
 
 *' Married ! and to that man! Oh! Hester!" 
 so murmured the horseman as he rode for- 
 ward into this old familiar town on his new 
 mission to strangers, and was greeted — wel- 
 comed, should he call it — by the marriage-bells 
 in honour of his first love\s wedding to 
 another. Poor Frank ! one little twinge 
 pulled at his heart as the old memories flooded 
 in on it. One, and but a slight one. Let us 
 hope it was the last on that subject felt by 
 ^ank Marsden.
 
 282 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 fpHE feeble sunlight of a February afternoon 
 -*- was struggling to make its way among 
 the bare branches of the trees, still wet with 
 a morning's heavy rain, and sending watery 
 glances though the large dining-room window 
 of Castle Neville. Furtively kissing now and 
 then the gilt of a picture-frame, then, subsiding 
 immediately, it vanished behind a cloud, as if 
 ashamed of its performance, and left the lon^, 
 handsome chamber, with its deep velvet paper, 
 in what seemed almost darkness. This room 
 and two or three more formed a modern wing, 
 which had been tacked on to the castle as 
 late as the same century. Indeed, though a 
 fine pile of building seen from a distance 
 among the noble trees of the park, so many 
 had been the additions of various generations 
 of Nevilles to the originally small but strongly-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 283 
 
 built tower of Avonsdale, that a nearer ap- 
 proach rather destroyed the effect, as it looked 
 more like a heterogeneous mass of specimens 
 of the architecture of all ai^es, than an old 
 feudal fortress built before the time of the last 
 Crusade. 
 
 However, if modern additions had destroyed 
 the picturesqueness of the edifice, they had 
 greatly enhanced its inward comfort ; and no- 
 where could you meet with a pleasanter abode, 
 take it all in all, than that favourite seat of 
 the Earl of Avonsdale. 
 
 Nor was the least amount of comfort to be 
 found in this dining-room, though it did 
 not appear to afford any particular amount 
 of it to the party now lingering there 
 after luncheon. Ennui had taken posses- 
 sion of each of them, for the time, at least. 
 The last remnants of that meal were still on 
 the table, but the governess and two younger 
 daughters of the house had withdrawn, leaving 
 behind the only other one unmarried. Lady 
 Charlotte, some three years Lady Olivia 
 Frazer's junior, and two young men, the 
 second and third sous, besides the Earl and
 
 284 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Countess. The latter was leaning back in a 
 very comfortable leather chair, to which she 
 had removed directly Mademoiselle had left 
 the room with her charges. The Earl was still 
 in his place, intently studying, for the forty- 
 first time, perhaps, the hunting card of his 
 own pack, which he already knew by heart. 
 Lady Charlotte alternately twisted the brace- 
 lets on her arms, and pulled the silky ears of 
 a little King Charles which had found its way 
 into her lap. The younger son was whistling 
 a soft accompaniment to an air he was drum- 
 ming gently on the table-cloth, while the 
 Hon. Henry — the same who had attended at 
 the " Eoebuck " in his father's place — stood 
 by the window looking disconsolately ou{, 
 sometimes giving a melancholy-sounding yawn, 
 sometimes suppressing it, always feeling ex- 
 ceedingly bored at the thought that shooting 
 was over for that season. Presently he ex- 
 claimed, with a sudden vivacity that startled 
 his mother, 
 
 " By the way, ma'am, I wish you'd call at 
 the Manor, on those new people there." 
 
 " On whom, Harry ?" asked the Countess,
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 285 
 
 half raising herself in the chair, and scarcely 
 believing she had heard right. 
 
 ** On the people at the old Lee Manor, you 
 know — don't you remember them at the ball ? 
 A tall, dark girl — you observed to me how 
 handsome she was, and — high authority, you 
 know," he added with a smile — ^' pronounced 
 her the belle of the evening." 
 
 a Very likely, my dear Harry ; but because 
 so great a connoisseur in female beauty as 
 your cousin Walter, Duke of Grantham, should 
 elect a milkmaid as the Venus of the moment, 
 I don't consider myself bound to call on her." 
 
 " But, my dear mother, Miss Lockstone is 
 not a milkmaid, nor in the least that style of 
 thing — and you met her at the county ball, 
 you know." 
 
 " Yes ; and how she ever came there is a 
 mystery to me. Oh ! yes, I know, you per- 
 suaded Sir Charles Raymond into giving them 
 tickets ; but that they should ever have 
 thought of asking or presuming to go at all ! 
 I wonder whom we shall see there next. My 
 sister is quite right in saying these sort of
 
 286 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 things are getting to be far too great a mix- 
 ture." 
 
 *^ Well, really, mother, I do think we might 
 visit the owners of Lee Manor quite as much 
 as the Raymonds themselves even." 
 
 "Yes — the Lees, perhaps. I made no ob- 
 jection to them — indeed, I should have been 
 extremely glad of their acquaintance, for the 
 sake of a little more society down here, if they 
 had not been so very peculiar, this genera- 
 tion, poor things; but it is quite different 
 with these people. My lord," she added, ap- 
 pealing to her husband, who looked up, with 
 attention still half-absorbed by the card, 
 '* what would you think of my leaving your 
 card at Lee Manor?" 
 
 " Well, my dear, if it is necessary, pray 
 do — Bertrand has some, I believe. Eh ? — 
 what is it ?" as he was fully roused by the 
 general laugh, in which Harry, albeit still 
 ])ent on gaining his point, could not forbear 
 joining. 
 
 *' Why, here is Henry proposing I should 
 call on some low people who are living at that
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 287 
 
 place where poor Mr. Lee was, you know — 
 quite preposterous, isn't it ?" 
 
 " What, the Merestown attorney, you 
 mean ? Lucky dog ! I suppose it's all 
 square. Poor Lee was a desperate fellow in 
 his youth ; but how such complete ducks and 
 drakes could be made of that fine property in 
 one generation, I can't quite make out." 
 
 " How Mr. Lockstone contrived to buy up 
 all the marketable aquatics, I suppose you 
 mean, sir, and so get the old place into his 
 clutches," suggested the Honourable Fred, 
 suspending his operations on the table-cloth 
 for a minute. 
 
 " Well, yes, that is part of what I mean, 
 perhaps, Master Fred, but not all — in these 
 days wise stewards who contrive to succeed 
 imprudent landlords, are not such rarce aves 
 as all that. What is astonishing is, that it's 
 all been done during this poor fellow's occu- 
 pation, and yet he was not so young when the 
 old man died. My dear, you must remember 
 about it ?" pursued the old earl, warming to 
 the subject as memories of his youthful days, 
 in many of whose exploits the poor imbecile of
 
 288 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 No. 5, Newman's Buildings, then the young 
 heir of Lee Manor, and not many years Lord 
 Neville's senior, had been a sharer, most pro- 
 bably the suggester. 
 
 '^ I don't know," responded the Countess, 
 more coldly ; ** till Olivia dragged me to see 
 these people — not very long ago, I think it 
 was — all I ever knew, all I had ever heard of 
 the Lees, were some old stories of yours, not 
 telling very reputably, I fancied, for this Mr. 
 Lee." 
 
 " Or for your humble servant either, eh, 
 Sophia ?" and with a good-humoured smile the 
 earl discarded his hunting-card, and went to 
 his wife, taking up that very popular position 
 on the hearth-rug — in front both of the fire 
 and his lady, which, however comforting to 
 the gentleman concerned, is by no means a 
 picturesque or gratifying one to the beholders. 
 " Ah ! well, he was a sad dog, poor Ned Lee, 
 and I suppose that's one reason why we 
 respectable fathers of families cut his acquaint- 
 ance when he came back to live in his own 
 hall, married to no one knew whom." 
 
 ^^But about the Lockstones, mother?" per-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 289 
 
 sisted Harry Neville, who, by no means abun- 
 dantly interested in his father's reminiscences, 
 was particularly so in the question of the call. 
 
 ** Why, what on earth can you want your 
 mother to call on an attorney's wife for ?" ex- 
 claimed Lord Avonsdale, now quite roused to 
 all the enormity of the proposal in debate. 
 
 ^' Yes, was there ever anything so utterly 
 absurd ?" echoed the Countess, quite satisfied 
 now that her lord had fairly entered on the 
 discussion. 
 
 " I am not wishing anyone to call on the 
 attorney — I simply suggest the expediency of 
 leaving a card on the owner of Lee Manor. 
 I take it the attorneyship will be dropped with 
 all convenient speed ; and if I ^m not misin- 
 formed, I think you, my lord, were the au- 
 thority, the rent-roll of Lee Manor is, for a 
 commoner, no small inheritance." 
 
 " Inheritance ! not much of that here, Mas- 
 ter Harry ! But what can it concern you ?" 
 
 " Oh ! nothing very special, only you know- 
 Fred and I got shooting cards — and it was 
 the very best day weVe had this season." 
 
 ** And the season is now over," observed the 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Earl, drily, as he still looked to his son for an 
 explanation. 
 
 " Is Harry thinking of the bright eyes of 
 the pheasants, or of those of this miraculous 
 beauty, I wonder ?" asked Lady Charlotte with 
 great apparent carelessness, but a mischievous 
 twinkle in her own bright eyes, which showed 
 she had been an attentive though hitherto 
 silent listener to the conversation. 
 
 " Nonsense, Charlie !" was her brother's 
 rather hotly-uttered rejoinder, but a faint 
 flush spread over his face, notwithstanding. 
 Harry Neville's was a frank, open nature, 
 and hitherto unspoiled by his association with 
 the great world, though he numbered already 
 some six or seven-and-twenty summers. Ge- 
 nial and trusting was he, and gifted by nature 
 with many of those distinctive features of 
 that charity which many an earnest but 
 harder character finds so very difficult of at- 
 tainment. 
 
 ^^ Ah ! Hotspur Harry, you are evidently 
 epris to desperation, by one or other," re- 
 turned his sister, gravely, shaking her glossy 
 curls — the new fashion in those days, and the
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 291 
 
 Honourable Fred lauglied aloud as he sug- 
 gested, 
 
 ^' Of course he is — by those of the un- 
 feathered biped, too, I feel positive ; and it 
 was that which made him speak of inheritance 
 so inapplicably just now. He has a misty 
 notion, to be sure, it may fall to his share ; 
 charged with the maintenence, tender care, 
 and cherishing, &c., &c., of bright eyes, of 
 course, but that, nevertheless, it might prove 
 no despicable portion for an earl's second son 
 — even so burdened." 
 
 " Eeally, Henry ! I do hope you are not 
 so thoroughly ridiculous," cried the Countess, 
 gravely, sitting upright in her chair as she 
 spoke, the better to take the critical survey 
 she now bestowed upon him. 
 
 There was no doubt, Harry did blush now, 
 and his mother saw it, though he turned ra- 
 pidly to the window, and exclaimed half an- 
 grily, 
 
 ** Upon my word, ma'am, I don't see why 
 you should listen to all these absurd sugges- 
 tions. And I cannot myself understand why 
 there must be some mysterious motive at work 
 
 u 2
 
 292 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 for me to propose your doing what half the 
 county have probably done already, or will 
 do, before six months are over." 
 
 *' Gently, Sir Harry," said his father, who 
 had been silently watching the young man 
 during the last few sentences. " If half the 
 county had done it, that might make a 
 difference ; but the will do so, is quite a 
 different matter, and I shrewdly suspect, what- 
 ever example Castle Neville sets regarding 
 this will be followed." 
 
 '^ Of course," chimed in Lady Avonsdale ; 
 ^' and that makes it more incumbent on 
 us not to do anything of the sort. The way 
 in which people push themselves forward now 
 is becoming quite unbearable. I am sure 
 when I was a girl these parveyius knew their 
 place and kept it. Indeed, I don't believe 
 there were any then. It is quite a new set." 
 
 '^ Not exactly, my dear," returned her lord, 
 smiling, " Tm not quite sure about your sis- 
 ter's husband ever having had a grandfather, 
 remember — and we have an acquaintance or 
 two ourselves in London whose pedigrees don't 
 quite date from the Conquest, I fancy. Still,
 
 THE CABIXET SECRET. 293 
 
 this Lee Manor business is a different thing. 
 The man starts up under one's very nose, from 
 a pettifogging attorney into the occupier 
 of one of the best estates in the county. I 
 don^t say, we may not call some time or other; 
 but I don't see any immediate hurry merely 
 because the man has a handsome daughter." 
 
 ^' Can't you have another flirtation with her 
 by calling yourself in acknowledgment of 
 your day's shooting, Hal," asked Lady Char- 
 lotte consolingly. 
 
 *^ Yes — no doubt — and I should be told Mr. 
 Lockstone was out, and see just as much of 
 her as we did on the shooting-day." 
 
 " Why, you said what a first-rate spread 
 was given you for lunch, and that you both 
 chose to go in for it purposely." 
 
 *^ And might just as well — better perhaps 
 — have let it alone ; we saw no soul but an 
 old butler, almost as stiff as our own, and he 
 only appeared twice, leaving all attendance to 
 his subordinates ; and I assure you, my lady 
 mother, whatever you may think, the ladies 
 have no idea of pushing themselves, or even 
 being seen too often by ordinary eyes, for I
 
 294 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ventured some sort of remark as to the family 
 not4unching with the shooting-party, and old 
 Wellcome himself in past days could scarcely 
 have equalled the grandeur of the reply I re- 
 ceived — given, too, with that half respectful, 
 half surprised look I've seen on his face, when 
 speaking to some one of my brother's rather 
 questionable cronies." 
 
 ** What did he say ?" asked the Countess, a 
 little interested in spite of herself, and not the 
 least affected by the allusion to Lord Neville's 
 set. The time for that had passed. When 
 first the heir of Avonsdale had affected peculiar 
 tastes, pursued scientific researches, and brought 
 some of the " queer creatures " he chose to as- 
 sociate with down to his paternal mansion, it 
 had been a great trouble to his lady mother, 
 who would greatly have preferred his sowing 
 wild oats of a more legitimate, if possibly less 
 innoxious sort, during that period of life which 
 it appears young men of fortune and position 
 make the sowing season of some moral or 
 mental crop of the sort. 
 
 Lord Neville took to a very harmless species 
 of agriculture, and after a time even his
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 295 
 
 mother recovered the shock of its peculiarity, 
 contenting herself with the hope that his de- 
 sire for the occupation would pass away as 
 years advanced, and that when the period for 
 taking a future Countess arrived he might 
 settle all the more advantageously for not 
 having followed the more beaten road to that 
 consummation. So Lady Avonsdale let Harry's 
 little irate fling pass, and only asked what the 
 man said. 
 
 *^ Why, that the ladies did sometimes lunch 
 wdth personal friends of the family wdien 
 shooting there — not with the general parties 
 ever ! And the air and the emphasis with 
 which the speech was made !" 
 
 ^' Yes," added Fred^ *^ it was more than all 
 I could do to keep my countenance. If the 
 lawyer's pretty daughters had been princesses 
 of the best blood royal their dignity could not 
 have been more carefully shielded. Why, 
 Charlie, even you have deigned to lunch oh 
 occasions with greater plebeians than an Earl's 
 second and third sons. 
 
 ^' I don't think it was a bad line for them 
 to take, though," observed his mother, raus-
 
 296 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 ingly. ^' Intensely absurd in their position, 
 of course, but still about the best thing they 
 could do. By-the-way, Harry, I can't think 
 what you see in that dark, flashing girl ; she 
 looks like a modern ' Lady Macbeth ' to my 
 fancy. Now the other creature was a fair, 
 pretty, even refined-looking person — for her, 
 I mean — only, if I remember right, she had 
 always a dreadful man hovering about her — a 
 fearfully vulgar specimen of that sort of 
 people." 
 
 " Yes, in this case the ladies are more pre- 
 sentable than the men, for a wonder," re- 
 marked the Honourable Fred. ^* Come, Char, 
 and have a game at billiards before riding," 
 and Lady Charlotte consenting, brother and 
 sister left the room together, and Harry was 
 lingeringly following, when Lady Avonsdale 
 detained him by asking, 
 
 '* Why can't you flirt with that one, if you 
 must with either, Harry ?" 
 
 '* I'm not very likely to have the oppor- 
 tunity, my dear mother, as you are so deter- 
 mined not to call ; but I could scarcely pay 
 my devoirs to much advantage in that quarter
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 297 
 
 if you did. . Miss Lockstone married that 
 same attractive gentleman you seem to have 
 honoured with so much notice last week." 
 
 *' Really ! What a horrible idea !" and the 
 Countess resumed her lounging position, the 
 better to contemplate it, apparently. 
 
 " He receives a very large dowry with his 
 bride, because the estate is destined, it is said, 
 for the younger daughter's portion, as T under- 
 stand," said the young man, with great ap- 
 parent carelessness, and then he too went off 
 to the billiard-room, leaving the Earl and 
 Countess to a conjugal tete-a-tete. 
 
 " Not so bad a Parthian shot of policy 
 that," remarked the former, laughing, as the 
 door closed, " especially for Harry. I am not 
 sure but he might make a diplomatist yet, eh, 
 Lady Avonsdale ?" 
 
 ** I'm afraid not ; and as to this, I am still 
 more afraid he is really very much in earnest. 
 What is to be done ?" and the poor lady 
 looked up at her lord in dismay. 
 
 " Nothing — not as to him, at least. As to 
 calling on these people, should you dislike it 
 very much, Sophia ?"
 
 298 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 " Why, you could not think oj. such a match 
 for Harry ?" and the Countess literally started 
 up from her chair. 
 
 ^* That is as it may be. Young men don't 
 marry the first pretty girl they fall in love with; 
 but no good results can follow determined 
 opposition with such a character as Harry's, 
 depend on it ; and, to say the truth, if this 
 man has honestly earned Lee Manor, it is no 
 despicable property for any man, peer or not. 
 I never heard anything against the father as 
 a lawyer, though he's not much liked, I be- 
 lieve, and his father was a very respectable 
 person. The girl had a grandfather, such as 
 he was, and really Harry might do w-orse. 
 He has five brothers, remember." 
 
 Lady Avonsdale did remember it, that large 
 dowers had been given already to three 
 daughters, and that three to be portioned 
 in some way still remained ; but Harry was 
 the second of her six boys. 
 
 ** If Neville should not marry — he is be- 
 tween thirty and forty now," she hesitated. 
 
 *^ So much the better, Sophy ; he'll marry 
 all in good time. No need for. all the Avous-
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 299 
 
 dales to follow our example, my dear, and see 
 their heir born before they are five-and-twenty. 
 It would be no joke for every generation of 
 our family to have a dozen sons and daughters," 
 and the Earl put his arm round his comely 
 wife's waist and smiled with very genial con- 
 tent at his fate — the twelve sturdy pulls at 
 his rent-roll notwithstanding. 
 
 ^' Well, but, Henry, this lawyer. Fancy 
 such a connection with a man living close to 
 us ; if he had come here, or belonged to some 
 other place, it might do, but really," and she 
 shook her head doubtingly. 
 
 ** My dear, Merestown isn't all the world, 
 though some of the good people round seem 
 inclined to consider it so. Harry's wife would 
 become the Honourable Mrs. Neville, and it 
 would cease to matter who she was when 
 once they were at the Manor ; for I daresay 
 if such a thing ever did happen, one could 
 arrange matters with the old lawyer. But, 
 after all, it is very premature to calculate 
 arrangements on a chance that may never 
 happen. Only I do think, if what Harry says 
 is true — and I will inquire into that to-day —
 
 300 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 there would be no harm in calling. We can 
 see our way better then; and if you do it now, 
 and it does not answer, why we shall soon be 
 going to town, you know, and it is easy to let 
 the thing drop when we return." 
 
 <* Very well," was Lady Avonsdale's reply. 
 
 She did not altogether agree with her lord, 
 except on the one point — of the ease of drop- 
 ping the acquaintance. That she not only could, 
 but quietly resolved she would do with all 
 convenient speed, unless very strong reasons 
 should present themselves against such a step. 
 She would much rather not have sought any 
 knowledge of such people at all ; but since 
 husband and son both advocated the course, 
 she would do it with the best grace she might, 
 and once done, take her own line afterwards. 
 
 Harry's information turned out to be per- 
 fectly accurate. Indeed, he had been at some 
 pains to obtain it ; so the Avonsdale carriage 
 passed through the gates of the Manor once 
 more, and the Countess went in state to pay 
 her visit to the attorney's transplanted wife. 
 She went alone, however. Lady Charlotte 
 need not go, and Lady Charlotte should not —
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 301 
 
 on that her lady mother was perfectly de- 
 termined. But Lady Avonsdale was not 
 admitted. The same important gentleman 
 who had so amused her sons, presented him- 
 self, after a short parley between the respective 
 footmen, and advancing to the carriage door, 
 informed her ladyship, with deferential polite- 
 ness, that he was '^ extremely sorry, as would 
 be his mistress, but Mrs. Lockstone was un- 
 fortunately too indisposed to see visitors to- 
 day. He regretted it greatly — but so it was," 
 and he received the cards as though it was 
 something of a condescension for him to take 
 them, bowed low, and closed the door almost 
 before the carriage was in motion. 
 
 Lady Avonsdale was a little nettled. She 
 only half-believed in the indisposition, and 
 began to think herself disappointed and balked. 
 She had had a slight curiosity to reconnoitre 
 the manners and customs of ^^ such people " 
 in their own home, and now she fancied she 
 had been very anxious to see them, and felt 
 herself proportionably aggrieved. 
 
 What would her feelings have been could 
 she have seen the handsome face of Sarah
 
 302 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 Lockstone herself watching the carriage as it 
 drove off, her very bitterest smile upon her 
 rich, well-formed lips, and ^m expression of 
 mingled satisfaction and contempt in her dark 
 eyes. 
 
 She followed the progress of the coroneted 
 Yehicle till it was lost among the trees in the 
 sweep of the Park, and then turned her head 
 back again into the room, the drawing-room 
 where, by a singular chance, she was sitting 
 with her mother when the Countess drove up. 
 She had witnessed the approach as well as the 
 departure, quite hidden herself in the deep 
 embrasure of the window. 
 
 *' I hope you are grateful to me, mama, 
 for saving you the novelty of entertaining a 
 countess," she observed, half-interrogatively, 
 after looking at her mother for a moment in 
 silence. 
 
 Poor ^Irs. Lockstone sat bolt upright in 
 one of the many easy chairs surrounding her, 
 mechanically busy over a bit of knitting she 
 held in her hands. Her thoughts were not on 
 that, however, though to which painful me- 
 mory they were now specially wandering, she
 
 THE CABINET SECRET. 303 
 
 would herself have been puzzled to tell, pro- 
 bably. 
 
 Starting as Sarah spoke, she looked up at 
 first blankly, then with some uneasiness said, 
 
 " Yes, Sarah. I did not wish to see her 
 ladyship, I am sure ; only — do you think — I 
 wonder what your father would have wished 
 us to do." 
 
 ** I really can't say. If his wishes are 
 as inconsistent as his conduct of late, I 
 should imagine he would hardly know him- 
 self." 
 
 " Oh ! Sarah, I hope he won't be vexed 
 with me," and the poor helpless woman said 
 the words so piteously, with such genuine 
 dread, that her daughter could find no pleasure 
 in keeping her on the rack. 
 
 " lieally, mama, I don't suppose he cares 
 very much either way ; and, at any rate, the 
 responsibility rests with me,'^ 
 
 Very coldly the words were spoken, but they 
 were received with abundant gratitude, for 
 if Mrs. Lockstone had any real feeling left 
 alive within her, it was the dread of her hus- 
 band's displeasure.
 
 304 THE CABINET SECRET. 
 
 There was no mixture of contradictory sen- 
 timents, no mingling of motives to dissect and 
 analyze, no flimsy veil of hypocrisy or affec- 
 tation worth drawing aside, and affording 
 amusement and interest in the process, and 
 Sarah almost sighed as she thought of this, 
 and of all Mrs. Geldfinder would have said and 
 felt on a similar occasion. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHKDI HOUSE.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 30112 042052578